Alicia Garza

• Born: January 4, 1981

Alicia Garza is a labor organizer and civil rights activist. She co-founded Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLM) with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi and the organization has grown to more than forty autonomous chapters around the world. Black Lives Matter is both movement and an organization, but these three women were the creators of the hashtag (#BlackLivesMatter) and the attempts to build an organizational infrastructure after the massive support the online presence garnered.

Alicia Garza was born Alicia Schwartz in January 1981. She grew up in Marin County, California, and was raised by her African American mother and her Jewish stepfather. Their family ran an antique store. Even though she was raised by an interracial couple, her family was not particularly political. Garza did show an early interest in activism in middle school. She remembers her brother being arrested by police when she was a teenager and feeling the injustice of the action. In high school, she petitioned to have information about contraception made available to students in Bay Area schools.

After high school, Garza attended the University of California, San Diego, where she majored in anthropology and sociology. At age twenty-three, she came out as queer to her family. In 2003, she met her partner Malachi Garza, a trans-male activist who trained organizers. He became the director of the Community Justice Network for Youth. The couple was married in 2008.

A series of murders of black teenagers at the hands of police and vigilantes motivated Garza and her colleagues to create Black Lives Matter. Although there is a long history of extra-legal and legally condoned lynching of African Americans in the United States, the spectacle of state-sanctioned violence had declined during the second half of the twentieth century, although it never stopped. In 2012, a young seventeen-year-old African American named Trayvon Martin was murdered in Florida by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch vigilante, while he was returning to his father’s fiancée’s house in the evening. Zimmerman, out on a patrol, thought Martin looked suspicious because he was black and wearing a hoodie sweatshirt. In an altercation in which Zimmerman attacked Martin, Zimmerman shot and killed the teenager. Martin was unarmed and had with him only Skittles and a bottle of iced tea. Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder, but he was found not guilty. The night of the verdict, Garza wrote, what she has called, “a love letter to black people” on Facebook. She wrote, “Black people, I love you. I love us. We matter. Our lives matter.” Her longtime friend and fellow organizer, Patrisse Cullors, put a hashtag in front of the closing clause to create #BlackLivesMatter. Then, Opal Tometi, built the webpage, Facebook page, and continued to use the hashtag to further the idea.

In August 2014, police shot and killed Michael Brown, an African American teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri. The officer that shot him, Darren Wilson, claimed that Brown had run towards him in the police cruiser, attacked him, and tried to reach for his gun. While Wilson’s testimony was questioned by witnesses, and a later Department of Justice investigation found rampant racism in the Ferguson Police Department, Wilson was not indicted. The verdict and the subsequent weeks of demonstrations against police led to the explosion of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. Over the three following weeks after the verdict, it was used almost two million times. Between Zimmerman’s acquittal and March 2016, it was used almost twelve million times.

Garza, who was then the special projects director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance in Oakland, California, was a longtime organizer. The National Domestic Workers Alliance represents twenty thousand caregivers and housekeepers and lobbies for labor legislation as well. She knew that the popularity of the message online could not just be slacktivism, a term that encompassed a phenomenon of online posting and sharing information about certain political issues that rarely turned into any real, in-person action. Garza, Tometi, and Cullors mobilized, building the online infrastructure and real-person connections to help make a difference. Since 2014, Black Lives Matter has grown to more than forty autonomous networks that work on issues of police brutality, but have also collectively staked out an intentionally intersectional position on social justice. That is, Black Lives Matter does not solely focus on black issues, but also advocates for LGBTQ issues, immigrants’ rights, livable wages, and women’s rights. Despite their intersectional advocacy, critics have tried to portray Black Lives Matter as a form of reverse racism or black supremacy. Garza has countered this by explaining that, “Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.”

Black Lives Matter as a slogan and a mission statement has reinvigorated a national movement pushing for equal rights for minority groups and marginalized groups. BLM has intentionally placed itself in a long line of African American civil rights groups, especially bold, militant groups like the Black Panther Party. But the group has tried to avoid the sexist and nationalist positions of those past groups. Black Lives Matter was started by three women, two of them queer, and their interest in intersections of power and oppression and their use of social media set the group apart from mid-twentieth century civil rights groups.

In 2020, Garza published her first book: The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart. That same year, Garda began publishing her podcast, entitled "Lady Don't Take No." The activist was also included in TIME magazine's list of 100 most influential people of 2020.

For profiles on Black Lives Matter, see Collier Meyerson, “The Founders of Black Lives Matter,” Glamour (November 1, 2016), Elle Hunt, “Alicia Garza on the Beauty and the Burden of Black Lives Matter,” Guardian (September 2, 2016), Jelani Cobb, “The Matter of Black Lives,” New Yorker (March 14, 2016).

Martin, Michel. "Black Lives Matter Co-Founder On her New Book, 'The Purpose of Power.'" NPR, 24 Oct. 2020, www.npr.org/2020/10/18/924701747/black-lives-matter-co-founder-on-her-new-book-the-purpose-of-power. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.

Schnall, Marianne. "Interview With #BlackLivesMatter Cofounder Alicia Garza: 'Fight Against Despair and Keep Doing the Work Needed to Change the World.'" Forbes, 15 Jan. 2021, www.forbes.com/sites/marianneschnall/2021/01/15/interview-with-blacklivesmatter-cofounder-alicia-garza-fight-against-despair-and-keep-doing-the-work-needed-to-change-the-world/. Accessed 28 Sept. 2024.