An essential guide to building the type of movements that can address the challenges of our time, from one of the country's leading organizers--one of the creators of Black Lives Matter. In 2013, Alicia Garza wrote what she calls "a love letter to Black people" on Facebook, in the aftermath of the acquittal of the man who murdered 17-year old Trayvon Martin. She wrote: Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter. Coupled with the speed and networking capacities of social media, #BlackLivesMatter is the hashtag heard round the world. But Garza knew that hashtags don't start movements--people do. Long before #BlackLivesMatter became a rallying cry for this generation, Garza has spent the better part of two decades learning and unlearning some hard lessons about how to come together when things around us are falling apart. The lessons she offers are different from the "rules for radicals" that animated earlier generations of activists, and diverge from the charismatic, patriarchal model of the American Civil Rights Movement. From this, she offers reflections on how making room amongst the woke for those who are still waking can inspire and activate more and more people to join the fight for the world we all deserve. This is the story of one woman's lessons from years of bringing people together to create change. Most of all, it is a new paradigm for change for a new generation of changemakers, from the mind and heart behind one of the most important movements of our time.
An essential guide to building transformative movements to address the challenges of our time, from one of the country's leading organizers and a co-creator of Black Lives Matter In 2013, Alicia Garza wrote what she called "a love letter to Black people" on Facebook, in the aftermath of the acquittal of the man who murdered seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin. Garza wrote:

Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter. With the speed and networking capacities of social media, #BlackLivesMatter became the hashtag heard 'round the world. But Garza knew even then that hashtags don't start movements--people do. Long before #BlackLivesMatter became a rallying cry for this generation, Garza had spent the better part of two decades learning and unlearning some hard lessons about organizing. The lessons she offers are different from the "rules for radicals" that animated earlier generations of activists, and diverge from the charismatic, patriarchal model of the Am