Excerpt from an interview with Opal Tometi, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, with the UN Human Rights Office.
This is heavy. For a start, she is not an austere man in a dark suit, but a 36-year-old woman in pilates gear, who laughs often and generously. So when, nine years later, Cullors wrote #BlackLivesMatter under Alicia Garza’s post, Tometi was poised for action. "That was the debate. Faith and family are her pillars of strength through the heartache of witnessing and fighting for justice, but she also draws from her African heritage, her identity as a Nigerian woman, and a wealth of education and experience in the field of human rights. Seven years ago Tometi helped to create what is possibly the biggest protest movement in US history. ), “Quite honestly, that’s why I liked the phrase Black Lives Matter,” says Tometi. ", The phrase made the rounds. Opal Tometi (born August 15, 1984) is an American human rights activist, writer, strategist, and community organizer. In January 2015, the American Dialect Center selected #blacklivesmatter as its word of the year. This success at spreading not just recognition, but a bone-deep understanding of structural racism, makes Tometi confident that BLM’s other aims will one day be achieved. Look at what we’re saying about immigrants, the way we’re talking about people being ‘illegal’, look at the types of laws being pushed. She also worked as a case manager for survivors of domestic violence. “From the beginning,” says Tometi, “when I built BlackLivesMatter.com, I went to the website and wrote: ‘Black queer lives matter, black immigrants matter, black disabled folks matter …’” This movement is about all of us and recognising that black people aren’t a monolith.”, We don’t need a pretty little story to put a bow on. One that is of particular relevance to the communities I work with is the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which oversees the implementation of the human rights convention against racial discrimination. I hope you’re being extra gracious with yourself… and extending that grace to the souls you engage. Then you can never forget who you’re fighting for. And those are just a few examples of the cases that got national attention. Black Lives Matter is an international activist movement that campaigns to promote and protect human rights and dignity of Black people. Wilson fired his gun twice, hitting Brown in the hand. He had spotted the teen walking while patrolling the area in his own vehicle as a volunteer neighborhood watch leader and, Zimmerman claimed, Trayvon punched him when he got out of his car and banged his head against the sidewalk, causing Zimmerman to fear for his life. “Me being the daughter of immigrants, Alicia and Patrisse being queer; naturally our own identities inform the work.” It’s relevant, too, that all three have brothers. She recognizes the sadness, the outrage, the desperation, the dwindling patience. This means engaging the United Nations and a variety of other human rights bodies. If people take the fight for justice seriously in their own country and with partners and immigrants in their community and folks in the international community, I believe that we will see human rights for all people affirmed. "I absolutely think people are concerned with police brutality," Tometi, a daughter of Nigerian immigrants who grew up in Phoenix, told the New Yorker last week. To be silent is to be complicit. I encourage folks to join these groups. She was more than ready. It’s scary out there. "The fundamental, ongoing problem here is apparently that the vast majority of protesters don't have any specific agenda that they're arguing for," David J. Garrow, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, remarked to the Los Angeles Times in July 2016. Wilson got out of the SUV and Brown, who had run about 180 feet away, turned and started to walk back toward Wilson (according to multiple eye witnesses interviewed by federal investigators). “I think we’re gonna be seeing that same thing happen with this conversation around defunding the police and reallocating those taxpayer dollars towards solutions that give us the possibility to live with dignity.” Defunding the police, she points out, is just a call to have government budgets targeted towards a community’s real needs.
In 2016, Garza was California Rep. Barbara Lee's guest at Obama's final State of the Union address.
"So some chapters are more focused in the education system. BLM's primary message, that Brown should be alive—that better police training, a better social framework, more educational and economic opportunity for communities of color, less animosity between African-Americans and law enforcement, an end to the racism embedded in the whole criminal justice system, any or all of which could have resulted in a better outcome—still resonated loud and clear.