Alicia Garza Quotes

We've said from the very beginning Black Lives Matter is a network and also, as a broad set of individuals, is an organization moving to transform the way our society values black lives. It's not an 'Internet movement.'

As far as I'm concerned, and this is a big theme of mine, I'm not interested in white people loving me. It's an unrealistic expectation. Black people don't love anybody but themselves.

We actually know that all lives do matter. And we believe it is so much so that we had to create Black Lives Matter.

I thought our community should have a deep dialogue to make black America better. I believe if we make black America better, we make all of America better.

A race-transcendent politics is most likely to succeed when the white community takes responsibility for overcoming its racism, not when the black community decides to forget it.

Black lives do matter, and our lives do hold value.

I think #BlackLivesMatter is a huge campaign that is important and integral to our advancement as a people.

We will not stop fighting until every single black life is provided the type of love and support we so desperately deserve.

We keep calling for accountability and reinvestment and a push for all of us to imagine a world where black people are not policed but instead supported and loved and cared for. Where our families can feel safe and inspired and protected.

Black Lives Matter is our call to action. It is a tool to reimagine a world where black people are free to exist, free to live. It is a tool for our allies to show up differently for us.

All lives matter when black lives matter and no lives are more important than black lives.

Whether or not you call it Black Lives Matter, whether or not you put a hashtag in front of it, whether or not you call it the Movement for Black Lives, all of that is irrelevant. Because there was resistance before Black Lives Matter, and there will be resistance after Black Lives Matter.

I think, the argument sometimes that I've had with folks who are much more interested in sort of race-specific programs is less an argument about what is practically achievable and sometimes maybe more an argument of "We want society to see what's happened, and internalize it, and answer it in demonstrable ways." And those impulses I very much understand.

Certainly we can end racism with love. We can demand that the federal government change its emphasis on racial distinction.

Learn to love being black.

White society will not listen to preaching. They will not listen to their liberals. Liberalism has not grown within white society, and we blacks cannot stand idly by watching the situation. We can only generate a response from white society when we, as blacks, speak with a black voice and say what we want. Now has come the time when we, as blacks, must articulate what we want, and put it across to the white man, and from a position of strength.

As part of the realization of the aim to eradicate racism in our country, we must strive to create and strengthen a black capitalist class… because we come from among the black oppressed, many among us feel embarrassed to state this goal as nakedly as we should.

My number one priority is to save the Black man.

The world has made being black a crime .... I hope to make it a virtue.

I don’t want to see the issue of Black reparations for slavery close the door to historic memory and continuing responsibility.

We want Black power.

The solution of this country's problems lies in black hands.

One of the things that will decline over time is the demand that the society or the government bring forth a particularized racial remedy based on a history of deprivation. That will be even more difficult to do in the future.

In 2013, I helped create a black-centered political will- and movement-building project called #BlackLivesMatter.

For me, it's clear Beyonce sees herself as a part of the movement for black lives and believes that black lives matter - and ultimately, that's what matters.