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What was most important, for me, is that I could share what I experience as a young person - in particular, what impact incarceration and policing had on my life and my family's life.

We rarely know what motivates somebody in their work, and it's usually a particular moment in their life. For me, that moment is my brother's incarceration and the ways in which this country has decided to neglect, abuse, and sometimes torture people with severe mental illness, especially if they're black.

Before BLM, there was a dormancy in our black freedom movement. Obviously many of us were doing work, but we've been able to reignite a whole entire new generation, not just inside the U.S. but across the globe, centering black people and centering the fight against white supremacy.

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

Tamir Rice, Tanisha Anderson, Mya Hall, Walter Scott, Sandra Bland - these names are important. They're inherently important, and the space that #BlackLivesMatter held and continues to hold helped propel the conversation around the state-sanctioned violence they experienced.

The black radical agenda, which pushes us closer to freedom and the agenda to which I subscribe, calls for an eradication of white supremacy and an adoption of values and traditions endowed from the black experience.

Like any organizer worth their salt, I'm open to critique, but I won't be bullied or treated badly. I'm an imperfect human, and as such, I have a proclivity to make mistakes. And while I make mistakes, I am not my mistakes.

I developed 'Power: From the Mouths of the Occupied' while I was an Artist in Residence at Kalamazoo College.

Statistics are easy to remove ourselves from. A story, you are implicated in, and you have to choose what side you are going to be on.

Wherever black people are in America, criminalization exists. Wherever there is a white-dominant space, deep racism exists as well - no matter how progressive. If you cut too far into that progressive, if you do something that's too radical, white racism will emerge.

In 'When They Call You a Terrorist,' I reflect on my time growing up in Van Nuys, California, surrounded by my devoted family and supportive friends, weaving our experiences into the larger picture of how predominantly marginalized neighborhoods are under constant systemic attack.

Myself and the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement have been called terrorists, but in truth, we are loving women whose life experiences have led us to seek justice for those victimized by the powerful.

'The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman' is a reminder that people across the world are rebelling against norms and forging new paths for the most marginalized people in their own communities.

Black Lives Matter has become what black communities all over the world have needed it to become. At times, it is a hashtag; at other moments, it is a declaration, a cry of rage, a sharing of light. It has become a movement that is international, worldwide in its scope of liberation for black and oppressed people everywhere.

We live in a world where black people are targeted for death and destruction, and we should not be surprised when moments such as these occur - in fact, Charlottesville confirms the violence that black people endure every day.

I don't like how cruel humans can be.

I don't dislike my appearance at all.

I have been arrested several times protesting.

I am scared every day.

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.

I was trained within a black radical tradition that encouraged struggle within our own movements because it sharpens collective analysis - bringing us closer to the tools we need to achieve liberation.

Wherever there are communities fighting for freedom and liberation, there are serious tensions.

Freedom means the U.S. government not being the main threat to countries around the world.

What does it look like to build a city, state, or nation invested in communities thriving rather than their death and destruction? To ask this question is the first act of an abolitionist.

I am an abolitionist. What does this mean? Abolitionist resistance and resilience draws from a legacy of black-led anti-colonial struggle in the United States and throughout the Americas, including places like Haiti, the first black republic founded on the principles of anti-colonialism and black liberation.

With abolition, it's necessary to destroy systems of oppression. But it's equally necessary to put at the forefront our conversations about creation. When we fight for justice, what exactly do we want for our communities?

Our communities must demand dignified housing, satisfying jobs, and proper labor conditions; our educational system must be culturally relevant, multi-lingual, and teach our histories. Our value should not be determined by legal records.

Since his inauguration, Trump has signed numerous executive orders that negatively impact poor, black and brown, queer, Muslim, and other communities.

Black Lives Matter was born out of our unwavering love for black people and our undeniable rage over a system that has historically dehumanized black people.

The Trump administration has done everything in its power to uphold the harsh racist reality we have faced.

Local law enforcement agencies, national police authorities, and other state-operated surveillance has created a hostile environment for communities at the margins.

Under Trump, black lives will become even more vulnerable to state violence.

White people who voted for Trump decided to invest in a president who underwrites white supremacy in the guise of populism.

My first reaction to Trump being elected was a visceral one. I cried for black people in general but, more particularly, for those of us at the margins who have been struggling and who have never received enough support.

A racist and misogynist should not be a president in 21st-century America.

Throughout every presidency since the heist of our country from indigenous peoples, the black American experience has been exceptional in its discomfort. And no chief executive of this great nation has, in earnest, developed a unique plan to remedy that discomfort.

Presidential elections and the voter experience have long been fraught for black people. From racist poll taxes to made-up literacy tests to the egregious rollback of voting rights over the past 50 years, American democracy has, at times, felt like a weird and failed social experiment.

Racism has its boot squarely wedged on the neck of black communities, and we don't want to be told that hard work and responsibility are the answer.

The Black Lives Matter National Network and the movement at large are sophisticated. We're not easily won over by talking points and campaign trail pledges. We want to see meaningful collaboration and a genuine transformation of American democracy.

Policing has never been about public safety: its origins are rooted in social control, the denial of people's human rights, securing the U.S. borders, recapturing escaped, enslaved Africans, and upholding racist, homophobic, and transphobic laws.

Policing was developed, created, and implemented for the elite, and - in the case of the United States - the elites were and almost entirely remain white, upper middle class, cisgender straight men.

The brutal history of colonialism is one in which white people literally stole land and people for their own gain and material wealth.

The only way to gain the kinds of often-generational wealth that the 1% has been able to gain is through controlling the populations it relied on to make its wealth.

Generations of black women have anxiously watched as our children walk out into a world set against them. We teach them how to respond to police and how to react to racist comments, knowing that these lessons are not guaranteed to protect our children.

Black women's lives have never been shown any value in America.

During my high-risk pregnancy, I consistently experienced subpar care from my hospital, which led me to hire two midwives instead. They provided me with excellent and loving care, and they made my pregnancy a truly special and powerful moment in my life.

In order to reverse the maternal health crisis for black women in the U.S., we need concrete policies from our leaders and better protocols from hospitals.

Each and every one of us has multiple identities, and this is a fact that should be celebrated. I for example, am a queer black woman who grew up poor in Los Angeles.

Individuals are complex and deserve to be recognized as such.

For those looking outside-in, it's not fair - or accurate - to assign someone an identity based off the first thing that we see.

When folks say 'identity politics' don't matter, it simply reinforces the norm of a white, middle-class, cis narrative and further marginalizes the rest of us who don't share that identity.

#BlackLivesMatter is about black pride and black power and standing up against a world that tries to annihilate us.

My morning rituals are typical. I wake up yearning for a few extra moments of rest. I express gratitude to a higher power for the breath in my body and the blessings in my life. I shower. I dress. I eat breakfast. I exchange laughter and words with my beloveds, embracing each other as we say our daily goodbyes.

Once upon a time, Bill Clinton was widely perceived as an ally and advocate for the needs of black people. However, it is the Clinton administration's Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act that set the stage for the massive racial injustice we struggle with in law enforcement today.

As a black millennial, I remember with horrid detail how Democratic policies ravaged my community and destroyed my family.

My personal history, along with the history of many black people in this country, is rife with trauma born out of anti-black policies aided and facilitated by presidents and their administrations.

With Black Lives Matter, we knew from the very beginning that it wasn't just going to live online. We were like, 'We're creating this thing and then it's also going to live with black folks on the street and protests and organizations.' It was very important for us to use the hashtag as a way to have a larger conversation and as an organizing tool.

I think publicly declaring that mistakes are a part of how we grow and how we heal is absolutely necessary.

I've been in movement work since I was 16 years old. Black Lives Matter becomes an important part of the story, but it's not the only part of the story.

So many stories have been told about Black Lives Matter. The beauty of building out a decentralized network, the beauty of building out something that's a hashtag, is that so many people can take it and run with it. The bad part about that is so many folks can take it and run with it - and misuse it and co-opt it.

When you grow up with a significant amount of trauma, you are realizing it as you get older, and you're realizing the ways you can recover from that trauma. The things that I have witnessed and that I have been through, it's going to take a lifetime to undo.

The story of Black Lives Matter starts before Black Lives Matter. The story of Black Lives Matter, for me, starts with my childhood.

With support from techies, designers, artists and thousands of activists across the country, Black Lives Matter is now an online-to-offline political movement, affirming the humanity and resilience of black communities.

The Internet is the most democratic communication platform in history, largely because we've had network neutrality rules that make sure all web traffic is treated equally, and no voices are discriminated against.

Because of network neutrality rules, activists can turn to the Internet to bypass the discrimination of mainstream cable, broadcast, and print outlets as we organize for change.

#BlackLivesMatter was born online but now lives in street actions, in conversations in our homes, and in the dignity swelling in our hearts. That is the power of the open Internet, and it is why we must do everything we can to protect black voices. Our lives depend on it.

Black women voted against Roy Moore not because they necessarily wanted the other guy; they voted against Roy Moore because they knew that would be better for the people of Alabama and, to be frank, better for the rest of the country.

The unfortunate reality is the alt-right has captured white people's imagination.

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.

I grew up in a neighborhood that was heavily policed. I witnessed my brothers and my siblings continuously stopped and frisked by law enforcement. I remember my home being raided. And one of my questions as a child was, why? Why us? Black Lives Matter offers answers to the why.

I think our work as movement leaders isn't just about our own visibility but rather how do we make the whole visible. How do we not just fight for our individual selves but fight for everybody?

What we acknowledged as a nation during the one-and-a-half year trial of George Zimmerman is that the white majority's public imagination of black people was based on their fear of us, not the reality of who we are.

Many of us believed that Black Lives Matter would move this country to not only reckon with white racism but to usher in new laws and practices that would curb vigilantism and law enforcement violence. But, instead, white nationalism was nurtured and began to take root among the American people.

We need to fight for a new human rights movement that recognizes and values black life.

I fight to prioritize black mothers and black children because we deserve to live in a world where our healing is centered and our lives are treated with dignity, respect, and care.

I am part of a legacy of queer black women who have fought for the freedom of black people across the globe.

I read everything and anything related to being queer. I found solace in reading authors like Audre Lorde and bell hooks, who would become my activist staples - their words helped me grow up and taught me how to be bold and courageous. By studying them, I came to understand that being young and queer and black would not be easy.

We should be developing spaces and places that are thinking about how we care for the group vs. asking the individual to take care of themselves.

We have to look at queerness as a means towards challenging normativity.

When I was growing up, my family was plagued by poverty. My mother, a single parent, worked around the clock to make sure her children - me, my five brothers, and three sisters - could eat and have a safe place to sleep. We hardly saw her.

In high school, I came out to my friends as queer. My entire world opened up; this was a monumental step toward unveiling my truest self. I had my first girlfriend when I was sixteen years old.

I knew marriage was not the answer to changing the conditions for poor, black, queer folks. So I never felt compelled to get married - it just didn't seem important. But even if marriage wasn't right for me at the time, or a quick fix toward black empowerment, I found it repulsive that loving same-sex couples were refused the right.

The first thing that Black Lives Matter had to do was remind people that racism existed in this country because when we had Obama, people thought we were post-racial. That was the debate. Is racism over? And very quickly, we understood that it was not over.

I think part of what we're seeing in the rise of white nationalism is their response to Black Lives Matter, is their response to an ever-increasing fight for equal rights, for civil rights, and for human rights.

Trump is literally the epitome of evil, all the evils of this country - be it racism, capitalism, sexism, homophobia.

I want to see Black Lives Matter be able to ultimately reduce law enforcement funding.

The movement for black lives isn't just about black people. Black liberation has never just been about black people. It's been about a fight for our humanity, for our dignity.

It was white people who got Trump into office.

We can feel sad, hurt, demoralized. But we can't give up.

I've been an activist since I was a teenager. I was always curious about what we would now call social justice. I remember just trying to navigate growing up poor in an overpoliced environment with a single mother and a father who was in and out of prison.

I have never felt the grips of patriarchy and its need to erase black women and our labor... so strongly until the creation of Black Lives Matter.

Every community has crime and violence; it's a part of being human. This idea that black communities are more violent than others is just false. But black folks fight the hardest for our communities. Before governments do, before other people do, we're the first ones to show up. We are the first ones to fight for our lives.

When I was younger, I had these romantic ideas about the Black Panther Party and what it meant to be a part of the civil rights movement. Then we're here, and it's dangerous. And it's dangerous to say, 'Black lives matter.'

Our decentralized, localized leadership structure has really allowed for Black Lives Matter structures in their own communities to take on the state and take on some of the most egregious acts against black people.

I think what's so powerful about Black Lives Matter is we're the first movement able to take on law enforcement and make it a popular discussion.

Through Black Lives Matter and social media, we've been able to have a really challenging discussion with America about police and how much it is investing in policing.

Black Lives Matter is one iteration of a much larger struggle to fight for black people's freedom.

I think so much of my life had me growing up under extreme poverty and really challenging conditions, with having the police in my neighborhood and seeing the impact of over-incarceration. Having a father love up on me and remind of who I was, and my strength against those conditions, really shaped why I'm an organizer today.

Colin Kaepernick is one of the leaders in the movement for black lives. His role as an athlete and activist is not only motivating but inspiring.

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