On today’s program we hear from Alicia Garza, activist and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter. Last month she spoke at United Nations’ Confronting the Silence: Perspectives and Dialogue on Structural Racism against People of African Descent Worldwide convening.
The event is organized by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, with the co-sponsorship of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the United Nations Department of Public Information, Amnesty International USA to name a few.
Garza, illuminated on the toll structural racism and the exercise of state power has taken on Black Lives. She said, “For Black people, especially those of us who exist at the intersections of gender, class, citizenship status and sexuality, it is a daily struggle to simply live while Black, much less thrive while Black. The United States has failed to adequately and robustly engage in truthful and honest reconciliation as it relates to the persistence, prevalence and dire consequences of anti-Black racism. Any best practices or recommendations must be grounded in the willingness of the United States to admit that there is still a war on people of African Descent. We question the ability of this nation-state to remain united, when people of African Descent are excluded, marginalized, disenfranchised, and murdered with impunity, and this misery is all sanctioned by the state.”
Today we’ve presented her talk as food for thought but also….as method of igniting urgency. For the Black Lives Matter Movement for all the most recent critique has shed light on a problem that has existed in the shadows. A movement that has gone global…with the conversations centered on Black existence. We also presented Alicia Garza’s talk at the University of Southern Maine.