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Alicia Garza

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Year of Publication: 2020

Garza, Alicia, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart, New York, Penguin/Random House, 2020, pp. 336

One of the co-founders of the hashtag Black Lives Matter in 2013, Garza outlines in this book a long term strategy for social change.  It is based on her own years of experience in community organizing.  She has moved on from the Black Lives Matter organization (although still close to the other co-founders) to create the Black Futures Lab.  She has developed a policy platform (based on a major cross-party survey of Black people in the US in 2018) that focuses on central, widely supported demands. These include raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, broadening opportunities for Black home ownership, and removing the police presence from schools that often leads to pupils being jailed.  She has campaigned in the 2020 US election on her agenda.  Her book also argues the need to abandon outdated models of individual leadership from the Civil Rights Movement, as well as cautioning against over-reliance on celebrity activists and the role of the internet.

See also: Mahdawi, Arwa, ‘Move Fast and Fix Things’, Guardian Weekly, 23 Oct. 2020, pp. 34-7.

An extended interview with Alicia Garza.