Activist Patrisse Cullors created the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter as a tonic against years of injustice by police forces and prisons.
Why you should listen
Patrisse Cullors is an artist, organizer and freedom fighter from Los Angeles, CA. While she is a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Network, and she is also a performance artist, Fulbright scholar, writer and mother. Cullors brings her full self to this work and wants to use her talents to both grow the Network and its diverse leadership. Cullors serves the Network primarily on the field team and utilizes her energy for leadership development, political strategy and relationship building with chapters based on commitment and shared reciprocity. She is focused on deepening the Network's political work, both long-term and rapid response, specifically around legislation and policy.
What others say
While many of her Black Lives Matter contemporaries focus on police brutality and vigilante violence against black people, Cullors focuses her work on the outcome of violent policing of black and brown bodies that doesn't end in death.
Patrisse Cullors’ TED Talk
Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, Mia Birdsong
An interview with the founders of Black Lives Matter
15 minutes 55 secondsBorn out of a social media post, the Black Lives Matter movement has sparked discussion about race and inequality across the world. In this spirited conversation with Mia Birdsong, the movement's three founders share what they've learned about leadership and what provides them with hope and inspiration in the face of painful realities. Their advice on how to participate in ensuring freedom for everybody: join something, start something and "sharpen each other, so that we all can rise."Posted Nov 2016
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