 Our final conversation in this session brings together political strategist and commentator Sally Cohn with one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza, for a discussion on systemic racism and the global intersectional movement for racial justice. Please help me welcome them to the stage. All right. Hey. So, oh, before I forget, important to note that Opal Tometi was supposed to be joining us in conversation today. Unfortunately, Opal is sick and couldn't be here today. I know. I heard some mozz. You should all awe. And take a chance and tweet at our teller to feel better if you're tweeting. Okay. So without further ado, hi. Hi. Hi. So there's like nothing going on in the world for us to talk about it all. Sort of feels like Black Lives Matter, kind of fizzling and relevance. It's gone. Yeah. It's over. Solved. It's over. Sorry. I just refunds for everyone. So I feel a little pressure to ask like R.D. Farty questions because we're in an art museum. So, but actually, I was, I was, what I really wanted, I also, I'm going to try to phrase this as an R.D. Farty question, but I really wanted to ask you about, for folks who don't know, this week it was revealed, just within the last a week or so, it was revealed that the FBI in a new set of guidelines has branded Black identity extremists, has created, I'm branded, has created the category of Black identity extremists and lumped them in with other groups of domestic terrorists. And what I wanted to ask you about, Alicia, is that it struck me that in a way, the Black Lives Matter movement began over contesting language in a sense, sort of language as a, as an important, you know, not just language for the sense of language, but language in terms of what it means, how we represent people, how we convey meaning and value and it's Black Lives Matter versus All Lives Matter and that whole whatever. And, and this now comes on the heels of half of the left, it feels like, sort of saying, oh, we should expand the definition of terrorism, we should call more, you know, white supremacist terrorists and Charlottesville terrorists and expanding that definition versus narrowing the definition. I want to hear your thoughts on the FBI piece in particular, but I want to just hear how you think about language and the significance of language as contested political space. Well, we're seeing it now, right? I mean, this whole thing, I'm glad you brought it up and you all saw I had to go to my happy place with the All Lives Matter thing. Sorry. We don't have to keep doing that, right? And we can just let that go to rest. I mean, you don't need to like, we're good here, right? Y'all. Are we good? We're good. They're all right. After you tweet Opal, then tweet people, explain why that's a bunch of BS. Go on. But the other thing that I think ties into that language piece is actually the Blue Lives Matter piece. And when we look at this whole conversation and the new designation, it's not actually a new designation, it's just a branch of an existing one that they've created to match the current conditions. So you all should read the report so that you know what they're talking about. Usually they do have a category of Black extremists. The identity piece, I think, is the one that got attached to our crew. In particular, it's geared towards Black people who are challenging the system of policing. So the way that they describe this category, are Black people who are quote unquote anti-police or in some way challenging the practices of law enforcement. And that seems to be derived to me from this conversation around Blue Lives Matter, all the adaptations of Black Lives Matter where you replace Black with anything else, whether it be all blue, I've seen dog lives matter. I mean, literally I've seen all these kinds of things. The difference between dog lives matter, which is like a branding thing, and blue lives matter, is that it's contesting for space, but it's also testing narratives that can catch with a particular base of people. And that particular base of people is terrified about how this country is changing, even though that change has been happening for a really long time now. Somehow when Obama got elected as president, and then Black Lives Matter kind of emerges onto the national scene, Ferguson catalyzes this international movement. And so suddenly we start to see these new ways to talk about race without actually talking about it. So if you can replace Black with blue, then you can have a whole different conversation about how police are under attack in this country, which is absolutely not true, by the way, despite a lot of the rhetoric, right? Less than 1% of police officers are injured on the job. So, yeah. So I want to say a couple of things, and this isn't like artsy, what was the term? Artsy, artsy, very technical term. But instead, it's just a call, right? It's a call. So there's a couple of things that I've seen. So one is I've seen folk kind of try to play with that language of Black identity extremist and say, hey, let's claim it. And that's something I have a really hard time with. One, because, you know, I'm a part of a long legacy of what I call Black liberationists. And if we know anything about Black liberation history, what we know is that our government created a program called COINTELPRO to interrupt the success of Black liberation and Black freedom movements. And so I can't really wear Black identity extremist on a T-shirt because Asada Shakur and Herman Bell, who just recently actually was beaten inside of prison by white supremacist guards, right? Because people are pissed off about what's happening on the outside and punishing longtime organizers and activists who are locked down inside. Guards doing that too. And guards. But guards doing that. So I can't, I'm not ready to reclaim that and I don't think that we should. That's my personal opinion. I think instead, we need to get really clear about what is the legacy of terms like this and what do they mean and what are the consequences. It's not a brand, right? This is a categorization of people that gets used to punish and contain and control, right? In the same way that after the Twin Towers fell here in New York City, a whole bunch of people started being labeled as terrorists, okay? We're seeing the same dynamic happen over and over. The good news is that I feel like we know the playbook. There's good news. The good news is we know the playbook. It hasn't gotten original, which is good news for us. It's like, let's create a designation for people that we think are a threat. But the bad news is I'm not sure we're taking it as seriously as we should. So there's lots of work happening right now. The Center for Media Justice, Color of Change is leading this fight to challenge the FBI around this designation, has filed FOIA requests to try to make public the ways in which the FBI is already surveilling activists and organizers. We found that here in New York City, right? The Black Lives Matter New York chapter had already been under surveillance by the FBI. So let's make sure that we stay vigilant about this and we don't treat it like a brand, a meme, or a gif, right? It's not a Twitter phenomenon. This is impacting people's lives. But it goes to that point that it isn't just symbolic. That's right. And it's striking to me in the context of the concept of Black Lives Matter. Again, the language of Black Lives Matter, both when we talk about the significance of sort of reclaiming, naming, and how language constrains people and shapes how people are treated, but also that that frame language was so offensive to write. And the notion that you would sort of say, you know, that you would say black, that you would suggest that Black Lives Matter equal, but as a... Oh, I'm sorry. Black, like that? Yeah, I know. It's taken years of self-training. Anyway, language felt like offense to... I mean, like, this whole fight we're having now around political correctness in this backlash, and how do we get beyond just fighting about language, right? When it's clearly so contentious and you can end up just in this fight, how do you get beyond that to where you actually then also start to use language and concepts for liberation? Well, I think the first step is recognizing that categorizing Black Lives Matter as politically correct or identity politics, right, in a particular form, is actually a strategy that conservatives and the right wing have been advancing for years and years and years. The reason that we're all really uncomfortable talking about race is because there's a very successful conservative movement in this country that has made it that way, right, that has made it so that we start to say, oh, I don't really care if you're Black, white, green, or purple. There's no green or purple people. You heard it here, folks. But it's also made it so that talking about race then gets designated as being racist, which completely diverts from what racism is and how racism operates. Racism is about an unequal division and distribution of resources, power, and privilege. It has nothing at all to do with good people or bad people, and we get all caught up in that, right? That's because the conservative movement has been so savage, like super successful, right? I want to build a movement that successful. That's what I'm trying to do. So the first part of it, I think, is understanding that whenever we start to do that, right, that that's a cultural strategy that has been working, and we can interrupt that by facing what is scary and hard about talking about race and facing racism for what it actually is. It's not about whether or not you're a good person. It's really not. Lots of good people uphold racist systems, right? So if we're going to challenge that in any kind of way, we have to be courageous enough to face what's actually happening. And that courage, right, will allow us to see things like why do black women make 64 cents to every 77 cents that white women make to every dollar that white men make, right? That courage will allow us to talk honestly about why black women are the fastest growing population in prisons and jails. That courage will allow us to talk about why the average wealth of black people is so small compared to white people in this country, like one dollar versus like a hundred, a lot of money, right? So courage is the first thing. And then the second piece, I think, quite honestly, is to understand the legacy of identity politics. I think there's this narrative thing happening right now where identity politics is being used in a pejorative way, right? It's being launched in particular, not just by the right, but also by the left. The Democratic Party, right, is saying, oh my god, we lost the election because of identity politics. Nearly only people have voted for you, but anyway. That's not true. It is also a particular kind of identity politics if we only start to then say, let's just focus on the white working class. That's identity politics, too. Wait a second. What working class people have an identity? Again, you heard it here. Identity politics as a intervention in language and culture came from black feminists. This is our tradition, right, of making sure that the way that we understand society doesn't just use white people as the control. Y'all with me? She's speaking science concepts now. Follow. That's all right. But that instead, right, that various ones of us, various groups of us, have layered complicated and nuanced experiences as we interact with white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, all that stuff at the big C, you know what I mean? And that if we want to build successful movements, then we have to understand people's lived experiences in three dimensions, not two or one, right? Multidimensions. So what it means to be a black queer woman in this economy and in this democracy matters, right? So instead of saying, oh, you're being politically correct if you talk about that, no, we're understanding the kaleidoscope that is this country and using it to shape a movement that can be strong and effective and powerful. Even the water is artsy-fartsy. I want to go back to that movement you were talking about building, which by the way, I don't know if we get to vote, but I'm all for multiple leaders and whatever, but you could play an extra big role. I'm fine with that. I just want to say that. They'll be ballots later. I want to ask is when you think about, because look, let's be clear, like the word movement gets overused a lot these days. But I think it is, I feel at least, very comfortable in saying that Black Lives Matter is not perhaps, maybe perhaps one of the only legitimate social movements we have in the United States today, but certainly the most vibrant, multifaceted, incorporates both institutions, but sort of scrappy volunteer grassroots decentralization and its culture, its politics, it's to me the things that make up a movement. But since we're in our museum, I want you to talk about not only where you see that movement going, but I want you to talk about organizing as art, organizing as a form of cultural resistance and manifesting an alternative vision and the sorts of things we might just think of as the province of artists. Yes, this question is everything. Okay. So let's start with the movement question. Because I do, I think we throw around the word movement a lot. And movements are not all encompassing. I even think that Black Lives Matter is a movement in the making. I'm not even sure that we are at social movement status. There's a lot of work we still have to do in terms of cohesion, alignment, and also, quite frankly, because we live in a society that commodifies everything, yes, Black Lives Matter is everywhere, but I don't know that that means that it's penetrated deeply. Like it's on t-shirts and it's, you know, you get a little three, like multiracial fists when you tweet it, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. But that doesn't make it a movement. Which is cool. I mean, you know, a really solid brand, right? So I would say we're a movement in the making. Okay. And we're hearing a lot of things, right, people say, oh yeah, Black Lives Matter, how did you turn a hashtag into a movement? I'm like, you don't, that doesn't happen. It doesn't. I mean movements, right, movements are sustained action that tons of people take, right, using different lanes, different opportunities, with a shared vision and a set of common goals. Hashtags are hashtags. There's a pound sign in front of some words, you know what I mean? And it's a way for people to enter into a conversation, but they're not movements in and of themselves. So I find it strange when people are like, oh, the, you know, hashtag me too movement. I'm like, no, me too is a moot. It's it's it's its own thing. It's people moving and doing things. Yes. But the hashtag doesn't make it a movement. You see where I'm going with this? People are like, thank you for saying that. So in a second, Brooklyn Conference is apparently trending on Twitter. Does that mean it's a movement? No. Sorry. That's awesome. But did not make a movement. Okay, cool. Just pilot testing that there. Go ahead. So let's talk about organizing as art and science. So I've been an organizer since 2003. And basically what that means is that I'm someone who can work with a group of people to identify the root cause of the challenges that we're facing, right? And to bring folk together through relationship building, through developing our capacities to envision where it is that we want to go and then charting a path to get there. That's organizing. Yeah. There's advocacy, right, which is like speaking on behalf of a group of people. And then their service, which is solving immediate needs and problems. Organizing is a science, meaning there's a way that organizers think about how do we move people to do a particular thing and accomplish a particular goal. And to do that, you have to understand numbers and human behavior, right? So if I want 100 people at a meeting, that means I have to talk to at least 500 people. Yeah. And then out of those 500 people, if 300 people say they're going to come, 100 people are going to show up, right? That's the science of organizing. It's understanding, right? Human behavior and how and why people take action, okay? Then there's an art to it, which is really touching like the hearts and minds of folk, right? The art is about emboldening people to dream big about what's possible and not just wait for somebody else to do it, not say, oh, we need a lawyer to sue that person and that's going to solve the problem. Or that's just not politically possible and it will never happen. I mean, the art of organizing is about making the impossible possible. And we do that in a whole bunch of ways. And so what I love about the art of organizing is that it is both a set of cultural strategies, but it's also how culture impacts politics and how culture impacts the way that people take action and themselves transform, right? How we learn about ourselves and what scares us. Organizing is about helping to move people past their fear towards what they care the most about. So I think there's a lot of richness in there and I'm going to be talking about that in my book. Well, wait, you don't have a pub date. Can we like... Can we... Coming soon. Sometime in late 2018. Stay tuned. It's going to be amazing. Do you think we're seeing a renaissance in... That's a loaded word. I don't know, but it was the word I went with. Just let's go with it. Are we seeing... Are we making organizing great again? No. Are we seeing... That was actually awesome. Thank you. There's your title. There's your title. That's really good. I'm like, let me take that down. Thank you, folks. Yep. But she's writing it down. Somebody tweeted at her so she can answer my questions. Yes, somebody tweeted at it. Yeah. All right. I'll try to remember it later. But this is a first for me. Okay. So I'm going to draw my question out until you're... Thank you. You're good. You're good. All right. See, this is how change happens. No. But what I'm going to ask is, are we... I feel like there was a period of where both... It felt like we were kind of stultified as a movement, like movement, writ large left. And it felt kind of like we were culturally... Just nothing was going on in terms of kind of political culture, small people, political culture. And it does now feel like there's also this rebirth of where we're seeing more political music, we are seeing more political art. Is that just that we, the big we are now seeing it because of the moment we're in it, it's becoming more mainstream and more visible or it's social media or whatever? Or is there actually something happening? You think that we're getting more engaged? I think that's the movement coming. We're getting more engaged. It's the movement coming. I really feel that. So movements are on an ebb and flow, right? There's lots of spontaneous action that happens. And then there's kind of a quiet. I think we saw that, right? 2013, 2014, 2015, big ebb, right? All of a sudden, everybody's talking about police violence, state violence. We're talking about, oh my god, there's racism, right? Any time you turn on CNN, there was somebody talking about black people in some kind of way, right? Then we had a, we had a lull, okay? And that was really the election where we just got nonstop conversation about... It's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Trump, Bernie, Hillary. Yeah. And then it just got real confusing, right? This period, I think, is a reemergence. And it's slow. So some of us might feel like, yeah, where are people? How come people aren't in the streets like they were? I think it's coming. I think what we need to remember, though, is that movements aren't only expressed in the streets. Movements are expressed in changes that happen in institutions. Movements are expressed in people's homes, right? In people's schools. Movements are expressed in people's places of worship, right? That's where you start to see. When you're having conversations about what's happening in this country, and what is our responsibility as citizens, as people who want to fight for a democracy that never quite came, but we know what it feels like for it to be walking out the door, I actually feel like it's brewing right now, and so I feel it. Also, though, movements aren't reserved for those of us who consider ourselves to be progressive or liberal or a part of the left. The right has had a renaissance, and they've been building a movement for the last 30 years, and this is the result and the effect of the work that they have been doing for a very long time. Now, we might feel like, oh my gosh, it's the onslaught, and where did this guy come from with the orange hair? Oh man, he's been waiting in the wings for a minute. They were just trying to find a moment to deploy him in the right way. So, with all that being said, I think that what will help to catalyze that thing that's being born to come a little quicker is two things. One, a hope that faith, that change is possible right now. Change is possible right now. And two, the other thing that I think will help to accelerate it is for all of us to be thinking about how do we bring this movement forward in the lane that we occupy? So, I see a lot of people who are like, I'm not a protester, and so I don't know how to be involved in this movement. I'm like, oh my gosh, protesting is like one of a zillion things that you could be doing. If you work in a philanthropic institution, you can be talking about how are we distributing resources right now, and towards what? Lots of big things happening right now. You can be a part of the movement if you're trying to help figure out a just recovery in Puerto Rico and throughout the Caribbean. You can be a part of the movement right now if you're challenging sexual violence and sexual harassment everywhere that it exists. You can be a part of the movement if you are working to make sure that there are no barriers to people participating in making decisions that impact their lives. You don't have to hold a picket sign or a bullhorn in order to become a part of this movement. And I think if we all adopt that, what happens is that the thing that's bubbling under the surface, the thin film gets ripped off and it's allowed to come up to the surface and breathe, right? Don't you all want to see the sprouts of all that we've been building for the last few years? I want to see it. I'm like ready. So, let's bring the sunshine. All right, so a last question is, I want to get to that beautiful vision. I don't want to know what it looks like. We don't have to give me the whole, but can you paint me a picture of some of those shoots? What does it, what does success look like and where do we go from this moment? What do we need to be doing more of? What do we need to be doing that we're not doing? And you can address that at the issue, you know, Black Lives Matter at the left, at the, you know, center left, like wherever you want to take it. But where are we going and how do we get there? I have a couple things. I wish we had all day. We could do a whole strategy session. Yes, we could. You should write a whole book about it. Go on. Just a suggestion. Go on, you know. So, for me, first and foremost, every day when I wake up, I'm like, what is it going to take to get this man out of office? You know, like what's it going to take? Because what I'm seeing is in our Congress, pretty much everybody knows this is a disaster on all sides. They're like, we really want power, but do we have to go this way? Right? I think that heat needs to get turned up a little bit. And we are coming up on 2018. And every, you know, couple of years, we start talking about midterms and how everybody needs to be engaged in the midterms, but for real this time? Like, 2018 is what is standing between us and eight more years. And I, not to be a bummer, but I think if we don't do some really significant stuff in 2018 and 2019, we are going to have eight more years of this administration. And I'm not even just focusing on the president. This administration does share an agenda. I don't know that he has an agenda. I think he's a vessel, right? He's not really ideologically committed to any of this stuff. He's committed to himself, first and foremost, right? But the people around him that are quietly moving, taking away protections for trans people in the workplace, effectively and quietly dismantling access to healthcare and particularly access to women's healthcare, the people who are quietly and steadily, right, attacking public sector unions, those are the folks that we need to make sure don't have a home after this next midterm election cycle. So hopefully we've all put to bed the debate around what would have happened if Bernie won? What would have happened if Hillary won? I'll just be 100% honest. We don't know, and that moment's over, right? What we need to be focusing right now on right now is how are we going to feel about ourselves if we didn't do everything that we could to get this abomination out of the White House? Whether you like voting, don't like voting, whether you want to have the candidates over for dinner or not, it doesn't matter. It honestly doesn't matter. Like, my thing is I am a little bit obsessed with holding Republicans accountable for continuing to provide cover. Because when you see something that's wrong and you know it's wrong and you don't do anything, that's like a particular kind of a front, you know? It's okay for you to not know, but if you know and you're still like having their back, then you got to go. So that's what I think that's the first sprout. And that's accessible and within our reach. The second thing is I think it's important for us to start to challenge, and it's not just on the Republican side to be honest, because there are some Democrats that are also providing cover, right? Doing the whole wait and see, you know, he's our president. What are you talking about? This is so bad that George Bush Bush sounded reasonable to me. I had to call my doctor. I had to be like, I'm going to need a CAT scan, you know, because something was going on here. I was like fine, right? Yeah, I was taking my temperature. I'm not sure. I mean, the fact that he's talking about no, I know, I know. He gave a really great speech against bigotry. So many things. Well, he seems so smart. So I'm still not cheering for him, but I am saying that it is within reach and there are splits possible and we need to force them, however we can. Second big thing is challenging our own folks. So if we want to build any kind of left in this country, we just got to get real serious. This is the time. This is the time. So no, I don't think that the only thing we need to be doing right now is focusing on the white working class. We should focus on the working class, the working class, right? And I think we have to challenge our institutions that are shaping narratives and frameworks for us and say, wait, what have we learned over the last four years? What have we been learning, right? So let's not do this thing where we throw Black Lives Matter under the bus because we didn't endorse a candidate. Actually, was not your biggest problem. The biggest problem was that the growing majority in this country was not engaged, was not engaged, was not talked to, and in as much as we were talked to, it was a very flat kind of two-dimensional, let's just talk about class language. Race is a very salient thing in this country and if we haven't learned anything else from Trump, we should learn that race is very salient in the ways that people move today. And there's a fear around people being replaced. So those chants we heard in Charlottesville were not just symbolic, right? The demographic shift that is happening in this country is scaring people because it means an inevitable uprooting of power and the way that it's structured right now. So we have some work to do, my friends. And I think we might be... That's cool. We solved everything. So I think we're all right. That's fine. But last thing? Yeah, please. I'm not interrupting you. I spend 10 minutes every day freedom dreaming on purpose, on purpose. So every time I get the itch to complain about something, because I have that itch all the time, I spend 10 minutes thinking about if I was going to do it differently, how would I do it? And what would it take? And what would happen if we did it that way? And you'd be surprised at how... Well, one, what it does for your mood, for real. Like for your soul. But also what it can catalyze and inspire in you and in your neighbors and in your friends and in your families. So freedom dream, even if it's for 10 minutes. Everybody, Alicia Garza.