User:Cnvillal/Alicia Garza

Early Life and Education
Garza was born to a single mother in Oakland, California, on January 4, 1981. Her first four years were spent in San Rafael, living with her African-American mother and her mother's twin brother. After that she lived with her mother and her Jewish stepfather, and she grew up as Alicia Schwartz in a mixed-raced and mixed-religion household. Garza identifies as Jewish. The family lived first in San Rafael and then Tiburon, and ran an antiques business, assisted later by her brother Joey, eight years her junior. When she was 12 years old, Alicia engaged in activism, promoting school sex education about birth control. Enrolling in the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), she continued her activism by working at the student health center and joining the student association calling for higher pay for the university's janitors. In her final year at college, she helped organize the first Women of Color Conference, a university-wide convocation held at UCSD in 2002. She graduated in 2002 with a degree in anthropology and sociology.

Malachi Garza
During a blockage at Bay Bridge in 2003, Garza saw Malachi in a crowd, doing a role of security. Through that same network a few weeks later, Garza received an email about the School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL). When she showed up to her interview, her interviewer (Malachi) was forty minutes late. Garza says in the 2016 YBCA 100 Summit, “a twenty minute interview turned into a four hour conversation, I remember leaving there and saying 'I met my soulmate’”. In 2004, Alicia came out as queer to her family. In 2008, she married Malachi and took the name Garza, settling in Oakland.

Tattoo
Garza has a tattoo emblazoned on her chest that reads:

“I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name

My name is my own my own my own

and I can't tell you who the hell set things up like this

but I can tell you that from now on my resistance

my simple and daily and nightly self-determination

may very well cost you your life”

These are the final lines in June Jordan's "Poem about My Rights"

The sentiment of #BlackLivesMatter has deep roots in African American culture. These roots are what Garza inscribed on her skin.

Mother
On March 28th, 2018 Garza announced via her Instagram page, "I wish this was a better update. Moms has a glioblastoma—a very aggressive brain tumor. The cancer cells have spread all over her brain". A month later on April 30th, 2018 Alicia said “ Moms passed away peacefully earlier today, surrounded by her family. I was holding her hand when she died…”.

School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL)
In 2003 Garza returned to the Bay Area, where she began a training program in political education with the School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL) that taught young people of color how to organize, by placing them with local community based organizations in West Oakland. Garza began working with Just Cause Oakland, where she met her partner Malachi Garza, a transgender man and a community activist.

People United for a Better Life in Oakland (PUEBLO)
Completing her internship at SOUL, Garza joined a campaign that researched the relationship between increasing economic security for People Of Color, and increased community security. She said in an Interview with Vanity Fair: “Building economic opportunities in local communities is a better alternative to dealing with crime and violence, than increasing police budgets” Her initial project with PUEBLO was to gather community resistance in East Oakland against a proposed Walmart.

PUEBLO is a "multi-issue community organization...Its mission is to advocate for the needs of low-income residents of Oakland, most of them people of color, by grassroots organizing, offering leadership training and initiating policy reform."

When the nearby work committee pulled their assistance in the action against Walmart, PUEBLO was unable to win. In 2005, the first Walmart in that area opened.

People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER)
After leaving PUEBLO, Garza began working with the UC Student Association for a year promoting activism to university students. In 2005 she joined People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) in Bayview–Hunters Point.

POWER is a "multi-racial and multi-lingual grassroots organization of African Americans and Latinas committed to winning economic, environmental, racial, and gender justice. Rooted in issues-based campaigns, leadership development and movement building, POWER builds the collective strength of working-class families to control the destinies of their communities and workplaces."

She advocated for increasing funding for accessible public housing and maintenance, in order to assist homeowners in moving underground power lines. This was a $7 billion task to transform 250 acres of land, including the contaminated area with radioactivity, toward the area of the Bayview least served by public transportation. Free transit for young people was approved, and expanded to seniors and people with disabilities. The same year, POWER organizers published a book analyzing how capitalism and imperialism were threatening the livelihoods of San Francisco and the Bay Area's working-class communities of color. In opposition to the changes they saw in their communities, POWER formed a coalition between other groups against the project's developer, Lennar Urban. With Gavin Newsom, much of the Democratic Party establishment and Lennar Urban opposing them, POWER lost. As a result, the respective ballot initiative, Proposition F lost 37 percent to 63 percent.

National Domestic Workers Alliance
Following a brief sabbatical, Alicia Garza joined the National Domestic Workers Alliance creating a program focused on Black domestic workers. Shortly before this, Garza founded Black Lives Matter with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tomet i.

Black Lives Matter
With Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors, Garza birthed the Black Lives Matter hashtag. Garza is credited with inspiring the slogan when, after the July 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman of murder in the death of Trayvon Martin, she posted on Facebook: "I continue to be surprised at how little Black lives matter... Our lives matter." Cullors shared this with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. She was also struck by the similarities of Trayvon Martin to her younger brother, Joey, feeling that Joey could have been killed instead. The organization Black Lives Matter was spurred on by the killings of Black people by police, racial disparities within the U.S. criminal legal system, mass incarceration, police militarization, and over-criminalization. In particular, the movement was born and Garza's post became popularized after protests emerged in Ferguson, Missouri, following the death of Michael Brown.

Garza led the 2015 Freedom Ride to Ferguson, organized by Cullors and Darnell Moore, that launched the building of BlackLivesMatter chapters across the United States and the world. However, Garza does not think of the Black Lives Matter Movement as her creation; she feels her work is only a continuation of the resistance led by Black people in America. The movement and Garza are credited for popularizing the use of social media for mass mobilization in the United States; a practice called "mediated mobilization". This practice has been used by other movements, such as the #MeToo movement.

Lady Don't Take No
On April 10th, 2020 Garza debuted her podcast Lady Don’t Take No, named after the song ”Lady Don't Tek No" by Latyrx. It is a  tribute to the Bay Area, where she discusses “political commentary with a side of beauty recommendations”

The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart
Garza's first book, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart, was published in October 2020 by Penguin Random House. Described as "an essential guide", the book tells Garza's story as an activist and shares lessons for future activists. . “My experience with BLM toughened my skin and softened my heart.. it taught me how to recommit to work that broke my heart every day, ” Garza said in the book. When asked about this quote in an interview with Angelica Ross, Garza responded, “I wanted people to see under the hood and under the curtains of what goes on in this work.. I’ve had the experience of feeling like I was not cut out for this work, and I wanted to humanize the movement”.

Notability
Garza was one of the protesters holding back the BART train in Oakland, CA in 2014. Once this protest ended, Garza started a new generation of civil rights leaders. Garza is now the 27th most influential African American (behind her counterpart, Patrisse Cullors) on the Root 100, an annual list of black influencers. She has given speeches to audiences across the United States of America, from union halls to the United Nations Office of the High Commission on Human Rights.

She was in 2020 Time's 100 Most Influential People with Opal and Patrisse.

She was on Fortune's 40 Under 40 2020 list for Government and Politics.

In 2020, she also was number 32 on Fast Company's Queer 50 list.

UC San Diego Commencement 2021
Alicia Garza will be the keynote speaker at UC San Diego's 2021 Commencement ceremonies, held on June 11-13, 2021. The chancellor of the University, Chancellor Kohsla, said in a report by UC San Diego news, "Alicia Garza’s determination to be a catalyst for change has deeply influenced our campus community, and we are honored to feature her as our Commencement keynote speaker...Her commitment to health equity and rights for domestic workers as well as ending police violence, racism and violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people of color has made a significant impact on the lives of many in our nation and around the world”