(theme music playing) HORSLEY: Hello and welcome to "P&P Live".

My name is Bashan.

I am part of the events staff with Politics and Prose.

This event is going to be presented in partnership with George Washington University.

In 2013, Alicia Garza wrote what she called a love letter to black people on Facebook, in the aftermath of the acquittal of the man who murdered 17 year-old Trayvon Martin.

Garza wrote, "Black people.

I love you.

I love us.

Our lives matter."

Long before #blacklivesmatter became a rallying cry for this generation, Garza had spent the better part of two decades learning and unlearning some hard lessons about organizing.

The "Purpose of Power" is the story of one woman's lessons through years of bringing people together to create a change.

Most of all, it is a new paradigm for change for a new generation of change makers from the mind and heart behind one of the most important movements of our time.

Ms. Garza will be in conversation today with Rashad Robinson, who is the president of Color of Change, a leading racial justice organization driven by more than 7.2 million members who are building power for black communities.

Um, on behalf of Politics and Prose bookstore, we are thrilled to welcome Ms. Alicia Garza and Mr. Rashad Robinson.

ROBINSON: Thank you so much.

That was an incredible introduction and welcome and congratulations, Alicia.

GARZA: Thank you, my love.

It's so good to be here with you and thanks to everybody who's joining us tonight.

ROBINSON: I remember as a young, uh, 20 something, um, living in DC, um, seeing some of the thinkers and activists and creators of our time at Politics and Prose.

And I hope, and I look forward to being able to be there in person with folks in the future, but for now we are doing this, um, as safe as possible.

Um, and then in our homes, but also having a conversation, right, about how we move forward.

And so I love it, right?

You, Alicia are so many things on you are a creator.

You are an organizer, you are a strategist, you are a person to so many of us that we think of as family.

And so why did you want to be also an author?

What about this book?

What about, um, this opportunity to share, um, is so important to you?

Um, and what do you hope people sort of take away from it?

GARZA: We spend every minute of every day trying to figure out how to change rules and put more power into the hands of more people.

That's what movement building is and that's the purpose of movements.

And oftentimes we don't actually get time to zoom out, to reflect on what we're learning and what it is that we need to unlearn.

We don't get a lot of time to evaluate and the same was true for me.

I've been doing this work for 20 years, seven of which are in the midst of what I would call a whirlwind of Black Lives Matter, really kind of took off in ways that I could not have ever imagined.

And you know, after the 2016 election, after I think lots of us curled or uncurled ourselves out of a ball.

The devastating impacts that we were anticipating from the results of the election... it did feel really important to me.

Um, as somebody who was kind of in the midst of that moment, um, you know, trying to help push forward a movement while it's being used as a political football, it felt really important to me to take some time and zoom out and to reflect and also to demystify I mean, at that point in time, I can't tell you how many times I've been asked, how can someone turn a hashtag into a movement?

And it used to like really get at me because I would want to give this whole answer.

But the thing is at that point in time, I think it was hard for people to hear it.

They were caught up in the frenzy of I'm seeing things go viral and it's helping to change the world.

And so I really wanted to demystify this process for people.

We know so much about what happens online.

We know so much about what happens in protests.

When we see them all over the globe, we're like change is happening.

And when we don't see them, we're like nothing's happening, but I wanted to be able to expose people to what the offline work looks like.

And I also wanted to do that, not from self-helpy kind of perspective, not from a, you know, a distanced academic perspective, but using my own life, my own experiences and telling stories that lots of people have maybe heard about, but from my perspective, so that we could do a few things.

Number one, offer some clarity about how movements do and don't happen.

Number two, be able to tell my own story from my perspective, from my own mouth, rather than having my story, in a lot of ways, our story told for us without us.

And number three, to inspire people to make change.

So some of us are looking around and going, how did we get here and what can I do about it?

And I think this book has something for you and there's others of us who have been involved in making change for a while.

And maybe we got tired somewhere along the way.

So I'm hoping that this book encourages folks like you to keep going.

That's really why I decided to write this book.

And frankly, you know, I have a lot of stuff to do.

And after I agreed to write the book, I was like, why did I agree to write this book?

But, um, three years later it's full circle.

And I'm so glad that I did.

This is really the book that I wanted, um, when I started organizing.

And so I hope other people who are wanting to be Changemakers find that true for themselves as well.

ROBINSON: Let's, let's, let's, let's go there for a second sort of the book that you wanted when you started organizing, um, take us there.

So, right.

Uh, you know, in the book you, you talk about, uh, growing up, you talk about your mother, you talk about so many sort of different aspects of your upbringing.

Um, but you know, becoming an organizer right, is a foreign thing for so many people, right?

To like, you know, most people have jobs that do not involve sort of like challenging political structures or challenging systems or changing systems.

And, you know, to choose that as a career, you have to have a certain type of belief that the systems can actually change, that things can actually be different or they should be different.

And that's one of the things I love so much about you.

It's one of the things I love so much about Patrisse Cullors as well.

Who's the, um, uh, one of the other cofounders of, uh, Black Lives Matter.

And I actually coincidentally enough, um, moderated, Patrisse's book launch, um, at BAM a couple of years ago, um, which so I made this may be a thing for me.

Um, um, but tell us like, you know, what made you start that and how does, how does that relate to movement building?

How does that on-ramp relate to movement building?

GARZA: Let me start off by talking a little bit about how I got started.

And, um, in that story, I also want to talk about some lessons that I've learned about what it takes to get other people started.

So I started organizing, I started in activism at 12 and a lot of that has to do with my mom.

Um, my mom was not an activist.

And in fact, for many, many years, my mom was like, what is it that you do again?

She's like I sent you to college.

Like what, what is this?

ROBINSON: Not a doctor, not a lawyer, not an accountant.

GARZA: She was like is this a thing?

Or like, are you working for, I don't understand what you're doing, but she did understand, In fact, um, you know, my mom is somebody who has had such an important impact on my life.

I talk about her a lot in the book.

And in fact, when I started writing this book, I thought it was going to be like the Black Lives Matter book.

And then when I started writing, that's not what came out.

And when I sat to write the first words of this book, I called my mom and we had a conversation about her life and how I got here that, um, I also tell in the book.

I want to say that, you know, one of the pieces of that story, I'm not going to give it all away.

But one of the pieces of that story is that, you know, my mom had me alone when she didn't expect to have me alone and for a Black woman at that time in the early 80s, um, being a single mother was, um, not only hard, right, but it was also being criminalized and demonized in a whole bunch of ways under the Reagan administration.

And, you know, my mom taught me a lot about what it meant for Black women to have dignity and to survive in a context like that.

My very first campaign was trying to get contraception in school nurses' offices in my school district.

At that time, there was a huge conversation happening nationally about family values.

And that was related to the moral majority that was being ushered in by the conservative movement.

That at that time was just starting to build power.

Um, and, and to take power, I should say.

And you know, one of the things that was a casualty of this is that there was a lot of people being talked about without them.

And my family was one of those people.

Um, there was an, uh, a whole outcry about the epidemic of teen pregnancy.

And yet there were debates happening in school districts across the country about whether or not to do comprehensive sex, health, education, or abstinence only education.

So smaller terms it's like, do we teach young people everything they need to know about sex and pregnancy so that they can prevent it, or do we just not talk about it at all and pray and wish that they don't do it.

And so, so to me as the product of a mother who was in a relationship when she got pregnant with me and the relationship fell apart before she had me, it was a no brainer.

I was like, you should be telling people what they need to be doing around how to make the best decisions for them based on their life circumstances.

Also at the same time, Rashad, I will tell you that, you know, one of the things that seemed really bizarre to me is, um, people were talking about how to keep kids from having sex.

But the fact of the matter is at 12 years old, I wasn't having sex, but almost all my peers were.

And they were getting their information from their older siblings or from television.

Right, and it wasn't accurate.

And so it was putting them at more risk.

So all of this seemed so basic to me that I got very vocal about what I thought should happen.

Needless to say, we won the campaign and there were contraceptives that were available in school nurses' offices in my school district.

And that really lit a fire in me around organizing there's something really powerful, right, about seeing a problem, making a plan to change it and actually winning that change.

Um, and I started to learn about what it means to bring people together in order to accomplish that.

And that was at 12.

I will also say this though, Rashad, after 20 years of doing this work, one of the things that I've learned is that we call the things that we care about a lot of things, but at the core of it, the things that we want, all of us, are dignity, and to be able to survive and to not have it have to be so hard.

You know, my mom was somebody who worked multiple jobs in the daytime and at night she would be sitting at the kitchen table with the light on and playing "Law and Order" in the background, don't judge us.

Cause I still love "Law and Order".

And I know it's wrong.

She'd be, sitting at that table with a calculator that had that receipt tape and she'd have her checkbook, she'd have her coupons and she would have her bills.

And every single night, while she was trying to figure out how to make ends meet, she was also trying to figure out how to pursue her dreams.

And she didn't call that feminism.

She didn't call it anti-racism.

It was like I'm trying to live.

And I'm trying to live in such a way where I can hold my head up high and where my daughter can do the same.

And that is a lesson I think in organizing that we and movement building that we should all take to heart that actually those are majoritarian values that should be able bring people together from a range of different experiences to be able to accomplish the same goal, which is to assure dignity and survival for everyone, regardless of race, gender, economic status, or any other rule that's been put in place to leave us out and leave us behind.

ROBINSON: Dignity and survival.

I love that.

Um, and I love how you talk about sort of it being a thing that people want.

And it could be a thing that brings people together, but in so many ways, right, we, we are deeply divided right now in this country.

And I don't use that in a cliche like, "Oh, we're divided the way the media says it."

I say that, um, we are divided for all sorts of reasons and this isn't division is not new, but some ways it's being animated by so many different forces.

And so I love that your book has the word "power" on the front of it, and that you talk about power and that title, "The Purpose of Power", right, is to settle and ground us in why power is important, right?

And this idea that you lean into in terms of dignity and respect and people wanting those things, that they're not just sort of pie in the sky, things that simply happen, but they are things that we have to fight for that we have to win and we have to win them through building the infrastructure to achieve them.

So as you approached this book, right, that's a big title.

What were some of the things that you wanted to get across?

And as you wrote the book, how did the writing process sort of expose what you needed to say?

Um, you talked some about that initial story with your mom, but talk us through sort of... you're doing the work and you're writing the book.

And so the book has got to have changed and maybe the work changed.

And so explain that for folks.

Cause a lot of folks are writing books.

Um, and a lot of folks are running movements and not, everyone's doing the same thing at the same time.

GARZA: I love you.

And that's tea and, um, I'll, I'll lob off of that real quick.

So for me, I remember when I came up with the title and I was talking with my sister, Angela Rye, and I'm quite sure I was going the hell off about something related to the election.

I'm positive.

I think that's all I've been doing actually for the last like eight or nine months.

And it is a big title, but the reason that I wanted this title front and center is because I want us to be very clear about the purpose of power so that we learn how to effectively and strategically fight for power.

And, you know, Rashad, I quote you in this book as saying that, you know, one of the ways, you know, if you have power or if you don't is, if people are afraid to disappoint you and in this election cycle, and I say this in the book, it's not just this election cycle.

It's been most election cycles, probably since like 1970-something that people aren't really afraid to disappoint black people.

And that politicians in particular are not afraid to disappoint black people.

And that bodes terribly for the democracy that we want.

At the same time, I also talk about how I think that in reflecting on the 2016 election being at the center of it being used as a political football, um, and being used as a political football in a time when it was deeply unpopular to say "Black Lives Matter," it wasn't like this year where it was like in, in alphabet blocks, by legislators... ROBINSON: We're not talking about that.

GARZA: We will.

I just, I think sometimes even coming into this cycle, learning from 2016, one of the most common things I would hear from change makers, who I love and adore and respect was "I don't engage in elections.

I don't engage in this, or I don't engage in that."

And for me, I was like, well, we're trying to make change and change has to happen both at the level of policy.

And it has to happen at the level of culture.

And either one alone is not sufficient to build the kind of power you need to ensure dignity and survival for everyone.

So if we're not building movements for power, what are we building them for?

Power exists in a lot of different realms.

And I talk a lot about that in the book.

For me, I really wanted to put power front and center and not "Black Lives Matter" or, you know, "Activism for the 21st Century" or any other thing that like people thought was going to sell a book because that's not the story of right now, the story of right now is people contending for power.

And frankly, right, we are at the precipice of a moment in our country's history that will go down in textbooks as a pivotal moment where we had to make a choice about which direction we were going into.

But the choice is not just a choice.

Like I wake up one day and I decide I want to go left or tomorrow I wake up and I decided I wanted to go right?

No, the choices that we're making right now in this moment that millions of people are making is who's making the decisions and where does the money go and who gets to tell the story of who we are and who we can be together, that's power.

And so in this moment, I really wanted us to be clear about the purpose of power.

So we'd be inspired to fight for it.

So we would stop being scared of, of, of having power and exercising power.

Because I also say in the book that I do think that one of the challenges that our movements not just BLM, right, or the Black Lives Matter movement, but all movements face right, is, um, what would happen if you became the decision makers?

How would you do it differently?

What would remain the same?

How would you put more power in the hands of more people?

These are the questions that change makers have to be faced with, and they are serious questions.

And the way that we know that right, is that right now, the people in power are using their power to put babies in cages, to separate families.

I heard this morning that ICE raids have resumed across the nation in the middle of a global pandemic.

Power allows you to make choices about how we move forward and whether or not we move forward.

So it felt really important to me, Rashad that that phrase, the purpose of power was on the cover of this book.

Not activism, not BLM, not, you know, how to turn a hashtag into a movement, which was the tentative title for this book and the quick answer to that is you cannot.

And I wanted it so that people who are just coming into consciousness and want to make change, understand what's at stake and what we're fighting for.

And I also wanted it to be a loving and firm push to those of us who are already involved in change-making that our task is to build power and to transform it.

And that, that is the only way that we can ensure dignity and survival for everyone.

It won't just come from taking things apart.

We have to have the power to install new ways of being, and in order to get there, we have to be focused on building power, not brands, not hashtags, but power and basis and movements.

ROBINSON: So this is really interesting because what you're kind of bringing us into is the messiness of it all, right?

Like, um, none of it's easy, right?

But there can be a level of comfort at railing against the system and never wanting to be the system.

There's a comfort at pushing back against those in power with authority and never wanting to be those in power or with authority.

And then we settle for constantly making demands on others then, then being the people that actually have the ability to enact... GARZA: That's right.

ROBINSON: And that is messy.

And you talk about some of that in the book, some of the messiness of movements, the dynamics of personality, the, the, it wasn't gossipy, it wasn't, um, um, about individuals, but about sort of the principles of how do we actually, um, focus on, uh, what we should be following and are able to identify the traps of, of celebrity, of capitalism, of visibility that can lead us towards things that don't actually, um, build power.

GARZA: Yeah.

ROBINSON: As you were writing this, you are a still in the movement.

We have not won.

You are in this writing about it as you are doing it.

Right, and there's like a, uh, a level of risk that even from the process of finishing a book till when it actually comes out, dynamics change, how did you sort of wrestle with a movement that from, you know, the post after the Zimmerman verdict to now, so much was changing, and at any point, someone could have written a definitive sort of autopsy or evaluation and they would have be embarrassed now by maybe what they wrote before.

Um, how did you sort of approach that?

What were some of the things that, and you've already said that you weren't writing a book about BLM, but there's a lot about BLM in there and a lot about the movement and a lot about the moment we're in and as, as a context for how you are explaining, you know, where we're at and where we should go.

GARZA: Yeah.

Important.

So let me start with, um, let me start with your last question and move backwards.

ROBINSON: Sorry about this.

I'm not a journalist folks.

GARZA: No, no, you're so good and they're layered questions to so I'm trying to like get meaty in here.

You know, it felt important to me to be able, to tell stories from my perspective, from having been in the mix, and I have spent the last, almost decade reading stories about work that I've done and other people who I know have done that were not our stories.

Like nobody talked to us, you know, you're absolutely right.

I mean, a lot of people jumped to write the story of Black Lives Matter.

Um, before it was time before Patrisse put out her book about her story and how she came to this movement and certainly without engaging a lot of us.

And you're right, those books, um, they have a shelf life and they have a shelf life because they are a snapshot in a moment in time.

And they're also opinion.

So, you know, that's the great thing about the literary world, we get to peruse a lot of perspectives.

Um, and the hope there, right, is that it's grounded in something for me, Um, I didn't want to write the story of BLM because it is still being written and I don't feel the need to offer a snapshot in time of, you know, where I was at a certain moment.

I had to tell that story to be able to tell a bigger story about how we make change.

I also talk a lot about how I became an activist, how I then went from being an activist to an organizer and how I understand the difference between the two.

Um, I talk a lot about my work in Bayview-Hunters Point, which is a community I spent over a decade rooted in, and it's really the community that grew me up and taught me a lot of what I know about organizing.

Um, and I talk about my work now at the Black Futures Lab and the Black to the Future Action Fund, where we work to make black people powerful in politics.

And I use that as a kind of bookend in the book because, um, I, I want people to see how our work evolves over time.

And so I hope that when you read this book that maybe you're in it to like get the story of BLM, but that you find a lot more because this is not the story of BLM, this is a story.

And my hope is that there is actually a whole cannon, not from people who study us, but from people who are actually doing this work right now, and we need to make room for people like you like me to actually write from our perspectives, these histories are so rich.

And the, the, the things that are happening in the present are so rich.

And if we're not telling our stories, somebody else is going to tell it for us.

And depending on what their agenda is, is the conclusion that people are going to reach.

So I wanted to cut right through all of the noise that people have circulated, especially people aligned with this administration and get to have my own say about what I think and where I came from and what I believe and what I do.

And, you know, put, I'll put that up against Donald Trump any day.

I will also say though, Rashad, your question about movements being messy is something that I talk about in the book, and you should not expect in any way to read the book like you would read a tabloid because you're not getting anything.

There's a lot of stuff we know, and I know, you know, this by your smirk that we will take to the grave, honey.

It's not for you.

But there are other things, that I think we need to talk about.

And, um, these aren't just BLM stories in terms of things we need to talk about.

They are things that I have encountered in every movement effort that I have been a part of, um, what it means to try and be a woman.

I'm somebody who identifies as a woman and a femme and a queer femme at that.

I'm inside of movements that purport to be feminist, but actually don't know how to practice feminism.

Um, it's about, you know, how we build organizations, right?

It's also about how we understand what we're doing and for what purpose and who gets to tell that story.

And one of the things that I, um, talk a lot about in the book is, um, you know, and I think you'll relate to this Rashad as somebody who, who also works deeply inside of Black communities.

There's a lot of stories that we tell ourselves about each other and who we need to be that don't serve us.

And one of those stories is, um, the story is about who gets to lead and how we have to look to be leaders.

I mean, sometimes when I do television hits and you know, the pandemic hit.

So I just had to find like a clear wall in my house and it happens to be next to my bar.

And so I'm getting up at like five in the morning to do these press hits and people, well, Black people would email me and be like, sister, you were incredible on this show, but what's going on with the alcohol in the back of your, in the back of your screen.

And I'm like, hey, it's the only corner in my house where somebody is not going to be walking past the camera or whatever else.

And actually in this conversation, I was talking about George Floyd.

I was talking about the process of why police continued to not be held accountable when they commit crimes in our communities.

But the only thing that you can focus on is that as a Black person, I have, you know, a half of a very nice and well stocked bar in my picture.

And some of these dynamics, Rashad, have to do with the fact that in our movement, in a different time, in a different place, under different conditions, it really did mean something for Black people to be dressed in our Sunday best.

It meant something to have, um, Black clergy and faith leaders at the head of marches.

It meant something that Black women were not at the head of marches and that had to do with the social arrangements and the needs and the conditions of that time.

But the thing is, our times have changed and we haven't figured out all of the things we gotta figure out, but there's some things that we actually have in our pocket that we need to close once and for all so that we can open up new opportunity.

I say in the book that, you know, people are constantly looking for the resurrection of Martin Luther King when actually leadership in this country today, and in this movement today looks a lot more like Lena Waithe or Laverne Cox, right?

Or Ava DuVernay.

And we have to get used to that as a movement.

We have to be able to address the fact that we can talk all we want about holding up and lifting up the sisters, but at the same time, um, there's a lot of practices that we engage in that don't encourage Black women to take leadership roles that don't center the issues of Black women in our campaigns.

And that is a problem for us being able to build power.

And I talk about that in the book.

Um, I will quickly just tell the story of, um, that I tell them the book about going to one of my first movement meetings.

Um, when I was first starting out as an organizer out of college.

And, you know, I show up at this meeting, it's full of Black folks, right?

There was about five Black women and 95 Black men.

And a lot of those Black men who are over the age of 40 and I'm sitting in the room and I'm listening to this one gentlemen talk, and he talked and I mean, he talked child for 40 minutes.

And then for the next 40 minutes, a whole bunch of Black men spoke.

And none of the Black women in the room had got to get the floor.

And I raised my hand and I asked about the vision for how Black women and Black queer folks fit.

I had heard now an hour and 20 minutes, right, of liberation.

That didn't include me literally.

And when I asked that question, the entire room went silent.

And I think a lot of us watching here know what that feels like to, um, ask a question that feels obvious to you, but somehow it like takes the air out of the room.

And I remember, you know, hearing a lot of stuff about, you know, sisters are so important and we got to lift up our queens and we got to defend our sisters, but yet that's not a vision for women to be equal to men.

It's just not, right.

It's a, it's a vision for how men can take care of women.

And that is a different kind of relationship.

I also say in the book that I had gone to that meeting with a coworker who was a mentor of mine, a male coworker who has taught me a ton about organizing.

And I asked him after the meeting, I said, God, did I act, did I say something wrong?

Cause I really felt like I took the wind out of the room.

And he said, no, it was a good and important question.

And you know, I've always taken that story with me because I also felt like, well, why did I have to be the one to ask it?

If it was good and important, why is the burden always on Black women or queer folks to ask about where we fit?

That is an example of how our movements can be messy Rashad, in the sense that we are fighting for change, but we're also still learning how to embody that change.

And as long as that learning is not as accelerated as it needs to be, there will be very painful things that get in the way of our ability to make the kind of change that we deserve.

So, um, there's more stories like that in the book that I think a lot of people can relate to and hopefully inspires us to think about how we invest in changing ourselves and how we show up as we're trying to build a world that doesn't exist yet.

Right?

How do we accelerate that process?

And I offer some suggestions in the book that I hope you're excited to read.

ROBINSON: One of the many things, um, about knowing you that I like, and that I appreciate and love that you included in the book was, um, aspects of your upbringing that I think gave you this expansive idea of possibility, of seeing a world that may not have been in front of you talk about MTV.

You talk about, um, your mother, you talk about sort of your upbringing and that sort of time and space that you were in and how those things sort of contributed to your view.

And, um, I'd love it if you could, just, before we jump over to questions, say a little bit about that because you, you know, what you just did in your last story was I think really important to not just, um, sort of diagnosing the things that we need to, we need to win, but the structures and the type of leadership and the type of infrastructure that's required, right?

It's not, winning is not just a list of policies.

It's not just a set of written rules.

It's a set of unwritten rules.

We, if we simply concentrate on, um, the details of policy and don't focus on how we get there to win, we may not actually change the things that need to be changed.

And in so many ways, I think that there's real stories and context to what shaped your life and your understanding that had nothing to do with policy and at the same time had so much to do with policy.

GARZA: Absolutely.

So, you know, these are some of the chapters that I'm most proud of.

And so I'm so glad that you brought this up just from a writer's perspective.

Um, the lessons were much easier to write than the context, again, I didn't want to make this book boring.

I wanted you to read it.

And so, you know, as somebody who has had my foot in the academic world and also, you know, my foot and both arms and other extremities, uh, in the kind of movement-building world, I wanted to make sure that I could tell a story about movements that was complex, but also accessible.

And I spend a lot of time in the book talking about the conservative movement that shaped my life.

And I do so because I wanted people to better understand that movements are not reserved for those of us who are seeking justice.

Um, you know, anybody really can design a movement and not from a hashtag and not from going viral, but as you said, by thinking really clearly about what kind of infrastructure is needed to win hearts, to win, win minds and to also change policy and change rules, both that are written and unwritten.

And, um, I talked a lot about the Culture Wars of the 1980s and 1990s and some of my earliest memories are of watching MTV.

I mean my mom was a single mom and she worked multiple jobs, she lived, um, you know, for the first part of my life with her twin brother and we all lived in a two bedroom apartment.

And so that meant that the television was often my babysitter.

And I watched a lot of music videos, but back in the day, MTV also had "MTV News".

And in this day and age, honestly, I miss it because it was actually really sharp and poignant and nuanced.

It was "MTV News" that taught me about the HIV and AIDS crisis.

And also about the impact of, um, not only discrimination against people who, um, had contracted the disease or who were even suspected of contracting the disease, right?

But also the impacts of the inaction of the federal government at that time.

And the President at that time, um, in helping to push forward more, uh, opportunities to intervene in this disease that had become an epidemic very quickly.

Um, it is where I learned about apartheid in South Africa.

Right?

It is where I learned about why there was famine in Africa.

And it's where I learned that that Africa was not a country, but it was a continent.

I mean, "MTV News" at the time was my "Encyclopedia Britannica" and I did have an encyclopedia set, but it was missing a couple of volumes because my mom got it for cheap.

So MTV is what helped to fill in the gaps.

I also learned a ton about politics from music videos and, and one of my favorites is that I shout out in the book, um, I guess people would think it was obscure now, but it wasn't obscure then, it was a top seller, which was Jesus Jones "Right Here, Right Now," and in the video it depicts the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Another one of my favorite videos was, um, uh, Madonna, right?

And it was, um, "Like a Prayer."

And that video right, actually is pretty relevant to today.

It talks about, uh, the murder of a white woman by white supremacists.

And it gets blamed on a Black man and there's a white woman who sees the whole thing.

And she goes to the church to figure out what to do.

And, you know, I, I, I use these examples because I think children of my generation, lots of us learn politics and rules written and unwritten through pop culture.

And one thing that this conservative movement has done really well is it has engaged in, and in a lot of ways, it is winning the pop culture war of today, right?

And so what that means is this movement, and I talk about this in my book, has built the kind of infrastructure that leaves no stone unturned.

They have built up media outlets, right?

They have, um, infiltrated writer's rooms and director's rooms, right?

The people behind the shows that you love to watch on TV like "Law and Order," which I grew up on, right.

I've seen every episode of "SVU" about 85 times.

And again, this isn't just because the writing was good, it's because there was a whole strategy, right.

To ensure that that's what was going to be on my television, in my neighborhood, in my community.

Um, and I'm challenging us, right?

To think about what is the kind of infrastructure that we need to build in order to have that kind of reach, in order to be able to tell different stories that are more complex, more layered and more centered on justice and, um, what needs to change about the way that we're organized now in order to bring that into being.

You know, Rashad, my story is unique in a lot of ways.

Um, and you know, when you read the book, I start to go, Oh my God, really?

I didn't know that about you girl.

But one of the things that I think is common amongst a lot of us is that I am somebody who at one point in my life felt incredibly isolated.

I felt alone.

I felt like I was the only one that was going through the things I was going through.

And it was really being a part of a movement that helped me see that, um, the things that I was facing every day, weren't because of personal failures, they were because of system successes.

And if there's anything I want people to take away from this book, it is that we are at an unprecedented moment in this country that I used to like read about when I was a kid.

And I used to wish that I had been alive when the Black Panthers were active.

I used to wish I had been alive during the bus boycotts.

So when I came up, it felt like there was no movement.

I used to feel like I was born at the wrong time, but we are actually in that kind of moment right now.

And, you know, in the book, I talk about the fact that our task right now is to give hospice care to the things that need to wither away.

So, um, the levels of deep inequity, the levels of misery and pain, like we need to make sure that that dies away, right?

And we also, at the same time, need to be thinking about prenatal care for that, which needs to be born.

And that is the vision part.

If we got rid of every terrible thing in society right now, what would we build in its place?

And how do we get there?

That is what movements are here to accomplish.

And that is the role of a changemaker.

And all of that requires power.

ROBINSON: I love that, I love that.

So I'm going to try to get through a couple of these questions.

We've got a bunch of them and we've got like six minutes, one really picks up off of exactly where you were just at talking about culture.

And it's really, um, um, really about sort of what is your viewpoint?

Um, it's from Christy Benoit.

Um, and it says, what is your viewpoint around, uh, Megan Thee Stallion, um, her demonstration, um, um, both on SNL and her article, the "New York Times" op-ed piece, um, and you know, more broadly about famous people speaking out, um, and raising their voice.

GARZA: Yeah.

Um, first of all, shout out to Megan Thee Stallion, um, I feel like that what I'm watching in real time is a woman who is coming into her own and she's finding her courage and she's finding her base of strength and she is standing on it firmly planted with both feet, um, as somebody who knows the pressure of what it means to be on a stage with everybody watching you, um, just to demystify that a little bit, I should tell you that I'm quite sure that she probably had a lot of people in her life telling her to not be so political, to not use that stage the way that she did to not put those words, protect Black women on that stage.

I can tell you that as somebody who is a survivor of intimate partner violence, that, um, it was probably difficult for her to share her story about being shot in both feet, um, by somebody that we're not really clear what the relationship was, but whatever it was, she was afraid to talk about it.

Um, and what a boss for then pinning a piece in the "New York Times", one of the most widely read newspapers, I think, in the world, right.

And then also doing an accompanying video and really talking about her process, not just of change, but also putting out that courageous clarion call to so many other people who are undergoing that transformation right now, or who are longing for it.

So one of the lines in her op-ed was, you know, I wished that I had learned that powerful movements like this one, um, were really launched into prominence from three Black women.

And I wish I knew their names.

And then she names Opal and Patrisse and myself.

And that was a moment that like hit me in my gut because I have felt that way.

I have felt enraged at the fact that people have kept information from me and not in like a conspiracy theory kind of way, but in a, like, um, in a way of like, your story is not important, so we just won't tell it, but it is important to some of us, it is important.

And so, um, in this moment, right, where there's an unprecedented number of women, women of color, um, who are taking positions of power, get it, Megan Thee Stallion.

Lastly, I'll say, um, I also really like how she's doing what she's doing.

She doesn't, I haven't seen her announce some new initiative, you know, you know, I appreciate the fact that she is lending her voice.

Um, but she's not feeling like she needs to, um, recreate the wheel, right?

And from everything I understand about what she's up to, she's really wanting to help amplify the hard work that people are doing and she's wanting to join it so kudos to her.

I think in the spirit of people like Mr. Belafonte, right?

That is, there are such important roles for people with large platforms to play in social change.

Um, but also in Mr. B's, um, credit, I should say, you know, one of the things that I know he would say is that it always has to remain about the work.

It should never be about the personality.

ROBINSON: So we, um, have one more question, um, before I think we have to wrap up, and I know that we're, I know that there's more questions.

Um, we're gonna, Alicia and I are gonna jump over to her IG and the Color of Changes IG, Instagram.

Um, and we're going to like jump on for an IG live after the conversation.

GARZA: After party.

ROBINSON: So we'll maybe get to some of the conversations as well.

So, but I did want to, um, take this next, I'm going to put a couple of questions together and sort of end up, because I think that there are a lot of people watching that want to know what to do, how do we engage?

And so we have a couple of anonymous questions that struck me as I think really important.

One was like, how do you respond to people who genuinely believe and feel that Black Lives Matter and do not agree with all the current demands of the Black Lives Matter movement, such as defunding the police.

Could you fight for Black lives and not defund the police.

And could you believe in Black lives is a matter and not all the tenants of the movement.

And for me, that also gets to this larger perspective of, um, can you believe the system is, um, hurting people, um, but maybe not want to fully fix the system or have limits on how much of a system you want to fix.

Um, and then that relates to, um, two more questions that kind of tie in, and then I'll let you jump in.

Um, one is about, um, um, what about meaningful white allyship and what does it look like, and what does space look like for Black women leadership?

And then the final one, which is my favorite question.

My apologies to anyone's question that I couldn't get to, but my favorite question is, is how do you balance, uh, being yourself: tattoos, funny, honest, liking TV crime procedures.

We're going to talk about that.

Being a Black queer woman, uh, with the demands of a button up political space, um, um, when you feel like, um, you know, when you just have to engage in that way, and I love that I could almost like written the superlatives about you.

Um, and this person wanted you to know that "MTV News" was everything.

So like really this capture of this space of in this moment, what do we do?

How do we make sense?

How do people wrestle with the complications of wanting, uh, to be standing up, but maybe not being there fully?

What does it mean to be an ally and how does one balance the bringing their whole self into the room, which you do with so much grace, elegance and effectiveness?

GARZA: Thank you.

Um, I'm going to try to answer this in rapid fire, but if you want more, come on over to Color of Changes IG or my IG and check me and Rashad out in the after party.

Really quickly um, I think you said it perfectly Rashad.

Sure.

You can absolutely be somebody who wants to see some change, but, um, uh, you're not totally sure if there's other types of change that you want to see.

Um, you can be somebody who thinks that, you know, racism is unfortunate and that the way that we address it is by getting people to be nicer to each other.

Um, I talked in the book about all the stories I've ever been taught about racism in this country.

I've been taught the salad bowl metaphor.

I've been taught the melting pot metaphor.

And then at a certain point, those metaphors just went away and they stopped teaching us anything.

And I think, um, my advice would be, um, or my offering would be, you know, use this moment to clarify where you stand and what you believe.

And if you're not quite sure, um, get involved with organizations that have a clear point of view.

It's actually really helpful in determining what side of history you want to stand on, and that's not a judgment at all, but it does.

It helps you, um, figure out where you can lend your efforts and make the most impact.

And so, um, there are differences in our movements about, you know, what is the root cause of a problem and how do we fix it and that results in, um, differences in terms of how we go, how we approach, um, fixing or changing or transforming a problem.

Whatever you do, do something and make sure that you find people who, like you, right, are looking to make some kind of impactful change.

And then your task is to figure out how you multiply yourself, um, by the many.

And this is where movements get tricky, because ultimately at the end of the day, if we have a shared goal of dignity and survival, it means that we have to work with people that have different methodologies of how they think we get there.

And that becomes the real work of emotional intelligence.

I will also just offer that, um, I'm not going to spend a ton more time on, you know, the stories that get told about us because I get to tell a story that is one that I am living and have lived, but I will say this, um, for the folks who asked about white allyship, I do talk somewhat about this in my book, but I'll just give a short answer, which is, I think it's really important to, um, do two things.

One really better understand why, um, this is a movement that you want to commit to.

And for the purposes of not doing the thing that I often hear from white folks, which is, I love your movement.

Good luck with that.

No, that's not how this works.

That's not how this works.

Um, it can't be my movement.

It has to be yours too.

And so you have to actually be clear about what you get out of it.

What do you get out of being a part of a movement for anti-racism?

And then work like hell for that, and just know that you're going to make mistakes.

You're going to mess up, you're going to disappoint yourself.

You're gonna disappoint other people.

But the measure of how effective you can be is if you're in the game at all.

So know that you're gonna mess up and keep coming back to do better each time.

Lastly, I will say, and this is a perfect segue actually, um, thank you to the person who asked the question about being yourself.

Um, I have worked really hard.

I have worked really hard to belong to myself at the end of the day.

Um, I am somebody who deeply values my relationships, um, in my community, and the movement.

And I work really hard to make sure that those are relationships of integrity but at the end of the day, the relationship of integrity that has to be the strongest is the one that I have with myself.

So the reality is like sometimes I do do the button up thing, but my way, and also, yeah, I have a tattoo on my chest.

I have to behind my ears, I got tattoos in a lot of places and I have nose rings and I wear loud lipstick.

And I, you know, my hair has a green tint today and you know what, that's me, that's how I get to show up.

But what you can be sure of is that whenever I show up, you're going to be able to connect with me and not the person I want you to see me as.

Um, and lastly, um, cultivate that for yourself.

You're so worth it.

You're so worth it.

And there's a lot of different ways that you can approach that.

But the big one is develop the kind of community that thrives off of you being all of yourself and not just some of it.

ROBINSON: Alicia, congratulations.

This is a tremendous accomplishment.

Politics and Prose community, thank you.

Um, I am so honored to have been part of this and um, it is so important.

Um, this is such a critical moment in our time in our history.

Um, and you should be part of reading the stories, um, that have helped shape how we gotten here and where we're going to go.

HORSLEY: And I would just like to thank both of you on behalf of Politics and Prose.

NARRATOR: Books by tonight's authors are available at Politics and Prose bookstore locations, or online at politics-prose.com (music plays through credits)