Campaigning for Racial Equality

For TED, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi gave a Black Lives Matter speech, allowing their audience to come away with a more enlightened knowledge of the movement's beginnings by listening to those who founded it.

They explain the movement by saying, "Black Lives Matter is our call to action, it is a tool to reimagine a world where black people are free to exist, free to live. It is a tool for our allies to show up differently for us." Following this, the three women consider what it was like to grow up seeing their family members needlessly frisked by law enforcement and to constantly have to be asking themselves: "Why us?"

The purpose of the movement, the founders explain in their Black Lives Matter speech, is to give answers to those facing such high levels of inequality. While the movement was started in the United States, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi stress that the issues faced by black people are global.

Through their conversation, the founders consider the importance of exposing issues and combating them as a community. To do so, they must continue demanding change where it is due by addressing the problems at the root.