Alicia Garza

Alicia Garza delivered the 2024 Gruber Distinguished Lecture in Global Justice on March 4, 2024, at 4:30 p.m. at the Yale Law School. She was in conversation with Professor Claudia Flores, Yale Law School. Garza published the Facebook post, which, along with other committed organizers, set off a chain of events that became Black Lives Matter.

Garza has had multiple roles throughout her career as an activist. In 2013, she became the special projects director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance, where she advocated for the respect, recognition, and labor rights of nannies, house cleaners, and home care workers in the United States. Garza and her co-organizers founded the Black Futures Lab and the Black to the Future Action to Build Black Political Power. She also co-founded Supermajority, an organization dedicated to harnessing the power of the women’s voting bloc. Garza recently published a book is entitled The Purpose of Power. She is currently transitioning to become senior vice president of Movement, Infrastructure, and Explorations at the JPB Foundation.

Garza began by explaining her trajectory as an activist. Recalling her mother’s influence, she told of how her mother always worked to foster dignity in people. This inspired Garza on her trajectory to ensure that everyone could have dignified lives; she enacts that through activism. Garza spoke of her process becoming political by watching MTV, particularly when the global gag rule was passed, which was an attack on women’s rights, communities, and families. This executive order, along with watching her mother, demonstrated to her the importance of reproductive freedom and body autonomy.

Garza also reflected on the Black Lives Matter movement. She spoke about how Black Lives Matter was not her first experience with national organizing, and that her previous experiences were instrumental in building Black Lives Matter. Garza expressed her worries at the backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement. Though Black Lives Matter is a global movement with support from a multi-racial coalition, there is also a global movement against Black Lives Matter. Garza said she expected the backlash because of her background in history. She discussed the current political scene and Trump’s potential reelection and its implications, including the possible dismantling of democracy as we know it. Garza went on to say, though, that crisis is an opportunity.

Garza also addressed her family connections to domestic work, which led her to work at the National Domestic Workers Alliance. She emphasized the need for care, and she discussed the absence of adequate care in the U.S. Garza described the work of the National Domestic Workers Alliance which is at the forefront of advocating for everyone to have access to care. Garza talked about the transnational aspect of the movements in which she is involved and about how the movements are all interconnected.

The conversation then turned to her book and the connotations of power. She defined power as the ability to make and change the rules. Garza said that “the purpose of power is to bring us back together again when we’ve fallen apart.” She discussed how power can also be used in beautiful ways, and posed the question of how the productive side of power can diminish the destructive and oppressive . Garza emphasized the importance of setting the narrative especially because narrative shapes policy.

Garza ended the talk by discussing her priorities. One priority is deciding the direction that the U.S. will take. Another priority is understanding what movements need to break through and be successful. She talked about the need to make space for people to awake, to join the movement, to disagree. She emphasized the need to find out what connects everyone, beyond party lines.

Watch the video here.