How Two Black Women in L.A. Helped Build Black Lives Matter from Hashtag to Global Movement
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LOG IN CALIFORNIA How two Black women in L.A. helped build Black Lives Matter from hashtag to global movement Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, addresses the crowd during a June 8 memorial service and funeral procession honoring George Floyd and demanding justice for those killed by police. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) By ANDREA CASTILLO | STAFF WRITER JUNE 21, 2020 | 7 AM Melina Abdullah stood in the bed of a white pickup truck parked in the middle of Vine Street in Hollywood before a sea of people whose end she could not place. Speaking into a microphone, she told the crowd on that early June day that they were going to honor the spirits of people whose lives had been stolen by police violence. She called out George Floyd. She called out Ryan Twyman. She called out Wakiesha Wilson. She called out Kisha Michael. After each name, she poured water from a plastic bottle onto the hot pavement below, while protesters responded with “Àse” (ah-shay), a word used by the Yoruba people of Nigeria akin to ending a prayer with “Amen.” “Our power comes not only from the people who are here but from the spirits that we cannot see,” said Abdullah, a Cal State L.A. professor, single mother of three and the leader of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles. “When we say their name, we invoke their presence.” Melina Abdullah, center, stands with others for a group photo at a Black Lives Matter event June 6 at Norman O. Houston Park in Baldwin Hills. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times) Then they marched. The unprecedented size and scope of recent rallies speaks to how Black Lives Matter has transformed from a small but passionate movement into a cultural and political phenomenon. And in few places has that movement generated more passion than in Los Angeles, home to two of BLM’s guiding forces, Abdullah and Patrisse Cullors. It’s been seven years since the group formed after George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. On July 13, 2013, Alicia Garza, an Oakland activist, posted what she called a love letter to Black people on Facebook, telling them, “Our lives matter.” Los Angeles activist Cullors turned it into a hashtag: #BlackLivesMatter. New York activist Opal Tometi built the digital platform. A few days later, Cullors called her friend Abdullah and 30 others together to form the first chapter of what is now a network of 16 across North America. The movement spread after protests erupted nationwide in 2014 when a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed Black 18-year-old. Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, marches with others in Hollywood on June 7. It was the largest demonstration in Los Angeles since George Floyd’s killing. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) Between instances of nationwide unrest, BLM L.A. has pursued racial justice reforms and supported the families of those killed by law enforcement in the region. The organization has been viewed by some as controversial for its confrontational tactics and rejection of so-called respectability politics. But its approach has also attracted young Black people and embraced those who are LGBTQ. Despite its growing renown among Black Americans, only recently has Black Lives Matter become a household phrase among people outside the Black community. Cullors, 37, likens the organization to an underground cult band that has now broken into the mainstream. Leadership within the movement is decentralized. But Cullors, who serves as chair of the BLM Global Network Foundation, the group’s international arm, assists her hometown chapter when needed. She also collaborates with organizers outside BLM under the broader Movement for Black Lives, a national coalition of more than 100 organizations. With nearly 100,000 estimated protesters, the June 7 Hollywood protest was the biggest organized gathering so far in Los Angeles since Floyd’s death. BLM has made it easier for people to lean into social justice, Cullors said, in part through use of social media and the engagement of celebrities like the rapper YG, who promoted that protest and used footage from it in a music video for his song “FTP,” which is an abbreviation for “F— the police.” Black Lives Matter Los Angeles organizers Richie Reseda, left, Haewon Asfaw and Patrisse Cullors laugh at a Twitter post at Cullors’ home in South Los Angeles. (Gabriella Angotti-Jones / Los Angeles Times) “It’s unheard of in L.A. to bring out 100,000 people to protest,” Cullors said. “That’s very New York, that’s very Chicago. L.A. is a very apathetic town.” Before the march began, E’Layjiah Wooley approached Cullors to ask how she could join the movement. The 19-year-old with curly pink hair told Cullors that they’d met a year before at a march in Oakland and that she had just moved to Los Angeles. “You’re in the right place,” Cullors told her. Cullors, who grew up in Van Nuys in the 1990s, said her earliest memory of police is watching officers force their way into her home while looking for her uncle and ransacking the place without acknowledging the family. She was 7. For Cullors, the mother of a 4-year-old boy, the current struggle is being waged for this generation — and those to come. “This is a movement led and envisioned and directed by Black women,” she said. “Many of us are queer, we’re moms, and we really started this work because we wanted to see our children survive. We’re laying the groundwork and foundation for a new world, not just for our descendants but for right now.” Haewon Asfaw, left, jokes around with Patrisse Cullors at Cullors’ home. (Gabriella Angotti-Jones / Los Angeles Times) With 500 members, the L.A. chapter is one of the biggest and most influential in the BLM network. The core leadership team consists of five people, including Abdullah, who manages messaging and strategy. She said she tries to ensure that members have a say in most decisions, though the core team takes on alone issues that could risk danger or arrest. None of the leaders are paid for their organizing work. Scot Brown, a professor of African American studies and history at UCLA, said people like Abdullah are the “real heroes” for leading the resistance long before there was international support. “There was a time when this movement was vilified,” he said. “Now it’s become the chant that affirms human rights.” The current moment has brought a wave of support from other progressive organizations. But at times, good intentions have proved insufficient. This month, the group behind the yearly LA Pride parade organized a march in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. But its leaders came under fire after they submitted a special event permit application to the Los Angeles Police Department. Thousands participate in the All Black Lives Matter solidarity march along Hollywood Boulevard on June 14. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) As a matter of practice, Black Lives Matter Los Angeles does not collaborate with police on any of its events. Under pressure, LA Pride apologized and said it would step back from the event. The All Black Lives Matter solidarity march did take place at the direction of a newly formed group, Black LGBTQ+ Activists for Change, whose board is composed entirely of Black LGBTQ people. For Abdullah, the situation illustrates the deeper thinking that must occur when people consider what solidarity really means. “It’s more than just saying ‘Black lives matter’ or painting it on the street,” she said. Abdullah, who is in her 40s, grew up the daughter of two schoolteachers in East Oakland during the rise of the Black Panther Party. She now teaches pan-African studies at Cal State L.A. — and was supposed to spend this year writing a book. In September, she took her first sabbatical in 18 years. While Abdullah is more the academic theorist, Cullors flourishes in the world of art. Originally trained as a dancer, her work lives at the intersection of performance and activism. For her master’s thesis last year at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design, Cullors contrasted the “history of Black bodies being harmed, tortured and brutalized” with pieces designed to showcase respite and healing. This month, she performed “A Prayer for the Runner,” which centers on a prayer she contributed to writing after the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. Patrisse Cullors, who completed her master of fine arts degree at USC last year, has combined performance art and activism to help build the Black Lives Matter movement. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) Cullors released her first book, a “poetic memoir” co-written with Asha Bandele about Black Lives Matter titled “When They Call You a Terrorist,” in 2018. Art, she believes, is essential to the movement. “We didn’t build it as a policy think tank; we built it as a cultural movement,” she said. “That’s why everybody feels moved by it. It’s why it tugs at people’s hearts. It’s why it pisses people off. It’s why people felt like they had to pick a side.” That’s what it did for the mother of Grechario Mack, 30, who was having a mental episode when he ran through the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza shopping mall with a knife and was shot dead by police. The Los Angeles Police Commission later ruled that the 2018 shooting violated department policy.