Black Lives Matter co-founder: Maine can be a leader in dismantling white nationalism
Alicia Garza, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, spoke to a crowded hall of Maine progressives on Thursday on the need to understand and transform power if the larger anti-racism movement is to succeed. She also suggested that Maine, where 95 percent of people identify as white, according to the most recent census data, has a unique opportunity to confront and uproot the organizing principle behind white supremacy.
“I went to sleep last night with images of two people face down in the Rio Grande — a father and his daughter, the latest casualties of a movement that for decades has been fighting to make America white again,” Garza told attendees at the Maine People’s Alliance’s (of which Beacon is a project) annual Rising Tide Award Dinner in South Portland.
She was referring to the picture of a man and his 23-month-old daughter who drowned on Monday when they tried to cross from Mexico to the U.S.
“It’s too easy to say that that is not who we are,” Garza continued. “But it is who we are. You see, America itself was founded on violence, steeped in white supremacy and predicated on theft and genocide.”
Read more: https://mainebeacon.com/black-lives-matter-co-founder-maine-can-be-a-leader-in-dismantling-white-nationalism/