Patrick F. Shanahan

Black Lives Matter Toronto founder Janaya Khan and movement co-founders Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, with moderator Sean Eversley Bradwell, Ph.D. ’09, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture Feb. 3 in Sage Chapel.

Black Lives Matter co-founders Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi and #BLM Toronto founder Janaya Khan offered inspiration to students and community members during the Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture, Feb. 3.

Sage Chapel was full to its capacity of 750 people for the event, which featured a discussion with the guest speakers moderated by Sean Eversley Bradwell, Ph.D. ’09; performances; and remarks from Cornell students and administrators.

“The role of language is everything,” Khan said early in the program. “To use the words ‘Black Lives Matter’ inherently challenges white supremacy. A movement actualized around it [from] the power of our ideas.”

The movement’s central tenets are love and social justice, and “began as a love letter to black people,” said Garza, who wrote that letter online following George Zimmerman’s acquittal in July 2013 for killing black teenager Trayvon Martin. “When the verdict came in, I was in a very public place watching it and the whole place went silent. And there was shame.

“We didn’t build this system that put 1 million of us behind bars, we came up in it. There is a narrative about blackness in this country, like it is a problem to be solved.

“There is a way to say enough is enough,” she said.

As activists and community organizers, the speakers gave insights into the movement and the issues that created it, made it go viral and spread to on-the-ground action in cities across America and around the world.

The following year, “we went from an organizing committee to a response to Ferguson,” Garza said, after the shooting of Michael Brown by police. “The reason? We had to watch a body bleed out for 4.5 hours, denied medical attention. We all thought, ‘that could be me.’”

Activists self-organized by the hundreds for the protests that followed, she added, to “work together and go back to our communities and continue the work there.”

“Hate can get a lot of people on the streets but only love can keep them there,” Khan said.

“On reflection, all of our lives lack in value – love drives us all,” said Tometi, who also cited examples of “structural racism on a global scale.” This “global anti-blackness,” she said, includes trade agreements and man-made environmental crises making “local industries no longer viable in their home countries.”

“We have to understand the ways in which our lives are interconnected and how global capitalism is not sustainable,” Tometi said.

The activists also stressed they were ordinary citizens, like thousands of others expressing their outrage and concern.

President Elizabeth Garrett introduced the speakers, saying: “Black Lives Matter has pushed issues of race-related violence to the forefront of our national consciousness, catalyzing political action and scrutiny by the media, and asking us all to examine ourselves and our institutions – not just law enforcement but all of our social and governmental institutions. It has been seen as a model by activists in other countries and inspired protests and discussions on college campuses around the world, including here at Cornell.”

“We in higher education, who have the privilege of a liberal arts education and an environment of robust inquiry and critical analysis, have a special responsibility to learn about and to teach the history that has given rise to our racial climate, as well as the reality of the present day,” Garrett said.

Ayisha McHugh ’16 reflected on the movement and what it addresses. “We black students attending elite academic institutions wept not only for the death of a child, the death of women and men, mothers and fathers, but the death of a dream. The myth had been exposed. We were not safe. And we grappled with the question of if we ever would be,” McHugh said. “Black Lives Matter has become more than hashtag activism – this movement has given way to find an agency to a new form of activism … accepting the differences in each individual identity.”

In his opening remarks, Rev. Kenneth I. Clarke, director of Cornell United Religious Work and chair of the King Commemoration Committee, said the event acknowledges faith as the basis of King’s convictions and activism. Speaking in Sage Chapel on Nov. 13, 1960, “Dr. King articulated his integration of faith and social justice in his sermon ‘Three Dimensions of a Complete Life,’” Clarke said.

The contemporary movement addresses numerous injustices “and proposes solutions, as Dr. King did in his lifetime, and has encouraged anti-racist allies to organize and join the struggle, as Dr. King did,” he said. “And Black Lives Matter has expanded Dr. King’s vision to include at its core the LGBT community, the disabled, women, undocumented immigrants.”

Ryan Lombardi, vice president for student and campus life, said, “I had many meaningful conversations last fall about creating a more just campus environment and our hopes to eradicate the systemic racism that still plagues our nation.”

“I heard countless stories from Cornell students,” he said. “Those stories, they broke my heart, they made me angry, and they inspired me all at the same time. We have so much work to do to realize Dr. King’s vision. I believe this is a place where that can happen.”