Doing It My Way
Alicia Garza Is Existing on Her Own Terms
The Black Lives Matter co-founder and principal at Black Futures Lab shares her thoughts on leadership, freedom, and the 2020 election cycle
Doing It My Way is a candid ZORA Q&A series with newsmakers and changemakers in our community who are charting their own paths with conviction and defying convention.
Alicia Garza was destined to become an activist. Long before the San Francisco Bay Area–based organizer co-founded Black Lives Matter in 2013, she was using her voice to make a difference. At just 12 years old, Garza petitioned the Marin County Office of Education to make contraception available in school nurses’ offices — and won.
“It seemed like a no-brainer to me. If everybody’s panicking about teen pregnancy and young people having sex, why wouldn’t you provide the tools people need to do that safely?” she recalls. “But also, rather than judging people, what would happen if people had access to the information and the resources they needed to make decisions on their own behalf?”
That question became the driving force for Garza’s advocacy.
“I was propelled by the notion that everybody deserves to have a dignified life, no…
