Black Lives Matter emerged from the hearts and minds of our three co-founders: Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi. It came to life right here in Los Angeles, where the first chapter was birthed. Our herstory is an important telling of the emergence of Black Lives Matter, and Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles specifically, as a reclamation of and recommitment to Black radical organizing and Black freedom struggle.
How You Can Help (MPLS, June 2020)
There are already plenty of thinkpieces and google docs floating around sharing action steps, places to donate, and ways to support the community both in Minneapolis and every city having an uprising right now after the murder of George Floyd. This is going to be a little different.
Digital Resources for a Movement Against Police Violence
As an organization, Rhizome supports an uncompromising movement for black lives and against police violence.
In times of public protest, digital tools and practices can play an instrumental role: as witness to abuse of power, as a tool for organizing street demonstration, as advocacy and fundraising platform, and as repository for the community memory that allows movements to grow and evolve over years. At the same time, these technologies and practices can cause harm and facilitate surveillance and oppression.
White People 4 Black Lives (WP4BL) is a white anti-racist collective and activist project. We operate within a national network of white anti-racists called Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ). Our work is rooted in showing up for racial justice and acting in alliance with Black Lives Matter: Los Angeles, the Movement 4 Black Lives, and other partners.
Welcome to the Resistance Resource Hub – please note this is a living document that organizers from across the country are editing daily.
DSA-LA Guidelines for Safe Protesting
We know that many of our members, comrades, and allies feel compelled to join the rebellions and protests springing up across the country right now, in response to the ongoing police violence and murders against black and brown people. DSA-LA has compiled a list of short tips for comrades to protest as safely as possible.
Street Watch New Member Trainings
We know from the horrifying footage of police violence we’ve witnessed just in the last week, the powerful impact simply WATCHING the police can have — holding police accountable for their brutality, spreading mass awareness, and inspiring massive rebellions like we are seeing today. In our Street Watch organizing, we see how our presence with a camera can provide real harm-reduction to our unhoused neighbors experiencing police harassment (who are also disproportionately black), as it forces law enforcement to adjust their practices and behavior. Documentation of unconstitutional practices has been used in litigation against the city, leading to major changes in policy, protocols, and practice, in addition to building broader public awareness, empathy and support for systemic changes.
Black and Asian-American Feminist Solidarities: A Reading List
Check out this reading list from Black Women Radicals and the Asian American Feminist Collective’s Instagram Live event, “Sisters and Siblings in the Struggle: COVID-19 + Black and Asian-American Feminist Solidarities.”
“Algorithms Of Oppression” Book Club And Study Group
Our collaboration with long-standing community members, Feminist A.I., engages the internet as theme and platform, and we look forward to launching our unit of study, based on the book, Algorithms of Oppression by Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble near the end of the month. In keeping with the spirit of this book’s point of departure , we’re also excited to be in alliance with The Free Black Women’s Library – LA, as the two co-hosts offer a book club/study group that will make sense of this text and what it means for online livelihood, for artists, creatives, and casual users, alike!
Resources & Tools Regarding Racism & Anti/Blackness
Education on how to be a better ally. A spreadsheet compiled with links to resources pertaining to whiteness, police brutality, liberation, racism, and Blackness in the U.S.
Anti-racism resources for white people
This document is intended to serve as a resource to white people and parents to deepen our anti-racism work. If you haven’t engaged in anti-racism work in the past, start now. Feel free to circulate this document on social media and with your friends, family, and colleagues.
Anti-Racism for Beginners + White People
Diving into the world of anti-racism for the first time can be confronting. It may feel challenging to understand your place and where to begin with educating yourself. Luckily, there are endless resources online to help you learn about anti-racism work, dismantle the unconscious biases that exist within yourself, and take action to create a more just society.
We started as a group that wanted to start to think about politics and activism on a global scale, integrating new levels of complexity and knowledge exploration. We started as a reading group. We then started expanding out hosting protests, municipal city politics educational forums for voters, we made a voters guide, we wrote a zine for activists. Our events and/or organisation have been covered by NPR, VIce, The Washington Post, and others. We hope you will join us to improve and build upon our community.
CASSANDRA is an artist run publishing and educational platform. We produce lo-fi printed matter, classrooms, projects, artist books, and exhibitions. Our intention is to spread ideas, distribute new language, propagate dialogue centering ethics, aesthetics, femme driven activism, and black scholarship because y’all ain’t listening.