When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

by Patrisse Cullors

They know who we are and give us private space in the back to meet. And in between the hours of planning and strategizing about what to do, we sing gospel songs and we mourn. We laugh and we cry. By the end of the night Angela Peoples from the LGBTQ human rights organization GetEQUAL says, Y’all. They’re gonna do a candidates forum. Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley are going to be there. We need to interrupt that. And I say, We need to shut it down. And that was that. The next day, I text Jose Antonio Vargas, the brave journalist who had been part of the Washington Post team that garnered a Pulitzer for its breaking coverage of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, and who outed himself as undocumented, having been sent to the United States from the Philippines as a child to live with his grandparents. Jose is going to be moderating the candidates’ forum shortly and because I know him, I have to tell him we are coming. Okay, he says. And with that, 100 of us from the Black Lives Matter Movement and the immigrant rights movement break up into two lines and enter the room where the candidates are speaking. Amber Phillips, an organizer and a woman with one of the most amazing voices anyone could ever hear, sets it off. She begins singing: Which side are you on my people, which side are you on? (We’re on the freedom side!) Tia Oso, a Nigerian sister from Arizona who worked with Opal’s organization, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, hits the stage first. We wanted to begin b...