I was trained within a black radical tradition that encouraged struggle within our own movements because it sharpens collective analysis - bringing us closer to the tools we need to achieve liberation.

Statistics are easy to remove ourselves from. A story, you are implicated in, and you have to choose what side you are going to be on.

Our decentralized, localized leadership structure has really allowed for Black Lives Matter structures in their own communities to take on the state and take on some of the most egregious acts against black people.

Before BLM, there was a dormancy in our black freedom movement. Obviously many of us were doing work, but we've been able to reignite a whole entire new generation, not just inside the U.S. but across the globe, centering black people and centering the fight against white supremacy.

Once upon a time, Bill Clinton was widely perceived as an ally and advocate for the needs of black people. However, it is the Clinton administration's Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act that set the stage for the massive racial injustice we struggle with in law enforcement today.

In 2013, I helped create a black-centered political will- and movement-building project called #BlackLivesMatter.

I fight to prioritize black mothers and black children because we deserve to live in a world where our healing is centered and our lives are treated with dignity, respect, and care.

So many stories have been told about Black Lives Matter. The beauty of building out a decentralized network, the beauty of building out something that's a hashtag, is that so many people can take it and run with it. The bad part about that is so many folks can take it and run with it - and misuse it and co-opt it.

With abolition, it's necessary to destroy systems of oppression. But it's equally necessary to put at the forefront our conversations about creation. When we fight for justice, what exactly do we want for our communities?

Under Trump, black lives will become even more vulnerable to state violence.

I developed 'Power: From the Mouths of the Occupied' while I was an Artist in Residence at Kalamazoo College.

'The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman' is a reminder that people across the world are rebelling against norms and forging new paths for the most marginalized people in their own communities.

I knew marriage was not the answer to changing the conditions for poor, black, queer folks. So I never felt compelled to get married - it just didn't seem important. But even if marriage wasn't right for me at the time, or a quick fix toward black empowerment, I found it repulsive that loving same-sex couples were refused the right.

Policing was developed, created, and implemented for the elite, and - in the case of the United States - the elites were and almost entirely remain white, upper middle class, cisgender straight men.

I am an abolitionist. What does this mean? Abolitionist resistance and resilience draws from a legacy of black-led anti-colonial struggle in the United States and throughout the Americas, including places like Haiti, the first black republic founded on the principles of anti-colonialism and black liberation.

Black women's lives have never been shown any value in America.

What we acknowledged as a nation during the one-and-a-half year trial of George Zimmerman is that the white majority's public imagination of black people was based on their fear of us, not the reality of who we are.

Through Black Lives Matter and social media, we've been able to have a really challenging discussion with America about police and how much it is investing in policing.

Many of us believed that Black Lives Matter would move this country to not only reckon with white racism but to usher in new laws and practices that would curb vigilantism and law enforcement violence. But, instead, white nationalism was nurtured and began to take root among the American people.

The movement for black lives isn't just about black people. Black liberation has never just been about black people. It's been about a fight for our humanity, for our dignity.

What was most important, for me, is that I could share what I experience as a young person - in particular, what impact incarceration and policing had on my life and my family's life.

Each and every one of us has multiple identities, and this is a fact that should be celebrated. I for example, am a queer black woman who grew up poor in Los Angeles.

I read everything and anything related to being queer. I found solace in reading authors like Audre Lorde and bell hooks, who would become my activist staples - their words helped me grow up and taught me how to be bold and courageous. By studying them, I came to understand that being young and queer and black would not be easy.

Individuals are complex and deserve to be recognized as such.

Myself and the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement have been called terrorists, but in truth, we are loving women whose life experiences have led us to seek justice for those victimized by the powerful.

Black women voted against Roy Moore not because they necessarily wanted the other guy; they voted against Roy Moore because they knew that would be better for the people of Alabama and, to be frank, better for the rest of the country.

When I was younger, I had these romantic ideas about the Black Panther Party and what it meant to be a part of the civil rights movement. Then we're here, and it's dangerous. And it's dangerous to say, 'Black lives matter.'

I think what's so powerful about Black Lives Matter is we're the first movement able to take on law enforcement and make it a popular discussion.

With support from techies, designers, artists and thousands of activists across the country, Black Lives Matter is now an online-to-offline political movement, affirming the humanity and resilience of black communities.

I've been an activist since I was a teenager. I was always curious about what we would now call social justice. I remember just trying to navigate growing up poor in an overpoliced environment with a single mother and a father who was in and out of prison.

During my high-risk pregnancy, I consistently experienced subpar care from my hospital, which led me to hire two midwives instead. They provided me with excellent and loving care, and they made my pregnancy a truly special and powerful moment in my life.

I think part of what we're seeing in the rise of white nationalism is their response to Black Lives Matter, is their response to an ever-increasing fight for equal rights, for civil rights, and for human rights.

When I was growing up, my family was plagued by poverty. My mother, a single parent, worked around the clock to make sure her children - me, my five brothers, and three sisters - could eat and have a safe place to sleep. We hardly saw her.

Generations of black women have anxiously watched as our children walk out into a world set against them. We teach them how to respond to police and how to react to racist comments, knowing that these lessons are not guaranteed to protect our children.

The first thing that Black Lives Matter had to do was remind people that racism existed in this country because when we had Obama, people thought we were post-racial. That was the debate. Is racism over? And very quickly, we understood that it was not over.

We rarely know what motivates somebody in their work, and it's usually a particular moment in their life. For me, that moment is my brother's incarceration and the ways in which this country has decided to neglect, abuse, and sometimes torture people with severe mental illness, especially if they're black.

We live in a world where black people are targeted for death and destruction, and we should not be surprised when moments such as these occur - in fact, Charlottesville confirms the violence that black people endure every day.

I don't like how cruel humans can be.

I don't dislike my appearance at all.

I have been arrested several times protesting.

I am scared every day.

Wherever there are communities fighting for freedom and liberation, there are serious tensions.

Freedom means the U.S. government not being the main threat to countries around the world.

What does it look like to build a city, state, or nation invested in communities thriving rather than their death and destruction? To ask this question is the first act of an abolitionist.

Black Lives Matter was born out of our unwavering love for black people and our undeniable rage over a system that has historically dehumanized black people.

White people who voted for Trump decided to invest in a president who underwrites white supremacy in the guise of populism.

My first reaction to Trump being elected was a visceral one. I cried for black people in general but, more particularly, for those of us at the margins who have been struggling and who have never received enough support.

For those looking outside-in, it's not fair - or accurate - to assign someone an identity based off the first thing that we see.

When folks say 'identity politics' don't matter, it simply reinforces the norm of a white, middle-class, cis narrative and further marginalizes the rest of us who don't share that identity.

As a black millennial, I remember with horrid detail how Democratic policies ravaged my community and destroyed my family.