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The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart Hardcover – October 20, 2020

by Alicia Garza (Author)

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An essential guide to building transformative movements to address the challenges of our time, from one of the country’s leading organizers and a co-creator of Black Lives Matter

“Excellent and provocative . . . a gateway [to] urgent debates.”—Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, The New Yorker

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY Time • Marie Claire • Kirkus Reviews

In 2013, Alicia Garza wrote what she called “a love letter to Black people” on Facebook, in the aftermath of the acquittal of the man who murdered seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin. Garza wrote:

Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.

With the speed and networking capacities of social media, #BlackLivesMatter became the hashtag heard ’round the world. But Garza knew even then that hashtags don’t start movements—people do.

Long before #BlackLivesMatter became a rallying cry for this generation, Garza had spent the better part of two decades learning and unlearning some hard lessons about organizing. The lessons she offers are different from the “rules for radicals” that animated earlier generations of activists, and diverge from the charismatic, patriarchal model of the American civil rights movement. She reflects instead on how making room amongst the woke for those who are still awakening can inspire and activate more people to fight for the world we all deserve.

This is the story of one woman’s lessons through years of bringing people together to create change. Most of all, it is a new paradigm for change for a new generation of changemakers, from the mind and heart behind one of the most important movements of our time.

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1 year and up
Print length

336 pages
Language

English
Dimensions

5.8 x 1.2 x 8.6 inches
Publisher

One World
Publication date

October 20, 2020
ISBN-10

0525509682
ISBN-13

978-0525509684
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“In a year when a long overdue reckoning with racism is once again in the spotlight, Garza’s call to action . . . is urgent and critically necessary.”—Time

“The Purpose of Power is a must-read. Anyone interested in turning the page of our contemptible past toward a brighter future should put this book on their reading list.”—Congresswoman Barbara Lee

“‘Black lives matter’ was Alicia Garza’s love letter read around the world. The Purpose of Power is another love letter that should be read around the world. It speaks to all that molded Garza, all that molds organizers, all that molds movements.”—Ibram X. Kendi, author of #1 New York Times bestseller How to Be an Antiracist

“I can think of no greater guide to the difficult work of building movements than Alicia Garza and no greater tome of wisdom for this age than The Purpose of Power, a precious offering to a nation navigating unprecedented crises, for whom movements remain our only saving grace.”—Ai-jen Poo, executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and author of The Age of Dignity

“Damn. The Purpose of Power changes everything. I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked at this book’s audacity, because it’s written a young Black woman who literally changed everything. Very few books become national monuments. Even fewer help shape social movements. The Purpose of Power is that rare book that is a monumental movement. It is a liberatory offering. Damn.”—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

“The Purpose of Power cements Garza as a generational leader whose unflinching yet generous wisdom will shape our approach to activism for years to come.”—Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us

“The Purpose of Power is a necessary political history, an expansive theory of liberation, and a personal testament to the power of movement building. Garza helps guide us to greater understanding and faith in our prospects for revolutionary change.”—Mychal Denzel Smith, author of Stakes Is High

“The book reveals Garza as not only a superb strategist but a master storyteller. This layered book is for anyone that understands that surviving with dignity is a practice, but fighting for both dignity and survival is a skill.”—Malkia Devich Cyril, senior fellow and lead founder of Media Justice

About the Author

Alicia Garza is an organizer, political strategist, and cheeseburger enthusiast. She is the principal at the Black Futures Lab and the Black to the Future Action Fund, co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Lives Matter Global Network, director of strategy and partnerships at the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and host of the Lady Don’t Take No podcast.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

Where I’m From

Frantz Fanon said that “each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.” This is the story of movements: Each generation has a mission that has been handed to it by those who came before. It is up to us to determine whether we will accept that mission and work to accomplish it, or whether we will turn away and fail to achieve it.

There are few better ways to describe our current reality. Generations of conflict at home and abroad have shaped the environment we live in now. It is up to us to decide what we will do about how our environment has been shaped and how we have been shaped along with it. How do we know what our mission is, what our role is, and what achieving the mission looks like, feels like? Where do we find the courage to take up that which has been handed to us by those who themselves determined that the status quo is not sufficient? How do we transform ourselves and one another into the fighters we need to be to win and keep winning?

Before we can know where we’re going—which is the first question for anything that calls itself a movement—we need to know where we are, who we are, where we came from, and what we care most about in the here and now. That’s where the potential for every movement begins.

We are all shaped by the political, social, and economic contexts of our time. For example, my parents: My mom and dad were both born in the 1950s and came of age during the 1960s and 1970s. My dad was raised in San Francisco, California, by a wealthy Jewish family who became rich through generational transfers of wealth and by owning and operating a successful business. My mother, on the other hand, was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, the daughter of a long-distance truck driver and a domestic worker. Compared to my father’s family, they were working class, but compared to other Black families, they were solidly middle class. Toledo was the home of the Libbey Glass Company and other manufacturers that employed the lion’s share of the population. My maternal grandparents’ community consisted of Polish immigrant families and other middle-class Black families, until the Polish immigrant families began to move out to the suburbs.

My mother wanted more freedom than her family and her community would allow, so she kept moving: first to New York as a young woman, then joining the army, where she was stationed at Fort McClellan in Alabama for basic training, then Fort Dix in New Jersey for more training, before heading west for a final stint at Fort Ord.

My mom was raised in a context where Black women could aspire to become secretaries, domestic workers, or sales and retail clerks. My father was raised in a context where his family experienced some discrimination based on their Jewish heritage and identity but mostly passed as white people of an elevated economic class, which meant they could reasonably expect every opportunity to be open to them.

And I came of age in a very different context, at a time and in a place that were unique to me. I came to understand the world from a different set of perspectives than those of my parents and most of my peers. And yet here we all are, alive right now, making a world together, our perspectives and experiences sometimes harmonious, sometimes clashing, sometimes unrecognizable to one another. We all came into this world-making project at different times—my parents showed up in a 1966 Chevy Camaro, I arrived in a hybrid, and those who came of age in the 1990s and 2000s came through on rechargeable scooters powered by Citibank—but we’re all here now.

Our wildly varying perspectives are not just a matter of aesthetic or philosophical or technological concern. They also influence our understanding of how change happens, for whom change is needed, acceptable methods of making change, and what kind of change is possible. My time, place, and conditions powerfully shaped how I see the world and how I’ve come to think about change. So, let me tell you who I am, and to tell you who I am, I have to tell you about my mother, who gave me my most enduring lesson in politics: The first step is understanding what really matters.

My mother was twenty-five years old when she found out she was pregnant with me. When she told my biological father, he wasn’t thrilled, she says dryly, but he wanted her to keep the baby. I ask her if she wanted to keep the baby. “Were you scared, Mami? I mean, wasn’t there any part of you that didn’t know if you wanted to have a baby?” I’m trying to coax out of her a genuine answer, trying to make her comfortable enough to say yes if that was her truth. “No. I knew I wanted to have you,” she tells me. “I didn’t plan it, but when it happened, I was ready to put my big-girl pants on and figure it out.” Quintessential Mami. Decisive and strong as an ox at five feet four inches.

There was a time when she was in love with my biological father, but when it went bad, it was over—by then, there wasn’t much to do but figure out how to fight for herself and her child. For her, all of this was a long time ago, and she did her best to block it out and move on.

My mother doesn’t identify as a feminist; in fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard her use the word. She is equally suspicious of men and women: In her experience, men have underestimated and tried to take advantage of her, while some women have tried to undercut her or compete with her—mostly for the attention of men. My childhood was littered with stories of how to protect myself from predatory men and women. “Know when to go home,” she would say, warning me to keep my wits about me and predict when a situation was reaching a turning point that might leave me unsafe. “Always know your exits,” she would say, in case I needed to escape a predator or some other emergency. “Keep your blessings to yourself,” she would say, as if there were someone around the corner ready to snatch a blessing from me.

For her, and for me, the central question wasn’t about whether she was a feminist but whether she was able to care for her family and be cared for in return. She grew up during a time when the role of a woman was to raise a family, keep the house together, and make men’s lives easier. Mami spent her life rebelling against that, actively and implicitly. She moved to New York at eighteen to be a secretary for a cinematographer and lived alone for two years. When she joined the military, she was the only woman in an all-male platoon, where she refused to take roles reserved for women. She fought off the sexual advances of her married boss when she worked in a California prison. And when the man she thought she would marry began seeing other women while she was pregnant with me, she had to figure out how to take care of herself and her daughter. Her feminism—her politics—was her right to survive by any means necessary.

One of my earliest memories is asking my mother about a poster that she had hanging up in the apartment we shared with my uncle. The poster featured a beautiful Black woman who looked just like my mother—so much so that I would regularly ask Mami if she was sure she wasn’t the woman in the image. Casually wrapped in a goldenrod headscarf, the woman gazes out into the distance next to the words “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.”

I didn’t know anything about the famous choreopoem, but I had a sense then, as I do now, that there was something unique about the experiences of Black women in a society that in so many ways seems to both fetishize and despise Black people. I recognized the sadness in the eyes of the woman in the poster. It mirrored the sadness in the eyes of my own mother.

Among her many colloquialisms, one of my mother’s favorites was “Sex makes babies.” For her, the practice of talking about sex was important to the well-being of her Black daughter. She never used phrases like “the birds and the bees” or “down there.” There was no stork who brought a baby in a bundle to a house that wanted one. In my house, I would sit at the kitchen table late into the night while my mother would buzz around like a hummingbird. “I can’t stand how white people sugarcoat everything,” she would say. Buzz. “It’s not the birds and the bees, it’s sex. Ain’t no damn stork. Sex makes babies. And babies are expensive.” Buzz.

Our time together, me at the kitchen table, Mami buzzing around prepping everything for the following day, was when we would talk about such intimate topics. At the kitchen table, we would talk about consent. Mami would tell me that I never had to hug or kiss anyone I didn’t want to, even family members. She would urge me to tell her or another adult if someone touched me in a way I didn’t want to be touched. We would run drills in the kitchen where she would show me how to fight back against someone who was attacking me.

Mami would say, “Okay, baby girl, let’s go over it again. What do you do if someone tries to grab you from behind and chokes you around the neck?”

Dutifully, I would reply, “I’m gonna drag my heel down their shin as hard as I can, stomp on their feet, and run as fast as I can.”

“That’s right, baby girl. Don’t try and kick them in the balls. They’ll be expecting that.”

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ One World (October 20, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0525509682
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0525509684
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 1 year and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.8 x 1.2 x 8.6 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #141,070 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #94 in Government Social Policy
- #436 in Discrimination & Racism
- #496 in African American Demographic Studies (Books)

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Alicia Garza is an organizer, political strategist, and cheeseburger enthusiast. She is the principal at the Black Futures Lab and the Black to the Future Action Fund, co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Lives Matter Global Network, the Director of Strategy and Partnerships at the US National Domestic Workers Alliance, and host of the podcast Lady Don’t Take No.

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The Purpose of Power

Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2021

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Alicia Garza is one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter Global Network but she worked as a community organizer for a long time before that. The Purpose of Power is multi-faceted – it’s both her personal story and the story behind #BlackLivesMatter. It’s also about community organizing in general and how to go beyond hashtags to make real and lasting change.

I learned a lot from this book. It starts with a brief history of movements and leadership within the Black community to give context to where things stand with it today. Then she weaves in her personal story, including her work as a community organizer. I first heard the term “community organizer” when Barack Obama ran for president but I didn’t know what it really meant. Garza has a wealth of experience that she details in this book and I feel like I understand what a community organizer does a lot better now.

The last section of the book is about the Black Lives Matter movement – how it started and where it is today. I appreciated this information because I didn’t know the specifics before reading this book. Now, I feel like I have a wealth of knowledge that I can use to educate others. There is a lot of misinformation about Black Lives Matter out there and I’m glad I feel like I can speak out now.

The focus of The Purpose of Power is the Black Lives Matter movement but what Garza shares about organizing can be applied to any movement. If you’ve ever felt like you wanted to do something beyond posting a hashtag, this is a great book for you.

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California Shopper

Illustrates the power of organizing

Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2021

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If you want to know more about the BLM movement you will get some information here, but the book is mostly about organizing and the sweet lessons that organizing teaches you about community, coalition-building, family, and power. There were so many stories in the book where the lesson is for us to really listen to each other - listen to what people are really saying, not what you want them to say. It's a reminder to take a step back and follow the lead of women of color, especially Black women. I appreciate Ms. Garza opening up to us in this book. Her honest assessment of the movement are greatly appreciated, including the need for coalition-building. This is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding movement-building, power-building, and coming together with others to create positive social change.

One person found this helpful

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A Loving Grandmother

Book is excellent! Highly Recommend Reading. Packaging bad!

Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2021

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Book arrived slightly damaged with pages bend because it was packed in same big box with large toner cartridge box with no bubble wrap, so it slid back and forth during delivery process. Amazon needs to deliver books in package sleeves with bubble wrap. Suggest ordering the book alone without other items.

Recommend the book to all high school students and adults who want the factual history of how the movement was started long before the famous hashtag. The formation of the organization is worthy of the need for clarification, not sound bites. It is doing far more than protest marching. It's a primer as how to create, organize, sustain making grassroots change. Alicia Garza's writing is clear, concise and historically honest as it clarifies what is missing in the media coverage.

Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2021

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I am inspired by your life story and how you explain organizing and connecting people in communities and how the #blacklivesmatter movement began. Like you I have hope that America can become great where equality and justice for all is possible. I'm working on a #weaveproject in my community which was inspired by reading the 1619 Project. Your book has inspired me to make more connections in my community for change. Thank you for writing your book.
Sincerely, Deborah Young

One person found this helpful

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Carol Gleason

I learned about organizing

Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2021

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The author is a co creator of "Black Lives Matter." She shares how it was organized and about organizing in general. She ends with a chapter on "Black Identity" that I find I needed to know what black people think about it. It's a well written book and I can highly recommend it to us white people and also to people of color.

One person found this helpful

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Cynthia Silva Parker

Powerful and Purposeful

Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2021

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A down-to-earth, clear and compelling narrative. Listening to the audio book was like an intimate conversation and a personal lesson in history and organizing, and an invitation to find one’s own purpose. Thank you Alicia for your work and for sharing this account with such grace.

One person found this helpful

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Kelly D Smith

Brillant!

Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2021

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Great book, love the hardback version. Will enjoy reading & going back & re-reading this cultural gem for many years to come.

One person found this helpful

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B

Brilliant & essential

Reviewed in the United States on November 24, 2021

Verified Purchase

Crucial guide to organizing. One part autobiography. One part argument. One part theory. An essential for anyone trying to make change today.

One person found this helpful

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A call to arms

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 24, 2020

Verified Purchase

A beautifully constructed work of art that provides a guide on what it takes to challenge injustice. You cannot read this and be unmoved, uninspired or unmotivated to make change. I loved this book and recommend anyone who is feeling at the sharp end of things to read it and find hope.

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