When They Call You a Terrorist

According to the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the atoms that make up the human body can be traced to stars that exploded billions of years ago. The notion that people are literally made of stardust resonates deeply with Cullors. In reference to her Black parents and ancestors who survived through decades of slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration, she writes, “What could they be but stardust, these people who refused to die, who refused to accept the idea that their lives did not matter, that their children’s lives did not matter?” (5).

Yet to many Americans, Cullors and others involved with Black Lives Matter are not stardust; they are terrorists. In 2016, an online petition asking President Obama to designate Black Lives Matter a terrorist group garners the 100,000 signatures needed to trigger a White House response. Cullors is outraged that anyone would label Black Lives Matter, an organization created to protest the acquittal of the man who killed Trayvon Martin, a terrorist group.

The petition gains much of its support after Afghan War veteran Micah Johnson kills five police officers in Dallas during a protest against the police killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. Johnson had no affiliation with Black Lives Matter, nor was the protest organized by Black Lives Matter.