“Love Wins” and Black Lives Matter

Abstract

This chapter addresses the spiritual underpinnings of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the non-traditional faith-based activism of its co-founder Patrisse Cullors, political artist and proponent of carceral justice. The acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s slayer George Zimmerman on July 13, 2013 sparked a cascade of outrage and activism on behalf of African Americans’ dignity and lives. With co-founders Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, Cullors began a campaign for Black justice to proclaim a contested idea: black lives matter. Whether on a plantation, an Arkansas classroom, or a walkway outside an apartment complex in Dade County, Florida, the violence perpetrated on African Americans has failed to quench their insatiable drive for justice and insistence on self-love. Love of self and race, and the deep, abiding belief in the presence of the spirit, has been the guiding force in Cullors’s crusade, who efforts are, in her words, “deeply spiritual . . . healing justice work.”