In 2012 George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood-watch volunteer, shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old boy in Sanford, Florida. His acquittal a year later led Alicia Garza, an activist, to post on Facebook: “Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter, Black Lives Matter.” Soon after, those last three words went viral, after several high-profile killings of African Americans at the hands of police. Black Lives Matter developed into a movement against police violence and racism, with more than 40 chapters in four countries.

Almost as soon as it began, Black Lives Matter met with a backlash. Protest slogans, such as All Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter, were created in reference to the police. President Donald Trump has said that Black Lives Matter is “a very, very divisive term because all lives matter”. In 2016 a petition calling for the movement to be labelled a “terrorist organisation” attracted 140,000 signatures in two weeks.

Today Ms Garza runs Black Futures Lab, an organisation that tries to give black communities a stake in politics. She spoke to The Economist about why Black Lives Matter is not a terrorist outfit and why she has not lost hope in the age of Trump.

The Economist: Black Lives Matter deals not only with racism but also with sexism and trans- and homophobia. What is the goal of the movement?

Alicia Garza: We have always been clear that Black Lives Matter was not just about police violence but about the wide range of ways in which state-sanctioned violence against black people impacts our lives. State-sanctioned violence looks like Sandra Bland being found hanging in her jail cell after being pulled over for a traffic violation. It looks like black women making 63 cents to every dollar that white men make and the 79 cents that white women make. It is the fact that though black and white people in this country sell and use drugs at around the same rates, black people are more than twice as likely to be arrested for drug offences. Our goal is to build the kind of society where black people can live with dignity and respect. The movement is much bigger than us. If we say we alone founded this, it erases the people who have made it possible. So we talk about it as an organisation, rather than a movement.

We are not trying to build a world where black people are empowered and white people aren’t, or where there is black supremacy. That wouldn’t make things better

From the beginning, there has been misinformation about what we do. We are not trying to build a world where black people are empowered and white people aren’t, or where there is black supremacy. That wouldn’t make things better; you can’t replace one group with another. Instead, we want to transform the way that power currently operates.

The Economist: When you co-founded Black Lives Matter, Barack Obama was still president of the United States. In your view, what happened to race relations during his presidency? Ms Garza: The fact that Black Lives Matter came to be under the first black president in America brought with it a whole host of challenges and contradictions. It interrupted this narrative that racism was behind us, because from the first day that this black president—elected by a landslide—walked into office, you have people calling him a monkey and a socialist Muslim, and his wife a gorilla in heels. If that isn’t racism, I don’t know what is. At the same time as he is in power, outrage explodes over the killings of black people at the hands of police. It makes it challenging to hold this president accountable for what is happening in our communities, when he is also black—there may be nuances around gender and class, but we all experience discrimination as a result of being black. The combination of these two things also challenged the idea of “respectability politics”: ie, that marginalised groups, instead of calling out society, act “respectable” to fit in and that by attaining positions of power you shift power in society as well. That proved to be wrong. Instead, racism continued to exist and black people did not feel safe. I remember being shocked by the news of black people being killed by police, many of whom were later acquitted, and thinking: how is this happening in 2013 and 2014, that black people are being killed without consequences? It had of course been happening for a very long time, but social media brought it to attention and helped galvanise the movement.

The Economist: A petition submitted to the White House deemed Black Lives Matter activists terrorists. What do you say to those who accuse you of fomenting hate?

Ms Garza: I’ll be honest, it used to really bother me because it could not be further from the truth and it feels like wilful ignorance. That petition gathered over 100,000 signatures, enough to get the attention of the White House. It made me angry. In the age of information, where everything is available on the internet, you would think that people could google Black Lives Matter and read our founding documents and who we are and what we are about.

The reality is that the far-right in this country has been doing this type of distortion for about 30 years now, as a backlash to the gains of the civil-rights movement and women’s-rights movement. It is only now that we have this administration that we have the physical manifestation of a phenomenon that has been around for decades. Not only are Black Lives Matter activists not terrorists but fundamentally what we are trying to do is point out the failings in the basic premise of the founding of this country, that there would be liberty and justice for all. We are pulling back the curtains on really despicable deeds.

The Economist: More than half (55%) of white Americans say they believe discrimination against white people exists in the US. What do you make of this?

Ms Garza: The far-right has been successful in demonising people of colour and immigrants as the people to blame for why too many people in this country don’t have the things they need to live well. It is easy for a coal-miner in Appalachia who has been out of full employment for years, and sees an answer that immigrants are taking jobs away, to believe that. The reason they don’t have something is because someone is taking it away from them—but it is not us.

What we are trying to do is point out the failings in the basic premise of the founding of this country, that there would be liberty and justice for all

Power is incredibly distorted in this country. I wish black people had the power to reshape the economy in such grand ways, but first and foremost black people are only 13% of the population of the United States. The makeup of people making decisions in this country is white men. There are only three black senators in Congress, and only around 40 out of 445 members of the House of Representatives are black. It is very plain to see that black people and immigrants are not usurping power.

The Economist: What improvements in race relations would you hope to see in your lifetime?

Ms Garza: I do think there will be change in our lifetime and there already has been. I am heartened by the resurgence of movements: the black-freedom movement, the women’s movement, the indigenous-rights movement. We are living in an era of movements.

We are on a path to reset what this country is actually about and to ensuring that America can be what it claims to be. The project of America was founded on the theft of land and resources, the enslavement of black people and the forced labour of Chinese and other Asian peoples. This notion of land of the free and home of the brave was land of the free white people and land of the brave white people. We have not yet reached “America the beautiful”, but I think we can still get to it.

The Economist: What is Black Futures Lab?

Ms Garza: Black Futures Lab is a new organisation that is focused on building independent, progressive, black political power. The first project is the Black Census Project: we are talking to 200,000 black people across the country about their experiences and asking them what they want to see in their futures. We are training 100 black organisers in 28 states and have entered into partnerships with more than 80 black grassroots organisations. It is important for us that decision-makers understand that not all black communities are the same. We don’t all share the same experience, except the same burden of trying to live well in a racialised economy and society. We are translating the survey into the eight main languages that black people in this country speak and have partnered with diverse groups: black immigrant families, incarcerated people, LGBTQ+ groups and rural blacks. We hope to get a clearer picture of the diversity of our communities, to shape smarter policies that affect black people in this country.