Organizing in black communities for 20 years. And i never really took a break to step back. What arey parse out, the key lessons necessary in order to keep moving this movement forward. And, today, we are in the middle of the most important election cycle in a generation. And this is the second time now that our movement is being used as a political football, in a contest that is going to have impact on the lives of millions of americans, so for me this is an opportunity to zoom out, to really invest in recalling the lessons i have learned and that i am still learning, and things i am on learning, that i think makes a successful movement. Every day, somebody asks me how they can get involved or how i keep going. I wanted to put all of that into one place, so that it could be a toolkit for folks to to take with them on this journey of making this country a better place for everyone. What i hope is this book can inspire people who have been involved for a long time, or certainly politically acute and active, but may be feeling cynical about our chances. And i wanted to have this book be accessible to people who are just now looking around and saying, oh my gosh, how did we get here in how do we get out of it . That is what the book is about and what inspired me to write it. One thing i find intriguing about the book is often when we Start Talking about leaders of movements, those who inspire others to act, that they can get flattened out and become two dimensional. And you really sort of give theple, at least a sense of three dimensional person that you are. I was fascinated to know that you grew up in the bay area, and that, you know, you went to a predominantly white high school. That you were really in sociology and anthropology. I am curious how all those things merged to sort of shape the kind of activist that you have eventually become. Alicia that is a great question. In reflecting on what i think makes an Effective Movement for the 21st century and beyond, i had to actually start with reflecting for myself on how it was i became active and we hat kept me active. I think i had a unique experience growing up in a wealthy community for part of my life, mostly around white people. And in reflection, i realized that growing up, even though my experience was very unique, i think a lot of people can relate to it. I often come as one of a few black people in a place, i often felt alone, isolated and i felt like the things happening to me, the things i was experiencing, were only happening to me and nobody else could relate. But the fact of the matter is once i found a community of people who may be did not have exactly the same experience as me, but certainly could relate to feeling alone and isolated, and looking for people that they could connect with, that that is where power lies. And if we take that to look at what is happening in this country right now, i think the same is true there are a lot of people who feel like they are the only ones dealing with the things they are dealing with and they are looking for a movement that can help them be powerful in their everyday life. Movements, fundamentally, are actually about moving more power to more people. We have tock here is figure out how to bring people together, who have some common experiences, but may be also different conditions that they are living in, and have people act together for change that we all agree on. Andor me, my experience placing it in a historical and political context i really hoped otherbe able to helelp people place themselves in this moment, for reflection on what is shaping them, and to find people like them who want to see change and have them come together to create a plan and execute it. That is what we have done with this movement, and certainly it has to grow bigger than that into has to be something adopted by everyone. One of the things that is so fascinating is your ability to are personal ort happened specifically to you, and to also be able to see the yourin which experience may have been unique, but also universal. That is leading me to this anecdote that you tell in your book, i think you are 17 in high school, and you are with a friend and you encounter a police officer, when the two of you are smoking a little pot. And i was not sure how the story was going to end. And you actually end up having a relatively positive encounter with this police officer. And yet, you could take that and detail the ways in which your thatience informed the way you also understood the criminal justice system. I am wondering if you can talk a little bit about that . Felicia absolutely icia absolutely. Offfact that you started saying that you did not know how the story would end is telling about our criminal justice system. When it comes to black communities in this country, too often the way that that story ends is not the way that mine ended. It usually ends in death, jail or prison. That is the problem, that these systems, like our criminal system, were designed to function exactly in that way. What happens is that there are rules in every sector of our society that essentially are rigged, rigged against our communities. They either over populate us in prisons across the nation, or they track us, right come into academic tracts that do not provide for success in particular economic context. There are so many ways in which it is not just personalities or goodwill that shapes the lives of our communities, but it is policies and practices that antinued to be to feed unhealthy pattern of black people disproportionately of being impacted most severely by the that exist in our society. In my case, i was sitting in a bmw in Marion County with a child prodigy that was blonde haired and blueeyed. The address on my license reflected a wealthy community. And if all those things had not aligned, my situation would have been very different. And that is what i am trying to lift up here, is that these systems and rules, it is not a function of individual people, it is not a function of good or bad people, it is a function of a system that is designed intentionally to criminalize and punish black people and people of color, especially in relationship to the criminal system. I just wanted to interrupt for a quick second, because it is also notable that the violation in this story had to do with marijuana, which is something that is so pretentious in terms of who uses it, but also who is, you know, criminalized for using it. That was another part of this that was really striking. Can you explain what was going on in the car . Alicia first, let me say the context of this is that i was in a car, being a kid at 17, and we had said that we were doing homework, but really we were sitting in our car and a smoking weed. And this was a point in the nighttime, and here we were being kids and doing what kids do. And in the book, i actually talk about the fact that i was raised in the era of the war on drugs, where there was disproportionate sentencing for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine, and how that impacted black communities. That is an example of a rigged rule. In this case, you are right, when we are talking about marijuana it is an extension of that pattern of criminalizing behaviors and certainly attaching those behaviors to particular communities. Whitee know is that people and black people smoke marijuana at the same rate, but then of course when we look at the criminal system and we look at who is being punished for that, there is a huge disproportion of impact on black communities, meaning black people are punished more often and more severely for smoking weed than white people are. That is an example also have a rigged rule. What i try to do in the book was use my own story to also talk about, right, how there how not only are there disparities, but what can influence or impact those disparities. To me, the system should work equally for everyone. The same rules should be applied to everyone. What i found in that particular case was that the same rules were not being applied to me, and it had to do with race, but also had to do with class and gender. Had i been a young black man in that car, would have been treated incredibly differently than i was. And had i been with another black person, also another black man, we would have been treated differently than we were. That is not how a system should work. That is why we build movements. We build movements to level the playing field. We build movements to transform the way that power operates. And, in the case of this movement, we build movements to make sure that punishment is not we should, that sure, hold people accountable when harm is caused, but at the same time we should not make punishment an economy the way it is now. One of the great things about the book is you took so much of the movement into context and you define a lot of the verbiage that goes about when we talk about movements. You talked about the civil rights movement, you discussed the leaders who came after that otinghe routing of ro of so much protests against Racial Injustice as being in the church. So can you talk about how now that the movement that is the black lives matter movement, you know, speaks to these times and at this generation in a way that is, you know, very specific, but is also part of that ongoing sort of transformation of what movements have to do . Alicia all movements are rooted in time, place and condition, and i talk about that in the book. For the last period of civil rights, and there were many, but the last prior to this one was very much rooted in the black church. Leaders came out of black churches and they ended up being the brokers and negotiators of power. Also, men were given a privileged place inside of movements. How people looked and it showed a was also determined by which was essentially to be a little bit crass about it, that if we look good and we look like we deserve respect and we look like we deserve dignity, then we will achieve it. Lookovements today, if you in the criminal Justice Movement and you look in the economic Justice Movement, all of these movements look differently than they would have 10 years ago, 20 years ago and even 50 or 60 years ago, and that is because our time, place and conditions have changed. No longer is it considered acceptable to not have women in leadership. Women are still deeply underrepresented in all positions of power, but now people are asking questions about it. That is a different set of political conditions. That is different from 60 years ago. Women were not in positions of power and nobody questioned why. So the point i want to make here and at the point i make in the book, is it is important for us not to harken back to a time that no longer reflects the conditions of our society. It was those movements of 50 years ago that paved the way for leadership to look so different in our movements. It has also paved the way for us to reimagine what movements can look like and how they can function, anyway they wouldnt have been able to, that is why they built movements then. Forward, iroject think it is important for us to be mindful of always searching for the next Martin Luther king junior, win frankly i think that Leadership Today is looking more like laverne cox or eva do vern a or angelica ross. It is more aptly reflecting the complexity of our communities, that come want to ask about the election, which is coming up in about 12 days, somewhere around there. Having to deal with , whoevers that be those powers might be, and then choosing who you align yourself with. And sometimes those things can be at odds. I know that you discuss this in a conversation you had with a rapper and it is the idea of who you align yourself with versus how you achieve your goals. How are you feeling about the election these days . This tuesday, on i am feeling motivated and inspired. Be one of is going to the most consequential elections in a generation. And what i know is already millions of people are voting and have voted. From what i understand, this election will have the highest turnout in the history of the nation, so that makes me hopeful because i think it indicates that people are paying attention and taking their protest into the polls. That is important because elections are an organizing terrain that too many movements leave on the table. What i always say is you know, anything that you leave on the table you are leaving for somebody else to eat, and most likely somebody who is being opportunistic will take what you have left and use it for their own agenda. For me, the way that i feel about this election is we need to get through it. I dropped off my ballot yesterday, i demanded my sticker and i was so proud of it. Said,verything going on i i am making time to do this. And there are black women like me across the nation that are trying to hold their Families Together and make sure that they can keep a job and roof over their head, and making sure that they are going to be part of the political process. I think that black folks are saying, no more decisions should be made about us without us. With that being said, i talk in the book about how voting can be a movement, but i also talk about the failures of both parties to address adequately or even at all the concerns that our communities have. We conducted a survey, the largest and 55 years, and we learned about the things important to black folks. Black voters are using this as they make decisions up and down the ballot. The most important part of the process is we heard most frequently that nobody asked us what we cared about, what we experience, and what we want to see for our futures, and at does not bode well for a vibrant democracy. So we have work to do, we have to push the parties to make sure that they are not just using us symbolically, but there is some substance in relationship to the agenda that they will be organized around, not just for four years, but indefinitely. Robin i should say that these questions are coming from a group that was invited called power to fly, and it is a tech,e group of women in sales and other industries, and one of the first questions is from patricia from new york. It gets to the idea that elections matter. Oft do you see as the impact the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court . Alicia well, this is a big one. I will try to keep it short so we can get to the rest of them. It would be devastating, it would mean there is a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, and not just conservative liberal or republicandemocrat, but extreme conservative, which is basically the administration that is running the country right now. She has incredibly extreme views about women, lgbt people, black folks, and she would be making decisions in the highest court of the land. The second consequence is, frankly, i am somebody who supports having more women on the Supreme Court. I want more women of color, immigrants, i want the Supreme Court to reflect the diversity of the nation. I think that her eventual nomination, or successful nomination, would mean that we have representation without substance, and that we cannot afford. We know when Clarence Thomas was appointed to the Supreme Court, for example, it had devastating effects on racial equality in the country. Just because he was a black man did not mean he was in support of ending racial discrimination. I think what we see from Amy Coney Barretts legacy is a she also is not interested in ending discrimination against women, against communities that have been left out and left behind, and that has extreme consequences because frankly, people will tout there are more women on the Supreme Court, but they will not look at the decisions they are making in relationship to our communities. That does not benefit any of us. Robin one of the other questions we have is from amor, from the united kingdom. What can white women do to be helpful and respectful allies . Alicia it is an important question. I say this a lot in the book, thats its important for people to be active. Behalf,ther peoples but because it makes the world better for you. And what i do not say in the book, but what i do say often, is that one of the things we have to be willing to do is not only make new mistakes, but not be afraid of making them. When it comes to white women in particular who are trying to be active in the process of racial justice, you know, often people get deterred because they dont want to make mistakes, say the wrong thing, and that keeps them from doing anything at all. If what we saw in 2016 was any indicator, we need white women to do a lot of work with each other, not for black people, not for other people, but for the sake of making sure that white healthy and a thriving constituency in this country. That means it will take work to be able to join together with others who are being left out and left behind. First things first, get to work. Second thing, as you are doing that work, do not be afraid to make mistakes because you will, but do not let the mistakes deter you from being better each time over. Robin i think we probably have time for two more questions. Ins one is from jenny california. How can we shift the can weation from what do in reaction to what is w do weng to ho proactively alicia the first thing we do is understand the root. I am somebody who, you know, has spent years studying the roots of the problems we face in society every single day, but because of the stories we are told, both through pop culture, which is how i got politicized, but also through our schools and education system. So much of the stories about why things function the way that they do are distorted and they are frankly, skewed. And the reason for that is they help preserve the status quo. For example, i talk in the book about the stories that keep us in the same places that we are, whether it is stories about pink is for girls, blue is for boys, or whether it is stories about this movement. There are so many stories we internalize on our own that skew the root causes of what we are facing and dealing with. The first step is to actually get educated. You can do that by being part of a movement. The second thing i think is really important for us is once we understand the root, to keep spreading that gospel everywhere that we possibly can. This administration traffics in lies and misinformation, and these days lies spread faster than the truth, so we have to do our part to make sure that we are upholding Accurate Information and that we are also challenging those who would distort and lie in order to keep power and move their own agenda. Those agendas are not the agendas of the majority and we need to fight to make sure that that ends today. Robin i think that this is probably our last question. We will see. How do you address racism within your own household. . N virginia. M prachi i i think she means ones household. Alicia racism infects every part of our society. It infects our laws, our culture, it is as pervasive as the air that we breathe. So the first thing that is important is to identify where it exists and how it can continue to operate. I do not know what you are dealing with in your household exactly, but i can say one of the most pervasive barriers to addressing racism anywhere is the notion that race is about personality, as opposed to policy and politics. That is how we adopt the stories about each other that actually keep us divided rather than bringing us together. So first things first, identify that is a lovely note to end on. It starts with all of us. As well as a conversation with the former cia director about his new book. Again, thank you so much for joining us and have a great rest of your day. The virginia Second District includes virginia beach, parts of williamsburg and norfolk. The confirmation of judge Amy Coney Barrett continues next week when the Senate JudiciaryCommittee Meets to vote on sending the nomination to the full senate. The senate would take up a confirmation on friday. Mitch mcconnell says they will stay on the nomination until she is confirmed. Watch live coverage on cspan. Next, political analyst making predictions about election results. They discussed their