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Black Lives Matter is about ensuring that all people of African descent are treated with the dignity and respect that we deserve. It’s about justice for all of us, and this includes those of us who live on the continent and throughout the diaspora. When we say these three words – Black lives matter – it means all of us no matter where we reside. All Black people can trace their roots back to somewhere on the African continent. And the goal is to repair and rectify the harm and trauma that has been done by colonialism and the legacy of it — which has led to the injustices we see today both in the Americas, but also in many African countries.

The Webby Awards are humbled to recognize Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi & Patrisse Cullors, the founders of the #BlackLivesMatter organization, with The Webby Social Movement of the Year Award for their roles in the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Black Lives Matter movement worked to rebuild black liberation and the validity of black life. 

Opal Tometi and Tiffany Pham have created powerful online communities aimed at improving people’s lives. Here’s what they’ve learned.

On July 13, 2013, when George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of Trayvon Martin, the activist Alicia Garza posted a simple message to Facebook from an Oakland cocktail bar: “Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.” Her friend Patrisse Cullors saw...

Opal Tometi’s interest in immigration reform was born out of personal experience. Tometi grew up in Phoenix—”ground zero for the anti-immigration movement,” she says—and is the child of immigrants. Her parents moved to the U.S. from Nigeria in 1983, and Tometi, 30, was raised in a close-knit community of Nigerian immigrants.

Meet Opal Tometi, a first generation Nigerian American who is making her mark as the Executive Director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.

Opal Tometi, like her cohorts, Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza, is invested in taking Black Lives Matter beyond police brutality, and her work addresses everything from mass criminalization to the adverse impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on communities of color.

How did three words launch a modern-day civil rights movement? The phrase was coined in 2013, in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of the black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

A shift has occurred in the year since Michael Brown’s death sparked unrest in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014. National conversations have arisen around issues affecting the black community in America: police brutality, economic injustice, racial inequality.

What does the Mother Emanuel massacre means in the larger context of America’s history of white supremacy and racialized terrorism?

While the media still primarily pay attention to institutionalized racism when a black heterosexual cisgender man is killed by police, organizers on the ground are looking to grow a movement that ensures liberation across sexual, gender, and class identity.

A first-generation Nigerian American, Tometi has been active in immigrant rights for much of the last decade. As director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, she became a vocal opponent of Arizona’s controversial SB-1070.

#BlackLivesMatter has been shouted and mentioned across the country from the The White House to the the front lines of marches to every single social media outlet.

“In 2015 I want to see our communities continue to rise up to challenge the criminalization of our people. At the national and local level my organization BAJI and the national network we coordinate, the Black Immigration Network, will be campaigning to end mass incarceration, detention and deportation.”