The 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch coordinator from Florida, for the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, set into motion the formation of a political movement called #BlackLivesMatter (BLM). With a strong emphasis on grassroots activism, BLM built a national and then global network of chapters committed to calling attention to the continued inequities and challenges, many of them institutional, faced by Black Americans. BLM’s founders sought to better include people from marginalized groups such as women, homosexuals and trans people who have previously been overlooked or excluded from participating in political movements. In this essay excerpt, Alicia Garza, one of BLM’s original three founders, explains how the movement came to be formed and its general objectives.