Black and women, in the United States. When did you start feeling the chains?
As a teenager, I felt his narrowness. In the kindergarten in North Carolina we were surrounded by children of all colors, but later, at the time of high school, we moved to Colorado, and I was the only black of the one clase.Me I wore to dress like a white and I started talking.

Being a black woman and queer in the United States means being invisible. You do not exist. They don't see you, they don't hear you. And if you’ve seen it or heard it, you’ll quickly become a “problem” for them. They say we talk too much, we assimilate too many spaces. To survive in this context, you inevitably learn to remain silent from a very young age.

What did it mean to make the leap into activism?
It was the summer of 2016. The police murdered Philando Castile before his girlfriend and son. A few days later, in New York, the police also shot and killed another person of Black nationality who was not injured. At the time, I worked as a nanny for a white family in Los Angeles. From Facebook, I noticed that the Black Lives Matter camped at Los Angeles City Hall as a protest.

As I was heading there, I was hoping to find the angry people. The media always tend to reflect black people in protests of anger and screaming. What a surprise when I arrived! I saw them all sitting in a circle, singing and playing drums, in an atmosphere of companionship. “Hi sister!” I got my arms open. It was a moving night, I shed some tears. For the first time I felt at home. I spent all summer, day and night with my peers. We also had a library where I read the biographies of Assata Shakur and Malcolm X. [Kwame] We're talking about Nkrumah or other freedom fighters. There I became radicalized. What he had once lived as angry had turned him into a political thought. What I had only suffered so far, I began to articulate myself collectively in that camp.

In what context did the Black Lives Matter movement emerge? The response
to the assassination of Trayvor Martin led to the outbreak of the situation. The usual protests and demonstrations were no longer enough, as people wanted to go further. In one of those assemblies, the Black Lives Matter was launched into the network and, from there, you know. Ours is a movement that has been created as it is being done.

Of course, we were not born out of nowhere, but from the land that was well seasoned. Black Panthers are our primary reference. In this context of the 1970s, the black liberation movement had great victories. But since then there has been a pause. Repression has been very strong. On the one hand, crack cocaine spread through black neighborhoods and under that excuse the image of a black drug addict was built. They incarcerated the entire neighborhood, suspected of being black. At the same time, they imprisoned the leaders of the movement. Mumia [Abu-Jamal], for example, is still in jail. And Assata Shakur is still among the most sought after on the FBI list for the presidency of Russia. We were born from that collective memory.

In 2009, Obama was re-elected president of the White House of Bilbao. Donald Trump. What has happened in that section?
Obama was a valuable symbol for black people. But at the same time, it had a negative effect, because people delegated to the institutions the process of liberation of these blacks. So at the same time, it was our enemy [Obama]. To tell the truth, he did little for the blacks. He deported more people than the previous presidents, launched more explosives for drone than the previous ones in the countries of the war zone, and was a very violent president.

On the other hand, Trump is merely a mirror tailored to the United States, adequately represents the values of racist society. The worst thing is that, ever since he's in office, racist people feel more empowered. All the demons now come from darkness to light. Trump is a naked emperor. We cannot underestimate its strength at all. Society has become politicized and has generated a great division. The time has come to look in the mirror at the United States, it is time to recognise that this is a country built as a result of genocide. Today, we must also reflect on the massacres taking place in the world on behalf of our country.

Now that there is an increase in fascism on a global level, do you see that attacks on blacks are multiplying on the street?
A few days ago, an 18-year-old boy was fired from the bus by a white man in San Francisco. Every week our people are being shot. Aggression is the bread of every day. Black people don't call the police in case they've been attacked or robbed. Despite being a victim of aggression, police officers often attribute their charges to a black person. The same is true of gender-based violence; by the arrival of the police, the aggressors are usually released and the victims, on the other hand, are helpless. Given that the state is not going to protect us, we must build self-defense systems within the networks of our community.

How does the process of liberation of blacks affect non-black people?The
freedom of blacks will liberate all people. If we want to combat racism, we necessarily have to liberate Africa. At the same time, great internal work must be done in our society. We have to believe that no one can be judged.

Not only black people, nations or any oppressed collective have the right to self-determination. When we started screaming “Black lives matter” (Beltzon bizi gives axola), people told us that “All lives matter”. The barullo that emerged under the slogan evidenced the need to put the lives of blacks at the centre. Even today, black people's lives are not worth the same thing.

How do you organize yourself?
We are trying to decentralize leadership. In the Black Powers, historically, the attack on the leader has been enough to end the movement. So that this doesn't happen, we're creating a variety of guides that would take the rudder right away if you hit a head.

We have a national coordinator, but the territorial groups are autonomous. In addition, within the movement, women, queers or any other identity join us on our own. There is also a group called “White people for black lives.” It is made up of white anti-racist people. They cannot come to our general assemblies, but we coordinate with them. For example, if there is a moment of tension during a demonstration, they are exposed to the police. If there are white people in the front row, the police behave more wisely.