The co-creator of the Twitter hashtag and social movement Black Lives Matter will speak in Hendricks Chapel next month, Syracuse University has announced.

Alicia Garza will be the commemorative speaker for the Office of Multicultural Affairs’ month-long event series in honor of Black History Month, according to an SU News release. Garza will speak on Feb. 23 at 7 p.m., according to the release.

Garza took to Facebook in 2013 after George Zimmerman, a Florida neighborhood watch volunteer, was acquitted that same year of murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, in 2012. Garza’s post that day included a message to black people “that black lives matter,” according to USA TODAY.

Then, Garza’s friend and another co-creator, Patrisse Cullors, turned it into a hashtag — #BlackLivesMatter — igniting an activist movement that continues today. The movement is “a call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society,” according to the Black Lives Matter website.

In addition to leading the Black Lives Matter movement, Garza is also currently the special projects director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which fights for labor protections for domestic workers such as nannies, housekeepers and caregivers, according to its website.

Garza also formerly served as the executive director of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), according to the SU News release. That organization fights for the rights of low-income people, racial minorities, women and people in the LGBT community, according to its website.

While at POWER, based in San Francisco, Garza organized a response to constant police violence in black neighborhoods, according to the SU News release.

Garza’s visit won’t be the first time the movement has been felt on SU’s campus.

In October of last year, Sybrina Fulton and Lesley McSpadden, the mothers of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, respectively, were among panelists at the (In)Justice For All event — where the Black Lives Matter movement was discussed at length — in SU’s Goldstein Auditorium.

In November of last year, during Vice President Joe Biden’s speech regarding sexual assault on college campuses, about 100 SU community members rallied to show solidarity with racial justice protesters at the University of Missouri.

Before that, in April, community members rallied to show solidarity with Baltimore protesters in response to the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who suffered fatal injuries while in police custody that month.

In December 2014, about 120 members of the community marched around the SU campus in solidarity with the city of Ferguson, Missouri, and in honor of Brown, an unarmed black teenager who was shot and killed in August 2014 by Darren Wilson, a white police officer.

When Garza visits, her speech will be free and open to the public, according to the SU News release.

Published on January 25, 2016 at 11:32 pm

Contact Michael: mdburk01@syr.edu