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Julie Walker, THE ROOT

 
AUSTIN, Tx. (The Root)—The founders of #BlackLivesMatter are grateful that their message has been picked up by so many people as a rallying cry, but they want other groups that use the essence of the name, such as #MuslimLivesMatter and #LatinoLivesMatter, to find their own slogans.

At a South by Southwest panel discussion, “What #BlackLivesMatter Teaches Us About Solidarity,”Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi said they were concerned about the dilution of their message.

“Not to say their lives don’t matter,” Tometi told the audience, “but we’ve been in a society that continues to marginalize black faces, and so we don’t want to see this kind of reappropriation and co-optation of #BlackLivesMatter as a hashtag.”