WHEN THE WATER IS SAFER THAN THE LAND

Opal Tometi's journey to becoming an activist is also unique: the daughter of Nigerian immigrants raised in the Arizona desert, as an 8th grader Opal lived through her parents' deportation trial, a deeply traumatic experience that informs the way she thinks about the ongoing violence against Black people and the nature of activism. Her work as the head of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) for the last seven years allows her to connect the struggles of African-Americans in America to those of Black people and immigrants around the world. In this book, Opal will write about the plight of immigrants and the issue of immigration from a perspective only she can.

Opal Tometi is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter and the Executive Director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI). Opal Tometi has appeared on CNN, NPR, MSNBC, and BET, and her words have been published in Cosmopolitan, Huffington Post, and Time Magazine. Her human rights work has led to her being named “A New Civil Rights Leader” by CNN, the Los Angeles Times and Essence. In 2016, Tometi, alongside her fellow BLM co-founders, received an honorary doctorate, the Glamour Magazine Women of the Year Award, and BET's Black Girls Rock Community Change Agent Award among other awards.