Narrator: Imagine a man in the throes of a mental health crisis. He's scared, confused, and not in control of his actions. Instead of receiving medical help, he is met with force. Police officers shoot him with rubber bullets, tase him, and then, in a move that defies logic, charge him with terrorism. This isn't a hypothetical scenario; it was the reality for Monte, the brother of Patrisse Khan-Cullors. How does a family, a community, and a movement respond when the systems meant to protect them become their greatest threat? The powerful memoir, When They Call You a Terrorist, co-authored by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele, provides the answer. It is a deeply personal journey that maps the path from individual trauma to the birth of a global movement, revealing how the fight for Black lives is, at its heart, a fight for humanity itself.

Narrator: The book argues that the struggles faced by Black families are not a series of unfortunate, isolated incidents, but the direct result of intentional government policy. Khan-Cullors points to a chilling quote from one of Richard Nixon’s top aides, John Ehrlichman, who admitted the administration’s strategy was to associate Black people with heroin and then criminalize them heavily. He confessed, "Did we know we were lying? Of course we did." This strategy was designed to disrupt and destabilize Black communities.

This disruption is felt intimately in Khan-Cullors’s own childhood. She recounts a memory from when she was just nine years old, watching from behind a gate as police officers swarmed her older brothers, Paul and Monte, in the alleyway where they played. The officers forced the boys against a wall, searched them, and touched them roughly. No explanation was given. Afterward, her brothers became silent and withdrawn, and the incident marked the beginning of a cycle of arrests that eventually forced the family to move. This early exposure to police harassment wasn't just a random encounter; it was the lived experience of a national policy designed to break the bonds of family and community.

Narrator: Schools, which should be sanctuaries for learning, often become the first sites of criminalization for Black children. At twelve years old, Khan-Cullors was arrested for the first time. She was attending a summer school in her own neighborhood, a world away from the wealthy, predominantly white middle school she was bussed to during the year. At her regular school, she saw white students use drugs openly with no consequences. But when she smoked weed at her neighborhood summer school, she was handcuffed in front of her classmates and taken to the dean's office.

The experience left a permanent scar, what she calls a "cellular level" of fear and humiliation. It was a brutal lesson in how her identity as a Black and poor girl defined her more than being bright or hopeful. This is reinforced by the research of Dr. Monique W. Morris, who found that Black girls are suspended at rates six times higher than their white peers. The book makes it clear that this isn't about behavior; it's about a system that sees Black children not as children, but as future criminals, setting them on a path of disposability from a young age.

Narrator: The memoir’s most heartbreaking narrative thread follows Khan-Cullors’s brother, Monte, and his battle with schizoaffective disorder. His story is a devastating indictment of how the American justice system fails individuals with mental illness, particularly Black men. When Monte experienced manic episodes, the family had only two terrible options for intervention: handle it themselves without professional support, or call the police.

Calling the police repeatedly led to incarceration, not care. In one instance, a minor fender bender during a manic episode resulted in Monte being shot, tased, and charged with terrorism. He was thrown into solitary confinement, a practice known to severely worsen mental health conditions. The family found him in court, shackled and wearing a spit net, a ghost of the person he was. The book highlights the horrifying statistic that America's prisons and jails hold more than ten times the number of people with severe mental illness than all of the nation's state psychiatric hospitals combined. For Monte, and countless others, the prison system became a brutal, ineffective, and dehumanizing substitute for a mental healthcare system.

Narrator: The title of the book is a direct confrontation with a tactic used for decades to delegitimize Black-led movements. As the foreword by Angela Davis explains, she herself was labeled a terrorist by President Nixon in the 1970s for her activism. This labeling is a strategic tool to evoke fear and shut down any challenge to the racial hierarchy.

Khan-Cullors shows how this played out in the modern era. After a Black Army reservist named Micah Johnson killed five police officers in Dallas in 2016, the tragedy was immediately weaponized to brand the entire Black Lives Matter movement as a terrorist organization. The movement’s message of love and affirmation was twisted into a narrative of hate and violence. The book argues that this is a deliberate mischaracterization. The real terrorism, Khan-Cullors suggests, is a system that allows a child like Tamir Rice to be killed by police for playing with a toy gun, or a system that allows the state to profit from the mass incarceration of its people. The label is a political weapon, and the book is an act of reclaiming the narrative.

Narrator: Black Lives Matter did not begin as a protest, but as a love letter. On the night George Zimmerman was acquitted for the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a wave of grief and outrage swept through the community. Co-founder Alicia Garza took to Facebook and wrote a powerful post that ended with the words, "Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter."

That declaration became a call to action. Patrisse Khan-Cullors, along with Garza and Opal Tometi, saw the power in those words. They transformed the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter into an organizing principle. It was more than a slogan; it was a political intervention and an affirmation of Black humanity in a world that systematically devalues it. Their first organized action was a march on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, a deliberate choice to bring the message to a place of white wealth and comfort. When Khan-Cullors asked the shoppers and diners to hold a moment of silence for Trayvon, they did. It was a small but profound moment, proving that a simple, powerful declaration of worth could begin to shift the world.

Narrator: The work of activism is emotionally and psychologically grueling. The book emphasizes that for a movement to be sustainable, it must prioritize healing and community care. After the Ferguson uprising, organizers created "healing justice" spaces to help activists and community members process their trauma. This focus on care became a core principle, especially as the movement grew to include the #SayHerName campaign, which centered the stories of Black women like Sandra Bland who were victims of state violence.

Khan-Cullors’s personal life reflects this principle. Her journey to motherhood and her relationship with her partner, Future, illustrate the importance of building a "sacred circle" of love and support. This chosen family becomes the bedrock of resilience. Even in the face of political despair, like the election of Donald Trump, the book finds hope not in politicians, but in the power of community. The vision for the future is one where Black people are not just surviving, but thriving—a future built on justice, dignity, and the transformative power of love.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from When They Call You a Terrorist is that the fight against systemic oppression is an act of profound love. It is love for one's family, one's community, and oneself. The book dismantles the public, political narrative of Black Lives Matter and rebuilds it from the inside out, showing that the movement was forged not in hate, but in the fierce, protective love that rises in response to unbearable loss.

Ultimately, this memoir challenges every reader to confront a difficult question. When a system consistently harms a specific group of people, who is the real terrorist? Is it the people demanding to live, or the system that denies them that right? The book leaves us with the understanding that creating a just world isn't just about changing laws; it's about changing who we value and what we are willing to fight for, demanding a future where no one has to declare that their life matters, because it is a truth universally understood and protected.