“It is a tremendous honor to receive this recognition,” Patrisse Cullors said. “It comes at a time when this movement is more important than ever - with an administration in office that is so openly racist, homophobic, anti-women, anti-children, anti-labour anti-immigrant. Black Lives Matter is our call to action, it is a tool to reimagine a world where black people are free to exist, free to live, and a tool for our allies to show up for us.”

The Sydney Peace Prize is Australia’s international prize for peace, awarded by the Sydney Peace Foundation at the University of Sydney. The Award will be presented on Thursday, 2 November at Sydney Town Hall. The Prize recognises leading global voices that promote peace, justice and nonviolence. Past winners include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson, Arundhati Roy, Senator Patrick Dodson, Professor Noam Chomsky, and Naomi Klein.
 
This is the first time that a movement and not a person has been awarded the Sydney Peace Prize. The Jury commended Black Lives Matter for capturing public consciousness, and compelling societies all over the world – from everyday people to lawmakers and political leaders – to question how it devalues black lives and reimagine what equality and justice for all can, and should, look like.

“Black Lives Matter offers bold and visionary solutions to build societies where black people, and by extension all people, are free to live safe and dignified lives,” said Archie Law, Chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation. “This vision of love, hope, and resistance that resonates around the globe and particularly in Australia where the struggle with racism towards our First Peoples, people seeking asylum, and other excluded communities scars our country and tarnishes our international reputation.”
 
“We have become inured to the high incarceration rates and deaths in custody of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples - it’s as if their lives do not matter,” said Senator Patrick Dodson, 2008 Sydney Peace Prize recipient. “When there is ignorance, hostility, discrimination or racism, and they are allowed to reign unchecked, then we are all diminished. As human beings, we are capable of being better. We are capable of concern, solidarity, inclusiveness and respect. Black Lives Matter reminds us that this is not only possible, but essential for our common humanity.”

Black Lives Matter is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression,” Cullors said. “By combating and countering acts of violence and creating space for Black imagination and innovation, BLM is building power and winning immediate improvements for Black communities every day.”

-- LIMITED INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITIES AVAILABLE WITH BLM LEADERS --
 

For media enquiries please contact Lisa Fennis on peace.foundation@sydney.edu.au or +61 (0) 468 465 887. For event enquiries contact Katie Gabriel on peace.foundation@sydney.edu.au.    

Past Sydney Peace Prize Recipients respond to Black Lives Matter's award:

Naomi Klein, 2016 Sydney Peace Prize:
With boundless integrity, wisdom and love, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi embody the core principle of the Sydney Peace Prize: That there will never be peace without real justice.  These women and the movement they helped start has already changed hearts, minds and the world in ways too profound to measure. This is an inspired, bold and urgent choice – and it’s exactly what our moment of overlapping global crises demands.

Noam Chomsky, 2011 Sydney Peace Prize:
The first African slaves were brought to today’s United States 400 years ago, opening the way to the most vicious system of slavery the world has ever known – also a primary basis for the development and wealth of the United States and England. In the 20th century, Southern Democrats permitted New Deal reforms on the condition that Black communities were excluded. Agricultural and domestic workers, half of US workforce, were barred from Social Security for that reason. It was not until 1967, under the impact of the civil rights movement, that the Supreme Court struck down laws banning interracial marriage – which the Nazis had used as the world’s best model for the Nuremberg laws.

The educational and activist initiatives of the Black Lives Matter movement have focused public attention on this record of unspeakable crimes and its grim consequences to the present moment.  Their courageous work is an inestimable contribution to progress towards a truly enlightened society.

Senator Patrick Dodson, 2008 Sydney Peace Prize:
For our communities, the storyline is all too familiar: the minor offence; the innocuous behaviour; the unnecessary detention; the failure to uphold the duty of care; the lack of respect for human dignity; the lonely death; the grief, loss and pain of the family – the coronial report where no-one is held responsible for a death in custody.

Black Lives Matter and the commitment to “collectively, lovingly and courageously working vigorously for freedom and justice for Black people and, by extension all people” reminds us that we must never cease in the struggle to build a society founded in mutual respect, love and justice. 

I wholly support the Jury’s choice of awarding the BLM movement the 2017 Sydney Peace Prize.