“Peace. Peace. Thank you Debra. Thank you, Nate Parker. Thank you, Harry and Debbie Allen, for doing that. Before we get into it, I just want to say — I brought my parents — thank you for being here and for teaching me to focus on comprehension over career. They made sure I learned what the schools were afraid to teach us. Also, thank you to my amazing wife for changing my life.
Now, this award, this is not for me. This is for the real organizers all over the country. The activists, the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the teachers, the students that are realizing that a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do. It’s kind of basic mathematics. The more we learn
about who we are and what we do, the more we will mobilize.
Now, this is also in particular for the black women who have spent their lifetimes nurturing everyone before themselves. We can and will do better for you.
Now, what we’ve been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to deescalate, disarm and not kill white people every day. So what’s going to happen is we’re going to have equal rights in our own country or we will restructure their function in ours.
Now, [standing ovation] I got more, y’all.
Yesterday would have been young Tamir Rice’s 14th birthday. So, I don’t want to hear anymore about how far we’ve come when paid public servants can pull a drive by on a 12-year-old playing alone in a park in broad daylight, killing him on television and then going home to make a sandwich.