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So, I'm afraid.
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Right now,
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on this stage,
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I feel fear.
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In my life, I ain't met many people
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that will readily admit
when they are afraid.
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And I think that's because deep down,
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they know how easy it spreads.
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See, fear is like a disease.
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When it moves, it moves like wildfire.
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But what happens when,
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even in the face of that fear,
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you do what you've got to do?
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That's called courage.
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And just like fear,
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courage is contagious.
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See, I'm from East St. Louis, Illinois.
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That's a small city
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across the Mississippi River
from St. Louis, Missouri.
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I have lived in and around
St. Louis my entire life.
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When Michael Brown, Jr.,
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an ordinary teenager,
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was gunned down by police in 2014
in Ferguson, Missouri --
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another suburb, but north of St. Louis --
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I remember thinking,
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he ain't the first,
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and he won't be the last young kid
to lose his life to law enforcement.
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But see, his death was different.
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When Mike was killed,
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I remember the powers that be
trying to use fear as a weapon.
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The police response to a community
in mourning was to use force
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to impose fear:
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fear of militarized police,
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imprisonment,
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fines.
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The media even tried
to make us afraid of each other
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by the way they spun the story.
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And all of these things
have worked in the past.
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But like I said,
this time it was different.
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Michael Brown's death and the subsequent
treatment of the community
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led to a string of protests in and around
Ferguson and St. Louis.
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When I got out to those protests
about the fourth or fifth day,
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it was not out of courage;
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it was out of guilt.
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See, I'm black.
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I don't know if y'all noticed that.
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(Laughter)
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But I couldn't sit in St. Louis,
minutes away from Ferguson,
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and not go see.
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So I got off my ass to go check it out.
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When I got out there,
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I found something surprising.
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I found anger; there was a lot of that.
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But what I found more of was love.
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People with love for themselves.
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Love for their community.
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And it was beautiful --
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until the police showed up.
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Then a new emotion was interjected
into the conversation:
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fear.
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Now, I'm not going to lie;
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when I saw those armored vehicles,
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and all that gear
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and all those guns
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and all those police
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I was terrified --
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personally.
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And when I looked around that crowd,
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I saw a lot of people that had
the same thing going on.
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But I also saw people
with something else inside of them.
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That was courage.
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See, those people yelled,
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and they screamed,
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and they were not about
to back down from the police.
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They were past that point.
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And then I could feel
something in me changing,
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so I yelled and I screamed,
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and I noticed that everybody around me
was doing the same thing.
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And there was nothing like that feeling.
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So I decided I wanted
to do something more.
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I went home, I thought:
I'm an artist. I make shit.
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So I started making things
specific to the protest,
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things that would be weapons
in a spiritual war,
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things that would give people voice
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and things that would fortify them
for the road ahead.
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I did a project where I took pictures
of the hands of protesters
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and put them up and down
the boarded-up buildings
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and community shops.
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My goal was to raise awareness
and to raise the morale.
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And I think, for a minute at least,
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it did just that.
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Then I thought, I want to uplift
the stories of these people
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I was watching being
courageous in the moment.
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And myself and my friend,
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and filmmaker and partner Sabaah Folayan
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did just that with our documentary,
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"Whose Streets?"
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I kind of became a conduit
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for all of this courage
that was given to me.
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And I think that's part
of our job as artists.
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I think we should be conveyors
of courage in the work that we do.
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And I think that we are the wall
between the normal folks
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and the people that use their power
to spread fear and hate,
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especially in times like these.
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So I'm going to ask you.
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Y'all the movers and the shakers,
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you know, the thoughts leaders:
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What are you gonna do
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with the gifts that you've been given
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to break us from the fear
the binds us every day?
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Because, see, I'm afraid every day.
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I can't remember a time when I wasn't.
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But once I figured out that fear
was not put in me to cripple me,
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it was there to protect me,
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and once I figured out
how to use that fear,
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I found my power.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)