and i have spoken hundreds of times but never before my life have i have experience on the follow up as a spy hind these two young woman that actually just blew it  and what that says to me is that maybe i'm getting old but but seriously just before you get to my story i just truly just want to relish in this moment to watch this to witness this youth movement and the power of the knowledge that you guys for me is like telling all folk to my job shut up and let them talk because it's really your time much story reaches here in an indirect way because i had the unfortunate reality to experience the system both inside and outside i was eighteen year old kid seventeen when i came to seattle for the first time from georgia just to come and meet my mother within one year i was tried convicted and accused and still is to die in prison for the rest of my life for a crime i didn't commit which is no different than the thousands of stories that's going on around the country right now video which are been exonerated because of d n a a bunch of liars and haters that actually point the finger which it took the likes of huge community in seattle people that i really didn't even know to come up to have my back that allowed me to be the first man in the history of washington state to ever being released from prison after and through this journey that i miss guess god intended me to actually go through this to have this experience this while i feel compelled to come at home that i'm dedicated to this now because it's more than about me it's about the many other lives that's been impacted just like mom that wasn't blessed enough that i asked ben to be able to come home to actually talk about it and not in a way to just talk about it put no longer to allow society to determine that the people that speaks doesn't qualified to speak because of a felony record of the things they've had that are right thank you and we allow this city this state this county or even this nation disqualified people from people speaking the truth the power simply because of something he did and he passed the most of the actual people that actually running the country be obligation to make sure that we don't disqualify someone who made an error in life even if that doesn't mean but to say that everything you do after that doesn't qualify you as a human being that  but for me my message is i want everybody to understand that was always intended that way so it's no longer a surprise to me and people seem to be baffled behind mike brown behind eric garner behind to me or rice behind oscar grant i'm no longer surprise i'm just continually disappointed because this had been gone on even before i was even born with the emmett till's and the slave owners the slave the slaves that has had to go through this i'm so excited by the fact it seems and sometimes in my experiences when i travel around the country to hear this conversation and different audience of the live different audience in this is sometimes they intentionally try to confuse you because they say black lives matter to be inclusive they want to talk about all lives matter that's a same way to say we don't want to call us black people we want to call us african americans to water it down to be acceptable for those days like them when in fact i don't want to water it down because as we can in order for you to swallow that is the reality intention is to change the conversation because they don't want to talk about the exact conversation that's before you right now you know ideas we are going somebody and they feel like they're losing the fight to try to change the subject that's a reality and so often that we get caught up in that that we lose sight of why we actually here and those that want to talk about when issue about mike brown as you see the department of justice about to announce that the officer would not be held accountable because he violated a civil rights what but that's the power of all of you speaking in one voice one message one to go and not get distracted by all the different things whether it be blue states or red states and everything else is talking about that it's not about putting some million dollars in order for some hundred sixty five we actually won the right to vote but we didn't get the right to vote tonight the sixty five so what was gone only the one hundred years to stall it out the inevitable and then the law passed because they feel like we supposed to be appreciated that some law passed and the first test before to say well in order to get the right to vote you've got to tell me how many jelly beans in the jar how many bubbles in his bar so and i'm not going to debate with you that it's ridiculous to talk about this the question and let me know is the fact that you don't have  intention to give it to me in the first place therefore i must take it because i want to discuss this with you no more and i don't want to dignify that bureaucracy as it would deceive a response because i feel like you insult me as a man and as a person but that's my position and that's the area that we talk about because this is the time i don't want to sit down and negotiate on the probability of getting something in two thousand and sixteen i'm saying that we need change we need it right now we're not the way for you know  thousand and fifty two thousand and forty two when are we going to get the result that we've been fighting for hundred years and we get blinded by the side of the fact because i live on one side of the water one side of the track and you don't all of a sudden you have the right to disagree you just don't have the right to dismiss white folks you can't dismiss it and act like it doesn't exist change and i know that some you feel like i'm not impacted by these issues because this doesn't happen in my neighborhood but the reality is you never got involved until it did and the question we tell you right now as a warning i want to tell you about one of the best days of my life it was two blocks couple blocks down the street there are twenty thirty in union and it was the day after the no indictment of darren wilson there was despair and i had to go join then double a c p rally there to try to seek solace and at that rally i managed to get some words out and speak about how i thought the new generation of activists are like nothing i've ever seen before that there's an anger burning in the in our black student union i garfield and that it's going to erupt one of these days and then i jumped in my car because i had to get back to garfield before lunch was over and turns out i had to pull over because a thousand students came streaming out of garfield  it turns out i didn't have to wait that long to see that that smoldering anger and what motivated those young those students i don't think it was the killing of mike brown i don't think it was the murder of mike brown i think it was the lynching of mike brown that's what we have to call that's what we have to call it what is it when you leave someone in the street for four and a half hours that's not just about killing one boy that's not about killing one young man that's about making  example that's about saying know your place black people know your place because this is what will happen to you and witness it right and get back in your place and to see these students at garfield high school walk out and and so on monday i joined the martin luther king protests and i gave one of the the final speech downtown at the courthouse and when that was over these two women helped to lead a march of many people a couple hundred people maybe that wanted to keep going that said this wasn't over yet we should keep marching and i join them it was my son's birthday party so i knew i needed to get back to that but i wanted to keep marching right up until i had to go so i joined them and we marched for i don't know four blocks six blocks and then the police came and set up a barricade in front of us with their with their bikes and said you you can't you can't cross this line and many people walked through the holes in the line and went forward because they were intimidated anymore and they were ready to keep going and i chose not to cross that barrier that day because i had to get to my son's birthday party so i actually decided i'm going to i'm going to go walk get on the sidewalk and at just as i'm stepping on the sidewalk my phone rang it was my mom she's coming to pick me up i had to tell her where i was i turn to take the phone call and an officer takes out the pepper spray and hits me right in the face it was a difficult birthday party to show up pouring milk in so i could stop the burning for several hours what they weren't ready for though is that we found out there's video footage and you can believe that that fight isn't done and what why did i get pepper sprayed in the face do you think that this this officer was really frightened of me turning away on my cell phone on the sidewalk i don't think that was it i think this officer was afraid of three words black lives matter what what they realize is that black the phrase black lives matter isn't just a simple declaration that we're human beings it's actually an indictment of the whole political system whole economic system it's an indictment of capitalism a system that was born in slavery grew up on jim crow and has now developed into this institutional races system we see today and how does this system work the people that take your money by the by the billions and trillions and use it to go murder people in the middle east those people are honored right with medals right while our young black youth are shot down in the street with with impunity that's that's how the system works and when we talk about black lives matter what would it take to really to make that it would take a complete upturning of this system and undoing of the entire social order and the political order and capitalism being replaced by something humane by something that respects black lives right let's not be afraid to talk about socialism and looking toward something that is about cooperation and building  a much better alternative and this is what they're worried about the guardians of institutional racism know that as long as this fire phrase is being used it will be used to highlight their crimes and l just want to highlight a few of those as my time runs down because here in seattle we have just a study just released that last year seventy the average median income for  families was seventy thousand dollars while black medium income fell to twenty five thousand dollars a thirteen percent drop nationally the unemployment rate is over ten percent for african americans black people would be much more unemployed if you put into words if you took into account the prison population right if you take into account there are more black people and how do they get behind bars there's a school to prison pipeline that's funneling them right from here into the jail that they're getting ready to build for them and  so i just want to say that as bad as that school to prison pipeline is in our communities we're now we're realizing that in fact there's school to grave pipeline being built in cities across this country when you hear about samir rice and michael brown and trayvon martin and jordan davis and the too many names that we don't have time to tell their stories tonight and so when we say black lives matter we don't just mean we don't want our young black youth to get shot down in the streets with impunity and these cops to get laid off when we say black lives matter we mean we want well funded schools right with the curriculum that empowers our students to solve the problems in their community when we say black was matter we want to society where the political decisions about our lives where are our jobs our health care our schools are controlled by the people who make them up who work there and i'm proud to say that what we're building here when when the students garfield high school marched to the east precinct when they walked out when they're holding this event here we are building a school the justice pipeline right here carlos before i say one word i want to thank the organizers of this event and i also want everyone here to be very clear about where dr carlos and i stand on a pressing issue of our time and that's that we want to see hawks to win the super bowl and i and i don't just say that because richard sherman has all kinds awesome and i don't just say that because i've got issues with patriots both capital and lower case  i say that because the patriots cheat and i bring that up because if you see sports as the sort of endeavor where all that matters is if you win and nothing else matters you actually perform a very very jacked up function in this society all that matters is if you win everything else doesn't mean a damn thing and that's why i'm so proud to introduce dr john carlos because he represents a very different kind of tradition that says the kind of world we live in matters a hell of a lot more than the medals dangling from your chest or the rings on your fingers now i have no doubt that before tonight everyone in this room saw this image before of john carlos and tommie smith standing on that metal stand raising their fists to the heavens but i would ask you to look at it again because they're not just raising fists on this medal stand they're also not wearing shoes on the medal stand as a symbol of poverty in the black south of the united states to recognize the amount of poverty that existed amongst black children in the united states they also are wearing beats around their necks which was a symbol of lynchings and the violence perpetrated against black people in the united states and if you look at john carlos this picture you'll also notice that his jacket is on zipped and he's wearing a black t shirt over the usa because he was ashamed of what this country had done to black people in this country and the reason why they have this consciousness the reason why they brought the beads the reason why they wore black socks the reason why they brought black gloves is because they were not just part of a moment but they were part of a movement of black freedom struggle that they wanted everyone to know that they stood with not a moment but a movement and it's a remarkable thing to think about because they brought the beads to the race they brought their socks they brought their gloves but what did they have to do first i mean they would have felt pretty dumb if they'd come in like seventh and eighth and think about that no seriously you go to the race you're like we got the beads we got the gloves we lost what a disaster but they were that confident that they were going to end up on that medal stand and that's why i took the time it wasn't just a cheap pander to the seattle audience but to mention about how disgusting i think the new england patriots are that it's all win at all costs because if you look at the race and please go to you tube and look up the race the two hundred meter race what you're going to see is john carlos gets the lead and anybody who's ever been a sprinter knows your head has to be in one direction and one direction only and that's where forward and if you look at john carlos he's running this race he's in the lead he's constantly looking backwards so where's tommy where's tommy where's tommy playing with hundreds of seconds he was doing an olympic race and engineering it to make sure that both of them were on the medal stand so they could make this happen that says to me i mean there's no other way to say it that's a lesson that echoes through the ages the idea that you know it's not about winning it's about standing for something much bigger than one's individual accomplishment it's about standing with the people not apart from the people to rise with the ranks not from the ranks and i'll tell you what makes this so amazing and what's been so remarkable about the black lives matter movement is that you hear john carlos his name again on sports radio as people are trying to understand why it is that athletes like le bron james der rose richard sherman are standing with the black lives matter movement and raising that question again gee should sports and politics really mix and i let me tell you there's no bigger okey doke than people saying that sports and politics shouldn't mix because what they're really saying is that sports and a certain kind of politics could next because when it comes to when it comes to when it comes to selling war when it comes to militarism when it comes to having generals throw up the coin before the super bowl when it comes to parading out cheerleaders those politics are just fine but when it comes to actually standing for resistance politics that's when everybody gets skittish and says oh my politics  but we should also remember that the sports part of the black lives matter music did not start with le bron james and it did not start with derrick rose it started extremely appropriately with a black woman at a division three school named ariana smith who made the decision before any st louis rams raised their hand she made the decision that because her team was traveling literally a thirty minute drive for michael brown was killed that she could not just play play as if it was just every day business so what she decided to do during the pledge of allegiance was dropped to her knees lie down on the court and she refused to move for four and a half minutes to symbolize the four and a half hours that michael brown nation my nation is disrespected me and for all the more i can to feel that what's happened in my life if you think i'm a terrible individual this way for the next generation here you walk into it let me just when i saw something that was out of the ordinary for me to be sitting in my father's shop on lenox avenue in new york and see a young white cop come out that is brand new blue uniform on and we still have the him looks about him get up and move on get a move on return to black guy he still lay with him mine is next and i'm standing in my father's doorway i could have been no more than eight nine years old and he goes over to the black fell some upset you look for an adult to make it better well outside of my household i can find no adults to make it better i couldnt find nor dollars to want to stand up to what i just saw then i begin matriculate to my neighborhood i got a new old i went around to my friends and i realized that a lot  with single parents in the household when i was younger there was always a mom and a date in the house for five kids and then when i got to be about fourteen fifteen years old i realize that they're still missing in action it's like overnight they all got drafted into the military and some but what the military someone came and said black people like to illustrate in these it went to south central l a they went to michigan they went everywhere will black people and they say let's put this drug on now at the same time what he was putting a drug  did have a methodology as to how we go and get these individuals to even attempt to use these drugs so how do we do it let's let a man have low self esteem let's have him have less respect for him self to the point where he's ashamed of who he is the father how do we do that we don't let him get a job we don't let him make no money we don't let him be able to take his wife out to dinner we don't let him go to get his daughter a new dress for birthday we don't let him get the tennis shoes this kid needed for p and every day he gets up and he goes to bear from the brush his teeth  yourself i don't like myself because i can be the man to mom one i don't like myself because i can't be the father to my kids i don't like myself because i can't be the breadwinner in my household i don't like myself because my wife think i'm less because he think i don't want to go to work because they've been spread the word we too lazy we don't want no jobs but yet and still for fifty some odd neighborhood go to school and be successful so went on his school for but at the same time based on the fact that i had good strong moral parent they'd made me go to school and boy you damn well better learn but then you begin to realize at the same time to put a rope a dope on you again because the dumbest of the dumb is teaches they sent to holland to teach me i couldn't spell and still can't spell today because  teaches it was trying to teach me they couldn't spell it blew my mind well how does this guy got a corporate job and his name is kip in he can't spell and i look at their standard of life i looked at my standard life my household was five kids mom and today my mother coming from cuba as a young woman i remember my mother took me my brother would always find a piece of cardboard when white stuck a pot on it and one day i had a nerve to take my hand put my hand in it and then put my hand in my mouth and my home i froze up i didn't know what it was and my mother said mom what didn't doctors got in office all the doctors got power to wipe out on cardboard my mother went off you went numb doctor's office you isn't a draws come now and my mother began to tell me well son you give these abortion for these women and they do this surgery to give the abortions and uses this medication is white powder to keep them stern in on the job and i said to myself now mom you should be a doctor you know all that so in turn out talk to my mother about going to school my mother went to school and she became a nurse's aid bellevue hospital my dad was a shoemaker cobbler and there was wholesome law abiding respect to respectable hardworking american citizens blown out how to live in and i was telling dave earlier today that i would have all my partners kind of my house and our my mother tell me she johnny you can't bring no more your friends home she was adamant you can bring them home mom why they can't eat they don't have food she said well we can't feed all your friends we taking food from your brothers and your sisters we've taken food from the dead and myself we can't feed them all but yet and still the problem still existed they didn't know how to feed themselves when nobody attempting to feed them was my job to feed them fourteen years old real fairs and be about four feet from the pole to the fire escape and i would push off and spin around gratify escape and when i went to the house all the people in that building they knew john carlos or johnny calo says  did didn't know how to help themselves was far greater than the fear of my father and i love my dad and now when i sit back and out think about fear i think about the same they have fear of offending their oppressors i know what they're doing to me is wrong i know what you're doing is right i'm afraid i might lose my job i'm afraid they might say bad things about me i'm afraid they might not like me almost free well you know when you think about fear and think about the fathers missing in action and then think about these men that have a hostile wholesome family and they have to turn this around and say you know what's happening in terms of society t polies going to down our kids are killing our kids that's been going on for a long long long time but even greater on the other side of the spectrum those followers this don't have the what was happening with the police but we need to do what was happening in our own g six years ago how do you still drive how you still keep your vigor how do you still push said yeah i mean i can roll with you no more why not my father told me that i got to stay away from you while your father tell you need stay away from me he said well if i want to get me a job one day i can ha black people hanging around with me now the minute this guy's house broke bread he been in my house and robbery but then when you sit back and you think about what his father sit back then that's current they were taught you know ignorance is blind you heard that statement that phrase ignorance is black they all blind they know not what they do we have to be able to set this nation capitalistic society it's capitalistic society no doubt about it she opened cuba when i went to cuba and i go to see the best baseball players in the world all i do is get in town make sure that walking don't pay enough over here i got to stand outside in the rain pay fifty dollars and still might have to stand but here in america this is a capitalistic society and we talk about capitalism in this country that's the main reason why it is so important for you youngsters out there it is making all the demonstrators demonstrations and moving  and thank god every day for give me the opportunity to sit down with this man dr king and dr king did not die as a result of his involvement in the civil rights movement lot of people think he died because he was fight you because you got involved in the numbers now all you young demonstrators here from coast to coast the demonstrations that you get involved in right now you're getting involved in the numbers was you know directly or indirectly when you go across the freeway and hold up the freeway walmart don't get their trucks p they can't kill us all they might try but they can't kill us all when one thing they will do they will say we got to reflect on how your lives some of the money go she now say you got the key and you got the key now is for you to tell them say you know some i remember when i was running around in pampers and i heard a ruckus years ago i heard them there was rapping about current situation in our communities about dope coming in about you is education go about learn to respect for yourself learn respect for your parents learn respect for your household i don't see all these foremen superstar families coming to say hey let me put a camp in your neighborhood the campaign about basketball the camp is about how to survive in this life that we you know why she's she's trying to do you know she's trying to give me now and she's doing the right thing because she's got a schedule and she want to make sure the books are most moved back to i want you guys to get this book particularly for adults to read i definitely want you to have it on your shelf for your kids there's a book that everybody should read and i'm not saying it because it's my book and and there's a book i'm not shana for that reason i'm standing because if you read that book and big kid reading a book i guarantee you they don't have insight as to who they are they don't have bigger insight in terms of what responsibilities they have to themselves and to the families that kids don't even know males in particular then we'll even take into account if you're one son in the family if you go on the street you run with the wrong crowd or you could mix it up because adults we too scared to go design these gangs and he just had to be walking down the block mine in this business and a gun fire break out and hits him and takes his life you know that's the end of the calo gene line right there because he's the only man son that he can make no more babies if for him to carry his genes are hearing will do it no more because someone that took his life and the person  looked took his life now turns out ten ten years fifteen years down the line he's the one saying why the hell is life so hauling me because our king had a job and my attitude is damn fool you can't get a job because the guy that