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Speaker 1: Our next speaker, ladies and gentlemen, is CEO and President of the Hip-Hop Caucus,
is working to provide a comprehensive agenda for the progressive and hip-hop community
domestically and abroad. Put your hands together and welcome Reverend Lennox Yearwood.
Lennox: Now you can do better than that. Come on, come on, if you want to restore habeas
corpus, somebody make some noise! Come on! Come on! Come on! You done heard from the
[inaudible 00:00:39], now it's time to hear from the streets, somebody make some noise!
If you want to end torture, make some noise! Oh man, now you're ready. I came out here
because I'm looking for something. It kind of got lost. Has anybody seen habeas? If you're
looking for habeas, make some noise! We came today to look for habeas.
I know I'm with some smart people because everybody here has gone to the sides, to the
shade. Everybody went to their left. I know they might look around and say "Where's the
media?" This is actually historic. We have the the Hip-Hop Caucus with Amnesty with ACLU
with conservatives. This is history. Where is the media? I've got something to say to
them. The revolution may not be televised but it will be uploaded. It will be uploaded!
Right now as I am speaking, this is being webcast all around the world. Because of that,
somebody make some noise! Hold your signs up. Hold your signs up and make some noise!
Are you excited now? You ready to hit the hallways now? Demanding the restoration of
habeas is more than an issue of restoring rights. We are in a state of emergency. This
is not a cause, it's an emergency. To overcome the vicious forces in our government that
have disregard our constitutional and fundamental values of civil and human rights. We must
come together as human beings fighting for justice. In case the reporters can't see my
belt because you see... What's my belt say? My belt says what? I didn't want to say it
but it says what? I can't hear you, it says what? Oh, okay, I wanted to make sure you
saw that. They might be afraid to say it but we are not.
The reason the hip-hop community is here today is because we recognize that if we don't stand
up now, seven years into the twenty-first century, there will be no twenty-second century.
The reason why Hip-Hop Caucus is here today ,and I'm so happy to stand with ACLU and Amnesty
and so many others, is because for too long our movements have become segregated. When
I would go to the immigration rally, it would be all brown. When I would go to some of the
peace or anti-war rallies, it'd be all-white. When I'd go to the peace, the poverty or the
Katrina, it's all black. I'm so glad to come out here today to see white people and black
people and Asian people and Latinos because we understand that torture and habeas cannot
be a segregated issue. This one thing that brought us all together,
when they begin to torture human beings and take away our constitutional rights and roll
back habeas, they brought everybody together. Last Tuesday on June nineteenth, on Juneteenth
which is the commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States. We joined together to
shut it down and stop the torture. How many were there last week Tuesday? Thirteen hundred
people came together, crammed into a little hall. Young people came together to fight
for justice. Yesterday, there was a young lady who gave the President at a scholars'
reception a letter asking why her country was torturing.
Young people, let me close with this. You are the most important generation and people
the world has seen. You are so important because right now, there are people who are wearing
the orange jumpsuits who are being tortured. I know sometimes our country wants to do away
with how we feel about other people. Since I am a descendant of a slave and because in
my country we've always been thrown to the side and if anybody knows torture, it's an
African-American. Since we even got to these shores, we've been tortured. We went though
and defeated slavery, after that they brought Jim Crow and we were tortured. Even though
our parents beat Jim Crow, our generation is now fighting something more sinister than
Jim Crow. What I call James Crow Junior, Esquire. James understands that if he can take away
from you the visual images of that standpoint then we can forget it. We are not going to
forget because as long as people are being tortured in our name, we are not going to
forget it. As long as they want to roll back habeas corpus, we are not going to forget
it. I don't care what senator, what Congress person comes up here today. They got to deal
with us today. We will walk the hallways. We will talk the hallways, We will go through
and through because we have got to stop torture now. We have got to restore habeas corpus
now. One day, once that happens, we can say, as Dr. King said not too far away, free at
last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, they are free at last. God bless you. Power to
the people! Power to the people!