How Baltimore called a ceasefire | Erricka Bridgeford

29,087 views ・ 2018-05-29

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There is a pastor in Baltimore.
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His name is Michael Phillips,
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he is the pastor of Kingdom Life Church,
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and he often talks about how problems show up in our lives so arrogantly,
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with so much confidence, as if there is just nothing we can do about them.
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And the murder rate in Baltimore had been doing that.
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Year after year, it just kept showing up as this big thing
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that there was nothing any of us could do anything about.
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But the thing about Baltimore
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is that it has never been the one to just be defeated.
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So the story about the Baltimore Ceasefire
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is that Baltimore looked the murder rate in the eye
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and said, "What you're not going to do is snatch our greatness."
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So two years ago, I'm at a 300 Man March meeting.
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At the time, I was a leader in that movement.
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And this guy named Ogun --
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he's like a godfather of hip-hop in Baltimore --
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he came over to me and he said,
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"Yo, I have this idea about calling a ceasefire in Baltimore,
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and I feel like you are somebody I should talk to about that."
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And I was like, "I'm absolutely somebody you should talk to about that,
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because that's something we should do."
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And so we played phone tag and meeting tag,
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and two years went by and we never really sat down and talked about it.
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So now we're in May of 2017.
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My son Paul, he's 19 years old, he's driving me home from work one day,
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and he says, "Ma, did you know that the murder rate in Baltimore
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is higher than it's ever been?"
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And I said, "What you mean it's higher than it's ever been?
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How is that possible?
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Like, I mean, what about people who say they have connections to the streets?
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Why won't they use those connections and call a cease-fire or something?"
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And on and on I went
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from my own feelings of helplessness about what other people weren't doing.
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The next morning I woke up
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and I realized that what I was really angry about
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wasn't about what other people weren't doing,
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it was that I had heard this message years ago,
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and I hadn't moved on it.
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So it was about what I was supposed to be doing.
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So I got up and I'm going,
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"OK, if we could just have three days
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where everybody in the city was committing,
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nobody is going to kill anybody,
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and we're going to celebrate life instead,
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when can we do that?"
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So it's May, I look at my calendar,
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all right, I've got some free time the first weekend in August,
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we'll do it August 4th through August 6th, right?
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So I'm all excited, I start driving to work,
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and the more I drive, the scareder I get.
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And so I start going, "Never mind ...
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(Laughter)
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I won't say this thing out loud.
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Nobody will ever know I was thinking it if I don't say it."
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But it wouldn't let me go,
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because God loves to show up as us,
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and because I look broken
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and I'm always called to stand in my wholeness,
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there was a call on my life to say this thing out loud.
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And because my city looks broken
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and is always yearning to show up in its wholeness,
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there were hearts that morning calling all through my chest
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that people around this city wanted to do something great together.
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And people who had already been killed in my city
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were calling to me
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up through my gut and my chest,
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as a knot in my throat, "Yo, E, you cannot just let us be dead in vain
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when you know how to say this thing out loud."
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And I responded to them with my fear.
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"But somebody might get killed anyway that weekend."
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And that was the moment where I had to accept
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that maybe while we're out spreading this message --
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"Hey, nobody's going to kill anybody. We're going to celebrate life!" --
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maybe somebody will be plotting to take a life right then and there,
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but now they would have a rumbling in their spirit.
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And so I knew it was time for my city
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to have a collective rumbling in our spirit.
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So I got on the phone, got around to Ogun,
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and I said, "Yo, you said you wanted to do a cease-fire?
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What is it? I'm ready."
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So he said, "You know, when I hear about the Israelis and Palestinians at war,
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I'm like, that's too bad, they should stop that,
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but when I hear the word 'cease-fire,'
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that makes me pause and stop and really research what's going on."
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And he wanted Baltimore to get that same kind of attention
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from the outside,
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but introspection from the inside about what was going on with us.
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And we talked about how it couldn't belong to one person.
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Not one person or one organization should call a cease-fire.
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The whole city had to own it and do it together.
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So we had our first meeting in May.
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About 12 or 15 people show up,
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and this is where it gets named the Baltimore Ceasefire,
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because you know what that means when you hear the word "cease-fire."
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Just don't kill nobody.
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And this is where the Baltimore Peace Challenge was born.
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Because it's not just about not being violent.
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It is about being purposefully peaceful.
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What is going on in your thoughts?
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What kind of petty things are you not saying out of your mouth?
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How are you responding in your behaviors to conflict?
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I grabbed up five people who I trusted,
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and the six of us became the organizing squad.
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So let's give them props real quick.
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On the count of three, I want you to yell "squad."
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One, two, three: squad! Audience: Squad!
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And it's Shellers's birthday. Happy birthday, Shellers.
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Audience: Happy birthday!
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And so we put out a press release,
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and the media told us, this is not really a story yet,
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we will get with you on August 7th to see how the cease-fire went.
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So we went, "Oh, word? Oh, all right then."
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And Baltimore got to work,
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and not only did people send money to the PayPal account
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so we could buy flyers and posters,
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people came and got the flyers and posters
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and they put them all around the city,
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and people were having conversations with each other.
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What kind of resources do you need? What are you going through?
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What has happened to you?
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Because we understand the root causes of violence in this country.
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People who said it wouldn't work still ended their sentence
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with "but please keep trying. Somebody needs to do something anyway."
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Teenagers who would tell us
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about the stuff they were doing in the streets all day asked,
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"But can I have a poster to put it on my wall at night
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so I can see it on my way to bed?"
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Gangsters were calling, saying,
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"I can tell you where violence is not going to come from,
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because we're committing to the Peace Challenge."
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And they kept their word.
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When people said, "It's not going to work,
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because somebody's going to kill over West or over East,"
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we said, "That doesn't matter. It's about self-determination, yo.
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You telling me you can't keep this three- or six-block radius safe?"
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And they would say, "Don't get it twisted.
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It's going to stay safe around here." And they kept their promise.
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(Applause)
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Four songs --
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and I know it looks like I'm holding up five fingers,
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but I have four fingers, so this is four for me --
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four songs got made about the Baltimore Ceasefire,
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and the one that most exemplifies it,
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where a bunch of artists came together and made a song,
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that one is currently nominated for a Grammy out here. Right?
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And so now what was happening
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was from the most beautiful corners of crack houses
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to the grimiest corners of politicians' offices,
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everybody --
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(Laughter)
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was talking about this thing Baltimore was doing together. Right?
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And then, the weekend came:
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events all over the city, people yelling "Happy Ceasefire Day!"
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Over 200 people got their records expunged and got jobs,
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and people went into drug recovery programs
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because of what was happening in our city that weekend.
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People were going, "But the air feels different in Baltimore.
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Nobody's mother got that phone call last night.
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I didn't hear any gunshots."
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And on Saturday, Trey went to go get a job
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and was excited about it.
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At 24 hours of no killing,
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we were singing Kendrick Lamar. "We gon' be alright. We gon' be alright."
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And then at 4:59 on Saturday,
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we get a message that somebody was killed.
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We didn't know his name, but it turned out to be Trey.
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So we rushed over to Sargeant Street,
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and we held hands in a circle
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and we looked at the pavement,
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and we said, "This is sacred ground because we make it so,
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because everywhere in our city where people lose their lives to violence
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needs to be sacred ground."
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And it wasn't just about upholding Trey and his transition
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and sending love to his family.
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It was about us pausing to really think about what must it feel like
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20 minutes after you kill somebody?
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Can't we pour love into that?
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Because until we do, we will not heal this epidemic.
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Later on in the day, we get another call.
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Dante is murdered.
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So by the end of this day, we were shook.
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In real life, we were shook,
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because we had opened up our hearts together
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and changed the atmosphere of this city,
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and now our hearts were broken together.
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And we had to be honest about the fact that last weekend,
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when we lost six people to violence,
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it didn't feel the way it felt this weekend when we lost these two,
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because now we were paying attention.
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Now we were all hoping together
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that nobody got killed.
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And so we had to make a vow with ourselves
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not to be numb anymore when we lose people in our city.
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These two lives were going to remind us to vibrate higher and to move forward.
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So as we move forward into Baltimore Ceasefire 365,
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because there's work that needs to be done all year,
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and there's another cease-fire happening next weekend,
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November 3rd through 5th. Mark your calendar.
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(Applause)
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Right? And we expect the same thing.
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It was news media from all around the world,
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Australia and Norway and China.
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Everybody wanted to come get this work from Baltimore,
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and y'all could come get it. Right?
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So as we push forward, we don't need to keep asking now
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"What can we do?"
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We have seen the power of collective consciousness.
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Y'all were the ones who misunderstood Baltimore.
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Y'all thought Baltimore was just "The Wire."
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When we lost Freddie Gray,
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y'all saw the Baltimore uprising,
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and people around this world mischaracterized it and misunderstood it.
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What you failed to realize is Baltimore is the power to rise up,
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and that is what we continue to do.
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(Applause)
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And so as we move forward, we see you, America,
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with your systems of violent oppression trying to beat us into the ground,
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and still, we rise.
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We rise and stand with cities all over this country just like us
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who are handed, through no fault of their own,
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criminal conditions in which to live,
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and then they get labeled savages for how they live.
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We stand with them.
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We remind them we are an example of what you can do when you say,
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"No, I don't have to accept these conditions
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that you are trying to hand me.
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I get to decide what the greatest vision of myself looks like.
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And so the next time
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you are faced with a dilemma, with a problem,
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you can say, "Let me be like Baltimore,
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let me look it in the face,
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let me tell it."
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But what you're not going to do is snatch my greatness.
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Please believe it.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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