Transcription
Give honor to God, to our pastor, and give a big hand to Bishop Howe. [Applause] To my brother Aubry, sister Katie, and to the whole family, and to those who have sat in that seat—families that are here who have sat in that seat know better than any of us how they feel. I don't care how much settlement they may be given; you can never fill the hole in their heart that was caused for no reason. And that is why they're here. Give those mothers, fathers, and uncles of victims who come today a big hand.
In the tradition of the Black church, we take a text and a subject. I didn't want to disrespect Bishop, so I went to the book of Isaiah today. They tell me this is Grandma's birthday. I'm a little older than her, so I have to read with my reading glasses. The book of Isaiah, 59th chapter, 8th and 9th verses says, "The way of peace they know not, and there is no judgment in their goings; therefore is judgment far from us, neither does justice overtake us." I want to use for a subject: "No Justice, No Peace." [Applause]
In 1986, in a section of Brooklyn called Howard Beach, a young man named Michael Griffith was killed because they said that they didn't allow Blacks in the neighborhood. Some of us went out and marched, and during the march, one brother yelled— I believe his name was Amadou Diallo—"No justice, no peace," and it became the chant of our movement. Some of us have made it popular, but it started there. But it really started in the Bible because Isaiah said that those who practice injustice cannot practice peace. The absence of justice is the absence of peace.
And when we say that, we're not talking about violence because there is confusion in this country between peace and quiet. Some of us are told to shut up and just be quiet, and you call that peace. But peace is the presence of justice. You can't tell us to shut up and suffer; we must speak up when there is an injustice.
I remember as I was riding here, I saw someone, and as I got out of the car to meet the family to ride to the church, I heard a man say, "I've not seen a funeral procession like this since Prince in Minneapolis." I said, "Well, we came to bury the Prince of Brooklyn Center." We come from all over the country because you hurt one of our princes. That's why we're in this temple with purple all over, because it represents royalty. You thought he was just some kid with an air freshener; he was a prince. And all of Minneapolis has stopped today to honor the Prince of Brooklyn Center.
Ah, if you knew who we were, if you understood that we were divine decisions that God made, if you understood that his mother and father broke the racial barrier lines and raised him in an interracial home that used to be against the law, but they defied the color barriers—a Black man and a white woman raised children to not hate anybody—and he was a prince of that raising. If you knew who he was, you would have been caught with mistaken identity. You keep thinking that we're somebody we're not.
They tell our young folks not to go to the streets and march when marching and protesting is a way of correcting the injustice Isaiah talked about. You can't go to church on Sunday and read this book that we call the Bible and not fight against oppression. God is not on the side of the oppressor; God is on the side of the oppressed. For every Pharaoh, there was a Moses. For every Nebuchadnezzar, there was a Daniel. For every Belshazzar, there were three Hebrew boys. For every Herod, there was a Jesus. We come in the tradition of what God's plan was, and when you oppress us, we must stand up.
That's why we're here. Eleven months ago, we stood for George Floyd, and as the trial wound down and the jury was about to get the verdict, the reason we got the jury we got and the verdict we got is that God used a young brother born and raised as a Muslim but believing in the same God. It doesn't matter how you approach God. He was elected even after you tried to scandalize him—the Attorney General of the state of Minnesota. [Applause]
God doesn't use folks without letting you test them. Everybody that God calls, He lets you baptize them in fire. They indicted Martin Luther King; it only got him ready for what he did. Every time you are under attack, you just get ready because God wouldn't test you if He wasn't going to graduate you. And he was being tested and elected so that he was prepared to take the attacks when he stood up for George Floyd and was able, for the first time in the history of the state of Minnesota, to convict a white policeman for killing a Black man—two murder convictions and one manslaughter conviction. God has turned the page in the state of Minnesota, and we're never going back. No more. [Applause]
Yes, some of us have different tactics, but all of us have the same goal. Some of y'all are civil rights activists; some of y'all are street activists. We're all street activists, and we're all civil rights activists. Some of us are young, some of us are old, but we’re all the same. They don't discriminate against us because of age. And that's why when I talked to brother Aubry and told him that we'd be there for him, whatever he needs, because we see this young man as royalty.
When Ben Crump called me the other night and told me that they were winding the trial down, I had certain obligations, and I had to fulfill them in New York. I couldn't get here the way I wanted. I called one of my wealthy Black friends; he said, "I'll send you my plane." Some of them got on Twitter talking about why I'm on a private plane. Because I'm that kind of guy. When George Floyd was killed, Tyler Perry sent his private plane to bring the Floyd family to Minneapolis. Robert Smith sent a private plane to bring Eric Garner's mother and me into Minneapolis. We ain't in the back of the bus no more. [Applause]
I had to take an Apollo rocket if it was available. Every crisis must be answered with real change. Yesterday, the Attorney General Garland announced a study of the practices in Minnesota, and that is going to lead to where it goes. But now we are fighting for a federal law. Why federal law? Because if we keep having to fight state by state, we'll never solve this. The generation before me boycotted in Montgomery against the segregation laws in Alabama, and they boycotted the bus company. In 1955, they started December 1st, and for a solid year, they wouldn't ride the bus. They said it was better to walk in dignity than to ride in shame, and they broke the backs of Alabama's segregation. But Dr. King and Dr. Abernathy and Rosa Parks said we can't stop there; we got to have federal law.
Then some young students, the young folk of that day, became Freedom Riders and others did other things, and it took nine years, and they got the Civil Rights Act federally that made it against federal law—Congresswoman Omar—to discriminate. Well, we've gone from all of these abuses, from Oscar Grant and Amadou Diallo and others, all the way to Philando Castile right here in the Minneapolis area. We struggled through all of that, but we are going to now, in his name, in the name of Dante, pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act as federal law. We are going to make it against the law all over this country to keep bringing us to funerals for our young princes. [Applause]
This is not a Republican or Democratic thing. Isaiah said it's about justice. If you believe in justice, it's time for the federal government to reflect the will of the people. You couldn't have a better picture than to have two people that crossed the color line and raised children to be somebody to stand up and embrace them. You couldn't have had a better example than the Floyd family that wiped tears from their eyes and stood up with dignity even as they watched them smear their brother, their uncle, their father. We've always had to take the smearing, Keith Ellison, but behind every dark night, the sun will shine.
I was talking to one of the relatives, and I said, "Well, why are they trying to justify?" One said, "Well, they said they saw some air fresheners in the back of his car." Well, air fresheners are to keep the bad odors out. We come today as the air fresheners for Minnesota. We're trying to get the stench of police brutality out of the atmosphere. We're trying to get the stench of racism out of the atmosphere. We're trying to get the stench of racial profiling out of the atmosphere. We come to Minnesota as air fresheners because