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'Grey's
Anatomy'
Star
Jesse
Williams
Gives
Impassioned
Black
Lives
Matter
Speech
at BET
Awards
By Jem
Aswad,
Billboard/MSN
It's
safe to
say that
34-year-old
Grey's
Anatomy
star
Jesse
Williams
stole
the BET
Awards
on
Sunday
night
with a
wildly
inspirational,
confrontational
speech
that is
bound to
become a
cornerstone
of the
Black
Lives
Matter
movement.
Later in
the
show,
Samuel
L.
Jackson
said he
hadn't
heard a
speech
like it
since
the
1960s.
Williams
has
appeared
in
multiple
films,
but he
was
honored
with
BET's
Humanitarian
Award
for his
activism.
In
October
2014, he
joined
protests
in
Ferguson,
Missouri
to
protest
the
shooting
of
Michael
Brown.
He was
also an
actor
and
executive
producer
of Stay
Woke, a
documentary
about
the
movement
that
premiered
in May.
He has
written
extensively
on Black
Lives
Matter
and met
with
President
Obama
earlier
this
year to
discuss
his
humanitarian
work.
BET CEO
Debra
Lee
presented
his
award
"for his
continued
efforts
and
steadfast
commitment
to
furthering
social
change."
He began
by
thanking
BET and
all
involved
in the
video
that
preceded
his
appearance,
his wife
and his
parents
"for
teaching
me to
focus on
comprehension
over
career,
they
made
sure I
learned
what the
schools
are
afraid
to teach
us.
"This
award is
not for
me," he
continued.
"This is
for the
real
organizers
all over
the
country,
the
activist,
the
civil
rights
attorneys,
the
struggling
parents,
the
families,
the
teachers,
the
students
that are
realizing
that a
system
built to
divide
and
impoverish
and
destroy
us
cannot
stand if
we do.
It's
kinda
basic
mathematics:
the more
we learn
about
who we
are and
how we
got here
the more
we will
mobilize.
"This
award is
also for
the
black
women in
particular
who have
spent
their
lives
nurturing
everyone
before
themselves
-- we
can and
will do
better
for you.
"Now,
what
we've
been
doing is
looking
at the
data and
we know
that
police
somehow
manage
to
de-escalate,
disarm
and not
kill
white
people
every
day. So
what's
going to
happen
is we're
going to
have
equal
rights
and
justice
in our
own
country
or we
will
restructure
their
function
and
ours.
[Standing
ovation.]
"I got
more,
y'all.
Yesterday
would
have
been
young
Tamir
Rice's
14th
birthday
so I
don't
want to
hear any
more
about
how far
we've
come
when
paid
public
servants
can pull
a
drive-by
on a
12-year-old
playing
alone in
a park
in broad
daylight,
killing
him on
television,
and then
going
home to
make a
sandwich.
"Tell
Rekia
Boyd how
it's so
much
better
to live
in 2012
than
1612 or
1712.
Tell
that to
Eric
Garner,
Sandra
Bland.
"The
thing is
though,
all of
us here
are
getting
money,
that
alone
isn't
going to
stop
this.
Dedicating
our
lives to
getting
money
just to
give it
right
back to
put
someone's
brand on
our body
-- when
we spent
centuries
praying
with
brands
on our
bodies,
and now
we pray
to get
paid for
brands
on our
bodies?
"There
has been
no war
that we
have not
fought
and died
on the
front
lines
of.
There is
no job
we
haven't
done,
there is
no tax
they
haven't
levied
against
us, and
we have
paid all
of them.
"But
freedom
is
always
conditional
here.
'You're
free!'
they
keeping
telling
us. 'But
she
would be
alive if
she
hadn't
acted
so…
free.'
Now,
freedom
is
always
coming
in the
hereafter,
but the
hereafter
is a
hustle:
We want
it now.
"Let's
get a
couple
of
things
straight.
The
burden
of the
brutalized
is not
to
comfort
the
bystander
--
that's
not our
job so
let's
stop
with all
that. If
you have
a
critique
for our
resistance
then
you'd
better
have an
established
record,
a
critique
of our
oppression.
"If you
have no
interest
in equal
rights
for
black
people
then do
not make
suggestions
to those
who do:
sit
down.
"We've
been
floating
this
country
on
credit
for
centuries,
and
we're
done
watching
and
waiting
while
this
invention
called
whiteness
uses and
abuses
us,
burying
black
people
out of
sight
and out
of mind
while
extracting
our
culture,
our
dollars,
our
entertainment
like oil
-- black
gold! --
ghettoizing
and
demeaning
our
creations
and
stealing
them,
gentrifying
our
genius
and then
trying
us on
like
costumes
before
discarding
our
bodies
like
rinds of
strange
fruit.
"Just
because
we're
magic
doesn't
mean
we're
not
real.
Thank
you."
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