Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. I stand before you as the President of National Action Network. We do not endorse candidates, but we report where candidates stand on criminal justice, economic empowerment, health equity, and other issues. On one side of this race, is Donald Trump, a fellow New Yorker I’ve known for 40 years. Only once, once in that time did he take a position on racial issues. He spent a small fortune on four-page ads calling for the execution of five innocent young teenagers. Well, I’m going to bring them out in a minute and you’ll hear from them tonight because they were not executed, they’re here to continue to fight. But it was there that I saw Trump love to fan racial flames.
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On the other side is a woman that I’ve walked with in Selma Alabama to commemorate the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Kamala Harris spoke to me that day about unity and passing bills. All I ever heard from Donald Trump was how he could get an advantage. I see one candidate who wants to protect the right to vote while the other has tried to cook up 11,000 votes in Georgia. I see a candidate who with Joe Biden brought leaders to the White House to confront violent hatred running against a man who said neo-Nazis in Charlottesville were fine people.
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I see a candidate who has sought to reform and uphold the law, and a man who wrongly assumes his mugshot appeals to Black Americans. I work with Kamala Harris, in every job she’s had she has consistently committed to making government work for those of us who’ve been disadvantaged. All Donald Trump has been consistent about is making himself richer and sowing division to get that done. This man sat right here in Chicago a few weeks ago refusing to apologize for claims that migrants were taking Black jobs. Well, in November, we going to show him when Blacks do their job. And we are going to join with whites and browns and Asians, and we are going to do a job on those that have done a job on us.
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Tonight, we are going to realize Shirley Chisholm’s dream. 52 years ago, I was one of the youth directors in her campaign for president, and 52 years after she was told to sit down, I know she’s watching us tonight as a Black woman stands up to accept the nomination for President of the United States. We have fought too hard for women to be told to get out of the kitchen. We are now on our way to the Oval Office. We won’t go back. We fought hard for LGBTQ loved ones to get out the closet. We won’t go back. We fought hard for the right to choose, the right to education, we suffered and died and bled, went to jail to get the right to vote. We won’t go back.
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So we must be committed. No matter how the Supreme Court tries to roll back on civil, no matter what the amount of money they have, we are here because others fought and suffered for us. And we vow tonight we won’t go back. This November, we will go forward to fulfill the promise of a just and fair nation. And let me say, as we transition, I’m a preacher and in Psalms it says, weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. We’ve endured January 6th. We’ve enjoyed conspiracy theories. We’ve endured lies and areas of darkness. But if we stay together, Black, white, Latina, Asian, Indian American, if we stay together, joy, joy, joy, joy coming in the morning.