00:00I spent my life singing about my country and where we have seceded and where we have come up short in living up to our civic ideals and our dreams.
00:22But things are happening right now in my home that are altering the very nature of my country's democracy and are too important to ignore.
00:38Every country, every home, each has their own problems.
00:53So first, let me thank you for indulging me in mine tonight.
01:00Thank you.
01:03Bless you.
01:09But in America, in America, my home, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent.
01:21This is happening now.
01:25In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world's poorest children to disease and death.
01:35This is happening now.
01:42In my country, they're taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers.
01:49They're rolling back historic civil rights legislation that's led to a more just society and that people fought and died for.
02:00They're abandoning their great allies and siding with dictators against their struggle and confusion.
02:12They're defunding American universities that won't bow down to their ideological demands.
02:18They are removing residents off American streets and without due process of law, deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons.
02:38This is all happening now.
02:45The majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue vote.
02:57They have no concern or idea for what it means to be deeply American.
03:13The American, the American that I've sung to you about for 50 years is real and regardless of its many faults, is a great country and is a great people and we will survive this moment.
03:32I have hope because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said.
03:45He said, in this world, there isn't as much humanity as one would like, but there's enough.
03:56that's a kind ofwriting culture.
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