00:00I want to move to Brittany Griner for a moment because I was at the brunch in Minneapolis where we really could not talk about it.
00:06So it's refreshing to be able to have this conversation and hear it here today.
00:10For you, I mean, as someone who knows her, as someone who played in the league, as a front office exec at this time,
00:18what can you express to people who don't understand the weight of what this is so that they can act as you asked us to do today?
00:24Like, I'm tired of hearing this conversation around and people trying to change it into, she shouldn't have done this.
00:33She shouldn't have done that.
00:34And as black women, we're never giving grace to say, maybe we did something that was right.
00:40Maybe we weren't in the wrong.
00:41It's all automatic judgment.
00:42We have to stop judging and understand that she is being held right now against her will.
00:47That is not okay.
00:51We have to understand she needs to be home.
00:54And I thank God for my father, who 30-plus years in the Marine Corps, prepared me months ago for what was coming.
01:02And he told me, continue to yell from the rafters because this doesn't change unless our country feels that Brittany is deemed good enough to be able to come home.
01:11Until every day when I wake up and I'm watching the news and every television station and they have at least a segment to mention her name.
01:18We are not there yet.
01:19But somebody can go and be a different athlete, have a different complexion, no melatonin, and then they're more important.
01:29We have to stop letting our black women not feel like they exist in this country.
01:34We have to make sure that Brittany knows we love her, but we want her home.
01:38We have to make sure our government officials here and all around the world know she deserves to be home.
01:44And I think that is the biggest thing for me.
01:46It's a hard stop for me when people start talking about, well, she brought this in.
01:49She did this.
01:50It's like you'd rather go to the negative to try to figure out, to make it her fault,
01:55than understanding that a whole country that's at war is holding an Olympian, a beautiful person,
02:01somebody that should be home with her wife right now, with her family, and it's a trauma.
02:08The trauma which she may endure is with...
02:11And that's what nobody's really talking about.
02:13It's hard for me.
02:14That's hard, and it's not right.
02:16And so I just encourage everybody, do your part, whatever you can do.
02:20You might post a million times on social media, talk to somebody.
02:23You're a local official.
02:24Even if they're not, just to put a bug in their ear so that when there comes time and there's
02:28conversations in those rooms, they can understand that you care about it as a citizen.
02:33Thank you for that.
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