00:00Hi. Y'all look great.
00:21I'm here with my brother Alfonso, President and CEO of the Global Black Economic Forum.
00:31We stand before you as a unit.
00:37Alfonso, will you start by just, so we gave each other a nickname.
00:44What was your nickname?
00:46Justice.
00:47What was mine?
00:48Joy.
00:49What did we mean by that?
00:51Tell them.
00:52She's Joy.
00:54I'm Justice.
00:56We were tagged by a very good friend, Deshunda Brown Duckett, the President and CEO of TIAA.
01:11And that tag means something to all of you in this room.
01:16We're here at a moment in our history where you may be feeling fatigued.
01:24Let's call it for what it is.
01:27Yeah.
01:28Yeah.
01:29I'm tired.
01:30I'm tired of black not being respected.
01:34I'm tired of us feeling like because we're on a justice fight, we can't be on a joy journey.
01:42What me and my brother Alfonso are here to represent with you when we say we are joy and justice is that we don't, there's apparently somebody really important about to speak.
01:57That's the rumor spreading around right now as Alfonso and I were in the back talking about how we wanted to come up here because of what's happening in the Supreme Court, because of what's happening in New Orleans right now.
02:14What we decided is rather than focus on who's coming to speak, who we are super proud of, we would focus on the community and give them a call to action.
02:24Oh, yeah.
02:26And the call to action is really simple.
02:29We're going to give you an audacious set of permissions to fully exist at the intersection of joy and justice.
02:39And let us expand in a little bit more detail what that means.
02:45I run the global black economic forum.
02:49Global.
02:50Black.
02:51Economic.
02:52Forum.
02:53And stuff.
02:54Right?
02:55And that's about economic opportunity.
02:58That's about economic justice.
03:00All of you should go to our website and learn why we're doing this work.
03:05We're doing this work because we know that we're under attack.
03:09And when you're under attack and you retreat, what happens?
03:16They win by forfeit.
03:19And they're not going to win by forfeit.
03:21We're going to fight.
03:22I think of my great, great, great grandfather who was a slave in Arkansas.
03:27Left and went back to Liberia.
03:30And then my parents came and immigrated here as refugees in this country.
03:34I'm not retreating.
03:36Not as a black man.
03:39Not as a gay man.
03:40I'm not retreating.
03:41Not doing it.
03:43And while my brother's not retreating, I'm going to have a good time.
03:51Which is why I'm justice.
03:54And I'm joy.
03:56And let me tell you what joy means.
03:58Joy means this sea of black faces are part of the largest festival in the country by per day.
04:08Attendance.
04:09Not largest black festival, but largest festival.
04:13That is blackity, blackity, blackity, black, black.
04:16And for three days, some of y'all took more time off from work, and I'm not going to tell your boss.
04:27But the festival is technically three, four-ish, seven days.
04:31I'll sound whatever note you need me to.
04:38I will lie for y'all.
04:40That's how much I love you.
04:42But what you get to do as we fight and not retreat, is you get to come to this city, New Orleans, and you get to come.
04:53Who was on the blackest plane that came in?
04:56I'm going to find out which plane was the blackest plane that came into New Orleans.
05:00Because I know y'all counted.
05:02I'm going to ask the pilots.
05:05They know.
05:06But what happened is, you descended upon New Orleans.
05:10And you came here because when you come here, you don't have to help people Google what we're celebrating.
05:20You don't have to have a disclaimer for your blackness.
05:26You don't have to lessen it for the person next to you to be comfortable.
05:31You just get to show up and speak to people without words.
05:35And embrace family you've never met.
05:38And be told you're cute and handsome.
05:40And show your ass.
05:42So, Caroline.
05:46What?
05:47Rev. Al Sharpton is in his audience.
05:51He right there.
05:52Hey, Rev.
05:53Rev.
05:54So, you can't steal sermons because he's in this audience.
05:57Well, I'm a D plus Christian.
06:00So, that's the saint.
06:02I'm the ain't.
06:03But let me close with this.
06:05He's working on me.
06:06He ain't done with me yet.
06:08But my point is this.
06:10We will fight together.
06:13We will celebrate together.
06:17And however you're feeling based on what may have happened yesterday, today, or a hundred years ago.
06:23You are in the safest place to be black.
06:26So, be black.
06:28And then, just take that little thing out of the hotel room, whatever thing you were planning to steal anyway.
06:39And I want you to walk around for the next three days and just fill it up.
06:43And then I want you to put it in your pocket and go back and be the best black where you came from.
06:48Right.
06:49Close us out.
06:50I'll close us out by saying I want to give a very, very, very special thank you to a man with a vision and tenacity and drive.
07:03A brother of mine, Richelieu Dennis.
07:06He my brother too.
07:08He doesn't want to come on stage.
07:10He doesn't like stages.
07:11But he deserves the respect, the recognition for what he's done and continues to do to elevate and amplify black culture.
07:19And I want to close with that because we need to support each other and we need to also recognize that sometimes our heroes are standing right next to us.
07:29Have a great time.
07:30Listen to what's about to happen.
07:31Enjoy!
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