00:01Ah, I had to put the right music on!
00:08Hey, this is Billy Porter, and this is my Essence Uncovered.
00:14To be the first gay man on the cover of Essence means so much to me.
00:19I'm home.
00:20What me being on this cover says to our community
00:24is that it's time for us to have a conversation,
00:26and a conversation that's based on humanity.
00:29Not on individual morals.
00:31And the two can co-exist.
00:33All of us can co-exist.
00:36The conversation is not about acceptance or tolerance.
00:40It's a demand for the respect for our humanity,
00:43just as we respect everybody else's.
00:45That's all a conversation is.
00:50When I was five years old, my parents sent me to a psychologist
00:53every Wednesday after kindergarten.
00:56My masculinity has been in question from the moment I could comprehend thought.
01:00My humanity has been up for legislation every single day of my life.
01:06I never saw an image of myself for a long, long time.
01:12We are all human beings, and we must treat each other as such.
01:16It's just that simple.
01:19I'm first generation post-civil rights movement.
01:23So Essence was one of our direct ways in to communicate as the larger community.
01:35It's always been very important to me, and it's always been very special to me.
01:39That's why this particular cover for me is so special.
01:46It really is.
01:47It's very hard to go through your life feeling unwanted, feeling dismissed, feeling oppressed from the outside.
01:57And then you turn to your people, and it's worse.
02:01It's nice.
02:03It's beautiful to see this conversation moving in a different direction,
02:08and cracking open to love and understanding.
02:13It won't close because it's inside, too.
02:15But I'm still in it, bitches.
02:19The vote is the one thing that we the people collectively have.
02:25It is on purpose that they, and there is a they, and an us.
02:31We didn't do it.
02:33They have set it up this way.
02:35And the reason why they create a space
02:39that makes it seem like our vote doesn't matter,
02:42that makes it difficult for us to do so,
02:46is because they know when we actually come out, they lose.
02:52There's no amount of gerrymandering.
02:54There's no amount of voter suppression
02:56that will hand this next election over to Orangina 45,
03:01except if we don't come out.
03:04We sat on our hands for Obama midterm, and look at what happened.
03:08We took our toys and went home last time
03:11because Bernie Sanders didn't get the nomination.
03:14So we sat out.
03:16This is what happens when you sit out.
03:19Register now.
03:20I don't care if you've never voted in your life.
03:23Vote this time.
03:24Because it might be your last.
03:27This is a country that's founded on thievery.
03:31Founded on slavery.
03:33The forefathers who wrote the Constitution owned slaves
03:39while they were writing it and didn't want to give them up.
03:42Please don't act like we're surprised by any of this.
03:44It's over and over and over and over and over again for centuries.
03:49I know for myself, I'm sick of it.
03:53Raise your voice.
03:55The time has come
03:58Shut it down!
03:59To stand for something
04:01Tony McJane!
04:02Hands up!
04:03No shoes!
04:04No jumpsuit!
04:05No peace!
04:06Or you'll fall for anything.
04:08You're back!
