00:00As I have looked forward to this morning, I have returned to the words of a man who I know
00:04is a hero to many here.
00:07Federico García Lorca.
00:10Córdoba, far and lonely, black pony, full moon, and olives in my pocket,
00:16although I know the roads, I'll never reach Córdoba.
00:20When García Lorca published Writer's Song nearly 90 years ago,
00:24the world, just as it is now, was in a moment of immense darkness and upheaval.
00:31Fascism crept across Europe.
00:34Here in New York, where García Lorca had found a deep resonance
00:37between the African-American poetry of Harlem and the flamenco of his native Spain,
00:43isolationism was the prevailing movement of the day.
00:46In Spain, as the Civil War raged, Franco's forces of repression perpetrated atrocities
00:51against those they deemed to be too left-wing.
00:55A year before Writer's Song was published, García Lorca was killed by Franco's men,
01:00executed by a firing squad.
01:02He was right.
01:03He never reached Córdoba.
01:05García Lorca never concealed his beliefs.
01:08He believed too deeply in the possibility of a better world.
01:11Today, nine decades later, those of us in this room hold the power to make that vision a reality.
