By Button Poetry
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Transcript provided by YouTube:
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your grandmother sips gin slow and a
00:05
speakeasy your great-grandmother slips
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sips gin slow and a speakeasy in Chicago
00:12
or Detroit Stokes the flames of a
00:14
pot-bellied stove in Alabama or Arkansas
00:17
she is cigarette fix the precipice of
00:20
red lips tells a suitor maybe your
00:23
great-grandfather maybe not what she
00:28
expects of his courting there will be no
00:30
hoarding pleasure in her house your
00:33
great-grandma was fast and ain’t that
00:39
what we call a woman well-acquainted
00:41
with the topography of a hostile world
00:43
yet unbowed to its back and a juke joint
00:47
majesty
00:48
a siren of her own fire a thing this
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world has endlessly tried to expire but
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could not which is why you are here
00:56
today
00:57
your grandmother cursed there never
01:01
cursed a drank our never drank new men
01:03
the way job new trials are never new sin
01:06
at all she was a country girl are
01:08
familiar with the infinite heat of a New
01:10
York City Street she was sweet on a
01:12
woman once they kissed and never told
01:14
she was Irish or Dominican or golden
01:17
brown as a Mississippi dirt road
01:19
glinting in the Sun she has labored
01:21
weather was hand or with heart she has
01:24
known part and parcel of struggle knew
01:27
she was done birthing after birthing the
01:29
child that birthed Jew or knew others
01:31
would follow
01:32
she has swallowed decades of broken
01:34
promises made to look like men or money
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she wished choice made flesh long before
01:40
we flung appro around its neck and
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called those words movement movement is
01:44
what she has always known prone to
01:47
survival which is why you are here today
01:54
your mother was never only your mother
01:57
never only lover or law clerk or
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domestic worker your mother was defiant
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in a bathrobe and slippers in a
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boardroom in a bedroom when she said no
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or yes or more with a body like the one
02:10
she taught you to own like your own good
02:13
name she has failed and flawed and
02:15
fortune forged in flame the best of what
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could be made of this star shine and
02:20
play an inheritance of blood and grace
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which is why you are here today and we
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call this evolution the way one person
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becomes seven billion by splitting an
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idea like an atom how the single notion
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that every woman ought to be the
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absolute mistress of her own body could
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gather us like rain water deliver us
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here queer and trans man woman none of
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the above but out loud love and the
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certainty that a true word spoken 100
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years later is still true you deserve
02:54
every option available to you in service
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towards your best life there is no light
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brighter than the blaze of resistance
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evolution is the insistence that we grow
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or die which is why we are here today
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redefining the way we see each other
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with broader vision carrying a
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great-grandmother’s mission forward like
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a seed tucked in the pocket of humanity
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we are not tasked with the awesome
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calling of making a tree we are tasked
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with the noble work of nurturing good
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soil a place where we each might grow in
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toil toward a self-determined truth with
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trans women undocumented youth little
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black boys playing alone in parks each
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make it home at night where the light of
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morning kisses us awake the work of
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evolution is not to figure out what the
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next 100 years will make the work of
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evolution is to plant the seed that from
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this precipice of history we simply
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cannot see or know but nevertheless will
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grow until you are the furthest point on
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a map of the future that looks 100 years
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back to a crowd that looks exactly and
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nothing like you or us but nevertheless
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I trust will say they are why I am here
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today and we will call that evolution
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[Applause]
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This post was previously published on YouTube and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video