Transcriber: Eunice Tan Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
"Hands up," they said.
Everyone knows to just "Yes, sir," "No, sir."
"No, sir, I don't know why I'm being pulled over."
"Sir, I know I don't look like you, but can you help me anyway?"
How are we supposed to feel safe
when our protection is determined by how we tiptoe around common procedure?
Ladies and gentlemen, that is a poem by one of our own, Janai Keita,
a poem that embodies the very real situation going on
between the African-American community and police today.
For those of you who think
that this is a situation that has just sprung out of thin air,
that is not the case.
Due to the rise in social media and technology
that is so prevalent in our society
through Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, taking videos on our cell phones -
we have too much by the way to keep it in our cell phones -
we're able to see these situations take place,
see what goes wrong, see what happens,
and amend these situations.
Having said that, for those of you who think there's no solution
to these problems between the African-American community and police,
that is not the case.
There is so much that we can do with law enforcement, with ourselves
to fix these situations.
Let's go through them.
Now, the first way the police can build better relations
with the African-American community
is by having better training and better reactions
in situations of conflict.
This is so key because so many of the situations we see
are caused due to problems with the confidence of these situations.
By a show of hands, who's heard of the story of Dontre Hamilton?
Show of hands, okay?
Okay, a couple of people.
Dontre Hamilton was a 31-year-old man from Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
who was shot after sleeping on a park bench.
Now, some background information on the story, real quick,
because that sounds kind of crazy.
Now, on April 30th, 2014,
Dontre Hamilton was sleeping on a park bench across from a Starbucks,
minding his own business, doing his thing, taking a nap.
I take naps all the time.
I'm a college student; I know how it feels.
But he was sleeping across the bench,
and the Starbucks called the police for whatever reason they had.
Now, two officers came to the scene.
They patted him down, did what they had to do,
and that was it.
Now, another officer came to the scene, by the name of Christopher Manney.
Now, Christopher Manney was unlike the first two officers.
Manney came, patted him down, and frisked him immediately.
Now, Hamilton had a history of mental illness -
schizophrenia, to, you know, to be exact.
So we didn't take this lightly.
Now, Hamilton tried to fight off Officer Manney,
which led Officer Manney to take his baton, tries to do Hamilton,
which led Hamilton to grab the baton and try and hit Manney,
and led Manny to shoot Dontre Hamilton 14 times,
killing him.
Now, just think about all the facts of the situation so far.
We have a man here with a history of mental illness
who wasn't doing anything to anybody,
taking a nap.
We had two officers come to the scene on a police call that was irrelevant.
And we had an officer who,
in blatant disregard of the law,
ended this man's life.
Hamilton was a son, he was a brother, he was an uncle, he was a cousin.
He was a human being.
And his life ended because a man who was entrusted to protect his life
didn't do so.
In the words of Brian Davis,
"This man did not protect Hamilton; he protected the community from him."
This is a situation that should have never happened.
And I say this to law enforcement, first and foremost -
frisking gets us nowhere in our society.
Not only is it unconstitutional,
it adds to the systematic oppression
that African Americans face in the United States of America.
Am I right or wrong? I'm correct.
Number two -
we need to end these situations of conflict
without the use of a trigger.
We shouldn't have to kill anybody for every single little thing.
This man had a history of mental illness.
We should be able to break down these situations
and find out, you know, what's going on and really see what's happening.
Police are some of the most highly trained people
in the United States today.
We have to figure out ways to de-escalate the situation
so that they don't happen.
Now, number two -
the demilitarization of police.
You know, when I was researching for this talk, I was doing my research,
I saw some facts that were just so intriguing.
In England and Wales,
for the past 24 years, from 1991 to 2015,
the past 24 years,
they've seen 55 deaths at the hands of police officers.
In the United States alone,
in the first three months of 2017,
we have seen 219 deaths at the hands of police officers.
We need to do better.
We need to find better ways to demilitarize our police
because they are not meant to act in the way of the military.
Now, who's heard of Michael Brown?
Heard of his case - raise your hand.
So almost everybody here - I'm glad.
Doing your history - I like that. Good job, guys.
So following Michael Brown's death, we saw a lot of protests,
both, you know, peaceful and violent.
Now, following these violent protests in Ferguson, Missouri,
which is where Brown died,
we saw police come in
to try and, you know, de-escalate these situations a little bit.
And police came into Ferguson, Missouri,
with tear-gas shotguns and armored tanks.
A Midwestern suburb no larger than the size of Penn State
has no business with this type of artillery.
At all.
I've never seen a tank in my neighborhood -
I'm from the suburbs - never seen one.
I hope you guys don't see one.
But we shouldn't do that.
We shouldn't have to have that type of artillery in here.
We need to demilitarize our police
and separate it from our military
because they're not one and the same.
Now, number three -
we need police that reflect the communities that they are policing,
meaning a majority African-American community
should have African-American police
or a majority Latino community should have Latino police.
And I understand situations
where there aren't enough people or ethnicities or stuff to go around.
I get that.
And if that's the case, we need police that can empathize with these people.
A lot of these communities have gone through so much -
Ferguson, Baltimore.
We need police that understand these communities.
The Black Lives Matter movement is not a terrorist organization.
Peaceful protests are peaceful for a reason.
They aren't disturbing the peace -
they're peaceful for a reason.
We need to realize that in our society.
Now, a story about this that I just wanted to tell.
I just thought about it five minutes ago before I came on my talk.
When I was in fifth grade,
Barack Obama was running for the President of the United States,
and he successfully became the president.
And being a young African-American male, this was a big thing for me especially.
And I'll never forget this day.
So we were watching the inauguration in class,
and a kid who I went to elementary school with
told me Barack Obama -
or told me that his father, who was a law enforcement officer,
said Barack Obama only won the election because all the "N-words" voted for him.
I'm in fifth grade, a 10-year-old hearing that.
And I don't wish that on anybody.
We shouldn't have law enforcement officers saying those things to their children,
saying those types of things in general.
They aren't meant to do that.
Now, this kid lived, what, five minutes away from me.
He could have been policing my own community.
I'm grateful that he doesn't,
but it doesn't stray away from the fact that he still could have.
We need police that understand these communities
and understand what's going on in these communities.
Now, the black community and police.
The first way that the black community can build better relations with police
is knowing our rights and abiding by the law.
This is so key because if you knowingly and willingly do something wrong,
you will get arrested, I promise you.
I won't bail you out - I'm a broke college student -
I know I won't do that.
But I'm telling you that it will happen.
I was talking about the protest.
Arson, looting, rioting, violent protests -
these are surefire ways to get you arrested,
to get you in trouble, to get you in jail.
Don't do it. Stay away from it.
I say this to every African American in the building right now:
never give a police officer a reason to arrest you or get you in trouble.
Ever.
Under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution,
we're protected against unreasonable searches and seizures.
And for people that look like me - that have melanin in their skin -
that was confirmed in 1964.
So if you know you haven't done anything wrong,
you have nothing to worry about.
Because if a cop searches your car, searches your house,
they'll be searching for a job after that because that's unconstitutional.
We have to understand that when we are in a good place
and we do stuff right,
when we're good activists in our community,
there's nothing to fear.
The number two way the black community can build better relations with police
is by realizing there are good cops out there.
Now, I know I started off kind of hard.
Sorry to any cops in the building - I love you guys.
But, you know, this was hard for me to understand.
I'll tell you a story.
So when I was 16 -
you know, 16, you're a teenager,
you think you're cool, you're kind of fire-full.
That's exactly how I was - I'm not going to lie to you.
So I'm from Long Island, New York.
I went on a little college visit in the city, New York City.
And I hadn't gone to the city too much - in Manhattan - when I was there,
but I wanted to act like I did, so I did what I had to do.
One thing that's bad about me is I'm always on my phone.
My mom is in the audience - she'll tell you -
"Get off your phone! You're always on your phone!"
I'm always on my phone.
So when I got to where I wanted to go,
my phone died, obviously,
and I got lost.
And the only person I knew
that would know where to get me to where I needed to go -
it was a cop.
I was scared because it was 2014.
2014 was the height of so many of these situations.
But, you know, I had to do what I had to do.
So I went up to the cop, told them what was going on.
And this cop showed me so much support and love
that I'll never forget it.
I wondered why I was scared,
because he told me where I wanted to go,
said good luck in school, good luck with your college, all of that.
Now, not everybody might have this kind of situation that I did.
But it's important to realize
that a lot of these cops are trying to protect us.
I have family friends and friends in the military and in law enforcement
that know how they're being portrayed in the media.
They want to do better,
and they want us, the African-American community,
to have better relations with them,
to trust them.
It's hard because of how the media portrays them,
but it's important to know a majority of these police want to help us,
want to protect and serve their communities.
It's important for us to know that.
Now, the number three way, and the last way,
that the black community can build better relations with police
is by being leaders in our community, being leaders in our society.
How can we be united to other communities when we aren't even united ourselves?
Now, one conversation that I always have is about the Black Lives Matter movement,
and something that always comes up is black-on-black crime.
It breaks my heart to hear that
because there's so much that we're doing to amend that.
But when we're doing things we shouldn't be doing
and breaking each other down,
all of that is negated.
Here's an example.
Myself, Demetrius Green, Marquis McBride, and Isaiah Chatman
last semester started the Men of Excellence program.
And what that does
is it builds up young black men to be leaders in our society.
It raises us up so that we know that we can run the world -
sorry, girls, but boys, "Who run the world? Boys!" -
(Laughter)
as young black men.
Just a couple weeks ago,
myself and many student leaders had a water drive for Flint, Michigan.
We raised over 3,000 bottles and almost $300 in donations,
which will be going to Flint in just two days.
By the way, we did that in four days -
four short days, by the way.
There's so much we're doing in our community, but listen:
if we're not united, no community can see us as united.
We need to be united in ourselves.
I say this to every young African American listening to this talk,
whether here or anywhere.
There is no limit to your success; there is nothing that you can't achieve.
My adviser, Fred Hodges, once said,
"Our deepest struggles are our greatest teachers."
No matter what you've gone through,
there is always something to get out of that situation.
There's always a way to better yourself.
And I say this to anybody
who thinks that something like this is impossible:
here's your answer.
Thank you.
(Applause)