I’m Jada. Everybody say, “Hey, Jada.” Everybody say, “Hi, Jada!”

I’m here in support of you. I’m here with you with a smile on my face because we’re here in support of truth, in support of love, in support of justice. This might be a sad moment for some as you recount things that happened in Odisha, in Gujarat.

Thank you to the Muslim community. We sympathize with you. I’m glad that you are here. And one thing that the Muslim brother said is that we are the majority if you add us all up. This is one thing that el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, peace be upon him — some know him as Malcolm X — this is what his ideology was after his pilgrimage to Mecca, is that we all are one. That we all are under one God.

I, as a black man, have a specific experience with the KKK in Louisiana, through politics, through ideologies, only one generation removed from Jim Crow. There’s something about melanin. Melanin has a genetic memory to it. So as I stand here with some of my brothers, the Dalits — the blacks of India — and some of them are darker than me, I have to be inspired by some of the light-skinned activists, like Huey P. Newton. So, some of these Dalits are darker than me.

This melanin, it has a memory, it won’t allow you to just lay down when your fathers, when your uncles, when your daughters have been abused. There’s something about that melanin that just won’t let you take a submissive posture. In the black community, we used to have this thing, “hands up, don’t shoot,” but that’s a submissive posture. Then there’s a trend where people are kneeling, but that’s a submissive posture. So I would prefer to stand here with you.

So I say, “One Mulnivasi. Black power.” We are here with you.

There’s something about melanin. There’s something about truth. There’s something about justice. There’s something about accountability. There’s something about holding people for their actions. So we’re here to hold the RSS, the BJP, the VHP for their actions.

We’re here to protest against any normality that may be presented, any normality that Hindu policy is okay, that Hindu policy should be normal.

I want you all to look past the propaganda as they talk about education and changing. I want you to have pride in your Indian heritage, just like I have pride in my specific heritage, and in your Indian heritage, one thing they want to do is they want Indians to be better represented in textbooks. But see, what they really want to do is they want to rewrite Indian history, where mythological rivers are presented as real, where Hindu philosophy is presented as the norm, and minorities are presented as “less than.”

So you need to stand against that type of propaganda, because I have a genetic melanin memory as my forefathers stood against it, just one generation removed from the Black Panthers. One generation removed from the Dalit Panthers. We’ve been standing together, and we’re going to continue standing together. I’m here with you. Are you here with me?

Part II

I’m here standing in a country that is supposed to be a free country, but I’m standing with people who are here asking today for a simple thing, which is freedom. Is that true? What do we want? When do we want it?

Are we asking for murder? Are we here perpetuating hatred? Are we asking for people to be tortured and terrorized? No, we are here advocating on behalf of victims of murder, on behalf of victims of torture, on behalf of victims of abuse. We are here today because we are standing against hatred. Against hatred. Against the Hindutva.

We are here standing in favor of everyone who has lost. We are standing here in favor of everyone who is locked up. For the political prisoners who have not been released, who have already served their sentences. For the Muslims who have been convicted of no other crime than being Muslim. For those who were born the wrong color, the wrong caste, the wrong last name, the wrong place.

For those people, we stand here. For those who have been chopped down. For those who have been laid down, we stand. For those who have been brought to their knees, we stand. For those who have been crumpled, and stepped down, and trampled on again and again, we stand. And we’re here today because we want one thing. What do we want? When do we want it?