"""I AM A MAN"" | Lili Haydn | TEDxKCWomen"
[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] h [Music] h [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh w [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you so much so that was a song from a film I scored called Anita about iconic gender Warrior Anita Hill on Whose shoulders the me too movement was born and also the last 25 years of the women's movement has been standing Anita said that sexual harassment is less about sex than it is about power domination of one over another and like so many of us in this room I'm a Survivor of sexual assault and and my experience was one of not being seen like I didn't matter and when you're there when you when you don't matter you're there to be dominated and I think that this is at the root of every issue we face whether it's economic inequality police brutality gun violence it's domination homophobia racism mass incarceration it's domination man-made climate change and the destruction of our water and air animal cruelty and Perpetual War it's domination one person or entity leveraging its position of power over another who it deems to be insignificant and all of our movements whether it's me too or lgbtq or black lives matter or the peace movement you name it we have something in common our fight for the right to be treated with respect and dignity and none of our movements will ever truly Triumph until we collectively move from a domination Paradigm to a paradigm of inclusion and compassion and respect for each other in our daily lives and for the other until we realize there is no other there's just us and this was never more profoundly and succinctly stated than in the signs of the s sanitation workers War when they marched with Martin Luther King I am a man if you don't know the history of these signs I want to give you a moment of History so in 1968 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement the sanitation workers in Memphis were living under subhuman conditions with dirt pay and no safety laws and two of the workers were crushed by a garbage truck with no reparation and that was the last straw they went on a Citywide strike and Martin Luther King flew into march with them and their signs their signs didn't say safer working conditions or higher wages they simply said I am a man and when I learned this I was completely blown away and I realized that these four words declare what the what's at the center of every movement what we're all saying I am here I will not be erased I will be counted so how do all of our movements come together to heal what can ultimately only be healed collectively without whitewashing or silencing important individual voices and experiences now is not a time for generalizations I know I think we do it around a central concept though concept of respect and dignity the crystallization of which is in these iconic signs I am a man so 50 years later can we learn from the direct unifying words of these Freedom Fighters not getting hung up on the word man with all du respect to these men's specific experience but rather can they be a Guiding Light around which we come together really seeing each other and hearing each other as one human family moving beyond domination and division into song [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] I am a I will be count the [Music] be free [Music] the brought me [Music] me oh yeah but you [Music] you can never k [Music] n [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] h [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] I I am a man I will [Music] brought me wants us to be [Music] free oh yes he does you can kill dream you can never K the dream oh [Music] [Applause] [Music]