“thank you, thank you, that is uh, that’s incredibly kind thank you so much, they only gave me a few minutes so, I want to say a very special thanks to Miss Viola Davis who is nominated tonight in doing this, thank you, thank you, I really appreciate it to the board of governors especially to Whoopi Goldberg Ava, you know when I set out to help someone uh it is my intention to do just that, I’m not trying to do anything other than meet somebody at their humanity like uh case in point this one time I remember I was maybe it was about 17 years ago I rented this building and we were using it for production and I was walking to my car one day and I see this woman coming up out of the corner of my eye, and I say she’s homeless let me give her some money judgment I wish I had time to talk about judgment, anyway I reach in my pocket and I’m about to give her the money she said excuse me sir do you have any shoes it stopped me cold because I remember being homeless and having one pair of shoes and they were bent over at the hills, so it’s like yeah so I took her into the studio, she was hesitant to go in but we went in we go to wardrobe and there are all these boxes and everything around the walls and fabrics and cracks of clothes so we ended up having to stand in the middle of the floor, so as we’re standing there wardrobe we find some shoes we help her put him on, I stand up, I’m waiting for her to look up and all this time she’s looking down, she finally looks up she’s got tears in her eyes she said “thank you Jesus my feet are off the ground” in that moment I just I recall her saying to me, I thought you would hate me for asking, I’m like how can I hate you when I used to be you, how can I hate you, when I had a mother who grew up in a Jim Crow South in Louisiana Rural, Louisiana right across the border from Mississippi who at nine or ten years old was grieving the death of emmett hill, as she got a little bit older she was grieving the death of the civil rights boys, and the little girls who were in the bombing in Alabama she grieved all this all these years and I remember being a little boy and coming home and she was at home like what are you doing at home you’re supposed to be at work she was in tears that day, she said “there was a bomb threat and she couldn’t believe that someone wanted to blow up this place where she worked, where she took care of all these toddlers”, it was the Jewish community center, my mother taught me to refuse hate, she taught me to refuse blanket judgment and in this time and with all of the internet and social media and algorithms and everything that wants us to think, a certain way the 24-hour news cycle it is my hope, that all of us would teach our kids and not only to remember just refuse hate don’t hate anybody I refuse to hate someone because they are Mexican or because they are black or white or lbgtq, I refuse to hate someone because they are a police officer, I refuse to hate someone because they are Asian, I would hope that we would refuse hate and I want to take this gene Herschel Humanitarian Award and dedicate it to anyone who wants to stand in the middle, no matter what’s around the wall stand in the middle because that’s where healing happens, that’s where conversation happens, that’s where change happens it happens in the middle, so anyone who wants to meet me in the middle to refuse hate, to refuse blanket judgment and to help lift someone’s feet off the ground, this one is for you too god bless you and thank you Academy I
appreciate it.”
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