I Can I show you what I’m proudest of? I Establish the first private orphanage in New York City I helped raise hundreds of children. I get to see them growing up. In their eyes I see you well, Alexander. I see you every time. And when my time is up, have I done enough? Will they tell no story? Oh, I can’t wait to see you again. It’s only a matter of time. The musical Hamilton opens with an orphan up against an empire from the first line. How does a bastard orphan son of a whore and a Scotsman dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by Providence and Poverish and Squalor grew up to be a hero and a scholar? Hamilton starts with an orphan that is ready to fight the British Empire. It has become an anthem for a new American Revolution. Why? Why? Because we dream at night. But our books, our TV shows, our movies, our comics, our musicals, our stories are our culture dreaming. And just as our dreams teach us something about ourselves, our stories are not an escape from our world. They are an invitation to go deeper into it. And as we go deeper into the story of Hamilton in American musical, we find that it is the story of an orphan versus an empire. In fact, when we look carefully, most of our favorite stories are about an orphan versus an empire. The orphan Harry Potter up against the Dark Lord Voldemort and his empire. The orphan Frodo Baggins up against the Empire of the Dark Lord Sauron. The orphan Darthy up against the Wicked Witch of the West. The quasi-orphan Katniss Everdeen up against the Empire of the Capital and its Hunger Games. The Game of Thrones is really about 12 orphans up against two empires. One of the living in King’s Landing, one of the dead north of the wall. The list is overwhelming. I’ve got a little list right here. Let’s see here. Aladdin, Simba, Snow White, the Doctor, Atreus, Sarah Connor, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Peter Pan, Dumbo, Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Wonder Woman, Dumbledore, Bilbo, Lyra, Bambi, Cinderella, Elsa, Jessica Jones, The Flash, The X-Men, The Green Arrow, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Captain America, all orphans up against respective tyrannies and empires. Woo! And then, and then in Star Wars we have the orphans Han Solo, Leia Organo, Jin Erso, Ahsoka, Rey, Obi-Wan, Finn, and of course Luke Skywalker up against the Empire. Lot of orphans. Hamilton starts with an orphan, Hamilton, and it ends with his widow, Eliza, opening in orphanage, proving what the musical has been saying the entire time, that America herself is in orphanage. A sanctuary. A sanctuary for those of us who have fled from our motherlands and our fatherlands and now coming together. We are here as a rag tag crew of orphans ready to fight the Empire of Patriarchy, with Patriarchy being a system, a zero sum system where the losers lose and the winners lose with the exception of very, very wealthy white men. Believe me, you have no idea how wealthy. Believe me. Believe me, I could do better impressions than that one. And I don’t even know where I’m going. By the way, I have 22 minutes, you guys have me on at 17, I don’t like being short change, what? Just up the time. All right, so, severe the heck are we? Oh yeah, right, I want to tell you a story. I’d like to use this time to tell you a story about the orphan and the Empire, about us, how we fit into that story, about the story that is the orphanage that is America, and her new American Revolution where we, the orphan heroes, step up and become the ones that we have been waiting for. That story starts on September 11th, 2001. Now from friends that told me firsthand, there was, who were there in the broken heart of New York, there was a breaking open, followed by a gritty sense of grace. America herself had been orphaned, and we were trying to find a sense of breaking open and had a different person been president and perhaps we could have broken open even more. But unfortunately, the Empire hijacked the tragedy of 9-11, creating infinitely more tragedies. They let bin Laden get away and their heinous acts of torture did nothing but help him recruit. Their illegal war in Iraq helped create ISIS and situations like this, which has ended up with the biggest refugee crisis since World War II. They also canceled out dissent, whether it was Phil Donahue or the Dixie Chicks or a child in a public school. Any one of us who questioned the Empire were told by Bill O’Reilly and Fox News that we hated America, when in fact we American patriots loved her. And we were put in a position of being orphans to America sent into exile. Now every great orphan story has a mentor that comes out. Alexander Hamilton meets George Washington. Harry Potter meets Albus Dumbledore. Luke Skywalker meets Obi-Wan Kenobi, who gives the Rebel Alliance a new hope. And in 2004, our mentor, our new hope, came in the form of Barack Hussein Obama. Obama gave us this feeling that we didn’t need to just focus on the Empire and shout, No, they can’t! When we could also, in addition to No, they can’t, tap into our soulful power by saying, Yes, we can. That we… Someone just did that. Yes, we can. That we are the ones that we have been waiting for. Shepard Ferry’s iconic image of Barack Obama shows a global citizen, an aspiration of where we are moving in this world of interdependence. What we learn about in terms of the force, the circle of life, Albus Dumbledore’s ideas of love, and with the magic of abracadabra, which is actually an ancient Arabic word, which means, I create as I speak. Obama created the chance for us to feel like we were a part of all of history and the world with those three magical words. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. You guys are good. Yes, we can. And with those three magical words, sometimes it felt like he was this magical mentor taking us into a freaking Disney movie, where he would show us a whole new world, a new fantastic point of view, no one to tell us no, or where to go, or say we’re only dreaming, a whole new world. And don’t you dare close your eyes to this with new horizons to pursue. We’re an aspiration that said, we want to be where the people are. We want to go. We want to see them dancing. Up where they walk, up where they run, up where they play all day under a non-threatening sun. And with a historic campaign, we actualized magic, allowing Michelle Obama to one day say, quote, I wake up every day in a house that was built by slaves. Yes, we did. Yes, we can. Fired up, ready to go. And with Obama coming in with an 84% approval rating and Bush leaving, it felt like we had transcended the patriarchy. We had transcended the hijacking of 9-11. But I forgot Professor Chilani’s prophecy in the third Harry Potter book. The dark lord will rise greater and more powerful than ever he was. I forgot that in 2008 Obama was not the only iconic face. There was one other that was tied with him. Heath Ledger’s The Joker. As America celebrated a new politics of health, the empire struck back with a politics of sickness, a politics of patriarchy, a politics of why so serious. In 2009, Donald Trump, who started his career by barring black people from housing, did not like that a black man had entered the White House. An alleged sexual abuser, Donald embodies so many, if not all, of the ideals of patriarchy. So now here we are. The empire has risen greater and more powerful than ever it was. So ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2017 American Hunger Games. Here in the American Hunger Games, we pit people into different districts and have them hate each other even though they’re all oppressed by the same group. We’ve got white working class people from Appalachia in District 12 who are learning to fear people of color in District 11, all to distract from who the real enemy is. The empire. The empire that said it was going to drain the swamp, only to fill it with the very Wall Street billionaires who made us broke in 2008, kicked us out of our homes, and had them, had us pay them bonuses to do it. The thing that’s remarkable about Donald Trump who is president of the American Hunger Games is that he did not mention much about what he was going to do as president. He did not mention that he was going to put the magic of our public schools into the hands of Dolores Umbridge. He didn’t mention that the head of national education would be a plagiarizer or the attorney general would be a person who just breaks the law for the entire Senate. I just found that out, that was crazy. He didn’t mention that his economic policies were really about make the middle class broke again, make jobs disappear again, make our coastal cities flood again, make ODing on heroin great at last, make Big Bird dead at last, make the arts dead at last, make science gone at last, and oh yeah, make America sick again. Not to mention make America hate again. Since Donald started his campaign, there has been a search of terrorist attacks and threats to Jews, Muslims, people of color, immigrants, those who are LBGTQ and countless others. He doesn’t mention that he’s too busy doing presidential things like getting angry at the cast of Hamilton and Meryl Streep. And then on Holocaust Remembrance Day, when Donald refused to mention that Jews were even killed in the Holocaust, President Steve Bannon issued a Muslim ban. And this is in the middle of the biggest refugee crisis we’ve had since World War II with orphan refugees like my ancestors in the 1890s who were fleeing pilgrims, searching for that great orphanage that is America, that was reaching out for the tired, the hungry, the huddled masses yearning to be brief free, and the Statue of Liberty, she wants to help, but she’s currently being forced, groped, and grabbed by Donald. And there is absolutely no justification for why, unless his tax returns show that he’s working for ISIS because they’ve been recruiting at a faster rate based on that Muslim ban. There is no reason why, no rational reason why, so then Kellyanne Conjob comes in and just makes some stuff up. I’ll get you my pretty with a terrorist attack that took place in alternative universe. I call it the Bowling Green Massacre. Alternative facts will make them sleep. Sleep. Now, to be fair to Ms. Conjob, it is true that she is a pathological liar, and it is true that she is a gaslighter. But really, to be fair, you know what, screw that, she tweets to Jew haters on Twitter that she loves them. Happy Valentine’s Day. Keep it up, boys. The same movement that hiled Trump after he won, the same movement that’s been threatening to blow up Jewish children in JCCs, in the cabinet that has questionable affiliations. Silly Benin, Prince said, let’s party like it’s 1999, not 1939. You got the year off by one digit. Or maybe your ideology can be best summed up by Bruce Wayne’s mentor Alfred. Some men just want to watch the world burn. My Jewish grandfather was sent by a White House to defeat the Nazis, only for a White House to be run by one. And Donald’s not even happy. He’s pacing around the Oval Office with the only family photo of a father who never loved him. Like Tom Riddle in Anakin Skywalker, Donald Trump is an orphan, a figurative orphan, who’s chosen empire. President Benin taught him that he doesn’t really need the love of a father if he could have a fatherland. And this un-American fatherland has shown us that they have one ace up their sleeve. The reason we can never forget the Bowling Green Massacre is because it teaches us something. Something a great author once said, decent people are so easy to manipulate, Potter. The only thing more powerful than a fake terrorist attack is a real one. And if the empire led by Bush and Cheney was able to so successfully hijack the tragedy of 9-11, I shudder to think what would happen if ISIS were to attack while Donald is president. The ministry has fallen. Obama is gone. Benin’s brown shirts are coming. And Obama’s final address as sitting president in his one last time, he said, I’m asking you to believe, not in my ability to create change, but in yours. We did what so many of our orphan heroes do in stories. We misinterpreted the words of our mentor. When we heard him say, we are the ones that we have been waiting for, we heard it as he is the one that we have been waiting for. Now, there is a moment in every orphan’s story where the orphan meets the mentor. And then there’s a moment in that epic where the orphan loses the mentor. And there’s this terrible feeling re-experiencing orphanhood that comes with that. And then there’s a moment where the voice of the mentor speaks through the orphan more powerful than the empire could have ever imagined. Indeed Obi-Wan speaks through Luke, Mufasa speaks through Simba, Harry says that Dumbledore will only be gone so long as there are none that are loyal to him. The concept of the global citizen, the concept of interconnectivity and love is only gone so long as there are none that are loyal to the notion that we are the ones that we have been waiting for. Enter the women’s march. On Friday, January 20th, 2017, we should have inaugurated a woman as president and broken a glass ceiling. But then we became the ones that we have been waiting for. Because the next day, Saturday, January 21st was the women’s march where we inaugurated women as the presidents of the United States of Resistance. And that march is only beginning, going towards the year 2020, the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage. And through this march and these next four years and from on, we will not let women, the presidents of the United States of Resistance, be silenced any longer. And I feel humbled to serve at the pleasure of my presidents, the women of America. The march continues. There are so many ways to get involved. Here’s a couple. Number one, check out Indivisible. Read that guide. Indivisibleguide.com. Join a group in your local area. Number two, check out women’s march.com. Number three, check out resistancecalendar.org. Number four, we lead Congress Follows. Download the app called Five Calls. It will actually tell you what to say. It’s always nerve-wracking to call Congress at first. It’ll tell you what to say. It will direct you directly to your congressperson. Don’t just call them once in a while. It is our obligation to call our congressperson every single day. And every month, go to their office in person. They are feeling it. It is working. Number five, given that Donald has put us in a position to make Americans killed again with his incompetent strategy regarding both the environment and national security, it is essential in the American spirit of self-reliance that we take care of each other. We need to get training and nonviolent resistance. We need to get training on how to protect our immigrant neighbors. We need to get training in community emergency response or cert training in the wake of a terrorist attack or a natural disaster. Number six, our neighbors are also Trump supporters. Some of them are our family. We need to connect, not just here, but here. Take walks. Break bread. Ask about a teacher that woke them up to something. Ask them about where their ancestors come from. Let’s re-humanize each other rather than continue this process of dehumanizing each other. Let’s bring the districts together and remember who the real enemy is. Number seven, patience and persistence. It is so important that we remember, people keep saying it is true, that this is a marathon, not a sprint. Find a group, whether it is in your family or your friends or your neighbors that supports you, that you have self-care and remembers the words of that mentor, Barack Obama. In the wake of this daunting defeat, we can look to his words, in the wake of his New Hampshire defeat in the primary, 2008. Quote, we know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change. We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics, and they will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks and months to come. We’ve been asked to pause for a reality check. We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. Yes, we can, and yes, we will, and yes, we can look to our great favorite stories of the orphan and the empire, from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games to Hamilton. Hamilton begins with an orphan, it ends with an orphanage, and it leaves us with America, you great unfinished symphony you sent for me, a place where even orphan immigrants can leave their fingerprints and rise up. You great unfinished symphony. July 4th, 1776 was merely an opening salvo to the great unfinished symphony that is the American Revolution, and it has continued with abolitionists, suffragettes, feminists, environmentalists, climate change activists, civil rights workers, education activists, immigrant rights activists, entrepreneurs, LGBTQ activists, and on and on and on we continue, we march on, that revolution continues, yes we can continue in the wake of the Muslim ban. I took this picture in DC. This is the moment I trained for in Hebrew school. This is the moment that all Jews have trained for. This is the moment for all Christians who reject Steve Bannon’s praising of Satan. This is the moment for all Muslims to recall that this country has embraced their faith since Thomas Jefferson. This is the moment that all Harry Potter fans have trained for. There is a resistance and the resistance is a resurgence and the resurgence is part of the evolving American Revolution. A new American Revolution, a new American Revolution where we, the orphans, we, the people of the United States of America, will not go quietly into the night for today is our Independence Day. I always wanted to say that. Today is our Independence Day. Today and every day from here on out is our Interdependence Day to each other. This is the moment when American Jews step up and speak out against the Muslim ban. This is the moment when American Muslims step up and help heal Jewish cemeteries and protect Jewish community centers. And that is what’s been happening. That is what’s been happening. This is the moment when we remember what Gandhi said that we cannot heal something if we cannot see it. Well, thank you, Donald, because now we can see it. Now we can see the fear. We can see the hatred in that wall. But those of us who have read Harry Potter know that the platform, just like the wall, the platform nine and three quarters, the barrier, oh my God, the barrier at the platform nine and three quarters is a secret doorway. There’s no such thing as walls. There’s only secret doorways waiting to be discovered. And we will use our courage to open that cowardly wall. Yes, we can, and yes, we will. We will continue to remember our lines as we get flustered and we are wrapping up. I promise you, I promise, believe me, you have no idea how much we’re wrapping up. We will remember that something that this administration doesn’t understand. They are the patriarchy’s last gasps. I mean, let’s be real for a second here. This time, the Empire sent us an emperor who literally inspired the creation of Biff Tannen, the thuggish bully in Back to the Future, whose plans always end with him covered in manure. And here’s the thing about manure. Don’t eat it. But it can be turned into fertilizer. Yes, we can turn this shit into fertilizer. Yes, we can, and yes, we will. Yes, we can, and yes, we will. It’s true. It’s true. The election of a Nazi sympathizing White House has shaken us to our core. And thank fucking goodness we have a beautiful core. And that core will renew our world. That core will say no to the American Hunger Games. That core will be a new American revolution where the bad hombres are bad ass. The nasty women are our leaders. The blacks in their so-called inner cities are leading black lives matter. And the so-called poorly educated say public education matters. The air of our children matters. When people are murdered in mosques, it matters. Muslims matter, Christians matter, Jews matter, all faiths matter. Gold star parents matter, veterans matter, science matter, facts matter, healthcare matters, civil rights matter, our security and our safety and our law and order, yeah, our actual law and our actual order matter. We all matter. We in the new American Revolution remember. We remember that in the story of the orphan and the empire always bet on us, always bet on we, the orphans, and our orphanage that is America because in the end we are going to win. And to the terrorists in the White House, too soon, so close. To the terrorists in the White House, we know, we all know that while you ignore the terrorist attacks against Jews and Muslims, while you even promote them oddly enough, we know that the second that there is a terrorist attack by a person who is fundamentalist and rejects American ideas and has brown skin, you will want us to unite around you. No, no. We will unite around each other. We will unite around America. We will not allow you to pray on our fear. We will stand together and pray for our love. Yes we can and yes we will. God bless the United States of America and God bless the new American Revolution.