Today, I want to tell you a story about fearlessness, how I face it, and it starts back in 2017. So some of the speakers mentioned the Women’s March. Make some noise if you’re familiar with the Women’s March. Okay. So this is where I’m going to begin my tell. So the Women’s March in 2017, Washington, D.C. I got to perform. It was incredible during that time because, as you know, the nation was pretty afraid. In that moment, seeing, for me, 500,000 plus pink hats out there, all these different media outlets, millions of viewers, I was like, okay, this is the time I’m going to exemplify fearlessness. Why? Because I knew where I came from. And also in this time, why be afraid? We don’t know what the future is holding. There’s no point to curl up and die. We have to be brave. So in that moment, I hit the stage. I see all these people. I couldn’t help but think of a post I seen on social media. Before I could even utter a word, mind you, it’s a sea of hats. I thought about my ancestors, but most importantly, I thought about what this post said. This post was warning, for my friend, warning all Muslim women, Muslim girls to remove their hijab to stay safe. Can I say that again? Take off this thing right here. It’s to stay safe. That right there prompted me with all the love and pride in my heart, not knowing where the future was going, but to be brave and to be sure. Put my fist up, keep my head high, and I yell, we are not afraid. I had 500,000 plus people yelling it back with me. And in that moment with those women, I stood for something. I remembered who I am. Now, like I said, the nation was very afraid. We were all scared. We didn’t know what was going on. But I knew in that time it was important to change the narrative and begin to write our own. We had to deprogram ourselves and reprogram ourselves with no fear, with resiliency, with a testimony. But though this hardship is coming our way, we are ready for it. And even if you didn’t feel it in the moment, you had to say it to believe it. You know what I’m saying? So this moment right here, we are not afraid. And that’s a picture for me on stage. That moment right there became a mantra for me. We are not afraid. It became a movement. It changed the trajectory in my entire journey with music, creation, and everything. But over time, I started evaluating this phrase I had started to pitch to the world. I thought, yeah, I’m not afraid. Definitely not afraid. But does that mean everybody else isn’t afraid? What are they thinking? Was I too loud? Was I too proud? Was I too black? Did I sound like an angry black woman? All these thoughts start coming in my head, but I realized it was because of fear. I come from a legacy of fearlessness, which is my grandma Margaret Block, my Uncle Sam Block, really quick for you. They’re Mississippi legends. My Uncle Sam Block was a civil rights leader in Mississippi. He was also stabbed with an ink pen for coming into a non-colored bar. He was known, which I just found this out, he was known to be the Freedom Song leader in Mississippi in the entire South. When he would come, people would say, Sam Block, Sam Block, oh my gosh, sing for us. And he would sing all these songs. And ironically, in Washington, D.C., he’s in the Smithsonian for all the Freedom Songs, and he’s the leader. And I found out it helped me deal with fearlessness. When I got on that stage and I, oh, we had none of it, I didn’t even know where it came from. But it came from something. Margaret Block, my grandma, she’s a poet. She’s very familiar in Mississippi, a legend. She’s a civil rights leader and activist. Did work with Martin Luther King, organized bus boycotts. I had to tap into that and realize where I came from. I had to look at the little girl in the mirror. Before I thought about this image and this label and what people see me as, I had to go back in time. That was me when I was like 10 years old. We was out there in the streets in San Francisco protesting. So we’ve been doing this for a long time. So I got to shout out my mom because she brought us there. And that girl was brave. She wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t worried about judgment. She wasn’t worried about her voice being raised too loud to crowd out of fear. And more to raise awareness because if you don’t stand for anything, then what? You will fall. So I could not fall. And I had to remember who I am. I’m a music artist as well. Music is my first love. I realized the power of music and what my music was doing to affect people all over the world. I was called to the Women’s March for my song, Who Ready? So I began to teach hip hop classes. And I teach them from elementary school to college. And a lot of the students in our classes, these are two of my classes here, we learn how to combat stereotypes with our words. Our words are powerful. They’re the most powerful weapon we have. So I’ll ask them, hey, what’s wrong with music? And you’d be surprised. I don’t have to say anything. It’s misogynistic. They treat women bad. They say the beat word too much. It’s too much custom, too much killing, too much robbing. So what we do is we take those same beats and we make clean versions to the songs. And they do it themselves. And that gives them the power, that same power that was instilled and fearlessness that I had instilled by my grandma, by my great grandma, by my uncle in generations before me. I started a collective called the Hijabi Chronicles. It is all Muslim women in a collective. We rap, we sing, we act, we dance, you name it. And this collective was really challenging because they were saying, hey, you’re Muslim. You shouldn’t even be on stage talking in a hijab and you’re a woman. And we had to do with a lot of stereotypes from a lot of different people. But one of my favorite times that we exemplified fearlessness, again in front of the world, was the day we decided to have a hip hop concert. Now mind you. There are no really supportive outlets for Muslim females in hip hop. So our concert started all Muslim females in hip hop to the point where we were getting discouraged but we still did it. People came out from near or far. The news even came out. Next thing you know, we were on the news. Instead of crawling under the bed and going into fear, we decided to have our very first concert. And when we did that, women from around the world were inspired. And sometimes you just have to be the one to do it, to show someone else. Representation is very important. And being strong and being fearless, it really matters in a time where everybody doesn’t want to say anything. I will say for me, my testament is a testimony to my story. It’s of hardship. It’s filled with fear. It’s filled with self-doubt, discouragement. But at the end of the day, I do not live in fear. Because when you live in fear, you’re just running away from yourself. So there’s no point. You have to embrace yourself. I implore each and every one of you. Trace your roots. Find out where you came from. The ones that came before you. See examples. And in that, raise your fist. Everybody? Raise your fist and say, we are not afraid. We are not afraid. Thank you. Love you.