WEBVTT

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This next one I wrote
was for an anthology

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that they're doing in California
against Proposition 187,

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which, you know,
passed in November.

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And I will tell you that I
was able to go back there,

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and I saw a very
momentous thing.

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I thought, like, it was
back to the 60s and 70s

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when we went in the streets, and
we walked out, and we battled.

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And I saw all these
Latino youths out there.

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I saw gang kids who would
have killed each other,

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out marching arm in arm.

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And I saw that this was
going to be the future--

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if we let it, if we don't hold
it back, if we don't crush it.

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Anyway I decided to write this.

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It's called "Seguro
Que Hell Yes."

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[LAUGHTER]

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And it's actually an apology
to Flaco Jimenez, who

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has a song by the same name.

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And it goes like this.

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"We have passed this way
before, laden with sod,

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skeleton tongues
marking the dark.

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We have eaten of this dust, we
have scraped it off our faces,

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we have dreamed this wound,
this world of vile tantas

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veces that it's a song
beneath our breathing.

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Seguro que sí.

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We knew it was coming
before it came.

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Ya hemos pasado por este
camino, and venom eyes seek us,

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taunting mouths greet us.

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The most rooted
people of the land

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are the most revered and
the most despised, making us

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myths even as mother
earth daily births us.

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We cross many borders and
then cross into ourselves.

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This America that Emerson
called a poem is a barbed wire.

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Our sweat, our blood, and
the lágrimas shed for thee,

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is fashioned into a prison.

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Freedom for some
is slavery for me.

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Whenever they lie, a
part of us is murdered.

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This we know, and our
children cannot let it be.

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This we know and we challenge
our skins to take it on.

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This we know because we
have passed this way before,

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seguro que sí, cactus
bedding at our feet,

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snake curling through our
veins, ya hemos pasado por este

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camino, and we can
never stop coming.

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The desert calls us out--

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the fire scarred trees,
the dried bones of elders,

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the silent screaming of
stones, they call us back

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and we come, because we have
died so many times to the sun,

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because we belong to the
rivers wild, because we never

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feared the blue in
the eye, the green

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in the heart, the searing
laws and guns and lies,

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because we dreamed all of
this, and now we are awake

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to dream our dreams again.

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Seguro que hell yes!"

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You can clap if you like.

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I don't-- [LAUGHS] I don't mind.

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[APPLAUSE]

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