I did my best to transcribe:
Proof by Cornelius Eady at the inauguration of Zohran Mamdani
Proof.
You have to imagine it.
Who said you were too dark, too large, too queer, too loud?
Who said you were too poor, too strange, too fat?
You have to imagine it.
Who said you must keep quiet?
Who heard your story, then rolled their eyes?
Who tried to change your name to invisible?
You’ve got to imagine.
Who heard your name and refused to pronounce it.
Who checked their watch and said, “Not now.”
James Baldwin wrote, “The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.”
New York City of invention, roiling town, refresher and renewer.
New York City of the real will.
The canyons whisper in a hundred tongues.
New York, where your lucky self waits for your arrival,
Where there is always soil for your root.
This is our time.
The taste of us, the spice of us,
the colors and the rhythms and the beats of us,
In the echo of our ancestors who made certain we know who we are.
City of insistence.
City of resistance.
You have to imagine an army that wins without firing a bullet,
A joy that wears down the rock of “no,”
Up from insults,
Up from blocked doors,
Up from trick bags,
Up from fear,
Up from shame,
Up from the way it was done before.
You have to imagine that space they said wasn’t yours.
That time they said you’d never own.
The invisible city lit on its way.
This moment is our proof.
