00:00For me, a big thing about this whole idea of being woke is about not focusing on yourself.
00:07It's about togetherness and family.
00:09I want to give you an example of that.
00:11It might make me emotional.
00:13I'm going to try not to.
00:14Shout out to my mom who's here.
00:18But about a little over a year ago, my father passed away.
00:24Very, very close to me.
00:26Very, very close to him.
00:27I love him dearly, even to this day, standing next to me right now.
00:31And when we were just starting to shoot Queen Sugar, I had shot the first episode.
00:37If any of you remember the first episode, in the first episode, their father passes away.
00:44It was less than a month later.
00:45It was about three weeks later, my father passed away.
00:48And in some way, I was in the same situation as the characters.
00:51I was in Montgomery, Alabama, which is where my father's from, where he lived.
00:56And I was at the funeral.
01:00And I looked up and I saw the cast of Queen Sugar.
01:06They drove from New Orleans to Montgomery.
01:11All of them in their own cars, figured out a way to get there.
01:15But they were all there.
01:17I think Tina Lifford came from Los Angeles.
01:19People just came in.
01:21And that is woke to me.
01:24Woke is not necessarily activism or protesting or all the things that we do and that we should
01:30do.
01:31Some of us do.
01:32It's about being there for each other in our moment of need.
01:35And maybe you're not an activist in the sense of you're out with Patrice and I in marches,
01:42or you're planning actions, or you're writing your congressman, or you're doing any of those
01:47things.
01:48But the wokeness of our community and what we have done throughout the generations to survive
01:53is to hold onto each other to make sure that we're okay.
01:57And I just encourage us and celebrate that we continue to do that.
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