About

Killer Mike's "Not Time To Burn Down Your Own Home" Speech is a viral video featuring a public address given by rapper Killer Mike about the protests and riots in Atlanta, Georgia, in response to the death of George Floyd.

Origin

On May 29th, 2020, following a day of protests, riots and civil unrest through Atlanta, Georgia and the United States, Killer Mike participated in a press conference held by Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Killer Mike delivered a speech and implored viewers to cease rioting and vote. He said, in part:

We have to be better than burning down our own homes because if we lose Atlanta, what else we got? It is your duty to not burn your own house down for anger with an enemy. It is your duty to fortify your own house, so that you may be a house of refuge in times of organization. And now is the time to plot, plan, strategize, organize and mobilize.

It is time to beat up prosecutors you don’t like at the voting booth. It’s time to hold mayoral offices accountable, chiefs and deputy chiefs.

I’m mad as hell. I woke up wanting to see the world burn down. I’m tired of seeing black men die. He casually put his knee on a human being’s neck for nine minutes as he died like a zebra in the clutch of a lion’s jaw, and we watch it like murder porn, over and over again.

That’s why children are burning things to the ground -- they don’t know what else to do. And it’s the responsibility of us to make this better, right now. We don’t want to see one officer charged, we want to see four officers prosecuted and sentenced. We don’t want to see targets burning, we want to see the system that sets up systemic racism, burn to the ground.

Spread

That day, many began sharing the video on social media. Conservative comedian and commentator Tim Young tweeted the video and wrote, "Drop everything and watch Killer Mike's speech in Atlanta tonight. I don't agree with him on all of his politics, but that doesn't matter tonight. He's 100% right about how to handle protesting and how to change the system… and it isn't burning your city to the ground." The post was reshared by @mentnelson, who wrote, "The whole country needs to stop right now and listen to Killer Mike. He’s verbalizing what a lot of us don’t know how to express." The post received more than 33 million views, 520,000 likes and 223,000 retweets in less than one week (shown below).

The whole country needs to stop right now and listen to Killer Mike. He’s verbalizing what a lot of us don’t know how to express pic.twitter.com/yiBEaicRGT

— ment (@mentnelson) May 30, 2020

The video became a popular topic of conversation on Reddit. The video received more than 71,000 points (89% upvoted) and 3,800 comments on the /r/videos^[1] subreddit. It also received more than 20,000 points (96% upvoted) and 1,200 comments on the /r/politics ^[2] subreddit.

Several media outlets reported on the speech, including NME,^[3] Mashable, ^[4] Rolling Stone,^[5] Vox^[6] and more.

Search Interest

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External References