This afternoon, at a rally in front of Roots International Academy in East Oakland, Riley joined students, teachers and community activists to champion direct action and criticize privatization of public education—a contentious topic in the Bay Area as public schools lose funding to charters. Riley cheered on protesters, reminding them that they're setting an example for students and teachers across the country and world. Read his full speech below.

What's up, thank y'all for fighting. My name is Boots Riley. I'm not gonna rap after that. But I will say in one of the Coup songs called "Strange Arithmetic," there is a very simple but true lyric that says "If your school don't teach you how to fight for what's needed / They're teaching you to go through life and get cheated." And that's what y'all are doing, teaching the students how to fight. You're not just teaching them the facts of what happened: you're teaching them to make something happen. And that's very important because otherwise, all these little templates they get, they won't know—when they get out in the real world—what to do with it, how to do anything but wish that things were different.

And this is not wishing that things were different, because what y'all are doing is the real way that all the changes that we've seen throughout history have actually happened. They don't come from hoping the right leader gets out there and gets into office, or the right superintendent. They come from the leaders and the elected officials and the superintendents being scared of y'all, being scared of y'all being able to just shut down the machine, shut it all down, and not to give in 'til you get what you want, right?