Lady Gaga uses Phoenix concert to protest SB-1070: ‘I will yell and I will scream and I will hold you.’

Since Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) signed the anti-immigration SB-1070 into law, many high-profile musicians — including Kanye West, Sonic Youth, and Rage Against the Machine — have boycotted the state. In recent weeks, activists had been pressuring Lady Gaga to cancel her July 31 concert in Phoenix, saying, “This is no time for a Poker Face, Lady Gaga!” Gaga, however, went ahead with her concert on Saturday and used it as a venue to speak out:

LADY GAGA: I want you to let go of all of your insecurities. I want you to reject any person, or any thing, or any law that has ever made you feel like you don’t belong. I got a phone call from a couple of really big rock and rollers, big pop stars, big rappers, and they said, “we’d like you to boycott Arizona…because of SB-1070.” And I said, “you really think that us dumb f*cking pop stars are going to collapse the economy of Arizona?”

I’ll tell you what we have to do about SB-1070. We have to be active. We have to actively protest. The nature of the Monster Ball is to actively protest prejudice, and injustice, and that bullsh*t that is put on our society…because you’re a superstar, no matter who you are, no matter where you come from and you were born that way! I will not cancel my show. I will yell and I will scream louder. And I will hold you, and we will hold each other, and we will peaceably protest this state. Because if it wasn’t for all of you immigrants, this country wouldn’t have sh*t. And I mean it. I mean it so deeply in my soul.

Watch it:

Gaga also told a story of a boy she met whose “house was raided because of a parking ticket or something. They took his brother, and now he is in Mexico. … It’s really (unfair), and it’s really disgusting.” She dedicated her song “You and I” to the boy at her concert, which more than 14,000 people attended.