Don Lemon Takes Stage at NYC Event After Arrest Over Minnesota Protest

The anchorman, who was arrested over a protest in Minnesota, told an audience in Manhattan, “I’m not going to let them turn me around,” and sang lines from a civil rights era freedom song.

Don Lemon, the former CNN anchor who was arrested last week after covering a protest in a Minnesota church, told an audience in New York on Tuesday night that he felt vulnerable but was determined to defend what he saw as an attack on free speech.

“I’m not a protester, but I am insistent on the First Amendment,” he said. “That is the bedrock of our democracy, and without the First Amendment nothing else stands.”