Countless celebrities took the stage at the DNC on Wednesday, with Empire’s Lee Daniels delivering a particularly powerful speech advocating stricter gun control. He began by expressing his initial concern: “I wondered if Hillary really knew who I was.” Daniels went on to explain that he has various members of his family in jail, his own father was a police officer shot and murdered in Philadelphia, and he himself has been to jail. “That’s the America I know,” he said. “And still I rise.” But in the end, Daniels explained, he realized that Hillary does, in fact, know him because she has helped turn “heartache into action,” and ultimately wants to keep families safe.