is one of the reasons that wraps up our time. thank you. thank you for attending today's event. book signing will be outside the auditorium. but tv is on twitter and facebook. and we want to hear from you. or post a comment on her facebook page. facebook.com.

good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the baptist church in the city of new york. we are delighted you can join us tonight and we are looking forward to a very informative and inspiring night. tonight we are joining for the conversation on women and mass incarceration. and i am delighted that the new press is publishing the book becoming this burden sent me a note suggesting that we take a look at the book. now i will tell you that a crossed a year i make it from

various publishers maybe 20 or 30 new books asking me to read them and i share my opinion or share my opinion on the cover or members of our congregation. i can't read them all but fortunately i read this one. i read it because it have a forward by an author and an activist and a lawyer named michelle alexander. i was coming out of a program similar to this at the schomburg library one schaumburg library one evening and one of the panelists was a late vincent harding. i knew him from my days at student at morehouse college. he saw me and he knows me as calvin. he said hey calvin before you leave i want to make sure that you get a book. i went and got the book and i

read it. and of course like many of us i was further enlightened in of course became increasingly even more angry. so i think michelle for being here tonight. and i think susan for being here tonight. and i also think you for coming so that you can learn more about women and mass incarceration. this would be the 90 second anniversary. and i think we all [applause]. i the pleasure of meeting her the other day in the housing projects. and i was immediately infatuated by her she is intoxicating in

terms of what she brings in the passion she brings to her cause. until the death of her son drew her into this. the best selling author. the book of becoming this and would be on sale. downstairs in the bookstore. they get a copy. you'd be signing them. i am sure after you hear this discussion you will want to get

a copy. our moderator tonight he is an award-winning author and journalist she first obtained recognition when she pinned her 1999 debut book the prisoner's wife it is a powerful lyrical memoir about a young black woman's romance and marriage with a man who was serving a 20 to life sentence in prison. with the hope that they would live as a couple in the outside world she became pregnant with her daughter. a former feature editor for essence magazine she also wrote something like beautiful the continuation of her love with another emotional disappointment in a serious bout of depression. in addition she is the author of a two collection of poems and the novel daughter. she lives in brooklyn with her

daughter. and so to get tonight started i think you again for coming and welcome to the baptist church. you're always welcome here especially on sunday mornings. we would be happy to see you. we've a service at nine and 1130. we are here to get started. [applause]. good evening and let me say that i'm more than a little humbled and overwhelmed to be standing here in this historic place to be in the presence of reverend buck who has been such a guiding light for many of us. and some of my darkest hours and looking -- living in brooklyn. and it held me close and held me tight it was here that i saw

fidel castro speak. it was here that friends of mine and sometime to say goodbye and for holding this community so beautifully together for bowling building he's built throughout harlem. please join me and thinking him. i am also overwhelmed because i'm in the presence of two women so deeply love. susan and michelle. it's not easy work to put your whole heart on a page is not easy to expose yourself in that way. your belief your personal memories but these two women had done it in an extraordinary way. with michelle gathering up the stories of our most harmed and pulling it together in one place. now what was popular but when it was right.

with them escalating so much that we often want to forget. the courage to do both is beyond the telling. please join me in welcoming them as they come to the stage. let me also think the new press. and to have a publisher so deeply dedicated to ensuring the truth of our story and then they had been. that it got out there. and to put that work out there. now to see what they have done with becoming this. they are dedicated to ensuring that our voices are heard and i want to thank everybody who is here from the new press.

i also want to know that we have c-span in the house. you will note on either side we had two scene he makes. that we would make sure that we get the voice. and finally as i began i want to thank my beautiful daughter who is 17 she could be out with her boyfriend tonight. but she is here doing the lords work and doing sacred work and telling the truth. with that i have all of these questions to start with michelle but let me ask that you read from the sending forward that you offered in this book the one that so moved him.

>> first i want to say incorporation you to the referent for hosting this event here tonight into say how honored i am to be here with susan burton who i admire so much and has become a real friend to me over the years when she asked me whether i might be interested in writing the forward for this book i was just overjoyed to have the opportunity to share her work in her life has not only meant to me personally but the guests that she has made to the movement. the lies that have been changed and transformed because she was willing to put them before herself.

this is what i wrote in a forward there once lived a woman with deep brown skin and black hair. they offered food, shelter and help. health. reuniting with family and loved ones. they organized countless others to provide support and aid in various forms so that they would not be recaptured and sent back to captivity. this courageous soul new while the fear and desperation of each one who came to her seen in their eyes all of the pain she felt years ago when she had been abused and shackled and finally began her own journey to freedom. she cried out to god begging for strength and when she woke she began her work all over again opening doors cleaning escape routes. and holding hands with mothers as they wept for children they hoped to see again.

a relentless advocate for justice this problem in was an abolitionist and a freedom fighter she told the un- endured truth to whoever would listen and spent countless hours training and organizing others to grow the movement she served not only as a profound inspiration to those who knew her than in a literal gateway to freedom for it lives that were forever changed. i know her as susan. thank you for that. thank you so much. susan, i had been thinking about

what they taught us that life has to be moved forward. i wonder if you would share with his audience what you know now. that you did not understand. i would also like to take the referent. and thank you in michelle you are so dear to me. i cannot even begin to tell you what your book did for me and many others. and i want to think them for taking this book.

they did becoming this burden. i started a new way of life thinking that if women have a place to go everything would be okay. as i worked my understanding and analysis grew it wasn't what was wrong with us. it was what was wrong with the society in the world. on the system that runs the world. i have a copy of the new jim crow. i knew.

i just couldn't name it. they put everything that i experienced. .. could allow

2.2 million people to go missing on our launch. any false sense that disrupt our freedom, the politics of respectability in the way of where we need to be as a community and the people, to both of you. >> the real genius of the system

of mass incarceration leads those who are trapped within it and the families to blame themselves entirely a new experience. when i grew up i used and experimented with drugs. i hung out with people who stole. we jumped into a car that wasn't ours and went joyriding but i lived in a solidly middle-class community where the police were not stopping and searching and frisking us and i committed those crimes and misdemeanors, went off to college and went off to law school and lived the rest of my life never for a minute feeling guilty or tortured about the fact that i got high when i was in college, never feeling the sense of deep unworthiness. barack obama did all those things. maybe not all the same things but a lot of them and he went on

to be president of the united states. so many of our communities, young people screw up and mess up and get in trouble like young people do, like human beings do, we all make mistakes, we all stumble and fail, and those are granted and shamed and locked in literal cages and dehumanized, and basic and civil human rights, and get housing or meet their basic needs. often blame themselves. and their families will often blame themselves, why can't you just get a job? what is wrong with you? why are you back out on the street? why can't you get it together?

the system of mass incarceration turned communities against each other. the reality isn't people of all colors have used in sold drugs with nearly identical race for decades but has only been black and brown young folks who have been shamed and demonized and stigmatized and locked up and locked out. when crime rates rose in our communities, violent crime rates rose, people in government sat back and said what is going on? how could we help? the reality was work had disappeared, jobs had vanished due to global capitalism, factories closed down, economic collapse in inner cities, could have responded with bailout packages and stimulus plans and investing in schools but instead a literal war was declared on

the poorest and most vulnerable and we ended up blaming and shaming ourselves. i hope that we are moving beyond that and we understand that a lot of healing needs to be done and a lot of organizing and movement building needs to be done and a new way of life, the organization susan has found that is thoroughly committed to healing, coming together and circled with honesty, providing support to one another and heading to work building a movement to end the system of mass incarceration and restore basic civil and human rights to each and every one of us. >> a magnificent answer. let me add something to that that we pivoted and began to

talk about a new way of life and an organization that is near and dear to my heart and many of us don't realize because of sheer numbers of men in prison, black women's numbers and women's numbers have gone up, actually doubled the rate of numbers of men, 832% in the last 25 years with black women leading that pack. talk about what we need to know about the experience of women who are incarcerated? >> in the book i talk about my life experience. but it is not just my life experience, it is the experience of most incarcerated women. i think there is a nexus.

i know through conversation that women have suffered so much prior to incarceration, and my thought is is this the way you treat trauma and childhood abuse, to cage and lock people up and punish them? later on they lay in their latter years. in california for 50 years, there was one prison and when the war on drugs hit our community california built the biggest women's prison in the world. i see the women come back from those places. with this fear in their eyes and hope in their mouth, thinking

and talking what they want to do and how they want to do but i see the fear and i fear the fear rolling off of them as they want to create a new life and want to take on rebuilding their lives and get their children back and come back in the community safe. >> i was also thinking about the experience inside and i can remember when i would go to visit my husband in prison, the packages were black. when i started visiting him in 1991 there were a couple who came to the area in brooklyn to pick me up, by the time that ended there were buses, bus companies coming to do that. i never failed to miss when i taught in women's prisons in bedford hills, there was never a

line, nobody visiting the women. i had to volunteer, i would get paid to teach and men's prisons but have to volunteer in women's prisons because there was almost no services available. that has been 20 years or so. >> the people that are going to see, the few that do come, a mother, grandmother, to get there to visit, to keep the tides and the bond. there was rhetoric coming out of the white house about welfare queens and crack mamas and so forth and i think that penetrated the fact brick -- fabric of our communities and our society, to say that this is a black woman and she shouldn't have done what she did and we are going to just throw her away but we are not throwaway people.

we are not throwaway women. [applause] >> we hold potential power, love, groundedness. the future of our community. i just want to say we are back and we are coming strong and we are going to repair and we are going to lead and we are going to stand side-by-side and make our communities safe and whole again. we are going to put the band-aids on our kids knees and we are going to stand in the gap when those people are coming and

say no, you can't have this one and we are going to do this by the dozens, by the hundreds, by the thousands, by the millions, and we are building that now as we speak. i want to call out a few people in the audience. i see a nixon in the back, college and community fellowship, educating all the women. i see councilmembers over here. i want the councilmembers to stand down. i don't know how many of you are out here but i know an email went out, these are the warrior women on the front line. sounds like i will do all this, we are going to do this, we can't leave here tonight and not think about what we are going to do to make the community safer,

and that is what i propose. >> are you going to bring a new way of life to new york and expand? >> yes. >> to stand because you have to wrap your love and your prayers because she is going to have a safe house where women can come and get that support, leadership, guidance that they can come and join and be part of this movement.

topeka sam is a member here. her daddy as a deacon here, her pastor is right over there. wrap your arms around her. it is not easy. >> to both of you, mister sam and i am very aware that the often visible leadership of the movement to end mass incarceration and doing what i do, doing a hard lift of the work, not always in front of the mic, sometimes you don't know their names. sometimes you don't know their

bodies. i have the privilege to work with these many folks so i wonder what he would talk about what women need to be supported in doing their work of ending mass incarceration and ensuring the community that is just as safe for our families. you want to take the first shot? >> my book is primarily on the experience of black men in the criminal justice system and i framed the book in that way because the book was inspired by my experiences working as a civil rights lawyer representing victims of racial profiling in the overwhelming majority of people who were being stopped and frisked, black and brown men

and since publishing the book and while writing it i am very much aware there was an untold story in the experiences of women in our prison system but also the experience of women doing time on the outside, the ones who hold together families while loved ones are cycling in and out of prison, the places where people return home to win just released, people who are driving and taking kids on buses, sometimes hundreds of miles so they can see their mom and dad locked up, and this experience of women in the era of mass incarceration deserves

far more attention than it has received and is one of the reasons i was so thrilled when susan was willing to tell her story and shine the light on the experience particularly of women in the era of mass incarceration was we won't have time for susan to tell her entire story but i hope everyone here will take the time to read the book. because her story of going from drug addiction after an la police officer drove over and killed her 5-year-old son in the street, her story of succumbing to addiction because no other support was available and cycling in and out of prison for 15 years, never being offered help or treatment, given access

to work, not even having access to food stamps because she was a drug offender, no food for you, cycling in and out of prison for 15 years until she got access to a private drug treatment program and got clean and got a job deciding to devote the rest of her life to making sure no other woman would ever go through what she went through. that is who she is. [applause] >> that is susan's story. she began by going to the prison bus meeting people as they get off the bus was nothing but a cardboard box and saying come home with me, sleep on the floor, don't have to turn to the streets tonight and that is how a new way of life began because she opened her home to strangers and welcomed them in and then

created five safe holds for women and i hope that your story doesn't get lost here and we read your story carefully. and learn what is possible when we come together with love to save one another. >> just a moment, that was so spectacular, thank you for saying that. [applause] >> they weren't all strangers, those were my home girls. my home girls needed a little love too. what was so amazing to me is where i got the treatment and santa monica, we could walk

three blocks to the beach and i was so fortunate to be there and get what i got but i couldn't understand why we didn't have that in south la too. why in this community, for what i went to prison for over and over and over again, they got a court card and community service. and treatment placement. i remember throwing my soul out to the judge and saying your honor, a policeman killed my son and i used drugs. i said is there any help for me? and he told me 18 months in

prison. when i saw and experienced something different, i did something different, was not only good for me, it would be good in my community too. the story and the journey began and i am thankful and grateful that i am able to give and do what i do because there are women just like me who have spent 30, 47 years is the longest time that someone came to a new way of life. i am glad that is not me. paying forward is what i do. i am grateful to be able to do it but as we go about our daily

lives, probably things that all of us can do that would make a huge difference to someone who just needs a hand out. those are my home girls. >> before i turned to the audience and see if there are any questions people want to ask, line up now because we don't have a whole lot of time. tell us about your son. bring your baby here. >> the day my son left i went to pick him up from school and we walked home and i went in the house and he went out to play. i was having dinner and he

brought in this pink chrysanthemum, said this is for you, mama. it was crawling with hands -- crawling with ants. they were all over my hand. he went back out to play. he was rambunctious and very adventurous. i remember him bringing me ice cream and saying this is for the fireplace. you know, and, the car screeched and it hit him and the policeman never got out of the car. that would have been hit and run, manslaughter for me. the police department never said i am sorry. they never sent a flower or even

acknowledged the loss. so today, whenever one of our black men are killed i tell it all over again. and then when the verdict comes back and he is not going to be charged, i tell it all over again. that was my take. he smiled on us today and cheering us on and clearing the way. i feel that. >> we say his name so much, kk. i am going to stop the line here because i don't think we will get to any more questions and ask people to the extent we can we know how we are and we are in

a church too. i want to get to as many questions as i can and get to the final question. >> very quick, my name is thomas lopez p air, i am a member of a percipient candidate for city council in west harlem, i read in your book where you talk about black people have gone from exploitation, slavery, to marginalization to mass incarceration and to jim crow to mass incarceration. my question is where do you see the future for the black mail when in new york city, 40% of black men have dropped out of high school for the last 30 years. where do you see as in an economy rooted in education, not government jobs, careers service jobs can no longer support a family? >> thank you so much for your question. we are living in a time right now where there are going to be

fewer and fewer jobs available for people considered unskilled, people who either dropped out of high school or have a college degree. there was a time you didn't necessarily have to finish high school to get a good job, support yourself and family to get a good factory job. get a good industrial job, and support your self, that is not true anymore. because of global capitalism and deindustrialization factories have closed, moved overseas and left entire communities and neighborhoods devastated and their is no plan to save us. the war on drugs and the get tough movement was a response in many ways to communities that are no longer needed, viewed as

disposable. during slavery, we were needed, whether you are male or female you were needed in the fields. during jim crow, there was a role for us as well. if people fled jim crow and came to northern cities, they were able to work in factories to support themselves. now those jobs are gone. there is no plan to invest heavily in our inner-city schools, or the neighborhoods that have been hardest hit by mass incarceration. i fear that even as our prison system may be downsized somewhat, we will see technological forms of surveillance and control in our communities, gps monitoring system slapped on kid that young

ages that come off, in-home surveillance systems, ways of keeping communities that are seen as no longer necessary to the functioning of american society under control and in check. this is not the way the story has to end. it is up to us. it can seem overwhelming and deeply depressing, particularly in a time like this with a president like the one we have got. our communities have faced greater obstacles. there was a time we thought slavery would never end. when harriet tubman was planning her escape route, seems crazy to imagine slavery would come to an end and it did. ordinary people who didn't have the right to vote organized and mobilized and brought the old

jim crow to its knees. we can do this. we can reverse a new america, multiracial, multiethnic democracy where everyone has a right to work, a right to a quality education, a right to healthcare, basic civil and human rights people take for granted in other nations, we conversed in america right here that honors the voices and lives of each and every one of us but it won't happen if we don't commit ourselves thoroughly and with great passion and conviction precisely the way susan burton demonstrated in her own life. i view her as a model, as an example of what is possible. >> if memory serves, you were a student activist, we protested, i have a good memory but i have

grown up a little bit. 25 years didn't take all that away and we said if we didn't go to school nobody would go to school and we saw they were taking the exact amount of money and putting it into prison building and refused to allow that to happen which i haven't turned my back on the work and need to have you so we will witness that. [applause] >> congratulations on the book. it did arrive in my office. did you get your book yet? i read it in one sitting, deeply honored to have known you and always honored to know you. from the johnson war on crime to nixon's war on drugs to bill

clinton 1994 crime bill, we have seen our own communities bamboozled into believing that a war on our own people will benefit our community. how do we prevent that from happening again, how do we stop attorney general jeff sessions from taking us back 50 years into the dark ages? >> one of the things susan can speak to is the critical importance of formally incarcerated people who have been directly impacted as emerging as leaders in this moment in time. it is easy to demonize the criminal when you don't meet them, when you don't know them, you don't hear from the man come to learn their stories and

anyone who reads susan's story is going to understand why the war on drugs is something that can never be revived on the scale that it was and we must end it once and for all in this nation but i hope susan will speak to the importance of formally incarcerated people, especially women in this time, this critical stage in building national movements, not only to end the war on drugs but restore basic damage that has been done over the past few decades. >> thank you for that. vivian hoped it would move us in arizona, incarcerated and convicted people's movement and we began to strategize on how to take the forefront to the fight

for ms. incarceration is mass incarceration for women, children, men. we have to be there. we have to be at the forefront. we are not going to be bamboozled. sessions, i heard him and my thought was, where is the hood? he has got to have one somewhere. that was my thought, where is the hood? we have to band together and not let him take us back to draconian laws and practices. mass incarceration failed our state and country and we the formerly incarcerated people in the front and in the lead of that fight.

it is important that we speak truly in our voice and lead in the ways he know will work and will change society, the atmosphere, crazy thoughts. >> this movement has got to be built neighborhood by neighborhood, community by community, city by city. jeff sessions can say we want to bring back law and order, revive the drug war, but in our communities we say no and we organize to ensure the drug use and abuse is treated as a public health problem, not as a crime. we actually ensure that we create sanctuary safe spaces for

people who need help. there is a sanctuary movement that emerged around immigrants who need safe places. we need to create safe places in our own communities for people who need help with drug treatments, access to basic support services, building places like a new way of life and organize, decriminalize and legalize drug use and addiction in ways that only harm our communities but this has to happen right where we are wherever we live, city by city, town by town and there is already enormous momentum at the state level in so many communities and rather than adapting a mindset to resist what donald trump and his cronies have in mind we need to build a truly transformational, revolutionary movement,

neighborhood by neighborhood, community by community to ensure that we end this history and cycle of creating these enormous systems of racial and social control. >> i want to mention here the most shocking things i found out, 75% to 85% of people who use drugs, any drugs, heroin, cigarettes, do not become addicted. most who use drugs pay their taxes, raise their kids, put people in prison based on their color. there has been a legal system of using drugs and being fined. it was for white people blues not for us. i just want to mention most of drug use -- the chaotic drug use they use on 48 hours, they are

not showing that was taken out of our communities, no jobs, income swept away, mothers, fathers, everything else swept away and i would like to say the black power movement was started by a formerly incarcerated person named malcolm x. may we have the next speaker? >> it is a privilege to be in your presence. i just want to say that and i have a question for you as well. after i read your book on jim crow, i gasped and i was immobilized and it was the most important book that i have ever read in my life and the beautiful words that you wrote apply to you. you are harriet tubman as well and i have to tell you that, thank you so much. [applause] >> the courage, the love, passion that you have, that you bring to such a sensitive issue that is literally destroying our

community. my question to both of you is where do you -- where do you draw your strength and courage from? >> i lost a son. in that space of loss, the love was still there. so that love of my son goes out and that void is filled. i had 300 kks since i lost kk. 300 of the women have been reunited with their children,

with their child. life, my community, that drives and sustains me. it can't be put out. it has to flow. it just has to flow. so i recognize that is where the passion and the drive is. it is unending. >> it is important to admit that this work can be very depressing and discouraging at times. you have to acknowledge it is not easy to stay motivated and inspired, it is people like

susan, that keep me going, or presenting people who were victims of police brutality and racial profiling and i saw what was happening and everybody had to just find a way to make a way out of their way and go on. really filled me with, i became obsessed, with wanting people to see what i had come to see. i should add that my dad dropped dead of a heart attack at an early age, he had been in and out of jobs, convicted multiple times. there is a saying that if it doesn't kill you it makes you stronger. sometimes it just kills you. in our communities there are so many who are just losing.

because haven't yet found a way and what i have seen through folks like susan and many people throughout this country when we come together we can do the impossible. we can make a way. [applause] >> i owe it to all those freedom fighters who came before us, the harriets and all of those who came before us not to give up and to take time and rejuvenate and get back to work because literally the lives of those we love and future generations depend on us not giving up. >> i want to add to that. i do understand i will not be here forever and at some point i

was going to slow down a bit. my responsibility as a leader, to build the leadership and train and multiply, you saw some of that, there are women and men who are going to the demonstrations and numbers are being multiplied, we are broader and stronger. >> thank you, roughly 10 minutes or so left, i see a line of five people. >> a member of the national

council and -- i want to say congratulations on the book but what can i do as a new york state policy advocate to assist you in a new way of life. >> into housing, policy advocacy, organizing, 6 attorneys on staff and it started in the bungalow. she needs help. i needed help each it wasn't just on me. community supported me. >> thank you.

>> all right. >> thank you very much for sharing your story and advocating women and men whose families are incarcerated. i am an early childhood educator and 20 years ago i was director of head start programs. i don't know how but bedford hills called and asked me to come to the prison to work with the parents of the children. the inmates who had children which bedford hills was the first prison to allow their inmates to keep their children until they are 18 months old. i was like why me? i am a early childhood educator. when i got through the gates, all of the locks and keys i saw,

this could happen to anyone. i loved them, they loved me and i was in a school, they changed classes and it was sophistication, one of my students was jean harris. >> let me ask a question. the question -- i am not promoting myself but do they have those programs? what about the children? what about the children? my mother left me, mommy and me programs, what was going on to help the children and families

day together. >> there was an annual bus, for people in california, done by a catholic charity and they are talking about taking it nationally but it is our responsibility to be -- begin to remove the shame and educate our young people about why her parents are aware, was mass incarceration looks like. how jim crow revolved out of slavery and resurfaces today but then there are the little children also. i just say we need to bring our people home, keep them home.

>> thank you so much. the biggest predictor of whether someone is incarcerated his foster care. >> a clinical therapist at the bronx da's office, how do we ensure that the same way we focused on african-american male trauma we start intentionally focusing on female trauma, you talked about in the new jim crow so eloquently, intentional incarceration and what haven't dealt with is the ways in which black female victimhood, make you a target for your family to be separated and that is the

gateway. black female criminalization. it is a case that is founded, your ability to work as a nurse, a teacher, a social worker, things that women are interested in doing are no longer on the table so how do we make community and other communities more aware of ways in which black women are criminalized and no one knows. >> sounds like a good step. >> somebody else? what i want to say we cut off the line, people got to say question, 30 seconds and move on. >> there needs to be a study around the nexus. i know what it is but people don't believe it until it is a good report but you have to read the book. you really have to read the book about there with you.

>> poster child is very good. >> yes. bj's i am a middle school teacher. i will be a director this year. my question in regards to an organization with 0 senior staff of color but employs mostly people of color to teach students of color what do you want to teach teachers this summer? [laughter and applause] >> i think you already know what to say. >> i don't think you missed that. >> i was at columbia university

for five years, they were in it. john jay college for 15 years. i have an answer, have to look at the devastation of our souls and a culture that can help us get past anything. the other thing, what is your consideration for prayer as a practical solution for earthly pain? >> thank you so much. and -- >> i prayed on the way over here and not only did i pray but the huber driver prayed for me too. >> police lied under oath.

>> let me mention one thing to the younger teacher, there is data in the new york times a couple weeks ago that black children do better with black teachers when they see somebody who looks like them. i ask speakers to read that and before anybody steps before our children, they do the work to heal themselves to stand strongly before our children and familiarize themselves so they are culturally anchored before they stand before our children and any number of books that are out there they can read before they take that step. age there has been a wave of shows that are popular focusing on experiences of people in prison. how do you think it is

counterproductive or helpful for the movement for mass incarceration? >> that is our final question. >> we among the formerly incarcerated population, have a lot of conversation and critique around orange is the new black where i land on it is it began a conversation in places that i could never get into. it elevated the conversation around mass incarceration, where are the experiences, orange is the new black and the new jim crow really began to elevate the conversation around mass restoration and i looked at it places i could never get into to

talk about mass incarceration. >> i have not watched all of orange is the new black so i am not sure i can give a fool analysis. a full analysis. it is important for our story to be told and for them to be told well. it is not surprising that out of hollywood we might not get the best representation. but i appreciate queen's sugar. [applause] >> queen sugar is an example of our stories being told very well. i hope if there are people even here tonight who are listening, who have some dream or desire to go into filmmaking or

screenwriting, take that seriously. when people think about what it means to build a movement, you think about taking to the streets but it takes all of us, it takes the artist, the activists, healthcare workers, people who will sit down and pray with you, takes educators and teachers, it takes all of us, and i hope in months and years to come we will see a new generation of young people who are writing and filming and telling our stories in a way that truly honor us and i am grateful that ava is out there making films. [applause] >> i want to thank the moderators and throw a final question so moved was i about what it is to be carried and how

hard this work is. and how to maintain wholeness, to keep themselves together. >> i don't know if i take time every day i should. i don't know that i take time every day but every year i go to a place where i spend days in total silence. i do that every year. >> i should but i don't. the things that i do tend to involve a window that i love the

-- fit that window and meditate or pray, don't do it every day and i love to run, and it is a way of clearing my head. i think your question is an important one. we live in a state of constant reacting to bad news in the world, reacting to the noise of life and if we are going to be effective, we have to learn how to stop reacting and get still and think about who we are, where we came from and what we truly want to do now and that requires us to get still and prayerful or at least in a space

of silence for some time and the practice of trying or aspiring to do that every day is a worthwhile goal. >> i pray almost every day. [applause] >> he makes conversation. >> show some love to asha bandele who did a great job moderating. listen. the books are on sale downstairs and in case you need more time, they will be on sale for the next several sundays but we want

you to go down now while we have susan and michelle here so you might get a not a graft copy. thank you for coming, may god bless you, don't forget we are here every sunday from 9:00 and 11:30. thank you, good night, it has been wonderful wonderful wonderful time. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> you are watching booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here is our primetime lineup.

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