played a lot of springsteen strong's but really learning more about his wife in what went into shaping and molding that mind that created these great musical lyrics and music and so i'm looking forward to finishing that. >> host: one of the books he mentioned a shell alexander's "the new jim crow" came out in 2010 and was a big bestseller at the time. recovered her, speaking about it in here she is. [applause] >> thank you, thank you so much for this warm welcome. it feels wonderful to be here.

i am thrilled to see so many people eager to join in dialogue about where we as a nation find ourselves in this drive towards freedom. seems particularly fitting that we would have this conversation today, the day after our nation caused its daily business to pay tribute to reverend martin luther king jr.'s life and his legacy and it seems fitting that we would have this conversation the day after our nation's first black president was sworn in for his second term. now i know much of the nation has already moved on and president obama's soaring rhetoric about the promise of america life, liberty, justice

and equality for all has already been forgotten by many and i know that many, many people in america will not think of dr. king again until his holiday rolls around again next year. but i would like for us to pause tonight and think more deeply about the meaning of dr. king's life and his legacy and what it has to teach us about our nations president. i think particularly important for us to do that given that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the march on washington, 50 years have passed , 50 years have passed since king's voice soared over the washington monument, declaring his dream.

i have a dream, a dream deeply-rooted in the american dream. yesterday while i was watching president obama's and not grow address i heard echoes of kings speech, i have a dream. when i turned off my television set i spent a few minutes reflecting on the question, are all of us, all of us truly welcome to share in this dream come the same during -- during that dr. came dream to? most americans i'm sure can recite portions of.your kings "i have a dream" speech. it's an extraordinary and familiar speech. i've grown accustomed to hearing eclipse of his speech played over and over, recycled over and over on the radio every january. the favorite quotes in the favorite lines and now that i

have school-age children i see how king has explained them in classrooms. when i was in elementary school there was no martin luther king day. there was discussion of his heroism in classrooms that when my children came home from school just the other day they told me all they have learned in school about king's courage. he was the man who stood up to bullies, men who believe that children of all colors and walks of life ought to be able to hold hands and be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. he was willing to die so that all of us could live his dream. i find myself conflicted as i listened to my children. back to me what they have heard in school about this man who believed in kindness, forgiveness and justice and compassion for all and i say yes, all of that is true, all of

that is true but i feel an easy and i know that something has been lost in the translation. that sense of disorientation was crystallized for me recently when i read vincent harding's insightful book, martin luther king, the inconvenient hero. dr. harding was one of king's closest friends and advisers marching with him countless times and living around the corner from king's family in atlanta. it appears as if the price for the first national holiday honoring a black man is the developing of a massive case of national amnesia concerning who that black man really was. i would suggest that we americans have chosen amnesia rather than continue king's painful and charted and often disrupted struggle towards a

more perfect union end quote. he says as if we are determined to hold our new hero captive to the powerful. back of his life that culminated in the magnificent march on washington in 1963, refusing to allow him to break out beyond the stunning eloquence of his eye have a dream speech dr. harding writes quote we would like to forget that it was not the weaver weaver of gentle someday dreams of freedom who was shot down on a balcony in memphis memphis tennessee and quote. he was by 1968 a different even more courageous man, and man ahead of his time. i can see clearly now that on days like yesterday we rarely honor the man who died. no, we honor that sunny cheery version of him. we honor the man who gave the soaring speech about black and white schoolchildren, a man who

dreamed that integration was a dream. who is king five years later in 1968? who was that man killed on a motel balcony, the man who was marching with sanitation workers and demanding economic justice, not mere civil rights? the man who would come to believe after the civil rights bill had already been passed, after the civil rights victories had already been one that our biggest battle, the most important battle still lies ahead and that nothing, nothing short of a radical restructuring of our society held any hope for making the dream and promise of america a reality for all. king explained to her reporter in 1957 quote for years i labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions of a society, a

little change here, a little change there. now i feel quite differently. i think you've got to have a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values. frustrated by white resistance to addressing it in any meaningful way, the ghettos in failing schools, the structural joblessness and crippling poverty, king told his staff that the southern christian leadership conference quote the dispossessed, the poor poor both white and neither lived in a cruelly unjust society. they must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of their fellow citizens but against the structures through which society is refusing to lift the load of poverty. so what would king think of us today, of the world we have created in his absence? with the believe that the nonviolent revolution had

already been one, had even begun , the revolution of values that he prayed for? would would the a he if he could see yesterday believe that we now share his dreams, that we are now traveling the road he was marching? 50 years later have we caught up with king yet? are we finally on the path that he was traveling in 1963, 1968? back in 1969 while blood still stains the motel balcony where dr. king was murdered, a poem was written honoring his life and reflect on his death. the poem was written back when king had only just begun the process of being transformed in our collective consciousness from a troublesome dangerous black figure to a national hero. it was written way back when the memory of king's assassination will was still fresh and still

spilling among those who loved him. that ban in 1969 the poet carl wendell hines jr. had this poem reflecting on king's death. he wrote, now that he is safely dead, let us praise him, build monuments to his glory saying osama to his name. dead men make such convenient heroes. they cannot rise to challenge the images we would fashion from their lives and besides it is easier to build monuments than to build a better world, so now that he is safely dead, we would ease consciousness and teach our children that he was a great man , knowing that the cause for which he lived his still a cause and a dream for which he died is still a dream, a dead man's dream.

now that he is safely dead, martin luther king jr. is safely dead. is it true? is he safely dead today and it's his dreams safely dead? i know many people in this room would say no, no, no. dr. kings dream his spirit is still so much alive amongst all of us and its thriving right here in this room. and what better evidence could there be of this then that we as a nation all pause to pay tribute to his dream. just yesterday a national federal holiday, think about that, national federal holiday for martin luther king, jr. the man who was once deemed a threat to national security by the fbi, radical troublemaker. is it not obvious that we as a nation have finally caught up with king? do you may not be living his

dream but haven't we shared his dream? we are better evidence could there be than we just reelected our nation's first black president something that was unimaginable in 1963 or 1968. what better evidence could there be than that beautiful multiracial multiethnic gathering on the mall in washington d.c. that we witnessed just yesterday and was broadcast around the world? clearly we must be living the dream, right? it has been said by numerous philosophers and theologians that any society, and a civilization must be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members and its citizens. king would no doubt agree with that sentiment and in considering how we fare in that regard i find myself thinking of people like susan burton, people

who have cycled in and out of our nations prison system in the era of mass incarceration in his post-king come post-civil rights era, time when our prison population is more than quintupled and millions of people, overwhelmingly poor people of color, have been permanently locked up are locked out, stripped of the very civil and human rights dr. king and so many others risked their lives for and died for. i think of -- whose son was killed by a police cruiser bearing down her street in los angeles ran over by a girl boy. she received no apology, no real of knowledge meant of her loss and she fell into a deep, deep depression wracked with grief and she ultimately became a tick it to cocaine.

now if she had been wealthy, if she had even been solidly middle-class with a good job and a good health care plan, she undoubtedly would have qualified for many many hours of therapy and counseling. she likely would have qualified for very good legal prescription drugs that would help her cope with her severe depression and grief. but no, things were different for her. impoverished, living in now a, she became addicted to crack-cocaine and thus began her odyssey of wing in and out of prison for 15 years, 15 years. every time prosecutors said just take the deal. we will give you three years rather than eight. this time we will give you five

years rather than 12. this time, this time we will cut you a break. just take the deal and we will give you two years rather than 10. one plea deal after another, never offered drug treatment, only shown to her prison cell. every time she was released and pushed out on the streets unable to find work, no housing, often sleeping on the streets, cycling in and out of our prison system for 15 years until by no small miracle she was granted access to a private drug treatment facility. she got clean and was given a job. she decided she was going to dedicate the rest of her life to ensuring that no other woman would have to go through what she went through and she began by going down to skid row in los

angeles and meeting women, prisoners as they would get off the prison bus on skid row, get off the bus hearing nothing but a cardboard box carrying their belongings with little or no money turned out on the streets. she would say to these women who are strangers to her, just come home with me. you can sleep on my couch. he can sleep on my floor. you don't have to turn to the streets. i will take care of you. i'll give you food and i'll give you a safe place. just come home with me to susan burton now runs five safe homes for women in los angeles when they are released from prison. her organization is called the new way of life help finding jobs housing and helping to reunite women with their families and beyond that she is organizing formerly incarcerated people to demand the restoration of their basic civil and human rights. clearly, clearly susan has

caught up to king but what about the rest of us? what i have to say on this point the popular. it is not the sunni chervil message that is expected on the day after we an odd. for the second time our nation's first black president. but i believe it to be the truth and it implicates me and it implicates everyone in this room , and the truth is this. we have allowed a human rights nightmare to occur on our watch. in the year since dr. king's death a fast new system of racial and social control has emerged from the ashes of slavery and jim crow, system of mass incarceration at that no doubt has dr. king turning in his grave today. the mass incarceration of poor people of color in the united

states is tantamount to a new caste like system on the shuttles are young people from decrepit underfunded schools to brand-new high-tech prisons. it is a system that will lock's overwhelmingly poor people of color into a permanent second-class status nearly as effectively as earlier social control. some idea of the moral equivalent of jim crow. now i am always eager to admit that there was a time when i rejected this kind of talk out of hand. there was a time when i rejected comparisons between mass incarceration in slavery and mass incarceration and jim crow believing that those kinds of claims and comparisons were exaggerations or distortions or hyperbole. that there was a time when i thought the people who made those kinds of claims and those kinds of comparisons were actually doing more harm than

good to reform our criminal justice system and achieve greater racial equality in the united states. but what a difference a decade makes. for after years of working with those civil rights lawyers and advocates representing victims of racial profiling and police brutality and investigating patterns of drug law enforcement in poor communities of color and attempting to assist people live in release from prison, reentered into a society that had never shown much use for them in the first place i had a series of experiences that began what i now call my awakening. it began to awaken to a racial reality that is just so obvious to me now. that what seems odd in retrospect is that i could have been aligned to it for so long. they write in the introduction to my book "the new jim crow"

what has changed since the collapse of jim crowe has less to do the with the basic structure of our society than the language we use to justify it, then the error of colorblindness that's no longer socially permissible to use faith explicitly as a justification for discrimination, exclusion and social contempt. so we don't. rather than rely on race we use our criminal justice system to label people of color criminals and then engages all the practices that we supposedly left behind. today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals and nearly all the ways which was once legal to discriminate against african-americans. went to her label the fell in the old form of discrimination employment discrimination housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote exclusion from jury service is suddenly legal. the criminal you have scarcely more rights and arguably less respect than a black man living in alabama at the height of jim

crow. we have not ended racial caste in america, we have merely redesigned them. now for those who might think that's overstating the case consider this. there are more african-american adults under correctional control today in prison or jail on probation or parole then were enslaved in 1850 a decade before the civil war began. as of 2004, more black men were disenfranchised than in 1870 when the 15th of men was ratified with simply denying the right to vote on the basis of race by the 15th amendment prohibited all laws explicitly denying the right to vote on the basis of race but during the jim crow era poll taxes and literacy tests circumvented the 15th amendment and operated to deny

african-americans a chance to vote. today in many states disenfranchisement laws of congress would poll taxes and literacy tests ultimately could not. this doesn't affect just some small segment of the african-american community there to the contrary many large urban areas today more than half of working age african-american men now have criminal records and are thus subject to legalize discrimination for the rest of their lives. in fact in some cities like chicago, baltimore, philadelphia , the list could go on, in some cities the statistics are far worse. effective as reported in chicago that if you take into account prisoners, if you actually count

prisoner says people and keep in mind that prisoners are excluded from poverty statistics and unemployment data. that's masking the severity of racial inequality in the united states but if you actually count prisoners as people in the chicago area nearly 80% of working age african-american men have criminal records that are subject to legalize discrimination for the rest of their lives. these men are part of the growing caste, not class, caste a group of people defined largely by race relegated to a permanent second-class status by law. now i find today when i tell people that i now believe that mass incarceration is like a new jim crow, a new caste like system people react in complete

disbelief. they say how can you say that? how can you say that? are criminal justice system is of crime control and that lack folks would just stop running around committing so many crimes they would have to move worry about being locked up and stripped of their civil and human rights. therein lies the greatest myth about mass incarceration namely that is driven by crime and crime rates. it's not true, it's just not true. our prison population quintupled in the space of 30 years. we have gone from a prison population of about 300,000 to an incarcerated population now of over 2 million. we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world and highly repressive regimes like russia or china or iran. again this can't be explained simply by crime or crime rates.

no, no. during that same period of time that are incarceration rates increased exponentially crime rates fluctuated, went up come way down went back up again and went down again and today as bad as crime rates are in many parts of the country nastily crime rates are at historical lows. but incarceration rates have consistently soared. most criminologists and sociologists will acknowledge that crime rates in incarceration rates in the united states have moved independently of one another. incarceration rates especially black incarceration rates have soared regardless of when the crime is going up or down in any given community or the nation as a whole. so what explains the sudden explosion in incarceration, the birth of a penal system unprecedented in world history?

it's not crime and crime rates. the answer is the war on drugs and to the get tough movement, the wave of punitive nests that washed over the united states. drug convictions alone, just drug convictions accounted for about two-thirds of the increase in the federal prison system in more than half of the increase in the state prison system between 1985 and 2000 the period the greatest expansion of our prison system. you get a sense of how large the contribution the war on drugs has made to mass incarceration consider this. there are more people in prisons and jails today, just for drug offenses than were incarcerated for all reasons in 1980. now most americans violate drug laws in some form in their lifetime, most do but the enemy in this war has been racially

defined. not by accident. this drug war has been waged almost exclusively import committees of color even though studies have consistently shown now for decades but contrary to popular belief people of color do not use or sell illegal drugs at higher rates than whites. that defies our stereotypes about to a drug dealer is. picture in your mind a drug dealer and what do you see? there are studies conducted asking that particular question. in the mid-1990s and national survey was conducted asking people to close their eyes and imagine a drug criminal and report what they saw. over 95% of respondents pictured someone african-american.

only 5% pictured someone of any other racial or ethnic group. when we think of drug criminals in the united states, we typically think of people who are black and brown. studies have consistently shown that people of all races use and sell drugs that remarkably similar rates and the fact significant differences in the data can be found. some studies suggest that white people are more likely to engage in illegal drug dealings than black people but that's not what you get by taking a peek inside of our nation's prisons and jails that are overflowing with black and brown drug offenders. in some states 80 to 90% of all drug offenders sent to prison have been one race, african-american. i know that many people who see this data say oh yeah that's a shame. that's a shame but we need to

get tough on them, those boys n the hood. that's where the violent offenders can be found. that's where the drug kingpins can be found. able people don't realize this drug war has never been aimed primarily at rooting out the violent offenders and the drug kingpins. federal funding has slowed in this war to those state and local law enforcement agencies that move the sheer numbers of drug arrests. it's been a numbers game. on force and agencies have been rewarded in cash for the sheer numbers of people swept into the system for drug offenses which helps to explain why so many police officers go out looking for the so-called low-hanging fruit, tossing his as many people as possible in an effort to get their numbers up and to make matters worse the federal drug forfeiture laws allow state and local law enforcement

agencies to keep for their own use up to 80% of the cash and cars seized from suspected drug offenders. they don't need to be convicted just suspected of the law enforcement offense. they will seize the cash and seized the car. that's a direct monetary interest not ending drug abuse or drug addiction or drug-related crimes but in the longevity of this war itself. the results have been predictable. people of color have been arrested en masse for primarily nonviolent drug offenses. in 2005 for example, four out of five for simple possession on only one out of five for -- most people have no history of violence or even significant selling activity and in the 1990s the period of the greatest escalation of the drug

war nearly 80% of the increase in drug arrests were for marijuana possession, a drug that has been shown to be less harmful and less addictive than alcohol or tobacco and at least if not more prevalent in middle-class white communities and college campuses as it is in the hood. but by waging this war almost exclusively in the hood we have managed to create this vast new racial and astonishing short period of time. where has the u.s. supreme court banned in all of this? where has the u.s. supreme court banned? far from protecting the interests of discrete and insular minorities, far from doing that. the u.s. supreme court has been busy defending this war at every turn. the u.s. supreme court over the

last couple of decades has eviscerated for has eviscerated fourth amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, granting to the police the authority to stop, frist, search just about anyone anywhere without any probable cause or reasonable suspicion, not a shred of evidence of criminal activity as long as they get -- what is consent quest consent is when a police officer walks up to a young man and with one hand on his gun says put your arms up in the air so i can search you. that young man just waved his fourth amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures. law enforcement does not have a shred of evidence to support that frisk now that the young man has consented of course believing that he really had no ability to refuse consent and

walk away. you might say these are just isolated instances but in reality these isolated incidents add up to enormous racial disparities. the new york police department reported in one year alone, just one year alone it stop-and-frisk more than 600,000 people in one year alone. overwhelmingly black and brown men. but the u.s. supreme court has ruled that we cannot challenge these racial disparities in a court of law. in a series of cases beginning with mccluskey armstrong versus united states the u.s. supreme court has ruled explicitly that it doesn't matter how overwhelming the physical evidence might be. it does not matter how severe the racial disparities are. unless you can offer proof of conscious intentional bias tantamount to an admission by a police officer or a law

enforcement -- you can't state a claim for racial bias in the criminal justice system today. so many of the racial profiling cases that i was litigating 10 years ago tended to be filed. the u.s. supreme court has close the courthouse doors to claims of racial bias in every stage of the criminal justice process from stops and searches to plead for -- bargaining and sentencing. in so many ways the u.s. supreme heart has effectively immunize the system of mass incarceration from judicial racial bias much in the same way the u.s. supreme court once rallied to the defense of slavery and rallied again for the defense of jim crow in earlier eras. but of course just being swept into the system with little hope of being able to challenge the bias or cat asked that got you there is just the beginning for

so many because once you've been swept in a branded a criminal, a felon you were then ushered into a parallel social universe in which the very rights supposedly run in the civil rights movement loan -- no longer applies you. you may be denied their right to vote depending on the state you live in. you are deemed ineligible for jury service for the rest of your life. for the rest of your life discrimination in employment would not only be legal but absolutely -- you'd be forced to check t box on employment applications as being the direct question have you ever been convicted of a felony collected? it doesn't matter if the felony happened a few weeks ago, a few months ago for 45 years ago. for the rest of your life you have to check that box knowing full well your application is

going straight to the trash. many people say come on stop making excuses for people. when you get out prison it's hard and stuff but if you try hard and if you really work at it and put yourself out there you can get a job. you can get a job at mcdonald's or burger king. getting a job at mcdonald's is no easy feat if you have a felony record. housing discrimination perfectly legal and absolutely existing through release from the prison as well as landlords free to discriminate against you, discrimination public benefits legal and in fact under federal law you are deemed ineligible even for food stamps for the rest of your life if you've been convicted of a drug felony. many states have now opted out of the federal ban on food stamps for drug offenders but still hundreds of thousands of

people can't get food stamps to feed themselves because they were once caught with drugs. what are people just released from prison expected to do? tossed out on the curb, can't get a job, can't get housing even food. food stamps might be off-limits. but are you expected to do? apparently what we expect people to do is to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees, fines and court costs and accumulated back child support which continues to accrue while you are in prison and a growing number expected to pay back the cost of your imprisonment and paying back all these fees fines and court costs and the chelated back child support may well be a condition of your probation or parole. and then get this, if you are

one of the lucky few, the very few who managed to get a job right out of prison up to 100% of your wages can be garnished. 100%. pay back all those fees, fines and court costs and accumulated back child support. what are people just released in prison expected to do? if we take a step back from this , take a step back and see the impoverished underfunded schools. you see the children who were hounded by the police stop-and-frisk on the way to and from school. when they are old enough to drive their cars are pulled over and searched. when they are swept in committing some usually relatively minor crime the first arrest is a relative thing minor

crime or drug offense the very crimes that occur with equal frequency in middle-class white communities or college campuses. once you are swept in you were ushered into the parallel social universe unable to work, find shelter or even food. when you step back and take a look what is the system designed to do? it's designed to send folks right back to prison is what happens the vast majority of time. about 70% of people released from prison return within a few years in the majority of those who return in some states do so in a matter of months because the challenges associated with mere survival on the outside are so immense. why did we choose this path? how did we get ourselves here?

all these years after dr. king has passed away? it's clear to me that in the year since dr. king's death our nation was faced with a choice. we could continue down the path the doctor king was traveling, the path of compassion, forgiveness, inclusion and hope. we could choose the path of the poor people's movement. we could join him in the revolution of values he prayed for or we could take a different road, a road more familiar when it comes to matters of race, the road of exclusion, division, punitive miss and despair. one day i believe historians will look back on this era of mass incarceration and they will

say it was their, right there at the prison gates that we abandon dr. king's dream and took a dramatic u-turn, a u-turn that would leave millions of people permanently locked up and locked out. we have now spent $1 trillion waging a drug war since it began, a trillion dollars. funds that could have been used for education, job creation, drug treatment. we are constantly being told there's not enough money for small class sizes. there's not enough money for jobs programs for youth. there's not enough money, not enough money for poor people. apparently we had a trillion dollars and we decided to spend

it rather than on education or job creation we decided to spend it building a prison system unlike anything the world has ever known. so what do we do? what do we do now? my own view is that nothing short of a major social movement has any hope of sending mass incarceration and inspire every commitment to dr. king's dream. if you think that sounds extreme , but surely some things less would do now, consider this. if we were to return to the incarceration rates we had in the 1970s and early 1980s before the war on drugs or the get tough movement kicked off we would have to release four out of five people who are in prison today, four out of five. more than a million people employed by the criminal justice

system. they would need to find a new line of work. most new prison construction is occurred in communities that have been sold on persons is an answer to their economic woes and believe prisons are a source for jobs, desperately needed jobs in their city. very often presents are advertised as providing far more benefits to these communities than they actually deliver but nonetheless so many of these communities believe that their economies depend on those prisons. private prison companies now on the new york stock exchange and doing quite well even in a time of economic recession. those companies would be forced into bankruptcy. the system of mass incarceration is now so deeply-rooted in our social political and economic structure that is not going to fade away or downsized out of

sight without a major upheaval, a radical shift in our public consciousness. now i know there are many people today who say oh you know there is no hope of ending mass incarceration in america, no, there is no hope. pick another issue. just as many people who were assigned to jim crow in the south that was a yeah, yeah that's a shame but that's just the way that it is. so many people today view the millions cycling in and out of our prisons and jails today is just an unfortunate but in an alterable fact of american life. i'm quite certain the doctor king would not have been so resigned. i believe if we are truly, truly to honor dr. king, if we are to ever catch up with king we have

got to be willing to continue his work. we have got to be willing to go back and pick up where he left off and do the hard work of movement building on behalf of poor people of all colors. in 1968 dr. king told us the time to come to transition from the civil rights movement to a human rights movement. meaningful equality he said could not be achieved through civil rights alone without basic human rights, the right to work, the right to shelter, the right to quality education and human rights civil rights aren't empty promise. so in honor of dr. king and all those who labored in the old jim crow i hope we will commit ourselves to building a human rights movement to end mass incarceration. a movement for education, movement for jobs, movement and

all forms of legal discrimination against people, discrimination that denies basic human rights to work, to shelter into food. what must be due to begin this movement? first i believe we have got to begin by telling the truth, the whole truth. we have got to be willing to admit out loud that we as a nation have an itch to re-create a caste like system in this country. we have got to be willing to tell the truth in our schools, in our churches and places of worship, behind bars and in community centers. we have got to be willing to tell the truth so a great awakening to the reality of what has occurred can come to pass. because the reality is this new caste like system doesn't come with signs. there are no whites only signs anymore. there are no signs today

alerting us to the existence of this system of mass incarceration. in prisons today they are out of sight and out of mind. hundreds of miles away from communities and families that might otherwise be connected to them and the people who cycle and in and out of these prisons typically live in segregated impoverished communities, communities that middle-class folks, upper-middle-class folks barely come across. so you can live your whole life in america today having no idea that this system of mass incarceration and the harm it reeks even exist. so we have got to be willing to tell the truth about what has occurred, pull back the curtain and make visible what is hidden in plain sight so that an awakening can begin and people

can begin to take the kind of creative constructive action that this moment in our history surely requires. of course it's a lot of consciousness raising isn't going to be enough. we have got to be willing to get to work and in my view that means we have got to be willing to build an underground railroad for people released from prison. underground railroad for people who want to make a genuine break for real freedom, people who want to escape this system and find work, find shelter and to be able to support their families, find true freedom in america today. we have got to be willing to open our homes, open our schools, open our workplaces to people returning home from prison and provide support for the families who have loved ones behind bars today.

how do we create to be safe places? one thing we can certainly do, we can begin to admit our own criminality out loud, our own criminality because the truth is we have all made mistakes in our lives. we all have. all of us our -- our centers. all of us have done wrong. all of us have broke in the law at some point in our lives. if you are an adult you have broke in the lot at some point in your life. some people will say oh yeah i am a sinner, i've made mistakes but don't call me a criminal. don't call me a criminal. i say okay well maybe you never drank underage. maybe you never experimented with drugs. if the worst thing you've done in your entire life is be 10 miles over the spit a limit on the freeway you put yourself and others at more risk of harm

then someone smoke marijuana in the privacy of their living room but there are people in the united states serving life sentences for first-time drug offenses, life sentences. the u.s. supreme court upheld life sentences for first-time drug offenders against the eighth amendment challenge that says sentences were cruel and unusual and in violation of the eighth amendment. the u.s. supreme court said no, no it's not cruel and unusual punishment to sentence a young man to life imprisonment for first-time drug offense even though virtually no other in the country in the world does such a thing. we have got to end this idea that the criminals are, not us and instead say they are bad for the grace of god go i. all of us have made mistakes in our lives, taken wrong turns but only some of us have been required to pay for those

mistakes for the rest of our lives. and that president barack obama himself is it netted two more than a little bit of drug use in his lifetime. he has admitted to using marijuana and cocaine and if he hadn't been raised by white grandparents in hawaii, if he hadn't done much of his illegal drug use a predominantly white college campuses and universities, if he had been raised in the hood the odds are good that he would have been stopped, he would have been first, he would have been searched and he would have been caught and far from being president of the united states days he might not even have the right to vote depending on the state he lives in. we have got to recognize that building this movement is about ensuring the future of all of us the life chances of all of our young people so they can all dream big dreams and join in

this project of the american dream. this is a movement we must build on behalf of all of us. not about us and them as people we imagine are the criminals. but of course building this underground railroad and creating safe spaces isn't going to be enough either just as in the days of slavery wasn't enough to shuttle the future freedom one by one on the underground railroad. it won't be enough for us to open our hearts and our minds to one by one. we are going to have to be willing to work for abolition. that means working for abolition of the system of mass incarceration as a whole and that needs ending the war on drugs once and for all, ending it. we must shift to public health model for dealing with drug addiction and drug abuse and

stop investing billions of dollars locking people up in prisons and jails cells rather than investing in education and drug treatment and job creation in the communities that need it the most. we have got to end all these forms of legal discrimination against people released from prison, discrimination that denies them basic human rights to work, to shelter, to food and last but not least we have got to shift from a purely punitive approach to dealing with violence and violent crime in our communities to end more rehabilitative and restored at one, one that takes seriously the interest of the victim, the offender and the community as a whole. we have got a lot of work to do and if it seems like too much, this seems like it can't possibly be done keep in mind that all of these that

constitute the system of mass incarceration all rest upon one core belief and it is this same belief that sustained jim crow. it is the belief that some of us , some of us are not worthy of genuine care compassion and concern and when we respectively challenge that core belief this whole system begins to fall. a multiracial multiethnic human rights movement must be born like that is rooted in the awareness of the dignity and humanity of all people and it's got to be multiracial and multiethnic. although this war on drugs may have been born with black folks in mind it is a word that has destroyed the lives of people in communities of all color and we see the same get tough rhetoric and divisive racial politics that helps us give birth to the drug war now leading to another prison building boom this one

aimed at suspected illegal immigrants. we have got to be willing to connect the dots and build a multiracial multiethnic human rights movement on behalf of of all of us. before this movement can truly get underway a great awakening is required. we have got to awaken from this colorblind slumber we have been in and we have got to be willing to embrace those criminals. not necessarily all of their behaviors at them, their humanness board has been the refusal and failure to recognize the dignity and humanity of all people that has been the sturdy foundation for every caste system that has ever existed in the united states or anywhere else in the world. it is our task i firmly believe two and not just mass

incarceration, not just the war on drugs but to end the history and cycle of caste in america. then and only then can we say with pride that we are finally catching up with king. thank you so much for having me tonight. thank you. [applause] [applause] [applause] >> well, okay. can i take a moment here? we are going to take some questions now. folks want to ask questions we have a microphone over here and a microphone over there. you can come up in lineup and

you can ask him questions. do you have any questions for professor alexander? ..

is related to the intangible but he is seized that are unneeded but nonetheless held that think to themselves i'm going to do my job i'm going to jump out and see if they've got anything on him. they did it with good intention. this same officer may see a group of kids walking down the street and it would never cross

his mind to have those kids spread eagle in the pavement and that may not hold any evil intent to those young black men but it's about who looks like a criminal and hundreds of thousands of times as i mentioned it is adding up to these racial disparities and the same is true with prosecutors. they show that prosecutors play a considerable bias in the decisions about who seems like they should be given a good deal, who is worthy of a second chance, who seems like they can't be turned around in a book should be thrown at them so they play themselves out in all kinds of offenses but when we talk

about violent crime it is important to acknowledge it that is much higher among black men than white men. violent crime is much higher. racial disparities and violent crime disappear when you control for joblessness in other words if you compare white jobless men with black jobless jobless men, man, the disparity in violent crime disappears. that doesn't mean it's an excuse for violence, certainly not and most people that are jobless do note that particularly chronic joblessness creates the conditions we know will give rise to violent and people at

risk of violence. they will be walked out of locked out of the economy as we supposedly do all of this in the name of safety and it ensures that the enormous population will be locked out of employment and trapped in the underpass to. why are we so willing to invest in building prisons rather than

job creation if the ingredients of the communities, so i think it's important for us to recognize the ways which it plays out in all of these discretionary decisions that are made in the system but also how we invest our resources in who we are willing to treat as disposable and who we view in the resources that would assure them of a path of equal opportunity. >> thank you. that answers my question. [applause] >> i had a quick question. we noticed a financial hardship kind of helps to break down

writing down the walls, the separate but equal in the classroom setting so this is added to because people are getting paid off of this and money is getting put into it so -- >> it's important to emphasize jim crowe didn't collapse to provide equal opportunities. there was no effort as was compared to whites. what led to the collapse had a lot to do with how the united states was being viewed in the

aftermath of world war ii when black servicemen were returning home fighting for freedom abroad it's because of the mass movement that arose in the system itself so i agree we can weaken the foundation of any system of control by challenging its economic base and that is one of the strategies that led to the collapse of apartheid in south africa. the divestment movement, urging

universities, corporations to divest from south africa, you know, scare the daylights out of the south african government as they feared the investment. there are people today that are talking about pursuing the strategies in the era of mass incarceration meaning divesting the united methodist church just announced they decided to divest well, churches invest in mutual funds and very often we don't even know what companies and mutual funds are invested. they've become very profitable so many investment portfolios now include private prisons as

one of the profitable companies that any institution ought to invest in this institution that we are investing in this system. i think the campaign urging universities, churches to divest with any mutual fund or pension plan that has even 1 penny invested in the prisons could be very helpful but even more importantly it can be a tool for raising consciousness and awareness about the system of incarceration as a whole and i believe fewer than one in ten today are held in private prisons.

as well as boycotting companies that will not hire people with criminal records. there've been a number of companies that courageously said we are going to hire people and give people a fair shot at employment, and if we begin to celebrate and honor those companies while publicizing the companies that won't even give people a chance at an interview coming even a chance of getting in the door i think that can be something else that helps raise consciousness and contribute to the building but ultimately, i don't believe this movement should be about dollars and cents. ultimately, we've got to find a way to build a new consensus and

force all of us to reckon with what we've done and inspire genuine care, compassion and concern for the least advantaged in society. so i think what you're describing can be part of that but we can't reduce the movement of the dollar. in your book you mentioned several judges who've given up the courts and reassigned because of the harsh sentences they are expected to give for drug offenders. have any of them said my experience gives a perspective and a sounding board where i can lead people into some of this revolution? >> there is an organization that i would recommend people to check out which is called law enforcement against prohibition. it's organized entirely of

judges, prosecutors, police officers, police chiefs who believe the drug war costs more than prohibition itself. these are people that spent their lives and careers as drug warriors and have come to the conclusion that the harm caused is vastly outweighed by any potential benefits that have to be abandoned in its entirety. they were voices in the community calling for the course. >> thanks for pointing to the leadership. >> growing up a poor man in my young age, i was sitting there thinking about how less than fortunate i am to be in the system but also have some people

i know that is in the system and you wonder these are good people so how do we determine now i know you spoke on the application and you put in that years in prison. my heart really hurts for that one particular guy made a mistake. help me turn this around to give someone a fat chance?

>> i'm a supporter of damn the box initiatives that have been successful in a number of cities and jurisdictions to be moved the box on employment applications asking have you ever been convicted of a felony. they have removed that question from all city employment opportunities in this jurisdictions around the country cities, counties that have embraced the band the box movement and have removed the box from employment applications. of course employers may still consider prior criminal history once the person has had an interview. but with removing the box does is gives people a chance to at least get an interview, at least get their foot in the door so they can make the case that they deserve a chance.

they are well beyond the kind of activity that landed them in jail in the first place. everybody should have a shot. they are in a position that is unfair to those that drink alcohol regularly. you have people that have alcohol problems and struggles with alcohol and they don't fix any boxes. there is no background checks that reveal their history unless they've been caught in a dui or something like that. so my own view is people who have some kind of drug-related

conviction these are the kind of things that shouldn't be held against people because they happened to be caught faster than you might get caught if you are a poor person living in a ghetto community as opposed to somebody on a college campus in beijing that activity and everybody thinks that these are were just being kids and they will grow out of it. we have to be careful about the extent to which we view it as relevant to the type of jobs people are applying for today. i support a very strong antidiscrimination position against people who have kryger criminal records unless it is directly relevant to the type of job you are applying for. >> i want to thank you for coming and one of my questions is for a student or anybody else out here in the crowd that wants to get more involved in the

progression of the movement what can we do other than informing other people of what going on and doing more research ourselves. >> excellent question. one thing you can do is think about forming a students against mass incarceration organization on campus. they've been forming on numerous universities around the country and there's one at howard and columbia and growing and you can go on my website and could join that effort linking up with others around the country but how can people begin to play a meaningful role it takes leadership in the movement to end the mass incarceration and on the site i list other resources and organizations consider contacting that you

could begin to work with if you choose and if they were doing work locally, but i do think that the priorities are consciousness raising and working towards supporting people as they are released from prisons of finding out what are the reentry centers that can be provided and then also getting to work with organizations like the drug policy alliance and many other organizations that are operating nationally to repeal the drug walls that exist here in the state like others to get involved in the initiatives and repeal the ban on food stamps.

one of the things that worries me the most about this point that we are in building the movement is that there is no grassroots organization that exists today on the national level that has as its primary mission ending the system of mass incarceration and so some of the work that needs to be done may not have been done in your community. but who is going to do this work, it's not you, it's not us. i encourage you to check out my list of websites for resources and form your own student organization and also get together with like-minded souls and think seriously about what kind of organizations need to be built perhaps in your own community to do the work that lies ahead.

i want to thank you for the presentation. overall when many young persons are arrested for drugs they tend to have other charges against them. one such charge that is difficult to beat his conspiracy they told me come spirits he is one of the hardest charges to beat. what software solutions do you propose to remove such a charge from the book because conspiracy can be applied in a broadway. >> thank you for raising that question. many people don't realize until

you are charged as being part of a conspiracy that something as simple as passing messages to someone, so and so called and wants you to meet, you need a ride okay i will give you a lift. you may have a sense of what's going on or maybe you don't know what's going on about prosecution but prosecution shuler thinks you do and it takes one act in support of the conspiracy to be getting someone a ride. it can be passing messages, it could be something extremely minor. many women find themselves charged as co-conspirators because the prosecutors are after their boyfriend or husband

or some man that they know who they think is involved in drug conspiracy so they will charge them as a co-conspirator in order to try to get them to snatch defeat cup snitch on their friend or loved one and many that actually do not even have the knowledge to be able to or because of their consciences won't allow them to snitch on someone they care about, then the person that is charged in the principle of the crimes of the conspiracy is very dangerous and unjust and it ought to be changed. it requires the demand and organization and to become educated about the nature of the law and insists that legislators

do what it takes so that people are not ensnared by them in the ways that you describe. >> thank you. >> we only have time for like three more questions so we will take the first question here. >> thank you for coming and continuing to spread the privateer mystified and talk about what is surrounding this topic. as i was sitting there, there was so much going through my mind so i guess i'm thinking about this and it should possibly be an internal community discussion. but there's still this notion of personal accountability that i am thinking about and i guess my question is does it play a role

in the movement because i have a lot of family members and friends that know better and make bad decisions and don't hold themselves accountable. how do we balance the act sort of personal accountability play a role and how do we deal with that in this movement? >> personal accountability plays a role for all of us we have to take responsibility for the choices we make in our lives and we also have to take responsibility for the choices we make collectively. it seems to me we have been putting an enormous amount of shame and blame on the most

vulnerable in society can accept no responsibility collectively for having set people up to fail and so yes of course everyone has to take responsibility for their own actions and that was absolutely the role for personal accountability in the conversation. we've got to expand the conversation beyond personal accountability and ask the question okay so you've made a mistake. now what. the reality is people of all colors make mistakes and in fact we make many of the same kinds of mistakes. but some people are punished in an unrelenting fashion and some

people that think the same mistakes go off to college and law school and going to the president of the united states so we've got to be willing to look at the kind of mistakes people make with an open heart and open mind and make choices about how we respond to those mistakes in a way that honors their humanity and their dignity based on the awareness that as a society we need to honor people's basic human rights to be able to live in a community that is safe and secure. a child growing up in the crime-ridden violent community that have to worry about bullets flying through the air near school of rights are being violated.

it assures we create thriving and caring communities that but we can't simply resort to shame and blame and get caught up in a way that makes us less safe and denies the basic humanities of those that we claim to care about. >> i would like to thank you for bringing the presentation on this area.

where is the african-american church when it comes to getting involved what has happened to them we seem to run from the root cause analysis for the church leaders that's what we should be doing to address this issue. >> thank you. i agree people have such an extraordinarily important role to play at this moment in the nations history. we care a lot about compassion and forgiveness. we talk a good game but then when it comes to being willing to stand up against these kind of injustices for too long, too

many have remained silent. i am encouraged that so in the recent years, the leaders are standing up and waking up to the conference that is a network of several thousand progressive churches that have decided to make ending mass incarceration one of their primary missions for the foreseeable future and they created a study guide for the book to be used in congregations to raise awareness and encourage people to explore the relationship between their faith and spiritual connections and what we see in this era of mass incarceration. there is a movement afoot in the communities. it is a multiracial and

multiethnic faith based social organizing network that is now embracing ending the mass incarceration as one of their main goals. so there is change in shifting attitudes to be seen in the community but i couldn't agree with you more. locking people up and subjecting them that is not a moral issue, a spiritual crisis to which this church off to speak and respond, i don't know what is so i hope that people like you will encourage the leaders that you know in your circles that influenced you to begin to speak up and speak out with courage.

you don't see many gathering together to help find the truth and i feel like we are struggling to find the truth because there's so many other things going on. truly if you are to watch mainstream news or mainstream media today to circulate the

videos and articles and materials online for as many people as possible but it's no substitute for coming together in person. posting to face but is great but coming together in person to have steady circles and film screenings in the form of these issues this is essential to raising the level of awareness and consciousness in building the common commitment to taking a.

coming out of prison and challenges they face. it's the one that we have been fed for so long about the criminals and what ought to be done with them, but in the meantime we have to take responsibility for educating ourselves in our own communities and the means we have at our disposal. [applause]

illustrators, graphic novelists, all these different authors all day over 100,000 people coming in to celebrate books and reading. i'm a little prejudice because i'm a library but i have to tell you anybody that wants to get inspired, the book festival festival is the perfect place. >> live all-day coverage begins 10 a.m. with featured authors including the pulitzer prize-winning authors david mcauliffe and thomas friedman, former secretary of state condoleezza rice and best-selling authors michael lewis and jd dance. book tv on c-span2 in prime time now continues.