molding that great musical leader eric so i look forward to finishing that. >> booktv wants to know what you're reading send us your reading list on twitter at booktv, or insta graham at booktv post to our facebook page facebook.com/booktv. book tv on c-span2. one of the books he mentioned the new jim crow that came out in 2010 and it was a big best seller at the time.aking abt it we covered her speaking about it and here she is. [applause] thank you so much for that warm welcome. her ite feels wonderful to be here.y i am thrilled to see so many people eager to join in the

dialogue about where we as aatid nation find ourselves in this ve drive towards freedom and itfreo seemsm. particularly fitting that we would have this conversationd today, the day after the nation paused its daily business to pae tribute to reverend martinr.'s f luther king jr.'s life ande andt legacy, weand it seems fitting that we would have this conversation today 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 andnd president obama's soaring oftoric about the promisering america, life, liberty, justice, a qualityyand equality for all y been forgotten by many, and i

know that many people in america will not think of doctor king again until his holiday rolls around again next year, i would like for us to cause tonight and think more deeply about the meaning of doctor king's life ands his legacy and what it has to teach us about our nation's. present.nk parti thingscularl particularly on the anniversary of the march on washington.s have 50 years have passed. 50 years have passed since his voice soared over the washington monument declaring his dream. i have a dream come it is a dream deeply rooted in thedeepln

american dream. and yesterday while i wasd watching president obama's inaugural address i heard echoes of king's speech i have a dreami when i turned off my television set, i spent a few minutes reflecting on the question are all of us welcome to share in se this dream, the same dream ring- doctor king dreamed up? most americans i'm sure can recite portions of the i have a dream speech by heart.have a dae it is an extraordinary veryrownd familiar speech i've grownhis accustomed to hearing clips of the speech played over and overy recycled over and over on the radio every january they are the favorite quotes, the favorite ni lines, and now that i have school-age children, i see howd

he's explained to them inclasoos classrooms when i was in elementary school there was no martin luther king day, no kin discussion of his heroism in the classroom but when my childrenr came home from school just thehy other day they told me all they learned in school about his courage. he was the man who stood up to t the bullies and believe the children of all colors and walko of life ought to be able to hold hands and be be judged by theech content of their character and not the color of their skin.e he was willing to die so all of us could now live his dream. and i find myself conflicted as i listen to my children and pare backed to my c to me they heardl about this man who believed inru kindness and forgiveness and justice and compassion for allln and i say yes, all of that is, f untrue, but all of that is true.

i feel uneasy and i knowwthatnsf something has been lost in the translation. ws that comes to be crystallized for me when i read harding's v insightful book "martin luther . king the inconvenient hero." doctor harding was one of king's closest friends and advisers marchinga with him countless times and looking around the corner from his family in atlanta.. harding writes with some sorrow, "it appears as if the price fory the first national holiday honoring a black man is thedevef development of a massive case oa yational amnesia concerning whol that black man really was. i would suggest we have chosen th amnesia rather than continue the painful uncharted and often disruptive struggle towards a more perfect union "-end-double-quote. it appears as though we are determined to hold our new hero.

captive to the powerful period of his life that culminated in a magnificent march on washington in 1963 refusing to allow him te break out beyond the stunninghis eloquence of his i have a a drep speech doctor harding writes we would lik would likee to forget but it wasn't a weaver of gentle sonnye dreams of freedom shot down ao was shot balcony in memphis tennessee. he was by 1968 a different and a even more courageous man, a man ahead of his time.i can see c and i can see clearly now like yesterday that we rarely honored the man who died no, we honorore that version of him the up inhe the man that gave a soaring about b speech about black and white schoolchildren, the man that dream integration of the dream. but who was king five years

m.ea later? 1968 who was that man killed on the that motel balcony marchingh sanitation workers demanding ec, economic justice not civil th man w rights, the man who would come ea believe after the civilbillar rights bills have already been had alrout after the victoriesrs have alreadyea been one of ourle biggest battles, the mostbatt important battles still liet ahead and that nothing short ofs a radical restructuring of ourlp society held any hope for makin the dream and promise of americr a reality for all of its citizens. king explai he explained to a reporter in 1967 for years i labored withthe the idea of reforming thesting existing institutions of thee society is little change here, e little change their. now i feel quite differently. i think you've got to have areco

reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values. frustrated by the whitengful resistance to addressing in any meaningful way that detained scs that detaining ghettos, failing schools, structural joblessness and crippling poverty, he toldos his staff at the southern lea christian leadershipdership coe before, both white and negro uelly un lives in an unjust society. they must organize a revolutiont against that injustice not against the lives of fellow of citizens but against structuresy through which the society is refusing to lift the load of poverty. so why would he think of us the world that we have created in his absence?? what he believed that the nonviolent revolution had already been one?

the revolution of the values v that healues prayed for but he e d wou could see us today believe we now share his dream and we aremg traveling the road he wasght up marching? y fifty years later have we caught up with him yet and are we fin finally onally the path that he3 traveling in 1963, 1968. back in 1969 when blood stillkiw stand at the motel balcony where he was murdered, a column was written reflecting on his death and it was back when king had only just begun the process of v being transformed in our collective consciousness from a troublesome figure to the itas national hero. wten it was written back when they were still fresh and spellingant among those who loved him.

onw that he is safely dead letid us praise him, build monuments to his glory. it is easier to build monumentsw than to build a better world so now it is a cause into the dreas is still a dream. now that he's dead martin luther

king jr. is he dead today come is his dream safely dead? i know many people in the roomlm would say no. it's to pay tribute to his dream jus justt yesterday. finally caughp we may not be living his dreamt haven w but don't they ever share his dream of better evidence could a

there be.idencecould what better evidence could therc be than that multiracial andwasn multiethnic gathering in the mall in washington, d.c. that we witne witnessed just yesterday and was broadcast arounddbroadcast the ? must be living and sharing the dream. it it's been said by numerous philoso philosophers and theologians thatlogians any society, any civilization must be judged byhi how it treats its most vulnerable members and prisoners i find myself thinking of people who cycled in and out of the i nation, prison system in thiss era of mass incarceration and

post civil rights era the time when the population has more thans more than quintupled overy peanen poor people otlf color have been permanently locked up for locked out, stripped of the very civil rights doctor king and so many others risked their lives for and some even liv die for. i think of susan whose son was killed by the police barrelingrg down her street in los angeles.e she received no apology or acknowledgment of her loss and fell into a deep depression wracked with grief andbecame a ultimately became addicted to crack cocaine. if she had been even solidly jod

middle class with a good job and good health care care plan she would have qualified for many hours of therapy and counseling and wouln have qualified for legal t prescription hdrugs that would help her cope with severe depression and grief but now things were different. imhoff, urged she became addicte to crack cocaine and thus becamo the odyssey of cycling in and out of prison for 15 years.e prosecutors said just take the ther deal we will give you three years rather than eight.e years this time we will give you five2 years rather than 12.

just this time we will cut you a dead break and give you two years rather than sit. an one plea deal after another never offering a treatment onlyt shown in ament, prison cell. every time she was pushed outime onto she the streets unable tod work, no housing often sleeping on the streets, cycling in andom out of the prison system for 15 years until by no small miracleb she wasy granted access to a private treatment facility and got clean and was given a job. so no other woman would have to go through what she went kirough.nby going do to s she began by going down to los angeles helping them get off the

bus with nothing but a cardboard box carrying their belongingssho and she would say to these womeh who were strangersese to her ym can sleep on my couch or floor you don't have to turn to theyoe streets.rganizati is the organization is called a new way of life finding jobs, reuniting women with their families and beyond that,eir rly incaerated organizing formerly incarcerated to demand the restorationo of the basic civil and human rights.g clearly susan has caught up, but what about the rest of us.

what i have to say on this point may not be popular. mege that i it's not the message that isday expected on the day after we inaugurated for the second timek the nation's first black president. truth i believe it to be the truth ant it implicates me and everyone im this room. and the truth is this.an right we've allowed a human rights nightmare to occur on our watch. in the years since doctor king'f death, a vast new system of racial and social control has emerged from the ashes of slavery and jim crow. a system of mass incarceration oftem no doubt has been turningn his grave today. the mass incarceration of poord states i people of color in the united states is tantamount toa a new system that shuttles tobrannew

brand-new high-tech prisons. sol it is a mind you the moral equivalent of jim crow.ime whent it was a time i rejected comparisons between mass incarceration and slavery, massc incarceration and jim crowthat f believing that those wereexaiono exaggerations or distortions were hyperbole. they were going to reform thed e justice system and achieveunite

greater racial equality in the united states but what a difference a decade makes profid representing the victims oftalin police brutality and investigating the patterns forf the communities of color tover s reenter into a society. i i had a series of experiences an thatg. i now call my awakening.n tobegan to awaken to the racials reality that is s mo obvious to. now what seems odd that much respect is that we have beenthey blind to it for so long.to my as i write in the introduction to my book what has changed what ha since the collapse has left thee basic structure of the societytu

and language we use tose justify it.ustice sy to we use the criminal justice system to label people of color a criminals and engage in all thae we supposedly left behind. today it is legal tote agait cri discriminate nearly and although the ways that was once legal tom discriminate against african americans. once you are label they fell inn the old one is the d discrimination, employmentymen tiscrimination, housing hhecrimination, denial ofn t housto right to vote. rghts you have more rights and lessrea respect than a black man living in alabama at the height of jimm crow.ended racialaste we haven't ended the racialigned

caste in america. we have just nearly redesigned it. for those who might think that is overstating the case, consider this.adults there are more african-americane adults under the correctionalctn control today in prison or jail on probation or parole then were enslaved in 1850 a decade before the civil war began. more were disenfranchised then in 1873 the amendment was ratified and denied the right to vote on the basis of the race.he they prohibited all of the lawsh and denied the right to vote on the basis ofsis of the race butg the jim crow era it circumventet the amendment and obligated toco denied the chance to vote. stes

today in many states there were ngr illiteratees c. tests that t ultimately could not. contr many to the contrary more than halfa now have criminal records intou thebject t o sleubject of discrr the rest of their lives.imore, in some cities like chicago, baltimore, philadelphia, thecou list couldgo go on.n in some cities it was reported in chicago if you take intoys account prisoners and counts prisoners as people and keep inp mind the y are excluded from

unmp policy statistics and unemployment data for thisng te masking the own equality in the united states but if you countne prisonerss b as people in the ar chicago area, nearly 80% of working age african-american men with criminal records arerdshat subject to discrimination for their lives..these meare part they are part ofo a growing undr caste, not class, a group of, ct people defined largely by race-s relegated to the permanent stats second-class status b by law. find today when i tell people i believe mass incarceration iss pike a new jim crow, peopleo react with a complete disbelief and say how can you say that.u ? our criminal justice system is a

ar crime controlt and if folksng would stop running around have committing so many crimes we wouldn't have to worry about being locked up bei and indies rights.pped ofheir civil that is where lies the greatest myth of incarceration that it's been driven by crime and crime rates., it that is just's jus not true. our prison population quintupled in the space of 30 years. we've gone from a prison population of about 300,000 totw the incarcerated population now of over 2 million.ighest ratef we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world withr highly repressive regimes like russia or china or iran. but again this can't be explained by crime or crime rates. during the same period of time

that our incarceration rates increased exponentially, theyctuated fluctuated. today as bad as they arecrime lowsonally they are at historical lows buttes h incarceration rates have soared. most will acknowledge they'vendt movedly o independently of one another. regardless if the crime is going up or down in any givenion as community or the nation as a whole. so what explains the sudden explosion in incarceration, the birth of a penal system bih of a penal unprecedentedsy in history theus answer is to get tough movementt

that washed for the unitedone, jus states.or it accounted for two thirds of in the fed the increase in the federal half prison system and more than half the increase in the state syste0 between 1985 and the period of 2,000 theeth greatest expansionn our prison system.people prisos there are more people in prisons and jails today then werethanine incarcerated for all reasons ine 1980. irst americans violate drug laws in some form in their lifetime. but the enemy in this war has beendefined. racially defined.i

not bybe accident. al it has been waged almostttees exclusively in the poorer communities of color even though studies the studies have consistently shown h for decades contrary tof popular belief, people of color do not use or so illegal drugs at higher rates than white and that is the racial stereotypepes ab about a drug dealer is.rug picture in your mind a drugat du dealer and who do you see? it's been conduct in question is the mid-1990s the national survey was conduct in asking people to close their eyes and imagine a drug criminal andrepoa report what they saw. aer 95% of respondents picturef someone.

the. it's overflowing with the drug offenders and in some states 80 to 90%%drug of all sent to pris, been one race, african-american. i know many people see this ands say that's a shame. but we need to get tough on those folks because that's whert

the violent offenders can be found, the kingpins can be r found. many people don't realize that it's never been aimed primarily at rooting out the offenders. hat m it's been a numbers game.er mbe it's the number of people swept intors the system. for the they go out slooking for the so-called low hanging fruit. they keep for their own use ofe to 80% of the cash, cars seized

from suspected drug offenders. to seize your cash and your cary and its direct monetary interest not even ending the drug abusedr or addiction or related crime. o it's the nonviolent drug, four o offenses. in the 1990s the period was nearly 80% of the increase for marijuana possession.

by waging the war almost ho exclusively we managed to creata this under caste in a shortperif whriod of time. where had the supreme court'ser ban in all off ba this?om protting the insufrom protecting the interest of insular minorities it's been at every turn. the supreme court the last couplef of decades either tradee fourth protections against unreasonable earchess

seizures grantingg to the police the authority to stop, frist, search just about everyone and everywhere without any probable cause or reasonabln suspicion not a shred oftivity n evidence of activity as long as they get consent. that young man waived his righta against unreasonable searchesser and seizures. law law enforcement doesn't have to have a shred evi of evidenceg support that and he had nod walk ability to refuse consent and walk away. you might say these are isolated

instances but the reality is int they add up to enormous racial spari disparities. n tha in one year alone it stopped and frisked more than 400,000 people overwhelmingly black and brown men but the court ruled we chalg th cannot challenge the raciala cour disparities in the court of law in cases the supreme court ruled it doesn't matter how overwhelming the evidence might be it doesn't matter be. how see the racial disparities are.ntamn it's tantamount to the position you cannot even state the claimn

in the justice system today.endt the cases i was litigating can't even be filed today. st it's every stage of the criminas justice from stop, search, plea-bargaining and sentencing.l the system of mass incarceration to the racial bias much in the same way that supreme courtupree rallied to defend slavery. just being swept into the system with little help is just the man beginning.

if you have a parallel social universe in which one and in the civil rights movement no longer applies in to you. may be dd you may be denied the right togo vote for the rest of your life depending on the states you've lived in. ervice fo you are deemed ineligible for jury service the rest of your life if you've been branded a felon. but the rest of your life discrimination and employment with not only been legal but absolutely routine it doesn'tsn matter if it happened a few weeks ororhappened a fe months s ago.your lie for the rest of your life you've got to check that box knowing full well your application ispp going straight to the trash. many people say stop making

excuses for people. when you get out of prison it iy hard tough. it an but if you work at it and puthee yourself out there some you can get a job at mcdonald's or burger king or something. getting. a job is no easy feat f you have a felony record. housing discrimination, legal and absolutely routine. released from prison housing as projects. discrimination in the public benefits under federal law you even f food are deemed ineligible even for food stamps for the rest of youe life if you've been convicted of a drug felony. f manyel states act without thed federal ban on food stamps for o drug offenders and it's still the case that hundreds of thousands can't even get food stamps to feed themselves because they were once calledugs

with drugs. what what are people released from prison and expected to do? you can't get a job or housing. food stamps might be offered. but do you expect them to do?reu we expect hundreds of thousands, of dollars in fees, fines, court costs that continue to accrue iare while you are in prison to payat back thehe cost of the improvemr it could be a condition of the probation or without parole. fer if you are one of the few thataj manages to get a job right out

of prison, 100% of the wages could be garnished. 100% to pay back all those fees court costs of back child s support. take a step back and see the impoverished underfunded chren schools.ho were you see the children that ared e hounded our stopped and frisked on their way to and from school when they are old enough toer an drive. when they were swept in and there is a relatively minor reli crime it is so relatively minorr cr or drug offense isim a crime tht comes with a roughly equal our w

frequency and the communities on college campuses are swept in ye and you've are ushered into this parallel social universe i'm able to work, find shelter and to food. happ this is what happens a majority out 70 of the time about 70% of people released from prison return and within a few years the majority of those returning do so in a matter of months. why did we choose this path? how did we get ourselves here all these years after doctor

king has passed away?nation was what is cl fear is the nation ws based with a choice. we could continue down the path. we could c of inclusion and hope and the path of the poor people's movement. it could be what he prayed for. or we can take a different roadl more familiar when it comes to matters of race. be one day i believe historians will look back on this era of sa mass incarceration and say that ity was their that we abandoned

the dream and took a dramatice f u-turn that would leave millions of people permanently locked up and walked out. we've spent $1 trillion reachin the war that could have been nds th used for education, job drug creation, drug treatment. we are constantly told there's not enough money to pay teachers there's not enough money for the jobs programyou for you. we decided to spend it building a prison system unlike anythingl

the world hasd ever known. so what do we do? what do we do now?t nothing my view is nothing short in this movement has any hope of ending the mass incarceration and inspires a recommitment to and n doctorspi king's dream.extreme if you think that sounds extremo but something less what do,if wo consider if we were to return to the rates of incarceration weere had in the 1970s or 80snd earlys before the war on drugs and thevemecked get tough movement kicked off we would have to reach four out ofp five. more than a million peopleloyedu employed by the criminal justice system would be defined in a new line of work.

this communities that have been sold but now believe they are ae sourcece for jobs and very often prisons are advertised for far than more benefits than they actuallh deliver but d nonetheless so mar of them believe that economiesi. depend on those across americarn that would have to shut down pee

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]