joseph surette, talking about joseph surette, talking about >> the theme of the issue is conference t we are delighted to present a panel the way literature and poetry help us face challenges as we open our

hearts and minds to healings at this point in time welcome our panel. [applause] >> good afternoon. i am a professor at columbia university african-american studies it is my privilege to moderate this panel. to give you a quick sense of what to expect a call for

healing and to introduce the panel in the order they open the conversation each offer brief remarks, to get the conversation going then we will have follow-up and by 230 open that up and we will engage all of you who are here in conversation. this is a call for healing mandate from the national black riders conference who has served when we face with personal and societal challenges to create a story riders expressways to explore ideas to harness emotional strength that pertained to the well-being of families and communities individually and collectivelyrt to examine the way the literary narrative is

nurturing with regard to understanding and represented in literature and we are prileg to have three amazing panelists doingork with literature and the art and activism now i want to introduce them to you to my immediate left we have andrea, author of the critically acclaimed book invisible no more. published 2017 by beacon, a black immigrant attorney in the 2014 with the advocating of against police violence and people of color and currently

researcher in resident of criminalization at the center for research s on women and then to resist police brutality with the clear injustice without criminalization to be here in brooklyn and in t chicago. and then to hear from desiree cooper 2015 fellow and former attorney from the detroit community to publish a collection of short stories to appear in detroit's publication publications, and african-american fiction and a host of other complications

also a board member in the and she is also a count be leo fellow and a national resident african-american fiction writer. then weon will hear from producer and designer domestic and international he has been covered bybo okay player and soul track as an artist he has performed or headlined at the american jazz museum crime and jazz and the charles wright museum most recently both project by the adult soundtrack dealing with trauma and the emergenceti from pain

but each of them will respond. but think about black writing, the long history there is that assumption that the work of black riders can move on to a very specific political movemen movement. but you tweak this from art and politics or maybe so three examples with the history of black writings that navigate the attention. first of all and activist just

but now she writes and delivers a speech on -- a speech on raceof literature and what we think fast literature that would make two types of contributions with black heroism as a counter to jim crow but also reveal true religion or true christianity and with his political landscape flashing forward to an essay and his blueprint for negrori writing and to argue that black riders at the time i got to take the place of the mantle once occupied that

would more adequately orient black people in the world with the complexities of what needs to be black in the unitedto states and then if we jump through the 60s the negro riders conference and afterwards to which she coed it in with the process of spiritual integration to move towards wholeness. then to open the conversation to see how they locate themselvesur from that black literary tradition or how they wrestle with healing in their

own work. >> i have that on envy and a ball the question first. when i start to talk about my book one of the first questions is what is the first name that comes to mind with police patel eddie? times have changed but usually across generations but almost universally male like rodney king. oscar grant. freddie gray. but even this week if we asked the question and not just

cynthia clemens who was killed byof police outside of chicago. in my answer always focuses on that narrative and that is so deeply entrenched and it happened exclusively to black men that we perceive not to be transgender and not gay. and violence against women is something that only happens to white women and some of us are just out here in the cold. so the goal was really to expand our understanding of police violence to bring into that narrative the story that

have driven the women's population so that rate of growth has increased at a rate 50% greater so what are the stories for women who wind up and then predominantly black women?do so that doubles again looking at the population in jail increased 14 times over the last decade maybe we are not doing as much hard time inde prison but going in and out of local jail cells instead of maybe going up say -- upstate but even less healthcare or less support but that is not

part of the story of mass incarceration if we read the newg jim crow doesn't include the story of those women but then to full more stories into the mix but you see how that actually changed how we understand things. so does that make visible beyond those notablele exceptions? so we seera a woman who was the first black attorney general elected in florida pulled over for driving while black the year before mike brown was killed the most to have traffic stops than any other population and part of the study that shows the only group of people and to

perceive women as a threat. so what do those stories tell us to better understand that narrative and to understand white supremacy and america so of pice violence only the shooting of the unarmed black people those that were raped and sexually assaulted. so i live two blocks over and

i watch police officers every single day sexually harassed women going back and forth to sa school trying to get an education. so they are not the ones so we tell the story stop and frisk is a story so 88% of men to get a better sense of what walking and driving while

black isse like. and those that deliver their children are ten times more likely so if drugs are found to be taken away and taken for treatment and that is the story that is part of the story but then to be a victim but a young black woman and

then she has asked for the badge number and a checker and kidnapped her part or in the car and handcuffed her took her to a parking lot and beat her within an inch of her life and broke her spleen. i don't know how you do that. they broke her jaw and had to wire it shut and left her for dead and told her if we ever hear from you again we will kill you. these were police officers responding to a call for help.or that is an experience of police violence i could tell the stories over two hours but

so it speaks the power of the story of what police violence looks like i know it doesn't sound like that from women who have experienced that to read the story and hear them told and every single time i think about this issue to be raped police officer or beaten by a police officer for the never showing up again. so then it is healing to have a space and be part of the conversation we are fighting for communities and it is

painful to be standing at a rally not to tell your story but the only story you can tell is your child or your son so there is something very healing and that i didn't intend to tell my own story of police violence then one day they just appeared on there page. i really can't tell you how it happened but the fact that they are finally out there out of my body and on the page so the last thing i'll say is the resistance that we can tell about these situations with

this community coming together these two women that were beaten and died by police officers there was a rally outside the precinct where the community came together they went back to the 77th precinct 300 people behind them after being beaten and abused there is a healing and knowing the history that also sparked by organizing by the two montgomery police officers. and that black woman's organization brought a ack caran to oklahoma city for those that were raped by the police officer there. and we are standing with you we see this as sexual violence

we went to bring those stories into the nationales conversation so for me that has been the real journey to see the healing aspect to think of other ways to organize a societys or to make sure what she calls for help she gets help and support because she is in a mental f health crisis that she doesn't get shot but the support she deserves. and that is also part of the healing and that i'm excited to engage in now that there was more stories. [applause] >> she said she didn't know where she was going to start but she found a perfectly wonderful place. [laughter]

>> thank you for your very important work where i would go go working off that landscape that she has laid for us is what role does fiction and poetry have to add to stories? why do we have to make them up if they are so many real ones to talk about? when you mentioned women in prison but how women who organize things around nascar's ration can only talk about the mass in carp -- incarceration how many of you have read in american marriage?

it is a national book award winner and it is a huge book and it is so crazy it is called an american marriage not in the african-american marriage it is about an african-american couple who had been married a year and a half, not the easiest year and a half as it is for many people it had to get into its groove they were relaxing in a hotel the door bangs open and people come in and arrest her husband for rape. he is innocent and has been with her these whole time but a woman identified him and he spends five years in prison before he is out. and that is the beginning. and from there told from many

different points of view this is the american landscape mass incarceration, so many black people now we have to find other peopleot to throw in there it is an american story. so a line in there was the husband behind bars said something like can you come and visit but it is like a drive she keeps it up for a little while but then he says i'm innocent. you have to come see me and she says i'm innocent too. so where is the room of our

discussion of mass incarceration for the women's voices to be heard that are not behind barsni but left behind by those communities ravaged by this? would a woman be shouted down at a conference if she stands up to say i'm innocent a too? i think she might. because it's not her time. it's never quite your fight the bigger issue is blah blah blah but this is where fiction and poetry can fill a gap to ask a question or explorelo the question not safely but intimately aware in your own room reading the story say wait a minute. i hate to this woman. she married him. but then you read her inner

struggles. it is called empathy which is the only reason we write so a question that i i have about fiction and poetry and healing is how do we go from trauma to empathy and riders of fiction? we're already traumatized byth reality so the only reason we go to another device it is too painful or too big for reality do you ever have one of those days to say if you had written them down they will tell you that can never happen? that is a life we are living right now is black people in america.ght i that this could never happen and we are walking around in trauma. weenie people were documenting thee stories to tell the

stories and documents from as many perspectives as possible from the victim's perspective, andhe then the literary perspective to translate that emotional map to take the trauma from pain to empathy. so one poet that i greatly admire right save brutally intimate pointit of view called the undertaker's daughter and it is a block that her father was an undertaker but there was one called burial site that says trauma is not what happens to us that what we hold inside of us in the absence of an empathetic

witness. yes it does happen, but what keeps the trauma alive and not healed is that there is no witness but perhaps yourself if you can even grasp of the trauma that happened. so what we have found over time that often writing the active writing not just speaking but literally writing a trauma can help define and contain it and weaken its power. this is not universally true especially those who are not used to the emotion it can reach traumatized to write things down i am having that personal experience to feel retraumatized every time i

look in the paper these days it is a hell of a time to be alive. but for most people, when when they transcribe their trauma, something starts to happen. when you write it down, at first it is first person that happened to me and i felt this but the more you write it, third person starts to creep in and this is proven studies of people asked to rewrite their trauma it is she and he the word because starts to trickle in or in relation to or consequences of.of so we go from this happened g to me to a higher and higher perspective of what has happened he, them, they and the trauma is diffused over a larger emotional mass.

a teacher taught me this she said what is a slave? i said the black people from africa she saide really? how did the word slave become black people from africa? when they had slaves for millions of years. there are all kinds of slaves.ti from every single ethnic group imaginable. how do we own that word? even in some languages the word slave means black. it is synonymous. so the more you come to grips with that is there a slave narrative? and what does that mean in terms of global healing? what is the connection?

i feel like i am rambling a little but that is able to investigate our trauma and in literature and poetry what i do hope we do get a chance to talk about is then who witnesses the witness? i feel vulnerable on the edge of madness. can you witness? i am not lgbt but i die when i witness the atrocities that are happening my kids have not been in a school shooting but i think of those babies in the schools, i die. how many times can i do that? as a human being? and as a

writer and who was a witness to my trauma? and as a writing community, how do we nurture each other through the stories that are absolutely necessary? i think if we are a lucky and heal the way that we can just might be the most important time in human history. right now because the potential to see past her own stories is huge if we can do that. [applause] >> the funny thing is that you said thesese i random moments tt end up working perfectly so i always think that winemaking art in a studio session or in a room by yourself it is a

savage moment trying to figure out how to get yourself across they always talk about the studio to be a place of escape so making art makes you feel like you're doing something larger it is emotional what you wanted to or not it could be anger or love or sympathy that there will be an emotional aspect so now giving that to recipients if you are an artist the word you're looking for is i'm feeling better i like. that. i want to pay for that i want to share that. moving those two parts forward you haveve the maker because making art by yourself that could be cathartic but if you're doing it for a a living you want someone to take something with you that you

know you had the intention of something you cannot even imagine that that there is the third part when your work works through you then someone finds it working for them now it is no longer about feeling it but becoming unnecessary. in some capacity used as a tool now you have rebellion and revolution and resolution to allow you to reset is good, o to movies to shoot them up and then reinvent how we think and then this movie comes out and

the language has changed and it is a beautiful ring to watch that is the part we don't talk about and recently i was in indiana talking about how we are taking to work with those programs and different states and then go back and use the word trauma and then not be an asset.

when we leave a woman is crying outside talking about abuse in the way that she understood she understood she was being abused. so no other person on the planet cares but i know we walked out of the place in indiana she could take this work find a place turn into something she could use for herself. that happens in my work and their work that some of the people have done to see the interaction between work and process that turns into something we can all use. i will take a gamble some of you have read the consequences? i forget which one he talks

about as he gets on that ship to go back to the community are is only good if it is used. but if it makes you feel good it is revolutionary. now getting married that is resolved to find out to create something and then to have

healing and change goes hand in hand. [applause] >> so much there complicating the narratives witness to the witnesses so each of those presentations with the paneli and then as we alluded to something that came up at the end of the previous panel like the movie will

conduct to say that it seems like part of a long history so the question of the presentation of the narrative we are familiar with the story but it seems like that enthusiasm for work on the was representation? then that says the joy about movie to talk about the present moment and yet at the same time we know the long history of racial violence the way it has put racialized gender makes it hypervigilant to us i remember teaching african-american studies

course just after mike brown hit new york and my students did not know what to do. but none of us could claim that. but i would ask for you all that are maybe a little older. >> not me. >> semper fi. but the last four years have been something else. and in light of that longer history how this particular moment has shifted what you do? with that insistence that poetry still matters like those historical stories how

you look like you are ready to jump in. >> with the election i will start there. people were running i around as if the devil showed up on the doorstep and i was confused. i didn't know he left. why would i now become radicalized? that makes you a target. so i scoffed at people but then it started to think about it so i asked my children how do you feel? to see what has changed. i called my oldest he hung up on me. so we thought we were accepted we were a bit confused like a racial stockholm sold one

--dash syndrome like we have arrived. you fooled us to believe he was our president he may look like us and talk like us or play basketball like us but still working for atb corporation that universally has never been about us and excepted us but never has been for us. i grew up in a household so from that that time that said it is the system so i never understood why. my work is been the same since io was 14 being for black people and being a black person and that will not change with the election of a black person it has been the same way that they started doing this. [applause]

>> i'm a have to echo that. i'm not sure and have been very concerneded with gender mostly because i have walked in the skin of a black woman and i don't feel that my story is respected or represented.ep so it is my job to tell that story. andt with really, really bad poetry and especially if it

wasn't work that we cannot be fooling around with sunshine and rainbows. and i hope we don't go there with part intro racial class war and gender war. we don't need to talk about babies or love right now. and back to the danger of a single-story you just cannot

do that right now and afford to shut down.ha it is an epic moment or people say i did not know that. then open to perspective in general. that is the right line. that is my shortcoming. but even into survive and thinking about this talk today she said to use alice walker's lovely phrase go in search of our mother's gardens not how they trampled or why but to know what they planted their

how they observed that blight. so in this time when i cry from a people and for democracy i spiritually thought it existed and planet earth i think i can write about babies and grocery shopping. and then with my soul that i gave to be a mother. . . . .--

i feel like it's shifting because more stories are available. we used to have to depend on someone thinking our stories were important enough to cover and now, we can just cover them ourselves on social media. we don't have to wait for the naacp to decide a woman story is important enough to merit the press release or campaign, but more volume and more conversation about it, but i think also we have not come for enough in terms of those stories

being part of how we think about the issue, how we organize ourselves about the demand we make in the world we dream so many of us can say sandra bland's name, so that for me is the next step. i want to break apart a little bit this dichotomy between fiction documentation because i think sarah haley eloquently writes about this for many of us it's documentation that the buddha fiction because we have to figure out what our mothers planted in the garden because there is no record of it. there is no record of the middle passage for black women, so we have to imagine what happened and i think for many of the women i write about all there is is 20 seconds of dash cam video or a newspaper story and i have to in some ways fictionalize what she may have been thinking when the police came crashing through her door and how might she have been feeling. why might she have reacted in this way when she was told to do

something or ordered to do something or what the air may have informed her lunging towards the police when she saw them taking her child or her sister or her daughter, so there is some creative black fiction going on there and then i have learned the value of fiction with this other piece of the world so i think what kind is about escape and also about what adrian brown calls visionary fiction, so if we could have a world that was really about us it would be fabulous. would be a monarchy? like is that what we want so we get to experience will conduct. would it be engaged with the rest of the world? and we can also fictionalize stories that are so hard to tell and what so powerful of that was what is it like to be abandoned over here on this land in some ways and to have that experience

of feeling left behind and it tried to come back and figure out what the relationship is with the mother country and i feel like being able to figure those out in a fantastical realm is what visionary fiction is about and the resurgence of octavia is not accidental in this moment work you are being honored and it's not accidental. we need to imagine new worlds, other ways of responding to violence and that will require us-- our imagination has been so limited by colonialism, anti- blackness, white supremacy, by the prison state that we really need to go to will conduct to think about something else, so i encourage people to read this written by predominantly by a black activists who are like literally trying to go somewhere else to imagine a world and into

the p sure target about i think those questions that have been framed not political are about human transformation and we can't get to where we want to go unless we learn how to transform our relationships with each other whether it's with her mother, child, garden and so that to me is revolutionary work and i would never say your work and mine are different. they are very much on the continuum. >> i will say i do think most women would agree. [laughter] >> i agree. >> it's not as that said-- >> (want to say about adrian and writing about daisies is that she is also a pleasure activists and about black people

experiencing pleasure every single day is revolutionary because we can't wait till after the revolution to experience pleasure so i want to read and watch and listen to that music that's about liberation of the moment. >> there is a movie called firefly and the brotherhood played best way like cat say his name got it going to try and do it at least talked about his character and they said to him you are evil and he goes no, i'm not evil, i'm necessary because there has to be a moment where the people are actually enjoying themselves and what you are talking about can't just be all about fight, fight, fight. falling in love is important. there's a song we did a long time ago, go girl and we were doing a concert and doing the writing in baltimore and literally trying to drive to the show we are in the car and we decided to change the entire show. i think it was around february, supposed to be a valentine's day show we got the show we like

can't do this. we do a performance about falling in love so we did it, but we wrote a song in the car about what it meant to fall in love. we wanted to make sure we were conscious of what was happening around us and allowing people who came to the show to have an escape, but still when you leave here don't forget the police are out to get your things are happening in your city of baltimore. stay in that place, but just leave that place for the two hours where you are here with us , so i totally agree with her. you have had the daisies and sometimes you have to dance with whiskey in your hand. things have to happen. >> so, we have about five minutes before we open it up for q&a, so if you have questions please get them ready and we have microphones there. >> most of my work is about slave narrative and until this very moment i realized that if it is about women. i'm actually embarrassed about that.

>> we have arrived. >> i was sitting here going like that's not true and i literally went through everything in my head in my library. that's ridiculous. wow. >> that's fixable. >> it's fixable, but its like okay this is a problem. >> and yet there are a whole host of narrative by limited-- women by writing their way through and out of slavery even though we continue to imagine slavery is manhood. >> the best leader out of it was a woman. >> absolutely took the stories are there and sometimes telling those stories are shifting the ways in which those stories are privileged or become taken as normative. i went to ask you one more quick question has folks are getting ready with their questions, which i hope is a response i think to desiree's provocation

of who will witness, so i think about back to that gathering we had that was a celebration of the work called the ancestral witness. ended up with folks describing the event of a moment of healing and it was in sort of these basic-- odd record in james baldwin, that was faced in their writing that we found some sort of-- to use the conference it seems that i venture to say as much as we struggle to find that , i'm anxious to hear where for you you find that. is a work like yours. is there particular writer that is a resource you commend others that you feel you can take you with you as a witness to the things you are even trying to name as writers. >> i think i was really taken by that question.

the forward to my book, one of them and was also a bomb because it was a witness across generations because i wrote that book after the police killing of elinor bumper. it was a crossgenerational conversation, the witnessing, but another one was by marion carver. she's-- she came from chicago, but she rode a foreword in the last paragraph she acknowledges the weight of carrying the story i have been carrying probably years i was writing the book and continue to carry and until i read that paragraph i had never thought about it and every time i read it still i cry and i think that the first step is acknowledging that we has black

writers need witness and that we need witnesses for the story we tell whether it's christina sharp writing or-- particularly as black women how the trauma and invisibility we are writing through suggests right. i think we need to have, so i found that in my activist community, my sisterhood, the people who work with me, you know the people we have been able to be on the phone together and we are supposed to talk about the indexed, but instead we have talked about how we have been moved by a story and how to index it and find it and in an informal community like that i'm blessed to have the conversation with black writers and black women writers and i'm inspired by the work because i feel like it so important to have residencies and spaces where black writers can be together having a conversation and i have been on many writers residencies where they're like one or none are in the only black writer and that's even more isolating and lonely and also makes it worse.

i think your call to us to witness for each other as black writers is one that really focuses on. >> i guess i don't know the answer. i asked that question because i need an answer. i feel very ravaged and broken and lost. i am taking care of my senior parents, one who has alzheimer's and one with dementia and i'm sort of in this anger mode of america's public policy to -- towards bringing human beings into the world and escorting them out issue get a girl to do it preferably free. that is a public policy and when most alzheimer's victims are going to be women or are women and most of the caregivers are women, trust me there is no

solution coming because the girls are doing it for free, so i think that for me kindness to myself is the only healing i can expect and unfortunately that also feels like a lowering of standards for myself which creates more stress because i'm type a, but let me offer something. how many of you guys are writers out there? okay. so, i want to offer something that i pulled-- that i pulled it out of there-- from other writers who have felt terrified by the work they must do. so, richard wright and i'm sure most of you know this, but i will reiterate this who wrote

native son and black boy wrote hiq for the last yrs of his life. he was very well for a long time and during that time he transitioned from writing the real to fiction an essay in every feels he did to writing haiku and his daughter juliet described his poland says self develop anecdotes against illness and also said he continued to spin these alums of light out of the gathering darkness, so maybe what we all do is get another trick, you know. if you are coming out through essay, then maybe back off and just write some poetry for yourself or if you are a poet, journal more or find-- paint. find another medium to sort of

deposit some of the angst's. now, i have not done this, so i'm just throwing it out there because i'm searching for options and i also want to go to toy because she said in an interview-- this is a quote from her i couldn't read burial sites out loud because every time i did i would go through the pain i felt a remembering those occurrences with my father and something came to me that said don't say the stories, seeing them and this gave me a practical way to be a performer of the pieces rather than the writer who had experienced these things. it was another way of gaining distance and emotional control, so again maybe don't write the story, maybe you draw the story. just keep the lid on one more day. maybe you pray the story. may be saying the story, but i do think that i will leave with this. i gave birth to two children and both times when you go from laboring to the transition there

were people around me saying push and my thought was what the hell would i do that for like that's going to hurt me. that's the life i want to do is push and of course that's the only thing i could do was push, so i think that's kind of where we are. we have to give birth and we don't want to go through the pain of it, but so what, that's where we are now and somehow we have to figure out how to get through that transition, hopefully together. >> thank you, desiree. [applause]. >> as you are clapping and what to ask that those of you have questions make your way to the microphone. >> i'm such a different person. i have tried to reconcile the fact-- two things, one i'm a black guy as you've noticed, so

there are support systems for black men. we know it's not a blind spot in the community. the book no jewels is about trauma. i wrote a kind of like a bizarro version of what is it-- 20 songs and-- 20 poems and son of-- you know the book. it's 18 poems up well and three of love. i'm writing the book or guy could write the book because i was able tickets ago to conquer and deal with an process by abuse. while interviewing other men for the book, a lot of people-- [inaudible] a lot of people that need a hug the drink and a collation of

those things, so i began to realize that yes as a writer i have support. , i have brothers who i can write with. i can call and talk about them with. most people don't so you lean on other things. you lean on alcohol and drugs promiscuity, lying through these are the things you can lean on, so if you're witnessing-- i adopted the tools my parents gave me to do with personal oppressions i had a day worked. i was able to come out of my own trauma by using that thinks my parents told me were for global universal change and it can also go to solve so one thing is recognizing there is a problem, which is a big problem for everyone to know there is something wrong happening around you. the second one is to sit down and figure out, not how it's

going to end because problems are adding to your debt. would it they say if you are added that you don't beach or addiction, you treat every day as a win. i'm not saying that properly, but it's something to that regard, so i treat my abuse every day as a win. here every day approach that now with other people it's inviting people into your circle who actually give a damn about you and your circle and about your plans peered doesn't mean they always believe you are right. doesn't mean they will always pat you on the back. they believe they see a bigger picture that even when you are angry the law for your progression in your ideas. big difference between agreeing with you. you do not want people in your circle who think you are right and love you unconditionally,

people who love you, fight with you, loyal to your progression in the parishioner your ideas. very clear distinction i want you to understand that. there will be a difference between you getting the workout. there's a difference between you making art and beautiful that everything is okay. listening to them talk is really them finding-- i don't want to say support, but finding family that believes in you and what your big ideas are because you didn't come to a writer's conference to say you are a fan. how many here are brighter's? hemi your good? how many think you are good? most of your not good. i'm kidding. being good is not actually about being good. how many of you actually read? thank you. that's the only real question i have because in the end craft and good any motion to me.

i had to learn that. to people here always joked that i'm a leader when he comes to writing. i ask had to sit back and think about that that the emotion aspect as important because part of mike process was kicking emotion out of my head and unlike i can't do that in write this book for other people. i had to find friends who would support me. i need it so i can create work that other people can care about, so think about that, loyalty, progression and the progression of your ideas and hopefully eric and will fall place. >> let's give the entire panel hand and we will go toward first question. >> this is-- i went his touch on something-- >> the panel would like to know

who you are. >> my name is marcus coleman a criminal defense attorney from cincinnati. we'll know about the large percentage of numbers of black men imprisoned. i don't have anything to say about that. what i know several years ago is the high percentages and i mean like 90% of legal fees i received which come from black women took these brothers, grandmothers and mothers, wives, girlfriends, sisters who spend money because they are supporting the people they love and then i read the book by matt-- matthew desmond when he talks about the large number of black women who are evicted and i see the connection between the women who cannot pay rent because they are paying me to support their loved one and so when andrea was talking about the story not being spoken about desiree mentioned that i'm innocent to, these are sisters who are watching their furniture being set out.

this is t direct correlation between the system which harvest black bodies in the sister who is being addicted with the direct correlation between all of that. >> there is also a part of that that is also forgotten. if you hustle for a living, there's a good idea you don't have a plan, so, i mean, i hustled as a young kid from 13 to about 19 and we were not thinking about a retirement plan we were thinking about the next day's rent, the next day's clothing, the next days a date, the next day's car and we also didn't trust the women we had. i estimate i could have bought two houses by the time i was 20, but i was too stupid to live out -- listen to the women around me that tommy to do something with the money and it leads to your conversation about why when

someone gets busted if you've made enough money and you made that much money on that street there should be a treasure trove somewhere that your women should be able to grab you to pay for lawyer fees, but we were not smart enough, often times we are not smart to think that part-- forehead and puts the onus on the women. >> there is a reporter called the true cost ben carson ray should talking about that, the woman-- burden women carry economically as the women who are still paid the lowest. black women have more opportunities for employment, maybe, but the pay is schematically lower than any other group and so women are working hard for much less pay and then carrying the weight of mass incarceration in supporting families that are devastated by mass incarceration and also individuals of the massive

perspiration. i think that i also went to again push to extend the narrative and to the extent we talk about women in the context of massive conversation-- incarceration always defaults to well, we are left behind your car partners, family members locked up. we are grieving, paying the bills which are important to recognize and it also takes us out of being a direct target, so i think the piece i would say about the bail and legal fees is that black women die in jail because they cannot pay bail. a woman who died in westchester because she was accused of shoplifting seafood to feed her family and then could not get bail and died inside, sebastian apiece of the story i want to make sure we include in the mix and it's not always like that we are a group that's a secondarily impacted by mass incarceration, but primarily impacted and secondarily impacted.

that's why it's so important to keep initiatives like the national mama state bailout, so please go to know more money bail.org and make a donation whatever you can, $5, $10. the longer you are locked up the more chance you will lose your kids. the reason you're locked up probably is because you are trying to hustle to feed those kids, take care of those kids and pay the lawyer bill for someone else and also or you are self-medicating with something to deal with the trauma of the things we're talking about and the longer you are in the more likely you will stay in, so last year we bailed 100 women out on mother's day and brought them home with their kids for mother's day and continue to offer them support in the community, so help us do that. no more money bail.org. mama state bailout.

>> did you want to respond? >> now, you guys covered it. thank you. >> i wanted to follow-up on that last conversation and one of the things we can advocate for and i don't know brother if this is anything similar in ohio, but what's been introduced here is an idea of supervised release as an alternative to bail. so, the judge has the taxability to place someone in supervised relee, so they don't have to put up money, but there is the kind of supervision that gives the court the assurance that might otherwise need and that's a variation of no more money bail.

>> the different ways in which there are perhaps alternatives. >> as long as supervision doesn't involve in a cobre slit that yet to pay for yourself which ends up being you pay for your own and conservation in your own home, so i feel like the idea of alternative is essential. we have to make sure the alternatives don't download the cost of incarceration on the same people. [inaudible] one of the things that's coming to mine is listening because my default is fiction and how to take. this feels like intimate details of the experience and them through fiction so that one of the stories in my collection is called another mother. it's called home for the holidays as the family drives from detroit to maryland for christmas and the woman who is driving, husband is sleeping and

it's his time to rest with two children in the backseat and it's in the overnight in a truck starts following the family and starts to be your and get them off the road and quickly they realize it's like rednecks. their license plate says motown or something so they have been identified as black people. in my aim-- when i read that people are breathless and i read it in very diverse audiences and instead of saying driving while black means xyz or many people are heard, unlike let's could in the car. lets get in the car with your kids and let's not make it the police because even though the police is a problem, driving while black is a problem from private citizen antagonizing and running you off the road and let's just see what it feels like and i think that can also be because in a newspaper

article in a longer essay people can say well, that's not me, but sometimes you can get hooked into a character of a story before you know it in your heart is pounding and you can believe this is happening to these people and i had no idea and so i think that is a role that fiction and poetry, creative nonfiction can play like you said the creative nonfiction into humanizing those statistics even though in journalism you are telling the story generally through the eyes of one person. .. tony blackland and my question, i work with a lot of

emerging artists but also artists involving reading and sharing the work. i have been working with a lot of performers who don't still their personal personal stories and are turning 40 come in their 40s and want to tell their personal stories and consulting with a few artists who have success in yesteryear and they are women and they have some stories and they are freaking out and nervous but they have - tough, strong woman on the outside but they disappear and shrink when i find them in editor or someone to support them for the page or the stage and confronted with this as well as a performance poet who can hide behind my

performance and my personality and charm and being at an age welling up here. we have a room full of writers here, how do we as writers who have maybe had a - it is not a thing yet, get to the point of overcoming the obstacle and the block, what did you do to be able to tell is painful stories, and traumatize the process of going there. telling everything on facebook, i do. don't know why i can tell and harnessing the emotional and power and where do you get your

reserves from, and there was so much i didn't want to miss in the moment. the statistics, i didn't know all of that about women. my mind is blown. now to sit down and write about that my mind would be triply blown in by then i'm tired and i didn't write anything today. >> what you just said, i got a book deal for a book, everything i do, what is this nonsense? she calls me up and goes there's a phone in here. turned to a book. it was about the abuse. it pays based on a couple guys and myself, didn't want to write that book.

two days past, i want you to write that book, and tells you to do something, do it or get on your nerves until you do it in a good way. she kept telling me, i asked her why and she said who cares if you don't need it, there are people who need this story. there is no story about especially black men who have gone through trauma and come out of it, go right the book. if anyone knows my work i don't write about that, slavery, streaks and women so come to the world, it is hard to write a book about myself. it isn't just about me taking

the narrative, and take that story and use it, that is personal, 2 million people walk around with the same process in their head, i need to do that. >> these are the questions, listening to you, being forced to come up with a financer, have you ever, as a fiction writer, people will say, ask questions and stay in your essay about so-and-so or your column, it is fiction. when i come out of it people think it is all true anyway, like i am writing fiction and

it didn't happen to me. >> that must've happened to you. some people don't -- don't think it already happened. as far as the world is concerned, what is the step? go ahead and do it. i talked myself into something. i'm struggling with that very thing. why are you doing it. a revenge tale like somebody gives me and they get hit by a train and live happily ever after, if that is your motivation, that is why you are being blocked because you realize that will start a more events cycle.

if it is there to show the way, push on it a little easier. a lot of good literature is revenge literature. >> what you were saying about it, it is a very clinical book, it tells stories but focusing on stories and archetypes of queer folks and what we think of them and how it contributes to criminalization but i wasn't in it, both of them are white, a constant station about what is in it but this was my story of doing this work for the past 25 years and it is my story, just jumped onto the page without my permission or

approval or will that i did ask myself why is it in their? i'm deeply uncomfortable. the fact that you know it is making me anxious, the idea that people are reading your book, that is great, but you read that part, so i think people, when they interview me, the lead question, no, i have developed very adopt ways of getting around that question moving past it but it was important because it was part of the work. here i am talking about how black women are leading struggles and never telling our own stories of those things and i'm challenging other women, i hear you talking about your son but i also know that you are experiencing police violence and you never talk about how i can support you in that and i

have to turn the question on myself. are you challenging - you have privilege in so many ways but it requires to go to the process of appealing too. to being vulnerable in that way, part of your healing or go through a process of healing where jumping outfield important but for me it felt i had never been pregnant but felt like i imagine it is like to be 10 months pregnant and used to come at all evident 10 boxes in my apartment, two blocks over, newspaper clippings, stories, videos so people could use it in ways they wanted to and other stories and stories - listening to what needs to come out and to do whatever healing is necessary and coming up with a

strategy. i will never talk about this on radio or tv so to protect yourself just because your story is out there doesn't mean it has to be all the way out there and you have no control over it and you can hold it in the way you need to hold it. >> we are just about 3:00. i have the two questions. c-span is wrapping up at 3:00 so i want to invite our questions, present your question and give each of you 30 seconds to respond, final words and say thank you. >> two quick things. thanks to each of you for the gift of your acknowledgment to find the witness. that is invaluable to me, the price of admission, find the witness. i'm the resilient researcher and writer and that is the

missing piece so i thank you for that. are you familiar with ursula or out of arizona state university? she's a good friend and colleague? very quickly, she was accosted by campus police roughly four years ago for jaywalking in tempe, arizona. her dress was flipped upside down, she was physically assaulted and she was fired and had to fight for her job back in. she is just finding her voice and is allowing me to chronicle her experiences and she needs to connect with you as well so we need to thank you for that. >> her story is in the book. >> i wanted to get your comment on two statements earlier,

things haven't changed. we think things have changed but they haven't and maybe they changed for the worst and it is next, talked about censorship in the black arts movement. as i misremember it, everything was fair game you can talk about it right about what you want and people could critique based on their reality-based on how it is. so my concern is whatever was happening with the black arts movement positive or negative, this situations corresponds to overall advancement and progress of our social status and now we are free to talk

about the flowers and daffodils but things are going to hell. this is my concern. >> quick final remarks. >> i can't do that quickly. thank you for having me. >> misremembered it as well. >> the panelist and all of you.