william and i will sign book. we like to thank c-span coming out. harry cohen from bookstore, yale bookstore. thanks for coming out tonight. [applause] >> booktv continues now on c-span2, television for serious readers. >> been a remarkable year for books that have been tackling the uses and especially abuses of this country's criminal justice system. we in politics & prose have been honored to host authors and poets behind many of them from martha, to reginald betts. the first event we hosted this year at this location at the wharf was for alexandria, investigation of the misdemeanor system. punishment without crime. this is pleasure we're closing

this events's season at wharf, look the way the legal world unfairly treats country's disenfranchised he targets his own profession at public defender. the book titled, usual cruelty. comes from alec karakatanis, an organization designed to advocate for racial justice and bring systemic civil rights cases on behalf of impoverished people. especially known for combating unconstitutionality of money bail. karakatanis was named 2016 trial lawyer of the year by public justice. was awarded steven wright award for indigent defense in the south. as introduction to his talk tonight i'm exciting to welcoming his guest the program. payne the poet. in d.c. he was raised in columbus, hire, after serving 8 year sentence within the virginia department of corrections he began using poetry as method of healing.

among his work he taught various workshops, after-school programs and panel discussions dealing with topics like mass incarceration, prison reform, social sus just, disenfranchisement and education. with that, join me welcoming payne the poet to kick off tonight's program. [applause] >> can everybody hear me? okay. got to move around. i'm payne the poet. as you heard from what he said about me, one of the things that i like to do, i like to artistically be able to articulate experience. we may come from different backgrounds. i like to find a way to bridge the gap between understanding, from where i have stood to where i stand now, from where you stood in the past. i use my art as to introduce you to a world maybe some of you haven't seen and affects of said

world. just -- you know. for so long i had been searching for purpose. i remember searching for a reason to be believed in with the ability to grab the attention of millions in the way to be i remember looking for way to be certain. certain there was certainly a reason i exist, after so long of searching you guys, i found this. you may not understand. this was supposed to never happen. i was supposed to believe rapping was my only means of expression. pour my heart into poetry the world would not come into question and everyone into my background would be unable to establish a connection within their hearts. i was supposed to be scared high class poets consider a convict incapable of creating real art. no, i gathered those fears. faith flooded, hope, dried tears and using a pen over any opposition what came out is this right here. i am pain the poet. polar opposite of environmental

product, pure example of years in the making. i would never let my past define me or my history claim me. yes i've been charged, convicted, never let them since break me. powerfully as poet. i paid persistently. i see sentences changing. to this right here, this is all i've ever had for a child hood of craziness. two or three days party bingeses. no need to be babysitter. we were tough kids too much of example about love is. we agreed to make enough, whatever enough is. now as a man there are no limits to the lines i haven't created yet but before you make a yes, give doubters room to suggest you need a back up plan or safety net or gas station grocery store job would be safest bet, what kills my those who have never been tell me you never make it. those who don't have know all the reasons to be complacent except thanks way it is, my question is my art my air, you take away my breath have you can

you expect me to ever live? now all i do is give. my every joy, my every pain, my every hope, my fear, i put my entire life on the line for this right here. i'm only real way i'm real to means expose how my inner deal is my opposition. i understand how my enemy is real. i am searching for peace. trying to make the inner me chill. so every poem i put forth is promise of pure love. i'm no different than you. my heart beats like yours does, but sure enough deep emotion coming down from here. only difference my emotions fuel my mind, drives my pens like gears to drive me my purpose on this earth right here. paves. [applause] we talk about a lot of effects of incarceration what it can do

to a person. recidivism is big, when you leave institution only within a certain amount of time return back to incarceration. a lot of it has to do with mental effect what is incarceration does to you. this poem i wrote basically me within the three weeks i released after doing eight years in virginia penitentiary system. called, go there. i remember struggling, really struggling. you see dealing with the return to the society from incarceration is complicated. i remember having difficulty engaging in casual conversation. i used to hear i had reluckance in my eyes, gave off a funny vibe of frustration. anxiety weighed heavy. i dealt with it always. institutionization, the fight against it exhausting. i was gone before twitter and instagram when mike was alive and bush was in office. coming home like hard to relate. hard to keep a pace. harder to find place.

simple things get difficult. imagine trying to date, especially if they feel like you're vulnerable. your positional louse to be easily molded or shape. you from their heart they feel obligation to replace it. what if they too have been threw it. since you both suffered you feel you have obligation to be mates. you consider often the kind-hearted fall victim to allegations they create. i never wanted to be a charity case and i never forced love where love obviously ain't. i couldn't find the energy of relationship, if i feel like i have so many demons i have to space it wouldn't be fair. i have so many demons i have to face them. i don't think you want to go there. i don't think you want to go there, if we go there, we have to go where i was projected, predicted to be statistic. oldest of three kids, one sister, one brother, son of two felons. raised by one parent, daddy apart woman to hirt kids, east

22nd, columbus, hire. one bedroom. sheet and mattress, they tell us home is where the heart is, but what about where the home is heartless. i don't know why my father departed or did what he did and doctor delivered his width kid regardless how desperate this is. a kid on the edge. terribly scared and that is whole another poem we're not getting ready to go there we're not going there because i don't think i can go there. i don't even if i know how. society brought harm to my heart, society hallowed it out. i'm homering out maybe i do need love. i never know love to think i travel about bitter and being, suffocated underweight of my own shortcomings as i struggle to for air. out of fear self destruction that those would hone necessarily care. i've been here my whole life and i just trading y'all have to go there. always tell me too look at

bigger picture. doesn't seem wrong but the problem with the bigger picture it is not fully developed and the frame wasn't built too strong. when they try to hosthold it it collapsed and folded. as far as the future holds i can't call it. i know what i write, i spit what i share. i know what it feels like to share your heart onand sleeve. feel like if this whole world doesn't care because i've been where i have been. you greatful that i don't have to go there, peace. . .

places that go beyond, you see people go, at a talk about how details i didn't even think were actual things that made affected me growing up. so this poem, please don't judge us, it speaks to that. please don't judge us. no. you see, a lot of us with the victims were the ones that love does. some of us had wayward fathers, under educated mothers. i know dudes that household cousins but they're just the victims of the want to love them. please, don't judge them. we only wanted acceptance. so we felt to all the -- we used to think drugs would protect us. we knew no other life than the life lived by others before us so we ended up running the circus while being moved by minor materials mainly because as kids we used to support.

i remember going to the drug shooter supported. he bought me the jordan stick he taught me money over everything, the doll is important. we are conditioned picket all the guys got unemployment no matter what never trust any member of the laws and enforcement. they never do anything for. >> women watch them take family from us. the matter how hard we tried to beg and take he's just a big glimpse of the one we love them here please, don't judge us. they don't understand. this all started as babies. and bottles and pampers. we the sons of fathers the following examples. she's the daughter of a promiscuous mother. she might not know what love is. it's a vicious cycle. some others get caught and so many will have kids destined to suffer. it hurts. watching are you stand at the back of a squad car when they arrested. fresh out of the frying pan into an oven, the heat on 400.

raised in a rubber we used to be raised by mothers who always wanted marriage but they never could trust it. they were always victims of the one that love them. but please don't judge them. don't call our women products of the projects. i put my palm on my heart and us will be tried. it's just the reality, the wind can live us to fight for our lives in this cold, cold world. the same place where we sing rap songs, raise. jerry springer. in the judicial system, well, you see they allow a judge to slam a gavel and say efforts that takes a debt from his son. the court system pics out a person as if they're worthless. judges and prosecutors are putting places that hurt us. i know they feel we are irrelevant. when you see one color get a slap on the wrist but a 17 euro black kid in the clearcase of --

to say were treated equally you insult my intelligence. i apologize for my incarceration. i spent eight years gone. eight years long and i was wrong. i tried to explain i i succumbo circumstances far beyond my knowledge. back against the wall suffocating under circumstances, i needed money to eat. thinking about it now leads this sour taste in my mouth because it may have been more problems then proceed but a moments of stress reflects over contemplation, situation deceit so hindsight doesn't express what it momentarily believed. it was back against the wall, suffocating under circumstances, young. i needed money to breathe. i'm just grateful that my family still loves me. i'm even more grateful they have faith in the lord above me in this world is so ugly and i just ask, please, don't judge me.

thank you all. i am pain. [applause] >> amazing. pain has some business cards here your kids you want to supt his work you can hire him to do event. you can support them on patriarchate i encourage you -- where can you find another social media? >> i have a website, pain the poet.com. [inaudible] and please come take a photo of one of his business cards before you leave. thank you to politics and prose hosting us tonight and for pain from coming up from norfolk to be with us. i always and so inspired when a

here what he does and wondered themes of the book, if you actually get it and read it is how are we going to change this narrative that has produced the legal culture and society more generally that is allowed for the masses gauging if human beings, and all of the cruelty that entails that. process that leads us to inflict so much pain. i want to talk a little bit about my perspective on things. there's some room over here if people were in the back want to filter in. might be easier. i have a couple more chairs for anyone who would be more comfortable in a in a chair. is that right, jonathan? jonathan, do we have a more chairs for some -- and there's another empty chair right here. so i was going to talk for a few minutes about my perspective, some of the background on how we got into some of the work we are

doing. i've mostly didn't like tough questions and comments from the audience. i find these events are much better when someone is not just talking at people but for a real discussion. the only thing i would ask if you do ask a question may be you can see your name or make a comment sentence or i or other can refer back to your comment and your awesome thoughts as we build a discussion together. i first started doing this kind of work when i quit being a public defendant 2014. had gotten a grant for for my law school -- i think a pitched the grant to something to the effect of give me some money so i can take down and dismantle the criminal legal system, and the people i pitched this to come this is a wild idea. there's a way we were ever going to give you this money. they have no hope of accomplishing something so broad and sounds ridiculous. luckily for me nobody else applied for the money and so they end up having to give it to me. the first to get it was i bought a plane ticket to alabama where

i used to be able to be a -- were used to be a public defender. the plan was to go from court to court and city to city and jail to jettison what i found. that trip change the course of my life in my career. i remember towards the end of the trip was going to stop in montgomery and visit some of my old college. before i went into the office monday morning i stopped into the local courthouse in montgomery and that morning there were 67 people in jail garb and chains around their ankles and wastes and wrists. all of them were black. as i watched the court hearing it became clear to me that not a single one of them was charged with a crime. also there was a prosecutor but no public defender. there was a man arguing this person should be jailed in this person should be jailed and they didn't pay enough money and they should be jailed, and one by one the people whose lives are being discussed would get up and beg

for mercy. they would say things like i have for my children. two are disabled. please don't like the other. i don't know what to do. don't take it with my kids. another myth got been kneeling on the floor of the courtroom and beg for mercy. he said i done bad things. i was addicted to drugs, i've stolen things. i can't afford these tickets. please don't put me into. for each one the judge said membership amy $1000 a thousand dollars i'm telling you in jail. i later learned, i'm a pretty sophisticated court observer. i'm a lawyer. i later learned as i was sitting there the person i thought was a prosecutor was actually a public defender. it turned out that the city of montgomery is contract for public defense told this man that he wouldn't be paid unless enough money was collected through fees and fines. sort of explained what i was watching. when i found that out i did what seemed natural to me and i started making objections. and alabama are not permitted to make objections while you sitting in the courtroom audience.

[laughing] especially if you're not barred in alabama. i was asked to leave the courtroom. i had seen about five cases and i've written down their names. i walked up into the local jail, which in montgomery, alabama, is both physically and metaphorically as it is in so many of our communities around the country the jail is connected to the courthouse. i walked in and i called in those five names and they brought me those five people. again, after by people that figured out what i was to announce asked to leave the jail as well. those five people begin my first lines as a civil rights lawyer. i will briefly talk about two of them. it bears and when i wrote the book. the first person who i opened the first essay in the book about, sean l mitchell who had been sitting on the couch with her one-year-old on a lap and are for your old next to her. the police raided jerome, rested

her. she'd been in jail for two weeks at the time i i met her and shd no idea where her babies were. she was desperate to get back to them. the jail card was nice enough to give her pencil. she showed a court document and the said pay us $2807 $2007 or8 days in jail. on the back of the court document she had been writing numbers, 2870. now she owed on the top right. on the left-hand column should written the days one through 58. she was fighting 50, 75, 75, and the right in such a subtracting those numbers from 2008 under seven. she said in montgomery $50 a day tortured debt just for being in jail. but if you agree to be janitor for the city and a clean the feces and the blood in the mucus and mold off of a jailhouse floors when you sleep and the walls and you agree to clean the judges trash cans you get an extra $25 a day. all of the women were competing each day for who would get the $75 that day. some of the day she was able to

do the extra work and some days she wasn't. it became clear that montgomery was running this debtors prison. by the time she was done describing this to me, the pencil on the back of the page was smeared with her tears. i i took a photograph of that document. the next person i met, lorenzo brown, the man knelt down on his knees in court. he had to pay $2000 or 240 days in jail. he wouldn't speak to me. he didn't trust me. i was wearing an inside-out hooded sweatshirt. i told as a a lawyer and the last person who told him was his point was person who told the judge to lock them up. he said i'll speak to you on one condition if my pastor gives you permission. likely i had my phone and we called his pastor on the speakerphone. the pastor said, luckily my grant had been posted online to

the pastor to google that i was actually a lawyer and he said this lawyer is an angel from god sent to help you through this. i know that's not true at all. i would love to talk you about this and see what we can do to help. i didn't build this wonderful relationship with lorenzo, a relationship of trust. he told his story that they and subsequently, and lorenzo and three of the people became my first clients. within a few weeks we were in a beautiful federal courtroom full of marble and would and lorenzo and others told their stories and the told them beautifully. the federal judge was so outraged at what happened that he ordered all of the city officials to appear in front of him in person to explain how this could be happening. instead of appearing in court, the just released everybody from their jail in a single day. i think to make things are notable about that hearing. first, we as a culture and a legal system have become so

desensitized to the brutality of putting a human being and a cage that entire cities can have jails full of people for no reason at all. so little reason for single day without any care of the work they can release everybody. the second thing was, was something that happened that it didn't even see myself. i was going up to talk to the judge after the judge issued the ruling and lorenzo was walking with his cane toward the back of the courtroom and there was a lawyer who had watched watchedk from the southern poverty law center. she held the door open for them and as he exited the threshold of the courtroom, he whispered to himself, under his breath with his head down, he said wow. i never i had this much power. the second thing i learned that day i think was the power of these narratives, particularly when you're told by people who would been directly impacted by the system. i think a lot of the people in whose name our legal system functions every single day don't have any idea of the kind of pain and cruelty that it is

flicking on peoples bodies and minds in families and communities. after the montgomery case i went to ferguson, michael brown had just been murdered. we spent a lot of time together in ferguson. the same thing was going on in ferguson. when i got there, the city of ferguson averaged 3.6 arrest warrants per household. almost all of them for unpaid debt. that's 2.2 arrest warrants for every adult in the city of ferguson. we brought the same kind of case in ferguson, the same kind of case in mississippi and in louisiana and new orleans. as we are doing that work it became really clear that this problem, this everyday infliction of brutality, the use of course as mechanisms for revenue generation was ubiquitous all over the country. we kept winning this cases. judges kept saying it's unconstitutional to put a human being indicate just because she kept making monitor payment.

i realize that was the foundation of the american money bill system. at the time we were winning these cases for people or been convicted and couldn't afford to pay their fines and fees there were 500,000 human beings in jail since everything up like prior to being convicted because he could make a monitor payment. judge morrison in the back has worked on this issue for how many years, judge? 40 bucks you're not that old. 20 years and so we begin a series of cases designed to challenge the american money bill system and the first ten months in 2015 we filed 12 cases in 12 different cities to show that it could be done to articulate the sleep was a very legal through that no human being should be case because she can't make a payment. also to greater of urgency. a sense of urgency that was lacking in the way our legal system confronted the issue mass

human caging. the other goal was to work not just as lawyers to come up with some theater and articulate and the court and have the court solve a problem and then go home but to work with communities to tell certain stories in a different way, to build power in those communities so if we did win a case, the people who decided what to replace this illegal system were not the same people who created. that's i think one of the main reasons i wrote this book. six years later there's a lot more attention on this horrible injustice that is our criminal bureaucracy. i'm very scared about the state of what's called the justice reform movement. it's out there in the east now. as in when heard the phrase the criminal justice system is broken? kind of a popular thing to say now. one thing i have realized as with government the country is that you were to refer what's with the system really informs the kind of strategy and tactics

you might use to fix it. if you think the criminal justice system is trying to create a society where all human beings can force and everyone is equal, then yes, it's broken. but if you think it's something different to control and cage and surveillance and preserve certain hierarchies of power and dissipation of well in our soc, actually functioning quite well. in that perspective it's incredibly sufficient broccoli, a bureaucracy of the summa manages to take 12 million people every single year from their schools and churches and homes and families and jobs and houses and put them into this entire system of government run cages of concrete and metal. when i come down after 11 years of being a a lawyer is the sysm is functioning quite well and its stated purpose, are not its actual function of a society. if you think that you have different philosophy for the kinds of interventions we need to pick. if you think of the people

running the bureaucracy are in good faith trying to make us all have flourishing lives and live better you might think the solution is just give them more information and more data. show them we have spent trillions of dollars on this. we have cage tens of millions of people and get let's take the war on drugs as an example, drug usage rates are higher than you were before. we have captured everyone's electronic communications, we've ended privacy, cage people, ruined their families, separate hundreds of thousand children from the families every single american state and get with nothing to show for it. maybe people are that dumb and you can show them the statistics and they will take michael does, how can we, what can we do to fix this? lets get rid of police and courts and jails. if you think the criminal punishment a bureaucracy is a locus where power is contesting power and the ruling class uses the criminal bureaucracy to control certain aspects of our

population then your solutions are much more likely to be organizing people who are directly impacted by the system, building powerful forces. that is the philosophy of the civil rights court. the argument to make in book of dogma is if you're working in the criminal justice reform space, anything to do that metastasize his engrossed a bureaucracy rather than dismantles it doesn't focus on building power among people for impacted if not in the end going to make any bit of difference in the system. let me give before hopefully some of, the example of a reform is maybe one of the most powerful examples and one of the main reasons i wrote the book to explain why i think this is so dangerous point there was a bail reform movement. it was led by dainty lawyers mostly white men called themselves liberals, 1960s. it was a cost taken a very poignantly by robert f. robert,

jr. before he was assassinated. these people that the first bill reform movement and they said it's unconstitutional and wrong and immoral to cage people because he can't make a payment. they were successful and the passed past the federal bail reform act of 1984. the day before, 24% of all people charged in federal crimes were detained just because he could make a monitor payment. the court of all people charged in federal crime presumptively innocent when a jail cell waiting for the family just because they couldn't pay. today as i stand here talking to you all, 72.4% of federal criminal pretrial defendants are detained. we got rid of the injustice of cash bail and we tripled the rate of pretrial detention. we increased the percentage of impoverished people and people of color who are arrested. we are caging three times more people and it's more discriminatory from a a socioeconomic class perspective

than it was before. the answer to this potential paradox lies in the fact that those reforms are led by elites, i people who control the punishment. it wasn't any kind of change in underlying power dynamics that created the bureaucracy that the ruling class uses to control certain populations. i think back over the history of the american judiciary, what made us think that institutions like the courts and congress were ever going to be the source of radical social justice? if you look back at the supreme court's history it's never been a source of radical social change. judges don't see themselves as radical agents of social change. they see themselves as agents of stability preserving quarter. that's why every single turn whether it's on racial justice issues or gender or economic justice issue the supreme court is always lagged behind social movements. the same is true when you look at the criminal legal punishment a bureaucracy. even the case that is perhaps

considered the most significant and positive case in history of the american supreme court brown v. board of education provides an example. you can have this beautiful decree and brent that it's unconstitutional to segregate schools and yet five years after brown, 40 years after brown, 60s after brown you have more school segregation in many parts of the country than before brown. 25, 30 is later some of the same voters of the very fancy sparklers using the same six or seven words in the 14th amendment brought the same set of cases. this time they won in virtually every court including in the supreme court. it wasn't that the lawyers were smarter. i think what happened was the was a social movement in this country that change the way

people think about same-sex marriage. there's a lot of disagreement about other social movement was organized and co-opted by moderate interest but the point is that the social movement that the court responded to. what we need in this context is a radical social movement that changes the way we think about human caging, that changes the way we think about the criminal punishment bureaucracy as a tool of oppression and changes, to be the locus where power is exerted over peoples body to its the reason it but ancestors stole certain land from other people that today i can call the cops if someone tries to trespass on that land and exert the force and violence of the state to remove them from a property. that's what the criminal punishment is all about. it's all about preserving certain hierarchies of people in power. that's the argument and they can about. what's so scary as many other people who are parading around

the country is criminal justice reformers, some of them quite famous people who are running for president, some of them are former attorney generals, they are making a claim that all we need to do is make a few tweaks, have slightly shorter mandatory minimum sentences and maybe some more version programs. it would be great if we could put several hundred million dollars in every major american city to put body cameras on the police to watch them oppressed the same people in the same neighborhoods doing the same things. those are the things that pass reforms and are criminal punishment bureaucracy reform which is called the justice reform movement. i wrote the book in which you try to as an intellectual matter to scrutinize some of those claims and offer a set of rules of thumb so people could tell what is a good reform versus a bad reform what is likely to help build power. what is likely to reinforce the aspects that are causing all the

problems? if we don't confront those questions, i worry this movement will be co-opted and that people who have profited off of it, created the bureaucracy will shave off some of the most grotesque flourishes believe in place to architecture and bureaucracy of this apparatus we have created. i'm going to stop for a second. i've been talking for a long time. seven several people afford thik talked a couple times so they have learned virtually nothing from what i've said but thank you again for coming again. i want to make sure this is most useful and relevant for the people who are here, so if there are questions or comments and i think jonathan has a microphone, right? we can pass it around. so someone hopefully will be brave enough to ask the first question and that usually gets it going. yes. >> the cash bail system -- [inaudible] the way the prison system has come what of the role -- the

private sector -- [inaudible] >> sarah asked -- an old family friend, thank you for asking the first question. the cash bill sisson, has a been privatized in the same way some of the prison system has been privatized? the answer is yes. throughout the long history of the use of money they'll basically since the magna carta, for-profit bail bonding has been illegal in equal. this skill is the legal in england. in about 1898 the u.s. saw its first for-profit commercial surety company start working in san francisco. to this day for profit money they'll is only legal in the united states and the philippines. that industry has really corrupted the basic delivery of what is called pretrial justice. i don't use these terms like the department of justice for criminal justice system. those are terms of propaganda that give the impression of what they're trying to do is some kind of justice.

the term law enforcement is meant to imply there's objectivity and enforcement of the law, not just enforcing some want to get some people. we call this, it's been privatized in a most every american state, for 60 it's a private or profit money disappeared with facet is we been able to have significant victories in many of these states, including example after we want a constitutional case striking than the money bell system in california, the democratic california legislature passed the bill eradicating the for profit money bail industry in california. what's so scary about that is that those industries are not stupid. the punishment bureaucrats who supported that repeal of the cash flow industry basically are not stupid. they carefully fashioned a system that would replace it and we're seeing this all over the country. i mention the federal bail reform act. what we're seeing in all these places like california when the

past the cash bail reform act they included some privations that expand their ability dramatically to increase pretrial detention. they passed the bill to dramatically increase their chill population. because then that built enough power and because the wet striking at the core of the reasons california had been relying on the cash bell system, we ended up with a law that would dramatically increase pretrial detention. the private prison industry, the bail industry see the writing on the wall, see the public is against cash bail. what is he doing? they are reallocating their capital and business model instead being the person the solution of the bail bond now

you be released without cash bond but ordered supervision. they will be the person charge you for the gps monitor and charges for the testing. this this is a fantastic examplf if you don't confront these mechanisms of oppression at the level of real power, it will just reproduce themselves with a different label. the fact we're taking it on the privatization of the cash flow industry, they haven't given up and they are fighting is hard but they all understand and some larger aggregations of wealth that back that from an investment perspective, from the large insurance companies that control them, they understand they have another ready-made business model right there because there's 2.3 million human thinks in cages right now but there's another 5 million on some kind of the government run supervision. those people are very easy to

get money off of. another question? >> my question is do you think, does you were a former public defender and left and you no longer a public defender, do you think it's possible to be a public defender and also not be called in the system of the bureaucracy is asian of the criminal justice system? >> let me preface my answer by saying i don't know the answer to that. i don't know if it's possible to be a lawyer in our society without being complicit in this great injustice. before target so public defenders, there's so many public defenders in the room, let me say that it's that clip at all that the work that we engaged now, we're going to federal court in asking those courts to vindicate certain constitutional rights, it's not clear that work is also just sort of legitimating the system and maybe lending the

credibility that needs to keep functioning. it's something i struggle with every single night as a go to sleep. what is the line between using the system and the cases that we're able to bring in the system as a way of helping communities in local organizing campaigns, helping people create a moment in a vehicle for telling a certain story. i believe the story were telling is subversive or press the potential to be subversive in the sense of you understand just sticking with the bail example, it's ridiculous keeping human beings in case because you can't make a payment. it makes no sense. people are saying if the criminal justice system is doing that and doing that to 500,000 human beings every single day, separating families, what else is it doing? if i can't trust that out or trust all of the other thinks it's telling me about what it's

doing? there something subversive in an the local and national narratives we able to tell, but nonetheless you are still left every single night with the feeling you're participating in this unjust system and it's very difficult to ever find a progressive radical social movement that's done real demonstrate countries will in class that's been led by lawyers. i mean, i think lawyers like other people can participate in social movements and can be part of building power but whatever lawyers can ball and something to seem to want to control and make decisions editing guitar to think of an example where that's led to radical social change. i've been avoiding this the real crux of your question for a long time. i ended up leaving being a public defendant because i concluded that i was complicit in the system and wasn't able to push and prod and challenge and

expose it as effective as a manipulative if i was a little more free. another thing, maybe it's path for different person to been a public defender and do a dozen things wanted to do but i was either going to get fired or the side to leave first. all kidding aside, , i went to e two things about public defenders. there's a question we been complicit. there's all kind of constraints placed on public defenders, incredible crushing caseloads, horrific judiciary. judges are really the problem. i know some judges are you. get the biggest obstacle to change it every jurisdiction would go to. profiteers. i know the constraints that we've been complicit also. i worked for two of the most prestigious public defender organizations in the country, the federal public defenders office and the public defenders service. in my 4.5 years in those offices neither i, come something i to live it every day, or anyone else from office to my knowledge

file a single bail appeal. a single appeal. i know for a fact that we didn't file a single request for bond pending appeal my entire time. i'm not sure if he filed one of the public defenders office of the. routinely, think about what that means. we were winning about 33% of cases. however, because of the backlog of cases and the time it took to process them, it took about and half years for case on average to get done. if your sins was less than 3.5 years you would always a resear since by the time you one your case a third of the time. it was in that context that we were not asking for clients to be released pending appeal. i don't want to be too harsh on the lawyers who work there because i and of the people working there often had good reasons for not filing certain motions but you never filed any, right? what does this say to legal

system, i was told when one to file a bail appeal we just don't do that. what does this say to the other actors in the courtroom that the person who was supposed to tell this clients story and he was supposed to take her human caging at the matter the most extreme urgency that any wealthy person would have a lawyer filing appeal immediately, what is a seat at point in all that we're not doing? the most -- bid good reasons. it must not be that bad at you. a bee didn't want come some other reason. it leads all this thinking in the aggregate of the thinking if you're your judge or public defender over the course of ten, hundred, house and the cases is to lose sense and stop even asking your clients what does it mean when you're incarcerated? what will it mean if you're detained for the next two months until your trial? censured not even asking those questions of your client, you are not telling the story in court and a whole set of narratives that would be so

important to change the way our legal system thinks are just being ignored. the second thing i i want to sy about public defenders is, i think that's changing. i spent a lot of time now with public defenders all of the country working with them, training them, collaborating. i just did a conference in new york about this exact issue and it's the question public defenders are struggling with is how could public defenders be a part of the social movement? how can public defenders be in a position to act collectively to organize about certain issues, to refuse to participate in certain aspects of the system? over possible organize with the clients. the one barrier has been the rules of ethics, enforcement apparatus that is mostly prosecutorial and judicial but it's long been told public defenders you can't do anything collectively with your clients because it against the interest of individual clients. it's fascinating to watch public

defenders push and prod at the margin of that and maybe untangle some of those threads but it doing to get a things like keeping track of prostitute misconduct in databases. organizing, collecting it. they're working with a journalist. we were forbidden from every speaking to a journalist. now there's a new moment for rethinking how can we take back the narrative in a society? we are in an amazing position to work with our clients to tell their stories. it's an exciting time to be in public defense world. they are starting to work with community organizers. there's a totally different moment in many of these jurisdictions and it's possible now to do some of the things that were not possible five, six, seven years ago. in addition, it's incredibly noble job just on a daily basis. standing there next to someone who our society wants to put in a cage and telling their story and standing between the person and the cage. so i never tell people not to be public defender but i do think

we need to understand the ways in which even public defenders have become desensitized to the brutality of the system every single day. i hope that's enough, but we can talk more afterwards. i don't want to get into too much trouble. >> in the kind of mainstream crime of justice reform we hear a lot about this kind of unlikely coalition of social justice progresses, conservatives who want small government, it's an effective use of resources. one, do you think there's any merit to these kinds of coalitions? and then in the more grassroots and radical work that you are doing, are there similar coalitions unlikely or otherwise? >> great question. so i think there is a real and

-- it's very difficult to know what the effect of some of the bi-partisanly criminal justice reform effort are. some of them seem real to me in the sense they are meaningfully getting people out of prison and jail and changing practices. exploiting things like libertarian philosophy and religious sort of philosophy to change the way people think about punishment undermines the punishment bureaucracy. other efforts seen mostly like ploys to reinforce the punishment bureaucracy. they can take a train i to figure out what -- so i think at the end of the day went to be very, very careful with the kind of coalitions are talking about. make no mistake, most of the conservative criminal justice reformers may have been persuaded some along the way that, especially if they are libertarian, that the criminal legal system is out of control and completely ineffective for

its stated aims and something to be really reckoned with. but at the end of the day most democrats and republicans, so supplies to mainstream democrats of our standard libertarians and republicans, most of those people are very happy with how our society works. if, for example, there's a choice between radically dismantling and abolishing the criminal justice system and by keeping our society, most to what looks people choose the latter every single time. if your theory is we need a radically more just society that looks different from it in terms of who owns things and then i worry that those people will jump off the bandwagon. you have to think, like if, for example, you conclude the best thing you can do to fix the criminal bureaucracy is universal health care and housing for all. that would be by far the best thing we do right away.

most of the people will not be a board with that. i have found most of the mainstream democrats and consumers that in this movement want to think of criminal justice reform in a silo. they want to say we can make little tweaks to the rule on bail and to the rules on sensing and yes, that will be enough. whereas the more radical people that have different philosophy say no, like the reason the criminal justice system looks the way does is because of capitalism and white supremacy and if we packed those things and organize people in the relationships, then we have the hope of actually fundamentally dismantling the system. i worry some of the bipartisan work that's being done doesn't have a theory for grappling with that. but a lot of that work is the work that is giving a lot of people out of cages. there's this constant tension in a movement between harm reduction and fundamental

change, and i think there's a lot of people that are doing that coalition work that are banking on all being smarter than the people there in coalition with. so understanding that the system can be ratcheted up and it was, but if we slowly ratchet it that they can be losing power at each step. what separates, it is by no means against a committal change, the thing you to keep your eye on is does the person doing that have a theory for how that incremental change is getting bigger and bigger and will turn into more radical change course or is a person just going to be satisfied with incremental change? that is the real tension, not the bipartisan nature but the real tension between people whose vision is basically abolishing all of these systems and people whose vision is slightly less cruel versions of existing system. i don't know how to answer your question in terms of local coalitions other than to say the same dynamic is being played at a a local coalitions all over the

country. >> we have time for two more questions. >> thanks for the shout out before. i'm a journalist at npr. i want to do more about how you envision this radical social movement that is going to create this change. you talked about marriage equality in the change over 20 years. as soon as that happened, gave people started coming out. 20 years before, people didn't know a lot of other, did know people who are gay and then suddenly people knew there in your family, people you worked with. so how do we get that kind of understanding? how do you see that radical social movement?

>> let me preface the answer by saying, i don't know that that question is ultimately one for me to answer. i have a view which i will be happy to tell you. but that is a question i think for the people that are organizing the movement, and it shouldn't be like a fancy lawyer in a pink sweater in d.c., by large. i certainly have done a lot of work with people who if there's about this and think that's really informed a lot of my perspective, but one of mistakes is were always looking at people like me for what will this look like and that it's an error that shouldn't be repeated my own view is something like we need to be hearing from people are directly impacted. there's been like a couple of intellectual failures as a part of mass human caging some moral failures.

intellectually, we failed, as it argued in the book, we failed to appreciate the costs of the system of mass human caging because we haven't been listening to the voices of people are directly impacted by. that was a lot of attention paid by the family separation crisis at the border over the last year and half but there are 3160 local jails that are essentially plays the family separation forcibly everything the city and town in this country. we haven't understood those costs because we haven't made space in our cultural discourse to the voices of people whose bodies and minds and families and communities are on the line. so one, we need to dramatically change who is being heard in media, in the arts and that's one reason why the civil rights courts has poets in residence. we're trying to change way we think and work and talk about all of these issues and the kinds of voices that are given privilege in these

conversations. a second intellectual failure is we haven't scrutinized the reported benefits of mass incarceration. there is a role for journalists and scientists and maybe lawyers and of the people to actually demonstrate that for the public in a really persuasive way that what's actually going on is the use of a giant metastasize bureaucracy that controls populations has a zero, in fact, significantly negative effects on the things that it tells you that it functions, public safety, well-being. part of intellectual failure is a field to understand and scrutinize the purported benefits. then i think there's a moral failure. all of us have allowed ourselves to be really complicit and a field to approach the situation with the requisite level of urgency. i was invited to the white house once, and only once for reasons i think you can probably

imagine. we were at this event, the purpose was after like seven years of the obama administration would be getting together and going to have a panel when we talked about the problems in the criminal legal system. it was a wonderful panel, judge morrison was speaking. a lot of other luminaries. i was not speaking there i was just sitting there. i did ask a couple of questions which is a reason i'm not invited back. one of the things that struck me after seven or eight years of essentially doing nothing but doing mostly bad things in the criminal punishment bureaucracy, the administration he said they bring to get all these experts and talk about how horrible it is that hundreds of thousands or are detained every single day because they can't make money bail and tens of millions of people are crushed under the weight of fines and fees. 13 million people can't drive, can't take the kids hospital, get good work just because they odette. in the middle of it attorney general comes in and interrupts

everything and says all my goodness, i'm so sorry. i know you all must be freaking out. i know all of your very worried what was going on in san bernardino. i want to assure you we got tactical team a and tactical team be and swat team and off-site out the right now, anything people came to the bottom of it, making people safe and it is clapping. and i thought to myself, that is what it looks like when someone treats something with urgency. that is what it looks like when someone responds to suffering in a way that has moral urgency. not seven years later having a discussion about if the problem is bad. it was almost like you go home, you turn on the local news and it turns out while i wish you're talking to the d.c. police had raided my house. in my house i had a dungeon and

in the dungeon i was keeping people. i've been plucking them office you, mostly black and brown people, almost all impoverished people and i was torching them, i was exposing them to sexual assault, physical abuse, squalor. i think that you would support the police raiding my home. some of you might have support prosecuting me for that crime like the kind cleveland appears ago had women in his dungeon. a lot of you would support nonetheless like some kind of emergency medical action to rescue all of those people. but that is the situation we have in over 3000 local jails. we have allowed our jails to become grotesque torture chambers. before a guidance work on on te case on the way here about a woman who is eight and half months pregnant. she can't afford for money jail. the judge jailed or because he wanted her to have her baby in a job because the jail was ten minutes coached the hospital than the treatment facility she wanted to live with with her

unborn baby. just like the one we couldn't get out two weeks ago in san jose. she will have her baby and such as a baby it will be ripped away from her. i just found out today that woman is in solitary confinement in the jail. that's just what we are dealing with and that's in santa clara county which is supposedly the most progressive pretrial county in california when this progressive states in the country. i see all of this not to be a downer but to acknowledge that we have not treat these issues with urgency they deserve. what with the movement require. it will require leadership of the people whose bodies and minds on the line to force our society in ways that i can do just talking at you about things, to force you to confront and to look at what we are doing in in a way that moves people to action. i don't know exactly what that looked like but it looks a lot like the organizing forcing on the grant and some of her cases

by organizing partners. it looks a lot like the new jails organizing that was just received that in new york city. it looks a lot like the texas organizing projects in harris county texas. there is the work being done at one telling thing is that the work of radical organizing has been defected from by v in our society. people are willing to give money to me because they be our look and talk and we are doing fancy legal cases. i think maybe more insidiously, it's because the work we're doing isn't that much of a a threat to the underlying order. we are trying to make it a threat where trying everyday to do the layering in a different way that will be more connected with canaries and traditional lawyering and trying to aim trying our best. but i think what's telling is the actual organizing

communities has been divested from, and i think the ruling class by large understands what in its interest and what's not in its interest to fund. they fund the things that maybe alleviate the worst symptoms of the spots that don't strike at the core. what hope is there is a new generation of people work on these issues that understand the differences between those things and that's why what the book, to try to move people to action around these sets of principles. >> we can do one more question. it's 8:00 now. we can do one more question for move to signing. >> my name is jonathan to type a short question. you mention mentioned at the e- >> really long answer. >> you mentioned at the end that, you know, these grassroots efforts have been the vested. to what extent is money helpful

in this movement and where,, someone who is dealt a lot with the movement, does money help? if you have money to get, where would you put it? >> great question. there are lots of organizations locally all over the country that need money to like, , so ls of organizations, for example, i will take one. we work with a lot, debug was doing incredible organizing work. they invented this defense that uses the criminal defense process as a on-ramp for families who have loved ones going through the criminal process to organize and get them involved and engaged in a assisting those cells become the debug community and help the next family that comes in. much of the work was being done by volunteers. they're so many organizations that during some of the most incredible work here, elsewhere,

around the country in every major city and every smaller town. they are doing it essentially with no resources. they can't produce materials. they can pick the people that are working for them. that's a real problem because you need to be able to pay people to do this work to have be consistent and enduring. and so one of the reasons why the proceeds, the royalties from the book i've been donating to group called -- organizing. we can talk afterwards. there's lots of organizations i encourage you to do your own research wherever you live about what are the organizations that are actually organizing and building power in your community and which of those organizations are led by people that event directly impacted by the criminal punishment bureaucracy and which have an actual like three of change that's involved at the end of the day like abolishing the systems.

those are the organizations i would donate to. we've been working with a number of organizations around the country and i'd be happy to offer you some thoughts about some specific places but there's also great ones in d.c. i get some rules of thumb at the end of the first essay about the kinds of changes that are good. if the organization doesn't have radical politics, i think you to be sure it probably won't make much of an impact and some else is, with much more money has probably already given them money. so i think jonathan, we are done. i just wanted to say one more time, pain the poet is an amazing artist, i've done a number of events with him and him he moves me to tears every single

time. but he needs you to support it. he loves to do events, so find him if you're not already gone back on the bus, but i don't see pain. i think he had to leave. i just can't stress enough how incredible an artist he is and a difficult it is to make a living doing this work. please consider supporting his work. as i mentioned, please also take a moment to look up as e justice group which is organization all the royalties are going to. they do amazing and inspiring work and could be more proud to be associate within an also want to thank politics and prose and jonathan for putting on this event and all of you for coming, and i will here to sign books for the next 30 minutes or so. [applause]

>> tv has cover several programs about impeachment including that of president bill clinton, former independent counsel ken starr who is not part of president trump's impeachment defense team discussed his 2018 book about the investigation into president clinton. here's a portion. >> how do we in a free society that believes in the rule of law and accountability keep the president and those around him, or her, honest, right? and if there are serious allegations of wrongdoing, are we simply going to say which is the case in some countries, excuse me, our chief executive, whoever he or she might be, is above the law? not in the united states and that's part of the glory, as unpleasant as all get out and especially not fun for those wrapped up and, of course, for president clinton and hillary and chelsea, this was a horrible episode to go through.

so at a personal level yes, lots of costs, but in terms of who we are as a free people with the constitutional democracy, isn't it reassuring to know that truly, no one is above the law? >> to access all of the c-span and booktv archives on impeachment visit our website c-span.org/impeachment. >> here's some featured programs this weekend on c-span2. tonight on "after words" financial times colonist and cnn analyst talks about her book don't be evil. monday, martin luther king, jr. day, at 10 a.m. eastern, a broken america. at 8:30 p.m. gary young with this book, the speech. and at 9:55 p.m. cornel west on west on his book the radical