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>> with that, i'm going to introduce our author. chris is a pulitzer prize winning journalist from a new york times foreign correspondent and now chief and middle east for 15 years. he's the author of numerous books in a bookstore or finalist, war is a force that gives us meaning. the book is for sale outside as is his new books which will be discussed tonight. drama, literature, philosophy and history in the college degree program offered by records university at east jersey state prison other institutions in the state's. [two bells tolling] his first class, studentss, read and discussed plays by mary and august wilson set out to write a play of their own. you can hear more about that, it is part of the book and you will

hear from the author directly if the title of the book our class, trauma and transformation in american prison, it gives a face and a voice to those our society too often demonizes and abandons. interviewedns by daniel, a reporter and producer for wl rn where he covers various issues including criminal justice, climate change and state politicsam. before. [two bells tolling] , whose investigative reporter and producer on the television series, the naked truth and digital reporter for fusion. daniel is also an alumnus of miami-dade college, i discovered that talking to him in the back and here is chris hedges and daniel. [applause]

[cheering and applauding] >> hello, how is everyone doing? thank you for that intro. to get started, i think one good way is to set the tone, make light of something i think a lot of us forget, a lot of us here in this room have probably done something that could have putaus in the prison system. we may not have been caught, we might have been caught and brought off somehow but a lot of us including myself, have done things that could have put us in the prison system. i just want to lay that out there because a lot of times when we talk about people who are in the county jail or state prison, federal prison, it's like them and us.

no, all are criminals but different things have happened to us alongng the way. can i just comment on back? >> i have>> this book, i won't o into it but one of my students in prison, he was in a bar and was offered a line of coke in the bathroom the guy tried to rape her. she ran screaming out of the bathroom and he killed a guy. he spent 32 years in prison for that. i told the story of my own experience but i think it completely addresses that which is very smart. iran a small church in the depressed section of boston when i was a semi- student. i was also a member of the ymca

boxing team and there was only one air conditioning unit on the first floor in this dilapidated house that iht lived in next to the church and it was a small l.a. between the church and house and one night i heard screaming iran outside and it was two -- i livedod in the neighborhood so i knew the neighborhood, to heroin addicts were attempting to rape a 14-year-old girl. i also knew they had knives in their pockets and i had to disable them as fast as i could before they could get their hands in their pockets and pull out their knives. so there is no heroics with us, anyone who's been around a heroin addict they are just bones.y i was throwing them into the sidewalk against the brick wall immobilize them and get the girl out. i could have easily killed one. my sole goal was essentially to just disable them physically and

remove the girl, i always tell that story to my students, it could easily have gone the other way but it's a really important thing to say. >> when i was trying to get at, my opening is when it comes down to whether you are in the system or not, sometimes it may be just an inch or a matter of one small decision or not and sometimes there are other factors at play. ... the judge said that he is be

redeemable. really makes it almost a life lesson tond try to prove the jue wrong. he is indeed dignity. and then i think that general feeling is one of the themes of this book. >> i look at mass incarceration as a civil rights issue of our age. prisoners, 40% of whom are not charged with physically harming another human being, drug laws, offenses three or four times longer than they are anywhere else int the world. 94% are railroaded into the prison system, coerced into accepting a plea. the police and the prosecutors

stack all sorts of charges against you which they are acutely aware of you did not commit. it is a bargaining chip. we will remove this, we will remove that and you are forced to accept the plea. those areho the longest sentencs that are inevitable that insist on a jury trial. the reason they insisted on a jury trial is because in most cases, my anecdotal experience of all the cases, they did not commit the crime. they thought that the system would validate that. they charge them with all of the charges. they have the longest sentences. these are exceptional men that i have taught in the women's

prison in new jersey. they have turned their cells into libraries. they are serious scholars. one of them is lawrence val. lawrence bell, his father died when he was two. his mother died when he was nine. he was living as an orphan in an abandoned building. the poorest city in america. there is a wait and a murderer. went to city police detectives. the police station, he has no adult he slapped down and you

are right, the judge in his sentence, 14 years old. calling him here redeemable. he is sentenced as an adult. he has not eligible to go before a parole board until he is 70 eyears old. that means that he can ask to get out and it is very rare the first time of around the first oral board that you get out. i always tell my students, it is not what you do in life, it's what you do with what life gives you. he is a stellar student. he rose to get into this college program, straight a student. i taught after this that i write

about called conquests. seal the great history. the great haitian revolution. the only successful slave in human history and haiti has been paying for it ever since. he waits until everyone leaves the room and he says to me, i know that i will die in this prison, butng i work as hard asi do because one day i will be a w teacher like and walked out. the code to the story is that a wonderful public defender in new jersey, jennifer for two years. to get him a resentencing hearing. not only a character witness,

but even if he re- sentences him, they won't release him. renting him an apartment for a year. my garage was filled with household items donated by other formally incarcerated and i don't wear it on my sleeve, i am an ordained presbyterian minister. for that, i put on my clerical collar. i was all that he had. they don't tell you, they did not at least give us those in the courtroom as scheduled. i go in the morning at 10. it's now 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon. i'm waiting for lawrence to be brought before the judge. they are all shackled with the chain around their stomach. he sees that i am therefore lawrence.

he turns to lawrence and he says who is at minister. lawrence goes, that is my pastor. almost all of my students are muslim. somebody who comes out of the left-wing tradition of the churchch, my father was a presbyterianan minister. he was a veteran of world war ii very involved in the civil rights movement in the yay rights movement. my uncle whose youngest brother was yay and his father had a particular sensitivity to being a yay man in america in the 50s and 60s. so, for me, the right standing with the crucified. it's not about bringing them to jesus. i was a bureau chief for the new yorkmi times. seven years in the middle east. i have tremendous respect for

islam. for me, a beautiful moment. he was released. he is now working as a community organizer and driving my old car [applause] a lot of the characters in this book stand accused or have admitted that they have done violent things. i know several people that have been killed by gunshots. i am sure many of us do. it kind of surrounds us in this culture that we are in. within that context, a lot of your writing in this book in particular really calls for empathy despite persistent

violence all around us. i am curious, how, because one of the things we always have to confront when we talk about the justice system, just this scale of it. it is not one thing in one place. it is pervasive in every part of the country. >> i'm curious, for people a lot of timeshi have admitted that ty have donewe pretty bad things or in close proximity to it. how do you think about the potential of systematizing some kind of empathy or scaling it up from one-on-one to potentially something greater than that? >> well, that is not there crime. number two, they pay. not with money, but with their life. separated from their communities, family, children.

and, i always tell my students, i don't know who you were 20 or 30 years ago. i believe in the possibility of re- transformation. i believe in the possibility of redemption. i am not naïve about violence. spending 20 years abroad around a lot of violence. killers frightened me. psychopaths that find a statistic enjoyment and murder. in fact, those people are ostracized within the prisons. i was once in salvador for the five years when there was in ambush, crouching down and firing it over their head.

they have no idea where. my students at oh, yeah, it's just a drive-by. they have powerful weapons. especially weapons that you can buy. they are not trained to use them. that is first. in an impulsive moment. a moment of fear, that is the first thing. there is a reason that the army and the marine corps recruit kids that are 18 years old. their brains are not fully developed. they are subject to peer pressure. so, you know, how do you deal with that? my students where there crime like a scarlet letter. i know that it is there. it is obviously for those that have killed and for their

families it's a greater burden. it is also a burden for them have a conscience. there is an expression in all prison systems that you age out of crime. i wasar in a maximum-security prison, these studentss were in their 30s and 50s. they age out of crime. when you are in a depressed industrialized community and you are working in the illegal economy, you cannot go to the police. you cannot go to the courts. all illegal economies depend, for those people that function upon them on enforcers. people who carry out acts of violence. and it is a kind of predatory environment. ideal with a lot of students who were big time drug dealers. hethere is an and tyler subset

according to those groups that just pray on drug dealers because they have drugs and they have money. they will not call the cops. >> at a few points in the book, you draw some parallels between the deprivation you have seen in inner-city america, especially in the northeast. some of those scenes that you confronted as a war correspondentpo, i have two quos here from your students. one from boris, prison is not a culture shock. the condition is outside from the inside. and another from student staff. just in terms of the social contract about whether you abide by the rules we have in place, the laws we have in place, when you feel that country is letting

you down, you are less likely to abide by those rules" it is a pretty harrowing picture of america. likes to pretend it does not exist. can you tell me a little bit about the parallels that you do draw between what you saw overseas and what you are seeing in some parts of the united states? >> five years in america, was in god's, what you have is a breakdown of social systems. you rupture what the sociologists would call social bonds. a great book on suicide. my last book was called america a farewell to her. arguing that when you are no longer integrated into a society, dignity, position, all of that is taken away from you,

then hee writes that you engage both groups and individuals and engage in self-destructive such as violence, opioid use, suicide , hate groups. he said those that seek the annihilation of others are driven by the desires of self annihilation. that would characterize war. in the war environment, if you think about it, every system that nurtures and protects life is targeted and destroyed. seshelling the magnificent libry and turned it into a bonfire. that was a parallel, i think. and so the kinds of activities, remember, in order, to function,

they are forced into the illegal economy one way or another in order to survive. the stories they tell of constant evictions, the men have already been removed because they are in the parcel system. constantly changing schools. no stability. matthew diamond wrote a very good book on this on evictions which is worth reading. so, the social bonds are destroyed. i think that that is a parallel to what i have witnessed in war zones with the same kind of result. start talking about going into the prisons and the place where a lot of the book actually takes place. to start off the book, you described with a lot of detail what it is like to physically

enter into a maximum-security prison. the machines, the different layers of hurricanes and it seems that they go into excruciating detail about what a strip search actually means in a prison system. can you tell us why you put those details that are so important for the general public to confront? it's easy just to gloss over. >> because, you know, it's like entering the reins of santo's inferno. by the time you get to the epicenter, you are stripped of all humanity. they don't refer to you by your name. they refer to you by your prison number. and then in order to survive in that environment, you have to build these b emotionally protective laws. if there is any kind of

vulnerability, it is seen as a weakness. so, staff and the book describes, he buys a contraband cell phone from a guard for $200. he's caught with it and they send them to solitary confinement for a year. in solitary confinement, unless you are psychologically quite robust. people start screaming in their feces smeared all over the wall. you go crazy. and then they drugged you up. some of our prison population is severely ill. you just sleep all day long. and then eventually you get the shakes. you are a zombie five.

i think what was so unique about that classroom is in the procesh of writing this play which was not premeditated, it just came out of the present, those walls were stripped away. you are right, the play was caged. eventually performed at the theater in trenton. sold out every night and then published. the first half of the play was inside the prison. the invisible walls that keep the poor poor. the interlocking systems of probation, police, schools, banks. probation. all of the mechanisms by which people are trapped. largely people of color for these internal colonies. it is meant to be, you are

turned into an object. prison culture and prison administration. >> in the process, this is what you're going to do, what was running through your mind, running through your heart when you saw those façades start to down. you saw little bit ofin vulnerability creeping in where there was really a wall there before. was there a change when that happened? >> it was b miraculous. when the door closed, it was as if the prison was not there. that was accidental. p i did not plan on it. maybe because it was accidental, that is why it worked. i had 28 students in that class.

one of the students had listened to me and knew who i was because he had listen to the station in new york. he recruited the best writers. a half a dozen very talented writers of students who wroteok poetry, one had written a book. when i started teaching, brother sister plays which i think are in miami, especially the middle one remic mackey is also a very fun playwright. $150 to go to new york and see fences. a little familiarity with drama. i want you to get used to

dramatic dialogue so that you understand the engine. i bring home the first set. all handwritten online it all carries that kind of musty smell can i hit one after another? my wife is an actor. graduate of julliard. i said, you know, i think i will help him write a play. i was working on a book which i dropped because i became a full-time editor. in addition to teaching the class. i can sign up students for remedial help.ki just without asking. i then announced it. they all showed up.

that was really over this four month period. by writing about the loss, their grief, everything that they had undergone, they could not hold back these emotions that were buried inside of them. they are big guys. they call it the 400 club which means you bench over 400 pounds. these big guys, you know, would get up, some of them covered with prison tattoos and their hands would be shaking in their eyes would be welling up with tears. there is a story in the book. we were trying to work on the scene with mother and everyone for the next class got to write a dialogue, a conversation with their mother. i said, well, that is what you have to write.

what he writes is autobiographical. everything in that play happened neto someone in that classroom. including one of my students was locked in the prison and on the first night the guard comes and tells him that that was a cell his father was in. me comes in and he has written a scene from the county jail. he is from patterson. he is in the car with his half brother in the car is stopped by police and searched. they find a weapon.y what they have for the county to his mom. it does not matter, ma. i was never supposed to be here anyway.

>> after the play is done, one of your students comes out, it is ultimately performed at the theater in trenton, new jersey, for a full month, i understand. it is amazing. >> you all had a night where you brought the families of your students and only them. can you tell us how that was that night? and how it was important for them to have a special audience? >> we had read all of these great plays where wilson writes a cycle, every decade for the experience. this one is set around night teen 10. most are set in pittsburgh. if you have not seen this, watch

it. it is stunning.ng it is about -- [inaudible] -- lack bodies criminalized. especially when they needed to pick the cotton or go into the camps in florida where we don't knowow. >> thousands of inmates, by the way. the mortality rate was staggering. they did not buy them. they did not have two pay for

them so i did not matter if they died. they would pick you up for some grfictional crime like loose cigarettes or my favorite is obstructing pedestrian traffic which means standing too long on the sidewalk. they would march you down the river and then people would pay a small fee and for a seven year. you would beit a slave. inthis character was all about bitterness coming north to try to find his wife who has come to pittsburgh. conger in the play. the ancestors, the voices of the ancestors are extremely important. this is what the piano another place are about. the dominant society will ever tell you who you are, where you

came from. they will give you the fictional narrative of those that have power. he keepsel telling this charactr fithat he has to find his song. it means he has to find out where he came from, who he was, in order to become whole. that was, for me, what that play came. their song. that last night when i left the prison, was, we were morning, really, what we had in that classroom was so powerful and so unique. the bond that we created exists to this day. especially as my students get out. and, so, it was making that song heard. my best writer got out.

when i first said only seven students wanted a part. they were wary. by the end, all 28 wanted parts. to put it on stage i would work as hard as i could. i don't know anything about producing plays, but all learn. you cannot have a play with 28 characters. but boris was key. my wife helped and then theater director workshop to it at his expense. which was key. so that we could create a central kind of core. maybe half a dozen. but that was their song. and, my goal, boris wolf was to make that song heard outside of those prison walls. we did not want anyone else

there. lee only wanted the families. when you talk about the strip search, we had a fair number of formerly incarcerated and in the place there was a strip search where you are forced. they were constantly strip-searched. if they are in solitary, clear strip-searched and they come out of the cell. in new jersey when you carry out a visit, you are strip-searched before you go into the visitor's room. when they in the visit, the guards will pull a certain between the prisoners and their families. it is quite traumatic, especially for their children. on the other side of the curtain, all of those prisoners are being stripped search. they write about it in the book, open your mouth, lift your nut sack and then you put your fingers in your mouth again. to humiliate you. that scene in the play was

huinteresting. the most traumatic for both the families and even people it triggered stuff for people that had been incarcerated. but after about four or five minutes into the play, i heard sobbing and just we think for the entire, you know, 90 minutes we wanted a space one of those nights where those families could grieve and those families could hear the song. of course, it was incredibly powerful. >> so, the process of you writing the play and getting to know your students, getting to know, not just, but also you introducing them to a lot of

drama and books and intellectuals and writers and whatnot, just through the book, you really start to see people grow into themselves and grow into people that they never thought that they could have been. towards theou end, you have a le you will become realistic when you strive against an evil. talking about the prison system itself. it seems to me that even by saying the system is evil is calling attention to the moral imperative of resisting it. it is not a small thing. especially when you are on the inside. your writing is very moralistic. you flaunt your colors.

the broader society is so many of us do not pay attention to what happens in the criminal justice system. don't think about it. on a broader scale, considering your experience on the inside, considering your relationship to the people there and on the inside, what is the current state of the morality of this country. it seems to be an open question. >> both within the lives of individuals and societies, and ascendant.at we have a saturated culture. we live in a culture that does not invest in people, but invest in control. in fact, we have abandoned huge numbers of people including the white working class which has led many of them to trump and

trump is not going away. whether it is trump or not, i do not know. remember, if you are black, you will are disenfranchised from the society. you are thrown into a system, i don't knowt what the status is n florida, proposition four or something, amendment four, you can vote, you lose your f passport, you can't get public assistance, you can't it public housing. my students, many of them, i am just, in the last few days, the guy who recruited all the students in my class two years out, you got a job at whole foods during covid. the courts open up, they ran a background check, he is fired.

i went to the manager, i might as well been talking to a deaf person. to it made no difference. so that is why you have a 76% recidivism rate within five years. because of all of the hurdles. it really gets down to making money off of the bodies of black and brown people. because on the streets of a city , they do not generate money, but if you lock them in a stage, and generate 50 or $60 a year for the prison contractors, construction companies, guards, everything. the problem is it is privatized. the phone service, money

transfer, you know in florida, huge sections of prisons have been poisoned with poisoning. the commissary is privatized. under the 13th amendment, you don't have to pay them minimum wage. >> in some states, you don't get paid at all. like george. the commissary talking about very basic items. you are sentence, you are stacked with thousands of dollars of fines. if you're making $28 a month, it is in 30 years. he has about 10,000 fines. when he got out, he still owed

$6000. if youou cannot pay it back, the is a warrant out for your arrest and you go back in. it is all about money. it is all of these lobbyists. prisons have been turned into warehouses. the programs a few decades ago, the vocational programs, educational programs, all of that is gone. people come out, people who already hadhe trauma when they went in, come out with even greater trauma. it makes it extremely difficult to reintegrate. but, also, everything is set against them. if you really want to understand the society, look at the prisms. onpeople are completely powerles and you see how cruel they are. if you truly want to communicate

with the family member in prison, you cannot just call them up, you have to pay in advance. you have to pay in advance. you are talking about the poorest of the poor. within the prison, all of the work is done by the prisoners. basically bonded labor. that is why a few years ago when they did a prison strike and for prisons that cost the state millions of dollars to bring uncompensated labor. my favorite story is, by the way , the leaders are in solitary confinement. it is so corrupt. you can get anything you want. i said i'm going to grab my tape

recorder. he said i'll call you back. we can do a conference call. then he said when are you going to publish this? we've got to get the phones out of the cell. if you want to break the back of this movement, you have to support the prison stripes that demand minimum wage. economically unsustainable. it is now reconfiguring the united states into horrific editing where all of the institutions within the united states essentially work to consolidate the wealth and power of this. i went to boarding school.

my graduation speaker, when he died he was worth about 3 billion. we have never seen money, 180 billion, it is unlike anything we have seen in american history. i studied classics at harvard. when you create an oligarchic system, you have to options. we are barreling towards corporatey. tyranny. >> tried to throwin that in. >> we do want to take some questions from the audience. >> if you have questions. we will try to get to your questions.

my name is paul fletcher. gtwashington state penitentiary. they went to the federal government and got it funded. one of the first in 1968. then, we started a halfway house at the university of washington. they got paroled to that halfway house. they checked themselves out and went to class and came back. one was named ron. a couple hollywood movies. also placed in the prison. i know how those systems work. rockefeller was the one that

kstopped the whole system from doing any kind of education. you are doing some hard work. i appreciate what you are doing. >> yes. wondering what they did on rockefeller. >> the way she ins the book is the response by the ruling white oligarchy. it is fascinating with the internal documents. they all think it's the beginning of a malice revolutioi in fact, argues, solve turbocharge the demonizing of special black men, but also the foundation of this draconian parcel state as a response. i interviewed for about six

hours. this consciousness from the 60s and early 70s by black radicals. hhe is kind of the old head in the prison play. when he gets to prison, he forgets solitary confinement is created. immediately put in solitary confinement for 22 years. twenty-two years. they don't w want him raising consciousness. he did not want to be interviewed. i had to move a lot of questions. they all knew him. he is famous in the prison system. i don't know. i don't think you trust white people.

>> don't worry, he doesn't trust anyone. he stopped the runners, the people that do the courier work for the gods. that is not your job. mysterious fires in that cell. i asked him, he was arrested, finally, for a shoot out for robbing a blank. i said, wow, what was it like to be in a shoot out with the new york police. he said i felt like the freest black man in america. [laughter] >> two questions. are there any successful reform efforts in various states that

you mentioned? if you could imagine a politician pressing the issues youe are raising clearly, what would they be urging? it's. >> to dismantle the state. two primary forms of social control the militarized police. impunity and create reigns of terror. i don't use that word lightly, terror. that is what happens when they kick your door down at 2:00 o'clock in the morning for nonviolent drug warrant. mass incarceration. those become the pillars of social control because theho social bonds have been ruptured we have to re-create the social bonds. integrated and given a place in a sense of dignity and purpose and meaning in the society. everything now

conspires within the system. the school system gives you enough numeric literacy. some of my students, no one called the n-word. described to me your high school. it's falling apart. metal detectors. you know, leaky roofs, there is no scientific equipment, et cetera. now i'm going to describe to you at the high school in princeton new jersey where i lived. the $1 million black box theater , the olympic swimming pool,po 30 ap, that is racism. that ist' racism. the bigger project is about we constructing our society so that it serves the citizens rather

than criminal organizations like goldman sachs. [applause] >> the criminal justice system. recently, when you see it hiding behind corporate law, the politicians who were basically killing people by vaccinations and masks, premeditated murderpr or something. the criminals family. it has been very ugly and very hard for me to see this. for the inmates, i would imagine it is even worse. the justice system is always for the poor and the rich can do anything. >> writing a good book about

this cold divide. he looked at courts that prosecuted the poor and then all of the thieves on wall street who never had to pay a price for trashing the global economy and engaging in horrific and massive acts of fraud. that, of course, is what i'm talking about.er i taught at princeton, columbia, a few other schools. the level of discussion begins at a place where these elite kids or want to be cannot even reach. they understand white supremacy, they understand how the system is configured -- they get it all let's not give biden a pass. taking back the law and order

issue from the republicans. that is where you got the vast expansion of the parcel state. what people don't understand is going down. biden was at the forefront of this in the senate. the militarization of police. the expansion of the death penalty for crimes. that was out of biden's office. it went for one or two and he bragged about it. half of my students at least would not be in the prison system but for biden and clinton the first civil rights. the democratic party has been one of the, you know, if you go

back to clinton, the primary engine of the occupation armies in poor neighborhoods.io they are occupation forces. you know, but, what is interesting is that can be a contentious thing to say. it was at a whole another level. org organic intellectuals. it was national news. but not to those of us that teach it imprisons. these are minimal intellectuals. i have two students, boris, i was telling you, he has arms the size of his thighs. he is huge. another one, i did not teach him

he has one of the guys who is so tall that he lives. he says he 68 but he is bigger than 6-foot 8 inches. he gets out, graduates from rutgers, it's the first fellowship, the first for any students in over a decade. he goes to the university of cambridge and gets a masters in philosophy. we are walking down the street in princeton. what are those two black guys doing? k they don't know what i know. you go home at night and read. are nerds, just like me. [laughter] >> thank you. [applause] >> we have run short on the time. i will ask you to take your

questions to the signing area. on this floor, just down the hallway. let's give a round of applause. [cheering and applause] thank you so much. [applause] gmac reporting conversations. hear them on c-span's new podcast. to be met focusing on the presidency of lyndon b. johnson. you'll hear about the civil rights act, the presidential campaign, and the war in vietnam. not everyone knew that they were being recorded. >> certainly, johnson secretaries new because they were tasked with transcribing many of those conversations. they were the ones that made sure johnson would signal to

them through an open door between his office and bears. >> you also hear some blunt talk. >> reporting a number of people. [inaudible] i won't go. i will just stay right behind. >> funding on c-span now or wherever you get your podcast. >> a new mobile video app from c-span. download today. >> now want book tvs afterwards program. georgetown law professor details her experience in policing after becoming an armed reserve police