competition in light of the upcoming midterm election, picture yourself as a newly elected member of congress. we ask competitors, what is your top priority and why five to six minute video shows the importance of the issue from opposing and supporting perspectives. don't be afraid to take risks with the documentary. be bold. $100,000 in cash prizes is a $5000 grand prize. videos must be submitted by january 20, 2023. visit student cannot work for roles, tips, resources and a step-by-step guide. >> there are a lot of places to get political information but only at c-span do you get it straight from the source. no matter where you're from or where you stand on the issues, c-span is america's network. unfiltered, unbiased, word for

word. if it happened here or here or here or anywhere that matters, america is watching on c-span powered by cable. >> i am regina, store manager and book buyer at everett. it's an honor to celebrate new book, our class, trauma and transformation in an american prison. our class is about a drama class taught in prison in the dynamics teaching and learning about the prison and people who have to live in it and around it and trying to survive trauma. the play caged was begun there is full participation of the class in real life in a series of public performances. we hear the voices of the students in the book read over their shoulders as they talk about the great play by the

likes of august wilson, they work should find their own stories and have the courage to traumatize them. the book is full of stories and complacency about what society does to people. on the title page and i have copies around the book around the room, look at the book, he got copies -- there is a photograph of all of the students in the cost and i find it really good to see their faces. another thing, when you pick up your copy of cage, in addition to the wonderful introduction, by boris was on our panel tonight, don't miss the section called playwrights on the inside and the outside as 2013, bios of everyone of the playwrights.

they are astonishing little stories. i hope the book will serve as a call to action and have time to include these ideas in the discussion to follow.r we are pleased to welcome hedges, war correspondent, author of many books and ordained minister, joined by boris franklin, playwright, scholar, first of chris's former students to earn his masters. currently assistant director of rothe -- we want to be help them

rebuild their collections. ibefore i came up here, i reada piece by my friend who wrote this great book among many others, he writes about radical action, fire and joy. he gave me something i needed today, he dropped a piece in the nation and i just wanted to share a bit of that with you today on the election and other stuff. he said i never thought yesterday picking up my dogeared copy reading it in a coffee shop would count as an act of resistance for here we are. i do know here in virginia and across the country there are a ton of people who either didn't vote or are other 18 and they are going to turn the lives of the tony morrison book burners on their head to demand

accountability for past, present and future. let's going. give it up for boris and chris. [applause] >> things, virginia and thanks for labyrinth book who donated over 700 books to the library at east jersey state prison where with my students you are about to meet three of my remarkable students, worked on and finished college degree, some include them to embody and there are several people here, jennifer who have been so important in the lives of those who have been demonized and forgotten so it is a special night.

wboris and ron were in the clas that wrote the play. ron and russ were in the class where i traumatize them by dragging them through all of chauvin's politics and vision.wa [laughter] i've taught -- russ was not in the cost russ got out in july after 32 years and they have all read the book, ron helped editth the book but i'm going to set it up and passed the mic to them they can pull from that experience in the book but they think is important. i went to teach the class at east jersey state prison through the program which is run out of rutgers and allows people on the

inside to earn their associates and their va. i wanted them to read the great playwrights rocker, dutchman, the great august wilson, pinero and others it was clear when i got into the class few members of the class had much experience with theater and drama so familiar with dramatic dialogue because everything a play of course is conveyed through dialogue i suggest they write owscenes as an exercise. what i didn't know is one of the students in the class kabir which means big which is his nickname and his big, knew who i

was listening to because he heard me on vba i and he gone around and recruited the most talented writers in the present. ... n online paper that -- on # line paper that the note, the prison, i ran into several scenes that were just remarkable and lyrical, powerful, and this happened the next week and the week after that. and i said to my wife, on you eunice, who is a professional actor, graduate of juilliard. i showed her this and went back suggested that maybe i could help the could help the students write a plan went back to class and propose that we take these themes and i would kind of service the editor and that we'd know some scenes in everything

had to be cleared with the class. but it was not premeditated. it was completely organic and i don't think i or anyone in that classroom is prepared for what happened because in prison you have h to build these emotionaly protective walls. when people began to write about their trauma are suffering their loss thosegr walls melted and as you can see 28 students recall that the 400 club were big guys prison type standing up there their handshaking and in someth cases crying and it just became this explosive experience where everything that poured out in people began to speak about experiences they had that they had neverne spoken about in prin

and sometimes decades like lawrence who had been arrested at the age of 14 in both his parents were dead. he was living in an abandoned house isg a 12-year-old and dragged into the camden city police station with three esdetectives. he weighs 90 pounds and is functionally. he's not eligible to go before parole board and kelly 70 years old. convicted as an adult and would still be in prison but for the gracefo of jennifer who got him out. [applause] like boris ron and russ he decided that he was just going to be the best person hee could he despite the circumstances in which he found himself. i taught history class and was

called conquest. we read classic work on the independence movement in this most successful revolt in haiti's history and at the end of that class he was always one of my top students. he waited until everyone left the room and he said i know i'm going to die inn this prison but i work as hard as they do because one day i'm going to be a teacher like you and he walked out. youu will see with these three-mile remarkable men here the depth of the brilliance and the integrity and the passion which i have never experienced in any classroom and i taught at princeton, columbia and all of places. sacred space because that classroom door closes and you

are not a number. you're a human being. and so we developed this play and it was the revelation of unimaginable, i mean something happened when it was published although it was 20 years collaborative something happened everyone that classroom. whatever was in the play had happened to someone in that classroom. so i think it was tillard locked in a cell in trenton and he said it was a cell that had held his father and for tammy i said right is seen about your mother a conversation with your mother into me came up and said what if we are product of rape and i said well that's what you have to write any rights about the phonecall from the county jail.

he is in a car in patterson with his half-brother and he stopped by police in the weapon is found if no one claims it then everyone can be charged with a weapons charge and tammy takes ownership of it in the conversation from the county jail is it doesn't matter. i was never supposed to be here anyway and you have a son you love. these are the kinds of people that i taught. eventually we put the play together and we couldn't perform to the prison. there were parts of the department of corrections would not like in retribution would be carried out against my students. they broughtn in cornel west a great theologian in our audience and my first student to get out was boris. he will tell you i was crying more than his mother at the

gate. and boris and i hundreds of hours because when i said who wants the part part we began and there were only seven students on the pardon asev we get into e play all 28 wanted to get in. we had to consolidate those parts. workoi in units and with a thear director jeff weise and boris and i sat at the computer where he learned what they -- he was. and it was produced at the theater to sold-out audiences because we threaten the horror of mass incarceration. i'm going to let them pick out some of -- of course ron and boris were in the class but i will let them pick out scenes that they think we should raise

in the book. >> if i had to pick out something in the bucket in the early stages of the book and it have to do with the role of art. and just bring art inside of that institution brought a little bit of humanity back into the institution. what we were looking at this individuals who have been taken out of society and to violent social death. i believe it was orlando patterson eroded book on that. so by coming in and taking our songs and bring them out he put us in direct dialogue and put us inback into into society net fashion we were able to tell our stories in that way. so to have that art to be produced and to be brought out toht the world puts you in

conversation with individuals trapped inside of the prison. i thought that was the way to restore some the humanity. everything is completely controlled by the threat of some sort of violence. for me as a person understands art and that's one thing the prison is full of. it's full of art. it's unorganized and fragmented and flawed. this is inside of a prison so he comes in and says i want to teach you guys how to structure thisia na dialogue and now we ae having a conversation in the genre and that took us to a different level of credibility. for me that was the mostba important part and the reason

why the conversation is still being carried. >> i think for me what makes this work important if we could just start with the name, and transformation. we all understand what drama is. seems like it never goes away and that part transformation with you understand the transformation is not a singular act but it's a process. for me you hit that right on the head in the book. for me you talked about the code. imprisoned there is a code for everything in the code is perpetually being human. you have to stick to the code. you can't show love to. you can't show feelings and you can't show emotions. you can't be human and to go

against that could get you hurt and could get you dead. so i thought you captured that very well andd how that clash pushed back against the code and i thought that wasgh remarkable and we can talk about that further as we go on. >> i want to go with that because one of the things i found so fascinating not only aboutt this book was how it described the humanity of various people. for instance when he i talks abt sincere in the space he is and he has to be looked at as a but he is no plug-in when he tries to write it comes out to be like a fanciful tv show and it

doesn't work. it doesn't work in reality so that to me shows that and he spoke about lawrence earlier. he speaks about him as a child coming up in the system and having to be an adult ending cages itself. we talk about, and this is something that came to me when you're trying to do the play. there was something missing in the play and dr. count started talking about how we couldn't reallygi give depth because we didn't understand it. elderly people do not know. it's just not prophetic and it's just not there. he came to me like but we do know about people in prison who

are imprisoned over and over from childhood. so i came up with the concept that we w needed to put somebody that came through the system as a child and work their way up and that's where came from. he has passed now. it showed in the play the depth of people that no longer have a connection to the outside. when they go to parole they don't want parole. out here is just another old man but he was somebody. >> if you can explain what he did and who he was. >> shakey brown was a blues guitarist. he played thet. blues in prison

all the time and he developed the narration will around life outside so that he could explain his life inside but the life he narrated from the outside was not real. but in his head it was real. he was the famous blues guitarist but the first time we got them on stage he developed into it and he always played the blues. he was self-taught and he played the blues like you couldn't believe. he was an amazing blues guitarist. he started out in juvenile hall and then he got caught up in crime until he got a life sentence. every time he went before parole they would call them a racist

and so-and-so and we'll won't get into the semantics but he would call them out on the nonsense that they were utilizing so he would always get, they called it a hit. i couldn't figure this out and i was speaking to somebody who him well. they called me and he said look he is shakey brown. he's a 70-year-old man that has nothing. so because of the prison culture you have to go to parole and try to get out but he didn't want out so he made sure he pushback against them enough that he didn't. so he was what we call a state -- inside the prison system and he was the picture of it because a lot of them end up

being addicted to drugs and they have a lot of real issues because of the trauma they have endured from childhood and so we needed him in the play to show the humanity for the making of humanity and what it means and what it does to someone how it destroys them to where they don't even want to move to where they could have people that would treat them in a humane way. so that's what i think shakey was like it was important to make sure that representation was in the play. >> ron through generous grant worked with me on the book and was intimately involved in the play.

boris can you talk a little bit about what took place in the classroom. it was a remarkable, because people reticent at the beginning. you were always sitting in the back and you had your glasses like this kind of eyeing me. you have to earn trust in an environment like that. >> i was skeptical of the sky when he walked and class. [laughter] we saved this guy. he earned the respect and that's part of the code inside of the institution of prison where ripping is built on respect. not many people have a different outfit and people wear the same thing in thee same shoes so whn chris came and on the first day he walked in and he started talking to everybody about what

he was not going to tolerate inside of a maximum-security prison. so psyched okay you've got my respect. in any event as it went on the wall started coming down and when you talk about the code there's a certain part of yourself you can express and a lot of guys do express it privately in conversations. you might see someone who has something on their wall like art or a picture of a child or something like that but it's very very private. when wee had the class and we could go do things about what happened to us what came down allowed us to see each other for the first time. anden then that's why we talk about things like what happened in the transformation of the

dialogue became honest. chris when he first came in and brought me some stuff to. they said they wrote this for a person. it's not how people talk. [laughter] but the fact that we are full to put everyone in an honest dialogue and we are able to not down some of the myths and the stereotypes as to why people -- and there was a shakey brown who couldn't understand. but through the stories were able to communicate and it had a resounding effect. it's 2021 and we are still having this conversation which means that class did what it was

supposed to do. it started a conversation that still going on and we are closer to understanding each other. if you can do that you begin to think differently. it's the gift that keeps on giving. so when i left i left with a completely new attitude. most of the stay in touch with each other. i've been to weddings so it created a thing. it taught us how to love and different way. it was the community that we were part of soy allowed for brotherhood and love because it makes you extremely vulnerable in a predatory environment. we learn to love and be brothers in a different way by bringing the class together and having the audacity to say 20 people

housed in different places are going to write a play together. i want to tell you what they call view. they called them rebel. this guy look like a hardened biker. so we wind up with these spaces and i find out he's brilliant. that this is what he was doing. that's what was happening and that was something that had never happened in prison. and it made a new society within a society and hopefully it's making a difference. >> i want to ask about lemay the play and boris took one of the parts in the play and the

part that he played was the old head prisoner and it was a scene that he wrote at the end. he comes out of his own experience in the prison where he stopping someone from going into a mess hall to carry out a revenge killing. and he knows he has a homemade knife called a shank and he wants the shank. when i watched for the first t time boris do it on stage at the theater in trenton i noticed he kept pushing and i asked him after the play when he said because if i couldn't get them to hand me the shank i had to start a fight so we'd go into lockdown. that gets to durrell articulated the director out of chicago the best. at its core what all of this is about is radical love. i'm going to ask all of you to address that theme. we were talking about before and

i'll let you start russ. that radical love is real within thee prison. >> they are think the best way to capture it is so read in the book on page 181. the play was at its core about the bonds of loyalty and love. this loyalty and love does not save the characters inov the pl. the forces already against them are overpowering and lethal. butth the repeated acts of self-sacrifice required loyalty and love and to be human. so when we talk about, first of all let me say we had to create a new code. we had to create that love and

loyalty in this setting of prison because it didn't exist. that's the first area there whereif he dared to be different and that radical love is a love that says i'm going to love at all costs. doesn't matter in that exact he the situation as happened with boris. that's what it exemplified, that radical love that i'm going to put myself at risk and this is something we have all learned to do. it says in the book that loyalty and love the character but it doesn't save any of us. and the real fight especially for us we have always been this even now that we are out, we keep reminding ourselves that we are human. because prison strips that from you. it strips it from you in every way and if i were to tell you that even now that i'm home i

still feel the loneliness i felt when i wasne in prison. i can tell you exactly why. because of the way they punish dates so it into your flesh. i left the prison but the prison is in me. azimi imports were saying earlier he has to remind himself every day that he s is free. i have to remind myself every day that i am free, that i'm human because i was so used to not having, so used to not being and they learn how to love and i did love and i would sacrifice myself but the problem is i still don't know how to receive love. >> radical love it is a person

that spends 20 years of his life trying to get back into an institution to bring hope and transformation to others. that's the tone right there. he 20 years of his life pushing back against the system because he knew the transformation. we were in trenton together and there were college classes. these college classes if somebody hope and one of the main things about radical love it is real and it will transform your heart. my name is rebel and i was an biker and that's true. back in the day i came in to prison angry and i had reason to

be angry but i wasn't directing anger properly. i was just angry at directing it and making sure nobody would come in to myspace for other reasons. so the transformation for me was having somebody believe in me. that's transformation. that's radicalat love. somebody would say gatto i don't know that well butel i know howe runs around his space. i know how he is and i want to make sure he gets to college. that's radical love. in the sprays -- the space of prison where you come from matter so radical love is somebody taking a chance on

someone. i tried to use it in the language that opportunity which is what he gave me, opportunity hope and hope is the spark that ignites the fire of transformation. so radical love is how we got to be from easter is a state prison to east jersey university. that's i would change that space into a space that for transformation into space that is for pain and anger. you can't show anger. you can't show grief because you can't put it on your brothers in that same space because they are dealing with enough on their own. >> i will add to that very quickly and there's not much worry to get to that except for fact that the word radical

meant it cut against the grain. it didn't necessary up along their sony show that love in that space and make that kind of sacrifice fromt the outside a person why would this person who is never getting out of jail make sure that another person gets out of jail? paralegals were tirelessly trying to help get us out. why would individuals who have nothing coming in return do that? and when they do it that's radical, right? they do it just to expressss thr humanity. it's a very radical thing to do this day and age. we see more of it on the side of the world do not side of the world. that's what makes the

conversation. >> i know lots of stories about these guys and i want to tell one. russ went into prison and took a vow of nonviolence the day he went into that prison which is a very courageous bout to take. he ran a prayer group when distressed in my class. at the end of the class rest would put his arms around them and they would all. i know this from boris someone who is dejected and alone and rejected in the mess hall. rest would go and sit next to them and he would hold their hand. boris said russ is the only guy i know who probably refuse to allow the prison culture to define him and he will get out

and that defined will save him. just to talk about radical love and what it means in a physical settingan like a prison is that russ was doing with the bloods and trying to get a particular member of the bloods to come to the prayer services and the other loads said you bleed and then you bleed out which meant that he was going to leave and did notoi commission -- communiy that he was part of his going to get a beat down and rest said i will take his place. and in the present that opens the entire ethos of the prison and they were so stunned when he walked in and said me down.

i've met some of the most remarkable people in my life in prison and three of them are sitting heree today. people loved tremendous integrity and brilliance. i don't think very many of us have endured what they have endured and i'm not going to cry. i think they are other teachers here and it's an honor for us. before we open it up to questions i want to read a little passage. >> this was 2019 the graduation ceremony with 27 incarcerated

students who graduated from rutgers and asked to give the commencement address. i am ordained presbyterian minister. i rarely wear a clerical collar but i put it on that day because i think out only what has transpired between us is sacred but also at its core is what ministry is about. it's about standing in solidarity as the great james cohen reminded us. my father was a presbyterian minister and a great influence on my life active in the silver rights movement and thee war movement and was a veteran of for two and the movement at a time when very few ministers spoke out. his brother was his youngest brother my uncle and my father hadin particular sensitivity toa

game and. i put a clerical collar round and i read the book and i put my father's cufflinks on my shirt. and i'm just going to get the beginning of this talk. it's what i told my students and enron were there. my fellow college graduates integrity is not an inherited trait. it is not conferred by privilege or status or wealth. it cannot be bequeathed by elite schools or institutions. it is not a product of birth race or gender. integrity is not a pedigree or brand. integrity is earned. integrity is determined not by

what we do in life but what we do with what life gives us. it iss what we overcome. integrity is the ability to affirm our dignity even when the world tells us we are. integrity is forged in pain and suffering fraud and tragedy. it is forged in the courtrooms where you were sentenced. it is forged in the shackles you are forced to wear. it is forged in the cages where you live sometimes for decades. it is forged in the cries of your children, those who lost their mother or their father to the monstrosity of mass incarceration. it is forged in the heartache of your parents, your brothers, your sisters, your spouses and

your partners. integrity is forged by surmounting the around you to study in a cramped and claustrophobic cell for the college degree know when, perhaps even you, thought you would ever earn. integrity is to refuse to become a statistic. integrity is to rise up and shot up to an indifferent universe, i am somebody. and today no one can deny who you are, what you have achieved and what you have become. college graduates, men and women of integrity, who held on fiercely triggered dignity and your capacity to exert your will and triumph. [applause]

so we can take questions if there are any. >> i'm going to come around the mike and it's not obvious to me how we transition to questions but it's such a privilege toto e here and to be witnesses to your thoughts and your experiences. it's a privilege so i want to start with a thank you for that. if there are questions in the room about me to a come to you o i can send you the mic. purse of all thank you. your talk was very moving yout each mentioned how there's a

code that you don't go against. yet you participated in class and you had to break that. i'm curious the first class and the first person that told their story and what put them over the edge to the point that they could do that? what was that like? >> i web for a sensor that. originally when they wrote the theme they were delivered to me. they were red. itla was only later they'd get p and be red in front of the class. there was a safety and security of having a professor. then they would read it and it was really moving and people were complaining they wanted to get through fences or whenever it was and they would come up.

some were so emotionally fraught that they couldn't get through it. i don't think tammy read his. but when tammy read it at the performance that we did for cornel west after he finished he disappeared. f i asked boris where is timmy and they said i think it's in the. i found him crumpled in the corner shaking. but it became this remarkable experience where people would get up in front of the class and all of that emotion would pour outnd as they read and the entie class would applaud. and i'll let boris also address that. >> very quickly what we did don't think anybody really knew what would happen in front ofly class.

whatever the process that chris was bringing in we would take it into the class. when he came in he said who wrote the theme? byra then the train had darted left the station. he's like beau come upup and red it. after you read it the next guy had to come up and he was reading. his wife looked over the scenes and we thought it was good. >> thank you all so much for speaking about this experience

but i wondered if you could talk. your decision to teach drama. why drama instead of novels and poetry and other formsls of artn addition to writing the play how did that influence the class and the conversations you were having. >> the beauty about a program is i teach all sorts of stuff. history, philosophy and i picked place that addressed the experiences of my students. august wilson baldwin and these kindss of figures because a gret playwright like wilson is reallt writing for them but they didn't live in an environment and enforce onward and the country

that supports the arts and they couldn't pay to see august wilson. so all of these writers they were writing for us like myself. they were writing for my students so i wanted my students to hear their voice and reread joe turner come and gone, the august wilson cycle. it was said set in a boarding house f in pittsburgh and it's about convict leasing by another name. those who used convict paid a small fee for them. they were actually buying a humann being and the mortality. was astronomical. and in that play the character comes up after seven years of being enslaved looking for his

wife and they tell him he has to find his song. the dominant society is never going to tell them who they are and where they came w from. they have to go on that search themselves and they can be complete human beings until they find their song. as that play evolved it became clear to me that this was their song and that last night, you know after cornell and james cowan came i had one more class at hightower. i got up and said he may have all seen last night when dr. west inductor cone were speaking. i've been in this prison systems since 1984 and the night that

dr. west inductor cone came to the person to speak was the only happy night i've ever in prison. and that last class none of us wanted to end. and everybody wanted to sign the script. i walked out and i had their song. no one wanted to hear it. because of this that we made sure their song was heard. you take it. >> i'll answer that i'm not going to cry. that's why he taught drama.

he's extremely -- next question. [laughter] >> i just want you to know that there will be more people who are listening to you tonight and there's a question here from kerry. i've seen the play at passage theatre and it's an honor and a joy to be here tonight. you and if you continue to write plays or might the collaborative experience be especially valuable or unique -- >> i'm still writing and i'm writing a play called love in the time of mass incarceration. all the comings and goings of the war in drug that makes it extremely difficult to maintain some sort of the connection. it did inspire me to continue to

write and also books as well. >> how about the others? >> the only writing i was doing m was for school. one of my classes is on wrongful convictions so my aim is always toward changing the whole narrative that's inside and changingol the words that everybody uses to organize people who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated. i'm also writing right now i'm writing work to try to -- and i forgotra i'm published in amerin

prison ands something. i'm a little overwhelmed by the story he just told and i'm not going to cry but that doesn't mean i'm not choked up diet. >> i myself plan to write in the future. i particularly plan on writing about trauma and i believe in what hemingway said that never write about a thing while you're in it so right now i'm just waiting and i'm processing everything around me so i can articulate it to where it's most effective to others. >> we are getting close to the hour. if i could ask a closing question just to highlight another dimension of this book because the book is also contains remarkable reporting about what you called the collective crime and the american crime of not just

hollering at the structural racism and error wrenching stories in this book about how it's possible that prisoners would release to re-enter the world in debt and if there are is reedman and their families and they want to see for the last time the family member that they have lost they have to pay the overtime before police officers toff take them there ad watch them while they are there. you have to pay for what you were going to wear on your release and on and on. it ate used to be a set in the book that there was a fund, a state fund that would cover some

of these expenses and this returns to virginia's question of their call to action. is there an effort today to reconstitute that fund and what can be done? where do we focus our energy grid may be wicked and with that. >> he randa wrecked apartment right?t >> there is a fund that prisoners have to pay into. let me just address that point because prisons are modern plantations. slavery is a product of as the premise he. it changes its shape but not its essence. all the work in prison is done by the incarcerated who earn

about $20 a month in new jersey. and yet i got ars list of, sorry prices today and the salaries they earn if you want to call it a salary is the same. the prices have increased 100% and we are talking about basic items like toothpaste and coffee etc.. then everything internally is privatized in the american prison system. the commissary is privatized and medical is privatized. money transfer phone and our market of philly has a huge prison contract throughout the country with constant cases of food poisoning throughout the prison. and when you are sent to prison you are given a fine. the 14-year-old was given $10,000 worth of find and they

are pulling about $2 a month out of it and he finishes prison in debt. as you mentioned it he wanted to get that fit teen minutes with an immediate family reviewing that's hundreds of dollars and fif you can't pay, if you can't pay that rack when you get out then you go right backge in. all of the impediments that people face when they get out guaranteed the 76% recidivism. that takes place in this country within five years. so you know i have taught students who have committed crimes but i have never taught criminals. there are criminals, those people who orchestrate poverty and poverty is what bernard shaw said is the greatest of all crimes. there are criminals are mark who

are both predatory against the most vulnerable and is a program heschel said a few are guilty. all are responsible. we are all responsible. 1 million people within our prison system work for for-profit corporations scrub shops with no right to organize and nobody is paying into their social security account. if they protest the conditions they are sent to solitary. 80,000 american citizens as a speaker in solitary at this moment involving torture. i'm glad that you highlight that. i look at mass incarceration of the civil rights issue of our time.

>> two things. one they utilize the money that is earned by commissary and the commissary is supposed to go into a general fund called the inmate welfare fund. the inmate well for fund is the fun you were talking about. when my brother passed in the 90s they paid for me to go and spend time. i was maximum security. they paid for me to go spend a half-hour with family. when my father passed they made me pay $650 to go from huawei to bayonne to the funeral home to sit by myself for 15 minutes.

when we got there they jumped out of the car and kept me handcuffed and shackled in the back of the car. before they opened the car door for me they told me it so much as a motorcycle drivers by this funeral home we are calling you out of pure and that's what i had to deal with. they told my family is my family even thoughtt about coming they would not let me go there. so that's part of the grieving process. i had toi pay $650 to see my father when he passed. i didn't get a chance to grieve with my family at all. so that fund needs to be reinstated but they need to reinstate every part that was w big for the start tearing everything down. >> i will say first of all it's

difficult d because the way the prisoners find out about people in their family who have died, that's not you main. they call you arbitrarily out of the blue and it's usually an officer that tells you. and it's so cold. then we have also had services on the inside where we held memorial services for people who couldn't afford it, to go out and do their family so we on the inside did the best. could to help people that were grieving. that just speaks to what we talked about earlier. there are millions of dollars for us when we come home but it never reaches us. it never reaches us and i just want to tell you what was told to me when i came home.

my parole officer told me i want you to keep in mind that you're not a regular citizen. >> i know than the left the first thing he said to chris was because you had to leave your library that you had have to rebuild your library that does want to end by saying anyone who has e to leave their books insie leverentz is here to replace those books. you just give us a list. >> thank you. [applause] [applause]