ministers and rabbis spoke about the great war before u.s. entered the conflict. exploring the american sort watch american history tv saturdays on cspan2. find a full schedule on your program can watch online online anytime at c-span.org/history. being up-to-date and the latest in publishing it was a book tv podcast about books. with current nonfiction book releases also bestseller list as well as industry news and trends are insider interviews. you can find about books on c-span out our free mobile app or were ever you get your podcast. i'm the store manager. it is an honor to celebrate chris hedges new book class,

trauma transformation in an american prison. our classes about a drama class taught in the prison about the dynamics of teaching and learning about the prison and the people who have to live in it, and are trying to survive its violence and trauma gone there with the full participation of the class and realizing in this series of public performances. we hear the voices of the students in this book. read over their shoulders as i talk about these great plays by theof likes of wilson they worko find their own stories and have the courage to dramatize them. this book is full of hard stores, it bears every complacency about the society does to people. the title page on a seat copies around the books we should look at this pretty want you to look at the book grab what you've got

copies near you. there is ahe photograph of all f the students in the class. i find it really good to see their face. another thing i want to point out when you pick up your copy of caged, there is in addition to the wonderful introduction by franklin who is on the panel tonight, do not miss the section called playwrights on the inside and playwrights on the outside as of 2013 there are bios of every one of the playwrights heard they are also astonishing little stories. i hope this book will serve as a call to action and that we have time to include these kinds of ideas in the discussion to follow. tonight we are so pleased to welcome chris hedges esteemed journalist, or correspondent, author of many books and an ordained minister.

they write, scholar, the first of chris's former students to earn his degree from rutgers currently the assistant director of the new directions program for prisoners. we are also proud to welcome ross owens who also studied with chris, a scholar and veteran of new jersey's prisons and honor graduate of rutgers university. also another graduate is here, ron pierce. very happy to welcome him as well. we spent some time thisrn f afternoon selecting books for this little library around us. and i know we want to be a part of helping these scholars rebuild their collections. just before i came up i read the latest piece by my friend among many others. he writes about radical action was such a fire and joy. he gave me something i neededti today. he just dropped a piece in the

nation. i justf wanted to share a little bit of that with you today will depressed about the election and all the other stuff. for seven hours that yesterday became my dogeared copy of beloved in reading and northern virginia coffee shop was count as an active resistant but here we are. i do know that here in virginia and across theet country there e metric tons of people who either didn't vote, or are under 18 they're going to turn the lives of the toni morrison book burners on theiror hand as they demand accountability for the past, present and future. and on that note let's get going please give it up. [applause] think it virginia. thanks to labyrinth the books which donated over 700 books to

the library at east jersey state prison where my students and you are about to meet three of my most remarkable students worked on in the case of ross finish their college degree summa cum laude. several people here, cecelia, dan, joe, others, jennifer been so important in the lives of those who have been demonized and forgotten. yes it is a special night. t orest and ron were in the class that broke the play. ron and russ were in the class where i traumatized them by dragging them through all of sheldon politics and vision. [laughter]

and russ was not in the class but i've taught russ. russ just got out in july after 32 years. they have all read the book and ron helped edit the book. i'm just going to set it up and passed the mic to them. they can begin to pull out from that experience in the book what they think ist salient in importance. i went in to teach this class at east jersey state prison through the nj step program which is rut out of rutgers and allows people on the inside to earn their associates and their ba. and i wanted them to read the great playwrights, the red dutchman, the great august wilson, mcgill pinero, low's.

and it was clear when i got into class that very few members of the class had much experience with theater and drama. i'm so just to get them familiar with dramatic dialogue because everything in the plate is conveyed through dialogue i suggested they write scenes as an exercise. what i did not know is one of the students in the class in arabic that means a big that's his nickname and he is big, knew who i was listening because he had heard me the station out of new york. he had gone around and recruited the most talented writers in the prison. so i got those first scenes back i'd 20 students and i brought them back to princeton with that musty smell all handwritten on lined paper that denotes the

prison iran into several scenes that were just remarkable,he lyrical, powerful, this happens the next week and the week after that. and i said to my wife eunice who is a professional actor, graduate of julliard. i showed her the stuff and suggested maybe i could help the students write a play. went back to the class ands propose this that we take these scenes and i would kind of serve as the editor. i would bring them in, everything had to be cleared with the class. but it was not premeditated. it was completely organic. i don't think i or anyone in that classroom was prepared for what happens. because in prison you have to build these emotionally protective walls.

but when people began to write about trauma, their suffering, their loss, their grief, those walls melted. as you can see there's 28 students they called the 400 club which mean they all bench over 400 pounds. big guys, prison tattoos standing up there, their handshaking in some cases crying. and it just became thisan explosive experience were everything that poured out and people began to speak about experiences they had that they had never spoken about in prison. and they had been sometimes in decades like lawrence and prison have been arrested at the age of 14 because both of his parents were dead he was living in an abandoned house a 12-year-old dragged into a camden city police station with three detectives pretty weighs

90 pounds he is illiterate and for society confession. he is not eligible to go before a parole board until he 70 years old convicted as an adult i would still be in prison except for the great jennifer sitting in the back who got them out. [applause] but like boris and ron, he decided he was just going to be the best person he could be despite the circumstances in which he found himself. so i taught history class but is called conquest you are james classic on the haitian independence movement the only successful slave revolt in human history and haiti's has been paying for it ever since.

it's always on my top students to wait until everyone left the room and said iow know i'm going to die in this prison. i'm then going to be a teacher like you and he walked out. you will save these three remarkable men here the depth of brilliance, integrity and passion i have never experienced in any classroom. i've taught in princeton, columbia and all sorts of places. it is sacred space. that classroom door y closes an you are not a number. you are a human being. and so we developed this play. it was the revelations that were just unimaginable.

something happened when it was a published who is 28 collaborative something happened to everyone in the classroom, whatever in the plate happen to someone in the classroom. locked in a cell in trenton that first night in the guards tell them that's a cell that held his father. or to me i think you write a scene about your mother a conversation with your mother and timmy came up and said what if we are a product of rape? i said well that's what you have to write. and writes about the phone call from the county jail. he is in a car in patterson with his half-brother. the car stopped and searched by police the weapon is found it is his half-brother's gun no one claims that the everyone can be charged. and to meet takes ownership of it even though it wasn't hits for the conversation from the county jail as if it doesn't

matter if mom i was never supposed to be here anyway and you have the sun you love. most of the kind of people that i taught. we eventually put the plate together. we cannot perform the prison there are parts of it the department of corrections would like the retribution will be carried out against my students. we brought in cornel west and the great theologian to be our audience. in my first student to get out was boris. he will tell you i was crying more than his mother at the gate. boris and i spent hundredsun of hours because when he first said he went apart there's only seven students who went apart. as we got into the play all 21 in parts. had to consolidate those parts.

we work to aef great theater director jeff forsyth set up the computer but i learned what a baby mama was. [laughter] it was produced at the theater to sold-out audiences because in trentonnc mass incarceration unfortunately is quite familiar to thosein who live in that cit. and i am going to let them pick out the course ron and boris were in the class. i'm just going to let them pick out the humans they think were i raised in the book. >> invited to pick out something that was raised in the book that is in the early pages of the book. it had to do with the rule of art. to bring art inside the

institution i brought a little of humanity back into the institution. what we are looking about is individuals taken out of society and there's some violent social debt i believe orlando patterson wrote a book on that, right? and so by coming in taking our songs and bring them out he put us in direct dialogue. he put us back into society in that fashion. we were able to actually tell our story in that way. so to have that to be produced and brought out into the world conversation or 28 individuals were trapped inside a prison. i thought that was the way others restored some was taken away every thing is completely controlled by the threat of the sort ofta violence. so for me as a person understands art.

that is one thing the prison is full of. it is full of art. it's unorganized, it is fragmented and it is flawed and it is personal. that is the kind of art that exists in this prison, right? when chris comes and said i'm going to teach you guys how to structure this in a form of dramatic dialogue, now we are having a conversation that gives us a different level of credibility and t respect. so for me that was probably the most important part the reason why the conversation still being carried. next i think for me what makes this book, this work important we can just start from the name transformation. we all understand what trauma is. it's just something that happens

and seems like it never goes away. in that part transformation we understand transformation is not a singular act it is a process.t in it for me you hit that rightm on the head in the book. for me you talk about the code. in prison there is a code for everything. the code perpetuates the inhuman. you have to stick to the code. you cannot show love. you cannot show feeling, you cannot show emotion. you cannot be human. and to go against that could get you hurt, could get you dead. so i thought you captured that very well and how that class pushed back against the code. i thought that was remarkable.

we can talk about that further as we go along. >> to go with that because one of the things i found so fascinating that only about this book caged was how it described the humanity of various people. for instance when he talks about sincere and having the space he is in he has to be looked at as a thug but he is no thug. when he tries to write it comes out to be like a fanciful tv show and it does not work in reality. so that to me shows there's various. book about lawrence earlier, he speaks about him as a child coming up in the system is

having to be an adult. and in cage itself this was something that came to meet when we were trying to do the play there's something missing out of the plate when i was out here. started talking about how we couldn't really give depth toe the black prophetic because we did not understand it. elderly white people do not know it. it's just not there. so it came to me that we do know about people in prison that have been in prison over and over from childhood. we called them state. so i came up with the concept that we needed to put somebody that came through the system as a child and work their way up and that is her shaky brown came from. he was a real person he has

passed now. but it showed in the play of the depth of people no longer have a connection to the outside. when they go to parole they do not want parole because there's nothing out here. out here he's just another old black man with nothing. butt inside he was shaky brown, he was somebody. >> what he did and who he was. next shaky brown was a blues guitarist. he played the blues in prison all of the t time. and he developed a narration 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 and it was read. he was a famous blues guitarist. but the first time but he developed into it. and he always played the blues. he is self-taught and he paid played the blues like you could not believe it. he was really, really an amazing blues guitarist. he started out in juvenile halls and it got caught up in another crime and another crime into a hat got a life sentence. but every time he went before parole he would call them a bunchf of racist so and so's we won't get into semantics. but hee would call them out on the nonsense they were utilizing so he would always get ped residents called a hit. i could not figure this out i was talking toig somebody that

knew him well and that is what they told me. they said look, in here he is shaky brown out there is a seven year old blackman that has nothing. so because of the prison culture you have to go to parole up, have to try to get out. but he did not want out so he made sure he pushed back against them enough that he wouldn't. he was state raised baby. inside the prison system he was the picture of it. a lot of the state raised and that being addicted to drugs they have a lot of real issues because of the trauma they endure from childhood to old age. but we needed him to show

humanity or the taking of humanity what it means and what it does to somebody and how it destroys to where they do noto even want to move they can have people who may treat them in a humane way. that is why i think shaky was -- it's important to make sure that representation was in the play. ron, through a generous grant worked with me on the book that was intimately involved in the play, was not in the original class but he's been involved in the process. boris, can you just talk a little bit about what took place in the classroom? it was remarkable. people were reticent at the beginning part you always sitting in the back but you hide your glasses case like this kind of eyeing me. you and steph. you have to earn trust in an environment like that.

it is not a given. >> i was look at this cody walked in the class, who is this guy? [laughter] he did come in and he earned the respect. that is something part of a code inside the institution of the prison. everything is built on respect. not many people different outfits well the same things from the same shoes respect is a very big thing. so when chris came in on his first day he walked into these talking to her about what is not going to tolerate. he's in a maximum security prison. [laughter] it's like okay you've got my respect. [laughter] in any event as it went on walls and start actually coming down. there's a certain part of yourself you cannot express.

a lot of guys do express it conversations very, very private. you might see someone who has something on the wall with a heart and a picture of a child. they have another inmate draw or something like that. it's very, very private. we had the class were able to go into this dialogue about things that it happened to us and start diving deep into some of that trauma, what came down allowed us to see each other sorta for the first time as a complete person. and then we talk about what happened with transformation the dialogue becamee honest. and it's one thing chris when you first came in you brought me some stuff someone had wrote you. >> the guy from trenton? >> i don't know where it's from but this was for a white person actually wrote this for you.

it's not how black people tyke jump talk. [laughter] the factor able to write that. then we were able to knock down some of the myths, some the stereotypes as to why peoplell sell drugs. there is shaky brown hoop could be explained most people would not understand why a guy wouldn't get out of job read through the stories we were able to communicate that. it had a resounding effect those 2018. list 2021 we are still having this conversation. which means that class did but it was supposed to do. it started a conversation that is still going on. and plus a bit closer to understanding each other and through that we begin to thinkro differently about how we vote on legislation. it's the gift that keeps on giving, right? but i left a left of the

completely new family. most of us all things and touch some us work together. i've been to weddings for individuals i was in that class with. it created something different. it taught us how to live in a different way because some of these codes in the prison actually come from the community we were actually in before. they don't allow for brotherhood and love because ita could lead you extremely vulnerable in the environment. so we learn to love and thed brothers in a different way that made us better individuals by bringing the class together. having the audacity to8 say 28 people are going to write a play together. when i had not known ron at all. when did tell what they called you. they called him rebel.ar

he looked like a hardened biker without going have anything in common we wind up in the spaces and classes they found that he is brilliant and i want him on my team in biology you get points for this guy get all the answers. [laughter] with this is what was doing. the laughter filled with love was happening to us. that is something that had never happened and a prison. and it made a new society within a society and hopefully will make some sort of difference. >> i want to ask about when we produce the play and boris took one of the parts in the play. the part he played was the older prisoner. in this scene he wrote at the end comes out of his own experience in the prison where he is 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 watch for the first time boris stood on stage at the theater in trenton, i noticed she was very physical pretty kept pushing and asked him after the plate why? i said because i couldn't get him to hand me the shank i had to start a fight so we both go to lockdown. the role probably are ticketed out of the director chicago the best. at the core with this is all about is radical. i'm going to ask all of you to address that theme. we were talking about it before all of you start because that radical love is real within the prison. >> i think the best capture it i will just read out of the book. on page 181 the code.

the play was at its core about the bonds of loyalty and love. loyalty or love do not shade th characters in the plate. the force is a rate against them are overpowering and lethal. but the repeated acts of self-sacrifice required by loyalty and love keep them human.t >> you talk about -- first about let med say that we had to creae a new code. we had to create that love and loyalty in the prison setting because it did not exist. that is the first area we dared to be different. on that radical love is a love that doesn't going to love at all costs. it does not matter. that is exactly what that situation that happened with

boris, that is what it exemplifies the radical love. and i'm going to put myself at risk. this is something we all learned to do. but it says in the book this loyalty and love do not say the characters. i doesn't save any of us. in the real fight, especially for us and it had always been this even now that we are out, is to keep reminding ourselves that we are human. because these prison strips that from you. it strips it from him in every way. and if i was to tell you even now that i am home, i still feel the loneliness that i feel when i was in prison. and i can tell you exactly why. because the way they punish they sew it into your flesh. you see i left the prison but the prison is in me. the borrowers, the concrete is inme me.

unless me and boris were sent earlier he has to remind himself every day that he is free. i have to remind myself every day that i am free, that i am human. i was so used to not having it. so used, to not being. i learned how to love and i did love and i would sacrifice myself. but the problem is i still do not know how to receive love. radical love is a person that spends 20 years of his life trying to get college back in the institution to bring hope and transformation to others. that tone right there. he spent 20 years of his life

pushing back against a system that in 1994 took college out of the prison systems. because he knew the transformation part when we were in trenton together with college classes but they did not restrict elite to a degree. but these college classes gave somebody hope. one of the main things about radical love is it will transform your heart. back in the day i came into prison angry. angry and i had reason to be angry i was just angry and directing it making sure nobody can come into my space and make me more angry for other reasons.

so they transformation for me was having somebody believe in me. as a transformation. that his radical love. some people say i don't know him that well but i know how he runs around the space. i know how he is. and i want to make sure he gets into college. that is radical love it. it doesn't matter that he came from kansas the space of prison where you come from matters. a radical love is somebody take a chance. i try to use it into a language that opportunity which is what he gave me. opportunity breeds hope. it sparks the transformation.

so radical love in the prison is how we got to be from east new jersey state prison east jersey university. that is how we got to change that space into a spaces for transformation not a space foran anger. you cannot show anger. you could not show grief you cannot put it on your brothers in that same space. they are dealing with on their own. >> i will just add to that very quickly, there's m not much we n add to that except the fact some say the word radical met cut against the grain. i did not necessarily belong there. and so you can show that kind of love and a space to make that kind of sacrifice from the

outside working mode this person who have nothing give us? why would this person is never getting out of jail of the work effortlessly, tirelessly trying to give individuals outward while individuals have nothing coming return do, that? that is radical, right? that is radical. the very, very radical thing to do. we see more from the side of the wealth of the other side with the conversation but that is what makes it so radical. are we doing for time? i know lots of stories about these guys i'm going to tell one. [laughter] but russ went into prison and took a vow of nonviolence from the day he went into that prison

which is a very courageous bout to take. he ran a prayer group when people were distressed in my class. at the end of the class russ would put his arms around them and they would all pray. i know this from boris if settlement was dejected and alone and rejected the mess hall russ would go and sit next them and hold their hand. boris addresses the only guy i know he refused to allow the prison culture to define him. he will get out and that defiance will save him. just to talk about radical love and what it means in the physical setting like the prison is that russ dealing with the bloods was trying to get a particular member of the bloods to come to the prayer services

that you had. the other said you bleed and you bleed out. that meant if he wase going to leave when that christian community russ was a part of it he's going get a beat down. you went to the bloods is that i will take his place, beat me down. and in the present that upends the entire ethos of the prison. they were so stunned they didn't. but he said beat me down. i have met some of the most remarkable people in my life. in prison and three of them are sitting here today. people of tremendous integrity and brilliance. i do not think very many of us could have endured with they have enduredme and become what

they have become. when i not going to cry. [laughter] think there are other teachers here, jill and jim and celia, it is an honor for us. and before we open up to questions i want to read low passage from the end of the book. this is 2019. i was a graduation ceremony we had 27 formal incarcerated students from records and was asked to give the commencement address. i am an ordained presbyterian minister i very rarely wear a collar but i did for that day. i only what has transpired, what transpired between us is sacred.

but also at its core is what ministry is about. it's outstanding with the solidarity which the great dreams, reminded us. my father was a presbyterian minister. of great influence on my life. veteran of world war ii. in the gay rights movement at a time when very, very few minister spoke out. my father had a sensitivity to the pain of being a gay man in america in the 1950s and 60s. and so i put the clerical collar on this and write in the book i put my father's cufflinks into my shirt with his initials. but i'm just going to give the beginning of the talk is what i told my students and we can have

questions. and boris and ron were there. my fellow college graduates. integrity is not in inherited traits. 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, or race, orra gender. integrity is not a pedigree or a brand. integrity is earned. integrity is determined not by what we do in life but what we do with what life gives us. it is what we overcome. integrity is the ability to affirm our dignity even when the world tells us we are worthless. integrity is forged in painai ad suffering, loss and tragedy.

it is forged in the courtrooms were you were sentenced. it is affords in the shackles you are forced to wear. it is forged in the cages were you lived sometimes foret decad. it was forged in the cries of your children, those who lostos their mothers or their fathers 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 hell around you to study and a cramped and claustrophobic celt for the college degree no one, perhaps not even you thought you would ever earn. integrity is to refuse to become a statistic.

integrity is to rise up and shout out to a different universe i am somebody. 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 to t your dignity and your capacity to exert your will and triumphed. [applause] brexit we can take questions if there are any. the song? can you hear me? i am going to come around the mic. it's not so obvious to me how we

transition to questions. is such a privilege to be here simply to listen. and to be witnesses to your thoughts and your experiences, it is a privilege. i want to start with a thank you for that. if there are questions in the room, allow me too come to you so i can hand you the mic. there is one in the front. rex first of all thank you. was all very moving. you each mentioned how there was a code you do not go against and you had to participate in class. you have to break that curious about the first class in the first person that told their story. what put them over the edge to

point where they could do that? explain what boris answer that. but originally when they wrote the scenes, they were delivered to meet they were not read. it was only later they would get up and be read in front of the class.fr there is ath safety and securit in passing the scene to the professor. but then they p would read it ad it was really moving. and as members of the classwork complaint they wanted to get through fences or whatever it was we were reading so people could read. some of the scenes were so emotionally fraught they could not read them. i don't think timmyim read his originally. went to me it at the performance that we did for cornell west and james cone, after he finished he disappeared and i asked where's timmy? ms. said i think is in the

bathroom and i found him bold in the corner shaking and sobbing. it became a remarkable experience of people get up in the class at all that abortion would pour out as they read. for the entire class when a plot i would let boris also address that. >> very quickly what we did was think anybody knew were going to have to read in front of the class. it was like complete trust in whatever the process. we were taking it as a class. through scenes and papers when he came in he said and by then the train had already left the station. [laughter] 's like i wrote in his come up and read it. after you read it then he wrote

this scene the next i had toxt come up and do some reading. that is kind of what tipped it. you came in and they looked over the scenes and came back with what we thought was good and we started actually reading the dialogue. rex brexit thank you so much for speaking. it's a beautiful experience. once you can talk a little bit about your decision to teach drama? a white drama post- poetry what ways do you think in addition to the play how did that influence the class and the conversations you are having? quick so, the beauty about the

program is that i can teach all sorts of stuff. a lot of times when there are holes ii will fill history, philosophy, and i picked plays that addressed experiences of my students august wilson, baldwin, these kinds of figures. a great playwright like wilson is really writing for them. they did not live in ant, environment important they live where they don't support the arts they cannot pay $150 to go see wilson. and so all of these writers they were not writing for us like myself they were writing for my students. i wanted my students to hear their voice. we read joe turner's come and gone the wonderful play this as

i think the first but set in a boardinghouse in pittsburgh. an. worse than slavery because those who use convicts paid a small fee for them, they were not actually buying a human being. the mortality rate was astronomical. in that play, the character comes up after seven years of being enslaved, looking for his wife. he is bitter, angry, and the conjurer in the play keeps telling him that he has to find this song. the dominant society is never going to tell them who they are, or where they came from. >> and that evolved it became

clear to me that this was their song in that last night you know after they came they have in my class and that was hightower who got up and said he may have all seen last night when they were speaking was crying. i have been in this prison system since 1984 and the night that doctor west came to the person to speak to us with only happy 90 percent in prison. and that last class none of us wanted it to end but everybody signed the front of the

script. come on. i have seen you cry ff i have their phone but nobody wanted to hear because of this guy we made sure their son was heard. on —- song was heard. >> now i will cry. [laughter] that's why he does because is extremely dramatic. [laughter] next question. [laughter] >> there almost 200 more people listening t1 line and there is a question here, a

treasure having seenan that play a passage leader it's an honor andd a joy if you continue to write plays with the collaborative experience that is unique to your creativity so with love in the time of masse incarceration so it did inspire me to write. >> the only writing on the door at the moment is what keeps me busy writing that one

of my classes is on wrongful convictions so my aim is always toward changing the narrative that is inside in the words that everybody uses for those that are incarcerated are formerly incarcerated so i'm also writing right now work to try for those people that are incarcerated also i forgot that i am published american prisons and cyclopedia. i'm a little overwhelmed at the story he just told i will not cry but that doesn't mean that i'm not choked up. >> and i do plan to write in the future. particularly plan on writing about trauma.

i believe in what hemingway said never writete about a thing while you are in it. so right now i'm rate waiting in processing around me so i can articulate to its most effective to others. >> the closing question just to highlight another dimension of this book, it also contains some remarkable reporting about the collective crime of the american crime not just tolerating that profiting from the structural poverty of the mass incarceration and there are wrenching stories in this book about how it is possible that prisoners on release reenter the world in debt.

if there to see their family for the last time that they have lost than they have to pay the overtime for four police officers to take them there and watche. them while they are they are. you have to pay for the sweatpants that you wear on your release and on and on. there used to be a state fund that would cover some of these expenses. so there are so many calls to action that are checked in the book but is there an effort today to reconstitute that fund? what can be done when we focus

her energies? maybe we can and with that. >> there is a fund. it is stolen in essence the prisoners have to pay interpreted as stolen by the doc bellamy address that point the prison is a modern plantation of slavery and our product of white supremacy and the changes the shape but not its essence. and all the work in the prison is done by the incarcerated earning $20 a month in new jersey that yet i have a list of commissary prices that maybe their salary of 22 cents an hourar is the same the prices have all increased by over 100 percent basic items like toothpaste or coffee.

but then everything internally is privatized in s the american prison system commissary is privatized, medical, money transfer, phones, there are huge prison contracts especially out of philly with constant cases of food poisoning throughout the prison. and when you are sent to prison you're given a fine so is a 14 -year-old was given $10000 for the fines and pulling two dollars a month out of and he finishes prison in debt. if he wanted to go get that 15 minutes of there viewing with an immediate family member that is hundreds of dollars and if you can't pay that back when you get out, then you go right back in.

so all of the impediments that people face when they get out guarantee that 76 percent recidivism rate that takes place in this country than five years so i have taught students who have committed crimes but i have never taught animals. there are criminals. in poverty is the greatest of all crimes. there are criminals who are predatory against the most vulnerable. and as abraham said if you are guilty but we are all

responsible. 1million people within our prison system working for profit corporations , sweatshops is no wayay to organize, nobody pays into their social security account. if they protest that conditions and they are sent to solitary and 80000 american citizens are in solitary this moment. a form of torture. so yes i am glad that you highlighted that. i look at mass incarceration is a civil-rights issue of our time. >> two things. they utilize the money that is earned from the commissary which is supposed to go into a general fund called the inmate

welfare find it is a fund you werere talking about so when my brother passed in the nineties , the paid for me to go and spend time i was maximum-security trenton state prison i could spend a half-hour and they allowed family there. when my father passed, they made me pay $650 to sit and a funeral home by myself or 15 minutes when we got there they kept me locked handcuffed and shackled in the back of the car with a check underneath the cars before the open the car door for me they told me, if so much as a motorcycle drives by we are pulling you out.

that's what i had to deal with a told my family if even thought about coming in i cannot be there so that is part ofof the grieving process i had to pay $650 to see my father when he passed. didn't get a chance to grieve with my family. so that fund needs to be reinstated that they need to reinstate every part before they started to tear everything down. >> so it's difficult because the way the prisoners find out , that is not humane. they just call you arbitrarily out of the blue and it's usually an officer that tells

you. and it is so cold but we also had services on the inside where we held memorial services for people who could not afford to be with their families. on the inside wesi did the best we could to help the people that were grieving but that just speaks to her we talked about earlier we know there's millions of dollars for us when we come home but it never reaches us. and i just want to tell you that was told to me when i came home my parole officer told me keep in mind you are not a regular citizen. >> the first thing he said

because you had to leave your library. i just want to end by saying that anyone who has to leave their books inside just give us a list and we will replace those books. >> thank you. [applause]