around race . i think it's good to know well, what does this look like overtime not just some old at one time where wecan't tell what age and what's generation and what'schanged . but look at this across decades . >> her book generation sunday night at 8 pm eastern on you and day. you can listen to q&a and all our podcastson our free app . >>.

>> c-span, powered by cable. >> thank you for coming out to this panel about an important subject of inequality in health justice. we have two fantasticauthors with books i think every american needs to read . first off we have this may see, she's a virginia-based journalist . her previous book was dope sick, and the drug company that predicted america. she was an executive producer and cowriter on the peabody award-winning dope sickseries . before that she spent years reporting for the roanoke times and occasionally contributes essays to the new york times. she's here with her book

we will have a great discussion. i'd like to start this off all of the quality the most shocking. we should keep it in mind.

i can only image you can image the sar row and the pain you would have to bear with people in that. if you could just explain why reporting on the crisis again. i'd love to share the story of the title. it was such an important vital part. >> yeah, thank you i can't stop talking to steven. this was a great pick. why write a second book about the opioid crisis? i was so bereaved after writing dope. sick.

theot last image is her mother saying good-bye to her battered body. bereaved because of the poor response from the opioid crisis. i wasn't go to write about it again. my husband said you should write a cookbook. [ laughter ] i started going out and talking to people and learning about really innovative things that surprisedhe me. especially when you have people doing cutting-edge harm reduction and low barrier care in rural states that haven't passed medicare expansion. holy cow, if they can do it, why aren't they the model for the nation going forward. we havee a treatment gap for ou, opioid usage disorder and only

13%. becauseover stigma and inaction. why not write the book that's more hopeful. this will help keep communities and in the ways humanities support.e many believe the title is a reference to nar cam. i started reporting on the two women that are married and the

nations only queer harm reduction group. theyef started passing out needs on the slide out the back of the pick up truck. they were poised when needleo exchange was legalized to become a full-fledged organize. people call pon the minister when she's trying to get christian groups to check the blind spots about harm reduction. going to people where they are treating-j them with nonjudgmenl care. even if they are still using. people who go to needle exchanges are five times more likely to keep using. the first time i met michelle she's in the community and gets yshijacked by someone who said i

think we should let them die and take organs. really? she s stands up and tells the story of lazarus. jesus was 4 days late getting to lazarus when he got there. jesus performed the miracle of bringing lazarus back from the decede. it's up to them to roll the stone. i have a chapter called establish roller. they did the dirty messy work. only by getting close to these folks on the ground can you experience the miracle of raising lazarus.

this is what you used to great effect within the book. this is what you explore in the book. the interrelationship between okmarginalized people. what was the genesis. >> i'm h honored to be here. the phrase originally used by an activist in 2011. it was using it to describe how and whyow people are criminalizd for transmitting hiv or exposing people to hiv. there are many points that connect. one of them is understanding the stigma. it keeps people from getting the help they need. for people in the audience it's

illegal to expose someone else tobo hiv under many circumstances. half of the u.s. and 70 countries around the world. what we want is for them to come forward andco get the care they need andt know they won't be judgeded and certainly not going to be judged in prison. i started writing about a gunman micheal johnston in st. louis in 2018 that was arrested for criminal exposure of hiv. we got him out 25 years early. he spent most of his 20s in prison.

when you tell people if the work i did was much harder. i started isn't eking how people live under a set of laws i heard activist use it in a different way. it wasim the bases of my ph.d overwhelmingly the people that are black let this happen. this was to understand how and why similar groups of people are exposed to different associate convictions and different viruses when you look at where

people get hiv they die and find criminalize over policing. when could vid deaths started happening i saw the same maps filling in. i still build off of race. one wayok they intersection this is not just a matter of race. this is effecting poor white people or people who are lgbtq. people that are disabled and our book intersect people who have been incarcerated. i'd likeo to add one point of hope. acted vest since the time i started working on this. obviously two states people look at the two party system the twol states that got rid of the laws areha illinois and texas.

happened under yourexas. lot of bipartisan support. >> great. i think the first area i'd like to drill in more in your discussions of your books just then. it'sit stigma. it's such a big part of what you wrote about in the book. stigma creates a sense of other. these are for other groups and people we cannion away. we have a good awareness how we treat people for sexual orientation or gender identity. what you both explore is this treatment of other when it comes to drug usage, homelessness or sex work of people with diseases like hepatitis or hiv.

youw know, it was put so well w do they reach solutions. >> such a great question. you want me to go first ? >> yeah. >> so much of the stigmaization is where they fall through the gaps and die. this is a the difference between treating people like a criminal and the high humans they are with a treatable medical condition. they aree th people with a treae medical condition just like you would take insulin if you had diabetes which i have.

so, if yo look at that it guys to the narcotics act of 1920s. he appointed the drug czar and created on demand methadone clinics. this is to get both and the southern strategy he employs that's well documented. this is husher against poor people and people of color. when i think of stigma i think the story in my book that got me

the most. i was following around ryan white hiv worker whose job was to test and treat people for hiv inin charleston west virginia. the state with the most concerning outbreak in the nation. criminal na nal law sa ring exchange. so, i'm following around the worker they are mostly unhoused and can't find them. the needs are just creaming at her. they arend coming right and lef. at one point we look for a person and at a home lessen campment. he's dope sick, crying. he picked maggots out of the abscesses in his feet. he won't go to the hospital even

though he will die of a bacterial innext. he went their last week and was treated like for 18 hours. it was like watching jesus. she sat on the dirty ground. opened her first-aid kit. putsts packets of on the day of the accidentment onin him. he's dope sick and need drugs to get well. at that moment a police officer comes up and puts an eviction notice up on the homeless encampment. you will a of the stories just cameup a sex worker came and sad to brook, honey that ointment won'ts cut it. i was a nurse for 17 years. an hln and got married and it was like . . . it was

incredible. she walked away and brook said, sheou should be the person treating him. if something hadn't gone wrong withre her. we have to remember this guy in the wheelchair had a family. he had kids. heju could be just like us. so, i any stigma is really at the base of all of the many things and all of the lawyers of discrimination in the one moment and just how poorly people in ourr own healthcare system which by the way participated in starting thee opioid crisis. they need to participate and put an endnd to it. so, the statistics i think about

most. one of every two black gay men are projected to be hiv positive. there is no reason to die of aids. it's a slow acting virus. 5 to 7 to 10 years tous. have badfelt effects. 10 to 15,000 people still die every year. a big part is economics. people are made a to feel so ba, thead disease is made to feel so shameful through laws and jokes. they don't get the help they need. if people w don't have a safe place to sleep doesn't matter if they get them the drugs. easy in the c early stages. they take one pill per day and go on with life thereafter i was

nasaying something nice. what abbott is doing with transchildren and lgbtq people are being criminalized the creating pathways of the state to lets, viruses into bodies if people who areho dealing with addiction as a health matter can'tta get clean needles they open up to hiv and other pathogens.d they will get the care they need someone else. stigma. notdo only is it a if physical matter they feel ashame to get the help they need. the firstmo person in my outer social circle was an activist that was known as the translatin

x mother of the community in jackson heights in queens. she herself had lived with hiv for decades. she was a sec worker and did amazing volunteer work. she wouldn't go out in the street and give them food and condoms. she contracted covid-19 and died. in thery early days of march 200 she didn't want to go to the hospital. because of all of the bad experiences sheow had. i wrote about an experience when i needed a testicular sonogram when doing my ph.d work. i was made to feel unwelcome because of my age. the receptionist made a joke

about not being a referral. if a transgender person goes for healthcare like sexual reproduction and if they are met with that kind of response you don't look like what i was expecting that's why they might not want care and why they are soo much more likely to ge x sick necessarily. i like to talk about healthcare in the system. what interested me what extent do you think the people making the decisions within our healthcaren companies have, you know, some sensekn of mill leggant intention?

>> go hay head. before dope sick came out i was askedin to talk to a nonprofit hospital in the state. tess had just died and i said, i know not all of you took a free trip to arkansas and florida to be paid speakers but paris pated in the system. you should participate in the correcting it. id think a lot of it at that point, that was 2017 two years later they changed the way they did medicine. they did medication adissed treatment and offered it in the e.d. it wasn't their job.

they canan change the world didt end when they changed. one guy, with a lot of power decided he could change the rules and, you know, he had incredible, that's what i see over and over in the book. one person sometimes it's a mother or sister that died of an overdosage. sometimesdr it's dr.burton. i asked what happened and he said, well, reread your book. how can wee not do this is from the research. he's an evangelist. 5% of hospitals do it. i don't know if it's because of the capitollistic system. the overdosage crisis to begin

with beginning with per due pharma. basically, you know, buying off the politicians and lobbyist and youob know, the fda and the guy who puts a stamp of approval. tripling the government salary three yearste later. i m mean, nobody is regulating these systems. you see that happen later when the dea is kneecapped going after pill mill doctors because ofal the law the lobbyist wrote for the drug companies. you couldn't make it up. i think it's both. the healthcare providers want to give back to doing no harm. i quiet a guy the eviction

medicine doctor. we have to get back to caring for the patients. >> i'll directly blame capitollism. it's to extract property and volume. cait's not about healthcare but theoi point of the companies iso drive companies. in is the primary motivation. many have a opportunity to do so. there is a phrase i heard a lot of advocacy from the ace buorganizes. they thought government reaction in the is they 80s and 90s.

the most important contribution is theyer forced the governmento change and i feel they are able to get vaccines for covid-19. as theyy used this phrase. when the medications came out. science won the debate about aids. f theyve figured out how to do it. capitollism is the reason why more people have died of aids. after the medication. racialac capitalism is the reasn why there is a higher grade of aids among african-americans then therere was among white americans. t this is the kind of results they hoped to create. the people you are writing about in the lazarus tour doing the

work. we write about people with a different ethics of care and i hope the covid-19 pandemic would inform many more people to have different senses of ethics of care. i no so many people working in offices prior to the pandemic once home truly enjoy doing things like getting groceries. those are the models i think we need to look at more care for people.in the person housing people in the basement do that work. the people that i interviewed about monkeypox, sex clubs and gay saunas that work overall summer to inform people about monkey possibles and distribute the vaccines and stop their sex

parties and turn them into places to get people vaccinate. something elsein i thought about covid-19 19 put into effect in different response from the world and hiv. this work around and anything for drugs often from society. we could have care with much seless judgment about the activities. not onlyindi benefiting people n individual level. >> great, i'd like to invite anyone from the audience that would like to ask a question to come up and with the mic. >> there is a bit about hope one

thing is that the people that need the most care and it's very distorted. individuals iwa don't want to sy fighting back in the system and finding t ways to help. are those solutions scalable. isis a way to make them work ona large scale. >> i think that have to be. we can't lose hope. in the same community they said let them die and take their organs. this is to offer overdosage response teams and peer recovery specialist. every person who overdosed a person recovery to come out and help them make the he has a

battle. he has the judges. he has money for it. i call this my rowdy angles. they reach out and find one good cop. one of my advice. if you can turn one good cop into doing things differently and diverting people to care from jail to care. you can show how that worked. these are things that people who do the work. this is understood by millions

of people much more. we will see that from decades. the huge unionization efforts this is a direct result from people feeling unsafe and coming together to deal with things. they will take the lessons nay learned andes a collective response. they are individual failures. let's go to the audience. >> is it on? that go.

do you want to come up here and repeat it you can just say it >> you can just say it and i'll repeat it. >> we will repeat it. >> thank you.

the question is about older adults and the congra gant living situation. i have a chapter about the closest person to make it out of covid-19 it was a completely stupid reason.

this was where i lived at the time and putting people with covid-19 into h nursing homes. when recover from an infection he died. 1 in 12 were indicted as well. i got manyfr letters from people ability their experiences with covid-19. one thing with my book was to give people a chance to morn those they lost or people whoho mad covid-19 that feel like they were forgotten. this is how this cares about the quote on quote u working age. they care about children and crelderly. it'sy very crew terms. they areec costing money from te economybu rather than contributg

to it. the elderly are also effected by hiv and aids. one of the few democrat graphic. healthcare and pleasure. the elderly are how i write about the underclass. enormously bore the brunt. it was your attorney general in texas that talked about, you know, can't grandparents give up their lives for a few years. it's disheartening. it's helpful because the elderly are disabled. visibility is thought of as how productive you are to the economy. growing old means your body is not able to do certain things

i'm talking about covid-19 as harming the people who have other problems. they are not hardy enough to survive. lyoverwhelmingly elderly people. >> want to add to that? >> [inaudible]th >> the hospitals are owned by religious organizes and how that reeffects peoples care and limis of the care. did your cover that in your bok or the religious aspect.

>> didn't get into that as much from the structural level. i explained the title raising lass russ and knowsly this point.d knowsly many of them based on religious beliefs are doing it. ii tell the story at the end catholic e nun in her 80s reaching out to start a go fund me. she can't pay the light bill. you know, the sagler's light

bill is working 12 hours per day and asking for money. most of the nonprofit hospitals are not paying taxes and participated in the system that ultimately lead to 7 million americans being addicted. they should step-up. >> deal with it briefly. it cuts bottle ways. at an individual level particularly with catholics. i have seen them doing phenomenal things. i wrote about it this summer. i turned it in right before. there is d a link in the ways tt we conceive religion and pac status it's very dangerous the

wayra corporations were able to say we don't want to pay for abortions because thatt violates our religion. stuff arere happening with queer stuff already. it might have been the massive investigateddive story about how the hospitals or nonprofit they are using aggressive bill eocollecting techniques. they are getting care for free and unaware of it. >> you got it. thankou you. >> one thing about the reproductive rights. ih thought this through a pane. the height amendment that made abortion illegal for poor people. there was really only full accessss for a few years before

the height amendment came in. same thing happening withve transgender care. if youca have medicaid you can't get transgender care. that's's putting us on a similar path howt the height amendment lead to abortions not being legal many places. >> thank you for your books. i look forward to reading them. you spoke about one bureaucrat who is doing work that's really, you know, trying to address the wiissues. kidney of you talk with others working with the government trying to make change and do thingsan differently to solve te issues. >> yeah, i was just at the white house a few weeks ago for a recoverymm summit. i was with the drug czar. he'sus authored some of it. we come back to politics i'm

hopeful this administration to make sure we get evidence based care. ino kept asking everybody what's the magic wand and federal fix. healthcare is run by state and community. states made it illegal. that's really concerning. the administration is aware of it and struggling how to bring it in. i don't interview government

officials. i interview those in the mental class. i'm critiquing how it plays out 4 hump thousand people died under trump. 650 people died under biden. trump didn't have the vaccine. when people don't have homes n there is only so much we can do. when theyor have more incarcerad people that's the major driving engine particularly raspatory illnesses. i have done really good people who go into the administration. >> that's a good point.

>> the question is why don we hear from good people. they are loud in public. the administration is teaching haresponse. i just don't hear from them. nay stop tweeting. i'm so squared of getting fired. i'd say there are a handful of exceptions., the doctor who is a very out gay leather, you know, positive person kid work and did monkey pocks and maintained quiet the

pocks and maintained quiet the the ideas are so great. i hope that's driving the administration that'so where te ideas go to die. >> this morning i got my mail and in my mail was political add fromar the republican party. some pack said all of these pieces of miss information about puberty blockers and trans youth and what the treatment is for transyouth.st what can people to do to reverse that information. you know, what do i do to make sure my neighbors or friends aren't believing that. >> go ahead. i think as a cis gender person

wewe should explain what's wrong aboutth it to anyone that will listen.. peoplew, take puberty blockers r alkinds of head indications that affirm gender for all kinds of regions. across allll gender spectrums. many are l misused by people all of the time. it's important to explain other gay people in the community. the ways we were talked about as gayle people in the 70s, 80s, and 90s they should go through conversion therapy. we wouldn't accept any more as gay people conversion therapy. that's what is being asked for. that's important to talk about in the community. >> we have an epidemic of misinformation.

you can trace a lotot of it back toto the fact that the jobs went away and government did nothing for people left behind. the opioid crisis we are ill equip to deal with it. ai'm thinking about the media's role and the declining media's role in not covering fact based journalism. we wons a numerous awards. 125 employees in the newsroom and know it has eight reporters. it's important we stalk about revolutionizing nonprofit journalism. i mean the stuff you get in your mailbox we have to counter that with faggot all information. >> one quick fact people will

say. we don't know what will happen withue trans people. thereh are 40 years of research. john stewart, better than any super national journalist said nope, nope, nope. there are seconds of research it's widely aventilatable and tell your neighbors. >> supportal t local journalism and subscribe to texas monthly. thank you so much for coming. thank you foror coming. they will be in the book signing if you would like to purchase a book and get their signatures. thank you. >> i have a dream. [ applause ] my poor little children will

live-in a nation where they won't be judged by the color of their skin but content of their character. i have a dream. >> live coverage of the 60th anniversary of the mar of wan washington as reverent sharpton, martin luther king the third gather for a continuation of the dream dr.martin luther king outlined. wave the 60th anniversary live on saturda on c-span, c-span now. our online at c-span.org. book tv every sunday on c-span 2 futures authors discussing the latest nonfictio books. former aclu president and law school professor shares her book

hate where she argued she should combat hate speech with free speech instead of sensorship. at 8:45. journal david looks at extremist groups and the impact on democracy with his book the age of insurrection. watch book tv every sunday on c-span 2 and find a full schedule on the program guide or watch any time on book tv.org. healthy democracy doesn't just look like this but this where they can see it at work. a republic thrives. get informed straight from the source on c-span word for word. from the nations capitol t