set of education. we have to stay up to date trade >> new year's day just before 1:00 eastern and throughout the on the future's of higher education, robotics, and data as the new industrial revolution. kay bailey hutchison on the women who helped to shape texas at 8:45. on american history t.v., daughters of civil rights leaders and a segregationist share their memories at 8:30. on gender,iscussion race, and incarceration rates among women. panel of women's rights advocates, some of whom have been incarcerated numerous times themselves trade from university in new orleans, this is an hour and a half. [applause]

>> thank you. it is a pleasure to be here this evening. plentyout and see that are still worried about their grades and seeking extra credit. thank you to the professor for that lovely introduction. larger part of the campus intellectual project to gauge with michelle alexander's ant, which has gotten enormous amount of critical praise over the years, that has restarted conversations that activists and scholars have been having often in more silo the spaces. hassuccess of the book provided more spaces for public discourse around these questions. me, one of the great challenges of the book as well as of so much activism, particularly within african- american communities around incarceration is the unnamed and

almost always unnamed assumption that this is primarily a man's problem, a problem of male bodies being stopped and frisked by police officers instead of assumptions about male gendered norms associated with black men and notions of violence and the idea that the problems of incarceration and the cost of incarceration are primarily borne by african-american men. part of what we want to do is challenge that by going to the intersection of gender and incarceration, by speaking specifically about how incarceration impacts women. we have assembled a really extraordinary panel and we will try to do as little talking as possible although all the students in my class know that i'll he say that and then talked for 2.5 hours straight. on our penultimate is susan burton, founder and executive

director of a new way of life reentry project. she is a formerly incarcerated person herself who after many years in and out and with a clear understanding of the challenges of incarceration, started a new way of life. she has been recognized for her successes and her continuing activism including being nominated as a cnn top 10 hero and a community crusader and receiving the citizens activist inrd from harvard university 2010, also being a justice fellow and a women's policy institute fellow and a community fellow for the california wellness foundation. heywoodh us is deion who is one of my favorite people. i am always looking for a reason to have her at the table. she is the executive director of women with a vision, a new orleans-based organization

founded in 1991. she is one of my favorite people mostly because of her no- nonsense approach to these fundamental questions. women with a vision does not take on the easy questions when it comes to incarceration. in 2009, she oversaw the launch of the note justice project. n-o.al they filed a lawsuit on behalf of trans women who were labeled and arrested under the street based sex workers crimes against nature law here in louisiana. they were on the sex offender registry as a result of nothing more than having been sex workers. a settlement with the state of louisiana removed 700 such individuals from the sex offender registry. [applause]

of course, for her work, women with a vision was also victimized by fire. that said, she takes on the questions that are not the easy ones. tina reynolds is a cofounder of women on the rise, telling her story. organization that seeks to provide a voice for currently and formerly incarcerated women. she is a formerly incarcerated woman herself holding a masters in social work from hunter college. one of the most important projects that she is currently working on is the birthing behind bars project. we recently focused on the problem of women who are undocumented immigrants being shackled in the context of labor and delivery. heart of what werth does is recognize that this is standard

practice in many localities not only for undocumented immigrants he held for nothing more than the status-based crime of being called a legal because they have crossed a border, but also for domestically incarcerated women. who has beth ritchie been one of my favorite people for longer than it would be reasonable for us to talk about here. the instituter of for research on race and public policy at the university of illinois at chicago. she is an intellectual mentor, one of the people who introduced me to the possibility that in the academy we can both be serious scholars and committed activists. her research projects include a study of factors including rearrest rates for women and young people released from large urban jails and also an examination of public policy and social factors that impact incarceration rates. i teach her book regularly. she is the recipient of the union institute's audrey lord

legacy award. "e book that i teach is arrested justice, black women, violence and america's prison nation." welcome my panelists. [applause] the way that we have decided to do this is to give each person on the panel who could undoubtedly speak for two and a half hours themselves, three to five minutes. i will hold you accountable for the three to five minutes. mostly because i have a series of questions on a variety of topics around arrest, conviction, incarceration and harder community impact that i hope to get to. i want to simply give you a moment to talk about your work a mere scholarship, your activism so that we have a sense of what this broad picture looks like. we will begin here. >> thank you so much.

i must include what brought me to my work. son was five-year-old killed accidentally by an lapd police officer. the height of the world on drugs. -- war on drugs. soon after, i began to take illegal drugs. illegal drugs i was in possession of, i was sent to prison. i was sent to prison not one time, but i was sentenced six individual times. i spent time in prison for possession of a drug. in 1998, i found a place that helped me. the place was in santa monica, a predominantly white neighborhood and when i got there, i got -- i was introduced to recovery and i

began to practice recovery. what i noticed is that in that neighborhood people were not sentenced to prison for possession of drugs. i said, what is wrong? what is going on here? i just saw these two different approaches, same county and the different neighborhoods, other side of the tracks. wasft there really glad i getting help. but really angry that i would be punished, caged, handcuffed, six times when recovery was so much more humane and acceptable. monica, went back to south l.a. and work and bought a house and began to help other women just like me find a place that they could come back to in their community that had

some resources with a safe environment and there began the beginning of a new way of life. today, a new way of life has five homes. over 700 women come back into the community. we have reunited more than 150 women with their children. more than that, we began to organize. we look at how to make policy changes. on 82-18 inworked --ifornia which bans unemployment applications. we began to organize nationally a formerly incarcerated and convicted people's movement. we 10 years ago organized all of us or none. five years ago we started a legal department where two lawyers take on all types of discrimination.

discrimination, housing discrimination, looking at how background check companies rapidly report all --es of stuff on people's for people who are seeking jobs, seeking employment. this whole mass incarceration thing is just -- has totally destroyed communities across this country. what do i do? i just work to make a better world. i work to level the playing field. i worked to give opportunity to people, women and men, but getarily women that never the opportunity to have a better life, to improve their life, to go to college and so forth. i worked to make a better world. thank you. >> hello, everyone.

ago, it was really an idea that came from eight women, all of them who were born and raised in the city of new orleans. we make a joke about how all of , thirdpresent every ward ward, ninth ward, seventh ward, six. [laughter] with theem decided onset of hiv in the late 80's and early 90's that even though there was a lot of talk about how it was transmitted, no one was talking to anybody in the african-american community. that is where women with the vision was born. for the first 15 years, we did a lot of advocacy on the local level in terms of speaking up around different issues that marginalized communities and at that time, that is when new

orleans had 10 housing developments and we worked in and around those areas. and harms around hiv reduction and trying to connect to women. we learn early on that access was the biggest issue. racism was the issue and definitely poverty was an issue. shiftedrina, our work because as many of you know, it became equal playing ground for some and what i call the killing field for others. that because i was here and that is what it felt like. ist we found post-katrina all of the worst things seem to have gotten worse. there seem to be all these new policies that had been in place someway, themehow, state legislature decided to go in and make the penalties worse.

to, ok,our work shifted we have been doing it on this level -- it seems like we have to look at laws and policies women in and cycle out of prison but put them in direct risk for going to prison. work on the our justice campaign was targeting louisiana's crime against nature law, solicitation crime against nature which was an automatic felony. 20 years. you have to follow all federal guidelines as a registered sex offender. one of the things we found was the majority of women being charged were african-american. 79% of the people on the sex offender registry were african- american women. that didn't look right to us. us wehough people told

weren't going to be able to fight it, they had tried this , you are not going to be of the to do it because one, y'all are small. two, y'all are all black and you are from the south. that didn't work for me. the one thing we are all very clear on and that we try to instill in people is that we are born with a power. we should have that. all we do is try to help women find their power. what won was their stories. we wouldn't have been able to do that if the community wouldn't have stood with us. led how that campaign was going to look and what we wanted the outcome to the. i am extremely proud not only for all of us at women with a itself.ut the community those trans women and women who said, enough is enough.

small, black women, changed louisiana. exists and women were taken off the registry and should no longer be placed on. thank you. [applause] >> i am glad to be here. arrested for the last time. i haven't gone back since. , but thisle violation particular arrest or rearrest was different. i was pregnant. buyer to that i had done my time on the installment plan. i had been arrested 61 times and served up to 4.5 years. i was pretty tired of being sick and tired. however, i wasn't tired and sick and tired for me but because i was pregnant. things became a little bit more overt.

as far as the treatment i received within the prison. i was shackled and sent to bedford hills where farm records island was about an hour and a half away. i was shackled by my ankles with a chain between my ankles and i my also belly shackled and arms. i had a five-point restraints. i was maybe 4.5 months pregnant and i had to lean over the bar and hold on while the bus took me up to bedford hills. night.a winter i said, what if the boss gets all nice and turns over? what happens to me if that happens? would someone protect my baby? i said, if this is happening to me, i wonder how many other women it has happened to. i served my time. i did my time specifically to keep my son. it wasn't for me that i served

this time. pregnant i began to open my eyes and look and see how women were treated. there were a lot of other women in the prison during that time that were pregnant as well. we did not receive appropriate food. nutrition, we did not receive appropriate medical care. things started turning for me. the case of my child being taken away from me after i gave birth to him was another issue. where would he go? birth to my son and i was shackled and handcuffed during birth and delivery. that was another scary thing. now i am looking at the safety for my child. son become a co- conspirator to my crime? i said, something has got to change. if this is happening to me than it is happening to other women. i served my time. i was eventually able to keep my son during incarceration i fought to keep him.

he and i walked out of prison. he was nine months old. eight years later, worht came andnd -- worth came around we decided to work on our first policy legislation change what was to end shackling of pregnant women. it was done with an organization and collaboration with incarcerated women sharing their stories about their experience. we are not the experience. we have those experiences. the separate that experience from who we are, we began to share our stories of the practice of being shackled. in 2009, we ended shackling, the practice of shackling in new york. [applause] change massim is to criminalization.

>> thank you. i am delighted to be here tonight in part, i will tell you my story by naming names. to start with, melissa. [laughter] have done for we a long time, susan who runs an incredible program. i say that because my work, my path to this work has been deeply influenced i women's stories. hear theays, when i three to five minutes, i think this is what our midterm election should have been about, these women leaders changing the world. they represent -- you got the short version of incredible stories of these organizations. make no mistake, these are black women up here. [laughter] right?

represent, especially they represent and credible on the ground of black women, black queer communities, black young people who are trying to change the world. would be as, this very different event at the world were ready for the kind of change that they have been working on the ground for for the past 20, 30 years, i don't know how many mycobacteria i want to name their names and their organizations. there is insight in the room. there is the new jim crow, but there is also all these people who have done this work for a long time. says thedo work that -- we that this isn't don't live in a world that celebrates prison abolition, black women's leadership, freedom, opportunities for women to raise their children, places forrieve, opportunity

sexual expression that is fair and just, the reason we don't live in that world is because we live in the world that is a prison nation. the prison nation in the world that says despite all those attempts to survive, despite well articulated strategies for empowerment of black communities and other subsets of black communities, what we have instead is a world, a government that is committed to the politics, the principal, the philosophy of a cursor allstate. when i talk about a prison nation what i am talking about -- ae world that has united states government that has more prisoners than any other place in the world. furtherople spend time away from their families and

communities than in any other place in the world. they spend that time in worse conditions of confinement than any other place in the world. they stay in their longer than in any other place in the world. we have embraced an ideology that says a prison nation caging people because of their race, because of their age, their sexuality, their gender is an appropriate response to social problems. i didn't say lawbreaking. i said social problems. that is what is filling up. metal health problems, problems related to violence, problems related to poverty, etc. when i try to bring to this work is an understanding that we need to change that world, the world of a prison nation that this government has embraced so that women like these are our leaders, are creating the kinds of communities that i want to

live in. that to me is a world that is a prison abolition world. i came to this work because i was working against violence against women. stories are these really about violence against women. they are about incarceration, police brutality, but they are also about violence against women. particularly violence against black women which is the target of the prison nation. i am humbled to be here. i so appreciate the work that you have done. i look forward to your leadership because you are organizing a world that i want to live in. thank you. [applause] >> we will pick up there. i have 493 questions or something. we will get to do four or five of them probably. i want to leave some room for the audience. i want to start where beth ended. the notion of violinist against black women -- violence against black women.

i can't think about much of anything without thinking of it through the lens of "12 years a slave." if you have not yet seen it, you must. there's a lot of discourse publicly about it at this moment, but for me, perhaps one of the most useful aspects of the film is for the first time in a film that is a major -- on major american theatrical screens, we see the intersection of violence and race and gender in a way that has not been previously depicted rror we see in the context of "12 years a slave." it is also possible for those who want to to walk away from the film feeling as though we are now in a sanitize world or at least that doesn't happen anymore. you can see that it is both an entry point into talking about

the horror of our national history, but also potentially a weent where we say, at least have clean that up, at least that no longer happens. i want to invite any or all of you to engage a little bit with me on this question of arrest and conviction and incarceration, those three aspects of the notion of violence against women, particularly marginalized women, black and brown and poor women. >> to be pulled out of your community in chains and put in the back of a car, which is a cage for transportation, and then to be put into another cage the court there until process sanctions you to become him up atain and woke

5:00, 4:00, 3:00 in the morning stripped of your clothing, chian --n a a -- on a out in the early morning, put on a bus, driven to some place that you know -- that you have no clue of where you are going and pulled off of that bus, cage, put into another again,, cage, stripped having to have every piece and part of your body looked at with flashlights and all the rest, and to be pushed out into a sort of compound where you are $.08, $.16,$.05,

and the executive job is $1 an hour, that is slavery in america. that is what prison is. i haven't seen "12 years a slave." i didn't want to see it before i got here. [laughter] it, i had this other experience that is slavery. the 13th amendment says, as long ofi'm under the auspices being convicted of a crime, the crime being possession of a drug that medicated the grief after babynforcement killed my and never ever said, i'm sorry, never acknowledged it -- i had to go through a lot of healing to even operate to be here today, for giving the accident, but then also -- forgiving the

accident, you can also forgiving the fact that this little black boy was killed by a white man with the badge patrolling my community. >> based on what susan said about patrolling our communities , because even though susan is in california and tina is in new york, tina and i have had multiple conversations about how our communities are policed in the same way. often when you hear about profiling, normally you hear it about black men, black and brown men, or in the last few years, you may have heard what that looks like for people in the community. whenever i think about policing and what that does to our ,lients and the way they think

that they are conscious of every move they make because everybody aows in new orleans there is jump-out tuesday -- the police roll up, even even if nothing is going on -- even if nothing is going on. we work in the community. when we had 10 housing developments, we could be handing out information, doing testing, and it literally, you would get 30-something police -- semi-i automatic automatic, and if you looked like they wanted to stop you, they could. if they want to go through our bags, they could. this is what poor communities in poor communities of color live with every single day. that means someone who is five years old, 10 years old, we live with this. if you think about what that

does to your mind in how you think about yourself, that is one piece of it, but then you womenabout what i see for -- many of our transgender clients always say, we are guilty of walking while trans, not because they are doing anything, but simply because in the police mind, you must be a ax worker because you are trans person. that is what you people do. it is the same way they look at a more masculine women -- i'm going to handle you like a man because you present yourself as one. , just many of our clients a talking crime -- police never had to catch anybody in the act. they never had to catch anybody performing oral sex. they definitely didn't catch sex,ody having sex -- anal

the two things under the crimes against nature statute written when we do that -- statute. we always like to look at things through a public health lens. if we can get the so-called people who run this country to look at things, real public safety, not the one they try to sell people, but real public safety, public health and human rights would be living in a different time, in a different world. was, i will give you a quick example -- we have a latina walking down tulane avenue. she was just waiting for the bus. a car pulls up. do you want a ride? no. where are you going? i'm going to the va hospital. when did you serve? she gets in the car. it is an undercover cop.

she is charged with a crime against nature. this is what happens when we give people who have a check or are not put in the position to check their own bias and their and we havef racism a quota to fill, so let me get you. how womenhink about are targeted, it is normally crimes like this. i try not to use the word i think it," because feeds the stigma, but if you are poor, if you are black, if you look like this -- the latest one i have heard, if your nails are done in your hair is done, you must be involved in sexual work -- i'm like, you're going to get a lot of people i know. policing looks like a certain thing for certain people in certain communities, which is why when you talk about, how do we fight and how do we stand up, some days i don't know how any of us do what we do simply

because it is tiring. as soon as you finish one, there will be another. >> can i jump in, a little bit about trying to expand the notion of policing that i think you are talking about? i think there is the police who police. then there are all the other people who police. >> right. >> that includes people who work in treatment facilities. it includes people who work in schools. it includes people who decide whether or not we are eligible or not eligible for public assistance. also, it includes partners. it is important, at least in the experience of talking about what happens for black women, black queer people, to talk about the relationship between the police, as in the people paid to the police, and the people who feel like they should police us even though they are not paid to do that.

between a connection those two. that is part of what i think makes it harder, more particular, and more dangerous for black women and black queer people. a whole bunch of people are thecing us -- our families, police force, and everybody in between them. so, the notion of policing i think has to be complicated in our discussion. one other quick thing i want to melissa, there is very problematic data that says that the incarceration rates of black women are going down, and the rate of violence against women is going down. big national studies are trained to demonstrate that the problem is not so bad as we are experiencing it. i think the way we need to respond to that is to say, even though there may be fewer black women actually going through the prison, be atl or

the cook county jail or bedford ,ills or the l a county jail even though people are not going through the doors, they are being police. they are being monitored and sanctioned and punished now by places outside of the building, which in some instances is maybe even more dangerous. you never know who is watching you and what kind of rights they may take away from you, like you lose your kids or your public assistance, etc. >> i think that is so true when we think about how we have internalized how it is we need to behave in relationships with other people that we don't know and how we walked on the street, especially as women of color. children, if we are a bad mom, we don't give our children breakfast in the morning. we are looked at as a bad mom. we are involved in a system that says, we should take your child away.

when i think about the issues of massive restoration versus massnalization -- incarceration versus criminalization, we have to look communities ofts color. 40 years we survived specific scrutiny where we were bombarded with the policing of other people's systems, communities, people within our communities, and our ways of thinking about how relationships should work. were consistently traumatized and re-traumatized to the point of where it was normalized. >> i want to pick up on that. let me get one more in here. that is the case of marissa ways,der, which, in many reflects this. i have often pushed back against miss alexander's book, the idea of the new jim crow.

be bad in its own way. it doesn't have to be the new old bad thing. book titles are almost never crated by the author. we've got to give her a pass on that one. that said, to bring back the slavery piece of it, i've also always pushed back around any attempts to make anything that is now that thing then, and one of the key aspects of why this thing now is not that thing then is simply what distinguished slavery in the u.s. south in the 17th, 18th, 19th generate -- century is the intergenerational nature of it. slavery there have been in other places, the thing that made the slavery different and unique in human history is the idea that you could expect nothing more for your children either than bondage. been doing this work, and also as i have learned more about the work you do, i am

increasingly convinced i have made an error of judgment, and that in fact the current system of impersonation doesn't have this deep, intergenerational component. and so many ways, the marissa alexander case opens this up. from what we know about this case, this is a woman who had just given birth to a child who hurt -- with her abusive husband. it was very clear that he abused her as well as other partners. in her attempt to protect, shooting more than at the ceiling, she ends up with 20 g -- 20 years or more in jail in florida. she has been incarcerated already for three years. away from that infant who she was trying to protect. i invite all of you at this point to reflect on either the question of the intergenerational nature of incarceration around women and children, but also if you want

to to reflect specifically on marissa alexander and what we have learned about the intersection of domestic violence, the intergenerational nature, the lack of interest in making sure that a black mother is at home to in fact parent her child. myi want to continue discussion about mass criminalization and give you an idea of why i cleaned it that way. safeooking at the adoption families act that passed in 1996 where, because of the languishing of children of color, specifically in our foster care system, president clinton made it so that folks' children could be released from being in foster care if their parents had no communication with them in a timeline of 15-22 months. where did that put people who were incarcerated? the median sentence at the time for women was 36 months.

ok? -21 months, the median sentence at the time nationwide was 36 months. if you did not plan for your child's reunification with you and you had a place for yourself and your child and a job, you could forget about it. most of the time, women were in prison. they would lose their rights to their children. the termination proceedings could continue. in some cases, many of the women didn't know that they lost their parental rights to children. when we make the comparison -- i'm briefly speaking on this -- when we make the comparison about intergenerational, we look at a system that has broken down the relationship between parent and child and the respect for parent and child. myi was saying, making unborn child a co-conspirator to my crime, here we are making children in foster care co- conspirators to their parents incarceration -- parent's

incarceration. >> that question and statement makes me think about woodmore. she was a woman who was sentenced to seven years to life for protecting her son. abusive boyfriend. he died. son was about two years old at the time. she went to prison for seven years to life, spent 20 years in prison, was found suitable for parole seven times, and the governor rescinded it seven times, and finally, she was released. she was released, and she came to work at a new way of life. releasedhen she was was serving a life sentence himself.

she should have been discharged from parole at five years. was toher biggest wishes vote in the 2012 primary elections. she died of a stroke. she never got to vote. she was working on getting her son out of prison. she never got to see her son because she was on parole. the parole capture a year longer. her.gistered they were supposed to discharge her. she never, ever got to vote. she had a lot of things sort of but votingket list, was one of them that she had never, ever got to exercise.

when we talk about intergenerational, we talk about so many women still in this life forentenced to protecting themselves from an abuser. -- it just brought her back. >> one of the things i wanted to case is about marissa's , a good friend of mine, she always says that there is no other woman from any ethnicity that is judged the way black women -- as harshly as black women are judged. when you think about -- i always give the example of the asian researcher in london who did

aying,esearch same -- s black women were the most unattractive women in the world -- just the sheer fact that he wanted to do that, the sheer you who canse of think back -- this is something that has been happening forever -- we can think about how people make jokes about our hair, whether you are dark. there is a holistic things i can go through -- a whole list of things i can go through. i also think about how that plays when the police are called to a domestic violence case, a situation. how you see me is how you will respond to me, whether you are t protect me, to

but if you walk -- i'm a thin woman -- not a thin woman. white people get really intimidated by loud black women. i don't know what to say to them. i get it all the time. [laughter] i am alright with it. we have seen it multiple times where even in the description -- we just had a meeting about this howier, last week, about the description of the woman -- big -- what does that have to do with it? or didn't look weak whatever. people always wonder why black forn don't access services domestic violence, why the queer community doesn't access it.

people?d you call those for same-sex couples or trans women, i can tell you we hear it all the time at women with a vision. i'm not calling the cops so they can arrest me. the charges go up when it is us. one more thing i want to add -- we hold a community voices group for formerly incarcerated women. all of them talk about, even when you are free, you are never free. i can tell you, louisiana is one of those states, they really don't want to let you go. even if you are out, the amount of fees that you pay into the women who werehe charged with a crime against nature, once you are out, you have 21 days to pay $500 to put

yourself on the sex offender registry and send out those postcards that all of you see in your mail. if you do not do that, you will return to jail. then you do more time and come out again. $500 for postcards coming out of prison? who does that? i don't know too many. if you weren't a sex worker, how would you make that money to keep yourself free? it is as free as you can be. this is how the system really works. they never let you go. we have one client, one woman who says to this day she is paying $800 a month for two marijuana charges, one in texas and one here, in court fees because the job she has, she could afford to pay that. she lost her job, and she is still paying that. if she doesn't pay that $800 every month to the new orleans criminal justice system, she will go back to prison.

this is the way that i feel like the system itself makes -- criminalizes people. if i make all of you think that these people are not worthy and they keep using drugs and they keep going back to jail because they do not want their life to be any different, don't fall for it. it is always a bigger story. this is the way they do that. --can i just add >> i'm going to invite folks to line up. we started late. i do want to give folks an opportunity in the audience. i'm going to keep questions brief. be sure that you do have a question. thisne up while i'm making point, which might be a little controversial, if you don't mind. i am very impressed with the national organizing around marissa's case. a lot of us have been doing it for some time. it is critically important. it is bringing forward the issue of black women's right to defend

themselves and the children. we would not be talking about it at a national level if it weren't for trayvon martin. me, there is a feminist question of why it took the zimmerman verdict and the tragic death of trayvon martin to have us focus attention on this black woman. it is kind of a rhetorical question, but it is an important one. >> it is a critical one about who we think is the victim. >> who we think is the victim. who would be talking about her case if the verdict had gone differently? >> that got people to the microphone. good evening. thank you so much for being here. i have two quick questions. a class at tulane. it is murder and violence in the community. we look at the underpinnings for the violence and murder in our

city, what is causing it, and of course, our concert -- conversation goes to the prison industrial complex. it is one thing that michelle alexander did a good job of, given the conceptual framework of how it is financially incentivized. as this conversation is evolving, i'm interested in how people see working against the momentum of this economic incentive of incarceration. my other question is very simple ira present the black alumni association of tulane. we want to do a service for children for people of incarceration -- people affected by incarceration -- what services are being needed? what are people meeting -- nee ding? what is the hierarchy of that? thank you. it is new orleans-

specific, do you want to take that one? >> being that i am from new orleans and you asked the question, how do we deal with it , i feel like i have been screaming the same thing. we are not going to change what is happening in the city of new orleans if we don't change the system itself. where we are paying into the criminal justice system, the fact that the prison gets more money than the program, the fact that the prison has become a way health,with addiction, when we could easily be like san francisco, new york, chicago, have putut, cities who that money into programs that will change that. until we change what poverty looks like for people -- people

say, it is the hopelessness -- i cannot play with that word anymore. thatt people every day have hope that something is going to be different. we don't experience anybody that comes through our doors that do not feel like it could be different, but if we don't change the way the city of new orleans, what they consider our priority, gelling as a priority to keep a safe, and now we are getting a larger one, and the fact that they get $22 a day per -- we haven't stopped violent crime in the city. what we have done is petty crime, the little things that people do if you have to, community service or helping people in other ways -- we haven't bought into that. i feel like it is changing slowly, but we haven't totally bought into that yet.

--terms of your >> i want to slide in. i know you've got a ton of people. i want to invite this university to start looking at evidence- based research to show that programs are of value. >> one more thing about research. there has to be a moral shift in this country. there has to be a moral shift in each and every one of us. changing of be a hearts and minds and valuing everybody, valuing the neighbor's child, the child in the community over here just as much is your child. there has to be a changing in the hearts and minds of america and the value of every human being to be just as valuable as the next person.

[applause] >> i'm going to say this real quick. i know we have other people. before you invite tulane to do research, tulane needs to talk to us. i just have to put that out there. too often, organizations like ours, people come in, and what they do is they take. they don't leave us with anything. we are actually equipped to do our own community-based artist of the tory research. participatoryased research. based talk about evidence- research as if it is great to fix folks. like they are broken. if you look at the system as broken as opposed to the people -- first of all, you don't want and many don't even

want to sit next to them once in my introduction, i said i was formerly incarcerated. if we sat next each other, you wouldn't know to when you find out, that shift that happens in your eyes and in your heart, it needs to stop. >> let me also just quickly say, the desire to vote. part of the inability to push back sufficiently against the economic incentives for incarceration is the act of disenfranchisement to currently and formerly incarcerated people. it is almost impossible to arounde communities justice questions for currently and formerly incarcerated people, but also when they are kept from being citizens forever -- all the cities that you named

, heart of what we have seen is a massive decline in african- american turnout. this problem primarily by living in communities that butpoliced not only by nopd also by the saw police of private security, and in the context of disaster, they will even call in halliburton. that is jeremy scales brilliant ahill's brilliant research, how halliburton was called during evacuation. the way violence is dealt with in this city is to keep it in the seventh ward and ninth ward. -- as long ase you live in the south loop, the south side -- the question of changing these moral questions -- what i just heard in terms of the moral narrative, when that

discourse comes out of the mouths of the right, what they are talking about is unborn children, which is not what they're talking about, but that is somehow what they're talking about when they say, we should care about every human. they are talking about fetuses, not black fetuses, certainly not black incarcerated fetuses. if i say something on television like, children belong to all of us, and i am even serrated for months because it is some sort -- letd communist plot me go to the next person. >> greetings. thank you all for the work you are doing. my first question, i'm an assistant professor. right now, i get a lot of black women wanting to do research on this subject. i am only one person. what are you all doing, what you have in regards to providing strategies for engaging the next generation of leaders? what do you have in place, how

would i engage them, how would i send them to you? that is the first thing. i have them in my office all the time. second, what becomes the role -- i'm a psychologist -- what becomes the role of mental health services in the work that you're doing? i'm just wondering how you incorporate that. >> i was just great to shut out three things -- shout out three things. make sure that your students know about the insight conference, scheduled for next spring, right, sometime in the bay area. march 2015. it is a wonderful organizing opportunity for women, especially women of color, with with an inclination to get turned on to a radical ending for incarceration. the issue of the message violence in the african-american active web presences,

blogging, looking for research assistance, and then a shout out to a national organization of young people who are taking their communities back and andng to, again, insight activist orientation. i say that because i think connecting people to faculty mentors is one thing. they can come my way. i'm always looking for students who want to work on some dimension of this project so they can be in a different city, but what i think we want to turn people onto is to be workers, activists, organizers, ready to be involved in the kind of work that the other sisters on this panel are talking about. get them connected to reading and writing and research, but also get them connected to activists. byp is the black youth project. black youth project will be represented at our gender and sexuality conference we are

having on december 6 rightness room. send the women over to this conference. women organizing for justice -- this was a nine-month leadership development, specifically for formerly incarcerated women, that they went through and learned about policy, learn how to speak to policymakers, learn how to organize, and learned how to stand up and speak and lead their community. that is one of the things we are doing in california, women organizing for justice. >> one of the things we do in developed a curriculum based on the popular education model, and the curriculum is developed on their success as returning women. have met ands they how they have overcome them. they have developed this curriculum with a focus group of women who have come home and talked about their challenges.

this curriculum, they offer it to the prisons, to work with women who are coming home. they went back into the prison and have taught this program to women who are returning. we are talking about sisters who have served 25 years and below, going back into the prison, and teaching women about the successes and challenges they have had an talking about real issues like relationships and health and wellness and resources that are needed and how it is you have a conversation with your field parole officer. the thing about another organization is the center for third world organization ash third world organizing -- third world organizing. they offer internships to pay you to interim with us. we look for interns who are interested and can get supported through their schools to come and stay with us for the summer

and develop programs or assist us with the programs we have. we cannot afford to pay people. [laughter] >> yes. >> again, thank you for being here. i am bonnie schmidt. i am the chairman of the north shore unitarian universalist church new jim crow task force. my particular question has to do with an issue that was raised in michelle alexander's book, the question being, where are the black man? we know where the black men are. my question for you is, how does that affect black women and their communities? i understand there is something gap between available women for marriage and available men. i wonder if you can expand on that and other factors. >> i've got so many emotions. [laughter]

i will take that question from a public health standpoint. question -- i don't want to go too deeply, but i will tell probably the cdc -- not that i agree with them most of the time -- but how the center for disease control uses that and how they label that as the number one cause for the rise in hiv rates of black women in this country, because they have multiple sex partners because all their men are gone. they end up finding more and more. then their man comes out, and they get another one. not really looking at the other ,ocial determinants of health like direct poverty putting people at risk for health issues.

that is probably the biggest one and how it we see labels the african-american community. if a child's father was incarcerated or couldn't find a job -- we all know there are many reasons why people struggle in poverty or with education or or a waying employment to make a living wage -- if he is taken out, of course, this is why his children become criminals, as well. when you think about removing them, them being out of the community -- i feel so many emotions around this, i don't know if i'm answering your question -- this is the way they also criminalize and label women and families and communities. >> yeah, they are missing. we are missing them. their children are missing them.

their sisters are missing them. our community cries and feels a huge void with all of the men that have been missing over the decade, and all of the women. body men are the largest in the prison industrial complex, women are the largest growth number. over the past 30 years, it has risen 800% for women being incarcerated. i don't know that it is going to catch up with the man and the numbers -- the men and the numbers, but it is a huge problem. i can tell you, the children and the women and the homes that we missing.ey are there is a lot of pain and the loss of them. see, how doegin to

we restore all of our community members? >> let me just say, there is a question of misdirection that sometimes occurs. the conversation -- two things what is wrong with black women is the lack of marriageable black men. several things it does -- it --ates all black women, p women as people seeking husbands. husbands. want they want wives or other marriage partners or other things. it reproduces something that we have known to be true. remember the moynihan report. i just want to recall this. before theh was done 1964 civil rights act was passed or before the 1965 voting rights act was passed. this democrat, this bighearted liberal democrat decides that

the primary problem of the black community, before we are even -- fullvice and, citizens, is single parenting by black women. .hat has been the narrative it has nothing to do but -- with public policy, but it has to do with black women and their pathological relationships to their men and children. in fact, the current single parenting and divorce rates among white women right now are precisely what they were when the moynihan report was released. -- that no great upward is what the compulsory pregnancy, abortion for what the finalg is -- thing i want to say on this is, this narrative about daddy pain

is also problematic for me. on the one hand, yes, people have daddy pain. on the other hand, president obama is the first african- american president who didn't have a daddy. i'm going to say that again. he is the first black man to become president of the united black -- he didn't have a father in the household, but also has pain and angst. >> motivation. >> i'm not saying if one doesn't have a father it will motivate you that motivate you to be present. i'm saying, we want to be careful about the personal narratives. part of what president obama's the little boy-- story, not the actual man who is president -- is that if you're black daddy is missing, a white mom and white grand parents who can give you access to education and resources and opportunities bad trade-off in terms

of maybe not your emotions but certainly your life outcome. us trying to create salvation in black communities by marrying off black women to black men, we ought to create the opportunities and resources to sustain -- [indiscernible] michelle alexander herself would say, because i've heard her say it -- there is a part of her understanding of the new jim crow that doesn't interrogate gender in the way that it gives us a possibility of prison abolition. , we domean by that is miss men in our communities, and at the same time, what can we do as people who are trying to envision a different society? i came to this thinking about gender violence. them homeinging

differently? what would it mean if we brought men home from prison because we prison abolition community building and said, since you have been gone so long, how are we going to engage mutual raising, of children, building of communities, respecting of queer, gender nonconformity, instead of saying bring men home to marry women and establish nuclear, patriarchal families? what about, bring men home so we can create a different kind of community, and therefore be on the forefront on liberation politics instead of reinscribe reinscribing a-- patriarchy?

lessme of myself who is fortunate, not a woman of color -- how do we assist in this movement that definitely needs to happen, and secondly, does helpe service coordinating with this? >> i sent a bunch of babies over lot.em and learned a i had been doing service learning in new jersey and chicago. i learned a lot about new orleans through the mistakes i made by pulling my babies and sending them over. i was humbled to hear -- we have to be careful about our service

learning model versus and engage fellowship model. >> i will say this one thing. for example, i have a wonderful relationship with tulane's school of social work. i actually spoke at their graduation last year. it is funny because i love my relationship with them. we are able to be very honest. i am able to say what kind of students i want to come through. i say that because we get a lot of students that come in, and they want to save everybody. i'm constantly saying, not one person wants you to save them. they simply want the tools they need so they can do it for themselves. also, i love the fact that they say, we don't have any students of color this year. that is honest. i have had that with other programs, as well.

because our clients are majority african-american -- i actually make the joke, and maybe some of you may not take it lightly -- how white are they? when i say, how white are they, she will answer me, no, no, good range. [laughter] in that, i can tell you we have had -- every student we have had, they are now waiting or trying to figure out how they can find money so they can come back and work at women with a vision. we e-mail. we talk. that makes me feel like we are doing something right, when students who could go off and make major money are trying to figure out how they can take care of themselves in this city so they can organize and do the work with us -- it says a lot. i think it is about transformation on both sides.

it is about being willing and being open and understanding where you come from, what is your privilege, how it is that folks like you can use your privilege, and what it is you can use it for to move the effort forward. it is not without black people having no privilege. i understand that they do. identify what that is. black people know what white people's privilege is. what people often don't know what black people's privilege is. having that conversation, which is a difficult conversation -- people often say they want to help -- what does that mean? you are coming in, writing in on the horse -- i've got the flag on and i'm going to straighten that isy out -- no, no, not how it works. people that have done this work -- i cannot speak for