"q&a," with molly crabapple, and british house of commons with prime minister david cameron. after that, profile interviews from republican candidates lindsey graham and john kasich. >> this week on "q&a," our guest is new york-based artist and writer molly crabapple. she talks to us about her career, political views, and how she approaches her work. brian: molly crabapple, where did you get that name? molly: it is a nickname from an old boyfriend. brian: why did you change your name? molly: i was working as a naked model when i was 18 to pay my way through school and i needed

a fake name. then i just kept using it. brian: what is your real name? molly: my real name? brian: jennifer? molly: people can google. my real name is jennifer ca ban. brian: where did you grow up? molly: i grew up in rockaway and long island. brian: what do you do now for a living? molly: i'm an artist and journalist. i travel around the world and draw and write about prisons and conflict zones. about three weeks ago, i was in gaza. i also have a book coming out called "drawing blood." brian: why did you go to gaza? molly: i was in palestine for a literary festival. i hadn't planned to go to gaza and then i met a journalist who walked me through the bureaucratic process by which a journalist can go there. it is under blockade, so it is

difficult to visit right now. i had the opportunity, and so i went. brian: where were you in gaza? molly: i was staying in gaza city. brian: what did you see? molly: the piece i did was about a suburb of gaza city that was -- i saw a level of decimation that i'd never seen outside of the one-day i went to syria. it was almost more throw. in syria, the decimation is done primarily by bombing campaigns. there's bombs, then there are tank shells, and bulldozers. the whole neighborhood was gone. you saw people living in ruined houses surrounded by the smashed rubble of their former lives. you saw a lot of poverty. brian: this on the screen now is your piece, one of your pieces

of work from gaza. what are we looking at? molly: that is the ruins of a hospital which was a rehabilitation facility for paralyzed and disabled adults. it was shelled during operation protective edge. there were no casualties, but the nurses were forced to evacuate. brian: when you saw this, when did you actually do this piece? molly: after i got home. i need to do them in my studio. as you can see, there's inc. there's die, there's acrylic. my technique of working is, i go around with my iphone and sketchbook. i take thousands of iphone photos. i also draw from life. i can drop really fast. it is a way that i build rapport with people. when i come home, i take the stuff that i've drawn from life and my iphone photos and figure out, what are the images i want to have here? what are the most dramatic

shots? what are the shots with the best lines? what are the things that boil down the essentials for the viewer? brian: what is more important to you, the art or the politics? molly: i think the art at this point. brian: how would you define your politics? molly: i'm a leftist. brian: what does that mean for you? molly: what does being a leftist mean for me? i think i have a rather old-fashioned definition. i believe in the individual. i believe in their inalienable rights, however, i also come from a more leftist economic perspective. i think the best way to ensure those rights is a social democracy. perhaps even more socialistic. brian: where did it all start? it says on wikipedia that your

mother was jewish and your father was puerto rican. molly: is. they are both fortunately alive. brian: your mother, you say she is an illustrator. molly: she was an illustrator of children's books and toys. in the era that she was working toy packaging was very artistic. everything had these beautiful hand-done illustrations. she did stuff for the cabbage patch kids. she raised me in a house where art was not some airy fairy thing that was far away from us. art was what my mom did. art was what my great-grandfather did. art was how we lived. brian: what about that? where did you get your views? molly: i was very influenced by my father. my father was a marxist. he was someone who told me i had to challenge authority and be interesting. he was someone who bought me

goldman when i was a little girl, the russian-american anarchist. brian: people, if they want to see your art, they want to see the videos, they can find it at what places? molly: my website is mollycra bapple.com and since i am a contributing editor for "vice," they can go to vice.com. brian: what did you do for fusion tv? molly: i did a series of five animated episodes. i did them with my dear friends and collaborators, a sound designer and director. they used stop motion animation a to talk about the prison industrial complex. brian: what we are going to look up first is locking up immigrants for profit. explain what that is. molly: there is a vast system of

detention centers for immigrants in america. these detention centers are very expensive, but much more important, they are taking people accused of a civil offense, not criminal, and locking them up in conditions that are as brutal as that that we would put a convicted criminal in, often indefinitely and always without the rights we would give to someone accused of a criminal offense. brian: let's watch a little bit of this. you can explain more about how you do this. [video clip] >> on march 31, 2015, 80 mothers announced a hunger and work strike. they were undocumented migrants in prison with their children, some for up to 10 months. they were held in a family detention center in texas. they were demanding freedom for their children and for themselves. the united states puts immigrants behind bars every day.

they are locked up in a patchwork of government facilities, detention centers, and local jails. the vast majority of these immigrants are not criminals but they are kept in conditions as brutal as any prisoner and they have fewer rights than if they were charged with a crime. there are currently over 34,000 people in immigration detention today. they sleep in dormitories often so crowded they are forced to sleep on the floor. communication with the outside world is limited. they are subjected to punishment like solitary confinement. brian: have you ever visited one of those centers? molly: i haven't. i went by reports of people who have been in them. also, testimonies from former officials and lawyers who represent immigrants. brian: how do you do that? molly: what do you mean? brian: the artwork. how long does it take for something like that?

how do they do the stop action? molly: for something like this we start with a script, then we break it into the most compelling images. for instance, we start out by talking about these mothers on hunger strikes. then i thought i would draw them behind the fence. i do something called a storyboard, which is kind of like a series of sketches that show every image that is going to happen. after the storyboard, which takes about three days, it is time to shoot. the way we shoot it is, we have a ladder over the dressing table. there is a step stool. on that step stool. on that stepstool is whoever the cameraman is. over the next few hours, that person stays on the stepstool with the camera pointed at my table while i draw every image. brian: how long does it take to

do one of those? molly: everything for that project was between three and five minutes. the actual filming takes about 12 to 15 hours. brian: and where is it seen? molly: they are seen on fusion's website and on youtube. brian: how many have you done? molly: i've done five of them. brian: we've got some video of a place that you say played a role in your life. it is in paris. it was owned by an american. his daughter now runs it. it looks like this. explain. when did you have a relationship with that place? molly: i'm getting drunk with nostalgia here. when i was 17, i was in paris and i heard about shakespeare and company bookstore. i thought maybe i could meet those people. i was really shy at that age. i started drawing and this old man comes out. i think he was 86 at the time.

brian: by the way, that is a bed in there. molly: what are you doing to me? this is like seeing my youth. i love that place. george whitman, the owner, he invited me to stay there. i lived there for a month, then i came back for another month. then i would come back over the years, back and forth. we would work at the cash register. that was -- i don't know, i guess my little heaven. it is this place where -- i guess i felt the lesson that george gave us was that if you acted with enough rigor and practicality, you could make anything happen in the world. this is a place where anyone could stay there for free. in the center of paris. as long as you wanted.

it was a successful business for 52 years. george would always call it the little socialist utopia that could. but unlike most utopian experiments, it didn't crash after two years. it is still going on now. george's daughter runs it. brian: there aren't many beds there anymore though. i wonder why. it is a different place than when george was alive. molly: i didn't know that they kicked out all the tumbleweeds. i do know that the upstairs apartments where they used to have writers were changed. brian: why do you think you believe what you do? molly: why do i think i believe what i do? brian: what part of the world don't you like? molly: these are very broad questions. brian: you've got molly crabapple's 15 rules for creative success in the internet age. what is boing boing?

molly: boing boing is a very successful blog that highlights things usually about technology. brian: you've got some stuff on here. you say, companies are not loyal to you. molly: obviously not. brian: why is it obvious? molly: a company is motivated by making money. especially a publicly owned corporation. that is their responsibility to their shareholders. a company is not motivated by personal loyalty. perhaps a small business is. i have a few employees and i am motivated by loyalty to them. but nothing like disney or nbc can be motivated by personal loyalty. it is written into a corporate charter. brian: what have you done because of that in your life? how independent art you? "vice" is a corporation. molly: i don't think that you read my whole rule. brian: "please never believe a

company has your back. they will discard you at a moments notice. ask other freelancers what they are getting paid and don't buy into the financial nagging of some suit." molly: exactly. that is the full thing. once you realize that they are immoral by design, you can deal with them in a more honest way. if you think they have personal loyalty to you, they are going to take advantage of you. brian: you say "i am both sick of social media and addicted to it. what nourishes you destroys you. the internet is getting increasingly corporate and centralized. i hope it is not." what do you think of the decision to regulate the internet by the government? molly: can you be more specific? brian: the most recent decision where the fcc decided how they

are going to regulate under title ii. molly: i've been in the last days of copyediting my book. internet events like this are over my head. brian: would you rather the internet continue like it is now or rather the government regulate it and keep tabs on how people can use it? molly: i think those are rather -- they are questions that are distortion. what do we mean when we say the government regulating the internet austin mark controlling what people say? are you talking about enforcing net neutrality? are you talking about the government preventing corporations from spying on you? what are you talking about when you are saying, what do i think about the government regulating the internet? i don't necessarily think the government is -- i don't think the government is any less or more evil than a large corporation like facebook

necessarily. in fact, they are in bed together. do i think the government should regulate free speech on the internet austan mark -- on the internet? no. do i think they should enforce net neutrality? yes. brian: are you still doing that? how many different income streams do you have now? you are getting more and more successful. molly: well, i write. i have a gallery that sells my paintings. i'm coming out with harpercollins. i still draw pictures. brian: are you afraid of being successful? molly: that is an interesting question. i don't know what that means. very often people become swaddled in their own success and they become soft and stop seeing things clearly. i might fear that. brian: let's go back and look at

some more of your art. molly: that handsome gentleman. brian: when did you do this, and what are we seeing here? molly: i did that based on a picture that i took in dubai last summer. i was in abu dhabi doing a piece about migrant workers that are building western museums. sort of as a lark, i went to dubai for a day. i knew that trump was going to be there. trump was building some golf courses and luxury housing. i got into the press conference and trump is saying, the world is so full of failure, and here in dubai everything is perfect. and why can't new york be like dubai? trump would never dare say that in america. it made me somewhat angry.

also, i had been doing some investigative journalism and i knew that the guys that were developing trump's golf courses and housing get paid $200 a month even though they work in the hot sun 12 hours a day doing construction work. at the end of the press conference, i said something like, you are making all of these luxury buildings in dubai and your guys are getting paid $200 a month. how do you feel about that? because it is due by, i got yelled at by the publicist. security guards wanted to throw me out or do worse. once the people from the local papers saw that things had quieted down, they all told me how much they wished they could do something like that. every single other person in that press conference just had to tell trump how wonderful he was. brian: the security guards, were they from dubai or were they traveling with trump? molly: i can't totally verify

this, but my impression is that they were with the dubai firm that was doing the event. brian: here is a solitary confinement as modern-day torture that you did for fusion tv. it is about one minute and 25 seconds. as you say, these are four or five minutes long. we have a shorter version of it. [video clip] >> in july, 2013 30,000 prisoners went on hunger strike in california. the strike lasted for two months. it was the second one since 2011. the prisoners were protesting solitary confinement, what many consider a form of torture. in solitary, your world is a concrete box. you spend between 22 and 24 hours alone in your cell. your bed is a thin mattress. three times a week guards shackle you and take you to the

showers for 15 minutes. for exercise, you pace around another concrete box. sometimes a bit of ceiling is uncovered. this is the only time you will see the sky. as punishment, the use of solitary confinement is often an arbitrary decision. nearly 3000 people are held in pelican bay prison. over one third are in solitary. most of them because of "gang affiliation." that is a meaningless phrase. gang affiliation might mean reading a book by a black panther or having a tattoo. pelican bay isn't alone in this. around the country, you can land in solitary for your art, you're reading, your beliefs, your sexual orientation, or your friends. brian: should we not have solitary confinement at all? molly: it is hard for me to say that if you are someone who is incredibly violent to other prisoners that there shouldn't

be some way of protecting other prisoners. but solitary should not be used like the way we are using it now. solitary is being used to lock up people because they use the phones in a way that prison doesn't like or because they got a tattoo. i think that once solitary stops being used like that, we could devote our minds to a few niche cases. as of now, it has to be stopped in general. it is torture. it destroys people's minds. shane bauer, who was an american hiker in prison in iran accused of being a spy, spoke extensively about when the iranians imprison him in solitary, it was the most brutal part of his ordeal. since solitary started being used, they've known it was torture. i don't think it is appropriate to torture people to enforce

minor rules. probably rules that people never should have been in jail in the first place. brian: when you were traveling you were put in prison. molly: i was detained. i was detained when i was 18, traveling in eastern turkey. it was right after the cease-fire. i actually think i was detained because in turkey they have a draft. a lot of the policemen are military police. they are young guys who are drafted in. they kind of saw an american girl and wanted to hang out and didn't realize how scary they were being. brian: you've been to syria. when did you go to syria? molly: last summer. brian: why did you go there and how did you get in? molly: i was doing a story about a camp right over the border. brian: here is some of your

artwork on the screen. molly: that is actually something i did in collaboration with a young syrian man who was under the islamic state. i and other western journalists cannot go there. i went over the border with another freelance journalist. we embedded with fighters for a day. we went to a border town that was being repeatedly bombed. when i was there, the islamic state had just been kicked out. i think the most touching thing i saw was that residents had taken the islamic state murals and painted over them in hot pink and orange. they put quotes about tolerance there. it was beautiful. brian: who is right and wrong? molly: how can you even say that in a war, who is right and wrong? what does that mean? brian: when you were there you

must have come to some kind of conclusion about what was going on there, who started it, is one side more dominant than the other, did u.s. yourself if the united states should be involved , where did you go with all that? molly: the syrian conflict was started when the assad regime brutally cracked down on protesters that were asking for basic liberties or protesting because their family members were killed. since then, the conflict has become incredibly brutal. were crimes are inc. -- war crimes are committed on all sides. i think it is difficult to say that there were wholly clean groups in syria. if this was 2011, i would feel very comfortable saying the protesters were right. at this point, the thing is the biggest humanitarian tragedy of

our generation, and i wouldn't feel comfortable saying this person is good, this person is bad. except that the assad regime is hideous. isis is hideous. anyone who committed war crimes in syria, i hope they are brought to justice and i hope the conflict stops. brian: what role should we play? molly: we should start taking more refugees. i believe the amount of refugees we've taken has been in the hundreds. this is a conflict where millions of refugees are in turkey right now. you cannot have populations of millions of people living in tents. most of these are women and children. you can't have kids growing up in tents. not just because it is wrong morally reprehensible, but because it threatens to destabilize the country's that

it is happening too. i have to say, for all of the racism that syrian refugees face and all the violence they face in turkey and lebanon and jordan and the camps there, i can't imagine america allowing a similar proportion of mexicans or central american refugees to flee here at all. what should america do? america should ease the burden on the states that are bearing the brunt of this. brian: as an artist, how many hours a day do you work? molly: it depends what i'm doing. i think lately i've been getting a little more burnt out. when i was starting out, i would work until i fell asleep from the time i woke up. i tend to do that when i'm doing any major project now. brian: when you are in syria or gaza, do you do any artwork on scene? molly: i go around with a

sketchbook and i draw. it is to build a rapport with people. very often, when you have a big camera, it puts a distance between you and the person. they can't see what you are taking. it is almost vampiric even though you are producing beautiful things. when you draw, it is a vulnerable thing. they can see exactly what you are doing. if you suck, they can tell you so. most people haven't been drawn before. most people are delighted to be drawn. a lot of times, i draw people because i like to. brian: do you work fast? molly: very fast. brian: do you sketch first, or is what we are seeing exactly the way you do it on paper? i don't know anything about art but i just look at it. molly: something like that is a finished piece that took like 10 hours. however, let's say i'm doing one of my quick sketches from

guantanamo. i would have a light green marker that has a fat tip and a skinny tip. first, i would draw this loose sketch with the skinny tip. no one would be able to understand it except me. it is like shorthand. then i would shade in all the big areas of dark, and take a pilot pen, like a cheap rollerball pen, and start doing all the little lines. one of the things i learned with that, it is better to make the wrong line confidently than the right line tentatively. people want to that confidence in your work. they want that sense of vitality. if you believe it, they believe it. you just do it as best you can with as much believe and rigor as you can and do it fast. brian: how many times have you been to guantanamo? molly: twice. i was on commission for "vice." i did twi features for "vice"

and a number of other features. brian: here's some part of your story on gitmo. explain this. molly: guantanamo bay is one of the most censored places on earth to make images of. this is for what the military claims is operational security. if you are a photographer, you feel like you are playing twister. you can't take a photograph of anyone's face. you can't take a photograph of doors. you can't take a photograph of cameras. as an artist, i had an advantage. i could just draw around it. i gave the soldiers those masks because i can't draw their faces. when i was in guantanamo bay, it was at the height of a hunger strike. the majority of the prisoners were hunger striking. there was a number of them being force fed at the time. the military made up a special term for that. that piece that you showed has on one side of the fence military nurses.

on the other side of the fence they are at this caribbean chicken place that we all enjoy. brian: molly: the first time i went was for the military commission. i was a pretty pretrial hearing of the military -- at the pretrial hearing. the second was for the tour. you do not get to speak to prisoners except for the defendants. except on the last day i got to see prisoners while they were writing through 82 way -- praying through a two-way mirror. brian: here is a piece you did on the mastermind of 9/11. what are you seeing? molly: the alleged mastermind of 9/11 is in court all day and

views board. -- is lord. -- is bored. he wears a hunting jacket and has died his beard. -- dyed his beard. that is just him hanging out. brian: how closely you? -- close were you? molly: very far away. the way they do it is that there is a room divided by layers of soundproof glass and monitors on a time delay so that the cia can stop the video if something is being discussed as they do not want us to hear. when i first came in i brought opera glasses but they were confiscated. brian: why? molly: they said it was

prohibited ocular amplification. brian: no other explanation? molly: note. -- nope. brian: first of all, "vice" is what? molly: a magazine and a tv show on hbo. brian: reads it? -- who reads it? molly: i was a young people. -- or so your people. brian: how young? molly: what is the usual demographic? 18-24. brian: do you think about that? artist. brian: what do they expect you to come back with? molly: word count and pieces of art. i do a column and they have a certain amount of features so i say i do two major print features. brian: who watches fusion?

molly: it is partially owned by univision and is more latino oriented but a similar age group. it is in english. brian: partly owned by abc? molly:. yes/ brian: do you worry you are too close to corporations? molly: everyday but what can you do. brian: what is the basis of this one? molly: versus law called -- there is this law called the manifest prostitution law allowing police to arrest a woman for prostitution without witnessing her exchanging sex for money. instead of a can do it based on if she has condoms on her or what she is wearing or she says hello to a certain number of people were very often if she is trans and is. -- is black.

brian: let's watch it and you can further explain. molly: monica said she just accepted an undercover officer's offer of a ride home. she is among the people arrested every year for prostitution. according to the fbi the fbi arrested 20,000 people, -- 57,000 people in 2011, the majority women. according to the municipal code you can be arrested for manifesting. if you wait any passerby or start conversations or even ask if somebody is a top. -- cop. this is not just an arizona. they exist all over the country. in new york, they arrested felicia for wearing jeans that outlined her legs. with the manifesting law racial

profiling is epidemic. in brooklyn black women are 95% of those charged. trans women are routinely profiled as sex workers. police sometimes place fake ads and arrests yours. -- some arrest sex workers. after sex acts make arrests. -- the cops make arrests. brian: would you rely on for information? -- what do you rely on for information? molly: i know many sex workers personally. and other things like the felicia mcginest thing comes off of the police report. that is what the prosecutors accused her of doing. brian: when you were younger your wikipedia site suggests that you describe yourself as gothy, dorky and dated.

wide -- hated. why do they describe yourself as gothy? molly: i wore all black and studied french. brian: what is the black part? explain what it is. molly: i am explaining what goth is on c-span? brian: that is what you are doing. [laughter] brian: why do people go there? molly: i think being a smart kid who is into literature and feeling alienated terribly sophisticated and romantic at that age. that is what i would say. brian: what was your favorite subject work that you did in high school. molly: i loved literature and art and i did not study french but i taught myself french. brian: you describe yourself as dorky. molly: i love books. brian: is that what it dork is?

molly: somebody with passionate intellectual interest and not as much interest in socializing. brian: does that bother you? molly: i am describing myself. brian: hated? molly: molly: i was an outcast when i was 12 years old. brian: why? what made you an outcast? molly: i was a grove address funny and was obsessed with. -- a grove address funny and was obsessed with books? -- to that address funny and was obsessed with books. brian: do you still do that? what do your mother and father? molly: they are proud. brian: brian: are you an only chil -- brian: are you an only child? molly: i am. brian: what effective that have?

-- affect did not have? -- effect did that have? molly: it is hard to say. brian: explained to me what molly crabapple's weekend how was. molly: i was sick of the work that i have done and i wanted to do something that i grew so intensely that i got all of my cliches out of my system. so i locked myself in a hotel suite and covered all of the walls with paper and i drew all over them for seven days. and i drew and i drew and i drew until i got to the very reservoirs of anything i thought i could do and ran out of them and came across something new. molly: -- brian: did you have to ask permission to put the paper on the wall? molly: we should have but we did not. brian: what was the hotel? molly: gramercy park. brian: you just checked in and

got a room? molly: yes. brian: let's left the beginning of this so people will have a better idea of what we are talking about. ♪ brian: so. molly: yes? brian: all around the room. molly: every spirit. -- square inch.

brian: did you keep it? molly: we cut it up and sold it. a little piece was $20 and a whole wall was $1000. it depends on how much people got, we sold by the inch. we sold it on a website called kickstarter. brian: what were the things you drew? molly: all sorts of things. dorothy parker and the algonquin roundtable as a scuba divers, i drew my friends all over the wall. i drew a medieval green man. i drew reversed mermaids. i drew an angler fish with a cupcake. i drew every surreal fantasy that came out of my head. brian: how many hours a day did you do it? molly: all of the hours. around the clock, pretty much. brian: seven days. molly: it was five days, like a business we can help.

-- week in how. -- hell. brian: did you like it? molly: i love it. brian: would you do it again? molly: no. brian: what was the result? molly: i was exhausted but within a month of that i started doing a different sort of work. more around politics. that is when occupy wall street happened. i think it served its purpose of clearing any cliche in my head. brian: you say that occupy wall street is when you started being clinical? molly: no, that is when i started a large my work to be political. brian: explain the difference. molly: someone might be political by donating to candidates or marching in protests. where you are expressing it as a private person, basically. but somebody's work might be political if they are writing books about politics or doing artwork to support political movements. so before this i was political as an anonymous participant. i would donate money or raise

money or margin protests. or vote for people at -- march in protests. or vote for people i believed in. after occupy that was the first time i felt i could allow it in my work as well. brian: what did you do as a result of that? what did you do that was political? molly: one of the first things i did is that i got frustrated by the media portrayal because i live down the block from the park so i was seeing it every day and i was in construction workers and veterans and grandmas and union guys. but then when i saw them on tv they would just find one dumb hippie was tie-dyed leggings beating on a drum. why are you focusing on that guy? he is so untypical and had almost nothing to do what is going on. it is to trivialize it. the first thing i did was to do

portraits of people that i saw there. brian: what is the result of occupy wall street? was it worth it? molly: it is a hard thing to say, right. we live in a society with such a short time frame on things. we think, this has been going on for three weeks in the world has not changed. what was the point? might look at other struggles, the civil rights movement and how long between one events and another and you think that we have lost our patients. i think that in some ways obviously occupied was a disappointment and in some ways it failed. we made a lot of tactical errors, dear god. drum circles are terrible and everybody hates them. but i also think that occupy radicalized and politicized degeneration so i do think it was important. -- a generation so i do think it was important. brian: back to fusion tv. when you first heard about first, what was your reaction?

molly: i had a lot of admiration for the people in the streets that were having the visuals for mike brown even though the police -- visuals for my ground -- vigils for mike brown even though the police brought dogs against them. brian: what was your reaction when the police did not indict them? molly: the state does not want to indict and the police unions are powerful. the police work hand-in-hand with prosecutors. i was not surprised. police are now not getting indicted because there are militant protests. brian: separatist works? molly: protest -- so protest works? molly: protest works. brian: this is artwork from ferguson. molly: tonight art symbolizes protest. amnesty international send

observers. protesters risk violence. one local women gave out water all day. that night the police minister -- maced her. the death is all too common. the policeman around 400 justifiable homicides a year. that -- commit 400 justifiable homicides a year. that is three people killed every single day. brian: how do you do, we are going back and forth between politics and art, but how do you do that when you have a piece of art on your board and you black in it in? molly: i pour black paint on that.

i am destroying my artwork. brian: that is not saved? molly: no. brian: do you know when you're getting through to a public? molly: that is a really good and hard question. i mean generally the people that write me or the confrontations around. -- are the confrontations around it. when i do it i am not thinking i must get through to this public. i am not somebody that does seo enhancement, i am an artist. i know that things have gotten through to me when people write me. also what is meaningful is when people were involved in what i am writing about right about me or write to me. or if i am doing a piece about abu dobby, -- abu dabbai, is pakistani migrant workers right to me. -- if pakistani migrant workers wirite to me.

brian: what impact is the internet having and changing the world? molly: one thing it does is that it makes things that would have been ignored previously difficult to ignore. ferguson is the prime example of that. the media was not particularly interested in ferguson until it started going up on social media and that is what groovy media to cover it -- drew the media to cover it. second have a distorting effect. -- that can have a distorting effect. it creates the potential for things that are not funded or do not have a mass platform to get equal attention and that is important. brian: with all of the things that you do, you speak to groups , you do your artwork, you do your writing for "first," you do television -- "vice" you do

television. when did you notice people paying attention? did it ever change? molly: a big change -- i think the time that i started -- i have been in the media for a very long time but i think that the time my career started to feel the most meaningful to me was after i went to guantanamo bay and had an art show called shell game that was the first time i had done these big, ambitious paintings, six feet tall, hyper detailed. a show that drew attention from all over the world where a lot of the participants came and were involved in it. it got a lot of media attention. brian: when did you see your prices going up? molly: right around then. brian: as the renegade jump? -- has there been a big jump? molly: yes. brian: buying a molly crabapple

is more valuable today than 10 years ago? molly: maybe. brian: what do you mean maybe? are you worried that if you make money it will change your life and what you are interested in? molly: i do not think it is about making the money, i think it is about what comes with money. one thing is that i am not an employee of anywhere and i have no desire for being an employee. despite some fancy sounding titles that do not bear power, i work with myself and that is the truth. i am ultimately beholden to me. and i think as long as you can maintain that, that is what is important. as long as you have the ability to tell people to fuck off. am i allowed to say that on c-span? brian: you just did. back to the things that you have written.

"never trust some silicon valley d-bag who is flush with investor money but telling creators to post on their platform for free or for crumbs of cash." molly: something you see a lot now where there are people that have websites that obviously the point is to get them invested in and sold fast but to do that you need the user base. they will try to attract a user base, a community of artists to get them to post on it and do a lot of work for free. it is not just the posting. you tweak and it takes 30 seconds and that is one thing but if you are writing a oil article that is a different -- we and it takes -- tweet and it takes 30 seconds and that is one thing but if you are writing a whole article that is a different thing. they often say, we are scrappy.

brian: your number 10 is "be a mercenary towards people with money. be merciful and generous to people without it." is that just obvious? molly: don't you think? if you are talking about raising money for some rokita' -- broke kid's bail fund, it is the right thing to do. if you are talking about whether an heiress wants you to draw frescoes that is a different thing, obviously. brian: working for free is only worth it, this is number 11, if it is a fellow artist or grassroots organization you believe in and only if they treat you respectfully. and you get creative control. molly: very often, because society does not value what

artists do, all sorts of people tell you to work for free. fortune 500 companies want me to work for free for them. while i work for free all of the time, more than most artists, i do not believe in doing it for somebody that is already rich. it is their job to hire people. i do it for people who might need my help, where my thing might have impact on their lives or raise money for them. might bring attention to them. i say that it is important to do it where there is creative control so you are not doing endless revisions. nothing more soul killing than that. brian: your memoir, what are you, 31? early for a memoir. molly: look at how much time we just felt. brian: what is the book about? molly: coming of age as an artist in new york city and working as an illustrator for nightclubs in the manhattan demimonde and being an artist that does work around conflict zones and prisons.

brian: when is it coming out? molly: in the summer. -- december. brian: how big is it? molly: 100,000 words of prose and illustrations. a big book. brian: we have one more video, this one is called "broken windows policing to molly: -- policing." molly: this is the theory that minor signs of disorder create major crime. the classic theory is that if a window is a broken in a manner of will start smoking crack and murdering people. -- his left broken in a matter of time people will start smoking crack and murdering people. what broken windows is really about is arresting poor, usually black and latino people were incredibly minor things like hanging out -- for incredibly

minor things like hanging out on a stoop. brian: let's watch it. molly: scientists introduce the theory in 1992 in an article. according to them, if a neighborhood had a broken window, residents will break other windows and crime will soar because nobody pushed back against the first signs of "disorder." eight years later william bratton became police commissioner of new york city and began to apply the policy. he applied a zero tolerance policy for crimes like turnstile jumping and jaywalking. under his leadership a new yorker could be arrested for selling art on the street. the idea is that they would find people with outstanding warrants. let's be clear. broken window policing does not mean that the police will fix up or neighborhoods. it means they will arrest.

for people to focus is on crimes by the powerless and is about controlling communities -- arrest poor people. the focus is on crimes by the powerless and it is about controlling communities. being questioned is intrusive and demeaning. brian: what should the police to? -- do? molly: first of all i think the police should stop giving quarters. in the -- getting photos. -- getting quotas. secondly, i think that things should be decriminalized like standing and hanging out. there is no reason somebody should be robbing in a cage because they drank booze out of a bottle or put up some graffiti.

as a final thing i think it is impossible to look at broken windows outside of this paradigm where the police are just disproportionately targeting black and latino people. i am 100% sure that if the police went around wall street insert people they would find a lot of cocaine. i am sure that if they searched their computers they would find tax evasion but they do not and the reason is that wall street is full of powerful people. the reason they do something similar in a place like crown heights is that it is filled with black and latino people that are criminalized. brian: what is on the molly crabapple dream sheet? from here on out. what more do you want to accomplish? molly: i cannot think of things in advance like that. brian: so are you -- could you be any freer than you are now? to do what you want to do and say what you want to say? molly: i suppose if i have a

dream of what i was going to do i like going to conflict zones. i like drawing conflict zones. i like drawing big paintings. that is what you will see from me. and books. brian: his present obama invited you into the oval office and said you have two minutes to tell him what -- if president obama invited you into the oval office and said you have to minutes to go and what he should do, what would you tell him? molly: i am not the person you should be invited. brian: why not? molly: there are people that could give better advice. brian: what do you want changed? molly: the things that i want changed in two minutes are not things that could be fixed by appealing to somebody who is so tied into the power structure that is causing so many of these problems. brian: as you look at the future, are you optimistic? or do you even think about it?

molly: i think anyone that is trying to make projections in a world as influx of ours is eyeing a mug's game -- p laying a mug's game. brian: if somebody is watching that wants to be an artist, can you print for it? molly: you either have or do not have love of our because we are all horrible at the start. i look at my work from 10 years ago when i think, how did anybody hire me? what i had was that stubbornness and i knew that this is what i was going to do. i would do this or i would die. i did it and i put in the work that you need to become good. work to the limits of your ability, work with discipline and rigor and passion. if you do not want to do the work you will not be the artist.

it is about wanting. brian: if somebody wants to see your work now, where can they see it? what our gallery in new york? molly: in tribeca. brian: if they want to see it online? molly: molycrabapple.com. brian: your book? molly: harpercollins. brian: you work for fusion and "vice." anyone else? molly: i have done a few visas for "vanity fair." also some recent me photos of what life is like under a barrel bombing and i hope to do justice to that. -- somebody sent me photos of what life is like under a barrel bombing and i hope to do justice to that. brian: thank you for spending a half h -- an hour.

molly: thank you so much. ♪ >> for free transcripts or to give us comments visit us at q &a.org. programs are also available as podcasts. >> if you enjoy this week's "q&a " interview with molly crabapple here are other programs you might like. documentary film producer alex talking about his profile of jack abramoff. johnetta cole, director of business on the 50th anniversary. and director aaron wolf.