that sncc 's making. how state resources should be spent. also a massive prison construction project. the most ambitious prison construction program in world history. the soledad brothers case becomes a touchstone in a time of prisoner activism. the sold-out of brothers were three men, all of them first encounter the criminal justice people as young people. one of them was eight years old. different experiences in the juvenile system. and they find themselves in adult prisons by the time they are 18 to 20 years old. george jackson becomes the most famous. he was the oldest. he was 18 when he was in prison. he got into trouble before, fights and burglaries. in 1960 he and a friend tried to rob a gas station. $70. the judge looks at his rap sheet and sentences him to serve one year to life in prison. remember that indeterminate sentencing. you are a bad kid, this is why we need to correct you. this is before a lot of the hallmarks of the second reconstruction coming to pass. george jackson is experiencing watts from san quentin. he seeing the

that is what organizations like sncc weres and organizing around. then they can't respond to the larger challenges to the community. johnson, nixon, reagan, who for all played a part. most people are incarcerated at the state level. arefederal politicians important in setting priorities. and providing resources. it doesn't actually give us mass incarceration. it needs to be built state-by-state by state. i want to take us to california in particular. offer --ere, i want to before we get there, i want to offer a counterintuitive account of mass incarceration. the movements and activists of the second reconstruction were already intimately acquainted with what we might call mass incarceration. police and the prison system. they are already shaped by it. to bolster their demands. we think about the leading figures of the time. all of them had criminal records. especially in the south. for rosa parks, to take her heroic stand. she broke the law. true for all the southern activists. was beaten forr trying to register to vote. carmichael one of the leadin

sncc, the student nonviolent coordinating committee started advertising and getting people to volunteero come to mississippi to set up freedom schools. to help to register african-americans to vote and to help with other initiatives to really give confidence and a voice to african-americans in mississippi. so once the volunteers were brought together, they went to what is now miami university in ohio for training sessions. so this is where they were taught to self-defense. kind of drop and roll and get into a ball and do that. they were also given different documents and different kinds of materials. so for instance, each person was given a list of freedom songs. because you know so often in the , civil rights movement, you have all these "we shall overcome," or "this little light of mine." these are important songs. the volunteers were actually given copies of the lyrics so that they could participate in different sing-alongs. and you will see here from the summer of 1964, this is mississippi democratic freedom party meeting at one of the local churches, and you will see that they are

well, a month after the founding of sncc, this song was sung throughout the whole south.uiet way, it was taking confidence. you can kill me, you can beat me, but i know we shall overcome. (scott-mclaughlin) in the prisons, they would sing songs. when they we're being beaten by the dogs, they would sing songs. and you'd have to ask yourself what was this thing about, why were they singing these songs as they're being beaten? and the reason why they sang the songs was just like when the priest chanted gregorian chants or when a buddhist has a mantra. or when you say, "hail mary mother of god" in the catholic religion. it was a means of going inside of yourself to find the strength within to deal with the outside world. one of my mentors was bill kunseler. there was one scene he told me about when he was in birmingham where he was representing dr. martin luther king. and they had come from a demonstration or rally, and king had been told that there were men looking to kill him that night. and they drove up to a house, and bill and king were staying in the house together with

summer summer of 1964, the 12 weeks during the summer 64, volunteers starting in february of 1964, sncc, the student nonviolent coordinating committee started advertising and getting people to volunteer to come to mississippi around the country. to set up freedom schools. to help to register african-americans to vote and to help with other initiatives to really give confidence and a joint -- a voice to african-americans in mississippi. once the volunteers were brought together they went to what is now miami university in ohio for training sessions. this is where they were taught to self-defense. sort of drop and roll and get into a ball. they were also given different documents and different kinds of materials. for instance, each person was given a list of freedom songs. so often in the civil rights movement you have so much of this -- we shall overcome, this little light of mine, these are important songs. the volunteers were actually given copies of the lyrics so that they could participate in different sing-alongs. from thewill see mississippi democratic freedom party move meeting at