susan burton k's is an advocate powerful story is detailed in a new memoir called "becoming ms. burton" from prison to recovery. it is my honor to welcome susan burton back to this program. can i start by saying having met you a few years ago and had you on the program before, i am so honored and pleased and delighted to see that people are getting the work that you are been doing for some time. sometimes you labor in the vineyard and not that it matters because you are not doing it for the praise but it is nice when people finally catch up to what you have been doing and how well you have been doing it. how are you handling all of this michelle alexander, john legend, nicholas christophe love? >> it's wonderful. i don't do the work for recognition. i do it because it needs to be done. and somebody needs to do it so i picked up the banner to help women escape the criminal justice system. myself. i travelled in and out of prison for almost two decades and there was no help for me until october 4 of 1997. i found help in santa monica. october 4 etched in my brain. and i found that

just come home with me to susan burton now runs five safe homes for women in los angeles when they are released from prison. her organization is called the new way of life help finding jobs housing and helping to reunite women with their families and beyond that she is organizing formerly incarcerated people to demand the restoration of their basic civil and human rights. clearly, clearly susan has caught up to king but what about the rest of us? what i have to say on this point the popular. it is not the sunni chervil message that is expected on the day after we an odd. for the second time our nation's first black president. but i believe it to be the truth and it implicates me and it implicates everyone in this room , and the truth is this. we have allowed a human rights nightmare to occur on our watch. in the year since dr. king's death a fast new system of racial and social control has emerged from the ashes of slavery and jim crow, system of mass incarceration at that no doubt has dr. king turning in his grave today. the mass incarceration of poor people of color in the united sta