Speaker 1: Push it. I'm Khalil Gibran Muhammad. I'm Ben Austin. We're
Speaker 1: two best friends, one black, one white. I'm a historian
Speaker 1: and I'm a journalist, and this is some of my
Speaker 1: best friends are. Before we get started, I just want
Speaker 1: to let you know this episode has some strong language,
Speaker 1: just a fair warning, but stick around. I am so
Speaker 1: excited to have Danielle Sarah, a really wonderful human being
Speaker 1: been and someone who you know I've talked to you
Speaker 1: about because because you know her work, but you don't
Speaker 1: know her no, no, right, I mean I've been reading
Speaker 1: all about restorative justice and her organization, Common Justice, But
Speaker 1: but you work with her personally, right, Yeah, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: know each other from my work at the Very Institute.
Speaker 1: And I gotta tell you I've had a dozen conversations
Speaker 1: with Danielle. I've broken bread with her. I know her
Speaker 1: really well. And she's going to talk about restorative justice
Speaker 1: in the context of her nonprofit work, Common Justice. So
Speaker 1: let's break down a little bit what restorative justice is. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: in the broadest sense, it is a process whereby two
Speaker 1: people come together, a harmed party and the person who's
Speaker 1: done harm. So like what many people would say, like
Speaker 1: the victim of a crime and the person who did
Speaker 1: the crime, the victimizer that's right, the perpetrator of the
Speaker 1: fender or the kind of criminal justice terms, but Danielle
Speaker 1: refers to them as the responsible party. And restorative justice
Speaker 1: has been around from millennia and often associated with Indigenous
Speaker 1: communities as a way for people to be restored back
Speaker 1: to the community. Something has gone terribly wrong between two
Speaker 1: people and they come together and they talk it out,
Speaker 1: and usually there's some form of accountability. There's some form
Speaker 1: of the person who's done harm doing something to restore
Speaker 1: the relationship, hence restorative justice. But you're saying this idea
Speaker 1: of like bringing those two people together, that's right and
Speaker 1: having them figure out like what accountability is and how
Speaker 1: to heal the harm. That's not abnormal. That's like just human.
Speaker 1: It's not only human. But it's very old. We've gotten
Speaker 1: away from it, and I think for Common Justice, which
Speaker 1: has been around for about fifteen years. It is a
Speaker 1: Brooklyn based nonprofit. The practitioners work directly with the courts
Speaker 1: and even with the prosecutors. Where a young person in
Speaker 1: general who has committed an armed robbery or an assault
Speaker 1: or some other horrible, violent thing gets brought before the court,
Speaker 1: and there's an option in that case, based on the
Speaker 1: victim's perspective or the harmed party, to say whether or
Speaker 1: not that person should get restorative justice. What's so amazing
Speaker 1: about this is that we are talking about people who
Speaker 1: did violent crimes. Yes, and often when we think of
Speaker 1: like the violent offender, those are the people that we
Speaker 1: don't want to deal with it all. That's right. What
Speaker 1: Danielle Sarah is doing is actually dealing with people who
Speaker 1: are involved in violence, who committed violent crimes, who are
Speaker 1: victims of violent crimes, and figuring even those people who
Speaker 1: have been dismissed by all the sort of criminal justice
Speaker 1: reforms that they could, there's an alternative to prison. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure everyone knows what you mean by
Speaker 1: dismissed by criminal justice reform. Say a little bit more
Speaker 1: about that, I mean, yeah, so like the idea that
Speaker 1: most of our reforms for the past dozen years have
Speaker 1: been about non violent and mostly non violent drug offenders,
Speaker 1: Like that's where we've sort of thought of mercy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's why Danielle is so important, because she is
Speaker 1: providing the actual evidence and the roadmap to doing alternatives
Speaker 1: to violence, meaning that this isn't alternatives to drug offenses,
Speaker 1: this is alternatives to violence. We should not simply be
Speaker 1: locking people away for violence because we haven't given the
Speaker 1: harmed parties what they want. The harmed party wants accountability. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's she said, It's not because of mercy. It's because
Speaker 1: the people who were harmed, they want to be restored.
Speaker 1: This is for them. Yeah, So let's get to Danielle.
Speaker 1: I am so excited to have Danielle Sarah a really
Speaker 1: wonderful human being. Some of my best friends are just
Speaker 1: really delighted to be able to have an important conversation
Speaker 1: with you today. Welcome to the show. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having me. Awesome and Danielle Khalil and I
Speaker 1: were just talking about how back in October, how President
Speaker 1: Biden had pardoned all of these people in the federal
Speaker 1: system who were convicted of simple marijuana possession or thousands
Speaker 1: of people who are convicted for marijuana possession who may
Speaker 1: be denied employment, housing, or educational opportunities to the result
Speaker 1: of that conviction. My pardon will remove this burden on them.
Speaker 1: And I might say, all these people we meet a
Speaker 1: few thousand and you know, what we were talking about
Speaker 1: is like, you know, maybe since two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: we've been taking these sort of first steps on criminal
Speaker 1: justice reform and really just sort of like first steps.
Speaker 1: And you know what Biden did is again non violent
Speaker 1: drug offenses of seeing some kind of leniency. And the
Speaker 1: flip side of that is that we're not really changing
Speaker 1: how we think about violence of people who both committed
Speaker 1: violent acts and people who suffered from them. And that's
Speaker 1: where your work comes in, and that's what we want
Speaker 1: to start maybe talking about to really change the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system. That's what we have to do, right, We
Speaker 1: have to dig into these issues of violence. I think
Speaker 1: you're exactly right, And just from a numerical perspective, more
Speaker 1: than half of people locked up in the United States
Speaker 1: are locked up for crimes of violence, right, And so
Speaker 1: if we want to see a transformative reduction in the
Speaker 1: number of people locked up, we have to take on
Speaker 1: crimes of violence. The math doesn't work out otherwise, and
Speaker 1: so be even clearer, even a transformative reduction of fifty
Speaker 1: percent doesn't bump us out of our spot as the
Speaker 1: nation that is incarcerated more of our own people than
Speaker 1: any other in all of human history, right, So it's
Speaker 1: a good aspiration to get at least that far, and
Speaker 1: we will not get farther without dealing with violence. And
Speaker 1: while I celebrate any shrinkage of the criminal legal system,
Speaker 1: like I believe every single day of every single person
Speaker 1: freedom is a sacred thing. Right, so that means one
Speaker 1: person getting free a day earlier is a sacred thing.
Speaker 1: At the same time, I know that even trees that
Speaker 1: are trimmed at the edges continue to grow, right, Like,
Speaker 1: the question is what's happening at the root. And I
Speaker 1: believe the root of the criminal legal system in this country,
Speaker 1: the place that where it continues to get its nourishment
Speaker 1: is our relationship to violence, and that until we upend that,
Speaker 1: we'll keep doing the same thing in slightly altering form,
Speaker 1: but not much more than just trimming and pruning. You
Speaker 1: came on the show just throwing haymakers. You're just like
Speaker 1: you got it, you started it. You've brought up this
Speaker 1: question of violence, like I was just going to take
Speaker 1: that casually. Someone listening to you describe this might still
Speaker 1: have a hard time wrapping the head around like the
Speaker 1: actual experience is there. I mean, given the hundreds of
Speaker 1: cases that you've supervised with your team at Common Justice,
Speaker 1: and I've heard you tell stories. You're already one of
Speaker 1: my best friends, so I've heard some of these stories.
Speaker 1: I think people would really benefit from just hearing, you know,
Speaker 1: just a snippet of someone or communities life that have
Speaker 1: experienced what you're talking about. So you know, I only
Speaker 1: tell stories I've permission to tell, and so this is
Speaker 1: one of those, and it's one of our earlier cases.
Speaker 1: And the hard party in it was an immigrant to
Speaker 1: this country. He was working for cash and a kitchen
Speaker 1: and midtown Manhattan. He was on his way home from work,
Speaker 1: and on his way from the train to his house,
Speaker 1: he was robbed and really brutally assaulted, and he experienced
Speaker 1: really standard post traumatics trust symptoms, right, so, he experienced
Speaker 1: hyper vigilance, or has he put it, he was whenever
Speaker 1: anyone walked up behind him, even quote unquote a little
Speaker 1: old lady like, his mind would race, and his heart
Speaker 1: would race, and stomach would just fear, just act physical
Speaker 1: fear and trauma. And because of that, he was withdrawing
Speaker 1: from many things in his life. He withdrew from his
Speaker 1: ESL classes, he wouldn't go out anywhere with his partner.
Speaker 1: You know, he was exercising all this different kind of
Speaker 1: care to try and avoid those circumstances where he felt
Speaker 1: so afraid and so activated, and so his life, all
Speaker 1: these good things in his life get lost to that experience. Right, So,
Speaker 1: just so we're clear, the perpetrator, I'm sorry that the
Speaker 1: responsible party. See I'm learning the responsible party is actually apprehended,
Speaker 1: arrested process, arrested charged, is facing a significant prison sentence.
Speaker 1: And is this person sitting in jail? And how old?
Speaker 1: How old are these people? Roughly the sponsible parties twenty
Speaker 1: the harm parties twenty four. I would say, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: and he consents to him being in the program. We
Speaker 1: go through that preparation and we get to the circle process,
Speaker 1: and we're going through it and through it, and part
Speaker 1: way through, the responsible party says, every man and my
Speaker 1: family older than me has served at least a decade
Speaker 1: in prison. And he said that, you know, my older
Speaker 1: brother served eleven years, and every one of those eleven
Speaker 1: years he won the prison Boxing League championship. And my
Speaker 1: brothers the one who taught me how to fight. And
Speaker 1: that night on the street, I showed you the wrong
Speaker 1: end of it. But he's also the one who taught
Speaker 1: me to defend myself. And if you wanted, I would
Speaker 1: teach you that too. And one important thing about a
Speaker 1: circle process is if you don't have the talking stick,
Speaker 1: you can't talk. So I can't be like, um, may
Speaker 1: I please consult my general counsel before we agree, right,
Speaker 1: it's the vision of risk moves before my hours, right,
Speaker 1: But I don't have a six, so I just shut up,
Speaker 1: like and it goes to the harm party, he says,
Speaker 1: I would love that. And so after some time we
Speaker 1: set up a training time at a local dojo with
Speaker 1: a marshal arts instructor present to watch over it. Because
Speaker 1: to be really great at something, you have to know
Speaker 1: what you don't know, and we do not know that.
Speaker 1: And in that process, the responsible party teaches the harm
Speaker 1: party how specifically, how to free himself from certain constraints, right,
Speaker 1: And he starts modeling by modeling. This responsible person, right,
Speaker 1: the one who did it, is standing as though he's
Speaker 1: being restrained, and he's coaching the harm party through the
Speaker 1: process of how to break free of that as he
Speaker 1: models it. So, just to be clear, because I'm looking
Speaker 1: at you, right, we're having this conversation, but I can
Speaker 1: actually see you talking, and you're literally saying the person
Speaker 1: who gave this twenty four year immortal fear after having
Speaker 1: been assaulted and robbed. The responsible party has the victim
Speaker 1: in a bear hug, teaching him about to teach him
Speaker 1: how to get the harm party has the responsible party
Speaker 1: in a bear hug to put it nicely, right, like okay,
Speaker 1: And so the harm party is the one doing the
Speaker 1: constraining first, right, while the responsible party is demonstrating how
Speaker 1: to release from that. And then they switch and this
Speaker 1: survivor is being held in the same position by the
Speaker 1: same person whose actions are the cause of all that pain,
Speaker 1: only this time he's coaching him and how to get
Speaker 1: out right, and he's like, okay, a little left, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the spot right, you know, like over and over
Speaker 1: and the first he's holding him pretty lightly, but as
Speaker 1: the harm party starts to learn it, he's holding him
Speaker 1: more and more strongly, until he's holding him with all
Speaker 1: his strength as he did that day, and over and
Speaker 1: over the harm party is breaking free man. So he
Speaker 1: closed the session. After that, we go home. The next day,
Speaker 1: the harm party, the survivor calls me on my cell phone,
Speaker 1: which is sort of widely understood to be for emergencies.
Speaker 1: And he called me and I said hello, and he said, hidan, yelle,
Speaker 1: I'm just calling to tell you nothing happened, which didn't
Speaker 1: immediately sound like an emergence. And see, but I asked him,
Speaker 1: can you say more? It can be a very useful question.
Speaker 1: And I said can you say more? And he said,
Speaker 1: I just walked by a six foot four man and
Speaker 1: nothing happened, right, meaning his mind didn't raise, his heart
Speaker 1: didn't raise, his stomach didn't turn, and he had about
Speaker 1: half an hour before he went to work, so he
Speaker 1: went to Times Square so he could be around as
Speaker 1: many people as possible. Actually contend that this is the
Speaker 1: only truly positive story about Times Square trone. So see
Speaker 1: if you can find another. I don't think you can't.
Speaker 1: And he's there on the phone with me and he's
Speaker 1: you know, the crowd, and he's like, hold on, I
Speaker 1: see a tall one right and you hear him like
Speaker 1: crossing the street and he says nothing, nothing, but tell
Speaker 1: me he didn't deserve that. I don't know when we
Speaker 1: talk about all of the reason we talk about incapacitation
Speaker 1: and detance, like what in the whole moral fuck would
Speaker 1: give us the authority to say he did not deserve that,
Speaker 1: especially if simultaneous to him getting that healing, we could
Speaker 1: ensure and we have now insured more than a decade
Speaker 1: out from that case that that young man never committed
Speaker 1: another act of violence. It's a decade later and the
Speaker 1: responsible party has not committed another act of violence. Wow.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, if we as a people, right, if
Speaker 1: we know a way that we can keep community safe
Speaker 1: and heal the pain of survivors, Like, what is the
Speaker 1: moral basis for our going up to survivors and tell
Speaker 1: them we have made a decision to deny you this
Speaker 1: opportunity because of this age old, largely disproven theory called deterrence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. I'm hearing that story and I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: having trouble catching my breath. I'm so moved by it,
Speaker 1: and I guess I want to hear, which is what
Speaker 1: a cynic would say, that that's not a story of
Speaker 1: just two incredibly exceptional individuals, like you know the movie,
Speaker 1: Like I want to hear that this is Like yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'll say two things about it. Like one is,
Speaker 1: there are fifty stories like that, right, and they're not all.
Speaker 1: This one's a little more dramatic, but there are fifty
Speaker 1: stories where the thing somebody wanted they could only get
Speaker 1: from the person who hurt them, including when what they
Speaker 1: wanted was answers, like as survivors, we want to know
Speaker 1: why me? Was it a real gun? Was it something
Speaker 1: I said? What would you have done if I fought back?
Speaker 1: If I didn't fight back? Did you know what I
Speaker 1: was going to use that money for? And the impact
Speaker 1: it had when you took it right? There are things
Speaker 1: that we can only get from the person who hurt us. Wow,
Speaker 1: this is so interesting. We're going to hear more from Danielle.
Speaker 1: After the break, we're back with Danielle Sarah of Common Justice.
Speaker 1: We are hearing from you, Danie, these amazing stories of
Speaker 1: what's happened when people have a chance to come together
Speaker 1: to talk about these terrible incidents of violence. So there
Speaker 1: are countless stories. There are people who wanted to meet
Speaker 1: each other's children after the circle. There are people who
Speaker 1: stayed in correspondence, people who worked out together, people who
Speaker 1: met at the spot of the incident every day at
Speaker 1: the time that happened and shook hands just to overwrite
Speaker 1: that person's experience of that place with something positive. Right,
Speaker 1: So there are countless things like that really powerful. And
Speaker 1: there are these other stories where the agreements are fairly average,
Speaker 1: where they aren't like brothers to each other in the end,
Speaker 1: where they don't embrace, and where they heal, and where
Speaker 1: neither of them hurt anyone ever again, And I actually
Speaker 1: believe those are just as beautiful, Like restorative justice isn't
Speaker 1: actually like a matchmaking service, like like our aspirations, isn't
Speaker 1: like how many brother like friendships have reformed, right, And
Speaker 1: sometimes I struggle telling these stories because there's too beautiful
Speaker 1: and we're so used to these. These are the stories
Speaker 1: we tell, right. We either tell of someone who wants
Speaker 1: the death penalty or someone who forgave the person who
Speaker 1: kills her child, and now that person has Thanksgiving at
Speaker 1: her house, and like most of us aren't that person.
Speaker 1: But I think about like one of our harm parties,
Speaker 1: who in that outreach conversation elected to have the person
Speaker 1: take part in common justice, like the way he described
Speaker 1: it as he said, fuck him, but fuck jail. I've
Speaker 1: thought about writing an essay where that's the whole content
Speaker 1: of the essay, and then it's like eighty pages of
Speaker 1: footnotes that support the legitimacy of both those claims. But
Speaker 1: actually it's incredible. Like, as a survivor myself, I have
Speaker 1: worked arduous decades to not think often about the person
Speaker 1: who hurt me, right, And so for someone to be
Speaker 1: like I don't really think about it much is extraordinary, right.
Speaker 1: And not because they've oppressed it, not because they've numbed it,
Speaker 1: but because it no longer constrains and shapes. They are
Speaker 1: daily choices from when they wake up in the morning
Speaker 1: to when they go to sleep, and whatever comes to
Speaker 1: them in those dreams is night. Yeah. Part of the
Speaker 1: choice that survivors are making is not just what you've
Speaker 1: described so beautifully and compellingly, but it is also the
Speaker 1: practical reality that people come back home. That's right. Like
Speaker 1: one of the first cases we had that this young
Speaker 1: man robbed and assaulted a fourteen year old boy, and
Speaker 1: so his mom was the one who got to consent
Speaker 1: because he was underage, right, And at that point in
Speaker 1: the process, the person who did it was facing three
Speaker 1: years in prison that had been negotiated down from much
Speaker 1: higher offer at the beginning. And when I reached out
Speaker 1: to her to see what she wanted to have happened.
Speaker 1: She said, you know, when this young man, she did
Speaker 1: not call him a young man. I will not use
Speaker 1: the words she used when this young man first hurt
Speaker 1: my child. First I wanted him to drowned to death,
Speaker 1: and then I wanted him to burn to death. But
Speaker 1: then I realized, as a mother, I don't want either
Speaker 1: of those things. I want him to drown in a
Speaker 1: river of fire, so I don't have to choose. And
Speaker 1: then she said, but three years from now, my nine
Speaker 1: year old child is going to be twelve, and he's
Speaker 1: going to be coming to and from school and tow
Speaker 1: and from his aunt's house and tune from the corner
Speaker 1: store alone, and one of those days he's going to
Speaker 1: walk by this young man, and I have to ask
Speaker 1: myself on that day, do I want that man to
Speaker 1: have been upstate? Or do I want him to have
Speaker 1: been with y'all. And so what she's doing is exactly
Speaker 1: what you describe Khalio, right. She is prioritizing her son's
Speaker 1: safety and the safety of kids like him over her
Speaker 1: emotional desire for revenge. Now, like as a mother myself,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I could do that, and I
Speaker 1: don't know that I actually should have to. I don't
Speaker 1: know that it's a parent's responsibility to be able to
Speaker 1: make such a practical choice, But I do believe it's
Speaker 1: the criminal legal system's responsibility. I don't believe a system
Speaker 1: has the right to choose some conceptual feeling of revenge
Speaker 1: over all the practical evidence of what actually produces safety.
Speaker 1: That's right. I've heard you as a friend, as a colleague,
Speaker 1: as a public scholar around these issues and educating the
Speaker 1: public around this. I've heard you lean into the reality
Speaker 1: that violence is everywhere, and Yelle, I want you to
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong, Like, how many times have
Speaker 1: you heard someone say we never talk about the violence
Speaker 1: in the community, And I'm like, you haven't been listening
Speaker 1: to people like Danielle or once for myself. You know, here,
Speaker 1: I am at the Schaumberg Center working late one night
Speaker 1: and Al Sharpton has a bullhorn outside my office window
Speaker 1: talking about stop the violence, and it is literally engaging
Speaker 1: in a public rally around this issue. What's the expression
Speaker 1: when you say you are in the business of ending violence? Right?
Speaker 1: That's right? Well, and I think you're right, and I
Speaker 1: think people who live in communities or families where violence
Speaker 1: is common are talking about it one way or another
Speaker 1: all the time, like all of us want to be safe.
Speaker 1: We want our children to be safe, we want our
Speaker 1: loved ones to be safe. When that isn't present for us,
Speaker 1: there is not a day we're not considering what we
Speaker 1: could possibly do to secure that safety for the people
Speaker 1: we care about. And I think at the same time,
Speaker 1: part of what happens is that people in communities racked
Speaker 1: by violence, they consider what would keep me safe, and
Speaker 1: their answers are things like, we need early childhood education,
Speaker 1: we need decent schools, we need clean water, we need
Speaker 1: mental health care, we need hospitals, we need educators to
Speaker 1: be paid a living wage, we need to be paid
Speaker 1: a living wage, and all the service industries we work in.
Speaker 1: And when people say all of that, they are talking
Speaker 1: about violence, right it doesn't register in the public discourses
Speaker 1: that because we refuse to think about violence as something
Speaker 1: that's produced systemic factors. And on top of that, people
Speaker 1: are also talking about violence in the narrowest sense, and
Speaker 1: very often they are solving it fully apart from the
Speaker 1: criminal legal system. Fewer than half of victims called the
Speaker 1: police in the first place. Fewer than half the people
Speaker 1: who are the victims of violent crimes they don't even
Speaker 1: go to the police. That is straight from the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice. From the Department of Justice's own statistics. When
Speaker 1: I was in school, fifty percent was in half, Right,
Speaker 1: that's the starting point. Yeah, another half of those drop
Speaker 1: off before a grand jury or the first evidentiary hearing
Speaker 1: in whatever jurisdictions. One statistic use site a lot is
Speaker 1: it's seventy five percent of people don't call the police
Speaker 1: to report when a crime happens to them. Is that
Speaker 1: because they actually don't believe the system can deliver what
Speaker 1: they want. Yes, survivors, And I say this as a
Speaker 1: survivor myself. I've survived rape, I've survived assault, I've lost
Speaker 1: loved ones to murder. I've loved many people who've gone
Speaker 1: through this kind of pain. Right, so this is not
Speaker 1: theoretical for me. And we are of course deeply emotional,
Speaker 1: like we feel at the best way I even described it.
Speaker 1: We feel lost, like so profound we'd like ring out
Speaker 1: our bones to be free of it from the marrow there.
Speaker 1: And we feel fear so all consuming that at night,
Speaker 1: in the safety of our beds, and the arms of
Speaker 1: the people we trust most. We can't fall asleep, and
Speaker 1: when exhaustion finally takes us, we wake from it with nightmares.
Speaker 1: We feel rage so all consuming it makes us unrecognizable
Speaker 1: even to ourselves. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: we're pragmatic, and there's two things we can't stand. We
Speaker 1: can't stand the idea of going through it again, and
Speaker 1: we can't stand the idea of someone else going through it.
Speaker 1: Those things are intolerable to us as survivors, and so
Speaker 1: if we're presented with options, we will always choose the
Speaker 1: option that's can prevent those things we don't stand. So
Speaker 1: seventy five percent of victims opt out of that system entirely.
Speaker 1: They're like, the police will not believe me, and they
Speaker 1: will not be able to protect me from that violence.
Speaker 1: And I know that because I've seen a thousand times
Speaker 1: their failure to do that. Seventy five don't call that
Speaker 1: remainder or the group of people we reach out to
Speaker 1: a common justice. And even of those people who elected
Speaker 1: to participate in the criminal legal system, nine percent of
Speaker 1: them say yes to us. It's not mercy. It's not
Speaker 1: because they want to shrink the footprint of mass incarceration.
Speaker 1: It's because they want to survive. Wow, we're going to
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk to Danielle about her own personal journey
Speaker 1: into this work. Welcome back to some of my best
Speaker 1: friends are and so, Danielle, you and I have talked
Speaker 1: about how this works very personal to you as well
Speaker 1: as obviously very political. But your own experience as a
Speaker 1: victim of violence is something that I asked you, was
Speaker 1: it okay for us to talk about on this show,
Speaker 1: because I think it's an important way for listeners to
Speaker 1: understand how you yourself, even as a young adult, committed
Speaker 1: grand theft auto. That's right. I also committed some violence
Speaker 1: that I didn't get caught for, which is also typical.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was an adolescent. I was an adolescent
Speaker 1: who had experienced traumatic things, and so I was both
Speaker 1: foolish and dealing with the reverberations of trauma and so
Speaker 1: and in the most extreme version, you know, I was
Speaker 1: brought up on multiple serious charges in the criminal legal
Speaker 1: system in Chicago, and I and how old were you
Speaker 1: at the time, fifteen? And I was given a slap
Speaker 1: on the wrist. It included community service cleaning fire trucks
Speaker 1: like it definitely didn't like heal my underlying trauma or
Speaker 1: shape my consequential decision making. And I don't have criminal record, right.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, the people, the young black
Speaker 1: people I knew in love, who are engaged in exactly
Speaker 1: the same behaviors as me, face very serious sentences, like
Speaker 1: some sentences that rolled up into their entire lives, right,
Speaker 1: And so I came to understand the racism of the
Speaker 1: criminal legal system as someone who benefited from it, And
Speaker 1: so I understood that it was then it was my
Speaker 1: job to make that inequity my enemy and to find
Speaker 1: people who were fighting that inequity and to fight alongside
Speaker 1: them until we won or I died, whichever came first.
Speaker 1: So Danielle Khalil mentioned to me that you have a
Speaker 1: three year old son. That's great, congratulations. How do you
Speaker 1: talk to him about restorative justice. I'm really interested to
Speaker 1: know how you're raising him with these values. And so
Speaker 1: there are a few things, like one is that we've
Speaker 1: been doing the restorative justice steps in my house since
Speaker 1: he was like a year and a half, you know,
Speaker 1: and those steps are you acknowledge what you did acknowledge
Speaker 1: it's impact, express remorse, make things as right as possible,
Speaker 1: ideally in a way defined by those harmed, and commit
Speaker 1: to not doing it again. And so when he's tiny,
Speaker 1: it's like he throws a cheery up my head. I'm like,
Speaker 1: that made me sad because I asked you not to
Speaker 1: do that. He said, you're sad. I say yeah, he says,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I say, give me a kiss on my forehead.
Speaker 1: He kisses me. He said, I'll try not to do
Speaker 1: it again. Done right. It's an eight second process. I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the things I love about restorative justice is
Speaker 1: it's just fiercely proportionate, right. And so he does this
Speaker 1: all the time and is used to it. He has
Speaker 1: come to expect it from his three year old peers
Speaker 1: who are not all used to it. And then we also,
Speaker 1: you know, he talked to him about my work is
Speaker 1: getting people free, and what does that mean two or
Speaker 1: three year old? How are you explaining it with So
Speaker 1: for a while we talked about freedom as people being
Speaker 1: able to be with the people they loved, right, drawing
Speaker 1: again on Andrea James's wisdom that freedom is mostly about connection,
Speaker 1: not about getting to do stuff, and for a while
Speaker 1: for I would say, you know, six months or a
Speaker 1: year of him being able to talk about getting people
Speaker 1: free in some vague way. He never asked this question
Speaker 1: that he finally asked maybe a month ago, where he said, Mamma,
Speaker 1: where people when they're not free? Interesting? And I said,
Speaker 1: in jail? And we had had someone we know and
Speaker 1: love who was recently incarcerated, and he'd heard us talking
Speaker 1: about it. I think that's part of what brought this
Speaker 1: into focus for him. And he said, you know, did
Speaker 1: the police take him from his home? And I said yeah.
Speaker 1: And he said how do people get to jail? And
Speaker 1: I said usually they drive people there in a bus.
Speaker 1: And he said could he get off the bus and
Speaker 1: I said no. And he said his jail inside or outside?
Speaker 1: And I said it's inside, babe. It's like a lot
Speaker 1: of rooms and people are in that either by themselves
Speaker 1: or with some other people. And they locked the doors.
Speaker 1: And he said do they lock the doors from the
Speaker 1: inside the outside? And I said from the outside And
Speaker 1: he said is there a window in that room? And
Speaker 1: I said sometimes there's a window and he said, well,
Speaker 1: if there's a window, even if he can't see, he
Speaker 1: could call out and say I love you, and they
Speaker 1: could yell I love you, popa wow. And you know, first,
Speaker 1: I'm like, there's something about his instinct to find like
Speaker 1: the place, the crack in the structure where love can
Speaker 1: get through. Right, He's like, it's not gonna be the bus,
Speaker 1: it's not the lock it. Oh no, He's like, the
Speaker 1: window is going to be the thing. Right, There's something
Speaker 1: in us I think as people. It's so literal, right,
Speaker 1: it's such it's such a crystal clear expression of like
Speaker 1: hope and light and connection as you describe. And none
Speaker 1: of what I described about prison is disputable. Like I
Speaker 1: didn't say, baby, it's the grandchild of slavery, it's white
Speaker 1: supremacy culture writ large. You know. I'm just like it
Speaker 1: was just it was just literal stuff. And to him
Speaker 1: it's horrifying because it's not been normalized yet, right, And
Speaker 1: just the logistics of it I think remind us of
Speaker 1: like who we've allowed ourselves to become. That anybody who
Speaker 1: is not raising their child to fight this has to
Speaker 1: raise their child to accept this, Like those are the
Speaker 1: choices and to become a people where mostly what we
Speaker 1: have to do is raise our children to accept this.
Speaker 1: I think is devastating for all of us. So, Danielle,
Speaker 1: I'm writing a book in a way about the parole system.
Speaker 1: It's called Correction, and it's about parole boards. It's about
Speaker 1: people who come up for parole, it's about people who
Speaker 1: got out on parole. And you know, I mean, in
Speaker 1: a way, it's an advertisement for restorative justice. You know,
Speaker 1: I've been going to these parole hearings, and I mean
Speaker 1: I see families who are victims who have been coming
Speaker 1: to parole hearings for forty years, and forty years of
Speaker 1: punishment have happened. Somebody has been in prison for fifty years,
Speaker 1: and they still feel as unsatisfied and hurt and traumatize
Speaker 1: as they did at the beginning, that the prison system
Speaker 1: has given them nothing. In writing my book, I looked
Speaker 1: at a ton of victim impact statements to for role boards.
Speaker 1: Right to your point, right, the number of them that say,
Speaker 1: I feel exactly the same way I did on that day,
Speaker 1: exactly the same way, and that is not how healed
Speaker 1: and healing people feel. And what they ask for is
Speaker 1: more punishment, because that's the only option that's an offer
Speaker 1: to them. As you put it, that's right, And imagine
Speaker 1: if you had been on the same meds for forty years,
Speaker 1: and your pain was unrelenting, undiminished, and you went to
Speaker 1: your doctor and they just wrote you a refill. Like
Speaker 1: eventually you would be like, this doctor is trash. These
Speaker 1: meds are trash, right, And I think shame on all
Speaker 1: of us for not having considered, in the face of
Speaker 1: what you're describing, this question of like, what we be
Speaker 1: doing instead for these people who have suffered such horrible harm.
Speaker 1: What should we be doing for them instead of this
Speaker 1: punishment of this person that is accruing as absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: to them in the end, as absolutely nothing of worth.
Speaker 1: And it's much easier to get stories to break through
Speaker 1: than to fully change everybody's minds. And so in part
Speaker 1: that makes me very hopeful about our chances to really
Speaker 1: up end this culturally. Danielle, you and I've talked about this,
Speaker 1: and I've talked to Ben separately. I mean, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm honored to be in this conversation with the two
Speaker 1: of you, who have spent a ton of time up
Speaker 1: close and personal with people. I mean, the kind of
Speaker 1: work I do is, you know, it's like book research,
Speaker 1: so I'm not as close to the actual lives that
Speaker 1: you all touch anyway. So my question is, like, I
Speaker 1: also know that each of you at times expresses deep
Speaker 1: pessimism or may be, to say, skepticism about what white
Speaker 1: Americans are capable of when it comes to achieving change
Speaker 1: at scale. And I've heard you, Danielle, talk about guilt
Speaker 1: and how it shows up in this mass incarceration crisis. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think we've seen extraordinary pushback to the built
Speaker 1: power of especially black and brown communities, resisting the permanence,
Speaker 1: dominance expansion of mass incarceration in America. Right, And I
Speaker 1: think we see a deep protection of a status quo
Speaker 1: that some white people will shift, Right, some white people
Speaker 1: will come to understand that if, even though it may
Speaker 1: not be in our material interest, it's in the interest
Speaker 1: of our humanity to live in a world that is
Speaker 1: more equitable, and we will choose that, right, We will
Speaker 1: choose those values over particular material game. Right. Like that
Speaker 1: will happen, and some will not, partly because white supremacy culture,
Speaker 1: like white culture is so retributive and so narrow and
Speaker 1: so transactional in so many ways that our own cultural
Speaker 1: framework doesn't allow for a pathway of repair. Right, we
Speaker 1: only know a pathway of punishment. The catch twenty two
Speaker 1: in it for me is that, as someone who does
Speaker 1: work on shame all the time, the only pathway I've
Speaker 1: ever found out of shame as accountability, the only one,
Speaker 1: you know, just like when we're on the receiving end
Speaker 1: of you know, when we lose somebody, we know there's
Speaker 1: a process, there's like a grieving process and stages of grief,
Speaker 1: and those things are are the things that restore us
Speaker 1: to our connection with one another, to our sense of
Speaker 1: self love, to our sense of dignity, right like we
Speaker 1: get through those We do those things through our grief work.
Speaker 1: And I really I think accountability is the corollary to
Speaker 1: grief for those of us who have caused harm. That
Speaker 1: it's in the process us of acknowledgement and repair that
Speaker 1: we regain our dignity, our connection, our self worth. I
Speaker 1: think white people are ashamed of what we have done,
Speaker 1: and we are terrified at the prospect of being ashamed
Speaker 1: of our own children, being ashamed of us, right, and
Speaker 1: that we do what ashamed people do, which is we
Speaker 1: commit violence. We do it interpersonally, we do it and
Speaker 1: as white people, because we have access to systems and
Speaker 1: structure as we do it systematically too, Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: do it by erasure. Yeah. For my part, I am
Speaker 1: definitely full of my pessimism. And I mean especially seeing
Speaker 1: these last couple of years. You know, first we have
Speaker 1: George Floyd and this promise, and then all of the
Speaker 1: retrenchment on crime, all the tough on crime stuff that
Speaker 1: has happened since. But listening to you, Danielle, the reason
Speaker 1: when you were talking about the doing restorative justice practices
Speaker 1: with your child, with your son, there's something so natural
Speaker 1: about that and so normal that as long as you
Speaker 1: don't think of another person as an abstraction, as some
Speaker 1: scary other like that, that that idea, even the analogy
Speaker 1: of how we hold our own children, our own families accountable,
Speaker 1: just makes so much sense. And I think about what
Speaker 1: you do and how how that idea could spread, And
Speaker 1: at least I'm hearing it sounds like, even in this
Speaker 1: moment of retrenchment and backlash, it sounds like you're expanding
Speaker 1: from Brooklyn to other boroughs. Correct, that's right, and we're
Speaker 1: starting to support more and more groups doing aligned things Nationally.
Speaker 1: I think the range of possibilities in this country is
Speaker 1: rapidly and vastly widening, like the best and worst are
Speaker 1: most as far apart as they've been in a historical
Speaker 1: moment that I know. But I'm with Khalil Muhammado's historians.
Speaker 1: I'm cautious about making too broad acclaim about the past
Speaker 1: in this person's presence. Well you have. You have totally
Speaker 1: inspired me and and anyone listening to this zation knows
Speaker 1: that that's not easily done in light of how I
Speaker 1: do think about the past and how sticky it is.
Speaker 1: But Danielle, just so happy that you are able to
Speaker 1: be with us today and to share your work, your vision,
Speaker 1: your experiences. Your little guy is going to be something
Speaker 1: special just like his mommy. And if we could just
Speaker 1: clone both of you, the world would be a better place.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for all of us, for all
Speaker 1: of your really incredible one. Thank you, Thank you, Danielle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this conversation just I think is so valuable. It reminds
Speaker 1: me why it's so important to be hopeful, because just
Speaker 1: reading the newspapers and listening to politicians isn't really the
Speaker 1: best way to know what's going on in this big, big,
Speaker 1: big country. And in light of what we talked about
Speaker 1: last season about our experiences in Europe and seeing how
Speaker 1: people are treated with dignity, how they treated as individuals
Speaker 1: in prisons in other countries. Yeah, that's right. The whole
Speaker 1: purpose of restoring them to humanity, even though that's happening
Speaker 1: inside of the bars. Kind of the point is that
Speaker 1: people have dignity at all times and it's inviolable, and
Speaker 1: so much of what Danielle sarahad is about is that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll just sort of even repeat what we sit at
Speaker 1: the beginning, is that, you know, the work that she's
Speaker 1: doing is talking about people who committed violent crimes and
Speaker 1: people who suffered from violent crimes, and that's where we
Speaker 1: as a country, we haven't worked in that space. We're
Speaker 1: not doing it enough. And we just had a long
Speaker 1: ass conversation about how you actually can. And then on
Speaker 1: both sides of that, people are better by coming together
Speaker 1: and not relying on prisons. Yeah, like literally, in the
Speaker 1: kind of language of economists, better outcomes on both sides
Speaker 1: of the equation. It's a total win win, and so
Speaker 1: beautifully she put it. I mean, you know, just like,
Speaker 1: don't people deserve that? Yeah, Thanky, she's not an economist. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: Khalil love you, love you too, man. All right, all right.
Speaker 1: Some of My Best Friends Are is a production of
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. The show is written and hosted by me Khalil,
Speaker 1: Gibron Muhammed, and my best friend Ben Austin. It's produced
Speaker 1: by John Asante and Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is Jasmine Morris,
Speaker 1: our engineer is Amanda ka Wang, and our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Mia LaBelle. At Pushkin thanks to Leita Mullad, Julia Barton,
Speaker 1: Heather Faine, Carly Migliori, John Schnars, Gretta Kone, and Jacob Weissberg.
Speaker 1: Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow chicagoan the
Speaker 1: Brilliant Avery R. Young, from his album Tubman. You definitely
Speaker 1: want to check out his music at his website Avery R.
Speaker 1: Young dot com. You can find Pushkin on all social
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Speaker 1: our newsletter at pushkin dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
Speaker 1: listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: like to listen. J Danielle, I didn't hear your response
Speaker 1: to the question I'm embarrassed, but is it Sarada. It's
Speaker 1: Sarah nobody knows, Sarah. It's never been the fight I've
Speaker 1: decided to pick because the things I want to get
Speaker 1: right in this country. Pronunciation my name never rose. In
Speaker 1: seventh grade, I learned I had to fight because my
Speaker 1: seventh grade yearbook listed me as Khalua Muhammad. Yes. No,
Speaker 1: not even close. And it's not because you had a
Speaker 1: reputation for like drinking kind of weird coffee type booze
Speaker 1: in class note in seventh grade