Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wika FA Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet Your Girl Danielle Moody recording not So Live from
Speaker 1: the Brooklyn Silarium. Folks. I'm really excited to bring you
Speaker 1: this conversation today with the innovation director of an organization
Speaker 1: called Impact Justice. Aisha to Yusuf is a person who
Speaker 1: has been working for the last several years of her career,
Speaker 1: but since the founding of Impact Justice in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: on reimagining what our criminal justice system should and can
Speaker 1: look like. In the conversation, we get into all of
Speaker 1: the ways in which you know, society has honestly been
Speaker 1: built to opt to dehumanize people. Right. There are systems
Speaker 1: right that are at play that force people into make
Speaker 1: unthinkable choices because they feel like they don't have any
Speaker 1: other choices to make. And what does it mean in
Speaker 1: a society that is supposed to be industrialized, that is
Speaker 1: supposed to house the land of the free and when
Speaker 1: we look at how we treat these folks that are incarcerated, right,
Speaker 1: I don't think that because you commit a crime that
Speaker 1: you should lose your humanity, but that's exactly what has
Speaker 1: been happening in our criminal justice system ever since its inception.
Speaker 1: You know, I've often said on woke af that the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system isn't broken. It's working exactly the way
Speaker 1: that it was intended to work. It is locking up
Speaker 1: black and brown people. Right. If you watched Ava Durbnay's
Speaker 1: thirteenth Amendment, you learned all about the ways in which
Speaker 1: this system was created to create another mechanism for forced labor. Right,
Speaker 1: Like we hear stories every summer that there are fires
Speaker 1: in California raging across the state. We learn about the
Speaker 1: fact that they are firefighters who are actually incarcerated, that
Speaker 1: aren't even being paid a dollar a day to literally
Speaker 1: fight deadly fires. But then when those same people get
Speaker 1: out of prison, they wouldn't be able to go and
Speaker 1: get a job as a firefighter, even though that is
Speaker 1: exactly what they were doing while they were in prison.
Speaker 1: So what does it mean that we set up these
Speaker 1: systems right that are not about rehabilitation, They are not
Speaker 1: about accountability, but instead they are steeped in punishment. And
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about this a lot since the conversation
Speaker 1: I had with Ice too, because the reality is in America,
Speaker 1: we believe deeply in punishment. It's actually one of our foundations. Right,
Speaker 1: If what do you think that the laws right now
Speaker 1: that are crumbling all around us with regard to a
Speaker 1: woman's right to an abortion or a person with a
Speaker 1: uterus's right to an abortion, what do you think that
Speaker 1: that is about? That is about punishing women, right for
Speaker 1: having the audacity to want to have autonomy over their bodies.
Speaker 1: Right for being able to say that, you know what,
Speaker 1: we are over fifty percent of the population and we
Speaker 1: get a say on when, where, and if we decide
Speaker 1: to have children. But then you had lawmakers, particularly obviously
Speaker 1: Republican lawmakers, who were putting into practice a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, transvaginal ultrasounds before women go and get an abortion. Well,
Speaker 1: when you ask the medical doctors, are trans transvaginal ultrasounds necessary, right,
Speaker 1: they told no, there's actually no medical use for that
Speaker 1: before we were to administer an abortion. But the point
Speaker 1: of it was humiliation, The point of it was harm. Right,
Speaker 1: And so when we hear stories ever infrequently, particularly during
Speaker 1: COVID in twenty twenty, I was wondering, when we're talking
Speaker 1: about social distancing and wearing masks, we were looking to
Speaker 1: the looking to the prison system to ramp up the
Speaker 1: production of masks, to ramp up the production of hand
Speaker 1: sanitizer and other metrics of cleanings. And guess what, those
Speaker 1: same prisoners that we're working for no money to produce
Speaker 1: and keep the country safe weren't allowed to use the
Speaker 1: hand sanitizer or the masks. But we didn't hear about
Speaker 1: massive COVID outbreaks in these facilities because we don't give
Speaker 1: a fuck. Like that's the reality is that in America.
Speaker 1: I recognize that we are a country that really is
Speaker 1: a bunch of fucking ostriches that want to bury our
Speaker 1: heads in the sand. You see. We want to say
Speaker 1: that we lock up the bad people and throwaway the key,
Speaker 1: except we get to pick and choose who is bad
Speaker 1: and who is good, who is worth rehabilitating, and who
Speaker 1: isn't who. When we were listening to the Kyle Rittenhouse
Speaker 1: trial and everybody's talking about that motherfucker's future, I don't
Speaker 1: ever remember hearing anybody talk about what about Trayvon Martin's future,
Speaker 1: what about Tamere Rice's future? Right when it's black and
Speaker 1: brown people that are the victims, we don't get to
Speaker 1: have our humanity front and center. And so one of
Speaker 1: the questions that I asked I should too, is how
Speaker 1: is it that you humanize the incarcerated when free black
Speaker 1: and brown people are not able to experience the fullness
Speaker 1: of their humanity because we are being looked at through
Speaker 1: the white gaze and filter. Right, we're out here marching
Speaker 1: and screaming on the top of our lungs that black
Speaker 1: lives matter, because they fucking don't. And so it's you know,
Speaker 1: to be in a job that is about humanizing those
Speaker 1: that we choose to see as animals. And what I
Speaker 1: find really just frustrating is that we spend more money
Speaker 1: more money keeping people locked up, keeping people in violent
Speaker 1: dysfunction then we do on our education system. Right. One
Speaker 1: of the things that I should too will talk about
Speaker 1: is the food in prisons, right, forcing people to eat
Speaker 1: food that is literally labeled not for human consumption, but
Speaker 1: because we are telling these people and reinforcing every single day,
Speaker 1: every hour of every day, that they are worthless, what
Speaker 1: do we think is going to happen when they're released,
Speaker 1: because then we put them into a situation where not
Speaker 1: only have we finally gotten to a place to ban
Speaker 1: the fucking box so that people can actually re enter society,
Speaker 1: but what is it that we think that they are
Speaker 1: re entering society with. It is not a better sense
Speaker 1: of self. It is not a sense of accountability. It
Speaker 1: is not a sense that I want to be a
Speaker 1: part of this society. It's that I have had pain
Speaker 1: and violence inflicted on me for however many months or years,
Speaker 1: and now I have even more internalized trauma than I'm
Speaker 1: going to act out like. It's not rocket science. Why
Speaker 1: there is such high recidivism rates because we don't create
Speaker 1: a system that views everyone equally, that says that people
Speaker 1: are worthy just by virtue of being fucking human. We
Speaker 1: spend so much energy trying to change systems that are
Speaker 1: working exactly the way that they should. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that I should too, will say as well,
Speaker 1: is that you know she is not cynical. Is that
Speaker 1: she cannot afford cynicism in this job because she wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to do it. And it got me to thinking, right,
Speaker 1: because I refer to myself as a cynic I say
Speaker 1: that I'm probably one of the most hopeless people. And
Speaker 1: somebody had said to me the other day too, They're like, Danielle,
Speaker 1: you're not because if you were, you wouldn't do this
Speaker 1: show if you were, you wouldn't get so enraged every
Speaker 1: single day. You get enraged and frustrated, right, and you're
Speaker 1: filled with this type of passion because you want to
Speaker 1: see better. You want people to be better, and you
Speaker 1: believe that they can if given enough information. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that she says is the same that
Speaker 1: we have to believe that we can be better. We
Speaker 1: have to believe that we can do better, because if
Speaker 1: we think that this is it right, that this is
Speaker 1: as good as it gets, then we are fucking future generations.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the things that I will end
Speaker 1: on in our interview is this, Those that were formerly
Speaker 1: enslaved right believed in a better day. They prayed for
Speaker 1: a better day. They fought for a better day. They
Speaker 1: fought for a freedom that many of them knew that
Speaker 1: they would never see, that they would never experience, but
Speaker 1: they did so anyway. And that is something that I
Speaker 1: need to remind myself of on a daily basis. And
Speaker 1: I want to remind all of you that, yes, the
Speaker 1: times that we are totally living in right now, absolutely
Speaker 1: and one hundred percent feel eternally fucked, and it may
Speaker 1: be for quite some time, but just because we may
Speaker 1: not experience. Right, the equity that we are fighting for
Speaker 1: each and every day doesn't mean that it is not
Speaker 1: worth fighting for. And that is the reminder that I
Speaker 1: got in my interview coming up next with Isshatu Yusef
Speaker 1: of Impact Justice Folks. I am very happy to well
Speaker 1: come to wok F for the very first time, hopefully
Speaker 1: not the last time. I should too. Yusef, who is
Speaker 1: the director of Innovative Programs at Impact Justice and Impact
Speaker 1: Justice Folks, is a national innovation and research center advancing
Speaker 1: new ideas and solutions for justice reform, which, as we
Speaker 1: talk about on wok F, is desperately needed. I should too.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining and you know, this
Speaker 1: must be a really precarious time to be in the
Speaker 1: work of justice reform and kind of reimagining what an
Speaker 1: actual justice system would look like. Can you talk to us,
Speaker 1: just give us a better picture of Impact Justice and
Speaker 1: the work that you all have been doing since the
Speaker 1: inception in twenty fifteen. Yeah, so I'm super excited to
Speaker 1: be here as well. I'm clearly a fan and I
Speaker 1: didn't think I did a chance to do this. I'm
Speaker 1: super excited to speak with you. Yeah, so should tun
Speaker 1: The director of Innovation Programs. And you know what's interesting,
Speaker 1: I've we've gotten a lot of asks around what's it
Speaker 1: like to be in the justice system now that everyone's
Speaker 1: talking about it, you know, and what I think is
Speaker 1: really interesting and not that much has changed for us,
Speaker 1: aside the fact that people want to actually listen to
Speaker 1: us sometimes now right the you know, you know, I
Speaker 1: think that you know what's real is that you know
Speaker 1: I've been I've been in back to most of my career.
Speaker 1: I've been in justice work. UM. And the folks that
Speaker 1: are really in the trenches, both on the advocacy research side,
Speaker 1: have been in doing this work for a long time,
Speaker 1: a lot of it silently or a lot of it
Speaker 1: like beating downdoors. And so I think what has changed
Speaker 1: the last few years is that people actually well, people
Speaker 1: that have like a moral compass, that want to actually
Speaker 1: talk about it and are more are more interested in
Speaker 1: hearing about what it is we've been screaming about for
Speaker 1: a really long time. UM. And so Impact Justice has
Speaker 1: been around for six years. Although we have every most
Speaker 1: people in that organization, I've been doing this work for
Speaker 1: a really long time. UM. We are a research and
Speaker 1: innovation organization right. Research is what we say a proxy
Speaker 1: for knowledge and innovation is really about risk and imagination
Speaker 1: and possibility, and because we work in such an antiquated system,
Speaker 1: both of those things are highly necessary. What's unfortunate is
Speaker 1: at our risk and possibility because the way the system
Speaker 1: is set up is around people, right. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, we have to able to think differently about
Speaker 1: how do we really impact the justice system and impact justice.
Speaker 1: We think about that and kind of four distinct ways,
Speaker 1: which is diversion, which means how do we keep people
Speaker 1: out of the system. There's a huge conversation that's been
Speaker 1: happening nationally around the reduction of mass incarceration. That is
Speaker 1: actually a bipartisan conversation in a lot of ways. But
Speaker 1: the way we really hit to mass incarceration is like
Speaker 1: keeping people out from the very beginning. We do that
Speaker 1: by diversion a lot of our storave justice practices things
Speaker 1: like that. The second piece we think about is what
Speaker 1: the term is called conditions of confinement. I hate the term,
Speaker 1: but that's the term folks use, and that's really thinking
Speaker 1: about what's happening to people, why they are inside. What
Speaker 1: is unfortunate is now oftentimes in our system, we lock
Speaker 1: the key and throw it away and throw them inside,
Speaker 1: and they're like, they're in there. Ye, what's real is
Speaker 1: that they are humans. They are people, and they will
Speaker 1: get out. Right. Ninety eight percent of people that are
Speaker 1: incarcerated get out. So if we don't providing both dignity,
Speaker 1: respect and care for them while they're in there, the
Speaker 1: person that comes out is probably not the person you
Speaker 1: want to wear neighborood because you tortured them and cause
Speaker 1: intense trauma. So a lot of the work we do
Speaker 1: is around conditions of confinement, have sexual as salt, the
Speaker 1: food that they eat, things like that. The third piece
Speaker 1: we do is abound re entry, which is right the
Speaker 1: folks that ninety eight percent of folks that go in
Speaker 1: will come out. So one of the work, kind of
Speaker 1: the two pillars that we really focus on, is really
Speaker 1: around how do you provide the necessary resources to provide
Speaker 1: people with the things that they need upon reentry, housing,
Speaker 1: a job, navigation, and that's both juvenile and adult because
Speaker 1: both those folks in the folks coming out, we want
Speaker 1: to adhere to that. And then all of that, as
Speaker 1: we said, I said, was rooted in research, which is
Speaker 1: a proxy for knowledge. Everything we do is not just
Speaker 1: evidence based practice, but also we use participatory research, which
Speaker 1: means we actually talk to the people that are that
Speaker 1: we're talking about that word, pack those system to actually
Speaker 1: help build our programs out to make mehia adhere to
Speaker 1: what it is their needs are so i AD impact justice.
Speaker 1: We do all that. We've done that for the last
Speaker 1: six years. Most of us have done that for mucho longer.
Speaker 1: But you know, the truth is is given the kind
Speaker 1: of rise and even from you know, George Floyd and
Speaker 1: Brianna's hair and all of those things, you know what
Speaker 1: ended up happening was the stuff that we did every
Speaker 1: single day, people wanted to hear about more. And that
Speaker 1: was in a lot of ways great, right, because people
Speaker 1: were interested in hearing about the atrocities that are happening
Speaker 1: to particularly black communities, particularly Native communities and brown communities, right,
Speaker 1: and so it just gave rise to people actually wanted
Speaker 1: to listen to what we want to say. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that the people actually heard it differently. Doesn't also
Speaker 1: mean that. It also doesn't mean that, like you know,
Speaker 1: more dollars came to support organizations like ours in some
Speaker 1: cases but not always and it doesn't mean that we
Speaker 1: you know, that we have easier time changing policies and
Speaker 1: laws because their policies and laws. But what it does
Speaker 1: mean is that we get to have the voice of
Speaker 1: the people that are impacted a little bit louder. And
Speaker 1: it also did mean that more people were alerted to
Speaker 1: the issues that impact around in black and poor communities,
Speaker 1: which I think is the biggest difference. What I saw
Speaker 1: almost instantly were people that work in completely different field,
Speaker 1: who don't have to do, who don't well, they don't
Speaker 1: know they do, but often don't know that they know
Speaker 1: someone's been incarcerated. I don't live in poor communities, right,
Speaker 1: being like, wait, what's going on? You know? Tell me
Speaker 1: about that, you know? And so I think that process
Speaker 1: and that outcome is a good outcome, a terrible reason
Speaker 1: to have that outcome, that it was a good outcome
Speaker 1: that we got to bring people into the conversation that
Speaker 1: didn't care before and didn't know to care. You know,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about you know, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for giving that rundown because I think that it's
Speaker 1: it's it's really exciting work that you are doing. Because
Speaker 1: I don't oftentimes think that we have an opportunity to
Speaker 1: really truly reimagine. Right, it's just kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: it is. It is the status quo, so we'll just
Speaker 1: kind of stick with what is and not imagine that
Speaker 1: there could be something that is different. The part that
Speaker 1: sticks out for me is the condition of confinement. And
Speaker 1: the reason why that sticks out for me is because,
Speaker 1: first of all, I mean, I don't need to go
Speaker 1: into the history of how black and brown people are
Speaker 1: looked at in this country in general. Right. It is
Speaker 1: you know, the opportunity has always been lock them up,
Speaker 1: throw away the key, force labor, you know, force birth, whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, it is, it has the fight has
Speaker 1: always been about the humanization of black people, right. And
Speaker 1: so when you think about who is actually incarcerated in
Speaker 1: mass it is black and brown men, right, and on
Speaker 1: the rise is women as well, And it's hard. The
Speaker 1: question that I have for you is how is it
Speaker 1: that you how do you work to humanize those that
Speaker 1: are incarcerated when we are having such a goddamn problem
Speaker 1: with trying to humanize those of us that are outside
Speaker 1: of bars, right. And so it's so to me, it's
Speaker 1: like you can justify the animalistic treatment because you believe
Speaker 1: those people to be animals from the jump, right, And
Speaker 1: so it's like, how how do you how do you
Speaker 1: do that work? How do you go about um doing
Speaker 1: that work and having people understand that to your point,
Speaker 1: ninety eight percent of people who are incarcerated will in
Speaker 1: fact be released. What are they being released as? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Um uh. That questions pack with a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna talk for a whole I'm gonna forgive me,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you a chump go.
Speaker 1: What I think is what I think is important to
Speaker 1: be at the end of your statement, which was around like, right,
Speaker 1: when you animalize people and you it's easier to it's
Speaker 1: easier to do that, you know. It's it's not just
Speaker 1: the fact that we've decided that black and brown and
Speaker 1: poor people are animals. It's that we don't know them,
Speaker 1: we don't care to know them, and then we literally
Speaker 1: pick them make them invisible. Right, That's why erration does right.
Speaker 1: And it's been and it's been and it's done from
Speaker 1: the beginning of time. I actually was listening to one
Speaker 1: of your UM sessions that you did a couple of
Speaker 1: days ago that actually you said in there um right, like,
Speaker 1: let's get back to what they Let's get back to
Speaker 1: what the justice system was supposed to do, right, But
Speaker 1: the truth there is no that. But it's doing what
Speaker 1: it's supposed to do. It's the right ways meant right, right,
Speaker 1: it was always meant to isolate individuals and prior to
Speaker 1: like I mean, you know, like incarceration in some ways
Speaker 1: have been around for a really long time. Right before
Speaker 1: the enslavement happened, they were like isolated white people, right,
Speaker 1: That's what they were doing, right. It's just that when
Speaker 1: enslavement happened, a colonization happened, that you became poor people,
Speaker 1: which were black people, and filling the blank all that,
Speaker 1: and so what I think is important to just differentiate
Speaker 1: in there is that it's not just that we see
Speaker 1: people that have committed crimes or poor people or black
Speaker 1: people as animals or as not human, but that we
Speaker 1: don't want that, but that society doesn't want to see
Speaker 1: them unless you unless they're seen and the gaze of whiteness.
Speaker 1: And they also put them but the reason is like
Speaker 1: a system of of isolation exists. It's because they don't
Speaker 1: even they throw them away. They're like you didn't meet
Speaker 1: the society standard. I actually don't want to see or
Speaker 1: you don't exist to me, and that makes it easy,
Speaker 1: right that when that makes it easy to think about
Speaker 1: people as bad because I don't have to see and
Speaker 1: I don't know them, but I'm gonna go down. That
Speaker 1: was the end, to go back to the beginning of
Speaker 1: your kind of question. So I am super lucky, and
Speaker 1: that in my title is innovation, right, which means I
Speaker 1: get to think differently about how we impact our systems.
Speaker 1: So what here's a couple of truths, is that the
Speaker 1: justice system or the legal system is what we call
Speaker 1: it is antiquated. Right. It is rooted in every system
Speaker 1: of harm that could ever exist, from sexism to racism
Speaker 1: to xenophobia. Right to you know that every system of
Speaker 1: harm is what the system is rooted in. Right, Even
Speaker 1: before we had words like xenophobia, right, it was rooted
Speaker 1: in an anti immigration, even before we had the titles
Speaker 1: of LGBTQI people, it was rooted in anti gain its right,
Speaker 1: it was it rooted in all these things. And so
Speaker 1: it just acts it out in different ways now. And
Speaker 1: so when you really think about changing policies and laws,
Speaker 1: I stand strong and support all of those lawmakers and
Speaker 1: lobbyists that are working to change a lot of policies
Speaker 1: for that, because we need that at the same time,
Speaker 1: but also some of the work that we do, right
Speaker 1: is that while that's happening and we support that and
Speaker 1: do all this, we can also create programming that actually
Speaker 1: can change the outcome for people. Why these things are
Speaker 1: happening simultaneously, right, and so for as an example, like
Speaker 1: right right now, there's a lot happening in the California
Speaker 1: legislatures around housing and housing formally incarcerated people. So why
Speaker 1: y'all figure that out and why you use our work
Speaker 1: and we do all that to help the policy change.
Speaker 1: We've created a program that houses formally incarcerated people in
Speaker 1: community homes. Right, So these things can happen simultaneously, and
Speaker 1: we do that in many of our innovative projects because
Speaker 1: I think what's important is, you know, this law take
Speaker 1: a long time to change. Policy takes a long time
Speaker 1: to change, and as that happens, there is other things
Speaker 1: that we can be doing, which is creating programs to
Speaker 1: see the dignity of people, so conditions of confinement to
Speaker 1: get into your big question around that, right, Yeah, So right,
Speaker 1: there's there's a bit there's a status quote benefit by
Speaker 1: throwing somebody in a cell and saying like you're done,
Speaker 1: you committed a crime. But what I think is really
Speaker 1: important to be clear about, right, is why this is easy.
Speaker 1: It is because people want to ignore the systemic processes
Speaker 1: of this. Right. Most people that committed crimes didn't just
Speaker 1: like wake up one morning you'd be like, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: rob that bank. That's not what happened, right, It's because
Speaker 1: they are reared in communities that have violence in them. Right.
Speaker 1: These communities are violent typically because they lack resources. Right,
Speaker 1: and not just like resources today, I'm like going back
Speaker 1: to enslavement resources, right, resources to education, resources to add
Speaker 1: to jobs, resource to mental healthcare, all of these things
Speaker 1: that without them lead to what we see today. And
Speaker 1: so right, and so when we start talking about people
Speaker 1: that are incarcerated, you have to see the entire human
Speaker 1: for you to really understand what happened. And that is
Speaker 1: why the the status quo doesn't like to see the
Speaker 1: entire human. Right. They like to seem like, oh, there
Speaker 1: goes someone who committed a crime. And this is not
Speaker 1: to admit it. This is not to say that the
Speaker 1: crime they committed is any like you know, I was
Speaker 1: throwing the blank, crime is not any less important or
Speaker 1: impactful like it was hard, right, it was harm to somebody.
Speaker 1: But in order to understand how you both write, do
Speaker 1: what the justice system says, which is around rehabilitation. But
Speaker 1: you have rehabilitate somebody. Is talk is dealing with the
Speaker 1: whole person. And if they're in a system where sexual
Speaker 1: violence is rampant, right, and that's where both people that
Speaker 1: identify as male and female and identify as other genders, right, rampant,
Speaker 1: how the heck do you think that they're going to
Speaker 1: come out of healed rehability person if they were literally
Speaker 1: in fear for their lives and that is and that
Speaker 1: is not I'm talking. I'm not just talking about the
Speaker 1: people that are incarcerated, right, They're in fear filmal lives
Speaker 1: based upon the people that are in charge of prisons. Right.
Speaker 1: This isn't just like their fellow inmate that are talking
Speaker 1: about this, like these are people. They harm is created,
Speaker 1: is given, is put upon them from the people that
Speaker 1: are running these institutions, right, And so if we're not
Speaker 1: talking about that, then how are we going to get
Speaker 1: to actually what their actual crime was Right, when we
Speaker 1: think of what we feed people, Right, every single day
Speaker 1: of your life, you get to choose the meal you eat.
Speaker 1: And you grew up in a society which they told
Speaker 1: you all about the pyramid, told you all about what
Speaker 1: you should and should not eat and how it impacts
Speaker 1: your body, your health, and your choices. Right, Why is
Speaker 1: that same conversation not part of the acarcetral system. When
Speaker 1: we feed people terrible food, we expect them to act
Speaker 1: differently and to be differently. Right. What's important to think about. Also,
Speaker 1: most people that are incarcerated, right, they come from marginalized communities. Right,
Speaker 1: So what they so they go in with a set
Speaker 1: of circumstances. They go in with a lot of trauma.
Speaker 1: Typically a sexual abuse, especially for women's sexual abuse is
Speaker 1: rampant drug abuse, food apartheid, food deserts. Like, they go
Speaker 1: in with these. Then they go into prison and they
Speaker 1: experience these same things in there. I mean, we released
Speaker 1: a report actually about a year ago today regarding food
Speaker 1: in prison. Right, The State of Food was the first
Speaker 1: national report on the state of food in prison. It
Speaker 1: wasn't rocket science, right, turns out it's really bad. But
Speaker 1: what it did do is it really brought to surface
Speaker 1: about like people in prison told us that they were
Speaker 1: forced to eat food that said not fit for human consumption.
Speaker 1: So if you lock me in a cage, right, you
Speaker 1: have taken me my dignity, and then you see you
Speaker 1: serve me food that says not fit for human consumption?
Speaker 1: How do you one think I'm going to act while
Speaker 1: I'm incarcerated? And then how do you think I'm gonna
Speaker 1: act when I get out? And not only did you
Speaker 1: you fed me that though, So when you get out
Speaker 1: and you have hypertension and you have all of these
Speaker 1: diseases that now become issues of the state and the
Speaker 1: county and our community, right, you blame the individual. You're
Speaker 1: like you, you're unhealthy, right, and you're like, hold you.
Speaker 1: I was reared in a community that didn't have healthy food.
Speaker 1: I was placed into ancarsal system that didn't have healthy food,
Speaker 1: and now you want me to get out X amount
Speaker 1: of years later and all of a sudden be like
Speaker 1: the pivotal health. How does that happen? I guess that's
Speaker 1: not logical sense it. You know, it's like the breakdown
Speaker 1: that you provide is so like clear, right, Like it's
Speaker 1: like x times why equal Z, like this is how
Speaker 1: this continued, this cycle. And it's like and what you said,
Speaker 1: I mean, you said so many things, but it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about a system that is created on punishment
Speaker 1: versus rehabilitation. Right. We want to refer to prisons as
Speaker 1: like these rehabilitation centers, but they're not right. We're actually
Speaker 1: not trying to heal or fix what's broken. This system
Speaker 1: is set up to have punishment, to make things so
Speaker 1: bad that then what you decide, Oh, I'm never going
Speaker 1: to commit a crime again because I don't want to
Speaker 1: go back there. But we're not creating a system and
Speaker 1: an environment that is a building whole people and then
Speaker 1: putting them back into environments that they can actually thrive in.
Speaker 1: Like the goal is not to have thriving human beings.
Speaker 1: I mean, and I could say the same thing about
Speaker 1: you know, our education system, which I have railed against
Speaker 1: for so many years as well. You want to talk
Speaker 1: about food, right, it was one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: Michelle Obama is like, let's get out, you know, let's
Speaker 1: go outside, let's do all these things. Let's change what
Speaker 1: we are feeding children, because we're allowing corporations to put
Speaker 1: pink slime into the meat and say that it's okay
Speaker 1: that only fifty percent of the meat is what is
Speaker 1: actual meat, and then we expect kids to learn. So
Speaker 1: it's like you take people that have come from violent situations,
Speaker 1: you put them into a hellish more violent situation and
Speaker 1: then feed them bullshit and then turn around and expect
Speaker 1: them not to go back and to commit more violence
Speaker 1: acting out what it was that was committed to them.
Speaker 1: It's I feel crazy having just said that I should do, Like,
Speaker 1: in all honesty, how do you if we were which
Speaker 1: is your job to innovate and to create a legal
Speaker 1: system that was human focused? What does that look like?
Speaker 1: And what is it like? What what does it look
Speaker 1: like to have a human carcerols system? We're regardless of
Speaker 1: if you've committed crimes, are not, we recognize your humanity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna. I'm gonna. One of the things you said,
Speaker 1: I think is really important is the way we talk
Speaker 1: about the job. The legal system is around this idea
Speaker 1: of punishment and accountability, right, right, and and people confuse
Speaker 1: these things all the time. Right. People have confused the
Speaker 1: idea that prison means accountability, which which I which I
Speaker 1: often say is how does that work? Like you can
Speaker 1: commit murder, go to prison for fifty years and still
Speaker 1: be okay with that crime you just create committed. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you're accountable for it. It just means that
Speaker 1: you threw them in a system like that. That means
Speaker 1: nothing like when you're you know, I have a little niece.
Speaker 1: When my niece lies, you's a love it. When she
Speaker 1: lies and she's in trouble for that, she's probably gonna
Speaker 1: lie again because if I'm her aunt, So I don't
Speaker 1: do that much. I don't do my punishment. I do
Speaker 1: a lot of like that was not nice, right, And
Speaker 1: because of that, right oftentimes she was a similar thing
Speaker 1: because she wasn't accountable. I was like, you could do that.
Speaker 1: I took your toy, right, And so I think there's
Speaker 1: this this this confusion around punishment and accountability. There is
Speaker 1: no data to support that if I punish people harm,
Speaker 1: then they won't do a crime. There's quite a bit
Speaker 1: of dame, but that actually exists that actually incarceration is
Speaker 1: not a deterrent for from crime. Right, And I don't
Speaker 1: even the quote you data on it because you can
Speaker 1: see it. Right, if prison was a deterrent, if jail
Speaker 1: was a deterrent. We probably wouldn't see rising crime levels
Speaker 1: right now, but we did, right, and that is because
Speaker 1: our communities are not set up to support people that
Speaker 1: are too, that support people that are engaging in prime
Speaker 1: right period. Like, well, there's a there's a conversation around
Speaker 1: survival crimes, right, and that's around people that are literally
Speaker 1: surviving and oftentimes they're committing crimes for that survival. Right.
Speaker 1: So I think there's like a bigger conversation that has
Speaker 1: to be had around like what is our goal? You
Speaker 1: know at id Impact, Jess that we talk a lot
Speaker 1: about um around prosecut about prosecution, right, like who's and
Speaker 1: there's a there's a bigger conversation that's been happening in
Speaker 1: in the prosecution world around um there and just prosecution
Speaker 1: and more and deeper conversations. And that's because right, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of subjectivity that happens between judges and prosecutors, right,
Speaker 1: and oftentimes because like the wind from prosecutors is like, oh,
Speaker 1: we got them locked up for years, you know, that
Speaker 1: was the win, right, But now there's deeper conversations around Okay,
Speaker 1: so who's to say that five years is different than
Speaker 1: three days? Different than six months, Like who provides that data?
Speaker 1: Who's to say that? So how are we actually saying
Speaker 1: people are accountable for their behavior? Which just gets me
Speaker 1: to this conversation that we do a lot about work
Speaker 1: as our restorative justice aversion team, and that is really
Speaker 1: the way in which we think about how do we
Speaker 1: actually have a different conversation on punishment and accountability? Right
Speaker 1: If my desire for you is you have committed harm
Speaker 1: against a person or a community, but my desire is
Speaker 1: for you is to one understand the implications of your harm,
Speaker 1: to be accountable for your harm, and work on a
Speaker 1: method and a tract process that will keep you from
Speaker 1: doing that again, and that you can teach other people
Speaker 1: in your community why that is not okay. At the
Speaker 1: same time, another part of this is how do we
Speaker 1: provide the resources for you to ensure that why you
Speaker 1: committed the crime or why what happened in your community
Speaker 1: that allowed for this to happen is also being mitigated
Speaker 1: on this side, right, And so that's aware. You know,
Speaker 1: people always say impact justice, we do a whole lot
Speaker 1: of stuff, and we do, and part of that is
Speaker 1: because we see this as a continuum, Right, It's not
Speaker 1: just about conditions of confinement. It's not just about diversion,
Speaker 1: it's about all of it. It's about reentry, it's about policy,
Speaker 1: it's about all of these things that really go to
Speaker 1: change a system. And so you know, to get to
Speaker 1: your ultimate question, which is around like what could the
Speaker 1: system be like do we just like throw it out?
Speaker 1: If we just throw it away and start again all
Speaker 1: these things? Right? Like, clearly if I was like, let's
Speaker 1: throw it away, that would like, would love to do that.
Speaker 1: The only issue with that, right is I happen to
Speaker 1: not be the status quo, and I happen to not
Speaker 1: be look like. I happen to not look like the
Speaker 1: people that decision to make because in many of my colleagues,
Speaker 1: not just that impact justice, but across this nation that
Speaker 1: do this amazing work don't always look like often are
Speaker 1: not the people that are called the pot to change systems.
Speaker 1: And so if I say throw it away, right, there's
Speaker 1: a fear, right, there's that real fear around like, but
Speaker 1: who gets to make law? Like we look at Congress
Speaker 1: right now, I don't want Mitch McConnell making not a
Speaker 1: single new law, come on me, right, So you know,
Speaker 1: and so you have to even I mean not even
Speaker 1: does that. We deal with moderates, we deal with liberals
Speaker 1: who still don't even understand what we're talking about, right,
Speaker 1: And so I think what is true is that there
Speaker 1: has to be a concerted effort to both understand who
Speaker 1: we are talking about, what the actual systematic issues are
Speaker 1: that led to where we are today, and then how
Speaker 1: do we start to have actual processes that change that.
Speaker 1: The way you do that is one A huge piece
Speaker 1: of that is research, And honestly, some of the reasons
Speaker 1: why we actually get to have these conversations now are
Speaker 1: because researchers got in there and said, here are the
Speaker 1: numbers that you're hiding or lying about. Here are the people, right,
Speaker 1: here's a face with that number, and it just so happens,
Speaker 1: and all those faces look real similar, right, All them
Speaker 1: faces turn out look real brown, All those faces turn
Speaker 1: out look really you know. And so when you start
Speaker 1: to pull data out, then once we have a data
Speaker 1: and we could say, like, this is what this looks like,
Speaker 1: we could say here and you know, we can bring
Speaker 1: it out. This is why people are incarcerated, this is
Speaker 1: where they came from, this is who they are. Then
Speaker 1: we can go to chip away at them right. And
Speaker 1: so some of the programs that we do right, like
Speaker 1: one of our programs called the California Justice Leader's Project,
Speaker 1: which is a project in which we it's an amercor
Speaker 1: project that we hire formally incarcerated young people and they
Speaker 1: operate as navigators to young people that are currently in
Speaker 1: the system and we'll be leaving within the next six months.
Speaker 1: And so it's called the credible messenger model. So like
Speaker 1: the person that experienced it is the most credible person
Speaker 1: to actually walk somebody through that process. And the reason
Speaker 1: we have that model right is because again, like what
Speaker 1: I can say or somebody else can say that wasn't
Speaker 1: incarcerated as a young person is very different than a
Speaker 1: person that's incarcerated. And so, and because we've talked about
Speaker 1: how important re entry is, right, we have them walk
Speaker 1: them through the path. What are the things you need?
Speaker 1: How am I going to how are you going to
Speaker 1: be set up to change, to change your friend groups?
Speaker 1: What are youse that you need to go back to school?
Speaker 1: What are these things? They start to help them walk
Speaker 1: through that process. But one of those things that the
Speaker 1: reason I'm bringing that up is because that's something that
Speaker 1: will change the outcomes for young people, right, because not
Speaker 1: only for the you know, our actual we call our
Speaker 1: members are actual caliform justice leaders. They were incarsepod at
Speaker 1: some point in their life. Through our program, we have
Speaker 1: now given them a job. We are now giving job skills.
Speaker 1: We are giving them mentors, we are giving them the
Speaker 1: ability to give back, we are giving them resume builders,
Speaker 1: and we are giving them connection to an entire network
Speaker 1: of people that they didn't have before. That is a
Speaker 1: key component of how we keep them out of the system, right,
Speaker 1: because now they have something to work with their Like,
Speaker 1: I have a resume, I know I can do this job.
Speaker 1: I actually know I can do something differently, Which is
Speaker 1: a huge part of this conversation is knowing you can
Speaker 1: be different, knowing you can choose differently, and that once
Speaker 1: people know that, right, that goes back to like psychology
Speaker 1: one on one, right, Like, once you know and understand
Speaker 1: there can be a different path for you, it's up
Speaker 1: to us, right, us as in the people that do
Speaker 1: this work, but our policymakers, our advocates, our corporate America
Speaker 1: that's giving money out all these people to actually provide
Speaker 1: processes to do something different. So when I think about
Speaker 1: what a system could and should look like I think
Speaker 1: about a system that's really built on he and accountability. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: because we don't get to healing, we get to nothing.
Speaker 1: Right if we don't talk about what's happening internally with
Speaker 1: your body, with your mind, why you didn't we still
Speaker 1: have nothing at the end of the day. Like one
Speaker 1: of the projects we're doing, I'm jumping around, but one
Speaker 1: of the projects we're doing on our research team is
Speaker 1: called is Men and Trauma. And that is because right
Speaker 1: there is a conversation that have a little more broadly
Speaker 1: around trauma, articulated and sexual assault for women, but we
Speaker 1: don't often talk about people that are incarce men that
Speaker 1: are incarcerated and the trauma that they experience which led
Speaker 1: to both their actions and outcomes. And so this project
Speaker 1: is really around, right, if we could understand the trauma,
Speaker 1: then we could actually adhere to the healing of it.
Speaker 1: We could adhere to the healing of it it. But we
Speaker 1: can get to the accountability piece of it. We get
Speaker 1: to the accountability piece of it, we can create processes
Speaker 1: that keep people from committing these crimes in the first place.
Speaker 1: But also going forward, I've talked a lot. I'll stop,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, I love this so much and
Speaker 1: I love the work that you all are doing so
Speaker 1: much because the fact is that we are broken, and
Speaker 1: we are morally bankrupt and broken society. And the fact
Speaker 1: is that we can clearly look at people from very
Speaker 1: young ages based on their zip codes and say you're
Speaker 1: worthy and you are not. And when you decide to
Speaker 1: center people's humanity and center their healing, right, then you
Speaker 1: can build programs and systems that are about creating a
Speaker 1: supportive ecosystem around them. Because what I mean when you
Speaker 1: mentioned you know a little bit back about survival crimes, right,
Speaker 1: and the way in which we view like, wait, why
Speaker 1: is somebody in a position where they are breaking the law.
Speaker 1: Of course people that want to break the law because
Speaker 1: they want to break the law, there are other people
Speaker 1: that are like we are faced with no other choice.
Speaker 1: There is no other option. It's either I do this
Speaker 1: or my family doesn't eat. Either I do this or
Speaker 1: I'm sleeping you know, under a bridge, right, Like, there
Speaker 1: are things, there are situations that are created, right that
Speaker 1: for some people when especially when you just said knowing
Speaker 1: that you can be different, knowing that there are other
Speaker 1: choices that you can make. But when we are living
Speaker 1: in a society that doesn't create and imagine choices for
Speaker 1: people and doesn't want other certain communities to have choices.
Speaker 1: This is where we end up. And I think that
Speaker 1: you know, to the point that you made about earlier
Speaker 1: about we just we don't want to see things, right,
Speaker 1: We actually don't want to see things just like we
Speaker 1: don't want to see the crumbling of our current democracy.
Speaker 1: We just we want things to just run like well
Speaker 1: oiled machines so that I can put my attention elsewhere.
Speaker 1: And the reality is is that we are paying more
Speaker 1: money in the taxes that come out of all of
Speaker 1: our hard earning right to support a prison industrial system
Speaker 1: that then turns around and does us harm right? Like
Speaker 1: does us who has never been in the system harm right?
Speaker 1: And so I just you know, to me, it's like
Speaker 1: every single problem that I talk about on this show
Speaker 1: comes back to humanizing people, comes back to just recognizing
Speaker 1: that people are worthy, right, and that no one person
Speaker 1: should have the opportunity or the power to be able
Speaker 1: to dictate somebody else's humanity and that, you know, and
Speaker 1: to me, that that is what comes out about the center,
Speaker 1: like the foundation of the work that you all are
Speaker 1: doing an impact justice. The last question that I have
Speaker 1: for you is do you feel this as a question
Speaker 1: that I ask a ton of people because I'm probably
Speaker 1: one of the biggest cynics in the world. M but
Speaker 1: do you feel I should do like hopefulness in the
Speaker 1: fact that more people's eyes are open to just how
Speaker 1: unjust the legal system is that because of these high
Speaker 1: profile cases that have been followed and people are clearly
Speaker 1: seeing now like, wow, there's a real stark difference between
Speaker 1: how Kyle Rittenhouse was talked about versus Trayvon Martin, who
Speaker 1: was an actual victim, right, Like, do you do you
Speaker 1: feel helpful? Yeah? So, I think one of the important
Speaker 1: things that you said that I just want to address
Speaker 1: partially is you know, are there people in the world
Speaker 1: that just commit crimes? Yes, that have mental health challenge
Speaker 1: that commit crimes. Yes. Most people that commit crimes are
Speaker 1: doing so on a broad scale of survival crimes, right,
Speaker 1: Like even if like when you're thinking about like the community,
Speaker 1: there are actual tangible commitst survival crimes, right, like I
Speaker 1: robbed the stores, I need to put the campers on
Speaker 1: my baby. Happens all the time. Right. There's also I
Speaker 1: think a deeper conversation that has to be had around
Speaker 1: the community that are raising, the communities in which people
Speaker 1: are forced to raise young people in that are that
Speaker 1: are such at a lack of resources, that crime is
Speaker 1: actually a way of life, that crime is actually an
Speaker 1: economic mobility. Right. We've created these communities because of racism,
Speaker 1: because of classism, and so it's not necessarily just they
Speaker 1: want to commit crimes. It's that they're raising communities that
Speaker 1: are victims of what the society has created, and they
Speaker 1: act out what society created, right, And so it's so
Speaker 1: I say that because that's much broader than just like
Speaker 1: they woke up one day and wanted to like, you know,
Speaker 1: bash a card. It's like bigger than that, right, It's
Speaker 1: like that's what they understand as a method for them
Speaker 1: to get stuff. That's what they understand as a method
Speaker 1: for them to have some type of economic change or
Speaker 1: to be a part of the community that is that
Speaker 1: has so much crime in it that that is what
Speaker 1: they're taught and they understand. So I just want to
Speaker 1: make like an in just like a distinction kind of
Speaker 1: kind of around that um and then all the things
Speaker 1: that you said, yes, I you know, like I like,
Speaker 1: you know, Like, you know, you know what's interesting because
Speaker 1: what I think of these written House case people are
Speaker 1: like really upset. I wasn't that upset, right, And that's
Speaker 1: because like written House is like a white blob to me, Right,
Speaker 1: it could have been written House, It could have been
Speaker 1: like any other white blob that existed on a chair, Right,
Speaker 1: it didn't really matter. And I think what's great is
Speaker 1: that because it was so public, people care differently. Right.
Speaker 1: But I see this every day, right, Like I see
Speaker 1: black and brown bodies that are that have experienced so
Speaker 1: much harm, right, and then are put on trial for
Speaker 1: a crime that they committed and are looked upon as
Speaker 1: animals and are not asked, are not even asked questions
Speaker 1: in court about who they are as humans, right, you
Speaker 1: know Written House, Like the conversation on him going too
Speaker 1: asu came up, all these things that humanized him, right,
Speaker 1: Like that humanized who he was came up both in
Speaker 1: the media and assol the court. Right when you watched
Speaker 1: the gymnastics that had to be played for hint for
Speaker 1: to jumping over, like when you watched gym Nasa that
Speaker 1: had you played on the amar Rbury case, right when
Speaker 1: you had to watch what happened for that case to
Speaker 1: have the verticot did you didn't see that same thing
Speaker 1: on the Rittenhouse case, right, because the person that was
Speaker 1: over trying to you know that that, like you had,
Speaker 1: like literally what was happening was a circus in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, because that is what our criminal legal
Speaker 1: system has become in some ways, because that's built on subjectivity. Right.
Speaker 1: There are laws and technicalities and all these things, but
Speaker 1: humans are the ones that are enacting these laws, right,
Speaker 1: and so it's all built in subjectivity. And so Rattenhouse right, Right,
Speaker 1: he got off because of a law, right, a law
Speaker 1: that was created and whatever reason it was created, but
Speaker 1: it was got off because of subjectivity, right, because the
Speaker 1: people that were on the jury of that case, the judge,
Speaker 1: the community, all these people saw a different human in
Speaker 1: that chair, saw a pudgy faced, white blob in that chair,
Speaker 1: and they cared differently about him. I mean, there was
Speaker 1: conversation about his future, right, But when there's a black
Speaker 1: body in that chair, they don't care that they shouldn't
Speaker 1: commit their crime, right, they chose to get rid of
Speaker 1: their future, right, And the conversations you have, and so
Speaker 1: I think when you like and so when I say
Speaker 1: like white blab, I'm actually not like talking about like
Speaker 1: the actual appearance. Yes, now I'm not talking about the
Speaker 1: idea of like it doesn't matter film the blank white,
Speaker 1: or film the bake, or or even feel you know,
Speaker 1: and race a gender plays a part of that too,
Speaker 1: but film the blank doesn't matter if the outcomes are similar,
Speaker 1: because we're dealing with subjectivity and we're dealing with laws
Speaker 1: and polities, policies that on paper think people talk about
Speaker 1: our gender neutral and race neutral button and actuality because
Speaker 1: humans are enacting them. They become you know, they become
Speaker 1: enacted by the ideas of racism and you see a
Speaker 1: play out, you know. And so that's to your question,
Speaker 1: like on my athenic, no, I there is you know,
Speaker 1: I am a I'm not that cynical in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, and you can't be some in some ways
Speaker 1: in the work that I do, right because if I
Speaker 1: because I would, I would I would die right because
Speaker 1: I would be so burdened down by what I see
Speaker 1: every day and the humans I speak to. And so
Speaker 1: whether it's reality or not reality, my response to you is, yes,
Speaker 1: there is hope. And I say that because I've been
Speaker 1: you know, I'm like older, but I'm not like super old,
Speaker 1: like you know, I'm the millennial to put that way.
Speaker 1: You know, but I've been doing this work for a
Speaker 1: lot of My niece calls me a dusty, so there's
Speaker 1: that she actually she needs to go on punishment. Okay,
Speaker 1: you just about the two thousand girl for Halloween. I
Speaker 1: don't want I don't like her, you know, yeah, like
Speaker 1: it was. It was the whole thing. Oh are you
Speaker 1: a dusty as well? There you got your dust I
Speaker 1: don't like I don't like her. She's eleven, So there
Speaker 1: you go. But my point though is that, you know,
Speaker 1: is there's but I've seen so much change, even as
Speaker 1: much as I've been in this work, right, Like I see,
Speaker 1: like ban the Box didn't exist what I started doing
Speaker 1: this work, which was like the well just you know
Speaker 1: in California's Destination actually now, which allow people not to
Speaker 1: ask questions around around felonies, right, that didn't exist when
Speaker 1: I started this work. We've seen changed, Right when I
Speaker 1: look at talking about sexual violence in prisons, like impact
Speaker 1: Justice runs that when I started doing just work that
Speaker 1: didn't exist. People weren't talking in a way that could
Speaker 1: change sexual violence side of Carcelo facilities and that the
Speaker 1: federal government was going to pay for that, like that
Speaker 1: didn't exist before that, Like conversations on black women being
Speaker 1: incarcerated and criminalized that didn't exist, right, talking about the
Speaker 1: school can find pathways for black young people and girls
Speaker 1: that didn't exist prior, you know, when I first started
Speaker 1: doing this work. And so is there like mountains and
Speaker 1: valleys and rivers and oceans to crime clots and swam across. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: But you can see change that's happening from both the federal, state,
Speaker 1: and local level. But that's only happening because people have
Speaker 1: continued to scream, continue to knock down doors, and continue
Speaker 1: to talk about what's right and what should happen right,
Speaker 1: And I think and I don't see that changing. And
Speaker 1: I think also because we've had to public display of
Speaker 1: a public display of racist acts, right that people in
Speaker 1: black and brown communities like we like when when the
Speaker 1: ammad armory happened, when George Floyd and Brianna Taylor, we
Speaker 1: like it wasn't like we was really terrifying for us,
Speaker 1: but it was common. Like you know, I think part
Speaker 1: of what I can tell you, like my response, like
Speaker 1: ever when Eric Gardner happened. I tapped out. I tapped
Speaker 1: out on that day. That was the day I tapped out,
Speaker 1: and I had an entire dislike ball. I was at
Speaker 1: my desk at work and I was just crying my
Speaker 1: face off, right because I tapped out at that moment,
Speaker 1: And I have these moments that I tapped out. I
Speaker 1: happened during you know, and am mod r Very was
Speaker 1: was murdered. I went on my two point one poo
Speaker 1: point eleven. I believe my I'll run and I cry
Speaker 1: at the entire way, right, And I think that is
Speaker 1: because the folks that do this work have this this
Speaker 1: stuff on their shoulders every day that we carry, and
Speaker 1: we have straight bats and long spines, and then sometimes
Speaker 1: it just gets heavy, and we have to be honest.
Speaker 1: We have to be honest about those moments. But we
Speaker 1: also to be honest about the fact that we see
Speaker 1: so much change it's happening. The fact that we get
Speaker 1: the fact that I got to have this conversation with
Speaker 1: you on a podcast that's going to be out to
Speaker 1: millions of people across race talking about the atrocities in
Speaker 1: our justice system is progress within itself, and I'm so
Speaker 1: appreciative to the folks that came before me, to the
Speaker 1: avid gets on the ground and the policymakers that are
Speaker 1: working to change things at every level, because without all
Speaker 1: of those things happening, we wouldn't be where we are,
Speaker 1: and we will not get to where we're going without
Speaker 1: people continuing to open up their mouths and speak about
Speaker 1: the dehumanization of black and brown bodies in our justice system.
Speaker 1: I should too, use if I really do hope that
Speaker 1: you will come back to wok af. I have enjoyed
Speaker 1: every single minute of this conversation. I think that the
Speaker 1: work that you're doing, that Impact Justice is doing is
Speaker 1: extraordinary and so needed. And you know, and I really
Speaker 1: do appreciate the fact that you said you know and
Speaker 1: not on the fact that you know you're not a cynic,
Speaker 1: because you wouldn't be able to do this work if
Speaker 1: you were. And I think that that is important, because
Speaker 1: you know, even those that while they were enslaved in
Speaker 1: shackles still persisted and dreamt of something that was bigger
Speaker 1: and different than the experience that they were currently having,
Speaker 1: and if they didn't, none of us would be here.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, to hold on to that hope,
Speaker 1: I think is extraordinarily necessary for us to keep forging ahead,
Speaker 1: and so for that I appreciate you. Thank you so
Speaker 1: very much, and I hope that you will join us again,
Speaker 1: oh anytime. Please let me know. I really appreciate the
Speaker 1: conversations you bring to the air. I really do, so
Speaker 1: thank you so much. It's been great. Thank you. That
Speaker 1: is it for me today. Dear friends on Woke app
Speaker 1: as always, power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fuck.