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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Nadelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the

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Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any

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Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of I Heart Media,

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Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, as an

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Speaker 1: inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not even

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Speaker 1: represent my own. And nothing contained in this show should

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Speaker 1: be used as medical advice or encouragement to use any

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Speaker 1: type of drug. We're talking today about race and the

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Speaker 1: war on drugs, two things that are inextricably linked in

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Speaker 1: this country and many others. You know what I'm talking about.

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Speaker 1: Racist sentencing law is involving crack versus powdered cocaine or

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Speaker 1: the police stopping frisk policies that disproportionly affect young people

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Speaker 1: of color. But how the War on drugs came to

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Speaker 1: be and who supported it as a complicated history. Today's

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Speaker 1: guest is James Foreman Jr. Who wrote a book a

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Speaker 1: few years ago called Locking Up Our Own Crime and

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Speaker 1: Punishment in Black America, which landed up winning the Police

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Speaker 1: Surprise for General Nonfiction in eighteen and being listed on

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Speaker 1: all sorts of best sellers list. He's a distinguished academic.

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Speaker 1: He's been teaching at Yale Law School for the last

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Speaker 1: ten years. When he was younger, he came out of

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Speaker 1: law school and clerked at the Supreme Court for Justice

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Speaker 1: Sandra Day O'Connor. But after clerking in the Supreme Court,

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Speaker 1: what he did was relatively unusual, and it almost kind

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Speaker 1: of reminded me a little bit of Obama's story where

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Speaker 1: Obama leaves Harvard Law School and goes back to Chicago

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Speaker 1: and become a community organizer. And what James decided to

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Speaker 1: do was to go work at the Public Defense Years

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Speaker 1: Office in d C. This was in the mid nineties,

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Speaker 1: and so James, thank you so much for joining me.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Psychoactive. And let me just start by asking

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Speaker 1: you why did you do that. I had gone to

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Speaker 1: law school intent on doing civil rights work. So when

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Speaker 1: I was in law school, I worked for the NUBLE,

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Speaker 1: a CP Legal Defense Fund for two summers, and I

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Speaker 1: really took a lot of classes that were focused on

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Speaker 1: voting rights and employment law, traditional areas that civil rights

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Speaker 1: law covered. But when I became a law clerk, one

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Speaker 1: of the things that became very clear to me. And

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Speaker 1: this is the early nineties, so we didn't have the

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Speaker 1: term mass incarceration, but it was very clear to me

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Speaker 1: that something terribly wrong and adjust was happening in our

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Speaker 1: criminal system. Because I was working for Judge Is both

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Speaker 1: on the Court of Appeals and then later the Supreme Court,

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Speaker 1: and we were faced with cases where when I would

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Speaker 1: read the underlying transcript, I would see clear evidence of

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Speaker 1: you know, legal malpractice, legal non performance. Lawyers just over burdened,

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Speaker 1: not able to adequately represent their clients, and people who

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Speaker 1: maybe some of them were guilty and getting longer sentences

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Speaker 1: they deserve, some of them may have been innocent, and

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Speaker 1: still we're getting convicted. People were getting represented by attorneys

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Speaker 1: that a three hundred, four hundred, five hundred cases at

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Speaker 1: a time, just getting shuttled through the process, and the

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Speaker 1: appellate courts, the courts that you go to an appeal,

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Speaker 1: weren't willing to do anything about it. Their position was, well,

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Speaker 1: you got a trial, you had a lawyer, you had

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Speaker 1: a warm body. That's good enough. And as I looked

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Speaker 1: out at the world, I thought, well, what can I do?

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Speaker 1: And it felt to me like working in that system,

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Speaker 1: that criminal justice system, which is what we called it

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Speaker 1: at the time, was the most important civil rights work

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Speaker 1: I could do. And so even though it wasn't really

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Speaker 1: talked about as civil rights work at the time, it

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Speaker 1: felt clear to me that it was. And the d

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Speaker 1: C Public Defender Service where I went to work, which

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Speaker 1: was only about a mile from the Supreme Court in

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Speaker 1: terms of the offices, although very different in terms of

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Speaker 1: decor and and that sort of thing, but it was

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Speaker 1: one of the leading public defenders offices in the country.

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Speaker 1: So the chance to go work with a group of

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Speaker 1: lawyers that included people like Charles Ogletree and Angela Davis,

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Speaker 1: people who really set the bar for what counted as

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Speaker 1: excellent representation, was just something that that I couldn't pass up.

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Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Well, you know, let's just set a broader

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Speaker 1: context here. So when you started doing this in d C,

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Speaker 1: it's the early mid nineties, and you know, in eight

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Speaker 1: when there was a kind of lull between Nixon's drug

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Speaker 1: War and then the drug War of the eighties, there

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Speaker 1: were basically five hundred thousand people behind bars in the

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Speaker 1: United States in federal and state prisons and local jails,

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Speaker 1: of whom about fifty thousand were there for a drug

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Speaker 1: law violation. By the time you get to the early

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Speaker 1: two thousands, we've gone from five hundred thousand people behind

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Speaker 1: bars to over two million people behind bars. We've gone

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Speaker 1: from having an incarceration rate that's kind of average for

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Speaker 1: the world having one that is astronomically greater, in fact,

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Speaker 1: the highest in the world. And among the people behind bars,

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Speaker 1: we've gone from fifty thousand locked up on drug charges

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Speaker 1: to five hundred thousand for whom a drug law violation

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Speaker 1: was the principal offense. And that five hundred thousand doesn't

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Speaker 1: even count all of the hundreds of thousands who get

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Speaker 1: reincarcerated on parole and probation violations connected to drugs. And

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Speaker 1: it doesn't even count the people committing crimes of you know,

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Speaker 1: prostitution or petty theft to support to drug habit And

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Speaker 1: it doesn't even count the people involved in the drug

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Speaker 1: business who are getting involved in violent crimes that are

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Speaker 1: as a result of the prohibitionist approach to drugs. So

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Speaker 1: you're talking about a huge part of the prison population

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Speaker 1: and jail population that's locked up in one way or

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Speaker 1: another for either a direct drug glove violation, or something related.

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Speaker 1: And when you break it out, you know, I was

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Speaker 1: teaching at Princeton, living in New Jersey, and then I

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Speaker 1: moved to New York and those two states. At that

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Speaker 1: time lad the country, something like fifty of new admissions

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Speaker 1: to prison were for drug glow violations. The only place

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Speaker 1: that was higher than that was Washington, d c. Where

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Speaker 1: a substantial majority of all the people being sent to

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Speaker 1: the jail in prison there were for a drug glow violation.

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Speaker 1: And there you are, as a public defender working in

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Speaker 1: the midst of this. I mean, what did it feel like, Well,

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Speaker 1: we felt like warriors for justice. When ever you're a

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Speaker 1: minority group, you know, whether it's you know, what the

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Speaker 1: early abolitionists would have felt, or people in the civil

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Speaker 1: rights movement. And I know because that both my parents

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Speaker 1: were in the movement. My mom came and visited our

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Speaker 1: office and when the first thing she said was, wow,

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Speaker 1: this reminds me of a movement office. And she was

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Speaker 1: talking about the early sixties and SNICK, the Student Non

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Speaker 1: Violent Coordinating Committee where she was a member. So we

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Speaker 1: we had that kind of righteous indignation, certainty that we

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Speaker 1: were fighting an unpopular cause, but a just cause, and

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Speaker 1: that was the feeling that we had. Now having said that,

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Speaker 1: we also knew our position was unpopular, right, So we

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Speaker 1: knew all of the statistics that you've just mentioned. I mean,

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Speaker 1: we were working as public defenders at a time when

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Speaker 1: those statistics were being compiled. So I was going into

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Speaker 1: courtrooms and facing judges and prosecutors, probation officers, social workers,

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Speaker 1: bailiff's court martials who would all look at your client

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Speaker 1: as you're the one that's bringing down the community. You're

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Speaker 1: the one that is causing so much harm and degradation.

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Speaker 1: You're the one that has to be punished. You're the

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Speaker 1: one that has to be banished. So we believed we

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Speaker 1: were right. But I'm not gonna lie. I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: hard to work in a context when you see every day, um,

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Speaker 1: people being sent to prison for long periods of time,

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Speaker 1: some subjected to, you know, unjust conditions. I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: hard to have a client who's addicted, who wants help,

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Speaker 1: but there's a year long waiting list for heroin treatment

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Speaker 1: programs in the community, and the only way that she

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Speaker 1: could get treatment if she was going to ever get some,

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Speaker 1: and it wasn't even very good, but the only way

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Speaker 1: she could get a shorter waiting list. Was after she

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Speaker 1: had been arrested and was facing sentence. I mean, think

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Speaker 1: about that. What is it like to live in a

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Speaker 1: community where if you know you're an addict and you

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Speaker 1: call the government and you say, I want help. I

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Speaker 1: don't have any money, but I want to help, I

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Speaker 1: want treatment, and they say, okay, here, take a number,

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Speaker 1: will call you back in a year to a heroin addict.

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Speaker 1: But go out to the corner, sell something to feed

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Speaker 1: your own addiction. Go sell five bags so that you

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Speaker 1: get to keep one which you can then use. Then

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Speaker 1: you get busted, then you're facing a maximum of thirty years.

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Speaker 1: So we'll spend hundreds of thousands millions of dollars to

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Speaker 1: lock somebody up in that era when we wouldn't even

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Speaker 1: invest enough to open a treatment facility for much less

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Speaker 1: money to serve their needs. So we're working in that

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Speaker 1: context and that environment, and it's hard. It is exhausting

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Speaker 1: to face up to that injustice every day and to

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Speaker 1: carry that burden with you and to know that as

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Speaker 1: hard as your fighting, you lose more than you win.

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Speaker 1: M Oftentimes, even back then, to the extent there was

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Speaker 1: treatment available almost the only way to get it if

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Speaker 1: you were poor was basically through the criminal justice system.

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Speaker 1: You know, there might be diversion programs. There were the

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Speaker 1: emergence of these drug courts and things like this. There

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Speaker 1: was pretending to provide strugtury me behind bars, but if

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Speaker 1: you didn't have the money to pay for it, that

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Speaker 1: was gonna be where it was gonna happen. Now I

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Speaker 1: remember that, you know, here I'm teaching a prince in

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Speaker 1: the late eighties early nineties, beginning to advocate. I'm surrounded

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Speaker 1: by a lot of my you know, generally liberally politically

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Speaker 1: minded colleagues, and what I see going on there is

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Speaker 1: there's sort of abandoning basic liberal values when it comes

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Speaker 1: to the drug war. And if I asked why, I

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Speaker 1: think there were basically two reasons. One was freaking out

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Speaker 1: about their kids, right. It's the way in which the

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Speaker 1: war on drugs is oftentimes justified as one great big

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Speaker 1: child protection act and therefore will pay any price, bear

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Speaker 1: any burden, lock up as many people if it's just

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Speaker 1: gonna make our kids a tiny bits. And the second part,

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Speaker 1: which was more subtle in some respects, at least in

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Speaker 1: their minds, was that the people getting locked up weren't

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Speaker 1: our people right that when you looked at pictures of

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Speaker 1: who was going to prison, it was overwhelmingly black and

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Speaker 1: brown people. I mean, I remember we started advocating to

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Speaker 1: reform the Rockefeller drug laws in New York, these draconian

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Speaker 1: drug laws, and nent of all the people getting locked

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Speaker 1: up were black and brown, even though that was vastly disproportioned,

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Speaker 1: it was much smaller percent or actually involved. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you just saw this pervasive kind of otherism. There's no

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Speaker 1: way that Americans would have endorsed this kind of mass

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Speaker 1: incarceration approach if, in fact, most of the people going

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Speaker 1: to prison were white. How did that? I mean, here

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Speaker 1: you are, living, in some respects the only majority black

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Speaker 1: jurisdiction in America. It's not quite a state, but you know,

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Speaker 1: I mean, what was that like for you in something

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Speaker 1: in that type of context. Yeah, you know, it's an

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Speaker 1: important point, and I and and I would love to

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Speaker 1: hear your thoughts at some point on how you felt

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Speaker 1: like you were able to shift the narrative with your

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Speaker 1: colleagues at Princeton. You know, you're sort of using those

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Speaker 1: as a stand in for this part of the community

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Speaker 1: that is both wealthy and whider um and therefore somewhat protected.

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Speaker 1: How did you get them to care? Because they now

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Speaker 1: do care, They now do understand the drug war is

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Speaker 1: an issue. I was working in a in a different context, right,

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Speaker 1: I was. I was having conversations with a different group

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Speaker 1: of people than what you're describing, because I'm a black

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Speaker 1: lawyer operating in a majority black city. As you say, uh,

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Speaker 1: and the dynamic there the politics around the drug war,

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Speaker 1: even though it ended up leading to a similar set

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Speaker 1: of policies and practice, Right, even though d C passes

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Speaker 1: draconian laws and mandatory minimums and like I mentioned, a

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Speaker 1: man maximum of thirty years um for selling even a

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Speaker 1: small amount of of heroin um or cocaine, the motivations

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Speaker 1: are more complicated, I think in the black community, and

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Speaker 1: a little bit different than what you described, which was

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Speaker 1: sort of a view that, well, this isn't happening to

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Speaker 1: our children, because in the black community people know it

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Speaker 1: was happening to their children. Now, there is a little

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Speaker 1: bit of a class story that we need to layer

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Speaker 1: in here, right, which is that the black elites who

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Speaker 1: are elected to office and who run government agencies do

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Speaker 1: receive some level of protection by their class status. But

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Speaker 1: they don't receive total protection right there Still, for example,

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Speaker 1: subject to the police officers doesn't necessarily know um their

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Speaker 1: class background, and maybe doesn't even care if they do

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Speaker 1: know UM. So there they received some level of protection,

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Speaker 1: but they're not nearly as protected from the ravages of

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Speaker 1: the drug war. Then, for example, the white colleagues you're

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Speaker 1: describing in Princeton. But another piece of the story in

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Speaker 1: a majority black community is that there was this sense

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Speaker 1: that even though members of our community were being targeted

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Speaker 1: and being locked up, they were doing things that were

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Speaker 1: wrong and we're harmful and we're damaging to our community,

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Speaker 1: and they had to pay the price. It might not

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Speaker 1: be fair that a white kid in New Jersey could

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Speaker 1: carry drugs or even distribute drugs by sharing them with

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Speaker 1: classmates or even selling them to classmates and get away

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Speaker 1: with it. That might not be right. But what's happening

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Speaker 1: in our neighborhood, what's happening in Anacostia, what's happening in Shaw,

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Speaker 1: what's happening in parts of DC that are being deeply

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Speaker 1: affected by the drug trade. That has to be police

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Speaker 1: and it has to be punished, And so maybe they

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Speaker 1: should send more police out to Princeton to make this equal.

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Speaker 1: But they shouldn't stop setting police Because I voter, citizen, grandmother, shopkeeper, parents.

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Speaker 1: I still want to be able to walk to school

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Speaker 1: in peace and in safety. I don't want shots ringing

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Speaker 1: out at all time of the day and night. I

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Speaker 1: don't want my kids to be offered drugs on the

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Speaker 1: way to school. I don't want to see a group

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Speaker 1: of fifteen year old guys standing on the corner who

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Speaker 1: need to be in school at eleven am and aren't

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Speaker 1: in school and are obviously selling drugs, Like that's not

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Speaker 1: fair and that's not safe, and that's not right, and

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Speaker 1: they need to be punished. And then there's one more

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Speaker 1: thing that I just want to put on the table,

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Speaker 1: which is that in the black community, that push towards

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Speaker 1: punitiveness as a way of protecting ourselves is also matched

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Speaker 1: by a desire for a deep investment in what we

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Speaker 1: might call root cause solutions. Those same black voters that

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Speaker 1: want longer sentences or want the more aggressive policing, they

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Speaker 1: also are asking for more investment and treatment programs, more

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Speaker 1: investment in and education, more investment in after school programs.

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Speaker 1: They're frustrated that the Recreation Center closes at four pm

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Speaker 1: when it should be open until eight nine pm. They

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Speaker 1: want the city to be spending money on those things.

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Speaker 1: They want the federal government to be spending money on

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Speaker 1: those things. So they're asking for more of everything, more policing,

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Speaker 1: more prosecutions, but more investment in social services as well.

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Speaker 1: And what we get in the nineties is not all

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Speaker 1: of the above, right, what we get is one of

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Speaker 1: the above. We get this unilateral focus on law enforcement, police, prosecution,

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Speaker 1: prisons as the solution. So those are some of I

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Speaker 1: think the complicated dynamics that we need to layer in

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Speaker 1: when we understand how it was that black communities came

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Speaker 1: to be behind some of these tough laws. Yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I mean, James, you know, it was a curious phenomenon

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Speaker 1: for me because, I mean, even when I started writing

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Speaker 1: and speaking about this, you know, at the height of

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Speaker 1: the drug were in the late eighties, the racial elements

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Speaker 1: to this stuff, the fact that the origins of the

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Speaker 1: drug laws were too in many rays were racist. I mean,

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Speaker 1: if you look at the origins of the cocaine laws

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Speaker 1: in the South, or the ways in which marijuana laws

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Speaker 1: were directed in Mexicans, or the antiopium laws at Chinese,

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Speaker 1: so the origins of that were apparent to me. Um.

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Speaker 1: It was also a history here when during alcohol prohibition,

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Speaker 1: I mean, some of the leading champions to prohibit alcohol

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Speaker 1: oftentimes were people from the black church, the black community

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Speaker 1: who saw the devastation of alcohol in their communities and said,

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Speaker 1: you know, let's support alcohol prohibition. And then, of course,

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Speaker 1: where do the prohibition laws land up being disproportionately enforced

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Speaker 1: is in black communities and against black people. And I

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Speaker 1: see all this going on, but I'm not really in

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Speaker 1: a position Shin, as a young white academic, to be

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Speaker 1: hitting the point of the racism of the drug war,

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Speaker 1: in part because if I tried that, people coming from

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Speaker 1: black community is saying who are you, white professor? Ideally

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Speaker 1: professors saying this sort of stuff. Do you have any

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Speaker 1: idea what crack cocaine is doing to our community? Don't

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Speaker 1: you understand we need this tough stuff, we need this.

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Speaker 1: And I would sometimes say, well, you know, sometimes it's

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Speaker 1: a matter of tradeoffs. Sometimes maybe you need if you

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Speaker 1: want more of the good stuff that you're talking about,

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Speaker 1: the investment in communities, one needs to find ways to

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Speaker 1: spend less on the law enforcement side. But those arguments

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Speaker 1: did not start to really get traction until the mid

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Speaker 1: to late nineties. Yeah well if if if then, I

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Speaker 1: mean I think not until later. Well, you know, I'm

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Speaker 1: just thinking about in June. I saw there was a

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Speaker 1: recent Supreme Court decision with Justice Thomas, the most conservative

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Speaker 1: guy in the court, writing it. And then you have

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Speaker 1: you know, Justice so do Mai or the most liberal

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Speaker 1: who is no choice but to sign on because the

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Speaker 1: law is pretty clear. But both of them are quoting

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Speaker 1: your book in their decisions to make a different argument.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I see what you mean. When you're when

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Speaker 1: you're putting the date in the mid nineties, you're really

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Speaker 1: talking about within the black community specifically. So yeah, so

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Speaker 1: that that opinion that was fascinating. Justice Thomas was trying

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Speaker 1: to recount a particular history of black support for the

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Speaker 1: kind of laws that were at issue, that were that

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Speaker 1: were being discussed in that case, right, mandatory minimums and um,

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Speaker 1: some of the crack cocaine distinction, and you know, broadly speaking,

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Speaker 1: he was making the point, which is correct, that many

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Speaker 1: members of the Congressional Black Caucus supported mandatory minimums in

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Speaker 1: the eighties. Uh, that many leaders in the black community

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Speaker 1: called crack the worst thing to hit us in slavery,

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Speaker 1: which is actually a title of a chapter in my book.

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Speaker 1: So he's making the point that listen to say that

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Speaker 1: these just have a single, you know, racist origin is

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Speaker 1: to misunderstand the history. And Justice Thomas was in d

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Speaker 1: C in the nineteen eighties. He was reading the same

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Speaker 1: you know, black papers and other newspapers, and black media

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Speaker 1: and and black speakers in the broader media who were

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Speaker 1: making these claims that that crack cocaine was so damaging,

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Speaker 1: and he draws on the book for that purpose. And

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Speaker 1: then Justice, so to myor, says well, okay, yeah, but

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Speaker 1: that's only part of the history. And then she expands

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Speaker 1: it out to the nineties and she says, look, here's

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Speaker 1: the thing you need to know. By the nine nineties,

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Speaker 1: when the racist impact and the racial impact of these

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Speaker 1: laws started to become clear, many of the black elected

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Speaker 1: officials who had supported these laws in the eighties, now

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Speaker 1: by the mid nineties were opposing them. And we're pretty consistently,

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Speaker 1: pretty uniformly saying we need to end these mandatory minimums,

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Speaker 1: we need to eliminate the crack cocaine distinction. And she

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Speaker 1: makes the point which we talked about earlier, which is, yeah,

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Speaker 1: they wanted tougher laws even back in the eighties, but

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Speaker 1: they also wanted all these other things, all these other

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Speaker 1: investments that they weren't getting. And a bunch of reporters

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Speaker 1: called me that day and said, you know, check this

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Speaker 1: out to justices are citing your book and for opposite conclusions,

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Speaker 1: and you know who's right. And what I said to

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Speaker 1: them was, you know, this isn't gonna be satisfying to you.

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Speaker 1: And but they're both right that they're correctly using the book,

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Speaker 1: and I believe correctly using the history for different points.

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Speaker 1: And I do agree with you that by the nineties,

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Speaker 1: certainly by the late nineties within the black community, there

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Speaker 1: was a growing understanding, at least among experts I wouldn't

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Speaker 1: say had broadened out into the general population that whatever

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Speaker 1: the motivations had been in the eighties, now we were

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Speaker 1: starting to see the terrible negative impact on the community.

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Speaker 1: M by just for our audience. When James referred to

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Speaker 1: the crack cocaine disparity in the mid nineteen eighties, Congress

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Speaker 1: past legislation where they basically said that possession or sale

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Speaker 1: of small amounts of crack cocaine will get you the

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Speaker 1: same penalty as sale or possession of one hundred times

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Speaker 1: as much powder cocaine. So you could get five to

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Speaker 1: ten years behind bars mandatory minimum for possessing five grams

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Speaker 1: of crack cocaine, it would take five hundred grams of

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Speaker 1: powder cocaine, and by and large, you know crack cocaine.

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Speaker 1: The people getting locked up for crack cocaine possession and

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Speaker 1: sale were typically black, and those on powder were more

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Speaker 1: likely to be white or sometimes Hispanic. So that's the

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Speaker 1: disparity we're talking about there, you know, James, I should

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Speaker 1: say from where I was sitting, right, So I pop

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Speaker 1: out in the late nineteen eighties. I write a series

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Speaker 1: of articles and prestigious journals. You asked how I began

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Speaker 1: to move some of my colleagues. So I published a

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Speaker 1: piece in the liberal journal Foreim Policy, in the conservative

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Speaker 1: General Public Interest, and then in the you know, uh,

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Speaker 1: prestige publication Science, all basically saying the war on drugs

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Speaker 1: is doing more harm than good. And probably the person

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Speaker 1: I'm debating more often than any other one back then

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Speaker 1: is Congressman Charlie rangle right, and he's the famous Harlem congressman.

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Speaker 1: And you know, the the you know, the successor to

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Speaker 1: the famous Adam Clayton Powell. He's chairing this Lick Committee

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Speaker 1: are Narcotics, And he and I are going at it

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Speaker 1: on Nightline and on you know McNeil, Lair Report and

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Speaker 1: NPR and ABC and stuff like this, and he's trying

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Speaker 1: to mock me as the white professor saying this stuff.

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Speaker 1: And I'm basically going at him about how he is

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Speaker 1: one of the biggest problems with American drug policy. Jesse Jackson,

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Speaker 1: same thing. You know, he's declaring himself the leader, he

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Speaker 1: is the general or on drugs. I think you mentioned

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Speaker 1: that Wrangle said he was the general too. They both

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Speaker 1: they both wanted to be the general in the War

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Speaker 1: on drugs, and and Wrangle had pushed through some of

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Speaker 1: the most draconian policies. And mind you, it wasn't just

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Speaker 1: on criminal justice stuff, right, you also had on needle exchange,

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Speaker 1: where the public health people were beginning to say do it.

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Speaker 1: And then when you see is huge opposition within black

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Speaker 1: communities in New York City, Mayor Dinkins becomes mayor, succeeding

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Speaker 1: a conscience shuts down the one little trial needle exchange

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Speaker 1: program and the Congressional Black Caucus initially opposes, you know,

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Speaker 1: needle exchange, but the transition happens most rapidly among black

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Speaker 1: political leadership. I mean, that's where you see they essentially

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Speaker 1: lead beginning in the mid nineties, whether it's on needle exchange,

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Speaker 1: whether it's on sentencing reform that. And it's where you

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Speaker 1: see oftentimes the younger Black leaders, the newer, younger members

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Speaker 1: of Congress, and also with the state legislatures who were

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Speaker 1: challenging the older generation. Right. And so that's where we

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Speaker 1: begin to get some actual momentum. And I should say

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Speaker 1: there were exceptions, because what was pivotal when I started

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Speaker 1: speaking out in eight was you had in Baltimore, you know,

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Speaker 1: a new mayor, former chief Prosecutor, Kurt Schmoke, who's steps

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Speaker 1: up at the Conference of Mayors basically saying the war

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Speaker 1: on drugs is doing more harm than good. Right. You

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Speaker 1: have on James Baldwin speaking up in eighties six saying

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Speaker 1: we gotta legalize drugs because you keep it this way,

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Speaker 1: it's gonna be against black people. But I mean, I

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Speaker 1: remember how Kurt Smoke bravely making this case as the

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Speaker 1: as the black mayor of a majority I believe Black

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Speaker 1: City is just being clobbered by both white and black

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Speaker 1: members of the community and leadership and just seen as

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Speaker 1: this kind of devian voice at the time. You know,

431
00:25:31,160 --> 00:25:33,919
Speaker 1: you get to the mid nineties and it begins to

432
00:25:34,080 --> 00:25:36,480
Speaker 1: evolve in a way that opens up the potential to

433
00:25:36,560 --> 00:25:38,879
Speaker 1: begin to make some reforms possible, at least at the

434
00:25:38,920 --> 00:25:43,320
Speaker 1: state level. Man, that is so interesting your perspective. I wish, honestly,

435
00:25:43,359 --> 00:25:45,439
Speaker 1: I wish I had been able to find access to

436
00:25:45,480 --> 00:25:48,280
Speaker 1: some of those debates between you and Wrangel that in

437
00:25:48,320 --> 00:25:51,600
Speaker 1: the in the eighties, because that would have been really

438
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:56,919
Speaker 1: rich for material for the book. But Smoke, right, Kurt Smoke,

439
00:25:57,040 --> 00:26:00,399
Speaker 1: you're so he There should be an awar I don't know,

440
00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:02,440
Speaker 1: are there. I don't know if there's a Kirch Smoke Award.

441
00:26:02,520 --> 00:26:07,159
Speaker 1: But now in this era, when there's an understanding, a

442
00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:10,800
Speaker 1: really different understanding about drugs and there's more of a

443
00:26:10,840 --> 00:26:15,000
Speaker 1: consensus that goes in that direction, somebody should honor him

444
00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:18,600
Speaker 1: because you are so right. You are so right. Actually, James,

445
00:26:18,600 --> 00:26:20,600
Speaker 1: the only award, the only word there is, is given

446
00:26:20,600 --> 00:26:24,639
Speaker 1: out by the Drug Policy Alliance for you. Yeah, I mean,

447
00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:27,960
Speaker 1: I think one of the bravest politicians in America. You know,

448
00:26:28,040 --> 00:26:30,119
Speaker 1: he would have made for a great U. S. Senator

449
00:26:30,200 --> 00:26:32,199
Speaker 1: for Maryland. And I think one of the things that

450
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:33,679
Speaker 1: got in his way was the fact that he had

451
00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:38,720
Speaker 1: been so courageous on this issue. We'll be talking more

452
00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:57,800
Speaker 1: after we hear this ad. I want to say in

453
00:26:57,840 --> 00:27:01,560
Speaker 1: your book, you talk about going to your students and

454
00:27:01,560 --> 00:27:03,879
Speaker 1: getting these kind of blank stairs, and you say, without

455
00:27:03,920 --> 00:27:08,520
Speaker 1: taking heroin into account, one cannot understand African American attitudes

456
00:27:08,560 --> 00:27:11,199
Speaker 1: towards the drug war. And you go back into a

457
00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:14,960
Speaker 1: history which very few people know about how and why

458
00:27:15,359 --> 00:27:18,280
Speaker 1: the experience around heroin in the sixties and early seventies

459
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:21,879
Speaker 1: shape things. And I wonder if you could elaborate on that. Yeah, absolutely,

460
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:26,680
Speaker 1: I think that if my students today, I mean, if

461
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:32,040
Speaker 1: they know anything about this era that we're talking about, um,

462
00:27:32,080 --> 00:27:34,320
Speaker 1: they know maybe a little bit about the eighties and

463
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:37,600
Speaker 1: nineties and Crack, right, maybe some of them have watched

464
00:27:37,600 --> 00:27:42,720
Speaker 1: the Wire. Um, but you're right, there's very little um

465
00:27:42,840 --> 00:27:48,320
Speaker 1: understanding about heroin in the nineteen sixties. But Heroin really

466
00:27:48,359 --> 00:27:52,760
Speaker 1: devastated black communities in some analogous ways to what Crack

467
00:27:52,840 --> 00:27:56,080
Speaker 1: would do uh in the eighties. Um and and and

468
00:27:56,119 --> 00:28:00,440
Speaker 1: I think set the stage for some of these um

469
00:28:00,440 --> 00:28:04,160
Speaker 1: punitive black attitude. Some of the political leaders that we're

470
00:28:04,160 --> 00:28:08,199
Speaker 1: talking about, they were in college and shortly after college

471
00:28:08,240 --> 00:28:12,119
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, so they were very much alive

472
00:28:12,280 --> 00:28:15,359
Speaker 1: during this period of time. So in the nineteen sixties,

473
00:28:15,840 --> 00:28:21,479
Speaker 1: the homicide rate doubled and in some cities tripled. And

474
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:25,280
Speaker 1: at the same time, at the same time as homicides

475
00:28:25,359 --> 00:28:29,960
Speaker 1: rates rates were increasing, you also saw a massive influx

476
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:33,159
Speaker 1: of heroin. For a complicated set of historical reasons. Some

477
00:28:33,200 --> 00:28:36,680
Speaker 1: of it had to do with UM exposure in Vietnam

478
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:42,680
Speaker 1: and and folks coming home, but for all the sort

479
00:28:42,680 --> 00:28:48,200
Speaker 1: of different reasons, the bottom line is that you started

480
00:28:48,240 --> 00:28:51,400
Speaker 1: to see, especially in the late nineteen sixties, you started

481
00:28:51,400 --> 00:28:57,200
Speaker 1: to see a huge uptick in heroin use and heroin addiction.

482
00:28:57,360 --> 00:29:00,080
Speaker 1: So in d C, which are the numbers that I

483
00:29:00,120 --> 00:29:04,640
Speaker 1: know best, they test everyone entering the DC jail every year,

484
00:29:05,280 --> 00:29:10,080
Speaker 1: and in the early nineteen sixties nineteen sixty three, about

485
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:13,560
Speaker 1: four of the people who are entering the jail are

486
00:29:13,600 --> 00:29:16,840
Speaker 1: testing positive for heroin. And by the end of the decade,

487
00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:20,000
Speaker 1: less than ten years later, um it has become it

488
00:29:20,080 --> 00:29:23,040
Speaker 1: has risen to almost forty and so you get this

489
00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:27,560
Speaker 1: massive increase, right, you get this explosion, and it's then

490
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:32,640
Speaker 1: associated also with a lot of a public presentation of

491
00:29:32,720 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 1: drug You so you get syringes that are being left

492
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:38,520
Speaker 1: in front of homes and businesses. You get people that

493
00:29:38,560 --> 00:29:41,760
Speaker 1: are nodding off on park benches, You have people that

494
00:29:41,800 --> 00:29:44,880
Speaker 1: are gathering on on stoops and some of them are

495
00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:49,360
Speaker 1: strung out. And you get neighbors again focusing on d C.

496
00:29:49,560 --> 00:29:52,280
Speaker 1: But the same story you could tell in every black

497
00:29:52,280 --> 00:29:56,280
Speaker 1: community across the country really kind of deluging their elected

498
00:29:56,320 --> 00:29:59,920
Speaker 1: representatives saying you gotta do something about all of these

499
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:03,680
Speaker 1: heroin addicts are public spaces, don't feel they don't feel

500
00:30:03,680 --> 00:30:06,680
Speaker 1: safe anymore. And I don't want to walk into my

501
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 1: backyard and my back alley and find like multiple dirty syringes.

502
00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:16,040
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to live like that. And so there's both

503
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:19,440
Speaker 1: a rise in heroin use, a rise in heroin addiction.

504
00:30:20,120 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 1: There's a demand for a response, and there's also a

505
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:30,360
Speaker 1: deep distrust in the black community which goes back for

506
00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:37,640
Speaker 1: centuries of government interventions and some government responses. So some

507
00:30:37,800 --> 00:30:42,480
Speaker 1: of the Nixon administration, which did many, many, many terrible

508
00:30:42,520 --> 00:30:47,080
Speaker 1: things on many topics, including on drug policy. One little

509
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:50,280
Speaker 1: small thing that they were doing right at the time

510
00:30:51,120 --> 00:30:57,920
Speaker 1: was they actually were investing in methodone and other heroin

511
00:30:58,000 --> 00:31:02,760
Speaker 1: treatment centers. But what there was deep resistance to some

512
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:07,400
Speaker 1: of these centers from a very distrustful black community, including

513
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:14,600
Speaker 1: black nationalists, who said, listen, we're fighting for our people's freedom.

514
00:31:14,680 --> 00:31:18,760
Speaker 1: We are fighting a revolution, and we don't want our

515
00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:22,800
Speaker 1: people to be strung out on heroin supplied by the

516
00:31:22,920 --> 00:31:28,080
Speaker 1: pusher on the corner or Method one supplied by the government.

517
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:32,960
Speaker 1: Both of those are ways of keeping us down, their

518
00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:38,000
Speaker 1: ways of keeping us unconscious, and their ways of keeping

519
00:31:38,120 --> 00:31:40,480
Speaker 1: us out of the fight that we all need to

520
00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:43,640
Speaker 1: be engaged in. We need all of our faculties to

521
00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:46,440
Speaker 1: be able to fight for freedom and fight for justice

522
00:31:46,440 --> 00:31:48,960
Speaker 1: and fight for civil rights. So you have this anti

523
00:31:49,040 --> 00:31:53,400
Speaker 1: drug from the left perspective, you have a distrust of

524
00:31:53,480 --> 00:31:57,880
Speaker 1: government perspective. You have neighbors and regular folks just freaking

525
00:31:57,880 --> 00:32:03,080
Speaker 1: out about this problem, and at the same time, you

526
00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 1: have the very beginnings of what will become right the

527
00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:12,840
Speaker 1: prison prosecutor uh police approach that would end up being

528
00:32:12,880 --> 00:32:15,800
Speaker 1: the dominant approach by the nineteen eighties and nine nineties.

529
00:32:16,040 --> 00:32:20,200
Speaker 1: And it's like sitting there ready to seize on this opportunity,

530
00:32:20,280 --> 00:32:23,960
Speaker 1: and that's that's ultimately what happens. M hm. You know,

531
00:32:24,080 --> 00:32:26,720
Speaker 1: essentially you bring up the method on issue, James. I mean,

532
00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:29,200
Speaker 1: it was oftentimes referred to in black communities as the

533
00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:33,000
Speaker 1: white man's chemical bracelet, as another form of social control.

534
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:35,680
Speaker 1: And I think what part of what helped to change

535
00:32:35,720 --> 00:32:38,880
Speaker 1: that was when there was a fellow named Dr Benny prim,

536
00:32:39,280 --> 00:32:43,080
Speaker 1: a liberal Republican and probably the leading black man in

537
00:32:43,160 --> 00:32:46,959
Speaker 1: drug treatment circles nationally, who eventually entered the federal government

538
00:32:46,960 --> 00:32:50,800
Speaker 1: Health in Human Services under the first President Bush. But

539
00:32:50,880 --> 00:32:53,880
Speaker 1: I think when he starts speaking up, that really moves

540
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:56,440
Speaker 1: things in New York and elsewhere. And I'll tell you

541
00:32:56,480 --> 00:32:59,360
Speaker 1: another little story. It must have been I don't know,

542
00:32:59,480 --> 00:33:04,360
Speaker 1: mid late nineties. I get a meeting with Reverend Calvin Butts,

543
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:06,960
Speaker 1: who's the head of Abyssinian Church in Harlem, one of

544
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 1: the most famous black ministers in the country. And people say, Ethan,

545
00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:11,360
Speaker 1: whatever you do when you go up there, you know,

546
00:33:11,560 --> 00:33:13,560
Speaker 1: you can talk about the arrest and Carsonarry don't talk

547
00:33:13,560 --> 00:33:17,040
Speaker 1: about methanon, but what the hell? And so I'm meeting

548
00:33:17,080 --> 00:33:20,400
Speaker 1: with him and I raised the issue of methanon and

549
00:33:20,440 --> 00:33:24,120
Speaker 1: he says to me, let me tell you something. Let

550
00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:26,360
Speaker 1: me tell you something about meth and I'm going, okay,

551
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:28,840
Speaker 1: here it comes, chemical bracelet, all this sort of stuff.

552
00:33:29,160 --> 00:33:31,800
Speaker 1: And he says, do you know that some of the

553
00:33:31,840 --> 00:33:35,120
Speaker 1: most respected members of my church have been on methanon

554
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:37,800
Speaker 1: for many years? Do you know that some of the

555
00:33:37,880 --> 00:33:40,280
Speaker 1: deacons in my church or on it? Do you know

556
00:33:40,360 --> 00:33:43,240
Speaker 1: that many of their cases, not even their family knows.

557
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:46,440
Speaker 1: I just know because of my pastoral privilege. And then

558
00:33:46,440 --> 00:33:48,440
Speaker 1: he says to me, could you imagine what it would

559
00:33:48,440 --> 00:33:50,840
Speaker 1: be like if they felt free to speak up in

560
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:53,360
Speaker 1: church and say, I am a person who has been

561
00:33:53,360 --> 00:33:56,080
Speaker 1: on methanon for many years and nonetheless have a family

562
00:33:56,120 --> 00:33:58,280
Speaker 1: and a job in leading good night. Can you imagine

563
00:33:58,320 --> 00:34:01,080
Speaker 1: the transformation that would happen? You know. It's another point

564
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:03,680
Speaker 1: you raise in your book, which is that the people

565
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:07,320
Speaker 1: who are being victimized by the war on drugs oftentimes

566
00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:10,360
Speaker 1: it's just young black men just being shipped into the system,

567
00:34:10,600 --> 00:34:12,800
Speaker 1: but it's even people who are getting that's not a

568
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:17,400
Speaker 1: nintenance treatment, who are intimidated that their voices are not heard.

569
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:20,600
Speaker 1: And that that's changed a lot now, But back then,

570
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:23,319
Speaker 1: there was no sense that such a person was even

571
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 1: entitled to have a voice. Yes, the issue that you

572
00:34:27,160 --> 00:34:30,799
Speaker 1: raise is exactly right. This is true throughout America. It's

573
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:33,960
Speaker 1: also true in the black community, which is that some

574
00:34:34,040 --> 00:34:38,600
Speaker 1: of the people who are most directly harm, most directly affected,

575
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:42,799
Speaker 1: whether they are struggling with addiction, whether they're people who

576
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:47,040
Speaker 1: are incarcerated, their voices aren't value. Their voices are very

577
00:34:47,080 --> 00:34:51,480
Speaker 1: diminished when we talk about the problems with the system

578
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:54,000
Speaker 1: and what to do about it. I first saw this

579
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:58,440
Speaker 1: up close in d C. In the ES, the Public

580
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:01,280
Speaker 1: Defender Service had people who would o lobby city council,

581
00:35:02,040 --> 00:35:06,160
Speaker 1: and we were very reluctant to send our clients and

582
00:35:06,200 --> 00:35:10,839
Speaker 1: their families to advocate on some of these issues, whether

583
00:35:10,880 --> 00:35:13,200
Speaker 1: it was a prisoner's right question or whether it was

584
00:35:13,239 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 1: a stop in frisk kind of question. And we didn't

585
00:35:17,200 --> 00:35:20,600
Speaker 1: we didn't have an infrastructure to train people how to

586
00:35:20,640 --> 00:35:25,399
Speaker 1: become effective advocates. It just wasn't a thing. And one

587
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:28,600
Speaker 1: of the reasons why that was the case is that

588
00:35:28,640 --> 00:35:34,080
Speaker 1: there was a sense that our clients and their family

589
00:35:34,120 --> 00:35:38,560
Speaker 1: members were so stigmatized and ridiculed. I talked before about

590
00:35:38,640 --> 00:35:41,120
Speaker 1: how when they went into the courtroom and everyone looked

591
00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:43,520
Speaker 1: at them as the enemy. So how are we going

592
00:35:43,600 --> 00:35:47,520
Speaker 1: to send them down to the city Council to argue

593
00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:51,480
Speaker 1: um on this issue. Weren't we just gonna lose all

594
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 1: all credibility? And they often wouldn't have wanted to go

595
00:35:56,280 --> 00:35:59,680
Speaker 1: testify because they would have felt all that scorn and

596
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:03,680
Speaker 1: shane and stigma being heaped upon them right by everybody

597
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:06,160
Speaker 1: of the city council hearing who's saying, well, you know,

598
00:36:06,239 --> 00:36:08,080
Speaker 1: you want to come and talk about this problem with

599
00:36:08,120 --> 00:36:11,040
Speaker 1: prison conditions, but let's talk about what you even did

600
00:36:11,040 --> 00:36:13,239
Speaker 1: to be in prison in the first place. Or if

601
00:36:13,239 --> 00:36:15,920
Speaker 1: it's the mom and you want to talk about disparities

602
00:36:15,920 --> 00:36:18,399
Speaker 1: and then the drug law, well let's talk about why

603
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:20,879
Speaker 1: your kid was even out there in the drug game

604
00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:23,640
Speaker 1: to begin with. What kind of mom are you to

605
00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:26,000
Speaker 1: have allowed that to happen? Right? You can just imagine

606
00:36:26,080 --> 00:36:28,960
Speaker 1: what a haunting and terrible experience that would be for

607
00:36:28,960 --> 00:36:32,360
Speaker 1: for somebody. So in the nineties, in the two thousand's

608
00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:35,440
Speaker 1: until really fairly recently, still too much, but but it

609
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:39,359
Speaker 1: is changing. Those voices are left out of the conversation,

610
00:36:39,480 --> 00:36:42,040
Speaker 1: and so you know, you get all those community members

611
00:36:42,040 --> 00:36:45,520
Speaker 1: that I described to are outraged about the person that's

612
00:36:45,560 --> 00:36:48,160
Speaker 1: nodding off on the bench and leaving the syringes or

613
00:36:48,160 --> 00:36:52,440
Speaker 1: selling drugs on the corner. But nobody who's actually being

614
00:36:52,560 --> 00:36:57,879
Speaker 1: directly harmed by the system's response is getting their voice heard.

615
00:36:57,920 --> 00:37:00,120
Speaker 1: So that, to me, I think is one of the

616
00:37:00,200 --> 00:37:03,920
Speaker 1: biggest things that has changed but still has to continue

617
00:37:03,920 --> 00:37:07,759
Speaker 1: to change. Um And in particular, what I believe is

618
00:37:07,800 --> 00:37:12,080
Speaker 1: that organizations that care about these issues have to continue

619
00:37:12,120 --> 00:37:17,520
Speaker 1: to develop the advocacy skills people really need to be

620
00:37:17,800 --> 00:37:21,760
Speaker 1: trained and supported to become highly effective and to build

621
00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:24,600
Speaker 1: on their life experiences and to be able to translate

622
00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:29,319
Speaker 1: those into ways that persuade at the city, county, state,

623
00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:32,839
Speaker 1: and national level. M hm, Now it makes sense. So

624
00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:36,000
Speaker 1: here I'm gonna ask you a very challenging question now

625
00:37:36,400 --> 00:37:38,239
Speaker 1: in part because I'm asking you to pack a lot

626
00:37:38,280 --> 00:37:42,719
Speaker 1: into this. So there are three significant points you make

627
00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:44,920
Speaker 1: in the book. I mean, many others, but three that

628
00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:49,200
Speaker 1: I kept highlighting. One was you talk about the simultaneous

629
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:53,520
Speaker 1: over and under policing of crime in black communities. The

630
00:37:53,560 --> 00:37:57,239
Speaker 1: second is you point out that mass incarceration, the rise

631
00:37:57,239 --> 00:38:00,600
Speaker 1: of mass incarceration is not the results of some great,

632
00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:04,400
Speaker 1: big campaign being mandated from on high, but a result

633
00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:08,360
Speaker 1: of small distinct steps with all sorts of different players.

634
00:38:08,480 --> 00:38:11,800
Speaker 1: You know, nobody fully being responsible almost reminded me of

635
00:38:11,800 --> 00:38:13,480
Speaker 1: the way you described it is the way we think

636
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:16,759
Speaker 1: about the financial meltdown in housing and loan and all

637
00:38:16,760 --> 00:38:18,680
Speaker 1: that in two thousand and eight, right where everybody's making

638
00:38:18,719 --> 00:38:21,839
Speaker 1: small steps, nobody is ultimately responsible and it all kind

639
00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:24,640
Speaker 1: of adds up. And the third point you make is

640
00:38:24,920 --> 00:38:27,759
Speaker 1: while we tend to focus on Washington, d C. In

641
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:30,840
Speaker 1: the federal government sense of the word, and the White

642
00:38:30,880 --> 00:38:34,120
Speaker 1: House in Congress and all that, in fact, most of

643
00:38:34,160 --> 00:38:36,640
Speaker 1: criminal justice and most of the war on drugs is

644
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:40,359
Speaker 1: operating at the local level. So now I wonder if

645
00:38:40,360 --> 00:38:43,960
Speaker 1: you could pollo three together and sort of analyze that

646
00:38:44,040 --> 00:38:47,520
Speaker 1: this is gonna make the question really tough. There's already tough, brother,

647
00:38:47,520 --> 00:38:50,600
Speaker 1: it's already tough. Keep going, I know, okay, But what

648
00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:53,320
Speaker 1: really captive met in the book was you talk about

649
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:56,360
Speaker 1: the journey of Eric Holder from his years his U

650
00:38:56,440 --> 00:39:00,120
Speaker 1: S attorney in in d C. To his years as

651
00:39:00,160 --> 00:39:03,400
Speaker 1: Attorney General from Obama where he becomes the driving force

652
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:07,919
Speaker 1: in Obama's second term basically for criminal justice and drug

653
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:10,840
Speaker 1: law reform. Just you know, provide our audience with a

654
00:39:10,920 --> 00:39:14,719
Speaker 1: sense maybe through the lens of Eric Holder as a

655
00:39:14,719 --> 00:39:18,799
Speaker 1: as a key character in all of this. Yeah, absolutely, um, So,

656
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:21,440
Speaker 1: I mean, I think Eric Holder in some ways is

657
00:39:21,480 --> 00:39:25,120
Speaker 1: a perfect character to to to understand and the book

658
00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:27,360
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, and to understand especially the

659
00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:31,279
Speaker 1: trajectory from kind of the then to the now. You know,

660
00:39:31,400 --> 00:39:34,280
Speaker 1: you've in a number of your comments you've talked about

661
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:39,880
Speaker 1: growth and evolution among black representatives that and elected officials

662
00:39:39,880 --> 00:39:42,440
Speaker 1: that you've worked with over the years, right, whether it's

663
00:39:42,440 --> 00:39:45,080
Speaker 1: Wrangel or Jackson, and and I think Holder is a

664
00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:49,360
Speaker 1: really great example of this. So Holder is a local

665
00:39:49,400 --> 00:39:52,399
Speaker 1: elected official in Washington, d C. So he has all

666
00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:56,040
Speaker 1: that power that we're talking about that comes at the

667
00:39:56,040 --> 00:39:59,000
Speaker 1: local level initially, right. And you know a eight percent

668
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:01,360
Speaker 1: of prisoners in this kind tree are in state and

669
00:40:01,480 --> 00:40:05,320
Speaker 1: local prisons, and of law enforcement in this country is

670
00:40:05,440 --> 00:40:09,480
Speaker 1: state and local. So that's why, Um, for listeners who

671
00:40:09,560 --> 00:40:11,759
Speaker 1: care about this issue, the place that they want to

672
00:40:11,800 --> 00:40:15,000
Speaker 1: be focused on is their state capital. The place they

673
00:40:15,080 --> 00:40:17,040
Speaker 1: want to be focused on is at the city level.

674
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:19,799
Speaker 1: Those are much more important than whether or not the

675
00:40:19,840 --> 00:40:22,920
Speaker 1: federal government passes this law or that law on this topic.

676
00:40:23,280 --> 00:40:26,160
Speaker 1: It really is. And Holders an example of that. So

677
00:40:26,200 --> 00:40:29,480
Speaker 1: he's a local elected official, uh, and then he gets

678
00:40:29,640 --> 00:40:33,920
Speaker 1: becomes an appointed official as the chief prosecutor in the city.

679
00:40:34,120 --> 00:40:38,160
Speaker 1: And Eric Holder is in a lot of ways, I

680
00:40:38,200 --> 00:40:41,360
Speaker 1: think what we would call in the black community traditionally

681
00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:44,919
Speaker 1: and my parents generation would call a raceman. And by

682
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:49,520
Speaker 1: which I mean he is somebody who deeply, passionately, like

683
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:53,120
Speaker 1: just every fiber in his body, he cares about black

684
00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:57,000
Speaker 1: people and he wants the black community to thrive. And

685
00:40:57,040 --> 00:40:59,360
Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties, he's looking out at the

686
00:40:59,360 --> 00:41:02,400
Speaker 1: world as a judge and as a prosecutor, and he

687
00:41:02,520 --> 00:41:05,600
Speaker 1: sees crack as the worst thing that's hit us in slavery.

688
00:41:05,680 --> 00:41:10,080
Speaker 1: He sees the body counts, the homicide rate um getting

689
00:41:10,120 --> 00:41:13,640
Speaker 1: two levels that had never gotten to throughout history. And

690
00:41:13,680 --> 00:41:18,360
Speaker 1: he gives a speech uh in the early saying, listen,

691
00:41:18,840 --> 00:41:22,359
Speaker 1: black people lost our freedom under Jim crow and we

692
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:26,319
Speaker 1: are losing our freedom now. But what's gonna keep us

693
00:41:26,360 --> 00:41:29,759
Speaker 1: from our freedom now is in segregation. It's not Jim Crowe.

694
00:41:29,880 --> 00:41:33,319
Speaker 1: It's crime and violence and people are afraid to leave

695
00:41:33,360 --> 00:41:37,120
Speaker 1: their homes. Right. So he draws a direct analogy from

696
00:41:37,239 --> 00:41:41,239
Speaker 1: Selma to Washington, d C. In the early nineties, and

697
00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:47,040
Speaker 1: he launches a very very aggressive stop and frisk vehicle

698
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:53,120
Speaker 1: campaign operations sees fire that leads to black drivers, black motorists,

699
00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:58,560
Speaker 1: and especially young black people getting stopped and searched and

700
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:03,200
Speaker 1: frisk at overwhelmingly disproportionate numbers. And he does it because

701
00:42:03,239 --> 00:42:05,480
Speaker 1: he wants to get the guns off the street, right.

702
00:42:05,520 --> 00:42:08,800
Speaker 1: He does it because he wants to create a safe community.

703
00:42:09,000 --> 00:42:11,319
Speaker 1: And the tools that he feels like he has at

704
00:42:11,400 --> 00:42:15,040
Speaker 1: hand is law enforcement. So he really does help to

705
00:42:15,280 --> 00:42:20,839
Speaker 1: build the system of mass incarceration that we now know

706
00:42:20,960 --> 00:42:24,960
Speaker 1: and called by that name. Having said that, by the

707
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:28,200
Speaker 1: time he gets into the federal government in the Obama administration,

708
00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:31,839
Speaker 1: he's still a race man. And now he's looked at

709
00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:36,759
Speaker 1: this accumulated evidence and he's horrified. He doesn't tell the

710
00:42:36,800 --> 00:42:39,880
Speaker 1: story the way I'm telling it. He doesn't identify his

711
00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:42,480
Speaker 1: own actions in the way that I am, and elected

712
00:42:42,520 --> 00:42:45,680
Speaker 1: officials and people in public life typically you know, don't

713
00:42:45,680 --> 00:42:48,319
Speaker 1: do that. As academics, we say, oh, you know, I

714
00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:50,080
Speaker 1: messed that one up. I was wrong. I make a

715
00:42:50,120 --> 00:42:53,480
Speaker 1: mistake that's not really like how elected officials really roll.

716
00:42:53,960 --> 00:42:58,040
Speaker 1: But regardless, he does then take a series of actions.

717
00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:01,680
Speaker 1: This time from the federal government standpoint to try to

718
00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:05,960
Speaker 1: undo some of the damage um that has been caused.

719
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:09,600
Speaker 1: And my thing is, we're all going to make mistakes.

720
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:12,239
Speaker 1: I have made mistakes. We're going to take physicians that

721
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:15,759
Speaker 1: are wrong. To me, what's really important is are you

722
00:43:15,880 --> 00:43:21,400
Speaker 1: willing to with an open mind except and evaluate new evidence,

723
00:43:21,960 --> 00:43:25,960
Speaker 1: see when you're wrong, and act in response to try

724
00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:29,560
Speaker 1: to shart a new course forward. And I think Holder

725
00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:33,000
Speaker 1: can be very proud of the fact that he has

726
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:38,920
Speaker 1: done just that. Now. Again, none of the individual actions

727
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:43,160
Speaker 1: that he took, either in the nineties or more recently,

728
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:46,920
Speaker 1: created this system or going to dismantle it. So when

729
00:43:46,960 --> 00:43:49,640
Speaker 1: people say to me, well, what's the most important thing

730
00:43:49,680 --> 00:43:54,160
Speaker 1: to do, I say, it's all important, right, It's all important.

731
00:43:54,200 --> 00:43:58,200
Speaker 1: The question is finding where you fit in right? Where

732
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:04,200
Speaker 1: can you how have influence? And every single person in

733
00:44:04,239 --> 00:44:08,520
Speaker 1: this country, every single person who's listening to your podcast,

734
00:44:09,200 --> 00:44:12,319
Speaker 1: they do have power, They do have the ability to

735
00:44:12,400 --> 00:44:15,480
Speaker 1: help us chart a new course forward. It might be

736
00:44:16,120 --> 00:44:19,840
Speaker 1: helping to legalize substances in the state that they're in.

737
00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:24,520
Speaker 1: It might be ending disparities, ending mandatory minimums we still

738
00:44:24,600 --> 00:44:26,920
Speaker 1: have a lot of them. It might be getting clean

739
00:44:27,040 --> 00:44:30,880
Speaker 1: slate legislation passed so that once you've served your time,

740
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:33,960
Speaker 1: your record is wiped clear and you get a chance

741
00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:38,319
Speaker 1: to re enter society as a full citizen. The precise

742
00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:43,239
Speaker 1: laws and policies that need to change are going to

743
00:44:43,440 --> 00:44:46,600
Speaker 1: vary from county to county, city to city, state to state,

744
00:44:47,120 --> 00:44:50,000
Speaker 1: but I can guarantee you that there's work to be

745
00:44:50,120 --> 00:44:53,719
Speaker 1: done in every single city, every single county, in every

746
00:44:53,719 --> 00:44:56,480
Speaker 1: single state. And I think it's really up to us.

747
00:44:57,080 --> 00:45:01,800
Speaker 1: Two sees that moment, you know, when Black Lives Matter

748
00:45:02,040 --> 00:45:05,120
Speaker 1: really emerged so rapidly a few years ago, five six

749
00:45:05,200 --> 00:45:09,480
Speaker 1: years ago, And for me, what was inspiring about it

750
00:45:09,520 --> 00:45:11,800
Speaker 1: was it was as if there was a new civil

751
00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:16,720
Speaker 1: rights movement that at last was not reluctant to embrace

752
00:45:16,800 --> 00:45:20,560
Speaker 1: the drug policy reform agenda, treat drugs as a health issue,

753
00:45:20,560 --> 00:45:23,879
Speaker 1: pro needle exchange of method on legalized marijuana, and mass

754
00:45:23,880 --> 00:45:26,360
Speaker 1: incarceration in all of these sorts of things. And I

755
00:45:26,400 --> 00:45:28,400
Speaker 1: think part of it is when you look at the

756
00:45:28,440 --> 00:45:30,560
Speaker 1: black people getting killed by cops. You know, you look

757
00:45:30,600 --> 00:45:33,680
Speaker 1: at George Floyd right in Minneapolis, or or before him,

758
00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:36,279
Speaker 1: you know, Philando Castile in Minneapolis. So you look at

759
00:45:36,280 --> 00:45:38,480
Speaker 1: Michael Brown Ferguson, which set the whole thing off for

760
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:42,279
Speaker 1: Lecon McDonald in Chicago, or Terence Crutcher and Tulsa right,

761
00:45:42,360 --> 00:45:44,439
Speaker 1: or even the Eric Garner case involving a guy selling

762
00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:47,920
Speaker 1: Lucy's in New York. In every case which you have

763
00:45:48,080 --> 00:45:50,359
Speaker 1: is the cops saying, oh, it only happened because they

764
00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:53,040
Speaker 1: were on drugs. So there's this constant way in which

765
00:45:53,080 --> 00:45:58,080
Speaker 1: the drug pieces being somehow used to excuse or legitimize

766
00:45:58,200 --> 00:46:01,520
Speaker 1: a killing of a typically are in black man. And

767
00:46:01,560 --> 00:46:04,960
Speaker 1: so there's something inspiring about that that's forcing the issue.

768
00:46:05,320 --> 00:46:07,320
Speaker 1: And the question will be I think, to some extent,

769
00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:11,680
Speaker 1: as a younger generation of black activists and allies begin

770
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:14,319
Speaker 1: to age up, begin to have their own kids, begin

771
00:46:14,400 --> 00:46:16,879
Speaker 1: to freak out about their own kids, will they land

772
00:46:16,960 --> 00:46:19,680
Speaker 1: up becoming more conservative as well, or will they keep

773
00:46:19,760 --> 00:46:24,440
Speaker 1: to the kind of youthful enthusiasm um that they've demonstrated

774
00:46:24,480 --> 00:46:27,560
Speaker 1: over recent years. What do you think? Wow, that's why

775
00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:30,080
Speaker 1: I'm not really in the prediction business. But I do

776
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:34,239
Speaker 1: really like how you frame that question. I think, yeah,

777
00:46:34,280 --> 00:46:36,239
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not in the prediction business, but I

778
00:46:36,239 --> 00:46:39,080
Speaker 1: am you know, I'm in the hoping business. The thing

779
00:46:39,120 --> 00:46:43,120
Speaker 1: that I hope that some of this new generation will

780
00:46:43,160 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 1: focus on is really trying to build up alternative structures

781
00:46:50,560 --> 00:46:55,360
Speaker 1: and alternative approaches for how to respond to really what

782
00:46:55,520 --> 00:46:59,239
Speaker 1: are real and genuine and pressing social problems. So to me,

783
00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:05,439
Speaker 1: the libertarian take on drug policy has never had any

784
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:08,680
Speaker 1: appeal to me personally and what I mean by that,

785
00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:10,960
Speaker 1: And this gets a little bit to your question about

786
00:47:11,280 --> 00:47:14,839
Speaker 1: sort of over policing under policing, which is that in

787
00:47:14,880 --> 00:47:19,959
Speaker 1: the black community, whether you're talking about drug policy, whether

788
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:23,000
Speaker 1: you're talking about poverty, whatever, it is that you're talking about,

789
00:47:23,719 --> 00:47:33,480
Speaker 1: these issues harm black communities especially, And this is what

790
00:47:33,560 --> 00:47:36,480
Speaker 1: a little bit was behind right when Wrangle was making

791
00:47:36,520 --> 00:47:39,080
Speaker 1: fun of you or attacking you in the eighties, even

792
00:47:39,120 --> 00:47:41,400
Speaker 1: though I think he was wrong right on that the

793
00:47:41,640 --> 00:47:45,520
Speaker 1: ultimate issue. Part of where he is coming from, and

794
00:47:45,600 --> 00:47:47,600
Speaker 1: part of where a lot of the people that I

795
00:47:47,640 --> 00:47:51,520
Speaker 1: write about are coming from, is they're like, look, this

796
00:47:51,680 --> 00:47:56,480
Speaker 1: problem of addiction, this is real. Do not minimize it,

797
00:47:56,760 --> 00:47:59,560
Speaker 1: Do not say well, it'll just like let's just do

798
00:47:59,640 --> 00:48:02,800
Speaker 1: nothing and it will be fine. That for me anyway,

799
00:48:02,800 --> 00:48:04,320
Speaker 1: I know there's a lot of people and may probably

800
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:06,120
Speaker 1: you have a lot of listeners that are like down

801
00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:11,080
Speaker 1: without analysis I'm not. I believe that whether we're talking

802
00:48:11,120 --> 00:48:13,919
Speaker 1: about drugs or whether we're talking about violence, I don't

803
00:48:13,960 --> 00:48:16,799
Speaker 1: care the issue that you're talking about in the black

804
00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:20,520
Speaker 1: community because of a history of racism that goes back

805
00:48:20,719 --> 00:48:22,880
Speaker 1: to slavery, which we have in this country for longer

806
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:26,640
Speaker 1: than we haven't. Because of that and Jim Prow and

807
00:48:26,760 --> 00:48:30,279
Speaker 1: all of the inequities that persist to this day in

808
00:48:30,320 --> 00:48:35,640
Speaker 1: the black community, we need a robust, affirmative, trauma informed,

809
00:48:36,200 --> 00:48:42,080
Speaker 1: community based, and government led and government supported set of responses.

810
00:48:42,560 --> 00:48:45,000
Speaker 1: So I don't want people to call nine one one

811
00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:48,479
Speaker 1: and send a police officer when there's somebody who's strung

812
00:48:48,520 --> 00:48:50,960
Speaker 1: out on the corner. But I also don't want there

813
00:48:51,000 --> 00:48:53,880
Speaker 1: to be no number to call. That's why I'm inspired

814
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:58,759
Speaker 1: by cities where activists are developing alternative systems three one

815
00:48:58,840 --> 00:49:01,840
Speaker 1: one systems where you can call a number and not

816
00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:06,040
Speaker 1: get a police officer, but you can get a social worker,

817
00:49:06,080 --> 00:49:09,040
Speaker 1: a mental health worker, a counselor who can come and

818
00:49:09,080 --> 00:49:13,200
Speaker 1: respond because that person might be in need and they

819
00:49:13,280 --> 00:49:16,640
Speaker 1: might want help. And I'm not for coercion, but I

820
00:49:16,719 --> 00:49:20,759
Speaker 1: am for building up a very very robust network so

821
00:49:20,800 --> 00:49:26,400
Speaker 1: that everybody can access services as quickly and efficiently and

822
00:49:26,480 --> 00:49:29,480
Speaker 1: with as much care as we would all want for

823
00:49:29,520 --> 00:49:32,759
Speaker 1: our child. So my hope is that this new generation,

824
00:49:32,920 --> 00:49:37,280
Speaker 1: alongside the critique of what happened over the last fifty years,

825
00:49:37,800 --> 00:49:41,640
Speaker 1: right alongside that, will be an equal commitment to building

826
00:49:41,719 --> 00:49:44,799
Speaker 1: a new set of approaches going forward. Let's take a

827
00:49:44,800 --> 00:50:04,200
Speaker 1: break here and go to an ad. One of the

828
00:50:04,200 --> 00:50:05,920
Speaker 1: things that also came out in your book was you

829
00:50:05,960 --> 00:50:07,880
Speaker 1: talked about I think while you were still working in

830
00:50:07,920 --> 00:50:11,840
Speaker 1: the Public Defender's Office, you're involved in starting this charter school,

831
00:50:11,880 --> 00:50:15,520
Speaker 1: the Maya Angelo School, educating people in the juvenile justice system,

832
00:50:15,600 --> 00:50:18,600
Speaker 1: And that seems exactly like the sort of thing one

833
00:50:18,680 --> 00:50:22,359
Speaker 1: needs a tremendous proliferation of. I mean, is that what

834
00:50:22,400 --> 00:50:24,600
Speaker 1: you're talking about, And do you think it's possible for

835
00:50:24,640 --> 00:50:29,040
Speaker 1: these things to be multiplied a hundred of thousandfold and more. Well, yes,

836
00:50:29,200 --> 00:50:32,960
Speaker 1: but it requires a significant investment. The Maya Angelo School,

837
00:50:33,040 --> 00:50:36,279
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a good example of the kind of

838
00:50:36,400 --> 00:50:39,040
Speaker 1: thing um that we are going to need, and we're

839
00:50:39,040 --> 00:50:44,279
Speaker 1: gonna need more government support for to do programs like this.

840
00:50:44,320 --> 00:50:46,880
Speaker 1: So when I in the nineties, when I was a

841
00:50:46,960 --> 00:50:50,239
Speaker 1: juvenile defender in d C. And I was very frustrated

842
00:50:50,280 --> 00:50:52,120
Speaker 1: by the fact that even when I would win a

843
00:50:52,200 --> 00:50:56,000
Speaker 1: case and my client would be protected from the worst

844
00:50:56,120 --> 00:51:00,360
Speaker 1: parts of this system, they would go back to the

845
00:51:00,520 --> 00:51:06,719
Speaker 1: same nothing that they were involved in beforehand. There they

846
00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:11,760
Speaker 1: oftentimes had been already pushed out of the traditional public school,

847
00:51:12,360 --> 00:51:14,640
Speaker 1: and they were they were those kids that I talked

848
00:51:14,640 --> 00:51:17,080
Speaker 1: about before that people were upset about. Who are fourteen

849
00:51:17,120 --> 00:51:20,279
Speaker 1: fifteen years old who were outside at eleven am on

850
00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:23,239
Speaker 1: a weekday, And people are like, why aren't they in school? Well,

851
00:51:23,320 --> 00:51:25,400
Speaker 1: sometimes they weren't in school because they had been pushed

852
00:51:25,400 --> 00:51:28,120
Speaker 1: out of the regular school. Sometimes they weren't in school

853
00:51:28,160 --> 00:51:32,840
Speaker 1: because they had already been tracked into the least engaging classes.

854
00:51:33,440 --> 00:51:36,960
Speaker 1: I was so frustrated when I would go to visit

855
00:51:37,200 --> 00:51:40,200
Speaker 1: schools with some of my juvenile clients and I would

856
00:51:40,200 --> 00:51:44,319
Speaker 1: see these alternative schools with outdated curriculum and no you know,

857
00:51:44,400 --> 00:51:48,440
Speaker 1: functioning equipment, and and no useful, meaningful textbooks. I mean,

858
00:51:48,480 --> 00:51:50,719
Speaker 1: it was it was a kind of thing that if

859
00:51:50,800 --> 00:51:54,960
Speaker 1: your child were put into that environment, you'd be sitting

860
00:51:55,040 --> 00:51:57,520
Speaker 1: in in the Board of Education like you'd go on

861
00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:01,399
Speaker 1: like a hunger strike out of out rage that they

862
00:52:01,440 --> 00:52:05,239
Speaker 1: considered this adequate education for your child, but because the

863
00:52:05,320 --> 00:52:08,240
Speaker 1: kids are poor, because the kids are of color, because

864
00:52:08,280 --> 00:52:11,640
Speaker 1: their parents, although they care a lot about education, don't

865
00:52:11,960 --> 00:52:16,480
Speaker 1: have the resources or the access to influence public officials.

866
00:52:16,920 --> 00:52:20,000
Speaker 1: Nobody was objecting. So we said, well, what if we

867
00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:24,080
Speaker 1: start an alternative school with a job training piece. Because

868
00:52:24,120 --> 00:52:26,719
Speaker 1: so many of my clients what they said was, you know,

869
00:52:26,760 --> 00:52:28,719
Speaker 1: I want a job, I want good teachers, I want

870
00:52:28,719 --> 00:52:31,439
Speaker 1: small classes, but I also want a chance to work

871
00:52:31,480 --> 00:52:33,919
Speaker 1: and make money. Because I'm poor, I have no money.

872
00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:36,720
Speaker 1: I can't take my girlfriend to the movies on a weekend.

873
00:52:37,280 --> 00:52:41,040
Speaker 1: And so David Dominici, who was a lawyer in d

874
00:52:41,120 --> 00:52:45,200
Speaker 1: C um really kind of envisioned this and together we

875
00:52:45,239 --> 00:52:47,720
Speaker 1: put it together with lots of support from my colleagues

876
00:52:47,719 --> 00:52:50,240
Speaker 1: at the Public Defender's Office and lots of people around

877
00:52:50,320 --> 00:52:53,000
Speaker 1: d C and we created what was initially a school

878
00:52:53,040 --> 00:52:56,640
Speaker 1: for twenty kids. We now have a couple of campuses.

879
00:52:57,080 --> 00:53:01,360
Speaker 1: We run the school now inside DC's juvenile prison. And

880
00:53:01,440 --> 00:53:04,600
Speaker 1: our basic idea is that the kids that need the

881
00:53:04,719 --> 00:53:07,879
Speaker 1: most and the best should get it. We normally give

882
00:53:07,920 --> 00:53:09,880
Speaker 1: them the least and the worst. But what if we

883
00:53:09,960 --> 00:53:12,719
Speaker 1: actually gave them our best. What if we gave them

884
00:53:12,760 --> 00:53:16,360
Speaker 1: small classes and engaged teachers, and a robust curriculum and

885
00:53:16,440 --> 00:53:19,600
Speaker 1: opportunity to work outside of school. What if we really

886
00:53:19,640 --> 00:53:21,759
Speaker 1: invested in them and try to create a sense of

887
00:53:21,840 --> 00:53:24,800
Speaker 1: family in the school and a sense of high expectations

888
00:53:25,040 --> 00:53:28,200
Speaker 1: while we supported them along the way counselors and mental

889
00:53:28,239 --> 00:53:31,760
Speaker 1: health workers because many of them are suffering with trauma,

890
00:53:31,880 --> 00:53:35,480
Speaker 1: sometimes never diagnosed. What if we did that and we've

891
00:53:35,520 --> 00:53:37,640
Speaker 1: now done that. But let me just go back to

892
00:53:37,680 --> 00:53:41,120
Speaker 1: the point where we started. It's expensive. We're still not

893
00:53:41,320 --> 00:53:45,080
Speaker 1: adequately funded um by public sources, so we have to

894
00:53:45,120 --> 00:53:48,359
Speaker 1: try to raise private money, which is hard. So, yes,

895
00:53:49,040 --> 00:53:52,920
Speaker 1: programs like ours can transform lives. They can change the

896
00:53:53,160 --> 00:53:57,920
Speaker 1: statistical trajectory, they can change individual trajectory. They can help

897
00:53:58,200 --> 00:54:02,359
Speaker 1: communities heal and thrive. But they can only do it

898
00:54:02,719 --> 00:54:05,399
Speaker 1: if we're willing to say, you know what, that kid

899
00:54:05,400 --> 00:54:08,080
Speaker 1: that's fourteen years old and has been arrested or has

900
00:54:08,160 --> 00:54:10,439
Speaker 1: dropped out of school and has four or five years

901
00:54:10,480 --> 00:54:16,400
Speaker 1: behind and whose parent is incarcerated, they're gonna need more support,

902
00:54:16,440 --> 00:54:19,560
Speaker 1: and that's going to cost more money. But that's the

903
00:54:19,640 --> 00:54:22,200
Speaker 1: kind of thing. You're absolutely right. It's one example. There

904
00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:25,040
Speaker 1: are many more. That's the kind of infrastructure that I

905
00:54:25,080 --> 00:54:28,359
Speaker 1: think that we need to build in communities, in black

906
00:54:28,400 --> 00:54:31,880
Speaker 1: and brown communities, in poor communities of all colors across

907
00:54:31,920 --> 00:54:35,200
Speaker 1: this country to to to give people the opportunity that

908
00:54:35,239 --> 00:54:38,000
Speaker 1: they deserve. Well, you know, I guess you know, I mean,

909
00:54:38,040 --> 00:54:41,800
Speaker 1: just to conclude all this here, we are now in

910
00:54:41,840 --> 00:54:44,880
Speaker 1: a period where in the last couple of years, the

911
00:54:44,960 --> 00:54:49,799
Speaker 1: number of shootings and homicides has increased in many parts

912
00:54:49,840 --> 00:54:53,960
Speaker 1: of the country, where the fear of crime, especially violent crime,

913
00:54:54,200 --> 00:54:57,799
Speaker 1: is growing um where people are beginning to to freak out.

914
00:54:57,840 --> 00:55:00,160
Speaker 1: The rates are, of course dramatically lower than they are

915
00:55:00,200 --> 00:55:02,200
Speaker 1: back in the late eighties and early nineties, but people

916
00:55:02,200 --> 00:55:05,000
Speaker 1: were getting accustomed to having very low rates. At the

917
00:55:05,040 --> 00:55:08,800
Speaker 1: same time, we're also in an era were unlike under Reagan,

918
00:55:09,280 --> 00:55:13,680
Speaker 1: Bush and Clinton, you know, where governments are spending more

919
00:55:13,719 --> 00:55:16,520
Speaker 1: money to some extent. Then I look politically, I mean,

920
00:55:16,560 --> 00:55:18,239
Speaker 1: you brought this up in your book that just a

921
00:55:18,239 --> 00:55:21,080
Speaker 1: few years ago. You know, you still have public opinion

922
00:55:21,120 --> 00:55:24,319
Speaker 1: polls showing a substantial majority of blacks, not as much

923
00:55:24,320 --> 00:55:27,080
Speaker 1: as whites, but substantial majority of blacks still saying they

924
00:55:27,120 --> 00:55:30,640
Speaker 1: want more policing. And you see, you know, black voters

925
00:55:30,680 --> 00:55:35,040
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly especially older voters supporting Joe Biden over the competitors

926
00:55:35,040 --> 00:55:37,799
Speaker 1: in the Democratic primary who are much more supportive of

927
00:55:37,880 --> 00:55:41,640
Speaker 1: criminal justice reform. When we look forward these next few years,

928
00:55:41,760 --> 00:55:46,160
Speaker 1: are we going to see some shutting down? You know,

929
00:55:46,239 --> 00:55:49,040
Speaker 1: nothing freaks people out and makes it conservative like fears

930
00:55:49,040 --> 00:55:53,319
Speaker 1: of rising crime. What's your take on these trends right now?

931
00:55:53,680 --> 00:55:56,399
Speaker 1: I think it's hard to know, obviously, you know, it's

932
00:55:56,400 --> 00:55:59,400
Speaker 1: hard to be sure. And and one thing that we

933
00:55:59,480 --> 00:56:02,279
Speaker 1: do know is that of all the things that we

934
00:56:02,320 --> 00:56:05,399
Speaker 1: don't want to be in the prediction business about its

935
00:56:05,440 --> 00:56:09,759
Speaker 1: crime rates because nobody would have predicted a twenty year

936
00:56:09,800 --> 00:56:14,040
Speaker 1: steady decline starting in around two thousand, late late nineties.

937
00:56:14,840 --> 00:56:17,279
Speaker 1: You just couldn't have known that was going to happen. Um.

938
00:56:17,360 --> 00:56:20,480
Speaker 1: I do think in the world that I operate in

939
00:56:20,520 --> 00:56:23,240
Speaker 1: and what I see with with teenagers and young people,

940
00:56:23,840 --> 00:56:27,800
Speaker 1: the impact that the pandemic has had cannot be overestimated

941
00:56:28,120 --> 00:56:31,400
Speaker 1: in terms of driving whatever is happening right now. Having

942
00:56:31,440 --> 00:56:35,920
Speaker 1: said that, what I do believe is that we aren't

943
00:56:35,960 --> 00:56:39,040
Speaker 1: going to go back because I think that there is

944
00:56:39,080 --> 00:56:44,560
Speaker 1: a consciousness around some of those mistakes and they impact

945
00:56:44,600 --> 00:56:46,759
Speaker 1: that they have had. I think if you look for example,

946
00:56:47,239 --> 00:56:51,040
Speaker 1: at President Biden's speech that he gave in response to

947
00:56:51,160 --> 00:56:55,400
Speaker 1: rising crime rates. It was as different of a speech

948
00:56:55,440 --> 00:56:58,879
Speaker 1: as as a Biden would have given years ago as

949
00:56:58,920 --> 00:57:02,280
Speaker 1: you could ever possibly imagine. It was addressing the same topic,

950
00:57:02,760 --> 00:57:05,000
Speaker 1: crime is going up and what are we gonna do

951
00:57:05,040 --> 00:57:08,040
Speaker 1: about it? But there was nothing in that speech about

952
00:57:08,040 --> 00:57:10,680
Speaker 1: building more prisons. And in fact, there was a lot

953
00:57:10,719 --> 00:57:18,120
Speaker 1: in that speech about community based responses to crime, violence interruption,

954
00:57:18,360 --> 00:57:24,200
Speaker 1: violence prevention, hospital based interventions. There's a proposed five billion

955
00:57:24,240 --> 00:57:29,720
Speaker 1: dollar investment in community based violence prevention. These are credible

956
00:57:29,760 --> 00:57:34,200
Speaker 1: Messengers programs. These are programs like Cure Violence, where they're

957
00:57:34,240 --> 00:57:37,200
Speaker 1: going out into the neighborhoods, they're working with young people.

958
00:57:37,480 --> 00:57:40,959
Speaker 1: When a shooting happens, they're going to the hospital, they're

959
00:57:41,000 --> 00:57:43,160
Speaker 1: talking to the person who was shot and the family

960
00:57:43,320 --> 00:57:46,200
Speaker 1: was shot because they don't want a retaliation. This is

961
00:57:46,360 --> 00:57:48,560
Speaker 1: one of the things that we we do know about

962
00:57:48,920 --> 00:57:52,240
Speaker 1: violent crime in particular, is a huge percentage of it

963
00:57:52,360 --> 00:57:57,080
Speaker 1: is retaliatory. So if you can interrupt that initial retaliation,

964
00:57:57,640 --> 00:57:59,920
Speaker 1: then you can start to have isolated incidents as a

965
00:58:00,120 --> 00:58:02,800
Speaker 1: posed to what you and I saw in the eighties

966
00:58:02,840 --> 00:58:07,760
Speaker 1: and nineties, right, which is incident, retaliation, retaliation, retaliation. All

967
00:58:07,800 --> 00:58:11,280
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you've got ten twenty thirty shootings instead

968
00:58:11,320 --> 00:58:15,560
Speaker 1: of one. So I I don't believe. Uh, this is

969
00:58:15,600 --> 00:58:17,720
Speaker 1: where you know I said before, I don't do predictions,

970
00:58:17,720 --> 00:58:20,200
Speaker 1: but I do do hope. I am a hope for person,

971
00:58:20,280 --> 00:58:23,320
Speaker 1: and I don't believe that we are um going to

972
00:58:24,040 --> 00:58:26,840
Speaker 1: make the same that that similar set of mistakes. It

973
00:58:26,920 --> 00:58:29,400
Speaker 1: may be that some of the momentum gets slowed, there's

974
00:58:29,400 --> 00:58:32,000
Speaker 1: no doubt about it. But I think that we've made

975
00:58:32,160 --> 00:58:35,720
Speaker 1: too much progress, uh to ever go back to the

976
00:58:35,840 --> 00:58:39,720
Speaker 1: days when you were on Nightline UM talking about harm

977
00:58:39,720 --> 00:58:43,560
Speaker 1: reduction and Charlie Wrangel was telling you that you were

978
00:58:44,360 --> 00:58:46,560
Speaker 1: a naive liberal and what we needed to do was

979
00:58:46,600 --> 00:58:50,080
Speaker 1: have more police and more prosecutors and more prisons. Yeah.

980
00:58:50,240 --> 00:58:51,720
Speaker 1: You know. One of the things that I think you

981
00:58:51,720 --> 00:58:53,800
Speaker 1: you point in the book that distinguished the crack era

982
00:58:54,120 --> 00:58:56,160
Speaker 1: was the ways in which the war on drugs also

983
00:58:56,240 --> 00:58:59,320
Speaker 1: became a war against violent crime, much more so than

984
00:58:59,320 --> 00:59:01,360
Speaker 1: with drew in the hair Own era. And I think

985
00:59:01,440 --> 00:59:04,680
Speaker 1: part of the success of the drug policy reform efforts

986
00:59:04,680 --> 00:59:08,120
Speaker 1: over the last twenty years has been that it's more

987
00:59:08,120 --> 00:59:11,240
Speaker 1: and more disentangled that the people have become more sophisticated

988
00:59:11,360 --> 00:59:14,560
Speaker 1: understanding that. You know, one reason we need to legalize

989
00:59:14,600 --> 00:59:17,360
Speaker 1: marijuana is so that it just stops being a pretext

990
00:59:17,440 --> 00:59:20,520
Speaker 1: for cops arresting vast numbers of young people. One reason

991
00:59:20,560 --> 00:59:22,680
Speaker 1: we need to expand access to treatment is because we

992
00:59:22,720 --> 00:59:25,560
Speaker 1: want to reduce the violence on on the streets and

993
00:59:25,640 --> 00:59:29,680
Speaker 1: drug markets. So I think there's a more sophisticated perspective

994
00:59:29,720 --> 00:59:33,640
Speaker 1: on this stuff today, which really is promising for the future. James,

995
00:59:33,680 --> 00:59:35,360
Speaker 1: I want to thank you too, because I thought your

996
00:59:35,400 --> 00:59:38,800
Speaker 1: book was a very brave and nuanced and thoughtful book,

997
00:59:38,840 --> 00:59:42,080
Speaker 1: and I think it's a book of historic significance. I

998
00:59:42,120 --> 00:59:44,760
Speaker 1: think it amply deserved the Politz there, and I just

999
00:59:44,840 --> 00:59:47,400
Speaker 1: wish you all the best on your continuing engagements to

1000
00:59:47,480 --> 00:59:50,479
Speaker 1: try to promote more sensible policies from your vantage points.

1001
00:59:50,520 --> 00:59:55,640
Speaker 1: So thank you, very very much. Thank you. Psychoactive is

1002
00:59:55,640 --> 00:59:59,120
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's

1003
00:59:59,160 --> 01:00:03,000
Speaker 1: hosted by me Ethan Naedelman. It's produced by Katcha Kumkova

1004
01:00:03,120 --> 01:00:07,840
Speaker 1: and Ben Cabrick. The executive producers are Dylan Golden, Ari Handel,

1005
01:00:08,040 --> 01:00:12,760
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Geesis, and Darren Aronovski. For Protozoa Pictures, Alex Williams

1006
01:00:12,840 --> 01:00:16,280
Speaker 1: and Matt Frederick for iHeart Radio, and me Ethan Nadelman.

1007
01:00:16,600 --> 01:00:20,160
Speaker 1: Our music is by Ari Belusian and a special thanks

1008
01:00:20,160 --> 01:00:25,400
Speaker 1: to Avivit Brio, Sef Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Beatty. If

1009
01:00:25,400 --> 01:00:28,080
Speaker 1: you'd like to share your own stories, comments, or ideas,

1010
01:00:28,480 --> 01:00:31,919
Speaker 1: please leave us a message at eight three three seven

1011
01:00:32,040 --> 01:00:39,440
Speaker 1: seven nine sixty. That's one eight three three Psycho zero.

1012
01:00:40,360 --> 01:00:43,880
Speaker 1: You can also email us as Psychoactive at protozoa dot

1013
01:00:43,960 --> 01:00:47,400
Speaker 1: com or find me on Twitter at Ethan Nadelman. And

1014
01:00:47,480 --> 01:00:49,520
Speaker 1: if you couldn't keep track of all this, find the

1015
01:00:49,560 --> 01:00:58,600
Speaker 1: information in the show notes. Tune in next week. From

1016
01:00:58,640 --> 01:01:02,480
Speaker 1: my conversation with sex call in this Dan Savage, drugs

1017
01:01:02,480 --> 01:01:05,880
Speaker 1: are something I recommend to long term couples frequently. You know.

1018
01:01:06,000 --> 01:01:08,920
Speaker 1: I think ecstasy saved my marriage. Terry and I were

1019
01:01:08,920 --> 01:01:11,439
Speaker 1: at a real low point and we got a cabin

1020
01:01:11,560 --> 01:01:14,440
Speaker 1: on the Pacific coast and took a weekend away and

1021
01:01:14,760 --> 01:01:17,640
Speaker 1: did eat. I recommend pot all the time, a little

1022
01:01:17,640 --> 01:01:21,560
Speaker 1: bit of pot. Subscribe to Cycleactive now see it, don't

1023
01:01:21,600 --> 01:01:21,880
Speaker 1: miss it.