Transcripts For CSPAN2 Zach Norris We Keep Us Safe 20240713

Spiritual director of the East Bay Church of religious science right here on 41st and telegraph. Come see us sometime. And this evening i am so grateful to be talking about this wonderful book it is packed full. We keep us safe, building secure, just and inclusive immunities by zach norris. I want to tell you little bit about him. You probably know a lot about him already. He is the executive director of the Ella Baker Center for human rights and the cofounder of restore oakland. Its a Community Advocacy and Training Center to empower Bay Area Community member is to transform local economic and justice issues. He is also the cofounder of the justice for family, thats a National Alliance family driven organization working to end our youth in conservation epidemic. Hes helped to build California First statewide network for families of incarcerated youth which led the effort to close five youth prisons in the state and pass legislation to pass legislation to enable families to stay in contact with their loved ones. Which also defeated proposition six a destructive and ineffective criminal justice ballot measure. Hes a harvard graduate and nyu educated attorney. Hes also a graduate of the Labor Community Strategy Center National School for strategic organizing in Los Angeles California and he was 2011 Soros Justice follow. He is a former board member and witness for peace and just cause oakland and currently serving on the justice for families board. He was a recipient of the american constitution societys david carlin liner publicinterest award in 2015 and a member of the 2016 class of the Levi Strauss Foundation of pioneers of justice. Pioneers of justice award. Hes married to author and labor organizer sau rew and they have two daughters and they are raising them here in oakland. Hes got quite an impressive resume lets give him some love. I believe it zach wants to share something from his book. Hes gonna give us a short reading from his book. Right on. How is already feeling . Good, i appreciate seeing all of your beautiful faces. Being in this institution the library, which is my favorite public institution. Just appreciate yall being here and when i told my mom, she knew i wrote the book but that i was in a go on a book tour she said you have to read from the book. So i gotta follow my moms orders and read a little bit from the book. Its just about one page just to manage expectations. How are yall feeling . Good. 1823 month unknown. Slaveholders from the deep south were more desperate for slaves since the abolition of the atlantic slave trade in 1808. And since the cotton gin invented in 1794 had allowed the production of cotton to really take off the prices of enslaved African People have risen in this period one in every 10 enslaved person was relocated from the states upper south to the lower south. They were sold down the river. And with no means of staying connected to the families and communities they had known. Slightly over half experienced family separations meaning children were separated from their parents or spouses separated from each other. The little boy was just at the cusp of his years of highest output the ages from 8 to 15 years according to popular wisdom among slaveholders. Children in these sought after ages were often bought alone on the auction blocks enslaved people were lined up by height. Making it even more likely children would be separated from their parents. The buyers examine the little boy as if he were livestock. In the end he was sold to another slave master in mississippi. When the ship lost into the water his mother was left standing in the world crying she never saw him again. These are unrelated yet connected stories to scapegoat an entire group of people making them a source of all evil is to disregard their humanity. As the United States grew from 13 colonies to 50 states this scapegoating made it easier to continue justifying the taking the land and lives of Indigenous People in the lives and labor of black people. It is a long tragic line a trail of tears and legacy of trauma from stories like my families to the immigrant families being demonized today in the name of Public Safety. To protect our job our wealth, to protect our way of life to keep our homes and families safe. America has been engineering and expanding a model of systematic scapegoating for the past 200 years. I wanted to offer that just to kind of situate the conversation. I think often times when we talk about Public Safety we can drop that kind of policy level and not really examine what some of the roots of our Safety Systems are in this country. Thats what i wanted to read a i was right there with that little boy being examined. I was right there with them examining his teeth and making sure he didnt have a lamp. And particularly with his mother walking the wharf even though she couldnt walk with him, how did you hear about the details of that. Through passage of letters and to my aunts who i interviewed a series of keepsakes from our family not everybody has those stories. I know i dont i wish i did. How do you think that knowledge and information made you want to become a lawyer . Truth be told when i applied to law school i didnt know what i was doing with my life. I applied to law school at the end of undergrad and i was at harvard that was the next thing you did. I was not trying to rock the boat. My hair i had a high top fade my hair was taller than i was. Eighth grade graduation like the mortar board barely fit over my head. They were calling all the awards for Different Things the award for math, science and i got all the awards it was like oscar so white. Eighth grade graduation, right. The truth of the matter that reflected injustice as well. Among my predominantly black catholic school, i was the lightest if not among the lightest if not the lightest of africanamerican kid in that classroom. That was lost on me those disparities is an eighth grader but by the time i got to harvard and saw how differently young people were treated for doing the same things a friend of mine got into a pretty serious fight at the school gymnasium, folks using and abusing drugs and harvard and getting a semester off they were getting the time of the support they needed they were Getting Mental Health counseling, meanwhile, family and friends were being locked up for doing similar things. Thats kind of what led me to a journey toward social justice. It wasnt until i got to the Ella Baker Center i thought about and grappled with what is it take to advance social justice. That was the first time i decided to step off the beaten path just like academic achievement i heard about this organization urbanization called Ella Baker Center and that resonated my mom was teaching in Public Schools and had a lack of resources in her classroom it has five times as many people as Allegheny County does. In our very best basic messaging when i was a Law School Student intern at the Ella Baker Center we said that jails be too big and too far and too racist. We were engaged in a campaign to get them to stop this construction was really bad. The good the thing about good poetry is there still abbad poetry there still good protest. Allegheny county of supervisors said we are going to whos willing to stop the slaughter stop moving from moving forward. Im the people pleaser. Im sitting on my hands with my hands under my butt cheeks like i know my hands are not about to go up for this. [laughter] but i started to see other peoples hands go up maybe it was the people pleaser in me or maybe trying to impress my fellow intern but my hand was going on up unbeknownst to me. And not as high abthat was like a huge Pivotal Moment for me. Because im in law school, im learning about the law, im supposed to be like learning about what civil rights are and how we change our society and nothing i was learning in law school was actually teaching me that. Being taken to santa rita and seeing the normalcy of africanamerican incarceration being prorated along this courtyard with nothing but a black man. I didnt know that story at that time. But i think having seen a couple episodes of eyes on the prize we were going to sit in and protest and then they were going to change their minds. [laughter] and see the light but thats not what happened. And we were able to stop this super gel from youth from moving forward. [applause] i say all that to say like to me i didnt start with like this clear intention of like i want to change things, i really was kind of a people pleaser more than anything but i think thats what leads me to believe we can all build power because through that experience i had an opportunity to understand what it means to really engage with the community and build power and move from being a people pleaser to trying to build people of power. It sounds like when you were in college you started recognizing the difference in safety of being a certain skin color as opposed to some of the darker skin color we are looking for ways to feel safe and more and more as we have more conversations we are finding out a lot of people are not feeling safe. When you were what about safety was driving you the whole time. One curious thing is that crime by and large is actually at historic lows. Crime has been decreasing in terms of overall Violent Crimes even property crime has been going down from past decades. Our anxiety has actually been going up. That was part of one of the things i was looking at in exploring this book is like out of those two things mesh . What i found is that there is no lie about safety. This traces all the way back to that story. I call it the he keeps a safe lie is the lie of White Supremacy is the lie of male supremacy is the lie of genderbased violence is the lie of abusers because abusers say, dont trust those who are closest to you. Dont trust your girlfriend, dont trust your neighbor and take to the National Level dont trust your neighbor around the block, dont trust your neighbor on the border, dont trust your neighbor in distant lands even those those folks want the same as we do. That kind of abuse of life is the lie the criminal Justice System has really run on and operated. Zach sure we will take more money from the State Government and the federal government and expand the juvenile because everybody else is doing it right. And so, the criminal Justice System and really run on this live in ways that actually have real harm. The harm that happened behin bed closed office doors, and be peoples homes and those are somewhat personal but also institutionalized. You couldnt get away with those if it werent for institutions and people protecting them at the same time pretty in their other forms of institutional harms and i will the throughout this thought. The Climate Change, and just inequality and people not having homes, and the police are often sent out to remove those mothers from the home in west oakland when they are trying to find a home for their children. In place officers often breakup not to be half of the owners but actually on the behalf of others but instead of supporting workers having affair wave. So it like in this way, the criminal Justice System has like, hide some of the harms that are all around us. And focus on the very narrow definition of crimes that actually reinforces the status quo and that helps to easily mike crime can actually be going down in terms of statistics of but our anxiety is going up because the person in the white house has different people that lies it so many different ways. Meanwhile, is like trust us right, we got this all coronavirus taken care of right. Trust me. Meanwhile the them cut the funding for the center for disease control. So theyre cutting the funding for a lot of the basic things that actually keep us safe. And are hiding a lot of the harms around us pretty one of the fundamental truths of them want to get to this solution and not just follow focus on the problems. Is that we keep us safe. If we recognize, Public Safety has the term public and it right. So when we take care of the public, we actually take care of Public Safety. We have kind of lost that in the equation. We should be thinking about really taking care of one another as a strategy towards achieving things. Host there are a lot of ways to take care of things you pretty much takes laura a lot of different ways we hurt each other from the children that are intellectually disabled to lgbt tail just the whole transit gender thing to what happens in families in the 700,000 children who are harmed by their own Family Members and people by people who are close to them. There are so many levels of violations that you talk about in the first part of the book that is very troubling but at the same time, bringing this to the forefront must be part of your attention so that you can work with us. He say more about that. Zach one of the reasons is the pressings that are going to the satirist this is not the work of one person. I had a lotta support from the levi straus foundation. And setting aside time to work with them in an editorial consultant and bring this book into being. So that is one reason that i wanted to bring this back into the organization quote from whitemore problematic level, this represents the wisdom of a lot of people. So in 2015 we did a report who pays the true cost of incarceration on families which was a National Community driven Research Project along with 20 other communitybased organizations across the country and this research. And i got a lot of press which is great. But the press really focused on the problem they didnt really focus on the solution that families wanted. So the book is an effort to lift out those solutions and restore oakland that we started in an effort to put forward a concrete and tangible vision of what Community Safety looks like. The book really reflects the wisdom of that Community Driven research but also this annual event that we do called night out for safety and liberation. Has anybody heard of that National Night out . And National Night out is a great event in the attention but the message it sometimes is very narrow. So the intention behind it to say that we create safety as community tenni because often ts but enforcement comes out and since you are the eyes and ears of the police. So if you see something, say something. Respectfully i would offer that we have more than just eyes and ears. We have heart, we have hands, we have minds that there are a lot of ways that people contribute to Public Safety and what we are trying to do is night out for safety is talk about how we knew mentor a young person, you are helping them and if youre providing a job to a castrated person or helping advanced safety safety. Each year we have done that, the revenue communities and folks in new mexico, restaurant workers in new york, restaurant workers in rhode island said that if i cannot feed my own family even though i am putting food on your table, im not safe. And so all of these stories and all of these different communities and experiences, every year since the murder of martin says ive been looking to folks and try to represent those stories inside of this book. So thats what, i mean, by this is really of an effort of togetherness. Rev. Celeste frazier in your book you call it the criminal legal system pretty tell us why you dont call it the criminal Justice System. Zach most fundamentally and has not produced justice. His Justice System that is predicated on separation. And if you close your eyes and ask folks in this room today before or even just keep them open if you dont feel comfortable and thought of as a time he felt safe. Just asking for some audience participation. I will ask you to think of a time. So come back to the room. Ive asked this question a lot of times and specifically, his people and coming in some kind of relationship. Maybe being held by a Family Member or being in a Faith Institution we feel surrounded by your community. Safely is really directly tied to relationships. And as you know as a pastor of a living community, that is critical to our notions of feeling safe, we do in terms of Public Safety, the criminal court system is really to move people. We are moving them from relationship but also removing them from their chance to actually be held accountable. Because the answers to someone, you have to be in a relationship with somebody. If you been removed from that situation, altogether then is very difficult then produce accountability. So have this notion of being tough on crime and removing them and putting the very far away. I think what is really difficult is facing the harm that you have caused. In a real way and having to make amends for that. Over time. Consistently. That does not look the same in every situation. In one of the things in a talk in the book is like, how we are sort of justice has been narrowly focused and i dont want to have the narrow focus but it is important to understand that Holding People accountable while also still fondling them in community and that is really key to actual real accountability in my mind. Rev. Celeste frazier people are more important than property. So how do you at the center really support people and feeling valued in what ways do use whatever the system whether it is Restorative Justice or other means to help people feel valued. Zach that is a really great question. A freedom fighter, and the power of everyday people to make change. We tried to build on her legacy by advancing healthcare and housing and handicapped agenda. We like the liberation. [laughter]. I think that we try to do that because we are trying to recognize that is part of a network of the organization that is trying to support most so restoring oakland with that building that we purchased, were parting with a restaurant opportunity and Restorative Justice for oakland youth and community and parting with others. Within that space there is restaurant space that is dedicated space today worker training and to have the restaurant to support women of color in developing their own food enterprises. On the second floor theres a area of justice, where people are held accountable. And this is for oakland youth but also many of you are seeking to like have conflict resolution. You can use this space free of charge. Ive been trying to sing them or more to make sure people are utilizing the space. But as they all of that to say that we recognize as an institution that we can do so much and we need to be in partnership with other folks that are helping to hold individuals accountable. One of the things that i think is true, you need like a baseline level of support for people to really participate in our democracy to really affect change and so we are trying to partner with an organization so that we can create a level of support as we engage people action. Rev. Celeste frazier i know that eisai has Prison Ministry. Im afraid to leave that up. In what ways can we help to stop this whole pipeline situation. How can we support those who are trying to get out of it. Zach on a broader level i would say that we need to get the architects of anxiety out of office. Those folks are our fear mongering and driving anxiety very intentionally and scapegoating and communities. And so i like to say in order to get to safety wind actually have to take risks. It because women, status quo, it is fundamentally unsafe and were going to have to actually take some risk to get to safety. So the thing that we can do at a bare minimum is honor our ancestors and those who i folks in florida who are currently fighting for the franchise. Make sure they were exercising their franchise. On march 3rd and come november. And when maybe that architect of anxiety maybe does not leave markeoffice. There may be different ways to take risks. We may be supporting supplies like oakland. There are different ways to take risk but it is important to begin the architects of anxiety out of office and then we can take her the risk that is necessary to keep them out of office not have a transition of power. And though we kinda begin to take away the architecture, that they have like that is bipartisan developed architecture. Ninetyfour yearold was done under democratic administration. In the federal legislation, we have to undo that. In 1978, proposition 13 was passed and that is the process after 1978 we saw the rise of prisons across the state built 20 new prisons and just one new university and so we have a opportunity in november to pass these which would help bring resources back to schools and communities in reverse some of those decades of resource misallocation. Those are some of the things that i think people can be involved in. In similar to your work, we are also not doing Prison Ministry but we are every month we are communicating with folks inside and writing letters to them and people can come to the bigger center participated network. So those are some examples. Rev. Celeste frazier you mentioned the president and his tendency to divide us with the mentality and also glad to see that john was here because i was born and raised in chicago that was happening from the time i was in hops i sold to the time i left for california but there is something to that up and then mentality that allows that kind of torturing of people and forcing people to admit the crimes that they did not do. This whole f and then mentality, what insights can you give us to kind of move past that. The book is talking about including the communities in how can we create those inclusiv inclusiveinclusiveness. Zach is that lt. In the Chicago Police department who over a decade tortured blackman inside of the play stations. It is an example in my mind of Restorative Justice more at an institutional level because there is a theory of men in the community who came out and said that we actually have two challenge what happened and innocent enough just to all this one individual accountable because there were mayors and there were Police Chiefs and there were institutions behind this cover up. And so they fought to make sure that instruct caught school chi. And they fought for restoration from the victims. An example of the kind of like Restorative Justice process, the need to happen at a larger level within communities across the country and i think it that is part of the answer to the question you asked in terms of how we overcome versus them us versus them because we do have to do the work that brian stevenson, one of my mentors and others are doing. This long history of racial injustice. And to acknowledge this happening across the country. And to really raise our kind of cultural understanding. He talked about how in germany, there was some level of aha moment, even in germany but also some level of aha moment the country had around the holocaust that is not really occurred in our country. We need to be a part of those efforts and really calling for truth and reconciliation and reinvestment in this country. And continuing to look that. So that is one part of along part of the story and justice that we have to be on. I would say the other thing that was good news is that at some level, the fact that, there is a bottoming out of the country in terms of the middle class, being overtaken like there is some commonality in our struggle that i think offers the moment of solidarity we should be using those to really explore how we can connect and come together. Rev. Celeste frazier some would argue that if we place more emphasis on the poor people than the rate people, then perhaps we might find a place towards inclusiveness. I was wondering what you think about this particular mindset that is been tossed around in the political debate around the wealthy and whether or not what the people are dangerous to society in terms of not really looking out for everyone as opposed to maybe maybe we could find some wealthy people that can help. Zach i think that given that 60 percent of people in the United States are likened 40000 less. Like single individuals on more wealth like in the entire states of people. And thats excessive. That is inhumane. I think that is another way to describe it because youve heard about someone who gave 10 billion to address the Climate Change crisis but that is like a tiny little percentage actually of the wealth that he holds. And i think it represents the disconnect at that level or at the scale of the top. Then he can sort of do this and were sort of in this new dealer new age where a lot of these individuals have such extreme wealth in their very fundamentally disconnected from everyday reality of people and i do think there needs to be some like Government Intervention to ensure that human rights are respected. Not the social safety net is an intact. This one of the things that is really addressed in the book and we have lost the safety and social safety net and if we dont have some level of a social safety net we will not actually be safe. Its hard to talk about what the criminal Justice Reform within the box but one of the more fundamental parts of the book is saying that we need a safety net. Rev. Celeste frazier so what does restore mean. Zach thing i hope it does, as far as the mountain imagination because for so long, the story has been the law and order Television Show and says that you do the crime, you do the time and everybody sees it even though 95 percent of people flee out and never see day of court. There is the story the says that prisons are the foundation of Public Safety even though what we have seen is that prisons exacthey worsen cycles of povery and incarceration. The is not just single people but entire communities and people and families are driven into debt. Its almost like economical quicksand. So restore oakland is designed to actually have Community Safety when looks like is people having the jobs in young people believing that they have a future ahead of them. And we are putting that in physical brickandmortar form. We will hold people accountable in this started just a space and will hold them in community. So i hope the restore oakland can help kind of spark the imagination around what safety looks like. There is one building. There are so many amazing examples of people doing amazing work. I wrote the book really with the intention of telling some of the stories. Some of the work that they have done in richmond california, and so i think restore oakland place one part for the help that there are the book helps to kind of continue the dialogue. Rev. Celeste frazier i think the book gives a lot of empathy towards one another and offer some solutions that we can get behind. And i am glad that organizations like restore oakland are around. And i am sure people who want to know how they can get involved and support us. Zach right on. I appreciate that. One thing you can do is purchase the book. I would appreciate it. Spread the word, pass it to a friend and the proceeds go to support the center. And, member of it. There are folks here lessee who have been supporters and i appreciate yall. Continue support. The last thing i will say is connect with us on this lineup for safety liberation. We have about participation happens everyda and just becausu have participated in the past, doesnt mean that you cant continue to participate and also invite your neighbors. And you can start a new one with whatever you start or feel comical with. But one of the things i am doing with the book is a solutions to tour with about in each city i got to attack with folks about what is a Safety Solution that you are bringing in this district. Ive here in North Carolina and having those conversations to help build towards a night out for safety and liberation because is going to come out of it critical time in our nations history. There will be two contending patients of safety. There will be the week keep us safe keeping. Dont believe does Democratic People who tell us that we cant win those arguments. I heard them say that. They say, security and safety, that is the talking point of the right. And they allow that fear narrative to drive people to vote against their economic interests or whatever but there really responding to something much more at the god. So if we do not have those conversations run what actually keeps us safe, imagine a time when you felt safe. It is not about excluding people and keeping people away from us, its actually about building communities. So we desperately need to have the conversation in a big way and having it strategically right before the elections. I think it can help maybe move some people away from that fear and towards understanding that we can come together as a community in this country. Speech of would be great. I would love to us to feel the communities in a very purposeful way. Rev. Celeste frazier i know this book can help to inspire people to do those things. Let us know when youll have out oakland it conversation about we can create safe communities. Zach were having it all of the times of absolutely. So one of the things that i am happy to pass folks my Contact Information but we have another monthly Membership Meeting at one place. We have a when were doing doing prison mill night and another opportunity. We just had a conversation yesterday in front of the city hall about the City Council People to tell them about their policy tours are unselfish neighbors. Some were having those conversations all the time and we would love for people to be engaged with us to become members and even just come check us out and Membership Meeting. And shout out to your work as well into the beloved community that your billing. Just so excited to stay dialogue. Rev. Celeste frazier absolutely, my pleasure. Lets give him a hand. [applause]. Rev. Celeste frazier we are all going to get a copy today right. Zach right on. I appreciate that very much. Rev. Celeste frazier any questions for zach. Guest honey fight going back to the us versus them and internalize printed in the example that i have is my prior all, they did have the specifics 100 percent black around printed. [inaudible]. It is different actually from the rest of the country most of the people of martin that probation officers, social workers, were also involved. The vast majority are also black and brown. They had drunk the koolaid said to speak. Theyre removing them from their homes, was the right way to go about it. As a lawyer, as a white woman, trying to bring in a different lens to it, a lot of times they will say it but there sending a very low standard for their own very own kids and how can iraq and we all, find it that narrative that is internalize that this is good enough for kids. Zach a lot of places california included, a lot of folks inside of our institutions are black and brown. There is a history behind that that i wont go into right at this moment. In the interest of answering your question. What would say is that it is not dissimilar from the work we do generally. The story i would tell the story and richmond, california i told in the book in 2005 the city richmond and one of the highest per capita murder rate in the country did the city council had declared the state of emergency and they were up in arms about what to do. One guy came to a City Council Meeting set i want to propose a mentorship program. And people were like what. People were shooting each other and you want a mentorship program. They had kind of tried everything else. So they said okay, we will try it. He provided daily, not he alone but in formerly incarcerated folks to be hired, provided daily contact and a monthly stipend and provided it travel opportunities. And then there was some pushback not among everybody but there was some pushback and be honest reality is with any community that has been under assault of the government and the best word that is what it is it alters a sense of whats possible so the question of messenger is important you are right. You are right. Am i the best messenger for having that conversation . And how am i an alliance with folks bringing that message . And there are no easy answers what i try to do in the book and those that exist to the left the risk that we have gone further in certain ways for when it comes to harm that i tried to grapple with the fundamentally we cannot take a Public Health approach to Public Safety and reminding people of what help them to have that position with a job and all of those things. And exclusivity word invite what they used to call the dominant culture to be in those conversations on behalf of those that cant. Yes one of the things that happened in california the head of the Prison Guards union they got in trouble and then he had the aha moment what is happening inside the institutions and actually that opposition that you mention of proposition six was partly because the Prison Guard Union decided to be neutral so then a number of other unions across the union mind and they said we will oppose proposition six so all of the advocates they said you cant defeat proposition six everything had passed up until that moment but we will try anyway because thats what we d do. But i had conversations with Prison Guards that were africanamerican and they said theres no leadership so as have some conversation so thankfully i got us versus them through actually engaging with them we could overcome some level of alignment not just in california but to question that incarceration. It can be an uphill battle then all of a sudden think shift like it is the common sense of the day is changing. Questions . What about legislation or Community Organizing . Or Something Like that . If you have ten or 100 people in that direction or is it acrosstheboard with all of these areas together and then say there is a deficit . It depends on the time in the situation. So looking at the National Domestic Workers Alliance talking about the different forms of disruptive power and political and economic power and modeling power. And at different times its important to do different thing things. When we were fighting that super jail and the super predator was the logic it wasnt like we could restore oakland like this vision of Community Safety nobody would give us the money there was no political will to make that happen. So we did what we could and it was from power and the grassroots organizing. And then we started to see legislative differences with a strategy in sacramento but we are having success to move the political needle even though they said you cannot have all of those funds will give them to communitybased programs so then we found they were promising jobs but really just doing job training talking about Restorative Justice but really a a deep connection with the community to say this is a different challenge its an imagination challenge so to get people thinking about what is possible so also your own internal capacity. There are so many ways to contribute. I wouldnt tell somebody who is a capable fundraiser to necessarily focus all of their energy and then to get them out of jail. You know theres passion just to do this type of work. And to know that it is ours to do. [applause] it happens now with outbreaks of contagious disease with assist social and political roots people get sick and then we hope we can throw sufficient vaccines and drugs that it to go away. It shouldnt be surprising when i talk about ebola very quickly the animal connection comes into play mosquitoes or with ebola is thats batson that is the chain of transmission in humans spirit theres nothing about this virus that suggests anything other than a natural mutation and as a reminder all kinds of theories of biological warfare to explain something and a wakeup call to all of us. We are often in denial of the challenges that i have discovered in my own research there is a belief that everybody is treated in the same way so they dont have different experiences so with that logic we not only denied difference but inequality. Doctor brown the director of Emergency Care research at nih and also the author of influenza the 100 year hunt