Introducey honor to the members of this discussion. A former staff writer for the atlantic, and formally a National Syndicated columnist covering a broad amount of issues. In manymns appear newspapers. She will be in conversation with the litigation director of the litigation department. She oversees litigation in four key practice areas, including economic justice, education, political participation in criminal justice. As a nationally recognized expert on race and criminal justice, she petite participates in conferences and National Media interviews including with pbs, msnbc and democracy now. Last but certainly not least, we have dr. Credit card. He is associate professor of African Studies and chair of afro studies at Howard University. He holds a phd in africanamerican studies from and a j. D. Ersity from the Ohio State University college of law. He was a school of district he was the schools district of philadelphias first resident scholar on race and culture. And is cofounder of the Philadelphia Freedom School movement and communitybased Academic Initiative that has involved over 13,000 elementary, high school and college students. Hes coeditor of the association for the study of classical african civilizations, multivolume African World history project and has represented Howard University as a spokesman in a wide range of print and electronic media. Which includes ebony magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Post, u. S. A. Today, msnbc, npr, bbc america, cspan, voice of america, the is smiley show that [applause] [laughter] it was a long list. So, please take a moment to help me welcome our guests for the evening. Juleyka hi, everyone. Can everybody hear me ok . Thank you so much for joining us. You guys look good. 7 00. On a friday. You beat the week. Congratulations. So were going to try and keep it a little bit informal. Were having almost too much fun in the green room. Were going to bring in a little bit of that fun to our conversation. But first obviously lets start with the basics. Im going to read the 13th amendment. So that everybody understands what were going to be talking about. Its really short. It was ratified in the senate in 1864 and the house in 1865 and became law that year. And it is known as the amendment that abolished slavery. Im going to put that in quotations for a minute. So it reads, section one, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereas the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or anyplace subject to their jurisdiction. Section two, Congress Shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Most of us are aware of the concept of fine print. Youre always being warned about the concept of the fine print. Did you read the fine print . Whats the fine print . Well, our forefathers were really not that subtle. They actually put the fine print in what is called an explanatory comma, and here it is. Except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. Right . And thats what were going to spend a lot of our time talking about. This fine print that was embedded right into the 13th amendment, which many people believe was essentially a loophole. And that has led to a whole series of consequences. And so im going to start with the professor. So that he can give us a little bit of context about how we ended up with such a statement in our constitution. Greg thank you for the invitation and thank you to hill house and benjamin drummond, of course, hero, having been in this space. Its good to be with ancestors. Thats a difficult question, of course. If i had to pick one word, i would say property. I came back from st. Louis. Of course thats where harriette and dred scott are buried. 1857, it was said, fifth amendment to the constitution really doesnt apply to you except as youre property. Youre not a human being. Youre not a citizen and you cant be one. So the 13th amendment is actually stands very firmly in the proud tradition of americas schizophrenia, when it comes to people of african descent. If you look at the federalist papers, federalist 54, hamilton was being praised, though god knows i dont know why from his broadway show. He and madison are having this battle. Are they people . Yes. Are they property . Yes. As the rapper future might say, at the same damn time. They have to resolve that tension for purposes of representation. They have a little fugitive slave law. They say other persons, theyre referring to us. Were property, right . Yeah. Were going to count you. The 13th amendment, congressman from ohio, the congressman pushes it. Lincoln is trying to resolve. Trying to resolve this. He wants his name on it. The only amendment to the constitution that a president signs. Even though he didnt have to. But hes connected to it. Even though in the years up to it, including here in d. C. , of course, emancipation in 1862, hes trying to free some people, keep some people enslaved, trying to work that out. By the 13th amendment its clear the die is cast. Weve been fighting, weve been coming into contraband camps. The 13th amendment, what they do is reach a compromise. One that we still are trying to fight to figure out. We are now not property. Except when we are property. And that basically is the summary of the 13th amendments fundamental contradiction. Everything that comes after it, the black code, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, when they try to put teeth in by saying everybody has a right to enforce contracts. The same as a white citizen. And then the courts begin to roll that back after reconstruction and then you come into the 20th century. The 13th amendment continues to diminish in stature as the courts keep chopping away at it, refusing to face the fundamental question of whether or not we can finally get rid of this ink blot. All that continues today in this fundamental question. What happens when you have classes of citizenship that are grounded in the fact that some people can literally have their humanity defined differently in the american legal universe . The 13th amendment sits at the nexus of that. Juleyka lets turn to the legal scholar in the room and ask her, in the immediate aftermath of enacting this, what did it actually mean in practice . Christina so, for a little while, a very little while, the courts tried to give it real meaning. They tried to say that you cant strip africanamericans of their rights as citizens. That was a very brief period of time after the enactment of the 13th amendment. The longer story of the use of the 13th amendment in constitutional jurisprudence is it hasnt done very much and it hasnt been used very much at all. There were some sort of a series of disgraceful cases at the beginning of the 1900s. The crookshank case, where the Supreme Court says, you know, a brutal klan massacre, they dismiss an indictment because they say, this is not something that is a product of that the 13th amendment can reach. Right . This is clearly a racially motivated crime. It was brought into federal court under the 13th, under the auspices of the 13th amendment. The prosecutors says, this is exactly what this amendment was about. We cnot have the klan massacring people based on their race and they should be prosecuted if that happens. And the Supreme Court dismisses the indictment and says, this is beyond the reach of the 13th amendment. And that really, shortly there after, it becomes a dormant amendment. Since then, its really been two circumstances. Where it has been used reasonably appropriately. We have the james bird and Matthew Shepherd hate crimes act, which was enacted partly on the basis of the 13th amendment. And the expressed statement that you cannot brutalize people based on their race. And also you have a case in 1968 where the court says, you cant deny people, you cant sell a private real estate sale cannot be denied, people cant be denied the opportunity to purchase property on the basis of their race. Otherwise the courts have largely ignored it. It is largely not dealt with at all. When the many, many cases that we litigate, that have been litigated over the last hundred years around the issues of race and criminal justice, the 13th amendment is largely quiet. Juleyka if the largely quiet in the courtroom, there are other places where it has actually helped install an entire industry, a. K. A. The prison industrial complex. How did that explanatory comma manage to birth such a thing . Greg i dont know if its it may be overstating the case. But lets overstate the case. The thing is compromised in the original constitution, only count 60 of African People for purposes of taxation and representation. In some ways the 13th amendment cures the flaw in the 3 5 compromise. It moves some people from 60 to 200 . If they pinch you for selling weed or some kind of thing and they put new jail in virginia, just who lost a person and who gained one . Neither one can vote. Now you count two. They lost one, they gained one. And they cant vote. So you have now people battling to put prisons in their little towns. Because theyre a source of income. So you dont just have an individual who has been harmed, who has been confined to a subhuman category by the law, you then have it feed a political economy that his or her ancestors were the kind of fuel for, a generation or century before. So in some ways the real legacy of the 13th amendment is, it creates the possibility of enslaving more than just black people. With that except clause. Those bodies then that cannot participate, there are a couple of states who allow prisoners to vote. Imagine what it means not only to not be able to vote because theyve taken your rights while youre serving time or in the system, but once you get out, its difficult to get your rights restored. Can you find a job . People like paul ryan are people like paul ryan are running around saying were going to give block grants to the states and that way we can perhaps get around some of the equitable distribution of resources from the federal government and maybe in the state they can imply a work requirement or you have to have a clean record requirement. And we can give some of this money to poor whites and cut these black and brown people out of it. All that stuff is made possible by that except clause in the 13th amendment. Juleyka so lets im going to do a really quick audience survey. Who has been on an unamerican road before been on an american road before . Who has ever been to college and slept on a college bed or sent a kid to college to sleep on a college bed . All right. Who has ever drisk an car with a license plate on it . Good. Theres a really high likelihood that someone in prison built that road, made that bed, punched out the drivers license number. States have these things and feel free to google this, these things called prison industries. And theyre very well established. They get to pay the incarcerated person 25 cents an hour, 10 cents per unit. Yeah. Its pennies for labor. And this is entirely legal. So, lets talk a little bit about the financial structure that is now benefiting from this explanatory comma in the 13th amendment, please. Christina that goes back a long way. The current use of prisoners is just a direct descendent of a convict leasing structure that existed immediately in the aftermath of slavery. We had a situation where coming out of slavery, laws were created whereby vague ransy and those kind of offenses, that were only applied to black people, and those laws were created entirely to take black people, free slaves off of the streets and into jails that could then lease them out, end quotes, to back back to the plantations, back to the industries that needed the bodies to do the work. That structure was just brutal because unlike slave owners, who were horrible, the companies had no interest. So people were literally worked to death. In mines, in its just horrendous. What we have today is a direct descendent of the convict leasing structure that occurred right in the aftermath of slavery. Greg its interesting, one of christinas colleagues, we were talking before we went on, when i was a secondyear law student i clerked the Legal Defense funding. I worked for george. George was working on a series of cases in georgia where they were doing exactly that. They lock you up, they pinch you maybe on a thursday or friday night. Then you dont get a trial until the distant future. In between, the good old boys would come and rinse you out and youre out there cutting grass. Its really a form of enslavement. Thats not ancient history. Thats a few years ago. Theyre really trying to get at this convict leasing system, which you would think we would have made progress in 150 years, but thats exactly why they put the Civil Rights Act of 1866, congress at least then is trying to put some teeth in the 13g9 13th amendment. It survived the u. S. Code. Between then and now theres been this long retreat from the intent of the 13th amendment. And theres a lot of labor. Anybody who has a student in college, for example, who is eating in a calf tear yarks you cafeteria, you have a good chance that thats the same company feeding the prisoners. Theyre not when you have that kind of economic clout, you can then purchase politicians. And guess whos powerless . Those people who are pulled into a system where they cant even go out there and vote against you. Its a nefarious kind of cycle. Christina its not just leasing out. There are also working plantations. Angola. You have prisons that are literally working plantations. I dont know if youve been onto the grounds. Onto the grounds of the angola farm. Its the clearest vision of a slave plantation ive ever seen. You go on and the this rolling enormous space with guards with shotguns on horseback. And prisoners working out in the fields. For change. Five credibilities, 10 cents. And theres no choice. You have to work or you have a problem. Thats the other way it happens. Youre not leased out. Theyre using their capitalizing in the prison. Juleyka i bet theres somebody go, thats over there. Im in d. C. Well, raise your hand if you knew that 70 million americans are Walking Around with a criminal record. I knew that. Yeah. 70 million of us. Chances are that theres someone in this very room who have a criminal record. Right . Raise your hand if you knew that every year 11 Million People are cycled through local jails. 11 million. Raise your hand if you knew that every year 600,000 people are released from prisons and another 600,000 to 700,000 are put back in. Every year. So were not talking about an isolated group of people over there. Were actually talking about people who spend their entire lives tethered one way or another to the criminal Justice System. Lets bring it forward to today and talk about the legacy of the 13th amendment in all our lives. Because chances are that rur one, two degrees of separation from someone in one of those situations. How do you in your role as someone who tries to dismantle these Structural Systems think about approaching this in your work . What are the tools you have available to you . And then id like to you take it from the citizens perspective and answer the same question, please. Christina its a hard question. Because the Supreme Court certainly hasnt made it easy to challenge these kinds of laws. We have a series of decisions, leading with the kemp decision. If youre trying to deal, make a full frontal attack on the role of race in the administration of the criminal Justice System, the first thing you encounter is that decision. Which was litigated by l. D. S. And ultimately the Supreme Court which the case l. D. F. Presented the largestistical study of the role of race in the death penalty. Africanamerican people, black people who are alleged or convicted of killing white people are four times more likely to be sentenced to death than any other race. They take this to the Supreme Court. They say, Supreme Court this has to be unconstitutional. Race is an arbitrary factor. It cant be considered in deciding whether someone should live or die. The Supreme Court says, not so fast. You just brought statistics and statistics alone are not enough. And so this is not enough evidence of racial disproportionality and the administration of the death penalty, and ultimately the criminal Justice System overall is not a does theres not a basis for a constitutional claim. Justice brennan in his dissent criticizes the majoritys decision as a fear of too much justice. Because what the Supreme Court says is, if we open the door here to a conversation about disproportionality in capital punishment, then we have to look at disproportionality throughout the criminal Justice System and were not going to do that. Brennan says, this is a fear of too much justice. So thats the first challenge you face. You say, we can all in this room cite the disproportionality, right. On the street, black people stopped and searched by Police Officers. Then once you get in there, the discretion that is exercised by Police Officers, black kid, white kid, the white kid is going to get sent home and the black kid is going to keep going through. Once you get into the courthouse, the discretion exercised by prosecutors is always, at every discretion point in the criminal Justice System, discretion is exercised in a way that africanamerican people receive the harsher ends. But we have mcclessky. They say, thats interesting, but you cant do anything with that. That is a fascinating fact. Thats a big challenge. Ultimately we need the Supreme Court, we are going to have to get that decision overturned. In the short run, you know, we do what we can. This year i litigated a case, you try to bring sort of the big highprofile extreme cases to the Supreme Court to make it clear that this is not a situation that has gone away. A couple of years ago the Supreme Court in a Voting Rights case said, you know, all that stuff about voting discrimination is a thing of the past. That doesnt happen anymore. Greg amazing. Christina right, about five years ago they said this. Thats just crazy talk. Which was an astonishing decision. So it really is at this point where you have to be bringing the evidence to them in a way that they cannot juleyka its not palatable. Christina yeah. You have to be very frontal and say, this is what is happening. So the case i brought to the Supreme Court last year was a case about a black man who was still on death row in texas. But his own lawyer introduced an expert who testified that he was more likely to commit crimes because hes black. Period. That was his own lawyer. And that fact, right, whether or not you were likely to commit crimes in the future is the fact, the prerequisite fact for a death sentence. So his own lawyer presented evidence that boo establish that he should be condemned to death. And he was. And that went through that was in 1997. It was february 22 of this year for the first time we got the sentence reversed. So lets be very clear. [applause] thank you. But, it is a good outcome. Its the right outcome. But it took from 199 hes been on death row with court after court after court saying theres nothing to see here, right . So the challenge is real. Its only because it was so explicit. You couldnt turn away. They couldnt say, this isnt Racial Discrimination. This is something else. There was no way to avoid what was happening. It was clear and that was the thing. It was as clear as day. You cannot call this something else. Its hard and we just try to be consistent and speak truth to power every time. Every opportunity we get. Juleyka you are in the 1 of our legal minds in the country. What do the rest of us scrubs do . Greg ball up your fists and fight. Juleyka we dont want to end up in jail, remember . Greg there are people probably in this room with an open warrant that dont know you have one, if you mispassed a Court Appearance for a ticket or a judge put a bunch warrant on you. You dont know physical until they put the scanner on your license plate and they hit the lights. License and registration. Did you nouveau a rrant . So there are a lot of us in this room who may, you know, it isnt just in fact, the police chief in camden, an article in the New York Times, very interesting. Camden, 8,000 people. Where Campbell Soup was. Right across the bridge from philly. They have taken a deliberate tact of deescalation, trying to mav away from violent confrontation. One of the things he talked about, he says, its these little nuance tickets. What does it mean to get a 250 ticket when you only make 10,000 a year . Then the fines pile up. So those are people too who are pulled into this web. I stress. Theres probably something in somebody in this room who might have an open warrant. As a black man thats just something we joke about. Sadly thats become our reality. But in terms of what we can do, like i said, came back from st. Louis. Its interesting. Because the 13yh amendment of the civil war amendments, thats the one thats supposed to apply to private action. They argue the 14th amendment, 15th amendment, you have to be a state actor. Intent threshold. Did you say nigger when you hit me . No. But the 13th amendment, interestingly, ironically, coming out of st. Louis, because thats where the case was, you didnt sell me this house because i was black. And the Supreme Court said, yeah, you cant do that. 13th amendment, thats a badge of servitude. That really reveals that the courts have this outside power, if they wanted to use the 13th amendment, they could. As citizens, not just as citizens, but as human beings, i think thats more important as we think about this, because citizenship speaks to the internal struggle of the United States. If you look at the hiftrf you history of our country. Oftentimes weve made the most progress when people who are aggrieved go outside of the national borders. Were going to take it to the u. N. And say this is a crime against humanity. This kind of thing. But when its domestic it becomes race relations. It becomes law and order. Not domestic. So sometimes we have to go outside. But in terms of this domestic thing and what we can do, ferguson, missouri, just a little suburb of st. Louis. We all know the name. Its sketched in infamy now. Its cracey how these things converge. They just had a mayoral election. 4,000 people vote. The republican comes back, 56 of the vote. The black woman who runs against him only gets 44 . When you ask people why they didnt vote, they say, nothing will change. Thats the attitude point of context. Thats not epic battles. As somebody who teaches at the law school, who is fascinated by the law, i have the utmost respect for these brilliant legal minds like yours who have done battle in the face of what looks to be something thats absurd and come out with the victory. Thats transcendent. But individuals who are in the society, while youre doing that, what good does it for to you fight the battle and come out in the street and none of these people who could the Unfinished Business is the vote oned. Theres no excuse. People say, it doesnt work. Just do it then. If it doesnt matter. Then maybe when you come to ferguson and you get in these nuance tickets and now you owe 580 and you dont have a check to pay it, and now you have a bench warrant on you. Maybe that doesnt happen with a Different City Council and a woman who is part of the structure who says, we need to revise this statute. Thats something we can do it. Has real consequences. Juleyka lets talk about ferguson. Because everybody said looking at ferguson, they learned that none of the elected officials were black. None of the ranking executives in police were black. The ratio of black Police Officers was one of the lowest in the country. And most significantly, the average citizen in ferguson has not one, not two, but three outstanding warrants. For petty infractions. Like a broken tail light. Like not stopping at a stop sign. And the average cost of that was 1,500 to the person. When ferguson has an annual average income per household of lower than the poverty rate of 26,000. These are called legal financial obligations. They are one of the ways millions of americans spend a lifetime tethered to the legal system. A study last year in washington found that Washington State year over year gets in 30 million in revenue just from legal financial obligations. On average a person pays 113 a year. Sometimes the penalty is 20,000. Sometimes its 5,000. Sometimes its 15,000. And they pay an average of 113 to the state. And administrative fees, late fees, these are all added on if you miss a payment. What happens also is that these things show up in the public rort. So if youre trying to buy a house and youve got an outstanding l. F. O. , youre not going to get the house. This happened to a mantha i interviewed in florida man that i interviewed in florida. He committed a misdemeanor. He served his four years. He came out. He couldnt get a job because of his record. He managed to do handy work. When he was sentenced, the judge that sentenced him also put in the sentence that he has to pay restitution to the state for every day that he was in prison. So when he came out of prison in florida, he had a 63,000 tab. Hes resigned to not paying it but hes also resigned himself now to not owning a home, not being able to cosign a college loan for a child in the future, and this is someone in his 30s who i spoke to. Because of a mistake that he made in his 20s, went through the system, spent four or five years, now hes got 65,000 that he has no ability to pay whatsoever. Where am i going with this . Back to the voting. One of the things that many people in places like ferguson, places like milwaukee, places like baltimore, were going to get to baltimore in a minute, because there was some big news today concerning baltimore. They have been systemically disenfranchised from the system. The phrase is, what difference does it make if i go vote . Heres the difference that it makes. Prosecutors in this country are elected. 2,400 prosecutors in the country are elected. The only state where theyre not elected is new jersey. So if you dont live in new jersey and you dont vote, somebody else is going to make that decision for you. Id like you to please speak to the role of prosecutors in this structure. In like eight minutes. Christina oh, my god. [laughter] well, before i do prosecutors. I was going to say, about the money. We recently filed another example of that, we recently filed a brief to houstons bail system. In Harris County in houston, texas, they have a system of what we call wealthbased bail for miss demeaners. Youre arrested and charged with a disme dean misdemeanor. Theres a schedule that says, this is the amount of bail for this charge. What does it take into consideration . Criminal history. What does it not take into consideration . Income. So if you are a rich College Professor greg i like this scenario. Christina and i am not. And we both get arrested the same day for the same offense, they set 50, 150 basement youre going home. Im staying in. Same background. Same criminal history. Everything. The only difference between you going home or going in is money. Your ability to pay bail. That is insane. You can imagine the racial disproportionality inherent in that structure. You have people of color, black and latino in houston, spending time in jail. You dont even get to talk about your ability to pay until for days. Youve now been in jail for days, a week. You dont even get to bring it up. And have a conversation about it. This is the structure in houston. Its so dug into the system. This idea of capitalizing on criminal justice. So deeply tied to the system. Juleyka for the northerners who are about to be like, oh, its texas. In philadelphia, the average cost of being sent into prison for shoplifting is a 50 fine. But if you cant pay 10 of the 50 fine, you get to the stay in jail. What is 10 of 50 . 5. Christina and there are people in. Juleyka the irony is that it costs philadelphia 103 a night to keep someone in jail. Greg and who are they paying . Christina exactly. Its insane. Juleyka so the web becomes a spiral for some people because then what happens is you get arrested on wednesday, you miss two days of work, you cant call in. You get fired on monday. But now youve got a pending court case. And youve got fines accruing because you werent able to pay. Christina your rent is due. Juleyka absolutely. And your rent is due. Ok. Prosecutors. That was a parenthetical explanatory thing. Greg thats leeway. Christina there is an election in houston. A sort of black lives Matter Campaign was launched in houston. A very tough, unfair prosecutor was voted out of office. And the new prosecutor who is in filed a brief in support of bail reform. In Harris County. That is completely as a result of this sort of new effort of understanding and engaging around prosecutors and election campaigns. That is a sign of hope. Prosecutors. Enormous, unchecked power over the criminal Justice System. Unchecked power. There is no supervision, no oversight at all. Not from the courts, nowhere. About the decisions that a prosecutor makes. The Supreme Court made sure that was the the case in a decision called United States vs. Armstrong. There is hypothetically a legal claim called selective prosecution. I could say, hey, i see in wherever you are, in washington, d. C. , the only people going to jail for crack cocaine offenses are africanamericans. Youre only prosecuting black men for drug crimes. We know that the numbers are 5050 use of drugs in this district. You could say that. I could say that. I sue. I want to sue because it looks like the prosecutor, and this is im not speaking literally at this point, but this prosecutor is discriminating against africanamericans. Now i need discovery. I need the data. You hold you, prosecutor, have all the information about what cases you looked at to decide which one was going to be charged and which one was not. So its called discovery. I need to you disclose that data. So we can all take a look. If you havent discriminated, you dont have anything to worry about. The Supreme Court said, oh, no, no, no. You dont get that. No. You dont have access to the information that allows you to support a selective prosecution claim. So ultimately prosecutors decide what crime is going to be charged. That decision determines what sentence will you get and that is the only decision that decides what sentence. You can get a range off of the prosecutors decision, but the charging decision dictates the ultimate sentencing decision. And so its literally unchecked discretion. The only way it is checked is at the voting is in the voting booth. If there are patterns like what i described, of discrimination. In Harris County there was a situation where the last prosecutor had a witness who had Mental Health problems and she decided and she didnt want to testify. So the prosecutor had her put in jail where she was promptly beaten and attacked. So she got voted out of office. But that is the only Current Power really to control what prosecutors are doing. So its critical for people to be following what prosecutors are doing and then acting on it. By going into the voting booth. Juleyka lets give the audience a concrete example. Who here knows a teenager who sometimes hangs out with knuckleheads . [laughter] im not saying your teenager is a knucklehead. He or she sometimes hangs out with knuckleheads. Right . So lets say that your son, daughter, neisse, nephew, gauddaughter, and his or her knuckleheaded friends vandalize something. And theres four of them. They all get sent to jail. They call you crying. Guess what . The prosecutors up for reelection next year. So theres a high, high probability that your niece, nephew, cousin, friend, and their friends are going to get charged as a gang. Right . For vandalism. For petty theft, whatever the crime was. But wait for it. It gets better. Depending on where you are, and up until september this was through the state of california, the prosecutor has the right to do something called direct file. Which means that he or she alone, usually want 24hour period, can determine whether or not that child will be sent to juvenile Justice Court or adult criminal court. In california they decided the citizenry decided 20 years ago to enact, to give this power to the prosecutors. Because they thought there was a Gang Violence wave. This was one way to mitigate this very quickly. 20 years later, they decided, actually, that really didnt work out well. Because youth crime in california is down 40 . But the number of direct files is going in the opposite direction. So it was a very contested referendum that passed last year. But 15 states and d. C. Still have this in the books. So this lovely person asked us earlier, whats my assignment . Your assignment when you want to do something is to figure out the one thing that you can pluck at. That will make a difference. Thats the assignment. And thats what happened this california. People decided, this is crazy. Why does one single person, looking at only the Police Report from an incident, thats all they look at, how does this one person get to determine what happens to these young people . And then they organized and organized and organized. Lets talk about baltimore. Because this brings us to today. Does everybody know what happened in baltimore today . In places like baltimore, and milwaukee, and ferguson, and a couple other places, our previous attorney general and his team and the one before that entered into these agreements with the Police Department. Sometimes voluntarily. Sometimes they were led to the table kicking and screaming. Nonetheless the agreement was signed. The agreement basically said, we recognize that youve got a lot of work to do. And we recognize that we have to play a role in that. So lets make a plan for how were going to make you better. Well, baltimore decided a couple years ago that they wanted a little bit more supervision, they wanted the help, the support of the attorney general and the d. O. J. And today the new attorney general, after a judge decided that, yes, this is a good idea for baltimore to enter into this consent agreement, the new attorney general said the following about the agreement. Make no mistake, baltimore is facing a Violent Crime crisis. In short, the citizens of baltimore are plagued by a rash of Violent Crime that shows no signs of letting up. I have grave concerns that some provisions of this decree will reduce the lawful powers of the Police Department and result in a less safe city. Greg [inaudible] i respect him. Because hes fighting for something thats dying. His silly mind, his little racialist view of the world is dying and hes fighting with his fist balled up as hard as he can. I respect that. Hes in the proud tradition of roger tiney. These people had this obsession with controlling bodies. Womens bodies, poor peoples bodies. The black body. Roger engages in this somersault in the dred scott case where he says you have National Rights and you have the rights of states. You might think that somehow these things one can supersede the other one. When it comes to the negro, youre not a citizen of the state and youre not a citizen of the United States. Now, why is that important . How does that link to baltimore . Their obsession is to play a shell game with states rights or the federal government as it suits them. There is no consistency in his legal argument. And a lot of these cities, the Police Chiefs are like, no. The Police Chiefs are like, no. Is,is going to happen they have to choose. Am i going to jump in now and revealed to everybody that i dont care about the law. This is about me preserving my warped view of the world . I suspect that he will. And if he does that, then we can begin, in terms of what we can do, we can begin to reframe how we look at the law. Because ralph said the negro is the special ward of the Supreme Court. Were always looking for the federal government to help intervene to help us. If we begin to look at law as something that we can buil consensus on at local levels, prosecutors like the late ken thompson in brooklyn, like the guy in dallas, johnson. Carol harris probably should have been more progressive before she became the junior senator sfr california. She was the a. G. Out there. At the local level, if we tell the federal government, we got this, were going to have to force them. Are you going to want to come in with the thunder and say, no, you cant free up the police because you freed us up and we made this deliberate choice at the local level . Then beauregard gets even more toothless than his father and grandfather which would take you back to the 19th century. This is the mentality that was born in the shadow of the civil war. It was not something that was born with him in that alabama hospital he was born in seven decades ago. [laughter] juleyka you need some water. Here. Have some water. Greg no, im good. Thats why im over here. What is needed now is not water but fire. Thats what James Baldwin said. I meant that with my whole heart. Juleyka we know. All right. To draw parallels here, if you will allow me. Some people will look at the statements from the a. G. Today as a preemptive strike, as a setup of some sort. The way that the crime wave and the crime bill in the 1990s was a preemptive strike, right . Which then provided an authority of sorts. Nixon was one of the first president s to utilize this method of preemptively saying, there is a fire, so i am going to bring the huge water cannons. Set in motion the war on drugs, for example. Now we understand how much damage that created. We are still dealing with the ramifications. Bill clinton also set up a similar preemptive strike, right . With the crime bill. This in the same vein . Where does this go now because we have now pay moraware, empowered and connected citizenry. And we have an administration that did not come in with the popular vote and who, leading up to the first 100 days has been haphazard at best about the way they govern. I know my sat words, ok . So, if this is a preemptive strike, what do we do . Or what is next . From the administrations point of view, what are the intentions . Christina let me say that i think that well, first of all, i would say that the war on drugs is a war on black people. Lets be clear about what that was. Im not using the air quotes. Im not embracing quotes. I dont think its much different now. I want to use the example of drugs again. It is fascinating to watch the current approach to the problem of drugs in the heartland. It is fascinating. We have an attorney general who is so concerned about crime. But hes not concerned about drug crime, right . Because the face of drug crime is now white. When the face of drug crime was black, then it was then it was a crime problem. Now it is a Public Health problem. And so i think the way he has responded to chicago, to baltimore, that is crime. Drugs are now health. That is race. That is the clearest way you can see what is happening, right . People who struggle with drug problems, it is the same. Addiction is addiction were ever it manifests itself. It is a choice about how you deal with it. It is just as plain as day, the way it is being handled right now. , leading to go back to the good old days of brutal. Olice violence and force the heartland, we just need doctors and medicine, you know what i mean . Story. That tells the where does history take us after this preemptive strike . It is interesting. Dubois was born free in massachusetts. To school in tennessee and went south and said, ok, im going to devote my life to this struggle. This human struggle. He wrote his doctoral dissertation at harvard. The suppression of the african slave trade to the United States. He said, nobody could have looked on with more horror at what happened in the civil war than the people who started the country. They never would have imagined that that would have been the result. But he said, the reason th couldnt imagine it, because they didnt understand its a moral challenge that they sewed into the fabric of the country. It was going to keep coming back until it was finally resolved. The lesson we have to learn is the right time to correct a morale wrong is the most you become aware of it. Is the moment you become aware of it. Otherwise youre going to keep facing it. Juleyka it is called the original sin. Greg that is exactly right. We havent left the legal universe of the 13th amendment. When you create a category that confines people to levels of citizenry, and you enshrine whiteness as the only definition of humanity in the legal universe, then will you find yourself faced with, when white folks get this drug addiction, we have to treat them. These are human beings. Anybody who you dont treat, you are saying basically, you are not human. Have at happens when you swelling group of people who are considered not human, except they keep having babies. And now they are out there and you cant put them all in jail. When youhat you have come to them one day and say, we are ready to try and solve this. They will say, not this time. We have seen the show about eight times. Lets finish the job. And if people think that is apocalyptic, all we have to do is remember where we were in 2017, and martin king who came out against the war did not live another year. A year to the day after he came with the critique, because he said it is militarism, it is capitalism. It is the way to suppress people , not only based on the color of their skin, but their wealth. You keep doing that, there is going to be an autopsy for this country. He thought it might he be at vietnam. It might be donald trump. It might be the war on crime. But that just means that the country will dissolve. People will stop believing that this framework can solve our juleyka problems. Juleyka right. Lets stay with the issue of race. You both have made elegant points about how race is a foundational element in this. I just came across this book yalled a colony in a nation b msnbcs chris hayes. This is one of the things he argues. He says, American History is the story of white fear. Of the constant violent impulses it produces and the management and ordering of those impulses. White fear keeps the citizens of the nation wary of the colony. And he means those in prison. In the physical prison. And fuels their desire to keep it separate. So, even the wokest white person is still fearful . Greg let me just say this about brother chris hayes. It is not white fear. It is white entitlement. He takes the line from nixon and he gave the interview in the New York Times magazine. He said, if you had one book you wanted everyone in the country to read, he said it would be dubois book. Height oftion is the white entitlement. Because they invented us. Greg exactly. What i am saying is that and i think chris hayes is brilliant. I think he is very insightful and i watch them. At the same time, i am looking at him like, dude, it is like the new jim crow. 25 years ago there was anot her book. Ida wells breaks down the entirety of how this whole situation comes out in our legal universe. Happening is every generation we are faced with this narcissistic, navelgazing on behalf of white liberalism that continues to lead us in the direction of trying to define our humanity based on the normative whiteness, whether it is for good or for bad. That has got to be displaced. How do we do it . We begin displacing it by conceding that if we are going to make this project work, this american experiment, we have too come to the table as human glorious tapestry of difference and redefine the terms. When they passed that 13th amendment, they said, it is very real, they say people should be able to make and enforce contracts. And then they say these rights should be practiced as they are enjoyed by white citizens. What does that mean . That means we are going to remove whiteness to a degree possible as the conduit for people being able to move through the universe. And ultimately, when the supreme says, ases around and applied to white citizens applies to white people too. If you get in trouble, it is your fault. If you are a drug addict, it is your fault. In other words, it becomes the the victim becomes the person who can never escape that definition. I dont think there is a solution to this problem, as long as we look to the chris hayess in the world to give us an on something we live every day. [laughter] no. maybe i should juleyka i was trying to introduce a different conversation. You are giving us the syllabus. Greg im sorry. And all due respect. I do appreciate his work a lot. I was getting fired up. But i suppose i should say this very simply. The challenge then, in terms of education is to get our young resist their agency, i. Hink looking to experts to tell us we are in a miserable condition and these are the three steps you need to take. No. If you want to help me, put some more money in public education. Stop betsy devos from privatizing. But it has got to be done that way. That is what i meant. Great segue. Is a i wanted to talk about the Movement Black lives matter. We are going to go to christina, so you can have some water. [laughter] possible. Is not juleyka it is the eternal flame. This brings up the point of since Michael Brown, right, there has been a magnificent resurgence of this claim to selfdirection, selfdefinition and it has really invigorated the conversation around who gets to define my humanity, right . Has that had any ripple affect intangible ways in the legal system . And how so . Christina yes, absolutely. Five years ago we had the Supreme Court saying in a case called shelby county, all those voting problems that congress acknowledged 10 years ago, those are gone. Those are a thing of the past. Then this year we have the Supreme Court in two cases of knowledge and racial dissemination in the criminal Justice System. My case is out of georgia where a prosecutor excludes africanamericans from jury service. Last term, the Supreme Court reaffirms the university of texas race conscious admissions process, a long protracted fight. End raceought to conscious admissions in any college system. The court ultimately upholds the policy and brings an end to this longrunning case. It is really powerful in these three cases, really powerful language. I think they would not have gotten their i am confident they would not have gotten there had we not seen what we had all seen for the years before. I argued my case days after charlotte exploded. There was no way for us to be standing in the Supreme Court expertsabout race, saying a black man is more dangerous isnt real. Doesnt matter to a jury. While charlotte was on fire. Impossible for the court to turn a blind eye and say this was not real. The videos, the brutal response to people, to children, to teenagers. Young people in the street and the brutalities that they faced in response to just owning their humanity. Black lives matter was met with tanks and guns. It really did change. Did it change it enough . Not even close. But five years ago, the Supreme Court said there is no more discrimination in voting. There is no voting discrimination. And now the Supreme Court, and Justice Roberts in my case writes about Racial Discrimination and i am quoting him. Some toxins can be lethal in small doses. He is talking about Racial Discrimination. That is Justice Roberts. That is a to say the world has changed is an understatement. That pressure has to be kept up. We cannot stop exposing and talking and pushing and requiring people to acknowledge the injustices happening on the street. It cannot stop. Places one of the symbolically and very much practically where much of this took hold was on college campuses. We have not seen this type of resurgence of activism since the 1960s and 1970s. How has that shaped the young minds you are in charge of shaping and what is this renaissance of self empowerment doing as you uer them out into the world as black people empowered . Greg that is very generous. I dont think the young people shaped byshered or anything. I think increasingly social media, the way it has transformed technology has displaced the classroom anyway as a place where you convene these kind of conversations to scale. You are right. The surely remember antiparty movement in the 1980s and 1990s in particular. Said,eneration, like i the millennium scholars, we meet down in st. Louis. We talked about the season and in south africa. We need to be able to pay for our education. Not only knewople about this, but there were connections to the 1950s court and the university of missouri. These movements now have the potential to unsettle some things people actually care about in this country, like money. Missouri is a great example of that. We talked about it today. It was funny because it gave us a chance to talk about missouri and the football game. The university being integrated. Students though, realized that when the Football Players at missouri, and im from the south. So, the sec, sometimes we call it the slave economic conference from the money they make off of black bodies. Take the negro who runs fast and the girl with the 5. 0 gpa. But when you see the missoula Football Player come out and say, this has got to end, that is what happens when young people begin to weaponize their education. And by that, i mean transform what they begin to understand into action. It is one thing if we do it. We are academics, writers and lawyers. No, no, no. There goes the basketball player we just hit the winning shot in the final four and when she steps out there we have a problem. These young people are finally talking to each other. Martin luther king had to get on the radio in downtown atlanta. If he was alive today, he would just tweet it out. That is the x factor. This thing could flip overnight if we could figure out how to continue to recruit these young people into their own operation. Juleyka we are going to take your questions. Im going to bring it back to the codification of bodies in the 13th amendment because now there is a movement afoot across the country to declare that Blue Lives Matter by declaring violence against police as hate crimes. Take it away. Wrongina there is a lot with that. It is largely redundant. There are already laws on the books in every state that enhance penalties for crimes against Police Officers. There is nothing needed to be done. That is already an enhanced crime. This is literally optics and wordplay to try to defuse the power of the black lives matter movement. Or to attempt to equalize, or to suggest that Police Officers face the kind of jeopardy or physical violence that africanamericans do, which is not remotely equitable. It is not a fair comparison at all. Legally it is simply redundant. The laws already exist. That is a done deal. Right, irealistically, mean the government refuses to count how many black people are killed, how many people are killed by the police until recently. The government literally refused to count it and now we know. You can go on the Washington Post and watch the running tally and it is horrifying. There is no comparison to the number of black people who are killed and hurt and wounded by Police Officers in this country. Tois a ridiculous attempt suggest that what israel, which is that black people really are in real jeopardy in many instances on the street when confronted by Police Officers. To distort that reality. Juleyka i have a different final question for you. We might notething be aware of, when the climate report comes out every year, it only covers eight categories of crime. It is gathered by voluntary information provided by the Police Departments and jurisdictions across the country. And they are not legally compelled to share their information. Crimes, theyeight only represent about 18 of all crimes in the United States. Next time you see the crimes report, remember that. Remember it is on a voluntary basis because not everybody is compelled. There is no way to compel Police Departments. They are now trying on a voluntary basis to have a National Clearinghouse for these things, but people have to volunteer for that. The last thing i want to ask is about the ferguson affect and i want greg to take this. For those of you who dont know, after ferguson erupted, Police Officersimed his white were afraid not an ferguson, but whatever that they were afraid to go into certain neighborhoods because they thought their lives were in greater jeopardy after the eruption in ferguson. He dubbed this the ferguson affect. Everyone talked about the ferguson affect for a while. Academics quite went to milwaukee for a few years and this is what they did. They went to milwaukee and they gathered all of the 911 calls one year prior to the death of a young black man at the hands of police and one year after the death of the young black man and the death of police. And crunched their data they came back and realized the real ferguson affect was that fewer people were calling 911 immediately after the highly publicized death of a black person at the hands of police. So, the communities were afraid that if they called the police into the neighborhood, somebody would end up dead. In total, the difference in calls the year prior to the incident to the year after the incident was 22,000 calls to 911. So, ferguson affect. Made you think. It took me like an hour and 15 minutes. [laughter] greg the fundamental issue we have to ask is, what is the function of police in society . That is why i have been thinking on this thing and the conversation you have laid out. I was in milwaukee shortly after a young man lost his life. It makes us question if this can be reformed, which is what i thought was going on in canada, or at least being attempted. Through he walked the training officers. If you encounter somebody who has a knife or is being violent, you try to create a corrdior, and you walk them away from other people and eventually get them to defuse the situation. We are talking about this guy who had a knife. These two officers walked and talked the man into a corridor and he was black and he eventually put the knife down. Only they come in and pull out their gun. It is beginning to have an effect in terms of places where the police are not trusted. Now people and i was thinking about immigration. You have these cowboys now that want to kick in the door with ice and now nobody is calling the police. So, what is the function of police . If the function is to maintain law and order, not just the United States, but anywhere else , then you have an automatic adversarial relationship. You dont have to say Blue Lives Matter. These are our enemies. They are an occupying army. If you just put on a uniform and go to work because your job is not just to keep us safe, but to help us move in community, then perhaps there is a way to have the police themselves come into the other space. What is keeping us from doing that . I mean, we all probably know police. We all have somebody in our family or friends that have served in the military. People come home and talk about drug abuse, who drink. They are on the streets and they realize they dont do it and there will be a war in the locker room. How do we free those people who want to be human in the world while wearing those uniforms to make different choices . Some of it is recruiting people to join the police force. All. Hat is not i think whatever the solution is, it cant involve escalating the conflict with Law Enforcement. It is a longterm strategy. It could do that, but the only result you get then is fullscale warfare. What has history shown us . If it gets bad enough, some of those people are either going to put their guns down or turn the guns on the people they came out there with. You make a choice. Am i blue or am i brown or am i human . The police are not going to c like the decision some of the cops make in that moment. At that point, you have to pull out of vietnam because they dont want to fight for you anymore. I dont see a solution to address the fundamental question of what is the role of policing. Juleyka some questions . Questions, not comments. Oni will take a question this side of the room first and then move around. Somebody on this side of the room. Come right over here. Policing, if you want to get promoted you have to make the arrests. If you want to make overtime, you have to make arrests. Can you speak to that . Greg no. [laughter] greg when the report came out in the wake of ferguson, they were looking at Something Like 3000 Police Districts in the country, most of them are less than 10 officers and the police union here in d. C. Had this conversation. You cannot keep defending the police. Stop and listen. You have to make a different decision. Can you create a plan whereby you can get promoted, you can make your advances and it is not built on the back of locking people up. That is a policy question. A municipality report to a larger structure, meaning some of these people on the city council have to give a bit more breaks. As you reform the policy, going to the policy manual. And when the police union comes, break their back. By break their back, i mean force them into a conversation. When the people say, i dont want to get promoted based on arrests, you have to say that. The people on the top are just out there scamming, really. I think it is a policy fix. I was going towa add. If you Say Something about the beat downs that you saw, then they are not going to come for you when you radio. You will be left out there. That is the culture right now in Law Enforcement in this country. Be i agree to with greg there has to be a complete Culture Shift in the way the Police Department is structured. At this point it is promoted as a paramilitary organization. Andlook at the science think about how it is advertised, inviting people who want to be in the swat team, who want to kick down doors, who want to be doing beat downs on the street. That is the advertising. It is, come here not asking people who want to solve problems to come. They are inviting people who want to deliver beat downs. That is the whole structure of the way it is promoted. That is how it has to be changed. Ineyka i wanted to add that san antonio they implemented a Great Program called crisis intervention training. It is taking hold throughout the country. San antonio decided they did not have the capacity in terms of deputies and this is that the sheriffs level, in terms of deputies to have as many people as they were arresting for things like domestic violence, drunken behavior. These were not Violent Crimes. They decided to run an experiment and they trained three officers. They sent them to an academy to train them with crisis intervention training. It is all deescalation techniques. It is all talking someone down in the moment of crisis, because this is what people dont realize. Police officers are almost always coming into contact with someone at their worst possible moment. They are almost always in crisis. So, they took these three Police Officers out of the normal rotation and they were only called into situations where there was clearly no one in imminent danger, nobody who was about to die because of whatever, and the responding officer was tuesday outside of the door. One as a safety. And these three officers come in and talk down and negotiate and the situation. The program was so successful that now they are training all of their officers in c. I. T. In five years they saw a 23 drop in arrests and they were able to diverge people to social services needed psychiatric intervention, who needed other social support. There are alternatives. Juleyka absolutely. Christina if you in your community see there is a pension for over policing, put pressure so that the c. I. T. Training can be adopted there. Greg you get promoted by not arresting people. Ask about grand juries. The bigall waiting for grand jury announcement. And then there was a lot of confusion about what they actually do and prosecutors saying, they were telling us that prosecutors only bring cases to the grand jury when they want to. Again, it goes back to your talk about grand juries. It sounds like a grand jury is just the pocketbook of a prosecutor. What do you think about grand juries and what do you think we can do about them and what is going on with them . Christina that is a great question. First, the prosecutors control the grand jurys. That is the way they function. The defense, people like me, if i want to i dont have any ability i can ask, i can call up the prosecutor and say, if i know there is a witness who has exculpatory information, you should ask the grand jury if they want to hear from the exculpatory witness. They have no obligation to do that. And i have no control over it. My client can go on the grand jury, but of course everything he says or she says will be used against him or her. Time certainly, i have put people on the grand jury if they have a compelling story and say, remember to say ask to see the exculpatory witness. But you have to be very creative about getting the other side in. But really, it is a situation where the prosecutor and it depends on the jurisdiction. There is not a clear answer. It depends sort of on what the rules are in that jurisdiction. But always where there is a grand jury, the presentation is exclusively within the control of the prosecutor. In ferguson, they basically tried, presented all of the prosecutions version of the story Police Officers version of the story to the grand jury and then the Michael Brown version. And those who are interested, mind didinterests in not have an opportunity ever to be heard. That ends the case. They say there are no charges available. In staten island, we will never know. It was a case presented to the grand jury in the eric garner case and that is a black box. There is no access. It is a secret proceeding. There was no regular access to it in any jurisdiction. That was a big deal to release the transcripts because it was unusual because it was so secret. It cuts both ways. I cannot say to you authoritatively, we should abolish the grand jury. I would not say that. But we need to do is empower the grand jury. The truth of the matter is that the jurors make the decision, but the jurors have to know they are the ones in control, not the prosecutor. The jurors can do whatever they want. You can say, i want to see more. Are there other witnesses . They are the ones in control. They can ask for anything they want in the grand jury room. That is not something the prosecutor feels like they have to share. But that is the truth. So, what you find i practiced in new york for a while the grand jury as a term of service. A beginning term grand jury was the worst because they did not know anything. He would always get an indictment. An interim grand jury, those people were radicalized. They realized they could do anything they want. You should always have an interim grand jury. You should always have a jury that understands its rights and its power because if you have that then you get a legitimate and a legitimate evaluation of the evidence. I cannot say no, we should never have a grand jury. We should have a fair grand jury were people understand what is. rir opower lets take one more question. Theyre are going to cut off the camera, i am just saying. What is your argument to people in positions of power, white people in positions of power, for dismantling their own privilege . So, im going to play two thought experiments. One is a white man in western pennsylvania. The Economic System has destroyed his livelihood and the only thing he has to hold onto is his whiteness. The other scenario might be a white liberal in new york city. And there they get to hold onto their whiteness as a white savior. Again, what is your argument . Life would be better. Again, look at history. After the civil war there is a brief period some people might refer to it as the agrarian movement. And surely thereafter you have interests that begin to feed the klan impulse. Folks were trying to organize. And here come the klan shooting at them and they shoot back and they say they are the ones who get in trouble. I guess the impulse in this country is, if there are enough good people of goodwill that begin to form coalitions that threaten to undermine the thing that is keeping that in place. I guess my answer is to folks like that is, lets sit down and reload history together and see just how your life has gotten better every time you tried this and see what will happen after your life starts Getting Better and this time, dont go for the okie doke. Whiteness is ultimately worthless. In the long range, this thing is not going to last. Nonwhite. Is 9 10 the only other thing i would say is that maybe we could get some of this into curriculum. Talking about the grand jury, i am thinking, not that our civic classes are the but if iin tennessee, was a 16yearold or 17yearold and i was in a school with a tommy what a grand jury was and what i was supposed to do when i got a notice and what power i had, when the notice came to my house i would not say, i dont want to do this jury duty. I would be looking to get on the grand jury. That is the kind of thing i think undermines the kind of myths and craziness of this whiteness and its offspring. It has engendered to trap everyone, including white people. Juleyka if i could add to that, there is a lot more evidence, and not just about whiteness. There is evidence about corporations to have women on their boards making more money. There are a lot more examples that women managers and managers who are people of color tend to have better teams. Outsell, outperform all the other teams. There is a real economic benefit actually, to inclusion that is now quantified and has been measured. And so, thats the argument i always make. I dont hold my moral compass above anyone else, but i know we both like keeping the most of our money. Right . [laughter] juleyka i have that in common with most people. Have the argument of, dont you realize that our collective net worth, literally our collective net worth, would rise . To yourtithetical selfpreservation not to maximize your own income in that way. In committing multiple things, not just actual, physical money. We have income in many ways. Onistina can i just add that point exactly but wait. [laughter] christina also in the criminal Justice System, there are studies that show diverse juries outperform allwhite juries. Allwhite juries make more errors. They deliberate less. They do not ask questions. This is literally in the criminal justice context. If you have an allwhite jury compared to a diverse jury, the diverse jury outperforms and gets a more accurate outcome. Juleyka like what we were talking about earlier. We came to the conclusion that people with a certain amount of i. Q. In have a higher please help me in thanking them. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] , we are featuring our studentcam winners in the documentary competition for middle and high school students. This year students told us the most urgent issue for the new president and congress. Our second Prize Middle School winners are eighth graders from concorde, massachusetts. Charlotte, caroline, and carl are students and their documentary on the gender wage gap. Take a look