Our class is about a drama class taught in prison and about the teaching and learning about the prison and he people who have to live in it and around it and who are trying to survive its violence and trauma and play cage was begun there with the full participation of the class in realize in a series of public performances. We hear the voices of the students read over. They work to find their own stories and have the courage to dramatize them. This book is full of hard stories. It dares every complacency about what the society does to people. On the title page, and i see the copies of the book around the room. So you should look at this. I want you to look at the book that you just grabbed. Theres a photograph of all the students in the class and i find it really good to see their faces. Another thing i want to point out when you pick up your copy of cage, theres in addition to the wonderful introduction by boris, dont miss the section called play wrights on the inside and play wrights on the outside. Their bios, theyre astonishing little stories. Up hope we have time to include these areas in the discussions that follow. Tonight, we are so pleased to welcome arthur chris hedges, esteemed journalist, war correspondent, author of many books and an ordained minister, joined by boris franklin, the first of chriss former student to earn his degree from rutgers. The assistant director of the new Directions Program for prisoners. Were also proud to welcome russ owens, who also studied with chris, scholar and veteran of new Jersey Prison and honored graduate of rutgers university. Also, another graduate is here, ron pierce. Very happy to welcome him as well. We spent some time this afternoon selecting books for this Little Library around us and i know we want to be a part of helping these scholars rebuild their collections and before i came up here, i read the latest piece by my friend, the kaepernick effect. He writes about radical action with such fire and joy and he gave me something that i needed today he just dropped a piece in the nation and i just wanted to share a little bit of that with you today. He said i never thought yesterday, reading my book would count as an act of resistance but here we are. I do know that here in virginia and across the country, there are metric ton of people who either didnt vote or under 8 00 theyre going to turn the lives of the Tony Morrison book burners on their head if they demand accountability for the past, present and future. And on that note, lets get going. Please give it up for boris, chris, and russ. [applause] thanks, virginia. And thanks to labyrinth books, which donated over 700 books to the library at East Jersey State Prison, where my students and youre about to meet, three of my most remarkable students, worked on and in the case of us are, finished their College Degree summa cum laude, and there are several people here. And jennifer works have been so important in the lives of those who have been demonized and forgotten and, yeah, its a special night. Boris and ron were in the class that wrote the play. Ron and russ were in the class where i traumatized them by dragging them through all of sheldons politics envision. I taught and russ was not in the class but russ just got out in july after 32 years. And so theyve all read the book, ron and, boris helped edit the book. But im going to set it up and pass the mic to them and they can begin to pull out from that experience in the book what they think is salient and important. So i went in to teach this class at East Jersey State Prison through the mj step program which is run out of rutgers and allows people on the inside to earn their associates and their b. A. And i wanted them to read the great playwright amir baraka, the red dutchman, the great August Wilson, miguel piniero, and others and it was clear when i got into the class that very few members of the class had much experience with theater and drama. So i suggested they write scenes as an exercise. What i didnt know is that one of the students in the class, kabi, r, in arabic, it means big and thats his nickname. Knew who i was listening because of he had heard me on a station out of new york and he had gone around and recruited the most talented writers in the prison. So when i got those first scenes back. I had 20 students and i brought them back to princeton with that kind of musty smell all handwritten online paper that on line paper that the note, the prison, i ran into several scenes that were just remarkable and lyrical, powerful, and this happened the next week and the week after that. And i said to my wife, on you eunice, who is a professional actor, graduate of juilliard. I showed her this and went back the class and proposed that we take these scenes and i would kind of serve as she editor and i would meddlesome scenes and everything would have to be cleared with the class but it was not premeditated. It was completely organic. In prison, you have to build these emotionally protective walls. But when people began to write about their trauma, their suffering, their loss, their grief, those walls melted. And as you can see, these are, you know, had 28 students. They call the 400 club, means they all bench over 400 pounds. Big guys, prison tattoos, you know, standing up there. Their hands shaking and in some cases, crying, and it just became this explosive experience where everything that poured out and people begin to speak about experiences they had that theyd never spoken about in prison. And theyve been sometimes, decades, like lawrence, in prison, has been arrested at the age of 14 the camden and both of his parents were dead he had been living in an abandoned house as a 12yearold. Dragged into a Camden City Police station with three detectives he weighs 90 pounds. Forced to sign a confession. Hes not eligible to go before a parole board until hes 70 years old and would still be in prison but for the great jennifer who is sitting in the back who got him out. [applause] but like boris, ron, and russ, he decided that he was just going to be the best person he could be, despite the circumstances in which he found himself. So i taught history class. It was called conquest. And on the haitian independence moves, and haitis been paying for it ever since. And at the end of that class, he was always one of my top students. He waited until everyone left the room and he said i know im going to die in this prison but i work as hard as i do because one day, im going to be a teacher like you and walked out. And youll see with these three remarkable men here, the depth of the brilliance and the integrity and the passion which ive never experienced in any classroom. And ive taught at princeton, at columbia and all sorts of places. Its sacred space. Because that classroom door closes and you are not a number you are a human being. And so, we developed this play and it was the revelations that were just unimaginable. I mean, something happened when it was publicked although its 28 collaborative something, something happened to everyone in that classroom. Whatever was in the play, it happened to someone in that classroom. Or timmy, i said well, write a scene about your mother, something to the conversation with your mother and timmy came up and said what if were a product of rape . I said thats what you have to write. And he writes about the phone call from the county jail. He is in a car in patterson with his halfbrother the car is stopped the weapon is found. Its his halfbrothers gun. But timmy, if no one claims it, then everyone can be charged with a weapon charge. And timmy takes ownership of it. Although it wasnt his. And the conversation from the county jail is it doesnt matter, ma. I was never supposed to be here anyway and you have the son you love. Those are the kind of people that i taught. We eventually put the play together. We couldnt perform it in the prison. There were parts of it that the department of corrections would not like and the retribution would be carried out against my students. We brought in cornel west and the great thee lotion james cohen to be our audience and my First Student to get out was boris. Hell tell you i was crying more than his mother at the gate. And boris and i spent hundreds of hours because when i first when i said who wants a part when i began. There were only seven students and as we got into the play, we had 28 points and he had to consolidate these parts. We worked with the great theater director jeff wiese and boris and i sat at the computer where i learn what had a baby mama was. [laughter] and it was produced at the package theater to a soldout audience because in trenton then horror of mass incarceration was quite familiar to those who live in that city. And im going to let them pick out some of the of course, ron and boris were in the class, but im just going to let them pick out themes that they think we should raise, that were raised in the book. I guess if i had to pick out something that was raised in the book, its in the material pages of the book and it has to do with the rule of art. And to bring art inside of the that is the institution, it brought a little bit of humanity back into the institution. Were looking at individuals who had been taken out of society and theres a social death, i believe it was Orlando Patterson who wrote a book on that, right . So by coming in and doing what chris would call it taking our songs and bringing them out, he put us in direct dialogue with all of you. He put us into back in society in that fashion and we were able to tell our story in that way and to have that art to be produced and to be brought out into the world, puts you in conversation with 28 individuals who are trapped inside of a prison. And i thought that was a way of restoring some of the humanities that was taken away where you get a social death where everything is completely controlled by the threat of some sort of violence. You know, so for me as a person who understands art, and theres art throughout the prison. Thats one thing that the prison is full of. Its full of art. Its unorganized. Its fragmented. And its flawed and its perfect. That is the kind of art that existed inside of a prison, right . And so when chris comes in, he says im going to teach you guys have to structure this in the form of dramatic dialogue, now were having a conversation in the language of a genre. And that gives us a different level of cent of understanding. So for me, that was probably the most important part and the reason why in the conversation is still being carried today. I think for me, what makes this book, this work important, if we could start from the name. From a transformation. We all understand what trauma is its something that happens and it seals like it never goes away. And that part transformation, we understand that transformation is not a singular act. Its a process. And for me, you hit that right on the head in the book. You know, and for me you talked about the code. In prison, theres a code. For everything. And the code perpetuates being inhuman. You have to stick to the code. You cant show love. You cant show feeling. You cant show emotion. You cant be human. And to go against that could get you hurt, could get you dead. So i thought you captured that very well and how that clash push back against the code. And i thought that was remarkable. And we can talk about that further as we go on. And to go with that, because one of the things that i found sofas nateing, not only about this book, but about the play cage, was how it described the humanity of various people. For instance, when he talks about sincere and sincere, having in the space hes in, he has to be looked as thug but hes no thug and when he tries to write it, it comes out to being like a fancy tv show and it doesnt work. It doesnt work in reality. So, so that to me shows that its various. And then you have lawrence and he spoke about lawrence earlier. He speaks about him as a child coming up in the system. As he has it is be an adult and in cage itself, we talk about and this was something that what came to me when we were trying to do the play. There was something missing out of the play when i was out here. And dr. Cohen started talking about how we couldnt really give depth to the black prophetic because we didnt understand it. Its just not prophetic. Its just not there. So it came to me like but we do know about prison people in prison that have been imprisoned over and over from childhood, we call them state raised. And so i came up with the concept that we needed to put somebody that came through the system as a child and work their way up. And thats where shaky brown comes from. He is was a real person. Hes passed now. But it showed in the play, the depth of people that no longer have a connection to the outside when they go to parole, they dont want parole because theres nothing on here. Out here, it was just be another old black man with nothing. When inside, he was shaky brown. He was somebody. Explain who he was and what he did. Well, shaky brown was a blues guitarist. He played the blues in prison all the time. And he developed a narration around life outside so that he could explain his life inside. But the life he narrated from the outside was not real. But it was in his head, it was real. He was this famous blues gishist. But guitarist but the first time we got him on stage, he froze but he developed into it and he played the blues. I mean, he was really an amazing blues guitarist. He started out in the juvenile halls, and he got caught up in another crime, and another crime until he got a life sentence. Every time he went for parole, he would call them a bunch of racists, so and sos. We will not get into semantics. He would call them out on the nonsense they were utilizing. He would always get piggie davis, which in prison, we call a hit. I could not figure out, i was talking to someone who knew him well. That is what they told me. They said, in here, he is shaky brown. Out there, he is a black man who has nothing. Because of prison culture, you have to go to parole. You have to try to get out here and he did not, he wanted to make sure they pushed back enough against him so he wouldnt. He was state raised, what we call state raised baby inside the prison system. He was the picture of it, because a lot of the state raised end up being addicted to drugs, and they have a lot of real issues because of the trauma they under from childhood to old age they endure from childhood to old age. We need him in the play to show the humanity, or the taking of humanity. What it means and what it does to somebody, how it destroys somebodys own humanity to where they do not even want to move where they can have people that may treat them in a humane way. That is why i think shaky was important, that representation was in the play. Ron, through a generous grant, worked on me through the book and was involved in the play. He was not in the original class, but he has been involved in the process. Boris, can you talk a little bit about what took place in the classroom . It was remarkable. People were reticent at the beginning, you were always sitting in the back where you had your glasses case like this. Kind of eyeing me. You and steph. You have to earn trust in an environment like that. It is not a given. Yeah, this guy, when he walked in the class. I was like, who is this guy . [laughter] they did come, he earned the respect. That is something that is part of a code inside of the institution of prison, where as though everything is built on respect. Not many people have different outfits, we all wear the same thing. Respect is a very big thing. When chris came in on his first day, he walked in and started talking to everybody about what he was not going to tolerate outside of a maximum prison. [laughter] it was like, ok. You have got my respect. Gangster. In any event, as it went on, walls started coming down. When you talk about breaking a code, there is a certain part of yourself you cannot express. A lot of guys do express it through art, privately. The conversation is very private. You might see someone who has something on their wall with a heart, and a picture of their child. They had another inmate draw it, or Something Like that. Something like that is very private. When we had this class and were able to go into dialogue abouts that have happened to us, start diving deep into some of that trauma, what came down allowed us to see each other for the first time as a complete person. Then, that is why when we talk about things like what happened sincere transformation, for him to be honest the dialogue became honest. Chris, when you first came in, he brought me stuff that someone had wrote. Yeah. The guy from trenton . I said, they wrote this for a white person. They actually wrote this for you. This is not how black people talk. [laughter] the fact that we were able to write that, it put everyone in an honest dialogue. We were able to knock down some of the myths, some of the stereotypes as to why the people sell why do people sell drugs. Shaky brown, who could not be explained. Most understand most would not understand why the sky couldnt it out of jail. To communicate that, it has a resounding effect. Here we are, that was 2018. It is 2021 and we are here having this conversation. That means that class did what it was supposed to do. It started a conversation that is still going on. For us to get closer to understanding each other, and through that, we begin to think differently about how we vote on adulation. It is the gift that keeps on giving. I left with a completely new family. Most of us lost touch with each other. I have been to weddings of individuals i was actually in that class with. He created something different, it taught us how to love in a different way. Some of these codes come from the prisons come from communities we were in before the prison, that do not allow for brotherhood and love to thrive in a way because it can make you extremely vulnerable in a predatory environment. We learn to be love and be brothers in a different way that made us better individuals by bringing a class together, and having the audacity to say, 28 people are going to write a play together. I had not known ron at all, they had called him do you mind . [laughter] say what he has tattooed on his stomach. They called him rebel. He looked like a hardened biker. I find out he is brilliant, i want him on my team in be ologies because in i ologies in biologies. That was something that had never happened in the prison. It made a new society within a society, and we are trickling back into society and hopefully, it will make a difference. I want to ask about when we produced the play, and force took one of the and boris took one of the parts in the play. The part he played was the older , head prisoner. The scene he wrote at the end comes out of his own experience in the prison where he is stopping from someone stopping someone from going into a mess hall to carry out a revenge killing. He knows he has a homemade knife called a shank, he wants the shank. When i watch for the first time boris do it on stage in the theater in trenton, i noticed he was very physical. He kept pushing. I asked him after the play, why. He said, if i couldnt get him to hand me the shank, i would have to start a fight so we would have to go to lock. That gets to the director articulated this best at the core, what this is about is radical love. I am going to ask all of you to address that. We were talking about it before, i am going to let you start, russ. That radical love is real within the prison. I think the best i will read it out of the book, on page 181, the code. The play was, at its core, about the bonds of loyalty and love. This loyalty and love do not shame the characters in the play. The forces arraigned against them are overpowering and lethal. But, the repeated acts of selfsacrifice required by loyalty and love keep them human. So, when we talk about first of all, let me say that we had to create a new code. We had to create that love and loyalty in the prison setting, because it did not exist. That is the first area we dared to be different. That radical love is a love that says, i am going to love at all costs. It does not matter. That is exactly what that situation that happened with boris, that is what it exemplifies. That radical love, then i am going to put myself at that i am going to put myself at risk. It says in the book, it says this loyalty and love do not stain the characters, but it is do not save the characters, but it does not save any of us. It has always been this, even now that we are out it is to keep reminding ourselves that we are human. Because, the prison strips that from you. It strips that from you in every way. If i was to tell you that, even now that i am home, i still feel the loneliness i felt when i was in prison. I can tell you exactly why, because of the way they punish, they sew it into your flesh. Yall left the prison, but the prison is in me. The bars, the concrete, is in me. As boris was saying earlier, he had to remind himself every day that he is free. I have to remind myself every day that i am free, that i am human. Because i was so use to not having, so use to not being. I learned how to love, and i did love. I would sacrifice myself, but the problem is, i still do not know how to receive love. Radical love is a person that spends 20 years of his life trying to get college back in the institution, trying to bring hope and transformation to others. That is tony right there, he spent 20 years of his life pushing back against the system that, in 1994, took college out of the prison system because he knew the transformation of it. We were in trenton together, there was college classes. They didnt trick you late articulate to a degree. One of the main things about radical love, it will transform your heart. Boris, had mentioned my name was rebel and i looked like a biker. That is true. Back in the day, i came into prison angry. Angry, and i had reason to be angry, but i wasnt directing anger properly. I was just angry, and erecting it at making sure nobody and directing it and making sure nobody could come into my space and make me more angry. The transformation, for me, was having somebody believe in me. That is a transformation. That is radical love. Somebody says, yeah. I do not know him that well, but i know how he runs around this space. I know how he is, and i am going to make sure he gets into college. That was calm. That is radical love. It didnt matter he came from canton, i came from baylor, in the space of the prison. Where you come from, matters. Radical love is somebody taking a chance on somebody. I try to use it in a language opportunity, which is what he gave me. Opportunity breeathes hope. Hope ignites the fire of transformation. This is how we got to be from East Jersey State Prison, the east jersey university. That is how we got to change that space into a space that is for transformation, and not a space for pain and anger. You cannot show anger, you cannot show grief because you cannot put it on your brothers in that same space. They are dealing with enough on their own. I will add to that very quickly, not much more you could add to that except for the fact that some guys used to say, the word radical could cut against the grave. It was like a bulldozer to concrete that didnt belong there. When you show that kind of love in that space and make that kind of sacrifice, from the outside looking, a person says, why would a person who is never getting out of jail makes sure another person gets out of jail . Paralegals work effortlessly, tirelessly to help get individuals out. Why would individuals who have nothing coming in return do that . And they do it, that is radical. Right . That is radical. They do it to express their humanity. It is a very, very radical thing to do. We should see more of it on this side of the board, on the others of the board in the conversation. That is what makes it so radical. How are we doing for time . Oh yeah. I know lots of stories about these guys. I want to tell one. [laughter] i hope it is about you, boris. [laughter] russ went into prison, took about of nonviolence took a vow of nonviolence the day he came into prison, which is a courageous vow to make. He ran a prayer group when people were distressed in my class. At the end of the class, russ would put his arms around them and they would all pray. I know this from boris, if somebody was ejected dejected, alone, rejected in the hall, russ would sit next to them and hold their hand. Boris said, russ is the only guy i know who refused to allow the prison culture to define him. He will get out, that defiance will save him. Just to talk about radical love and what it means in a physical setting like the prison is that russ was dealing with trying to get a particular member of the bloods to come to the prayer services, and the other bloods you bleed in, you bleed out, which meant if he was going to leave and join that Christian Community that russ was part of, he was going to get a beat down. Russ went to the bloods and said, i will take his place. You beat me down. Of course, in the prison, that upends the entire of the prison. They were so stunned, they didnt. He walked in and said, maybe he down they beat me down. Have met some of the most remarkable people in my life in prison. Three of them are sitting here today. People of tremendous integrity and brilliance. I do not think very many of us could have endured what they endured and become who have who they have become. I am not going to cry. [laughter] i think there are other teachers here, jill, jim, celia. It is an honor for us. Before we open up to questions, i want to read a passage from the end of the book. This was 2019. It was the graduation ceremony, we had 27 formerly incarcerated students graduate from records, and was asked to give the commencement address. I am an ordained presbyterian minister, i rarely wear a clerical collar, i put it on for that day because i think not only what has transpired between us is sacred, but also at its core is what ministry is about. It is about standing in solidarity with the great of the earth. My father was a presbyterian minister, a great influence on my life. Active in the civil rights movement, he was a veteran of world war ii, and the gay movement at a time when very, very few ministers spoke out. His brother was gay, my uncle. My father had a particular sensitivity to the pain of being a gay man in america in the 1950s and 1960s. I put the clerical collar on, and as i read in the book, i put my fathers cufflinks into my shirt with his initials. Just going to give the beginning of this talk, is what i told my students. Then, we can have questions. And, boris and ron were there. My fellow college graduates. Integrity is not an inherited trait. It is not conferred by privilege, status or wealth. It cannot be bequeathed by elite schools or institutions. It is not a product of birth, race or gender. Integrity is not a pedigree or a brand. Integrity is earned. Integrity is determined not by what we do in life, but what we do with what life gives us. It is what we overcome. Integrity is the ability to affirm our dignity, even when the world tells us we are worthless. Integrity is forged in pain and suffering, loss and tragedy. It is forged in the courtrooms where you were sentenced, it is forged in the shackles you were forced to wear. It is forged in the cages where you lived sometimes for decades. It is forged in the cries of your children, those who lost their mothers or fathers to the monstrosity of mass incarceration. It is forged and the heartache of your parents, your brothers, your sisters, your spouses, and your partners. Integrity is forged by surmounting to study in the claustrophobic cell for the College Degree no one, perhaps even you, thought you would ever earn. Integrity is to refuse to become a statistic. Integrity is to rise up and shout out to a different universe, i am somebody. Today, no one can deny who you are, what you have achieved and what you have become. College graduates, men and women of integrity, who held on fiercely to your dignity and your capacity to exert your will and triumphed. [applause] we can take questions, if there are any. I am going to come around with a mic. It is such a privilege to be here, simply to listen and to be witnesses to your thoughts and experiences. It is a privilege. Im going to start with a thank you for that. If there are questions in the room, allow me to come to you so that i can hand you the mic. There is this one. First of all, thank you all. This was very moving. You each mentioned there is a code we do not go against, you have to participate in the class, you write a new code that said you had to break that. Im curious about the first class, and the first person that told their story. What put them over the edge to the point where they could do that . What was that like . I will let boris answer that. Originally, when they wrote the scenes, they were delivered to me. They were not read. It was only later that they would get up and be bread in front of be read in front of the class. There was security in passing the scene to the professor. They would read it and it was moving, and if or swimmers the class, people were complaining they wanted to get through fences so people could read. Some of the scenes were so emotionally fraught that they could not read them. I do not think timmy read his, originally. When timmy read it at the performance that we did, after he finished, he disappeared. I asked boris or someone, where is timmy . They said, he is in the bathroom. I found him crumbled in the corner, shaking and sobbing. But, it became this remarkable experience where people would get up in front of the class and all of that emotion would pour out as they read. The entire class would applaud. I will let boris address that. Very quickly, what we did was i do not think anybody knew we would have to read it publicly in front of the class. We was like, complete stress, then the process with chris. We took it as a class. When he came in, he said, who wrote this scene . By then, the train had already left the station. [laughter] like, i wrote it. Like, well, come up and read it. After you read it, he was like, who wrote this scene . The next guy comes up and do some reading. Tim came in after him, his wife looked over the scenes and came back with what we thought was good and we actually reading we started actually reading them. I will come to the back down here. I thank you all so much for speaking, it is a meaningful expanse. I wonder if you could talk about your decision, specifically to teach drama. Why drama as opposed to novels, poetry, other forms of art . In what ways do you think, in addition to writing the play, how did that influence the class and the conversations you are having and the lessons you were learning . The beauty about the program is, i can i teach all sorts of stuff. A lot of times, when there are holes, i will fill it. History, philosophy. I picked plays that addressed the experiences of my students. August wilson, baldwin, these kind of figures. Because they were really a great playwright like wilson is really writing for them. But, they didnt live in an environment, and unfortunately, we live in a country that they do not support the arts, they could not pay 150 to go see August Wilson. All of these writers, amira baraka, they were writing for my students. I wanted my students to hear their voice. We read joe turner, come and gone. A wonderful play. The August Wilson cycle, we read that first. It is about convict leasing, slavery by another name. Worse than slavery because those who use convicts paid a small fee for them, they were not actually buying a human being. The mortality rate was astronomical. In that play, the character comes up after seven years of being enslaved, looking for his wife. He is bitter, angry, and the conjurer in the play keeps telling him that he has to find this song. The dominant society is never going to tell them who they are, or where they came from. They have to go on that search themselves. But, they cannot be complete human beings until they find their song. As that play involves evolved, it became clear to me that this was their song. And that last night of the play after cornell and james cohen came, i had one more class. I think it was for hightower. Got up and said, well, you may have all seen last night when dr. Weston, dr. Cohen were speaking that i was crying. I have been prison systems since 1984 or something. The night that dr. Weston and dr. Cohen came to the prison to speak to us, the only happy night i have ever spent in prison. That last class, i think none of us wanted it to end. There was a sense of mourning. Everybody came up and signed the front of the script. I remember walking up come on, i have seen you cry, ron. I walked out and had their song, no one wanted to hear. Because of this guy, we made sure their song was heard. Anyway. You take it. I am not going to cry. [laughter] that is why he to drama, he taught drama, he is extremely dramatic. [laughter] next question. [laughter] we have a question here from the online audience. I just want you to know there are more people that are listening to you online. There is a question here from carrie, i treasure having seen the play at passage theater, and it is an honor and joy to hear you tonight. Do any of you continue to write plays or stories as individuals, or might the a club or might the Collaborative Experience be unique to your creativity . I am still writing. I am writing a play called love and a time incarceration, does love survive the war on drugs, it makes it difficult to obtain a connection. It did inspire me to continue to write, and books, as well. That is a yes. How about the others . The only writing i am doing at the moment is at school, that keeps me busy writing. [laughter] one of my classes is on wrongful convictions. My aim is always toward changing the whole narrative that is inside, and changing the words that everybody uses to dehumanize people who are incarcerated, or formerly incarcerated. I am also writing right now, work to try and get people incarcerated and that is what i am writing to rate i forgot, i am published in american prisons and something. [laughter] i am overwhelmed by the story he just told. I am not going to cry, but that does not mean i am not choked up by it. [laughter] i plan to write in the future. Particularly plan on writing about trauma. I believe in what hemingway said, never write about a thing while you are in it. Right now, i am just waiting and processing everything around me. So i can articulate it to where it is most effective to others. Maybe i can ask a closing question, to highlight another dimension of this book, chris. The book also contains really remarkable reporting about what, chris, you called the collective crime of the American Crime of, not just tolerating, but profiting from the structural property poverty and Structural Racism in mass incarceration. There are wrenching stories in this book about how it is possible that prisoners were released and reentered the world in debt, if there is bereavement and their families and they won to see for the last time, the they want to see for the last time, the family member, they have to pay the overtime for Police Officers to take them there, watch them while they are there. You have to pay for this. It used to be, it says in the book, that there was a state fund that would cover some of these expenses. I want to know if this returns to virginias question of, there are so many calls to action that are tucked in the book. Is there an effort today to reconstitute that fund . What can be done . Where can we focus our energy . I will let them answer this. There is a fun, it is stolen, and essence. The prisoners have to pay into it, and it is stolen by the doc. Prisons are modern plantations. Slavery, a product of white supremacy, it changes the shape but not its effort its essence. All the work in a prison is done by the incarcerated, who earn about 28 a month in new jersey. Yet, i got a list of commissary prices from 1996 and today, the salaries they earn if you want to call it that, a salary, . 22 an hour, it is the same. The prices are all increased by over 100 . We are talking basic items, toothpaste, coffee, etc. Everything internally has become privatized in the american prison system. So, the commissary is privatized. The medical is privatized. Jpay, money transfer, the phone, r mark, r mark out of philly has huge prison contracts throughout the country with constant cases of Food Poisoning throughout the prison. When you are sent to prison, you are given fines. Belle, as a 14yearold, was given 10,000 worth of fines and they are pulling two dollars worth out a month and he finishes prison in debt. If you wanted to get that 15 minutes of a viewing with an immediate family memory, that is hundreds of dollars family memory, that is hundreds of dollars. If you cannot pay that back when you get out, you go right back in. All of the impediments people face when they get out, guarantee the 76 recidivism rate that takes place in this country within five years. So, you know. I have taught students who have committed crimes, but i have never taught criminals. There are criminals, those people who orchestrate the poverty. Poverty, as George Bernard shaw said in major barber, is the greatest of all crimes. There are criminals. Our mark, j pay, who are predatory against the most vulnerable. As Abraham Henschel said, if you are guilty, but all are responsible a few are guilty, but all are responsible. One Million People within our prison system work for forprofit corporations, sweatshops, with no right to organize, nobody is paying into their Social Security account. If they protest the conditions, they are sent to solitary great 80,000 american citizens as i speak are in solitary at this moment, a form of torture. Yes, i am glad you highlighted that. I look at mass incarceration as the civil rights issue of our time. [laughter] two things. One, they utilize the money that is earned by the commissary. Commissary is supposed to go into a general fund called the Inmate Welfare Fund. The Inmate Welfare Fund is the fund you were talking about, that is what used to pay. When i went to my brother he passed in the 1990s, they paid for me to go and spend time, i was in trenton state prison. I was in maximum security. They paid for me to go spend a half an hour, and they allowed my family there. When i follow passed, they made me pay 650 to go from rahway to brom to sit in a funeral home by myself for 15 minutes. When they got there, they jumped out of the car and kept me locked, handcuffed, shackled in the back of the car. Before they opened the car door for me, they told me, if so much as a motorcycle drives by this general home, we are pulling you out of here. That is what i had to deal with. They told my family, if my family even thought about coming, they were not going to let me there. That is part of the grieving process, so i had to pay 650 to see my father when he passed. I didnt get a chance to grieve with my family at all. That fund needs to be reinstated, but they need to reinstate every part that was before they started tearing everything down. I will say that, first of all , it is difficult because the way the prisoners find out about people and their family that have died that is not humane. They call you arbitrarily out of the blue, it is usually an officer that tells you. It is so cold. Then, we have also had services on the inside where we held Memorial Services for people who could not afford to go out there and be with their family. We on the inside did the best we could to help people that were grieving. That just goes to speak about what we talked about earlier, even coming home. We all heard, there is millions of dollars for us when we come home, but it never reaches us. It never reaches us. I want to tell you what was told to me when i came home, my parole officer told me i want you to keep in mind, you are not a regular citizen. So, i know, boris, when you left prison, the first thing you said to chris was because you had had to leave the library, you are you had to rebuild your library. I want to end by saying, anybody who has to leave their books inside that you know about and gets released, i am here to replace those books. You just give me a list. Ok . [applause] we thank you. [applause]