Transcripts For CSPAN2 Race 20240703

So i want to start just by introducing myself. Samuel brown. Im the chief civil of the pima county attorneys office. Im also the board president of the dunbar pavilion. And im going to take 10 seconds to plug the dunbar. If youve never there. Its a former segregated school in tucson off of main in oracle. If you got a chance, come check us out. Its its the hub of african the africanamerican here in tucson. And wed love to see you come by the dunbar at some point. I want to start. Thank you. Thank you. I want to start with antonia. Her book, madness, race and insanity and a jim crow asylum. Antonia, if you can just in a minute or less, please summarize the title for the room. Oh boy. Yes. In one minute. Madness tells the story of a 93 year Old Institute of an asylum that was founded in 1911. In the heart of the woods in maryland and. It was originally called marylands hospital for the insane, a name that i think you a lot about what this institutions was and and what it did to and in the Community Around that it served there this was the only hospital in the state of maryland that for decades was willing to treat black people who were suffering with Mental Illness or accused of having some some kind of diagnosis and tell the about century long of this institution really a window into the american psyche as a way to explore the legacy of race and Mental Health. And to look at this industry, this field that today feels so broken to americans of every background and to situate black in the black community and and what happened to them in this space. And so the hospital really becomes microcosm and in the book i tell you about this institution through the eyes, through the experiences and the stories of the real patients and employees who lived and worked there. But really, its a greater story about our countrys fights over integration, freedom and how we were going to live up to our promises is all through the eyes of Mental Health and people and communities efforts to strive for safety and and peace in this country. And, you know, its really such an honor to be here on this panel with all of you, because i think that our work overlaps and thank sam. Its excited to be here with you. Thank you. All right. Next, we have Jonathan King life. Its called king. And its about king. But really, you know, the of this book was to create a more intimate portrait of king a more nuanced portrait. I say in the book that in hallow king, we followed him in creating a National Holiday and a monument and a thousands and a hundred public schools. Weve turned him into this icon and forgotten he was human. Forgotten how radical he was. Weve forgotten that the i have a dream speech had a first half that talked Police Brutality and reparations and fact that america had made a promise that it had come back with insufficient funds on that check and i wanted to write a book that reminded us that king was someone who failed, who had flaws, who had frustrations, who was deemed unpopular. He was two thirds of all americans. In 1966. So they disapproved of martin king, not that they disapproved of his stance, the vietnam war. They disapproved of him, period and in large part, as were going to talk about later. That was that was due to the fact that the fbi was surveilling him and spreading rumors about his personal life . So i wanted to write a book that showed he carried on despite it all of that, despite the fact that the nation on him, then his own government turned on him, he not only continued his fight for justice, but he doubled down on his beliefs in god and in our country that we could be better. And thats what i set out to do. So sweet. Thank you, jonathan. Thank you. And edwin traveling all the way from york. An inconvenient cop. My fight to change policing in america. So, first of all, thank you all for being here. As many other panels. So were glad that youre with us. In my teenage years, rather than allow negative with police to deter me from the Police Department it actually inspired me. And after eight years, i became a whistleblower. And my life changed forever. Front cover. New york times magazine. And you know, everyone reached out all the cops that needed support people that stopped believing in the system, people who are very cynical that say, you know what, if if there could be more cops, you maybe theres some hope. Our reporters reached out and i decided to write this memoir as central repository for all the information that ive gathered in 15 years with the nypd. But this is not just about nypd. Its about policing in america as whole. Thank you. I want to start. Antonio and jonathan, with you. You both did extensive interviews and work the writing. I want you to talk about that process, how it informed the but also how it impacted you personally. When we start at the heart of madness is an oral history and that was deeply important to me because one of the things i found very quickly as a researcher who was digging into archives to try to reconstruct the story of this institution was that most of the records, a vast majority of the records that survived about brownsville were written by and from the perspective of the people who decided to construct it who were leading this institution, who for decades were all white who in many cases had openly, very bigoted views of the community that they were supposed be serving. Many of them were prominent segregationists who were involved in passing things like the first apartheid ordinance in baltimore in 1910, which inspired much of the south to then set up similar jim crow laws all over the place. And these are the folks who had their names on roads on in this institution. And so if i took their word for what the institute was, how it was operating, what its purpose was, i wasnt actually going to be telling you the truth. And so i needed to build really deep relationships. This community in maryland, really in the area. And so ive spent the last ten years. I started this work as just a 19 year old in college calling people up, introducing myself to them, telling them that i was really about this place and about telling the story about us and our communitys place in Mental Health. Because so often were excluded. And how can i put your voices front center . And so every person that i met, every new family that i connected with, they started to open doors for me. But it was really slow, painstaking work because. For so long, black people have been mistreated by these systems and told that their voice didnt matter. And so at first, when i called them. They werent always excited to welcome me into their home and to talk to me or to revisit challenging memories as i can, as you can. Many people whove worked in asylums, places like this, that lee carey until the very end. And so ive spent last ten years really deeply embedding folks and and interviews and their voices as really compliment dont with what i found in the record and ill give you an example of of what i mean that. If you look in the early decade brownsville history what you find that often the people who ran the place were really interested in how much money the patients who were living there could make for them. They were putting patients to slavery sort of style working abuse. They were running a massive for them. They were constantly pushed to offset the costs of their own care. And so when you look at monthly reports about how the patients are doing, their health is conceptualized, it is talked about as capacity to labor to provide something to bring money into the state that how they viewed black patients. But when you talk to actual patients survivors families, former employees, especially a generation of Health Care Workers who then came in to integrate the place, they have a much more complex story. They can tell you the true sites sounds and smells of what it was like to live on these wards and to be a person in this place. And they do a great job of of bringing you through the ways in which those early years in the 1900s and the beliefs that we had about black people and patients at that time informed every era that came after that. So you see the connections through their voices between what was happening in 1910 and what we see in our Mental Health care system to this day. Something that, of course, affects people of color disproportionately, but actually implicated in affects all of us. And so the short answer to your question is that interviews are the soul of this book and the story of institutions like crowns will cannot be told. If you build a relationship with the community first. Thank you. And it reading the book that you really put there into into into crowns both really cool and i learned something very cool that dr. King chewed on his nails which is something did as a child. And its something that i think you only learn by speaking to people who knew . Him. Yes. And antonia has we beat she spent ten years on her book. I spent six on mine, often get topped in that category. Yes. You have to interview people to find out if it is nails, you know, Ralph Abernathys children who hung out at the king home all the time told me that dr. King used to shout the tv screen when he watched game shows and that he would hide his cigarets from the kids because they would sneak them and throw them away and flush them down the toilet. These are the humanizing details that that i wanted and thats why i interviewed 200 people for this book, including you know, kings neighbors from childhood who remembered like what they would have for snacks when they came home from school. His favorite was white bread with and sugar sprinkled on top. So those are the details that, you know, bring a man to life. And i want to connect with something. Antonio said too is that often the white media is telling us the and we need to get beyond that. And one way that i got beyond that in this book, i found how you might ask what is their new to say, dr. King . Well, dr. King had a private personal archivist whose papers were at the schomburg in harlem, and the boxes had never been opened until i requested them. Coretta scott king recorded made tapes when she went to work on her memoir. And those were never heard until except by her ghostwriter until i requested them from the library. And even more importantly, to get to your point about how you know much of this history is being told about people of color by white people. The montgomery bus boycott, i discovered, was documented by sociologists black sociologists at Fisk University, and they went down there with notebooks, interviewed everybody as it was happening. They conducted an interview with rosa parks before the news media even knew who she was. They interviewed those. The regular folks who were walking to work every day. Instead riding the busses. They even interviewed klan members and they would write down conversations. They overheard heard in the community. Its this gold mine of material. And ill just tell you one story from those and i want to take too much time. But what you really see happening when you listen to these voices is that the fear is disappearing and king and the Civil Rights Movement and the montgomery boycott is helping them overcome the fear that has been used to keep the community in check for so long. And they did this interview with a named dele cooksey, who was a housekeeper working for decades with the same white family, and the housekeeper her was in was at the house where she was working. And the woman said, you know, i would be happy to pick you up and take you to work daily. And, you know, dr. King is just giving you guys, all these crazy ideas and. You know, you dont need to get so upset. I you well, dont i . And dele cooksey said she she told her boss, dont you dare talk about dr. King that way. This is a man sent by god and weve been rabbits too long. And we aint in that rabbits no more. And you see, you know, thats the kind of interview you were never to get anywhere else, only because Fisk University sent people down there and to write about what was happening in real time. And thats the kind of research that sounds like we both really got a lot from in our processes. John king, thank you, edwin. Yours is more of a current account. Youre a reporter about whats going now and your experience. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah. So lets take it back to 20, 20. Right. Another new virus. You know, every few years we hear about these viruses in other parts of the world. But this one was different. Right think the first the first famous person, i think it was tom hanks. I was watching it like tom hanks has been tested positive for covid 19. And then Society Comes to a stop right . All the distractions are suppressed. And at this time are at 7 p. M. In new york, everyone outside. And theyre, you know, the sirens are going off banging pots thinking the First Responders and the essential workers and george floyd happens. It was a 180. We went from thinking cops, thinking First Responders to protest and think about it. Distractions are suppressed. Its not the pandemic. Its not climate change. Right. These global issues, the thing that gets everyone outside, all around the world is the policing black bodies in america. The george floyd video went viral and everyone started protesting. All right. As at the time i retired from the Police Department as a lieutenant at time, i was working 19 hours a day at protest. But journalists from japan, italy, you name it, france, journalists from all over the world were coming to interview me and others about whats going on. So i especially in an election general election year, there are many subjects are polarizing, but none so much like that issue of policing. Right. Right now there its either cops can do no wrong or abolish the police. And what my book offers what this memoir offers is more of a middle approach. Right. I highlight the voice, not mine, but the voice of what i call the justice minded people in, Law Enforcement, who can see it for what it. Right. They also run towards the gunfire. They do the job. They know the difficulties of the job. But at the same time, they are not blinded the brotherhood. They can what the detriments are and they are ready to move the needle in the right direction. So what im hoping comes from this, as people learn not just my they realize, you know what, maybe there is some hope. Ill tell you. Last summer early in the summer i sent a copy to a very conservative white friend of mine whos also in the nypd. And also sent it to another friend whos whos an abolitionist. She literally said, im the only police also shell ever speak to right. And when they were both done, the the conservatives. You know what, ed . Maybe there is room for improvement. You know, maybe maybe cops, maybe we dont have it. All right. And the abolitionist said, ill deny this if you ever it, but i cant say who she is. She said she said, maybe we dont need to abolish. Maybe there is another. So thats what im hoping that this book delivers, powerful stuff, man. And. I want to i want to quote for the question from madness the Civil Rights Movement made criminality a disproportion fortunately prevalent in racialized the issue setting in motion a of events that stretched the definition of criminal behavior and strengthened every part of the carceral apparatus. Some white leaders and doctors willingly or unwilling witting or unwittingly misread anger as Mental Illness and use tools of psychiatry to punish, not to heal communities they were meant to serve. A backlash occurred during and after the Civil Rights Movement. Institutions designed to heal like asylums. Institutions designed to protect americans like the fbi were turned against black communities. Jonathan and edwin, your books touch directly on the interaction specifically between black men and Law Enforcement, starting with. And edwin, id like to get your reaction and in antonio. How does the fbi treatment of Martin Luther king para what we see in modern policing. Wow. Well you know most of kings career was in conflict with Law Enforcement. Going to jail was part of his strategy. And, of course, now that sounds like just another sit in. But it was not just another sit in because going to jail had peril. And every black person in america knew that going jail could sometimes be something you dont come out of. And king went to jail 29 times in his career. And he was petrified every time. Thats why Ralph Abernathy went with him. So often because he knew that king had a hard time emotionally psycho, logically dealing with being there. And its part of kings courage that he made that a part of his strategy. He knew that the world paid more attention when he was in jail. He knew the world paid more attention when bull connors dogs were attacking peaceful protesters. He knew the world paid more attention. When, you know, small black bodies were being hurled walls by Water Cannons and that was the price they were willing pay to prove that they believed in democracy. And as far as backlash, ill just say one more thing. August 28th, 1963, king gives the most famous speech of his life, the famous speech that we all know that we teach, our kindergarten children. I have a dream and it really does seem like a moment of incredible hope for this country. The newspapers, even the white saying this might be a crossroads. We might really be at a turning for this country. We might be to start dealing with the the sin of slavery and the systemic racism. And we might able to be a better place. And the next day, the fbi assistant, william sullivan, writes a memo for his boss j. Edgar hoover that says, given kings oratory, given his power to unite the masses we must now consider him the most dangerous man in america when it comes to race. That is the backlash. And theres more backlash because weeks later, the 16th Street Baptist Church is bombed in birmingham. So clearly the idea of moving past a our racist roots, the idea of king helping to unite black and white, north and south is, viewed as a threat to the establishment. I mean, thats the only way you can understand how why the fbi would see king as a as the greatest threat. Its because hes a threat to the status quo and the people who in power dont want to give up power. Thanks. So ill jump right in. Former commissioner william bratton, arguably probably the most police chief Police Leader in the world in 2015 at a black church in in queens, new york. He said the worst when it comes to race. Worst parts of american would not have been without the police. Right. The police are literally the muscle. Of the system. Right. They are other ways how the system operates in an insidious. But the most tangible representation of the system is Law Enforcement. So when you think about what what king endured even how jim crow is enforced. Its the police that make it tangible. Right. Everything is everything is just ink on paper. Something makes it real. An unfortunately, thats how Law Enforcement is used whenever theres not an existing agency or an agency is underresourced. You send the police and unfortunate the police dont simply enforce law. Law enforcement enforces this ideology of a society. Right . It upholds the ideas of a society. And because we know the inception of this nation experiment, as some people want to say, the fact that were still we still have so much work to do, we unfortunately continue to see the police used in this way until until the leadership is brave enough to stop using police that way. Obviously, we need other stakeholders like the laws that are being enforced to change. But it doesnt matter as long as there are laws are called pretextual stops they will use whatever they can like traffic. You know one of the things that king went to jail for was a traffic violation. Like, they they wont they wont stop. We as a society have to change how we use Law Enforcement. Sadly, im not surprised at all to draw that parallel between how the fbi treated king and how Law Enforcement gets used today. And i think what i. What i would add to that from my work, looking at this from the clinical and side of things, you know, one of the reasons i wrote madness the first place was to complicate what we know and assume about this period of time and what backlash looks like in these different systems. And so one of the findings in this book is that during that period in this during the Civil Rights Movement, theres sort of two things going on in the country when it comes to white patients and White America, theres actually a Major Movement going on at the same that encourages sympathy and understanding for patients. Theres new media, new films, shows, cartoons that are exploring health and Mental Illness. Theyre encouraging people to get on medication in an unprecedented way, to get people out of asylums and back communities, to be patient with people, who are struggling to be forgiving. But for black americans, because of the Civil Rights Movement and the backlash thats coming with it, theyre kind of excluded from that larger narrative of of sympathy and understanding and welcome home. And so theyre starting to be arrested out in the streets, beaten as both of these men just about. And they are being criminalized for behaviors associated with anger and hurt that theyre feeling associated with poverty and associated with things that would have in the past understood as something that would be or Mental Health related, but instead now is being seen as something that is the business of the larger carceral apparatus. So what i found in the research at brownsville is while patients coming out of predominantly white institutions were able to come home and connect to clinics and care patients who were exiting places like brownsville were being arrested on the streets of baltimore in annapolis, they were being accused of having schizophrenia, for having concerns. And fears about the fbi. This is something thats found very commonly in the clinical record. If you look into the treatment of black patients, not just in maryland, i studied, but also one researcher named Jonathan Metzl did this in a segregated institution in michigan and found that doctors would use labels like schizophrenia diagnoses like that to actually allow them to hold and keep and and medicate black men at much higher rates any other population. And so the backlash is about a lot more than just your interaction with a Police Officer on the street. Its about the fact that these ideas, black people, the fear of of what we were asking this country to do and and how we wanted it to change, thats seeping into everything, including medical system. And so i really am looking at the and this institution, as in many ways being a sibling of the criminal justice space. And so i think a lot of people familiar with this concept of like the school the prison. But i would add, asylum is part of the broader genealogy there and is a place where a lot of these attitudes were very being reflected. They were shaping and they were changing patients lives or in some cases cutting their lives short. Wonderful. Thank you. Theres you allude to the sort of different phases of control of black and brown bodies. The encounter with Law Enforcement, the detention itself, and then what happens afterward. You edwyn in antonio both speak about this or allude to it in your books sort of in an assassination of soul that oppressed people feel at those different phases, especially when it comes from europeanamericans. You know, in your book, ed, when you talk about black cops and antonia, you talk about the staffers who integrated crowns. So talk a little bit about the people are from those communities who end up being a part of the system of oppression. Okay. So. Yeah, i remember writing this chapter and, you know, i didnt want to offend anyone, but i had to tell my truth. I had to tell the truth and you take any institution and change the racial makeup, but as long as the people are incentivized to operate within a particular framework, you will still end up with the same racially disparate outcomes. A good example is tyree nichols. Right. This is after george floyd. This is after the uprisings around the world. Every one of those officers were black men. Tyree nichols himself was a black man, the chief of police in tennessee at the time, i believe she still there is a black woman. And yet we still end up with something. Looked like rodney king, if you ask me. So unfortunately we i refer to this as cosmetic diversity. Right. Theres genuine diversity, diversity and thought, etc. Diversity in which the true diversity the true value of diversity is leaning into the people and what makes them unique. Ask them how they can make things better by simply satisfying the employment discrimination aspect is not enough. You know, we have to go further if. Were going to get more women, more black, more people from different religions, name it in certain spaces, then have to tap into them to get the changes that we need. So unfortunately, that itself will i mean, are the all the anecdotal situations that can happen because that officer is has a cultural so similarity to someone. Sure. But in terms of of of why dynamic systemic change, diversity, i dont think will ever be the answer and not in. We have to go further. I mean, and theres a a similar dynamic at brownsville. This was probably my favorite part of the story. The timeline to report in the forties and fifties, a generation of young black people start to get the very first job at this institution. Theyve been barred from working and serving at for decades. And they come in and this power struggle really to ensue where there are white employees who think they own the and run the place and they had actively been battling to make sure that black employees could never work there. Then young black employees come. I mean, some of them are 19, 20 years old, and they come into a very hostile Work Environment and they actually know their patients. And i dont mean that as surface level diversity. I mean they went to school with patients. They rode the bus with the patients they go to the same church. I mean, they are from the same neighborhoods. And so they looking at these people in the face and they know them and feel a certain level of responsibility to them. And then at the bottom of the totem are the patients themselves. And while employees arrived with this idea, they could change everything, reality quickly, kind of hits them over the head because. They realize theyre going to be battling against decades of discriminate version of ideas about who they are and about their qualifications. And it really doesnt matter that in they find out that so much of this has a lie and, not just the obvious lies, that you would assume. I mean, these workers have been told for years that they arent qualified to work with black patients because they dont know enough about medicine and theyre not experienced enough. And they get into brownsville and they find that a lot of their white colleagues are addicted to meth, are working high on the job. Some of them cant read and write and they thats part of why they havent been leaving records about the patients. And so theyre doubly insulted because. Theyre like, these are the people we were told were qualified to work with. White. And so this really painful process to ensue where each of them is faced every single day with this really difficult moral question about whether they can continue to work at this institution, whether its, you know, worthwhile fighting for the individual patients that they can impact, who they can reach, who they can talk to, or if theyre now complicit in something that will never change or that is making them uncomfortable or, that is forcing them to beness t things they never imagined they would see. And the answer is very different for each person, but interesting that the term you use, the assassination of the soul because what so many of and many of them are black women who are still alive and in their late nineties now and im so honored that i got to spend time with them but what they describe to me is feeling like they had to give up pieces of their soul to give Something Back to their. So to do the work and or to save a life you they had to subject themselves to things that traumatize them, that actually made them very unwell. And so in a way theyre almost treating their own humanity to give Something Back to someone. And those are emotions. Those are memories. Theyre still all living with and struggling with. Now, in their nineties. And so, you know, i tried to make sure that the book has all of that messiness, that gray area in there. You know, in some ways thats a very heroic choice to decide to do that. The most marginalized among you. But then in other cases, its you know, its a its an act that leaves someone feeling very hollow and unsure of who they are. And all of that is in there. And i think thats why this idea, that surface level representational change isnt quite enough, because for so long those people werent actually in any kind of power and there was so little that they could. Yeah. That, that really resonates. I, i am a lefty, but i work the prosecutors office. I work for the county attorney. I want to get back to king. But edwin, i want to follow on this thread with because you were it sounds like antonio was describing you as, as a as a black man in the nypd. Talk about your personal experiences you write about in the book. So, i mean mean, its the irony of being on the receiving end of oppression while donning the uniform of the oppressor. Hmm. Right. I know what i into policing for, but immediately i learned there some people that know once you cross that youre not even black anymore. And their eyes and in the police you learn that you might wear the badge and have the gun, get the paycheck, but youll never really be blue either. Its a limbo that. Is, you know, i tried my best to capture it in the memoir, but im a great writer. Right. But but i think even ive its something i have to write more about that that limbo. And ill tell you, it, during george floyd, i had calls from cops all over the country who were like, im done. I cant do this anymore. And i and begged them to not leave because i said the fact that you are going through this is that we need because there are others that can sleep at night with no problem and think that people are protesting for no reason. Sadly, many of them did leave Law Enforcement. Because that that middle ground it just its shaky and they just couldnt do it anymore to be on the front lines. People are yelling all types of things in your face. You know, i got called de kooning, everything you could imagine. I never thought id you know, im like, im a garvey. People calling me a is crazy, you know . But but, you know, i was able to to know that ive sacrificed much. But an officer that simply makes sure he or she go along with certain things but cant risk their careers and lives and, livelihoods. It was harder for them to continue wearing the uniform. So we lost a lot of great people in Law Enforcement because of of what you know. Antonia, describe like youre giving a piece of yourself in order to do for the marginalized. You come from the marginalized. And i just said, yes, thank you. Thats really powerful. You know, what youre describing is something that king and im sure so other black activists can relate to this feeling of having to be two things. One thing for yourself and one thing for the public, and maybe Something Else that the white world expects you to be. And, you know. King was always being criticized from all sides. He wasnt radical enough for some. He was too conservative for others. And i remember this story of when he went to mississippi walking with Stokely Carmichael, picking up the mississippi march that. James meredith had left after having been shot. And and carmichael is using black power and starting to really try to position himself as a more radical alternative to king. And he says to king, you know, im using you in this way and i apologize. And king says, i know thats what people do. Thats because im king. Im Martin Luther king. Everybody, you know, has to position themselves. Ive ive been used before you go ahead and do your thing and spend days together walking and Stokely Carmichael really comes to respect, admire him in a way that causes to stop using the personal taunts against king. And he tries to get king disabled power so you know try it its really its really good. And king said im not going to say it because it sounds violent. He said, oh, really like it, try it. But but what what . Stokely carmichael. So impressed with was that in the weeks, months ahead, king began saying black, lot more than. He began talking economic power a lot more, mixing that into his speeches while he was listening and he was learning. And he was he recognized that he could have the most impact by affecting government and that required to be somewhat a part of the system just like youre talking about. And that decision to be effective by respecting the power of the system made him unpopular. Those people who were impatient which is you know, he understood that. But he felt like it was worth it because he was getting things done. Yeah, ill just add, you know, have ive experience that, you know, ive experienced while hes still a cop or i mean yeah impatient i think thats a good word there are some people that like this one gentleman he featured in the he watched a doc and he said, im not going to lie. I wanted to hate you. People have been telling me about you. Im like, let me go check this out. I want to. He said, wanted to hate you, but i can see that your heart is really in this. But but thats not enough. Like you going to tell us to go vote. Some people, they cannot. They want immediate, they want extreme. And ive never seen it work, you know, in the way that that, you know, like whites bred long term intergenerational progress. It rarely works. Yeah. And unfortunately, the reaction is sometimes extreme. Jonathan, you talk about we talk about soul assassination a lot, but there was actual, actual assassination. Would dr. King did, the fbi contribute to that and . What was the impact of his kings assassination and on the nation and on Law Enforcement . Well, yeah, the fbi contributed to it. Im not of a conspiracy buff. And i know some people, people i really respect, who i for this book, including members of the king, including andrew young and james, they still think that it was a conspiracy that James Earl Ray did not act alone and maybe didnt even fire the trigger. I dont know about that. But i do know and i think its verifiable that the fbi created conditions that would make think of king as the enemy and make him more vulnerable to, in fact, just three months before his assassination, the put out a memo saying that now that malcolm x is dead, really, king is the only one left who could become the messiah. And we must do everything in our power to disrupt him. And that memo went out to every bureau, fbi bureau office. So thats the conditions in which he was living. The fbi director, the most respected lawman in america, says that king is a notorious liar. Youre putting that out there and you know what happens when you put stuff like that out there. So the response to the assassination, i think id like to hear from edwin on this too, but i think its clear that after the cities go up in flames and the nation had a choice in how to respond to that and they could have responded by committing themselves to legislation and reforms that would enact kings vision for equal employment, fair housing. Instead, they responded with Law Enforcement, incarceration and that the primary response short term and long term, i think and were still living with the consequences of that. And tony, you you i think, draw a lot of parallels. The Mental Health and the asylums and how that evolved. A theres a point in your book where you say that you youre quoting George Wallace and he says, tried to talk about good roads and good schools and no one listened. Hes talking about his. Then i talked nwords. They stomped floor. Talk about how to jonathans these like the riots in the late sixties lead to a different criminal Justice System and in so to speak to why the people who run institutions and politicians go that direction rather than things like legislation. Well they realize that in White America theres a lot support for beating this back. I mean, people are starting to flee cities like baltimore, reshape suburbs and communities and they want all of this to be as far from them as possible and to and so that translates into increased support investment in things like juvenile Justice Centers and new prisons, jails. And it makes them a lot less supportive funding for places like brownsville. And so right at that moment, employees, you know, think about this black employees have just gotten their foot in the door in this place. Theyre just starting to changes. Some of them are even starting to get into leadership positions at the hospital to do real reform. But then at the very moment that theyre starting to make these demands and actually make changes that at the hospital reflect, the broader changes that black americans fighting for everywhere, the money and, the rug gets snatched out from underneath them, they start being told to that they are going to have to hit certain quotas and get certain results, but with less money and less support. And theyre seeing patients go out on the street and either be unsafe because they have no home, no place to go to or get scooped up very quickly by the prison and jail system. At one point, i write about a local county, which is sort of a mayor like figure. Indiana rundle, annapolis area in maryland, who literally turns part of brownsville into juvenile school that he nicknames his name is pascal pascals prison. So all the little boys and girls who are there are in this place. Its now jokingly called a prison. And he makes a really nasty remarks about these children who are minors in the regularly. And then i the story at one point in the eighties and this is a story that sticks me all the time of this black doctor named dr. Brian sims whos working a shift. Hes about to be over and hes standing there and he sees, a cop car start to come down the driveway the main entrance road at brownsville. And there are six Police Officers in this big car and they pull out a six year old boy, a boy in a karate uniform, and immediately he knows something is very wrong. So they bring the six year old to the admissions room and they say, sorry. The judge says, we have to bring him here. And the doctor and of the nurses working with him kind of freak out. Theyre like, theres just no way that that this boy deserves to be here, even if he got in some fight karate class like you bringing him to an adult asylum. And so, thankfully, those doctors get on the phone with the judge and they convince this judge that this is not an appropriate place to bring a six year old, that he has not committed any kind of crime and deserves to be reconnected his family. And theyre able to do that, but only because hes staying late and doing this all over the phone and willing to put that work in for this one child. But that image of a of six year old boy whos clearly so misunderstood could who is coming from from a karate class that is seen by Law Enforcement in that way not given the kind of Second Chances that we know other kinds of kids would get and that the attempt to bring him to a place like brownsville you start to see the way in which black and their place in the world is being at that very moment. And so all of these things very much interconnected and the broader point i really wanted to know is not just how hard all of this was for people, then, but when you look at our our Mental Health care now and you see that only about 2 of psychiatrists are black. There are communities in this country where you cannot find a therapist of color, or if you do, you will be on a six month to one year long waiting list. Even just get an initial with them. And that is if you have good insurance, which many, Many Americans do not. And if you have a severe diagnosis, you need inpatient treatment or access to a facility there may just not be one. And so many, many patients, particularly of color, are getting their first access to doctors into medication by being arrested, put into jails. First, theyre seeing doctors for the first time. And the in a jail cell. And so we cant understand why our Mental Health care system is so broken. Right now without first understanding how all of this was set in motion and how everything like the Civil Rights Movement, like the decision to institutionalize asylum is like the way in which judges and Police Officers started to really stick their fingers into what was happening in mental institutions and reshaped all of this. And i think there are a lot of people now not to get on like high horse, but who are very invested in making us all believe that theres little we can do about this or, that the system works this way. It just has to. But are choices that we made a society and there are very specific points where we can look back and see where those choices were made, why they were made. The good news is, once you recognize that, you can undo them. But, you know, thats the thats the big challenge ahead of all of right now. Thank you. Yes. So from jim crow and through the movement and through the reaction to the assassination, dr. King, m. L. King and the reaction that which brought us into heavy Law Enforcement of our communities and in the crack era of the eighties up through now we hear this phrase a postracial society. We have our first black president. We have a black woman as the vice president. Now. So secretary of defense lloyd austin, House Minority speaker jeffries, the mayor of new york now is black man. And people point to these these milestones. Theyre not really progress or steps theyre milestones. If anything anything. Would it be safe to make the argument . I think i know you all as i answer that dr. Kings is fulfilled, if not completely if not completely, are we close to achieving it . And how. Not . Yeah, were done. I mean. Yeah, right. I mean, there are people that genuinely felt that. I remember. I cant remember who i was watching beat back when obama became president elect in 2008 and it was a gentleman that says that said you know we are we have made it we no longer ever reference race as an issue for anything. And just so false. The the fight continues. I like in this fight to to a Patchwork Quilt right where the objective for every generation to add its own patch to quilt. And what we are currently seeing is unraveling of the quilt. Right progress can be undone. It can be woven. It is up to us to make sure we stay on top of it. So in short, despite certain appointments, even elections it is not a sign that you know, everything is nothing to see here. We still have a lot work to do, especially when have people like Clarence Thomas right. All right. Think about it. And others that i wont. I wont, you know, give the the dignity of naming. We cannot allow cosmetic diversity to to rock us to sleep. You know, and i would just thank. I would just add that always frustrated that king is used in this way to try to make the case king had a dream and the dream came true. And we can all stop complaining and theres also this tendency, to use his words, to justify racism, to justify rolling back the gains, even to say that we shouldnt have teach diversity, we shouldnt have to teach black history. Didnt dr. King say that we should be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin . Well, no, that is not what he meant. And you know it. So, you know, lets get real. And finally, i like what you said about the quilt. Think that its a quilt and history is a quilt and it means that you have to continue to add threads and just continue to see it and continue to develop it. You know, dr. King said that history, the long arc of history bends toward justice. But he doesnt say that it bends itself. We to bend it, we have to keep working and we have to keep fighting this, even if it like were fighting the same battles that he fought. Its not the same. Its just because these troubles are persistent. Our work has to continue. Thanks. I think as a journalist, the only thing that i can add is that its simply not true in the show that there is so theres so much data. Theres so much evidence that were not in a postracial america. I mean, you barely have to entertain this idea when people say it to you because theres just so much to point to that shows that thats not case. And in this space and what i do so in the world of Mental Health care, i mean, heres here are a few facts you can be armed with if people try to push back against these things for you. The first, is that prominent black doctors and researchers who with children of color in Mental Health care systems, including a woman named dr. Tammy, who is the lead pediatric in the philadelphia area, have found that when black children come to Emergency Rooms in the of Mental Health crises. So they are saying im in pain i commit suicide. I need help they are verbalizing this and they are coming and presenting them to doctors in hospitals and trying to get connected to care that less than 50 of them are able to successfully connected to appointments doctors, ongoing checkups, care, you know, after they leave no one calls them again is essentially shes found that in communities like philly where kids are subjected to systemic racism to violence that they experiencing on average about five incidents of implicit or explicit discrimination every day and that you can track doctors can how those incidents that those experiences are crushing their selfworth and their understanding of their place in the world and contributing to poor Mental Health outcomes. And you know, the fact that our fields like psychiatry are still at 2 , that is not because there are there arent a whole lot of black who want to be doctors and who want to serve their communities. That is because its a its a field, a space that has become very hostile to them and made it impossible for them to get through programs to get matched into schools and to thrive in these fields. And there are so many black doctors around the country screaming the rooftops, trying to share their stories who have amazing ideas about what we could do to solve our countrys Mental Health care crisis coming out of the pandemic and few people are listening to them. But there, if you want to thank you for the we have time for a couple of questions there to microphones here so i will do first come first serve and i will start with you, sir. Okay. Thank you. Question all three of you, how do you feel about Race Relations forward in the future . Are you Optimistic Pessimistic . And also, do you see another Martin Luther king on the horizon today. I see a lot of Martin Luther kings on the horizon. The problem is we tend not to listen to them because we all want to just listen to what makes us most comfortable. And the great thing about king, as i mentioned earlier, is that he was willing to talk to people who disagreed with him. He was willing to talk to people who he got punched in the face by a nazi, literally a member of the nazi party. He invited the man to come back and listen the rest of his speech speech. That should not be so rare, should be able to talk to each other. So i think there are a lot of people, a lot of great activists, a lot of people doing the work and its just that its very hard for them to reach the masses in the way king did, because we are were just not listening. I would agree on that last piece. As a journalist, i meet every day who are unbelievably inspired and who are doing what they can on their local level change, who try to speak out on these issues. But it feels like were in a very fractured media environment, information environment. And so there are sort of everything is becoming the national is becoming very local and its hard for those people to really find support backing and an an National Audience and a lot of the people who are rising to be the most visible are not always the most committed and ethical. And so i dont think its impossible, but i dont think there is one person who has been able to replicate all of what jonathan just described and it in terms of how i see relations, its that its difficult to change hearts. This is why we have to make sure litigate in and legislation reflects the equality until we can people to change their hearts. So as long as we stay on top of that you know the opposite of what you see happening in some states i would attacking the i and banning books etc. I think im optimistic in terms of someone like king i have to agree with antonia its its its not easy i think things have in the last six decades things have changed. I dont know i know if as a society well give that much. I dont know that that the cause is a myth, you know, like like that. And this is this is why jonathans book exists to try to humanize him. I dont know if we could get to that to that point. Again, but we do have great people who are a lot to get us there. You, sir. I i. Legacy of racism. Turning to the current president ial campaign, the man whos currently leading to become the next president has said that the immigrants coming into the u. S. Are poisoning the blood of our country now. That was language last used by adolf. He also says that the people coming in here are being led out of the insane asylums. So language is used and certainly mayor adams has been dealing with this. So im wondering your thoughts, how this is being reflected in the campaign regarding immigrants or i can i can take that first. I used to be an immigration reporter, so im very familiar with the language that youve described. I mean, for anyone whos familiar, the kind of the heart, the meat of what youre describing there is the great replacement theory that was once a fringe, something that would very quickly get you labeled as a nazi and a racist and unwelcome public spaces. But now which of our lawmakers talk about very openly this that people of color are immigrants are coming into our country to replace the white majority and that democrats are aligning with them to do this and that they are somehow voting in our elections as even though that is absolutely not the case theres no evidence that that is the case or, that there is a grand conspiracy or coordination there. And youre right that this is language this idea that there are infestations, that there are poisoning. This is dehumanizing language very similar to some of the language that youll see has been used to reference in to all kinds of communities of color, including black patients, over the decades in this country, order to other them, to separate them into, different institutions, and then to mistreat them, those institutions. I mean, so as a journalist, often when i talk to people about these things or try to make them help them, you know, Media Literacy like what are you listening to and how should you process this . I try to to show them kind of on a historical timeline. You know that if people are using language dehumanize others and to paint them as animals, dogs, vermin, rats that that is a strategy as old as time to make you complicit in treating those people in in abhorrent ways. And so you know it doesnt mean that our country doesnt face a serious challenge what to do about immigration and how to create a better for citizenship. You know, of course, dealing with the cost of of caring all kinds of people in this country, those are real issues. We do. And i think we the capacity to come together on. But when you hear people using language like that thats not collaborative language. Thats not language that encourages a solution and Mental Health or this idea of insanity is often weaponized against people to make you very afraid of them very around them and very comfortable and complicit in whats about to happen to them next, which is usually bringing them carceral spaces where they are subjected to all kinds of abuse and, you know, thats something that i explore in this book. Thats something that i explored as a reporter, lived on the border for a while and, covered the family separation crisis, and saw what happened to children and families who ended up in those detention centers, who slept those floors with basically aluminum foil wrapped around them for a very long time. And so there are between how we do this and language is often a clue for you about what someones intentions are or where all this might be headed. Yes. Thank you. One more name. And i believe that dr. King was murdered a year to the day from he spoke on the vietnam war. And at that he talked about capital wisdom and poverty and on the question is poverty is related to Mental Health. I mean, if youre broke, you have Mental Health issues, you know, you dont shoes when you go to school youre hungry and same thing with line you commit crimes because youre broke and. Youre poor. I dont condone doing, but you know, i consider that an issue that goes with what dr. King said and what the rest you have said. And were survivors know most of us in this room has survived something or other and were not afraid of them anymore. Im not afraid of trump. You know, im thats the question. What what do you think about that pov . Brodie capitalism, in terms of and Mental Health issues in the last weeks and months of his life, king was working basically what he was called the poor peoples campaign. And was an attempt to call attention to these issues the underlying segregation underlying Mental Health issues, poverty. And he really wanted us to reexamine the fundamental basis of capitalism and look what we could do to get at the root causes that it was a human rights issue, just a civil rights issue. And some people think thats got him killed because he was beginning to take on these bigger issues and it certainly made him more unpopular. And i think that when the portrait when he was assassinated coretta basically led that poor peoples campaign. And one of the things she said in her opening speech was that poverty is form of violence. Hunger is violence. We have to continue fight all of these things to be the society that we that we want to be. All right. I have one more question for all of you, and were going to get out of here. I think im over time, i well, i want to i want to get moving and have to read this part. The festival organizers think cspan booktv for sponsoring this location and tci Wealth Advisors inc. The friends of the festival and the Arizona Daily Star for sponsoring the discussion. Make sure to stop by the book sales area and author signing at and signing. If youre interested in purchasing one of these books or meeting the authors or book sales at the festival help support the cost of the festival and the local literacy programs. It funds. You can also help keep this free and open to everyone by becoming a friend of the festival or sponsor of the festival. My last and the website is tucson festival of books dot org. The last question for each of you you can be brief. One of my favorite authors, the great toni morrison, said books are a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books your mind if reading your book can change one persons mind, whose mind would you want it to change. Ill start. Yeah, well, with my memoir, just those who are cynical, those who have hope, those who dont think that theres any light at the end the tunnel, you know, im hoping that it wakes them up and makes realize that we theres work to do but we can get there. I think my book is for two groups of people one the same as edwins anyone who is exhaust outed by feeling personally hurt by our Mental Health care systems and who maybe has lost or belief that theres anything we can do to change the number of people who are suffering, to keep people from being shot and hurt out in public to do something about the number of americans dont have homes. This is actually while so much of this history is is difficult, its also a very hopeful story. Many of the people who you meet along the way will fill with hope and possibility. And then on a more personal, this is a book thats also for people who come from families like mine with a long history of mental trauma and suffering who may be carried, shame or embarrassment in association, those things and are patients and people in this book will help you lift that shame, that stigma from your shoulders. And so if my book helps people just feel better about talking about their own mental or connecting with someone who might be able to help get them care, that to me is one. And im going to basically echo what my wonderful panelists have said. You know, king reminded us that, we must stay awake to change that. We must continue to fight and that we must never lose infinite hope. And for a man who was stabbed in the chest and jailed 29 times and surveilled his own government to say that he never lost hope, then i think that we can at least try to do the same same. Thank you all. Its been an honor