You dont know what will happen, people in japan, talking about from tokyo to ferguson justice. You just never know whats going to happen. Dont think you cant make a difference. You can make a difference young and old alike. Theres a Michael Brown in every community in america. There is a tamir wright a trayvon, Alicia Thomas monroe bird. And the list can go on and on, in every community. You hear about black boys getting shot in the back we dont do anything with your position and stature. That will make somebody look a little further into the matter. If you just did anything and you hear people, thank god for the young people. Im here, the cap stone Howard University. And i know cspan is covering this stuff i want to give zhu to way young man who said, i can make a difference. It was a Howard Law School student who called my office when trayvon we cant get nobody to cover it, im out here saying, im calling all my friends in the media michelle. Theyre like okay a little black boy got killed. Why is that newsworthy. You know thats almost like a little black boys getting killed . Im like, but it was a Neighborhood Watch. I hadnt even said anything about race or anything. I just thought, a Neighborhood Watch volunteer can kill an unarmed child, and nobody thinks its a big deal, it was this little boy at Howard University because the young people got on social media they started talking about, this kid calling me up while he was studying. He said, i was thinking after reading about i read your article on trayvon, i want to start a petition online to see did that can help. I want to get your permission and see if it was okay and ask his familys permission. I said no any help. Anything you can do will help. And that kid, that one kid who thought that i need to do something started the largest petition in the history of change. Org. They still havent gotten anywhere close to getting 2. 7 Million People to go, you know, take the time and fill out the form to sign the petition like that there but that was all because of one Howard University student saying, i can make a difference. To the school of davinitity mr. Harris ladies and gentlemen and america, that kid gave the best example of how we change a moment into a movement. You just step up and try to do right. Thank you, god bless. [ applause ] thank you very much for those words and your thoughts. I got it right, thank you. Miss rice, i know its very painful. As a father of four children. One of them a little black boy. I worry every time hes out. I know a lot of the parents who have black sons. We worry about our children. We worry about our little black boys. I know its very difficult. And i know what youve gone through having read some of the articles in cheefld. Written about you. And whats going on with you and your family. Would you feel comfortable coming up and sharing from your perspective something about tamir. Can you tell us something about your son, something about that day . Can you take a minute . Will you help me welcome miss rice . [ applause ] well can you hear me . Can you hear me . Yes. I just want to first off say that i have a god of my understanding, and that is the only way that im standing along with the supports nation and my family. Me right now, i am grateful to be here and im honored to be here, and thank you for welcoming me here. A little about tamir was the youngest of four. And he was my special child. He was very bright and very talented in a lot of things. You know you always want your kids to see things that they do along with your health. So, you know, of course i played a major part with his schooling, being at his school making sure he was at after School Activities where he wouldnt have to be on the streets. You know what im saying . Just gave him structure. I believe in that a lot. You cant watch every second things that your children do unfortunately. He had a promising career. Loved all sports and a great swimmer. Helper, he was a helper at his school by him being so tall. And maybe almost the tallest one in his school even in the sixth grade, he was up there with the eighth graders, as tall as they was. Sometimes they would ask tamir to get things off shelves and stuff. This is the teacher, the principal. They kind of worked with me with him. You know and i was grateful for that that. Like i said, great helper he was just helping them with the Halloween Program over at the Recreation Center across the street from my house. Everybody loved them up there. The whole community knew him. I had just been over there almost a year. I just try to do the best i can as a single mom. Im a human being and im a vulnerable human being at this point. People like me where i come from and obstacles that i had to go through, sometimes we make it, but a lot of times we dont. I knew my kids was going to make it. My other three children, theyre going to make it too but i knew my son had a promising career thats all i could tell you. He excelled in everything. He was just recently put on the drum line at his school. So he had a lot of talent and tricks and just a wonderful kid. Beautiful smile. Everywhere i went they always say my children are mannerable and nice, i take pride in that, i invested a lot in that. I made a lot of sacrifices for myself too. Just to make sure that they have things that they need. Why dont you tell them about that day. Okay. I was robbed of that i was robbed of my sons future. A little about that day is its a normal saturday. I had just fixed lunch for taji and tamir and they ate their lunch. And went outside, gave them a couple dollars to go to the store. I didnt think nothing of it, it was a normal day. They always go to the rink free wifi up there, they get to play in the gym, the gameroom, theres a lot of staff up there they can call me if my kids is up there misbehaving at any time im on speed dial. But like i said, normal day for me. I got a knock at the door. It had to be about 3 30. They had just left, it wasnt even 30 minutes they had just left out the door, and i got a knock at the door, and two children just told me the police just shot your son twice in the stomach. I was in disbelief, im like no, not my kids, no, they know, no no. They were there at the time he was sick. Got had put the strength for him to run out there with no shoes on and no jacket. It was chilly that day, not so much snow on the ground but it was chilly he beat me over there. When i arrived on the scene i was still in disbelief, but when i arrived on the scene i seen my 12yearold son laying on the ground just wondering, what did he do . What happened . Whats going on. The police told me to as i was charging toward them trying to get to my son, they told me to calm down or they were going to put me in the back of the police car. My 14yearold daughter was in the back of the police car in handcuffs. I asked them to let her out. They gave me an ultimatum to either stay with my 14yearold or go with my 12yearold in the ambulance that day. They made me sit in the front seat of the ambulance. My other son, when i arrived on the scene, they were puts my other son in the police car, he was trying to get to his little brother. I have two children in the police car them giving me an ultimatum to stay with the 14yearold or go with the 12 12yearold. And thats just how my day was that day its been a nightmare ever since. Its been a nightmare. Were doing the best we can under the circumstances but i just never thought id be in a situation like this, ever. Im a mom. Im vulnerable. And i never thought im still numb to the situation a lot yall, im still numb, i still cant believe it. Im still waiting for answer ss. But what i can say is that i also well some of the community has created a petition on change. Org p cuyahogacounty. Its to make sure we keep the pressure on the prosecutor for a conviction. Also. We have a gofundme account in tamir rices name for donations if we can. Im planning a Community Healing festival june 20th. Tamirs birthday is june 25th he would have been 13. Having a Community Healing. So i hope you guys can come june 20th. I thank you. [ applause ] first id like to i do a lot of public speaking, i moderate a lot of panels and its very natural and easy for me to get up to speak. I dont know how you did it, thank you. I know that we will all say, no matter what happened, we cannot the loss of a child the idea of seeing your son lay on the ground like that, and i know that our prayers are with you and god bless you and your family. Moving on with our rebuttals id like to put in the middle of the lawyers a theologian. Well get a chance to if you dont mind going last all right. Were going to bring up professor trulier to talk about these issues. We called a respondent, hes going to respond in a way. I think youll not hear a lot of people actually disagreeing with these concepts. These are concepts were looking for solutions for and theyre real every day issues. Professor am you take a moment to share some of your thoughts on these issues . They set it up first for our respondents to speak from the table. I think it would be easier to stand and address the audience. Harold dean moore. Why at a school of davinitity have this presentation . Attorney crump has said that life matters. He named names of people whos lives matter. In the christian tradition. We believe that life matters because life is a gift. And that all human beings are created in the image of god. And so when you take a life, you snuff out the image of god. Every life matters which means that we need a vocabulary to talk about our young black plaels and the other constituencies that attorney crump had mentioned. That does not demonize and does not dehumanize. We have to stop drinking the thug koolaid. We have to stop drinking the around malkoolaid. We have to stop with the name calling and the object if iing that we our sfls in the name of distancing ourselves from them. The second thing that came out for me out of this, aside from theology of life matters, is his notation that these instances belong to all of us. One of the thijss that ive been doing over the last 30 years is working at the intersection between religion, the Faith Community and the criminal Justice System, i started working in 1977 with first offenders in passaic county, new jersey. I worked with joe clark at east side high school. I talked at hsinghsing, religion, and in all of that time, one of the things thats become very clear to me is that the only reason that this is not every black congregations issues is that we dont want it to be. Were ashamed. What weve done is we have taken a real life situation that is germane to every single africanamerican congregation in america and turned it into an issue. Folks dont deal with issues. They deal with people. One of the things were trying to surface is how many of us as human beings are impacted by this system. Whether it is as victims and by the way, the new language is not victims, its surviveorsurvivors. If youre a survivor, that means you made it through something. Were talking now about survivors, youre a survivor of a situation or whether you are someone who has a son or a daughter who is actually in the system. Because one of the things we dont talk about much is that 80 of all young black males who are incarcerated are crime survivors, they dont think of themselves that way. But the institute has done research and weve zwoverred that when you interview young men who have been incarcerated, come home have you ever been the victim of a crime . A survivor of a crime . No, no, no no, never. Who have been jumped by somebody with no cause . They put their hans up. How many of you have had something taken from you by force . They put their hands up, homes burglarized . They put their hands up. They have been victimized they have survived trauma. And unless we are engaged in helping them deal with the trauma theyre bound to repeat the trauma. The problem is we see them as someone out there. We dont see them as our children. We dont see them as our grandchildren. But i guarantee you if you were to do an altar call like i will this sunday and ask for every parent and grandparent that has a child whos been impacted by this system, whether its by a wrongful incarceration or wrongful arrest or whether its been by an incarceration or arrest, i guarantee you that between one third and one half of the congregation will come forward. This is our issue. I used to try to distance myself until i was incarcerated. I dont have one of those rags to riches things. You grow up in the hood, and youre a bad kid and you meet jesus. Unlike those of you who have sinned since you became religious religious. And i drank the shame koolaid, i dont want anybody to know that i was in trouble. So i gave them a phony nickname. Call me doc. That meant i was the only inmate that had a monogrammed jumpsuit. That took a while. And so i was okay for two weeks until a young man came up to me and said pastor . I said, i dont know you. He said i used to play drums in your choir. I said, i dont know you. He told me his mothers name she was on my staff. Before i got out of that facility, i met seven young men whose mothers, sisters wives and cousins i had pastor eded. Every single one of those kids on our streets are connected to us. And the way that we turn this from a moment to a movement i could go on, tell you about my time at Cuyahoga County juvi. We did some of this work with them, we had to get the church to understand that those are not somebody elses kids many the way you turn a moment into a movement is by turning it from an issue to a face. Attorney martin called me a theo loathen. Im a sociologist, they just let me teach here. And one of the things we know from socialized research is that congregations, the Faith Community is not motivated by issues. You can tell the Faith Community to do this because its right until youre blue in the face and they wont budge. But if you can link the issue to a face, if you can shift from narratives to name. If you can move from numbers to names. If you can move from statistics to stories. Then you can move the Faith Community to get involved and invested. Put a face on it, and now we have faces. Weve got eric garner we have trayvon martin, we have tamir rice, we have walter scott, we have faces. The civil rights moment, a oneday boycott in montgomery, became a longstanding movement because it had a face. Read Martin Luther kings speech launching the boycott in montgomery, you will find that one third of it is look what they did to miss parks. Segregation had been wrong for a long time look what they did to miss marks. Discrimination had been wrong for a long time look what they did to miss parks. And youre right attorney martin, this isnt new. Weve had lynchings, weve had police brutality. Weve had bad cops doing bad things to good people. Thats not new. But today is the day we say, look what they did to tamir. [ applause ] we told you wed have some interesting thoughts for you. And some comments. And we have saved our best for last last. The within i say weve saved our best for last, the concept of Community Policing is a concept that once was believed to have been one of the best techniques for controlling conduct in a community. If someone is selling dope down the street everybody between the houses knows whos selling that stuff. If someones committed a crime in your neighborhood everyone knows whos committing those crime crimes. The best way to figure out whats growing on in the community is to ask the community. With that, im going to bring in an assistant attorney general from new jersey who has put a lot of her effort ss into understanding these crimes and not just accepting that theyve occurred, but trying to see what happens tomorrow with either reentry, Community Aspects or second chances. With that, assistant attorney general moore, would you share some thoughts with us . Yes i will. Thank you. [ applause ] i just want to start by thanking the Howard Family for having us here. And all of our distinguished guests. I want to thank you, dr. Harris for allowing us to be a part of this process. I also wanted to thank Jennifer Nash whos joining me now, whos going to help me. We have a quick power point were going to share with you. The first thing i want to share with you, is that weve been engaged in doing some wonderful things around Community Police partnerships. Weve been figuring out what needs to be done by having conversations with Community Talking to noble talking to Law Enforcement, having the conversations with neighbors. Talking to youth understanding what the issues are, and then we take a look at the data, and put all those pieces together and think about some strategies that we think make sense. There are a couple strategies, one were going to get to. I want to share the first one, and personally these are being raised here today these involve our Faith Partners. We do a lot of work with clergy all around the state. But we have one in particular called fugitive safe surrender, it was a program started by the United States marshalls service, when an officer was shot and killed during a routine traffic stop. As a result the United States marshalls came to the faith communities and said, we need you to help us, and what wed like for you to do is bring in folks who are wanted on misdemeanor, lets see if we cant clear up those matters if you would, were going to walk you through some of that. As we did fugitive safe surrender, we began to do first what we knew, the numbers, how many warrants how many people were involved we then began to look at communities that would help us we started by going to the Faith Community and working with them to say, hey, listen. Would you help us . And that brings me back to a comment that was just said moments ago. And one of the things that was said is that faith communities are not motivated by the issues. What we found is that when we knocked on the door, when we said we need your help, wed like for you to help us and get this ready they began to open up the door and work with us, so much so that we were able to help almost 18,000 people over a fourday period come into the church, meet and greet us and their warrants were resolved on the spot. We did it over a four day period. To date we have 17,000 individuals, we know that approximately two thirds of those individuals were male. Most of them had two to three outstanding warrants and we were able to resolve them. While jennifer keeps moving, ill tell you about some of our other programs. Im going to stick to some of those in our Faith Partnerships i think they bring home how you can Work Together. And then well get back to you when the screen comes back up for us. The other programs that weve been able to establish, one is called the chaplaincy program. What weve been able to do is work with our local Police Departments in which the chaplins themselves and work with community partners, particularly help young people were encountering the juvenile Justice System, figuring out ways to wrap themselves around a young person as well as their families, to make sure that they get the support that they need, that they get the encouragement that they need, and so the Chaplin Program has been pushed by one of our local departments in the Vineland Police department in particular, and the group well share that with you in a second. Has the opportunity to travel around the state and working with departments to look at how we can support families in the neighborhoods and on the grounds. I just want to share with this slide here, youll see the arrow up in, and youll see thats where we start right above the church, this slide is showing what we did in Atlantic City at Grace Assembly of god. We advertise. One of the things we found, we did this work people didnt trust us so they wouldnt necessarily come out and turn themselves in and surrender for the first half of the day, people would stand across the street from the church before they came in and wait for people to come back out. When they saw they came out they would come in. That was one of the reasons we did this. What was really important, its through word of mouth we get the message out there, telling the story. We have worked in various communities, particularly our Spanish Speaking communities. And making sure that everyone understood the requirements. Over the past few years special Law Enforcement program called safe surrender has seen 18,000 mostly nonviolent fugitives turn themselves in peacefully in a dozen cities. How safe surrender changed lives last week in wilmington delaware. He was on the run from police. Wanted for violating his probation for gun possession. Inn[ inaudible ] potentially dangerous for him if you have a knife they worked out hundreds of they came to what was called fugitive safe surrender. Run with state and local authorities, to clear outstand ago rest warrants. This opportunity, this cost saver to the courts, to Law Enforcement and quite a help to the communities. They took place over four days with judges, attorneys and even location owners all under one roof of a church. We came for help. Local clergy is a key part of this program. Folks are coming because they trust the faith leaders. People also trust their outstanding arrest warrants will be treated favorably. You wake up and look over your shoulder worry about people recognizing your face. He came with his wife to get a fesh start. You cant enjoy your marriage and family, when you have this heaviness hang ing over you. He was allowed to leave with probation. After paying 589 in fines. He will no longer be living under the radar. The biggest thing is, im not a fugitive any more. Marshalls and police, the program eliminates risk, to them. Any time you push a surrender, thats one less car chase, and we see the results too often. Where somebodys injured as a result. Cordell weiss had a handful of traffic violations. If you dont know what happened. By the end of the day, the smaller than expected fine, his tickets were cleared. Over the past four days, more than 1,000 people surrendered. There will be six of those people arrested. A little bit about fugitive safe surrender. Less than one half of one percent of the people that we deal with are taken into custody, because theyre wanted on an indictable manner which is outstanding. What it looks like in camden, the program was run in philadelphia a week or two before we began the program in camden. We thought since they had a few hundred people ours would be a little smaller. We actually had that many people waiting on line when the doors opened at the church. That is Bethany Baptist church in newark, new jersey. Over at First Baptist in somerset, he was able to host this for us, and again that line actually wraps around the entire building. There were torrential rains the one day, people were still there, people were also very enterprising, because they began to sell umbrellas for us the next day, they did wrap around. Grace assembly of god church. One of the things we needed to do in Atlantic City, all the people initially surrendered themselves here, one of the things we had to do in our program, was to make sure the Court Personnel were in a different location, you see us in the church, you know theres Court Personnel. We resolve these cases, theres Law Enforcement, were doing the lookups, looking at them on the state as well as federal databases, we move folks. The next slide, please. From this church from a to b, the Convention Center that agreed to host us. Next . The last one we did the year before last was in jersey city, the jersey city arm horry. 4,000 people showed up allowing us to resolve tens of thousands of matter s matters. Then we were able to give a little talk about the work. I wanted to share that with you, that was a part of what we were asked to do talk about the roll roll. Particularly since our Faith Partners have been a tremendous asset to us. And we brought the issue. I think thats part of the dialogue and conversation we have to have when you sit down and talk the issues. Youre breaking bread together. You understand what the issues are, i think together as a community, we can make a difference in the lives of all of the communities. Thank you. [ applause ] the way we tie in the video and the discussion you just had from the Attorney Generals Office is, there are crimes that are committed, there are people who commit those crimes and there are people who we want to be locked up. There are programs that address that. And i think the purpose of our lecture today and discussions that we had is that we want to find a way for our Law Enforcement to separate those two groups as opposed to putting the sheer physical presence and look of a person as a predominant factor and their reacting to whats going on. We as africanamericans fought for civil rights in the 60s, the Civil Rights Act was one of the key pieces of legislation. Along with the Civil Rights Act, entitled 42 of the United States code section 1141414. That section allows investigations of Police Departments by the department of justice justice. They have that investigation in cleveland, they have that investigation going on in philadelphia, in newark new orleans orleans. I was the attorney of record representing the city of cincinnati in 2003 when cincinnati had those investigations. The reason i raise that. And i know that we all have scene attorney general eric holder when he would address these issues. What was fought for in the 60s was the showing that the laws applied and protected all of us equal protection. And you listen to thurgood march shall, it was equal protection of the laws, now the laws are written in a way that we understand they provide equal protection were now saying those laws are being used in a different way. With that i would say that there are findings of unnecessary use of force. Discriminatory practices. I know were going to have some questions and answers, so before we talk about how it is we depart and what our takeaways are, i would open up the floor to see if based on some of the thought provoking discussions weve had thus far your own personal thoughts and educational experience and Life Experiences are are any questions you would like to pose to this talented panel that we have have. Were going to ask that you step up to the microphone, that would make it easier and allow also the Recording Studios to pick that up. In light of the recent killing inning is sk what is your position about forcing coercing convincing our congress to require all police to wear body cams, do you think it will help if they wear them . Do i dont get you in any trouble with the attorney general, were not going to put you on the spot with that one. Thank you. Ill be brief and also i want to announce attorney walter madison. Hes my co council in the tamir rice case. The attorney general say a word or two we pushed for that in Michael Browns tragic killing in ferguson missouri. The mike brown law which i pray and hope will happen, it makes a difference. Let me quickly say this here. History happened this week in ferguson missouri. Just as ferguson missouri they had three times as many people in that Community Come out and vote than they ever had in history, i think that was a direct response of our community saying, were going to do something about them killing our children. And now we have three africanamerican policy makers out of ferguson. To answer your question directly. I think cameras are good because they let us know what happens that makes it transparent, thats what our Community Wants more than anything. And half of the Police Officers, if they didnt do anything wrong, theyre exonerated right there, you have this cloud of position because nobody saw it its questionable how youre shooting our little brother or sister in the back can translate or correlate your life being in danger, it makes no sense to us. I say this in light of walter scott, that we saw on video so many things we would never see on video its about a culture, its about a culture. The video why do we need video cameras to make you do right i keep hearing everybody say, you would agree, the majority of the Police Officers are good Police Officers. I say i want to believe that, and i honestly say that, just like i want to believe the majority of young africanamerican men are good people. I want to believe that too but im not just going to accept that all the Police Officers are good when all these good Police Officers see Police Misconduct and they dont come forward and say anything thats what we have to say good policing last thing. The guy the chief said, we dont want you to throw a blanket over our police just for the actions of one police officer, ditto. We dont want you to throw a blanket over all young black and brown boys for the action of one black and brown boy. What you want is exactly what we want want. Thank you for a really wonderful discussion. My name is dr. Marcia korabayo. Were the organization that launched a major demonstration in front of the department of justice to demand that the department of justice release the civil rights reports. And obviously we were very unhappy with the results of those reports, but we thought it was important for the families to you have that information so they could process the fact that their government is not being responsible in Holding Police accountable for the deaths of our children. My son has been stopped by police over 30 times. And that is very common. You ask most young black people, how many times have you been stopped. It is 20 30 40 times. And he was a Howard University student. And his trauma was such that he had to drop out of howard for one year because of the anxiety and depression being caused by being stopped by the police so many times. We are having a million moms particular, we hope that you can join us on may eighth. Were also asking our brothers and husbands to join the mothers as we take to the streets on march 9th to demand that the police stop may 9th. To demand that the police stop stopping our children harassing our children sodomizing our children on the sites of the streets and they stop killing our children, the last point i wanted to make was, in terms of your video, i want to know when are we going to see police lined up in front of black churches surrendering their badges what i saw, we have hypervigilance in the black community. People are being arrested for walking in the middle of the street. I want to know when will the police be arrested . Thank you. Will you please identify yourself and pose a question. My name is mike evans i serve as one of the social justices coordinators at the ame church. What i heard today was very profound and i anned to thank miss rice for putting a real face and real moments of truth and pain and sadly agony with what has happened to her and her son and family many times we hear all of us have heard about a 12yearold boy, but we didnt know his story we didnt know he was a helper. We didnt know he loved to swim, we didnt know he loved to make his family and proud and. When these things happen you know, we have to reflect on what that means to those families and to our even. The thing that struck me this morning before i left to come here was i turned on the news, cnn, cspan and i was amazed at how quickly the media in collusion with the police had jumped from outrage and indignation to blaming the victim. Once again for all that he had brought upon himself. Well, he ran and he ran because he had x number of dollars in Child Support he was afraid he was going to get pulled in on. Wait a minute there werent any warrants out. Its more than we thought it was, and on and on and on and we see these stories to justify the actions that are you know, by the police and the occupied forces. In our community through to justify and rationalize what theyve done. Ill be real quick. Im glad were here and talking about solutions. We spent a lot of time with the recitation of the injustices that have been placed upon us. We really about solutions. Years ago i ran a Legal Aid Program for Catholic Charities in chicago. We had we provided sentence excuse me im going to ask you one question. Arrest expungements. We ask that you ask a question to our panel. Arrest expungements, and tried to provide information to communities about what the criminal Justice System is about. What types of programs Public Service programs, Information Programs have you experienced and envisioned where the actors in the criminal Justice System present to the community what they do, how they interact, how they work with each other, and how theyre supposed to be working for us . Do we have anything in place that can help faithbased communities house those types of Information Services . Sure. You know. One of the things that i didnt get a chance to get to is some of the Youth Development that we do, right. I talked a little bit about the data and the research and how we look at what is happening in communities. And so in this process we have something called the municipal Planning Board process. It is Youth Development boards. And so these boards actually meet with our local Police Departments, we meet at the local school boards, we might meet at the high school, but what we do, we bring both our Justice System partners, as well as our social Services Together to really look at one, what do we know about the community . Not just what we hear, what do we know . So we start with the data and then we begin to pull together both strategies looking at the policy level, looking also at the programs that are available so that we can help families get access to the services because what we found is there are sometimes many services, but our families dont know about the services, there is not this connection. There is no link between some of the resources and the good things that are happening and the families and the partners who need to make those things come together. So it is through that process that we have actually began to do a lot of work as we engage our partners, could be through grants, through the process im talking about and this Youth Development process, but we actually bring together on a regular basis, i dont mean once in a while in a quarter, at least once a month, and in between we are meeting in small committees asking the same thing, how to connect partners to resources and how to link them and most importantly how to make sure we have Better Outcomes so that our families are successful. Thank you. Id like to respond to that also. Because its not just we cant just wait. Ive worked with miss moore for a number of years and she does great work. And she would do greater work if she werent hamstrung by government red tape. Thats just the reality of it. Governments, their wheels turn slowly. She doesnt. She does yeomans work. What i want to supplement what she said is with we have to create within the Faith Community itself the desire to get that information and we have to construct programs within the Faith Community itself so that were not waiting for the heroes and the champions to fight through the red tape to get stuff to us so that part of what were trying to do in the healing communitys project is go to congregations and teach them what questions to ask what information do you need . How can you get involved in the system and how can you get involved in responding to these partnerships with information and with leverage and not just be assigned a part by a Government Agency in a grand scheme of programs that theyve put together without you. And then come to you and say, heres your role. So there is a lot of work we have to do internally to develop that kind of program and not just simply wait for agencies to come to us and explain things to us. We have congregations all across this country, who have resourceful people in them, who know the answers, and if we can empower them to give us the internal kind of leverage that we need, then we can have real partnerships. Thank you. Thats one of the issues that i thought we would discuss today. And that is what is the role in the black church. Should the programs come from the government or should the programs come from the community and the community and the government Work Together . As i understand both what youve indicated and what miss moore is indicating that she tries, you i say you the church will try, but sometimes red tape gets in the way. But if the church had its own initiatives, were not looking for approval from the government, there is a role the church can do without governmental assistance. Is that what i hear you saying . Thats exactly what im saying. We had a statewide program in michigan on faithbased reentry. We had great stuff going on from the Upper Peninsula to detroit to grand rapids. And then they got a new governor. And the new governor said, were not going to put any more nun in the communitybased reentry programs. Were going to expand the department of corrections in michigan and run our own programs. And so all the money came off the table and all of a sudden the reentry programs started to die off. Why . Because we were depending on the government to fund the communitybased programs. What we have got to do in the Faith Community is to recognize that we have capacity. And that we have ideas. And we have people. We just havent been able to generate the motivation. Thats why im running around the country saying we got faces now. We have got samaria rice, tamir rice. Weve got walter scott. I went to ferguson in december and talked with people. Weve got people like Tracy Blackmon. We got faces now. Shes a pastor who is pastor the young people. People say, the preachers arent leading in ferguson. They arent leading in ferguson. The young people are and pastor Tracy Blackmon and pastor tim are pastoring them. He pastored students from fiske and abts on the front lines. You dont have to be out front. You can help the young people gain a sustained voice and not just stand up there and make speeches and turn everything into your personal platform. No names. So there has to be there has to be Capacity Building and energy channeling within the Faith Community itself, and then were in a position to partner with government, but not dependent on the administration and the administration change to make sure that this stuff keeps going. Thank you. Professor . Alex gresham bullock, im a professor in the school of law here. Im a tax professor and Estate Planning as i said to the panelists. When i spoke with them earlier, im not im not dealing with these issues as a lawyer on a daily basis. In other words, im not in the weeds on this issue. Im not even in the tall grass as a lawyer dealing with this issue. I deal with this issue on my front lawn and in my back yard. I have a 30yearold son, i said to the group i am astounded that my my husband and i raised our children, my son is 31 years old, tall, strapping black guy, well built, good looking, and we started quizzing him early on. My husband used to be the u. S. Marshal for the district of columbia. We used to quiz him early on about his interactions with the police. To this day im astounded that he has never had an uninvited interaction with the police. It is amazing in the district of columbia. That i tell you because it gives me reason for hope that we can have that in communities across this city and across the country. And my son grew up at a time where in up in northwest d. C. , the Second District apparently had a philosophy, i dont know if i would hold the Police Department, but the officers in the neighborhood knew the kids. They knew us. I think my husband made a difference, they knew the kids because he was active. So i also think we as parents have a role to play in how we deal with the Police Department as well. Now i ask you, theyre telling me theyre going to cut our time down. Sure, my question we have to pose a question. I got a question. To our panel because the cameras are going to shut off on us shortly. You answered a large part of it in this dialogue, but what you showed us is a snapshot of the difference your community and Faith Program with u. S. Marshals service made in your community. My question is, has that spread to other communities, related to that are there coalitions with other communities in other states where you all talk to each other, so the folks here in d. C. , maryland and virginia could know the success you had up in new jersey so that this spreads . Thank you. So it has spread for us and other communities. People would find what we were doing and they would come and visit with us. And so we would actually have other jurisdictions come and actually help us, you know, in terms of our own thinking about it, but they also really wanted information because they wanted to do the same thing. They wanted to get those programs together and actually figure out how to do it. But i think to your question, is there a network, are we doing this across the board . Is there somewhere in the country. I dont think so i think thats why were delighted to be part of this conversation, because there is a lot that we can do, i think if we were to connect the dots. There are other programs that are happening. There are Faith Programs. There are the communities who are doing it on their own, thinking through their own strategies, but how do we connect together, not just in new jersey, not just here in the district, but across the country. So we certainly would be open to continuing to dialogue to figure out how we can make those bridges and connect them
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