Dialogue about where we as aatid nation find ourselves in this ve drive towards freedom and itfreo seemsm. Particularly fitting that we would have this conversationd today, the day after the nation paused its daily business to pae tribute to reverend martinr. s f luther king jr. s life ande andt legacy, weand it seems fitting that we would have this conversation today after our nations first black president was sworn in for his second term. Now i know much of the nation has already moved on andnd president obamas soaring oftoric about the promisering america, life, liberty, justice, a qualityyand equality for all y been forgotten by many, and i know that many people in america will not think of doctor king again until his holiday rolls around again next year, i would like for us to cause tonight and think more deeply about the meaning of doctor kings life ands his legacy and what it has to teach us about our nations. Present. Nk parti thingscularl particularly on the anniversary of the march on washington. S have 50 years have passed. 50 years have passed since his voice soared over the Washington Monument declaring his dream. I have a dream come it is a dream deeply rooted in thedeepln american dream. And yesterday while i wasd watching president obamas inaugural address i heard echoes of kings speech i have a dreami when i turned off my television set, i spent a few minutes reflecting on the question are all of us welcome to share in se this dream, the same dream ring doctor king dreamed up . Most americans im sure can recite portions of the i have a dream speech by heart. Have a dae it is an extraordinary veryrownd familiar speech ive grownhis accustomed to hearing clips of the speech played over and overy recycled over and over on the radio every january they are the favorite quotes, the favorite ni lines, and now that i have schoolage children, i see howd hes explained to them inclasoos classrooms when i was in Elementary School there was no Martin Luther king day, no kin discussion of his heroism in the classroom but when my childrenr came home from school just thehy other day they told me all they learned in school about his courage. He was the man who stood up to t the bullies and believe the children of all colors and walko of life ought to be able to hold hands and be be judged by theech content of their character and not the color of their skin. E he was willing to die so all of us could now live his dream. And i find myself conflicted as i listen to my children and pare backed to my c to me they heardl about this man who believed inru kindness and forgiveness and justice and compassion for allln and i say yes, all of that is, f untrue, but all of that is true. I feel uneasy and i knowwthatnsf something has been lost in the translation. Ws that comes to be crystallized for me when i read hardings v insightful book Martin Luther. King the inconvenient hero. Doctor harding was one of kings closest friends and advisers marchinga with him countless times and looking around the corner from his family in atlanta. Harding writes with some sorrow, it appears as if the price fory the First National holiday honoring a black man is thedevef development of a massive case oa yational amnesia concerning whol that black man really was. I would suggest we have chosen th amnesia rather than continue the painful uncharted and often disruptive struggle towards a more Perfect Union enddoublequote. It appears as though we are determined to hold our new hero. Captive to the powerful period of his life that culminated in a magnificent march on washington in 1963 refusing to allow him te break out beyond the stunninghis eloquence of his i have a a drep speech doctor harding writes we would lik would likee to forget but it wasnt a weaver of gentle sonnye dreams of freedom shot down ao was shot balcony in memphis tennessee. He was by 1968 a different and a even more courageous man, a man ahead of his time. I can see c and i can see clearly now like yesterday that we rarely honored the man who died no, we honorore that version of him the up inhe the man that gave a soaring about b speech about black and white schoolchildren, the man that dream integration of the dream. But who was king five years m. Ea later . 1968 who was that man killed on the that motel balcony marchingh sanitation workers demanding ec, Economic Justice not civil th man w rights, the man who would come ea believe after the civilbillar rights bills have already been had alrout after the victoriesrs have alreadyea been one of ourle biggest battles, the mostbatt important battles still liet ahead and that nothing short ofs a radical restructuring of ourlp society held any hope for makin the dream and promise of americr a reality for all of its citizens. King explai he explained to a reporter in 1967 for years i labored withthe the idea of reforming thesting existing institutions of thee society is little change here, e little change their. Now i feel quite differently. I think youve got to have areco reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values. Frustrated by the whitengful resistance to addressing in any meaningful way that detained scs that detaining ghettos, failing schools, structural joblessness and crippling poverty, he toldos his staff at the southern lea christian leadershipdership coe before, both white and negro uelly un lives in an unjust society. They must organize a revolutiont against that injustice not against the lives of fellow of citizens but against structuresy through which the society is refusing to lift the load of poverty. So why would he think of us the world that we have created in his absence . . What he believed that the nonviolent revolution had already been one . The revolution of the values v that healues prayed for but he e d wou could see us today believe we now share his dream and we aremg traveling the road he wasght up marching . Y fifty years later have we caught up with him yet and are we fin finally onally the path that he3 traveling in 1963, 1968. Back in 1969 when blood stillkiw stand at the motel balcony where he was murdered, a column was written reflecting on his death and it was back when king had only just begun the process of v being transformed in our collective consciousness from a troublesome figure to the itas national hero. Wten it was written back when they were still fresh and spellingant among those who loved him. Onw that he is safely dead letid us praise him, build monuments to his glory. It is easier to build monumentsw than to build a better world so now it is a cause into the dreas is still a dream. Now that hes dead Martin Luther king jr. Is he dead today come is his dream safely dead . I know many people in the roomlm would say no. Its to pay tribute to his dream jus justt yesterday. Finally caughp we may not be living his dreamt haven w but dont they ever share his dream of better evidence could a there be. Idencecould what better evidence could therc be than that multiracial andwasn multiethnic gathering in the mall in washington, d. C. That we witne witnessed just yesterday and was broadcast arounddbroadcast the . Must be living and sharing the dream. It its been said by numerous philoso philosophers and theologians thatlogians any society, any civilization must be judged byhi how it treats its most vulnerable members and prisoners i find myself thinking of people who cycled in and out of the i nation, prison system in thiss era of mass incarceration and post Civil Rights Era the time when the population has more thans more than quintupled overy peanen poor people otlf color have been permanently locked up for locked out, stripped of the very civil rights doctor king and so many others risked their lives for and some even liv die for. I think of susan whose son was killed by the police barrelingrg down her street in los angeles. E she received no apology or acknowledgment of her loss and fell into a deep depression wracked with grief andbecame a ultimately became addicted to crack cocaine. If she had been even solidly jod middle class with a good job and Good Health Care care plan she would have qualified for many hours of therapy and counseling and wouln have qualified for legal t prescription hdrugs that would help her cope with severe depression and grief but now things were different. Imhoff, urged she became addicte to crack cocaine and thus becamo the odyssey of cycling in and out of prison for 15 years. E prosecutors said just take the ther deal we will give you three years rather than eight. E years this time we will give you five2 years rather than 12. Just this time we will cut you a dead break and give you two years rather than sit. An one plea deal after another never offering a treatment onlyt shown in ament, prison cell. Every time she was pushed outime onto she the streets unable tod work, no housing often sleeping on the streets, cycling in andom out of the prison system for 15 years until by no small miracleb she wasy granted access to a private Treatment Facility and got clean and was given a job. So no other woman would have to go through what she went kirough. Nby going do to s she began by going down to los angeles helping them get off the bus with nothing but a Cardboard Box carrying their belongingssho and she would say to these womeh who were strangersese to her ym can sleep on my couch or floor you dont have to turn to theyoe streets. Rganizati is the organization is called a new way of life finding jobs, reuniting women with their families and beyond that,eir rly incaerated organizing formerly incarcerated to demand the restorationo of the basic civil and human rights. G clearly susan has caught up, but what about the rest of us. What i have to say on this point may not be popular. Mege that i its not the message that isday expected on the day after we inaugurated for the second timek the nations first black president. Truth i believe it to be the truth ant it implicates me and everyone im this room. And the truth is this. An right weve allowed a human rights nightmare to occur on our watch. In the years since doctor kingf death, a vast new system of racial and social control has emerged from the ashes of slavery and jim crow. A system of mass incarceration oftem no doubt has been turningn his grave today. The mass incarceration of poord states i people of color in the United States is tantamount toa a new system that shuttles tobrannew brandnew hightech prisons. Sol it is a mind you the moral equivalent of jim crow. Ime whent it was a time i rejected comparisons between mass incarceration and slavery, massc incarceration and jim crowthat f believing that those wereexaiono exaggerations or distortions were hyperbole. They were going to reform thed e Justice System and achieveunite greater racial equality in the United States but what a difference a decade makes profid representing the victims oftalin Police Brutality and investigating the patterns forf the communities of color tover s reenter into a society. I i had a series of experiences an thatg. I now call my awakening. N tobegan to awaken to the racials reality that is s mo obvious to. Now what seems odd that much respect is that we have beenthey blind to it for so long. To my as i write in the introduction to my book what has changed what ha since the collapse has left thee basic structure of the societytu and language we use tose justify it. Ustice sy to we use the criminal Justice System to label people of color a criminals and engage in all thae we supposedly left behind. Today it is legal tote agait cri discriminate nearly and although the ways that was once legal tom discriminate against african americans. Once you are label they fell inn the old one is the d discrimination, employmentymen tiscrimination, housing hhecrimination, denial ofn t housto right to vote. Rghts you have more rights and lessrea respect than a black man living in alabama at the height of jimm crow. Ended racialaste we havent ended the racialigned caste in america. We have just nearly redesigned it. For those who might think that is overstating the case, consider this. Adults there are more africanamericane adults under the correctionalctn control today in prison or jail on probation or parole then were enslaved in 1850 a decade before the civil war began. More were disenfranchised then in 1873 the amendment was ratified and denied the right to vote on the basis of the race. He they prohibited all of the lawsh and denied the right to vote on the basis ofsis of the race butg the jim crow era it circumventet the amendment and obligated toco denied the chance to vote. Stes today in many states there were ngr illiteratees c. Tests that t ultimately could not. Contr many to the contrary more than halfa now have criminal records intou thebject t o sleubject of discrr the rest of their lives. Imore, in some cities like chicago, baltimore, philadelphia, thecou list couldgo go on. N in some cities it was reported in chicago if you take intoys account prisoners and counts prisoners as people and keep inp mind the y are excluded from unmp policy statistics and unemployment data for thisng te masking the own equality in the United States but if you countne prisonerss b as people in the ar chicago area, nearly 80 of working age africanamerican men with criminal records arerdshat subject to discrimination for their lives. These meare part they are part ofo a growing undr caste, not class, a group of, ct people defined largely by races relegated to the permanent stats secondclass status b by law. Find today when i tell people i believe mass incarceration iss pike a new jim crow, peopleo react with a complete disbelief and say how can you say that. U . Our criminal Justice System is a ar crime controlt and if folksng would stop running around have committing so many crimes we wouldnt have to worry about being locked up bei and indies rights. Pped ofheir civil that is where lies the greatest myth of incarceration that its been driven by crime and crime rates. , it that is justs jus not true. Our prison population quintupled in the space of 30 years. Weve gone from a prison population of about 300,000 totw the incarcerated population now of over 2 million. Ighest ratef we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world withr highly repressive regimes like russia or china or iran. But again this cant be explained by crime or crime rates. During the same period of time that our incarceration rates increased exponentially, theyctuated fluctuated. Today as bad as they arecrime lowsonally they are at historical lows buttes h incarceration rates have soared. Most will acknowledge theyvendt movedly o independently of one another. Regardless if the crime is going up or down in any givenion as community or the nation as a whole. So what explains the sudden explosion in incarceration, the birth of a penal system bih of a penal unprecedentedsy in history theus answer is to get tough movementt that washed for the unitedone, jus states. Or it accounted for two thirds of in the fed the increase in the federal half prison system and more than half the increase in the state syste0 between 1985 and the period of 2,000 theeth greatest expansionn our prison system. People prisos there are more people in prisons and jails today then werethanine incarcerated for all reasons ine 1980. Irst americans violate drug laws in some form in their lifetime. But the enemy in this war has beendefined. Racially defined. I not bybe accident. Al it has been waged almostttees exclusively in the poorer communities of color even though studies the studies have consistently shown h for decades contrary tof popular belief, people of color do not use or so Illegal Drugs at higher rates than white and that is the racial stereotypepes ab about a drug dealer is. Rug picture in your mind a drugat du dealer and who do you see . Its been conduct in question is the mid1990s the National Survey was conduct in asking people to close their eyes and imagine a drug criminal andrepoa report what they saw. Aer 95 of respondents picturef someone. The. Its overflowing with the drug offenders and in some states 80 to 90 drug of all sent to pris, been one race, africanamerican. I know many people see this ands say thats a shame. But we need to get tough on those folks because thats whert the violent offenders can be found, the kingpins can be r found. Many people dont realize that its never been aimed primarily at rooting out the offenders. Hat m its been a numbers game. Er mbe its the number of people swept intors the system. For the they go out slooking for the socalled low hanging fruit. They keep for their own use ofe to 80 of the cash, cars seized from suspected drug offenders. To seize your cash and your cary and its direct monetary interest not even ending the drug abusedr or addiction or related crime. O its the nonviolent drug, four o offenses. In the 1990s the period was nearly 80 of the increase for marijuana possession. By waging the war almost ho exclusively we managed to creata this under caste in a shortperif whriod of time. Where had the Supreme Courtser ban in all off ba this . Om protting the insufrom protecting the interest of insular minorities its been at every turn. The Supreme Court the last couplef of decades either tradee fourth protections against unreasonable earchess seizures grantingg to the police the authority to stop, frist, search just about everyone and everywhere without any probable cause or reasonabln suspicion not a shred oftivity n evidence of activity as long as they get consent. That young man waived his righta against unreasonable searchesser and seizures. Law Law Enforcement doesnt have to have a shred evi of evidenceg support that and he had nod walk ability to refuse consent and walk away. You might say these are isolated instances but the reality is int they add up to enormous racial spari disparities. N tha in one year alone it stopped and frisked more than 400,000 people overwhelmingly black and brown men but the court ruled we chalg th cannot challenge the raciala cour disparities in the court of law in cases the Supreme Court ruled it doesnt matter how overwhelming the evidence might be it doesnt matter be. How see the Racial Disparities are. Ntamn its tantamount to the position you cannot even state the claimn in the Justice System today. Endt the case