I think that elayne brown has the power to. I really spent a lot of time digging into the personal stories of my heroes. What i love about those books. As somebody that has done these, what was the process and how long did it take. They have a better timeline. Anywhere from the time i spoke nine months later we were getting a book deal. I came to her because someone had come to me in the 2015. You heard me talking about my story. I wasnt thinking about that. I was thinking about where our movement was going and what the protest was going to be and the next stage othatthe next stage t was. And i kind of wrote an outline and then i went back to organizing, to the daily grind. But then the president ial candidacy happened. I started to see the ramping up of the rightwing Interest Groups and seeing my face on bill oreillys former show. I said okay, i need to write something. They said someone had already asked if i wanted to publish a book. What do you think, do you think i should do it and they said that definitely coming you should do it. I think that she can collaborate with you and a coauthor. So i called immediately and said would you be interested in working with me on a book. Before i could even finish, she said of course i would. I spent the next month thinking about how the we want to shape this, bu what is the central th . Was going to be important for people to read, not just for us in 2018, but what is going to be important for people to read 20 years from now, 30 years from now come and that became kind of the centerpiece of how we wrote it. Host subprocess, was it you and asha recording and comparing notes . Guest it was both. We would spend very early mornings on the west coast talking through different experiences that i had, and then she would write out a first draft. I would look it over or she would send a set of questions and i would write and share the stories. And really wanting to dig into the Research Part of it. We would go back back and forth and do research on what we wanted to uplift in the book and it became this beautiful collaboration between us that i feel very privileged for my first book to have been coauthored with someone like asha. Host it seems the systems failed her. Twelvestep systems, religion systems, educational, justice systems, prison, over and over. The systems that are said to have run the society and lead you in a chaotic situation and a deprived situation of not having her father, not having your brother either not physically with you or because they have been damaged by the system. You talk about when you were arrested in front of your class at 12yearsold. I mean, lets just start with the impact of all of the systems failing you over and over as the impact on you. Guest i think that when erica garver passed the first thing i thought about was black women get left behind. We dont get served in this place atho and ill only do we t get served, but then we have to take on the battle of serving everybody else, and we suffer because of it. It becomes a sacrifice. Part of being in a movement and trying to challenge the government of local, state and National Means that you are sacrificing a lot. You are sacrificing your sanity and often your health because the system is a well oiled machine with lots of money and resources. To figure out the resources you can cease together to ensure your humanity and dignity and i think you are right the system failed me and my sister and my siblings and feel of the community. And its why the movements start. Its why this movement started because the system field mike brown and speed Trayvon Martin and his family. Host talking about the impact of the system. There was a spot rave on where you live ostensibly looking for somebody. Talking about the smoke and the movement of pulling you and your family out. Guest it was a beautiful summer day in los angeles, and the community said its been there for decades, its the artist village into the Helicopter Police were out and had been a suppressive shooting at Police Station that was right across the street from my village. And they literally created a barrier in the neighborhood where nobody could come and and nobody could leave. For hours and hours helicopters were just circling. And i said to the person i was with, i hope they are not coming for us. What are the odds. I remember going on twitter and thinking to our village and went straight to our apartment. Host and they were coming to her rescue you believe . Guest there were about eight different colleges in thee village. There is an Apartment Building and yet they came to my college. This is the height of me working on challenging local lawenforcement and the sheriffs department. And the brutalization of people in spite of jails and in la county. They knocked on my backdoor in full swat gear with big military grade weaponry and i asked who it is. I know better because of military training not to open up the door fully because once you do, that gives police the right to come into your home. So i asked who it is and they said lapd. We have a reason to believe the shooter is in your home. I said there is no shooter in my house. They said we would like to talk to you. I stepped outside and closed the door and said what would you like, and i was visibly shaking and nervous. The officer said to me why are you nervous . Host because you are in my face hello guest i said because you have a huge gun and you are in full riot gear. Often times, Law Enforcement tells my community. So im extremely nervous. Host [inaudible] guest thats exactly what i said. He said we are just here to protect you. We think the shooter is in your home. The dog sniffed the shooters sensent at your home, and i said nobody is here. I have a friend here in his daughter. Went back inside and i heard him talking outside. I think the shooter is in there and i think she was nervous because he was forcing her to see the things that she said. I was like they are going to come inside my house. And i was talking to my friend and his daughter and i said we need to be called. Be cal m. There was a sixyearold with us. There was a knock again and they said we have to search your home. I said okay, but i would like to have my friend and his daughter go out first and i want to let you know my friend and his daughter, he is not the shooter, please be peaceful. They went outside and had their guns drawn on them and set them down. I went outside, they searched my home and i have no idea to this day what they did in my home and later on the detectives came and took pictures of my home. I knew i had to leave. I couldnt stay in the village anymore. Host this happens in your adult life, but 12 you were arrested in your sixth grade in fifth grade class on suspicion of having smoked weed in the bathroom. No comment did come about even if the system fails a 12yearold in handcuffing for m the first arresting but then handcuffing and doing it in front of their class, what was that experience like and what was the longterm impact . Guest when i was telling the story out loud, asha forgot i was arrested because she wanted to hear more about my childhood, and i talk often about my brother and their friends. And then i just kind of said then i was 12 and she paused like im sorry, what happened when you were 12. I went on to say an officer came into my science class and whispered to the Science Teacher and i knew my name was being called and i walked down the hall with an officer. Host wait a minute, the moment that 12yearold patrisse was handcuffed in front of your seventh grade class, im sure the kids were silent but theres stilthereis still all this ener. Host it was so scary. All i can remember was my response like what am i going to tell me by another. My brother had already been incarcerated and i thought now my mother has to deal with me. I remember them searching my bags. And i just felt terrible. Now that im an adult, but they should have done is brought in a counselor and they should have said whats going on, whats happening and what do you need a . Obviously something is happening, you want some sort of attention. They could have just like it was happening, they made me call my mom and i went back to class. There was no talk about it afterwards. It created such a sour feeling for me and it made me feel like the School System didnt want me there or didnt need me there and wasnt interested or invested in me or my education. Remember that this is the middle school that is my neighborhood schools which is very different than the school i went to outside of may neighborhood that is a much more wealthy. I saw the difference in how i would be treated the res and hoe rest of my community was treat treated. And its the first time they arrested. I go to this other School People are smoking weed and doing all kinds of things on the campus and not ones where they arrest arrested. Host part of what you are underlining is what we criminalize in the attack is a personal failing to put people in jail for it as opposed to treating it compassionately as it is in many european countries. And you really learn and a texas personal emotion, and this is an important part of the book, you are talking about external factors into drug use especially in the general sense that your life does not matter. And a 12 step program says you are the problem if this is something ive dealt with a lot talking about the book chasing screen. People dont feel valued as people and thus criminalizing them misses the point. Guest i will say that is true. Some people use drugs as they are fine. The war on drugs has had just created this culture where anyone that uses drugs is a drug addict and that is a really interesting to do because when you are a drug addict it is easier to dehumanize. Many people in my family use drugs and were not addicts. We have to have a much or nuanced conversation about the drug use because right now it happens in the movement us while we allow the narrative to shape the narrative around who is a drug user. It isnt nuanced enough. It isnt addictive in the same physical way as cocaine and others. It doesnt make you do violent things. Its not like marijuana but we are talking about more dangerous things. [inaudible] [laughter] prison is a huge part of this as a destructive part of her childhood even if you are never inside for anything that you have done, but your father and your brother doing inside the humanized it is a difficult part to read about the torture committe, thesystematic tortures inside that your brother went through the. Guest what we lived in as a society and a culture that only doesnt give options for people who are mentally ill and especially if they are poor and black, but they dont give them anything if they dont provide a family with anything. What ends up happening is people have severe Mental Illness ended up on the streets where they are consistently criminalized for being homeless and mentally ill and sometimes drug users and drug addicts. Or they are criminalized ended up in jail for years and heres not getting any healthier, being overmedicated for not receiving the type of treatment they deserve. You cant get well in a cell. We say that all the time. My brother and his situation, he ended up a casualty to the fore on the mentally ill. My family really becomes the front line for him in his care and being advocates for him. So it is such a wear and tear on the families. I talked to families of all races and socioeconomic backgrounds because Mental Illness is such a process to go through. What is Mental Illness and how to treat it. So people get experimented and end up taking medications that make them overweight and oftentimes unhealthy. My brother has contracted diabetes because of other medications. So there is a way in which we have to change how we care for people with simple illness littd we have to shape it, shape our society very differently. Host some of us know prison is chromogenic and create crime and makes them more violent and separates them from their families and law abiding citizen and turns them into underground figures. You and i are talking in this book about wanting a prison free world. What does that look like, because i know some folks here that and say dont we need that and they dont understand it functions as a deterrent, but what does that look like . Because you also want a World Without police, so what does america look like without poli police . Guest i want a world where people are held accountable and where people can feel safe. If we look at the prisons and people are held accountable, if i talk to people that are victims of crime, my family is a victim of crime, there is a sort of idea. Victims of crime are also black people in poor neighborhoods. Ask them if they feel like they had accountability when they were sent off to prison and they will say no actually. Actually. I didnt feel like i have accountability. I still dont have a job, i still dont feel safe. Host quite often things get really bad. Guest and i think the other piece is we have spent the last 450 years completely investing in police and investing in prison if not other things like housing and having access to healthy food and access to public education, adequate public education. And we have seen the impact of f that. That. So, imagine if we flip it and even took half of the Police Budget and put that into social programming. What can we do for human beings or someone like my father and imagine if you were given more resources to drive it just survived. Imagine if my brother, monty, was diagnosed earlier this to give in a Juvenile Hall or use the county cant i think he would be able to hold a job. He would not have compounded ptsd. So there is a way that im trying to have a larger conversation. Im not saying get rid of something. I am saying replace it with something else. Host ive known you for several years now and i know you as a person with great joy and advocacy of a great selfesteem. You seem very hopeful and optimistic. I read your story and this just pain and deprivation, struggling to find love in all the state. How does this person get to this person. Am i wrong are you not happy . [laughter] guest iem at the inside doesnt mean that i dont battle with depression. Especially living in this moment if you are not on the side of white nationalists, it is sad to the. Host how do you get to the joy and optimism that you seem to have when so much has gone wrong . Guest that is a good question. My mother looks u thinks up at n the morning and is one of those very joyous people. She is happy and is a source of joy. I called her and talk to her three to five times a day. She is such a source of my resilience but also, i am so proud to be a part of a movement that is a part of changing the world. I mean, it is hard work and it is challenging work. But it is also work that revives my spirit and soul to be part of something that is 100 years hopefully we are not having the same conversation, hopefully we are adding new conversations. Host the joy that you describe to your mother isnt there. In the book she is a serious character and important character, but also one who seems to have to carry the world of her back. I dont never ever going to a movie with my mother or window shopping or together as human beings. Weve always had to be humans doing. Seems shes always working and stressed and filled with guilt. Guest we have to unlearn the things we thought about each other and relearn each other. I had a dedicated relationship with my mother throughout the years. Shes one of the primary care providers for my child and that brings a great source of joy being a grandparent. She was a manager. She had to make sure that our environment was managed because she was doing everything from figuring out how to raise four children, coordinating schedul schedules, she was literally just trying to make sure that we were surviving. If i cant imagine the kind of stress that can cause an individual. She had four kids by the time she was 27yearsold. She did it alone an and have support sometimes, but largely she did it alone and she was a superhero to be. Host is your baby going to grow up and say my mom was always doing guest its interesting that you ask that because i, when you witness someone else like a mother figure its easy to end up like that. I work a lot that is not a truth i also spent a lot of quality time with my child to try to figure out ways to and i think about my mother a lot like how do i create a different environment for him. My mom did the best job she could. Host her father is a bigger character in the book for many reasons and once you get into the book you will see why. Like talking about life he has a drug problem and you get so eloquent talking about the impact and the years of strip searches at the years before that when you were a chil childt knew no dream you had for yourself taken seriously by anyone. You were not someone who would be fully invested in were viewed as worthwhile. What is the impact of not being valued. So many people say hes a drug addict because he lacked character that you are like yes, he was always told you are nothing so what do you think is going to . Guest for my fathers character, he was such an amazing human being and he was so intelligent and ready. His life was cut too short and i remember the day he passed like it was yesterday i remember getting that call and begin over his dead body as they brought him out from the structure saying you didnt deserve this. You deserved a longer life. He died of a heart attack, a broken heart and i think of so many of us that grew up in communities that are so impoverished that witness our familys struggles so much that we deserve so much more and this book is calling for that. Host you get into these difficult moments in the stories come to you if you think of them at your filled with this coura courage. If she did it and he did it, we are going through that wall. Guest thats absolutely right. For a long time i just remember how she was talking about her nickname in how they talked she was strong and feminine and it felt like i can relate to her character so much if they could later learn about she was much more than someone who was strong or disabled. She went back and read her own family. She created a nursing home for black elderly folks who fled slavery. She became a thoughtful character in my own trajectory. Host tell us about the folks that you are advocating for that are not here to see their own name. If there are one or two of these sort of public deaths that have haunted you were hurt you more then some othan the sum of the . Guest sandra. I get choked up thinking about her because she was deeply affected by the movement. I consider her a proof the movement and she was so inspirational, soberly and. It could have been any of us insidinside the of the cell andd arrested for actio