Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Baptist Church in the city of new york. Were delighted that you can join us tonight. Were looking forward to a very informative and inspiring night. Tonight youre joining us for a conversation on women and incarceration and im delighted that the new press who has publishing the book becoming this burden, sent me a note suggesting that we tick a look at the book. Now, i will tell you that across a year, i may get from various publishers maybe 20 or 30 new books. Asking me to read them and i have to share my opinion or else share my share my opinion on a cover or share my opinion with members of our congregation. I cant rad them all but fortunately i read this one and i read it because it had a forward by an author, and an activist and a lawyer named Michelle Alexander. I was coming out of a program similar to this at the library one evening and one of the panelists was the late Vincent Harding i knew him from my days at a student at the college and he saw me, he knows me as calvin he said hey, calvin before you leave, i want to make sure you get a book. And i said what book is that . He said the jim crow and i went and got the bock and i read it like many of us i was further enlightened and, of course, became increasingly even more angry. So i thank michelle for being here tonight. I thank suzanne for being here tonight. And also thank you for coming so that you can learn more about women and mass incarceration. This today would be the 92nd anniversary of the birth malcolm x and i think we ought to salute his memory with a round of applause. [applause] [applause] i haded pleasure of meeting suzanne byrd the other day borns in housing projects of 1950 in los angeles. I was immediately infatuated by her. Shes intoxicating in terms of what she bringses to passion she brings to her cause. And when heard and raised o. C. About how the death of her son into this, i was immediately impressed. You will hear more from her this evening. Ive already mentioned Michelle Alexander civil rights lawyer advocate legal scholar and best selling author. And i should also tell you that later after the discussion, the book of becoming will be on sale be downstairs in our bookstore. Wheres ms. Graham make sure im right about this. Now down stairs in our bookstore soy encourage you all to go down after it is over and get a copy. Youre signing them yes ms. Byrd will be signing them and im sure after you hear this discussion you will want to get a copy. Moderator tonight is archer an awardwinning author and journalist and first detained recognition when she pinned her 1999 cay debut book the prisoners wife its a powerful lyrical memoir about a young black woman romance and marriage with a man who was serving a 20 to life sentence in prison. With a hope that they would live as a couple in the outside world she became pregnant with her daughter. A former feature editor for essence magazine, she also wrote Something Like beautiful. The continuation of her love with emotional disappointment and a serious bout of depression. In addition, archer is author of two collection of poems and novel daughter. She lives in brooklyn with her daughter lisa, and so to get tonight started, i thank you again for coming, welcome to the Baptist Church. Youre always welcome here especially on sunday morning. We will be happy to see you we have a service at 9 and 11 30 so any time you want to stop by, come on by. But right now lets welcome our mod ray for moderator for the evening archer as we get started. Good evening and let me say that im more than a little humbled and overwhelmed to be standing here in this historic place. And to be in the presence of reverend barts a Guiding Light for many of us for me and my darkest hour and living in brooklyn couldnt always get up here but hear him on radio and held me close and tights on many sundays and it was here i saw fidel castro speak. Here that friend of mine, we come to worship with them and to love them and sometimes just to say goodbye and for holding this mountain so beautifully together for building what hes built throughout harlem please join me in thank you calvin heart. [applause] ive always overwhelmed because im in the presence of two women i so deeply love. Suzanne and michelle. It is not easy work to put your whole heart on a page. Its not easy to expose yourself in that way, your beliefs, your personal memories. But these two women have done it in extraordinary ways, this michelle gathering up the stories of our most harmed and pulling it together in one place, taking a position, taking a stance, not when it is as possible popular but a right, and susan excavating so much that we often want to forget the courage to do both is is beyond the telling it is breathtaking please join me in welcoming them so they can come to the stage and you can hear from them yourself. [applause] to this stage and you can hear from them yours. [applause] let me thank the press whatever you want to call it to have a publisher deeply dedicated to ensuring the ruth of our stories as they have been to ensure that the new jim crow got out there, that i watched how they work to put that book out there to make sure that everybody read it and everybody saw it was truly incredible and now to see what theyve done with becomeing this burden they are dedicated to ensure and get our voices heard, and i want to thank everybody who is here from new press so we can read and hear from women tonight and i want to note that we have cspan in the house youll note on either side we have two standing mics as some point in this program were going to open it up to questions from you so ask that you step to that mic and speak clearly into it to make sure we hear your voices as well as see your beautiful faces they are truly beautiful finally as i begin i want to thank my beautiful daughter who is 17 and a comes with her mother to everything. She does she could be out of with her boyfriend tonight and out doing a lot but shes here doing the lords work the truth and thats [applause] so it is with that, i have all of these questions to start with michelle but let me ask that you read from this stunning forward that you offer inside this book the one that so most moved reverend. Well, first i want to say thank you to reverend. For hosting this event here tonight. And to say how honored i am to be here with Suzanne Burton who i admire so much and become a real friend to me. Over the years, and so when she asked whether i might be interest had had writing the forward or book i was just overjoyed to have the opportunity to share what her work and her life has not only o meant to me prnlly, but the gift that she has made to the movement, to end mass incarceration and to hundreds of women who os lives have been changed and transformed because she was willing to put them before herself. This is what i wrote in the forward. There once lived a woman with deep brown skin and hair who ushered people to safety she welcomed them to safe homes and offered food, shelter and help reuniting with family and loved ones. She met them wherever they could be found and organized countless others to provide support and aid in various forms so they would not be recaptured and sent back to captivity this courageous soul knew fear and desperation of one seeing pain she felt years ago when she had been abused and shackled and finally began her own journey to freedom deep the in night she cried out to god, begging for strength, and when she woke she began her work all over again. Opening doors,en playing escape routes and hold hands with mothers as they wept for children they hope to see again. A relent advocate for justice this proud woman was abolitionist and Freedom Fighter and told truth to whoever ever would listen and countless hours training and organizing others derled to grow movement. She served not only as profound inspiration to those who knew her but gait wisconsin to freedom for hundreds whose lives forever changed by heroism. Some people know this woman by name Harriet Tubman i know her susan. Im crying like the first time i read that so im going to take a second hold, for those beautiful words and thank you for that, michelle, thank you so much. You know, susan, just, you know, ive been thinking, you know, about what they taught us that life has to be liveredrd if and known understood backwards but i wonder if he would share with this audience what you know now to the writing of this book that you didnt understand other than when you first began writing it or when you were first inconsiders incarcerated. I would like to thank reverend and church for hosting this and thank you archer across town to our bad traffic. [laughter] and michelle youre dear to me. I cant even begin to tell you what your book did to me and many, many others. And i want to thank the press for for taking this book. They dont do memoirs but they did becoming this burden. The new jim crow so i started a new u way of life thinking that if women had a place to go everything would be okay. But as i worked, my understanding and analysis grew, you know, there wasnt what was wrong with us. Thatit was what was wrong in the society, system, systems that run the world. And when i got a copy of the new jim crow, i knew what i knew but i couldnt put my finger on it. You know, my mom used to say, i know but i cant put finger on it i knew but i just couldnt maim it and describe it. And the new jim crow put everything that i experienced through the criminal Justice System through my community. You know, in plain and distinct order. So you know as a i stayed around, and continued the work my understanding and analysis grew, and with that my commitment and determination grew to change, to change things. Not only for myself. But for everybody who crossed my path, and thats thats resulted in, Many Movement building in systems change. In leadership development, and in building a Strong Community that stays and sticks and fights together. Uhhuh. Thank you for that. Susan let me ask this of both of you buzz you talked your own sorts of narrative art for your learning curve who michelle told before that as well. Im very aware that we have a much larger conscienceness about ending mass incarceration now it wasnt this bigs when you started critical resistance in 1997 with angela davis. But i wonder what it was that was and this is to boat of you that can allow 2. 2 million peel to go missing on our lot. Was there any sort of false sense of morality that actually descrupghts our freedom with a politic of respectability with the way of where we need to know as a community and a people. Just to both of you . [inaudible conversations] well you know, i would say that l real genius that it leads those trapped within it and as well as their families to blame themselves most entirely for their experience. You know, when i grow up i use experiment with drugs i hung out with people who stole. We jumped into a car that wasnt ours and went joy riding. But i lived in a solidly middle Class Community where police were not stopping and searching and frisking us. And i committed those krill and misdemeanors off to college and went off to law school, and lived rest of my life never for a minute feeling guilty or tortured about the fact that i got high when i was in high school or college never feeling this sense of deep unworthiness barack obama did all of those things but maybe not the same thing but a lot of them and wengts on to be president of the United States but in so many of our communities, young people screw up and mess up. An they get in trouble like young are people, human beings do because we all make mistakes stumble and fail. And those young people get branded and shamed. And locked in literal cages and dehumanized and when theyre released theyre stripped of all of their basic civil and human rights making it virtually impossible for them to ever find work or get housing or meet their basic needs, and blame themselves and families will often blame themselves and one with another why cant you just get a job. Whats wrong with you . Why are you back on . Reets why cant you get it stoght . And the system of mass incarceration turned against each other and reality is people of all colors used and sold drugs that nearly identical rates. For decades but it been black and brown demonized and lockedded up and locked out when crime rates rose in our community Violent Crime rates rose, few people in government stood back and said well whats really going on . How can we help . Because raiment was that work had disappeared. Jobs have vanished due to global capitalism and factories closed down and moveds overseas so economic and cities, and we could have helped we could have responded with bailout packages and surplus plans and investing in schools but instead a literal war was declared on the poorest and most vulnerable and we round understand blaming and shaming ourselves. And i hope that were moving beyond that and understand that a lot of healing needs to be done. And a lot of organizing and Movement Building needs to be done, and thats what a new way of life, the organization that susan has founded so thoroughly committed to, healing coming together in circles of honesty, providing support to one another, and then getting to work Building Movement to end system of mass incarceration and restore basic civil and human rights to each and every one of us. Magnificent answer. I just have to thank you so much, and susan let me add something to that as we pivoted and begun to talk about a any way of life and organization near and dear to my heart and just thinking, i mean, many of us dont realize because of the sheer number of men in prez that is black womens numbers and womens number that have gone up and double the rate of the numbers of man 832 . In the last 25 years or so with black women far leading that. That pack and i wonder if you would talk a little bit what about we need to know about the experience of women who are incarcerated that are particular to women who are incarcerated. So in the book i talk about my life experience. But its not just my life experience. Its the experience of most incarcerated women. I know through conversation that the women, you know, have suffered so much prior to incarceration and my thought is, is this the way we treat trauma and childhood abuse is to cage and lock people up and punish them . Later on and they in their ladder years, in california for 50 years, there was one prison. And when the were on drugs hit our community, california built a biggest womens prison in the world. And i see the women come back from those places with this fear in their eyes and hope in their mouth. Thinking and talking about what they want to do and how they want to do, but i, i see the fear and i feel the fear rolling off of them as they want to and want to rebuild their lives and get their children back and come back in the community. Back in the Community Safe. You know results of theg about this experience inside. I mean, i can remember when i would go to visit my husband in prison, raining dead of winter anything but mine, package and babies was like this. When i started visiting him in 1 1 there were a couple of vans that would come u through my area in brooklyn and pick me up by the time that ended, there were buses whole bus Company Coming to do it and what i never failed to prison there was never a line. Nobody going to visit women and i would volunteer in men and in women prison it was almost no service available. That has been 20 years or so the lines about lines in the people thats going to see the few that do come is a mother, a grandmother. A husband to get there to visit to try to keep the tie and the bonged. You know there was rhetoric coming out of the white house about welfare queen and crack momma and so forth, and i think that just penetrated the fabric of our communities and our society. To say this is the black woman and she shouldnt have done what she did. And were just going to throw her away baa were not throw away people. We are not throw away women ppg [applause] we hold potential, power, love, groundedness. You know, the future of our community. You know, and i just want to say were back. And were coming strong. [applause] and youre going to repair and were going to lead and were going to stand side by side. And make our Community Safe and whole again. Were going to put the bandaids on our kids knees. And were going to stand in the gap when those people are coming and say no you cant have this one. And you know were going to do this by the hundred, by the thousands, by the millions and were building that now as we speak. So i want to call out a few people in the audience. I see vivian nixon back there in the back from college and community. Shes educating all of the women. And i see counsel members over here yeah. So i want the counsel members to stand, donna, i dont know how many of yall are out here but yen mail wept out so you know. These are the warrior women on the frontline, so you know it sounds like im going to do all of this. Were going to do this and all of you too. I mean, you cant leave here tonight and not think about what are you going to do to take your Community Back to make it safer. To make it holier and thats what ill propose and then suzanne are you saying youre bringing new way of life to new york from california or expand . So yeah. So yeah in essence yes, and i want to ask to stand because you all have to wrap your love and your prayers around tomoya because shes going to start a home safe house for women where women can come to and get that support, leadership, guidance that they can come and join and be a part of this movement to. So yall remember about shes a member here. Her daddy is a deacon here. All right. Her pastor is right over there and yall wrap your arms around her as she takes on this strug the in fight because its not easy. [applause] you know to both of you and to ms. Sames and my beloved vivian nixon, you know im very aware that often visible leadership of the movement to end mass incarceration is often meant and yet working has been doing what i do as women doing the everyday hard lift of the work all of the time not always in front of the mic. Sometimes you dont know their name. Sometimes you dont even notice their bodies. Theyre out there. And i see it all of the time. I have a privilege and i wonder if you would talk a little bit about what women need to be supported and doing the work of ending mass incarceration and ensuring community that is safe for all of our fam