My mom used to say i know but i cant put my finger on it. I knew, but i just couldnt name it and described it and the new jim crow put everything that i experienced through the criminal Justice System, through my community in plain and distinct order. So as i stayed around and continued the work, my understanding and analysis grew and with that, my commitment and determination grew to change things. Not only for myself, but for everybody who crossed my path. And that resulted in Movement Building and systems change, in Leadership Development and in building a Strong Community that sticks advice together thank you for that. Susan, let me ask this of both of you because you talk about your own sort of narrativearc or your learning curve. Michelle, certainly before that as well and im very aware that we have a much larger consciousness about ending mass incarceration now. It wasnt this big when we started critical resistance in 1997 with angela davis and i wonder what it was that was disruptive in our own community and this is for both of you, that can allow 2. 2 Million People to go missing on our watch . Is there any false sense of morality that disrupts our freedom, have the politics of respectability gotten in the way of where we need to be as a community and people, this is for both of you. I would say that the real genius of the system of mass incarceration is that it leaves those who are trapped within it as well as their families to blame themselves almost entirely for their experience. When i grew up i used an experiment with drugs. I hung out withpeople who stole. We jumped into a car that wasnt ours and went joyriding. But i live in a solidly middleclass community where the police were not stopping and searching and frisking us. And i committed those crimes and misdemeanors and went off to college and went off to law school and live the rest of my life, never for a minute feeling guilty or tortured by the fact that i got high when i was in high school or college, never feeling a sense of deep unworthiness. Barack obama did all those things, maybe not all those things but a lot of them and he went on to bepresident of the united states. But in so many of our communities, the young people screw up and mess up and they get in trouble like young people do, like human beings do because we all make mistakes. We all stumble and fail. And those young people get branded and shamed and locked in literal cages and dehumanized and then when they are released, they are stripped of all 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 often blame themselves and their families will often blame themselves and, why cant you just get a job . Whats wrong with you . Why are you back out on the streets . Why cant you get it together. And the system of mass incarceration turned our communities against each other. And the reality is that people of all colors have used and sold drugs at nearly identical rates for decades. But its only been black and brown folks who have been shamed and demonized and stigmatized and locked up and locked out. And when crime rates rose in the 1980s, violent crimerates rose , few people in government stood back and said what was going on . How can we help . Because the reality was that work had disappeared. Jobs had vanished due to global capitalism factories closed down and moved overseas. There was economic collapse in inner cities and we could have helped. We could have responded with bailout packages andstimulus plans and investing in schools but instead, a literal war was declared on the poorest and most vulnerable and we wound up blaming and shaming ourselves. And i hope that we are moving beyond that. And that we 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 the new way of life, the organization that susan has founded his silver firmly committed to healing, coming together in circles of honesty, providing support to one another and then getting to work building of movement to end the system of mass incarceration and restore basic civil and human rights to each and every one of us. Thats a different answer, i have to thank you so much but let me add something to that as we pivoted a little bit and we begin to talk about a new way of life and organization is also near and dear to my heart and just thinking, many of us dont realize because of the sheer numbers of men in prison that actually black womens numbers and womens numbers that have gone up actually doubled the rate of the numbers of men 132 percent in the last 25 years or so with black women far exceeding that and i wonder if you would talk a little bit about what we need to know about the experience of women who are incarcerated and in particular to women who are incarcerated. So in the book i talk about my Life Experience but its not just my Life Experience, the experience of most incarcerated women. I think theres a message and i know through conversation that the women 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 in their latter years . In california, for 50 years there was one prison and when the war on drugs that our community, california built the 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 mouths. Thinking and talking about what they want to do and how they want to do but i see the fear and i feel the fear rolling off of them as they want to create a new life and want to take on rebuilding their lives and get their children back and come back in the community. Safe, so. Susan, i was thinking about the experience inside. I remember when i was going to visit my husband and prison, raining, the dead of winter, the packages or babies were wrapped like this and when i started visiting in 1991 there were bands that would come to my area pick me up. At the time that ended, there were buses, Bus Companies coming to do it and what i never felt was what i taught in a womens prison here and in Desperate Health there was never a line. There was nobody going to visit the women and i had to volunteer there. I would get paid to teach in mens prisons and womens prisons because there was almost no services available. Thats like 20 years or so the lives of the people that going to see, the few that do, as a mother or grandmother, a husband can get there to to visit, to try to keep the ties in the bonds. There was rhetoric coming out of the white house about welfare queens and crack mamas and so forth and i think that just penetrated the fabric of our communities and our societies, to say that this is the black woman and she shouldnt have done what she did and were just going to throw her away but we are not throwing away people. We do not throw away women. [applause] we hold potential power, love , groundedness. You know, the future of our community. And i just want to say we are back and we are coming strong. And we are going to repair and we are going to lead and we are going to stand sidebyside. And make our communities safe and whole again. Were going to put the bandaid on our kids needs and were going to stand in the gap when those people are coming in saying no, you cant have this one. And you know, were going to do this by the dozens, by the hundreds, by the thousands, by the millions and we are taking that now as we speak. So i want to call out a few people in the audience. I see Cynthia Nixon back there, college and community partnership, shes educating all the women. And i see councilmembers over here, yes. So i want the councilmembers to stand, donna, i dont know how many of you are out here but i know email went out so these are the warrior women on the front lines so its not like im going to do all this, we are going to do this and all of you too. 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 whole and thats what i propose. [applause] susan, are you saying that cynthia can endorse from california or expand . Yes. And thats in just and i want to ask to be get sanders to stand because you all have to wrap your love and your prayers around miss toby to sams because shes going to start a home for women, a safe house where women can come to and get that supports , leadership, guidance that they can come and join and be a part of this movement to. So you all remember op for sanders, a member here. Her dad, hes a deacon here. Her pastor is right over there. And you all wrap your arms around her as she takes on this struggleand this fight because its not easy. [applause] you know, to both of you, and to miss sams and vivian nixon, im very aware that the often visible leadership of the movement to end mass incarceration is often men and yet, working has been doing what i do, i see women doing the every day hard lift of the work all the time, not always in front ofthe mic. Sometimes you dont know their names. Sometimes you dont even know that theyre here. I see it all the time. I have the privilege to work with as many folks so i wonder if you would talk about what women need to be supported in doing the work of ending mass incarceration and ensuring a community that is justin safe for all our families. So you want to take the first shot back . Id like to acknowledge, my book, the new jim crow focus primarily on the experience of black men in our criminal Justice System and i framed the book in that way primarily because the book was inspired by my experiences working as a civil rights lawyer representing racial profiling and mortality and the overwhelming majority of the people who were being stopped and frisked and thrown in the streets and were black and brown men. And yet publishing the book and even while i was writing it, i was very much aware that there was an untold story about the experiences of women in our prison system but also the experience of women who are doing time on the outside. Who are the ones who are kind of pulling together families while love ones are cycling in and out of prisons, who are the places where people return home to. Theyre the people who are driving and taking their kids on buses. Sometimes hundreds of miles to a womens prison so they can see their mom or their dad who is locked up and their cousins and this experience of women in the era of mass incarceration deserves far more attention than it has received and its one of the reasons i was so thrilled when susan was willing to tell her story and to really shine a light on the experience, particularly of women in the era of mass incarceration and i know we wont have time here tonight to, for susan to tell her entire story but i hope everyone here will really take the time to read the book because her story of going from drug addiction after an la Police Officer drove over and killed her fiveyearold son in the street , her story is succumbing to addiction because no other support was available. And cycling in and out of prison for 15 years, never being offered help or treatment. Not getting access to work, not even having access to food stamps because she was a drug offender. No food for you. Cycling in and out of prison for 15 years until finally she got access to a private Drug Treatment Program and after she got clean and got a job decided she was going to vote devote the rest of her life to making sure no other woman would have to go go through what she went through. Thats who she is. [applause] thats susans story and she began by going down to the present boss with nothing but a card, meaning people with nothing but a cardboard boxand saying come home with me. Just sleep on my floor. You dont have to turn to the streets tonight. And thats how a new way of life began because she opened her own home to strangers. And welcomed them in. And then created five homes for women so i just hope that your story doesnt get lost here. And that we read your story carefully. And learn whats possible when we come together with love to try to save one another. Ill just give just a moment, that was so spectacular and beautifully said, thank you for saying that about susans work , [applause] they werent all strangers, those were my home girls. And my home girls needed a little love to. What was so amazing to me is where i got that treatment and santa monica, we could walk three blocks to the beach and you know, i was so fortunate to be there and get what i got there but i couldnt understand why we didnt have better in south la too. You know, why in this community for what i went to prison for over and over again, they got a court card. Andcommunity service. And treatment placement. I remember throwing my soul out to the judge and saying your honor, a policeman killed my son. And i used the drugs. I said is there any help for me . And he told me 18 months in prison. You know, so when i saw and experienced Something Different, i felt that this Something Different was not only good for me, it would be good in my community too. So for us the story and the journey began. And you know, im just really thankful and grateful that im able to give what i do because there are women just like me who have spent 30 and 40, 47 years is the longest time that someone spent inside a new way of life. And i am glad thats not me. So you know, my pay forward is just what i do. And im grateful to be able to do it. But as we go about our daily lives, this probably is the thing that all of us can do that would make a huge difference to someone who just needs a hand up. So i just want to say, those were my home girls. That i brought home. Just before i turned to the audience and see if theres any questions people want to ask and if there are i would ask you to line up now because we dont have a whole lot of time. Tell us about your son, bring him into this space for us. Bring your baby here. The day my son left, i went to pick him up from school and we walked home and i went in the house and he went out to play. I was cooking dinner and he brought in this pink chrysanthemum. He said this is for you, mama and i took it and aunts were all over myhand. And he went back out to play. He was rambunctious and very adventurous. I can remember him bringing me an ice cream stick and saying this is for the fireplace. You know, and the car screeched and i hit him and the policeman never got out of the car. That would have been hit and run, manslaughter for me. The Police Department never said im sorry. They never sent a flower or even acknowledged the loss. So today, whenever one of our black men are killed, i feel it all over again. And then when the verdict comes back and says hes not going to be charged, i feel it all over again. So that was my man and hes smiling down on us today and hes cheering us on and clearing the way. I feel that. So. Way say his name, thank you so much. Kay kay. I dont think we will be able to get more questions and i just asked people to the extent, were in a church too so theres that. To capsule as much as we can so we can get to as many questions as we can and get to the final question for our guest. My name is thomas lopez , a member here at abyssinian and im a candidate for city council in west harlem and miss alexander, im reading your book where you talk about where black people have gone from exploitation slavery to marginalization to mass incarceration and through mass incarceration, my question is where do you see the future for the black male when in new york city 40 percent of black men have dropped out of high school for the last 30 years . Where do you see us in an economy thats rooted in education, not government jobs and where service jobs can no longer support the family . Thank you for your question and were living in a time right now where there are going to be fewer and fewer Jobs Available for people who are what are considered unskilled. People who either dropped out of high school or have a college degree. There is a time when you didnt even necessarily have to finish high school in order to get a good job that could support yourself and family, you could get a good factory job. You could get a good industrial job and support yourself and family. Thats not true anymore because of global capitalism and deindustrialization, factories have closed down, moved overseas and left entire communities and neighborhoods devastated and there is no plan to save us. The war on drugs and the get tough movement was a response in many ways to communities that are no longer needed but are deemed disposable. During slavery, we were needed whether you were male or female, you were needed in the field. During jim crow, there wasa role for us as well and if people fled , jim crow and they came to northern cities, they were able to work in factories to support themselves and now those jobs are gone. And there is no plan to invest heavily in our inner city schools or in the neighborhoods that have been hardest hit by mass incarceration and so i fear that even as our prison system may be downsized somewhat, that we will seize technological forms of surveillance and control in our communities. Gps Monitoring Systems slapped on our kids at young ages thatnever come off. Inhome surveillance systems. Ways of keeping communities that are seen as no longer necessary to the functioning of the American Society under control and in check but this is not the way the story has to end. Thats right, thats right and its up to us and it can seem overwhelming and deeply depressing, particularly in a time like this where the president like the one weve got but our communities have faced greater obstacles. Thats right. There was a time when it seemed like it would never end, when Harriet Tubman was planning her escape route reedit it seemed crazy to imagine that slavery would come to an end and it did and ordinary people who didnt have the right to vote organized and mobilized and brought the old jim crow to its knees. We can do this. We can reverse a new america, a multiracial, multiethnic democracy where everyone has a right to work, a right to quality education. Our right to healthcare. The basic civil and human rights people take for granted in other nations, we can birth and america right here that honors the voices and lives of each and every one of us but it wont happen if we do not commit ourselves thoroughly and with great passion and conviction precisely the way susan burton has demonstrated in her own life. So i view her as a model,