Book tv. Org. Good evening everyone. My name is ware harmon, and im the executive director of town hall seattle on behalf of our team as well as our friends at Elliot Bay Book company. Its a pleasure to welcome you to tonights presentation of dereka pernell in conversation with Nikkita Oliver and darnell, elmore. As we get underway, i want to acknowledge that our institution stands on the unceded traditional territory of the coast salish people in particularly the duwamish we thank them for our continuing use of the Natural Resources of their ancestral homeland. Were very glad youve joined us for tonights virtual event, which will likely run around 60 minutes including q a. Integrate our audience experiences on those nights when we have live audiences in the building. Weve changed the q a platform this year to submit your question. 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With all of that dereka pernell is a human rights lawyer writer and organizer who works to end police and prison violence by providing Legal Assistance research and trainings and communitybased organizations through an abolitionist framework a graduate of harvard law. She is the former editorinchief of the harvard journal of African AmericanPublic Policy and her writing has been seen in New York Times the atlantic the guardian cosmopolitan Harpers Bazaar and team vogue among many other spots. Cornell is also appeared on npr democracy now slates. Whats next and msnbc among other Media Outlets erica is in conversation when the key to oliver a seattlebased Creative Community organizer abolitionist educator and attorney. They are the executive director of Creative Justice a youthled communitybased Program Offering and artsbased alternative to incarceration all of our also organizes with no new youth jail. He criminalized seattle covid19 mutual aid seattle and the seattle peoples party. Currently director of inclusion and for content in marketing at netflix darnell l. Moore is a media maker educator and writer focused on marginal Identity Youth Development and other social justice issues in the us and abroad prolific writer. Darnell has been published in various Media Outlets including the New York Times book review the guardian Huffington Post ebony and many more and in 2018. He published the memoir no ashes in the fire. Cornells new book becoming abolitionists Police Protests and the pursuit of freedom is the subject of this evenings discussion. Please join me in welcoming Nikita Oliver darnell, elmore and derrica purnell. Wow. Wow. Derek and nikita higher hello. Hello how to you both . Um, listen, i i know nikita and i are going to go back and forth with some questions for you dereka, but i wanted to start by one thinking seattle town hall for hosting this conversation for hosting you such such an honor to be here supporting you my friend and sister and i just got to say before i jump into a question like its one thing to write a book and i know what it takes to write a book right . Its another thing to write a book that is engaging. Textually rich that possesses clarity of voice thats driven thats even paced at astutely researched necessary and good so kudos to you. Kudos to you. Thank you. So borrowing from what nikita really prompted us to to sort of think through when we talked on the side. Lets start with grounding ourselves grounding you like talking about context that through which you you come to be and the words that you write, who are your people . Where is home what is home or homes . And what are the traditions that you locate yourself in within that have ultimately shaped your abolitionist politics. Wow, thats a beautiful and very very very hard question. Thank you both for being here tonight. Im just so enthusiastic. I have so much respect and excitement for what which i have done in the world, which i continue to do in the world and whatever future holds. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you both yall my people so start there. Where is home for me . So when i think of the word home the first place that comes to mind in, st. Louis . Just saint louis. I realized how midwestern i am whenever i go to new york city or la and im just like well, its a lot of people here a lot of moving a lot of stairs a lot of hustling. And so when i think of home, i think of saint louis i think of hickory street i think of you know, my neighbors on the south side, i think of particular rec centers and particular basketball courts, i think of buddha i think of wolves i think like thats thats what i think of and i think of home i think of my great grandmothers house right where when home was less tumultuous we would gather and celebrate and talk trash and celebrate some more and eat homeless tumbling on top of mattresses and an alley with my little brother before we were getting in trouble. Like thats very much home to me. And home is home is where my where my people are and so over the more and i guess over the last year and i have i have been so lucky to have been quarantined with my sisters. Im the oldest of six i have three younger sisters and weve all been quarantining together and its just been so beautiful because its the first time as adults weve all lived together. Like i kicked out of my mamas house and i was 16 and have gone a bunch of different journeys and have been fortunate to be around people who love me and to care for me and pushed me and challenged me and to be in a space with my sisters. I mean, the circumstances are obviously like ridiculous but to celebrate birthdays with them to spend time with them has just been so rewarding home is my children. Home is my partner and i mean home is at your house my favorite pink bathroom. Its literally like where my people are people i have or people have joy and people are true tellers even when it hurts and so i find some political spaces. I can send them my home right . Its its where i find people are willing to tell the truth when it hurts so that thank you for that question. I mean i want to think think about that some more. For sure go please please i was thinking about the traditions too because its its so much of it is related to like culture and then our political traditions and then theres this marriage between them right so when i think of which traditions i belong to i would say that i belong to people who tell the truth when it hurts. Sometimes they lie to and they take care of each other. They take care of each other. So i would see my mom fights with my aunties and they were still make sure we have food right like its is that like thats a traditional come from like you may Say Something that hurt me or upset me. I may Say Something i offend you and we know that thats temporary. Were gonna try to figure it out. Even if we take our time and im gonna make sure you eat im gonna make sure you have someone to live and then the political traditions. I find the best of them have that too. Its like when people think they ask me hard questions about abolition the hardest questions ive been asked and i ask of others are in those political homes where we fight were over talk each other. Well try to get to the bottom of a campaign and then its like did you get food . Like what you what you ordering for lunch, right . Is that like i consider myself to be a part of that. Addition and i think that tradition is long and storied and i hope to be a good steward of it. Thats so dope, i have a question for you and then i think probably in gleaning from your company from your answer im sure the key does not have something for you too abolitionism and specifically prison and Police Abolition foreign part of a broader tradition right and you trace this across time and place in your book but its one that has reenter the Public Domain and a really interesting way right with force with the type of popularity and you answer this in many ways of your book, but your book is a unique contribution to conversations on abolitionism one that pays homage to the feminist genealogy to decolonizing internationalists Disability JusticeClimate Justice. Racial justice politics, right you do all of that and the pages of less than 300 pages and amid all of the necessary chatter and there i say performative utterances of a type of abolitionism that profits us to sort of talk talk a good game, but not practice abolitionists at like well talk about abolitionists and where the abolitionist shirt and still rely on cars for logics. Im just saying. Yes you youre doing something. Guinness book and it isnt it isnt its a looking back. Its also looking forward. Its a pain homage, but its also a unique intervention why that approach . Why now . Why you why are you writing this book . Right . And what is a particular intervention youre trying to make that you did not come to play. Okay. Wow, so. I think the first thing ill say is that what i hear you describe that i think what i tried to do in the book is pulled together acquire right of all these people who have been singing various songs of liberation. Like its i think thats what that is if i have one way to describe this book. I will hope that im like a quiet director or at least someone who a medium whatever right and so you have all these people from various different traditions right from you know, organizers activists parents lovers people in different parts of the world people with different identities that they organize through and live through what i try to do. Its like show like look at how all these people are influencing this tradition and making this tradition and criticizing this tradition around abolitionism because i dont think its enough for me to be like, hey, derica write a book. Thats like this is what you think. What abolitionist is right. Its i think its so much more complicated than that. What i hope to do is show that well, this is why i learned right . This is how people push me and challenged me. This is how it shaped the person who i am right now and hopefully the person im constantly becoming and here all the interventions that they made not only on some in to my life but into the movement so and so i find myself to be a student of all these people like the idea that some people would say like, oh your expert can you come speak your can you do that . I find myself to be a perpetual student of everyone i talk about in this book. Everyone are right about this book. I remember having a conversation with someone about the Disability Justice chapter and just trembling just trembling because its one of the areas i want to learn more about that. Im like trying to figure out how am i making sure im like, this is a main part when im in organ. Spaces im like bringing this up. Im making sure were include like how it i was so nervous to talk about it, but then to not talk about the role of Disability Justice at activism like and its interventions entire movement would just be wrong. I couldnt tell the story about abolition without telling the story of Climate Change and climate activism and resistance to the warming earth right i couldnt tell a story about abolitionist about talking about the people who survive all kinds of violence Sexual Violence who escaped murder. I mean i couldnt talk about it with out engaging with all of these people who continue to teach me and so i think that the book its someone caught his genre bending which makes me feel like a film or something, but i think the book ultimately came out the way that it came out. Its because ive been very fortunate to be, you know, a student of so many radical thinkers activists storytellers artist. And they have influenced me greatly and continue to influence me. So hopefully that homage it just goes all the way through because thats thats me. Thats who i am. Like thats what made me and so if i do any of them justice, i will be very very very proud of that and the second thing. Ill say really quickly. Is that what i didnt want to happen. Is that precisely for the what you said that you know abolition would you call it perform it performative utterances. I didnt want people to be like i want to be an abolition miss like derica, right . What i hopefully tried to do is say look at all of these people doing so many different kinds of work and theres a entry point for everybody who are trying to figure out how to get free and here are countless examples here different organizations here in different stories. He i tried to do that with a lot of intentionality and so hopefully people can find their people too. Yeah, i love that. Um and also the intersectionality of abolition, i think that often gets overlooked it gets distilled down to being just about prisons or police but ignoring that there are so many factors that actually lead to our dependency upon the carceral system impunative systems which includes Climate Justice it includes, you know justice for survivors. It is a multifaceted abolition should exist in all of our movements, right . You know, you have so many accolades and the thing that actually draws me to you is im also a midwesterner and hearing you talk about saint louis. I almost immediately think about ferguson which for a lot of people was their first entrance into blm as a movement or being aware that about how people were moving and defensive black lives and i remember for myself as an abolitionist or when the worlds abolitionist views very distinctly sitting in a childrens jail here in seattle with a young woman a who was around the age of 17, and she was telling me that she did not feel she could live outside of a jail that she was institutionalized and she 17 telling me this and i had a very distinct moment in a very long journey of thinking wow, we are doing something wrong and i couldnt fully put my finger on what it was, but i knew having a child sitting in front of me telling me that this was the only place they could live for the rest of their life. Man, we were doing something wrong, and i know that for a lot of people saint Louis Ferguson and honestly as an attorney, missouri because of its its its laws, you know, hold a lot of of those moments. Is there a moment in your life that connects to why you wrote this book that really triggered your journey into abolition as a part of your world view. Wow. Wow, i mean, i just just send it so much. Love to that baby. Its just its heartbreaking. You know, its heartbreaking and i mean, we know that its not true, but its heartbreaking and thankful that you know, she has you. I think that before when i used to when i was first access question, i would say its ferguson where i would say, oh, yeah, you know as started law school right after the ferguson uprising Michael Brown was killed about 10 minutes from my house right before i was set to become this civil rights lawyer, but then when i tried to write that in the book like, okay, where would i put this i started remembering all of these other moments of not only National Tragedy but resistance to it. And it was like, oh right like i cant talk about, you know, justice and ferguson the uprising. Its like being a catalyst for abolitionists thinking because i had all these other influences like along the way. And so its hard to say one particular moment. But in the book, i list several that i guess was starting to prepare me, right . I talk about the genesics in louisiana, right the group of black boys who were charged with assault of the Deadly Weapon after they fought a group of white boys and put one