A students . How many people in the adult prison system right now graduated Phi Beta Kappa . Right . There are correlations that we have to understand and be honest about. And so when we are watching the growth of the juvenile Justice System and the adult prison system, the adult prison system when you look at the fact that 64 of people have some form of interaction with the juvenile Justice System. The adult prison system is kids involved in a juvenile justice and we have now simply gotten older and are committing more serious crime and are now more heavily involved in what is now an adult system. System. That is how that evolution, talk about the pipeline, thats the pipeline the people are talking about. So be able to address these things at their core, like education, education free, but even once aa person gets involved, what is that education that we can provide . And there is a 3rda 3rd thing which becomes another critically important piece, this piece on economics. I remember when we were in afghanistan, someone told us something that one of my platoon sergeant said that i thought was so right. He said, who is the most dangerous person we have out here . And of course, the natural answers became taliban and i got a group and al qaeda. Andqaeda. And his point was, it is the person that has not worked in 24 months. That is the most dangerous person we have out here and here is why. Because when a person has worked in 24 months, they have no problem with someone walks of them and says, go to the top beverage, and when you see an american convoy rolled by, push send on the cell phone because that will then detonate an ied. And for every confirmed kill that you can show us that you have from your action, i will give you 75. That now has just become a stream of employment for this person, and that person has now just become the most dangerous person we fight in afghanistan. We have to be able to think about how economics play into this as well. Both economics not just in terms of any people to do more in terms of hiring, but there are people doing certain movements and things that can be positive and good but how to create an entrepreneurial class and culture and support the things were grow new businesses, hire more people , and they can turn in charge partners themselves . How do we prevent opportunities for growth, personal, personal, societal, spiritual, etc. , for people who might admit mistakes . And i think if we can do that there are some tremendous opportunities that we know command i think baltimore in many ways can be a National Example when you think about the foundation that we have here. And im not talking about financial foundation, the societal foundation that we have here. But it means were going to have to be deliberate and aggressive. If you look a cities that have grown and cities have done really well over time, when i, when i think about the growth of cities like boston and atlanta and dinner, etc. , those were not by accident. It is because they were maniacally disciplined and because they were focused on the growth. When you look at what Michael Hancock and the work he is doing in denver, denver is not growing because it is an accident. Denver is growing because it is intentional. When you look at the growth of atlanta overpass generations, that was not an accident. I was because Maynard Jackson and a group of other said, no, we will be deliberate about a level of growth and how do we not just come up with a cherry picking Growth Strategy but incorporate all members of our society, even those who might have made stakes. The 95 percent are coming home are part of that Growth Strategy two, they have to be. What we are going to do at this time is lets see if we can get [applause] [applause] the book, the work, and you will have an opportunity at the close of this part of the presentation to purchase a copy of the book. He will take the time to sign the book and get a few copies for your family and friends as well. And these are not just history but the story of many of the works that are being done, Amazing Things in the community to make sure that the work stays lit for many of us. We will be doing that in the tent right up there right around the corner here not too far, literally right outside their. You can getyou can get a copy of the work written. Again, thank you so much for your questions and passing information. We are happy that he has but thisput this book out, not just a story, its really like a how to guide. Get to your passion and your work so that you can be truly successful and live a meaningful, well lived life. [applause] [inaudible conversations] a Panel Discussion on issues facing the city. Volunteers are on hand, and they are happy to accept a donation. Thank you for helping to keep the baltimore book festival free. D watkins is a columnist. His work is been published in the new york times, huffington post, aion, the guardian, and other magazines. He is a College Professor and has also been the recipient of numerous awards including a fellowship,a fellowship, baltimore magazines best writer award for 2015 in the baltimore business journals 40 and under list. Under 40 list. A knewa new minority, the author of six books including his highly acclaimed memoir white like me, reflections on race properly son. His next book under the affluence of shaming the poor, praising the rich and jeopardizing the future of america will be released in early 2015. Has contributed to over 25 additional books. Stephen janis is an awardwinning investigative journalist. Print and television. He won to maryland dc delaware print Association Awards for his work on the number of unsolved murders in baltimore and the killings of prostitutes. As an investigative producer he has won three successive capital emmys for best investigative series and is currently an investigative journalist for the Real News Network and nonprofit news service in baltimore. Cherry park, the strong black woman in American Life and culture, the research focuses on public ascetics, the particular concern for popculture as public mythology and its effects on individuals, families, and minority culture, inactive and is in demand as a public speaker. Active in the university as a Steering Committee member of the coalition for Civic Engagement. In 2008 she was2,000 and she was recognized by the campus is not standing woman of color. The University Honors program and lets dispense the limits of hip hop and black politics, associate professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins university who specializes in the study of black racial and urban politics in the wake of the neoliberal turn, and awardwinning scholar in 2013 when he sees the distinguished book award and teacher and 2009 received an excellent asis teaching award. Can be regularly aired on National Public radio. Next book will be out at the end of october. Please welcome our esteemed panelists. [applause] what i am going to do is start with letting the panelists, beginning with Lester Spence kind of describe what their individual books are about. Zero, wow. Thank you very much. I knew that i was in the right place when i saw theyi saw they had a book festival because it meant that baltimore was literate and i wanted to be in a place where people like to read and reading mattered. I am really interested in kind of the reproduction of any quality within black spaces. If youspaces. If you look at any quality across time from 1929 or so until the present, it takes the shape of athe you, really really high level in 1929, low levels in 1950 or so and really high levels now. We havenow. We have higher levels of inequality now than we did in the great depression. Why is it taking the shape . Wisely because of politics. You have the new deal, the Great Society that gave workers the right to organize, gave us a social safety net, and it made aa number of types of segregation or Racial Discrimination illegal. Those policies were kind of gradually peel back starting in 1970 or so, and that has an effect, if you look both enter racially, but it also has an effect within black communities. So if you look of black communities, a black politics approach as opposed to a racial politics approach that is, if you look within black community solely as opposed to comparing them to why communities. Some black people with a lot of bit aloof, some with a little bit of the. And what you see consistently particularly in his modern moment i black elites justifying why that loot is distributed the way that it is a that is, why poor black people are where they are, why black people are workingclass where they are. What im interested in doing with my next book is seeing how that dynamic plays out in black churches. Youre talking about the rise of prosperity. Increasingly forced to the entrepreneurial and look at downtown development. Basically thats why books about. Thank you. I area public ascetics, how that moves to their lives and families and cultures. In and around the city that we will talk about later. Heres angels argues that black women have already perfected an organic leadership model that they practice every day that is often unrecognized. And that is the invoice. The 1st records Creation Stories and argued the sacred dark feminine and the strong black woman of the same model. The mother of herself. The darkness before. Does anything. So i often get in trouble with people for saying these things. I street her through african and european history because ii argue that by the time slaveowners and sabine arrived they both already have a narrative. Brilliant, strong, and interested in other peoples problem. The best way to explain this is look around at the high number of security guards in the city. And i asked the women, hired a lot of them, why it is said, they can do everything how many times have you heard those. Im a natural woman. Im everywhere i can do everything. They are Strong Enough that no one is going to go up against them. They are highly nurturant. That figure is on lockdown. And often black women position themselves behind men and often when im in an allblack situation talking saying this summary raise their hand is is why you supposed to . Going to be two Different Things. Two different types of people. Going through some type of healthcare disparity. Why we are the way we are and help you recognize humanity exists within all this. He can be a black person in a Housing Project or you can be a top ranking ku klux klan member. Eithermember. Either way, both of those guys probably like ice cream. If story is relevant and you have a place in society. That is what i had in mind. Hopefully we can talk about some of those things tonight. So, most of my work, as some of you know, deals with eradicating White Supremacy, addressing White Privilege, institutional racism, and does that singly focus on that under the effluents connected to that, but it that, but it also is an attempt to examine the connection between economic disparity as a general classbasedclass based phenomenon and White Supremacy as a specific aspect of that. Essentially because when you look around there are a lot of people talking about any quality. Every now and then politicians talk about it, but neither occupy white dominated leftist movement for very little acknowledgment of White Supremacy, very little supremacy, very little knowledge of the role of privilege even within there own space not just with the larger analysis. A lot of people are talking about that. I argue in the book and document, as many others have done, the ways in which the class system in the United States cannot be understood absent an understanding of White Supremacy. It does not exist without it, it would not exist a strong before it. Butbut for the manipulation away workers and white workers races. A way of seeing the white people. Without that the class system in this system would not be a strong. Rationalized. Is also happening with the white space and we have been conditioned to believe that we are about you. This perfect mechanism for justifying inequality. An old european feudal systems if you were a peasanta peasant you them on the you were a pleasant and you were not going to be royalty. You were done. But in this country we have an ideology that says you are poor today but you will on this tomorrow. You can be a millionaire, billionaire, or folks in england would not have believed that. In this country everyone thinks theyre will be the next bill gates, donald trump, because we have an ideology that says that. If you made it, good on you, if you didnt, shame on you. We dont have to have a salon that solidarity, objectivity. We need to double down and we need to double down and work 60 hours a week, 80 hours a week. And we have a system that justifies all of the disparity using racism as a way toa way to bash poor folks by associating poverty in the with black and brown this which ironically means once they get associated with blackness and brown this whiteness who are struggling for social benefits discussed cut two. Your Unemployment Insurance one away, he labor unions are being weakened, all of the stuff that provides subsidies for working people is being kicked out from the system because of the way in which all of that was racialized has stuff we do for those people over there on that side of town. People looking around. Racials edition a need has led to a situation where for workingclass white folks are also feeling the pinch. Unless we understand, talk about, and address that we are all going to be at the mercy of that one 10th of 1 percent that owns a disproportionate amount of the wealth in this country and the city and state. I was a reporter. Dealing with specifically crime, pain, violence, the eyes of specifically homicide detective. I was thinking about some of the things, people that eyewitnesses reporter covering crime and policing in a city which i guess in a lot of ways i examine some of the specifics. The idea of the path forward is kind of a profound idea. In the world i live in an observed and write about, there is no path forward. There is a psychology of this idea of limitations, limitations of space and limitations of people. I wrote a lot about the zerotolerance policy of the city where hundred thousand people were arrested yearoveryear. I think it is a difficult topic to get to the individual sometimes. It is such a profound effect of the psychology of the city, the psychology of the people who were going to have a work in a corrupt Police Department. So i think before the uprising, we did a lot of writing about it. Something that hangs over the head of the city. And we are the city, as a person who writes about the people here, a lot of times the way forward is certainly not the main focus. Dealing with things that happened in the past and the pain of those policies has inflicted changing the psychology. So the name on the title for this discussion is baltimore the path forward for the future of baltimores Diverse Communities and what it takes to unify city. I would offer this to start the conversation. May 151911 Baltimore Mayor pendant signed into effect the 1st line the nation that directly created segregated housing of black and white homeowners. So basically baltimore invented segregation housing amongst all the other great things that we have done. And many of those lines that were made distinct on somewhat in movable warming in place. My question to the panels, have we ever in the history of this city really ever been truly unified as we try to seek that type of unity . Have we ever really been unify . I would sayi would say that the most i feel as a reporter was during the uprising there was something that i think a lot of us did not think was possible. Certainly during that time that was the most unified ive ever seen in the city in terms of trying to solve or overcome something. Generally its a small neighborhood, small little village, a collection of 250 it is very difficult to draw those lines. We are unified when the ravens win the super bowl. And so outside of euphoria and catastrophe, i guess the. Is, have we ever been in that kind of place where there was really unity to speak up . I am having difficulty remembering a time when that was actually true. Definitely the super bowl, but what i think the uprising did was because he got so much media coverage, i think that so many people who do not believe these types of things happen pope were not aware were almost forced to read about it and see it so that they felt energized and wanted to do something. I have never seen that many white people on north avenue in my life. Somebody put a smoothie stand up. All of these Different Things going on. One thing i took away from that was what do we do with this energy now . None of these people are aware of these situations. Before camera phones a lot of people didnt think these murders were vor existed. Now that we know the big question is how to move forward. I felt like i had been living into baltimores my whole life. I no why people and i no black people who will never meet each other under any circumstances. So the bigger question for me is to go along with what you asked, now that we have this moment out of the capitalize on it . I want to piggyback on that because i think most black people with privilege him back and forth on a regular basis and meet people every day. I think that is a reality that particularly are white friends did not know about. After ferguson but before freddie rate at affluent churchmen past what people of faith to do. One of theone of the things i said in passing was that it was baltimore. This could be baltimore. It has been bal