You dont know what will happen, people in japan, talking about from tokyo to ferguson justice. You just never know whats going to happen. Dont think you cant make a difference. You can make a difference young and old alike. Theres a Michael Brown in every community in america. There is a tamir wright a trayvon, Alicia Thomas monroe bird. And the list can go on and on, in every community. You hear about black boys getting shot in the back we dont do anything with your position and stature. That will make somebody look a little further into the matter. If you just did anything and you hear people, thank god for the young people. Im here, the cap stone Howard University. And i know cspan is covering this stuff i want to give zhu to way young man who said, i can make a difference. It was a Howard Law School student who called my office when trayvon we cant get nobody to cover it, im out here saying, im calling all my friends in the media michelle. Theyre like okay a little black boy got killed. Why is that newsworthy. You know thats almost like a little black boys getting killed . Im like, but it was a Neighborhood Watch. I hadnt even said anything about race or anything. I just thought, a Neighborhood Watch volunteer can kill an unarmed child, and nobody thinks its a big deal, it was this little boy at Howard University because the young people got on social media they started talking about, this kid calling me up while he was studying. He said, i was thinking after reading about i read your article on trayvon, i want to start a petition online to see did that can help. I want to get your permission and see if it was okay and ask his familys permission. I said no any help. Anything you can do will help. And that kid, that one kid who thought that i need to do something started the largest petition in the history of change. Org. They still havent gotten anywhere close to getting 2. 7 Million People to go, you know, take the time and fill out the form to sign the petition like that there but that was all because of one Howard University student saying, i can make a difference. To the school of davinitity mr. Harris ladies and gentlemen and america, that kid gave the best example of how we change a moment into a movement. You just step up and try to do right. Thank you, god bless. [ applause ] thank you very much for those words and your thoughts. I got it right, thank you. Miss rice, i know its very painful. As a father of four children. One of them a little black boy. I worry every time hes out. I know a lot of the parents who have black sons. We worry about our children. We worry about our little black boys. I know its very difficult. And i know what youve gone through having read some of the articles in cheefld. Written about you. And whats going on with you and your family. Would you feel comfortable coming up and sharing from your perspective something about tamir. Can you tell us something about your son, something about that day . Can you take a minute . Will you help me welcome miss rice . [ applause ] well can you hear me . Can you hear me . Yes. I just want to first off say that i have a god of my understanding, and that is the only way that im standing along with the supports nation and my family. Me right now, i am grateful to be here and im honored to be here, and thank you for welcoming me here. A little about tamir was the youngest of four. And he was my special child. He was very bright and very talented in a lot of things. You know you always want your kids to see things that they do along with your health. So, you know, of course i played a major part with his schooling, being at his school making sure he was at after School Activities where he wouldnt have to be on the streets. You know what im saying . Just gave him structure. I believe in that a lot. You cant watch every second things that your children do unfortunately. He had a promising career. Loved all sports and a great swimmer. Helper, he was a helper at his school by him being so tall. And maybe almost the tallest one in his school even in the sixth grade, he was up there with the eighth graders, as tall as they was. Sometimes they would ask tamir to get things off shelves and stuff. This is the teacher, the principal. They kind of worked with me with him. You know and i was grateful for that that. Like i said, great helper he was just helping them with the Halloween Program over at the Recreation Center across the street from my house. Everybody loved them up there. The whole community knew him. I had just been over there almost a year. I just try to do the best i can as a single mom. Im a human being and im a vulnerable human being at this point. People like me where i come from and obstacles that i had to go through, sometimes we make it, but a lot of times we dont. I knew my kids was going to make it. My other three children, theyre going to make it too but i knew my son had a promising career thats all i could tell you. He excelled in everything. He was just recently put on the drum line at his school. So he had a lot of talent and tricks and just a wonderful kid. Beautiful smile. Everywhere i went they always say my children are mannerable and nice, i take pride in that, i invested a lot in that. I made a lot of sacrifices for myself too. Just to make sure that they have things that they need. Why dont you tell them about that day. Okay. I was robbed of that i was robbed of my sons future. A little about that day is its a normal saturday. I had just fixed lunch for taji and tamir and they ate their lunch. And went outside, gave them a couple dollars to go to the store. I didnt think nothing of it, it was a normal day. They always go to the rink free wifi up there, they get to play in the gym, the gameroom, theres a lot of staff up there they can call me if my kids is up there misbehaving at any time im on speed dial. But like i said, normal day for me. I got a knock at the door. It had to be about 3 30. They had just left, it wasnt even 30 minutes they had just left out the door, and i got a knock at the door, and two children just told me the police just shot your son twice in the stomach. I was in disbelief, im like no, not my kids, no, they know, no no. They were there at the time he was sick. Got had put the strength for him to run out there with no shoes on and no jacket. It was chilly that day, not so much snow on the ground but it was chilly he beat me over there. When i arrived on the scene i was still in disbelief, but when i arrived on the scene i seen my 12yearold son laying on the ground just wondering, what did he do . What happened . Whats going on. The police told me to as i was charging toward them trying to get to my son, they told me to calm down or they were going to put me in the back of the police car. My 14yearold daughter was in the back of the police car in handcuffs. I asked them to let her out. They gave me an ultimatum to either stay with my 14yearold or go with my 12yearold in the ambulance that day. They made me sit in the front seat of the ambulance. My other son, when i arrived on the scene, they were puts my other son in the police car, he was trying to get to his little brother. I have two children in the police car them giving me an ultimatum to stay with the 14yearold or go with the 12 12yearold. And thats just how my day was that day its been a nightmare ever since. Its been a nightmare. Were doing the best we can under the circumstances but i just never thought id be in a situation like this, ever. Im a mom. Im vulnerable. And i never thought im still numb to the situation a lot yall, im still numb, i still cant believe it. Im still waiting for answer ss. But what i can say is that i also well some of the community has created a petition on change. Org p cuyahogacounty. Its to make sure we keep the pressure on the prosecutor for a conviction. Also. We have a gofundme account in tamir rices name for donations if we can. Im planning a Community Healing festival june 20th. Tamirs birthday is june 25th he would have been 13. Having a Community Healing. So i hope you guys can come june 20th. I thank you. [ applause ] first id like to i do a lot of public speaking, i moderate a lot of panels and its very natural and easy for me to get up to speak. I dont know how you did it, thank you. I know that we will all say, no matter what happened, we cannot the loss of a child the idea of seeing your son lay on the ground like that, and i know that our prayers are with you and god bless you and your family. Moving on with our rebuttals id like to put in the middle of the lawyers a theologian. Well get a chance to if you dont mind going last all right. Were going to bring up professor trulier to talk about these issues. We called a respondent, hes going to respond in a way. I think youll not hear a lot of people actually disagreeing with these concepts. These are concepts were looking for solutions for and theyre real every day issues. Professor am you take a moment to share some of your thoughts on these issues . They set it up first for our respondents to speak from the table. I think it would be easier to stand and address the audience. Harold dean moore. Why at a school of davinitity have this presentation . Attorney crump has said that life matters. He named names of people whos lives matter. In the christian tradition. We believe that life matters because life is a gift. And that all human beings are created in the image of god. And so when you take a life, you snuff out the image of god. Every life matters which means that we need a vocabulary to talk about our young black plaels and the other constituencies that attorney crump had mentioned. That does not demonize and does not dehumanize. We have to stop drinking the thug koolaid. We have to stop drinking the around malkoolaid. We have to stop with the name calling and the object if iing that we our sfls in the name of distancing ourselves from them. The second thing that came out for me out of this, aside from theology of life matters, is his notation that these instances belong to all of us. One of the thijss that ive been doing over the last 30 years is working at the intersection between religion, the Faith Community and the criminal Justice System, i started working in 1977 with first offenders in passaic county, new jersey. I worked with joe clark at east side high school. I talked at hsinghsing, religion, and in all of that time, one of the things thats become very clear to me is that the only reason that this is not every black congregations issues is that we dont want it to be. Were ashamed. What weve done is we have taken a real life situation that is germane to every single africanamerican congregation in america and turned it into an issue. Folks dont deal with issues. They deal with people. One of the things were trying to surface is how many of us as human beings are impacted by this system. Whether it is as victims and by the way, the new language is not victims, its surviveorsurvivors. If youre a survivor, that means you made it through something. Were talking now about survivors, youre a survivor of a situation or whether you are someone who has a son or a daughter who is actually in the system. Because one of the things we dont talk about much is that 80 of all young black males who are incarcerated are crime survivors, they dont think of themselves that way. But the institute has done research and weve zwoverred that when you interview young men who have been incarcerated, come home have you ever been the victim of a crime . A survivor of a crime . No, no, no no, never. Who have been jumped by somebody with no cause . They put their hans up. How many of you have had something taken from you by force . They put their hands up, homes burglarized . They put their hands up. They have been victimized they have survived trauma. And unless we are engaged in helping them deal with the trauma theyre bound to repeat the trauma. The problem is we see them as someone out there. We dont see them as our children. We dont see them as our grandchildren. But i guarantee you if you were to do an altar call like i will this sunday and ask for every parent and grandparent that has a child whos been impacted by this system, whether its by a wrongful incarceration or wrongful arrest or whether its been by an incarceration or arrest, i guarantee you that between one third and one half of the congregation will come forward. This is our issue. I used to try to distance myself until i was incarcerated. I dont have one of those rags to riches things. You grow up in the hood, and youre a bad kid and you meet jesus. Unlike those of you who have sinned since you became religious religious. And i drank the shame koolaid, i dont want anybody to know that i was in trouble. So i gave them a phony nickname. Call me doc. That meant i was the only inmate that had a monogrammed jumpsuit. That took a while. And so i was okay for two weeks until a young man came up to me and said pastor . I said, i dont know you. He said i used to play drums in your choir. I said, i dont know you. He told me his mothers name she was on my staff. Before i got out of that facility, i met seven young men whose mothers, sisters wives and cousins i had pastor eded. Every single one of those kids on our streets are connected to us. And the way that we turn this from a moment to a movement i could go on, tell you about my time at Cuyahoga County juvi. We did some of this work with them, we had to get the church to understand that those are not somebody elses kids many the way you turn a moment into a movement is by turning it from an issue to a face. Attorney martin called me a theo loathen. Im a sociologist, they just let me teach here. And one of the things we know from socialized research is that congregations, the Faith Community is not motivated by issues. You can tell the Faith Community to do this because its right until youre blue in the face and they wont budge. But if you can link the issue to a face, if you can shift from narratives to name. If you can move from numbers to names. If you can move from statistics to stories. Then you can move the Faith Community to get involved and invested. Put a face on it, and now we have faces. Weve got eric garner we have trayvon martin, we have tamir rice, we have walter scott, we have faces. The civil rights moment, a oneday boycott in montgomery, became a longstanding movement because it had a face. Read Martin Luther kings speech launching the boycott in montgomery, you will find that one third of it is look what they did to miss parks. Segregation had been wrong for a long time look what they did to miss marks. Discrimination had been wrong for a long time look what they did to miss parks. And youre right attorney martin, this isnt new. Weve had lynchings, weve had police brutality. Weve had bad cops doing bad things to good people. Thats not new. But today is the day we say, look what they did to tamir. [ applause ] we told you wed have some interesting thoughts for you. And some comments. And we have saved our best for last last. The within i say weve saved our best for last, the concept of Community Policing is a concept that once was believed to have been one of the best techniques for controlling conduct in a community. If someone is selling dope down the street everybody between the houses knows whos selling that stuff. If someones committed a crime in your neighborhood everyone knows whos committing those crime crimes. The best way to figure out whats growing on in the community is to ask the community. With that, im going to bring in an assistant attorney general from new jersey who has put a lot of her effort ss into understanding these crimes and not just accepting that theyve occurred, but trying to see what happens tomorrow with either reentry, Community Aspects or second chances. With that, assistant attorney general moore, would you share some thoughts with us . Yes i will. Thank you. [ applause ] i just want to start by thanking the Howard Family for having us here. And all of our distinguished guests. I want to thank you, dr. Harris for allowing us to be a part of this process. I also wanted to thank Jennifer Nash whos joining me now, whos going to help me. We have a quick power point were going to share with you. The first thing i want to share with you, is that weve been engaged in doing some wonderful things around Community Police partnerships. Weve been figuring out what needs to be done by having conversations with Community Talking to noble talking to Law Enforcement, having the conversations with neighbors. Talking to youth understanding what the issues are, and then we take a look at the data, and put all those pieces together and think about some strategies that we think make sense. There are a couple strategies, one were going to get to. I want to share the first one, and personally these are being raised here today these involve our Faith Partners. We do a lot of work with clergy all around the state. But we have one in particular called fugitive safe surrender, it was a program started by the United States marshalls service, when an officer was shot and killed during a routine traffic stop. As a result the United States marshalls came to the faith communities and said, we need you to help us, and what wed like for you to do is bring in folks who are wanted on misdemeanor, lets see if we cant clear up those matters if you would, were going to walk you through some of that. As we did fugitive safe surrender, we began to do first what we knew, the numbers, how many warrants how many people were involved we then began to look at communities that would help us we started by going to the Faith Community and working with them to say, hey, listen. Would you help us . And that brings me back to a comment that was just said moments ago. And one of the things that was said is that faith communities are not motivated by the issues. What we found is that when we knocked on the door, when we said we need your help, wed like for y