Hes often one of my greatest inspirations. Marilyn mosby is baltimores states attorney. Absolutely give it up for marilyn. Well known for taking bold moves in the pursuit of justice, not as well known, shes become a dear sister friend of mine, also a huge inspiration. Shes doing so much good work to help reform the criminal Justice System in this country, and shes leading the standard with baltimore, so please lets give it up for marilyn. [ applause [ applause ] you might know him from new edition and bell biv devoe. I might break out in the poison dance real quick. But hes here today not for the dance moves and for being a producer extraordinaire, hes also here to help inform this process today. Michael bivins. And next up we have colin warner who well hear a lot more from later in the program, but its so important when we talk about these issues that were not just talking policy. Were talking about the people these issues have actually impacted. So colin warner is here today. Well watch a trailer about his experience later on today, this afternoon. Colin, we welcome you to the stage. Next up we have a wellknown activist here in baltimore an organizer, ray kelly, who found the National Spotlight on his city after freddy grays death. His work has been seen in the department of justices overview of the Baltimore Police departments work. And hes here today to join us and talk about what we can do to impact the policy. Thank you for joining us. Next up the andrea james who is a boston area activist and author who uses her personal experience working in the criminal legal system and then being incarcerated in federal prison to fight reform. We will hear from andrea today on both sides. We welcome you to the panel. Next up we have jewel james who is a Michigan State representative. He is michigans youngest state representative. And before that was the youngest elected City Council Member for the city of we are so often hard on our young people for not being involved. He not only is involved, he ran. Lets give it up for terrell. And last but certainly not least, i call him my mentor, i call him doc, none other than dr. Michael eric dyson to help round out this panel today. You know him very well. Lets give him a warm welcome. Please be seated. Then so you all know, there are folks in the audience who have no cards. Well try to get to your question. So if you see the volunteers holding the note cards, they can take your questions via the note cards this afternoon. Good morning. Good morning. Is it still morning time . Yes, its 11 14. 46 minutes left for morning. I really think its important that before we dive into other pieces of this, we hear the term mass incarceration, criminal Justice Reform so often, and i think we throw them out so much that people start to lose the compassion about the issue. So i really want to take a moment to set the stage. Marilyn, i want to start with you. What mass incarceration really is and why we should care. So just both the definition, how we define it and how it impacts us and why we should care, why we should be utilizing our energy to really throw ourselves in and get involved. Id love for you to use the examples as well. When we talk about mass incarceration, we have to think about for a very long time the criminal Justice System has had a disproportionate impact on communities of color. And weve criminalized our communities in ways in which nonviolent offenders have resulted in a disproportionate impact of individuals, africanamericans being incarcerated. So you know, when we talk about reforming that, its a matter of trying to address the systemic issues and ensuring that we are not just locking up black people based on nonviolent offenses. So next, i want to go to dr. Dyson. I know hes done taking his selfie now. You got to be able to throw shade at your mentor, right . So i want to go to dr. Dyson to answer the same question. Before we get into some of the anecdotes that actually happen to be sitting here with us. Its great to be here with dr. Angela rye and all the other panel here this morning about. When we think about mass incarceration, we think about, as attorney mosby said, the disproportionate concentration of people of color and what we now know as the Prison Industrial Complex which means, local jails, federal jails, and prisons who warehouse disproportionately africanamerican people and latina people. That means that for nonviolent drug offenses that other people are hit on the back of the hand and told, you go home and you become a better johnny or jill, shaniqua and jamal are sent to prison. There sent to prison because theyre introduced to it in terms of detention in public school. Look at the relationship between discipline when your children are kicked out the second and third grade, god knows sometimes even kindergarten. Then they are known as a disciplinary problem. And then they go to detention. Then they are sent from detention to local detention centers. That becomes a feeding cell for a jail cell which becomes a warmup for prison. Again, these are not people who are inherently criminal but they have become as ms. Mosby said, criminal lives. When the honorable ms. Mosby talks about criminalization, that means your children are targeted for specific slots in prison and in jail. Mass incarceration suggests that a disproportionate number of people of color are subjected to this for doing the same offenses that white and other peoples commit. They are given time off, theyre given time release, they are given programs where judges allowed them to work off their time in other fashion. Well, that is not the case for black and brown people. That leads to an accumulation of black and brown bodies in prison. Think about it. In the 80s, we had numbers of people in prison. That has doubled and tripled. Now we have what, 1. 2, 1. 3, 1. 5 Million People in prison, the most of any industrialized nation. Masses of those happen to be people of color. Not only are they doing the same thing, theyre getting harsher sentences in the refusal of judges in some cases because theyre locked in with mandatory minimum sentences which makes a difference when you have an attorney general like eric holder in place and when you have an attorney general like Jeff Sessions in place. Jeff sessions has reignited the war on drugs. And as tupac shakur said, the war on drugs is a war on black and brown people. Mass incarceration is the masses of people of color being subjected to penalties that viciously and specifically target us in ways that throw away the key when we are put into jail. And then, finally, the criminal Justice Reform means we need to reform the criminal Justice System that is often unjust to us. When other people when we look away from what they do, when we overlook what they do, when we give them a second, third, fourth chance, when they have affluenza, my child is too rich to go to jail, so please let him out, whereas the people in the hood in baltimore are not seen as affluenza and as a result of that they go to jail for three and four and five and six and seven years. When we think about the fact that a white woman is killed by the police in minnesota, what happens . The police chief has to resign. What happens when Philando Castile announces to the Police Person that he has a gun on his person . He is killed in seven seconds. The reform of the criminal Justice System suggest the inputs we make, the data they derive from looking at the number of times were stopped, Philando Castile 50 or 60 times over the past ten years. So we see a reform of the criminal Justice System and we have to find a way to make sure judges are not bound by mandatory minimum sentences. People of color are not subject to arbitrary forms of reprisal in a criminal Justice System that doesnt Pay Attention to us. And fimle that we get the same breaks as everybody else. Black folks say if you do the crime, you do the time. Youre being ignorant. Thats not how white folk do it. They hook their kids up and find a way to keep them from being in prison. One of the things that i think is also important this morning, i believe in focus groups. I think this will also help us set the stage as we transition to the actual anecdotes of personal stories on the stage today. I need you all to be active participants. I know its been a long morning, but i need you to stake awoke for a second and engage. The first question i have for you. Please dont be ashamed that this is a family conversation. How many of you all have been incarcerated at some point in your life . Then how many of you all have a Family Member who was or is . And the last question dont keep standing up. Participate. The last question is how many of you all have a good friend who was or is. So when you look around this room, when you look at even the stage, we dont have a choice but to engage on this issue because it literally impacts almost every Single Person in this room. So with that, i want to transition to you, colin, and the reason why i want to go to you before you answer, theres a trailer that we have about your story, but then i want you to talk to us a little bit about what happened and your personal experience. Of being wrongfully convicted. But if we can run the trailer. If you focus on your breathing, it will bring you out of your mind and back into your body. Just know that you are not alone. Crime today is an american epidemic. I aint no killer. The system doesnt work for people who cant afford to defend themselves. The whole neighborhood know what happened. The whole neighborhood know you grabbed the wrong guy. Im an innocent man. A mother shouldnt lose her son. Ill work for free if you take a look at this case. We cannot afford this. You want to believe him, they will keep me in here. You know i will die before i do that. But i cant fight that for you. You got your family, you got your hif. Why are you still wasting your time on me . Thats not just about you. Its bigger than that. Colin lived in texas or louisiana, he would have been executed long ago. Longer sentences, more prisons. They took everything from me. More police. I cant just pretend this situation doesnt exist. This situation is, too. We cannot leave an innocent man in jail. Im going to take you home. Its just a matter of time. Colin, thank you for being here. I really want you, you know, as quickly as you can and this is tough because seeing the trailer b you i want you to share a little bit about your experience being wrongfully convicted. Om of us are well aware of the central park five or we know somebody who was wrongfully incarcerated or wrongfully arrested. Talk about the impact of that on you and how that shaped your life knowing youre innocent. Hello, everyone. And man, woman and children. Again, my name is colin warner. And the trailer you just saw is a synopsis of what happened to me. What i can say is that i was literally dead. Dead upon being convicted for a crime that i didnt witness, didnt participate in and had no knowledge. The feelings that i could share with you, theres not too many words that could adequately fit into your mind, into your mind, but having a life taken away for something i seen this as a murder is hell. Based on the movie, i hope that each and everyone will get something from the movie because i feel you dont have to be incarcerated to get something from the movie, right . Love. I believe this is what keeps us separated and all these other issues coming upon our head. But we have power, right . Me and my friend came before the syst system, before the system, oh, its 21 years. But in the eyes of god, 21 year s. So we have to recognize what we have and keep it for a certain amount of time. Were talking about mass incarceration of kids, these kids have nobody out there. Nobody out there to show them something different, to teach them. Theyre on the streets 24 hours a day. What do you expect them to do . Go to college . From the streets . We have to be afraid. Because if were afraid for the next man on the street, you will do nothing for the kid. We have to step in. This is one of things that surprised me after being 21 years in prison is how scared we are as people to do anything. We are great, but our greatness is come down to normalcy. Colin, you just mentioned carl king, who is your childhood friend who works diligently to help get you out of prison. Is he here . Take a stand. Thats my angel. Thats my angel. [ applause ] colin, what it sounds like youre saying is so often were timid as a people. So often there arent enough carls, but there are too many collins that dont have carls in the Prison Industrial Complex that are in jail for things they didnt do or theyre serving time for things they shouldnt be serving time for, to docs earlier point. Right now its hit or miss. We dont have proper representation. Yes. Thats key. Right . We are basically on our own. We cant give up on the kids. We cannot give up because if you give up, we give up on ourselves. So going forth in your biological kids lives and the lives of every kid on the street, man, woman, child. Reach out. We are a community and the only way to accomplish anything is by coming together and moving forward. Thank you, colin. Andrea, i want to go to you next because you worked on both sides of this issue as an activist for folks who are incarcerated and then having served time yourself. I would like for you to paint a picture because you say that that informs your work of what its like inside a prison and why its so important for us to not only address the issue of folks going in but also addressing the conditions that folks are forced to live in behind bars. Also, thank you to the naacp for inviting us on to this platform. We come from the voices of the hundreds of thousands of black women who are sitting right now as we are convened here in a cage and the effects of that on our children and communities. So to have the organization of the naacp to understand how incredibly important it is to raise awareness within its membership of the swift and dramatic increase in incarceration of black women in this country, i thank you for being aware of the importance of that issue. So yes, i was a former criminal defense lawyer sentenced to serve a two year federal prison sentence. This issue is personal to me. Im a born and raised very proud in the community of rockies buxbur massachusetts. My children and husband are still living in roxbury. And we are the fourth generation to live in that community. We understand firsthand what happened in the country over the past four decades starting with a war on drugs which was really a war on black people. We saw the crack epidemic come into roxbury, the problem was crack left quickly but the very draconian hard on crime policies that incarcerated millions of black and brown people never left. So thats the work that we now do at the National Council for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women and girls. I didnt think that there was anything coming into the community with all the personal experience i had, coming as a criminal defense lawyer. Coming from being married to a man who two decades ago served a twoyear mandatoriy criminal drug sentence. This is very personal to me. I did not think there was anybody could tell me more about our broken criminal Justice System when i left my 5monthold baby boy and my 12yearold daughter in the parking lot of the federal prison for women in danbury, connecticut and stepped into that prison crammed full of black women. Almost 2,000. And thats just one federal prison. There are hundreds and thousands of prisons where people are being held in prison cells. Theyre separating mothers from children. When we talk about the violence and the gun violence and the social issues that we are dealing with in our communities today, we cannot do that and have those dialogues and find solutions that are separate from dramatic criminal Justice Reform that needs to happen in this country. It is directly in relation to the warehousing of blacks, men and women, in this country. In the federal system there is no better place to see where we have generations. I was in a prison with generations of black women from the same family. Grandmothers, mothers and their daughters on the same drug case incarcerated for a minimum of ten years mandatory minimum plus sentences. And if you ask them where are your male counterparts, they, too, their husbands, their brothers, their uncles, they are also in a federal prison somewhere serving these very long draconian drug sentences. Who, i ask you, is left behind to care for our children and to raise our children . So we have to understand the very importance of stepping out. I come from a prominent black family of lawyers and doctors, all members of the naacp. I understand, i understand what our people think and how weve tried to separate ourselves from us black folk and these black folk. Yeah, yeah. We cannot, cannot continue to do that. This issue, as you have seen with everybody in this room stood up, has seeped in and pervaded our entire lives throughout all of our communities. And now it has taken the Fastest Growing incarcerated population are black women in this country. Theyre separating us from our children. Women cannot mother from inside of a prison pay phone. It doesnt work. And so we have to understand the conditions are horrific. 90 of women who are currently incarcerated in our countrys prisons, federal, state and county are women suffering from untreated trauma. They are women who are victims themselves. Theyre criminalized and they are essentially incarcerated for being poor and struggling with the illness of addiction. How dare us, how dare us as a country allow that to be the solution that we take the most vulnerable women, black women whose lives have been devalued by a system that has intentionally devalued the lives of all of us and allow the system to incarcerate our black mothers and daughters in the way theyve done. The conditions, we could be here all day if we began to go down the laundry list. We just help to introduce the dignity for incarcerated women act with senator cory booker and Elizabeth Warren in washington, d. C. That bill speaks directly, angela, to what youre referring to in regard to the horrific treatment and conditions of women livi