Transcripts For CSPAN Q A 20240622

Molly i was working as a naked model when i was 18 to pay my way through school and i needed a fake name to keep stalkers away. Then i just kept using it. Brian what is your real name . Molly my real name . Brian jennifer . Molly people can google. My real name is jennifer caban. Brian where did you grow up . Molly i grew up in far rockaway and long island. Brian what do you do now for a living . Molly im an artist and journalist. I travel around the world and draw and write about prisons and conflict zones. About three weeks ago, i was in gaza under the airstrikes. I also have a book coming out with harpercollins called drawing blood. Brian why did you go to gaza . Molly i was in palestine for a literary festival. I hadnt planned to go to gaza and then i met a journalist who walked me through the bureaucratic process by which a journalist can go there. Because you know it is under , blockade, so it is difficult to visit right now. And i had the opportunity, and so i went. Brian where were you in gaza . Molly i was staying in gaza city. Brian what did you see . Molly the piece i did was about a suburb of gaza city that was very close to israel and was completely flattened by israel. I saw a level of decimation that id never seen outside of the oneday i went to syria. In fact, it was almost more serious. More thorough. Because in syria, the decimation , is done primarily by bombing campaigns. Theres bombs, then there are tank shells, and bulldozers. The whole neighborhood was gone. You saw People Living in ruined houses, surrounded by the smashed rubble of their former lives. You saw a lot of poverty. You saw people really living in an openair prison. Brian this on the screen now is your piece, one of your pieces of work from gaza. What are we looking at . Molly that is the ruins of a hospital which was a rehabilitation facility for paralyzed and disabled adults. It was shelled during operation protective edge. Fortunately there were no , casualties, but the nurses were forced to evacuate. To evacuate the patients in a pitchdark building without electricity. Brian when you saw this, when did you actually do this piece . Molly after i got home. I need to do them in my studio. As you can see, theres inc. Theres ink, theres dye theres acrylic. My technique of working is, i go around with my iphone and sketchbook. I take thousands of iphone photos. I also draw from life. I can draw a really, really fast. It is a way that i build rapport with people. When i come home, i take the stuff that ive drawn from life and my iphone photos and figure out, what are the images i want to have here . What are the most dramatic shots . What are the shots with the best lines . What are the things that boil down the essentials for the viewer . And, those are the images brian i choose to work from. Brian what is more important to you, the art or the politics . Molly i think the art at this point. Brian how would you define your politics . Molly im a leftist. Brian what does that mean for you . Molly what does being a leftist mean for me . I think i have a rather oldfashioned definition. I believe in the individual. I believe in their inalienable rights, however, i also come from a more leftist economic perspective. I believe the best way to ensure those rights is a social democracy. Perhaps even more socialistic. You know . Brian where did it all start . I know your mother says it says on wikipedia that your mother was jewish and your father was puerto rican. Molly is. They are both fortunately alive. Brian your mother, you say she is an illustrator. Molly she was an illustrator of childrens books and toys. In the era that she was working, toy packaging was very artistic. Everything had these beautiful handdone illustrations. She did stuff for the Cabbage Patch kids. Holly hobby. She raised me in a house where art was not some airy fairy thing that was far away from us. Art was just a prosaic way that adults made a living. Art was what my mom did. Art was what my greatgrandfather did. Art was how we lived. Brian what about your dad . Molly my dad was a professor. Brian where did you get your views . Molly i was very influenced by my father. My father was a marxist. He was someone who told me i had only two rules to live by. To challenge authority and be interesting. He was someone who bought me goldman when i was a little girl, the russianamerican anarchist. Brian people, if they want to see your art, they want to see the videos, they can find it at what places . Molly my website is mollycrabapple. Com and since i am a contributing editor for vice, they can go to vice. Com. They can see my illustrations not all of my illustrator journalism but a vast amount of it. Brian what did you do for fusion tv . Molly i did a series of five animated episodes. I did them with my dear friends and collaborators, a sound designer and director. They used stop Motion Animation and illustration to talk about the prison industrial complex. And about policing and america. Brian what we are going to look up first is locking up immigrants for profit. Explain what that is. Molly there is a vast system of Detention Centers for immigrants in america. These Detention Centers are very expensive, but much more important, they are taking people accused of a civil offense, not criminal, and locking them up in conditions that are as brutal as that that we would put a convicted criminal in, often indefinitely and always without the rights we would give to someone accused of a criminal offense. Brian lets watch a little bit of this. You can explain more about how you do this. [video clip] on march 31, 2015, 80 mothers announced a hunger and work strike. They were undocumented migrants in prison with their children, some for up to 10 months. They were held in a Family Detention Center in texas. They were demanding freedom for their children and for themselves. The United States puts immigrants behind bars every day. They are locked up in a patchwork of government facilities, forprofit Detention Centers, and local jails. The vast majority of these immigrants are not criminals but they are kept in conditions as brutal as any prisoner and they have fewer rights than if they were charged with a crime. There are currently over 34,000 people in immigration detention today. They sleep in dormitories often so crowded they are forced to sleep on the floor. Communication with the outside world is limited. They are subjected to punishment like solitary confinement. Brian have you ever visited one of those centers . Molly i havent. I have visited president s prisons, obviously,. I went by reports of people who have been in them. Also, testimonies from former officials and lawyers who represent immigrants. Brian how do you do that . Molly what do you mean . Brian the artwork. How long does it take for Something Like that . Is the camera up above you looking down . How do they do the stop action . Molly for Something Like this we start with a script, then we take the script and we break it into the most compelling images. For instance, we start out by talking about these mothers on Hunger Strikes. I found photos of mothers on Hunger Strike. And then i thought i would draw them behind the fence. I do something called a storyboard, which is kind of like a series of sketches that show every image that is going to happen. Then, after the storyboard which takes about three days, it is time to shoot. The way we shoot it is, we have a letter over the drafting table. Next to the latter is a stepstool. On that stepstool is whoever the cameraman is. Over the next few hours, that person stays on the stepstool with the camera pointed at my table while i draw every image. In the order we figured out before hand. Brian how long does it take to do one of those . Molly everything for that project was between three and five minutes. And the actual filming takes , about 12 to 15 hours. Brian and where is it seen . Molly they are seen on fusions website and on youtube. Brian so anybody can watch all of them . Molly anybody can watch all of them. Brian how many have you done . Molly ive done five of them. Brian weve got some video of a place that you say played a role in your life. It is in paris. It was owned by an american. He is deceased now but his daughter now runs it. It looks like this. Explain. When did you have a relationship with that place . Molly im getting drunk with nostalgia here. When i was 17, i was in paris and i heard about shakespeare and company bookstore. I thought maybe i could meet those people. I was really shy at that age. So i sat in front of this place, and i started drawing and this old man comes out. I think he was 86 at the time. Brian by the way, that is a bed in there. Molly what are you doing to me . This is like seeing my youth. This is so beautiful. I love that place. George whitman, the owner, he invited me to stay there. I lived there for a month, then i came back for another month. Then i would come back over the years, back and forth. We would sleep in the books and between the stacks and we would work at the cash register. That was i dont know, i guess my little heaven. That place that i always return to. It is this place where i guess i felt the lesson that george gave us was that if you enacted your dreams with enough rigor and practicality, you could make anything happen in the world. This is a place where anyone could stay there for free. In the center of paris. As long as you wanted. It was a successful business for 52 years. So, george would always call it the little socialist utopia that could. But unlike most utopian experiments, it didnt crash in flames and recommendations recriminations after two years. It is still going on now. Georges daughter runs it. Brian there arent many beds there anymore though. I wonder why. It is a different place than when george was alive. Molly i didnt know that they kicked out all the tumbleweeds. I do know that the upstairs apartments where they used to have writers were changed. Brian why do you think you believe what you do . In other words, what is it that molly why do i think i believe what i do . Brian what part of the world dont you like . Molly these are very broad questions. Brian youve got Molly Crabapples 15 rules for creative success in the internet age. My net on your website. Molly you can find that on boing boing. Brian what is boing boing . Molly boing boing is a very successful blog that highlights things usually about technology. Brian youve got some stuff on here. That is why im asking you. For instance you say, companies , are not loyal to you. Molly obviously not. Brian why is it obvious . Molly a company is motivated by making money. Especially a publicly owned corporation. That is their responsibility to their shareholders. A company is not motivated by personal loyalty. Perhaps a Small Business is. You know, i i have a few employees and i am motivated by personal loyalty to them. But nothing like disney or nbc can be motivated by personal loyalty. It is written into a corporate charter that to you cannot be. Brian what have you done because of that in your life . How independent art you . Are you . Vice is a corporation. Molly i dont think that you read my whole rule. Brian right now i didnt, no. But, yeah. Please never believe a company has your back. They will discard you at a moments notice. Ask other freelancers what they are getting paid and dont buy into the financial nagging of some suit. Molly exactly. You asked me what i said about it, and that is the full thing. Once you realize that they are immoral by design, you can deal with them in a more honest way. If you think they have personal loyalty to you, they are going to take advantage of you. Brian you say i am both sick of social media and addicted to it. What nourishes you destroys you. The internet is getting increasingly corporate and centralized. And i dont know that future is not just going back to bigmoney platforms. I hope it is not. So, what do you think of the decision to regulate the internet by the government . Molly can you be more specific . Brian the most recent decision where the fcc decided how they are going to regulate under title ii. Molly ive been in the last days of copyediting my book. And so all recent news events are reaching over my head. Can use spell it out a little bit more . Can you spell it out a little bit more . Brian would you rather the internet continue like it is now or rather the government regulate it and keep tabs on how people can use it . Molly i think those are rather they are questions that are lending themselves to distortion. What do we mean when we say the government regulating the internet austin mark controlling what people say . Are you talking about enforcing Net Neutrality . Are you talking about the government preventing corporations from spying on you . Selling your data to chinese firms . I mean really what are you , talking about when you are saying, what do i think about the government regulating the internet . I dont necessarily think the government is i dont think the government is any less or more evil than a Large Corporation like facebook necessarily. In fact, they are in bed together. Do i think the government should regulate free speech on the internet . No. God, never. Do i think they should enforce Net Neutrality . Yes. Brian are you still doing that . How many different income streams do you have now . You are getting more and more successful, as you know. Molly well, i write. I have a gallery that sells my paintings. I have a book coming out with harpercollins. I still draw pictures. Brian are you afraid of being successful . Molly that is an interesting question. I dont know what that means. I mean, i suppose very often when people become successful, they become swaddled in their own success and they become soft and stop seeing things clearly. I might fear that. Brian lets go back and look at some more of your art. Molly that handsome gentleman. Brian yes. When did you do this, and what are we seeing here . Molly i did that based on a picture that i took in dubai last summer. I was in abu dhabi doing a piece about Migrant Workers that are building western museums. Sort of as a lark, i went to dubai for a day. Because i knew that trump was going to be there. Because trump was building some golf courses and luxury housing. With a dubai firm, i have forgotten the name of the firm but you can read the article. I got into the press conference and trump is saying, the world is so full of failure, and here in dubai everything is perfect. And why cant new york be like dubai . I am from new york. New york is my city. Trump would never dare say that in america. And you know it made me somewhat , angry. Also, i had been doing some Investigative Journalism and i knew that the guys that were developing trumps golf courses and housing get paid 200 a month even though they work in the hot sun 12 hours a day doing construction work. And so at the end of the press conference, i got up and i said Something Like, you are making all of these luxury buildings in dubai and your guys are getting paid 200 a month. How do you feel about that . And because it is dubai which is a very sense of, the room went dead. Censored place, the room went dead. I got yelled at by the publicist. Security guards wanted to throw me out or do worse. Once the people from the local papers saw that things had quieted down, they all told me how much they wished they could do Something Like that. Every single other person in that press conference just had to tell trump how wonderful he was. Brian the security guards, were they from dubai or were they traveling with trump . Molly i cant totally verify this, but my impression is that they were with the dubai firm that was doing the event. Brian here is a solitary confinement as modernday torture that you did for fusion tv. It is about one minute and 25 seconds. As you say, these are four or five minutes long. We have a shorter version of it. [video clip] in july, 2013, 30,000 prisoners went on Hunger Strike in california. The strike lasted for two months. It was the second one since 2011. The prisoners were protesting solitary confinement, what many people consider a form of torture. In solitary, your world is a gray concrete box. You spend between 22 and 24 hours a day alone in your cell. Your bed is a concrete slab with a thin mattress. Three times a week, guards shackle you and take you to the showers for 15 minutes. For exercise, you pace around another concrete box. Sometimes a bit of ceiling is uncovered. This is the only time you will see the sky. As punishment, the use of solitary confinement is often an arbitrary decision. Nearly 3000 people are held in pelican bay prison. In crescent city, california. Over one third are in solitary. Most of them because of gang affiliation. But that is a meaningless phrase. Gang affiliation might mean reading a book by a black panther, or drawing aztec patterns, or even having a tattoo. Pelican bay isnt alone in this. Around the country, you can land in solitary for your art, youre youre reading material, your beliefs, your sexual orientation, or your friends. Brian should we not have solitary confinement at all . Molly it is hard for me to say that if you are someone who is incredibly violent to other prisoners that there shouldnt be some way of protecting other prisoners. But solitary should not be used like the way we are using it now. I mean we solitary is being used to lock up people because they use the phones in a way that prison doesnt like or because they got a tattoo. I think that once solitary stops being used like that, we could devote our minds to a few niche cases. But as of now, it has to be , stopped in general. And also it is torture. , it destroys peoples minds. Shane bauer, who was an american hiker in prison in iran accused of being a spy, spoke extensively about when the iranians imprisoned him in solitary, it was the most brutal part of his ordeal. Since solitary started being used, theyve known it was torture. I dont think it is appropriate to torture people to enforce minor rules. Probably rules that people never should have been in jail in the first place. Brian when you were traveling you were put in prison. Molly i was detained. I was detained when i was 18 traveling in eastern turkey. It was right after the ceasefire. I actually think i was detained because in turkey they have a draft. A lot of the policemen are military police. They are young guys who are drafted in. They kind of saw an American Girl and wanted to hang out and didnt realize how scary they were being. But i was very, very terrified at the time. Brian youve been to syria. When did you go to syria . Molly last summer. Brian why did you go there and how did you get in . Molly i was doing a story about a camp right over the border. Brian here is some of your artwork on the screen. Molly that is actually something i did in collaboration with a young syrian man who was under the Islamic State. I and other western journalists cannot go there. But, what i did was, i went over the border with another freelance journalist. We embedded with fighters for a day. We went to a border town that was being repeatedly bombed. When i was there, the Islamic State had just been kicked out. I think the most touching thing i saw was that residents had taken the Islamic State murals and painted over them in hot pink and orange. They put quotes about tolerance there. It was beautiful. Brian when you saw the situation over there, who is right and wrong . Molly how can you even say that in a war, who is right and wrong . Define that for me. Brian when you were there, you must have come to some kind of conclusion about what was going on there, who started it, is one side more dominant than the other, did u. S. Yourself if the when you were over there, did you ask your self if the United States should be involved, where did you go with all that . Molly the syrian conflict was started when the assad regime brutally cracked down on protesters that were asking for basic liberties or protesting because their family members were killed. Since then, the conflict has become incredibly brutal. War crimes are committed on all sides. The sides are incredibly regimented. I think it would be difficult at this time for anyone to say there were wholly clean groups in syria. If this was 2011, i would feel very comfortable saying the protesters were right. At this point, the thing is the biggest humanitarian tragedy of our generation, and i wouldnt feel comfortable saying this person is good, this person is bad. Except that the assad regime is hideous. Dash, isis is hideous. Anyone who committed war crimes in syria, i hope they are brought to justice and i hope the conflict stops. Brian what role should we play . Molly we should start taking more refugees. Thats one thing. I believe the amount of refugees weve taken has been in the hundreds. This is a conflict where millions of refugees are in turkey right now. You cannot have populations of millions of People Living in tents. Most of these are women and children. You cant have kids growing up in tents. I mean, not just because it is wrong, morally reprehensible but because it threatens to destabilize the countrys that the countries that it is happening to. I have to say, for all of the racism that Syrian Refugees face and all the violence they face in turkey and lebanon, and jordan and the camps there, i cant imagine america allowing a similar proportion of mexicans or Central American refugees to flee here at all. What should america do . America should ease the burden on the states that are bearing the brunt of this. Brian as an artist, how many hours a day do you work . Molly it depends what im doing. I think lately ive been getting a little more burnt out. When i was starting out, i would work until i fell asleep from the time i woke up. I tend to do that when im doing any major project now. Brian when you were over in syria or gaza, do you do any artwork on scene . Molly i go around with a sketchbook and i draw. It is to build a rapport with people. Very often, when you have a big camera, it puts a distance between you and the person. A big insectlooking thing right in front of your face. They cant see what you are taking. It is almost vampiric even though you are producing beautiful things. When you draw, it is a vulnerable thing. They can see exactly what you are doing. If you suck, they can tell you so. It is more of an interchange. Most people havent been drawn before. Most people are delighted to be drawn. A lot of times, i draw people because i like to. Brian do you work fast . Molly very fast. Brian how do you explain that . In other words, do you sketch first, or is what we are seeing exactly the way you do it on paper . I dont know anything about art, but i just look at it. Molly Something Like that is a finished piece that took like 10 hours. However, lets say im doing one of my quick sketches from guantanamo. I would have a light green marker that has a fat tip and a skinny tip. And it would be light gray. And so, first, i would draw this loose sketch with the skinny tip. It is like shorthand. Then i would take the bat tip, and shade in all the big areas of dark, and take a pilot pen, like a cheap rollerball pen, and start doing all the little lines. One of the things i learned with that, it is better to make the wrong line confidently than the right line tentatively. People want to that confidence follow that confidence in your work. They want that sense of vitality. If you believe it, they believe it. You just do it as best you can with as much belief and rigor as you can and do it fast. Brian how many times have you been to guantanamo . Molly twice. I was on commission for vice. I did two features for vice and a number of other features. Brian heres some part of your story on gitmo. Explain this. Molly Guantanamo Bay is one of the most censored places on earth to make images of. This is for what the military claims is operational security. But, if you are photographer there, you feel like you are playing twister. You cant take a photograph of anyones face. You cant take a photograph of doors. You cant take a photograph of cameras. You cant take a photograph of multiple holdings. As an artist, i had an advantage. I could just draw around it. I gave the soldiers those masks because i cant draw their faces. When i was in Guantanamo Bay, it was at the height of a Hunger Strike. A Hunger Strike iv prisoners. By the prisoners. The majority of the prisoners were hunger striking. There was a number of them being force fed at the time. The military made up a special term for that. That piece that you showed has on one side of the fence military nurses. On the other side of the fence they are at this Caribbean Chicken place that we all enjoy. Brian how much access did you have . Molly at guantanamo, nearly no access. The first time i went was for the military commission. I was at the pretrial hearing. The military commission of sheikh mohammed. The second was for the tour. You do not get to speak to prisoners except for the defendants. Except on the last day i got to see prisoners while they were praying through a twoway mirror. Brian here is a piece you did on the mastermind of 9 11. What are we seeing in this . Molly the alleged mastermind of 9 11 is in court all day and is bored. He messes with his beard. He is wearing this sort of hunting jacket in an attempt to look military. He has died his beard orange. That is a traditional thing that a person who is done the harsh might do. That is just him hanging out. Brian how close were you . Molly very far away. The way they do it is that there is a room divided by layers of soundproof glass and monitors on a time delay so that the cia can stop the video if something is being discussed that they do not want us to hear. When i first went and now, i brought opera glasses but they were confiscated. As prohibited ocular amplification. Brian why . Molly that is what they said. It was prohibited ocular amplification. Brian no other explanation . Molly nope. Brian first of all, vice is what . Molly a magazine and a tv show on hbo. Brian who reads it . What kind of an audience does it have . Molly mostly young people. Brian how young . Molly what is the usual demographic . Marketers golden demographic. 1834. Brian do you think about that . Molly i am an artist. No. We do not think like marketers. Brian what do they expect you to come back with . Molly word count and pieces of art. I do a column and they have a certain amount of features so i say i do two major print features. And an article every month. Brian who watches fusion . Molly a similar age group. It is partially owned by univision and is more latino oriented but a similar age group. It is in english. Brian partly owned by abc . Molly yes. Brian do you worry you are too close to corporations . Molly everyday but what can you do . Brian lets go back to another one of your pieces. This is how Police Profile in shame sex workers. And shame sex workers. What is the basis of this one . Molly there is this law called the manifest prostitution Law Allowing Police to arrest a woman for prostitution without witnessing her exchanging sex for money. Instead they can arrest are based on things like, if she has condoms on her or what she is wearing, or if she says hello to a certain number of guys on the street or in my opinion, very often if she is trans and is black. I saw so many who were arrested just for who they were. Brian lets watch it and you can further explain. Molly monica said she just accepted an undercover officers offer of a ride home. She is among the people arrested every year for prostitution. According to the fbi the fbi arrested 57,000 people in 2011 the vast majority were women. Monica was not arrested for exchanging sex for money. According to the municipal code you can be arrested for manifesting. Like monica was if you wave at , any passerby or start conversations or even ask if somebody is a cop. This is not just an arizona. Manifesting statutes exist all over the country. In january of 23rd team, january of 2013, in new york they arrested felicia for wearing jeans that outlined her legs. With the manifesting law racial profiling is epidemic. In Brooklyn Black women are 95 of those charged. Trans women are routinely profiled as sex workers. Police sometimes place fake ads on websites where people find sex workers. After sex the cops make arrests. Brian what do you rely on for information . Molly i know many sex workers personally. For Something Like this, i also spent a lot of time in what are called sex worker intervention courts. And other things like the felicia mcginest thing comes off of the police report. That is what Police Officers accused her of doing. Brian when you were younger your wikipedia site suggests that you describe yourself as gothy, dorky, and hated. Why do they describe yourself as gothy . Molly i describe myself as got the, because i wore all black and, you know, studied french. Brian what is the black part . Of being got the . Of beimng being gothy . Molly i am explaining what goth is on cspan . Brian that is what you are doing. [laughter] brian why do people go there . Molly i think being a smart kid who is into literature and feeling alienated, terribly sophisticated and romantic at that age. That is what i would say. Brian what was your favorite subject work that you did in high school . Molly i loved literature and art and i did not study french in school but i taught myself french. Brian you describe yourself as dorky. Molly i love books. Always have loved book. Brian is that what a dork is . Molly somebody with passionate intellectual interest and not as much interest in socializing. Brian does that bother you . That somebody would describe you as a dork . Molly i am describing myself. Obviously. Brian hated . You are hated . Molly i was an outcast when i was 12 years old. Brian why . What made you an outcast . Molly i was a girl who dressed funny and was obsessed with books. Brian does it bother you today . Do you still do that . Does that still make you a dork . Are you hated . Molly no, i think that is something that people get out of their system, i hope. Brian what do your mother and father think . Molly they are proud. Brian are you an only child . Molly i am. Brian what effect did that have . Molly it is hard to say. My cousin was, unfortunately, or if and when she was 12yearsold and she spent some time with us. I dont think people can speculate what they would be. It is hard to say. Brian explain to me what Molly Crabapples week in hell was. Molly i was sick of the work that i have done and i wanted to do something that i drew so intensely that i got all of my cliches out of my system. I was 27yearsold. So, i locked myself in a hotel suite and covered all of the walls with paper and i drew all over them for seven days. And i drew and i drew and i drew until i got to the very reservoirs of anything i thought i could do and ran out of them and came across something new. Brian did you have to ask permission to put the paper on the wall . Molly we should have but we did not. Brian so you just checked in. What was the hotel . Molly gramercy park. Brian you just checked in and got a room . Molly yes. Brian lets watch the beginning of this so people will have a better idea of what we are talking about. Brian so. Molly yes . Brian all around the room. Molly every square inch. Brian did you keep it . Molly we cut it up and sold it. Brian sold it . What is it worth . What kind of money to people pay for that they for that kind of thing . Molly a little piece was 20 and a whole wall was 1000. It depends on how much people got, we sold by the inch. Brian where did you sell it . Molly we sold it on a website called kickstarter. Brian what were the things you drew . Molly all sorts of things. Dorothy parker and the algonquin roundtable as scuba divers, i drew my friends all over the wall. I drew a medieval green man. I drew reverse mermaids. I drew an angler fish with a cupcake luring mice. I drew every surreal fantasy that came out of my head. Brian how many hours a day did you do it . Molly all of the hours. Around the clock, pretty much. Brian seven days. Molly it was five days, like a business week in hell. Brian did you like it . Molly i love it. Brian would you do it again . Molly no. Not going to do it again. Brian so, at the end of five days, what was the result . What did you feel . Molly i was exhausted but i was just broken, but within a month of that i started doing a different sort of work. More around politics. That is when occupy wall street happened. I think it served its purpose of clearing any cliche in my head. So that something new could happen there. Brian you say that occupy wall street is when you started being political . Molly no, that is when i started using my work to be political. Brian explain the difference. Molly someone might be political by donating to candidates or marching in protests. Volunteering, all sorts of things like that where you are expressing it as a private person, basically. But somebodys work might be political if they are writing books about politics or doing artwork to support political movements. So before this i was political as an anonymous participant. I would donate money or raise money or march in protests. Or vote for people i believed in. That sort of thing, sort of. But after occupy, that was the first time i felt i could allow it in my work as well. Brian what did you do as a result of that . What did you do that was political . Molly one of the first things i did is that i got frustrated by the media portrayal because i live down the block from the park so i was seeing it every day and i was in construction workers and veterans and grandmas and union guys. But then when i saw them on tv they would just find one dumb hippie was tiedyed leggings beating on a drum. Without rhythm. Why are you focusing on that and i was like guy . , he is so untypical and had almost nothing to do what is going on. It is to trivialize it. The first thing i did was to do portraits of people that i saw there. Brian what is the result of occupy wall street . Was it worth it . Molly it is a hard thing to say, right. I mean we live in a society with , such a short time frame on things. We think, this has been going on for three weeks and the world has not changed. What was the point . We might look at other struggles, the Civil Rights Movement and how long between one event and another and you think that we have lost our patience. I think that in some ways obviously occupied was a disappointment and in some ways it failed. We made a lot of tactical errors, dear god. Drum circles are terrible and everybody hates them. But i also think that occupy radicalized and politicized a generation so i do think it was important. Brian back to fusion tv. This one is about ferguson. When you first heard about ferguson, what was your reaction . Molly i had a lot of admiration for the people in the streets that were having the vigils for mike brown even though the Police Brought dogs against them. Brian what was your reaction when you find out they did not indict the policeman . Molly the police are sort of the ground enforcement of the state. Obviously, the state does not want to indict and the Police Unions are powerful. The police work handinhand with prosecutors. These are three reasons why police do not get indicted. I was not surprised. Police are now getting indicted because there are militant protests. Brian so protest works . Molly protest works. Yes. Brian this is artwork from ferguson. Molly tonight art symbolizes protest. Lawyers and medics came from around the country. Amnesty international sent observers. Protesters risk violence. One local women gave out water all day. That night the police maced her. The death is all too common. She told Huffington Post it felt like hell on fire. The policeman commit 400 justifiable homicides a year. But that number is way too low. 1450 deaths were documented three People Killed every single day. Brian how do you do, we are going back and forth between politics and art, but how do you do that when you have a piece of art on your board and you blacken it . Molly i pour black paint on that. I am destroying my artwork. Brian that is not saved . Molly no. No, it is not. Brian do you know when youre getting through to a public . A public that is looking at what you do . Molly that is a really good and hard question. I mean, generally the people that write me are the or the confrontations i see happening around it. Generally, when i do it i am not thinking i must get through to this public. I am not somebody that does seo enhancement, i am an artist. I know that things have gotten through to me when people write me. Also what is meaningful is when people were involved in what i am writing about right about me or write to me. Write about me or write to me. Or if i am doing a piece about abu dhabi, if pakistani Migrant Workers write to me. Brian what impact is the internet having and changing the world . Molly one thing it does is that it makes things that would have been ignored previously difficult to ignore. Ferguson is the prime example of that. The media was not particularly interested in ferguson until it started going up on social media and that is what drew the media to cover it. Second, that can have a distorting effect. It makes the it can make things that are not that eggs seem bigger. But i also think it creates the potential for things that are not funded or do not have a mass platform to get equal attention and that is important. Brian with all of the things that you do, you speak to groups, you do your artwork, you do your writing for vice you do television. When did you notice people spending a little more time talking about you or being interested in you . When did it change . Molly a big change i think the time that i started i have been in the media for a very long time but i think that the time my career started to feel the most meaningful to me was after i went to Guantanamo Bay and had an art show called shell game that was the first time i had done these big, ambitious paintings, six feet tall, hyper detailed. And, i had a show that drew attention from all over the world where a lot of the participants came and were involved in it. And it got a lot of media , attention. Brian when did you see your prices going up . What people were willing to pay for your art . Molly right around then. Brian has there been a big jump . Molly yes. Brian buying a Molly Crabapple today is a lot more valuable than it was 10 years ago . Molly maybe. Brian what do you mean maybe . Are you worried that if you make money it will change your life and what you are interested in . Molly i do not think it is about making the money, i think it is about what comes with money. One thing is that i am not an employee of anywhere and i have no desire for being an employee. Despite some fancy sounding titles that do not bear power, i work with myself and that is the truth. You know i i am ultimately beholden to me. And i think as long as you can maintain that, that is what is important. As long as you have the ability to tell people to fuck off. Am i allowed to say that on cspan . Brian you just did. Molly crabapples 15 rules for creative success and an internet age, and back to the things that you have written. Never trust some Silicon Valley dbag who is flush with investor money but telling creators to post on their platform for free or for crumbs of cash. Molly something you see a lot now where there are people that have websites that obviously the point is to get them invested in and sold fast but to do that you need the user base. And so they will try to attract , a user base, a community of artists or journalists are all sorts of layings to get them to post on it and do a lot of work for free. It is not just the posting. You tweet and it takes 30 seconds and that is one thing but if you are writing a whole article that is a different thing. They often say, we are scrappy. We are independent. We are in this together. But their actual purpose is to sell for a lot of money. They will get the sale, but you the creator, will not take part in that. Brian your number 10 is be a mercenary towards people with money. Be merciful and generous to people without it. Is that just obvious . Molly i mean, dont you think . Like if you are talking about , raising money for some broke kids bail fund, it is the right thing to do. But if you are talking about whether an heiress wants you to draw frescoes that is a different thing, obviously. Brian working for free is only worth it, this is number 11 if it is a fellow artist or Grassroots Organization you believe in and only if they treat you respectfully. And you get Creative Control. Molly very often, because society does not value what artists do, all sorts of people tell you to work for free. I have had fortune 500 Companies Want me to work for free for them. And while i work for free all of , the time, more than most artists, i do not believe in doing it for somebody that is already rich. I mean it is their job to hire , people. People give them money. I do it for people who might need my help, where my thing might have impact on their lives or raise money for them. You know, it might raise attention for them. I say that it is important to do it where there is Creative Control so you are not doing endless revisions. Nothing more soul killing than that. Brian drawing blood, your memoir, what are you, 31 . Molly yes. Brian early for a memoir. Molly look at how much time we just filled, right . Brian what is the book about . Molly coming of age as an artist in new york city and working as an illustrator for nightclubs in the manhattan demimonde and being an artist that does work around conflict zones and prisons. Brian when is it coming out . Molly in december. Brian how big is it . Is it written, or is it just your artwork . Molly 100,000 words of prose and about 100 illustrations. So, it is a big, book. Brian we have one more video, this one is called broken windows policing. Molly this is the theory that minor signs of disorder create major crime. The classic theory is that if a window is left broken in a neighborhood, in a matter of time people will start smoking crack and murdering people. Because of that little sign of disorder attract a big one. However, the name is misleading. Because, when i get up, the first thing i think as we are going to fix the broken window. But what broken windows is really about is arresting poor usually black and latino people for incredibly minor things like hanging out on a stoop. Or jumping a subway train sell. Stall. Brian lets watch it. Molly scientists introduce the theory in 1992 in an article in the atlantic. According to them, if a neighborhood had a broken window, residents will break other windows and crime will soar because nobody pushed back against the first signs of disorder. Eight years later William Bratton became Police Commissioner of new york city and began to apply the policy. He applied a zero tolerance policy for crimes like turnstile jumping and jaywalking. Subway graffiti. Under his leadership a new yorker could be arrested for selling art on the street. The idea is that they would find people with outstanding warrants. That would prevent bigger crimes from being committed. Lets be clear. Broken window policing does not mean that the police will fix up for poor neighborhoods. It means they will arrest poor people. The focus is on crimes by the powerless and it is about controlling communities. Being questioned is intrusive and demeaning. Brian what should the police do . Molly first of all i think the police should stop getting quotas. In new york, police have quotas of people they need to arrest. I think that creates perverse incentive where they are arresting people who are committing crimes that really do not bother anyone. Secondly, i think that things should be decriminalized like standing and hanging out. There is no reason somebody should be robbing in a cage because they drank booze out of a bottle or put up some graffiti. And as a final thing i think it , is impossible to look at broken windows outside of this you know, sort of paradigm where the police are just disproportionately targeting black and latino people. I am 100 sure that if the police went around wall street and searched people they would find a lot of cocaine. I am sure that if they searched their computers they would find tax evasion but they do not and the reason is that wall street is full of powerful people. And the reason they do something , similar in a place like Crown Heights is that it is filled with black and latino people who are already criminalized. Brian what is on the Molly Crabapple dream sheet . From here on out. What more do you want to accomplish . Molly i cannot think of things in advance like that. Brian so are you could you be any freer than you are now . To do what you want to do and say what you want to say . Molly what is freedom, right . I suppose if i have a dream of what i was going to do, i like going to conflict zones. I like drawing conflict zones. I like drawing big paintings. That is what you will see from me. And books. Brian if president obama invited you into the oval office and said you have two minutes to go and what he should do, what would you tell him . Molly i am not the person who should be invited. Brian why not . Molly there are people that could give better advice. I am just an artist. Brian what do you want changed . Molly the things that i want changed in two minutes are not things that could be fixed by appealing to somebody who is so tied into the power structure that is causing so many of these problems. Brian as you look at the future, are you optimistic . Pessimistic . Where you come down on that or do you even think about it . Molly i think anyone that is trying to make projections in a world as influx of ours is playing a mugs game. Brian if somebody is watching that wants to be an artist, can you train for it . You either have it or you dont have it . You you have any instruction at all on what you do today . Molly it is not that you either have or not have art, it is you either have or do not have love of art because we are all horrible at the start. I look at my work from 10 years ago when i think, how did anybody hire me . What i had was that stubbornness and i knew that this is what i was going to do. I would do this or i would die. And so i did it and i put in the , work that you need to become good. And so, i think that, yes. Work like hell. Work to the limits of your ability, work with discipline and rigor and passion. But if you do not want to do the work you will not be the artist. It is about wanting. That is really what makes you an artist. Brian if somebody wants to see your work now, where can they see it . What art gallery in new york . Molly in tribeca. Brian if they want to see it online . Molly molycrabapple. Com. Brian your book . Comes out in december. Molly harpercollins. 25 for hardcover. Brian you work for fusion and vice. Anyone else . Molly i have done a few pieces for vanity fair. I have a piece coming out, a friend of mine, sent me photos of what life is like under barrel bombing and i hope to do justice to that. He rode a beautiful essay to a company that. That is the next these coming up. Brian thank you for spending an hour. Molly thank you so much. For free transcripts or to give us your comments visit us at qanda. Org. Programs are also available as podcasts. If you enjoyed this weeks q a interview with molly, here are other programs you might like. Alex talking about his profile of jack abramoff. Johnetta