Guest thank you, congressman. Im veri am very glad to be her. Host mr. Edelman, i hope im not embarrassing you, but i hear youve got an 80th birthday coming up. I wanted to just let you know happy birthday. Guest thank you very much. Not until january therell. I am a young one. Host youve done a lot in your life. 80 years is a long time. Growing up as a jewish kid in minneapolis, minnesota; what was it like for you as you grew up . Up . Guest we were a stalwart democratic lever family. I grew up with Hubert Humphrey as the mayor, and my father was a lawyer in minneapolis and was also an active politically a little bit so my father was on that and that was kind of the model for me to watch him involved in the civic activity. My mother played the piano beautifully, so i grew up in a comfortable way, but i think understanding having some values that were about centers of justice and not having discrimination, and i think i took that into adult hood. Host what kind of lawyer was your dad . Guest he was known in minneapolis for the really complicated cases, the complex things, so that is what he did. He was a trial lawyer. Host civil cases. Guest he also did pro bono civil rights. He was a lawyer so that was all part of who he was. Host you became a lawyer yourself and followed in his footsteps. Guest yes, i certainly dated in terms of the values, and i had kind of the idea that if i were to do something that my father hadnt gon done i thot maybe if i went to new york, that could be different. Host you went away to college. Guest i went to harvard law school, yes. Host and you decided to go to new york which is where a lot of the harvard trained voyeurs were going. I didnt initially. I took a job on wall street a couple of years earlier on and never showed up because what happened was a i had the wonderful opportunity to serve on the Supreme Court and that led me to the Justice Departme department. I was in the Kennedy Administration but that was the change in my life getting to know being in the same place and not knowing again so when he ran for the senate i thought maybe i could do something in politics and when the campaign was over and he asked me to go to work for him that was a big change in my life. Host that was 1964 and the campaign for the attorney general. Guest yes. He did offer a job after the campaign and so therefore i was on the senatorial staff for washington. Legislative work in the policy iand the policyis what you did. What were some of the initiatives that you worked on as you were a part of that legislative shop of senator kennedy . Guest particularly if one is that two of us have been a couple of other people came along as the time passed, so the answer to the question is a tizzy. So i learned a lot about gary but the heart as you know it was race and poverty and he cared about Nuclear Proliferation and about International Foreign aid and he is of course famous for the trip that he took to south africa but they had a very havey desperate emphasis. I worked with him on the Voting Rights act of 65 and the initiative in brooklyn which was the new kind of initiative to help both your income people in that part of brooklyn to hold themselves up with a funding from corporations and more than that i had the opportunity to go with him in 1996 and going down to mississippi where i met my wife but in the context of this terrible situation of the massive malnutrition in mississippi in 1967 because the plantation owners were pushing people off the plantations and didnt need them anymore because they are worth picking coffins and all that so the families were pushed off the plantations and have nowhere to go and there was this enormous hunger, so those were all things we did. We went to the indian reservations with them and it was a major education for me. But we were seeing together the things we did. They added this to the list so for the rest of the time that we were there that was one of my jobs was to be in effect the person to go into th his senate staff about the farmworkers and when there were issues about hunger, then the staff person to work on doing something about it because of the terrible things that we saw and at the sore if n their arms that wouldnt heal. Host it was during those years working for senator kennedy from 64 to 68 that gave you permission that you have carried out over the years for social justice and poverty . Guest yes. In terms of her influence as well as my own, when Robert Kennedy died, i was not interested in private practice. I become kind of a policy person. But the most important thing is i felt like i should do whatever i could to keep on with the things Robert Kennedy was doing. But yes that was the definition of. Host youve lived through the new deal in the brown v. Board of education president john kennedy shortlived new frontier, lbj Great Society and now we are into what youve also been through with the welfare to change to such a degree as we dont know if any more as we think is the moniker that youve been through in this new jim crow era as Michelle Alexander put it. So youve seen a lot of that has changed for the better and have you seen anything change for the worst . Guest i certainly was alive during Franklin Roosevelt and in many ways in reading about in the sense that we have the capacity for change and of course we definitely saw it as a young adult they are despairing and this is a time when people do the despair and we need to remember that the change is very possible and in fact what we see from the historical record is that we can do it if we organize and get together if we push back and push forward. The 1960s of course there was a piece of that history. We were the only economic power in the world, so trade was always to have been the japanese and german economies destroyed and so we had a terrific bad year that was the context of which the Civil Rights Movement went and then the movement itself is crucial to the younger people that came back, africanamericans from the war and found that segregation was not only there but it was worse for some people who simply couldnt take the fact that there was a black man who had come back and was essentially not playing the old game. So much of what happened in the 60s there was particularly president johnson who was responsive to that, and knowing how to work with congress to get the act and the 65 act. But its also true at the same time if you look on the poverty side of it, poverty in the United States was 20 , and africanamerican poverty was 55 in 1959 and by 1973, the overall number of poverty had gone down to 11 and another for the Africanamerican Community was 32 . So what happened in the period of time because anybody that says we cant make progress on this is just wrong. Host the Great Society programs that are responsible for producing poverty in this country in such a short period of time would you agree . Guest i think the civil rights has a part of it because there were particularly in large cities and levels of government and even in the private economy that is a big part of it that isnt some accident. At the time together of course is part of the Great Society absolutely, but its a two to f things that come together. In that context of the jobs, people of color getting jobs in the plans and steel plants in men and some women, but men who hadnt gone to high school became a part of the middle class and their kids got to go to college. That all happened in that time. And then in terms of what then happens is the deindustrialization that happens in the 1970s and makes it much harder. Host the 60s budgeted a period of social change and social justice. Doing away with a jim crow law and the installation of the law that provided for good paying jobs that could not be relegated only to white people, both black people had the right to get these jobgivethese jobs or filen court to address any discrimination, and lots of mitigation took place to break the barriers of employment, and of course these benefits, good jobs, good highpaying jobs, white collar jobs that white folks, white men in particular had worked for decades controllincontinuing to live onn after the Great Society, after Lyndon Johnson decided not to run, Hubert Humphrey ran and then came the period of Richard Nixon and the republicans and the fact that the Democratic Party lost a number of people who were in support because the Civil Rights Act of the Voting Rights act. Can you tell me how things started to turn once Richard Nixon took office . Guest it certainly is a change. In the southern strategy, basalt that Lyndon Johnson himself had said in terms of what happens to the party in the south, tha sous what makes him was pursuing and there are two things that happened along with that. Clearly, one part of it is to get them for people with organized in the senate as democrats as they didnt believe in the things that humphrey or other liberals did, but when they turned to the republicans, they were voting for the leadership in the majority after a while. But there are two other things that are important in the conversation. One is mass incarceration and the other is the 30 year war. What they saw that they needed to do is to have signals they would tend to say we are still good boys here. So one store in the 70s arresting a lot more people, walking up a lot of people. There is a degree of crime, but the response is much more extended and worse than that. And its politics that work for them. And then for women they started telling him the story that the bees are all people that are lazy and dependent and giving them money makes them lazy and not want to work. The difference between adding on but not necessarily all done in a cooperative way because nixon himself tries to do a welfare reform and weve got to remember this where she proposed against the guaranteed annual income and finally it was in an active and that is a story in and of itself, so it is partly nixon and the economic structure thats taking away the industrial job, and its these things that are created in the mass incarceration and the attack on welfare as a part of a political strategy. So things like la law and order began to gain significance and they were used in the 68 election john mitchell, attorney general, so at that time there was not a war on drugs, but it was declared back i believe in 1971 by Richard Nixon. How has that impacted this mass incarceration . Guest its very much a part of it. The numbers of people who particularly cant send a person to possession if you are putting away all the dealers you wouldnt fill up all the prisons. If this isnt just federal law. That is a significant part of it and everything that happens you have to sort of look at the situation. There is a book about how mass incarceration started in dc. It was a great deal of crack cocaine in particular. It was bad. And after that, there was violence. In both cases it was appropriate to do something and if you look at it, what happens this is a story for the whole country thats overdone. They had a problem that needed to be looked at and acted on. But the sentences are crazy and the other part about dc that tells you the complexity. In dc, the leaders of making these balls were all with all africanamericans, so it gets to be if you kind of look at the whole thing, the politics you have in a largely black community, you have these leaders who are just as strong, they have something to it that they overdo it. Host was poverty in issue in terms of the war on drugs or the victims of the war on drugs and how big poverty play into that . Guest what happens to families and the men tha to thet have been blocked in all of the collateral consequences so they cant get jobs and they are not allowed to live in public housing. 45,000 laws across the country retire consequences of one kind or another. It destroys somebodys life. If they were not poor when they went into prison, they are definitely poverty stricken for the rest of their lives and its totally connected to poverty. What is really amazing on the argument of the Public Policy and how they work in relation because we all hear from paul ryan we all know who the speaker is talking about how nothing extended so weve got to change everything and make block grants that relates to poor people it should be understood that the Public Policies that we have, Social Security but also food stamps and the earned income tax credit and the Child Tax Credit and housing vouchers and many more things, we would have twice as many people in the poverty now as we have instead of the 43 Million People who are now called poverty in the way we measure poverty. It would be more like 90 million. So we have had a Public Policy that was constructed and made a difference that in the economy was now so many lowwage jobs people couldnt take ends meet. We have a Public Policy that was helping and adding to their income so even with mass incarceration which is a mess hit even so we had a Public Policy that was working to this day and we need to get people to understand that. Host we have been this investing in the government providing the opportunity for people through various programs that basically stem from the Great Society. Weve been dismantling it and it took place over a period of eight years or on the new frontier in the Great Society over a period of eight years and since then its been a disassembling guest with a little more complicated than that because they mix in period is a big headline weve already talked about which is the southern strategy. No question about it, thats bad. Host but we have to give credit where credit is due. Guest its not too much. Its a Democratic Congress and in the period that we get food stamps, nixon would send a message to have that done. How many vouchers, pell grants, Social Security for inflation. Those are all during the nixon period and those are some of the major things as i said before that there would be twice as many poorer if we didnt have those things. Now this investing, before i get to the big thing that is jobs, when we have a third of our population over 100 Million People who have twice the 200 of poverty level, which is very low in where we have to keep poverty that we have now with 20 Million People according to the way that we cant poverty rate is half the poverty line. That is a definite disinvestment absolutely especially for people at the very bottom. But the other thing is that weve never stood up to the question of what are we going to do about having decent jobs in this country. That is the question about income, poverty, and really related to the race as well. Host speaking of things getting better. You have a quote not a crime to be poor but the criminalization of poverty in america so as we have just invested in programs that provide a social safety net that kept people from falling through the cracks, weve got more people falling through the cracks now and you have written a book about how poverty and the criminal Justice System interface. Most of us we think about people charged and convicted of serious offenses, armed robbery, drug dealing, that kind of thing. Your book takes a twist on this different issue of criminal justice and so tell us what was it that motivated you to write this book not a crime to be poor, the criminalization of poverty in america, what was it that prompted to write the book at this time . Guest all the things come back to what weve done one way or another about poverty and over that period of time, i would never think about i didnt know about all these ways we are now criminalizing poverty and much of it has been going on for two or more decades, so Michael Brown is killed, that is horrible and we see that in other communities. Another story about ferguson is we found out in running this awful system its basically to get revenue for the city that the majority of the africanamerican town its not a question about whether they didnt vote out the white people, never mind but that is a separate question. In any case, they were just arresting anybody all the time and the date us of how much thy had to make and they would arrest somebody for not having mowed her lawn and things like that. A lot of them were made up but there is that kind of broken window idea that somehow its printed up but its about making money. And of course you have the department of justice that makes a terrific report about that. Somewhere in there it gets into my head that there is a story about all of that. Host so, what was going on in fergusoand ferguson particulr specifically about prompted you to write this book . Guest ferguson itself is about being more cognizant to read the papers on the subject. If you have a bad back, a lot of friends have a bad back and so my consciousness comes up and it turns out others had been actually reporting on this but it is a story that you kind of have to be sensitive to. Host the story where Police Officers are stopping motorists driving through small towns and find a the least offense to charge them with. Guest its way down the road, south georgia. Its on more than one occasion so they say you are guilty of this. So she is told i think its 127 she says i dont have that and this is a story that is told over and over again. He says to her go in that room and there is a woman who she finds out later is a probation person. Theres not going to be any real. Its a way of making money. As you know there is th therest one in the country in terms of forprofit taking 100 million forprofit that the county or city due to probation, socalled probation. There are plenty of regular agencies that do the same thing because they charge people and it is just amazing how much they charge people for everything. They charge people in state after state for living in the prison, for eating and staying on the mattress. Two thirds of people who have come out from prison or jail, but still havent paid. And in many cases, they never can. Host with fines that may be extensive to begin with guest they can pay on a payment plan and in many instances if a person doesnt know exactly what to do now is criminal content. Plus the Interest Rates and for every test that they are going to take when they never had any problem of drug abuse at all. But its a stipulation on the probation that you dont do any alcohol and drugs and you are subjected to random alcohol and drug screening. So the surcharges in the courts of the stat this state law and e probation fee and the drug and alcohol screening. Host guest she talks back to the woman in the place and she is saying if you dont pay on going to take you back to the judges and go to jail. She says im not signing the paper, which i guess is a probation paper. 50 i will let you off this time. Her fiance is there and looks at the Engagement Ring and they get out there. She gets on google and find sir gerry of the center for human rights who comes in and defends her and kicked her out of the mess which has been unconstitutional for what had been done to her. Host you cant lock a person that just simply because they couldnt pay the fine. Guest absolutely. But most people dont have a lawyer and it doesnt matter that we have something called gideon because you go around the country particularly in small towns and they are not there or they might be there because of a contract thats paid by the judge with them and they are more loyal to the judge. This shows us what exists all over the country. But i knew enough about it because theres a lot of that going on. Benton county washington, who knew. Its the same story that i just told you and the aclu heard about it and came and fought back. When they were able to operate because so much of what they did was unconstitutional and it makes the county change their whole policy as a result of handling that particular case. Now for bigger thing is that its not these madeup things or these low violations. The bigger thing is why sends, drivers suspensions. More than half of the violations or whatever they are relates to that. They use it for a variety of things. Guest in some states they can lose it and whether or not the particular state that doesnt put people in jail for doing these things but what it does do is garnish his wages and the tax refund. They have taken 4 million drivers licenses away from people, and it goes around the country well over a million in texas and florida, North Carolina almost a million in virginia. Its a very big thing and the same way that the difference is you need your car so you go out there because youve got to get to work and take the kids to the doctor, whatever it is and then you get arrested again after you get another sentence, you owe more money and it goes on and on. One of the other things that is so important in this conversation is people are fighting back. There are similar people around that i could name and there are chief justices in the states ten or 15 years ago are agreeing and by the way why would the money be needed in the first place i should have said before, but you can say it in two different words. So, the whole thing starts with the antitax rebellion and its added to a lot of places that creates a lot of arrests and gets caught up in the same things. So a lo a lot of the municipal y governments in the amount of revenue from locking up people who cant pay and doing everything they can. They are releasing them to go back into the streets and at that point they may not have a drivers license to be able to get to it from work and it is just a cycle that traps people. Theres a story in here about a guy named jefferson from la who was a truck driver and was convicted of something and then he lost his wife and his house and he was harmless and then the state finally started working in the right direction particularly in the state senate but also outside of people in poverty. They did an amnesty and that other kinds of things to reduce the problem. They got their drivers license back after all of that horrible mess that he went through so that particular thing had a good result because in this case its going to the legislature and getting change. Host you talked about this issue also. Can you elaborate on that for us . Guest in the cycle that we talked about its because a lot of times but its a much bigger part the person arrested is put in jail for a very minor thing that they are alleged to have done and they dont have the money to pay the bill. Sometimes it is 500 on a thousand dollars but they dont have that or the family doesnt so the person ends up proving they are guilty just to get out of there so they may be in there long enough but then they have to pay the money that they dont even understand the collateral is consequence which is huge so that is a key part. Note that 700,000 people a day or in jail. Three out of five people who are there had not yet been found guilty of anything so it is a massive thing so they are heard in so many ways but eventually the whole system depends on not having trials because they didnt have a person in power to do it. So down at the final they are not being ejected from the system so they just end up being in jail. Guest host is there some monetary angle to that process or an entity that is making money of people that are lodged in jail awaiting trial who writes the bond . Guest Insurance Companies and others. The reforms started in the 1960s Robert Kennedy was involved in that as the attorney general and was actually moving pretty well until the mass incarceration came along and changed the attitudes of the kennedy and resulted in the political power of the bail bondsman. We were also finally getting this area and some others just to emphasize there are lawsuits now that are succeeding because it is a line of people who can pay and people who cant. The biggest thing we have seen is a case in houston, the thirdlargest jurisdiction in the country. It happens the way they do their bail stuff is they dont bring them to the courthouse but they do it by skype so there is a recording of each of these encounters and they are shown on the film that have done this this trading of people, so in that 193 page opinion of the story there is an argument and we are seeing other cases following after that in San Francisco and a number of plac places. Years ago in kentucky and most recently in maryland and impartial in new jersey there are lawyers working for the example in the report where they are pushing much harder and this is a brooklyn defender to get to advocate to get the judge to see that it makes more sense. Host there is an entire industry that feasts on people that are trapped in jail and cant get out and have to make phone calls to the people back home trying to get out to those phone calls that go through private service charges. Oh dollar 50 per minute or whatever the cost might be. They are making money in addition to the probation companies and medical care that is given at the jails. Host its not only for forprofit, Affordable Care. I talk about one of the largest forprofits. They were in the jails rendering care. Guest they are the Mental Health places of the 21st century. Host so we have divested from our Mental Health infrastructure and kind of left those people to fall into the clutches of the criminal Justice System. Guest there are many such stories. Somebody asked me last night and the fact is that many of these jails have paid very large settlements. Any place in miami. They are running scalding water through and keep advocate on the floor and wouldnt claim it up so they scolded him to death. There is a reportetheres a repe miami herald who dug in to it and found out what happened and it won an award for doing that. But how could there be that kind of treatment of people . Host we have come a long way in society that we still have a long way to go thats pretty clear. Ultimately, what is it you want the readers of the book to know not a crime to be poor the criminalization of poverty in america, what is it that you would like for the readers to take away after theyve read that book . Guest how big the problems are and that we send kids from school to jail to court now instead of just being suspended. Other kids are black and brown and the whole series its not about the fees, its about women who call 911 because they are in danger of Domestic Violence and the law ordinance is called so they say the landlord must throw her out because she is a chronic nuisance. So i want people to know what those problems are comin comingo secondly, i want people to know that we can push back and some of it is people like the lawyers and other leaders of the judiciary but some of them we had a terrific pushback recently on the Affordable Care act and medicaid and stopped in to the people that rospeople that roseu wouldnt take away this coverage that we have. We need to do that. We are beginning to do it on mass incarceration. We have to go on to make a bigger dent in poverty. Host we have about two minutes left and i want to ask you this because having failed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care act is now hellbent on passing what is called comprehensive tax reform, which is simply tax cuts for the wealthy. A 1. 5 trillion gold in the federal debt that our children will have to pay for. If the tax cuts passed, then what will be the impact on this issue that youve pointed out in terms of criminalization and poverty . Guest there are two pieces here. Its going to take money away from people that are not rich and in and of itself is terrible. But the second thing that is going to happen if the bill passes as the republicans are going to say now we have a deficit, so now that means we have to cut medicare and medicaid and Social Security and food stamps and all the rest of it. But we cant afford it. So they go to the court an a coi am an orphan. Host i have enjoyed conversing with you on these issues and i look forward to your next book, but certainly people should go out and get not a crime to be for the criminalization of poverty in america, and i want to thank you. Guest thank you very much, congressman. They detail the relationship between Antonin Scalia and david brian. They offer a critical look at the Trump Administration and how its reshaping the political landscape. In broken, they weigh in on partisanship in the senate. Virginia eubanks looks at algorithms and automated programs have impacted the poor in automating inequality. Look for these titles in bookstores and watch for many of the authors in the new