The history of policing, black america, slavery. Editor and producer of npr, staff writer, for the atlantic. And opinion columns covering a broad range of issues for womens rights abroad, and child demand development and demographic changes. And dozens of national and local papers and in conversation, litigation director of the naacp, and christina overseeing all aspects of litigation in 14 process areas including economic justice, and criminal justice, as a nationally recognized expert on issues for criminal Justice Christina participates in committees, 5year Panel Strategic conferences. And msnbc and democracy now. Last but certainly not least we have doctor craig, doctor greg carr, and the chair of the drums of afroamerican studies at Howard University and adjunct officer at ed Howard School of law, phd in African American studies from Temple University and jd from Ohio State University college of law, he was a School District he was the School District first resident scholar on race and culture and Community BasedAcademic Initiative been involved 13,000 elementary, high school and college students, coeditor of the association of the study of classical african civilizations and World History project and represented Howard University as spokesman in a wide range of Electronic Media which includes the New York Times, the Washington Post, usa today, msnbc, npr, and the voice of america, the diet room show and cnn. So okay. I was trying to cut it, it was a long list. Please take a moment to help me welcome our guest for this evening. [applause] the 15th amendment, so they reh a compromise we have to fight to figure out. And figure out where we are property. That is a summary of the 13th amendments fundamental contradiction and everything that comes out of it, in 1866, everybody has the right to enforce contracts, same as a white citizen. And the 13th amendment continues to diminish as the court chops away at it, facing the question whether we can get the distinction right. All that continues in this fundamental question of what happens with classes of citizenship that some people can have their humanity defined differences in the 13th amendment. In the immediate aftermath, what did it mean in practice. For a little while, the courts tried to say you cant strip africanamericans of their rights as citizens. That was a brief period of time after enactment of the 13th amendment, longer stories of the use of the 13th amendment and constitutional jurisprudence, hasnt been used very much at all. And the beginning of the 1900s, the Supreme Court says brutal plan massacre, and the 13th amendment can reach, racially motivated crime, brought into federal court under auspices of the 13th amendment, prosecutors said this is what this was about. And should be prosecuted if that happened and the Supreme Court dismisses beyond reach of the 13th amendment and shortly thereafter, since then has been and we had the hate crimes act which was enacted and express statement that you cannot brutalize people on that and and and cannot be denied to purchase property on basis of it. Courts have largely ignored it, not dealt with at all. And had been litigated over the last hundred years on the issues of race and criminal justice to be quiet. Largely quite in the courtroom. It helped install an entire industry. How did that managed to burst . I dont know it may be overstating the case, it is compromised in the original constitution, 50 of African People for taxation, the 13th amendment, 60 to 200 , for selling weed or something in brooklyn, in virginia, guess who lost a person, and count two and they gain one and cant vote. A source of income. An individual who has been harmed and and the fuel for and the accept clause. And they have taken that in the system. And can you find a job and running around with block grants to the state and into the equitable distribution of resources and in the state imply work requirement a clean record requirement and to cut these black and brown people out of it made possible by the accept clause. A quick audience survey, who has been on an american road. Who has been to college, sends up a college bag. Who have a car with a license plate on it, there is a someone in prison built that road, made the bed, and feel free to google this, these things called Prison Industries and are very wellestablished and to pay the incarcerated person . 25 an hour and . 10 per unit and it is pennies for labor and this is entirely legal. Lets talk a little bit about the financial structure that is benefiting, the 13th amendment please. That goes back a long way, a direct descendent of the leasing structure that existed immediately in the aftermath of slavery. Laws were created whereby vagrancy and those kinds of offenses, they were created entirely to take black people, free slaves off of the streets and into jail that could lease them out to back to the plantation and industries that needed the bodies to do the work. That structure was brutal, and companies have no interest. It is horrendous so what we have today is direct descendent of the infrastructure one of your colleagues. The second year law student. And george was working on three cases. They pinch you on thursday or friday night, then dont get to trial and in between to rinse you out, it is a form of enslavement. And trying to get at the leasing system that you would think we made progress in 150 years and Civil Rights Act of 1856. And put some teeth in the 13th amendment, but still in between, there has been this retreat from the intent of the 13th amendment and there is a lot of labor. Anyone with a student in College Leading in a cafeteria has a good chance that is the same company. At Howard University, they are not changed but when you have that kind of economic clout you can purchase politicians for people you pour into a system where they cant get out and vote against. It is a nefarious cycle. Not just leasing out we have prisons that are literally working plantations. Dont know if you have ever been on to the ground of the angola farm. It is the clearest vision of a slave plantation i have ever seen. You go on and a rolling enormous space with shots on horseback and prisoners working in the field for 0. 05, . 10 and there is no choice, you have 2 work or you have a problem and that is the other way. They are using that in prison. Okay, that is angola over there. Raise your hand if you knew that 70 million americans are Walking Around with a criminal background . 70 million of us so chances are there is someone in this very room who has a criminal record. Raise your hand if you knew he every year 11 Million People are cycled through local jails. 11 million. Raise your hand if you knew that. Every year, 600,000 people are released from prison, right . Another 700,000 are put back in every year. We are not talking about an isolated group of people, but people who spend their entire lives tethered to the criminal Justice System and lets bring it forward and talk about the legacy of the 13th amendment in all our lives because chances are you are one or two degrees of separation from someone in one of those situations so how do you, in your role trying to dismantle the structural system with think about approaching, tools that you have available, take it from the citizens perspective and answer the question. It is a hard question, Supreme Court made it easy to challenge these kind of laws. We have a series of decisions like if you are trying to make a full frontal attack on the administration of the criminal Justice System the first thing you encounter is what was litigated by lgf and a case that was presented to the largest statistical study of the role of race and administration of the Death Penalty, study finds African American people, black people who are allegedly convicted of killing white people or four times more likely to be sentenced to death than any other race, take it to the Supreme Court, they say this has to be unconstitutional, race is an arbitrary factor that cant be considered in deciding whether someone should live or die and the Supreme Court said not so fast, you just brought statistics and statistics alone are not enough and this is not enough evidence of racial disproportionality and administration of the Death Penalty and ultimately the criminal Justice System overall is not a basis for a constitutional claim. Justice brennan in his dissent criticize the majority decision, fear of too much justice because the Supreme Court said if we open the door here to a conversation about disproportionality in Capital Punishment then we have to look at disproportionality throughout the criminal Justice System and we wont do that and this is a fear of too much justice so that is the first challenge, we can all in this room site the disproportionality. Before you are on the street black people stop and searched by Police Officers, then, once you get in there, the discretion exercised by Police Officers, black kid, white kid, the white it will get sent home and the black kid will keep going through. Once you get into the courthouse, discretion is a nice exercised by officers, every discretion in the criminal Justice System, discretion is exercised in a way that African American people see the harsh end. But they say that is interesting, you cant do anything with that. That is a fascinating fact. Ultimately we need the Supreme Court, we are going to have to get that overturned. In the short run, and the highprofile extreme, this is not a situation that will go away. All the stuff about voting discrimination is a thing of the past, that doesnt happen anymore. Five years ago they said this. That is crazy talk. An astonishing decision. It really is at this point where you have to be bringing the evidence to them in a way that is not palatable. That is what is happening which the case of a black man, his own lawyer introduced an expert who testified he is more likely to commit crimes because he is black. Period. That fact, whether you are likely to commit crimes in the future is the fact, the prerequisite fact for a death sentence so his own lawyer presented evidence that would establish he should be condemned to death and he was and that was in 1997, february 22nd of this year, the first time we got the sentence reversed. Lets be very clear. [applause] it is a good outcome, it took he was on death row with court after court after court, saying nothing to see here. The challenge is real, only because it was so explicit they couldnt turn away and say this is and racial discrimination, this is Something Else. There was no way to avoid what was happening. It is hard and they tried to be consistent, speak truth to power every time. You are in the 1 of legal minds, what do the rest of us do . Open warrants dont know how you have them. And put the scanner on your license plate, did you know you have a warrant . There are a lot of things is just the fact the Police Chiefs in the New York Times a week and a half ago, very interesting, where Campbell Soup was, they have taken a deliberate deescalation, trying to move away from complications, these little nuisance tickets, what does it mean to get a 250 ticket when you make 10,000 a year . Those are people who are pulled into this. I stress the fact there is probably somebody in this room with an open warrants, a black man, something we joke about and that has become a thing. In terms of what we can do, the 13th amendment, the 15th amendment, you have to be a state actor and an intense threshold, did you actually the 13th amendment, in st. Louis, where the alfred mayer case was, you didnt sell me this house because i was black. The court says you cant do that, the 13th amendment, that really revealed the court has outsized power, if they wanted to use the 13th amendment they could but as citizens, as human beings, citizenship speaks to the internal struggle of the United States and if you look at the history of the country we made the most progress, when they go outside, and we are going to take you to the un and it is a crime against humanity, it is race relations, law and order, not domestic, but what we can do, ferguson missouri, st. Louis we all know the name, it has taken ten minutes on the same street, crazy how these convert. 4000 people vote, republican comes back, the black woman, 44 , when you ask people why they did that nothing will change. That point of context, somebody who is fascinated has the most respect for the great legal minds, since battle in the case of something absurd. That is transcendent and individuals in a society, when doing that what does it do to fight that battle . Many people who could vote go forward. There is no excuse, just deal with that. If it doesnt matter maybe when you come to ferguson and get these nuisance tickets and you owe 580 and dont have a chip to pay it and you have a point on you maybe that doesnt happen with a woman who is the mayor of the Council Structure saying we need to revise the statute, that is something we can do and it has real consequences. Something about ferguson, everyone looking at ferguson, they learned none of the ranking executives were black, the ratio of Police Officers was lowest in the country and most significantly the average citizen in ferguson has not one, not two between 3 outstanding warrants for petty infractions like a broken taillight or not stopping at a stop sign and the average cost was 1500 to the person when ferguson has an average annual income for households lower than the poverty rate of 26,000. Legal financial obligations, they actually are one of the ways millions of american spend a lifetime tethered to the legal system. A study last year in washington around washington state, year over year gets 30 million in revenue for obligations, someone has 113 ideally. Sometimes the penalty is 20,000, sometimes 5000, sometimes 15,000 and they pay an average of 113 to the state hands late fees, these are all added on if you miss a payment and what happens is these things show up in public records so if you are trying to buy a house and you have an outstanding you will not get the house. This happened to a man i interviewed in florida. He committed a misdemeanor, served four years, came out, couldnt get a job because of his record but managed to do some handiwork but when he was sentenced, the judge who sentenced him put in the sentence that he has to pay restitution to the state for every day he was in prison. He came out of prison in florida, he had a 63,000 tab. He is resigned to not pay it but also resigned himself to not owning a home, not being able to cosign a college loan for a child in the future and this is someone in his 30s. Because of a mistake he made in his 20s went through the system, spent four five years, has 65,000 and no ability to pay whatsoever. Where am i going with this . Back to the voting. One of the things place like ferguson, milwaukee, baltimore, we will get to baltimore in a minute, big news concerning baltimore. They have been systematically disenfranchised from the system, the phrase is what difference does it make . Heres the difference that it makes. Prosecutors in this country are elected. 2400 prosecutors in the country are elected. The only state they are not elected is new jersey so if you dont live in new jersey and you dont vote, somebody else will make the decision for you so speak to the role of prosecutors in the structure in eight minutes. I want to say about the money, we recently found another example of that, in a challenge to houston, in Harris County in houston, texas, they have a system of what we call wealth based misdemeanor, so you are arrested, charged with a misdemeanor, there is a schedule that says this is the amount of bail for this charge, what does it take into consideration, committal history, what it does not take into consideration, income. So if you are a rich college professor. I like this scenario. And i am not and we get arrested the same day for the same offense and they said 50, 150 bail, you are staying home, same background, same committal history, everything. Only difference between you going home or going in is money, your ability to pay bail and you can imagine the racial disproportionality inherent in that structure, people of color, black and latino spending time in jail, dont get to talk about your ability to pay until for days you have been in jail for days, a week, bring it up and have a conversation about it and this is the structure, so dug into the system, capitalizing on criminal justice, so deeply tied. For the northerners, philadelphia the average cost of being sent to prison for shoplifting, 50 fine, but you cant pay 10 of the 50 fine, you get the same, 1 of 50, 5. The irony is it cost philadelphia 150 a night. Who are they paying . And so the web becomes a spiral fors people, missed two days of work, you cant call in, get fired on monday, now you have a pending court case, what you are able to pay. The rent is due. That was an explanatory it is sort of black lives Better Campaign was launched in houston, very tough unfair prosecutor was voted out of office and new prosecutor filed in reform in Harris County. And understanding and engaging prosecutors and election campaigns, a sign of hope. Prosecutors, unchecked power over the criminal Justice System. Unchecked power. There is no supervision, no oversight from the court about the decision the prosecutor makes. The Supreme Court made sure that is the case in United States versus armstrong, there is hypothetically a legal claim called selective prosecution. I could say in wherever you are, washington dc the only people, and africanamerican, and the use of drugs in this justice, i want to sue because it looks like the prosecutor not the literally, this prosecutor is discriminating against africanamericans, Supreme Court says i need discovery, and had all the information. And he got called discovery. And we can all take a look. You dont get back you dont have access to the information that allows you to support prosecution claims. Prosecutors decide what crime is going to be charged. That decision determines what sentence you will get and that is the only decision emphasized, you can get a range off of the prosecutors decision, charging decisions dictate sentencing decisions. It is unchecked and the way it is checked is the voting in the voting booth. Is there a pattern like this, what i described and Harris County a situation where the last prosecutor had a witness with Mental Health problems and she decided not to testify and she was promptly beaten and attacked and got voted out of office but that is the only Current Power or control what prosecutors are doing so it is critical for people to follow what prosecutors are doing and acting on it and going into the voting booth. Who knows a teenager who hangs out with knuckleheads . Not saying he or she sometimes hangs out with knuckleheads. Lets say his or her knuckleheaded friend vandalize something and four of, they get sent to jail, the prosecutors up for reelection next year so there is a high probability that if you cause that, their friends are going to get charged as a gang for vandalism, petty theft or whatever the crime was. It gets better. Depending where you are coming in the state of california, the prosecutor has direct file which means he or she in a 24hour period can determine whether or not, the adult criminal court. In california they decided the citizenry decided to discover 20 years ago to give the power to the prosecutors because they thought there was a Gang Violence wave, and that didnt work out well. It is 40 . The number of direct files is in the opposite direction. It is a very contested referendum that passed last year but 15 states and dc still have this in the books. This lovely person asked us earlier what my assignments was. Your assignments when you want to do something is figure out the one thing you can plug at that will make a difference. That is the assignment and that is what happened in california. People decided this is crazy. Why does one Single Person looking at how does this determine what happens to these young people and organized and organized and organized and lets talk about baltimore. What happens in baltimore today . In places like baltimore and ferguson and other places, previous attorney general and his team and the one before that answered into these agreements sometimes voluntarily and some were kicking and screaming and the agreement said theres a lot of work to do and we have to play a role in that. Baltimore decided a couple years ago, they wanted the help and support for the attorney general and the doj, the attorney general, after a judge decided entering into the consent agreement, saying the following about the agreement, make no estate, baltimore is facing a Violent Crime crisis. In short the citizens of baltimore are plagued by Violent Crime that shows no signs of letting up. I have grave concerns some provisions of this decree will reduce the powers of the Police Department and result in a less safe city. What do they do . I respect him, he is fighting for something, silly i did racial view of the world. I respect that. He is in proud condition which there is a succession with controlling womens bodies or black bodies, he engages in a legal somersault, you have the rights of states and you might think these supersede, when it comes to the negro you dont hear a citizen of the state or citizen of the United States. Why is that important . What does that have to do with what beauregard is talking about . It is a shell game with the federal government as it suits them. We upset about race and we should because that is the center of it but the legal fiction of separating out between the federal government and the state is the bally wic of the game. Beauregard says we will pass all of this except when we need to, there is no consistency, and the police union made brussels and the police chief said no, what is going to happen, the consent agrees, what beauregard has to choose, do i jump in and put the hammer down, i dont care about the law, this is about my warped view of the age and reframe how we look at the law, the negro is special to the Supreme Court, always looking to help us. And on a local level, in brooklyn, johns harris should have been more progressive, having some intervention with some work, at the normal level, if we tell the federal government we got this we have to force them, come in with thunder and you made this delivery at the local level and beauregard gets a little more with his father and grandfather to the 19th century, born in the shadow of the civil war. You need some water . What is needed now is not water. [applause] i did not expect that. I meant that my whole life. Dont try it. I want to go parallel here. Some people look at the statements as a preemptive strike, fed up the way crime wave on the crying bill in the 90s was a preemptive strike, providing an authority of sorts so next was one of the first president s to utilize this method of preemptively saying there is a fire, and so dixon set in motion the war on drugs for example, you understand how much damage, dealing with ramification, bill clinton had a similar preemptive strike being tough on crime and how does this go because we now have a more connected citizenry, we have an administration that didnt come out by a popular vote, had this has been haphazard about the way to govern. I know my sat words. What do we do . What is next . From the administrations point of view, what are the intentions . The war on drugs is a war on black people. Im not embracing quotes. I dont think it is much different now, what use the example of drugs again. It is fascinating to watch. And drugs in the heartland. It is fascinating. And attorney general was so concerned about crime but not concerned about drug crime, the face of drug crime, in the face of drug crime, it was a crime problem. The way it responded in chicago and baltimore, drugs are now helped, that is the clearest way to see what is happening. People who struggle with drug problems, it is not the same. That is what we are seeing, the way it is handles right now, baltimore, chicago need to go back to the good old days, the Brutal Police force, the heartland needs doctors and medicines. That tells the story. What is the arc on history after this. Web do boys web du bois was born free in tennessee, and going to devote my life to this human struggle. The african slave trade to the United States, no one could have looked with more or at what happened in the civil war, would never have imagined that would have been the result. They couldnt imagine it, a real challenge to the fabric of the country, going to keep coming back, the right time to connect the moral law is when you become aware and you keep raising. We havent left the universe of the 13th amendment. When you create a category that consigns people to levels of citizens and enshrine whiteness as the only definition of humanity in the legal universe, when they get this drug addiction we treat them and these are human beings. Anybody you dont treat you are saying you are not human which a swelling group of people considered not human except they keep having babies and they are out there and cant put them all in jail. And we are ready now to solve this and they say not this time. And if people think it is apocalyptic, and another year to the day after he came with the critique, militarism, capitalism, the ways it is based not just on the color of their skin but their wealth and if you keep doing that will be an autopsy for this country. It might be vietnam but it might be donald trump. And the country will dissolve which people will stop believing this framework can solve our problems. Lets stay with the issue of race, you made the elegant point how race is a foundational element in this. I just came across this book by chris hayes and this is one of the things he argues, American History is the soiled fear of the constant, the management and ordering of those impulses, the citizens of the nation wary of the colony and he means those in prison but it is a physical prison. The desire to keep it separate. Even another white person is fearful. No way. What do you say . It is not white fear, it is white entitlement, you take that line from nixon. He gave the interview, and web du bois black reconstruction, the assumption that white people in this country is a figment of white peoples imagination is the height of white entitlement. They meant it. Exactly. Somehow our entire depend on what they think of us. That is the definition of it, you saying get out. What i am saying, chris hayes is very insightful. The new jim crow, mcintyre wrote 30 or 40 years ecological race. Before that, you go through du bois, it ought to be different. Where the whole situation comes up. Every generation we are faced with narcissistic navelgazing on behalf of white liberalism that continues to lead us in the direction of trying whether it is good or bad remains at the center of the legal universe. How we begin this place to get by conceding if we are going to make this work we are going to come to the table as human beings in our glorious tapestry of distance and redefined the terms, why the 13th amendment when they passed the 13th amendment they said it is very real and they say people should make a contract and they go through a litany and they say these rights should be practiced as they are enjoyed by white citizens. We are going to remove whiteness to the degree possible as people being able to use the universe. What they do, the Supreme Court says as applied to white citizens applies to white people too. We are trying to restore whiteness is the normative default. If you get in trouble it is your fault. You are drug addicts, it is your fault. The victim becomes the person who can never escape that destination. I dont there is a solution to this problem, looking to chris hayes to give us enlightened and on which we live every day. I know you were. Maybe i should trying to introduce a different perspective. Giving us the syllabus. I am sorry. I do appreciate his work. But i suppose i should say this very succinctly. The challenge in terms of education is to get our young people to possess their agencies. That is what i am trying to say. Are these experiences the foundation for how we solve this problem . Not looking to experts to tell us we are in this miserable condition and here are the steps you need to take. No, no, no, no. Fund more money to public education. Stop betsy devos from doing whatever she believes and. That is a great segue because i want to talk about the movement for black lives, black lives matter. So you are that is not possible. Humanity to somebody else. This brings up the point, since Michael Brown, there has been a magnificent resurgence of this claim to selfdirection, for selfdefinition and it has really invigorated the conversation around who gets to define my humanity. Is that had any Ripple Effect intangible ways in the system . How so . Absolutely. Beginning five years ago we had the Supreme Court saying in a case called shelby county, all those voting Problems Congress acknowledged we 10 years ago are gone, those are a thing of the past. This year, the Supreme Court in two cases acknowledging racial dissemination and committal justice, in my case another case out of georgia, a prosecutor excludes africanamericans from service from the gerri, last term, Supreme Court reaffirmed the university of texass race conscious admissions process, long protracted fight which was wrought as a full throated challenge to end any form of race in higher education. Real risk and court ultimately upholds the policy and brings an end to the long running case and really powerful in these three cases, powerful language and it wouldnt have gotten there, i am confident it wouldnt have gotten there had we not seen what we had all seen. For the court to turn a blind eye to say that this isnt real, the videos, just the brutal response to people, to children, teenagers, junk people in the street and the brutality that they faced in response to just owning their humanity. Standing up and sang black lives matter was met with tanks and guns and everything else. It really did change, did it change it enough . Not even close. Not even close, but five years ago the Supreme Court said there is no more discrimination in voting. Theres no voting discrimination. Nothing for us to worry about. Now the Supreme Court, Justice Roberts writes about racial discrimination. Im quoting him, some toxins can be lethal in small doses. Hes talking about racial discrimination. Thats Justice Roberts. That is, i just, that is, to say the world has changed is an understatement. That pressure has to be kept up. We cannot stop exposing and talking and pushing and requiring people to acknowledge the injustices that are happening on the streets. It cannot stop. One of the places, symbolically and very much privately, where much of this, college campuses, right . We havent seen that type of resurgence in activism i would say since the 60s and 70s. How has that shape the young minds that you are in charge of shaping and what is this renaissance of self empowerment doing . Thats very generous. I dont think young people be ushered into shapes by anything. Increasingly i think social media is the way the media has transformed Current Technology has displaced the classroom in a way as a place where you can convene these conversations to scale. So that you write. I mean, you know, im sure we remember the Antiapartheid Movement in the 80s and 90s the particular those confirmations and then you see the 60s of course this generation like i said i just left the United Negro College fund data st. Louis. We talk about the campaign in south africa which started, you see the statute and the students, black, white, we need to be able to pay for her education. We need to have support. Vision people who are sitting in st. Louis and all of the country not only do about this but then they connected to concerns to the 1950s which was the university of missouri. These movements now have the potential to unsettle some things that people as ask her ce about in this country, like money. Missouri is a great example. We talk about today. You all know about concerned students in the 1950s. University of missouri being integrated, the kinds of games, nobody still know it happened. Anyway, these students realized when the Football Players at missouri, and im from the south so you all know the secs, sometimes we call it a slight economic conference are all the money to make up the black bodies. The spoils of integration. When you see the Football Players come out and say this got it and, they start getting rid of chancellors, the board of trustees tartly forgets what happens when young people begin to weaponized their education and by that i mean transfer what the begin to understand into action. And its one thing we do, academics. Your writers and lawyers. No, no, no. Their goal is about School Player who just hit the winning shot in the final four. When she steps out there we have a problem. What people dont realize is as all secure people are talking to each other, you know, Martin Luther king would get on the radio in downtown atlanta, if you are alive today he would just tweaked it out on facebook and whole world would be listening. That is the x factor. This thing could flip overnight if we could figure out how to is an exciting time i think. We are going to take your questions. I just want up one more interaction and im going to bring it back to the qualification of bodies in the 13th amendment. Now theres a movement afoot across the country to declare that black lives matter are declaring violence against police as hate crimes. Take it away. So much wrong with that. The first thing thats wrong with that is it is largely redundant. The already laws on the books in every state that enhanced penalties for crimes against police officer. There is no, nothing needed to be done. That is already an enhanced crime. This is literally optics and like wordplay to try to diffuse the power of the black lives matter movement, right . And to suggest that, to suggest or to attempt to equalize or to suggest that Police Officers face the kind of jeopardy, physical violence that africanamericans do, which is not remotely equitable, its not a fair comparison at all, so legally it is simply redundant. The laws already exist. Thats a done deal. But just realistically, right . I mean, the government refused to count how many black people are killed, how many people are killed by the police. Until recently, you know . Exactly. The government literally refused to count it. And now we know and you see, you can go on the Washington Post all these websites and watch the running tally in the running tally is horrifying. Theres no comparison to the number of black people that are killed and hurt and wanted by Police Officers in this country. Its a ridiculous attempt to suggest that what israel, which is that black people really are in real jeopardy in many instances on the street when confronted by Police Officers its an attempt to distort that reality. Let me Say Something. Either final question for you. Just fyi, Something Else we may not be aware of. When the crime report comes out every year, they make a really big to do about it, it only covers eight categories of crimes. It is gathered by volunteer information provided by Police Departments and jurisdictions across the country. And they are not legally compelled to share that information. Of those eight crimes, they only represent about 18 of all crimes committed in the United States. So next time you see the crime report remember that. Remember that it is on a voluntary basis. Because not everyone is compelled, the doj, the federal government has no way to compel Police Departments. They are not trying on a volunteerbased of a a National Clearinghouse for these things, but he can people have to volunteer for that. So the last question i want to ask is about the ferguson facts, and one greg to take this. For those of you dont know, after ferguson erupted, police chief claimed that is what officers were afraid to go, not in ferguson necessarily but were ever, that they were afraid to go out in certain neighborhoods because they thought their lives would be in greater jeopardy after the eruptions in ferguson. So we dubbed this the ferguson effect. Foeverybody talked about the ferguson effect for a while, right . Then nonchalant quite academics went to milwaukee for two years, this is what they did. They went to milwaukee and they gathered all of the 911 calls, one year prior to the death of a young black man at the hands of police and one year after the death of a young black man at the death of police. They took their dad and came back and realize that the real ferguson effect was actually that fewer people were calling 911 immediately after highly publicized that of the black man on the hands of police. So the communities were afraid that if they called the police into their neighborhoods, someone would end up dead, right . In total over the difference in calls the year prior to the incident to the year after the incident was 22,000 calls to 911. Ferguson effect. That made me think. The fundamental issue, the fundamental question i ask is so what is the function of police in society . Thats what im just thinking of listening to the conversation, he laid the scenario out and i was in the walkie shortly after a young man named robinson who lost his life, and it makes us question if this can be reformed, which is why i thought whats going on in canada or at least been attempted in canada whats going on . The chief walked through out their training officers. If you encounter someone who is got a knife always been violent, you try to create a corridor and talk to them, walking away from other people and eventually get them to diffuse the situation. He talked about this guy who had a knife. These two brown officers parked and walked a guy into a quarter. He was black and eventually took the knife done. Normally they walk in, pull out the guns, drop the weapon. That is beginning to have an effect in terms of place place h the police are not trusted. Now people feel, im thinking about is you are talking, im thinking about the parallel track the coast immigrations. You got cowboys who want to kick in the door with ice or whatever. Nobodys calling the police. So what is the function, get the function of the police to maintain law and order, not just the United States but anywhere else. Then you have automatic adversarial relationship. You dont have to say blue lies matter as a matter of law or a matter of culture. These are our enemies. They are as huey newton said an occupying army. They are humans. He just put on uniformly good work because your job is not just to keep us safe but to help us move in community, then perhaps there is a way to that the police themselves come into the other space. But whats keeping us can whats keeping us from doing that . We all probably know police there just like we all got some inner family or friends who served in the military. People come out and talk about drug abuse who drink, who complain because theyre out there on the street and they seated and they realize that they dont do it and now theres going to be a war in the locker room are the dispatcher or their sergeant will Say Something. How do we free those people who want to be in the world who wear the uniform to make different choices with some of it is joining folks to join police forces. That isnt all. I think whatever solution is it cant involve escalating the conflict with Law Enforcement. Its a longterm strategy. Now, it could do that but the only result you get than is a fullscale warfare. What has history shown us . If it gets bad enough for most people are they going to put the guns down or turn those got on the people they came out there with pointing guns. Because the crisis will reach a point with a contradiction has to be resolved and have to make a choice, am i blue or am or am i human . The police are not going to like the decisions some of the cops make in that moment if we understand what history john kerry did bring when the election but he threw his medals in vietnam. I can do this and more. At the project a pullup of vietnam because they dont want to fight for you anymore. I dont see a solution to it absent to reall attract addresss final question, what is the role of policing in society. Some questions. Questions, not comments. Ill take a question on the site of the room first and then i will move around. So within policing, if you want to get promoted jeff to make a respite if you want assignments you have to make arrests. If you want to make over time, you have to make arrests. So can you speak to that . No. [laughing] the report came out, again Justice Department in the wake of ferguson, they were looking at it was like 3000 Police District in the country, most less than ten officers, and the head of police union here in d. C. , one of the think tanks had a conversation. Dude, you cant keep defending the police. Stop, listen. Do you hear . Because you got to make a different decision. Can you create a plan whereby you can get promoted, make advances, teacher raises and its not built on the back locking people up arresting people. Thats a policy question. The police remember, the police, some people may move like forth the police any municipality report to a larger structure. Some of these people, city council has to get more break. Some of these elected officials have to get more break. As you reform the policy, go to the policy manual and when the police union comes, break their back. And by break the back i mean force them, force them into a conversation with the rankandfile because when do people say i do want to get promoted based on arrests, you have to tell your rep that. You have to tell your shop steward that. The people at the top are just out there they are putting you engage but i think its a policy fix and thats just incremental. I was going to its not just what you identify pickets also if you Say Something, right . If he Say Something about the beat down to you saw, if you Say Something, then they are not going to come for you when you radio, know what i mean . Then youll be left out there. That is the culture right now in Law Enforcement in this country. So i mean, the really have to be i think ill agree with greg, that there has to be a complete Culture Shift in the way the Police Department is structured. At this point its promoted as a paramilitary organization. Think about how it is advertised, inviting people who want to be in this swat team, who want to kick down doors, who want to be doing b downs on the street. That is the advertising. Its not come here and let me, its not asking people who want to solve problems to come, right . That somewhat their inviting. They are inviting people who want to dilute the downs. Thats the whole structure, the way it is promoted. That all has to be changed. I want to add that in san antonio where the afflicted a really Great Program called crisis intervention training and its taking hold of the country. So san antonio decided that they just didnt have the capacity in terms of deputies, if this is at the sheriffs level, in terms of deputy come in terms of room capacity to house as many people as they were arrested for things like Domestic Violence incidents, for drunken behavior. These were not criminal and that there wasnt really Violent Crime. So they decided to run an experiment and they trained three officers. They send them to an academy to be trained. It was called crisis intervention training and it all the escalation technique. Its all talking someone down in a moment of crisis because this is what people dont realize that Police Officers are almost always coming into contact with someone at the worst possible moment, right . They are almost always in crisis. And so these three Police Officers out of normal rotation and they were only called into situations where there was clearly no one in imminent danger and no one who is about to die because of whatever, and the responding officer was to stay outside of the door, one like white sage was established. Then that these three officers would come in and talk down and negotiate and deescalate the situation. The program was so successful that now their training all of their officers in cit. And in five years they saw a 23 drop in arrests and theyre able to divert people into social services who needed psychiatric interventions, who needed other social support. And so there are alternatives. Another to do thing, if youre in your communities see theres a penchant for over policing, put pressure so that the cit training can be adopted there. So well take another question. Get promoted by not arresting people. Asked about grand juries. That was a big talk for a second. We were all waiting for the big grand jury. There was a lot of confusion over what they do and prosecutors saying, were telling us prosecutors only bring cases to the grand jury when you want to. Again it goes back to your talk about grand juries, prosecutors have complete, something to grand jury is just a pocketbook of the prosecutor. What do you think about grand juries and what we do about them and was going on with them . Whats the future . Thats a great question. First the prosecution controls the grand jury. Thats the way they function. The defense, people like me, if i want, i dont have any, i can ask to say, i can call up the prosecutor and say if i know there is a witness who has exculpatory information, i think you should let come as the grand jury if they want to hear from the exculpatory witness when they have no obligation to do that. And i have no control over it, right . My client can go on the grand jury but, of course, everything that he says or she says will be used against him or her. So at times certainly i put people in the grantor if they have a really compelling story that i was a and also remember to say ask to see the exculpatory witness. But you have to so to be very creative about getting the other side in. But really it is, its a situation where the prosecutor, and it depends on its jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Its not a clear answer. It depends sort of what the rules are in that jurisdiction. But always its within the presentation is exclusively within the control of the prosecutor. So for example, in ferguson they basically tried, presented all of the prosecutions version of the story, sorry, the Police Officers version of the story to the grand jury and then sort of Michael Brown version, and those who are interested, had his interest in mind didnt have an opportunity ever to be heard. And that in the case, right . They say theres no charges available. In Staten Island we will never know, right . There was a case presented to the grand jury in the eric on a case and thats a black box. There were suits to get access to the transcripts in public interest. Theres a access. It is the secret proceeding. There is no right of access to it in any jurisdiction. So when the ferguson, that was a big deal to release the transcript because it was unusual because it is so secret. It cuts both ways. I cant say to you authoritatively come you cant say we should abolish them i would not say you should abolish the grand jury because an empowered, what we need to do is empower the grand jury. The truth of the matter is the jurors make the decision but the jurors have to know that they are the ones in control, not the prosecutor. The jurors can do whatever they want. You can say i want to see more. I would like to see, other of the witnesses . Theyre are the ones in control. They can ask for anything they want in the grand jury room. Thats not something the prosecutor feels like they have to share. But that is the truth. So what you find, like a practice in new york for a while is like grand juries, they have a term of service. A beginning term grand jury with the worst because they did know anything so there always, you would always get an indictment because they were following the prosecutor and interim grand jury were radicalized. You always wanted, know what a mean . You should always have an aim to term grand jury purchase of a a jury to understand its rights and its power. Because if you have that then you get a legitimate process and a legitimate evaluation of the evidence. I cant say no, we should never have a grand jury. We should have a fair grand jury were people understand whether power is and they dont have to do everything the Prosecutor Says no matter what the Prosecutor Says. Please help me thank this take one more question. Theyre going to cut off the camera. Im just saying. Im just curious what is your argument to people in positions of power, white people in positions of power, for dismantling their own privilege . So im going to play to thought experiments. One thought experiment is say a white man, western pennsylvania, economics sense of basically destroyed his life it and dont think he has told onto is his whiteness. Another scenario might be a white liberal in new york city, and make it to hold onto the whiteness as a white sage you could forget of ask what is your argument . Your life would be better. Do you really want to take the ill with the disease you have in western pennsylvania and you have any access to anything . All we have to do is again look at history. After the civil war theres a brief period, people may refer to it as the egg ring movement. Youve got black farmers and white farmers tried to get together. Shortly there after you got money interest that begins to feed this impulse. When you look at the early cases, case in oklahoma where these folks are trying to organize and that can organize and who comes the claim shooting at them. They shoot back and then its like they are going to get in trouble. I kissed the impulse in this country is the art enough people of goodwill who begin to Form Coalition that threatens to undermine the thing that is keeping that in place. I guess my answer to folks like that is, lets listen and read a little history together and just see how your life has gotten better every time you tried this and see with what happened after life starts getting better. And this time dont go for the okeydokey. Whiteness is worthless. It may seem like theres a true interest but in the long range this thing is not going to last because nine tenths or nonwhite. The only other thing i was as maybe we can get this into curriculum. Im thinking not that our civics classes with the greatest in nashville, tennessee, but this guy did a pretty good job of helping us. If i was 16, 17yearolds and dozens go what he taught me with the grand jury was and what i was supposed to do when i got a notice, when the notice came to my house, i wouldnt say, i would be looking to get on the grand jury about the kind of thing that undermines the kind of myth and craziness that this whiteness and its offspring, because it aint racism, lets be frank, its whiteness, has engendered that traps everybody including white people. If i can add to that. Theres a lot more evidence and not just about whiteness but does lot more evidence, for example, corporations that women on the boards make a lot more money. Theres a lot more example that women managers and managers or people of color tend to have better teams. They tend to outsell, outperform all the other teams. So theres a real economic benefit actually to inclusion that is now quantified and has been measured. And so thats the argument i always make. Because i dont hold my moral compass about anyone elses moral compass, but i know that we both like keeping the most of her money, right . I know that i have got that income with most people. We like to keep the money we work so hard for. So i always end the argument of, dont you realize that our collective net worth would rise, you know . It is antithetical to your self preservation not to try to maximize your own income in that way. And in communing multiple things, not just actual physical money. With income in many ways. So anyways speeded by can add before we wrap up . On that point exactly is also weight. But that also in the criminal justice of the studies that show the diverse jurors outperform allwhite juries. The allwhite juries make more errors. They deliberate unless. They do not ask questions. That is literally in the criminal justice context is given allwhite jury as compared to a diverse jury, the diverse jury outperforms enkidu more accurate outcome than an allwhite jury. We came to the conclusion that people with any discernible amount of melanin have a high aptitude of detector. So please help me thank them, please. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] the Los Angeles Times has been putting on the festival of books for more than 20 years, and it has become an institution that is part of the community. And its a way that we can celebrate with the readers of the paper and with the city as a whole, the very notion of reading. And today when the idea of there being something called fake news is out there, i think that books help us celebrate the way that words and fax are grounded in storytelling and in history. Watch our live coverage of the Los Angeles Times as to the books all weekend april 22 and 23rd on booktv on cspan2. In case you missed it on cspan, oklahoma congressman Steve Russell on the 100th anniversary of the u. S. Entry into world war i. On the sixth of april 100 years ago today where i am standing, with concrete evidence of the german hostility to the United States, to international peace, and to liberal democracy, the congress of the United States declared war on germany. Romantic his secretary john kelly on the building of the border wall. I have no doubt when i go back and say boss, wall make sense here, fencing, high tech since he makes its, Technology Makes sense over here, ive no doubt that he will go tell me to do it. Senator harris on morale of the department of homeland security. In regards to top to bottom assessment, has had included looking into the morale issues at the agency putting in place programs and initiatives to actually improve the morale . Thats what i do, yes. Actress Holly Robinson peete on Autism Awareness posted by sesame workshop. And now with this new see amazing all cheered on all children issue there showing just how amazing kids with autism to darker, to a better understanding about autism to the beloved sesame street friends makes it all the more accessible and its all part of sesame street magic. Secretary ben carson at the National Low IncomeHousing Coalition conference. Bureaucracy is when you care more about the rules and you care about the goals. That is killing us as a nation. So we are working very hard to get the inappropriate things out of the way. Representative Bruce Poliquin at the Consumer Financial protection bureau, annual report. Do you guarantee that neither you nor anybody at the cmpd has used personal communication devices, text, email, cell phones and fully complied with the federal record . This is a yes or no. Programs are available at cspan. Org, on a webpage and by searching the video library. And we are live for discussion on food policy. The Consumer Federation of america is the host of this annual National Food policy conference. At first be discussion on the role of food in foreignpolicy and the challenges of finding Food Insecurity at homes. And that program reflects the exemplary work of our advisory committee. I dont have a packet of you with me, but if you look in your