Organized by the American Museum of Natural History in New York and our area is fortunate to have this exhibition or any questions about days and hours please call 242-3117. Lassen National Park is hosting the Mill Creek Falls guided hike Saturday July the 14th starting at 10 30 am further information at Mt Lassen National Parks website a free federal bluegrass in America concert will be happening Sunday July 15th from $1.00 to 4 pm at the palace community hall and it's being presented by the all time fillers Association. You're invited to see the film Collateral beauty it questions the universe about love time and death will be a free showing and free popcorn Tuesday July 17th 5 30 pm in the Park Plaza located at 2871 sure if you grow it in reading for any questions you may have please call 246-9544. And a heads up for any benefit for care and community radio in its new blue in concert . In North Carolina a band that is bending the boundaries of bluegrass. Sunday August the 5th through 6 pm all city hall in reading tickets are $15.00 at the door and available on events right. And there is a link to that right on our Facebook page the opening act as a local band called bird feeder there's beer wine and other beverages and food like a carry on will be on sale for more information go to our Facebook page or call 337-1101. This is been the case here in community calendar police and your notice at least 2 weeks in advance to Shane educate carry on dot org Again s h a n And Erin dot org. Programming on j.k.r. And community radio is supported by listeners like you and the Shasta piping sorry the piping society is a charitable organization dedicated to the encouragement of musicians and listeners of the Scottish Highland bagpipe society grants refurbished instruments to k. Through 12 graders interested in learning the music of Scotland see their Facebook page for more community information Take care and thanks to Piper society for a community radio. Play an impi free if Neil Young everybody knows the new way and the new young himself sound then Pete 3. Will in fact even start getting some music streaming company called Luna to create high definition files that are past the sound and p 3. S. And p 3 s. Are coming under fire by Neil Young and others there is a composer finding value in a foreign land by discovering the ghostly sound get left out when the file is main . Content and today on with good reason the m p 3. Later in the show an architect instructed. The New York City building there's a wonderful quote by John Cage that says what really are listening what we mostly hear is that if we really were and we find it fascinating. The 1st before the n.p. 3 revolutionized the music industry in the 1980 music files were large and took up too much room on computer hard drives so audio engineers created this way for people to store many one device Ryan McGuire is a Ph d. Student in composition in computer technology at the University of Virginia he's been finding those sounds good left out of the m p 3 and then creating ghostly compositions right in your project is called The Ghost In The m p 3 and I didn't fully appreciate it until I listened to what you wanted me. A song from a while back that's now known as the mother of the m.p. 3 Yeah the mother of the m p 3 it's a really vocative Freya's isn't it Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega was a huge hit in the early ninety's it was sort of everywhere you went and one of the people that was listening to that song back then was Karlheinz Brandenburg who was an engineer for the front cover Corp in Germany and they were tasked with creating the m p 3 so one day while pregnant Berg the story goes was working on his m p 3 algorithm he walked out into the hallway and heard on the radio Tom's Diner playing and you heard this archipelago singing you know what to do to do it and he thought oh my goodness this would be really difficult to make into an m p 3 because it's there's nothing there it's so bare and it's just this beautiful voice and how do I and code that into an m.p. 3 let's play it to let people know how beautiful it is and what the difficulty. I am doing in the morning and the diner on the corner I am waiting at the counter for the man to pour the coffee and he does it only half way and the far right. Even argue he is looking out the window at somebody clowning in most popular music has drawn guitars all these things going on that compete for your attention and you can only hear so much at once but with Tom's Diner it's just this solo voice in a sort of reverberant room and to capture that sound really well is a really difficult challenge when you're using something like an m p 3 that erases so much information so how did it go for him when he did convert a horrible. Terrible I think it took months it took a really long time and it sounded just. Came out sounding like a demon on the other hand when he 1st made it into an m.p. 3 Eventually he got it right that eventually they got it right. And now you can't really tell the difference when you listen to up really high quality m.p. 3 of Tom Steiner and away file now I am sitting in the morning at the diner on the corner I am waiting at the counter for the man to pour the coffee and he only half way and apologies to artists who don't like the m p 3 I can't tell the difference in most people can't under most circumstances it's there are so many other factors that. Degrade the quality of audio you have or you know the speakers that you're listening over background noise whatever the acoustics of the room you're in are that it sort of makes the difference between the uncompressed found the m p 3 and negligible under most circumstances and that's really a testament to how clever the algorithm is and I think that's a big part of why it's still in such wide use today but then not long ago he did something very cool you took the wave file and you subtracted the compressed version and created a file of the music that gets left out of an m.p. 3 right I was really interested in what this material that we throw away is it's sort of an endangered species of data or of sound that is really absent from our contemporary listening environments and I want to take your it I want to know what it sounds like so this is the material that's deleted from the m p 3 of Tom's Diner. How interesting it's not in some ways as beautiful obviously as the full version but it has some really interesting and haunting. Yeah it's very atmospheric you end up with a lot of the sort of reverberant material. And breathy. And the 1st time that I heard it when I finally when I did the calculations and got this sound out I thought that it had tremendous potential to be made into music it's the things that add a beauty to the original but they're isolated so on their own they don't sound like much but they have tremendous potential to be made into something really beautiful I thought when you 1st were able to extract and realize this was unheard sound where you thrilled Yeah I was really it was like a eureka kind of moment I you know because I didn't know what it was going to sound like and so I had written all the code in waited a really long time and it popped out and it sounded. Had this sort of really distinct sound it didn't really sound like anything I'd ever heard before and to a for a composer and for somebody that's making art making work out of sound that's like the most exciting things that yes you do something very cool with it I want to play the composition that you call the ghost in the m p 3 Yes So. I wrote a few different algorithms to calculate what gets lost in the m p 3. And kind of chop them up amplified bits of them rearrange them into a composition that to me is it's Thomson are brought back to life from the material that we throw out when we make them p 3 s. This one this one I call modernist. Me me. Me me me. Eerie haunting beautifully if you can imagine. A movie producer would want to know how did you do that yeah actually I immediately thought of film when I made it and I found a video are. To make a similar video. Where we took the music video from Tom's Diner and compressed it using like You Tube compression and then calculated the difference and we made an accompanying video to go with it because it just sort of undulating inkblot type of things yes. You did this also with not just mother of the m p 3 as you call Tom's Diner but other pieces that were early on test cases for converting music to m p 3 forms That's right the mother of the m p 3 is the one that everybody has heard of Tom Steiner but there are also a number of Sisters of the m p 3 or aunts of the m p 3 those some of those are fast car by Tracy Chapman and we've got Haydn trumpet concerto and over cording by Ornette Coleman a sort of a snippet of one of his solos and a test recording of cast a gnat's and there are a few others but these ones were also used to test the m p 3 early on and are a little bit less famous in sort of cultural pop culture history and what are some of the stories about how each came out when they initially tried to make very well fast car presents its own challenges for example this song has a full band so it's got percussion and drums guitar voice and percussion in particularly is notoriously difficult to encode into m p 3 you get this effect called pre Echo where things like high hats and snare drums are sort of mirrored in time so they don't sound as sharp as they do in the original recordings it's a really subtle effect that most people don't notice but it's there if you're listening close enough so let's play 2 things play the Tracy Chapman fast car wave . Which is the full version and then let's play the ghost sound that you were able to recover from it Ok here's the good. Version of the memo. It reminds me of why we all love that song so yeah she is amazing now let's play the musical elements you were able to capture that were lost when they can compress and made it into an m.p. 3 yes and you'll hear there is a lot of percussion and sort of rough for. That and it's fun to listen to it doesn't sound viewable to Ronnie. Yeah by itself I think it's sort of it's like dressing on a salad and it makes the salad amazing but by itself you won't want to just eat dressing on its own but it has a lot of potential So what was the aha moment for you when you thought I'm going to look into the ghost behind this m p 3 Well I was learning a lot about the history of recorded sound and I was really curious what kind of music you could make out of n.p.c. 3 is like what is the thing about m p 3 s. That's unique that's different than all of these other previous formats and I was talking to one of my teachers one night after our class our whole class went out to this pub or New Hampshire and so we're sitting there in this noisy pub and I'm kind of explaining my idea to her about hi I'm going to make really low quality m p 3 s. And make music out of it and she said Oh I misunderstood you know over the loud music and approaches like oh I'm I thought you said you were going to make something out of the material that's deleted from the m p 3 s. I just kind of froze. Know that but that is what I should be that's a really good idea Tara. Tara Rogers gets credit for sort of mishearing. My terrible idea as a really good idea and and I thought I should do that and she said yes. So she sort of encouraged me to pursue this project and you know a year later and a lot of work later it's sort of become this whole avenue of research when you 1st posted your goes to the m p 3 online and went to sound cloud you so much fan mail. Well it was yeah it was really interesting it was up for a number of months before it sort of went viral and than all of a sudden like one day I think it was on Valentine's Day actually like half a 1000000 people watched this video and I. Oh my goodness what's happening and shortly thereafter I got a really interesting email from the recording engineer that recorded the mother of the m p 3 that recorded Tom's Diner So he was actually in the studio you know when that recording was made and he was the one responsible for you know setting up the microphones and running the recording session and so he mailed me and said hey I think this project that you're doing is really fascinating I've I've always you know then really interested in this sort of mythology of how this song became known as the mother of the m p 3 and I've always preferred the original version and he sent me all the facts of how it was recorded and said This is the microphone that we use and these are the you know this was the tape reel to reel machine that we used and and anyway it's like you know I did good work keep it up thank you and so then we had a little bit of an exchange and so that was really interesting that was probably one of the best ones are the reel to reel version you need to hear and I should i should really email the next time I'm in New York and say hey can I come here what's next for you well I'm making an entire album out of this material using the sort of the answer of the m p 3 and all the other you know fast car and the Haydn trumpet concerto and actually I've been thinking about applying for a Fulbright to go to Vienna and where Haydn a soprano and studying with a composer there and sort of getting deeper involved with this idea of what loss from an and you know what's the essence of music can and what's you know in a room I'd like to go hear some of these spaces where this music is performed live and so it's sort of becoming this whole avenue of research for me. Brian this is wonderful thank you for sharing your music and your insights on this on with good reason Thank you so much thanks for having me and let's play your piece modernist now as we were leaving interview Yes and that's actually an anagram of Tom's Diner which. Rearrangement of our the letters and balls modernists and that's sort of analogous to what I did with a sound also I think. Is a Ph d. Student in composition in computer technology at the University of Virginia. Next to some of New York. From early morning garbage trucks creaking of buildings. To find New York City current and lying in his a professor of architecture at the University of Virginia and an expert in the field of. Architecture she's been collecting the sounds of buildings in the city and collaborated with this will artists Jim Welty on an exhibition featuring her recordings and his animation. Karen you become an expert in something called Architecture What is that. Keep architecture is an awareness we are trying to develop to allow people to discover the sounds that we all live with but by and large ignore and we ignore them in part because we're simply not paying attention or we have earphones on or we're paying attention to our i Phones and it's really our way of getting the public to rediscover the sonic environment that we live in you recently had an exhibit in New York on some of the sounds of the buildings the public buildings that you recorded there why New York well New York is very familiar to me I lived in New York for 30 years so I know these feelings very very well and one of my ways of getting into this whole area was that I was very sensitive personally to the sounds of some of these spaces for example I can't imagine Grand Central Station without hearing it it has huge oceanic sound and it's such a comforting things to be an altogether different than arriving at Penn Station for example which is chaotic and uncomfortable Let's play it let's play this sound pure profit with you from Grand Central Station Ok. So many of the sounds actually we take for granted way. Through and it's so rich when you begin to listen to or there's a wonderful quote by John Cage that says when we are listening what we mostly hear is noise but if we really were and we find it fascinating. And that's really the example here to just stand in place and listen very very attentively to all the way or the. Sounds of nature are people of events it's incredible. Remember being in place with my mother not long ago where she stopped and she said . I remember that sound from when I was a girl and it was something to do with a low chatter of voices on the steamboat platform so it's the idea that the sounds are emotional to us because it depends on what we are. It's true deeply emotional if you were to ask anyone about the sounds of their house growing up you'd be really surprised at how many people can recall very specific sounds about the house that they grew up in you also have I think what is your favorite building not just Grand Central but the Library of New York oh the Library of New York is deeply emotional and personal to me because a lot in that building as a young architect in fact right from an architectural licensing stand there so let's play the sound that you have from the New York Public Library which room this is the main road reading room and it is just to give us a sense. Of the football field camos to one of the largest interior spaces in America and so almost 2 blocks on and it is enormously impressive. Floor and it's a long table sort of chairs and when people come and go they pull those old chairs in and out. Sometimes. Sitting in one of those chairs there some are resonating sound like the sound of a lion roaring. And they're going to determine one minute. It's so interesting to me because I hear pure emotion and all that because you would think that an architect really would have designed quiet floors rugs or some material that is more durable that would allow absolute silence in the library but what are you attracted to I needn't love this I love the idea of people coming in going that I'm in space with other people and everyone is studying and looking around it it's a great feeling of security Yeah studying and looking around another person as I did chair back or her chair that let me through say. The joy of the public around the be all joy of being together in space. You also did the Rockefeller Center or what particular to the sounds of that big building Well I picked a very specific part of Rockefeller Center not the central part the back of the skating rink but I picked the northern end which is opposite St Patrick's Cathedral called the International Building and it has a very vertical space entryway but it also has a very specific sound played in what you hear is her knitting of the 1930 s. The letters that are still there and by the way are land marked. Here the. Those are the landmark escalator Shillington thirty's and what's so incredible about that the discovery is that that representative of the industrial era that built the whole infrastructure for the Rockefeller fortune which built to build a live picture now standing in. Your appreciation for the humanity that is evident in the buildings Surely you know when you were starting out to be a young architect did not think of recording sounds and buildings not at all not at all I wasn't part of my purview and also architecture is largely a visual field so I worked very much on honing my visual skills when I was chair of architecture Parsons Gene Gardner who as a very legendary professor there introduced people to architecture to the multiple senses and she invited a person in David high the founder of the harmonic choir to come and talk to our students that was a pivotal moment for me really really strong because he does overtone chanting and he could show how the overtone chanting would change from one place to another and that was very very pivotal for me that particular time you also recorded sounds of the Guggenheim or the circumstances well in this particular recording I was recording an exhibition that was at the Guggenheim at the time called the group tie artists and they were artists that were practicing in Japan after World War 2 and those artists were trying to bring joy to civically the the wonder of life back into existence for people who had just come through a terrible war a terrible bomb and so there were so much in their exhibition both to look at like . New distribution hanging glass volumes of colored water for example that were meant to make people happy and bring gauging that into life so what happened in this particular set of recordings that I did is there was a young boy he was and no older than a year and a half or 2 years and he kept screaming in front not screaming from wanting something not screaming because he was angry this rescreened of joy so they matched completely the mission of the of the good tired and I I didn't put that together until later on I kept trying to do the recording without green then I came back and I was speaking with my partner John Welty who said that that's the essence of the entire recording and their beautiful was cranky hey it's worth it for her. Was another project down there as well we're working on Washington d.c. Right now to try to understand the sonic qualities of some of the mall buildings the general public the sights and one of the interesting things we discovered when we recorded the Jefferson Memorial the Jefferson Memorial of course is this kind of perfect building and cited in a way that you can see in 4 directions and one of them is looking out over the water to see the Washington Monument etc And when you're in at about every 2 or 3 minutes. You know you're Reagan Airport and you hear the sound of Air France going over her I thought oh that's too bad but then I didn't think about it and I thought Jefferson Davis and was ahead of the time. Of the planes and actually augmenting the feeling of what the memorial really is a pan out if you think about it that way so it can either be an irritating sound or it could be a sound that is very much about the spirit of the me. Who never knew or a for. Building bridges the built environment dynamic alive it has. It's not dead and that awareness is very powerful. Carrying Ben Lang in a professor of architecture to deliver city of Virginia major support for with good reason as provided by the law firm of McGuire willing and by the University of Virginia Health conducting doctors and patients for telemedicine to deliver high quality care throughout Virginia to us in the world Uva health dot com the support also comes from Smithfield global food company committed to providing food in a responsible way so consumers can carry real memories with family and friends with gilt dot com with good reason it's produced in Charlottesville Virginia humanities our production team. Elliott like Kelly Libby there and Allison Byrne Pailin handle sister service our production assistant destroy generate and our internal Emily Haines for the. Reason radio. McConnell thanks for. Programming on k k e r n supported by listeners like you and Hill Country Health and Wellness Center providing integrated health services at their main site in Round Mountain and satellite clinic on Lake Boulevard in reading urgent mental health services are provided at their care center located at 1401 in reading with kindness and as a partner country is there to help you get well and live well for more information call 503375750 or visit them on the web at Hill Country Clinic dot org k k r And thanks to all country for their generous support of community radio. I am Laura Flanders and Laura Flanders show the t.v. And radio program that seeks to raise radical spirits by interviewing forward thinking people with real models of shifting power from the worlds of Arts entrepreneurship politics and activism. By our borders by our prisons will an uprising of outrage about the trumpet ministrations immigration policy cause the nation to think more deeply about our incarceration. Has been through it personally and color of changes Rashad Robinson joins me in studio for that conversation then a short film on the cash by Molly crab apple and John Legend just ahead. Laura Flanders the place where the people who say it can't be done take a backseat to the people who are doing. It families belong together what about kids with parents behind bars while people have been outraged and rightly so of a family separation at the border a family separation is nothing new in the United States according to the Sentencing Project approximately 10000000 children have experienced parental incarceration at some point in their lives and like the prison population black families are disproportionately represented so without shedding differences how can we come together to make real systemic change I'm joined by 2 guests in Monny Davis has been advocating for children and families affected by incarceration for over 25 years our own father spent much of her life behind bars and we have a welcome back Rashad Robinson Rashad is the president of Color of Change and has been a leading voice on both immigration and the criminal justice system as well as other systemic injustices in the u.s. Of a thank you both for coming in I'm really so happy to have you. Let's start with the personal. In money watching this story play out at the border tell us give us a little insight into how you react to that well it was funny when we talk about me coming on the show I was thinking about the fact that I've been watching the news with a box of tissues and a notebook because I think that I was looking for language and for evidence that would support the conversations we've been having around parental separation due to incarceration for the past 25 years I came into that work in 1982 I was 14 my father went to prison I was 6 and for me I was even though it is so incredibly difficult to watch what is physically happening I mean just. I don't even have the words when you're watching. A family being born Yes absolutely babies being ripped from their mothers without any real plan a part of me felt a sense of gratitude quite honestly that when separation happens around incarceration the very often not all the time but very often children will be at least given to someone else that they know and that there is some hope at some point that one would be returned not all the time absolutely not because we have harmed policies around child welfare right but I think what I was looking for was when I saw the American Association come out when I saw kind of all these folks coming out saying these are the consequence of Prince incarceration starting Ok Are people paying attention because we've been saying this forever even saying forever that there are long lasting incredibly. Separation which I think when you criminalize people you also criminalize their families and that is what we do in America and when you Deborah date people and act like they're not human beings which is what we are now doing on the border and I think where it's very easy for us to say you know these are normal families these are natural families they don't love the way we love I think I think that's what we're seeing and I think that's the only way that anyone could actually even move like this just a little bit of what it was like for you. What was that like growing up at that early age with your dad beyond where you could connect with him on a regular basis I mean my father was incarcerated Virginia and we lived in New York so it was a 10 plus hour trip that I feel tremendously grateful that I had a mom who was willing to make and also had grandparents who supported our capacity to make that trip I think one of the things that most struggle with I didn't struggle with which was the financial implications of actually being able to get to families because so often there are hundreds and hundreds of miles away from where children live and we were able to make that trip so it was 25 full years of that trip I don't remember ever having a Father's Day not with him but it was very different to do that in a prison visiting room I think in hindsight I look at it as I'm grateful that we were able to have physical contact as we become a punitive nation which is we mourn. More and more to kind of dismantle contact including for children I feel grateful that we had that but at the same time I mean what is it like in I think the complexity is one that these children are going to face which is that you're you're trying to understand the personal impact of just missing your parent and looking at it in the scale of like this is my nation that has made a decision to destroy my family I don't think that we think about how confusing that is for children to like how do you then trust your police trust your teachers trust your like trust your community because because your country has sunk in its teeth into this insatiable need to destroy families. What about you Rashad I mean you're so clear about the structural nature of all of this but these are kids watching them crying and specific family or person how do we hold those 2 realities at the same time but we have to hold Think what you said was so important because you know oftentimes people think of the. What they're seeing on t.v. What they hear about in terms of families being ripped apart whether it's by mass incarceration immigration policies fortunate almost like a car accident right as like a byproduct. Sad we have built. We can figure out what are the power of all things that we put around to kind of help these young people I mean we're even seeing that in the idea that in concert in the families to gather together that hurt them will be a better way but if we don't move people from unfortunate to our jobs what we will end up instead don't actually get anything right and when people stay in the unfortunate spaces when you have big corporations that go into the inner city and they clean up schools and ending the inequality in public education you have folks that work on real. 3 alone and sort of actually in the mass incarceration with reentry being a kind of key component there is a way that we've got to move people to the structural nature and how do we and in real ways help people when they're seeing those stories when they're seeing these images not go into a charity mind frame but to go into structural reform mind frame because what we're seeing on the border what we're seeing in communities around the country has been manufactured by our leaders it has been created by a set of decision makers who every single day wake up and have a choice about what they're going to do with our tax dollars what they're going to do with their political power and they have made a decision that the families that they're ripping apart are not valuable that they are not worthy that voters will not care about them and they will not show up to the polls that corporations are not nervous about disappointing them and so we see big corporations making a lot of money off of the attention off of incarceration we see media that tell pieces of the story but not the full story it's why it's so important that we have independent media channels like yours all this is why we have to help people see these situations differently so we can approach them differently where do you see the connections in terms of the policy piece of this I mean I work at a at the arguments that the defenders of both mass incarceration and of our border policies make I am and they say well we're sending a message that you shouldn't try to emigrate with your children and if we you know frighten people enough they won't come we see the same kind of language around in cars we want to make incarceration not about correction but about punishing so that it will be something that people you know don't break the rules. Is that the connection is kind of punitive idea I mean I think that's just untrue right like I think that we've proven years and years and years ago that prison is not a deterrent to crime and I think that we've also like that people are not paying attention to the fact that we collapse everyone at the border so everybody is now illegal just trying to come in we are not having any conversations about asylum about the fact that people are fleeing things that people that while especially want to cross the border with your baby right unless you actually were trying to get away from something so I think one thing is just that that narrative is just a lie it's just a lie and I think that the conversation is to Manatee that that's what's missing that's what people don't want to say right is that there's a lack of humanity in all of it because we're not we're not sending any message to anyone other than we are cruel and irresponsible and vicious and racist. And let's get back to the unfortunate frame right because we don't have the conversation about what people are screaming and what are the economic structures that have oftentimes been created by multinational corporations created by American and international impact or other communities how that has actually created and helped. Some of the things that people are trying to escape international war and drugs and at the same time in so many communities to get a gun than if you get a quality education here then you get mental health or health any attack of health care then you get sort of a job and so we have manufactured problems in our community in a broad that then they can we can sort of build the punishment zones for people who their reaction to. That have been created is our state is the so-called criminal justice system that we have created can. You know the way that we're addressing immigration. And current government in power at the federal level that the Obama administration put in around private prisons and private. And now the. Companies are now going to. Provide the bed. Health care. At all levels. So I'm Laura Robinson president of Color Of Change the nation's largest online racial justice group. Who's been an advocate for the rights of children of incarcerated parents she was one of those children of 14 years old the founder of life beautiful management group we're talking about family. Ration or immigration detention the problem. I'm not a man. Just listening to memory lane by fisheye aka Thomas. And I do receive my weekly commentary and exclusive access to me at our website Laura Flanders dot org The latest is all about the youth vote and will show up in November among my panelists Democratic Socialist candidate Alexandria. Who defeated the nation's 4th most powerful Democrat proudly in New York's 14th Congressional District last month she didn't get a headline in The New York Times until she won in that paper finally asked who it is Alexandria court they'd have known if they'd listen to the special co-production of the Laura Flanders show free speech t.v. And m n n when we call the Laura Flanders show the place where the people who say it can't be done take a back seat to the people who are doing it we mean it. Is one of those Now back to this week's get in money Davis advocate for children of incarcerated parents and Rashad Robinson from Color of Change protests took place all over the country last week around the message families belong together as outrage grows over the trumpet ministrations border policy a move to gather to our jobs the money Davis. A profoundly troubled nation I want to ease out this question of how do we get deeper in our now and instead of having warring kind of factions for attention we've got the Muslim bad we've got the separation policy we've got mass incarceration we've got we've got that sometimes can feel like overwhelming it can also sort of feel like a smorgasbord and how do I pick what you're all saying and not about picking It's about a root cause talk about that root cause and how do we address that are we talking about as a. Simple as abolition not that simple I mean I'm not an abolitionist when it comes to prison because I've been working inside of prison since I was 18 years old I just turned 40 I said that on television. Coming out of crime I am I am I would say that I met people inside that really needed to be there like at least for some period of time right that I'm not an abolitionist I do think that we hold people way too long I do think that we fortunately incarcerate based on race class access to services and resources money money absolutely when I look at this I actually look at it holistically right what I see when I see all of these things coming up is I see profoundly harm to men being profoundly harms and that really is the conversation I'm always in right which is that when I look at America it's very easy for us to be in range I feel sad when I look at this because the fact that people are not doing that or cannot do better to me is really a very loud indicator of how profoundly harmed we are as a nation and one of the reasons why I think that we are that way is because we don't tell the truth you know the reason why people are quick to say this thing about we've always done this right the American Indian Welfare Act and write the separation of those families the Japanese right indigenous forever all over the planet but in America in particular chattel slavery right the separation of families why it's important to say what we've done so that we can acknowledge the harm we've caused and right I don't spend a lot of time trying to convince the Donald Trumps of the world that they should care about these little my grandbabies that's not what I'm worried about but there's a huge fraction of America that just doesn't know what to think or what to do and I think that for them what's really important is to continue to do this piece around having people understand that these aren't different family that's why over these years I've been willing to come out and say I'm a child of a prisoner these are the things. That up here I don't cry I don't do a huge production about being a victim that's not what it is I don't think that's empowering for people I think people need to hear that there is the capacity. To thrive and survive very difficult circumstances and in Virginia families are allowed to go and see the case so I did everybody for I was the most compelling person so as a child I was going in and sitting in front of the parole board and asking for my father's release year after year after year Absolutely and it does tremendous damage right I remember not being able to get out of the bed for 2 days after that it just takes everything you have but I think that that's why it's important to be having the conversations that we're having and I try to have them as often as possible because if somebody is willing to sit down with me are willing to sit down with you with an opportunity to then humanize the things that are happening I think that's the only way you turn a nation quite honestly is that you stop this narrative as if these are different kinds of people coming here to do crimes and coming here No no mother is coming across the border with her baby breastfeeding because she's trying to go and rob somebody of something it's just a lie and we have to continue to be pushing on people to tell the truth. So what do we do I mean there are campaigns around the bail bondsman's campaigns around incarceration and around the separation but where do we think I think that we've got here Homer time at each of these big moments because we oftentimes let enablers off the hook. That occupy the sort of mainstream and while the evildoers whether they be Trump or someone else what they're doing their whole host of. That hold them up and you know we really do try to focus in on the enablers you know we're not running our campaigns at the local bail bond industry running our campaigns at the big insurance companies that say that they like to make most of their money from your home like bankers when in fact the biggest piece of their bases actually comes from backing the bail bonds local bail bonds industry to the tune of billions of dollars and nowhere to be found on their Web site we run our campaigns you know not at Donald Trump around this but about demanding that Microsoft no longer me whole set of cloud software for ice or that Greyhound no longer less ice agents without a warrant onto their buses because we've seen that they've done all sorts of things like lock up a Jamaican grandmother who are 3 days who was on a legitimate because she didn't have her paperwork with her in that moment and didn't give her the access to call her her family we racially profile people time entirely out major corporations if politicians that want to occupy the mainstream media outlets and expect us to tune in all complicit in this and we're not holding them accountable Why do we think that you know the political leaders who are benefiting and are leading on these type of demands are going to do anything and so for us we think that the time is now that will make people pick. What are you going to do in this moment what will he say about you 51015 years from now will they say that in this era you just wanted to make more money that you just wanted to like you know add to your life already well retirement or do you stand up push back and make yourself uncomfortable because just this was more. Money want to add I mean I think part of what you were asking was like kind of which thing does $1.00 focus on kind of is there one area and one of the things being a movement baby I was definitely grew up in the movement right. Panther I doubt it was a missile defense for the Black Panther Party inside was an addict absolutely one of the things that actually taught us was like the person who brings the water is just as valuable as the person who's doing any of the other demonstration acts right that the women who stayed home and took care of kids are as valuable as and that was really one of the things as I got into my activism in college you know and I was always like well I want to be doing this and they're not let me do this and if I'm not you know he was kind of hackneyed to me to really understand that there were so many ways to do this work and so I think that you know looking at balance form is important looking at sentencing is important looking at proximity right like there is in New York alone there are there are new things on the books that we're looking at right that correctional institutions would take into account when placing parents in prison when they're going to send them somewhere right to send them someplace that's closer to home right or having in the print sentencing reports having a family impact statement right where people start to think about the impact of incarceration taking children into account for custodial and noncustodial parents to me it's all of it you know and I think that one of the reasons why I actually stepped away from this field and took a break was when I got very tired of people wanting to say that there was only one right way to do it I think that everybody needs to be doing it all the time part of didn't actually for profit business was because I understood that unless you were actually coming in and making financial impact you want to carry the big folks don't care I can let your actually you know when when the election was. Happening and we were at there was all this press about who was the senator. And only. Whatever that was. Right. To me it was like that. We're doing this all wrong so for me it was looking at that I think it's everything and I think that he's exactly right I think continuing to put pressure on folks to not do business as usual to be watching very carefully the privatization of prisons because that is where the most harm is coming we can't regulate those are not by the state we have no control over what's happening in the prisons don't have to have visiting ever they can do a complete they don't have to give their family they don't even have to not have Terri confined spaces like it's actually quite terrifying to think that we. Are animals which is what we're going to be doing on the summit that's exactly what we're going to. I thank you both so much for coming on having this conversation and . Change. Or next. Change. The money. People in jail. Faced with the choice of. Jail. Early 3 years the. Chargers when it became clear they had no case. The nation hundreds of thousands of. Families. That. The United States. And. Every day people. Who profit from taking freedom they trap people in debt. And they take. It. They don't take. Even the. Public. In fact there is no real reason for money. Represented on the program Laura org. Next time Molly crab apple and John was Marwan he's on their new collaborative book Brothers of the gun Thanks think kind stay curious and more of. 3. Point 5 f.m. . And a walk in the Tom Hartman University r r r book club and. Today we're reading for Ralph Nader's breaking through power it's easier than we think. This is from page 74 the chapter how the system is rigged. Or editor of The Corporate Crime Reporter quote crime takes far more lives causes far more injuries. And are more money than street crime but the vast about a law enforcement resources mass media attention and prison cell blocks are devoted only to street crime. Just consider these preventable casualties almost 60000 and you will workplace related fatalities from both the seas and trauma 54000 deaths a year from air pollution over 100000 lives lost as a result of medical malpractise nearly 100000 lives lost from hospital induced infections over 100000 fatalities from adverse effects of drugs and over 40000 deaths every year due to inadequate or no health care coverage for diagnosis treatment and medication there are far larger numbers of sickness and injuries attached to these datasets. Pointing human faces children women men and families destroyed by uncontrollable monetized mines whether they are caused by reckless criminal negligence or worse the key factors in common are the prevent ability of such pain and the suffering inflicted on commercially induced neglect predation manslaughter and homicide by comparison St and homicides do not exceed 14000 lives lost annually. Now see how companies are made sure they have the laws that they need to go after you and how they make sure the law can be used as their Punisher the giant multi-tiered home mortgage business now driven by the same one percenters who profited from crashing the economy in 2008 nail you if you misrepresent information on your mortgage application Suppose you say you're going to occupy your house as a present principal residence to get a lower interest rate and down payment and you don't for some reason lenders can call a loan and demand repayment of the mortgage balances outstanding absent that payment the lender can seize your home foreclosure in addition by claiming you committed bank fraud these companies can use the f.b.i. Against you as a veteran housing columnist Kenneth or Harvey warn the intruder trigger severe financial penalties prosecution and prison time for ordinary Americans but how many bankers feel a cold metal of handcuffs tighten their wrists when their crimes Rob American families of their homes and life savings health insurance companies have similar support.