Transcripts For CSPAN2 Discussion Focuses Ont The 13th Amend

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 Based Academic 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,