Guest there were suggestions and i thought it was the most enlightening repression that anyone could get into. I was quite opposed anything of that nature. So i had always said that i never wanted to be an actress in this profession and they kept knocking me in the back of the head. Eventually i felt that i had to turn it around. Cspan what was your first acting job . Guest it was a small independent film. Very few people have seen the film. I have gone back to school and i had planned on teaching and writing a novel. That was the track that i was on. I had spent time on the stage quite a bit and my teacher thought that i should audition for a role. In the and the way he coming to do it was simply by telling me that they needed someone who had an athletic build and someone who played High School Sports and i have done that. And i looked at it and i thought, oh, what harm would that do. So i ended up with the role. Cspan what year was that . Guest well, the film came out in 1997. Probably five years before that. It probably was 1991 or 1992. At any rate, a year later, it was in the back of my mind. Some things stick with you. They do with me and i take it as a sign that perhaps i should investigate. And so i took a class that summer in new york. And i havent had any experience , but the class was very moving and open up something inside of me. He revealed to me that perhaps there was another place to put my experience in my expression. Cspan where does the name the wire come from . Guest i have to ask david, to be quite honest with you. But we were running the wire during that entire five seasons, it could come from that, i dont know if there is a symbolic meaning there. Cspan what was your part . Smack i played a detective, the character tina greg. She is known to be a cop. But i see her as much more than that. She was the moral compass the police department. Cspan we have a small clip of the trailer. Lets play it and get a feeling. Are you saying you dont trust me . Matt you are looking at a tv station. Here we go. Bring it. [cheers] okay, okay. Look at her. She runs a dam art gallery. Savanna what was that . Cspan what was last seen . Guest that is where tina greg talks about what moves her to become a cop and her connection to the field. The clip of the women they see in the showplace microfine. She was also an attorney and did not like the fact that tina greg was in law enforcement. She wanted me to get out of there. Cspan were you very connected . Guest yes, she was very connected to the job and more connected than she would have realized. Cspan it was situated in baltimore . Guest im sorry, she was working for a television station cspan but this program was centered at baltimore around the harbor . Wasnt centered around the harbor. Guest some of it was, but not a lot of it. But yes, you are right, some of it was. Cspan tell me how wrong i am. Lots of smoking and drinking and swearing and realworld language. What was the reaction that you got during the five years with this program . Guest the same reaction as the rest of the world. Cspan seems very rough. It seems like it was very up close and personal in that whole world. Guest you know, there was certainly the population of people who could not watch the show. It was too real. Also, very painful for some to see. Either because they came from that environment or because some folks use television as something to unwind with and so they didnt particularly care to spend their time in that world in that way. However, many folks felt as though the story was told truthfully and clearly and without apology. That is what we have been told. I am talking about folks in law enforcement. I am talking about judges and attorneys. Also politicians, as well as folks whose lives were depicted by some of the street characters. They felt that someone was fighting for them and gayrights cspan we saw you when you testified in baltimore, i believe it was at the attorney generals task force, lets watch this clip and kept up with your story. I remember lying in bed as i heard an argument growing and my parents bedroom. Only to remember the deafening sound of my mothers jaw being crushed. I remember her head on the kitchen chopping block and my father holding a knife to her throat and my mother asking to be put out of her misery. Our member asking my father to stop and not make mommy cried. I was two years old. That was the pattern that made me feel i have some responsibility for the situation. Cspan how hard was it for you to do that . Guest it has been many years and it was a long process. At this point in my life, there is some distance from the emotion and the trauma of all that. So now it is a part of my story, but its not me. I would not say it was difficult for me to tell the story. I think it was most difficult or challenging you know, my father is still living, we do have a great relationship. Members of my family are still a part of my life. So i am concerned as to how it will reflect upon and how they would take it. So just trying to navigate those waters and being respectful and honorable, you know, being honorable. The. Cspan were you born in newport news, virginia . Guest yes. Cspan your father wasnt north korean another africanamerican . What was that like for you . Guest well, i grew up in an allblack neighborhood. And just in general, as a kid, you dont want to stick out and be different. But in particular, growing up in the south, the newly desegregated south very newly desegregated that had just started when i was in Elementary School and virginia was one of the last dates on that track. So there was a sort of challenge there. I was always having to or many times having to sort out, you know, feel as though i had to prove that i was, you know, as black as the rest of my peers, whatever that means. Later on i began to see that my definition of blackness at the time was quite skewed. If you were tough and you could become tough, you could be respected. That was kind of the running definition of blackness at the time. So there was that sort of challenge. However, i believe that it has been growing up as a mixed race person for me in terms of how it shaped my world view and perspective in life i was always very aware that i was a person first as opposed to a label. And i am aware of what people can see in terms of my mother and father and my siblings and what have you. There is always this strong impulse to unite and get folks to understand that. But we are all people together. Cspan you talked about your father. Guest i later found out that my father was paranoid schizophrenic and on lots of medication. My father is a brilliant man. He had moments of brilliance as a parent. My father, there were phases where we had to try and have sunday dinner. It couldve been any tyrannical nightmarish affair at the time, but there were times of laughter at the table. He thought that he should teach us how to play chess. By the time you were six years old, you knew how to play chess. But there came a time when he could turn into a monster and i could no longer justify loving him. Cspan we learn that your mother died some time ago . Guest my mother died in 1998. Cspan when you go back in your own life growing up in newport news, you were into drugs at some point. How did that happen . How old were you . Why were you attracted to them . Guest well, you know well, the story sort of speaks for itself. After a while it became a bit tough to take. I started smoking pot when i was 11 years old. At the time, it wasnt as though i was not conscious of it doing of my doing it as an escape. I was experimenting with others with pot. But by the time i was 13 years old, i was smoking every day. Again, at that time, you are not aware that you are doing it to sort of keep things manageable or create distance between you and what is really whats really bothering you inside. You know, i would also say that around that time was about the time that i pretty much gave up on fixing my family. I was just trying to bide my time. I spent a lot of my childhood, you know, trying to figure out how i could fix the situation. And around that time sometime around 11 and 12 years old, i just decided that there was nothing that i could do about it. I had a plan to leave and i was confident that i could do so. I did not want to go to a foster family or anything like that, i wanted to go to new york and struggle and be on my own. You know, to be able to live on your own and i have this plan. But i was literally about to walk out the door i had my bags packed and everything. And i just kept, you know, seeing visions of my mother just heartbroken and crying and feeling as though she had failed. I knew that my mother stayed in this marriage because she believed that we needed a father. There was nothing i could do to convince her that regardless of perhaps this is not the arrangement, maybe not having a father in our lives could be an arrangement. But my mother grew up without a father and there was nothing i could do about her being adamant that we need to keep a father in the home. Cspan where did your father role of . Guest my mother was quite successful, you know, considering, you know, where she came from. In korea she had a sixth or seventh grade education. She could speak english. Reading and writing was a big challenge for her. There was a point sh. Reading and writing was a big challenge for her. There was a point when we were, you know, growing up where she started doing crafts at a local church. She could make anything from scratch and was very gifted. She spent most of her life working for the government and the Civil Service capacity. She did that in virginia on the various bases down there. She rose to role of a supervisor at the naval base. She had a dream to build her own home. We grew up in a mixed Income Housing unit. You know, i saw my mother by her first home when i was in high school. Within 10 years, my mother bought a piece of property in virginia and had her house built on an acre and a half of land. She was quite successful. Cspan did you move from marijuana to cocaine . Guest well, not like that. Cspan but did one thing lead to another . Guest yes, it was speed and asset and marijuana and later in high school i became introduced to cocaine. You know, that was pretty much how it went. Cspan what we would like to know is a lot of people use the drugs and we all wring our hands and say its horrible. But do people enjoy these drugs . Is that why they use them . Or are you hiding from something . Guest there comes a point when you no longer enjoy them. But initially there has to be some sense of enjoyment. For instance, when i was 10 years old i smoked my first cigarette. I took one hit off of the cigarette and got so dizzy and fell on someones bed and i just, you know, i dont care about your pressure. I said im not smoking, and i didnt care and i never really smoked a cigarette again. Occasionally socially i would have won, but i did not enjoy it. But when it came to pot, i enjoyed it, it was relaxing, for me it just calm my nerves, it got me out of my head. That is what the initial attraction to that was. You know, drinking is never something that i really took to it. It was something that, you know, eventually when i got into it to cocaine, drinking was something that became a balance for the edge that the cocaine would give you. In the years i started not to like it and i started to see where it was taking me. Cspan how did you get out of it . Guest initially i thought out of it with my first husband. He saw that there was a problem. We were having problems. He suggested that we went to therapy. It was the first time that i ever tried therapy and i went to therapy with him. After our first session, she said i needed to come separately and have a therapy session and she pulled me out of my cloud. No one had ever done that before. I was not living up to my potential and i realized that. I knew that i should be doing more than just kind of, you know, raising my kids. We had a middleclass lifestyle. I was a good mother. Cspan where did you live . Guest we lived in new york at the time. I had some very Big Aspirations to create a beautiful picture. I said i have to be here, i cant leave my mother. This is a miserable situation, i cant save them from their misery, but im going to be happy. And i started to create a sort of happy picture for myself. Something that was powerful for me to live in. I became active in sports and i was in the Honor Society and a cheerleader and i did all kinds of things. And there there were five people doing those things and we created a scenario in which there was some level of comfort. We presented this picture to the world. It allowed us to function and earn money and have jobs and whatnot. Discipline was tied into that as well, many africanamericans live in this country. You have to make certain accomplishments like x, y, and z. There is some judgment attached but i believe that this is the kind of picture that i was able to create in my 20s and my 30s in my first marriage. Cspan lets watch this segment. When you feel abandoned and uncared for, some kind of support becomes an essential survival skill. This is how i became and how many children today become easy prey for pedophiles. This is why our young people create and nurture that they so desperately need by forming and joining gangs. This is why many children enter into the job world at an early age. This is why sex trade seems like a viable option, and this is how we lose our nations future. With our resources to deal with trauma, seeking support on the streets becomes a coping mechanism. Oftentimes these children have been having a selfdestructive behavior, never gaining a proper ability to handle the stresses of everyday life. They find emotional support and they become very youngce ty live with ads up in layers, burying them. Cspan why did you agree to testify . Guest because i believe in the mission of the task. I believe that it is being ripped apart at the seams. We are not paying enough attention to the trauma and the pain and the struggles that our young people are facing today. Cspan how old are your children . Guest my children are older, 21 years old and so forth. Cspan did you get married again . Any children from that. Guest i did get married again, no children from that marriage. My youngest daughter is graduating from college this year. My older daughter has been working in retail for the last two years and is very interested in fashion. Cspan where do you live now . Guest i spend quite a bit of time in baltimore. I spent part of my time in baltimore. I have a home in the outer banks of North Carolina and i have connections in new york and i pretty much kind of hop between those three places. That is my primary residence right that is my primary residence right now. Cspan the main reason we asked to talk to you is the organization you want. What is it called again . Guest rewired for change it was started in 2008, 2000 minus one we officially started. Cspan what does it do . Guest rewired for change, you know, it is associated with our mission, which is support and power families and communities in which children live. We started by offering a program and we used the wire as an opportunity for discussion and awaken the possibilities of personal transformation. Cspan out of the race the money . Guest well, it was our money to be used for the organization. Its on going right there. Cspan how many people are working for you . Guest for the last year and half, two years, we have been running a Community Home in baltimore at the village house. We have a program, an afterschool and Afterschool Program come and we sponsor a local Community Group called the local village council. And we essentially open our doors to be supportive to children in any way that we possibly can. That house employs four people. Cspan what the. Cspan what is the age group that you will take in . Guest for the Afterschool Program, we are talking about seven years old to 12 years old, they told us that we have is 13. We are revamping the curriculum. We are revamping the program. One of the things we discovered after offering the rewired for change program cspan what is the difference between rewired for change and rewired for life is for the high risk children. Those are the things that we have discovered in our work for the pilot program. Our young people had to go back to families and communities that were broken and not unified and not healthy. It made their transformation much more challenging. But there was no way to sort of isolated population and truly assist. We are not looking for okay, you get your ged and a job. You get off the streets. But what has unfolded, we want to see a deep level of healing in the community and throughout the entire community. So our mission is to uplift and empower communities of folks and recreate communities in a way that we have never seen before. Not since i was young. Cspan statistics i just saw this in the paper the other day 80 of africans dont acquire to be in the military today. 70 dont want to go into the military and i dont know all of the other specifics, but 40 of the American People have children out of wedlock. How did this happen to us . How do you get out of . Guest you know, thats a great question. [laughter] i am not an authority exactly on this issue for sure. But, you know, i think this boils down to something that is very simple. I was actually not familiar with that statistic. Now, i would like to talk about age groups. Cspan i think a lot of our younger. Guest yes, that is correct. You know, every human being needs to be loved. That is a core need is something. Not to say that children who are involved in that kind of behavior loved, but we need to be loved in a healthy way. We need to be cared for invasive ways. It calls for an emotional day in school who are the other aspects that, you know, a young person needs to be accustomed to. Sometimes one thing leads to another and you become invested and you become invested in another person. A person that has been nurtured, they can grow in their confidence in their principles and values and things that they can hold on to so they dont have to anchor themselves to another person. So i believe that that pattern has a lot to do with that position. Cspan lets watch part of the testimony about your father and then we will have you explain. Guest i was trying to figure out how to get my hands on gun and i had no success. I resorted to a new option after reading an article by a popular r b singer. One day when i was washing dishes, i took the egg is spot we had, filled it with water, boiled the water and went back to doing the dishes. When i began to watch myself as though i was outside my body, i had disassociated. Once the water boil, i took the pot and i walked slowly into the living room and stood over my father is left on the sofa. The violence flashed before my minds minds eye and i saw us without him. I saw myself happy and free in my home and laughter on the faces of the rest of my family. Just as i was about to throw the wa