What is the problem

Why I care about the problem

What are the solutions

How do we get to the solutions

Hello, First let me say thank you for allowing to speak to at this important forum. This is

actually my first keynote so im kinda excited and it’s actual about a topic which has set the

trajectory for my life in ways I could’ve for seen and also defines much of the work I do

today. Of course that topic is race, particularly how race and criminal justice coalesce to

form what Michelle Alexander calls “the new Jim Crow” which seeks to locate a mass

incarceration system defined largely as a racial project. I think of New Jim Crow via the

rubrics of Racial Profiling (which leads to mass criminalization and creates the conditions

for hyper ticketing and arrests) , Police Violence with impunity (which is to say Police

brutality and killing with no accountability) and Mass Incarceration. I think these

phenomena work in tandem and that any approach to end them must do so holistically.

Also this New Jim crow moment is of course marked by a time where we have more and

more discourse about being in a Color Blind or Post racial moment which either says race

no longer determines ones life chances or that if it does have a determinative effect it is no

where near as impactful as it once used to be. Of course to that I say that I think a formative

way to think thru quote “the work” that race does currently is thru the example Naomi

Murakawa does in her book the First Civil Right gives. She goes on to define our moment as

a paradigm of 1 million incarcerated Black people (by incarcerated I mean via jails, prisons

and confined halfway houses) for 1 Black president. That when we allow ourselves to

reflect on that paradigm but also on the examples President Obama, Oprah or Michael

Jordan represent we find they in fact represent the narrative of racial exceptional ism. That

is their examples that reinforce and underpin the idea of that it is ok, just and alright to

have a massive criminal justice state that incarcerates the most in the world (hovering

around 2 million) and does at a absurd level for Black People. Nationally as of 2010 the

percentages are as follows White/Non Hispanics make up 64% percent of the population

and account for 39% of the prison population, so a net underrepresentation, for Latinos

16% of the population and yet they are 19% of those incarcerated and for Black people

who are 13 percent of the population they represent 40 percent of our incarcerated

population. Put in another per 100,000 white people 450 are incarcerated, per 100,000

Latina people 831 are incarcerated and Per 100,000 Black people 2,306 people are

incarcerated. When it comes to Illinois Blacks make up 15% of the population overall but

make up 56 percent of the population of those incarcerated and that’s inclusive of those in

state federal prison, half way houses and local jails. At a more local level in cook county

Blacks make up 24.8 percent of the population and 66.9 percent of the Cook County Jail

population.

What that leaves us with is a country where we spend on average 30,000 per inmate but a

little under 12,000 per k to 12 students.

Deeply connected to these issues of racial profiling, mass criminalization and mass

incarceration is the issues of police violence towards members of the community also

vigilante violence in the name of law and order. What these issues present particularly due

to the frequency of how such alleged perpetrators are held unaccountable for there acts of

violence such the murder of Eric Garner and the torture survivors of Jon Burge is deep

distrust of law enforcement most effect by high levels of crime.

But of course I think we are all inclined to ask what does this mean or more importantly

why should one care about racial profiling, racial disparities and mass incarceration and I

think even more importantly – Is this keeping us safe. Does having the world’s largest

Prison population make a safer nation? Is having a disproportionate number of Black and

Latinas incarcerated made us safer? Particular have such epic incarceration made Black

and Latina communities safer from violence but also has such safety then allowed for more

community investment and opportunity as Rand Corporation likes to project in many of its

research project about why Police are the best public investment of tax dollars. When

comparing the United States to similarly industrialized nations, we in fact are not safer

from violent or non-violent crimes than say Germany, France, Canada or Great Britain.

Though crime has gone down overall in the USA when aggregated by race such gains

diminish and as is the case in Chicago has shown that crime just becomes more

concentrated as areas become more hyper segregated by race and also by poverty. For me

that is most compelling aspect of our current Prison Nation. That policies of racial profiling,

mass criminalization and incarceration have not made us safer or brought needed

investment to Black and brown communities. Again I hi light the investment part because a

lot of narratives that to lead our current moment of thinking we can police and incarcerate

our way out of social problems was the idea that such policy solution would lead to

investments in communities most affected by crime, particularly Black and Latino

communities. So for me this is the scope of the problem. That the policies of mass

criminalization and incarceration have not only made our communities less safe but these

policies inhibits economic investment and undermines the promise of equality and justice

in this country when it comes to political and social opportunity.

My story

Now my stake in this work and confronting mass criminalization and incarceration comes

from my own experience being incarcerated. My teenage years consisted of what many

teenagers do. Use drugs and sell them. In fact recent studies show that all races use drugs

in basically the same amount. My downfall was of course I was just a horrible drug dealer.

By horrible I mean just not good at the business of it, so making a profit and not good at

selling it without getting arrested. And so by 18 I was locked in Cook County jail where I

ended doing 10 months in total. 6 months in pre trial. A 7-year sentence reduced to 4

months of boot camp conditional on me behaving well on my 2 years on parole. If I messed

my parole I would have to complete the seven years in full. But I think the inner working of

my sentencing misses the point. What my time in jail provided me was a thorough

understand of how cook county jail was product of structural racism. It was at cook county

jail where I realized racism was about implicit bias or prejudice of one person. But was in

fact systemic. What brought me to this revelation was the fact that I got to grow up on the

north side of Chicago. And on north side unlike the south and west side has a lot of white

people. A lot of those white people were my friends and we did and sold drugs together. In

fact what my childhood on the north side taught me is that white people do and sell a lot of

drugs and also commit crimes. So it was shocking to me when I saw barely any white

people in my division. In my unit in fact there was only one white person. What there was

though was scores of Black and Brown men who were there for non-violent offenses.

Usually some sort of drug possession or distribution charge. Once I got out I was

determined to turn things around, I committed to staying sober and did so with the support

of a 12 step program. But still it was hard to find work due to my felony. The most basic

places wouldn’t hire me, like TJ Maxx, fast food spots, telemarketing, etc. Luckily I had the

support of a program called Jobs for Youth which helped me thru these tough times with

words of encouragement and finally with a referral for a job interview at the ACLU. At the

ACLU interview of course I learned of this thing called racial profiling and felony

disenfranchisement and how they didn’t practice that and went on to hire me right away.

Luckily at this time ACLU also had a youth organizing program and I got introduced to the

world grassroots organizing. What becoming a community organizer did for me was teach

me how I could empower myself and my community to end what is now called the school

to prison pipeline. And that though I was powerless to change it as a teenager I could fight

to end it now but also prevent other young people of color from experiencing the heart

ache of incarceration. So for me grassroots organizing and the organizations that have

employed me ACLU, Multi Cultural Youth Project, Service Employees international union

and now Black Youth Project have saved my life by virtue of them being willing to hire

someone with a felony. But its important to note that this is a exceptional story. Most the

people I was locked up with I never see in organizing meeting or recovery rooms. That

most people with felonies never get hired and if they do it isn’t living wage jobs with

benefits like the jobs I had. In fact what my story of expectionalism usually do is give

legitimacy to the rule of racial mass incarceration. But my hope is that by sharing my story

you will get a glimpse into why I care but that also that those in incarcerated are not

beyond redemption. That if we in fact meaningfully give policies of restorative and

transformative justice a chance – such as ending felony disenfranchisement, having

community courts that practice restitution instead of incarceration, support publicly

funded jobs- we can start putting a dent into mass criminalization and incarceration.

Solutions

Now there is in fact a growing consensus that mass incarceration and the amount of police

we have on the payroll is not a good policy solution to the social problems of crime. As

recent statements by Cook County President Toni Precwinkle, Cook County Sheriff Tom

Dart and even Mayor Rahm Emmanuel have all acknowledged - mass incarceration, racial

profiling and police accountability is a problem. Still despite this national consensus and

even the impactful report by the Department of Justice reporting on how intense the nexus

of racial profiling, police violence with no accountability, and policies of mass incarceration

in Ferguson pre empted the massive civil unrest after Mike Browns death there seems to

me a lack of political will to handle the enormity of the task of meaningful criminal justice

reform and police accountability. For me at least any conversation regarding meaningful

criminal justice reform has to begin with police accountably, decreasing the amount of

police overall and the amount we fund, reducing the number of things we can arrest,

incarcerate and ticket people for and of course reduce drastically the spending and

population of jails and prisons. Such action I believe will in fact make us safer, and improve

the communities most impacted by crime. This is largely the agenda of the Black Youth

Project 100 with whom I am a national coordinator for. As I said before but will say again

we believe Police killings of Black people with no accountability, and the policies of mass

criminalization and incarceration are deeply connected. That you can’t really take care of

one with out the others. This is what we tried to do with our “Agenda to keep us safe”.

Which is a overview of polices written by young Black people about what type of legislation

that is needed to actually keep our communities safe from crime but also from the police

violence, profiling and hyper incarceration.

The main polices we felt would get us there was of course passing the End racial Profiling

Act, Independent Democratically elected Civilian review board for Police accountability,

Demilitarization of Police, Mike Brown’s Law – Body Camera’s on the police that is housed

and accessible independent of Police departments, end the war on drugs – so

decriminalizing all drugs and heavily regulating and taxing the more harmful drugs,

repealing crimes of youth – so crimes that only youth can do, such as truancy and that

generate the school to prison pipeline and finally ending mandatory minimums and

supporting early, expedited release for non violent detainees and offenders. Now I mind

you I am sure you have heard of all of these before, I have for sure in my 13 years of

organizing. Deficits in states, counties and cities all over this country have ballooned due to

prison and policing costs. Neighborhoods across the country have not received or felt the

promise of safety via policing and incarceration yet we keep on the same path. Even now

when we seem to be at a turning point not enough meaningful change is happening.

For what at issue isn’t the lack of meaningful policy that could be agreed upon by a large

section of the public. For me what’s at issue is the lack of political will. I don’t think such

political will can from policy papers or reports about the cost benefit analysis of education

over school. No matter how many DOJ reports we have about Ferguson, New Orleans or

Cleveland, all cities who had similar DOJ reports and interventions, we will not get the

systemic change we need to see of our criminal justice system to end racial profiling and

mass incarceration.

What it takes

In order to get such a solution we will need a social justice movement as massive as what

was once the civil right movement which is to say to we will need a revolution in values,

ideas and judgments of one another in addition we will have to go outside the legitimate

realm of political actions such as voting and lobbying to non violent civil disobedience to

win against what we have call the Police and Prison Industrial complex. This is the

approach to ending Police violence and mass incarnation Black Youth Project 100

advocates and practices via Direct action organizing, Electoral/Policy advocacy and

Political education. This is what the rise of the protest movements in Ferguson and New

york and what has coalesced around Black Lives Matter is teaching us. I doubt such a in

depth report about Ferguson PD would of come out if a Black Lives Matter movement was

not in the streets. For me and many others this is just the beginning. I am always pulled to a

interesting statistical point regarding the civil rights movement. That the years we saw

some of the biggest legislative victories of the Civil right Movement – The Civil rights Act,

The Voting Right Act and the Economic Opportunities act – are the years that saw the most

amount of Direct actions. On average there was 600 social movement direct actions. To put

it in perspective imagine 600 Selma’s in one year. That was the type of Social movement

activity that was needed to agitate for such profound legislative achievements. I think such

social movement activity will need to occur in order to pass federally and locally the

legislative proposals I have outlined here. With such passage of legislation I think we will

begin then ending racial profiling, police violence with impunity and mass incarceration.

Thank you