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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2013-05-05
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTqiIuh9_Z0
mass incarceration is one of the most compelling social justice and human rights issues of our time if you look at the world's population only if five percent of the population of the world is in the United States and yet we incarcerate at a rate of twenty five percent twenty five percent of all the prisoners in the world are right here that's a terrible thing if you
look at that closely that means that two point four million people currently are in prison are in lockdown status and another seven million are in custody in some form form of probation or jail or parole sixteen million people right now are re entered and over thirty percent of the population of the entire United States now has an arrest record that's unbelievable it's unbelievable when you looked
at the fact that in the last twenty years crime has dropped by forty percent how does it happen that keep going up and up and up and up on prison population but crime is actually dropping if you look at that carefully what you discover is some of the findings that Michelle Alexander found in the new Jim crow and what she concluded is that what has actually
happened is there's a new system of racial and social control in the United States that is so devastating that it's devastating communities and that it's created a caste system from which people cannot recover communities will suffer in perpetuity and we can never get those folks back that we lost to the system it's actually a parte a part hate I listened carefully to some of her talks
you know trying to glean some wisdom from them and very frequently she concludes with we must break the silence about mass incarceration that this is a devastating nightmare of human rights abuses and that it has to end and she wisely also says that some of the answers about what do we do now and you know where are we going with this can be found in the
feelings of hearts and lives in and pictures of directly affected individuals I was a directly infected individual I went to prison when I was twenty one years old her broken remorseful foolish and I went in when Gerry Ford was still president six months after the end of the Vietnam War I would remain in prison for twenty six years and seven months twenty six very long years
and seven months I came out about six months after the end of two thousand and eleven that following some and what I'm here to share with you is that the idea that we must break the silence we must here from the words in the hearts in the lives of the people that are directly affected is extremely critical in solving the social justice issue I can tell
you that from being in prison and living with thousands and thousands and thousands of women that you're surrounded with day and night that that is a very eye opening experience you end up finding things about everybody imagine that we're in this room and this is actually a prison and you can't leave and you can't go anywhere for thirty five or forty years look around you now
imagine that this is what your life is going to be for the next thirty five or forty years so when you lose your cell phone when you lose your computer but you lose you know you're food toilet paper comforts of life all you have is each other but you discover your sense of self forced to usually and you rise to the occasion because you can't kill
the human spirit you can't lock up a mine in the soul in a hard in the brain and so prison is based on oral culture an oral culture is such that you sit around and you talk to each other nonstop you tell story after story after story you discover who you really are you discover who other people are and you learn one of the things I
love about school social work they understand that diversity is in the lives in the experiences of the lived experiences of the people around you and the people that you share with it's not all about color and creed it's about who you are it's about how you've lived it's about your children and your family and your culture and your life I think that one of the most
important %HESITATION lessons that I've learned through all those is the fact that that we are dependent on each other I've heard a lot of it today about that connection and about how important it is for us to help each other and I want to share with you that in the spirit of Ted technology entertainment and design that there's no efforts now to open up those stories
and to share that information with the world from Charlie to tar and Benjamin hill from MIT they created between the bars human stories from prison so there's a new effort now for blogging to be used for those stories of prisoners to come out of a closed society in which phone calls are off the chain expensive and you know you're doing good if you got a couple
of stamps to write a letter to be able to get that information to MIT to the folks that them skin and put it online and this is a beautiful thing because this allows people to share their are in their writing and their their answers their stories this you can go online to discover you can respond to people you can up take a look at favorite writers
I have a couple that I really appreciate very much you can %HESITATION give them a response that will be sent to them they actually will receive it another up piece of a masterpiece is the prison arts coalition the prison arts coalition was created in California in two thousand eight at the critical resistance ten pound friends from a group of activists in a workshop just as much
as he works up here and it has become a catalog of the wealth of %HESITATION documents and information that you can't find anywhere else this is actually a magnificent historical document now there's a blog there's galleries there's events jobs I've been looking for a job on their there's programs arm if if I'm now working in the UK or I'm working in Porter Rico are I'm a
California woman Detroit I can look on that I can find resources and contact information information another movement that is extremely valuable is nation inside nation inside was created by Nixon Birla and the folks that he worked with in Kentucky and this is a new effort pull together and to organize groups that working on prison reform issues and on re entry and on issues that are pertinent
to women and families and children and folks that are locked up this you can all is also interactive on the glory of this is they now have a database with the court over a quarter million people in it that are working together in pulling together and organizing around at the end of mass incarceration nation inside meets yearly at the allied media conference in Detroit this is
another magnificent effort that is now fifteen years old of grassroots activists and artists and dancers and dreamers and people that support folks that need help and that are outside the margins that are you know on the outside of the criminal justice system %HESITATION this check us out online this is amazing I think that one of the questions I'm asked frequently is about reentry is what was
it like to come home after all that time you hear the term reentry but you don't really know what that means and I certainly didn't but I found out quickly I my way out the door they handed me three condoms in five dollars so that was their idea of what I really need it you know I'm gay hello ed it I'll never forget how insulted I
was when I'm standing I got my nasal soon I'm ready to go finally and I got these three rubbers in my half I don't know what to do with them so so I I don't want to insult them of their own way in their face that might keep me so so I remember I threw away in the trash can immediately when I got outside and I
took the five Bucks and I put it blossomed sacraments poor box in grand rapids at the church re entry is an experience that you can't even scribe but I'll try it's kinda like Star Trek you know where you're in the studies beaming you all up in it you're in the capsule and you don't know what's gonna happen with the door opens and you've been living in
this altered universe and you step out and there you are it's like Ole boy would I do that it's a complete mental and physical and emotional thing that happens when you go through re entry because incarceration so physical itself you know years of living on less than two dollars a day for all three meals imagine that and and dislike torturing the pressure the stress of the
poor diet in poor health care not really ways on your body and soul so that when you step out you have to become oriented against to time place and the time place thing is really critical and it takes a couple years to to get it together to be able to arm not think about prison every day to be oriented to where you're walking and moving I
used to joke I got lost in the parking lot but I had the wisdom of Buddha so %HESITATION it's difficult because you can't find a job usually and you've got that X. on your head where you're considered you know kind of a pariah I got lucky though I start working as soon as I could and worked all the way through many of my fellow returnees are
not so lucky at the Delano shelter those folks they talked about that are homeless I learned from one of the program directors that five hundred to eight hundred people that come through that one shelter alone every year have a criminal record that's devastating I mean I met multiply that by all the shelters the United States there's a whole underclass that can't find a job they can't
find a place to live and has no money and have no health care and has no future all because of mass incarceration in the way that we treat addiction a mental illness in this country we criminalize the instead of treating a I am delighted to be here today free I honor all the parents and the family members that are here with your students and speakers %HESITATION
I think my own parents who all those long years came to see me and in fact when my mother was dying she came to see me and I was able to be here with her at home free when she passed away I remember one unbelievable Christmas it was a blizzard and my sister Jameela to come all the way from Kansas in a blizzard way out to
the facility in the country are in the snow and arrive like Santa Claus was great %HESITATION and I thank them I honor them and I also honor all of the inmate nation all of the brothers and sisters inside who have been there many of them for decades and decades that were incarcerated back in a time when when you didn't have the benefit of what of a
real appeal or you didn't have the benefit of a domestic violence defense because it wasn't recognized then you didn't tell anybody if you were beyond her shut up it even tell your mother %HESITATION who now because of the policies of the elimination of habeas corpus in the way the court system is can't get out and you know I never saw anybody in prison that was rich
what do you know there's there's nobody in prison with money the people that go to prison are predominantly poor sixty percent of them are people of color or ethnic minorities and it's I knew was good and bad one time when it was set in the art on my way out I looked around I thought my god it's United Nations of everybody was public you know it's
it's bad it's really bad so I call on you today them and I ask for your involvement I ask for you to take a look at these blocks and see if you might want to write a letter to a someone in prison you can communicate and you know they never have your contact information you could you could you can help somebody in the neighborhood that you
know is struggling because they have a family member in prison you could help a kid that needs a mentor %HESITATION there's actually sixty percent of the kids good Maxie I found out can't even read reading right they can read and write those are the kids that are children mostly a prisoner's so I ask you did in your the goodness of your heart to arm consider how
