Punishment and Accountability

look like. In the conversation, we get into all of the ways in which you know, society has honestly been built to opt to dehumanize people. Right. There are systems right that are at play that force people into make unthinkable choices because they feel like they don't have any

other choices to make. And what does it mean in a society that is supposed to be industrialized, that is supposed to house the land of the free and when we look at how we treat these folks that are incarcerated, right, I don't think that because you commit a crime that you should lose your humanity, but that's exactly what has been happening in our criminal justice system ever since its inception. You know, I've often said on woke af that the

criminal justice system isn't broken. It's working exactly the way that it was intended to work. It is locking up black and brown people. Right. If you watched Ava Durbnay's thirteenth Amendment, you learned all about the ways in which this system was created to create another mechanism for forced labor. Right, Like we hear stories every summer that there are fires

in California raging across the state. We learn about the fact that they are firefighters who are actually incarcerated, that aren't even being paid a dollar a day to literally fight deadly fires. But then when those same people get out of prison, they wouldn't be able to go and get a job as a firefighter, even though that is exactly what they were doing while they were in prison. So what does it mean that we set up these systems right that are not about rehabilitation, They are not

about accountability, but instead they are steeped in punishment. And I've been thinking about this a lot since the conversation I had with Ice too, because the reality is in America, we believe deeply in punishment. It's actually one of our foundations. Right, If what do you think that the laws right now that are crumbling all around us with regard to a woman's right to an abortion or a person with a uterus's right to an abortion, what do you think that

that is about? That is about punishing women, right for having the audacity to want to have autonomy over their bodies. Right for being able to say that, you know what, we are over fifty percent of the population and we get a say on when, where, and if we decide to have children. But then you had lawmakers, particularly obviously Republican lawmakers, who were putting into practice a couple of

years ago, transvaginal ultrasounds before women go and get an abortion. Well, when you ask the medical doctors, are trans transvaginal ultrasounds necessary, right, they told no, there's actually no medical use for that before we were to administer an abortion. But the point

of it was humiliation, The point of it was harm. Right, And so when we hear stories ever infrequently, particularly during COVID in twenty twenty, I was wondering, when we're talking about social distancing and wearing masks, we were looking to the looking to the prison system to ramp up the production of masks, to ramp up the production of hand

sanitizer and other metrics of cleanings. And guess what, those same prisoners that we're working for no money to produce and keep the country safe weren't allowed to use the hand sanitizer or the masks. But we didn't hear about massive COVID outbreaks in these facilities because we don't give a fuck. Like that's the reality is that in America. I recognize that we are a country that really is a bunch of fucking ostriches that want to bury our

heads in the sand. You see. We want to say that we lock up the bad people and throwaway the key, except we get to pick and choose who is bad and who is good, who is worth rehabilitating, and who isn't who. When we were listening to the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and everybody's talking about that motherfucker's future, I don't ever remember hearing anybody talk about what about Trayvon Martin's future,

what about Tamere Rice's future? Right when it's black and brown people that are the victims, we don't get to have our humanity front and center. And so one of the questions that I asked I should too, is how is it that you humanize the incarcerated when free black and brown people are not able to experience the fullness of their humanity because we are being looked at through the white gaze and filter. Right, we're out here marching and screaming on the top of our lungs that black

lives matter, because they fucking don't. And so it's you know, to be in a job that is about humanizing those that we choose to see as animals. And what I find really just frustrating is that we spend more money more money keeping people locked up, keeping people in violent

dysfunction then we do on our education system. Right. One of the things that I should too will talk about is the food in prisons, right, forcing people to eat food that is literally labeled not for human consumption, but because we are telling these people and reinforcing every single day, every hour of every day, that they are worthless, what do we think is going to happen when they're released, because then we put them into a situation where not only have we finally gotten to a place to ban

the fucking box so that people can actually re enter society, but what is it that we think that they are re entering society with. It is not a better sense of self. It is not a sense of accountability. It is not a sense that I want to be a part of this society. It's that I have had pain and violence inflicted on me for however many months or years, and now I have even more internalized trauma than I'm

going to act out like. It's not rocket science. Why there is such high recidivism rates because we don't create a system that views everyone equally, that says that people are worthy just by virtue of being fucking human. We spend so much energy trying to change systems that are working exactly the way that they should. But one of the things that I should too, will say as well, is that you know she is not cynical. Is that she cannot afford cynicism in this job because she wouldn't

be able to do it. And it got me to thinking, right, because I refer to myself as a cynic I say that I'm probably one of the most hopeless people. And somebody had said to me the other day too, They're like, Danielle, you're not because if you were, you wouldn't do this show if you were, you wouldn't get so enraged every single day. You get enraged and frustrated, right, and you're filled with this type of passion because you want to see better. You want people to be better, and you

believe that they can if given enough information. And one of the things that she says is the same that we have to believe that we can be better. We have to believe that we can do better, because if we think that this is it right, that this is as good as it gets, then we are fucking future generations. You know. One of the things that I will end on in our interview is this, Those that were formerly enslaved right believed in a better day. They prayed for

a better day. They fought for a better day. They fought for a freedom that many of them knew that they would never see, that they would never experience, but they did so anyway. And that is something that I need to remind myself of on a daily basis. And I want to remind all of you that, yes, the times that we are totally living in right now, absolutely and one hundred percent feel eternally fucked, and it may be for quite some time, but just because we may

not experience. Right, the equity that we are fighting for each and every day doesn't mean that it is not worth fighting for. And that is the reminder that I got in my interview coming up next with Isshatu Yusef of Impact Justice Folks. I am very happy to well come to wok F for the very first time, hopefully

not the last time. I should too. Yusef, who is the director of Innovative Programs at Impact Justice and Impact Justice Folks, is a national innovation and research center advancing new ideas and solutions for justice reform, which, as we talk about on wok F, is desperately needed. I should too. Thank you so much for joining and you know, this must be a really precarious time to be in the work of justice reform and kind of reimagining what an

actual justice system would look like. Can you talk to us, just give us a better picture of Impact Justice and the work that you all have been doing since the inception in twenty fifteen. Yeah, so I'm super excited to be here as well. I'm clearly a fan and I didn't think I did a chance to do this. I'm super excited to speak with you. Yeah, so should tun

The director of Innovation Programs. And you know what's interesting, I've we've gotten a lot of asks around what's it like to be in the justice system now that everyone's talking about it, you know, and what I think is really interesting and not that much has changed for us, aside the fact that people want to actually listen to us sometimes now right the you know, you know, I think that you know what's real is that you know I've been I've been in back to most of my career.

I've been in justice work. UM. And the folks that are really in the trenches, both on the advocacy research side, have been in doing this work for a long time, a lot of it silently or a lot of it like beating downdoors. And so I think what has changed the last few years is that people actually well, people that have like a moral compass, that want to actually talk about it and are more are more interested in hearing about what it is we've been screaming about for

a really long time. UM. And so Impact Justice has been around for six years. Although we have every most people in that organization, I've been doing this work for a really long time. UM. We are a research and innovation organization right. Research is what we say a proxy for knowledge and innovation is really about risk and imagination and possibility, and because we work in such an antiquated system,

both of those things are highly necessary. What's unfortunate is at our risk and possibility because the way the system is set up is around people, right. But at the same time, we have to able to think differently about how do we really impact the justice system and impact justice. We think about that and kind of four distinct ways, which is diversion, which means how do we keep people out of the system. There's a huge conversation that's been

happening nationally around the reduction of mass incarceration. That is actually a bipartisan conversation in a lot of ways. But the way we really hit to mass incarceration is like keeping people out from the very beginning. We do that by diversion a lot of our storave justice practices things like that. The second piece we think about is what the term is called conditions of confinement. I hate the term, but that's the term folks use, and that's really thinking

about what's happening to people, why they are inside. What is unfortunate is now oftentimes in our system, we lock the key and throw it away and throw them inside, and they're like, they're in there. Ye, what's real is that they are humans. They are people, and they will get out. Right. Ninety eight percent of people that are

incarcerated get out. So if we don't providing both dignity, respect and care for them while they're in there, the person that comes out is probably not the person you want to wear neighborood because you tortured them and cause intense trauma. So a lot of the work we do is around conditions of confinement, have sexual as salt, the food that they eat, things like that. The third piece we do is abound re entry, which is right the folks that ninety eight percent of folks that go in

will come out. So one of the work, kind of the two pillars that we really focus on, is really around how do you provide the necessary resources to provide people with the things that they need upon reentry, housing, a job, navigation, and that's both juvenile and adult because both those folks in the folks coming out, we want to adhere to that. And then all of that, as we said, I said, was rooted in research, which is

a proxy for knowledge. Everything we do is not just evidence based practice, but also we use participatory research, which means we actually talk to the people that are that we're talking about that word, pack those system to actually help build our programs out to make mehia adhere to what it is their needs are so i AD impact justice. We do all that. We've done that for the last six years. Most of us have done that for mucho longer.

But you know, the truth is is given the kind of rise and even from you know, George Floyd and Brianna's hair and all of those things, you know what ended up happening was the stuff that we did every

single day, people wanted to hear about more. And that was in a lot of ways great, right, because people were interested in hearing about the atrocities that are happening to particularly black communities, particularly Native communities and brown communities, right, and so it just gave rise to people actually wanted to listen to what we want to say. It doesn't mean that the people actually heard it differently. Doesn't also

mean that. It also doesn't mean that, like you know, more dollars came to support organizations like ours in some cases but not always and it doesn't mean that we you know, that we have easier time changing policies and laws because their policies and laws. But what it does mean is that we get to have the voice of the people that are impacted a little bit louder. And it also did mean that more people were alerted to the issues that impact around in black and poor communities,

which I think is the biggest difference. What I saw almost instantly were people that work in completely different field, who don't have to do, who don't well, they don't know they do, but often don't know that they know someone's been incarcerated. I don't live in poor communities, right, being like, wait, what's going on? You know? Tell me

about that, you know? And so I think that process and that outcome is a good outcome, a terrible reason to have that outcome, that it was a good outcome that we got to bring people into the conversation that didn't care before and didn't know to care. You know, I want to talk about you know, thank you so much for giving that rundown because I think that it's it's it's really exciting work that you are doing. Because I don't oftentimes think that we have an opportunity to

really truly reimagine. Right, it's just kind of, you know, it is. It is the status quo, so we'll just kind of stick with what is and not imagine that there could be something that is different. The part that sticks out for me is the condition of confinement. And the reason why that sticks out for me is because, first of all, I mean, I don't need to go into the history of how black and brown people are

looked at in this country in general. Right. It is you know, the opportunity has always been lock them up, throw away the key, force labor, you know, force birth, whatever, whatever it is, it is, it has the fight has always been about the humanization of black people, right. And so when you think about who is actually incarcerated in mass it is black and brown men, right, and on

the rise is women as well, And it's hard. The question that I have for you is how is it that you how do you work to humanize those that are incarcerated when we are having such a goddamn problem with trying to humanize those of us that are outside of bars, right. And so it's so to me, it's like you can justify the animalistic treatment because you believe those people to be animals from the jump, right, And so it's like, how how do you how do you

do that work? How do you go about um doing that work and having people understand that to your point, ninety eight percent of people who are incarcerated will in fact be released. What are they being released as? Right? Yeah? Um uh. That questions pack with a lot of stuff. So I'm gonna talk for a whole I'm gonna forgive me, I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you a chump go.

What I think is what I think is important to be at the end of your statement, which was around like, right, when you animalize people and you it's easier to it's easier to do that, you know. It's it's not just the fact that we've decided that black and brown and poor people are animals. It's that we don't know them, we don't care to know them, and then we literally pick them make them invisible. Right, That's why erration does right. And it's been and it's been and it's done from

the beginning of time. I actually was listening to one of your UM sessions that you did a couple of days ago that actually you said in there um right, like, let's get back to what they Let's get back to what the justice system was supposed to do, right, But the truth there is no that. But it's doing what it's supposed to do. It's the right ways meant right, right, it was always meant to isolate individuals and prior to like I mean, you know, like incarceration in some ways

have been around for a really long time. Right before the enslavement happened, they were like isolated white people, right,

That's what they were doing, right. It's just that when enslavement happened, a colonization happened, that you became poor people, which were black people, and filling the blank all that, and so what I think is important to just differentiate in there is that it's not just that we see people that have committed crimes or poor people or black people as animals or as not human, but that we don't want that, but that society doesn't want to see

them unless you unless they're seen and the gaze of whiteness. And they also put them but the reason is like a system of of isolation exists. It's because they don't even they throw them away. They're like you didn't meet the society standard. I actually don't want to see or you don't exist to me, and that makes it easy, right that when that makes it easy to think about people as bad because I don't have to see and

I don't know them, but I'm gonna go down. That was the end, to go back to the beginning of your kind of question. So I am super lucky, and that in my title is innovation, right, which means I get to think differently about how we impact our systems. So what here's a couple of truths, is that the justice system or the legal system is what we call it is antiquated. Right. It is rooted in every system of harm that could ever exist, from sexism to racism

to xenophobia. Right to you know that every system of harm is what the system is rooted in. Right, Even before we had words like xenophobia, right, it was rooted in an anti immigration, even before we had the titles of LGBTQI people, it was rooted in anti gain its right, it was it rooted in all these things. And so

it just acts it out in different ways now. And so when you really think about changing policies and laws, I stand strong and support all of those lawmakers and lobbyists that are working to change a lot of policies for that, because we need that at the same time, but also some of the work that we do, right is that while that's happening and we support that and do all this, we can also create programming that actually

can change the outcome for people. Why these things are happening simultaneously, right, and so for as an example, like right right now, there's a lot happening in the California legislatures around housing and housing formally incarcerated people. So why y'all figure that out and why you use our work and we do all that to help the policy change. We've created a program that houses formally incarcerated people in

community homes. Right, So these things can happen simultaneously, and we do that in many of our innovative projects because I think what's important is, you know, this law take

a long time to change. Policy takes a long time to change, and as that happens, there is other things that we can be doing, which is creating programs to see the dignity of people, so conditions of confinement to get into your big question around that, right, Yeah, So right, there's there's a bit there's a status quote benefit by throwing somebody in a cell and saying like you're done, you committed a crime. But what I think is really important to be clear about, right, is why this is easy.

It is because people want to ignore the systemic processes of this. Right. Most people that committed crimes didn't just like wake up one morning you'd be like, I'm gonna rob that bank. That's not what happened, right, It's because they are reared in communities that have violence in them. Right.

These communities are violent typically because they lack resources. Right, and not just like resources today, I'm like going back to enslavement resources, right, resources to education, resources to add to jobs, resource to mental healthcare, all of these things that without them lead to what we see today. And so right, and so when we start talking about people that are incarcerated, you have to see the entire human

for you to really understand what happened. And that is why the the status quo doesn't like to see the entire human. Right. They like to seem like, oh, there goes someone who committed a crime. And this is not to admit it. This is not to say that the crime they committed is any like you know, I was throwing the blank, crime is not any less important or impactful like it was hard, right, it was harm to somebody. But in order to understand how you both write, do

what the justice system says, which is around rehabilitation. But you have rehabilitate somebody. Is talk is dealing with the whole person. And if they're in a system where sexual violence is rampant, right, and that's where both people that identify as male and female and identify as other genders, right, rampant, how the heck do you think that they're going to come out of healed rehability person if they were literally in fear for their lives and that is and that

is not I'm talking. I'm not just talking about the people that are incarcerated, right, They're in fear filmal lives based upon the people that are in charge of prisons. Right. This isn't just like their fellow inmate that are talking

about this, like these are people. They harm is created, is given, is put upon them from the people that are running these institutions, right, And so if we're not talking about that, then how are we going to get to actually what their actual crime was Right, when we think of what we feed people, Right, every single day of your life, you get to choose the meal you eat.

And you grew up in a society which they told you all about the pyramid, told you all about what you should and should not eat and how it impacts your body, your health, and your choices. Right, Why is that same conversation not part of the acarcetral system. When we feed people terrible food, we expect them to act differently and to be differently. Right. What's important to think about. Also,

most people that are incarcerated, right, they come from marginalized communities. Right, So what they so they go in with a set of circumstances. They go in with a lot of trauma. Typically a sexual abuse, especially for women's sexual abuse is rampant drug abuse, food apartheid, food deserts. Like, they go in with these. Then they go into prison and they experience these same things in there. I mean, we released a report actually about a year ago today regarding food

in prison. Right, The State of Food was the first national report on the state of food in prison. It wasn't rocket science, right, turns out it's really bad. But what it did do is it really brought to surface about like people in prison told us that they were forced to eat food that said not fit for human consumption. So if you lock me in a cage, right, you have taken me my dignity, and then you see you serve me food that says not fit for human consumption?

How do you one think I'm going to act while I'm incarcerated? And then how do you think I'm gonna act when I get out? And not only did you you fed me that though, So when you get out and you have hypertension and you have all of these diseases that now become issues of the state and the county and our community, right, you blame the individual. You're like you, you're unhealthy, right, and you're like, hold you. I was reared in a community that didn't have healthy food.

I was placed into ancarsal system that didn't have healthy food, and now you want me to get out X amount of years later and all of a sudden be like the pivotal health. How does that happen? I guess that's not logical sense it. You know, it's like the breakdown that you provide is so like clear, right, Like it's like x times why equal Z, like this is how

this continued, this cycle. And it's like and what you said, I mean, you said so many things, but it's like, I'm thinking about a system that is created on punishment versus rehabilitation. Right. We want to refer to prisons as like these rehabilitation centers, but they're not right. We're actually not trying to heal or fix what's broken. This system is set up to have punishment, to make things so bad that then what you decide, Oh, I'm never going to commit a crime again because I don't want to

go back there. But we're not creating a system and an environment that is a building whole people and then putting them back into environments that they can actually thrive in. Like the goal is not to have thriving human beings. I mean, and I could say the same thing about you know, our education system, which I have railed against for so many years as well. You want to talk about food, right, it was one of the reasons why Michelle Obama is like, let's get out, you know, let's

go outside, let's do all these things. Let's change what we are feeding children, because we're allowing corporations to put pink slime into the meat and say that it's okay that only fifty percent of the meat is what is

actual meat, and then we expect kids to learn. So it's like you take people that have come from violent situations, you put them into a hellish more violent situation and then feed them bullshit and then turn around and expect them not to go back and to commit more violence acting out what it was that was committed to them. It's I feel crazy having just said that I should do, Like, in all honesty, how do you if we were which is your job to innovate and to create a legal

system that was human focused? What does that look like? And what is it like? What what does it look like to have a human carcerols system? We're regardless of if you've committed crimes, are not, we recognize your humanity. Yeah, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna. One of the things you said, I think is really important is the way we talk about the job. The legal system is around this idea of punishment and accountability, right, right, and and people confuse

these things all the time. Right. People have confused the idea that prison means accountability, which which I which I often say is how does that work? Like you can commit murder, go to prison for fifty years and still be okay with that crime you just create committed. That doesn't mean you're accountable for it. It just means that you threw them in a system like that. That means nothing like when you're you know, I have a little niece.

When my niece lies, you's a love it. When she lies and she's in trouble for that, she's probably gonna lie again because if I'm her aunt, So I don't do that much. I don't do my punishment. I do a lot of like that was not nice, right, And because of that, right oftentimes she was a similar thing because she wasn't accountable. I was like, you could do that. I took your toy, right, And so I think there's

this this this confusion around punishment and accountability. There is no data to support that if I punish people harm, then they won't do a crime. There's quite a bit of dame, but that actually exists that actually incarceration is not a deterrent for from crime. Right, And I don't even the quote you data on it because you can see it. Right, if prison was a deterrent, if jail

was a deterrent. We probably wouldn't see rising crime levels right now, but we did, right, and that is because our communities are not set up to support people that are too, that support people that are engaging in prime right period. Like, well, there's a there's a conversation around survival crimes, right, and that's around people that are literally surviving and oftentimes they're committing crimes for that survival. Right. So I think there's like a bigger conversation that has

to be had around like what is our goal? You know at id Impact, Jess that we talk a lot about um around prosecut about prosecution, right, like who's and there's a there's a bigger conversation that's been happening in in the prosecution world around um there and just prosecution

and more and deeper conversations. And that's because right, there's a lot of subjectivity that happens between judges and prosecutors, right, and oftentimes because like the wind from prosecutors is like, oh, we got them locked up for years, you know, that was the win, right, But now there's deeper conversations around Okay, so who's to say that five years is different than three days? Different than six months, Like who provides that data? Who's to say that? So how are we actually saying

people are accountable for their behavior? Which just gets me to this conversation that we do a lot about work as our restorative justice aversion team, and that is really the way in which we think about how do we

actually have a different conversation on punishment and accountability? Right If my desire for you is you have committed harm against a person or a community, but my desire is for you is to one understand the implications of your harm, to be accountable for your harm, and work on a method and a tract process that will keep you from doing that again, and that you can teach other people

in your community why that is not okay. At the same time, another part of this is how do we provide the resources for you to ensure that why you committed the crime or why what happened in your community that allowed for this to happen is also being mitigated on this side, right, And so that's aware. You know, people always say impact justice, we do a whole lot of stuff, and we do, and part of that is because we see this as a continuum, Right, It's not

just about conditions of confinement. It's not just about diversion, it's about all of it. It's about reentry, it's about policy, it's about all of these things that really go to change a system. And so you know, to get to your ultimate question, which is around like what could the system be like do we just like throw it out? If we just throw it away and start again all these things? Right? Like, clearly if I was like, let's throw it away, that would like, would love to do that.

The only issue with that, right is I happen to not be the status quo, and I happen to not be look like. I happen to not look like the people that decision to make because in many of my colleagues, not just that impact justice, but across this nation that do this amazing work don't always look like often are not the people that are called the pot to change systems. And so if I say throw it away, right, there's a fear, right, there's that real fear around like, but

who gets to make law? Like we look at Congress right now, I don't want Mitch McConnell making not a single new law, come on me, right, So you know, and so you have to even I mean not even

does that. We deal with moderates, we deal with liberals who still don't even understand what we're talking about, right, And so I think what is true is that there has to be a concerted effort to both understand who we are talking about, what the actual systematic issues are that led to where we are today, and then how do we start to have actual processes that change that.

The way you do that is one A huge piece of that is research, And honestly, some of the reasons why we actually get to have these conversations now are because researchers got in there and said, here are the numbers that you're hiding or lying about. Here are the people, right, here's a face with that number, and it just so happens, and all those faces look real similar, right, All them faces turn out look real brown, All those faces turn

out look really you know. And so when you start to pull data out, then once we have a data and we could say, like, this is what this looks like, we could say here and you know, we can bring it out. This is why people are incarcerated, this is where they came from, this is who they are. Then

we can go to chip away at them right. And so some of the programs that we do right, like one of our programs called the California Justice Leader's Project, which is a project in which we it's an amercor project that we hire formally incarcerated young people and they operate as navigators to young people that are currently in the system and we'll be leaving within the next six months.

And so it's called the credible messenger model. So like the person that experienced it is the most credible person to actually walk somebody through that process. And the reason we have that model right is because again, like what I can say or somebody else can say that wasn't incarcerated as a young person is very different than a person that's incarcerated. And so, and because we've talked about how important re entry is, right, we have them walk

them through the path. What are the things you need? How am I going to how are you going to be set up to change, to change your friend groups? What are youse that you need to go back to school? What are these things? They start to help them walk through that process. But one of those things that the reason I'm bringing that up is because that's something that will change the outcomes for young people, right, because not only for the you know, our actual we call our

members are actual caliform justice leaders. They were incarsepod at some point in their life. Through our program, we have now given them a job. We are now giving job skills. We are giving them mentors, we are giving them the ability to give back, we are giving them resume builders, and we are giving them connection to an entire network

of people that they didn't have before. That is a key component of how we keep them out of the system, right, because now they have something to work with their Like, I have a resume, I know I can do this job.

I actually know I can do something differently, Which is a huge part of this conversation is knowing you can be different, knowing you can choose differently, and that once people know that, right, that goes back to like psychology one on one, right, Like, once you know and understand there can be a different path for you, it's up to us, right, us as in the people that do this work, but our policymakers, our advocates, our corporate America

that's giving money out all these people to actually provide processes to do something different. So when I think about what a system could and should look like I think about a system that's really built on he and accountability. Yes, right, because we don't get to healing, we get to nothing. Right if we don't talk about what's happening internally with your body, with your mind, why you didn't we still

have nothing at the end of the day. Like one of the projects we're doing, I'm jumping around, but one of the projects we're doing on our research team is called is Men and Trauma. And that is because right there is a conversation that have a little more broadly around trauma, articulated and sexual assault for women, but we don't often talk about people that are incarce men that are incarcerated and the trauma that they experience which led

to both their actions and outcomes. And so this project is really around, right, if we could understand the trauma, then we could actually adhere to the healing of it. We could adhere to the healing of it it. But we can get to the accountability piece of it. We get to the accountability piece of it, we can create processes that keep people from committing these crimes in the first place.

But also going forward, I've talked a lot. I'll stop, you know, you know, I love this so much and I love the work that you all are doing so much because the fact is that we are broken, and we are morally bankrupt and broken society. And the fact is that we can clearly look at people from very young ages based on their zip codes and say you're

worthy and you are not. And when you decide to center people's humanity and center their healing, right, then you can build programs and systems that are about creating a supportive ecosystem around them. Because what I mean when you mentioned you know a little bit back about survival crimes, right, and the way in which we view like, wait, why is somebody in a position where they are breaking the law.

Of course people that want to break the law because they want to break the law, there are other people that are like we are faced with no other choice. There is no other option. It's either I do this or my family doesn't eat. Either I do this or I'm sleeping you know, under a bridge, right, Like, there are things, there are situations that are created, right that for some people when especially when you just said knowing that you can be different, knowing that there are other

choices that you can make. But when we are living in a society that doesn't create and imagine choices for people and doesn't want other certain communities to have choices. This is where we end up. And I think that you know, to the point that you made about earlier about we just we don't want to see things, right, We actually don't want to see things just like we don't want to see the crumbling of our current democracy.

We just we want things to just run like well oiled machines so that I can put my attention elsewhere. And the reality is is that we are paying more money in the taxes that come out of all of our hard earning right to support a prison industrial system that then turns around and does us harm right? Like does us who has never been in the system harm right?

And so I just you know, to me, it's like every single problem that I talk about on this show comes back to humanizing people, comes back to just recognizing that people are worthy, right, and that no one person should have the opportunity or the power to be able to dictate somebody else's humanity and that, you know, and to me, that that is what comes out about the center, like the foundation of the work that you all are

doing an impact justice. The last question that I have for you is do you feel this as a question that I ask a ton of people because I'm probably

one of the biggest cynics in the world. M but do you feel I should do like hopefulness in the fact that more people's eyes are open to just how unjust the legal system is that because of these high profile cases that have been followed and people are clearly seeing now like, wow, there's a real stark difference between how Kyle Rittenhouse was talked about versus Trayvon Martin, who was an actual victim, right, Like, do you do you

feel helpful? Yeah? So, I think one of the important things that you said that I just want to address partially is you know, are there people in the world that just commit crimes? Yes, that have mental health challenge

that commit crimes. Yes. Most people that commit crimes are doing so on a broad scale of survival crimes, right, Like even if like when you're thinking about like the community, there are actual tangible commitst survival crimes, right, like I robbed the stores, I need to put the campers on

my baby. Happens all the time. Right. There's also I think a deeper conversation that has to be had around the community that are raising, the communities in which people are forced to raise young people in that are that are such at a lack of resources, that crime is actually a way of life, that crime is actually an economic mobility. Right. We've created these communities because of racism, because of classism, and so it's not necessarily just they

want to commit crimes. It's that they're raising communities that are victims of what the society has created, and they act out what society created, right, And so it's so I say that because that's much broader than just like they woke up one day and wanted to like, you know, bash a card. It's like bigger than that, right, It's like that's what they understand as a method for them

to get stuff. That's what they understand as a method for them to have some type of economic change or to be a part of the community that is that has so much crime in it that that is what they're taught and they understand. So I just want to make like an in just like a distinction kind of kind of around that um and then all the things that you said, yes, I you know, like I like, you know, Like, you know, you know what's interesting because what I think of these written House case people are

like really upset. I wasn't that upset, right, And that's because like written House is like a white blob to me, Right, it could have been written House, It could have been like any other white blob that existed on a chair, Right, it didn't really matter. And I think what's great is that because it was so public, people care differently. Right.

But I see this every day, right, Like I see black and brown bodies that are that have experienced so much harm, right, and then are put on trial for a crime that they committed and are looked upon as animals and are not asked, are not even asked questions in court about who they are as humans, right, you know Written House, Like the conversation on him going too asu came up, all these things that humanized him, right, Like that humanized who he was came up both in

the media and assol the court. Right when you watched the gymnastics that had to be played for hint for to jumping over, like when you watched gym Nasa that had you played on the amar Rbury case, right when you had to watch what happened for that case to have the verticot did you didn't see that same thing on the Rittenhouse case, right, because the person that was over trying to you know that that, like you had, like literally what was happening was a circus in a

lot of ways, because that is what our criminal legal system has become in some ways, because that's built on subjectivity. Right. There are laws and technicalities and all these things, but humans are the ones that are enacting these laws, right,

and so it's all built in subjectivity. And so Rattenhouse right, Right, he got off because of a law, right, a law that was created and whatever reason it was created, but it was got off because of subjectivity, right, because the people that were on the jury of that case, the judge, the community, all these people saw a different human in that chair, saw a pudgy faced, white blob in that chair,

and they cared differently about him. I mean, there was conversation about his future, right, But when there's a black body in that chair, they don't care that they shouldn't commit their crime, right, they chose to get rid of their future, right, And the conversations you have, and so I think when you like and so when I say like white blab, I'm actually not like talking about like

the actual appearance. Yes, now I'm not talking about the idea of like it doesn't matter film the blank white, or film the bake, or or even feel you know, and race a gender plays a part of that too, but film the blank doesn't matter if the outcomes are similar, because we're dealing with subjectivity and we're dealing with laws and polities, policies that on paper think people talk about our gender neutral and race neutral button and actuality because

humans are enacting them. They become you know, they become enacted by the ideas of racism and you see a play out, you know. And so that's to your question, like on my athenic, no, I there is you know, I am a I'm not that cynical in a lot of ways, and you can't be some in some ways in the work that I do, right because if I because I would, I would I would die right because I would be so burdened down by what I see

every day and the humans I speak to. And so whether it's reality or not reality, my response to you is, yes, there is hope. And I say that because I've been you know, I'm like older, but I'm not like super old, like you know, I'm the millennial to put that way. You know, but I've been doing this work for a lot of My niece calls me a dusty, so there's that she actually she needs to go on punishment. Okay,

you just about the two thousand girl for Halloween. I don't want I don't like her, you know, yeah, like it was. It was the whole thing. Oh are you a dusty as well? There you got your dust I don't like I don't like her. She's eleven, So there

you go. But my point though is that, you know, is there's but I've seen so much change, even as much as I've been in this work, right, Like I see, like ban the Box didn't exist what I started doing this work, which was like the well just you know in California's Destination actually now, which allow people not to ask questions around around felonies, right, that didn't exist when

I started this work. We've seen changed, Right when I look at talking about sexual violence in prisons, like impact Justice runs that when I started doing just work that

didn't exist. People weren't talking in a way that could change sexual violence side of Carcelo facilities and that the federal government was going to pay for that, like that didn't exist before that, Like conversations on black women being incarcerated and criminalized that didn't exist, right, talking about the school can find pathways for black young people and girls that didn't exist prior, you know, when I first started doing this work. And so is there like mountains and

valleys and rivers and oceans to crime clots and swam across. Absolutely, But you can see change that's happening from both the federal, state, and local level. But that's only happening because people have continued to scream, continue to knock down doors, and continue to talk about what's right and what should happen right,

And I think and I don't see that changing. And I think also because we've had to public display of a public display of racist acts, right that people in black and brown communities like we like when when the ammad armory happened, when George Floyd and Brianna Taylor, we like it wasn't like we was really terrifying for us, but it was common. Like you know, I think part of what I can tell you, like my response, like ever when Eric Gardner happened. I tapped out. I tapped

out on that day. That was the day I tapped out, and I had an entire dislike ball. I was at my desk at work and I was just crying my face off, right because I tapped out at that moment, And I have these moments that I tapped out. I happened during you know, and am mod r Very was was murdered. I went on my two point one poo

point eleven. I believe my I'll run and I cry at the entire way, right, And I think that is because the folks that do this work have this this stuff on their shoulders every day that we carry, and we have straight bats and long spines, and then sometimes it just gets heavy, and we have to be honest. We have to be honest about those moments. But we also to be honest about the fact that we see

so much change it's happening. The fact that we get the fact that I got to have this conversation with you on a podcast that's going to be out to millions of people across race talking about the atrocities in our justice system is progress within itself, and I'm so appreciative to the folks that came before me, to the avid gets on the ground and the policymakers that are working to change things at every level, because without all of those things happening, we wouldn't be where we are,

and we will not get to where we're going without people continuing to open up their mouths and speak about the dehumanization of black and brown bodies in our justice system. I should too, use if I really do hope that you will come back to wok af. I have enjoyed every single minute of this conversation. I think that the work that you're doing, that Impact Justice is doing is

extraordinary and so needed. And you know, and I really do appreciate the fact that you said you know and not on the fact that you know you're not a cynic, because you wouldn't be able to do this work if you were. And I think that that is important, because you know, even those that while they were enslaved in shackles still persisted and dreamt of something that was bigger and different than the experience that they were currently having, and if they didn't, none of us would be here.

And so, you know, to hold on to that hope, I think is extraordinarily necessary for us to keep forging ahead, and so for that I appreciate you. Thank you so very much, and I hope that you will join us again, oh anytime. Please let me know. I really appreciate the conversations you bring to the air. I really do, so thank you so much. It's been great. Thank you. That is it for me today. Dear friends on Woke app

as always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.