WEBVTT

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- We wanted to thank everyone so much

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for coming this evening.

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We are really excited to be hosting this

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panel discussion tonight on Race

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and the Criminal Justice System,

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the Central Park Five.

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In attendance tonight,
we have Yusef Salaam,

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one of the exonerated members of

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the Central Park Five,
we have Sarah Burns,

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writer, director, and producer
of the documentary film,

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the Central Park Five,
Dr. Christopher Tinson,

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local assistant professor
at Hampshire College,

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who engages in research and advocacy

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in race and the criminal justice system,

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and our panel facilitator is Mary Gannon,

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educator and activist in
the field of social justice.

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Both Liz and I became involved in bringing

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this discussion to Smith
from different places,

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but our collaboration has
been a wonderful source

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of inspiration for me,
in particular in seeing

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how community comes
together to create change.

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As part of my community practice project

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this year, one of our
tasks was to go watch

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the documentary film,
The Central Park Five.

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After watching it, I felt overwhelmed

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by what I had witnessed, and felt

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everyone I knew, every social work school,

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everyone, everywhere should see this film.

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There was so many gross
issues of injustice at play,

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I did not know how to
process what I had watched.

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I was hoping that by
bringing the film to Smith,

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the community here would engage

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in conversation and help
me gain a better awareness

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of what had happened,
along with what actions

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I could take next.

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- We both wanted to
give our sort of reasons

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and perspective as to why we tried to,

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or we have made this happen on campus,

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which is very exciting.

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(laughing)

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I watched this film in November

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when it was on PBS, and I reflected on

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a class that I had taken
with Sarah Burns in college,

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which was called Politics
of the American Color Line,

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and I remember her talking about the case

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and that she was writing her thesis about

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the Central Park Five, and
this was in 2003, 2004.

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And watching the film in 2012 and seeing

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how much work and effort
clearly, and thought

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was put into this film,
I was so excited for her

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and impressed that, really stuck with it

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as long as you did and I'm excited

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to hear more about what's motivated you.

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But then of course, I thought a lot about

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Smith, and during my Dismantling

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Institutional Racism class this past year,

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Sarah Burns and The Central Park Five

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was brought up as a film
that really illustrates

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the injustices of the
criminal justice system

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and the endemic racism that the film

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so clearly shows as a powerful force

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behind the convictions,
and also for the reason

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of the lack of media
attention once these men

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were exonerated.

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I applied to Smith largely
because of its commitment

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to anti-racism, embedded in its mission.

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And it's been a privilege
to work with Ruth

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and everyone, Mary, and
all of you here today,

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to really bring all these
collaborators together

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and bring yet another, just another one

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of the conversations of hopefully

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many, many, many that we have about racism

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and anti-racism work, and I hope that

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it's aligned with the mission but also

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expands and pushes our conversation today.

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Lastly, we would not be here without

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the collaboration of many,
many student organizations

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and of course, the Smith
College School for Social Work

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faculty and staff,

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as well as The Innocence Project and

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Florentine Films.

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The student organizations
on campus have helped

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with screenings, they've helped with

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all sorts of different things, and also

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just generous donations.

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The Jewish Student Alliance,
Disability Awareness Group,

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Gender and Sexuality Alliance,

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Men at Smith, Council
for Students of Color,

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and Social Welfare Action Alliance,

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and of course all of you.

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I mean I think it's
really awesome to show up

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and you are here, and that is wonderful,

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and we are excited to move forward

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and see what we learn and can ask

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and grow from today.

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Thank you.

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(applause)

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- Hey everybody.

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I'm not used to being behind the podium.

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So, this might be a little awkward.

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So good evening, really honored to be

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part of this conversation tonight.

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Certainly, part of the
work as an instructor

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is to support students and continuing

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to figure out how to bring issues

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of race and racism to the forefront

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of our work here at the Smith College

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School for Social Work.

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So just for a minute, I want to really

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acknowledge Liz and Ruth for their efforts

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and for this example of really engaging

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in collective action.

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When I think about the Dismantling

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Institutional Racism
course, which I've been

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really fortunate to teach
now for several years

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with my colleague Mike Funk, who couldn't

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be with us tonight, part of
the mission of that course

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is to really support
students in thinking about

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how to take the action, and so I see this

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as a real example of that.

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So if we could just give Liz and Ruth

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a round of applause for that.

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(applause)

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It's also, just as a
shout-out to those faculty,

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it's always nice when
you see your students

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do what you ask them to do.

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So, thank you.

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So, this story of the Central Park Five

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is a story that is as old as this country.

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It was 1619 I think, when the first

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African slaves arrived
in the United States,

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and so the span of the
history of the United States

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shows us the same themes,
dilemmas and questions

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of race, class, issues
of justice, freedom,

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and the impact of powerful
social institutions

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like the media.

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This story, from my observations of it

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many times now and also
looking at the clips,

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it really strikes me as another example

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for the countless stories of excessive

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and undeserved incarceration
of men of color

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over the history of the United States,

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and I'm sure tonight we'll be hearing

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and talking about some
of those other examples.

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What I want to share
is just a few thoughts

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in the intention for this event.

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One of the ways that I
frame anti-racism work,

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and for those of you that
have been a student of mine,

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this may sound familiar,
is we talk a lot about

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locating the head and the heart.

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And I think, you know when Liz and Ruth

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and I spoke about this, we felt as,

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alongside of it being very important

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to have an analysis of
institutional racism

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and really look at the web
of institutional racism.

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We also feel like it's really important

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to hold the experience
of emotions and affect

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that go alongside of doing this work.

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And so what we, and at the same time,

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we talked about this a little bit as well,

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is that we also don't
want to feel immobilized

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or to feel that we are stuck around

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how those emotions impact us.

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And so as Liz and Ruth both said earlier

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in their introduction, one of the goals

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for tonight is to really think about

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how we identify concrete actions

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that each of us can engage in personally

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and professionally, individually

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and institutionally.

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I know for many of you third-years

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that are heading out into
your professional lives,

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and those of you also
that will be in placement,

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these are some of the
challenges and dilemmas

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that you face as practitioners.

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And so I think we really
want to talk about that

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at length tonight and make that

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one of the focus of the conversation.

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I just want to share a little bit.

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Recently, I have a colleague up at

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the University of
Vermont who's a professor

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in geography, his name's Rashad Shivaz,

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and he was interviewed
on Vermont Public Radio.

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I'm from the North Country, so, yes

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we do talk about these issues up there

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in the North Country.

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And he was asked to come on to the radio

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and speak about his reaction to

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the Trayvon Martin case.

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And in his comments, he referenced

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James Baldwin's essay,
The Devil Finds Work,

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which I would encourage you to take

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a look at if and when you have some time.

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And he talked about this essay

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in terms of some of his observations

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about the current state of
race and racism in the US.

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And I want to read you the quote

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that he also quoted in his commentary.

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The quote is from The Devil Finds Work.

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"White Americans have been encouraged

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to continue dreaming, and black Americans

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have been alerted to the
necessity of waking up."

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And so when I think about that,

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I think Baldwin is speaking directly

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about the way in which he was perceiving

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race and the way it functions
in the United States,

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and interesting how if he were alive now,

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he would see probably many
of the same observations.

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And so this idea that
whiteness is a dream stage

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while black folks are awake,
and have to remain awake.

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And so I share this
with you because I think

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we all have work to do
around these issues,

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across racial ethnic
groups, and if we talk about

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social justice, we talk about class,

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we talk about heterosexism and homophobia,

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we talk about sexism,
domestic violence ability,

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so there's lots of issues.

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I feel at times that what is often missing

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is a real clear focus on
issues of race and racism.

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And so I do think in my work as

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a white anti-racism educator that there is

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a point where those of
us who identify as white

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need to think about whether we're

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living in that dream state which allows us

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to in many ways stay
in that state of denial

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that plays a part in how race
plays a part in our lives.

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And so I think also that this call

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for waking up can also be very liberatory,

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and I think it could open us up to

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a larger sense of humanity, and also

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help us engage in anti-racism
work in productive ways.

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So I just wanted to share that with you.

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I think, like I said, we all have

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a part in this, but when I really think

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about my work as a white person

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engaged in anti-racism work, I was just

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struck by Baldwin's thoughts.

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So our hope tonight is that we are

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making space here for a healing

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and liberatory process, while we're

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also creating strategies for
individual and systemic change.

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So what we want to do now is show

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about a 12 or 13-minute
clip from the film,

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and we're aware that many of you

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may have seen the film already and thought

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in case folks hadn't, we want to just

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set a context for the story of

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the Central Park Five
and where it took place.

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So we're going to show that clip and then

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we'll get to discussion.

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(distant sirens and horns honking)

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(mellow music)

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- [Voiceover] I showed her
the top of the entrance

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in the direction she came by.

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I showed her when she made the turn.

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I showed her where I
picked up the tree branch.

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And down the road where I struck her there

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with the tree branch and
where I dragged her in.

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She just kept moaning, you know,

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and said, "Stop," and grabbed my head,

261
00:12:43.371 --> 00:12:47.104
she was in pain and all that, you know.

262
00:12:48.224 --> 00:12:50.146
She was bleeding.

263
00:12:53.100 --> 00:12:54.865
I can't explain to you what happened

264
00:12:54.865 --> 00:12:56.665
after I left there the park that night,

265
00:12:56.665 --> 00:12:59.265
but I can guarantee you that there was

266
00:12:59.265 --> 00:13:02.530
no way these kids saw this woman come in,

267
00:13:02.530 --> 00:13:05.067
or had a idea the way she was coming from.

268
00:13:07.697 --> 00:13:09.926
I'm the one that did this.

269
00:13:19.022 --> 00:13:20.677
(police radio)

270
00:13:29.135 --> 00:13:29.959
- [Voiceover] Ready?

271
00:13:29.959 --> 00:13:31.108
- [Voiceover] Yeah.

272
00:13:31.108 --> 00:13:33.604
- Approximately 1:30
this morning, two males

273
00:13:33.604 --> 00:13:36.937
walking through Central Park
north of the 102nd street

274
00:13:36.937 --> 00:13:39.479
jogging path found a female.

275
00:13:39.479 --> 00:13:41.906
She was still alive, and
in fact still is alive.

276
00:13:41.906 --> 00:13:44.344
The female was clad only in a bra.

277
00:13:44.344 --> 00:13:46.677
She was lying exposed in the area,

278
00:13:46.677 --> 00:13:48.988
appeared to have been exposed
for a couple of hours.

279
00:13:48.988 --> 00:13:51.217
Her body temperature was down very low.

280
00:13:51.217 --> 00:13:53.016
Around her mouth was
an article of clothing

281
00:13:53.016 --> 00:13:55.292
that was wrapped around her face,

282
00:13:55.292 --> 00:13:56.987
and the same article was used to bind

283
00:13:56.987 --> 00:13:59.727
her wrists to her face.

284
00:13:59.727 --> 00:14:00.958
She had been struck around the head

285
00:14:00.958 --> 00:14:03.233
repeatedly, and mud on her body.

286
00:14:03.233 --> 00:14:04.766
She appears to have been dragged

287
00:14:04.766 --> 00:14:08.023
through the woods north
into the shrub area.

288
00:14:08.225 --> 00:14:09.607
She was taken to Metropolitan Hospital

289
00:14:09.607 --> 00:14:12.725
where she's classified
as in serious condition.

290
00:14:15.470 --> 00:14:17.763
(dramatic music)

291
00:14:20.486 --> 00:14:23.179
- [Voiceover] I look
back at the jogger case

292
00:14:23.179 --> 00:14:27.040
and wish I had been more
skeptical as a journalist.

293
00:14:28.311 --> 00:14:31.637
You know, a lot of people
didn't do their jobs.

294
00:14:33.663 --> 00:14:37.338
Lawyers, police,
prosecutors, defense lawyers.

295
00:14:37.935 --> 00:14:41.088
This was a proxy war being fought.

296
00:14:42.231 --> 00:14:45.168
And these young men were the proxies

297
00:14:45.168 --> 00:14:47.253
for all kinds of other agendas.

298
00:14:48.431 --> 00:14:50.431
And the truth and reality and
justice were not part of it.

299
00:15:07.598 --> 00:15:09.130
- [Voiceover] You give us 22 minutes.

300
00:15:09.130 --> 00:15:10.036
- [Voiceover] --fight back against--

301
00:15:10.036 --> 00:15:11.232
- Polls are galloping--

302
00:15:11.232 --> 00:15:12.903
- [Voiceover] Do you have
a passport, Mr. Gotti?

303
00:15:12.903 --> 00:15:14.935
- Given the alarming spread of AIDS--

304
00:15:14.935 --> 00:15:16.642
(crowd talking)

305
00:15:16.642 --> 00:15:19.620
- You don't like it, you're fired!

306
00:15:20.276 --> 00:15:21.541
- [Voiceover] A savage
racial attack in the

307
00:15:21.541 --> 00:15:23.213
middle class neighborhood
of Howard Beach--

308
00:15:23.213 --> 00:15:25.314
- A mob of whites
attacked three black men--

309
00:15:25.314 --> 00:15:26.615
- [Voiceover] The mayor
of New York called it

310
00:15:26.615 --> 00:15:28.287
a racial lynching.

311
00:15:28.287 --> 00:15:30.174
(yelling)

312
00:15:33.441 --> 00:15:36.745
- New York, under-policed city
with crime out of control.

313
00:15:36.820 --> 00:15:39.130
- The criminal justice
system isn't working.

314
00:15:39.130 --> 00:15:41.359
- They call him the Subway Vigilante.

315
00:15:41.359 --> 00:15:43.565
- [Voiceover] Goetz, ran over
to one of his wounded victims

316
00:15:43.565 --> 00:15:45.667
and said, "You don't look
too bad, here's another."

317
00:15:45.667 --> 00:15:47.130
- If I had more bullets,
I would have shot 'em all

318
00:15:47.130 --> 00:15:47.966
again and again.

319
00:15:47.966 --> 00:15:49.835
- It's about time someone
stood up for himself.

320
00:15:51.865 --> 00:15:53.701
- [Voiceover] 25-year-old
Michael Stewart--

321
00:15:53.701 --> 00:15:55.140
- [Voiceover] 16-year-old Yusef Hawkins--

322
00:15:55.140 --> 00:15:56.975
- 67-year-old Eleanor
Bumpurs lived, until police

323
00:15:56.975 --> 00:15:59.517
came to evict her and
ended up killing her.

324
00:15:59.517 --> 00:16:02.443
- New York's now the
capital of racial violence.

325
00:16:02.443 --> 00:16:03.911
(loud chanting)

326
00:16:03.911 --> 00:16:06.843
- You wanna use a gun, we'll use the gun!

327
00:16:08.520 --> 00:16:10.192
- None of us is safe,
even if you lock yourself

328
00:16:10.192 --> 00:16:11.527
behind doors--

329
00:16:11.527 --> 00:16:12.700
- [Voiceover] There's now a new level

330
00:16:12.700 --> 00:16:14.662
of random violence in the city.

331
00:16:14.662 --> 00:16:16.324
- [Voiceover] (unclear) and this city will

332
00:16:16.324 --> 00:16:19.099
raise up in its wrath against those

333
00:16:19.099 --> 00:16:21.908
who would perpetrate monstrosities.

334
00:16:21.908 --> 00:16:24.550
(rap music)

335
00:16:31.080 --> 00:16:32.787
- [Voiceover] Harlem, 1989.

336
00:16:32.787 --> 00:16:36.206
My neighborhood is a small neighborhood.

337
00:16:36.920 --> 00:16:38.081
When I was younger all the kids would say

338
00:16:38.081 --> 00:16:40.200
this is the suburbs of Harlem.

339
00:16:40.356 --> 00:16:43.776
It was like three different
projects around my neighborhood.

340
00:16:45.233 --> 00:16:50.045
Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson,
Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam,

341
00:16:51.305 --> 00:16:52.809
I didn't know them.

342
00:16:52.930 --> 00:16:54.887
But I seen them a lot in my neighborhood.

343
00:17:04.076 --> 00:17:06.282
- I lived in The Bronx at
one time, and The Bronx

344
00:17:06.282 --> 00:17:08.987
was more quiet-like, you know, even though

345
00:17:08.987 --> 00:17:10.287
it was the projects.

346
00:17:10.287 --> 00:17:14.043
It was very secluded;
everybody knew each other.

347
00:17:14.687 --> 00:17:17.248
When I moved to Harlem,
Harlem was very fast-paced.

348
00:17:17.555 --> 00:17:18.623
Everything moved fast.

349
00:17:18.623 --> 00:17:21.810
The cars moved fast,
the people, the lingo.

350
00:17:22.199 --> 00:17:24.144
It was a big culture shock.

351
00:17:26.599 --> 00:17:28.201
- [Voiceover] I was a only child.

352
00:17:28.201 --> 00:17:31.138
Me and my mother, we was close,

353
00:17:31.138 --> 00:17:33.351
but my father was my best friend.

354
00:17:33.878 --> 00:17:35.789
I thought he was like a super hero.

355
00:17:36.049 --> 00:17:38.598
He coached all my little league teams.

356
00:17:39.138 --> 00:17:40.862
He was a great teacher.

357
00:17:42.040 --> 00:17:44.792
I played short stop, I played pitcher.

358
00:17:44.792 --> 00:17:48.391
In little league you get
to play outfield, catcher,

359
00:17:48.391 --> 00:17:50.707
but my favorite position was short stop.

360
00:17:51.793 --> 00:17:54.376
(rap music)

361
00:17:57.632 --> 00:17:59.420
- [Voiceover] My dad was from Puerto Rico,

362
00:17:59.420 --> 00:18:01.621
my mother was a mix of
Puerto Rican and black.

363
00:18:02.172 --> 00:18:04.204
So my dad's like
light-skinned Puerto Rican,

364
00:18:04.204 --> 00:18:06.909
and my mother's side was
more like dark-skinned.

365
00:18:06.909 --> 00:18:09.655
You know so we had like,
the best of both worlds.

366
00:18:15.918 --> 00:18:17.613
- [Voiceover] I used to ride skateboards,

367
00:18:17.613 --> 00:18:20.655
I used to play things
like hide and go seek and

368
00:18:20.655 --> 00:18:22.919
you know, used to run around with a lot of

369
00:18:22.919 --> 00:18:24.678
people from the neighborhood.

370
00:18:26.588 --> 00:18:29.804
- [Voiceover] As a kid, I
knew Yusef and I must say

371
00:18:29.804 --> 00:18:31.737
he was a good kid.

372
00:18:31.766 --> 00:18:36.323
He had, him and his
family had just moved in

373
00:18:36.607 --> 00:18:38.819
to the Schomburg complex.

374
00:18:41.774 --> 00:18:43.283
- [Voiceover] Well me
and Yusef, we grew up

375
00:18:43.283 --> 00:18:45.048
in the same building.

376
00:18:45.048 --> 00:18:46.882
So, you know of course I seen them around

377
00:18:46.882 --> 00:18:49.216
and our parents knew each other

378
00:18:49.216 --> 00:18:50.731
from just day-to-day.

379
00:18:54.254 --> 00:18:56.699
- [Voiceover] It was my mother,
my sister and my brother.

380
00:18:57.122 --> 00:18:58.654
And my mother was a single parent

381
00:18:58.654 --> 00:19:00.809
teaching at Parsons University.

382
00:19:01.963 --> 00:19:04.367
She encouraged all of us to do good work,

383
00:19:04.367 --> 00:19:06.718
good quality work, whatever we did.

384
00:19:10.102 --> 00:19:11.402
- [Voiceover] When I was a kid, had

385
00:19:11.402 --> 00:19:13.626
a little hearing problem.

386
00:19:16.650 --> 00:19:19.912
But I just found myself just ignoring it

387
00:19:19.912 --> 00:19:22.995
to the point where it affected my life.

388
00:19:26.084 --> 00:19:27.895
- I grew up with a big family.

389
00:19:28.562 --> 00:19:32.074
A lot of women in my family;
my mother plus four sisters.

390
00:19:33.357 --> 00:19:34.901
- [Voiceover] He's the baby, and he was

391
00:19:34.901 --> 00:19:39.162
treated as such and, you
know, mama's only boy

392
00:19:39.162 --> 00:19:41.455
out of five children and the baby.

393
00:19:41.797 --> 00:19:44.572
So he was just our hearts'
like, joy, everybody's.

394
00:19:47.778 --> 00:19:50.377
- [Voiceover] At that time, I
was just getting into music,

395
00:19:50.377 --> 00:19:54.882
watching videos, MTV Raps was
kinda big, so we watched that.

396
00:19:54.882 --> 00:19:56.519
We would record the videos and we would

397
00:19:56.519 --> 00:19:59.056
watch 'em over and over and over all day.

398
00:19:59.688 --> 00:20:00.861
You know, my dad would
come into the house say,

399
00:20:00.861 --> 00:20:03.247
"You still watching that
video from when I left?"

400
00:20:03.427 --> 00:20:05.766
You know, that's how far my range was.

401
00:20:06.863 --> 00:20:09.394
I think that I was at that point

402
00:20:09.394 --> 00:20:11.971
of coming into who I was, you know,

403
00:20:11.971 --> 00:20:14.451
but I never really, I really
never really got there.

404
00:20:23.161 --> 00:20:25.037
(upbeat music)

405
00:20:32.324 --> 00:20:33.984
- New York in the late 1980s was

406
00:20:33.984 --> 00:20:38.472
a completely schizophrenic, divided city.

407
00:20:39.197 --> 00:20:42.169
It was enormous wealth
gushing into the city

408
00:20:42.169 --> 00:20:44.398
out of the rise of the
financial industries,

409
00:20:44.398 --> 00:20:48.654
which had surged beginning around 1980.

410
00:20:49.576 --> 00:20:53.140
So the city that had
been in a big collapse

411
00:20:53.140 --> 00:20:56.188
for several decades had turned around.

412
00:20:57.041 --> 00:21:00.136
But there was a whole side to the city

413
00:21:00.281 --> 00:21:05.233
in which drug gangsters
and crack and kind of

414
00:21:05.853 --> 00:21:10.504
hard, permanently locked
underclass was in place,

415
00:21:10.718 --> 00:21:13.139
and there was enormous suffering.

416
00:21:14.793 --> 00:21:17.911
It was as if there was a social moat

417
00:21:18.264 --> 00:21:20.686
that divided these two New Yorks.

418
00:21:28.841 --> 00:21:33.114
- The city, when I came, in
was on the edge of bankruptcy

419
00:21:33.114 --> 00:21:36.034
and people thought we would not recover.

420
00:21:36.411 --> 00:21:39.575
- We were a city coming
out of a series of crises.

421
00:21:39.917 --> 00:21:41.943
Enormous economic crisis.

422
00:21:42.158 --> 00:21:44.596
A school system that was in collapse.

423
00:21:44.596 --> 00:21:46.860
Political institutions
that seemed to be failing

424
00:21:46.860 --> 00:21:49.460
the people and not meeting their needs.

425
00:21:49.460 --> 00:21:52.793
Old fashionable, beautiful,
noble neighborhoods

426
00:21:52.793 --> 00:21:54.836
falling apart.

427
00:21:54.836 --> 00:21:58.755
- And of course overriding was crime.

428
00:21:58.911 --> 00:22:00.374
- Several things happened to me

429
00:22:00.374 --> 00:22:02.580
that I just considered normal part

430
00:22:02.580 --> 00:22:04.827
of living in New York City.

431
00:22:05.146 --> 00:22:07.119
A couple of muggings and near-muggings

432
00:22:07.119 --> 00:22:10.666
and I didn't even report
any of these things.

433
00:22:10.846 --> 00:22:13.302
Just kind of figured it's the way it is.

434
00:22:14.085 --> 00:22:16.628
- People had it worked out in their heads

435
00:22:16.628 --> 00:22:18.996
that their block was safe.

436
00:22:18.996 --> 00:22:20.889
The streets they walked
to get to the subway

437
00:22:20.889 --> 00:22:23.164
to go to work, they were okay.

438
00:22:23.164 --> 00:22:25.602
Their subway line, they
got on the same spot

439
00:22:25.602 --> 00:22:28.523
on the train every day. That was okay.

440
00:22:28.598 --> 00:22:31.477
They had figured out a safe path

441
00:22:31.477 --> 00:22:35.628
through this garden of terrors.

442
00:22:39.917 --> 00:22:44.533
- And then in about '84,
crack came to New York City

443
00:22:45.920 --> 00:22:48.109
and had increased crime.

444
00:22:48.428 --> 00:22:50.837
No question about it.

445
00:22:51.690 --> 00:22:53.629
- [Voiceover] When the
crack wars happened,

446
00:22:53.629 --> 00:22:55.135
all of a sudden, teenagers had

447
00:22:55.135 --> 00:22:59.414
lots of cash and guns,
and all hell breaks loose

448
00:23:00.174 --> 00:23:02.136
in Bedford-Stuyvesant,
all hell breaks loose

449
00:23:02.136 --> 00:23:04.400
in Harlem, all hell breaks
loose in Brownsville

450
00:23:04.400 --> 00:23:05.823
East New York.

451
00:23:06.246 --> 00:23:07.976
We were supposed to be afraid.

452
00:23:07.976 --> 00:23:11.117
It would have been
irrational not to be afraid.

453
00:23:11.215 --> 00:23:12.875
But the people who suffered most

454
00:23:12.875 --> 00:23:16.347
with the rise of criminality,
gang wars, drug wars,

455
00:23:16.347 --> 00:23:18.698
were actually the people we blame.

456
00:23:19.493 --> 00:23:22.059
Most of the homicides were young,

457
00:23:22.059 --> 00:23:25.606
poor, working class black and brown kids.

458
00:23:27.167 --> 00:23:29.327
And the dominant social message was,

459
00:23:29.327 --> 00:23:32.084
no one cared if you lived or died.

460
00:23:40.008 --> 00:23:42.806
- As far as I'm concerned, in the late 80s

461
00:23:42.806 --> 00:23:45.993
in New York City, the black
community was under assault.

462
00:23:47.113 --> 00:23:50.584
The most endangered species in America,

463
00:23:50.584 --> 00:23:54.643
that was a popular phrase,
was the young, black man.

464
00:24:01.126 --> 00:24:03.228
- Just so you have a sense of the flow

465
00:24:03.228 --> 00:24:05.062
of the next hour and a half, we'll spend

466
00:24:05.062 --> 00:24:08.870
time up here with some
discussion questions

467
00:24:08.870 --> 00:24:12.650
that I will be posing to my collaborators,

468
00:24:13.108 --> 00:24:16.208
and I'm sure we'll have
plenty to talk about.

469
00:24:16.208 --> 00:24:20.126
And then we want to leave time
for Q&A with the audience.

470
00:24:20.376 --> 00:24:23.220
So as you are listening to what people

471
00:24:23.220 --> 00:24:25.948
are sharing and thinking about questions

472
00:24:25.948 --> 00:24:28.561
that you might have,
you know jot those down

473
00:24:28.561 --> 00:24:32.677
and we'll have some time to do some Q&A.

474
00:24:35.434 --> 00:24:39.462
It occurred to me that many folks might be

475
00:24:39.462 --> 00:24:42.876
curious to know what brought Sarah Burns

476
00:24:42.876 --> 00:24:46.707
to this piece, and so I thought, Sarah,

477
00:24:46.707 --> 00:24:48.704
we might take a few minutes just to

478
00:24:48.704 --> 00:24:51.014
have you talk a little
bit about what drew you

479
00:24:51.014 --> 00:24:55.235
to the story, what compelled
you to create this.

480
00:24:57.284 --> 00:24:59.833
- Thanks everyone for coming tonight.

481
00:25:01.254 --> 00:25:03.873
In 1989 when this happened,
I was six years old.

482
00:25:04.087 --> 00:25:06.014
And so it was not, and I grew up about

483
00:25:06.014 --> 00:25:08.215
an hour north of here in New Hampshire.

484
00:25:08.824 --> 00:25:11.332
I was totally unaware of this case

485
00:25:11.332 --> 00:25:13.271
at the time, it was not on my radar.

486
00:25:13.271 --> 00:25:16.069
And so I learned about
it for the first time

487
00:25:16.069 --> 00:25:18.402
in the summer of 2003.

488
00:25:18.402 --> 00:25:20.678
I was going into my senior year in college

489
00:25:20.678 --> 00:25:22.768
and I got an internship working,

490
00:25:22.768 --> 00:25:24.683
doing some research for a pair of

491
00:25:24.683 --> 00:25:26.843
civil rights lawyers in New York,

492
00:25:26.843 --> 00:25:29.153
and they were just getting involved

493
00:25:29.153 --> 00:25:32.538
in and about to file the
civil suit in this case.

494
00:25:33.658 --> 00:25:36.508
So it was not long after the
convictions had been vacated.

495
00:25:36.990 --> 00:25:38.290
And that's how I learned about the case,

496
00:25:38.290 --> 00:25:40.798
and I was majoring in American Studies

497
00:25:40.798 --> 00:25:42.226
and concentrating on race, and I knew

498
00:25:42.226 --> 00:25:44.130
I wanted to write my senior essay

499
00:25:44.130 --> 00:25:45.837
about some kind of 20th century

500
00:25:45.837 --> 00:25:48.275
African-American studies topic,

501
00:25:48.275 --> 00:25:50.916
but I hadn't figured
out what that would be.

502
00:25:51.073 --> 00:25:55.171
And I was suddenly made
aware of this story,

503
00:25:55.171 --> 00:25:58.213
and was so drawn to it.

504
00:25:58.213 --> 00:26:00.721
I met Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson

505
00:26:00.721 --> 00:26:03.821
that summer briefly in a meeting,

506
00:26:03.821 --> 00:26:06.688
and was moved by their stories,

507
00:26:06.688 --> 00:26:09.556
and also by the way that the context

508
00:26:09.556 --> 00:26:11.297
for this case felt so important,

509
00:26:11.297 --> 00:26:13.399
it sort of had that, the academic side

510
00:26:13.399 --> 00:26:15.767
to it that fit with what I was studying.

511
00:26:15.767 --> 00:26:17.300
And so I ended up writing my senior essay,

512
00:26:17.300 --> 00:26:21.416
as was mentioned, about this case.

513
00:26:21.700 --> 00:26:24.672
Specifically about the
racism in the media coverage,

514
00:26:24.672 --> 00:26:27.006
the sort of animal language and imagery,

515
00:26:27.006 --> 00:26:30.089
and the context for that.

516
00:26:30.442 --> 00:26:33.560
And I couldn't let go of it after that.

517
00:26:33.647 --> 00:26:34.715
I was thinking about law school,

518
00:26:34.715 --> 00:26:36.015
I worked for the lawyers again on

519
00:26:36.015 --> 00:26:37.315
other cases for a couple of years,

520
00:26:37.315 --> 00:26:40.520
but this story stuck with me, and it felt

521
00:26:40.520 --> 00:26:43.190
like such an important story that needed

522
00:26:43.190 --> 00:26:45.593
to be told and it wasn't being told,

523
00:26:45.593 --> 00:26:48.728
it was not something that, where the,

524
00:26:48.728 --> 00:26:50.260
you know, the coverage of the convictions

525
00:26:50.260 --> 00:26:52.432
being vacated had been minimal,

526
00:26:52.432 --> 00:26:54.835
and it felt like nobody knew about this.

527
00:26:54.835 --> 00:26:58.039
And so I decided to go back
and write a book about it.

528
00:26:58.039 --> 00:27:01.011
And I had never aspired to be an author,

529
00:27:01.011 --> 00:27:05.000
It just felt like the right
way to try to tell the story.

530
00:27:05.017 --> 00:27:07.811
And so, figured out how to do that.

531
00:27:07.811 --> 00:27:10.482
I didn't have any
experience writing anything

532
00:27:10.482 --> 00:27:13.256
that wasn't a college paper.

533
00:27:13.256 --> 00:27:16.554
So I had to learn how to write
in a totally different style,

534
00:27:16.554 --> 00:27:20.199
how to interview people
and be a journalist,

535
00:27:20.199 --> 00:27:22.626
and sort of figured it
out as I went along,

536
00:27:22.626 --> 00:27:25.505
which was a painstaking process.

537
00:27:25.505 --> 00:27:27.415
How to ask questions.

538
00:27:27.827 --> 00:27:29.801
Talked to Yusef a number of times

539
00:27:29.801 --> 00:27:33.789
over a number of years, until
I started to figure it out.

540
00:27:35.408 --> 00:27:39.860
And pretty early on in that process,

541
00:27:39.860 --> 00:27:41.678
for me, you know, documentary film making

542
00:27:41.678 --> 00:27:43.547
is the family business.

543
00:27:43.547 --> 00:27:47.320
Both of my parents, my uncle, my husband,

544
00:27:47.320 --> 00:27:48.853
are all documentary film makers.

545
00:27:48.853 --> 00:27:52.127
And so it became very obvious that

546
00:27:52.127 --> 00:27:54.925
we had to make this film and that

547
00:27:54.925 --> 00:27:58.129
there was this potential
to share the story

548
00:27:58.129 --> 00:27:59.336
in a different way.

549
00:27:59.336 --> 00:28:01.774
And while the book gives
me this opportunity

550
00:28:01.774 --> 00:28:03.737
to explore all the context and get into

551
00:28:03.737 --> 00:28:06.285
a lot of detail about the case,

552
00:28:07.312 --> 00:28:09.077
making a documentary gave us a chance

553
00:28:09.077 --> 00:28:12.247
to interview Yusef and the other members

554
00:28:12.247 --> 00:28:13.814
of The Central Park Five, some of their

555
00:28:13.814 --> 00:28:16.020
family members, people who were there,

556
00:28:16.020 --> 00:28:17.947
but most importantly them.

557
00:28:17.947 --> 00:28:20.025
And that this was an opportunity,

558
00:28:20.025 --> 00:28:21.953
a platform for them to
tell their own story,

559
00:28:21.953 --> 00:28:23.253
it doesn't have to be me telling it,

560
00:28:23.253 --> 00:28:25.691
it can be them in their own
words, talking about it.

561
00:28:25.691 --> 00:28:27.792
And I think that that makes it

562
00:28:27.792 --> 00:28:31.874
a much more powerful medium
for sharing this story.

563
00:28:32.494 --> 00:28:35.676
And so we started working on this film

564
00:28:35.676 --> 00:28:39.170
and it came out, our first public premiere

565
00:28:39.170 --> 00:28:43.228
was at the Cannes Film
Festival in May of last year.

566
00:28:43.977 --> 00:28:47.715
And since then we've
been all over the country

567
00:28:47.715 --> 00:28:51.558
talking in movie theaters and in schools

568
00:28:51.558 --> 00:28:55.407
and high schools and middle
schools and law schools

569
00:28:55.819 --> 00:28:58.420
and just trying to spread
the word about this story

570
00:28:58.420 --> 00:29:01.073
and have conversations like this one.

571
00:29:01.090 --> 00:29:02.762
So we're very glad that you're all here

572
00:29:02.762 --> 00:29:04.486
tonight to talk about it.

573
00:29:07.940 --> 00:29:09.739
- I want to keep this sort of conversation

574
00:29:09.739 --> 00:29:11.875
as organic as possible, so I don't want to

575
00:29:11.875 --> 00:29:13.675
be the one asking the questions, but

576
00:29:13.675 --> 00:29:17.309
I wonder, Chris if you want to

577
00:29:19.419 --> 00:29:22.011
share some of your insights or in terms

578
00:29:22.011 --> 00:29:25.181
of thinking about your
own work and what you do,

579
00:29:25.181 --> 00:29:28.385
how you see this case just in light of

580
00:29:28.385 --> 00:29:31.856
what we know is happening to other,

581
00:29:31.856 --> 00:29:33.122
you know happening in communities of color

582
00:29:33.122 --> 00:29:34.527
across the country and just, you know,

583
00:29:34.527 --> 00:29:35.743
some of what your
insights and perspectives

584
00:29:35.743 --> 00:29:37.313
are around that.

585
00:29:37.968 --> 00:29:40.784
- Yeah well, I'm happy to be here as well.

586
00:29:41.370 --> 00:29:44.110
And I'm really honored to be on the panel

587
00:29:44.110 --> 00:29:46.978
with y'all and meet
you for the first time,

588
00:29:46.978 --> 00:29:49.300
and having seen you on the
film and all this stuff,

589
00:29:49.300 --> 00:29:51.970
and having your dad visit our school

590
00:29:51.970 --> 00:29:53.851
every year to help raise some money.

591
00:29:53.851 --> 00:29:55.831
(laughter)

592
00:29:57.589 --> 00:29:59.784
It's good to meet another
part of the family.

593
00:29:59.784 --> 00:30:01.972
(laughter)

594
00:30:03.487 --> 00:30:08.010
But The Central Park Five
is a very important film,

595
00:30:08.549 --> 00:30:11.980
obviously because the recent verdict,

596
00:30:12.601 --> 00:30:15.202
we just call it the verdict now around

597
00:30:16.952 --> 00:30:20.119
the exoneration or the
acquittal of George Zimmerman.

598
00:30:20.972 --> 00:30:24.536
And perhaps that is part of the reason

599
00:30:24.536 --> 00:30:26.853
at least that some of you all are here,

600
00:30:27.682 --> 00:30:32.402
which is great, because
time and time again

601
00:30:32.977 --> 00:30:36.059
we feel that these cases
are isolated events,

602
00:30:36.819 --> 00:30:39.473
that they just popped up on our radar,

603
00:30:39.989 --> 00:30:42.125
instead of being seen as a continuation

604
00:30:42.125 --> 00:30:45.271
of the kind of logic that operates

605
00:30:45.271 --> 00:30:47.414
throughout American society.

606
00:30:48.139 --> 00:30:50.566
And you know, in terms
of historical examples,

607
00:30:50.566 --> 00:30:52.609
obviously we can talk about Emmett Till,

608
00:30:52.609 --> 00:30:55.906
and we can talk about
the Scottsboro boys case

609
00:30:55.906 --> 00:30:59.842
in the 30s, but we don't even have to

610
00:30:59.842 --> 00:31:02.582
go back that far actually,
we can just really

611
00:31:02.582 --> 00:31:07.406
look at 2012, and the fact that a group

612
00:31:07.551 --> 00:31:11.394
that I'm affiliated with, The
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement,

613
00:31:11.394 --> 00:31:15.649
they composed a study called
Operation Ghetto Storm.

614
00:31:16.584 --> 00:31:19.533
And in that study, it's over 300 pages,

615
00:31:19.533 --> 00:31:23.433
they document that in calendar year 2012,

616
00:31:23.433 --> 00:31:27.991
there were over 300
extra-judicial killings

617
00:31:28.043 --> 00:31:31.660
of black and brown youth
by either police officers,

618
00:31:32.234 --> 00:31:35.787
security guards, or
self-appointed vigilantes

619
00:31:35.787 --> 00:31:37.964
in the case of George Zimmerman.

620
00:31:38.387 --> 00:31:41.487
So there's at least 312
other Trayvon Martins

621
00:31:41.487 --> 00:31:43.908
that we don't even know, right?

622
00:31:44.355 --> 00:31:47.844
And even after that study came out,

623
00:31:48.232 --> 00:31:50.944
we just got reports about Darius Simmons

624
00:31:51.158 --> 00:31:55.588
in Wisconsin, 13-year-old shot
by a 76-year-old white man.

625
00:31:59.169 --> 00:32:01.514
We have the other case of Jordan Davis,

626
00:32:01.514 --> 00:32:04.614
also in Florida, who
was the kid in the car

627
00:32:04.614 --> 00:32:07.250
playing the music too
loud and Michael Dunn

628
00:32:07.250 --> 00:32:10.419
rolls up, probably drunk, just came from

629
00:32:10.419 --> 00:32:14.675
his son's wedding, and
empties eight or nine

630
00:32:14.993 --> 00:32:18.378
bullets into the car,
killing Jordan Davis.

631
00:32:19.858 --> 00:32:24.079
So this is a very common, unfortunately,

632
00:32:24.827 --> 00:32:29.651
violent experience that obviously results

633
00:32:30.040 --> 00:32:34.760
in the kind of most fatal
result, obviously, in death.

634
00:32:35.404 --> 00:32:37.911
But really, they are expression of kind of

635
00:32:37.911 --> 00:32:41.691
micro violences that go
on in different ways,

636
00:32:42.347 --> 00:32:43.647
whether you're talking about kind of

637
00:32:43.647 --> 00:32:45.539
general surveillance that happens,

638
00:32:45.539 --> 00:32:47.385
the general suspicion that's associated

639
00:32:47.385 --> 00:32:50.787
with black mobility in this country,

640
00:32:50.787 --> 00:32:55.059
and the way in which black
folks are forced to compromise

641
00:32:55.059 --> 00:32:58.142
in order to get along in this world.

642
00:32:58.937 --> 00:33:01.700
And so I think that
this is part and parcel

643
00:33:01.700 --> 00:33:06.031
of the experience of being
an African descendant

644
00:33:06.031 --> 00:33:10.228
in this country that I
think we shy away from

645
00:33:10.907 --> 00:33:12.655
too often as a country.

646
00:33:13.310 --> 00:33:17.800
So for me, when we think about Trayvon,

647
00:33:17.800 --> 00:33:20.166
when we think about Central Park Five,

648
00:33:20.485 --> 00:33:24.079
these things prove to
me, they're evidence,

649
00:33:24.119 --> 00:33:26.987
they're additional evidence of the fact

650
00:33:26.987 --> 00:33:29.617
that we do not have a post-racial society.

651
00:33:29.796 --> 00:33:32.682
In fact, I think that the
Trayvon Martin killing,

652
00:33:33.129 --> 00:33:36.815
the Zimmerman acquittal, are actually

653
00:33:36.971 --> 00:33:41.192
obituaries to the idea of
post-racialism in this country.

654
00:33:42.080 --> 00:33:43.508
And I think that if we think about them

655
00:33:43.508 --> 00:33:45.412
in those terms, then we can get realer

656
00:33:45.412 --> 00:33:48.848
about how we bring about that healing

657
00:33:48.848 --> 00:33:50.613
that I spoke about earlier that hopefully

658
00:33:50.613 --> 00:33:52.389
we're all here to do.

659
00:33:52.389 --> 00:33:55.095
But of course, in order to have

660
00:33:55.095 --> 00:33:58.607
that kind of experience of renewed health,

661
00:33:59.495 --> 00:34:01.921
we have to really deal with the pain,

662
00:34:01.921 --> 00:34:04.342
and we have to deal with the
wounds that are already there.

663
00:34:05.068 --> 00:34:08.272
So I think that I try
to encourage my students

664
00:34:08.272 --> 00:34:11.265
to deal with the real
around these questions,

665
00:34:12.485 --> 00:34:15.151
and not be afraid of them,
no matter where you're from.

666
00:34:15.900 --> 00:34:19.702
And this is the way in which
we achieve racial justice

667
00:34:19.882 --> 00:34:23.388
is by confronting the
idea head on rather than

668
00:34:23.388 --> 00:34:24.921
trying to sweep it under the rug.

669
00:34:24.921 --> 00:34:28.125
So there's plenty of historical examples

670
00:34:28.125 --> 00:34:31.939
that we can point to, and we
mentioned enslavement earlier.

671
00:34:32.316 --> 00:34:35.660
I wonder if we had
Twitter on the slave ships

672
00:34:35.660 --> 00:34:37.315
what would we know?

673
00:34:38.237 --> 00:34:41.123
So I'll just leave it there for now.

674
00:34:43.508 --> 00:34:45.326
- Thanks, Chris.

675
00:34:46.678 --> 00:34:50.155
So Yusef, you and I got to talk
the other day a little bit.

676
00:34:51.345 --> 00:34:54.340
I could hear the noisy city
out there so I was appreciating

677
00:34:54.340 --> 00:34:57.847
you were taking time
from work to talk with me

678
00:34:57.847 --> 00:34:59.182
and think about what we wanted

679
00:34:59.182 --> 00:35:01.196
to have you bring to the panel.

680
00:35:01.388 --> 00:35:04.720
And so I want to leave that open for you

681
00:35:04.720 --> 00:35:07.100
to a certain extent in terms of where you,

682
00:35:07.100 --> 00:35:11.448
how you think about these
issues now in your life.

683
00:35:11.697 --> 00:35:14.426
But you also talked a bit about

684
00:35:14.426 --> 00:35:16.608
some of the work that you're doing

685
00:35:16.608 --> 00:35:18.210
with juveniles and with children

686
00:35:18.210 --> 00:35:22.309
and really thinking about
how social institutions

687
00:35:22.309 --> 00:35:25.960
overall are really
impacting youth of color.

688
00:35:26.976 --> 00:35:29.112
So I just wanted to invite you to speak

689
00:35:29.112 --> 00:35:30.413
about that or whatever else you're moved

690
00:35:30.413 --> 00:35:32.509
to speak about this evening.

691
00:35:32.816 --> 00:35:37.373
- Well, I definitely thank
you all for inviting me here,

692
00:35:37.820 --> 00:35:40.577
and I'm glad to get here
safely in one piece.

693
00:35:45.598 --> 00:35:48.466
I'm glad, let me just first say that

694
00:35:48.466 --> 00:35:52.559
I'm glad that Sarah had the...

695
00:35:55.943 --> 00:35:57.650
I want to call it a calling.

696
00:35:57.650 --> 00:35:59.043
I don't want to call it like, you know,

697
00:35:59.043 --> 00:36:01.144
"I feel like I want to
do something different,"

698
00:36:01.144 --> 00:36:04.720
you know, I'm glad that
Sarah had the calling

699
00:36:04.720 --> 00:36:08.691
and responded to the calling to be

700
00:36:08.691 --> 00:36:11.971
what I always call my liberator.

701
00:36:15.262 --> 00:36:18.489
My comrade Korey Wise always gives

702
00:36:18.489 --> 00:36:20.852
Sarah the nickname his angel.

703
00:36:22.007 --> 00:36:24.376
Because, as he says it, he was in

704
00:36:24.376 --> 00:36:26.373
a far worse prison than I was.

705
00:36:26.373 --> 00:36:28.671
I mean I was in a bad prison,

706
00:36:28.671 --> 00:36:32.270
and it wasn't until I got
to the types of prisons

707
00:36:32.270 --> 00:36:34.813
that Korey was in that I realized

708
00:36:34.813 --> 00:36:37.855
how bad he had already, you know,

709
00:36:37.855 --> 00:36:39.353
the situation that he was in was

710
00:36:39.353 --> 00:36:42.110
already far worse than I
could have ever imagined.

711
00:36:43.056 --> 00:36:46.423
And when I hear him
speak most of the times,

712
00:36:46.423 --> 00:36:48.420
I hear the pain in his
voice and he's still

713
00:36:48.420 --> 00:36:51.921
dealing with the realities,

714
00:36:54.399 --> 00:36:57.993
not just of being falsely imprisoned,

715
00:36:59.310 --> 00:37:02.247
but the realities of what it means

716
00:37:02.247 --> 00:37:07.247
to be let down by a judicial system

717
00:37:07.681 --> 00:37:09.638
that's supposed to be
there to protect you.

718
00:37:10.154 --> 00:37:15.154
The realities that you realize
that you're living inside of

719
00:37:17.526 --> 00:37:21.050
what I now call the criminal
system of injustice.

720
00:37:22.101 --> 00:37:26.327
You're living inside
of what we all now see

721
00:37:26.327 --> 00:37:28.817
as this institutionalized racism.

722
00:37:29.368 --> 00:37:32.341
One of the most important
things that happened

723
00:37:32.341 --> 00:37:36.224
with the Trayvon Martin verdict,

724
00:37:36.834 --> 00:37:38.041
I mean it was a travesty of justice

725
00:37:38.041 --> 00:37:40.003
that he was murdered, but the fact

726
00:37:40.003 --> 00:37:42.070
that it was so much light
and so much attention

727
00:37:42.070 --> 00:37:44.612
brought to him and to the case,

728
00:37:44.612 --> 00:37:48.543
was that it brought all of us together.

729
00:37:50.359 --> 00:37:52.728
Those who wanted to deal with the issue

730
00:37:52.728 --> 00:37:56.112
and solve the problem. You know.

731
00:37:56.257 --> 00:38:00.652
And for some of us it
was like a total let down

732
00:38:01.772 --> 00:38:04.855
that George Zimmerman went free.

733
00:38:06.973 --> 00:38:09.214
I forget what the first juror's name was,

734
00:38:09.214 --> 00:38:12.047
Juror B something,
something, what amazed me

735
00:38:12.047 --> 00:38:14.717
was, I just want to speak
on that for a second, like.

736
00:38:14.717 --> 00:38:19.669
So what amazed me was, I
play Words With Friends

737
00:38:19.756 --> 00:38:21.840
all the time, right?

738
00:38:21.857 --> 00:38:24.179
I'm on social media, I'm
heavy on social media.

739
00:38:24.179 --> 00:38:26.629
I'm on every, almost
every social media outlet

740
00:38:26.629 --> 00:38:30.866
that's out there, Facebook,
Twitter, Tumblr, Google+...

741
00:38:30.866 --> 00:38:32.828
(laughter)

742
00:38:32.828 --> 00:38:35.656
I'm just out there, Instagram,
I'm everywhere, right?

743
00:38:35.661 --> 00:38:37.205
- He has three phones in
his pocket, too, yeah.

744
00:38:37.205 --> 00:38:38.633
(laughter)

745
00:38:38.633 --> 00:38:40.178
- And the great thing about it is that

746
00:38:40.178 --> 00:38:43.795
it gives me the opportunity to

747
00:38:44.949 --> 00:38:49.100
in a way, separate myself from reality

748
00:38:49.106 --> 00:38:51.167
but also still play a part in it.

749
00:38:51.172 --> 00:38:52.716
So I'm playing Words With Friends

750
00:38:52.716 --> 00:38:55.921
and of course, what pops up on my screen

751
00:38:55.921 --> 00:39:00.107
is on CNN, verdict is being announced.

752
00:39:00.623 --> 00:39:03.630
So I'm like, "Verdict is being
announced? It's Saturday.

753
00:39:05.270 --> 00:39:07.990
I didn't know that they held court

754
00:39:08.796 --> 00:39:11.844
on the weekend down in Florida."

755
00:39:12.244 --> 00:39:14.155
(laughter)

756
00:39:15.704 --> 00:39:16.912
I'm trying to get my last days

757
00:39:16.912 --> 00:39:18.340
of deposition done on the weekend,

758
00:39:18.340 --> 00:39:20.563
I'm still going through depositions.

759
00:39:20.615 --> 00:39:22.217
I mean for those of you that saw

760
00:39:22.217 --> 00:39:24.388
the whole film in its entirety,

761
00:39:24.388 --> 00:39:26.885
the very last frame prior to the credits

762
00:39:26.885 --> 00:39:31.813
being rolled is that we are
still fighting this system,

763
00:39:33.595 --> 00:39:36.748
and we've been fighting
this system for justice

764
00:39:37.032 --> 00:39:40.347
for over 10 years now.

765
00:39:41.002 --> 00:39:44.282
They dropped the ball
when they arrested us.

766
00:39:45.101 --> 00:39:46.494
They dropped the ball further when

767
00:39:46.494 --> 00:39:49.693
they convicted us, and
then they sent us away.

768
00:39:50.209 --> 00:39:52.612
And then they told Korey,
like, Korey sometimes

769
00:39:52.612 --> 00:39:54.214
doesn't tell the whole story, and I'm

770
00:39:54.214 --> 00:39:56.798
bringing him up because
he's not here, you know,

771
00:39:57.187 --> 00:39:58.882
but he doesn't tell the
whole story sometimes

772
00:39:58.882 --> 00:40:01.192
but sometimes in our
private conversations,

773
00:40:01.192 --> 00:40:03.294
I get to

774
00:40:05.888 --> 00:40:08.983
familiarize, refamiliarize
myself with him.

775
00:40:09.000 --> 00:40:11.781
He was my best friend when I
was, before I went to prison.

776
00:40:12.298 --> 00:40:14.822
And when I say refamiliarize
myself with him,

777
00:40:15.106 --> 00:40:18.067
I get a chance to hear
about the experiences

778
00:40:18.067 --> 00:40:20.970
that he had that were
similar but different

779
00:40:20.970 --> 00:40:22.949
than the experience that I had.

780
00:40:23.106 --> 00:40:25.829
This one story that he told me,

781
00:40:26.078 --> 00:40:27.483
and he's starting to tell us more,

782
00:40:27.483 --> 00:40:29.247
but he told me about how when he

783
00:40:29.247 --> 00:40:31.599
went to the parole board,

784
00:40:32.254 --> 00:40:35.621
the people that were there
to judge him on whether

785
00:40:35.621 --> 00:40:38.222
he was going to get
released on parole or not,

786
00:40:38.222 --> 00:40:41.549
they said "Oh, you're Korey Wise, huh?"

787
00:40:41.624 --> 00:40:43.400
He said "Yeah."

788
00:40:43.400 --> 00:40:46.181
"You're the guy about that
Central Park jogger case."

789
00:40:46.337 --> 00:40:48.706
And you know, he was kind of
like still not really sure

790
00:40:48.706 --> 00:40:52.450
as to which, why were they
even saying it like that?

791
00:40:54.406 --> 00:40:59.358
And then he says to me that they said,

792
00:41:01.384 --> 00:41:03.474
"You know to be honest with you,

793
00:41:03.474 --> 00:41:06.306
we wish you had more time, because

794
00:41:06.306 --> 00:41:09.151
every time you come before us, we would

795
00:41:09.151 --> 00:41:13.615
hit you with 24 months until
the rest of your life."

796
00:41:14.898 --> 00:41:16.628
This is what they told him.

797
00:41:16.628 --> 00:41:19.228
Now you look at that and then you look at

798
00:41:19.228 --> 00:41:21.638
the truth that was exposed.

799
00:41:22.073 --> 00:41:25.156
Because see you can have money

800
00:41:26.102 --> 00:41:28.488
buy you a not guilty verdict,

801
00:41:29.074 --> 00:41:31.518
but there's something completely different

802
00:41:31.639 --> 00:41:34.757
when you look at not guilty and innocent.

803
00:41:35.320 --> 00:41:36.748
You see?

804
00:41:36.748 --> 00:41:38.083
And when they found out that we were

805
00:41:38.083 --> 00:41:39.418
completely innocent, the DA's office

806
00:41:39.418 --> 00:41:42.443
themselves said, "We gotta fix this."

807
00:41:43.377 --> 00:41:46.059
And they wrote what amounted to be

808
00:41:46.059 --> 00:41:49.746
a document, I forget
exactly how thick it was,

809
00:41:49.797 --> 00:41:51.969
but a pretty thick document about why

810
00:41:51.969 --> 00:41:56.851
they needed to reverse the law,

811
00:42:00.268 --> 00:42:02.296
the sentence, in regards to our case.

812
00:42:04.147 --> 00:42:05.982
And it's so funny because in the film

813
00:42:05.982 --> 00:42:09.030
it shows it perfectly
because it's not made up.

814
00:42:09.616 --> 00:42:11.914
This is one of the greatest
things about documentaries.

815
00:42:11.914 --> 00:42:14.301
It's reality right there
in your face, right?

816
00:42:14.550 --> 00:42:16.988
So in the film you see Michael Warren

817
00:42:16.988 --> 00:42:19.229
there in front of the
judge, talking to the judge,

818
00:42:19.229 --> 00:42:21.156
saying to the judge what we want,

819
00:42:21.156 --> 00:42:23.165
and then he's about to sit down,

820
00:42:23.165 --> 00:42:25.963
and before he even sits, the judge says,

821
00:42:25.963 --> 00:42:28.488
"Granted, have a Merry Christmas."

822
00:42:29.840 --> 00:42:34.490
And it was almost like,
wow, did he just say that?

823
00:42:35.076 --> 00:42:36.980
And that's the part that's
crazy because then you look at

824
00:42:36.980 --> 00:42:39.494
cases like Trayvon Martin
and George Zimmerman,

825
00:42:43.571 --> 00:42:45.421
and there were so many
people that were like,

826
00:42:45.421 --> 00:42:48.701
"Something just doesn't
feel right with this case."

827
00:42:49.751 --> 00:42:52.672
Many of us who have been
through it already knew

828
00:42:53.223 --> 00:42:55.841
that he was not gonna get found guilty.

829
00:42:57.031 --> 00:42:59.539
It was a let down, but we already knew

830
00:42:59.539 --> 00:43:01.623
that he wasn't gonna get found guilty.

831
00:43:02.139 --> 00:43:04.902
And it just brought back to my reality

832
00:43:04.902 --> 00:43:08.107
the fight that I'm in, and
the fight that I continue

833
00:43:08.107 --> 00:43:12.757
to be in, and how happy I
am that this film came out.

834
00:43:14.248 --> 00:43:18.202
Because the film introduces us to you all

835
00:43:18.823 --> 00:43:21.105
and the rest of the
world for the first time.

836
00:43:22.190 --> 00:43:23.920
I mean Sarah said it best when she said,

837
00:43:23.920 --> 00:43:26.910
people were always pointing the finger

838
00:43:27.194 --> 00:43:28.859
saying, "This is who these guys are,"

839
00:43:28.859 --> 00:43:31.099
or they were drawing pictures of us

840
00:43:31.099 --> 00:43:32.167
and in these pictures, we looked like

841
00:43:32.167 --> 00:43:34.519
monkeys and apes and
all kinda other stuff.

842
00:43:34.698 --> 00:43:36.463
They were talking about
us and the language

843
00:43:36.463 --> 00:43:38.634
that they were using was indicative

844
00:43:38.634 --> 00:43:43.528
of the same not too distant
past that we had just come from.

845
00:43:46.041 --> 00:43:48.927
And this is how they were describing us.

846
00:43:50.082 --> 00:43:52.706
I mean I have like so much to say,

847
00:43:52.706 --> 00:43:54.586
I don't know if I should stop here, or,

848
00:43:54.586 --> 00:43:55.794
you know because I'm thinking about that

849
00:43:55.794 --> 00:43:59.521
and I'm thinking about
how the system fails

850
00:43:59.521 --> 00:44:04.521
not only the young, I
mean I was 15 years old

851
00:44:06.986 --> 00:44:09.807
when I got snatched up and placed into

852
00:44:09.807 --> 00:44:13.319
the belly of the beast. 15.

853
00:44:14.614 --> 00:44:17.058
I came home when I was a grown man.

854
00:44:17.470 --> 00:44:19.408
So that whole time of learning how

855
00:44:19.408 --> 00:44:21.580
to fill out a job application, going on

856
00:44:21.580 --> 00:44:25.039
your first date, all kinda stuff,

857
00:44:25.039 --> 00:44:27.367
that's the, I don't know
anything about that.

858
00:44:27.884 --> 00:44:28.987
It's funny, like a friend of mine

859
00:44:28.987 --> 00:44:31.123
I was in prison with, he went on a date

860
00:44:31.123 --> 00:44:33.155
with a young lady, and he's writing me

861
00:44:33.155 --> 00:44:35.697
and I'm still in prison, he's home,

862
00:44:35.697 --> 00:44:37.926
and he's writing me while I'm in prison,

863
00:44:37.926 --> 00:44:39.401
and he's like, "Yeah I went on a date,

864
00:44:39.401 --> 00:44:42.431
I brought some flowers to the girl

865
00:44:42.431 --> 00:44:45.310
and she was like 'Wow that was so nice,

866
00:44:45.310 --> 00:44:48.056
chivalry is not dead.'"

867
00:44:48.480 --> 00:44:49.641
And it's funny because I guess

868
00:44:49.641 --> 00:44:52.155
guys don't bring flowers
anymore, right? (laughter)

869
00:44:52.578 --> 00:44:57.263
But he says to me, he says,
"I didn't know what to do.

870
00:44:57.512 --> 00:45:00.328
I read that in a book."
(laughter)

871
00:45:02.122 --> 00:45:04.954
And that's the part that's amazing to me

872
00:45:04.954 --> 00:45:07.875
because I used to always say that

873
00:45:07.892 --> 00:45:10.812
we're living our lives
trying to play catch up.

874
00:45:11.096 --> 00:45:13.285
We're trying to catch
up to what we missed.

875
00:45:13.836 --> 00:45:15.369
And then I had to realize
that we don't even

876
00:45:15.369 --> 00:45:17.813
know what it was that we missed.

877
00:45:17.876 --> 00:45:22.526
So in reality we are living
our lives in spite of it all.

878
00:45:24.239 --> 00:45:26.305
But this right here, I remember when

879
00:45:26.305 --> 00:45:28.035
we first saw this film, you could

880
00:45:28.035 --> 00:45:31.431
hear a pin drop, you know
we were extremely quiet.

881
00:45:33.213 --> 00:45:35.454
I think we all kind of had the same,

882
00:45:35.454 --> 00:45:36.719
meaning The Central Park Five,

883
00:45:36.719 --> 00:45:40.510
we all had the same
feeling, and at the end,

884
00:45:40.655 --> 00:45:43.413
Sarah and Ken and Dave were there,

885
00:45:43.964 --> 00:45:45.032
and a few others, and they were saying,

886
00:45:45.032 --> 00:45:46.832
"Well you know here,
we're gonna fix the colors

887
00:45:46.832 --> 00:45:48.701
and we're gonna put the credits here,"

888
00:45:48.701 --> 00:45:53.701
and Korey said, "Hold up, hold
up. This is a credit to us."

889
00:45:57.443 --> 00:46:01.826
I mean, I've been not only
all over North America

890
00:46:03.213 --> 00:46:05.240
with regards to this film,

891
00:46:05.489 --> 00:46:08.356
I was even called to go
down to the Caribbean,

892
00:46:08.356 --> 00:46:09.785
all expenses paid.

893
00:46:09.785 --> 00:46:11.886
They said listen, we're
gonna give you a vacation.

894
00:46:11.886 --> 00:46:14.498
We just need you to
come down and talk to us

895
00:46:14.498 --> 00:46:17.279
about the Central Park Five.

896
00:46:18.933 --> 00:46:21.250
And I had a great time.
(laughter)

897
00:46:24.367 --> 00:46:28.431
So, I mean I'll stop there for now.

898
00:46:28.431 --> 00:46:29.867
- Aww, come on.

899
00:46:29.867 --> 00:46:32.358
(applause)

900
00:46:42.150 --> 00:46:43.979
- It's great, it's great.

901
00:46:45.262 --> 00:46:47.810
- You know, just a quick--
(laughter)

902
00:46:48.512 --> 00:46:49.998
- Please, I'm just here--

903
00:46:49.998 --> 00:46:51.798
- Let me just say this, right.

904
00:46:51.798 --> 00:46:53.865
Everywhere we go, right, and this is

905
00:46:53.865 --> 00:46:56.692
how great this film is, you know.

906
00:46:57.696 --> 00:47:00.308
Sarah's first film, but
she has it in her blood.

907
00:47:00.308 --> 00:47:02.003
And she's a book writer, right, so she has

908
00:47:02.003 --> 00:47:04.732
a whole bunch of stuff
in her blood, right.

909
00:47:04.732 --> 00:47:08.360
We go into places and we
get standing ovations.

910
00:47:09.480 --> 00:47:12.400
I mean, what a way to be welcomed home.

911
00:47:13.218 --> 00:47:14.588
I used to tell people
that I was going out,

912
00:47:14.588 --> 00:47:17.294
and I said you know what
I have a collection now,

913
00:47:17.294 --> 00:47:19.929
a collection now, of Citizen's watches.

914
00:47:19.929 --> 00:47:20.927
I just started buying them.

915
00:47:20.927 --> 00:47:23.029
I said, "You know what
I'm a citizen again."

916
00:47:23.029 --> 00:47:25.130
And I mean not, I know
there's a legal definition

917
00:47:25.130 --> 00:47:27.104
of what the word "citizen" means,

918
00:47:27.104 --> 00:47:28.996
but not the legal definition, but just

919
00:47:28.996 --> 00:47:30.204
what it means to me, being able

920
00:47:30.204 --> 00:47:33.478
to be a part of the whole again,

921
00:47:33.478 --> 00:47:36.189
let that circle be
unbroken again, you know.

922
00:47:36.880 --> 00:47:41.880
And to receive your
applause, that is tremendous.

923
00:47:44.159 --> 00:47:49.159
We went from the most hated
to some of the most loved.

924
00:47:50.719 --> 00:47:55.044
And that's tremendous.
Thank you. (applause)

925
00:48:05.475 --> 00:48:07.362
- Do either of you want to respond?

926
00:48:07.402 --> 00:48:10.253
- I actually do have
something to add to that idea.

927
00:48:11.814 --> 00:48:16.814
No one who is responsible
for this directly

928
00:48:17.816 --> 00:48:20.254
would say, as Craig Steven Wilder sort of

929
00:48:20.254 --> 00:48:21.857
puts it all in the film in some ways,

930
00:48:21.857 --> 00:48:23.087
we're all responsible for this, right,

931
00:48:23.087 --> 00:48:26.222
but, the police, the prosecutors, no one's

932
00:48:26.222 --> 00:48:28.161
ever apologized to you, right?

933
00:48:28.161 --> 00:48:30.227
There's never been any kind of official

934
00:48:30.227 --> 00:48:32.451
or unofficial apology.

935
00:48:33.025 --> 00:48:34.233
But the really amazing thing about

936
00:48:34.233 --> 00:48:36.102
these sort of standing ovations

937
00:48:36.102 --> 00:48:38.471
and being able to share
the film with audiences

938
00:48:38.471 --> 00:48:41.855
and have you guys come along, has been

939
00:48:42.070 --> 00:48:43.707
that interaction with audiences.

940
00:48:43.707 --> 00:48:47.695
And so the first time,
so we had our screening

941
00:48:47.817 --> 00:48:49.187
at this film festival first, and then

942
00:48:49.187 --> 00:48:51.183
in the fall last year we went to

943
00:48:51.183 --> 00:48:53.389
the Toronto Film Festival, and Raymond

944
00:48:53.389 --> 00:48:54.992
was able to come along, and that was

945
00:48:54.992 --> 00:48:56.861
the first time any of you guys

946
00:48:56.861 --> 00:49:00.582
had been to a sort of big,
like a public screening,

947
00:49:00.599 --> 00:49:02.921
it's like 500 people and
a film festival in Canada,

948
00:49:02.921 --> 00:49:06.961
and so Raymond had seen the film before,

949
00:49:06.961 --> 00:49:08.970
but he was sitting in the audience

950
00:49:08.970 --> 00:49:12.000
in a room full of strangers
for the first time seeing it,

951
00:49:12.000 --> 00:49:13.660
and he, you know, they introduced us

952
00:49:13.660 --> 00:49:15.344
afterwards and everyone claps, you know,

953
00:49:15.344 --> 00:49:16.876
and then we introduced Raymond,

954
00:49:16.876 --> 00:49:19.959
and they like stand up and cheer for him.

955
00:49:20.580 --> 00:49:24.835
And he was, he's very good
at talking about this,

956
00:49:25.619 --> 00:49:27.186
he couldn't say anything
for a few minutes,

957
00:49:27.186 --> 00:49:28.718
and it was this really amazing experience,

958
00:49:28.718 --> 00:49:31.122
and afterwards someone came up to us

959
00:49:31.122 --> 00:49:32.294
on the street and said,
"I was just in there,

960
00:49:32.294 --> 00:49:35.824
and I have to say I think
that that standing ovation

961
00:49:35.824 --> 00:49:38.169
was our apology."

962
00:49:38.169 --> 00:49:40.038
And that's been this amazing theme

963
00:49:40.038 --> 00:49:43.475
throughout this experience
of talking to people,

964
00:49:43.475 --> 00:49:45.507
and we'll often get, I'm
sure you've heard this one,

965
00:49:45.507 --> 00:49:48.177
someone in an audience who will say,

966
00:49:48.177 --> 00:49:51.010
"I don't have a question,
I just want to say,

967
00:49:51.010 --> 00:49:53.645
I lived in New York then, I remember this,

968
00:49:53.645 --> 00:49:55.874
I believed you were
guilty, I read the news

969
00:49:55.874 --> 00:49:58.951
and I was convinced, and I just want

970
00:49:58.951 --> 00:50:00.716
to say I'm really sorry."

971
00:50:00.716 --> 00:50:05.041
And so it's not maybe
the apology you deserve,

972
00:50:05.557 --> 00:50:08.459
but there is something
really amazing about that

973
00:50:08.459 --> 00:50:10.294
experience of sharing this story

974
00:50:10.294 --> 00:50:12.320
with people who respond in that way.

975
00:50:15.472 --> 00:50:17.074
- Sarah, I wonder if you
could talk a little bit more.

976
00:50:17.074 --> 00:50:18.432
We talked about this at dinner, but

977
00:50:18.432 --> 00:50:20.743
just the reactions, and
maybe the both of you can,

978
00:50:20.743 --> 00:50:25.126
but the reactions that
you have gotten over time

979
00:50:25.642 --> 00:50:29.097
from audiences around the film.

980
00:50:29.381 --> 00:50:32.353
And I think it's interesting cause I think

981
00:50:32.353 --> 00:50:34.814
what a lot of us hope for is that

982
00:50:34.814 --> 00:50:38.158
as there's more visibility that there's

983
00:50:38.158 --> 00:50:39.992
more increased conversation, more

984
00:50:39.992 --> 00:50:42.697
increased awareness, and I'm not always

985
00:50:42.697 --> 00:50:44.799
sure if that's the case, and
maybe that's the cynic in me.

986
00:50:44.799 --> 00:50:47.278
But I wonder if you can talk about that.

987
00:50:47.968 --> 00:50:49.536
- You know, that's definitely a challenge,

988
00:50:49.536 --> 00:50:51.567
I mean certainly, I
think my goal initially

989
00:50:51.567 --> 00:50:53.971
in trying to tell the
story, write the book

990
00:50:53.971 --> 00:50:55.875
and then make the film, was about

991
00:50:55.875 --> 00:50:57.744
sharing this story with a wider audience.

992
00:50:57.744 --> 00:50:59.311
It felt to me like a
really important story

993
00:50:59.311 --> 00:51:01.749
that wasn't known enough.

994
00:51:01.749 --> 00:51:04.478
And so part of that is about, how do you

995
00:51:04.478 --> 00:51:06.823
reach an audience and how do you

996
00:51:06.823 --> 00:51:08.320
start a conversation and how does

997
00:51:08.320 --> 00:51:10.886
that actually make a difference?

998
00:51:10.886 --> 00:51:13.255
And that's a challenge, right?

999
00:51:13.255 --> 00:51:16.726
I mean, we, being on PBS is a great way

1000
00:51:16.726 --> 00:51:18.537
to do that, you can reach millions

1001
00:51:18.537 --> 00:51:21.370
of people that way; we
had a theatrical release,

1002
00:51:21.370 --> 00:51:24.609
but a documentary film, we made,

1003
00:51:24.609 --> 00:51:26.513
we were on a hundred or so screens

1004
00:51:26.513 --> 00:51:28.905
which was great, but
still, we're talking about

1005
00:51:28.905 --> 00:51:30.902
tens of thousands of people and so

1006
00:51:30.902 --> 00:51:33.433
there was this question
of how you reach people.

1007
00:51:33.433 --> 00:51:35.848
But the amazing thing
that we found is that

1008
00:51:35.848 --> 00:51:38.553
people really do want to talk about it.

1009
00:51:38.553 --> 00:51:41.351
This isn't something where
people go to the movies

1010
00:51:41.351 --> 00:51:44.486
and pay their 10 dollars
and, or watch it on PBS

1011
00:51:44.486 --> 00:51:46.889
and then go home and
stop thinking about it

1012
00:51:46.889 --> 00:51:48.224
and stop talking about it.

1013
00:51:48.224 --> 00:51:50.894
And that's been really amazing,
to have these conversations.

1014
00:51:50.894 --> 00:51:53.762
I think when we started
out to make the film,

1015
00:51:53.762 --> 00:51:56.397
there were a few goals, right.

1016
00:51:56.397 --> 00:51:58.000
One was just to set the record straight.

1017
00:51:58.000 --> 00:51:59.033
What really happened?

1018
00:51:59.033 --> 00:52:00.937
People don't know, we need to inform them

1019
00:52:00.937 --> 00:52:04.373
about the facts of this case.

1020
00:52:04.373 --> 00:52:07.775
Another is to think about
how does this happen?

1021
00:52:07.775 --> 00:52:09.621
What are the mechanisms by which

1022
00:52:09.621 --> 00:52:11.049
a wrongful conviction happens?

1023
00:52:11.049 --> 00:52:13.615
Because of course that,
hopefully, helps us

1024
00:52:13.615 --> 00:52:15.856
figure out how we can prevent
it from happening again.

1025
00:52:15.856 --> 00:52:18.689
Because obviously this
is not an isolated case.

1026
00:52:18.689 --> 00:52:21.196
We know this is happening all the time,

1027
00:52:21.196 --> 00:52:23.031
it's not limited to a time period.

1028
00:52:23.031 --> 00:52:25.956
I mean, learning about New York in 1989,

1029
00:52:25.956 --> 00:52:27.466
and the context is really important

1030
00:52:27.466 --> 00:52:29.370
to understanding this case, but it doesn't

1031
00:52:29.370 --> 00:52:31.773
mean that we're limiting this story

1032
00:52:31.773 --> 00:52:34.339
to a certain time and place, because

1033
00:52:34.339 --> 00:52:38.896
it's a much broader and more
universal story than that.

1034
00:52:39.807 --> 00:52:41.316
And then it's also, as I said before,

1035
00:52:41.316 --> 00:52:44.556
about getting to know
the Central Park Five

1036
00:52:44.556 --> 00:52:49.368
as human beings, who are
they, how do they feel,

1037
00:52:50.221 --> 00:52:53.641
what has this experience been?

1038
00:52:54.296 --> 00:52:56.758
And I think one of the
challenges that's come up

1039
00:52:56.758 --> 00:52:59.248
is what can we do about this?

1040
00:52:59.463 --> 00:53:02.418
And I was saying before,
I am a story teller.

1041
00:53:02.865 --> 00:53:07.759
And so I, my job is to try to
share the story with people

1042
00:53:08.472 --> 00:53:10.963
but then what next?

1043
00:53:11.003 --> 00:53:12.733
And so we can talk about the reforms

1044
00:53:12.733 --> 00:53:14.242
in the justice system that can hopefully

1045
00:53:14.242 --> 00:53:16.680
prevent things like this
from happening, right,

1046
00:53:16.680 --> 00:53:18.619
we can video tape custodial interrogations

1047
00:53:18.619 --> 00:53:20.419
from the beginning rather than

1048
00:53:20.419 --> 00:53:23.925
at the end of 24, 36 hours when someone's

1049
00:53:23.925 --> 00:53:26.421
spirit is broken, let's turn that camera

1050
00:53:26.421 --> 00:53:28.325
on at the beginning. And that's happening.

1051
00:53:28.325 --> 00:53:31.402
The Innocence Project
and others like that,

1052
00:53:31.402 --> 00:53:33.561
many others, I mean lots of organizations,

1053
00:53:33.561 --> 00:53:34.769
there's some information outside

1054
00:53:34.769 --> 00:53:36.232
about the Innocence Project, I think

1055
00:53:36.232 --> 00:53:38.043
you all saw when you came in.

1056
00:53:38.043 --> 00:53:39.262
That's one of the big things that they

1057
00:53:39.262 --> 00:53:41.979
advocate for that helps in, that helps

1058
00:53:41.979 --> 00:53:43.546
to prevent wrongful convictions,

1059
00:53:43.546 --> 00:53:45.009
and that's happening now in I think

1060
00:53:45.009 --> 00:53:48.213
19 states and the District of Columbia.

1061
00:53:48.213 --> 00:53:50.779
Which is great, but it
should be everywhere.

1062
00:53:50.779 --> 00:53:52.346
And so we can work on things like that,

1063
00:53:52.346 --> 00:53:53.948
how do we better protect juveniles

1064
00:53:53.948 --> 00:53:56.746
in the system, have more support for them

1065
00:53:56.746 --> 00:53:59.254
if they are brought in and interrogated,

1066
00:53:59.254 --> 00:54:00.624
make sure that they know their rights.

1067
00:54:00.624 --> 00:54:02.598
How do we teach kids and families

1068
00:54:02.598 --> 00:54:05.077
and parents what your rights are?

1069
00:54:05.129 --> 00:54:07.904
But of course underlying all of this

1070
00:54:07.904 --> 00:54:10.133
is the bigger, harder
problem, the one that's

1071
00:54:10.133 --> 00:54:11.967
even hard to talk about sometimes,

1072
00:54:11.967 --> 00:54:13.801
which is the racism underlying this,

1073
00:54:13.801 --> 00:54:16.878
the fact that we know
that if the situation

1074
00:54:16.878 --> 00:54:21.563
had been reversed, and
the accused were white

1075
00:54:22.207 --> 00:54:24.947
and the victim black, or any other sort of

1076
00:54:24.947 --> 00:54:26.224
combination of these things, we would be

1077
00:54:26.224 --> 00:54:29.080
looking at a different story.

1078
00:54:29.080 --> 00:54:31.425
And that's the thing that's really hard

1079
00:54:31.425 --> 00:54:33.974
to figure out what to do about.

1080
00:54:34.595 --> 00:54:37.376
And I think that's in some
ways why we're all here.

1081
00:54:38.763 --> 00:54:42.931
And so I hope that, and
maybe this is a cop out,

1082
00:54:42.931 --> 00:54:44.138
this isn't enough, but

1083
00:54:44.138 --> 00:54:47.412
as a story teller, as a cultural producer,

1084
00:54:47.412 --> 00:54:49.107
what I hope we can do in sharing

1085
00:54:49.107 --> 00:54:52.741
this story and sort of humanizing

1086
00:54:52.741 --> 00:54:56.480
these people who have been depicted

1087
00:54:56.480 --> 00:55:01.213
as animals in the first sort
of public meeting of them,

1088
00:55:03.922 --> 00:55:07.858
in the press, that
hopefully it helps not just

1089
00:55:07.858 --> 00:55:09.901
understand this case but, if someone

1090
00:55:09.901 --> 00:55:12.002
sees that and can relate to someone

1091
00:55:12.002 --> 00:55:14.533
who is different than them, that's

1092
00:55:14.533 --> 00:55:18.539
part of that, right,
how do you move forward?

1093
00:55:18.539 --> 00:55:19.537
How do you move away?

1094
00:55:19.537 --> 00:55:21.209
And there are the sort
of institutional ways

1095
00:55:21.209 --> 00:55:22.811
you can do that, but it's also just about

1096
00:55:22.811 --> 00:55:24.611
reaching people and having them

1097
00:55:24.611 --> 00:55:26.341
think differently, and maybe think

1098
00:55:26.341 --> 00:55:27.711
differently the next time.

1099
00:55:27.711 --> 00:55:30.752
And I don't have a good answer about that

1100
00:55:30.752 --> 00:55:33.232
but that's what we're trying
to do in telling this story.

1101
00:55:34.549 --> 00:55:36.023
- I want to jump in here because

1102
00:55:37.893 --> 00:55:40.528
they hired me to be the
angry one on the panel.

1103
00:55:40.528 --> 00:55:43.181
(laughter)

1104
00:55:43.593 --> 00:55:48.023
I gotta earn my stripes right about now.

1105
00:55:50.571 --> 00:55:52.585
- I didn't do that by the way.

1106
00:55:53.798 --> 00:55:54.913
- But one of the things in hearing

1107
00:55:54.913 --> 00:55:58.140
Yusef speak is just the remarkable

1108
00:55:58.140 --> 00:56:01.200
humanity that he possesses.

1109
00:56:02.715 --> 00:56:04.712
And I want people to pay attention to that

1110
00:56:04.712 --> 00:56:06.581
because everything about prison

1111
00:56:06.581 --> 00:56:11.138
is meant to break that
down. It's to deny that.

1112
00:56:11.422 --> 00:56:12.862
And prison did not give him that,

1113
00:56:12.862 --> 00:56:14.290
that's in him, that's the creator,

1114
00:56:14.290 --> 00:56:16.426
that's his parents, that's him.

1115
00:56:18.196 --> 00:56:20.589
And so we really need to honor that.

1116
00:56:20.803 --> 00:56:23.438
And really honor the fact that

1117
00:56:23.438 --> 00:56:27.427
there are millions more Yusefs

1118
00:56:27.537 --> 00:56:30.759
languishing in America's prisons.

1119
00:56:31.740 --> 00:56:33.017
Some of them are born and bred

1120
00:56:33.017 --> 00:56:35.815
in the United States in the inner city,

1121
00:56:35.815 --> 00:56:39.356
some are recent immigrants
who've been detained

1122
00:56:39.356 --> 00:56:41.173
for whatever reason.

1123
00:56:43.187 --> 00:56:44.592
And so I think that we need to honor

1124
00:56:44.592 --> 00:56:46.891
the humanity, I mention the humanity

1125
00:56:46.891 --> 00:56:49.364
because we're coming up
on the 50th anniversary

1126
00:56:49.364 --> 00:56:51.750
of the march on Washington
for jobs and freedom.

1127
00:56:53.299 --> 00:56:57.270
Now I wonder if the
jobs and freedom portion

1128
00:56:57.270 --> 00:57:00.492
would be part of the 50th
anniversary celebration.

1129
00:57:02.239 --> 00:57:04.108
It might just be 50th anniversary

1130
00:57:04.108 --> 00:57:07.614
of the I Have a Dream speech,
or the 50th anniversary

1131
00:57:07.614 --> 00:57:11.051
of the march on Washington, but the actual

1132
00:57:11.051 --> 00:57:13.530
title is for jobs and freedom.

1133
00:57:14.685 --> 00:57:17.088
And if we look at our prison system,

1134
00:57:17.088 --> 00:57:20.594
and we see crimes, people being accused

1135
00:57:20.594 --> 00:57:22.289
of crimes or people committing crimes

1136
00:57:22.289 --> 00:57:26.336
and being convicted, what
were they doing before that?

1137
00:57:26.562 --> 00:57:27.735
Were they gainfully employed, were they

1138
00:57:27.735 --> 00:57:29.337
in school, what were the conditions

1139
00:57:29.337 --> 00:57:32.385
prior to their incarceration?

1140
00:57:33.005 --> 00:57:34.039
These are the things that we really

1141
00:57:34.039 --> 00:57:35.571
have to think about if we're talking about

1142
00:57:35.571 --> 00:57:38.009
racial justice, but if we're talking about

1143
00:57:38.009 --> 00:57:40.895
abolishing the prisons
or just prison reform.

1144
00:57:41.783 --> 00:57:44.441
It's just the idea that when you study

1145
00:57:44.441 --> 00:57:46.055
the prisons, to study the prisons

1146
00:57:46.055 --> 00:57:48.337
is to study race in America.

1147
00:57:49.526 --> 00:57:51.825
You can't study the prison without

1148
00:57:51.825 --> 00:57:54.908
engaging these questions
of race and racial justice.

1149
00:57:55.831 --> 00:57:57.328
And we have some pamphlets out there

1150
00:57:57.328 --> 00:57:59.035
about the exonerations.

1151
00:57:59.035 --> 00:58:02.135
The national registry of exonerations

1152
00:58:02.135 --> 00:58:06.890
from 1989 to 2012 cited 873 exonerations

1153
00:58:09.113 --> 00:58:11.661
coast to coast. 873.

1154
00:58:13.315 --> 00:58:16.805
Now, over 50 percent of
those were for murder cases.

1155
00:58:17.588 --> 00:58:20.369
Close to 40 percent of
those were for rape cases.

1156
00:58:21.222 --> 00:58:25.675
The DNA testing helped to exonerate.

1157
00:58:26.028 --> 00:58:27.793
One of the beautiful
things about Sarah's book

1158
00:58:27.793 --> 00:58:30.835
is that it walks you through the history

1159
00:58:30.835 --> 00:58:34.863
of the DNA testing, briefly
and succinctly. (laughter)

1160
00:58:35.833 --> 00:58:37.285
Thankfully.

1161
00:58:40.065 --> 00:58:43.478
But the point is is that,
that history is in there.

1162
00:58:43.478 --> 00:58:45.742
And the fact that when they were hung up

1163
00:58:45.742 --> 00:58:50.659
in the system in 89, April 89,
DNA testing was still fresh.

1164
00:58:52.220 --> 00:58:54.305
People didn't really
know what to do with it.

1165
00:58:54.554 --> 00:58:56.017
So there's a kind of medical history

1166
00:58:56.017 --> 00:58:58.826
and a racial history that intersect

1167
00:58:58.826 --> 00:59:02.083
in understanding how prisons proliferate,

1168
00:59:03.691 --> 00:59:05.595
and how court systems respond to

1169
00:59:05.595 --> 00:59:09.723
police coercion of testimony and whatnot.

1170
00:59:11.342 --> 00:59:15.354
I mean this case really forces us to do

1171
00:59:15.580 --> 00:59:18.006
some - what we used to
call political education,

1172
00:59:18.006 --> 00:59:20.625
but really, we all need
to be students of the law.

1173
00:59:21.849 --> 00:59:23.382
There's so many anecdotes in there

1174
00:59:23.382 --> 00:59:24.856
where even the professionals who were

1175
00:59:24.856 --> 00:59:27.422
paid and hired to really
know the ins and outs

1176
00:59:27.422 --> 00:59:30.272
of the law failed to do their job.

1177
00:59:31.323 --> 00:59:33.691
Intentionally mishandled information,

1178
00:59:33.691 --> 00:59:37.471
withheld information,
didn't compare cases, etc.

1179
00:59:38.196 --> 00:59:40.745
When the actual culprit,
when they finally caught him,

1180
00:59:41.133 --> 00:59:42.968
I mean, I don't want
to ruin the film if you

1181
00:59:42.968 --> 00:59:44.767
haven't seen it, but the point is,

1182
00:59:44.767 --> 00:59:46.944
we kind of know what happens, right?

1183
00:59:47.565 --> 00:59:50.711
Is that by the time he's caught,

1184
00:59:50.711 --> 00:59:52.882
people are looking like,
and Sarah lays it out,

1185
00:59:52.882 --> 00:59:55.274
like, you almost want to call everybody

1186
00:59:55.274 --> 00:59:57.817
in the NYPD, I did, I was
writing in the margin,

1187
00:59:57.817 --> 01:00:02.287
dumb, stupid, missed that,
how you miss that, right?

1188
01:00:02.287 --> 01:00:04.156
There's a couple places in there where you

1189
01:00:04.156 --> 01:00:07.575
really lay out the fact that
they missed some obvious stuff.

1190
01:00:08.556 --> 01:00:11.563
And so we really have to do some homework

1191
01:00:11.563 --> 01:00:13.490
consistently to really understand

1192
01:00:13.490 --> 01:00:16.439
how the legal structure is set up,

1193
01:00:16.439 --> 01:00:19.643
how it functions, and really so that

1194
01:00:19.643 --> 01:00:21.536
none of these, no more of our youth

1195
01:00:21.536 --> 01:00:23.080
in the inner city or elsewhere are trapped

1196
01:00:23.080 --> 01:00:24.705
in that same kind of predicament

1197
01:00:24.705 --> 01:00:27.109
where even the parents and guardians

1198
01:00:27.109 --> 01:00:30.487
felt that their hands were tied,

1199
01:00:30.487 --> 01:00:32.020
and that they couldn't even defend

1200
01:00:32.020 --> 01:00:36.171
their own loved ones' basic
rights in this moment.

1201
01:00:36.791 --> 01:00:38.057
So I just want to salute you brother,

1202
01:00:38.057 --> 01:00:40.014
for the humanity that
you continue to show.

1203
01:00:40.016 --> 01:00:40.994
- Thank you.

1204
01:00:40.994 --> 01:00:42.225
- And we should give
him a round of applause.

1205
01:00:42.225 --> 01:00:44.344
(applause)

1206
01:00:51.873 --> 01:00:55.385
- I'm listening to what you're saying,

1207
01:00:56.041 --> 01:00:59.228
and something kept on
popping into my head.

1208
01:00:59.884 --> 01:01:02.456
It was a conversation that Ken and I had.

1209
01:01:03.378 --> 01:01:04.841
And I was talking to Ken and I was saying,

1210
01:01:04.841 --> 01:01:08.435
"I'm the guy who believes in conspiracies,

1211
01:01:08.521 --> 01:01:09.984
you know it's a conspiracy
that's going on,

1212
01:01:09.984 --> 01:01:11.285
they got a book about it, it's called

1213
01:01:11.285 --> 01:01:13.255
The Conspiracy to Destroy the Black Boys

1214
01:01:13.255 --> 01:01:15.658
Volume One and Two, and they even have

1215
01:01:15.658 --> 01:01:18.277
a book called The Conspiracy
to Destroy the Black Girls."

1216
01:01:18.897 --> 01:01:22.798
And we were vibing back and forth

1217
01:01:22.798 --> 01:01:25.986
and Ken said, "There is no conspiracy."

1218
01:01:27.535 --> 01:01:30.293
And I said, I kinda was
thrown for a second,

1219
01:01:30.496 --> 01:01:33.091
I said, "What is he talking about?"

1220
01:01:33.410 --> 01:01:37.700
And Ken shattered my whole thinking

1221
01:01:39.122 --> 01:01:44.122
by saying just this, he
said, "Most of the time,

1222
01:01:45.589 --> 01:01:49.078
we can't wrap our minds around

1223
01:01:49.467 --> 01:01:54.467
the devious, negative nature that breeds

1224
01:01:55.597 --> 01:01:58.517
what we think is a conspiracy.

1225
01:01:58.569 --> 01:02:01.652
This is just part of the plan."

1226
01:02:02.110 --> 01:02:03.642
And that's the part when I look at

1227
01:02:03.642 --> 01:02:07.079
what happened to me, because I have

1228
01:02:07.079 --> 01:02:08.577
an out-of-body experience, I think this is

1229
01:02:08.577 --> 01:02:10.945
one of the reasons why I can move forward

1230
01:02:10.945 --> 01:02:14.149
a lot easier, I have an
out-of-body experience

1231
01:02:14.149 --> 01:02:17.354
where I'm not really
dealing with the case,

1232
01:02:17.354 --> 01:02:19.844
what happened to me, from inside.

1233
01:02:20.326 --> 01:02:22.358
I'm looking at it kind of like the way

1234
01:02:22.358 --> 01:02:25.406
Korey talks about he's
helping that young boy.

1235
01:02:27.338 --> 01:02:30.032
Korey changed his name, he's not even

1236
01:02:30.032 --> 01:02:33.951
Korey Wise anymore, he's
Korey King Wise, legally.

1237
01:02:34.676 --> 01:02:37.120
The spelling of his name
is not even the same.

1238
01:02:37.880 --> 01:02:41.352
That's how profound this is.

1239
01:02:41.352 --> 01:02:44.417
But understanding it
from that perspective,

1240
01:02:44.417 --> 01:02:48.939
like, this is why it's the institution

1241
01:02:50.024 --> 01:02:52.801
that's racist, this is
why I couldn't understand,

1242
01:02:53.022 --> 01:02:55.727
like, "Hold on, you mean to tell me that

1243
01:02:55.727 --> 01:02:59.548
in the constitution, it
says that we have a right

1244
01:02:59.548 --> 01:03:01.021
to bear arms?"

1245
01:03:01.897 --> 01:03:06.350
But in New York City, stop
and frisk is happening

1246
01:03:08.004 --> 01:03:11.261
overwhelmingly to black and brown people.

1247
01:03:12.010 --> 01:03:15.661
We overwhelmingly don't have
guns. We don't carry anything.

1248
01:03:16.781 --> 01:03:18.186
And then Mayor Bloomberg comes out

1249
01:03:18.186 --> 01:03:20.822
recently and says, "We need to stop and

1250
01:03:20.822 --> 01:03:23.405
frisk them more, I don't
think we're doing enough."

1251
01:03:24.943 --> 01:03:27.277
And this lends to what you said before

1252
01:03:27.277 --> 01:03:29.959
about maybe Sarah said it, had the tables

1253
01:03:29.959 --> 01:03:32.733
been turned, would Trayvon Martin

1254
01:03:32.733 --> 01:03:37.151
have been able to get let free if the law

1255
01:03:37.900 --> 01:03:40.960
was, he was standing his ground? You know?

1256
01:03:41.638 --> 01:03:43.240
And that's the part that's so crazy

1257
01:03:43.240 --> 01:03:45.395
because then you look at
the whole legal system,

1258
01:03:47.246 --> 01:03:50.723
I think about like my court attorney,

1259
01:03:52.319 --> 01:03:55.809
my trial attorney was a divorce lawyer.

1260
01:03:57.022 --> 01:03:58.577
And that was my attorney because

1261
01:03:58.577 --> 01:04:01.405
he was a friend of my mom's,
we didn't have any money.

1262
01:04:01.863 --> 01:04:03.558
So we'd look, we'd look and look and look

1263
01:04:03.558 --> 01:04:05.427
and try to find somebody
that could help us,

1264
01:04:05.427 --> 01:04:08.562
my mom's friend, who
was a divorce attorney,

1265
01:04:08.562 --> 01:04:11.958
became my attorney in a criminal trial.

1266
01:04:15.261 --> 01:04:19.133
I don't even have to say
anymore about that. But then--

1267
01:04:19.475 --> 01:04:21.043
- And it's worse than
you can even imagine.

1268
01:04:21.043 --> 01:04:25.600
- Exactly. I mean, then I
think about my appeal attorney.

1269
01:04:26.546 --> 01:04:28.572
My appeal attorney was Bill Kunstler.

1270
01:04:31.992 --> 01:04:35.160
And I was in the film with
the Kunstler daughters

1271
01:04:35.160 --> 01:04:36.658
and there's this part in the film

1272
01:04:36.658 --> 01:04:39.897
where he's talking about
the legal system and how

1273
01:04:39.897 --> 01:04:42.957
we understand the legal
system, like on a whole.

1274
01:04:42.997 --> 01:04:44.007
Unless you've been through it, unless

1275
01:04:44.007 --> 01:04:45.505
you know somebody who's been through it,

1276
01:04:45.505 --> 01:04:49.495
unless you're fighting
this, you're looking at this

1277
01:04:49.495 --> 01:04:51.481
and you're saying well, they, like almost

1278
01:04:51.481 --> 01:04:53.695
like when the verdicts came back

1279
01:04:53.695 --> 01:04:56.682
with George Zimmerman, you know it's like,

1280
01:04:59.109 --> 01:05:03.673
he went through the legal
process and this was the law.

1281
01:05:04.793 --> 01:05:05.919
So it wasn't until like yesterday

1282
01:05:05.919 --> 01:05:06.628
or the day before yesterday that

1283
01:05:06.628 --> 01:05:08.427
a different juror came back and said,

1284
01:05:08.427 --> 01:05:12.381
"I wanted to convict him,
but legally I couldn't."

1285
01:05:13.628 --> 01:05:17.617
That was like wait, hold up,
there's one constitution.

1286
01:05:19.166 --> 01:05:23.828
But justice is --

1287
01:05:26.643 --> 01:05:29.703
just us being exempt

1288
01:05:30.753 --> 01:05:34.068
if you happen to have a
darker shade of skin color.

1289
01:05:35.420 --> 01:05:40.192
And the part that's so amazing is, I think

1290
01:05:40.192 --> 01:05:44.912
white people who have lived in Harlem,

1291
01:05:45.231 --> 01:05:47.530
you know me and my lady,
we joke all the time,

1292
01:05:47.530 --> 01:05:49.596
because we may see like some Amish folks

1293
01:05:49.596 --> 01:05:51.802
coming down the block, they look Amish,

1294
01:05:51.802 --> 01:05:54.205
I mean, you know. (laughter)

1295
01:05:54.205 --> 01:05:57.340
But I think they actually are.

1296
01:05:57.340 --> 01:06:00.115
When we see some Amish
folks coming down the block,

1297
01:06:00.115 --> 01:06:04.962
and we live, I have to
explain it like this,

1298
01:06:05.989 --> 01:06:09.142
we live down the block from Strivers Row.

1299
01:06:09.623 --> 01:06:13.397
We don't live on Strivers
Row, so we live down the block

1300
01:06:13.397 --> 01:06:15.695
where people still shoot,
people still do all kind of

1301
01:06:15.695 --> 01:06:18.209
crazy stuff in the tenement buildings.

1302
01:06:20.397 --> 01:06:25.257
And we jokingly say, you
know cause you look in Harlem

1303
01:06:25.564 --> 01:06:27.073
today, you look at all
of these places that have

1304
01:06:27.073 --> 01:06:31.027
become gentrified, people
are coming into these spaces

1305
01:06:31.264 --> 01:06:32.541
that black and brown people have been

1306
01:06:32.541 --> 01:06:34.945
all of their lives,
and sometimes they say,

1307
01:06:34.945 --> 01:06:37.011
how could they live, how have they

1308
01:06:37.011 --> 01:06:39.647
been able to live like this?

1309
01:06:39.647 --> 01:06:43.617
But we've been doing it all of our lives.

1310
01:06:43.617 --> 01:06:48.082
And with regards to this, I'm
gonna call them Amish family,

1311
01:06:49.260 --> 01:06:51.593
we'll jokingly say, they've been here

1312
01:06:51.593 --> 01:06:54.583
for 25 years, they've been
owning that brownstone

1313
01:06:55.436 --> 01:06:58.501
that my mother used to
always say, if she had

1314
01:06:58.501 --> 01:07:00.278
the money then, she could have bought

1315
01:07:00.278 --> 01:07:04.730
a brownstone on Strivers
Row for 50,000 dollars.

1316
01:07:06.083 --> 01:07:09.804
The houses now cost 1.2 million dollars.

1317
01:07:11.052 --> 01:07:13.385
But what people are finding out

1318
01:07:13.385 --> 01:07:17.142
as we begin to really become
a melting pot in Harlem

1319
01:07:18.459 --> 01:07:23.074
is that all of the stories
that they were being told,

1320
01:07:25.262 --> 01:07:27.967
even like, say for instance,

1321
01:07:27.967 --> 01:07:29.964
if you guys didn't see the movie

1322
01:07:29.964 --> 01:07:31.799
and I just came here today and I started

1323
01:07:31.799 --> 01:07:35.288
talking to you about the
Central Park jogger case,

1324
01:07:35.537 --> 01:07:37.871
and how there was these
young boys that got arrested

1325
01:07:37.871 --> 01:07:39.717
for a crime they didn't commit,

1326
01:07:39.717 --> 01:07:41.876
they went to prison for it
and all that sort of stuff,

1327
01:07:41.876 --> 01:07:43.618
most people would be like, "That sounds

1328
01:07:43.618 --> 01:07:45.882
like a really fascinating fantasy story

1329
01:07:45.882 --> 01:07:48.517
that he just made up."

1330
01:07:48.517 --> 01:07:53.517
But this story was building
on the same premise

1331
01:07:54.961 --> 01:07:58.769
that a black man should not be allowed

1332
01:07:58.769 --> 01:08:01.480
to be with a white woman.

1333
01:08:02.739 --> 01:08:03.970
And the great thing about Ken Burns' films

1334
01:08:03.970 --> 01:08:08.690
is that he deals with
that whole racial tension

1335
01:08:09.078 --> 01:08:12.393
and aspect of things in all of
his films. I mean it's great.

1336
01:08:12.550 --> 01:08:14.849
I just became introduced to it,

1337
01:08:14.849 --> 01:08:17.897
first with the Central Park
Five, but I got the collection.

1338
01:08:18.181 --> 01:08:20.886
(laughter) But you look
at that, and you start

1339
01:08:20.886 --> 01:08:23.150
saying to yourself, these things

1340
01:08:23.150 --> 01:08:24.891
that they were told, these lies that

1341
01:08:24.891 --> 01:08:27.724
they were being told, a lot of people

1342
01:08:27.724 --> 01:08:30.308
are realizing that they were really lies.

1343
01:08:31.497 --> 01:08:34.202
Black people aren't, you don't have to

1344
01:08:34.202 --> 01:08:36.949
walk in crowds in Harlem.

1345
01:08:37.604 --> 01:08:40.722
You don't have to be out of
Harlem when the sun goes down.

1346
01:08:42.643 --> 01:08:45.545
As a matter of fact, a black person,

1347
01:08:45.545 --> 01:08:46.880
you may knock on a black person's door

1348
01:08:46.880 --> 01:08:50.834
and in reality, but maybe jokingly say,

1349
01:08:51.722 --> 01:08:54.589
"Hi I'm your neighbor, can
I just have a cup of sugar?"

1350
01:08:54.589 --> 01:08:56.354
and they say, "Oh sure, no problem."

1351
01:08:56.354 --> 01:09:00.076
And get you a full cup of
sugar. And you can keep the cup.

1352
01:09:00.859 --> 01:09:04.028
I mean, because the nature of us

1353
01:09:04.028 --> 01:09:08.307
and this is partially unfortunate,
but this is the reality.

1354
01:09:09.299 --> 01:09:11.533
The unfortunate side is that, I think

1355
01:09:11.533 --> 01:09:14.605
Angela Davis said it,
she said, "Black people

1356
01:09:14.605 --> 01:09:19.605
are the only group of people
that have historical amnesia."

1357
01:09:21.049 --> 01:09:25.200
We quickly forget, but that's the reality.

1358
01:09:25.542 --> 01:09:28.207
That's how forgiving we are.

1359
01:09:29.327 --> 01:09:32.519
Because today, if I talk to my stepson

1360
01:09:32.519 --> 01:09:34.261
or if I talk to young boys, or if I talk

1361
01:09:34.261 --> 01:09:37.541
to young girls about
the realities of slavery

1362
01:09:38.556 --> 01:09:41.883
and how the new slavery
is the prison system,

1363
01:09:42.539 --> 01:09:44.948
they'll be looking at me
like I had five heads.

1364
01:09:45.766 --> 01:09:48.274
Because young people today, I'm not sure

1365
01:09:48.274 --> 01:09:49.841
about up here, but definitely in Harlem

1366
01:09:49.841 --> 01:09:51.409
and Brooklyn and Queens and everywhere

1367
01:09:51.409 --> 01:09:54.468
in the inner city, they
want to go to prison,

1368
01:09:54.543 --> 01:09:57.655
they feel like prison is a badge of honor.

1369
01:09:57.655 --> 01:10:00.116
"I'm gonna be there, we
gonna be running the show."

1370
01:10:00.116 --> 01:10:02.357
But then when they get there, they meet

1371
01:10:02.357 --> 01:10:05.329
the officers that I met that had tattoos

1372
01:10:05.329 --> 01:10:09.497
of black and brown babies on their arms.

1373
01:10:09.497 --> 01:10:12.330
They would tell you very easily,

1374
01:10:12.330 --> 01:10:16.283
"We will kill you and
put you under the prison.

1375
01:10:17.868 --> 01:10:20.254
Your family will never find you."

1376
01:10:20.608 --> 01:10:22.797
It's called getting lost in the system.

1377
01:10:32.814 --> 01:10:34.017
That's a lot of words to leave on.

1378
01:10:34.017 --> 01:10:35.835
- Thanks, Yusef.

1379
01:10:37.326 --> 01:10:39.288
So, I know that in a moment we do want to

1380
01:10:39.288 --> 01:10:41.796
move to some questions for folks

1381
01:10:41.796 --> 01:10:43.062
so you can be thinking about those.

1382
01:10:43.062 --> 01:10:46.446
I think one piece that I just wanted to

1383
01:10:47.729 --> 01:10:50.805
bring to the conversation, and we don't

1384
01:10:50.805 --> 01:10:54.457
necessarily need to expand on it too much,

1385
01:10:54.973 --> 01:10:57.307
and Yusef, I thought
of it when I went back

1386
01:10:57.307 --> 01:11:00.634
and looked at several of the clips

1387
01:11:01.545 --> 01:11:03.135
where you're interviewed, I can't remember

1388
01:11:03.135 --> 01:11:05.480
which one it was now.

1389
01:11:05.480 --> 01:11:07.918
But I was appreciating
one particular moment

1390
01:11:07.918 --> 01:11:10.090
where you talked about that it was

1391
01:11:10.090 --> 01:11:12.388
important to remember that
there were six victims.

1392
01:11:12.388 --> 01:11:13.782
- [Yusef] Yes.

1393
01:11:13.782 --> 01:11:17.357
- And so I just want to
bring that into the room.

1394
01:11:17.357 --> 01:11:22.054
Because I think again,
I'm not fully aware,

1395
01:11:22.663 --> 01:11:24.196
and maybe you and Sarah want to

1396
01:11:24.196 --> 01:11:25.473
talk about this a little bit or not,

1397
01:11:25.473 --> 01:11:29.960
but in terms of how she has been involved

1398
01:11:30.604 --> 01:11:32.845
with these conversations with you

1399
01:11:32.845 --> 01:11:35.132
in different ways, on panels, I'm not

1400
01:11:35.132 --> 01:11:36.711
really sure of that, I have a little bit

1401
01:11:36.711 --> 01:11:38.313
of information about that.

1402
01:11:38.313 --> 01:11:41.320
But I do know that in
our class this summer,

1403
01:11:41.320 --> 01:11:45.576
we talked a little bit
about how we need to

1404
01:11:46.220 --> 01:11:49.192
remember her, and I was appreciating

1405
01:11:49.192 --> 01:11:51.166
that you brought that to one of the clips

1406
01:11:51.166 --> 01:11:52.965
that I saw, so I'm not
sure if either of you

1407
01:11:52.965 --> 01:11:54.550
want to speak to that.

1408
01:11:54.695 --> 01:11:58.289
- You know, Trisha Meili,
the victim of the rape,

1409
01:11:59.502 --> 01:12:02.242
of course had no memory of the attack,

1410
01:12:02.242 --> 01:12:04.308
and so while she testified in the trial

1411
01:12:04.308 --> 01:12:06.642
about sort of her whereabouts and

1412
01:12:06.642 --> 01:12:10.363
to garner sympathy with the jury I'm sure,

1413
01:12:11.715 --> 01:12:16.273
she didn't really add anything
to the case. She couldn't.

1414
01:12:18.089 --> 01:12:20.086
And since then, she
wrote, as it's mentioned

1415
01:12:20.086 --> 01:12:21.793
at the end of the film, she wrote a book

1416
01:12:21.793 --> 01:12:24.533
that came out right after the convictions

1417
01:12:24.533 --> 01:12:27.366
were vacated about her recovery.

1418
01:12:27.366 --> 01:12:29.931
And she's really focused
very much on telling,

1419
01:12:29.931 --> 01:12:32.904
and she's actually now,

1420
01:12:32.904 --> 01:12:35.945
her sort of primary work
is as a public speaker.

1421
01:12:35.945 --> 01:12:39.243
She goes around and gives a lot of talks,

1422
01:12:39.243 --> 01:12:42.017
I think, about her recovery.

1423
01:12:42.017 --> 01:12:43.248
And that's really what she focuses on,

1424
01:12:43.248 --> 01:12:45.616
how she's a survivor of
a traumatic brain injury

1425
01:12:45.616 --> 01:12:49.192
and how she made this
really miraculous recovery

1426
01:12:49.192 --> 01:12:53.111
from what could have easily killed her.

1427
01:12:55.125 --> 01:12:56.890
And that's what she's focused on.

1428
01:12:56.890 --> 01:12:58.596
And she's really, for the most part,

1429
01:12:58.596 --> 01:13:01.661
not waded into the conversation

1430
01:13:01.661 --> 01:13:04.651
about the wrongful convictions at all.

1431
01:13:05.168 --> 01:13:06.363
She, in the beginning of her book,

1432
01:13:06.363 --> 01:13:07.443
it's clear that the book was sort of

1433
01:13:07.443 --> 01:13:10.381
written before this all happened,

1434
01:13:10.381 --> 01:13:12.714
and so at the beginning in her prologue

1435
01:13:12.714 --> 01:13:14.943
or introduction or
something, there's a mention

1436
01:13:14.943 --> 01:13:17.184
of the fact that there
is this new information

1437
01:13:17.184 --> 01:13:20.551
and this guy has come forward,

1438
01:13:20.551 --> 01:13:22.014
but she's not really going to address it

1439
01:13:22.014 --> 01:13:23.987
because that's not what her book is about.

1440
01:13:23.987 --> 01:13:26.054
And I think that's basically
the position she's taken.

1441
01:13:26.054 --> 01:13:27.691
I mean, we approached
her, I did for the book

1442
01:13:27.691 --> 01:13:30.199
and then for the film and invited her

1443
01:13:30.199 --> 01:13:32.532
to participate.

1444
01:13:32.532 --> 01:13:33.670
She declined and I think

1445
01:13:33.670 --> 01:13:37.269
I understand that, I can appreciate that.

1446
01:13:37.269 --> 01:13:41.205
But she hasn't been
sort of out, and I mean

1447
01:13:41.205 --> 01:13:43.144
you've never met her at any point, right?

1448
01:13:43.144 --> 01:13:47.277
I mean she's I think
really removed herself

1449
01:13:47.277 --> 01:13:51.358
from that part of the story.

1450
01:13:51.480 --> 01:13:54.591
And so there really
hasn't been any overlap

1451
01:13:54.591 --> 01:13:56.286
I mean Raymond always says when he's asked

1452
01:13:56.286 --> 01:13:58.812
about it, you know, our door is open.

1453
01:13:59.595 --> 01:14:00.861
It's like, if that's something that

1454
01:14:00.861 --> 01:14:02.962
she could bring herself to do, to come

1455
01:14:02.962 --> 01:14:05.133
and talk about it, great, but also,

1456
01:14:05.133 --> 01:14:09.656
with an understanding
that that's not necessary.

1457
01:14:12.029 --> 01:14:13.307
- I mean when I think about it,

1458
01:14:13.307 --> 01:14:16.105
I think about it, actually
when you started speaking

1459
01:14:16.105 --> 01:14:18.578
about the six victims I
thought about something

1460
01:14:18.578 --> 01:14:21.016
that other folks had
been saying in certain

1461
01:14:21.016 --> 01:14:24.951
events that we'll be at where they're

1462
01:14:24.951 --> 01:14:28.818
always talking about not
only the Central Park Five,

1463
01:14:28.818 --> 01:14:31.343
but the Central Park Six
or the Central Park Seven.

1464
01:14:37.002 --> 01:14:40.393
And why would it be called
the Central Park Five,

1465
01:14:40.393 --> 01:14:42.651
why would the film be called
The Central Park Five?

1466
01:14:42.970 --> 01:14:45.391
As opposed to the other guys, right?

1467
01:14:46.232 --> 01:14:48.171
And one of the things that
we've always addressed

1468
01:14:48.171 --> 01:14:51.910
was the fact that those
guys never became known

1469
01:14:51.910 --> 01:14:55.689
in the case the way that
we had become known.

1470
01:14:57.750 --> 01:15:02.202
I mean, Alton Maddox's
client was almost like freed.

1471
01:15:02.254 --> 01:15:06.672
Right after he fought for
him initially, he was let go.

1472
01:15:08.756 --> 01:15:12.866
But this whole idea and understanding

1473
01:15:12.866 --> 01:15:15.304
about this legal system, about how

1474
01:15:15.304 --> 01:15:20.304
the legal system failed
the primary victim.

1475
01:15:24.638 --> 01:15:26.937
Here you have a woman who was raped,

1476
01:15:26.937 --> 01:15:31.065
and when she comes through, miraculously,

1477
01:15:31.314 --> 01:15:33.433
as the papers reported back then,

1478
01:15:35.006 --> 01:15:38.878
the people who met her were the DAs,

1479
01:15:39.824 --> 01:15:42.942
the police officers, "This
is who did this to you;

1480
01:15:43.423 --> 01:15:46.395
we got them we put them in prison;

1481
01:15:46.395 --> 01:15:48.230
this is how it went down."

1482
01:15:48.230 --> 01:15:53.230
She comes to court, she takes the stand,

1483
01:15:54.604 --> 01:15:59.231
she offers her presence
that makes the jury

1484
01:15:59.341 --> 01:16:03.259
believe that they need to convict us.

1485
01:16:06.713 --> 01:16:11.713
And you find out 13 years later,

1486
01:16:13.690 --> 01:16:16.309
you know 13 is supposed
to be this unlucky number.

1487
01:16:16.361 --> 01:16:18.427
Buildings don't have a 13th floor,

1488
01:16:18.427 --> 01:16:21.237
Friday the 13th, oh, don't go outside

1489
01:16:21.237 --> 01:16:23.913
to the party tonight, you
know, it's Friday the 13th.

1490
01:16:24.999 --> 01:16:29.999
It's like for us, it
became a liberator as well.

1491
01:16:31.570 --> 01:16:34.507
But the liberation was
quickly smacked down

1492
01:16:34.507 --> 01:16:39.471
because it was a blip
on the large media mass

1493
01:16:40.184 --> 01:16:43.188
or of the media mass that
had initially come out.

1494
01:16:43.188 --> 01:16:45.597
Like when we first got arrested,

1495
01:16:46.056 --> 01:16:49.812
there were over 400 articles
written about this case.

1496
01:16:50.560 --> 01:16:54.920
I mean articles that
were like common citizens

1497
01:16:55.204 --> 01:16:58.699
pulling out their money,
paying for ad space,

1498
01:16:58.699 --> 01:17:01.845
calling for the reinstatement
of the death penalty

1499
01:17:01.845 --> 01:17:03.273
specifically for our case.

1500
01:17:03.273 --> 01:17:04.504
The trial hadn't even started yet,

1501
01:17:04.504 --> 01:17:07.691
and here's Donald Trump, "I
wanna hate these people."

1502
01:17:08.649 --> 01:17:13.649
I mean you look at the
piece that was written

1503
01:17:14.953 --> 01:17:19.585
and had this been the 50s, we would have

1504
01:17:19.585 --> 01:17:22.523
been drug out of our
homes, hung from trees

1505
01:17:22.523 --> 01:17:25.158
in Central Park, we would have been

1506
01:17:25.158 --> 01:17:30.158
definitely castrated, possibly burned.

1507
01:17:32.542 --> 01:17:35.358
And that would have been that. No trial.

1508
01:17:36.141 --> 01:17:39.473
And it would have been 13 years later

1509
01:17:39.473 --> 01:17:43.067
that the truth comes out,
but it's like a whisper,

1510
01:17:43.838 --> 01:17:45.011
and we sweep it under the rug,

1511
01:17:45.011 --> 01:17:46.219
"Hopefully nobody saw
that, we had to report it,

1512
01:17:46.219 --> 01:17:50.745
but hopefully nobody saw that
we had to exonerate them."

1513
01:17:51.935 --> 01:17:56.760
Because in, close to
New York, I was invited

1514
01:17:56.760 --> 01:17:59.147
to Garfield, New Jersey.

1515
01:17:59.628 --> 01:18:01.137
I was invited there because a young man

1516
01:18:01.137 --> 01:18:02.531
had been murdered by the cops.

1517
01:18:02.531 --> 01:18:05.056
I don't know if you guys
saw this piece on the news.

1518
01:18:05.131 --> 01:18:07.378
There was a guy sitting
in a police precinct.

1519
01:18:07.442 --> 01:18:08.568
And then all of a sudden you just see him

1520
01:18:08.568 --> 01:18:10.478
run out of the precinct.

1521
01:18:10.774 --> 01:18:12.573
And then they said they found him

1522
01:18:12.573 --> 01:18:15.685
some time later in an abandoned building

1523
01:18:15.685 --> 01:18:19.603
with a gunshot to his head that
he shot himself in the head.

1524
01:18:19.818 --> 01:18:21.420
He was handcuffed, somehow he shot

1525
01:18:21.420 --> 01:18:23.823
himself in the head after he ran out.

1526
01:18:23.823 --> 01:18:26.157
Couldn't take the freedom, you know.

1527
01:18:26.157 --> 01:18:29.094
And I was called there because

1528
01:18:29.094 --> 01:18:32.409
the people of Garfield thought

1529
01:18:33.030 --> 01:18:36.008
that the Central Park
Five were still in prison.

1530
01:18:36.896 --> 01:18:39.085
This was like last year.

1531
01:18:39.276 --> 01:18:41.361
They thought we were still in prison.

1532
01:18:42.004 --> 01:18:44.855
That's how much information was out there.

1533
01:18:46.648 --> 01:18:49.464
But in terms of like what we could do,

1534
01:18:49.586 --> 01:18:52.762
that's the part that's great about today.

1535
01:18:54.114 --> 01:18:57.991
The social media aspect,
the films that we watch, the

1536
01:18:57.991 --> 01:19:02.991
discussions that we have, the
more critical that we can be.

1537
01:19:04.493 --> 01:19:07.651
Even realizing like you know what,

1538
01:19:07.651 --> 01:19:11.099
I'm all for understanding that there needs

1539
01:19:11.099 --> 01:19:15.639
to be mass reform, but I also know

1540
01:19:15.639 --> 01:19:19.790
that that will cause a mass war,

1541
01:19:21.478 --> 01:19:23.951
and that's a war that people aren't really

1542
01:19:23.951 --> 01:19:26.355
able to truly digest.

1543
01:19:26.355 --> 01:19:28.444
It's almost like if I say to you guys,

1544
01:19:28.444 --> 01:19:29.849
like they said to us, they said you know,

1545
01:19:29.849 --> 01:19:31.951
"We're gonna have a blackout day.

1546
01:19:31.951 --> 01:19:35.347
We're gonna black out
America for Trayvon Martin.

1547
01:19:35.596 --> 01:19:39.550
We're not gonna buy anything
on the 23rd of July."

1548
01:19:40.298 --> 01:19:42.951
This is what they said,
nobody buy anything.

1549
01:19:44.106 --> 01:19:48.118
When you take money out of
the powers that be pockets,

1550
01:19:50.770 --> 01:19:53.366
you have called for war.

1551
01:19:54.985 --> 01:19:58.729
And that's the part that's hard to digest,

1552
01:19:59.222 --> 01:20:01.823
because we won't understand
what it truly means

1553
01:20:01.823 --> 01:20:04.233
to be in that kind of struggle.

1554
01:20:04.342 --> 01:20:06.560
But that's the type of
struggle that we need to be in.

1555
01:20:06.560 --> 01:20:08.023
We need to be in a struggle.

1556
01:20:08.023 --> 01:20:11.065
My mother always says it, she
says, "It'll take one person

1557
01:20:11.065 --> 01:20:14.966
to," you know like, if we're
boycotting in 125th street,

1558
01:20:14.966 --> 01:20:17.264
because it's Malcolm X's
birthday or something

1559
01:20:17.264 --> 01:20:20.376
like that, it takes one
person to stop that boycott

1560
01:20:20.376 --> 01:20:22.675
just by walking into the store."

1561
01:20:22.675 --> 01:20:25.595
We need to be of one mind
when it happens like that.

1562
01:20:26.041 --> 01:20:29.246
But a lot of times it's like,
it's an us or them kind of

1563
01:20:29.246 --> 01:20:32.538
understanding, and that's
the part that's unfortunate.

1564
01:20:36.293 --> 01:20:38.894
- We are gonna give
some time to questions.

1565
01:20:38.894 --> 01:20:42.760
We have two volunteers that will be

1566
01:20:42.760 --> 01:20:45.128
moving up and down the two aisles.

1567
01:20:45.128 --> 01:20:48.228
So if you would like to ask a question,

1568
01:20:48.228 --> 01:20:50.028
and what we also wanted to encourage

1569
01:20:50.028 --> 01:20:52.675
folks to do is, in terms
of trying to create

1570
01:20:52.675 --> 01:20:55.798
some sort of a dialogue
with the panelists,

1571
01:20:55.798 --> 01:20:57.946
is that maybe when you stand to

1572
01:20:57.946 --> 01:20:59.314
ask your question, make a comment,

1573
01:20:59.314 --> 01:21:02.279
that you also talk about
something that you've heard

1574
01:21:02.279 --> 01:21:04.888
so far tonight that you just want to

1575
01:21:04.888 --> 01:21:08.190
share back to the panelists
that resonated for you

1576
01:21:08.190 --> 01:21:11.418
or that you're thinking about.

1577
01:21:11.418 --> 01:21:14.141
So we want to encourage you to do that.

1578
01:21:17.258 --> 01:21:19.377
And don't be shy.

1579
01:21:20.767 --> 01:21:22.494
- [Voiceover] All right, should I stand?

1580
01:21:22.494 --> 01:21:23.549
- You don't have to. It's up to you.

1581
01:21:23.549 --> 01:21:25.523
- [Voiceover] Oh okay, okay, I'll stand.

1582
01:21:25.900 --> 01:21:27.595
Before I raise my question which deals

1583
01:21:27.595 --> 01:21:32.060
with social media and larger conversations

1584
01:21:32.205 --> 01:21:34.283
around cinema, my friend sent me

1585
01:21:34.283 --> 01:21:37.243
this photo with a comment from

1586
01:21:37.243 --> 01:21:39.252
Dick Gregory, and I
just wanted to quote it

1587
01:21:39.252 --> 01:21:41.197
really fast, it's not long at all.

1588
01:21:42.119 --> 01:21:44.952
And just imagine Dick Gregory's voice,

1589
01:21:44.952 --> 01:21:48.511
who is quite hilarious but
just, his truth is so piercing.

1590
01:21:50.525 --> 01:21:51.965
He says, "But let me tell you something

1591
01:21:51.965 --> 01:21:54.136
that's interesting; out of the thousands

1592
01:21:54.136 --> 01:21:55.935
of black cops in America, you never

1593
01:21:55.935 --> 01:21:58.536
turn on the TV or pick up the newspaper

1594
01:21:58.536 --> 01:22:01.206
and see where a white
family is complaining

1595
01:22:01.206 --> 01:22:03.273
that some black cop shot their child

1596
01:22:03.273 --> 01:22:06.495
or mother or father in the head 40 times.

1597
01:22:06.942 --> 01:22:09.380
Now ask yourself the
question, are black cops

1598
01:22:09.380 --> 01:22:11.644
more spiritual than white cops?

1599
01:22:11.644 --> 01:22:13.989
Are black cops better trained?

1600
01:22:13.989 --> 01:22:16.381
No, black cops know that white folks

1601
01:22:16.381 --> 01:22:19.603
ain't gonna tolerate it,
that's why you don't see that."

1602
01:22:20.328 --> 01:22:23.230
All right, so that really stuck out to me.

1603
01:22:23.230 --> 01:22:27.097
And I think he's really
kind of calling for

1604
01:22:27.097 --> 01:22:31.886
an activism that would come in many forms

1605
01:22:31.961 --> 01:22:34.504
but a particular form in which people

1606
01:22:34.504 --> 01:22:39.293
begin to question the
police very critically.

1607
01:22:40.309 --> 01:22:42.050
And that leads me to my question

1608
01:22:42.050 --> 01:22:43.641
regarding social media that you mentioned,

1609
01:22:43.641 --> 01:22:47.269
Brother Yusef, and I just found it

1610
01:22:47.286 --> 01:22:48.552
very interesting that this film

1611
01:22:48.552 --> 01:22:51.222
is coming out around the same time

1612
01:22:51.222 --> 01:22:53.736
as Fruitvale Station just came out.

1613
01:22:54.287 --> 01:22:57.793
I hope if you haven't seen
that film, please check it out.

1614
01:22:57.793 --> 01:22:59.303
It is one of the most powerful films

1615
01:22:59.303 --> 01:23:02.286
I have ever seen in my entire life.

1616
01:23:02.286 --> 01:23:06.640
Also, in October of this year, there's

1617
01:23:06.640 --> 01:23:10.007
12 Years a Slave that's coming out,

1618
01:23:10.007 --> 01:23:11.540
and also, this is in the context

1619
01:23:11.540 --> 01:23:14.512
of slavery by another name and a number

1620
01:23:14.512 --> 01:23:18.198
of films that deal with
black subjectivity,

1621
01:23:18.447 --> 01:23:20.050
just the incarceration of black people.

1622
01:23:20.050 --> 01:23:23.684
I wanted to talk to you
about, Yusef and Sarah,

1623
01:23:23.684 --> 01:23:26.853
about where you find this film in that

1624
01:23:26.853 --> 01:23:29.918
larger conversation of a
kind of counter narrative

1625
01:23:29.918 --> 01:23:33.657
to police violence and
to a larger narrative

1626
01:23:33.657 --> 01:23:35.561
of black people being subjected

1627
01:23:35.561 --> 01:23:38.214
to different kinds of oppressions.

1628
01:23:41.435 --> 01:23:43.780
- Well, you know, all I can say about that

1629
01:23:43.780 --> 01:23:46.811
is I absolutely do see it
as part of that narrative

1630
01:23:46.811 --> 01:23:49.516
and I hope that it can play a role

1631
01:23:49.516 --> 01:23:51.617
in changing some minds and raising

1632
01:23:51.617 --> 01:23:53.719
some of those questions.

1633
01:23:53.719 --> 01:23:56.354
And I think that it's especially

1634
01:23:56.354 --> 01:23:59.361
important today for documentary films

1635
01:23:59.361 --> 01:24:02.055
to be able to do that as a medium,

1636
01:24:02.055 --> 01:24:04.829
especially as we see the sort of decline

1637
01:24:04.829 --> 01:24:08.823
of print journalism that
I think documentaries

1638
01:24:08.823 --> 01:24:10.774
can play a really important role

1639
01:24:10.774 --> 01:24:12.236
in not only covering these stories,

1640
01:24:12.236 --> 01:24:15.278
but hopefully covering them in a really

1641
01:24:15.278 --> 01:24:17.008
thoughtful way and a way that has

1642
01:24:17.008 --> 01:24:19.911
enough distance to do
some of that analysis

1643
01:24:19.911 --> 01:24:21.838
and to raise some of
those bigger questions

1644
01:24:21.838 --> 01:24:24.114
rather than just sort of doing the news.

1645
01:24:26.064 --> 01:24:29.582
And that's one, this is
maybe slightly off topic,

1646
01:24:29.582 --> 01:24:31.393
but just in thinking
about documentaries and

1647
01:24:31.393 --> 01:24:35.097
that sort of responsibility
as journalists.

1648
01:24:35.097 --> 01:24:37.558
We were subpoenaed by the city

1649
01:24:37.558 --> 01:24:40.298
for our out takes from the film.

1650
01:24:40.298 --> 01:24:43.897
And they argued that we
were not journalists,

1651
01:24:43.897 --> 01:24:45.604
basically, that we weren't protected

1652
01:24:45.604 --> 01:24:47.566
by the shield laws for journalists

1653
01:24:47.566 --> 01:24:50.933
because we were advocates.

1654
01:24:50.933 --> 01:24:54.543
Which is, of course, not
how the law works anyway,

1655
01:24:54.543 --> 01:24:59.263
but besides the point,
and so we fought that

1656
01:24:59.350 --> 01:25:03.878
because not only really on
principle, the sort of larger

1657
01:25:03.878 --> 01:25:06.652
sense that documentarians do need to be

1658
01:25:06.652 --> 01:25:08.591
identified as journalists
and protected as such

1659
01:25:08.591 --> 01:25:11.854
because it's such an
important medium today

1660
01:25:11.854 --> 01:25:13.862
for being able to share those stories

1661
01:25:13.862 --> 01:25:15.534
and to sort of be a part
of that conversation

1662
01:25:15.534 --> 01:25:17.368
and to hopefully push that conversation

1663
01:25:17.368 --> 01:25:22.368
in different directions,
and so we filed a motion

1664
01:25:24.207 --> 01:25:26.436
to quash the subpoena
which the magistrate judge

1665
01:25:26.436 --> 01:25:28.944
in the case granted, but
the city has appealed it

1666
01:25:28.944 --> 01:25:30.674
to the district judge.

1667
01:25:30.674 --> 01:25:34.017
So we're still actually
waiting to find out about that.

1668
01:25:34.017 --> 01:25:36.258
We feel very confident about it, but

1669
01:25:36.258 --> 01:25:39.822
this is one of the complicating factors

1670
01:25:39.822 --> 01:25:42.603
when it comes to trying to
tell these stories, even.

1671
01:25:43.665 --> 01:25:45.488
Which is, even if we
have the law on our side,

1672
01:25:45.488 --> 01:25:49.616
we don't have a legal team, so that's been

1673
01:25:52.071 --> 01:25:53.336
a challenge for us.

1674
01:25:53.336 --> 01:25:57.661
But I do think that this
medium is really important

1675
01:25:58.677 --> 01:26:01.243
for telling that story, and feature film

1676
01:26:01.243 --> 01:26:02.810
can be, too, I haven't had a chance

1677
01:26:02.810 --> 01:26:04.772
to see Fruitvale Station
yet, but I've been

1678
01:26:04.772 --> 01:26:06.920
reading about it for the past year

1679
01:26:06.920 --> 01:26:08.986
and really looking forward to it.

1680
01:26:08.986 --> 01:26:12.562
But sometimes you can
reach a different audience

1681
01:26:12.562 --> 01:26:15.732
that way, even if it's a
fictionalized version of

1682
01:26:15.732 --> 01:26:17.230
a story, though it sounds like that one

1683
01:26:17.230 --> 01:26:20.243
is trying to be very accurate.

1684
01:26:22.303 --> 01:26:23.963
And I think there's a
place in the conversation

1685
01:26:23.963 --> 01:26:27.806
for all of those different forms,

1686
01:26:27.806 --> 01:26:29.176
and they're all really important.

1687
01:26:29.176 --> 01:26:31.103
We were just at a, we just got an award

1688
01:26:31.103 --> 01:26:35.051
for this film from the
American Bar Association

1689
01:26:35.051 --> 01:26:36.711
for something that was about, it's called

1690
01:26:36.711 --> 01:26:38.545
the Silver Gavel Award and it's about,

1691
01:26:38.545 --> 01:26:40.914
I forget the whole length of the thing,

1692
01:26:40.914 --> 01:26:44.385
but it's basically works that promote

1693
01:26:44.385 --> 01:26:46.719
a better understanding of the law.

1694
01:26:46.719 --> 01:26:49.145
And it was really amazing to see

1695
01:26:49.145 --> 01:26:50.864
some of the other honorees because

1696
01:26:50.864 --> 01:26:53.267
you do see, there were a couple of these

1697
01:26:53.267 --> 01:26:55.020
investigative journalists there

1698
01:26:55.020 --> 01:26:59.856
who had exposed these
really interesting stories

1699
01:27:01.208 --> 01:27:05.382
that often had to do with
racism, not surprisingly,

1700
01:27:05.806 --> 01:27:08.244
and our prison system.

1701
01:27:08.244 --> 01:27:12.302
And they talked about the fact
that they are a dying breed.

1702
01:27:12.876 --> 01:27:15.314
And so, trying to figure out even how you

1703
01:27:15.314 --> 01:27:17.485
can tell these stories
and get them out there

1704
01:27:17.485 --> 01:27:19.958
and reach an audience is a
really interesting challenge

1705
01:27:19.958 --> 01:27:21.706
today I think.

1706
01:27:22.013 --> 01:27:24.196
- I mean I think about it from

1707
01:27:24.196 --> 01:27:28.811
the perspective of it being, when a group

1708
01:27:29.432 --> 01:27:33.223
wants to put a list of films together

1709
01:27:33.507 --> 01:27:36.502
that are must see films,
like I'm a little scared

1710
01:27:36.502 --> 01:27:39.173
to see Fruitvale Station,
and I just have to

1711
01:27:39.173 --> 01:27:41.042
be honest with that, because I've been

1712
01:27:41.042 --> 01:27:43.480
on panels with folks who have been,

1713
01:27:43.480 --> 01:27:47.364
who are friends with Oscar.

1714
01:27:48.681 --> 01:27:51.456
I've been on panels with this one guy

1715
01:27:51.456 --> 01:27:56.456
who basically became the stepfather

1716
01:27:58.631 --> 01:28:00.982
of sorts to his daughter.

1717
01:28:02.636 --> 01:28:05.632
And it's painful when you know people

1718
01:28:05.632 --> 01:28:08.732
from that close of a proximity

1719
01:28:08.732 --> 01:28:10.276
and you know a lot about the story

1720
01:28:10.276 --> 01:28:13.178
because it's like, when
you see these things,

1721
01:28:13.178 --> 01:28:14.583
when you see stuff like what happened

1722
01:28:14.583 --> 01:28:16.441
to Sean Bell and you see what's happened

1723
01:28:16.441 --> 01:28:18.821
to Amadou Diallo, and countless others.

1724
01:28:18.821 --> 01:28:23.436
It's like these stories have to be told,

1725
01:28:23.593 --> 01:28:25.810
and they have to be understood that

1726
01:28:25.810 --> 01:28:28.080
it's not isolated incidents.

1727
01:28:28.329 --> 01:28:31.127
The Central Park jogger case wasn't a case

1728
01:28:31.127 --> 01:28:33.885
that happened to five unfortunates.

1729
01:28:34.634 --> 01:28:37.043
This is a case that happens all the time,

1730
01:28:37.107 --> 01:28:39.052
it's happening right now.

1731
01:28:39.637 --> 01:28:42.343
And to be able to shine light on that,

1732
01:28:42.343 --> 01:28:44.908
to be able to look at
it from that perspective

1733
01:28:44.908 --> 01:28:48.897
and realize, this is a necessity.

1734
01:28:49.970 --> 01:28:54.760
Because it also talks about statistics

1735
01:28:56.658 --> 01:28:59.328
and how it relates to the black community

1736
01:28:59.328 --> 01:29:01.308
and the brown community.

1737
01:29:01.522 --> 01:29:04.994
How the statistics that are against us

1738
01:29:04.994 --> 01:29:06.921
state that we are gonna be dead or in jail

1739
01:29:06.921 --> 01:29:10.549
before we reach the age of 21.

1740
01:29:10.636 --> 01:29:13.522
But none of us made that choice,

1741
01:29:14.734 --> 01:29:17.028
but that's the choice that's put on us.

1742
01:29:17.103 --> 01:29:19.715
And so even if we're trying to escape,

1743
01:29:19.715 --> 01:29:22.478
you still have babies holding up signs

1744
01:29:22.478 --> 01:29:27.465
that say, "Don't shoot,
I want to grow up."

1745
01:29:29.050 --> 01:29:31.058
And then when you look at us, like

1746
01:29:31.058 --> 01:29:33.961
the Central Park Five, I think the part

1747
01:29:33.961 --> 01:29:38.611
that I think people are more impressed by

1748
01:29:40.125 --> 01:29:42.454
is the fact that we survived it.

1749
01:29:42.935 --> 01:29:45.675
Like how did we go through that?

1750
01:29:45.675 --> 01:29:49.222
How did we walk through hell and survive?

1751
01:29:50.261 --> 01:29:55.259
And that's like, in a way we
were the ones that escaped.

1752
01:29:57.076 --> 01:30:00.101
But we really didn't, but in a way we did.

1753
01:30:07.885 --> 01:30:08.825
- [Voiceover] I just want to say peace

1754
01:30:08.825 --> 01:30:10.300
to my brother here, Yusef Salaam.

1755
01:30:10.300 --> 01:30:13.295
I just wanted to say
that, I'm 40 years old,

1756
01:30:13.295 --> 01:30:14.595
I'm from New York.

1757
01:30:14.595 --> 01:30:17.928
And I think that I have post-partum

1758
01:30:17.928 --> 01:30:21.004
things like going through
my body, so, emotional.

1759
01:30:21.004 --> 01:30:22.630
But I think that what's important

1760
01:30:22.630 --> 01:30:24.406
about your story, and I think that

1761
01:30:24.406 --> 01:30:25.776
it gets lost sometimes is that

1762
01:30:25.776 --> 01:30:28.911
well for one, there
was kind of a movement,

1763
01:30:28.911 --> 01:30:30.780
there was a movement that moment

1764
01:30:30.780 --> 01:30:32.881
to kind of meet some of the craziness.

1765
01:30:32.881 --> 01:30:35.621
People were, I guess
there were people thinking

1766
01:30:35.621 --> 01:30:37.351
you were guilty, but there was also

1767
01:30:37.351 --> 01:30:40.381
a lot of people, folks who
knew you were innocent.

1768
01:30:40.381 --> 01:30:41.391
- Yeah.

1769
01:30:41.391 --> 01:30:42.564
- [Voiceover] It wouldn't make sense

1770
01:30:42.564 --> 01:30:43.562
to a black person in New York that

1771
01:30:43.562 --> 01:30:44.781
a bunch of teenagers would attack

1772
01:30:44.781 --> 01:30:45.699
a white woman in Central Park,

1773
01:30:45.699 --> 01:30:48.427
it just wouldn't make sense to us.

1774
01:30:48.427 --> 01:30:50.598
And also, you're involved in--

1775
01:30:50.598 --> 01:30:52.607
I'm serious, it just wouldn't make sense.

1776
01:30:52.607 --> 01:30:55.939
And then you're involved
in a patchwork of things.

1777
01:30:55.939 --> 01:30:57.645
Yusef Hawkins, I mean these are the things

1778
01:30:57.645 --> 01:30:58.911
that we lived through.

1779
01:30:58.911 --> 01:31:00.316
I'm in like New York when kids still

1780
01:31:00.316 --> 01:31:02.266
changed the lyrics of the songs

1781
01:31:02.266 --> 01:31:03.311
and say Kiss FM, whatever.

1782
01:31:03.311 --> 01:31:06.446
But I just think that that history

1783
01:31:06.446 --> 01:31:08.872
needs to be recuperated
about what's happening

1784
01:31:08.872 --> 01:31:12.018
there with all these different
events on our bumpers.

1785
01:31:12.018 --> 01:31:17.018
William Shatner did an
interview with Bernhard Goetz,

1786
01:31:18.868 --> 01:31:22.636
and the interview is so chilling to me,

1787
01:31:23.303 --> 01:31:24.964
a teenager in New York that moment,

1788
01:31:24.964 --> 01:31:26.566
hearing the way he's talking about

1789
01:31:26.566 --> 01:31:29.375
these youth that he shot and I think

1790
01:31:29.375 --> 01:31:32.231
that attitude was so prevalent,

1791
01:31:32.231 --> 01:31:34.112
and we also, there's also flip sides,

1792
01:31:34.112 --> 01:31:35.645
like I'm responding to the specific guys

1793
01:31:35.645 --> 01:31:37.607
who are talking about if he was white.

1794
01:31:37.607 --> 01:31:38.721
We don't have to speculate that,

1795
01:31:38.721 --> 01:31:39.848
there were lots of cases in New York.

1796
01:31:39.848 --> 01:31:41.752
There was a white guy who killed the woman

1797
01:31:41.752 --> 01:31:43.690
in the park, there was
something in Connecticut,

1798
01:31:43.690 --> 01:31:44.991
I can't remember his
name, Michael something,

1799
01:31:44.991 --> 01:31:46.488
he killed, around exactly the same time

1800
01:31:46.488 --> 01:31:48.230
that y'all were there, you
know what I'm talking about.

1801
01:31:48.230 --> 01:31:51.783
And I just think that that needs to be

1802
01:31:51.783 --> 01:31:54.499
kind of discussed, that
there's a whole movement

1803
01:31:54.499 --> 01:31:56.937
there in that moment around polarization

1804
01:31:56.937 --> 01:31:58.865
in New York, the way the subways were

1805
01:31:58.865 --> 01:32:00.606
and also there's black
folks and brown folks

1806
01:32:00.606 --> 01:32:04.542
who are also involved
in this kind of movement

1807
01:32:04.542 --> 01:32:06.980
and I think you guys are
at the beginning of it,

1808
01:32:06.980 --> 01:32:08.849
unfortunately, to kind of think about

1809
01:32:08.849 --> 01:32:10.846
what did that mean for us?

1810
01:32:10.846 --> 01:32:12.181
How are we gonna change those things?

1811
01:32:12.181 --> 01:32:14.480
So I think those are all important pieces.

1812
01:32:14.480 --> 01:32:17.313
I mean, I think that that
case makes more sense

1813
01:32:17.313 --> 01:32:19.589
in the context of all
these racialized events

1814
01:32:19.589 --> 01:32:21.353
that are happening and
people are just like

1815
01:32:21.353 --> 01:32:24.082
getting their heads
blown off in that moment.

1816
01:32:24.082 --> 01:32:25.126
So anyway, I just think
that's something else

1817
01:32:25.126 --> 01:32:26.798
that, and I guess we'll get there because

1818
01:32:26.798 --> 01:32:29.544
20 years later we recuperate the history.

1819
01:32:31.036 --> 01:32:34.171
- I mean, I think that we just really,

1820
01:32:34.171 --> 01:32:39.171
we don't, somebody said
when the verdicts came out,

1821
01:32:40.707 --> 01:32:45.334
somebody responded and said,
"We don't need another march."

1822
01:32:48.114 --> 01:32:51.000
And I thought about
that, and I remember when

1823
01:32:51.957 --> 01:32:56.957
Amadou Diallo got shot,
and I heard about it,

1824
01:32:58.029 --> 01:33:01.379
I was coming home from
work, and I was on the bus.

1825
01:33:01.628 --> 01:33:03.033
I was working at this place called

1826
01:33:03.033 --> 01:33:05.280
Internet Customer Service Enterprise.

1827
01:33:05.970 --> 01:33:08.943
And I was on the bus
coming across 42nd street,

1828
01:33:08.943 --> 01:33:12.414
and traffic was like at a stand-still.

1829
01:33:12.414 --> 01:33:14.306
I said man, later for
this, I'm getting off,

1830
01:33:14.306 --> 01:33:16.582
I'm walking to the train station.

1831
01:33:16.582 --> 01:33:18.846
And I got off, walked, and I'm hearing

1832
01:33:18.846 --> 01:33:22.265
the people chanting, and I
didn't know what was going on.

1833
01:33:22.747 --> 01:33:24.634
I didn't know that they
were marching, right.

1834
01:33:26.044 --> 01:33:30.079
When I found out what was
happening, I joined that march,

1835
01:33:31.361 --> 01:33:35.443
and I walked from 42nd street
to the World Trade Center,

1836
01:33:36.667 --> 01:33:39.053
and I didn't feel it at all.

1837
01:33:39.941 --> 01:33:42.722
That's how electrically charged it was.

1838
01:33:43.912 --> 01:33:48.864
But the problem is, with
the way that we respond...

1839
01:33:52.921 --> 01:33:55.238
I don't want to say it has no effect,

1840
01:33:55.452 --> 01:33:59.069
but collectively, there has
to be a different response.

1841
01:34:00.293 --> 01:34:04.711
Because we can't just say
okay, we're gonna sing

1842
01:34:04.961 --> 01:34:09.181
a song, We Shall Overcome,
and they're gonna

1843
01:34:09.802 --> 01:34:12.920
stop doing what they're doing.

1844
01:34:13.703 --> 01:34:16.716
There has to be a different
type of dynamic going on.

1845
01:34:17.674 --> 01:34:21.273
We can't fall asleep, we
can't say, okay march,

1846
01:34:21.273 --> 01:34:24.106
let me go back home and
go back to my reality.

1847
01:34:24.106 --> 01:34:26.828
This is the reality. This is the whole.

1848
01:34:27.484 --> 01:34:30.015
And unfortunately, social media almost,

1849
01:34:30.015 --> 01:34:32.912
in a way it did us an injustice.

1850
01:34:33.452 --> 01:34:37.208
Because for those of us who prefer

1851
01:34:37.364 --> 01:34:40.069
to be bystanders and look at it,

1852
01:34:40.069 --> 01:34:43.506
we can look at what's happening in Egypt,

1853
01:34:43.506 --> 01:34:45.700
and see what's happening in Tahrir Square

1854
01:34:45.700 --> 01:34:48.475
and say wow, okay cool, man, alright,

1855
01:34:48.475 --> 01:34:50.240
let me go to sleep, or let me go to work,

1856
01:34:50.240 --> 01:34:52.411
or let me go do whatever.

1857
01:34:52.411 --> 01:34:55.278
But these folks are out there mobilized

1858
01:34:55.278 --> 01:34:57.113
because of social media.

1859
01:34:57.113 --> 01:34:59.678
And that's the part that
needs to change as well.

1860
01:34:59.678 --> 01:35:03.005
How do we attack,

1861
01:35:05.391 --> 01:35:08.334
and not attack from the perspective of -

1862
01:35:11.091 --> 01:35:14.383
well, it is war. It is war.

1863
01:35:15.700 --> 01:35:20.606
But I was, see I was taught martial arts.

1864
01:35:22.097 --> 01:35:25.847
And in martial arts, the first thing

1865
01:35:25.847 --> 01:35:29.998
that we were taught was
how to repel, how to heal.

1866
01:35:31.049 --> 01:35:34.822
It's not gonna do
anything, you know I forget

1867
01:35:34.822 --> 01:35:37.121
who said it, somebody said that we can't,

1868
01:35:37.121 --> 01:35:40.058
the answer to violence isn't to take out

1869
01:35:40.058 --> 01:35:42.607
our guns and to start shooting folks.

1870
01:35:42.763 --> 01:35:45.579
Because we're not gonna,
nobody's gonna hear us.

1871
01:35:45.933 --> 01:35:48.661
And not only that, we
don't have enough guns

1872
01:35:48.661 --> 01:35:51.384
to go to war with America.

1873
01:35:51.401 --> 01:35:55.889
Because as soon as we start,
I mean we already know.

1874
01:35:56.405 --> 01:35:59.186
We've seen it, we've seen it in Philly,

1875
01:35:59.412 --> 01:36:00.573
you see what I'm saying?

1876
01:36:00.573 --> 01:36:02.616
We've seen it all over the place.

1877
01:36:02.616 --> 01:36:05.379
But it's like how do we fight

1878
01:36:05.379 --> 01:36:09.089
and part of that is healing,
part of that is repelling,

1879
01:36:09.849 --> 01:36:13.478
part of that is
understanding from a whole.

1880
01:36:14.621 --> 01:36:18.749
Like my daughters shouldn't feel weird

1881
01:36:19.602 --> 01:36:20.728
when we're walking down the block

1882
01:36:20.728 --> 01:36:23.270
and they raise their hand
and say, "Hi, Mr. Officer."

1883
01:36:23.270 --> 01:36:26.388
And I hit their hand and I say,
"They're not your friends."

1884
01:36:28.100 --> 01:36:30.626
With a straight face, I can't
smile when I'm doing that.

1885
01:36:31.107 --> 01:36:34.532
But I mean, they shouldn't
feel weird about that.

1886
01:36:34.532 --> 01:36:35.809
Because that type of education,

1887
01:36:35.809 --> 01:36:38.445
that's the conversations that we're having

1888
01:36:38.445 --> 01:36:40.349
at home, that's the
conversations we're having

1889
01:36:40.349 --> 01:36:43.089
around the dinner table.

1890
01:36:43.089 --> 01:36:46.032
How do you survive tomorrow?

1891
01:36:47.419 --> 01:36:48.917
You're still with us today.

1892
01:36:48.917 --> 01:36:50.908
How do you survive tomorrow?

1893
01:36:51.297 --> 01:36:53.579
And that's the part that's like...

1894
01:36:55.000 --> 01:36:56.644
Nah.

1895
01:36:59.842 --> 01:37:02.623
(unclear speaker from audience)

1896
01:37:06.076 --> 01:37:07.182
- [Voiceover] Okay wow, I
feel a lot of pressure all

1897
01:37:07.182 --> 01:37:10.927
of a sudden; thank you,
thank you, thank you so much.

1898
01:37:11.780 --> 01:37:14.357
I just have to say that
being here and witnessing

1899
01:37:14.357 --> 01:37:16.621
and listening to you is a way that I am

1900
01:37:16.621 --> 01:37:19.152
maintaining my own community, and I just

1901
01:37:19.152 --> 01:37:22.321
cannot appreciate and express in words

1902
01:37:22.321 --> 01:37:24.743
how much, how important that is for me.

1903
01:37:25.328 --> 01:37:27.947
And also to thank the
Smith community, of course.

1904
01:37:28.533 --> 01:37:30.901
In particular, Chris and
Yusef, you've mentioned

1905
01:37:30.901 --> 01:37:33.891
the importance of
maintaining one's humanity.

1906
01:37:34.733 --> 01:37:37.449
And Yusef, you mentioned
your own particular way

1907
01:37:37.449 --> 01:37:39.731
and means of being able to do that.

1908
01:37:40.015 --> 01:37:43.719
And just thinking of parents
with young black children

1909
01:37:43.719 --> 01:37:45.274
who are forced to teach
their children that

1910
01:37:45.274 --> 01:37:48.456
they cannot react in the face of injustice

1911
01:37:48.456 --> 01:37:50.668
because they're black.

1912
01:37:50.754 --> 01:37:52.554
How do you teach them on a daily basis

1913
01:37:52.554 --> 01:37:55.189
to maintain their own humanity,

1914
01:37:55.189 --> 01:37:57.732
and when they're obtaining an education,

1915
01:37:57.732 --> 01:37:59.926
living their lives, where
institutional racism

1916
01:37:59.926 --> 01:38:03.096
profoundly exists and is promoted,

1917
01:38:04.746 --> 01:38:07.507
knowing that they hold close and dear

1918
01:38:07.507 --> 01:38:10.607
that reality of the modern-day slavery

1919
01:38:10.607 --> 01:38:12.604
that you speak to, which
is the prison system,

1920
01:38:12.604 --> 01:38:16.250
and I would add also, the
business of sexual exploitation

1921
01:38:16.250 --> 01:38:18.961
for brown and black children.

1922
01:38:19.512 --> 01:38:21.985
And so I want to know for all of you,

1923
01:38:21.985 --> 01:38:24.040
but in particular, Yusef I know that you

1924
01:38:24.040 --> 01:38:26.861
have family and children
of your own I believe.

1925
01:38:26.861 --> 01:38:30.339
What do you actively teach
them on a daily basis?

1926
01:38:35.766 --> 01:38:39.917
- I was at a panel once listening to

1927
01:38:40.770 --> 01:38:45.258
Dr. Adelaide Sanford,
and she was talking about

1928
01:38:46.772 --> 01:38:51.492
how to be, and she was saying that

1929
01:38:53.181 --> 01:38:57.100
a lot of young people in
this new hip-hop culture,

1930
01:38:59.694 --> 01:39:01.250
they want to be hip and
they want to be down

1931
01:39:01.250 --> 01:39:04.257
and they have this lingo
and way of talking.

1932
01:39:04.257 --> 01:39:06.962
And she said well we
need to be trilingual.

1933
01:39:06.962 --> 01:39:08.727
We need to be able to understand and know

1934
01:39:08.727 --> 01:39:11.792
how to talk when we're
being around friends,

1935
01:39:11.792 --> 01:39:14.404
we need to understand how we need to talk

1936
01:39:14.404 --> 01:39:17.202
and deal and operate when we're around

1937
01:39:17.202 --> 01:39:20.355
what can be conceived as the enemy.

1938
01:39:23.681 --> 01:39:28.681
But we need to be able to
know that we have a future.

1939
01:39:31.111 --> 01:39:33.979
Some of my conversations with my children

1940
01:39:33.979 --> 01:39:38.513
center around understanding
that you have to plant seeds.

1941
01:39:39.865 --> 01:39:43.069
Those seeds are similar to what the folks

1942
01:39:43.069 --> 01:39:44.265
who plant olive seeds.

1943
01:39:44.265 --> 01:39:45.798
I mean I don't think that the person

1944
01:39:45.798 --> 01:39:47.876
who's planting an olive
seed for the first time

1945
01:39:47.876 --> 01:39:50.552
is ever gonna see the fruits of the labor.

1946
01:39:50.836 --> 01:39:52.438
They're never gonna ever be able to

1947
01:39:52.438 --> 01:39:55.196
pluck an olive or get
some oil from that tree.

1948
01:39:55.840 --> 01:39:59.364
But their children may. And
their children's children may.

1949
01:39:59.811 --> 01:40:01.680
But it's that far type of thinking

1950
01:40:01.680 --> 01:40:04.408
that causes the person to plant the seed

1951
01:40:04.408 --> 01:40:06.161
in the first place.

1952
01:40:06.161 --> 01:40:11.044
And for me, I have a weird type of reality

1953
01:40:14.358 --> 01:40:18.004
that I'm faced with,
because my personal children

1954
01:40:18.004 --> 01:40:21.052
are daughters, like I have five daughters.

1955
01:40:23.170 --> 01:40:26.659
I have two stepsons and
a stepdaughter as well,

1956
01:40:27.210 --> 01:40:29.138
but, with your personal children,

1957
01:40:29.138 --> 01:40:34.101
it's like you have to,
it's hard to talk to them

1958
01:40:34.780 --> 01:40:37.717
sometimes, because I remember one time

1959
01:40:37.717 --> 01:40:40.585
my daughter, my oldest daughter's 12 now,

1960
01:40:40.585 --> 01:40:43.429
and I think she might
have been five or four

1961
01:40:43.429 --> 01:40:44.463
or something like that.

1962
01:40:44.463 --> 01:40:47.656
And like I said I live down
the block from Strivers Row,

1963
01:40:47.656 --> 01:40:50.303
we happen to live in the penthouse

1964
01:40:50.303 --> 01:40:52.956
on the sixth floor, but we
just don't have an elevator.

1965
01:40:53.170 --> 01:40:55.580
So we have to walk up
the stairs all the time.

1966
01:40:55.968 --> 01:40:58.639
So as we were walking up the stairs,

1967
01:40:58.639 --> 01:41:02.377
and my daughter, there was three of them,

1968
01:41:02.377 --> 01:41:04.780
so I couldn't carry everybody, I had to

1969
01:41:04.780 --> 01:41:06.313
carry the baby, right?

1970
01:41:06.313 --> 01:41:09.854
So it's like, "Daddy, this
is hard, it's hard, my legs."

1971
01:41:09.854 --> 01:41:13.703
And so I kinda, I didn't,

1972
01:41:16.425 --> 01:41:18.277
hopefully I didn't scare her.

1973
01:41:19.258 --> 01:41:21.591
But I said "Get yourself together, woman!"

1974
01:41:21.591 --> 01:41:24.117
(laughter)

1975
01:41:25.864 --> 01:41:28.389
I said, "We gotta get up
there, but you gotta help me."

1976
01:41:29.904 --> 01:41:31.506
And it's funny because you
look at my daughter today,

1977
01:41:31.506 --> 01:41:33.968
I don't think she ever, well
maybe she might remember that,

1978
01:41:33.968 --> 01:41:35.047
that might be one of those memories

1979
01:41:35.047 --> 01:41:37.277
that you never forget. (laughter)

1980
01:41:37.277 --> 01:41:41.567
But it's like, having them realize

1981
01:41:42.222 --> 01:41:46.606
and understand the reality
that we're faced with,

1982
01:41:48.120 --> 01:41:51.917
this is a struggle that has been going on

1983
01:41:51.917 --> 01:41:54.976
since the story was told
in the bible about Ham.

1984
01:41:56.468 --> 01:42:01.332
And for the people who
were to be the outcasts,

1985
01:42:01.332 --> 01:42:03.678
to be the black and the brown, and for

1986
01:42:03.678 --> 01:42:05.570
the language to be changed,

1987
01:42:05.570 --> 01:42:09.274
so that people can be looking
at the majority of people

1988
01:42:09.274 --> 01:42:13.436
and calling them the
minority, there's a problem.

1989
01:42:14.208 --> 01:42:17.807
But pointing those things out, and also

1990
01:42:17.807 --> 01:42:21.394
letting them know, you can't get up

1991
01:42:21.394 --> 01:42:25.371
in the face of the enemy and challenge.

1992
01:42:26.596 --> 01:42:28.093
Because even if you tell your children

1993
01:42:28.093 --> 01:42:31.031
the truth about slavery,
the truth about history,

1994
01:42:31.031 --> 01:42:33.538
and they go to class
and they write a paper

1995
01:42:33.538 --> 01:42:37.318
about the truth about
history, they will get an F.

1996
01:42:38.136 --> 01:42:41.393
Because that's not what the books say.

1997
01:42:41.712 --> 01:42:44.046
So at one point in time,
the Central Park Five

1998
01:42:44.046 --> 01:42:47.517
was in history books,
and the history books

1999
01:42:47.517 --> 01:42:50.222
would talk about this big crime

2000
01:42:50.222 --> 01:42:52.625
that Mayor Koch talked about.

2001
01:42:52.625 --> 01:42:56.277
The crime of the century,
and how we got them.

2002
01:42:57.861 --> 01:43:00.392
Then they had to change the books

2003
01:43:00.392 --> 01:43:03.504
because that history wasn't true.

2004
01:43:03.504 --> 01:43:06.639
But it's like, it's hard
because our challenge

2005
01:43:06.639 --> 01:43:11.213
I think is to not give
up, and find creative ways

2006
01:43:11.213 --> 01:43:16.165
to be able to make sure we
push our way into the future.

2007
01:43:18.748 --> 01:43:23.572
Somebody had, you told
me that it was Roosevelt

2008
01:43:23.949 --> 01:43:25.482
or somebody who said it.

2009
01:43:25.482 --> 01:43:27.954
I was at a demonstration and I said

2010
01:43:27.954 --> 01:43:30.091
somebody had posted on Facebook

2011
01:43:30.091 --> 01:43:33.202
a photo and the photo said when you're

2012
01:43:33.202 --> 01:43:38.143
walking through hell, keep
on going, or keep on walking.

2013
01:43:40.575 --> 01:43:41.968
And that's been my model, that's been

2014
01:43:41.968 --> 01:43:45.492
my reality, that's been
how you get it done.

2015
01:43:52.839 --> 01:43:55.784
I think part of the problem is that

2016
01:43:55.784 --> 01:43:59.133
there's a certain hopelessness in it,

2017
01:44:00.729 --> 01:44:02.907
but not really.

2018
01:44:04.189 --> 01:44:06.128
Because see when I go to work, let me

2019
01:44:06.128 --> 01:44:07.997
just tell this story real quick.

2020
01:44:07.997 --> 01:44:09.866
Like when I first came home, it was

2021
01:44:09.866 --> 01:44:12.641
very difficult for me to get a job.

2022
01:44:12.641 --> 01:44:14.267
I would go to try to get jobs and

2023
01:44:14.267 --> 01:44:17.099
then I finally joined an organization

2024
01:44:17.099 --> 01:44:19.871
called Fight Back, Harlem Fight Back,

2025
01:44:19.871 --> 01:44:21.438
and they were placing people

2026
01:44:21.438 --> 01:44:24.480
in the jobs; they were forcing the people

2027
01:44:24.480 --> 01:44:27.150
who were employing
folks in our communities

2028
01:44:27.150 --> 01:44:29.966
to take us, right.

2029
01:44:30.750 --> 01:44:33.879
And so I got this job; I
was a construction worker.

2030
01:44:34.558 --> 01:44:36.055
But they didn't let me learn anything,

2031
01:44:36.055 --> 01:44:40.183
they put me in the what
do they call those things,

2032
01:44:40.258 --> 01:44:42.034
when they bring the thing off the truck

2033
01:44:42.034 --> 01:44:45.088
and they put all the dirt
and all that stuff in there,

2034
01:44:45.088 --> 01:44:47.642
it's the dump truck but
it's that part that,

2035
01:44:47.642 --> 01:44:50.783
in New York, they leave
them on the streets.

2036
01:44:51.973 --> 01:44:53.877
They put me in one of those.

2037
01:44:53.877 --> 01:44:55.142
And they told me to take all the glass

2038
01:44:55.142 --> 01:44:56.675
out of the windows because the owner

2039
01:44:56.675 --> 01:44:59.914
wanted to be able to
resell all of the aluminum

2040
01:44:59.914 --> 01:45:01.551
that he was getting,
so he was only getting

2041
01:45:01.551 --> 01:45:02.956
money from the building, but he wanted

2042
01:45:02.956 --> 01:45:05.475
to take this found money that he wasn't

2043
01:45:05.475 --> 01:45:08.621
sharing with us, and
resell it so that he could

2044
01:45:08.621 --> 01:45:10.648
put some more money in his pocket.

2045
01:45:11.466 --> 01:45:14.653
And they found out who I was.

2046
01:45:16.737 --> 01:45:21.009
And I remember there was a dialogue

2047
01:45:21.009 --> 01:45:24.649
that played itself out in the media,

2048
01:45:25.537 --> 01:45:27.313
and the reason that I say
it like that is because

2049
01:45:27.313 --> 01:45:30.750
ultimately, I got fired, I got a pink slip

2050
01:45:30.750 --> 01:45:33.334
that came in the daily news.

2051
01:45:34.953 --> 01:45:38.308
So the pink slip, the article says:

2052
01:45:38.308 --> 01:45:41.344
Yusef Salaam gets the axe.

2053
01:45:43.161 --> 01:45:45.030
And it was almost like this sentiment

2054
01:45:45.030 --> 01:45:49.878
that wherever I went, the citizens

2055
01:45:50.034 --> 01:45:53.616
of New York were gonna exact justice on me

2056
01:45:53.807 --> 01:45:56.960
to make sure that I was
having a hell of a time.

2057
01:45:59.345 --> 01:46:02.468
So, I was going places
and the doors of success

2058
01:46:02.468 --> 01:46:04.495
were being shut in my face.

2059
01:46:04.651 --> 01:46:08.001
And then finally, I started listening to

2060
01:46:09.655 --> 01:46:12.204
motivational speakers.

2061
01:46:12.279 --> 01:46:14.305
Uncommon motivational speakers.

2062
01:46:14.427 --> 01:46:17.027
One guy I came across, he has this piece

2063
01:46:17.027 --> 01:46:21.747
called How to Position
Yourself for Success.

2064
01:46:22.751 --> 01:46:25.572
Because it's not enough
to be in the right place

2065
01:46:25.572 --> 01:46:28.458
at the right time, you have
to be doing the right thing.

2066
01:46:29.241 --> 01:46:31.058
You have to be ready, right.

2067
01:46:31.609 --> 01:46:34.140
And here I was in my mom's office,

2068
01:46:34.140 --> 01:46:36.242
and I'm reading books
and I'm very interested

2069
01:46:36.242 --> 01:46:38.750
in computers and things like that.

2070
01:46:38.750 --> 01:46:41.531
And I was self-educating at that point.

2071
01:46:42.186 --> 01:46:44.682
And a woman comes in who's a lawyer,

2072
01:46:44.682 --> 01:46:46.261
and walks by my office space, looks

2073
01:46:46.261 --> 01:46:49.240
at the books and says,
"Who's reading these books?"

2074
01:46:49.860 --> 01:46:53.582
My mom said "Oh that's
my son. He needs a job."

2075
01:46:53.866 --> 01:46:55.793
I was working for my mom
but she was always plugging.

2076
01:46:55.793 --> 01:47:00.385
(laughter) So she said "Oh, I
know the perfect job for him."

2077
01:47:02.237 --> 01:47:04.228
Sent me on an interview.

2078
01:47:04.373 --> 01:47:07.473
And you would think that because

2079
01:47:07.473 --> 01:47:10.567
I was in prison, I'm a master of time.

2080
01:47:11.745 --> 01:47:13.545
Today I got here on time.

2081
01:47:13.545 --> 01:47:15.948
In the nick of time, right.

2082
01:47:15.948 --> 01:47:18.671
I got to this job interview an hour late.

2083
01:47:19.988 --> 01:47:23.977
I had worse than CP, CP time,
is that CP time? (laughter)

2084
01:47:24.528 --> 01:47:26.327
Worse, I had worse than that, right.

2085
01:47:26.327 --> 01:47:28.591
We hate time.

2086
01:47:28.591 --> 01:47:31.099
Having been a former inmate, we hate time.

2087
01:47:31.099 --> 01:47:34.536
Because time is then
telling you what to do,

2088
01:47:34.536 --> 01:47:37.525
where to be and where to go.

2089
01:47:38.077 --> 01:47:41.676
So here I was bucking the system,

2090
01:47:41.676 --> 01:47:44.276
saying ah, I'll get
there when I get there.

2091
01:47:44.276 --> 01:47:48.265
Got there, and got the job.

2092
01:47:50.824 --> 01:47:53.019
I was working as a consultant at

2093
01:47:53.019 --> 01:47:55.329
New York Presbyterian Hospital,

2094
01:47:55.329 --> 01:47:57.808
the number one hospital in New York City.

2095
01:47:58.394 --> 01:48:00.943
I worked there for seven years.

2096
01:48:01.564 --> 01:48:04.466
The only reason why I
left New York Presbyterian

2097
01:48:04.466 --> 01:48:07.136
was because another hospital from New York

2098
01:48:07.136 --> 01:48:10.108
calls me up and says,
"Hey, we hear that you're

2099
01:48:10.108 --> 01:48:11.978
the administrator there."

2100
01:48:11.978 --> 01:48:13.313
Because at that point I had moved up,

2101
01:48:13.313 --> 01:48:15.217
I started listening more
to the success stuff,

2102
01:48:15.217 --> 01:48:19.333
I was being more on time,
you know, (laughter)

2103
01:48:19.385 --> 01:48:21.614
and prepared, got me a iPad,
I was like you know what.

2104
01:48:21.614 --> 01:48:26.009
Two phones and a watch, right. (laughter)

2105
01:48:30.089 --> 01:48:31.866
I get this call, and at that point

2106
01:48:31.866 --> 01:48:35.198
I'm now meeting with the CEOs and the

2107
01:48:35.198 --> 01:48:38.832
CIOs and the CTOs of the organizations,

2108
01:48:38.832 --> 01:48:43.517
and I'm like, "Wow, this
hospital wants to hire me."

2109
01:48:44.973 --> 01:48:47.005
So I said, "Well I'm
comfortable here, I mean

2110
01:48:47.005 --> 01:48:50.244
you guys called me."

2111
01:48:50.244 --> 01:48:55.231
They said, "Well how much,
what's your price, salary wise?"

2112
01:48:58.479 --> 01:49:01.477
So I said, "Man, I've never
been asked that before."

2113
01:49:02.121 --> 01:49:04.206
Because at that point I
was making decent money.

2114
01:49:04.931 --> 01:49:05.929
You're never really making decent money

2115
01:49:05.929 --> 01:49:08.919
when you got five children,
though. (laughter)

2116
01:49:10.167 --> 01:49:14.265
I was making, I was okay, I was okay.

2117
01:49:14.265 --> 01:49:18.038
So I threw what to me
was a fictitious number

2118
01:49:18.038 --> 01:49:20.500
out there, you know it's gonna cost

2119
01:49:20.500 --> 01:49:23.449
this amount for me to go.

2120
01:49:23.449 --> 01:49:26.049
Well the guy says...

2121
01:49:27.769 --> 01:49:32.731
"Well, we could do that,
but 50 dollars less."

2122
01:49:34.687 --> 01:49:36.556
I said, "50 dollars less? That's all?

2123
01:49:36.556 --> 01:49:39.674
That's the negotiation?" (laughter)

2124
01:49:40.330 --> 01:49:42.501
I handed in my letter of resignation.

2125
01:49:42.501 --> 01:49:45.084
I had to go.

2126
01:49:46.239 --> 01:49:48.724
And it was a fortunate, I mean the doors

2127
01:49:48.724 --> 01:49:51.406
of success have just been opening up

2128
01:49:51.406 --> 01:49:54.006
more and more, and one of the great things

2129
01:49:54.006 --> 01:49:56.247
I think that I'm finding out is that

2130
01:49:56.247 --> 01:50:01.247
what I'm doing, I'm not
supposed to be doing.

2131
01:50:03.457 --> 01:50:05.941
Like I work in health care,
and I'm good at what I do,

2132
01:50:05.941 --> 01:50:08.124
but I'm not supposed to be doing that.

2133
01:50:08.124 --> 01:50:09.854
I'm supposed to be in the streets,

2134
01:50:09.854 --> 01:50:11.328
I'm supposed to be in the struggle.

2135
01:50:11.328 --> 01:50:13.499
I'm not supposed to be in
the back office somewhere

2136
01:50:13.499 --> 01:50:16.617
making a whole bunch of
money, keeping my mouth shut.

2137
01:50:17.261 --> 01:50:20.338
This is why I love coming
to these types of forums.

2138
01:50:20.338 --> 01:50:23.403
Because not only does it
give me an opportunity

2139
01:50:23.403 --> 01:50:25.539
to reintroduce myself to you all,

2140
01:50:25.539 --> 01:50:27.640
but it also gives me an opportunity

2141
01:50:27.640 --> 01:50:30.793
to go through somewhat
of a therapy session.

2142
01:50:31.309 --> 01:50:34.386
Like they didn't ever say to
us, "You guys were damaged.

2143
01:50:34.386 --> 01:50:36.900
We're gonna help you re-enter society."

2144
01:50:37.219 --> 01:50:40.011
We did that stumbling
and falling, you know.

2145
01:50:40.794 --> 01:50:43.964
And now, I walk into a place, and unless

2146
01:50:43.964 --> 01:50:48.666
you know me, you would think -

2147
01:50:48.666 --> 01:50:52.921
people never expect that
I've ever been in prison,

2148
01:50:53.740 --> 01:50:56.660
that I've ever been in
prison for almost 7 years.

2149
01:50:56.805 --> 01:50:59.243
They never expect that.

2150
01:50:59.243 --> 01:51:02.250
And then when they find out, it's like,

2151
01:51:02.250 --> 01:51:04.711
my ex-boss found out.

2152
01:51:04.711 --> 01:51:08.786
And he came to his boss, he
said, "Do you know who he is?"

2153
01:51:08.786 --> 01:51:12.403
He said "Yeah, he's our
telecom guy." (laughter)

2154
01:51:12.559 --> 01:51:15.415
He said, "But do you know
who Yusef Salaam is?"

2155
01:51:15.415 --> 01:51:17.029
And he knew who I was, but he said,

2156
01:51:17.029 --> 01:51:19.501
"Well has he done anything wrong?"

2157
01:51:19.501 --> 01:51:20.387
He said "No."

2158
01:51:20.387 --> 01:51:24.532
So my boss said to his
boss, "Well what do we do?"

2159
01:51:24.532 --> 01:51:27.916
So his boss said, "We do nothing."

2160
01:51:27.968 --> 01:51:30.278
This is a guy, the
boss' boss was giving me

2161
01:51:30.278 --> 01:51:32.847
his computers and saying,
"Ah, the screen is broken.

2162
01:51:32.847 --> 01:51:34.646
Can you fix it?"

2163
01:51:34.646 --> 01:51:39.169
And so I was fixing
computers on my spare time

2164
01:51:39.778 --> 01:51:41.612
as I was still working
and doing other things.

2165
01:51:41.612 --> 01:51:43.516
I mean this was like
the type of experiences

2166
01:51:43.516 --> 01:51:45.989
that I was having.

2167
01:51:45.989 --> 01:51:48.410
But man I think we're like, over our time.

2168
01:51:48.961 --> 01:51:50.320
- I know that it's a little after nine,

2169
01:51:50.320 --> 01:51:53.629
so what we want to do is just give time

2170
01:51:53.629 --> 01:51:55.126
for a few more questions; if folks need

2171
01:51:55.126 --> 01:51:57.634
to depart, we understand that, but

2172
01:51:57.634 --> 01:51:59.538
I feel like there's just, there is time

2173
01:51:59.538 --> 01:52:00.931
and I think our panelists
can hang in there

2174
01:52:00.931 --> 01:52:02.958
for a few more minutes.

2175
01:52:06.643 --> 01:52:08.106
- I see some hands.
- One in the back.

2176
01:52:08.106 --> 01:52:10.133
- Yeah.

2177
01:52:14.747 --> 01:52:15.513
- [Voiceover] Should I go?

2178
01:52:15.513 --> 01:52:16.814
- Yes.
- Yes.

2179
01:52:16.814 --> 01:52:18.416
- Yes, please, please do.

2180
01:52:18.416 --> 01:52:19.751
- [Voiceover] Hi, my name is Henry White

2181
01:52:19.751 --> 01:52:21.458
and I'm a resident here in Northhampton

2182
01:52:21.458 --> 01:52:24.964
and first of all, this
is a great event here,

2183
01:52:24.964 --> 01:52:28.366
just want to share my appreciation.

2184
01:52:28.366 --> 01:52:30.223
And to Brother Yusef,
first of all, I want to

2185
01:52:30.223 --> 01:52:33.172
just share Chris' sentiments to you,

2186
01:52:33.172 --> 01:52:36.098
and I'm inspired just by
your sense of humility

2187
01:52:36.098 --> 01:52:40.528
and that innate humanity
that you're expressing here.

2188
01:52:41.938 --> 01:52:45.392
It's wonderful, and it's
refreshing, I appreciate that.

2189
01:52:46.175 --> 01:52:49.809
One of the things that stuck out to me

2190
01:52:49.809 --> 01:52:53.919
during the clip, which was very powerful,

2191
01:52:55.069 --> 01:52:56.764
and I think Sarah talked a little bit

2192
01:52:56.764 --> 01:52:59.707
about it a little while
ago with the journalist,

2193
01:53:00.816 --> 01:53:02.981
I think he was a reporter.

2194
01:53:03.370 --> 01:53:06.005
And he started, he was apologizing,

2195
01:53:06.005 --> 01:53:08.641
like I think his exact
words was, you know,

2196
01:53:08.641 --> 01:53:12.025
"A lot of people did not do their jobs."

2197
01:53:13.111 --> 01:53:16.391
And to me, that was so telling,

2198
01:53:17.279 --> 01:53:22.279
because when we talk about
systematic injustice,

2199
01:53:23.118 --> 01:53:26.034
systematic racism, systematic,

2200
01:53:27.774 --> 01:53:32.774
or institutional injustices,
the culpability runs deep.

2201
01:53:33.660 --> 01:53:35.954
And it runs far wide.

2202
01:53:36.331 --> 01:53:41.155
And his comments to me was
just an affirmation of that.

2203
01:53:41.369 --> 01:53:43.273
And it happens, I mean
it happened back then;

2204
01:53:43.273 --> 01:53:45.804
it happens all the time now.

2205
01:53:45.804 --> 01:53:49.456
People are just not doing due diligence

2206
01:53:49.845 --> 01:53:53.229
and getting the real stories, talking real

2207
01:53:53.513 --> 01:53:55.684
as Chris was talking about earlier.

2208
01:53:55.684 --> 01:53:58.389
The other thing real quick
I want to just comment on

2209
01:53:58.389 --> 01:53:59.922
was something Chris said about just

2210
01:53:59.922 --> 01:54:03.574
having a real conversation, especially

2211
01:54:03.649 --> 01:54:06.667
when it comes to prison reform

2212
01:54:06.667 --> 01:54:09.820
and the criminal justice system and so on.

2213
01:54:12.797 --> 01:54:16.925
You can have that
conversation, and definitely

2214
01:54:17.941 --> 01:54:20.541
about the racial injustices,
but I don't think

2215
01:54:20.541 --> 01:54:22.550
that you can have that conversation

2216
01:54:22.550 --> 01:54:25.278
without having the conversation about

2217
01:54:25.278 --> 01:54:30.033
the history of labor in
America and the work force.

2218
01:54:31.617 --> 01:54:33.846
Because in my opinion, that's where

2219
01:54:33.846 --> 01:54:36.521
the incentives come in when you talk about

2220
01:54:36.521 --> 01:54:41.411
private or privatized
prisons, the profits,

2221
01:54:42.600 --> 01:54:47.600
and the incentives to
keep that revolving door

2222
01:54:48.103 --> 01:54:51.221
of black and brown folks
going into that system.

2223
01:54:51.877 --> 01:54:54.658
Because they drive that
labor force in there,

2224
01:54:54.709 --> 01:54:56.648
and that's the history.

2225
01:54:56.648 --> 01:54:59.481
So I commend you all.

2226
01:54:59.481 --> 01:55:01.838
And I mean there's so
much that I could react to

2227
01:55:01.838 --> 01:55:06.070
and respond to, but the
conversation continues.

2228
01:55:06.888 --> 01:55:11.213
And again, Brother Yusef,
just continue on, man.

2229
01:55:11.857 --> 01:55:14.435
You're an inspiration, and
Sarah, thanks for doing this.

2230
01:55:14.435 --> 01:55:16.536
It's been great.

2231
01:55:16.536 --> 01:55:18.981
So I just want to commend
you guys, great job.

2232
01:55:19.334 --> 01:55:22.434
- You know, I just saw
something today that the judge

2233
01:55:22.434 --> 01:55:27.328
in Pennsylvania, I think,
was sentenced to prison time.

2234
01:55:28.436 --> 01:55:31.548
This judge who had been
convicted of basically

2235
01:55:31.548 --> 01:55:36.430
funneling kids into the
prison system for profit.

2236
01:55:36.819 --> 01:55:38.224
And so we're not even just talking about

2237
01:55:38.224 --> 01:55:39.861
the prisons themselves and the people

2238
01:55:39.861 --> 01:55:42.856
profiting from those but, when that even

2239
01:55:42.856 --> 01:55:45.724
leaks into the judicial system too.

2240
01:55:45.724 --> 01:55:47.198
And I think that there are a lot of,

2241
01:55:47.198 --> 01:55:49.369
when you mentioned earlier about police

2242
01:55:49.369 --> 01:55:51.529
and sort of trusting police
to do their jobs right,

2243
01:55:51.529 --> 01:55:54.803
again, so many layers of
people not doing their jobs.

2244
01:55:54.803 --> 01:55:57.937
And I think even beyond that, there's this

2245
01:55:57.937 --> 01:56:01.589
sense that as someone says
at the end of the film,

2246
01:56:01.589 --> 01:56:04.752
that we're all, I think we're
all sort of responsible.

2247
01:56:04.752 --> 01:56:07.609
There's a sense that the
media is telling this story

2248
01:56:07.609 --> 01:56:11.451
that's false, but we're
also buying that story.

2249
01:56:11.451 --> 01:56:13.088
We're buying those newspapers.

2250
01:56:13.088 --> 01:56:15.027
And so I think in some ways I like to say

2251
01:56:15.027 --> 01:56:17.721
that we get the press we deserve.

2252
01:56:17.721 --> 01:56:19.358
So it's easy to pass that blame around,

2253
01:56:19.358 --> 01:56:22.295
but I think it is even broader than that.

2254
01:56:22.295 --> 01:56:24.234
But one thing I learned
in doing my research

2255
01:56:24.234 --> 01:56:27.938
about this story was about the police,

2256
01:56:27.938 --> 01:56:29.366
and how this stuff comes up, and

2257
01:56:29.366 --> 01:56:31.595
it's not just in the interrogation room

2258
01:56:31.595 --> 01:56:34.613
where they cross the line, sort of knowing

2259
01:56:34.613 --> 01:56:37.144
that they will get the
benefit of the doubt

2260
01:56:37.144 --> 01:56:41.719
in terms of interrogations,
but there was a study done

2261
01:56:41.719 --> 01:56:44.551
in the early 90s about police
corruption in New York City.

2262
01:56:44.551 --> 01:56:49.497
And they found not only
these limited examples of

2263
01:56:49.497 --> 01:56:52.133
sort of extreme corruption,
like taking money

2264
01:56:52.133 --> 01:56:55.035
from drug dealers for
protection and stealing

2265
01:56:55.035 --> 01:56:58.367
evidence and drugs and
money and stuff like that,

2266
01:56:58.367 --> 01:57:03.192
but they found widespread corruption

2267
01:57:03.870 --> 01:57:08.857
in the sense of perjury,
which was so prevalent

2268
01:57:09.548 --> 01:57:13.095
that the police had a nickname
for it, "testi-lying."

2269
01:57:14.714 --> 01:57:18.116
Which was basically understood among

2270
01:57:18.116 --> 01:57:21.158
these police officers, detectives, usually

2271
01:57:21.158 --> 01:57:22.888
who would come and testify in cases,

2272
01:57:22.888 --> 01:57:26.092
that essentially the
ends justified the means.

2273
01:57:26.092 --> 01:57:30.812
Well, we know he's guilty,
so to get up on the stand

2274
01:57:31.270 --> 01:57:33.534
and say something that isn't true

2275
01:57:33.534 --> 01:57:37.023
to make sure that person
goes to prison is fine

2276
01:57:37.702 --> 01:57:40.831
It's useful, that this was the sense.

2277
01:57:41.115 --> 01:57:42.880
And you see that in this case.

2278
01:57:42.880 --> 01:57:47.187
You see, before the
trials, there was a hearing

2279
01:57:47.187 --> 01:57:50.496
to determine the admissibility
of the statements.

2280
01:57:50.496 --> 01:57:53.050
And the detectives in the case

2281
01:57:53.050 --> 01:57:55.988
all got on the stand and told the judge,

2282
01:57:55.988 --> 01:58:00.942
"All I asked him was what
happened and what happened next."

2283
01:58:03.128 --> 01:58:06.454
Now, that is remarkable.

2284
01:58:06.808 --> 01:58:10.709
Because, if that's what they were doing,

2285
01:58:10.709 --> 01:58:12.515
they weren't doing their jobs.

2286
01:58:12.671 --> 01:58:15.609
We don't want our
detectives to just say that.

2287
01:58:15.609 --> 01:58:18.883
That would be useless.

2288
01:58:18.883 --> 01:58:21.448
And clearly, they're hiding
what they're really doing.

2289
01:58:21.448 --> 01:58:23.550
But the fact that that then becomes,

2290
01:58:23.550 --> 01:58:26.081
I mean the judge decides of course,

2291
01:58:26.081 --> 01:58:28.844
not surprisingly, to
allow these statements in,

2292
01:58:28.844 --> 01:58:30.632
despite the fact that this is clearly

2293
01:58:30.632 --> 01:58:34.092
incredible, what they are saying.

2294
01:58:34.092 --> 01:58:37.528
And so I think that it
goes again to that sort of

2295
01:58:37.528 --> 01:58:40.872
broad where the culpability
is, the fact that

2296
01:58:40.872 --> 01:58:44.343
the judge isn't willing to
be skeptical of this thing

2297
01:58:44.343 --> 01:58:47.373
that is on its face, obviously ridiculous,

2298
01:58:47.373 --> 01:58:49.545
what these people are saying.

2299
01:58:49.545 --> 01:58:53.306
That at every level
you have these failures

2300
01:58:53.306 --> 01:58:55.152
in the media and one more quick thing,

2301
01:58:55.152 --> 01:58:58.693
Jim Dwyer, who made that
comment that you referred to,

2302
01:58:58.693 --> 01:59:01.723
about how he felt guilty for
not sort of getting it right,

2303
01:59:01.723 --> 01:59:05.195
and he plays a sort of
big role in the film

2304
01:59:05.195 --> 01:59:07.064
in telling the story sort
of of the perspective

2305
01:59:07.064 --> 01:59:08.631
of the media a little bit.

2306
01:59:08.631 --> 01:59:12.439
He actually is being modest.

2307
01:59:12.439 --> 01:59:14.808
He was a columnist then for Newsday,

2308
01:59:14.808 --> 01:59:17.571
didn't really cover the case much,

2309
01:59:17.571 --> 01:59:19.905
but during one of the
trials, he wrote a column,

2310
01:59:19.905 --> 01:59:21.077
having been the day that

2311
01:59:21.077 --> 01:59:23.144
Raymond's statement,
written statement was read

2312
01:59:23.144 --> 01:59:26.720
into the record and he
basically wrote a column

2313
01:59:26.720 --> 01:59:29.483
saying, "These are not the
words of a 14-year-old boy.

2314
01:59:29.483 --> 01:59:32.687
This is the language of the
police, and the prosecution

2315
01:59:32.687 --> 01:59:35.659
has not proven a case here."

2316
01:59:35.659 --> 01:59:38.097
And he was one of very few people

2317
01:59:38.097 --> 01:59:40.524
who was raising those kinds of questions.

2318
01:59:40.524 --> 01:59:43.101
And even still, he can today say,

2319
01:59:43.101 --> 01:59:47.984
"I didn't do enough, and I
didn't get the whole picture

2320
01:59:48.976 --> 01:59:50.724
of what was really going on."

2321
01:59:51.066 --> 01:59:52.807
And the amazing thing is that he's the one

2322
01:59:52.807 --> 01:59:55.547
who's sort of apologizing,
and it's the people who are

2323
01:59:55.547 --> 01:59:59.587
writing "Wolf Pack" across
the top of the newspaper

2324
01:59:59.587 --> 02:00:01.387
who we aren't hearing from.

2325
02:00:01.387 --> 02:00:03.419
And we did try to interview
some of those people too,

2326
02:00:03.419 --> 02:00:05.375
and they did not want to talk to us.

2327
02:00:06.252 --> 02:00:09.154
- And Korey even got
smacked by a detective

2328
02:00:09.154 --> 02:00:10.570
during interrogation.
- Oh yeah.

2329
02:00:10.570 --> 02:00:12.591
- And that came out later too,

2330
02:00:12.591 --> 02:00:14.762
and the cops got up there
and lied about that as well,

2331
02:00:14.762 --> 02:00:17.827
so I mean this -
- Got the benefit of the doubt

2332
02:00:17.827 --> 02:00:21.205
- This is why we need to
have folks as advocates

2333
02:00:21.205 --> 02:00:24.235
in these interrogation rooms,

2334
02:00:24.235 --> 02:00:26.708
and if there's one clear area
where we can do some kind of

2335
02:00:26.708 --> 02:00:28.578
reform, it is that.

2336
02:00:28.578 --> 02:00:31.643
I, myself, advocate prison abolition.

2337
02:00:31.643 --> 02:00:35.323
I think we can talk about the
details and what that means;

2338
02:00:35.323 --> 02:00:38.284
I know that scares everybody.

2339
02:00:38.284 --> 02:00:39.828
But we need to ask ourselves,

2340
02:00:39.828 --> 02:00:41.952
"Why does that scare everybody?"

2341
02:00:41.952 --> 02:00:46.225
And probably the reason
is because our imagination

2342
02:00:46.225 --> 02:00:49.069
of what criminality looks like

2343
02:00:49.069 --> 02:00:51.832
mirrors the depictions that were ascribed

2344
02:00:51.832 --> 02:00:55.072
to the Central Park Five, Wolf Pack.

2345
02:00:55.072 --> 02:00:58.619
Wilding. Wild Youth. Wild.

2346
02:00:59.414 --> 02:01:02.049
And so who wants to
release that kind of energy

2347
02:01:02.049 --> 02:01:04.847
back into our safe communities?

2348
02:01:04.847 --> 02:01:07.552
So called safe communities.

2349
02:01:07.552 --> 02:01:09.939
Because some of our
communities mirror the prison.

2350
02:01:11.082 --> 02:01:13.427
In terms of the violence that goes on,

2351
02:01:13.427 --> 02:01:16.051
the policing, the surveillance.

2352
02:01:16.051 --> 02:01:20.033
So the point is that
we are at a point where

2353
02:01:20.033 --> 02:01:23.917
we have to stop apologizing for the state.

2354
02:01:26.024 --> 02:01:28.833
They won't even give
the Central Park Five,

2355
02:01:28.833 --> 02:01:31.469
after it's been proven
everything was false,

2356
02:01:31.469 --> 02:01:34.244
they won't give them the
benefit of an apology.

2357
02:01:34.244 --> 02:01:37.413
So we need to stop
apologizing for the state.

2358
02:01:37.413 --> 02:01:40.350
We need to stop saying that we
are slowly getting somewhere

2359
02:01:40.350 --> 02:01:43.311
with, you know -- cause I'm
not sure that we're very far

2360
02:01:43.311 --> 02:01:46.457
when you bring up Trayvon,
Oscar Grant, Ramarley Graham,

2361
02:01:46.457 --> 02:01:49.859
and others, I'm not sure
how far we are from 1989,

2362
02:01:49.859 --> 02:01:52.959
or 1969 for that matter.

2363
02:01:52.959 --> 02:01:56.303
And so the work that's being done here

2364
02:01:56.303 --> 02:02:00.204
is an act of bravery, courage, etc.

2365
02:02:00.204 --> 02:02:04.569
And I think that if we want
to expand it a little bit

2366
02:02:04.569 --> 02:02:07.808
to talk about real media justice
and how to use privilege,

2367
02:02:07.808 --> 02:02:11.001
etc, just look at the
stuff that Glenn Greenwald

2368
02:02:11.001 --> 02:02:15.036
has been doing in terms of exposing NSA

2369
02:02:15.447 --> 02:02:16.388
and all these kind of things.

2370
02:02:16.388 --> 02:02:18.454
And the case around
Bradley Manning and all

2371
02:02:18.454 --> 02:02:19.592
this kind of stuff.

2372
02:02:19.592 --> 02:02:22.123
I mean, doing this kind
of radical journalism,

2373
02:02:22.123 --> 02:02:25.276
progressive journalism,
it comes with a price.

2374
02:02:26.256 --> 02:02:28.195
But that's the work that
if we're serious about

2375
02:02:28.195 --> 02:02:30.564
justice, we have to do.

2376
02:02:30.564 --> 02:02:32.665
We can't be afraid of
that as documentarians,

2377
02:02:32.665 --> 02:02:35.591
songwriters, etc., people
in hip hop, whatever.

2378
02:02:35.591 --> 02:02:38.609
I mean I wish it was 1993 for me when

2379
02:02:38.609 --> 02:02:41.407
the Trayvon verdict came down,

2380
02:02:41.407 --> 02:02:45.041
because if it was 1993,
I would just take my

2381
02:02:45.041 --> 02:02:48.048
black spray can and I would be bombing

2382
02:02:48.048 --> 02:02:51.287
every single window with Trayvon -

2383
02:02:51.287 --> 02:02:53.145
I would just hit up Trayvon. That's it.

2384
02:02:53.145 --> 02:02:55.757
Just to remind people.

2385
02:02:55.757 --> 02:02:57.998
That's where I was.

2386
02:02:57.998 --> 02:03:00.831
I always tell people I
wasn't born a professor.

2387
02:03:00.831 --> 02:03:02.880
(laughter)

2388
02:03:04.697 --> 02:03:08.540
You have to kind of go
through different things.

2389
02:03:08.540 --> 02:03:09.666
I had a period too.

2390
02:03:09.666 --> 02:03:11.477
I'm glad - I thank God that I
didn't have to go through it

2391
02:03:11.477 --> 02:03:13.010
to the extent that these brothers did,

2392
02:03:13.010 --> 02:03:15.181
but none the less, we had to go through

2393
02:03:15.181 --> 02:03:17.375
our growing pains.

2394
02:03:17.375 --> 02:03:19.453
But I just wish for a
moment that I could go back

2395
02:03:19.453 --> 02:03:22.820
to 1993, because I would
really just try my best

2396
02:03:22.820 --> 02:03:25.084
to use my artistry or whatever to really

2397
02:03:25.084 --> 02:03:28.892
let people know how
angry the situation makes

2398
02:03:28.892 --> 02:03:31.632
folks of color.

2399
02:03:31.632 --> 02:03:33.525
And I think that that is one of the things

2400
02:03:33.525 --> 02:03:35.870
that American society is most afraid of,

2401
02:03:35.870 --> 02:03:39.306
is really confronting
the anger and the rage

2402
02:03:39.306 --> 02:03:44.306
that a lot of folks of color
live with on a daily basis.

2403
02:03:45.669 --> 02:03:49.604
That, in society, is
frightening to a lot of folk.

2404
02:03:50.684 --> 02:03:52.716
And so I just think that we need to stop

2405
02:03:52.716 --> 02:03:56.652
apologizing for the state and
the sooner we can do that,

2406
02:03:56.652 --> 02:03:59.491
the better the culture will
be to getting some justice.

2407
02:04:03.258 --> 02:04:06.445
- Maybe one or two more.

2408
02:04:08.366 --> 02:04:09.510
Thank you.

2409
02:04:10.804 --> 02:04:13.335
- [Voiceover] Hello. Thank
you so much for coming.

2410
02:04:13.335 --> 02:04:16.133
And for having this discussion here.

2411
02:04:16.133 --> 02:04:18.444
It's really great.

2412
02:04:18.444 --> 02:04:22.472
I just wanted to say that

2413
02:04:22.472 --> 02:04:24.783
Sarah, you mentioned
that when you heard about

2414
02:04:24.783 --> 02:04:26.919
the story, you just
wanted to share it with

2415
02:04:26.919 --> 02:04:28.521
everyone you knew,

2416
02:04:28.521 --> 02:04:30.820
and that's exactly the feeling that I got.

2417
02:04:30.820 --> 02:04:33.653
I even said that right
after watching the movie.

2418
02:04:33.653 --> 02:04:35.255
I just raised my hand and said,

2419
02:04:35.255 --> 02:04:37.263
"I want everyone I know
to watch this movie.

2420
02:04:37.263 --> 02:04:39.725
Where can I find it?"

2421
02:04:39.725 --> 02:04:43.179
And they told me. Streaming on Netflix.

2422
02:04:43.533 --> 02:04:44.938
We have to get the DVD.

2423
02:04:44.938 --> 02:04:48.253
But with that being said,

2424
02:04:48.467 --> 02:04:50.975
and it's definitely been
in my mind since then,

2425
02:04:50.975 --> 02:04:53.204
and I want to share it with everyone.

2426
02:04:54.574 --> 02:04:56.547
One piece of the movie that I just

2427
02:04:56.547 --> 02:04:58.742
haven't been able to stop thinking about

2428
02:04:58.742 --> 02:05:01.946
and I probably never will,
which is a good thing,

2429
02:05:01.946 --> 02:05:04.936
is when they showed the picture to Korey.

2430
02:05:06.520 --> 02:05:10.010
And just seeing his genuine reaction,

2431
02:05:10.688 --> 02:05:15.176
like, that was just, I
think that said everything.

2432
02:05:15.936 --> 02:05:19.767
Right then and there in
that 30 second piece.

2433
02:05:19.767 --> 02:05:23.169
And I just think that's just
so important to remember

2434
02:05:23.169 --> 02:05:24.911
that you guys were so young,

2435
02:05:24.911 --> 02:05:26.942
and so really thank you

2436
02:05:26.942 --> 02:05:30.483
for coming out and talking about this,

2437
02:05:30.483 --> 02:05:32.283
and you made a comment about

2438
02:05:32.283 --> 02:05:34.547
how you're not going to therapy,

2439
02:05:34.547 --> 02:05:36.555
and you said that at a social work school,

2440
02:05:36.555 --> 02:05:41.275
so (laughter)
- This is therapy.

2441
02:05:42.326 --> 02:05:43.730
- [Voiceover] We can talk
collectively, I think,

2442
02:05:43.730 --> 02:05:46.331
and say, "Maybe. Maybe do that."

2443
02:05:46.331 --> 02:05:51.121
Because (laughter) it's
doing justice for everyone

2444
02:05:53.100 --> 02:05:55.166
for you to take care of yourself

2445
02:05:55.166 --> 02:05:56.676
in a manner that allows you to continue

2446
02:05:56.676 --> 02:06:01.041
doing this type of
discussion for everyone else.

2447
02:06:01.041 --> 02:06:02.928
So thank you for that.

2448
02:06:04.385 --> 02:06:06.167
- One more.

2449
02:06:08.889 --> 02:06:12.599
- In the back.
- Up in the back maybe.

2450
02:06:12.686 --> 02:06:14.967
- Or just yell it out.
(laughter)

2451
02:06:15.588 --> 02:06:18.259
Oh in the middle right there.
- Right there.

2452
02:06:18.259 --> 02:06:20.807
- Right behind you.
- Yeah. There we go.

2453
02:06:22.694 --> 02:06:25.573
(laughter) - [Voiceover] Thanks. So hi.

2454
02:06:25.573 --> 02:06:29.706
So I wanted to ask, and
I'm just really very happy

2455
02:06:29.706 --> 02:06:33.305
that you're here and sharing with us,

2456
02:06:33.305 --> 02:06:38.305
and I guess I wanted
to ask how can we have

2457
02:06:39.447 --> 02:06:44.236
a more gendered conversation around

2458
02:06:46.424 --> 02:06:48.386
when we talk about the prison system,

2459
02:06:48.386 --> 02:06:53.083
and when we talk about the atrocities

2460
02:06:53.390 --> 02:06:56.270
that we look at from enslavement to today

2461
02:06:56.270 --> 02:06:59.085
and modern enslavement,

2462
02:06:59.729 --> 02:07:02.400
and in having that gendered conversation,

2463
02:07:02.400 --> 02:07:06.510
is that, I personally feel that

2464
02:07:06.510 --> 02:07:09.609
this country sets men
of color as examples,

2465
02:07:09.609 --> 02:07:14.294
as public examples, of
what should not be done

2466
02:07:14.718 --> 02:07:16.483
and how you will be punished

2467
02:07:16.483 --> 02:07:18.741
and how you will be killed.

2468
02:07:18.886 --> 02:07:20.755
But when I speak on gendered,

2469
02:07:20.755 --> 02:07:24.424
I'm talking about the silent
way that women of color,

2470
02:07:24.424 --> 02:07:29.306
that women are set as
examples and are broken

2471
02:07:29.567 --> 02:07:33.393
and are, you know, you could
fill in the blank in many ways.

2472
02:07:34.571 --> 02:07:38.170
And how can we be able to
have more of a conversation

2473
02:07:38.170 --> 02:07:42.477
where it is balanced in
terms of talking about

2474
02:07:42.477 --> 02:07:45.560
the voices of women, not from only --

2475
02:07:45.682 --> 02:07:49.722
not only from a perspective
of mother, sister, daughter,

2476
02:07:49.722 --> 02:07:54.722
but a perspective of survivor,
victim, killed, raped, etc.

2477
02:07:55.852 --> 02:07:59.840
And also, along with
men, in the prison system

2478
02:08:00.299 --> 02:08:03.004
in also astronomical numbers,

2479
02:08:03.004 --> 02:08:05.697
so I just wanted to see how
we can be able to have that

2480
02:08:05.697 --> 02:08:08.635
open dialogue in that
conversation and not,

2481
02:08:08.635 --> 02:08:12.408
in some ways, add to that silence

2482
02:08:12.408 --> 02:08:16.791
of where women are in relations to this.

2483
02:08:18.015 --> 02:08:20.245
- Yes, yes, yes. I think that's beautiful.

2484
02:08:20.245 --> 02:08:23.019
I completely agree.

2485
02:08:23.019 --> 02:08:24.923
Just real quick, everybody heard about

2486
02:08:24.923 --> 02:08:26.421
the Dream Defenders,
right, y'all know what's

2487
02:08:26.421 --> 02:08:28.255
going down in Florida?

2488
02:08:28.255 --> 02:08:30.821
OK well, they've been
occupying the State House

2489
02:08:30.821 --> 02:08:32.598
in Tallahassee.

2490
02:08:32.598 --> 02:08:34.629
But the reason I mention them is because,

2491
02:08:34.629 --> 02:08:36.951
you know they have a
three-prong kind of campaign

2492
02:08:36.951 --> 02:08:38.937
right now, and that is --

2493
02:08:38.937 --> 02:08:42.640
The first piece is to ban racial profiling

2494
02:08:42.640 --> 02:08:44.869
throughout the state of Florida.

2495
02:08:44.869 --> 02:08:46.204
The second piece that they're calling for

2496
02:08:46.204 --> 02:08:50.297
is an end to the school
to prison pipeline.

2497
02:08:50.848 --> 02:08:53.844
And the third piece is they want to repeal

2498
02:08:53.844 --> 02:08:55.748
the Stand Your Ground law in Florida.

2499
02:08:55.748 --> 02:08:58.987
And Florida was one of the
pioneering states in 2005

2500
02:08:58.987 --> 02:09:01.286
to put in motion the
Stand Your Ground law.

2501
02:09:01.286 --> 02:09:04.223
Now there's over 25 states that have them

2502
02:09:04.223 --> 02:09:08.479
all the way up to 2011 was
the last one that was enacted.

2503
02:09:08.635 --> 02:09:09.633
But the reason why I'm mentioning the

2504
02:09:09.633 --> 02:09:11.967
school to prison pipeline is
because the sister's point

2505
02:09:11.967 --> 02:09:16.541
is well taken because if we look at the

2506
02:09:16.541 --> 02:09:18.271
school to prison pipeline,
we have to understand

2507
02:09:18.271 --> 02:09:20.106
what's happening in the school systems and

2508
02:09:20.106 --> 02:09:21.847
the ways in which students of color

2509
02:09:21.847 --> 02:09:25.696
are being disciplined
which lead to arrests,

2510
02:09:26.410 --> 02:09:30.450
and a friend of mine out west
is doing some work around

2511
02:09:30.450 --> 02:09:32.482
the way in which young women of color

2512
02:09:32.482 --> 02:09:35.024
are increasingly being
disciplined and then

2513
02:09:35.024 --> 02:09:37.788
suspended, detained, and
then funneled into the

2514
02:09:37.788 --> 02:09:39.866
prison system from their schools.

2515
02:09:39.866 --> 02:09:41.758
In the public school system in California.

2516
02:09:41.758 --> 02:09:43.767
In Oakland, California, to be exact.

2517
02:09:43.767 --> 02:09:45.624
So as you were mentioning that,

2518
02:09:45.624 --> 02:09:47.795
I was thinking of that example as just one

2519
02:09:47.795 --> 02:09:50.466
of many we could name about why

2520
02:09:50.466 --> 02:09:52.103
you're absolutely correct in terms of

2521
02:09:52.103 --> 02:09:54.378
looking at this in a nuanced, gendered,

2522
02:09:54.378 --> 02:09:58.744
race, class, region, of kind of collective

2523
02:09:58.744 --> 02:10:01.809
inter-sectional analysis
throughout our discussion,

2524
02:10:01.809 --> 02:10:04.404
so I just kind of wanted to amen that.

2525
02:10:06.453 --> 02:10:09.552
- So I think we need to;
I'm getting the hi sign

2526
02:10:09.552 --> 02:10:12.258
from over here, from the leadership,

2527
02:10:12.258 --> 02:10:13.593
that I need to cut this.

2528
02:10:13.593 --> 02:10:15.334
Because I could stay and I really want to

2529
02:10:15.334 --> 02:10:16.855
appreciate that people hung in here.

2530
02:10:16.855 --> 02:10:18.399
If you want to come up, we'll be here

2531
02:10:18.399 --> 02:10:20.605
for a few minutes, so if you
want to come up and talk with

2532
02:10:20.605 --> 02:10:23.635
any of the panelists,
please feel free to do that.

2533
02:10:23.635 --> 02:10:25.539
Just really want to appreciate. Thank you.

2534
02:10:25.539 --> 02:10:27.856
(applause)

2535
02:10:55.772 --> 02:10:58.941
- I just have -- I don't
know if you guys heard.

2536
02:10:58.941 --> 02:11:01.681
I do poetry.

2537
02:11:01.681 --> 02:11:05.315
So I just have one piece that
I want to share with you all.

2538
02:11:05.315 --> 02:11:07.811
Very succinct piece of poetry called

2539
02:11:07.811 --> 02:11:09.965
"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."

2540
02:11:12.850 --> 02:11:14.934
I've gotta stand up and do this.

2541
02:11:16.960 --> 02:11:21.146
The revolution will not be televised.

2542
02:11:23.601 --> 02:11:26.271
I can remember when that statement

2543
02:11:26.271 --> 02:11:29.174
made me sad inside.

2544
02:11:29.174 --> 02:11:31.310
Too young to be in it,

2545
02:11:31.310 --> 02:11:33.771
now I couldn't even see it?

2546
02:11:33.771 --> 02:11:35.907
Why?

2547
02:11:35.907 --> 02:11:39.716
Why couldn't the revolution be televised?

2548
02:11:39.716 --> 02:11:42.850
The last poets, Gil Scott Heron,

2549
02:11:42.850 --> 02:11:45.521
as I grew up I began to see:

2550
02:11:45.521 --> 02:11:48.319
They left theirs, and
I, too, wanted to leave

2551
02:11:48.319 --> 02:11:50.524
a mark on history.

2552
02:11:50.524 --> 02:11:53.462
A man in half and I wanted to bask

2553
02:11:53.462 --> 02:11:56.417
in that task that set men free.

2554
02:11:57.096 --> 02:12:00.904
But a revolution, the revolution,

2555
02:12:00.904 --> 02:12:03.423
is where I knew I had to be.

2556
02:12:03.423 --> 02:12:06.337
The revolution will not be televised.

2557
02:12:06.337 --> 02:12:08.938
They didn't wanna display the victory

2558
02:12:08.938 --> 02:12:12.102
of those quote-unquote "lesser men."

2559
02:12:13.350 --> 02:12:17.663
The revolution will not
be televised. Smile.

2560
02:12:18.354 --> 02:12:20.292
I know.

2561
02:12:20.292 --> 02:12:22.777
Because I am the revolution.

2562
02:12:22.777 --> 02:12:24.495
Peace.

2563
02:12:24.495 --> 02:12:29.111
(applause and cheering)