 What this campaign is about is not sound bites. It is attempting to address some of the most important issues facing our country. It's attempt to force discussion on issues that are often swept under the rug. And today's discussion is an enormously important issue in terms of the destruction of human life and the expenditure of vast, vast sums of money in ways that all of us can think could be spent in a better way. Bottom line is, and I want everybody in this room to know it, in the United States of America, we have more people in jail today than any other country on earth. Think about it. China is a communist authoritarian country four times our size. We have more people in jail than China does. 2.2 million people. We are spending $80 billion every year to lock up fellow Americans. All right? Clearly, we can do a lot better. But we are not gonna do a lot better unless we break through some old ideas. And that's what this panel is about. This is a great panel. What we're gonna do after our panelists speak, we're gonna open it up for you. I'll talk for a while, and I want your ideas. This is gonna be a town meeting, an informal discussion to address a very, very serious issue. And without further ado, let me introduce to you a woman who has been a champion, not just on this issue, she's come from Cleveland, but on issues impacting low income and working people. You know, in America today, their issues were allowed to talk about, issues were not allowed to talk about. Poverty is one of the issues, apparently they were not allowed to talk about despite the fact that we have 47 million people living in poverty. Senator Nina Turner does talk about poverty, does talk about the needs of working people, does talk about a broken criminal justice system. And we're so delighted that she's a part of our campaign. Senator Nina Turner. So very much. And I wanna thank the Senator for that warm introduction. It's such a pleasure to be here with you to talk about an issue that is so fundamental to the core of who we are and who we hope to be. And I can't wait to engage in this dialogue with Jerome and with Reuben, who have a story to tell. You know, what is so appealing about Senator Sanders is that he doesn't say one thing to one audience, that he couldn't say to any other audience. And when we think about what is wrong in this country, one of the things is that we cannot afford any longer to take the human capital that we have in this nation and just lock folks up and throw away the key. We cannot do that. And disproportionately, we gotta have a coming to Jesus meeting, as I like to say, about what is happening to black and brown folks in this country. We are not new to this. The problems that are facing this nation are generational. And it is just unseemly to have the overwhelming majority of black and brown folks and poor white folks locked up and for us to think that they're gonna stay locked up forever and not care about what type of life, what type of future they may or may not have when they come back. And so for Senator Sanders to stand boldly and to talk about these issues, I was just with the Senator in Cleveland, Ohio, at the Cleveland State University, my alma mater, where the audience was a majority white audience. And the Senator said these words. He said, as the president of the United States of America, I will work to eradicate institutional racism. That is, that's it. That's it. And he's willing to say that, no matter what the audience looks like, because as Dr. King once said, and we quote Dr. King often because he is just so quotable, but he hit the nail on the head. He said, what happens to one directly happens to us all indirectly. And so we cannot say that we are the land of the free home of the brave when we throw folks away, even after they have served their debt to society, we don't give them the opportunity to live out their greatest greatness. This really is about restorative justice. That when folks come back home, they need to have a job, they need to have somewhere to live, they need a support system, and it's not just a one-time proposition. As humans, we fail over and over and over again. And I want you to think about your lives, that if you hadn't had some type of support system, whether that's a family member, or a minister, a rabbi, emem, just somebody that you can talk things through, where would you be as a human being? And so we cannot any longer continue to throw people away. And I am so happy that Senator Sanders is willing to take on these issues head on, and talk about them head on, and deal with the fact that black and brown folks are disproportionately locked up. Now I understand in your state that African-Americans make up about 4% of the population give or take, but then they make up over 20-something percent of the prison population. There's something wrong with that. So either we're saying that black and brown folks are innately more criminal than anybody else, or we have to confess something that we have a problem in this nation that it is going to take, as my grandmother used to say, Lottie Dotty and everybody to do something about. And so we gotta do that. And so I'm supporting Senator Sanders because of his righteous indignation for working poor folks. As the Senator said, we gotta not be afraid to say poor. Some people are poor, and they're trying to make it to the middle class, and we have a middle class that is almost non-existent, and the Senator talks to those issues. But I'm gonna tell you something. He is the only candidate for president that has a comprehensive racial justice program policy that will deal with the four violences against black and brown folks, physical, political, legal, and economic. Together we rise, divided we will fall. And so it is vitally important that we all take a look at what is happening in the criminal justice system and start to treat folks who come back out of that system and welcome them back into our communities and help them to be able to live out their greatest greatness. We can do that together. And now we are gonna turn to some real, real experts on the criminal justice system. People whose lives have experienced the criminal justice system from A to Z. And people who have shown unbelievable courage and determination in transforming their lives and not only transforming their lives, using their lives to make sure that younger people do not go through the same experiences that they have gone through. And I would hope all of you have just the enormous respect for the courage and determination that they have shown. So it gives me a great deal of an honor and a privilege to introduce Jerome Miller. Jerome is a former convict. Jerome has been in penitentiary. And he's gonna talk a little bit about his life. Please welcome Jerome Miller. Jerome. Hi everybody, my name is Jerome Miller. I am 51 years old, coming this Wednesday. I am from New York, Queens. And I, like the senator said, I have 11 years in the penitentiary. A lot of my criminal behavior revolves around the use of drugs. I have- Mike. Hold up, Mike. I have five and a half years in New York State for drugs. I have three years here in Iowa for drugs and I have three years in Colorado for drugs. I came out in 2010. So I'm home now about five years. One of the things that kept me home is the fact that I got tired of what was going on with myself. And I figured I'll start taking control of my life. I've let everybody else write the book about who I am, my felonies, my troubles in school. And this is like the latter part of my life. It's time for me to take my book, grab the pen and write the rest of my story and make my happy ending. One of the reasons that I was able to get out of the penitentiary is because I changed my thinking process. I did not allow myself to fall victim to the same old conditioning. I decided to do things on purpose. So I just studied and studied and studied and people would ask me, what are you studying? I'm studying just to study. I'm not sitting around talking, just to talk. I talk for a purpose and with a purpose. I seen the parole board 18 months, had a 35 years with 18 month mandatory sentence. I seen the board in 18 months and they told me I didn't have enough time. So they sat me down and said, we might see you next year. I wrote them and said, thank you for giving me the opportunity. I understand, I have 35 years and maybe I didn't satisfy it with just 18 months. However, I will see you again and I will continue doing the things I need to do to make that happen. I seen them the next year. They asked me a question and it's a very important question. It's something that the senator from Ohio had hit on. They said, why should we let you go home? And I said, because I'm still useful. Please do not put me inside the warehouse on a shelf and let me sit there. I am useful. I can use my experiences, bad or good to help those who unfortunately may be traveling the ways that I have traveled. Five years later, I am now in my master degree in Drake. I dropped out in the 10th grade in 1988 and got a GED in New York State Penitentiary. And now again, I'm in my master's degree. The young man that is company me, he was the first young man that gave me a job when I went into Fort Des Moines, which is the work release. That most of, if any of your family members are incarcerated and they have to go through work release, probably would be Fort Des Moines. And when you go to Fort Des Moines, they give you a piece of paper and they tell you to go find a job. That's all they do. Well, I have 11 years in the penitentiary, three here again. And in those three years, I have been through a lot of things. And there were some emotional things that I had to learn how to deal with, with no help. So I've learned how to deal with myself. Without those supports that the senators were mentioning, I'd probably be back. And I didn't have many supports. I own my own agency now. And the reason why I own my own agency is because nobody would give me a job. I made my own job. Everyone though, does not have the resilience that I have. So one of the things that I say is that while you have a person incarcerated and they're just doing time, you need to put something on their brain so that they can be conditioned to do something different because you're going to be conditioned regardless of what you do because you're just doing it over and over and over again. So put something on their brain. What saved me was the ability to save others. And I did it so I can save myself. And in the process of saving myself, I have been able to benefit other people. Now I have been inside of people's homes as a business worker for those who don't know that, that's behavior health intervention. I have been a parent partner for those who don't know that. That was a people who helped other people who has lost their children because of drugs or other things. We are mentors for them to jump through the hoops of DHS and do what they need to do to get their children back. I feel great doing all those things. And those things keep me free. I believe that if you give somebody the opportunity to serve, especially just coming out, they'll take that opportunity. And a lot of them will stay home. And we won't see all this going back and forth. With that, I'm gonna pass it on to the Senator and let other people talk. Thank you very much for your time. Jerome, thank you very much. Now I'm very honored to introduce Ruben Johnson. Ruben, similarly to Jerome, has also experienced the inside of a penitentiary. Please welcome Ruben Johnson. Thank you all. Appreciate y'all being here. I'm sure that it's gonna be real beneficial. My name is Ruben Johnson. Like they said, I have been in penitentiary. I've been incarcerated three times in the state of Illinois and the state of Iowa. And kind of like picking back and off of what Jerome Miller said, it's a huge struggle going from that and then coming out. Most just about everybody who comes out of prison, they have a grand idea of something changing, something being a little bit better, maybe doing a little bit of something different. I'll be honest, some of them will come out and think maybe I'll do the crime different and I won't get caught. But they're in there. My point being is they have this thought that maybe if I do something different, if something changes, I will get a different outcome. For the ones who are thinking positively, in a lot of cases, a lot of cases that does not exist. That does not exist unless you have some family support or unless you have some gentlemen who have been in prison and can speak directly to you about their experiences. Nine times out of 10, they have nothing. And I'm gonna just speak about my experience. When I left the penitentiary in Illinois, I was being released from Joliet State Penitentiary. The day before I was released, I did not know I was going to be released, had no idea. So someone finally came to my cell, said package stuff, you're going home. Great, exciting. I'm wondering what the next steps will be. There are no next steps. So when I get released, I get taken to the front door of the state prison to await my ride. They give me a envelope and I believe it had $75 in it, perhaps, and that was it. My ride was a little late. They tell me to sit on a bench and wait. I didn't know what to expect, yet I was expecting something. In my mind, I was like, should I be getting something? Is there no paperwork? Are there some other steps that I need to follow when I get back out? Nothing. My brother comes to pick me up, he's an unlicensed driver, he's an ex-fellow. When I get in the car, he has marijuana and some drink for me. Congratulations, brother, I'm glad you're home. Let's party. Unfortunately, I am in poverty, so I have to go back to my home. My friends, these are my friends. They say, man, I'm glad you're home and they wanna give me things they're illegal to allow me to get some money so that they say you can get back on your feet. These are my friends. Unfortunately, that's all I had available to me at that point. That's not what I wanted, but I didn't know where else to look. I felt as if I should want something else but I didn't know where else to look, so I took it. I ended up going back to prison. Again, those are my friends. So I get out of prison from Mount Pleasant, Iowa here. I kinda expected that I would be released. I went to see the parole board similar to Jerome and in that parole board meeting, they have a list of questions that they typically ask you and these are a list of questions that they ask everybody. Different cases, different demographics, different understandings, different backgrounds. Yes, they're the same questions for everybody. Eventually, because I might be in a cell with Jerome, Jerome has kinda prepped me for the questions. So I answer the questions in the manner in which the parole officers wants to hear them and they grant me a parole. That's not to say I hadn't changed or I hadn't learned anything. Well, I did learn something. I learned what they wanted to hear when they asked these questions and they benefited me. So I was able to be released from prison. While I was in prison, they have programs that you must be a part of. What I'm responsible with when I'm in prison to those programs is to show up. I have to show up and sign my name that I was here. From that point, I can fall asleep. The instructor does not work in the prison. He has no responsibility whatsoever to ensure that I follow this program or even learn from the program. He is being paid to show up and facilitate a class and he does that. And to my understanding, he probably does it well. When I'm woke, I'll probably think that he does it well. So honestly, I didn't gather that much from that. I did gain some things that I found out later, but I didn't gather that much from that. So upon getting granted the parole to be released, the kind of like the same thing happened over again. I'm expecting something. I feel like something shouldn't happen. So they tell me I'm going to a work release center. He mentioned it and it's in fourth. They're more like, okay, so I understand that. That'll be a little bit more development. Maybe some skills training, if you will. I don't know, but no, not at all. You get there, you have to establish a banking account because they want to keep track and manage your money for you. They're nice that way. They will also give you the piece of paper that he mentioned where you must go out and you find a job. Now, kind of like what Jerome said, when Jerome came out, me and him met and I was able to assist him with finding some employment that he became successful at. I was able to develop him to the point where he was able to run off on his own and find that development. That's almost was my expectation in this work release center, but that's not what they do. Again, they'll just give you this piece of paper and they require you to go out and get that job. I was not from Des Moines, Iowa. I knew nothing about Des Moines, Iowa. I really didn't have Des Moines, Iowa. When friends, I did not know where employers was, I didn't even have work experience. So my resume is going to be tainted. Unfortunately, I had dropped out of school so I don't have a full level of education either. If not for a friend of mine who happened to be incarcerated telling me, yo, they hired me over here and they're still hiring. They like us. You need to come out here. So I went out there, the interview process is very simple, probably because they just want to feel ceased. They're trying to feel their full-time employee quota and I met that. So they hired me. But if not for that gentleman introducing me to that, I would not have had that opportunity. What it turns out is the same employment opportunity he talked about and we made it a point to go out and seek individuals who were just recently let out of prison who didn't have many skills or many educational opportunities and we brought them in, right? I won't take up too much more of your time. Hopefully to make sure you maybe you'll ask me later on. But throughout my time, I was released from prison in 1999 and to this day I haven't recidivated. I'm proud of that. I haven't even thought about recidivating. I'm a little bit proud of that. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. That's my job. That's what I should be doing. I shouldn't be congratulated for it. I'm proud of it. I shouldn't be congratulated for it. But throughout that time, I have met and I cannot even count them on my hand and I'm no one special in it. That's not what I'm saying. But I have met, I can't count them on my hand but I'll roughly say about 15 different male individuals who if I hadn't had the experiences that I had that made me a little upset and angry and I wanna make sure that this gentleman doesn't go through that either. There are about roughly 10 to 15 individuals who have felony records that I'm not even supposed to socialize with who I've had giving them an opportunity in their life today. They have never been back to prison one time. They're gainfully employed. Some are pursuing their master's degrees in college. I mean, they're making so many improvements. They're getting married. They're not even running the streets in that type of manner anymore. Some have gotten off drugs. Some have stopped drinking. I don't take credit for it. What I do know is I gave them the motivation to be able to pursue their dreams in that manner. However, legally, this was something that I was not supposed to be able to do. Legally, this was something that I was not supposed to be able to do. I want you guys to think about that, right? If this young lady accidentally makes a mistake in her life and they consider it felonious, a felony, she is removed as a resource from just about everybody else in this room if we were felons. And I don't think that's fair because I know she has something that I'll be able to benefit from, something that'll be able to impact my life. What does that mean? We are giving back to our community. We're giving back to our families. We're giving back to our country in this particular manner. That's all I have. I don't take up too much time. I thank you guys for allowing me to come here and speak in this manner, but I do hope that this allows us to open our mind, open our eyes to the demographic that we are singling out and we're targeting. I understand that there are criminals out there and they need to be in prison, but we have to make sure we're doing our weights and balances and we're getting the right people in the right places. Thank you. Ruben, thank you very much. I got a long speech, but I ain't gonna give it. Because these guys know more about the subject than I do. What I wanna do, and we don't usually do it this way, I just wanna open it up. Let me throw out some questions that maybe we may wanna think about. Why is it that in America, we have so many people in jail? Question number one, why is it disproportionately black and brown? What are some of the laws out there, minimum sentencing, so-called war on drugs? What impact does all of that have on the high rates of incarceration in America? Are we doing anything close to what we should be doing in terms of dealing with the high rates of recidivism? In other words, you heard both of these guys talking about when you come out of jail, is there a path, are there programs available to help you get your feet back on the ground or are you simply given a piece of paper and said in 75 bucks, and good luck to you. And if that's the case, why is it not surprising that so many people end up back in jail, okay? So those are just some of the issues that come to the top of my mind. Other issues out there that we didn't talk about, all right? And I'm the former chairman, it's interesting, I'm the former chairman of the Senate Veterans Committee and somehow or another I think there's some kind of correlation, some kind of relationship when people come home for, what about the wives or the girlfriends and the children? How are they impacted on this whole process? That worthy talking about what percentage of kids whose parents are in jail will themselves end up in jail? The answer is obviously it's a very, very high percentage but if dad is arrested and goes to jail, what happens to the rest of the family? I might want to think about that. All right, so those are some of my questions. You have other questions, let's open it up. Yeah, sir, just introduce yourself and be as loud as you can. Oh, we have a mic, okay, there's a mic right here. I'm Steve Patterson, I'm from Cedar Rapids, I'll marry on a summer of the Cedar Rapids. Is it going in? I can project. Just hold that mic close to your mouth, Steve. All right, oh there it is. We welcome you and your guests here today. One of the questions that came up to us while we were just sitting here is what about having the voting rights restored to confirm that one story we're doing? Steve, that is a fantastically important question. And I have the numbers buried here in my speech but I'll give it over to Jerome. Do you want to say a few words on that? You got a mic there? Yes, he said we have a tiny mic. Okay. Is it? Yeah. Well, I'm loud too, so don't go there. I'm gonna stand up so everybody can see me as well. I, well, we did have it at one time and the governor that we have now when he was first inaugurated, he, yeah, he left. Me and Reuben, we worked at the place that they was having their party at when he won and he left and rescinded the bill for us to vote because he wanted to be governor again. We might not vote for him. That's all. That's what happened there. I do think that's important though because again, I mean, we all make mistakes. Some makes worse mistakes than others and if a person has proved to be able to think now in a more productive way, then I think certain rights should be restored to that person so they can be a full citizen of this country and we have a lot to offer. I mean, right now I'm a second class citizen. I can't vote and I can't carry a gun. Well, I don't want a gun and the only person I probably would vote for if I could would be Bernie. And he ain't paying me for that. Just letting you know. No money for that one. But that's something that would make me a whole person. You know, one of the reasons why I'm able to do the things that I do and I have came as far as I came in this five years, short period of time is because I feel I have a purpose. Without a purpose, that's anybody. Be it an ex-con, be it a person who worked their job, all their life, what happens when you retire? You know, you feel lost, right? You need a purpose, right? So helping, allowing us to help this democracy that we have will help us feel like a part and not outside, inside the law and not outside the law. Outlaw's enough. All right, in case anybody is interested or I found the statistic, this is unbelievable. Picking up on Jerome's point. 13% of African-American men have lost the right to vote due to felony convictions, 13%. Now if anyone thinks, by the way, let me just make two points on that and Jerome has made the main point. You did your time, right? You were convicted, you did your time, you suffered. Why should that crime take away your right to participate in American democracy? Now there are states like mine, by the way, where felons do vote. And we have got to make that universal. People have paid their price, but that does not mean they should not be able to participate in the democratic system. Steve, thanks for that very, very good question. All right, let's get some, yeah ma'am, stand up. Hi, I am Stephanie Scruggs. I live here in Anamosa. And my comment is that 64% of people in jails and prisons have some sort of mental health challenge. And you mentioned earlier that poor is a word that we don't like to talk about. Mental health is something that is a huge contributing factor to people ending up in jails and prisons and especially in the state of Iowa. We just closed two of our mental health facilities. I know the governor would like to close a third. And when people have nowhere to go for mental health treatment, oftentimes, they end up in jail or prison. So. See, that's why I don't give speeches because you guys get right to the point right away. Too absolutely great. All right, I'm gonna ask these guys. No, I want you to answer it. Let's, Anita, jump it as well. Mental health issues, people behind bars. What's the correlation? Who wants to join me, I'll take a shot. Yes. Speaking about the African American community and other minority communities, mental health is something that is, has always been somewhat downplayed. We tend to be very secretive as far as that's concerned. The access, the ability to get to a mental health facility is another thing that might interfere with a person getting that. So most minorities do get their mental health treatment while incarcerated. Then they get their treatment. They learn how to deal with it. They come home with maybe six months' worth of medication if they have medication. And that's it once again. So we don't have no, it's gaps, right? So they go back and they call themselves self-medicated doing the wrong things again and they back into penitentiary again. So it's a vicious cycle. We have some services that connects from the penitentiary to society, then there might not be that much of an issue. I want Ruben to answer and then I'm gonna ask you guys to think about what percentage of people, because I don't know the answer to this, I don't know if anyone does, but what percentage of people behind bars in fact are medicated? Is there a lot of medicine in it? Well first, I don't know too much about the mental health thing that clinical diagnosis would have. I'll be honest with you, I'm skeptical of it. I know it's used as a tool, it's especially for younger people. That's where they started at. If I can clinically diagnose you with a problem right here, I can say that's the reason why I'm sending you to prison. Later on down the line, you can't learn, you're unable to change. You have issues, you have mental health. Let's just go ahead and get them incarcerated. Because before you get incarcerated, naturally they show you the dream that there's rehabilitation, there's treatment, there's things that'll be able to address once you're incarcerated. Not true. So then going to what you're talking about, that's where the medication comes in at. I'm the doctor in the prison. It's a prison that's fairly big. I got a lot of people who were considered clinically or mental health issues. Well I would rather just medicate some that I don't want to deal with. And I'll service some that I do. So the medication rate is high, so that I end up coming out of prison and I need to sustain that so that I don't punch somebody in the face. You're saying it's a significant number of the people in prison or on medication? Yes. And when they get out of prison, what happens? When they get out of prison, that medication becomes, it falls more into the financial realm. Now there's a huge benefit in it, so particularly you probably can't afford it, right? So you go to the alternative. I don't know if you pay attention to the news of you do some studies, right? They go from a prescribed medication pill that makes them feel some type of way and they go find that drug on the street. So whether it's something that made you feel relaxed, you might go find marijuana or heroin. If it's something that made you feel hyper, you might go find cocaine or meth, whatever the case may be, right? So it's just, again, the coping mechanism, whether it's mental health, whether it's the guy that was in prison, whether it's the guy that doesn't have a support or whatever, you go and you try to find what you can do to cope because there's nothing out here to help you. A part of that, again, is the gap, right? Because again, they just let you out. It's not I let you out and then these are the services we're gonna put around you, right? So we can make sure that you're still out, which helps the person who just came out of penitentiary provides jobs for individuals, things of that nature. All right, let me jump in and ask you a question. All right, Ruben says, tell me if I got it right. They let you out with 75 bucks, right? Okay, 75 bucks. Many people who get out have been receiving medication in jail. You got a limited amount of money, you don't have a job, men don't have job training. And you have, why do you have that? Tell me about that. Well, the short and the sweet of it is I represent a significant amount of money as an individual to the prison complex and they are determined to get their money. So even when you're out, you owe them their money. They typically say restitution, they might say pay to stay, like you'll pay for your bed, you'll pay for, eventually you pay for the medication that you were getting in there, you pay for all the services, you pay for the treatment, but it's not itemized on that bill, they just lump it in one sum called restitution, if you will. And that's not taken off of you, you will pay that. You, like child support, you will pay that. So you're getting out of jail without a job, but in debt. Drum, did you wanna hear from them? Oh yes, and then, they pay, you pay for supervision, so you have a parole officer, you have to pay $300 to have one, right? Where's the assumption that you have this $300 to pay? I mean, it doesn't matter, go get it. Go get it. Did you guys know this? Am I the only person in this room who didn't know this? All right, yeah. Yeah, and then if you go to Polk County, pay for stay, and it's contractual, so they give you a piece of paper that you sign your name on. Now if you don't sign that name, I can't really tell you what happens, you won't be charged, but you probably won't go to a bed because if it's comfortable or not, right? You'd probably be fed because that's what they need to do, but you might just get, you know, baloney sandwich, right? All right, so what we're hearing is you're released, no job, no source of income, 75 bucks maybe in your pocket. You may be on medications which have created a certain feeling in you that you're gonna have to deal with outside, and then on top of that, you owe the state some money. And then you don't have nobody, like if you had a case manager, say every person who's about to leave out of the state penitentiary or federal penitentiary had a case manager, that person would be somebody there to organize these services around that one person. So there's no gaps, but there's no money in fixer. Nina, too. I mean, we're really setting people up to fail, and we have to come to grips with that, and the question about mental health, and I'm so glad that the young lady brought that up, most of the women, and we have to talk about women in prison, too. We cannot leave out the mamas, the sisters who are in prison right now. Most women are non-violent offenders as well, so we're locking them up. Many of them, not all, because we need to care about single women as well as single and women who don't have children, but then just think about the women who do have children, how we're compounding that, because lots of homes, especially in poor communities, and especially in African American communities are single mother-head households over 70%. So if the mama is locked up, where are the resources for the children? But to her mental health point, lots of women are on that mental health track, and they don't have the support that they need when they come out. So we should not be surprised, and I'm with you, Sena, I mean, the charging of folks, but we should not be surprised as a nation when we know that the system itself is created to help them go back to prison, really. And so your point, Senator Abel, and I hope you'll talk about that, taking away the profit, doing away with for-profit prison. Well, let me just pick up on the point that Senator Turner made, and then we'll open it up. I think this one is a no-brainer, and we've introduced legislation. Corporations should not be profiteering through the incarceration of fellow Americans. End of discussion. I'm in pretty much total agreement with everything. Your name? Sorry, my name is Rick Stewart. I'm from Cedar Rapids. Rick. And in my neighborhood, it's 50% black, it's not four. And I agree with everything people are saying, but I still don't think we're talking about the white elephant in the room, which is over half of our prison population is there for non-violent drug offenses. You can't solve a problem if you continue to throw people in prison for doing nothing that hurts anybody but themselves, and in most cases, doesn't hurt themselves. What we have is gutless politicians who won't stand up and say the war on drugs is a complete and total failure and needs to stop now. Well, Rick, it looks like you touched the nerve in the room. All right, let me just start it off as somebody who does not consider himself to be a gutless politician, and tell you about what we have done, and there's a lot to be discussed. You know what I love about these meetings? I mean, what I love about, in three questions, you got three of the major issues, right? I mean, all right, so let's talk about the war on drugs. One of the things that we have done is, many of you may know, we have at the federal level, state governments have their thing, at the federal level, we have the Controlled Substance Act. This is federal law dealing with drugs. Right now, on schedule one, you have heroin, and alongside heroin, you got marijuana. Does that make sense to anybody in this room? Okay, so what we have done, Rick, is introduce legislation that takes marijuana completely out of the Controlled Substance Act. No longer is a federal crime. It doesn't legalize marijuana, that's for the states to do it. As you know, we have four states and the District of Columbia that have done that. That's for the state level, but we have made it not a federal crime. And here's something that I really actually, one of the interesting things about running for president, is you learn a lot, I advise everybody to do it. It's a great learning experience. So one of the things that I learned, and I really knew it, but I didn't really know it, is you get, you possess marijuana, okay? Police come, they arrest you, you don't necessarily go to jail, but you got a police record. You know what, that police record, even without a day in jail, that is a pretty big deal for your life. So you go walk it in, you're looking for a job, right? Go in to the guy and the employer says, hi, how you doing, good. Away you, let me see your record. You got a police record, I don't know, actually, I got a panel of the people outside looking for a job who do not have a police record, have a nice day. Then you can't earn an income. You can't get a job, then what happens here? How do you get money? But you go back to the same old, same old, okay? All right, why don't we start off with a panel talking about the war on drugs, what a police record means, even for a nonviolent offense here. You guys wanna say a word on that, we'll open it up. I mean, again, I'm not as politically savvy as these guys, I don't hear anything like that. But the war on drugs, I can understand, perhaps maybe that we do have a drug problem in this country, that's true, right? Somebody always tells me we need to go find out what created the drug problem, what started it, what went over the situation, what went over the issues. I don't know, maybe it could be poverty, maybe it could be a lack of opportunity, maybe it could be a lack of resources, maybe it could be something that was designed to target a specific population and it worked to a certain extent. So, you know, whatever, right, it needs to end, it needs to end immediately because it's having too much of a blowback right now. But more importantly, what you hit home was about that police record, right? I, from time to time, I'm fortunate enough to do recruitment interviews and hire people. So, I would also have to run a background check. And what I learned is that typically, they don't look for convictions, they don't look for what happened after you were charged. All they wanna see are the charges. For example, you have an assault. They don't know the circumstance, they don't care the circumstances because the assault could consist of me and my brother resting in the front yard. My mom couldn't stop us because we were bigger than her so she called the police to do so. The police has to follow his job, so he creates a report. It seems like a very simple Mr. Mead or Assault. The whole entire family, last week, Giggle, we eat together. We don't even go to court because we figure if you don't go to court, no problem, right? But we didn't understand that it gets put down as non-contested, it doesn't go away. It just says you didn't contest it. So then later on down the line, I end up going to find a job and an employment and I say, yo, run my background check, run my background check four times, I don't care. They say, well, Mr. Sir, you have a assault on your background. No, that's not possible. Yeah, that's possible because they're not looking for anything that would go on the circumstance that went with that. It's easier for me to keep you out of my company by finding something that's adverse to the politics of my company. I don't have to look into it. It's the easier way for me to, that's the word, it's the easier way for me to discriminate against Jerome. Without me looking directly at Jerome and saying, because you're who you are, because of your skin color, whatever the case may be, I will go and find something that was designed for me to be able to legally discriminate against you. So definitely that record does become into play at that point, whether it's the long drugs or not. Yeah, I have a little bit. I was a crack, a cocaine crack person. That was my vision and it was in the 80s, a long time of the regular era in the war on drugs. It was a conspiracy theory that may be true and may not be true. That they needed money for war outside of the United States of America and one of the ways that they were able to do that was to allow a certain individual to allow some drugs in there to feed towards the minority. So it pretty much in my mind was not with the on drugs and the war on minorities because we the ones who got caught up in it. There was times when I was smoking, I had to figure out, should I get high or should I eat? Not only three days without eating. That's how good the cocaine was. So it was perfect in my mind. A lot of us, a lot of the people in my neighborhood got caught into that. And it was at a time for me where we in New York City, we was coming out of the gang mode and we was more into a cultural content. We was being more proud of being black and being brown and we was getting there. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, in my mind, here comes crack cocaine. And yes, it was my choice, you know, but I wasn't warned about anything. Nobody warned me, you know, in that time era, it was, hey, get high, it was okay, you know? So we tried it and that was it. And I know people today who are still underneath that same illusion from the 80s, still chasing that same high. Fortunately, our children, they don't do that no more because they've seen how it affect us. But it's still a whole generation of experience that could have been given, granted, to the babies that were behind us. And it didn't. And I'm very angry about that. And that's one of the reasons why I did pick being a drug counselor so that I can help that type of situation. Because honestly, when we allow somebody to force to the wayside being black, brown, white, whatever the color, what it is, we do a disservice to our country. Everybody has something to offer. Think about me. 11 years of the penitentiary, I changed my life. The fact I changed my life, I changed other people's lives. I have 40 clients that I deal with, white, black from the ages of 17 to 65. And if it wasn't for me changing my life, getting those little opportunities that I was able to grasp on, I couldn't help them. So me helping me helps everybody. You helping us helps everybody. We help each other. That's the unity. Thank you. Okay, other questions? Yup. My name's Andrea Schulteis. I'm from West Branch, Iowa. Andrew, hold up, Mike. A little bit closer to the amount. Sorry. I spent some time working with foster care youth. Age 16 to 21, it was a mentoring program for kids. It was a voluntary program. So they didn't, they had to have a case worker, but they didn't have to work with our program, but it was an incentives-based program. So if they met goals, they could receive incentives, and it was a government program. So we worked at the Department of Human Services, and it was a really great program, and it was pretty well-funded. And I felt like we had a lot of success with the kids that were willing to come work with us. But the day that they turned 21, they're no longer eligible for any of those services. And the percentage of former foster care youth who end up homeless at some point in their lives is over half. In many states, the percentage of former foster care youth that end up in prison, like for the number of inmates who are former foster care youth is over half in most states. And I'm just curious what we can do as a society to help change our perspective that when someone is 12, 13, 14, 18, 19, 20, that they deserve our support. They deserve access to mental health care services. They deserve adults who are there as their mentors or people who they have as wide access to services, professional services. But all of a sudden when they're 21, they're supposed to have all their lives together. And they don't have a support network if they haven't built it through the professionals that have been working with them or if they don't have it innately in them to make it. I don't know what the answer is, but there's so clearly this funneling of kids who grew up without the support that they needed, oftentimes children of people who have been incarcerated and then end up in the system, sometimes successful system, sometimes unsuccessful system, but regardless when they're 21, then it's just cut off. I think for a thought, and I'm gonna give it to the panel as well. We have, by the way, exactly that same problem in Vermont, exactly the same. Look, as a society, what we have got to establish and be clear about is what our priorities are. Is 21 some kind of magical number? So if I'm still struggling when I am 21, trying to do the right thing, right, trying to get my feet on the ground, does it make any sense in the world because of the magical number of 221 that you pull the rug out from under those kids and take away the support system that has kept them alive and whole for a bunch of their lives? Frankly, it does not. I'm gonna tell a story, which is not necessarily relevant to your question, Andrea, but it talks about what we can do when we wanna do it. Southern part of my state, there was a principal of a high school. This woman was virtually fanatical about determining that kids will not drop out of high school. That's it. Hard determination was the kids were not gonna slip through the cracks. And throughout our society, that's what happens zillions of times. People slip through the cracks. Who gives a damn about that kid? She gave a damn about every kid in that school. She hired mentors. You know what the mentor's job was? Kids can call up that mentor at three o'clock in the morning. If there's a fight between your parents or bad things are happening, you call up your mentor at three o'clock in the morning and she or he will be there for you. You are not going to drop out of school because we love you and because we're concerned about your future. And she had an extraordinarily positive result in terms of keeping people from dropping out of school, getting kids jobs when they needed it, helping them financially, helping them get to college if that was their goal. What's the bottom line? The bottom line is we know what has to be done. There are another example. I come from a family when my dad came to this country at the age of 17 without a nickel in his pocket, he dropped out of school. Never had much education. My mother graduated high school. That was it. I went to college, frankly, I was a little bit lost. Hanging around with lawyers, kids, and business people's kids and doctors' kids was very insecure about that. There's a program out there, Senator Turner, I think you know it, the TRIO program. You know what they do? They say to kids who are 14, who are 12, who are 10, you know what, if you want to go to college, we're going to work with you. We're going to tutor you. We're going to take you to a college campus. It ain't so scary. You are smart as anybody else, even if those other kids have money and your family does not. And you know what? They have an extraordinarily successful record. What's the bottom line? The bottom line is we know in many cases what has to be done. The question is putting the resources into doing what has to be done, not wanting to punish people, not wanting to say, hey, you're 21, you're out on your own now, good luck to you. Here's 75 bucks, you're out of jail, you can do it. If we want to make sure that foster kids do well, we know how to do it. If we want to make sure that people who are released from jail do not go back to jail, we know how to do that as well. All right, comments? Senator, you hit the nail on the head and thank you, Andrea, for your work. I have a cousin who is a foster parent, a foster mom, and she ended up adopting those children and older children, especially have a harder time. It does start with the schools and if some way we can connect the schools, schools should know the condition of every child in that school. They are the foundation because every child in this country has to go to school so they're the answer. A community safety net is an answer as well. Age ain't nothing but a number, as they say, it really is and my son who is a police officer, he just turned 26, he is independent but he's not because I'm mama and he's fortunate enough to have a mother and a father that's gonna be on him all the time, even though we raised him right, he had a period of time, especially during the great recession after he graduated where young folks couldn't find jobs, even young folks who had college degrees, but he was fortunate enough to have two parents who could catch him. A lot of children don't have that, whether they're foster children or not, but you're absolutely right. We have a throwaway mentality in this society. If children don't fit a certain mold, we throw them away. So I believe that the school system though is the key because they're the foundation to catch all of the children. The ballot box, can I just say that? Because when we elect people in the elected ministry who care about the folks they were elected to serve, then we can have policies back to Senator Sanders point that will do the things that we need to have done. You cannot defund programs like that and then expect these children to be okay. You can't defund or close down mental health institutions and think that people are going to be okay. You can't collect ungodly amounts of money off the backs of people who have fallen on hard times in this country and think that things are going to be okay. I'm a college professor as well and so I know that TRIO program very well. On the first day of class, I usually ask my students what they want to be when they grow up and it doesn't matter if they're 18, 30, or 65 if they're in my class. If you are living, you should have a dream and a vision for your life. And I've yet to have one of my students say to follow and Professor Turner, when I grow up, I want to be poor or when I grow up, I want to go to prison. That's the life for me. I'm looking forward to this journey. You know, folks, everybody has a dream but somehow along the way it is snuffed out by a society that does not care. If we could just have some compassion and some empathy but then elect folks, Senator Sanders said, give a damn. I want to say elect people who give a shit. You know, elect them. You know, Frederick Douglass once said and I'm not quoting him exactly but he said something along these lines that it's a better investment to invest in children than broken men. And that is what we have to do. We can start right there. But the school system, I think, Senator, I think the school system is the best institutional answer that we have. Let me just add one point. I'm a proud progressive but any conservative out there should be listening to what Senator Turner and Ruben and Jerome are saying as well because the evidence is overwhelming that when you invest in the children when you invest in the services when make sure that kids get a good education or a good job, you save substantial sums of money. At the end of the day, at the end of the day providing a path for kids to go to the University of Iowa is a hell of a lot cheaper than giving them a path to jail. While I was incarcerated, I lost my parental rights so that hit home what the young lady was talking about. Since I've been home, my son has adopted. Nice young lady, we talked. He's 15 years old now. I left, he was three, I came back, he was not. I left, he was three, I came back, he was nine. He's already adopted. The young lady that has adopted him, we talk. And I have my son majority of the time. My son is running track. He's very interested in school. He's trying to go to Coordinary Arts. And I think that's very important. As a parent partner, again, a parent partner is a person who is a role model for individuals who already have been going, who are going through DHS issues now. They have been through more. And as a parent partner, I've noticed that regards on what society says or does, most likely, most likely the child is gonna try to come home. I don't care if it's one year after, two years after, 10 years after. I know a young man that has 21 placements. And at his 21 year old, they cut him off and he found his mother. Unfortunately, he went back and forth to jail, but he found his mother. I'm with my son. The children want to be with their parents. So let's look at maybe a fix or a help. Say a parent who has lost their parent rights come home and they're in contact with the foster care person. Say they're not adopted. Say they're still in foster care. And this person shows for an adequate amount of time that they're able to function in our society in the mannerisms which is appropriate. Why not give them their rights back? Why not reunite them with their children? With the babies wanna be. You, Julie. Okay, questions. Ma'am, right here. Hi, I'm Paulina Harrison. I'm actually from San Diego, but I go to school in Cedar Rapids. I grew up, well, I'm Mexican-American, and so I grew up, we didn't have cable or anything. This has a point, I promise. And so I watched a lot of KPBS and whatnot, and so I remember growing up, most of the characters, I mean, I know they're animals, but most of the characters I assumed were white. And so growing up, it was kinda hard to believe in myself. And so I was wondering if there's any way that we can make at least public broadcasting television legally require diversity, and not just one character from each race, but like protagonists of various races and stuff like that, so that'd be nice. All right, I'm gonna give, I'm gonna let the panel respond to that. But I wanna, Paulina, is your name? Okay, I wanna broaden your point. And that, throughout this campaign, what I've been talking about is my fears that economically we are moving toward an oligarchic form of society where a small number of very, very wealthy people are receiving today almost all of the new income and the new wealth. Politically, I worry that as a result of Citizens United billionaires are buying elections, but I also worry about the medium. Paulina raises an issue, one issue. But this is what I worry about. I think you can watch television 24 seven and not get a feeling that what you are seeing is the reality of American life in many respects. Now you're talking about racial issues, in a sense. You're not seeing people of your background on television, okay? Right, all right. But what I'm talking about also, and Senator Turner made this point a moment ago, we just came out of the worst economic downturn in the modern history of this country since the Great Depression. Millions of people lost their jobs. Millions of people lost their homes. Millions of people lost their life savings. Today in America, you have a middle class which is disappearing. You have in some cases people's life expectancy going down, massive despair. Is that reflected on television? Is the reality the pain of America reflected in TV? The struggles that people are making. Half of the people 55 years of age or older, up to 65, have zero savings for retirement. Got that? You're 57 years of age, you got nothing in the bank. How do you think you're feeling? You're scared to death. See that on television, CNN talk about it terribly much? NBC, ABC, soap operas, not so much. Not so much. So your point, Polina, is right, and I agree with you. But it is even deeper than that. We are a country where millions of people are in despair, black, white, brown. They wanna see a reflection of their realities in media and in many respects, they are not. And then they say, who the hell is talking about my life? Who knows about my life? Why should I vote? Nobody cares about, nobody even knows what's going on in my life. So media becomes a very important part of the reality of America. And I think we need some big changes there. Anyone wanna add to that? I think that a part of how things are, how we're losing control as a country is that we are at each other's throats. I think that there's a lot of different titles, brands that we tend to fall under. But what the Senate is talking about pretty much, and what has pretty much affected us more than anything else, in my belief, is classism. We are being put at one another for one reason or another so that we cannot come together and figure out what really needs to be done. While those who are supposedly sitting above in their economical comfortability are looking and plotting, how can we keep them confused so we can keep making money? I have issues with what the young lady was talking about as well. However, I also, as I said, know that those issues might run a little deep as the Senator said. And that might just be a first fog so that we can stay in that and talk about that and worry about that while they, whoever they may be, are still plotting and planning how to continue to confuse us. The drone just made a very profound point. Let me just pick up on it. I want you to hear this. In America today, the top one-tenth of 1%, not 1%, 1-tenth of 1% owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%. Wealthiest 20 people in this country, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 20 people own more wealth than the bottom 50% of the American people, 150 million people. 58% of all new income generated today, 58% is going to the top 1%. You seen that on TV lately? Not too much. And what's Rome's point is, they rather have us fighting against each other and black and brown and white and gay and straight. You're born in Mexico, you're born in America. Let's all fight it out. Let's have a war with Mexico. Let's ban all Muslims. Let's talk about that. Let's not talk about how we come together to create an economy that works for all rather than the top 1%. Okay, let me, I'm going to apologize now because we've got to head down the road. But I think everybody here knows that this discussion could go on for five times as long and still not dent the service. I just want to not only thank Senator Turnip for all that she has done for so many years, but thank Jerome and Ruben, who are real American heroes. And what these guys are about, and I cannot begin to imagine the kind of strength that was required to transform their lives and to make the point that what they want to do with their lives and what makes them stronger human beings is to actually help other people. So I want to thank them very much for what they're doing, for their participation in this panel today. I want to thank all of you for coming out, for helping us address one of the major crises facing this country. Thank you all very much.