 Welcome everybody. Hello, hello, hello, hello. All right. This is the most people we've seen since before the fall. All right. I love it. And let's welcome the many, many people joining us on Zoom and YouTube land. So San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramya Tush Aloni people who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland, and as uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as First Peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and Ramya Tush, relatives of the Ramya Tush community. If you check out our website, you can find some amazing reading lists for First Person, which is coming up in November. And I suggest you all check out Segorte Land Trust, a women-led land back movement from Oakland. Yes. Bathrooms outside this door to the right under the stairs. There will be signing after the event. And I think that's all I have to say except for let's welcome our city librarian. Thank you all for being here tonight. Thank you so much, Anissa. Good evening, everyone. I'm Michael Lambert, your city librarian. Welcome to your San Francisco Public Library corret auditorium. I am so excited to see all of you here. It warms my heart to see this room full again, activated. And yes, thank you. It feels so good to be back in community. And here we are for our 17th annual One City, One Book, San Francisco Reads event. This is our signature literary event of the year. And this is the first time that we've been back in person in three years. And I could not be more awestruck by this year's selection. This is Ear Hustle. Unflinching stories of everyday prison life by Erlon Woods and Nigel Poor. This book and the podcast that it's based on, it really lifts the curtain on prison life and brings light to the humanity of those on the inside. I must confess that I am more of a nonfiction kind of guy, so this was perfect for me. And I enjoyed the digital audio book, so it resonated with me. But it's truly remarkable when you think about it, that the city of San Francisco has created a community of readers. All reading and talking about the same book, whether you read the physical or the digital version. But before we get started this evening, please allow me to take a moment to introduce or thank the One City, One Book selection committee, including our own library commissioners, Commissioner Susan Mall right here in the front row. And our president of the San Francisco Public Library Commission, Connie Wolf. There she is. Also Bob DeLoria of Books Inc. Mario Lemos, major gifts officer at Glide San Francisco, poet and author Michael War, and our intrepid in-house library community of readers, Michelle Jeffers, Alejandro Gallegos, Denise Schmidt, and Anissa Malady. Yes. Now Anissa, who was just up here in particular, she deserves a special shout out. She's been working so hard. Yes. Thank you so much Anissa for all your hard work coordinating this special 2022 edition of One City, One Book. I also want to acknowledge our other library commissioner who's in attendance, Jari Bolander. Of course, enormous gratitude to the Friends and Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library. Your support is what makes this possible. The team is here. Thank you. Thank you, Marie Sapella. And I understand there are some board members here this evening as well. I also want to thank our wonderful partners of this year's program, including the San Francisco Unified School District. Woohoo! Project Rebound, KQED, Radio Topia, and Crown Publishing. Though tonight truly is the main event, our other related One City, One Book programs and exhibits will continue throughout the month of December. So please pick up the brochure in the back and we hope to see all of you again in the coming weeks to engage further with this powerful read. Now without further ado, let me introduce Bruce Wallace, the executive producer of Ear Hustle, who will bring our authors to the stage. Thanks so much, Michael. Thanks, Anissa. I like audio persons when they get this properly positioned. Thanks to Shubnam. I wanted to give my colleague Shubnam a big shout out who's been doing this amazing job keeping everything coordinated. This has been like an amazing task and we also put out a podcast you may have heard of. Oh, my placement is bad. Okay. Shameful. And it was Shubnam who a week ago asked me to do this introduction, which made me a little nervous because I do not like public speaking. And also, if I'm going to be honest, I hadn't read the book yet. I had listened to the audiobook, which I'd really recommend. It's amazing. I have now read the book and it reminded me of one thing that I guess I always knew about Ear Hustle. It really came through reading the book and that Ear Hustle is more than a podcast, more than a book. It's like a conversation, I think, in its core. It's a conversation between Earl Allen and Nigel. It's a conversation between them and the hundreds of people they've interviewed. It's a conversation among the team who obsesses endlessly over the smallest detail of what word to leave in and leave out of podcasts. And it's a conversation, maybe most importantly, with the listeners who are some of the most generous and thoughtful people, listeners I've ever known or gotten to know. And it seems that One City One Book is sort of, as a similar argument, that books can also be conversations. And those conversations have been playing out over the last few weeks on the library visits. Earl Allen and Nigel visited every library in San Francisco. There have been these book clubs, both virtual book clubs, and at some of those branches. Great conversations there. A conversation at downtown public, or downtown high school in Pichero Hill, where some high schoolers interviewed Earl Allen and Nigel. Apparently it was like one of the best interviews they've ever had. So props to those guys. And now it's a conversation tonight with Piper Earl Allen and Nigel, who I will introduce, although maybe they don't need introduction. Piper Kerman is the author of The Memoir Orange is the New Black. About the 15 months she spent at the FCI Danbury, the federal prison in Connecticut. The book was The New York Times bestseller and was adapted, of course, into the Netflix series of the same name. It's also a fun fact, apparently very popular among correctional officers at FCI Danbury. And she's now Piper's a speaker and advocate on issues around incarceration, including solitary confinement, the experience of women in prison, and barriers to employment that many formerly incarcerated people face. She serves on the boards of the Women's Prison Association, the Penn America Writing for Justice Fellowship, and Healing Broken Circles, which is a group that pushes for alternatives to incarceration. Erlon Woods is my boss, a friend, one of the best dressers I know. And as you know, he's a co-creator, co-host, sound designer of Ear Hustle Podcast and the co-author of the book Ear Hustle. He's the founder of Choose One, which aims to repeal the California Three Strikes Law. And he spent 21 years in prison, the final ones of those at San Quentin. And that's where he met Nigel. And I wanted to read a bit that Nigel wrote about first meeting Erlon back there. There was one guy who was always there, quietly helping out, friendly but shy. He was always present and always willing to lend a hand with whatever needed to get done. At group meetings, he was mostly silent until something important or difficult needed to be said. At that moment, he would speak up, say his piece, cut through the bullshit, and engage in frank conversation. He was a slow reveal, not someone who has to tell you what he's all about the first time you meet him. He was kind, thoughtful, and paid unique attention to his surroundings. Just the type of person to whom I respond best. Nigel Pour is also my boss, friend, and the other best dresser I know. And co-creator, co-host of Ear Hustle, co-author of the book. She's a visual artist. Her works down the street here at SF MoMA, up the street here at the De Young. She's also a professor at California State University Sacramento. And the teaching is what actually initially took her into San Quentin where Erlon met her in 2011. And about Nigel Erlon wrote in the book, which I've read now. People see things differently in this world. Some see no value in discarded things or people. Nigel looks more closely, sees the what if. Day after day, she showed up in the media lab and saw everyone there. We weren't invisible to her. She saw us. As somebody who spends a lot of time watching things, myself, I consider her a professional observationalist. I respected and responded to Nigel's drive and discipline. Plus, she was cool as fuck. So welcome, Piper Kerman, Erlon Woods, and Nigel Pore. Hello, hello. Oh, is this thing on? Is it hot? Oh, we gotta turn it on. Turn it on. Hello. Oh, here we go. We gotta do nothing. Is this one on? No. It'll come on in a minute. I think. Hi! It's okay. I'm loud. Yeah, we can be loud too. Welcome to the main branch! I think we're super delighted to see all of you and meet all of you and talk with all of you, but I think we have something special to start off with. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Before. Thank you, Bruce. That was a great introduction. I know. That was beautiful. That was beautiful. Thank you, everyone, for coming out tonight. It's really nice to see so many open, happy, smiling faces. Before we start, both Erlon and I really want to thank the library. This is the library of San Francisco public library, and the commissioners who selected our book. It's a huge thrill. Isn't it amazing? I've been loving it. Yeah. And so one of the things that we wanted to do when we found out that we were having this honor was to make sure that we visit all of the branches of the library in San Francisco. And so we spend a couple weeks visiting each library, seeing what was special about each of them getting to meet the librarians, and just being filled with gratitude and love for the work that people do in libraries. So we made a little audio that we want to play for you before we start talking about your hustle. One of the things I like about any undertaking that comes my way is I like to learn from it and be surprised. And so part of this audio is about being surprised about what actually happens inside of libraries. So it's three minutes and 40 seconds. Hey, no, no, I'm going to say this is what you can do with your iPhone. Yes, exactly. Yes, it's just with putting an iPhone in people's faces and then Erlon did a beautiful job sound designing it and producing it. These are science fiction books. I'm a star and I am the acting branch manager at the Engelside branch of San Francisco Public Library. You do not have a library voice. I have a singing performing arts background, so that's probably it. And I've had many a toddler come up to me and say, Miss Catherine, shh, where's your inside voice? When was the last time you were pushed? Oh, um, like a couple days ago. My name is Vinny and I am a children's librarian at San Francisco branch library. I most often use my library voice to say, walking please, no running in the library. Is there such a thing as a library voice or am I making this up? I think you might be making it up. My name is Jack Tilley. I'm the branch manager of the Noe Valley Sally Brun branch. And this is my library voice. Oh, you don't have a different voice? Oh, I can make up a different one. And this is my library voice. Do you mind if it gets loud? Oh, no, not at all. What does the madness tell you? It means that we actually alive and well. Hi, my name is Drakas. I'm the teen services librarian at the Parkside branch library of San Francisco public library. When you talk to the classroom kids, your temporary needs to go up to engage them, right? But when you're talking to adults or teens that need to quiet it down, you'll talk in a lower tone. And then when you're getting ready for them to get out of the building safely, you will project your voice in a certain manner. My name is Ion and I'm the circulation supervisor here at Merced branch. This is my library voice. Do you use that library voice when you're feeding these creatures here? I use the library voice when I'm feeding the creatures, when I'm talking to the creatures. Can you say what you're doing here? Yes, I am feeding the mantises in our insect lab. We have flies that we popped in the freezer to stun. And, you know, we can live in the tanks to see if we're in. So she has like a little plastic container and she is throwing in a little blue bottle fly. That will make it done quick. My name is Michelle Jeffers. My library voice is like right here. I was surprised because somebody said we're not a shushing library. Have you had to shush? No, I don't think I've ever shushed anybody. I have gotten shushed and I almost got picked out of the main library security guard came over and is like, ma'am, you need to keep your voice down. My name is Chao and I am right now at the Chinatown branch library and this is my library. There's the myth that librarians are very quiet. We're actually super chatty. We all know this. Well, I would say I went to a library conference and I had seen nobody produce like librarians. It was wild. That's our little... All from my iPhone. That's our love letter to librarians everywhere and to libraries for being such an important place in all of our lives and hopefully we are inspired to use them more and to be grateful that they exist and to hug a librarian whenever we get the opportunity to meet one. So thank you all for doing the work that you do. Thank you to the library. Is it the Merced Library? Yes. Were they feed the critters? Yeah. It was vicious. And my memory is correct that there's some praying mantis sex in this book. Is that correct? Yeah, there is. I think there is. I forgot about that. Some of you may not have gotten there yet. But it's in there. So definitely find it and enjoy it. I love this book so much. So, so much. I last saw these two a year ago when it was first published and I am just delighted and thrilled and totally unsurprised that it's the San Francisco One Book One City Read. Wonderful. Bravo. So when you visited all those libraries, what were your assumptions that were challenged? Well, definitely the library voice. I thought libraries were supposed to be quiet. I was told that's pretty out of date. I loved seeing how utilized they were by people of different ages. There were so many that had junior high school students and middle-aged people and older folks there. And just all the services that are provided for people beyond just books. So they just really felt like a meeting place. And I always think about this. If libraries didn't already exist in the world we live in today, I don't think they would ever come to fruition because they're so radical and inclusive and free for us. I mean I know we pay for it through taxes, but they're amazing. And so I was surprised by how loud they were and how full of life is that one librarian said that life is happening in here. And that actually reminds me of something about prison is that people who haven't been in prison or don't spend time in prison often talk about how once you're incarcerated your life is on hold. And I've always really hated that idea that your life is on hold because there's a lot of life happening in prison, a lot of vital life and interesting and beautiful things as well as really awful things. Just like in libraries there's all sorts of things happening, right? They're not quiet dead spaces. They're spaces where people live and grow. Not at all. I mean it's fascinating because of course what the podcast, your hustle does is challenge so many people's assumptions about prison and about incarcerated people. And it's amazing what you two have accomplished. And it's reflected in the book in ways that are so familiar to those who are fans and listeners to the podcast, but also in ways that are completely different because a different medium demands different approaches. I hope you will share, you know, we're going to talk about some specific parts of the book today, but we would be remiss to skip the beginning of the book, which is the origin story and everybody loves an origin story. So, you know, Erlon, would you take us back and tell us maybe a moment or perhaps a collection of moments when you began to get an inkling that this relationship between the two of you, the partnership, the collaboration, undergirds every single episode of the podcast, undergirds all of the stories that are told in the book, so beautifully told. What was the moment when you began to get a sense that this partnership was going to be something so enduring? Was there a moment or, you know, was there a handful of moments, a period of partnership? Yeah, I'm sure it was a handful of moments. But I think when I knew, if we go to Earhussel, when I knew that Earhussel was becoming some different was when the Public Information Office of Lieutenant Robinson used to take his tours through San Quentin. They used to pass us up all the time. Then the tours basically started and ended right there at Earhussel. So, that was when I knew that, okay, people are starting to ask about what is Earhussel? Yeah, I mean, for anyone who has spent a lot of time in prisons, whether incarcerated or for any other reason, there's very few things going on in prisons that they want to brag about. So when they want to brag about you, you know some things going on. Yeah, Nigel, what was the moment or a set of moments for you when you were like, I mean, you know, Bruce shared with us a little snippet from the book around your attention focusing on Erlan. Yeah. So a moment when I realized that there was something special? That this partnership was really going to endure because, you know, when you're doing something creative in prison, it's definitely always going to be at risk, right? Yes. Well, one thing we had been through a lot of struggles in the prison together and we always found a way to make things move forward. And as you heard in the part that Bruce read, Erlan, someone who's very present and quiet in some ways until he needs to speak up. So he just was a very trustworthy person. But I have a very specific memory. I'm also a photographer and every once in a while I could take my camera into the prison. And one day we were in the housing unit and I took a portrait of Erlan. He was standing by these banks of pay phones. He was somewhat posing, but I'm not 100% sure he knew I was taking his picture. And the light was falling on him in this really beautiful way. And he didn't have a beard, so you could see his face better. And he had this very kind of wistful yet powerful expression on his, you know, he was sort of looking off into the distance. And when I got home and I was looking through my pictures and I saw it, I just saw something in that portrait that really spoke to me. And it was a combination of the light and the beauty in this place that's not full of beauty. And seeing this restful body and face and thinking that's someone I can really spend time with. So it was a kind of, it was a photograph, it was art that really cemented it for me beyond knowing him and the conversations we have. But I often think back on that portrait, it's really beautiful, although I don't think I've ever really shared it publicly. I think I answered that question wrong. You've got a second chance. There's always second chances. Yeah, there's always second chances. All right, real quick. She just kept showing up, so I knew she was the one. There is something about just showing up. Just showing up, being present. Well, you used a word which is so important to me, it's trustworthy. Trustworthiness in a context which is inherently dangerous, inherently oppressive, which is what prisons and jails are. They are constructed to harm people and to punish. So trustworthiness is really important. It's really important. I wouldn't say that it's rare, but it's incredibly important. It's important for the purposes of survival. And we think about those in terms of some of the stories that were related in the book, which are sometimes frightening or really, they include a lot of risk or violence. But they're also incredibly important in the enterprise of creativity. If you're going to collaborate with people, you have to be able to trust them. And that comes through so beautifully, again, in every single episode of the podcast, but also definitively in the book. I'm a little raw because I taught creative fiction, creative narrative, nonfiction writing, basically, memoir writing in Ohio State prisons for about four years. And last week I was permitted to go back and visit some of my former students who are incarcerated. And I also got to reunite with some of my former students who are no longer incarcerated. Fantastic. But so many things in the book resonate with me. And being back in those facilities, it is this sort of incredible tactile experience that's really tough. I want to talk about the chapter on memory, because I know that it's one that has really resonated with a lot of folks during the course of this program. And I will say it's fascinating for a memoirist and also for someone who teaches memoir this question of memory, of what we remember, how we remember it, the sort of quote-unquote accuracy of what we remember, how we reconstruct, and if you start to delve into how the brain and the mind work, it's a fascinating thing. But the chapter is also fascinating in terms of how you created it. So I want you to talk a little bit about the photographs, which take place at a critical role. And I actually had an opportunity to see the photographs exhibited at BAMFA, which I think was pre-pandemic. Oh, yes. Right. So I've seen some of the photographs that are referred to in the book with my own eyes, and they are amazing. I don't know what prospect any of us have to see them. There's a book. But talk a little bit about simply how you put the chapter together in the first place and the role that those photographs played. So I got access to an incredible archive of photographs taken at San Quentin between approximately 1938 and 1964, something, 1984, excuse me. And they were all taken by correctional officers as a way of documenting life inside San Quentin. They were all taken with a large format camera, and they document all the things you can imagine happening in prison, violence, murder, suicides, and also beautiful things like weddings, and ice carvings, sculpture contests, and family visits, and holidays. And so I did a couple things with those photographs. But one thing was to bring certain photographs down to the media lab and show them to people and use them as a prompt for them to look at the photograph. And then in that photograph, find a memory, a personal memory that was inspired by the image. First describe the image, and then bring back the memory. And one of the things that I love about photography is that, as you brought up, it's an unreliable witness because what's happening outside the frame is really important to what's happening inside, and we never know what's happening outside of the frame. And that's very much like memory. Memory is selective, and I love this quote that you can start with fact or fiction, and inevitably one will recall the other. So it's a beautiful way to explain how we take information and how we remember things. And so that was the setup. So I can't remember how many people, maybe eight people, looked at very different photographs, and they selected. It was a very, everybody wanted to be in that little class. Started as a class. Yeah, so people would select the photograph and then describe something, and then that description would lead into the meandering world of memory, right? I think it made people investigators though. Yeah, absolutely. Because every picture you get, you investigate it. That's true. You start looking at the picture, looking in the picture, seeing what's in the picture, that's in the picture. Imagining the back story. What happened immediately before, what might have happened after. One of the things that was really interesting to me in that chapter and throughout the entire book is this question of trust. So I'm curious, Erlon, about how, certainly in those interactions around the photographs, but in the much bigger context in the course of the work, how you work to establish trust. Now, some of the people who have been included in the show and who are included in the book are people you know very well personally, but not all of them, right? So could you talk a little bit about that question of how you establish trust with folks to be able to talk about sometimes incredibly difficult things, and sometimes incredibly wonderful things, but it's the difficult things that sometimes incredibly revelatory, and it's really amazing to be able to draw that out of folks. Yeah, and now thinking about trust, I'm sure people have to be comfortable with you when you talk to them. I think really though, people sometimes just want to be heard. I think if you just give them an opportunity to tell their story, you know, individuals open up. I think they knew, you know, what we were doing was it was okay, it wasn't, you know, bad. We wasn't trying to hit people with got-you-type questions or trying to elicit certain things. We were just asking people for a moment in their life, and I think once people start hearing the podcast and seeing what we were doing, they were interested in talking to us, but I think from, you know, people that I probably hung around with in the prison, they knew what our reputation or how we were in prison, and so they were willing to come down and talk. Yeah, and I think we also worked as a team. I mean, we had, without really having explicit conversations about it, we knew how to handle a conversation and who would take what part. So, I mean, I could ask questions that Erlon couldn't ask and he could ask questions. I couldn't ask, and so together, we were like one bigger person that could handle a conversation. And it's really important when you're talking to anybody, interviewing them, that you make them comfortable and you make them understand at that moment they're the most important thing in the world to you. And that you can handle what they have to tell you, whether it's something beautiful or violent or frightening and you're not going to judge them. And you just have to establish that really quickly. You know, and you just, you get better at it with practice, I think. And you have to be vulnerable too and not worry about making mistakes or letting your emotions show. I think, I mean, probably every interviewer is different, but I'm always, I'm interested in what happens in that room when there's just me and Erlon and one other person in conversation. It's a very creative experience. Yeah. I was given the opportunity to interview correctional workers at one point and I was really astounded actually by what they were willing to talk about, the disclosure about their own lives, because people do want to talk. They want to share. And I think that prisons are so intentional and are so intentionally hidden from the view of the public, right? And so not only, you know, the millions of people that we've incarcerated, but I think also many people who work in those institutions have a sense of being disappeared. And so, I mean, my own, you know, experience, you know, both before and after incarceration or during and after incarceration and people want to be recognized as human regardless of how complicated their past history might be or regardless of how complicated their present employment might be. Well, who's the hardest, who do we have the hardest time getting to speak to us? Usually the people that have been incarcerated for 30, 40 years are pretty much the hardest and it's, you know, I always try to tell them like, and nobody know who you are right now. But if you talk to us, people may hear your story and, you know, it may resonate with some people or, you know, people may want to, you know, see cats get out, you know? But if you don't, then you're going to continue to be a statistic sitting here. Nobody know who you are, having heard your voice, you know? So I think people that's been locked up longer, they have a reservation of talking to the media and their health system became pretty much part of the media. Well, some cats they don't want to talk, but they end up talking sooner or later. Ain't that right, Lonnie? Yeah, there's someone we're still working on. Oh, yeah, right in the room, right here. You know, I got to visit one of my former students, you know, I hadn't seen him in a number of years because he had received a punitive transfer to a different prison, so he'd been transferred out of class. I was so happy to see him. He's a phenomenal writer. And getting to the prison, he's in, you know, sort of a high-medium. And I hadn't visited that prison before. I visited a lot of prisons, but I had not been to this one before. And so I was out and it was a visiting day and I was going to visit him in the visiting room. And I arrived and there were probably about 10 or 12 women waiting to be processed in for our visits. And again, I hadn't set foot in the prison since before the pandemic. And I just remember feeling so angry as, you know, I took a number and so I was, you know, at last in line and I'm just watching as each person gets processed in. And I found myself just feeling really, really upset and angry because, you know, whatever I've seen and experienced as an incarcerated person, you know, I know that that visiting room is a lifeline, a lifeline like an important, important place. And so the idea that families have to endure so much in order to get into that place of fellowship was something that every incarcerated person knows, but there I was sort of watching it play out. So you've got a chapter on family, which literally brings it to light. Can you talk to me a little bit about Karen's stories? You know, I'm sure all of you have finished the book by now, but talk a little bit about, you know, how you were brought together with Karen and how you decided to tackle these questions of family. John, how do we hook up with Karen? I knew Karen probably from the criminal justice movement. From her husband, right? Yeah, it was her partner, but I knew her from just the movement. And, you know, we just communicate a lot. So we just start talking about, you know, what would her story be like, and then we did the grace. Did we do the story before grace? Grace, what was it? I think it was before. Can we start by just you talking a little bit about your experience of the visiting room? Because you've had really interesting things to say about it. So, you know, the visiting room for me, you know, it was, you know, if my people came cool, if my people didn't come cool, you know, I used to pretty much serve time so far away from them. And, you know, them coming, especially like on holidays and stuff like that, I really wasn't with it because I wanted the family to be home and join the holidays. They didn't have to come all the way so many hours or days where I was at. So, you know, I used to always just look at the visitor room like it was a cool place to be. It was a cool place to see your family, but it was like, yeah. And I know it probably had so many other thoughts. Which one were you talking about? Well, I remember you talking about it. You just didn't want to put your family through. Like how difficult it is to enter a prison as a visitor. I mean, I've only gone in as a volunteer and that's a very different experience than going in as a visitor. Karen had, was a teacher and she met a man who was incarcerated and she was helping him write letters and one thing led to another and they fell in love and they got married. And before we spoke to Karen, we hadn't spoken to too many women. All of our stories really centered around San Quentin and the men's experience and we really wanted to talk more to one women but also people who weren't incarcerated that were experiencing the prison system and it was really eye-opening to hear about the struggles of being a visitor and having to get your kids ready and the clothes that you can and can't wear and driving to the prison so you got there at three in the morning so your car would be in line so you could get into prison and you've got these little kids and there's no place to go to the bathroom and you have to brush your teeth with a gallon of water and then you get there and you go through this humiliating process of having your body wanded and probed and patted down and groped. Sorry. Turn up that lingerie bra. Yeah, we'll get to the bra story and then sometimes getting turned away because you're wearing something that's not acceptable to wear in prison and Karen in the book talks about when you first start going in and you're with someone you want to dress up like you would on any of your first dates and look really beautiful but it doesn't take long before you're worn down and you're just wearing all of your black because you just don't want another turn away, right? And there was, this is related in San Quentin in the parking lot I kept finding underwires from bras in the parking lot and in the visitor parking lot and I started collecting them and trying to figure out why are there so many underwires out here and at first I thought it was people having crazy sex out there and somehow the wires were coming out of the bras but pretty rough. I guess exciting but it turned out that you can't wear underwires if you're a visitor into the prison and so there's a couple of choices and you can't go in bra-less so women that have them on end up having to take them out of their bra and I guess out of frustration fling them on the ground and I have probably a hundred of them and when I showed them to Karen and this is one thing where books fall short in the audio, I showed them to Karen we didn't tell her what they were I just handed it over to her and I said what is this and she looked for a second and then she just gasped and you could tell it brought back so many memories for her of bringing her children there herself having to take wires out of bras and there was really no way to convey that emotional moment when she recognized what those were and it just hit me that these delicate little objects that seem innocuous are so full of stories for people everything is a potential prompt for a story and then if you have children when do the young girls start wearing bras and what is it like to have your teenage daughters being looked at by correctional officers because it's their job to make sure you have a bra on I think it's a deterrence because in prison you can make knives in machines in machine shop you can do it bra-wide you know what I'm saying well and volunteers can wear them everybody can wear them except the visitor but then we were going to San Quentin and there's a drawer where they also keep all the underwires that people pull out and then there was a vending machine in there that was a new thing where women could get bras and of course it was a male correctional officer there and I was like how do you get the right one and he was like well they're one size fits all you really are clueless I mean even you were like what it just really brings home the extent that prison is a place of punishment and the punishment is extended beyond the individual who's serving a sentence at this visit last week there's a young woman and she's talking with a correctional officer and she said I'm literally wearing the same clothes I was wearing for the last visit and the correctional officer was trying to turn her away and then I was being granted a special visit a special approved visit so I was wearing the in all of the women were wearing sneakers I noticed immediately and I was like oh shit because I was wearing these and but I was the last one in and they're like oh and they wanted me and my underwear went off and they looked at me and I could tell they were mad that they had to let me in because it was a special visit so I love that chapter and it really does widen the lens there are a number of amazing moments in this book that sort of widen the lens and remind us that that's the beauty of both the podcast and the book is that that zoom in and these individual narratives are so riveting but there's just this constant widening of the lens which I so appreciate in that spirit I want to talk a little bit about so ironically these chapters are like 789 let's talk a little bit about about specifically Earl on your fight and many other people's fight to overturn a particularly unjust policy and you know it's policy that drives incarceration rates it's not crime right because well we could go on at length but it's very important for people to understand that it is policy it is not crime rates so the 9th chapter is about it's about California's three strikes policy but California is not the only place and it is a policy and this chapter really does drive home I think this question of harsh punishment can you talk a little bit about you know just your own experience and then the fights you know since you've come home so I went to prison when I was 17 for the first time I was end up kidnapping a drug dealer and I took a plea bargain for 10 years for that and I received a conviction for kidnapping a conviction for robbery and when I got out as an adult you know trying to get a job with kidnapping on your record was kind of hard you know people didn't want to hire me so I did what I thought was best which was go back to crime that's all I knew at that point and I ended up I was out for two years 10 months and I went to jail for attempted secondary robbery and unbeknownst to me that when I was a juvenile that one case it had two convictions in it so it meant that me going to jail as an adult would be my third conviction if I'm convicted and I was convicted and I received two life sentences 31 years of life plus 26 years of life for attempted secondary robbery and you know me not thinking I should have been a recipient of the three strikes law I was so you know my whole time in prison was like you know trying to read up on the law and figure the law out and how to change the law and the one thing I can't say which pipe prevention is like a lot of prisons are full based on I would say initiative related legislation not legislation that probably come from the actual capital but just I put up an initiative a lot of people like yeah sound cool I'm not going to read it sound cool and then it don't be cool you know you end up locking up a lot of individuals and then you had this thing called mass incarceration so one of the missions that I've been on was to basically in California three strikes law because to me it serves no purpose in the society um thank you and I think that you know if a person commits a crime of course they should serve their time for that crime whatever the term is but to just say that oh yeah you've been to jail a couple of times we're going to give you life for that you know I think it's you know it affected I can say it affected the brown and black community the most because when you start you know spending years in these prisons and you start going down from the high levels to the low levels and as three strikers we could only be housed in cell living so I was at these level two prisons where I looked around and I was like damn these prisons are like 70% black and I realized everybody had three strikes um so a lot of my partners this out here with us we've been on a campaign to end California three strikes law and the whole the whole the way to end it is to hire professional signature gathers but to do that you need like five million dollars we tried to do fundraising we didn't get there so we tried to do the next big thing which was grassroots efforts and we went out to go get the signatures collect the signatures and it's a hard task to do it from um like way up north to you know what we're Christmas City all the way down to San Diego it's really hard to organize that and we tried our best and I can say from doing it understanding how to collect signatures uh the one thing I can say is everybody that not everybody but most of the people that we approached was like I thought that law was gone that was the one thing they was like I thought it changed in 20 they kicked it out like nah they just amended it it's still there um so we we've been on a mission to end it and hopefully in 2024 this time we can actually fun the signature gather movement and not do it from a grassroots level because no I think no no initiative has ever gotten on the ballot with just volunteers so it's a lot to get those signatures yeah so that's what we're on yeah so if anyone want to help in this yeah definitely go to choose one dot org and there's information there where if you would like to donate monetarily you can or get involved you can yeah because california's prisons are still filled oh and if you and you know the biggest thing about ending california three strikes law we ended tomorrow um 33,000 people would be affected it will close down five prisons or more um and you know the prosecutors would have to actually work now they just can we're going to give you three strikes okay I'm guilty you know because people don't want to go through that or they get a less uh a different plea bargain but definitely if you would like to help we would love your help yeah get involved definitely please um yeah I see one more thing to that yeah do it just yesterday I was in San Quentin prison and I ran into a couple of my partners that they're serving these long sentences now me I was supposed to go to parole my parole board was 2028 um I was released four years ago because I got a my sentence based on all of this was commuted by the governor you know and then you have people that have people that you know they have probably better stories than mine but they still stuck so you know I was just looking at a few of them the other day yesterday in San Quentin like bruh we still here I'm like I see you you know what I'm saying I'm trying we trying to help we trying to help because some cats got a thousand years to life based on the three strikes law 800 years 400 years and it's a long time before they see a parole board yeah so I would say uh you know the work that Erlon and other people are doing to overturn it you know via the me the mechanics of California's you know policy making system are fantastic but governor Newsom and any other governor in this country could do mass clemency and mass commutation so by all means support the work well he's like not exactly but based in California you gotta go to the supreme court they could do so pressure the governors right there's a lot of power and it's there as as Erlon has already detailed it's very difficult to get something onto the ballot it's very difficult to move the legislature we just got a placard telling us it's question okay good excellent um I was about to say you know so we touched on some of the chapters that I know have been particularly resonant for readers during the course of the program there's a lot that's still to come okay so you have your programs there's a lot coming during the rest of the year with the one book one city program so check it out there are other events there's something you can do today after today's events when you go down to the lobby you can check out a display of the illustrations from the book and they are amazing wonderful they're done by a formerly incarcerated artist whose name is Damien Lanane I'm pronouncing that correct yeah and he's a formerly incarcerated man from Australia and I was curious what how he got connected with you all yeah it's a good story this is an interesting story um I was you know doing what I do sometimes late at night or when I'm in the bathroom which is stroll through Instagram TMI man TMI like we all do and I seen this picture of Mandela and it also Malcolm X they were drawing pictures and on that same wall was a picture of me and I'm like damn you know what I'm saying I'm like this is dope I reach out like bruh that's nice you know and we start communicating and that's how we end up hooking up with dude but it was I was on the wall with some grace I was like shit they're beautiful the illas are fantastic he's really talented yeah I want to thank the library again and all of the committee members and all of the folks who you know make this program happen year after year and I again you know from the bottom of my heart thank them for choosing this beautiful book for the one city one read and and yeah just I want to drive home you know we have only so many public institutions in our lives and our communities and we pour our resources into them and we can all see how libraries do such incredible things for so many different people and yet we are pouring a lot more resources into our prisons and jails so we can just think about our own you know our communities choices and how we can demand different and better choices from all sorts of people but questions right we have a lot of questions so I want to dig in and start pinging you all okay alright and some of them are about the book and some of them are about the podcast and they're all intertwined anyway right so let's go sometimes people you interview on the podcast express racist sexist or homophobic ideas how do you decide the balance between unflinchingly representing reality versus giving a platform to harmful ideas I think about this all the time when I'm writing about prison and jail because you want to represent what happens in an authentic and accurate way but what do you think? I don't think people come in to speak too crazy on the mic I don't think they come at us like that do you recall? I don't think there's some I mean I like people I like to allow people to be who they are and I think that we challenge people we try to balance letting people speak their mind and challenging them and we would be doing a disservice if we didn't allow some of that to come out because that's the reality of life in prison there's a lot of homophobia there's a lot of racism there's a lot of frustration and it comes out in those negative ways so I personally think we balance it pretty well I want to tell gritty stories and we have to be able to hear difficult things that we disagree with and try to have a civil conversation about it and so we do try to push back on people and I think we get it right I do personally but can we interview a lot of homophobic people? this is an ongoing conversation listen to the episode that came out on Wednesday listen to it I didn't hear none I could talk about this particular question but we have a lot of questions so how does one keep hope alive while in solitary confinement after months this question obviously is for E because I have not been in solitary I'm happy to say well I would say this solitary confinement is just another part of the prison system you know a lot of times we do get used to being in the general population where you get programmed and all that but at the end of the day whether you're in solitary confinement or not you're still in prison still the same conditions I think your mind adjusts after about a week in like the whole and once you're in the hole you've probably been in the hole for a while before you even get to the solitary part so I think it's just waking up every day realizing okay this is the program we'll make our program for the day and go from there but I think it's just waking up every day just having the energy to wake up and you'll definitely get through it but solitary confinement you get in tune with yourself you might write yourself for something I would recommend three books They are all by men which deal with solitary confinement in one way or another one is Albert Woodfox's book which is called solitary and he spent decades in solitary confinement one is a chapter that I teach out of Wilbert Riddow's memoir In the Place of Justice which is about Angola prison in Louisiana and he has a chapter on solitary confinement which is beautifully written and I use it in my classes and then my friend Joe Loya is a man who outgrew his prison cell and he spent two years in solitary and deals with it in the memoir so if you're interested in this question Can I just quickly amend something I said about that first question where I said we get it right we get it right for us that doesn't mean we get it right for everybody so I just want to make that clear we talk about those things a lot and we decide what the stories can bear and what they can't and that won't mean it's right for other people to be comfortable I understand that too I remember in the very first class in the men's state prison that I was teaching one of the students very skeptically asked me can we write raw and I was like if you're trying to write the next 50 Shades of Grey that class is down the hall but if you're asking me if you can write in an authentic voice that is honest and the answer is yes and if you write something that is challenging or problematic then we're going to discuss it but we have a lot of questions so I'm going to keep going when you guys did the meal experiment what were you thinking because I found it super insensitive and folks in prison can't turn off the meals they're served we got that a lot and the prison was like why are people saying that they didn't see it as insensitive and again we got it right for us I don't know we were trying to have people think about what they have in their lives and what other people don't we were hoping to make people more sensitive to what other people have to go through I wanted to see I spent a lot of time in prison I wanted to see if I could live up to some of the things that were going on we were trying and everyone on the team particularly the guys inside were absolutely befuddled by that reaction from people so I'm not sure what else to say about it except again we got it we talked about it a lot the incarcerated people the formerly incarcerated people and the people on the team who had never been incarcerated and that's how we make our decisions what's going to work for our team so I'm not sure what else to say about it what do you have to say about it I definitely didn't do it that's 27 years in my life I'm good but it was a good experiment I appreciated Nigel's camaraderie with the fellas and the women and everybody when we went inside we had so much to talk about every time we went in New York it was like how are you doing what sort of interviews did you do today how are you dealing with all the carbs and they felt very supported and seen by people I mean I can only express what New York and other people on the team said but they felt very seen by the endeavor I heard Nigel in that episode she was groggy a little bit I did get cranky Rick, Rick, Rick I know other groups and entities that have done similar experiments and it's always illuminating for those who are actively participating I think so that's a question about the difference between listening to it and doing it was it not coming in with like hella snacks you, yes I was coming in with McDonald's all kind of shit so after so many incredible and powerful seasons of ear hustle looking back on your first season is there anything that you wish you'd done differently shit probably done this a couple of years before nah I think anything done differently nah I think it went just right I don't know I don't think so I mean we were learning we hadn't done a podcast before we were experimenting we were pushing each other we were seeing how deeply could we tell a story in a place it's not very welcoming of stories coming out of I would have had a little bit less bass in the music in the episodes and a little bit less that reverb loved it all yeah he loved it all so no honestly no I think we learned a lot no there isn't actually I mean you know it's a very groundbreaking season obviously it's a great groundbreaking enterprise and there are so many folks who are oh this will be the last question we have a lot of questions so I apologize that we did not get through all of them but yeah when you're making something groundbreaking it's obviously imperfect but everything's I mean we knew we had to get better we knew we had to learn it hasn't gotten easier I'll tell you that okay let's have this question about the libraries all right and you know it's directed towards Irland but I think we can all weigh in on it so I'm a public librarian thank you first of all who serves often decarcerated individuals folks who have come home outside of one to one literacy instruction technology classes and career development programs which all happen at libraries what can public libraries be doing to support the reentry needs of decarcerated individuals that's a good one there give people jobs that's what I can say career development what can libraries do make sure everybody got library cards so they can come check out you know you can check out tools out of library Bruce told me that I did not know that but it's hard to answer that question I just try to give some type of services to individuals I mean I think the library is a good space for people to come get on the internet do what they do to you know get their job applications in or resumes but definitely just you know let individuals know that the library is a place that they can come do that because a lot of people probably didn't go to libraries a lot in their life I'm one of them you know so one thing we did find out on this library tour is that Irland has a book from the library from elementary school but he was given a solution it was something about a whale I'm talking about I was like five years old I kept that book I'm taking it back I would say just to weigh in on this question as well I mean so literacy instruction, technology classes, career development I mean you're really touching some of the most important needs but I do think one of the most amazing things about libraries you know here in San Francisco one of the greatest library systems in the country thank you San Francisco library is the ability to have a place to gather and the ability to be in community with other people just like we're doing right now right so to whatever extent and I don't know if this person is listening or watching or here to whatever extent you make it possible to gather around these questions and around these experiences formally incarcerated people you know families impacted you know to create space for you know either face to face or obviously so many you know experiences and opportunities have blossomed online as a strange result of the pandemic I mean that's the one thing I think is that everyone I know who has thrived post incarceration has found a way to do it via community and you know ear hustle is a brilliant example of that shining light communities that we don't always understand but so we come away you know both from the book and the show understanding them so much better so thank you and you know the one thing I didn't find out about the librarians I didn't find one I haven't found the librarian that read all the books in their library I haven't found that one yet I learned something today and that is that there is a library here in San Francisco which has a working fireplace I'll leave you with that suspenseful challenge you oh a two okay I challenge you yes to go out and find out which ones and I thank the wonderful team here at the library for having us yes we want to thank you hypercrowman Nigel poor Earl onwards and just to say we also want to shout out our jail and reentry services department here San Francisco public library artist working team ever also Zara stone and joy Joe will be in conversation on this Saturday December November 12 yeah and Nigel and Erlan will be joining us again December 3rd in combo with pindarvis harsha and Brandon to Zeke who have an exhibition on the fifth floor and Damien's exhibit is on the atrium not only did he self-teach himself to draw inside but he worked at the library while he was inside got out became a got his MLIS he's a librarian and is working on his PhD so he's amazing as amazing as these two thank you so much thank you thank you thank you all Nigel and Erlan will be in talks outside the atrium