 Back in the 60s, there was a science journalist named Ed Brecker. Ed Brecker was tasked by Consumer Reports, the Consumer Safety Magazine, to write an analysis, a book, about drugs. This was about 1970 or so. The book was called, Lisit and Illicit Drugs. It became the Bible for every thinking person in America and worldwide about understanding drugs. It broke through myths that people couldn't even imagine were myths. I know that for Ira Glasser and for so many others, for me, that book was a starting point in understanding what was really going on about drugs. Now, to present this award, I'm going to ask my colleague, our Managing Director of Communications, Sharda Sekharan, to come on up. So my job to advocate and get public attention around the drug war and its harms isn't necessarily a simple one, but it's been made a whole lot easier by the work of the men we're honoring tonight with the Edward Brecker Award, Eugene Jerecki, with this incredible film, his documentary film, The House I Live In. And I want to acknowledge that among all the people here tonight excited to honor Eugene is Ralph Nader, who was a long time advocate on so many issues, including our own. So thank you for being here tonight. Eugene Jerecki is the acclaimed documentarian behind Why We Fight, Reagan, and the Hot Trials of Henry Kissinger, among many others. And he's receiving the Brecker Award for his incredible film, The House I Live In, which has changed hearts and minds around the country. It's been used as part of curriculum, it's been educating so many people in this country and bringing the issue of the drug war home to people to understand how it impacts each and every one of our lives. He's done wonders with this film, and it made waves at the Sundance Film Festival. And it won an award for Best Documentary, so congratulations for that. His film has added so much to our movement. There's been organizations around the country, more than 100 showings. It's really changed hearts and minds, and he's brought in celebrities to co-produce it with them, which really gave it a lot of bump, like names like Brad Pitt, John Legend, Russell Simmons, and Danny Glover. So to thank you for your work tonight for creating this amazing documentary film, please join me in welcoming Eugene Jerecki. I'll use my time very carefully to give time to others. I say that because when you make movies about social justice questions and you then stand in the presence of people who have been fighting the good fight around you for decades and decades, you feel a little bit like an imposter because essentially I've spent a handful of years of my life, maybe a decade now, focused on the human rights issue that was most glaringly occurring in the American heartland, which was the story of the criminal justice disaster we face, and the engine of it, of course, as the war on drugs filling our prison beds for reasons that don't have to do with public health or public protection, but all too often have to do with private profit. And so I was a late comer in a way, and I wouldn't have embarked on this whole chapter of my own human rights career were it not for Ethan Natelman and DPA. I came into contact originally at Linda Smith and then later when it became DPA and when I had ideas about what to do with the film, but it was first sort of budding in my thoughts, I went to Ethan and was helped throughout by DPA in a very frontline manner. And it was an important feature of how we did it because when you make a film of this kind, the worst thing you could do is imagine that you're sort of inventing the wheel for the first time to ignore that there had been what Cornell West once used this to describe Mr. Nader. He called him a long distance runner for justice. And I knew that there were other real long distance runners for justice like Ralph Nader, like Ethan Natelman, who had been at this for a long time and I didn't want to step on the toes of that. We wanted to harness all of the wisdom and all of the hard earned knowledge that had come from fighting a fight that when we started making the film we were told was going to be a losing battle. The drug war was here to stay. There were too many entrenched interests behind it. There was a kind of bureaucratic thrust that was not going to let it go. And look at where we are today. There's an electricity in this room because frankly it became clear to me at some point that thanks to Ethan and thanks to all of you and thanks to DPA and the many other groups, the ACLU, families against mandatory minimums, et cetera, the sentencing project, so many groups who frankly know how to play well with others. We suddenly were much more than some of our parts and all of a sudden we had a vulnerable adversary and we have a vulnerable adversary as never before. And to see this kind of a gathering, commemorating that is deeply gratifying for me as a movie maker. I make my films and I'll say one last comment. The strategy of how we make these films is always not to preach to the converted. We don't make films that are really for those of us who already feel a certain way about a subject. The whole goal is to go capture testimony and sights and sounds and stories and experiences from people who are like the people who might not already think this thing is a bad idea so that you don't create such a resistance to rethinking it. You come to somebody and say, look, here's a prison guard who's going to give you some inside scoop on why he doesn't think what he's doing is working. Or here's a police officer who from the seat itself where he does his work in his patrol car is going to tell you that what he does is senseless and it's not leading to making society safer. Here's a judge with his hands tied. So we went after all these people and we tried to use these voices as a kind of army for change to get everyday people all around the country. We've shown the film in 150 prisons. We've shown it in 43 states, probably four or 500 screenings of a private nature at this point. And that means so many Americans have met these very special voices who know what's wrong. So in doing that, I was trying to reach out to the unconverted. But the fact is when you do that, you can really take the choir for granted. You can really forget that the choir itself needs reminding. The choir needs rewarding. We need to be padded on the back for caring about this and not having given ourselves over to hopelessness or despair. And so it's incredibly gratifying to be here back tonight with what I consider to be my family, to be the converted, to be the choir, the choir who have long fought for this and long sung for this and then to have walked in the door tonight and seen Ralph Nader here tonight who has formed me as a political actor for change. Ralph Nader has done more to form young Americans into change makers in this country than anyone. And so to find him here to cheer me on was one of the greatest things that could have happened to me and I will say I then had to sneak him in because he didn't have a ticket. So we can all go away knowing that Ralph Nader who once authored a book called Crashing the Party for Obvious Reasons crashed the party here tonight. Thank you very much.