 Hello, Columbia University. It's a pleasure. I always knew you. I'm Art Wayne, I'm a drug user. No, we're going to be so content with this. I don't always do my factors. I mainly do more drugs than do my factors. But my children have never been hungry. And thank you for joining the Sunday at runtime. I've had peace and doubt for the past four years, so I know about Sunday brunch. We don't have the most of it, but it's a power heart state, and we will have some real estate. So let's get into the real stuff. This is a conversation about being old. You know, we talk about having someone get out of prison, they need to come back into the community. How can we make that person old again? This is a conversation about healing. So not only do you want that person to come back into the community to be old, we want the community to also be old and the community to heal. But more than anything, when it comes to drug policy reform movements, this conversation is about how do we make this movement old, right? How do we engage users and sellers in a way that we get to engage them? And I just have to come testify and tell a child's story, but have them at the table when the policy is actually being made, right? So that's what this conversation is about. Because if this is for us, but not by us, what does that mean to us, right? And how do we define us? You know, we often want to advocate for the dependent drug user. We're about the user who's not dependent. We often want to advocate. In this class over here I got a question of how do we advocate for the drug seller? I know some of the facts fall away where the reform goes through and we keep it quiet that it may help the drug seller, right? How do we do this straight up in your face, advocate for the drug seller, make sure you lower your energies for the drug seller. of this conversation that we're about. Yes, ma'am? I'm going to do a mistake, let me, let me, let me go on this. So, this is what happens when I don't use a script, and I think I'm actually going to remember everything I've known three hours of sleep. There's one other person I really want to bring up to this stage, and I think, because I was thinking about him as a person who had finished in a lot, so if you needed it, I forgot, the Jarell Jones, a brilliant card that she doesn't use. And I want to mention, I'm not a teacher. We are using this case in connection to the head of Jarell, over here. I guess my age is shortly. So, we did a lot to around the clock. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm going to tell you all about our student work. So, you know, DPA, we have a serious tradition. We want to remove criminal use for users, for users and investors. But how do you do that if you only bought the seller? The user is the seller half the time, more than half the time, right? The seller is the user. So, with that, I'm going to ask you gentlemen to share the microphone, Jarell, go again with you, and just simply tell your story, tell how the drug trade met in a part of your life, how maybe drug use was a part of your life, and how this drug war in general has impacted your life. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Jarell Jones. I work at New York Congress for the DPA. I'm the largest human exchange program on the East Coast. So, through my life, I shouldn't even be here. As I said at the DPA conference. Through my life, drug use has played a major part. From me being deemed a menace to society because of my drug use, my drug telling, me carrying a gun, me being a violent person at that time, I'm not supposed to be there. When I got arrested, I was offered nine and a half to 18 years for selling crack cocaine. Evidentially, they brought that down to four and a half to nine. But I was selling crack to support my habit. So, when I asked for a drug program, I was refused. But the white counterpart of mine, that was selling drugs, was offered a program. I went up to, frankly, a corrective facility five miles away from the Canadian border. I had no contact with my family. Had no contact with my kids. Sitting up there in this facility, the only thing that had me doing was going out into the community up there, painting, fixing up their little towns. Nothing was aggressive about my drug issue at all. And those valuable years, no contact with my kids. Family members come up there because it was too far. You know, I thank God for harm reduction. I really do. And one of the things that really hurt me about it is that black people are not involved in harm reduction. Because we look at it as an intervention for individuals, for our IDU, indivisible drug users, which is not. I'm a crack user. And harm reduction helped me get my life together. One of the things that, you know, that's really important to me is that, yes, we must address this issue on heroin. Well, let's address this issue on crack, too, because that's something our community needs to address. We need to look at the fact that how many people on a daily basis are still being arrested for crack use, which is not being addressed. And those individuals that lives are being destroyed because they have no contact are nothing with their family either. Yes, we need to have more prevention around crack use with harm reduction. The fact that today is still going unnoticed is that we put in more emphasis on the heroin use, but let's talk about how many people are dying from overdose of crack use. Something that we're not addressing. The thing, you know, like I'm saying, I've been doing this work for 13 years. And to see the devastation that drug use has caused in my community, the separation of families. But I commend that they don't have ties with their kids and their families because the first thing, when we get arrested, is we're sitting up north to jail. We're not giving a program. We're not giving an affordable opportunity as other individuals are being given. The first thing they look at is, well, let's throw them in jail. Maybe they'll learn something. Which create a cycle of the black man not being home with his kids and his child. And this is still going on today. Like I said, I'm an outreach worker, too. And I go into my community every day and I talk to people. I look at what's going on out there in the streets. The stigma between people that use drugs. We need to start changing the language. And that starts with us. Because I have no faith in politicians at all. Even though on some days I go down and talk to the city council, I go to Albany, I go to Washington. And I advocate for our people. But do they really care about us? See, it's up to us to put a fire under their asses. Because, like I said, when I spoke to a lot of the individuals in the back of the Latino, Asian caucus, they'd be there to know and understand about harm reduction. One of the things that was brought up in that is that harm reduction brings no money to them. And that's the shame because we talk about saving people's lives. So if the money is more important or the lives of the people in our community is important. And that's for us to do. We need to understand that we are the one that's going to take back our power. We're not going to sit there and leave it into the hands of the politicians. Because we see what they're doing. This fair war on drugs has been going on for how long? 40 years? Nothing has changed? When do we, as people in this community, start taking back our power? When do we say enough is enough? I've been doing this work, I've said, for like 13 years. And the fact is that our politicians have not done nothing. All they have done is reap up the benefits of our people, of our community. Appreciate it, sir. Shaila, quickly, your story as well. So, I'm going to skip a lot of my story because I think for me, the ending is really important. And so, I'm the executive director of the People's Homosexual Alliance, which is the largest user-run needle exchange. I am a co-founder of the Urban Survivors Union, National Drug User Union. But the two factors that made all of that possible and that changed how I was going to be treated and how everything was that I was born male and I was born white. And so, I am replacing at the exchange that I've been, for 20 years, I replaced two other white men, right? And unless I do, and we do something to change that, a white man will replace me. And I have engaged the drug users. Drugs have saved my life. They have been a major positive force in my life. They have given me opportunities in engaging my brain in a way that I could never have possibilities to do. They have made it so I have to work with people and engage people that I never would have met before. So all of that is possible. But the simple fact that we don't really talk about, and I know we're talking about race here, but it's that people like me get to end up as executive directors. Right? That's how this system works, right? And look at the harm reduction world and look at business powers. You start going into rooms with executive directors. It is all white men. There's some white women there. But it's like how did I get here as a street drug user? Because the best and the brightest, they died or went to prison. And I was the trash that was left. And I was the one, I was the only thing left to take over. So I am not an incredibly talented human being. I'm just literally the drug user who's left when everyone else has died, everyone else is in prison. And I was all that was left, because I did not want to be the person who spoke up and screamed and yelled and got their life trash because they were going to say, I'm drug user and I'm proud. But I was all that was left in my community. So it was time for me to stand up and I just took the plunge and I did it and I never stopped fighting. You know, but it's not going to change unless we acknowledge why I'm at this table. Right? Appreciate it, Shadow. Norton. Norton. I have a special question for you. Because I know that as you just got your story, it could go a while. So I'm going to ask you a specific question later. So I want to get under Mr. Hayden to first speak and tell us about his experience with Nikki Barnes, what it meant during that time and how it may have elevated his situation in life to be a part of that Nikki Barnes outfit and what brought him into the drug trade and his experience with the drug wars. First of all, let me say I don't like being typecast. I don't like being looked at as a formerly incarcerated person. I don't like being looked at as a former drug dealer. I am bigger than that. That's right, baby. Those periods were just a chapter in my book in the book of life. Right? Drugs, I haven't used them in 45 years. 45 years. Just like I made a decision to start using them when I was 16 years old, I made a decision to stop using them. 45 years ago. It's as simple as that. I didn't need no drug program. I didn't need anything. All I needed was the decision to make that decision to stop and I stopped. In my life, I have done many things. I've traveled around the world. I've lived at the top of the pyramid and I lived at the base of the pyramid. I've had a full life. I'm 74 years old now and I'm sitting here talking to you. Two weeks ago, I was arrested and abused by NYPD simply because I was filming an incident. When I was dealing with drugs, at the same time I was dealing with drugs, I was trying to get a garbage can on every corner in Harlem. My life with drugs there was an alternate side of me that also existed. And that side came out of me when I went to prison. When I went to prison at 16 years old, I woke up. I was arrested for a small amount of drugs and that was my first stop in Frisk. That was in 1957. My mother got me into a program or got a program to accept me and when I went to court, the judge said, no, you're not going in the program. You're going to prison. And he sent me to prison and I went into prison with 2020 vision. In six months, I woke up and I was blind. I was sitting in the mess hall and I went blind, literally. But it was temporary blindness and that blindness came from reading books through the bars. I woke up at 16 years old and I haven't stopped since. I haven't stopped since. I got kicked out of every school I ever went to and I ended up with four college degrees, two associates, a bachelor's and a master's and was even accepted in the Harvard or in scholarship, Harvard Divinity School to study community organizing. I've been a community organizer all my life. You know, even when I did the what society calls the bad things. Did you feel like a bad person when you went on to the drug trade? I didn't feel like a bad thing. No, I didn't. And I'm going to tell you the reason why because all of the people that I was dealing drugs with and dealing drugs to were consenting adults. They were not children. They were consenting adults. We had something they wanted and they had something we wanted and it was simple as that. The pharmaceutical companies in this country the pharmaceutical industry in this country they got me hooked on high blood pressure pills for life. They got me hooked on high blood pressure pills for life. I can't quit because if I quit, I'll die. There's absolutely no difference between big pharma and what we were doing out there on the streets of Howard. Absolutely no difference. I've become an expert on the law and the history of drug prohibition and it was racist from the beginning to the end. It started with the Chinese. And it went to the Mexicans and blacks and Hispanics. You understand? It was all to give big pharma a monopoly on the drug market in America. And that's all it was. Would you say there's a difference? Would you say no? Maybe a problematic drug dealer and a non-problematic drug dealer. I mean how would a drug dealer who was playing on you if that person didn't exist or what, but we talk about problematic drug users and non-problematic drug users. Would you say there's the same thing when it comes to drug centers? How do doctors deal with it? How do doctors deal with problematic drug users? They don't give them no drugs. They're out there to make money. Listen, this whole narrative about drugs has to be changed. It has to be changed. We have to seize control of this narrative, man. Because this whole narrative, man, Erlichman, Nixon's vice president, I think. Advisor. Advisor. Advisor. Just confess that the whole war on drugs was a way for them to control the anti-war population and the black population. That's right. Let me move to George. Yeah. Thanks. I appreciate it. The term structural inequity, structural racism has come up. The need for economic justice, healthcare justice when it comes to black and brown folks. You know, given that we are, what, 50 years from the civil rights movement, I don't know, 150 from the emancipation proclamation, 400 years in when it comes to slaving and so forth. We still have work to do, basically. And given this reality, given the fact that we need economic justice in our communities, why do we look so down on the drug dealer who's just trying to put some money in this project, or just trying to pay the light bill, or just trying to buy a similar act, because for some reason, our mothers, kids, and breastfeeds, don't let me go on on the tangent, but why are we still so hard on the drug dealer, given everything we face in the society and given structural inequity and structural racism? Mm. Uh-oh. Token home, baby. Token home. You want to sit down? I'm the one that showed up at your conference. With 20 other people saying, wearing the t-shirts saying, let's not screw pookie again. Because y'all getting ready to come to the end of marijuana prohibition. And y'all gonna screw them the same way you screwed them when we came to alcohol prohibition. You gonna screw them the same way you screwed them when we came to the end of a lotto, I mean, number running and took it into lotto. I think that I got into the business. And I wish I could say that I was a success. I actually think that when I got to prison and I seen it was predominantly black and brown people, that notion was dispelled almost immediately. And I'm the person that you don't call for, because I'm a person that was convicted of first degree murder at the age of 19, and every time you talk about your reform, you exclude me right off the top as if we had the same access to financing our habits, our needs, or our desires. It may not mean that way. I'm also the founder of a treatment center and the basis in which I found the treatment center wasn't necessarily to get people in recovery from drugs, but to get people engaged in a fight for their freedom. We named our place Free at Last. That had a basis in which we named our thing. And I need to say that when we opened it, we opened it and we recognized that we was victims and we started doing needle exchange. And I'm a 12-stepper, but I believe that's not how many steps you need to get to the top of the mountain. So we did needle exchange. We introduced method on maintenance inside of our program because we didn't figure like a person can hear you if they're throwing up on your shoes. So we started doing different stuff. A number of things that was mentioned, I think I need to say I'm a formerly incarcerated person because within that space and that identity, I fight for the full restoration of my civil and human rights. And most of the time when people talk about recovery, they think I'm talking about recovery from drugs. I'm talking about recovery from slavery because that's where I stand front. So it ain't that shit that I'm cracking down on drug dealers because when I didn't have an opportunity and couldn't feed myself, somebody passed me the sack. And I didn't necessarily think that it was a real reasonable choice but a last option because I couldn't feed me or my family. So I ain't never objected or hated people that gave me an opportunity to feed me and my family. So every year I throw a picnic and I'm a part of a picnic called the OG picnic, right? 4,000 of us show up, right? So when y'all talk about Proposition 47 and y'all talk about fingerprinting people so they can get their records clean, if you think our ass is going to come back down to the police station for that privilege, you crazy as fuck. And by the way, when we talked about ban the box because I'm one of these people that went from the gates of San Quentin through the gates of the White House and when I got there and I was there for the business of ban the box, it wasn't the first thing that I said. The first thing that I said was that my son may not be going to get Skittles an iced tea. He could be going to get a beer and a block and I still expect his ass to make it home safely. So I got a different feeling about this shit, right? Because just because I ain't used in 25 years, right? The only reason that I didn't is because I made a promise to some black men inside of a correctional institution that I wouldn't fucking forget, you know? So I need to say that some people just want to get high. I don't just want to get high. I want to win a fucking revolution. So the next time I hear the joint with you, we'll be the one that actually had a victory we can celebrate. So I think it's really important that everyone be aware. I am an active injection drug user and use drugs every week. I am also the only Caucasian person on this stage and I'm also the only person who's never been in prison. So I think it's very, very clear that we have to understand how this plays out and the white folks in this audience need to understand that they are here and are because of their privilege and I got out of so many cases and so many incidents simply because I was male in the color of my skin and watched close friends of mine go away and I'm thinking when I'm young, I got out. Wow, that's slick. I scared the system. I didn't. The number one factor that changed my life again was I was born white and I was born male. I see myself treating it better. I got a certain job that I think some other brothers could have got treated better by police on the case and so you know what, we all found it here. I'm going to talk about it in a minute. We got to own that male privilege, too. We got to own that male privilege, too, boy. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Can't see that. Can't see it. Can't see it. Own it. Own the shit, all of it. Talk about that right at the spay. Woo! Yeah, I don't know. I'm sorry. You know what, I need to talk about how I sold marijuana because I want to buy marijuana for this one. Right? That's not only because I sold marijuana, right? I'm somewhere from the early and never part of it so I get a pass from being a part of the impacted community but I don't know what it's like to have to deal with drugs to feed my kids. I never was in a situation where, you know, it was do or die or it was a survival economy for me. It was a choice for me and right I never got caught because I wasn't that good at it. I wasn't making that much money anyway, right? And I never got caught so I don't know if I could go through the system. So, you know, sometimes I could wear the impacted community badge but I don't believe, I should have come in that badge many times. I think we need to dial at the policy table so I appreciate you talking about all the different policies that you all help get started, Dorsey. I think your trouble is in that way and I'm hoping to do some of the stuff you did in California and Colorado. One more round of applause for Dorsey and Lisa Jones. Hi, I'm Stephanie Jones. I work for the Drug Policy Alliance. I run a program called Music Fan and I'm going to take it a little bit further away from what we just talked about because that program, it talks about harm reduction and drug education in nightlife and festival settings. So, when we talk about people who use drugs and people who sell drugs, there's an incredible diversity of experience that we need to bring to the table and a little bit of the back and forth here kind of demonstrates that. We have people, you know, as Dr. Karl Hart mentioned in the last session, most of us who use drugs are not using the problematic ways. They're not using them in dependent ways and that's from all communities, white communities, black communities, Hispanic and Latino and Asian communities and what I wanted to bring to the table is the importance of getting after it with information into all of those different communities. No matter where you're sitting or standing, where you're at in the world, every community deserves that knowledge and that just goes from drug education straight up, drug information, accurate and all the way into how the drug war is impacting your particular community. So, I'm really happy to work very closely here in New York with my friend here, Kelly Green. She runs New York's dance safe chapter and so I'm going to let her say a few words. Okay everyone. I had zero prompts about speaking up here today in this room so bear with me while I try to collect myself. But yes, my name is Kelly Green. I run the New York chapter for dance safe and we are our Russian organization that sets up harm reduction boosts at EDM based events around the country and Canada. Here in New York City, well I am about 10 years deep in the racing as a harm reductionist and as a raper. I see in this community probably more minorities than white people. And the face of EDM tends to be that everyone seems to as much white people hanging out doing drugs at a party and all those things that are each year or whatever. But in reality, you know, in the middle of the ground there are a lot of parties probably every other day, every weekend. I feel a lot of minorities because that's a lot of where a lot of time is paid from. So, you know, as a raper, I've been seen, I've seen a lot of things and I've wanted to pre-check help my own community, help my own people and people that are affiliated with us. So I started out in the New York dance safe chapter about three years ago and every day trying to find ways to get it out there that is everybody's problem and just as much of a part of my life I've been a part of it I've been a part of it because I've done every right problem and just as much of a minority problem as people think it is a white people problem if not a white people problem it's every right problem it's just that. It ends with a whole billion media in the same way until a pretty white girl could die at the festival unfortunately. So we have the same problem in our community and actually have a close friend doing the research And that's a good question to add, because she got all the wrong stuff, so there I am. Thank you for those good questions, and we want to do that to begin to open up for some questions. And so because we have, I say one, you say, Mike, up here, I'm going to ask you to form a line so we can get some questions for our panelists, and for the folks who respond, set me up as well. So if you have some questions, please come to the formal line over here. I just got one question, because Dr. Hart, you did make me think about something. How come when white folks get addicted on how? They have an epidemic, and we have a crime wave. So I'd like to know, how do race play into this shit on a real level? Because the way that they pursue me and mine could be totally different the way they pursue other people. So I want to know, what is an epidemic, and how come my shit is a crime? So as we think about the opioid epidemic, I think that's what you're talking about. It's important for us to be careful. The New York Times trying to piece something about now that white people with opioids and heroin is now a gentle war on drugs. Washington Post ran a similar piece now that the face of the drug re-user is fighting with getting more gentle. We have to be careful, because all of those kind of conversations coming from the New York Times, NPR, Washington Post, it's a setup that's playing into, it's not really talking about race. If you want to talk about race and the opioid situation, what you need to do is go through any of your local newspapers. On the one hand we're saying let's be compassionate with these users, because they're white. And we all should be saying that, no matter who the users are. That's a good thing. But the thing that we are failing to talk about is who is being arrested for opioids now in terms of trafficking. None of these conversations deal with that, and that's where the real issues are. And so please be careful about falling into that simple narrative that these writers, these progressive liberal writers are writing about. It's the distraction. Stay focused on who's going to jail. And white people are going to jail for opioids today. And not that we don't need to go back to the crack. Because we weren't compassionate with certain types of crack users. People won't think so, but if you go back and you read your newspapers, it was the same narrative. And we shouldn't have been compassionate, but we were not compassionate with black people who we said were trafficking. Just like we're not compassionate with them in a wide range of areas and wide range of domains. So they're saying to me, so keep your focus on who's going to jail. Just to say that there are some solutions between recreational areas and this opioid crisis, if that's what you want to call it. Like one of the things that Kelly does, that the NSA does is drug checking. Like in this community, having adulterants in drugs has always long been an issue. And that's a solution that can be outside of this community. So I would like to start building bridges. We need to have the full depth of the conversation. Who's getting arrested? Who's using the drugs? Where can we get solutions from other communities? And so I thank you for bringing that up. But there's a lot that we can all learn from each other. Thank you so much, Stephanie. I would like to see a woman on the panel soon. Yes! Please address that. Let me address that. Women often sit on this panel, black women. To sit on this panel and say that they are active drug users, risks of losing their children. And that is why we didn't put, there's a different risk that even women have. And so when we thought about it, I wanted to trust that we made very conscious decisions. And so that was why we also had responders, and we're having an open conversation. But there was no woman who said, oh, we just want to have a woman. That was not what we did. We had to determine risk because it is still illegal for people to use drugs. And it's still illegal for people to sell it. We also don't have any active drug sellers on this panel. So I just want to say one thing. I want to thank you for that. Because one of the things that we really need to realize is the one that do come to women. That how their issues are not addressed. About the feelings what a woman has to do if she's on this panel, and the feelings that have been created and what she went through. Women issues are very sensitive and different from men issues. And we always got to keep in mind of that there, you know what I'm saying? And I appreciate that because we need to protect that woman out there. Do you know how hard it is for a woman to come into treatment and evolve what she goes through? That's something that we need to remember. Man, you know like black women, white women are proud of us, you know what I'm saying? So we need to keep that in mind that their issues are really deepening out. It's hard to keep females in their treatment. And we're really grateful for a whole day program in which we will also hear about solutions for peace in this drug war and the cost of the drug war from an extraordinary panel of women who will drop the mighty Eshwajima. So, Wakana Eshwajima, I want to add one more thing. And that is... Okay. I'm glad to know. So, my husband is currently in the Formical Theater. Who's now incarcerated at Whitmore. He'll be announced in 2018. But one of the things that I get from him is something I've heard in listening to your comments which is a little bit of shame and resistance around that label of I'm a formerly incarcerated person or a prisoner. And I feel that... And I'm wondering how you feel that we can address that stigma to get folks like that involved. People like my husband who I think has really a perspective but wants to distance themselves from the prison label. And then beyond that, Obama made comments this year about, you know, America is a closet with white guilt. We're not interested in sympathy for people like my husband, people like myself who are so dressed forever even. And so then how are we investing other folks and understanding that man's information that I'm really interested in? Can I drift? The reason that I wear that label is because somebody got to stay at home for that fight. Right? Because at a certain point when you get down to, you know, what is the position of us who have a conviction history coming home when our loved ones stay in public housing, somebody got to step up and say, we want access to our families. We want to actually change public policy in relationship to housing. When it comes to the question of employment, if we don't step up and say that we want that box man on employment, not just for the federal government but for private contractors because I'm paying fucking taxes too, right? And if I'm paying taxes and 25% of the labor market is being controlled by private contractors doing business with the federal government, if we wanted to end unemployment questions for me, somebody got to stand up and says that this is my fight. This is where I stand. This is where I resolve. Because I'm not expecting y'all to save me. I expect that I will be saving myself with the fight that I initiate about my rights. When it comes to the question of voting, we expanded, here's the four things we did in 18 months. One thing that we did in 18 months was we expanded access to public housing in terms of the guidance they probably issued in the last two weeks. We actually got the President of the United States saying that he's going to stop that crooked-ass shit on the federal application. What we got them to do is when they put in our request for proposals on the federal government that changed the language because they was calling us offenders in their language or when they're doing a conviction history check, what they would call it is a criminal background check which means that you would taint the information that you're looking for. The other thing that we did is in multiple places we started expanding the ability to get access to the right to vote. We did that by something like $60,000 in the state of California when we expanded for the right to vote on the post-release supervision. So we have a low intensity fight and I feel the same way about it as Dr. Hart felt about it. If you are a formerly incarcerated person in this room, bring your ass out the closet and get in the street and fight with the rest of us. We're going to start in 15 minutes later. Do you want to go 15 minutes into the lunch or do you want 7 minutes? We're going to put in 15 minutes. Do you mind showing him the bonus of 15 minutes? Okay, and then he will take it with us. So start for me guys. Okay. In the second half of the statement, I answered that deferred event because of the application. The name is Elijah William and the NGO representative for ACROM. And to the panel, the question is, United Nations has declared 2015 to 2024 the decade of African people. What is it that you want us to do to make that platform relevant to the struggle for freedom? That's a great question. I've been coming to Drug Policy Alliance events for years, you know, for decades. And I've been in the street. I've been an activist community organizer. I'm the director of the campaign and the New Jim Crow in New York. Me and Michelle Alexander are extremely close. And I just think it's time for the conversation to shift from problem to solution. I think we talked about the problem in the minutiae of the problem at Infanita. And I think that it is time for us to begin to start talking about how do we solve this problem? You know, we can't go on like this. You know, because people are filling up prisons, jails, getting killed by the police. And I mean, all we're doing is marching through the streets, talking about no justice, no peace. Hands up, don't shoot, power to the people, right? But we're not organizing on the grassroots level. And until we begin to do that and start organizing in every poor community of color, this is where all these things are happening. We will be just like the people in Ferguson, Missouri. They didn't have a drug problem. They had a political problem. 67% of the population of Ferguson, Missouri were African-Americans. They didn't organize. They didn't take advantage of the political process. They controlled it. I mean, they could have controlled it and controlled who was their mayor, who was their police commissioner, and how policy and practice would have been initiated in that community. So I'm saying that, you know, we can sit up here all day and talk about the intricacies of this oppression that we are suffering. And we can talk about politicians in a bad mode. But if government is the organized power of the ruling class, the only solution is for us to become the ruling class in government. Thank you, Jack. Thank you so much. I'd like to address that question also to add on to that. I've asked my sister, John Gamblin's primary, whose board is a special consultant with the UN, and especially working to here in Panama, but not only in Panama, to talk a little bit about the process and how we might address that as organizers who are working to add the drug born in the class and get through a racial justice lens. Thank you very much. So the first thing with the UN, and to know that the UN is not going to resolve anything. The UN is a vehicle to narrow voices heard and to go over government on U.S. soil. That's what the UN is. The important process of the United Nations is now the decade which, you know, I have my observations and reservations about, but in the process of the UN, the important thing is being able to get the issues out. So there's an undeniable fact that there are human rights violations that are happening, depending on the issues that we're looking at. And that is through civil societies to manage shadow reports. The shadow reports are ongoing, they're heard, and they're read by a committee, an international committee, that then holds the United States, in this case, accountable to human rights violations, because they have signed international legally, you know, their documents are legally up, they're supposed to be legally upheld by the government. And they're not being legally upheld, but part of that, part of that they're not being legally upheld because most of us do not know whether they're legally supposed to be upheld. So part of it is educating ourselves through these kind of discussions around why are the international obligations, responsibilities, and legal obligations that the United States has to people. And then finding a way to uphold them through those international processes. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. I wanted to echo something that was mentioned by a couple of different panelists about how the dispossession of people of color is cyclical throughout the drug war and that it will happen even after deep remeliation, even after legalization. So recently I lived in Seattle and that's something we're actually seeing there. We have legalized marijuana, we have big stores, we go into it, and people planning on it, I love you. And those places have become anchors for budding gentrification in the city. And there's an Artism and Donut store in a store and there isn't a lot of information. There is, there is. All of those private accesses, all of those clubs, all of those has to be done with unhandcrafted, hot orange bean cookies. And we have had black communities in Seattle protesting in front of legalized marijuana stores because they're feeding this place and why there's not a force that's coming in. And I know we're not there yet, we're still working on legalization and legalization, but if we wait until we are there, we'll be behind the inequality. And especially for me as someone, I mean, my ignorance would, my ignorance was that I did not see this coming. As a white person, I thought we got it in the back with marijuana. And so, can we have this conversation and what can we do to try to prevent legalization and we, I guess, turning these things into ready-to-do businesses to be another step in the cycle of the discussion? Thank you, and I'm sorry to be part of, I'm sorry to be part of, I want to be aware that there are 300 people with a terminal and really get a chance to speak with a lot of speakers. It's not about me, you have to, you know, hold it, you move down a lot. So, why don't you want to take that question? I'll answer that. I mean, to say marijuana legalization caused gentrification, I think is a simplification. And I didn't mean to make that wrong. But gentrification in the city of Denver has been going on for the last 30 years. Legalization is something that people can easily point to and say is the cause, but I think it's much deeper than that and I'm pretty sure the same situation is in Seattle. But what is true is that the marijuana industry five, ten years from now cannot look like the tech industry. Can not look like all kind of other industries that are not inclusive. And what has to happen is we have to be there in the beginning where the policy is being written to make sure that the industry can be as inclusive as possible and that stuff has to be written into the regulations. Colorado and Washington went first. We learned a lot of lessons from Colorado and Washington. Is this thing even on or y'all just hearing this? And I think it's on us as reformers to make sure the industry is most inclusive. To realize that you've taken supplemental income away from our impacted community to realize that you may create a system where we are not being involved. It's on us as reformers to work with the industry to make that happen. And what we learned in 2016 is set in the bar for what marijuana legalizations should look like and we're going to learn from mistakes of Colorado and Washington but let's not put a justification on legalization because it's not that simple. Let me start for the next round. Charlie, what's this? It's not so much about my city but I feel like something we miss is whatever group we're talking about and whatever group we're lobbying for or fighting for with that group. We passed these laws and went like victory but they didn't actually change the conditions on the ground for people because we took out three clauses that would have done that because we didn't think they were important because we were not connected to that community. And so I think it's important that whatever it is whatever you're passionate about that constant communication and bringing not just like we had some drug user back look at this and the first draft but like multiple people looking at it from multiple different directions because really if you've met one drug user you've met one goddamn drug user we're not a homogenized group so you need to constantly look at how these are going to affect people and specifically people who are most marginalized. Thank you so much Charlie for the answer. In 11 minutes on the clock I am going to start the questions after we hear from Debra Small we're going to give special dispensation here because there's no way that Debra Small can constantly not have the technology that we would not even be having this conversation it would not be possible for under 30 by one another to do it having had a mirror to look into when I first learned the work that Debra Small was doing a long time ago when I was in Essence Magazine she had no mirror she had to make it look like I had a whole clock herself and the fact that any of us who are sitting here today having this discussion is because this woman stood there a long 15 years ago please recognize Debra Small. Thank you all I'm going to speak fast because we've got a line here with you I just wanted to raise a couple of questions that speak to the ways which are starting this panel and to what Cassandra said at the beginning because she started today by acknowledging the work that everyone has done and is doing that has brought us to this place where we are today and you started this panel by talking about the principle of wanting to get rid of eliminating criminal penalties for users and possessors and I listened to that and I thought about that and I was like you know that is what we've accomplished over the last 20 years is to really shift that conversation but in spite of doing that we've left out the majority of the people who look like us because we've always known even when we came up with that language that the majority of the people who go to prison for drugs go with the label as traffickers not as users not as possessors so I'm asking why is it in 2016 that we're still holding onto that principle and still saying that we're for racial justice but those two things are not compatible number one number two, the conversation about what is the trafficker needs to actually match what it is and it's not anybody who's ever sat at that table or sat in this room it's big pharma it's big advertisers it's big banks we never talked about the fact that every major bank has pled guilty to drug trafficking money every single month that the market for opiate abuse was created by big pharma and promoted by big advertisers but we never talked about them as having complicity or accountability in the area of trafficking I have done this shit people I'm gonna blow it up I'm gonna blow it up I'm gonna blow it up I'm gonna blow it up I'm gonna blow it up I'm gonna blow it up The world believes is a reflection of what we've been saying. If you look at me and if you look at breaking bad news, they are a reflection of what we've been telling them. Keep good to the users and the possessors, and fuck over the traffickers. If we don't want to continue to see our people taken away, if we're given away, we need to change that language. Thank you. I feel recruited. That's the mindset of a lucky person who follows us. I was a little bit of a young man when I was recruited. And I was committed that we end the cycle and that we begin to live free. And I see that what we're not doing is keeping a real awareness from our family. And we're not keeping it real about drugs. We're not keeping people out of their lives because they're bad. We have a period of time though. And I guess my question is, how do we be more effective on that time around keeping it real? When a politician is difficult, it's hard for department officials to have commentations that actually make a difference. You're mine for granted. Thank you. I actually do because at a certain point I'm sitting in a cage and I have dreams about what do I want my community to look like. So when people are pushing out these theories around broken windows, when I know that every day that one of my homies is going to get out with skills and trade that could actually repair a community, nobody thought enough of us to actually frame us as if we were an asset instead of a liability. If we had anything to contribute to the community, to the community, to the general conversation, the way that we shape and handle our money is almost like we would be preferred to give the money to a treatment program than to give the money to the person who couch I slept on. So at a certain point, you could have attached economics to my release. You could have attached the opportunity for me to actually repair the broken windows. You could have actually allowed me to buy the abandoned houses. We could have restored our own fucking community, but we are not letting us engage in the conversation where we have aspirations and dreams and ownership of this stuff, too. So when I say let's not screw bookie again, it's a broader fucking concept. Thank you for our thanks. We have fewer questions left to ask. Please forgive me. So my name is Kalani. I'm a cannabis user. I'm also programming Canada's culture facilitation. We're going to diversify and increase the space. If people come out and you shouldn't get into the cannabis space, please reach out to us. This question can shadow, I'm sorry, how do you get more occasion now to own up and say white male privilege exists and give them the room to talk about culture together as one, as people? Thank you. I'm going to stack the last two questions. So thank you. Hi, I just want to one big thank you. I've enjoyed this panel. As someone married to a formerly incarcerated person, it's someone who has been fighting for freedom since 1619 since the protracted struggle. So I thank DPA for this and all the people that are involved in various levels that they are from the time that they have on this earth. My question is to Jack. You say that you sold drugs to a consenting adult. I am not an adult woman, but as a child my father suffered from alcoholism and drug abuse, or drug use. And what that meant to my mother, his wife, and his children, and the children that I work with in high school, I don't know how drugs, even if it sold to a consenting adult, does not affect children because it destroys families and it destroys communities. So I'm curious and I'm concerned how that would be that it doesn't affect children. We're going to ask, we're going to ask. That's a hard question. Thank you. So we're going to answer everything. I just want to ask the last question. Hi, my name is Alph, and I'm a G.S. alum. I'm also a former business owner and we used to work with a half-way house used to be a peaceful home and incarcerated individual. Individuals, so I'm very used to this world. I don't even know what kind of reaction it is, but just to tell the story in a short manner to ask that question. So my knowledge in this subject is through seeing my employees going through the trouble of trying to deal with addiction and trying to deal with... Okay, sorry. Basically, what I'm trying to say is for us as business owners who didn't keep our employees and wanted to help them stay on the job was much more helpful for us to lose influence. What happened there is that we're constantly giving information about how to fire employees. So very important how it can be there's more information for employers who want to work with people who want to help them stay on the job and succeed in that. Thank you so much. So the first piece of jazz do you want to respond? What was the first question you talked about? Shiloh? Shiloh for you talking about getting other women to download Privilege a question about selling drugs and then not possibly harming children even for such a sensitive adult and finally having to inform people in the workforce. Great. So Shiloh had the mind first. I mean... I'm not trying to... See, we'd be taking mics even on questions now. Shit. Why Privilege is awful. I know, I'm telling you that. So... Speaking about how to communicate to white folks I can tell you that it is incredibly frustrating and difficult even in my own community of homeless people and drug users I do a barbecue once a year for former homeless people and active homeless people in my neighborhood and it's almost all white men who are formerly and it's predominantly mixed race who are active and all the white men talk about how they pull themselves up from their bootstraps and they did it themselves and why can't other people do it and I always have to remind that to do this slowly and painfully where I remind them to this person and that person, this person they died and you got away this person you got arrested and you actually skewered it because of this person getting arrested and each and every time you climbed over someone of color and over someone who didn't have more privilege than you to get to where you are so you did not do it alone and the harsh, brutal reality is that white people don't listen to anyone but white people and you have to be like, I'm sorry I'm going to call you on your bullshit and we're going to have some comfortable conversation and you're not going to call me for months and then you're going to respond to me on Facebook about what an asshole I am and then eventually you're going to come to me a year later and say 10% of them and say thank you for enlightening me, I didn't know because another white person told me this too and I'm just being real I'm going to bring you to fuck with my white people we speak about white people like they are a monolithic group every ethnic group that came to this country the Irish, the Italians the Jews, all of them went through the same thing that black people went through to a lesser yeah, no wait, hold it I said if you let me finish I'm saying to a lesser degree okay they queued question and hello my sister yeah in every apartment and home in this country they have a medicine cabinet and in that medicine cabinet they have opioids and opioid derivatives and anyone in America can go to a doctor and get a prescription for oxycontin or any of the other opioid derivatives so I mean if we're going to blame the drug dealers in the street that are out there simply because they have no access to the opportunity structure in this country if we're going to blame them then we must also blame Big Pharma in the whole medical profession I mean from my primary care physician to the emergency room to every hospital in doctor's office in this country yeah I'm saying that drugs is common in this country as water yeah I mean trying to blame one group for the ills the repercussions of selling drugs it's not fair I think that's just right the general was going to add something to that a system on a certain level you are correct you know I think that we have a conversation in our community that underlies prohibition that drugs are bad at least if they're illegal they're bad and that people who use them or sell them are bad people and as long as we operate from that place and believe that then we're going to continue reinforcing this conversation and so what I really want us to be able to think about inside of talking about drug policy is what is our attachment to punishment what is it about us as a community that has us be attached to punishment in this way because the conversation that we started goes to won't you the ultimate outcome of that is that person has to be punished because they're causing harm because they're doing bad things so what I want us to actually think about how can we eternalize that and does it actually support us and if it doesn't wasn't our conversation that would because to be human beings are being making machines we've made all of this stuff up to mean a certain thing and to the degree that doesn't work it's time for us to make a new story a new meaning about our relationship to drugs thank you veteran I'm talking to employers about and to support their any partners they have using drugs I wanted to talk about the pain oh go ahead do that hahahahahaha hold on let me know if parents buy out of their parent I always say quit they've lost kids I always say quit they've had um you know there's a range of discrimination or disparity in the child prohibition of the child welfare world Black people lose their kids but that's something they're saying by somebody else and that's more disrespectful than the Black parent does we have to be careful with these drug-invading up, because that can go down real quickly. I had a neighbor who said, I like these, most have me in the back porch. I smell it, you know, next thing I know, top protective surfaces in my house. It's time to take my kids with me. So race and discrimination exist in that world, too. So let's be real careful with just parents, by the way, they parents. I thought it was an impossible thing.