 You may not be fearless, Joy, but you are brave. Thank you. Robert C. Randall was a pioneer on the issue of medical marijuana in the United States. He was a model citizen who took on the federal government and assisted defending people accused of criminal offenses involving marijuana. The Robert C. Randall Award for Achievement in the Field of Citizen Action honors citizens who make democracy work in the difficult area of drug law and policy reform. To present this year's Robert C. Randall Award for Achievement in the Field of Citizen Action, please welcome DPA Senior Director for Grants, Partnerships and Special Projects, Asha Bandali. It's time I'm going to talk to you all today, and so I wanted to try to make it mean something. So I'm going to share with you a part of the final conversation I had with one of my mentors, Dr. Maya Angelou, who died in May of 2014, and a week before her death, I had a final conversation with her. And what she said is, you know, something she said publicly, but, you know, Dr. Maya likes to lecture a lot. And she said of all the virtues that one can possess, most important of all is the virtue of courage. That sense of courage is what binds the two people who we are here to honor tonight for the Robert C. Randall Award. We hear people speak on panels a lot, but probably don't give a lot of thought to what it means, about what it means to lay your soul bare for the world to judge, reject, or honor. You never know what it's going to be, and it can be any one of all the three. Pastor Kenneth Glasgow and Cathy Kane Willis embody the idea of courage. These two people who I have worked with every day, whether I wanted to or not, since 2005 have exemplified a level of courage that I just want to take you through. And I'll share this with you. With my husband in jail, there came a point where I could no longer walk into prisons. I had post-traumatic stress disorder. I didn't realize it. But it was later actually diagnosed. And to think that, Kenny, after being in hell, the people who would have seen you dead, that you walked back in those prisons, not once, and not a hundred times, but hundreds of times, to ensure that hundreds of thousands of people would have the right to vote from inside the prison, from inside the prison, in one state, is monumental to me, and not just that. When prisoners went on strike throughout the state of Georgia, and no one was paying attention to them around the exploitation of prison labor and the violence, because trust me, what we see on our screens in the street that they do to our children walking home with skittles and iced tea in their hand, they have practiced behind walls without cameras on people in prison, because no, you walked back into that, my love, is beyond my own comprehension and, Kathy, I could talk about what you did in Chicago. I could talk about how we first met on a racial justice platform trying to change the laws in a city that was up south. I could talk about how you made Naloxone accessible to people who went unconsidered. I could talk about how you ensured methadone maintenance, but I'm going to tell people, because I know and I remember, and we had late night conversations, when you came out about your own personal history with drugs in a research organization, and you didn't know how they would see you, you didn't have a PhD, you had no protection, and you were somebody's mother. Courage, and finally, what it is going to take to ensure our movement, because we talk a lot about strategy. We talk a lot about being super smart. We talk a lot about logic models. But love is not a logic model. Love is something you carry within you. Love is something you know, and it takes courage to love deeply. It takes courage to love people who sometimes are hard to love, who sometimes are difficult to love. This is what binds you together. This is why you are our proud partners, and this is why both of you, Kathy Cain-Willis and Castor Kenneth Glasgow, both of you deserve the Robert C. Randall Award for Action in Citizen Democracy, because you make our world better. You change our culture. Please join me on the stage. So we're going to let beauty be for age. I can't, Kathy. No disrespect, no disrespect. I cannot begin to express, I'm also height challenged, aside from challenge in many other ways, how much this honor means to me personally, but no one single person is responsible for acts of advocacy. This award is for those people who inspired me and worked alongside me. This award is for Asha, who believed in me when maybe people didn't. And Ethan, who actually believed in me when other people didn't. And Jenny Jantek, who probably no one knows, but she helped co-found the Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy with me, and to all the SSGPers out there who worked so goddamn tirelessly. And Bill Murray, this is for you. Stephanie Schmitz-Beckbler, this award is especially for you. You did so much of the work, so much behind the scenes while I stood in the spotlight. For all of those of you who stood in the spotlight but put your backs into the work, this is for you. Working alongside people who have been personally impacted by overdose and advocating for overdose prevention and criminal justice reform, civil rights, and against racial disparities has taught me so much. So many people who have worked through pain and dignity, yet with so much grace. People like Tammy Alts, who personally dealt with overdose and still managed to make change. People like Cathy Arbini, a parent who lost her child when working on Missouri's overdose prevention laws, said, my boy would be so proud of me. He would be so proud. This community of people has taught me so much how to live through prison, how to deal with injustice, so much of how to deal with my own struggles, my living with cancer. So I thank them all for this award. I've also been thinking because I think too much about what it means to recover. I was once asked as a part of a government survey, as part of redefining recovery, what was recovery? To me, recovery is not about drugs or alcohol, it's about living a fully realized life. Right? It's a fully realized life with work, with connections to people you love and learning and growing. It's a process. And then I started to think about this more. We all, all of us, whether or not we've ever had a substance use disorder, are in recovery. We are in recovery from life. Life can be so tough. And we are all working to learn and grow and balance ourselves so that we are living the best lives we can. And honestly, this health struggle, this work has taught me something else. It's not enough to be courageous and an advocate and fight against injustice. One must also be in recovery from life. Two, learning to balance mind and work and body and spirit and rest and play and family and friends. It's probably the hardest lesson I've had to learn, especially, especially for advocates. Especially for you. So to all of those advocates out there, I wish you recovery. To everyone out there in recovery, whether from substance use disorder or from life, I say thank you. This award is for you. I don't know, man. You're going to put me behind a Catholic. Catholic took most of what I wanted to say. But I will say this. I'm very, very grateful to receive this award. And on behalf of the people that deserve it, I'm sitting over there that you all don't never see. My mother, who believed in me and took $200 to get me out, even after I did 14 years in prison. Some of y'all don't realize they sent us home from prison back to county jails in city jails, because we still got tickets we didn't pay, fines we had left over. And for some reason, while we're in prison, they just don't seem to act like we're paying those fines at the same time. And had to pawn our cars. So this for you. And this for all of my children. And this for you, TT. And your grandmother that believed in me enough to try to make me the man of the year when folks ask her what's she crazy because I'm an ex-crackhead. And I'm an ex-fellow and I'm an ex-diss. Well, I'm an ex a whole bunch of other stuff, too. They don't know nothing about it. But for the record, we're going to leave that one alone. Amen? And I couldn't pay the light bills and couldn't get Asha on the phone and Asha had to fight with the board and Ethan was just gracious enough to say, hey, we're going to keep them going. And for the last 11 years, we lived off of 30,000 or even $40,000 if we were lucky because of DPA that believed that something could happen in the South regardless of what everybody else said. And it did. And it did. And it did. And here, 16, 17 years later, Ethan, we got 17 laws in the Alabama past. 15, some say 15, some paper say 13. They'll figure that out after a while. We got three laws changed in Georgia. One in West Virginia, one in Florida. But all that's done by them people sitting at them tables that y'all don't never see. All that's done with Project South by Stephanie and all them when Stephanie said let's group together and make a Southern movement because as the South goes so goes the nation. So my question now, you know when I started now and Ethan to tell you the first plenary he put me on back in 2005 before I stood on the chairs in 2009 don't tell no funders. But anyway and one of the things we had was restore. We started on this to restore us first to heal us first to connect us first to dismantle racism amongst us is anybody understand what I'm saying first to eradicate classism and any kind of other that will stop us from being together first and then the first time I met them law enforcement officers against prohibition I tripped the hell out because I'm trying to figure out that's a oxymoron that you got police that sitting there helping us advocates fight against prohibition and they used to lock people up and I was so scared of people like Neil Franklin, Ira Glasser I said I don't care what y'all say he gonna pull out them handcuffs sooner or later. But he didn't he came down and stood with me and those guys over there that's in that corner they're singing prodigal child project and made theme songs all of us are none and theme songs are prodigal child project and be with me every day those are the guys that disaward for right there that come up out of the prisons so my question is Ethan how do we connect how do we continue this and I don't know how you step down I'm still trying to figure that out you some kind of man to burst something put it into effect to get it to transition like it is Asha was even asked in the day I need a good white man to put on the panel I remember when there were no black people here but me and Darcy so y'all can look at what then happen here and see just in our movement how we have transitioned so now let's take it to another step how do we continue to connect those that believe in God and go to church and believe in Jesus and believe in Islam and believe how do we connect with people that don't believe in God at all how do we continue to connect how do we continue to connect with those that are in prisons those that are out of prisons without seeing each other differently and allowing them to say non-violent and violent crimes and separate this crime from that crime how do we continue to connect how do we continue to connect politically and socially and economically with as equity all amongst us so that none of us are lacking and all of us are fighting with the same strength and the same power how do we continue to connect how do we continue to connect with this southern movement and thank God that y'all having it here in Atlanta Sharon Raven and all of them got together and said look we not only going to let you come here and have your DPA conference but we're going to make this we're going to decriminalize decriminalize so you can smoke right here how do we connect the southern movement with the national movement how do we connect in such a way when we got new funders coming into the fray like like Chloe and Michelle and William and all of them that's changing the funding world so we no longer got to fit a criteria or fit some kind of skilled evolution that they have but they really looking at the grassroots work and what we doing and none of us are judging each other anymore how do we continue to connect with that being said with Alabama, Florida and Georgia looks like in five years it doesn't just matter to the south anymore now it matters to the nation so as I ask the question how do we connect I also got to reflect on how much we have already connected so I end with my words that I started with in 2005 in the first DPA conference I went to when me and Ethan were sitting up there trying to discuss how we bring all of you here somebody say restore come on y'all somebody say restore somebody say restore and until we restore everybody we have not restored each of the all ourselves