 I want to start with you, Susan, and talk a little bit about what the drunk one has caused you personally. So, um, Asha, I'd like to start with you. I'd like to start with you because I know you. You know, as a woman, a black woman who has stood in the places that we don't always get to come into, the rooms and the conversations that we don't always get to have, but you stood in front of us, ensuring that we are represented and usher the resources to us for us to continue to be able to be resource to actually be in this fight. You are the longest standing black female program officer that I know. And when you come into the room, we need to look at you and understand and acknowledge who you are and what you do. So, I'm going to ask everybody to stand and applaud Asha. I'm going to give you a tip on the land this year. No, but that's real. But that's real because I know it's all types of fights that go on and, you know, and I just had to say that because there's some mornings, early mornings and conference calls that you're always on in and you're always on point. And, you know, I know that there's room, there's conversations that I'm not privy to that happen. It's just part of the game. It's just part of the flow. So thank you for being that warrior. We love you, Asha. So the cost of the drug war, for me, and I'll say for us, I mean it's tremendous and it continues. So just to let people who don't know me know a little bit about me, in 1982, I had a son who was five years old. He was killed by a police officer. And, you know, it was an accident. The police officer ran him over. But the police officer never, ever stopped his car and got out. The police department never said, I'm sorry. All I know today is his name. And that's because I read it in the LA Times. After his death, I began to drink heavily. And, you know, crack came to every corner and I took crack and I got sent to prison. I got sent to prison not one time, but six times. I was convicted of possession of a controlled substance and sent to prison. I think it was the third time I threw myself on the mercy of the court and I said, your honor. And I went through a whole litany of my life, of what my life had been like up until my son's death. And that just, you know, threw me overboard. Excuse me, but that MF still said state prison three years. After my sixth incarceration, I found a place that I could go in Santa Monica, upscale community. And I went in there and I got treatment. They called it treatment for drug addiction, but what I found was compassion for my addiction and services to help me to rise above it. You know, like therapy weekly, medical services, dental services, and most of all compassion. And I got better. But in that time, you know, what I found is that what I saw is that the community in which I was in, they got handed a court card instead of some chains. They were diverted to different types of treatment and different types of groups and different types of meetings that I never got a crack at. And so I left that treatment facility after 100 days and said, this shit is crazy. You know, why was I chained up and put in a cage like an animal? You know, why didn't someone tell me there was a way to deal with my grief and a way to deal with my anger? A way to deal with my rage and quite frankly, had I not had something to medicate my pain, my anger, my grief, I might have went down to the Wilshire police station and shot that thing up. You know, they took my son and never even said, Ms. Burton, I'm sorry. Never acknowledged it. You know, I lost 20 years or I gave 20 years. I won't say I lost it because I learned so much in that 20 years that informs my work today. So I left that treatment facility and got a little minimum wage job and I saved my money and I bought a little house and I went down to the bus station where women were getting off the bus. All the women, I know all the women that was trapped up just like me with some types of substance abuse or incarceration problem and said, hey girl, I got a home. Come on over here and there's a new way a life is born. So in providing and creating this community, I saw the rapid discrimination that people face. You know, I don't want to say as a result of incarceration. I want to say as a result of being black in America. You know, I saw babies snatched. I saw, you know, denial all across the board. You know, I saw what I really am clear on today is the treatment industrial complex that reproduces racism while they say I'm helping you but I think you're really re-student and hurting us. And if anybody's in here and you're working with folks and you say you're fixing them or giving them opportunity and it's based under federal government money, you're lying. Because what I found is through those contracts and those resources that you have to continue to push that racism and treatment of people that just isn't right. It isn't healthy. You know, it isn't good for them. As a result of that, you know, I terminated. I terminated last year every government, every county contract that I had and said we will survive. We'll make it through but I'm not going to do what you're asking me to do to report on my people the way you're asking me to report on my people. I'm not going to tell you when they're brushing their teeth and when they're laying down in the bed. You know, I'm not going to give you their birthday, their social security number and all of the things that you're asking me to do. This is a real positive because I want people to really hear what you said. We had a question before about how we can run a workplace and do it ethically. Not harm people who use drugs and not harm people, period. The vulnerable position that most of our not-for-profit organizations are in especially ones that have run our black women and black men is incredible. When we started this branch program, Ethan and I, when I sat down and said we're not basically going to guarantee people as long as they do the work that they're going to run. That's it. There's not a billion things that you have to report. It's not because it's too hard and the more we push people into doing grants as though they're making widgets and not saving lives as we're just incredibly ridiculous. And so I just really want to remind you the courage that you did. And just saying, when she goes and hits her around there, when she says something around and says I need $5, take $5 out and put it in a way of life's work. Yeah, so I guess what you can say is we're building a way out up under what the traditional like America thinks is a way out. And I see so many, so many providers that keep people pinned up in cages. I mean, I had a week and I went to the treatment facility and they said, they're not in 15 bucks an hour, but it's a start at building the end times. But that's the way in which I see people really held hostage sitting in groups and talking about what I did wrong. Not why and what the culture and what the environment's about. What pushed me there. What caused, so anyway. That's my story. That's my frame. That's what I feel like we, especially the 70 million formerly incarcerated people in this nation. Yeah, just like Dorothy said, they need to come out. We need to stand up. We need to organize. We need to take a day and flood this country with our faces and demand our right to be, you know, just here. Thank you so much. Oh, one thing. And Dr. Hart, I wonder, many times I wonder, you know, if my son would be at Columbia or in one of those prisons. I wonder that, you know, a lot of times. Yeah. Thank you so much. Hold the space on this. So the people I've worked with the most closely supported me. She stepped into this work the last few years in the city of Cullin. She is not only something who organizes, she's broken up more, but also organizes with Moms United. This whole together family should all across the country will be standing in front of the U.N. tomorrow. So that our families, the people we've loved and lost and recognized. And I don't know, a lot of times we get questions in doing work around racial justice. What does a white ally do? What does a white ally look like? In my world, it looks like you, Denise, and I'm wondering if you would share with us also what the show of the war has caused you. Thank you, Asha. First, I'm a mother. I will always be a mother, even though I don't have a child anymore. And this, obviously, the primary thing that it's cost me personally. My son, Jeff, died of an overdose in 2008 after four months of being incarcerated two days after he was released. He was 27 years old, and he was my heart. And our little family was broken when that happened. We've been through 12 years of trying to help him with his pathological drug use. He started using it about 15, was in nine treatment centers. Traditional 12-step, do nothing, treatment centers. At least for us, that's what they were. He said he had a fairytale life. He never blamed anybody for his drug use. He took all the responsibility on himself. He used every drug there was. He didn't start with opiates and died from them. He died from morphine and Xanax, a combination. He had loving parents in a secure home. He was not a minority born into a minority, but he became one. And then as a result of that, I became one. I watched it happen. I saw it happen, and I felt it. Because when he became a member of that minority, he changed. He became stigmatized. He became an other. And he took on that persona because that's what he heard about himself all the time. He called himself a junkie. I never used those words. But he felt that way. And so people looked at us as we had to be bad parents, or our child would not be doing what he was doing. I know that he was born into privilege. He had everything he needed, not everything he wanted, but everything he needed. And his half family and my husband and I and Jeff were very, very close. But I watched as they degraded my son. I watched as they devalued him. And he lost himself in those words, in their beliefs. He internalized the stigma and prejudice of those who saw him as less than human. I watched as my son was broken by their future loathing, broken in pieces, such that he would never be whole again. Not in this life. What has endured the war cost me? In a way I think I should. It's what did it cost Jeff. It cost him his life, but before it took his life it cost him his dignity. It cost him his self-worth, his identity as a human being worthy of respect and compassion. It robbed him of his humanity and allowed those who should have helped my son to instead treat him with contempt. It allowed them to criminalize him, incarcerate him for being who he was. And this drove him further into his addiction. I fought for Jeff with everything I had, everything we had for our son. We walked alongside him, but we lost and Jeff lost. This addiction it took his life. My son, as special as he is to me, is not so different than the thousands of other sons of other daughters whose lives have been lost to the so-called wanderers. They have been incarcerated or incarcerated now, and they have died. Too many of these sons, too many daughters, they are all precious gifts. But these gifts so precious to us are seen as nothing more than trash through the lint of this war. And this war this time it must stop. My son is not trash, he is Jeff, and he is gone. Thank you, Denise. You know, Erica, when we sat down and talked a couple of months ago, you know, we were talking about how your father was happy he was killed. It seemed like they sought to justify it by saying he was selling legal cigarettes. And by that very act, somehow, that allowed them to choke him to death. And we learned very little else about him other than that. And I would like you to tell us in your words who Eric Arner was and what you know really happened on that afternoon on July 14th, 2014. I still want to say that man-to-minds guilt and cover-up is more murderous since it happened. And we need to demand accountability and transparency for the individuals from the crime school for the payroll. That's right, that's right. We've been pushing for a long time, but pushing for a long time. And the cover-ups and the corruption still keep on going. I need for Democrats, progressive Democrats, to stand behind the chokehold bill and stand behind the special prosecutor, executive action or whatever. Like, he promised my family a year ago that if it doesn't come in the house as well, that you'll already know it and you haven't heard or heard about it. But who my dad was as a person is who I am today. Like, he told me everything and prepared me for my journey right now that I'm off. He was a love and care like that. He was like my sooner man. Like, I never got to know how I am. We never had everything we might have wanted, but we had everything we needed right now. My dad was a type of person. Like, he knew his rights. He was harassed for seven years. And after his death, I looked into it a little bit more and found documents that he couldn't complete about being a sider or a sider or a shoe being pulled over. Just money stolen from him. And my dad was a type of person. Like, you're not going to stop me if you don't know what I had to do. And that's what he and my kids. He was of asthmatic. Yes, he was. He was in the hospital for the first four months of his life because of asthma. He had to have some gland in his nose to remove because he needed to breathe. The reason I'm going to do this is because of asthma. And I can't understand why social security don't feel as, you know, a disability. I have chronic bronchitis and I know how it feels. You can just get tight and you're trying to breathe. A lot of people say, well, I can't breathe. That became a rallying cry. That became, you know, somewhat of a slogan that people used. But when I look at that video, I see a man fighting, begging for mercy to get back to his kids. He had six kids, two grandkids, and they was his life. My father was a hands-on dad. He was the type of dad that would do my hair with lotion. Like, he was the type of dad that would play the cooking show in the kitchen with his six-year-old kids. Like, you know, he was the hands-on dad, but you don't hear about that in the media. And when I noticed by speaking out, I learned something called respectability, power of politics. And what they continue to do is further victimize the family and the victims when they kill us. And they try desperately to say that I'm done with some cigarettes and that was what I learned. But it's no law that says that you have to kill someone for a freaking cigarette. Like, that gets me so upset all the time. And I'd just seen my dad being exploited by artists and politicians and elected officials. And I was like, you know what? Who can better do this but you, Erica? Because you're all a, you know... I'm Erica! I'm Erica! I'm Erica! Like, when you first had a kid, when you married my mom at 18, he was young. And he told me, he was like, you gotta find a man that's gonna take care of you and your daughter. Like, put your daughter before you. Like, you know, someone who's gonna love you the way that I loved you and your brothers and sisters. They're gonna go out there and get it by who needs it. That's a sudden, don't come home. He said at times that he didn't come home because he didn't have enough money to buy food. So he would stay out and buy bread, milk, cereal, whatever we needed. But he wasn't gonna come home empty-handed because he knew that children provide for him. He told me, you know, he told me a lot of things and I couldn't understand why my dad was telling me with these things. Like, a year before he passed away, he was like, Erica, what you want to do? When I'm gone, I'm looking at him like, you know, don't say that you don't know where. And like a year later, he was taking from me. I was living, I was living and working in Far Rockway and I was in Staten Island. And I couldn't move fast enough to get to him. And I felt so bad when I had to find out on the train that my dad was going off with me. And you know, it took my family a while to speak out because there was a whole bunch of people from left field, right field, me, all this other crazy stuff going on. But now I feel like I'm in a position to like really, and plus I just endorse Bernie Sanders. So now I'm in the, it's not mostly about, you know, Bernie Sanders. Like, I learned about him, but I've seen that as an opportunity to uplift my voice, like to really convey my message. Enough is enough. And that's when my dad said in the video, you can't take this no more. He was harassed because he sold a loose cigarette. But when he walked to the court, he sold it to the Hypees and get a 50 cent cigarette. And the only thing they get is a five and still continue to keep on selling cigarettes. Something is wrong. Something is wrong in this country where they see us as a threat. We look down the street and they see us as a threat. They got these belt broken windows or stopping threats. Like policies and stuff that's put into place to put us in jail. Stop us from voting. Stop us from housing. Stop us from having decent jobs. Stopping us from bringing us up from our families. Like, as he said, even though he was sending out his job my whole life, I would never know it. Because he was, what, going for about two to six months? He's never been going for years. They tried to put him out as a criminal. He was never a killer. He was never one of those people that said he don't rape anybody. He was just being a loving cameraman that wanted to take his family. And they took that away from me. And I have to keep on going out and be his voice because they took it away from him. He was actually getting somewhere. He got a couple of officers from that print, you know, transferred from there. He put it, he was actually getting somewhere by going the right way and putting it in these things. And, you know, I feel like it was kind of a retaliation. They lost their friends. This black man that keep on, they tried to end all the stuff. And he can't, you know, he paid his parents or whatever. But other people want to speak, and that's what I just wanted to say. And that's what the drug policy goes for me. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Sarah. The London Warriors, wounded healers are doing this work. Thank you for coming today to be with us. Let me turn to you, Ms. Joyce, Joyce Rivera. And, really, I wanted to switch a little bit to the question of some solutions. And part of that talks back to a conversation we were having with some of the players earlier about how we criminalized and just white-bought everybody who was a drug seller. A few months ago, you told the most amazing story about how we started harm reduction in the Bronx. And really, who worked with you and who helped you. And I'm wondering if you share that with us today, and help us think through how we need to be thinking about solutions to the drug war. Okay, so I'm really happy to be here. I, you know, when we started this morning, I loved the way it started because it really talked about the dance talked about women and women's power. Put it in your head. I just, I'm much more... You know you don't have a soft voice. I do have a soft voice. So, this morning when we started, you know, in that dance, What I saw was the way we women just simply called forth the energy in the room and the energy in the dance. And I think that dance is really important for this panel and for the spirit that it raised and the importance that it set the tone and both at this moment here today. In general, that's what that dance does. If you come from my background, what I see as a woman is what it's a message to us women. We started, we invoked spirit and we work it and we're really comfortable with who we are. And I see that here and I'd like to add that there were also disobedient women. And I think that disobedience is the mother of freedom. I've always been disobedient. And I've always done it my way. And when I was doing work in the South Bronx, I come from the South Bronx. I'm born and raised here. I'm a home girl. And I'm happy about that. And when I came to my, Jesus, when I came to my working in the South Bronx, I met a gentleman. There was activity going on in a park. And it was, you know, for us New Yorkers, we go everywhere. And no one went into this park. They didn't want to go into this. Not every people went, but the people that I was working with didn't want to go. They were afraid. And so the first thing is that being disobedient means that you come back afterwards. You want to find out what's going on in that park. And in that park, I spend time. I respect the big man. I think the big man is doing a lot of stuff in our communities and has done a lot of stuff in our communities. The big man provides jobs. Osterity took out jobs. The drug policy has reshaped our communities into a state of sheer survival and despair. And so the big man is providing, you know, he's also a man that deals with violence. And so it took time to work with the big man because I respect him. And what I learned to do, what happened was that in learning to work with the big man, he humanized me. He, you know, we're all shaped by the drug war. This is a received culture. And we are, you know, we also have to work on our narratives. We have to remember our disobedience. You know, the system basically teaches us that we're inessential to our own communities, to our leadership, to every aspect in our lives. It tells us we're inessential. It tells you who's essential. The big man was essential. And in working with the big man, not only did he humanize me, but he became important to the building of a syringe exchange because I saw other aspects to him. I saw that he was somebody, you know, I saw, you know, he was someone that was interested in, he wanted nobody HIV. He grew. He had other aspects to him that I got to know. And it was a, it was, it made it fertile for creation of the syringe exchange. He closed his, you know, when, when I wanted to do it, I wanted to do it in a, across the street somewhere in a park. And I was so naive. I was so naive about that. Because I didn't get that what we were doing was taking a commercial transaction, you know, syringe and turning it into a humane one. And why that I mean, you know, you could always cop dope in New York. Always. But you couldn't find needles. So what are you going to do with that shit? You got the dope. You ain't got the needle. The dealer told me, you know, you can't go and do it wherever you're going to want to do it. I did it in his spot. I said to him, you know, you got a cop and go operation here. I got to stop and chat. So he closed it down for two and a half hours, three hours. That's how it started. I had to stop from having his guys, you know, like, you know, it was important to recognize that the big man, that our communities live in huge despair. And that the big man is there because you have to understand, you know, that the whole thing is the economy. But in general, it's also that we're binded, we get blind and we're binded to a certain narrative. And that narrative tells us everything, you know, about our identities. And so we, and how we live. And so you're a drug dealer. You're a bad guy. You work for Big Pharma. You're a good guy. So in fact, you know, we, but you're in a living. So you're blinded by the fact that you depend on this narrative. Your very identities are coming from this narrative. And you're blinded by that and it binds you. And so being disobedient allows you to decode that. Yeah, thank you so much. Let me ask you to share a conversation that we have often privately and offline. And, you know, we're sitting in a time, you know, massive incarceration to communities that are already vulnerable and increased poverty by as much as 20%. Right. They never locked up a single person. They locked up whole communities and destroyed schools. They took away green spaces. You know, you just went on and on. And in all the ways in which people were harmed. And so here we are as we're, you know, as we've often said that women have been at our backs. People are questioning the drug laws. The drug policy line is just an incredible sign-on letter where people from Mary Jane College, the board of prophets signed on. And said it's time to rethink all of these policies. But even as we do, right, how is it that we prepare the harms? How do we make hope? The people who have been so harmed, right? Even as people who have been a kinder gender drug war. Right. I'm very aware of the marijuana, above-ground marijuana industry that Ohio truly tried to do an oligarchy. And it truly did. We have a different looking California now. Hopefully if legalization gets through there, there's so many people that have been harmed. What is the responsibility that people have to communities that have been harmed? The politicians, the bankers, and so many others who made the decisions to lock up people, to run the drug war, to sell it to us, to make us think that our own children were who we should have been afraid of and criminalized and were okay to be shot down in the street when we would have raised hell if we had done that with dogs. Right? It's not even safe to say shot down on dogs. What is the response? How do we prepare for harm? That's a deep question, Asha. One that requires a much longer answer than I have time for. But I'm going to give an attempt. And I want to start by acknowledging who we are, what you're looking at in front of you, which is the tradition of women as change agents. You know, we very rarely talk about the fact that a lot of the major changes that have happened in our society, particularly the ones that have made people's lives better, were changes that were initiated by women. So I just want to like do a quick little don't waste my time by clapping because this is meant to be a teachable moment, like for real. So I just want to, I was just sitting here thinking about it. And I, because for me, everything that we do has to be linked to the past. It actually has to live in a frame so that we get what it is that we're doing and what it is that we're continuing. So I start with Harriet Tubman, who was a person who led people to freedom, but more important than that she removed both the physical and the psychological shackles of slavery. The most important thing that she ever said from my point of view was that she could have freed more people if they had known that they were slaves. Removing the psychological shackles is even more important than the physical ones and that's part of the work that we're doing today. Ida B. Wells-Barnett eliminated the denial in America about the reality of lynching, but not just the fact that it was happening because we had lots of photos of that, but the fact that it was linked to black men's behavior, that it was about black men's predatory behavior. She was like, that's bullshit. Black men are not going around trying to rape white women. They're not even looking at rape white women. You guys are lynching them because you can, because you want to, because you like it. That was some truths that needed to be told then. Rosa Parks, most of us only associate her with the sit-in on the bus, but before she did that she was an investigator for the NAACP who kept people's stories about sexual violence. What had her sit down on the bus was the fact that that was a site for sexual violence against black women that went uninvestigated and unprosecuted and she was like enough of that. I want to make my stand by sitting down. Ella Baker inspired a whole generation of young people to seize their power, to organize, to demand what it is that they wanted to establish policies for themselves. And if we had kept her tradition we wouldn't be having this conversation right now because we never would have passed the fucking crime bill back in 84, 86, 88 or 94. Shirley, my favorite shero, Shirley Chisholm from the great borough of Brooklyn, first black woman to run for Congress, first black woman to run as president. What was her slogan? Unbossed, unbound. That is who we are, that is who we must remain to be. And finally, some of you, most of you have never heard of, but some of you have, Amani Woods. The first sister that I met in harm reduction when I first came into this movement. The first person who taught me what it was to actually do harm reduction. And not theoretically, but like practically, with real people. And not just on other people, but on myself. On removing and reducing the harm that this system has caused me to cause to myself that I continue to cause to myself. Because if I'm not engaged in harm reduction for me, I can't be about harm reduction for any of you. So that is like the space that I just want to establish as the space for which we have a conversation about solutions and what it is that we're bringing to our community. Because the truth is that we don't need resources from other people to do the healing that is required. We just have to be willing to provide it for each other. And first and foremost, we have to be willing to do the work of healing ourselves. And we cannot make being a do-gooder for other people be a substitute for doing good for ourselves. Starting with our families. And I will just say, because I had to think about like what is it that the drug war has cost me? It cost me my father, my brother, my brother-in-law, my best friend from law school, my first love, my belief in justice, my belief in myself, my understanding of my own need to medicate where that came from and the reason not to make myself wrong and to actually like seize some power around all of that. So to me, this is a conversation and I want to echo so much what Susan said about Asha. Because this is the space that you're stepping into, that you have stepped into, that you are continuing is that space of supporting our community in ways that we're not always even present to and don't even acknowledge and bearing the burden of all that pain that you and I both know that comes with doing this work. Our own pain and the pain of other people. The ones we can help and the ones we can. And doing it anyway. So I want to just acknowledge that. I want to acknowledge you, but most importantly, Asha, what I really want to acknowledge you for is something that most people never think about, which is the fact that you ask for help when you need it. You call people when you're upset. You're like, I need to like just vent today instead of holding it in and letting it tear you down. That's what has women die early is the fact that we don't do that. So I want to thank you for being an example of what it is to have a commitment to self as well as a commitment to others and to understand that if we're not having a conversation here that's grounded in truth, telling the truth to ourselves and to others, then we're not doing anything really good. And now I'm going to take one last minute to tell some like internal truth telling. So, you know, I'm going to leave it to other people to talk about the policy changes and things that we need because we can talk about that. We can read about that. But I do want to talk a little bit about a consciousness change. I want to call out the black Victorians. You all know who you are. All the professional people who think that somehow they know what's good for black people and who are always our biggest obstacle to progress. The epitome of that is the one who's sitting on the goddamn Supreme Court who refuses to die in a timely fashion. That's why I said it because all of us are going to go eventually. Some of us should go sooner. Those folks. No, because I was just in Sacramento with a group of black physicians talking about legal weed. And they're like, well, we're merely talking about that. We don't think we should support it. Excuse me, y'all took an oath that said first, do no harm. Why is this even a question? Like, how can you even tell me that legal marijuana is nearly as harmful to black people as illegal marijuana? Like, just to me, there's just no debate about that because the whole purpose of having it illegal is to continue to harm black people. All right, let's just be real about that one. So that's the first part. The second part is that we also need to tell the truth about what's been happening in white communities and the ways in which the drug war harms the white community. And it does it in a couple of ways. But one way that the obvious way is in overdoses, all that kind of stuff. But the part that's not obvious that I think we need to talk about in a room like this is how it is that white people are not present to what's happening in their own community because the denial of criminalization means that this can't be, my child can't be an addict, my cousin, my so-and-so can't be abusing drugs because those other people do it. They can't be buying it from people that we know because we don't do that. And yet we know that the majority of people buy drugs from people that they know. So how many opiate sellers are there in white communities? Why are we still having this conversation about drug sellers? Like somehow they're my predominantly people of color. That was never true. It was never true. Not before, not now, not in the future. Not true. All right? So I'm not willing to have that conversation anymore. And to the degree that we allow ourselves to continue that, we're continuing a conversation for white people's denial about their own behavior because part of the perversion of racism is that it makes black people have a false sense of inferiority and it makes white people have a false sense of superiority. Both of them are evidence of mental illness. Seriously. I'm really not joking about that because I'm at the place again. I said I'm in my item care mode. I say what I believe. I know, but I'm trying to be a little bit more PC. But for me, the thing is this. There is something really perverse and I'm talking to people of color right now that has us accept a narrative that white people have a legitimate right to be afraid of us. Like think about it. 400 years of raping, pillaging, burning, maiming. Fucking us over. And we believe that they have the right to be afraid. And they can shoot us down. They were afraid. Fuck that shit. That is projection. Everything that white people have done to us in morality, their drug use, their addiction to power and money, et cetera, gets projected on to other people. And mind you, I should be a little bit more specific because it's not all white people. It's elite white people because they play that same game on poor white people too. They play that same game on them. They project all of that same stuff on them and have them believe that there's something that they're not. So like this for me is an opportunity for us to like, if we could ever get away from talking about drugs as if they were the problem, we could actually begin to talk about what really is the problem which is the system that we live in that we feel the need to escape from on one level or another. That actually isn't working for us. Answers to that, this is a conversation for all of us. But Asha, I thank you for creating a space for us to have that conversation. Because for me, that's a healing space. Thank you, Asha. I feel better right now just because I've said what was on my test. All right. A reflection on what we've heard today. You brought me up here because I'm the only person who would speak out of Deborah. Actually, before I bring the next person up, I wanted to acknowledge some important work done by Deborah. We don't get a chance to talk about her in part because she does so many other things. But the work that she and Harry were being, Harry, you're the house, Harry, stand up. There were people that exposed the marijuana arrest, the racial discrimination in the marijuana arrest in New York City. And they educated us about how it goes down. Now, marijuana in New York State has been decriminalized since 1977. And so the question becomes, how in the hell are you arresting all of these black and brown people? First of all, we didn't even know what was going on until Harry and Deborah published their first report. And so without that knowledge, we would remain ignorant and we wouldn't have the evidence. So thank you, Harry. Thank you, Deborah, for that work. Thank you. There are a number of luminaries in this field in the house today. And I apologize that we're not able to introduce all of you all. But I hope that we have some time to mingle and get together and talk. Because for the folks who are new to this, because a number of people raised their hands when Asha asked who had never been to a drug policy alliance event and are a number of you all. But there are a number of people in the house who have actually increased our knowledge in this area and has made sure that we have some justice and can push us to get justice. So please make sure you all mingle. But I want to acknowledge one person before I bring up our next speaker. I want to acknowledge Pat O'Hara. Pat, are you in the house? Wow! Stand up, please. Me, or continuing to educate me about the conditions in Northern Ireland where they are all white. But you still see the same sort of egregious acts play out in a drug war. And Pat was the guy who started contrainduction in the UK. And so Pat is, he's been around for a while. In fact, today is his birthday. Happy birthday. All right, so now to the stage, the former president of the nation. Ruth, do you want to come up here, please? This is Ruth Dryden. This is she's the former president of Switzerland. Before I give Ruth the microphone, I have to share just this story. Ruth is a dear friend now. But I have to share a story. When I was traveling to Switzerland for the first time, the remote my book, I gave a lecture and they said the first question would come from the former president. And so whenever people say you got to get a question from a politician, it's like it's got to be a bullshit question. And one man, you can just smith. So I gave a lecture. I went through my talk pointing out the fact that these drugs, the dangers of these drugs have been exaggerated. We have given thousands of doses, for example, here at Columbia of crack cocaine and a wide range of drugs. And we continue to study those drugs because of you, your tax dollars. These are the same drugs that we're saying are so dangerous and too dangerous for other people to use. But we give them out on a daily basis. Anyway. So I went through the data and I pointed out this sort of consistency. And then I said, this is why I think all drugs should be decriminalized. And, you know, that was the end of my talk. And Ruth raised her hand in her Swiss way, unassuming, non-American, American way. She raised her hand and she said, you know, we'll make sure, and she understood clearly that I said these drugs were not as bad as we said. And she said, well, why are you arguing for decriminalization? Why aren't you arguing for legalization? I don't know about any of our idiotic presidents coming anywhere near this. I can't. So we have asked Ruth to come up. So she can maybe help us to understand what is it that we can ask or we can expect from our presidents, our former presidents, what is it that we expect from them in terms of providing some of the solutions that these questions were raised from? So with that, I want to tell you, Ruth was a little concerned about her English. Her English is fine. Her English is absolutely fine. And I should also tell you that in three years I will be moving to Switzerland. Because Ruth is now working on illegal immigrants, so I'm going to be immigrants. To be honest on this stage, it's clear that I raised this question to come, but it's also clear that we don't have the legalization of drugs in Switzerland. I was for ten years responsible for the narcotic laws in Switzerland as the Minister of Health, which is a great advantage, but I couldn't legalize the drugs. So the question was to somebody who made this motivation, this rationale, and I thought that I had issues go further, but as a politician I was not able to go further. I continue to try out there. I'm no longer a government, but I am a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy and we are fighting for regulation of all drugs, all over the world. But I didn't succeed in my own country till now. So yes, I was very moved about what your story is and very popularized also and energized by what you wrote. I think what is very important, the role of a politician is to make the problem visible and to make the people who have to be respected, all the people. I mean, to go in your perspective, to meet the people, to show the people how they are, to show that they are able to have reasonable consumption, that they are able to have families, that they are able to have a life even if they are consuming drugs, even if they are dependent on drugs, not only consuming, because as we know all dependent people are a minority and the right consumers are those who generally can consume in a reasonable controlled way. So I think the first duty for a politician is to show the reality and to show respect to all the people. Because all your stories are stories of the recognition of young people and this is, I think, a real problem that is dividing our society. In Europe it is perhaps less a problem, a racial problem, but it is always the same. It is a problem of the poverty. It is a problem of the non-respect of the people. It is, yeah, you are talking about your son being not a trash, but it's considering people as trash, considering people as no value. And I think this is the duty of the politician to say nobody in this country is trash. As to here from the past ahead in Glasgow, who leads the Ordinary People Society and the title of the child project, and it's been one of the first partners that we ever had in DBA, a lot of actual women, but I think six of us around the table, 70 by 36 history. And Patrick Glasgow, from a faith perspective, and everything that you tell me, most just as an organiser, and somebody who's been incarcerated to represent the formerly incarcerated community, but you reflect on some of the things that the sister said about the cost of war and the solutions that repeats in about three or four minutes, and then we want to open it up to the beginning here from all of you. First of all, I want to really, really echo what they said about you. And those of you that don't know you've gone past and all that, you've been the most faithful one, and given all this accountability, and all this paperwork right here. Some of y'all are really good on paper and work damn on the streets, but it's just really, really nice. And so I'm going to thank you all, and I hope the ladies and people out there now, along with others, to make sure that the work, the people that really do the work and don't leave it on paper, are presented to DBA in a real, real, you know, intentional way so that they can get funded and continue to do the work, you know. And to those of y'all that do have those technical skills and all that, I don't have things to do with it, so it wasn't my job. You continue on, because don't stop me from doing mine. And what I heard today, first and foremost, as a man, I want to apologize to the Hofstra and the Susan Bergemen who were trying that crap, and the Deborah Smalls and Ms. McCullough and the Denise and all of y'all because I'm one of those preachers, you know, and some of those preachers have a tendency to look at women in a different way. I want to look at this yearbook and straighten me on that. And inside this movement, I've learned some things from dealing with you when we were. And I'm not saying that in a scientific way. I learned that we never counted y'all. We never thought about what y'all were going through. We always wanted to know why the hell you're not capable of telling us. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. And you know, Susan had to very, very make me see that. And then I got around the rims over and dusted. I was wondering, you know, are they a little sweet or what? Why they so worried about the women? You know, and I learned that. So when I come in here and I'm sitting next to Steven and I'm here and I'm trying to write and I'm trying not to let Steven right there see me because I'm crying. Because I'm thinking about Susan Burton and I'm thinking about my own mother. How she got breast cancer and liked to die while I was in prison. And I hung up the phone on her and said, I can't hear it. And my daughter, I never forget she called me back and I called them back and clearly called me in prison. And she said, why you hung up on my same I hung up on my mother. I hung up on whatever that was talking to my mother trying to tell her I'm going to die in prison. Whatever that demon was and all that. And what I'm trying to say is y'all women have a way of making us realize we demonize a lot of people in the faith-based community. Me and the young ladies, please stand up. Stand up. She's overracing in all that excuse me. And she's addressing it with all that stuff. And what I've heard of inflection to you Susan and you Denise and what I hear in you Erica is that, you know, we lost. We suffered just as much as y'all did if not more. Because y'all was the ones that we depended on to get that God done commissary in their own time. Y'all were the ones that we cussed out when we wasn't there on time. Y'all were the ones that we depended on when we couldn't go to courts for ourselves or go to the lawyers and see the parole officer or go to see somebody by trying to get us out. And I sat there when I was listening to y'all speak today and I thought about all the changes I took my mother through when I was like us. And I just want us men to acknowledge the fact that we've really been taking care of y'all. We really depended on them so much for a lot of things that made me think about what demands there early when the ones that charged it will get done. And we always had y'all in charge. We just didn't ever let y'all know or accept it ourselves. Oh, we know it. Brother, we know it. So to hear the wrap up and to hear what Debra Small was saying and what you were saying about the drug war and especially with the president. The president of the country talked about legalizing the drug. But to hear that and to hear it come from women, I want y'all to know one thing, that we as men we declare this day. And we declare that we will be behind you. The faith-based community have been one of the, you know, we slow on the road of coming up to par. So, you know, you have to give us a little bit longer. But now that you have us here my last words will be to say no. Thank you. Thank you. The woman also asked for a final reflection because I know the woman has been sitting here spinning all day for us. But really the woman was born really incredibly like. You could be spooned in his mouth and it's this in the air. The landowners are a long line of organizers and it's the only way that I've never known you to be. And so I wonder if you can think a little bit of your work that you do to end police violence and police brutality through your work at the NAACP legal defense fund. I'm going to be quick. Good afternoon everybody. First of all, thank you all of the panelists for a very full provoking and honest sharing. What I'd like to offer in reflection is actually to all of us who are participating in this discussion in ECT, it's for us to reflect on where we stand and our proximity to the issues that we've heard. I think it's always safe for us to be in these spaces and to be the amen corner and to be very supportive of what we hear when we go back to our spaces we don't reflect what we were amen to here. And so if we believe a lot of both you and I right now how do we make sure that's reflected in the spaces that we worship the spaces where we work, the spaces where we learn the spaces where we love all of those spaces that we begin to share what we've heard, what we've learned even if we don't intervene but if you begin to talk you begin to grow and you're not afraid to do so. Whenever I come to DPA spaces I'm always challenged and I like that because I am uncomfortable in spaces where I'm not hearing anything that challenges me right? So to be uncomfortable and sit in this space and let me think about that I appreciate that and I want to challenge us to really be able to really hold ourselves accountable that if we are supporting a lot of what we hear about it then we need to act as many people say don't talk about it and be about it right? And I will also challenge for us to think a little more ahead I think a lot of what we are hearing we know is different manifestations of what has come in the past that will continue to happen we know about broken windows we know the stock of frizz let's be very clear about the understanding that it will happen again and the observance of those patterns so when we see it again we're able to not just observe it speak out about it that's right it only takes one person to stand up and speak up and the rest will fall in line so say Eric Hey guys I think what I think getting in front of you I want to also challenge to talk about folks who are incarcerated and folks who have been just really casted away that who really needs to get some butts in those are really in the worst of the worst categories that we consider to be able to be thrown away if you want to get thrown I would really, really like to push this conversation in those spaces being to die in prison whether it be by using objection or by life without parole whatever it may be but for us to continue to raise those people's concerns their resistance and allow their experiences to change our conversations I'm going to ask you to come up here because we have one mic let me just say something that it doesn't get away from me Eric so every time there is a killing a police killing it reverse and I feel the pain in the loss of the day that I lost my son in particular when your father was killed they flashed his killing for two days months two years well I took the TV off so but repeatedly I saw him being choked on the streets of New York and it was horrifying that they would show that over and over and over again as if we're going to get desensitized to watching a black man kill as if you know men and women hanging from trees years ago as we walk by it was just fast forward for me to the 21st century and I want you to know that we feel the pain the grief the loss and are shocked and I feel as though it's just that we traded in crosses they traded in crosses for badges and white hoods for blue uniforms and at the end of the day thank you Susan thank you let me open it up for Deion if anybody else wants to ask a question please don't lie to me we're waiting ever behind as you're called online but it's already half the time Deion in my case yours thank you so much for teaching me about the compassionate love that I don't always have and I don't really have a question I have more of a reflection but as we are looking at the narrative that's placed before I want people to think about how the war on drugs how that policy really enters the lives of women not just about how we take care of our men in jail or the loss of children but also the policies that are in place that are directly affecting everything like for women it is why we test women for our welfare it is why we have people who say we're going to take your children because your bars are in so many drugs it is why women are being killed not just the story of treasure but across this country where women who are involved in sex work women, cisgender women and trans women are put on the block basically to give police information so I need, couldn't sit here and not stay on teach when you think about the levels for women where we have people who say that we can't work with women because they are too sensitive or complicated or complicated I want an organization called Women with a Vision and none of the fucking women that walk through my door are that sensitive and they tend them and they want a place to protect themselves we have to put the power in the hands of women who are also being affected so that's really important it's also okay to be sensitive I'm a crying mother fucker everybody wants this if there's something in the ground, I cry a lot for her but he wasn't the only loss for her to act but I want to say this too men are sensitive too they call it rage they cry a lot they speak a lot of fun and the men I encounter doing this work who are fighting to me is considered to have the power and authority is beyond the pair and so if women are sensitive so are you if it is not, we wouldn't get cursed out we wouldn't get hung up on we wouldn't be spoken too ridiculously none of that would happen because sensitivity sometimes shows up like crying and sometimes it shows up like rage I'm so glad that you're here and I'm so glad that DPA brought us all here DPA does so much great work but one of the things they don't talk a lot about is policies regarding some of the drugs and the drug policies that are causing the most harm to our communities which are alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceuticals and I think as we're talking about changing the narrative we have to ask ourselves how do we include talking about these policies because racist tobacco enforcement was a factor in your father's death how do we incorporate talking about these policies into our narrative of how the drug war needs to end? I think it's a little unfair to ask to speak on behalf of the U.N.A I wasn't trying to do that so I'm actually going to move that question to start with Debra and then but she has a comment I just want to make clear that there's a lot of women and I that have stood up and been strong because of this nation like Harriet Tubman and all them and people that sit in this Black Lives Matter movement that has been on the forefront and fighting and stuff so women we have a chance to stand up we just got out of the courage to do it we just got to do it baby do it so I think that is important for us when we talk about like why people are arrested for drugs for some of the lucies or whatever those are Eric's version of the paper for those of you who read either Michelle Alexander's book or slavery by another name and this is why I always bring history into the conversation because it's not about the specific crime it's about the right and the ability to surveil to arrest, to detain we are a country that is addicted to punishment and we're also addicted to extracting resources from Black people that's the reason we were brought here that's the reason we have kept here and the only reason that people can actually justify in terms of a power thing existence is as a source of extraction and that's not just for Black people that's Americans we are being extracted and so the laws are there to justify that and so it's wrong for us to get hung up on whether or not it's about alcohol, tobacco whether it's sugary drinks whether it's food stamp fraud people come up with a thousand little kinds of misdemeanor type of menace to criminalize people for the thing is the result which is criminalization and I'm going to leave you guys with two thoughts one comes from my friend Ruthie Gilmore who gave this description of racism this definition like 15 years ago I've never forgotten it she defined it as a series of policies and practices that it developed by one group of people being imposed on another group of people with the final result of it being premature death so I just want you guys to sit with that for a little bit and then the final thing that I wanted to say because this came up in another question was about reparations I continue to use that word because it's the word that is needed it's not enough for us to make policy changes and agree to do better without repairing the damage that's been done and this country is still suffering because we did not repair the damage of slavery or genocide against the indigenous people here that failure to own your harms causes great agenda on the people who cause the harm as well as the people who are the recipients so if we're ever going to get past this problem of racism in America it will only come when we're willing to own the full truth of all the harms that have been caused and make the commitment to deal with it Thank you so much for your time since none of y'all have paid any attention to me since then we're supposed to break at 3.15 from this panel and come back at 3.30 and start the lifetime we still have one more to go we're trying to glass that a little bit but I do know my potency sits at 5 because I know how you are and so we have now 9 minutes or so to go through the next 4 questions or comments that we're going to ask so please be mindful of that and anything to say or respond to to stop I don't think everybody here is going to ask a question or make a comment question so why don't you come here and ask what you have a question or a comment can we do it in 30 seconds let's try again why don't you ask the first question so with the panel I want to say you're going on the idea of incarcerating so many black and brown lives with so many black kids on marijuana and how the white male taking charge of profit from this organization of marijuana come on baby so we're going to stand here just like 30 seconds make it right so my role my issue is on federally non-sentencing my brother also known as 23280 is in federal prison sentenced for 15 years just finished 3 years this was a case that went all the way to Supreme Court made at national news based on a comment by the federal prosecutor at this point everything that's been reported is what's been reported no one has come to the family to ask about this issue if a federal prosecutor can stand in a federal courtroom and make a rational comment what else is in that courtroom transcript it's deep, I have it only one reporter at the British Signers event which Erica was there spoke to me and did an interview this with the courtroom news what was the comment the comment was with African Americans and Hispanics with all that money in the room in the life of this was a grand deal mind to do what it was this case was set up by the federal to keep national news we know that police officers are shooting people but we are not realizing that the prosecutors are doing the very same thing with any people yes applause no answer so I just wanted to make an international perspective I have an international perspective I'm with my sister and the work that I do has to do with the displacement around drug that's happening and all of you have believes you know we have to have these conversations because all of the stories here are stories that I've heard in every single country throughout the region so and the faces are exactly the same faces they look like me they look like every single woman here so I just want to put that on the table that the drug the quote unquote warren drugs it's not funding policies around whatever it's funding murder it's funding displacement it's funding incarceration it's funding men children being disappeared and women who spend death threats for protecting their land their ancestral land and tax dollars for the United States is doing that I appreciate your moderating style I think you should be everything that includes black people every time really general knowledge about the economic justice angle in terms of deals there's something around it's so much compassion around addicts and none around the economic violence that creates you know dealers but I'm also wondering I've been asked this question about in the past year about in this libertarian and dominated space how black people are going to be participating in their love for our economy because I think we have a right to and so specifically if we know of any women led co-operatives who are farming who are buying dispensaries I want to be a part of paying for some of this money I want to be a part of it I want to be a drug dealer too and you know I'm working hold on I'm working really really to get this you know marijuana off the ground thing but I want a dispensary can I have a dispensary can you help me get a dispensary I'll get the money because that's the main thing just to that well basically there ain't no black people that want a dispensary and that's the kind of money we're going to do but we want drugs and we need more more investments in our community but I'm sure that we're going to that's what I'm saying no more of drug I don't want anything else about politics now education housing and schools raise the next generation I just feel like me and much of my community put front end do's do's on this marijuana thing and I want a dispensary I want to I want to hear I'm sorry because New York City is a Latino city let's get this straight here that when I listen to Latino voices and I want to talk about do you know what you're part of the art do you know what we have drug dealers and they haven't been successful but the people that work with them have been they have done in some respects a real good benefit and investor in our community which is probably what you all won't do but working in communities drug dealers working with all of us on drug reduction peers community prohibition we made it possible for this community to be here we brought the fundamental idea of this so they have civil disobedience but also the humanity the humanity that makes us world and if you're wondering what the harm reduction is I want people to be able to talk about opioid you know so this is what you know is definitely opioid dysfunctional numbers it's not going to be a dispensary you would be I have nowhere to go you would be experiencing it I'm sorry but I let it go and my truth is working in communities with everyone is a human rights thing that we all have to do it creates a movement and a real strong movement that allows others hiding unable to be out there who have their own truth all right we create protection it's an opportunity for others to have the old ones who can see us out there but it's fundamentally right it's not just racism people in our own ethnic groups have been against us not because of class yet I was the main group in Harlem and I was the main group and I had just come out in the sixties and I had my degree and then after all I'm sitting there I'm stuck because I can't take my drive because of racial segregation so I'm going to be pissed at my own people so you know economic, pastoral race class those are the issues okay Dream actually asked you the question Debra so I just want to say very very quickly how many people here have ever heard of a Susu New Yorkers okay so I have a couple of proposals one I think that we should really to the degree that we're going to have legal marijuana businesses we want to think about them being co-ops it's an opportunity for us to begin to create a different business model and people individually can't do it but together people can pool their money and look at that one way and that's where the Susu comes in because we actually do need to make some demands of the industry and so my suggestion is that we actually have what I call like a fund for growth a social venture networking fund that would be come out of the profits from legal marijuana that could be targeted for communities that were the victims of disparate drug law enforcement and that that money would actually be matched by money that people in the community save like a Susu okay so that you actually have skin in the game on both ends so that the growers create a fund and that the people save up for the fund and that the money can be used for any legitimate purpose because the reality is that poor people need access to money from non-predatory lenders so what I want us to be in a conversation about is not just how we use this for marijuana businesses but how do we use this as a way to undo what I call the patterns of legal looting that poor people are subjected to every day and that would be the beginnings of a form of policy type reparations