 Please welcome Tyrone Baker Lamont, an activist and intellectual who's booked a convict's perspective, critiquing penology and inmate rehabilitation. I highly recommend Nora Dicker, a recent graduate of the NCCU master's program and social work. Kyla Brown, a rising junior and theater major at NCCU. Dr. Harvey McMurray, my big brother and professor of criminal justice at NCCU and my close collaborator at Wilmet Institute, Chitra Golastani, the associate director of the Wilmet Institute and the sister who holds everything together over there. So welcome all and we'll begin with Dr. Golastani. Thank you so much, Derek. And for this conference, it really has been amazing for all of us at every meal. We're just so excited to talk about our new insights. I'm gonna give you the basics this morning. So bear with me. For those of you who are not familiar with the Wilmet Institute, we are an agency of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States. We're an online learning center and we offer community courses, university courses at the graduate level and undergrad level, along with other learning opportunities like certificate programs, webinars, and affiliations with other institutions of higher ed. In the nine-year plan of the Universal House of Justice, we are all learning about the three areas of endeavor and I think we can all say them together, right? Community building, social action, and public discourse. Paying attention to all three protagonists, the individual, the community, and the institutions. After studying guidance and consulting, the Wilmet Institute team identified that our contribution to the plan is raising capacity to contribute to social discourse with an emphasis on racial unity and justice within higher education. That is where our collaboration with NCCU emerged and with the play, the bus stop. We explored the impact of the prison industrial complex on families and the community. Although this particular session is about how institutions are collaborating together, I hope that the lessons learned will help in any meaningful endeavor that we are engaged in that some of this learning will apply. So I'd like to just share a quote from the paragraph six of the Resvan message about how we are in a learning mode, our institution, our administrators, our courses are striving to be collaborative and to have this learning systematic learning within it. The House of Justice says, in this new series of plans, increasing attention needs to be given. Sorry. Just a bit closer. Okay, sorry about that. Actually, can you run this move? I'm actually a bit closer. Thank you so much. Can you hear me okay now? Okay. In this new series of plans, increasing attention needs to be given to other processes that seek to enhance the life of a community. For example, by improving public health, protecting the environment, or drawing more effectively on the power of the arts. What is required for all these complimentary aspects of a community's well-being to advance is, of course, the capacity to engage in systematic learning in all these areas. A capacity that draws on insights arising from the teachings and accumulated store of human knowledge generated through scientific inquiry. We hope that we're striving for our classes, our courses, our collaboration to have this balance. As capacity grows, much will be accomplished over the coming decades. The collaboration between the Wilmed Institute and NCCU was made possible through long-standing Durham Baha'i and Professor, whose colleague recently referred to him as one of the pillars at NCCU, Dr. Harvey McMurray. His willingness to explore possibilities with us and NCCU administrators, faculty, students really set the environment for true capacity building. Where one entity is not doing things for others, but we're all doing things together with each other in a collective advancement with all the actors involved. The two institutions came into this with an exploratory eye and without preconceived notions about like how capacity was gonna be raised with whom and so forth, but these regular consultations would take place because Dr. McMurray would call faculty and from various disciplines, they would show up meeting after meeting. And I have worked with various institutions and I honestly was so encouraged by how the collaborative spirit that emerged with the consultations. When sometimes the university settings, one can feel that the division between the disciplines is so strong and then even within departments, professors sometimes choose to be in theoretical encampments where like competition is seen as the path to make their mark in academe. At NCCU, you could feel the difference and I really truly believe that all of this was because as we hear from the guidance, the relationships of trust that were resulting from sustained efforts and it's those sustained efforts that really changes events into a process that can evolve. I also want to acknowledge that one of the NCCU faculty who was exemplary in her efforts to build capacity was our dear Penny Carroll and I'm getting a little emotional because she was with us through the entire process and was so looking forward to being here with you today. But just as she thought that her mom was in stable condition, her mom did pass and regrettably she couldn't be here with us but when you see this Penny, I want you to know that you're in our thoughts and prayers and with us here. Truly I can see when she in the meetings was describing the values, the core values of social work, she embodied them and as she says, when we are working together, this is just the beginning. So with that, I'm also encouraged with what Dr. McMurray always says, DAC has got us covered. Everybody know what that is? DAC, you don't know? DAC? It's okay, I didn't either. Dr. McMurray would let us know that the Divine Arrangements Committee has us covered. So with that, I'll turn it over to Dr. McMurray. Thank you. First of all, I want to say I'm not responsible for anything I say. I got back last night at 1130 from a two-week trip to Uganda and Kenya and got up, well, I've had about three hours of sleep. So please excuse me if I say something wrong. But I am so happy to be here and a question was I was told that no is a complete sentence and I should have said no about coming here this morning. But I tell you, Kaila, Noor, and Tyrone have been such a source of inspiration. I would dare not miss this. And so one of the things I want to do is to, if you will, converge what has been going on at MCCU. There's a picture that has Chair Dickerson, Councillor Rosenberg, Chancellor Johnson-Aclea, myself, Nathan Glyons, and Bob James. The reason we met with him was because there was this very complex arrangement around MCCU. It was designed for nine zones. The focus was on children and junior youth. At this high point, they had eight junior youth groups, three or four children's classes, really, really settled in. Chair Dickerson, who's the first person you see, was actually a criminal justice major. And she did two years, two years of service in the area around MCCU. Phenomenal, she's not Baha'i, but she aligned herself with the principles in community building. So not one year of service, but two. And I'm not saying that to inspire you. But she was phenomenal. And the young lady, Mariam, is, I mean, she met with the Chancellor and we were in the Chancellor's suite waiting for him. She was saying, well, so who was he? Is he like a principal? I said, yeah, I guess he is in many ways. But she lived two minutes from MCCU and didn't have a sense of what MCCU was about. So it really goes to underscore the importance of community building. And it's not just academic. COVID hit, of course, and things kind of fell apart. And so Mariam was in a car that was a victim to a drive-by shooting. But she told the Chancellor that she says she is not getting suspended, she's not fighting, and da-da-da-da involved in junior youth groups. And she was one of the six, she was one of people, one of two people who was killed in a drive-by shooting. I'm saying that to say that junior youth groups is, this isn't an academic issue. It's about changing the lives of communities. So we had these nine zones and we had the local spiritual assembly collaborated with the Office of Community Engagement on campus. There was a meeting in 2018 that included Jeff Albrecht, Dr. Galastani, Mr. Kaiser Barnes, myself, Najib Brown. And so we went around to visit administrators to explore how we could take it to the next step. And I mean, people they love in spite of me, they really embrace the folks from the Will Met Institute. In fact, we have met with the Dean from the School of Law and she agreed that the School of Law would in fact sponsor an annual Lewis G. Gregory lecture series to focus on law and social justice. And unfortunately, she got sick at a meeting out of town and she passed. So we have to re-establish the relationship but we certainly plan on moving forward with that Lewis G. Gregory and Lewis G. Gregory. The lecture. So now to get to the new part with the Will Met Institute. I think a key learning is the importance of building trust and relationships. The Will Met Institute did not come in and say, well, we should do this and we should do that. Their question was, what can we do in the spirit of collaboration to support the interest at North Carolina Century University period? And so I really applaud them from their hands off but yet supportive approach it and we should really give them a hand off. And so we convene a group of department chairs and they can be funny people. I was one for a few years. But they came in together without any hesitation whatsoever to find a way to come together and explore a pathway to an interdisciplinary approach to public discourse and social action. And the difference between an interdisciplinary approach and a multi-disciplinary is in the latter case, different departments, they do different types of things but in an interdisciplinary approach, they come together and consult and collaborate and figure out how we can benefit student learning and community engagement. NCCU's motto is truth and service. So all students at NCCU are required to do community service before they graduate. See, he is, yes. So the public discourse, so the question become, how do we learn about this? And one of the points of consultation is in order for it to be systematic and sustainable, it has to be curriculum center. And that's where the Wilmette Institute is really, really, really important in terms of helping to develop curriculum, providing guest speakers. We're talking about starting a student club that our friend here is going to, Cali is going to be the first president. And that will actually provide the space that they can consult and forward the pathway forward. We, and we've also talked about, we don't plan to take a deficit approach by talking about what people don't have. Rather, the question is how to take advantage of opportunities that actually exist. And again, the focus is what can we do that is both sustainable and systematic? I'm approaching year 37 at NCCU. Certainly I won't be there for another 37 years. And so the question for us is how do we learn about public discourse? How do we learn about community building and society building? At one point, certainly when I was a kid, the question was, or the point was, it takes a village to raise a child. And then we're talking about going beyond the villages in society building. So, Derrick is giving me the look, is it looking at me? So it is less about building skills than it is, or I guess I should have said, in closing, that would have helped. Rather to actually understand about concepts, justice, the ones of humanity, values, society building. So I will stop there and Kala, I believe, is next. Yes, I was able to be introduced to the Wilma Institution into Mr. Najee Brown as a theater major and we worked on a project called the bus stop. And the bus stop is about five women who meet up at the bus stop who transports them to prison so they could see their loved ones or their relatives in the prison system. And through this whole production, I think as a cast and as an individual, we had a two-fold moral purpose of what I now know after coming to the conference and exploring with you guys is a two-fold moral purpose. And I saw individually the comparisons between my character and myself, much like my character. My father had been in prison for a majority of my youth and into my adolescence. And because of that, we did not have a good relationship or even a grounds of communication. However, in my character, I realized that she was more open to forgiveness and more open to be vulnerable and have uncomfortable conversations that most of us would tend to not have with strangers or even our loved ones, because we don't wanna hurt anyone's feelings. And I think to heal as a community, as an individual, as a family, that we have to have those conversations so that we can find the problem and find a solution. As, thank you. Thank you. And as a cast, we definitely grew as a cast. We kind of got this family attitude about ourselves and we were able to creatively express our individual stories through our characters and add more jokes or take away some lines to add some more relative aspects to the play. And because of that, we were invited to the Kennedy Center for American College Theater Festival, which... Yeah. Thank you. And it's a regional competition, but as an HBCU and as a black college, it is extremely hard to get into because majority of the people there, sometimes, cannot understand the message that we usually present. And for us to be invited and to win that competition, it was inspiring to us because we now knew that we weren't alone in our fight for social justice and the elimination of racial injustice. And even though the crowd and the judges did not share the same personal impact because of social justice, they understood as humanity and as people we should help each other to eliminate a problem that is hurting a community or anybody in general. So we took that back to North Carolina Central and we took that urge to help people and to grow as a community. And like Dr. Harvey said, we are building a community, a student community club focused on going out in the public and to figure out what's the problem and how do we individually and as a community fix that problem. So thank you. Dr. McMurray wants to say a couple words before you go, Nora. Ordinarily, we wouldn't give him this opportunity, but since he just came back from Uganda, we figured we'd give him two more minutes. Yeah, I just wanted to say how Dr. Howard, Asabi, chair of the department of theater and dance, dropped a play from the fall of 2022 to add the bus stop. And that was phenomenal. Her faculty voted for Najee Brown to come on campus and they use all students in that play. So it was a phenomenal expression of cooperation. So they did a great job. So at the time of the bus stop play, I too was a student at NC Central University. I have since graduated in May with my master's in social work. Thank you so much. And so I would like to take an opportunity to expand upon the opportunities that was given to us as students to engage in social engagement and collaboration through this interdisciplinary collaboration. And so my involvement with this project really began with just that, a school project that was in my social work class led by Professor Carroll, who Dr. Cheacher mentioned earlier. So in this project, we were assigned to create a public service announcement. And with this, the goal that, well, one of the goals that Professor Carroll had was for us to have a product or physical component that we could take with us through the class, but also into our career. So I took that opportunity to create a PSA with Tyrone about post-traumatic stress disorder among the justice involved population. And through that, Professor Carroll then invited me and among other students of social work to become part of the post play discussion where we talked with community members or the audience about their thoughts and things that stood out in the play. But then also, what do we think that we as a community, how can we respond? What action can we take as a result of seeing this play and learning how truly the whole community, excuse me, the whole community is impacted when one individual is sent to incarceration. And so through that invitation, not only did I get a chance to actually engage with the community, but I also got to collaborate and meet other departments with the school, other students and professors that I otherwise would not have had an opportunity to engage with. So then I also was able to expand my professional network too. And then as a result of that facilitation, I became involved, well we really became involved with the Wilma Institute and so we've done this webinar online before, which is a huge opportunity as a student to go, I was still a student at that time, but to be part of a webinar further engaging with the larger community. And then of course that led to us coming to this conference and being able to learn besides y'all and for us to have this opportunity to speak with y'all today, which I'm so grateful for. So while I'm talking about opportunity, I'd like to refer back to the metaphor that Baha'u'llah likened those of African descent to the pupil of the eye from which our light shines through. It's very well known that the prison system and criminal injustice system disproportionately impacts black people in America. And so I want us to keep that in mind while we talk a little bit more about opportunities and what the impact of prison is on opportunity. So let's think about a couple of things. Let's go through some examples of what impacts and what effects are after incarceration. Most people know that when you're going through job interviews, when you're filling out an application, you will likely have to disclose that you had a criminal history. It might come up in an interview or it might come up in an official background check. So of course we can imagine how that's going to limit one's opportunity to become employed and for them to be able to sustain themselves. So it might be that you are now able to you're having a harder time finding a job, you're having a harder time paying your bills and maybe even your housing is becoming insecure. That's one of your most basic needs. And so when you're struggling to meet one of your most basic needs, it's really hard for your light to shine through, right? Because you're so focused on making sure that you're safe and that you're able to survive. So let's add onto the layer that without a doubt when you are incarcerated, you are going to witness or personally experience very traumatic events that leave people with mental health symptoms and we'll get in a little bit more about that because that's what our PSA is about. But so you're now experiencing mental health symptoms that you've never experienced before on top of all of these barriers that you're now experiencing as a result of your incarceration. So thinking back to this metaphor that likens African-Americans or those of African descent to the people of Iowa are light shines through. So thinking about these connections, you can understand that prison not only darkens one's light by going through those traumatic experiences, but then your ability to achieve and find your own shine afterwards is significantly restricted by the harms of prison as well. And so like I said, we will get into just one of those experiences in some more depth being PTSD in this PSA. Thank you. Extremely negative and long lasting. Violence levels are high. The treatment by correctional officers is often demeaning and violent. The healthcare within the system is severely lacking and there's often a sense of loss of individuality and self-dignity. The experiences of those who have been incarcerated very greatly, but one factor does remain consistent and that is the experience of trauma. An underexplored phenomenon is the development of post traumatic stress disorder among this population. The PSF-5 describes PTSD as when an individual has experienced, witnessed or a loved one has experienced or witnessed an extremely traumatic event. And as a result of this, they relive that event for weeks or months with the additional symptoms that can cause life disruption. The population that has the highest prevalence rates that's been researched heavily of PTSD is combat survivors. However, many of the factors present that cause PTSD are extremely common within the prison system. Evidence shows that between four and 32% of men and between 16 and 58% of women who have been incarcerated experienced post traumatic stress disorder. This evidence shows that the prevalence of PTSD among this population is very high, but with such a large range of percentages, it lets us know that there is more need for this area to be explored via research. I would like to now introduce Tyrone Baker, a published author, essayist, entrepreneur and someone who spent 14 years within the North Carolina prison system to further discuss this topic. Hey, Nora, thanks for having me. I can definitely confirm that PTSD is a problem and it is very much under explored amongst those who have served time in prison before. A lot of the criteria that's used to diagnose PTSD can be found amongst the previously incarcerated and currently incarcerated populations. For example, the physiological responses. That can come in the form of feeling nervousness when around police officers or feeling a little tense whenever you see a pair of new balances in the mall. The new balance is being the shoes that were worn by people who are incarcerated here in North Carolina. Another criteria used to diagnose PTSD is the avoidance of external stimuli or the avoidance of external reminders of the trauma. For me, this will come in the form of never watching 60 days in or any of the prison-centric shows and it would also come in the form of being averse to having conversations about my experience in prison where people would not have been incarcerated before. Another criteria used to diagnose PTSD is hypervigilance. This is like a staple of post-incarceration life. This comes in the form of being in a crowd and scanning the crowd. Looking for other people who may be scanning the crowd. People with bad intentions are probably scanning the crowd so you scan the crowd to see who is looking at you. You're looking at people's apparel, how people are dressed, a guy or a woman who's a threat, they're not gonna have on flip flops. This is very problematic and all of these criteria that we used to describe or diagnose PTSD are pretty much universal amongst people who have exited the prison system. I can say as a society, it is in our best interest to further explore this phenomenon and to really dive into the way in which PTSD affects people who have been incarcerated, who have been incarcerated. In order for us to lower the chances of recidivism and to keep the level of crime commission to an all-time low, it's vital that we explore these issues and that we address the harms that are experienced by people who have done time before. We actually need to create a system of healing and understanding to ensure the help of our entire communities. Wow, that was, when we made that video in our living room, I didn't expect it to ever be played on an extremely large screen, you know. That was interesting. But before I dive in, I do want to, I want to thank Nora for making the point that she made before that video was played. The fact that the criminal injustice system directly oppresses the demographic that embodies the people of the eye metaphor of events that light from shining through is definitely worth highlighting and should not be overlooked. So thank you for that. I appreciate that. That was a very valid point. So when it comes to the carceral state, pursuing justice in this country is a massive endeavor. It's a big issue. Addressing PTSD amongst the formerly incarcerated is only a small part of that issue, admittedly. A larger part and a more prevalent part, a more relevant part, is tapping into the unifying effects of the arts. And here's what I mean by that. So when it comes to justice to really make progress, we have to view justice and habilitation as synonymous. We have to view justice and the creation of civically and spiritually upstanding individuals as one and the same. And next, we have to view every member of society as worthy of that habilitation. You know, nobody, thank you for sure. So it's a very tough issue once we start devaluing certain lives or valuing certain lives above others. So I feel like those are two prerequisites for justice. We have to unify around the idea that everyone is worthy of justice. So this is where the arts come in. So there are very few things that are as powerfully unifying as the arts. The arts, they unify their audiences around ideas, around emotions, around concepts. You watch a movie, everybody watching the movie tends to feel the same thing at certain times, like the arts unifies in a way that very few things really can. And I think the bus stop exemplified this. The bus stop unified its audience around the idea that this mass incarceration system affects and infects more than just those who are housed within those human warehouses. It affects the families and communities to which these people are connected. In particular, it affects black women in a way that is terribly under-explored. I have the unfortunate experience of directly seeing black women in courtrooms putting up the deed to their house to get their black son out of jail. You know what I mean? Or there was black women that was coming to those courtrooms. It was black women that was putting money on the phone. It was black women that was showing up at visitation, taking a day off of work, foregoing their income so they could come show love to the black men that was locked up. Like, I saw this, I saw my mom. Excuse me. That woman never failed to answer the phone. She, in watching the bus stop, I saw my mama. I saw what she went through. She, y'all gotta forgive me, I'm sorry. So, so, appreciate it, thank you. So, this play resonated with me for obvious reasons. You know, not only did it unify people around the idea that the carceral state impacts more than just those who are locked up, but it also impacts their families and loved ones. It also compelled its unified audience to take action, to combat the societal infection known as mass incarceration. You know, so the arts, like having that role and having that power, we can tap into that unifying power and lay the groundwork for justice and society, you know? Like, Bahá'u'lláh once said that the purpose of justice is the appearance of unity amongst men. You know, I encourage everyone in here to support the arts that unify people around powerfully progressive ideas that compel people to take action in a way that fulfills the purpose of justice and gives people the appearance of unity. You know, for us to do anything short of that is us doing a disservice to the spiritually impactful positions that each of one of us occupy in the society. So, I definitely encourage y'all to continue to support the arts, thank you. One of the things that we're trying to learn about is how to be more outwardly oriented in all of our endeavors in the Bahá'u community. And I think one of the things that this panel really demonstrates to us is that the richness of our intellectual life will be a function of our outward looking orientation. I think that the contributions that were made by Kyla and Nora and Tyrone are incredible and they represent the future of our efforts here at the Wilmette Institute and also in the Association for Bahá'u'lláh Studies. The focus of the power of the arts that has been spoken of on this panel has to do with the way in which it is focused on what has been called here the criminal injustice system and this of course for anyone who is thinking about the issue of race unity and race justice in the United States is of primary importance. And so the wonderful way in which the NCCU community opened itself up to this production that Kyla spoke so beautifully of, it was transformative not only for those who were involved in the actual production of it, but those who viewed it and then those who collaborated in discussions emerging from that is I think quite instructive for us. The way it drew in people like Nora and Tyrone shows us the power of the arts that the Universal House of Justice is telling us to draw upon. I think one of the other things that's really important to note here is the youthful orientation of what we have accomplished at NCCU through the efforts of Dr. McMurray and others who are a little bit more senior, making available opportunities, fostering the environments that we have been asked to foster so that the brightness of youth can shine forth. And I think Kyla did such a wonderful job of explaining the way in which the arts were so impactful for her. I think also we have to note the way that we are now moving into a territory that represents society-building as the Universal House of Justice calls us to do in a nine-year plan. And in that society-building, we need to think about the reconceptualization of all human relationships. This is one of the things that the Universal House of Justice tells us the revelation of Bahá'u'lláh requires of us, the reconceptualization of all human relationships. And in this panel, I think one of the things that we've been able to do is reconceptualize some of our ideas, perhaps, about the criminal justice system, calling it the criminal injustice system helps us to think about our aspirations for justice. If we, as a community, are truly believers in the concept that justice is the best beloved of all things in my sight, in the sight of God, then what does that call us to stand for? And I think that as we go forward into this nine-year plan and into the next period of work here at the Association for Bahá'u'lláh Studies and at the Wilmette Institute, we are going to be calling to mind this issue of the establishment of race unity and its connection to issues of justice time and time again. And so I think with that, I would like to just ask everyone to offer another round of applause to our panelists. When we were preparing for this panel, I just knew it was gonna be excellent. And I think it lived up to our expectations even far beyond what we imagined. So thank you so much Tyrone, Nora, Kyla, Dr. McMurray, Dr. Golestani, and thank you all for joining us for this plenary session. We're now gonna have about 10 minutes for a break and then we'll return for our second panel of the morning. Thank you so much. Thank you.