 Our next panelist is Marisa Laufer, who's with the San Antonio chapter of national organization for the reform of marijuana laws. She's our co-sponsor of this panel. Hello, I'm Marisa Laufer. I had some prepared. I'm a mother, full-time student, organizer, current board member, and current board member of San Antonio I got involved because I wanted to find like-minded individuals who believed in working on creating a movement in Texas. I also saw the momentum shifting in the country as did most of us here. I thought I would seek out the local normal group and suggest that we have a march. I've worked on many different issues prior to getting involved with normal and I wanted to understand the connection between over-policing in the streets, nonviolent offenders in prison who were disproportionately black and brown, as well as the tremendous suffering in Mexico and Central America because of the drug and refugee enforcing policies. Basically I believe in self-determination and to have a voice on this racist matter. It's not a question of whether it is going to be legalized, but a question of how and when. A little bit about the war on drugs. There are five million people under correctional control in the United States. We are putting people behind bars when we should be treating them for addiction and finding ways to correct a racially influenced economic caste system. Essentially the drug war is the new Jim Crow and it creates second class citizenship for drug offenders who are disproportionately black and brown. Black people are 14% of the regular drug users but are 37% of those arrested for drug offenses. Black people serve also as much time in federal prison for drug offenses as do whites for a violent offense. They are more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, prosecuted, convicted and incarcerated for drug law violations than whites. Police officers who are pressed for high arrest quotas, they racially profile and they over-police urban areas, low-income communities and communities of color. Once in the system they are affected in some way or another for the rest of their lives. In Barrett County the arrest rate is 160 for black residents per 1,000 versus 79 for non-black for 1,000. In 2013 almost 3% of all black males were imprisoned compared to 5% of all white males. 1 in 3 Hispanic adults have been in prison. 1 in 9 black men ages 20 to 34 have been in prison. There are mandatory minimums and harsher sentences for crack versus cocaine. Coke use is 12% and crack use is 4% but the people that are using crack are getting arrested multiple times throughout their lives. It has been reduced to 20 to 1 ratio. It used to be 100 to 1 now 20 to 1 and that comes with activism and the reform movement. The policies that discriminate against people basically they make you into a second-class citizen. Pretty much you can't get a job but it's a lot harder if you didn't have that money. You lose your voting rights, also you're ineligible for business loans, trade licensing, gun ownership, student aid and even public housing or other public assistance and so I wanted to also mention women in the prison industrial complex Black women are three times more likely to go to prison than white women. More than three quarters of the women behind bars are mothers, many of them are sole caregivers. Women of color are disproportionately affected by social stigma, the conspiracy offense laws, regulations that bar people from public assistance who have a conviction and by the drug treatment systems that are designed for men. Conspiracy offenses meant to target criminal networks have actually hurt women the most. The women could be nothing more than just living with a husband or boyfriend involved in some drug sales. Harsh mandatory minimum sentencing may keep them behind bars for 20 to life. The drug war punishes women, particularly mothers, not just for drug law violations but also just for you know just they punish them if they even use drugs and you know cannabis is actually very therapeutic and helpful to many people. That's partly my job to educate people on this. So I just wanted to wrap it up real quick. Basically it's 40 years and 40 trillion dollars spent on fighting the drug war. It hasn't reduced drug use, it hasn't reduced overdose deaths or disease transmissions but it has created second class citizenship and that needs to change. Basically I work with San Antonio Normal as a for a specific thing that I'm doing with them as opposed to just in general working with different organizations in the city. So I stay focused when I think about the work that I'm doing with Normal. We have monthly meetings and we do go up to the capital when it's the legislative session which is going to be 2017. So for 2015 there were 11 bills that were introduced and we've had up there and go and talk to legislators and call them and meet with them in the city. But you know there is so much work to do just working on trying to reform our laws in Texas. Governor Abbott is one of the biggest problems and we actually need to create a campaign to get an amount of office in 2018. That would improve our lives vastly not just the possibility of legalizing one day in the state but to really improve our community. I mean if we want to do all these things we can have people that are the gatekeepers that are keeping a lot of this progress from happening. So we need to identify people that are not helping, they're not worthy of that office and they need to be picked out or voted out rather. So we meet every Thursday of the month and we're meeting at TLO's text mix January 21st from 7 to 10. You can have a bite to eat there and you know it's a great it's a great time to get together. We're actually registering people to both this this coming meeting which is January 21st 7 to 10 at TLO's text mix that's 12403 West Avenue and what we'd like to see is just more people to get involved and doing the run work that's necessary to organize all the people in San Antonio that care about this issue and how it's related to the war on drugs and how it's related to mass incarceration and police brutality and what's going on in Mexico. So if the one issue I can pull everything together into and say that's one thing I can focus on and getting more I would think more people would really want to support this and you know see the foot soldiers to getting this taken care of in Texas. We will be having a march in May, marches are always a fun visible way to show support and to galvanize people. It's generally just very symbolic but at the same time it gives you an opportunity to talk about the issues all these issues that we're talking about and so last year was our first march in the in the recent past and that was a lot of fun and we had 300 people and you know it just was a way to say we'd like to take back our communities you know it doesn't just mean you want marijuana to slow. You're really doing it because people need it they're sick and they need it for medical care, anxiety, depression, whatever ills them, they're not they're considered criminal because they want they need to use it for medicine so we need to change that as well as to decriminalize the possession of it.