 And I'm going to go ahead and open the doors. All right, we're live. Hello everyone. I'm going to get started in just a moment. Welcome. Welcome, welcome. And the chat is officially open our river of consciousness this evening. Please use it. Here is the document tonight. This is the live document that I use and it has library news links to our presenters links to their holdings at SFPL. And then as they discuss tonight, topics will come up, resources will come up and I will add those as we go. And we're going to give it till right at seven so we can get as many of you in the room as possible. Welcome YouTube viewers. Oh, let me hit send on that link. There it is. Welcome. We already have two other librarians in the audience. So see, they're coming out. The library love. I love it. Hello everyone welcome welcome. Get started in just a moment. All right, it's seven. So we're going to get on with today's library news and information and get that all out of the way. But you are all here to spend some time with Kristen Henning and Reginald Dwayne Betts in convo about Henning's book, the rage of innocence. This is part of our one city one book campaign. And if you have not picked up the book yet ear hustle, please do so. You can pick it up at one of your 28 locations or bookmobile. You can also have a brochure that goes along with it, a reading guide and all of the events, many, many events and reading lists, which will be running through December featuring all sorts of folks working in incarceration and reentry, social justice, abolition, all of it. So please come check out the book. Lots of great events coming up around that. And I'm going to tell you about a few, but first, I want you all to know that our library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded and ancestral homeland of the raw, Mutual Sholoni peoples who are the original inhabitants of San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland and as uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as the first peoples of this area. And I encourage you all to check out that map that I put in the link. If you don't know what area you are staying on, check it out. And then also we have a lot of reading lists going on right now, which you can check out because it is Native American Heritage Month. So we create loads and loads and loads of reading lists because we love doing that. And we have some programming going on. And then I encourage you to also check out Seguritate Land Trust, which is an all women run organization out of Oakland, doing amazing work in the community. All right. So just some, also some one city one book coming up. I'm just going to talk about the ones coming up from November, but do know we have some amazing events in December. This Saturday we're going to do a letter writing 101 in our gorgeous Hormel Center. So it's letter writing to queer prisoners. So come check that out on Sunday. Sunday is my favorite day to be at the main library. There's no bosses. Yeah. And there's the farmer's market, which is amazing, especially at around one o'clock where they're starting to go home, get that discount on all the beautiful produce. And they're just always, they're amazing farmers. So please come support that. But more importantly, come check out the California coalition for women prisoners. They'll be telling about the amazing work that they do. And we'll have some formerly incarcerated women telling their narrative and story. So come check that out. The 22nd to pre-thanks. Thanks. Gratitude. Whatever you want to call it day. But Rodessa Jones, if you don't know Rodessa. You need to know Rodessa. She is a power matriarch and does a lot of theater work for incarcerated women specifically. And how that can transform. So please 22nd. Check that out. And I just want to hit on a couple more in-person events. We have in December. The amazing Pindarvis Harsha from KQED. And photographer Brandon to Zeke will be in combo with Nigel and Erlon from ear hustle. And they'll be talking about their work that they have done called facing life. And about. It's an essay and photo journal journalistic endeavor. We also have a small exhibit on the fifth floor. And we're going to be having like a nice little gallery exhibit after that. So come check that out. And one more in-person event. I want to tell you about December 11th. The amazing Sarah Cruz on. Whose book I cried to dream again. Trafficking murder and deliverance. Sarah spent two decades incarcerated. For the murder of her abuser. And she has come out of this. Like a powerhouse. She's so smart. So. Sensitive and emotional and just a teacher. So you do not miss that. All right. Now. On to tonight's event. Also just amazing humans. I can't tell you. I'm so happy they both said agreed to be here tonight. At their bedtime. So. Let's let's give them that. And there will be time for Q&A. You can put your questions in the Q&A function. Or the chat. And tonight we are here to talk about. To listen about rage of innocence. How America criminalizes black youth. Drawing upon 25 years of experience. Representing black youth in Washington DC. Juvenile courts. Hitting. Kristen Henning confronts America's irrational. Manufactured fears of these young people. And makes powerfully. The compelling case that the crisis. And racist American policing. Begins with this relationship to black children. One thing that struck me about your hustle too. Is the stories and the lives of the folks that they talk about. Are often. Start with incarcerated folks that are. Then go in when they're 16 and 17. And so young and just missing entire lives. So I'm really excited to hear this talk. Hitting is a nationally recognized advocate, author, trainer and consultant on the intersection of race, adolescence and policing. She serves as the bloom professor of law and director of the juvenile justice clinic. And initiative at Georgetown law. And was previously the lead attorney of the juvenile unit at the DC public defender service. And she served as the director of the juvenile justice clinic. And she served as the director of the juvenile justice clinic. And she served as the director of the juvenile justice clinic. And initiative at Georgetown law. And was previously the lead attorney of the juvenile unit at the DC public defender service. Henning has been representing children accused of crime for 26 years. And is the co-founder of a number of initiatives to combat racial injustice in a juvenile legal system. Including the ambassadors for racial justice program. And a racial justice toolkit for youth defenders. And the Washington Post. And is available at our library in all formats right now. Betz is a poet and lawyer, a 2021 MacArthur fellow. He has, he is the executive director. Of freedom reads a nonprofit organization that is radically transforming access to literature. In prisons through freedom libraries in prisons across the country. Yes. Yay library love. For more than 20 years, he has used his poetry and essays to explore the world of prisons. And the effects of violence and incarceration and American society. He's the author of a memoir and three collections of poetry. He's transformed his latest collection of poetry. The American book award winning felon. Into a solo theater show that explores post incarceration experience. And lingering consequences of criminal, a criminal record. Through poetry stories and engaging with the timeless transcendental art of paper making. In 2019, Betz won the national magazine award. In the essay and criticism category for his New York Times magazine essay that chronicles his journey from prison to becoming a licensed attorney. He has been awarded the Radcliffe fellowship. From Harvard's Radcliffe Institute of Events Study. A Guggenheim fellow and Emerson fellow with New America. And most recently, a civil society fellow at Aspen. He has been awarded the Guggenheim scholarship. He has been awarded the Guggenheim scholarship. That holds a JD from the Yale law school. Amazing. I'm going to stop sharing and turn it over to our guests. Thank you both for being here. Thank you, Anissa. Such an honor to be here for sure. And to be here with Dwayne Betz. What if I gave you a vote? The honor is definitely mine. And it's, and it's quite interesting because, you know, when people come out with books, you know, I find myself asking, why do we wait till the book is published? They had these conversations, but I realized that I think one of the reasons why we wait is, it's because the book gives audience something to hold on to. And I know many folks watching this haven't had a chance to read your book. I actually want to start with asking you about the title. It's a lot that I want to ask you about, but this notion of the rage of innocence. This notion of the rage of innocence. It's a distinction that, that, that finds you. I'm recognizing that it's a distinction, I think between. Between, between like innocence. And guilt. And childhood. And so I want, I want to ask you, you know, what made you title the book? The rage of innocence. Absolutely. It's a great way to start because it really frames everything that's in the book, but I, I don't know what it means, of course, but the over the, the, the biggest theme, the broadest theme is that the rage of innocence is the rage that every single one of us should have any time, any one child is deprived of an opportunity to be a child, to live out that presumption of innocence. But of course it has much more nuanced meanings. And one of those important nuances is it is also the rage that black children have when they are told over and over again that they are criminal, that they are a threat, that they are dangerous, that they are to be feared. And any person, right? Any person with an ounce of dignity and an ounce of self-worth should resist those labels, right? They naturally push back against those faulty narratives and faulty labels. And so it's also the rage of black and brown youth to be quite frank against those who would label them unfairly and unjustly. And so I often remind folks, and I imagine we'll talk about this in the hour we have together, but that, you know, adolescents, you know, are teenagers, they're emotional, they're reactive, right? They're fairness fanatics. And so when a young child wants to tell you that something is unfair and that the label is incorrect, they don't say, you know, Mr. Officer or, you know, neighbor, I don't like the way you're treating me. You're not perceiving me the way I should be perceived. Instead, you know, it's loud sometimes. And it's, you know, emotional. It might even involve profanity. But I don't perceive me as this threat, as this danger. So that's at least two ways in which the title comes about. You know, it's interesting because I'm, because one, I think, from chapter to chapter, you sort of present a coherent argument where the chapters could be read like by themselves. And I think that's really useful for a person who's trying to understand more about this system. You know, you've attempted to ask why you chose to organize the book in that way. But instead of asking that, because I think some people might not know, I'm just going to say what I think is the answer. And then I'm going to ask you if I'm right. Okay. I feel like as a defense attorney, you know, your work allows you to see the world. And these really complicated ways where you see what overlaps. But also I think that you could sort of discern some of the commonalities of the practice that extend within like the context of what's going on. And so instead of specifically asking how you organize the book, I want to ask how your work as a defense attorney led to some of the ways in which you approach the questions that you grapple with in the book. Oh, beautifully asked. You know, there is extraordinary overlap in or even more than that, there's extraordinary influence of my work as a defense attorney in this book. And so I think that you can see that in a couple of ways. And it's exactly sort of what you say, how do you craft quote unquote an argument? So for those of you who haven't had an opportunity to read, let me be clear that the book is not meant to be a legal textbook. It is a mass press reading that is driven by stories, stories of clients that I have represented as well as stories about young black youth that we've heard about in the news, Tamir Rice, you know, Mike Brown, you know, you know, the nine year old who was pepper sprayed in Rochester, New York. And I, you know, we've together those stories though with research and with data in plain language. And so why do I do that? I do that because I believe that narrative changes hearts and minds. It's the stories that are going to change hearts and minds. It's not the numbers. It's not the empirical research. It's the real children who are impacted by the policies and the practices. So every chapter opens with the story of a young person. The book starts and ends with one of my own clients. And most of the stories start with one of my own clients. And throughout, I weave in those, those stories, but I also recognize, right? That the, the listener. And so to carry with your analogy, you know, doing like a judge who's listening to me could push back and say, well, those are just anecdotes. And so that's why it became essential to weave in the data to show, no, no, no, these aren't just one offs, right? These are a representative of the larger phenomena that is happening in our country. And then also the social science research. I want you to see for those of you who are naysayers, that the empirical research helps us understand how this phenomena of the criminalization of normal adolescents among black youth is perpetuated. And so that's that empirical research helps me do that. You're absolutely right that each chapter could stand alone, right? That I could tell any one of those stories to drive home the narrative or the argument, you know, if you will. And because I recognize that people care about different things. So if I want, I cared a lot about audience, we care a lot about audiences, defense attorneys also. So if I want to speak to school officials, right? Lawmakers interested in school policy, education policy, I have a chapter on cops in schools. If I want to talk to back black parents, you know, empathize, engage and provide insights to black parents. You know, I have a couple of chapters that speak directly to black parents and black families. I have a chapter on the black family in the era of mass incarceration. That's the title of the chapter. And I have another chapter called black adolescent identity formation, which is all about how do you, you know, help raise, how do you raise a black child in a society in which you know they're going to experience racialized encounters at school, in the community, in health care with police officers. So it was indeed very intentional. Thank you for asking that. And I love your, your, the analogy of using this as an argument that I would make as a defense attorney. But you know, and, you know, and one of these I want to ask about, because I like you, you're talking about things fall apart on the black family in the era of mass incarceration. And you talk about Zimmerman being felt not guilty. And part of that was because of the story that was told to the prosecutors. And I've grappled with this a lot, just listening to what people say about, about Mike Brown and what people say about, you know, about, about Trayvon Martin. And I recognize though, interestingly enough, these folks who, who say these things that I won't even name anybody's name, but some of them are like black intellectuals, right? These folks who continue to weaponize a narrative about black boys. They never say the opposite when it's somebody that, that it's found not guilty of murder. Like, so when there's a young black kid that is found not guilty of murder, it is the system having failed. And it makes me step back into that. And it makes me step back and think, oh, you know what? The, the, the story that you're actually telling is, is about the fear of blackness. And you're not telling the story about these individuals. But what I would love for you to offer for us is, is the ways in which you want us to recognize. Like I believe more than the individual cases, those cases tell, tell us more broadly about what black boys don't have permission to do. And so we're trying to justify something that should have happened. And we could grant you that like, that a scuffle occurred and you lost the fight. We could even grant you that you were afraid for your life. But, but I imagine that we cannot grant you that that fear then gives you the right to one, kill someone, right? And I, and I guess my question becomes, how, how do you imagine you want people to respond to these stories, even as you can see that if, if Zimmerman were your client and the two people in that encounter were black boys and it wasn't the way it was framed now. Like I wonder how you want us to understand what happened independent of what the system does. Because it seems like once you buy into the system, then, then you ultimately have to deal with wins and losses. And, and that your argument is, is about more than buying into the system. No, it's about, it's about reckoning with a different kind of story that we don't acknowledge. And that's what's in the race. Cause sit beside Michael Brown. Cause sit beside Trayvon Martin. Is that making sense? Yes, it really is on so many levels. I can pull so many threads out of what you're saying. I get, you know, sort of passionate listening to you. Before we even get to this question of you say, like wins and losses and, you know, before we even get into the system, there's a story, right? Like the, the, the work that needs to happen in our country is a cultural shift in the narrative, right? The relinquishment, the, you know, more than just the relinquishment of this, this, this fear of narrative. I mean, this narrative of fear, but a, a, a story of adolescence, a story of beauty. And I end actually the, you know, I end the book, you know, as you, you know, folks, I won't give away too much, but I, you know, talk about this is all about telling the right stories. But I'll say this, that you talk about, like, what are young people not have Black youth, not have the permission to do as a result of this fear narrative that is driven. And it's really just that adolescence is a privilege in our country. It is a commodity. It is a value. And so people never think about it that way, right? This opportunity to be a child, this opportunity to be a teenager is as important as shelter over one's head, food in one's mouth, clothing on one's body. It is that important. There are whole bodies of research that I actually didn't even know existed about the importance of recreation, play, and leisure. And we do not give Black youth permission to be just that. And so part of also what is happening in this need to shift the narrative is I write this book with a deep desire that every single reader will be able to find themselves somewhere in the stories, right? So a reader being able to see themselves as a teenager, doing the exact same kinds of things that my clients did, right? I think some of these readers is going to see themselves as the cops that are persecuting. Adults that are saying, like, I have just decided that that kid, you are at the ice cream shop and you must be up to no good. And it's like, it's interesting. I mean, I think that because you tell it through stories, you ask yourself, because I could recognize myself as some of these stories, but what's troubling is that I know a lot of people can't, and that if they're honest, they might recognize themselves in the voice of authority that's just making assumptions about who your client saw, who these young men are. And so I think it's even good for that to be like, the people that's listening, we should all be asking ourselves, how do we exist in this narrative? Because we aren't all the good guys. We aren't all innocent persons. Sometimes, and it doesn't even matter about race or gender or the way you identify. I think sometimes we all play the villain, but I'm sorry, I interrupted you. I was being a villain. But you're making a good point. And I'm okay with people finding themselves in that role, just like one of the stories that you referenced, one of my clients who was standing after school, like teenagers do with a group of friends in front of you, and you know, a police officer comes by and is like putting him in handcuffs because he's quote unquote blocking entry into the Rita's ice and you're like, you've got to be kidding. This is what kids do. Ask him to move or whatever. So what might, my point here is I hope to unsettle, right? Unsettle, but I hope to get out there and not to get into the to unsettle people who were comfortable in being in that policing position. So I'll say this to you in response to your comment, Dwayne, that somebody said this to me and I found it to be very powerful. There's almost a 20, 60, 20 rule. 20% of the people who read my book are gonna automatically get it, right? They're gonna be like, oh, I knew that. I knew this how black children were being portrayed and treated and deprived of their opportunity to just do kid things. 60% of the people are shocked. They had no idea that a kid hanging out with friends in front of McDonald's, in front of Rita's ice, or getting into an argument at school, playing on a cell phone at school is gonna lead to an arrest and sometimes even a murder or killing. And but 20% of the people are gonna dig their heels in and say that these kids are bad. I'm happy with an 80%. I'd love to get us to a hundred, but you know what? If I can shift, I mean, 60% of the people to see this, that's a really powerful, full number. And I do believe that not only does one see themselves as that person who was the neighbor who weaponized 911, right? Who called that police to get their black neighbor's child out of the way. I know people will see themselves in that, but they'll also see hopefully the absurdity of what we are arresting, prosecuting, detaining, incarcerating children for, things that they did when they were kids, things that their own children have done and never came into contact with police for. And so yeah, I hope people see themselves in some of the many, many absurd stories. And I think when I go out on the road and talk about that, that's one of the things that keeps coming back. I had no idea that a black child was being arrested for that foolishness. Yeah, I mean, it's stunning too, because I was thinking of a friend of mine, her kid gets picked up for carjacking, right? And he didn't do it, right? Yeah. So let's end with the beginning. He didn't do it. And he was obviously innocent, right? But what happened was, and the guy who did, the guy who got carjacked was like, yeah, you know, like Tommy Boy jumped in the car with me and I was like, what's up? And he was like, yeah, I'm taking your car. So then the police arrest somebody who's not named Tommy Boy, who doesn't know the victim at all, right? And the kid spent more than a week incarcerated as he had to go from one court hearing to the next before they finally released him. You talk about Khalif Browder in the book, and I think that's the most tragic example of when something like this happens. But I guess I wanna know what do you say to the person who their pushback is? Yeah, but what about the actual violence that happens? Because I, and look, and I love hip hop, but I think the problem with hip hop, I'm not gonna say that. I think the challenge of art is that it's always doing three or four, five different things. Yeah. If you isolate the hip hop that is pointing out when the police wrongly shoot somebody, what do you say when Naut say, don't bust in a crowd, hit them solo, make the right man bleed? How do you talk about, because I feel like that's what the counter is saying. Like the counter is saying, how do you want me to respond to these tragedies that you depict in the face of the actual violence that happens in the community? And so I wonder how do you respond to that? Because that's the same thing people say about music. You want me to listen to Jay-Z when he's protesting about violence, but you don't want me to listen to Jay-Z when he say, I do you one better, and slay these dudes faithfully. Murder is a hard thing to process, but I ain't got nothing but time. And again, on that song, he's talking about revenge. But I think that both of these things happen and the real question is, how should we demand society respond to our young people as if they had a presumption of innocence and as if they had a presumption of being able to be a child, even in the face of whatever violence is happening in the communities where they live. Yeah, so I'm going to pull out two questions. I'm going to start backwards almost with the music. And then I'll talk about this broader question. How do we respond to young people in when we're all worried about safety? So with regard to music, and I try to take this on a bit in the book I want to say in chapter three, let me be clear. How do I want you to respond and think about the music? I want you to think about it as just that, as music. And I want you to think about that hip hop song, that rap song in the same way you would think about country music, pop music, heavy metal, rock music. And truly there have been empirical studies so that I'm not just talking anecdotally that all of those genres of music, the latter set country, heavy metal, pop music all have the same themes, misogynistic themes, glorification of violence, drugs, sex. All of these things that we quote unquote, deplore, revenge, all of that, that we deplore in hip hop and rap music. All of those themes are there. There's a whole genre of music I learned as writing this book called Dirty Country, deeply misogynistic and violent. And we accept that music almost without critique. But if you play the lyrics, you read the lyrics for rap and hip hop, you think that the music itself is like the most dangerous music around and it's generating the, generating and responsible for the violence when the empirical research actually has not played that out. In the same way that, you think about country music and folks talking about going to kill the man who was sleeping with my woman, people understand that as music, as hyperbole, as art and expression. And we don't give that same grace to hip hop. We demonize it because of all the racial bias. So we either as a country take on all the lyrics, all the misogynistic and violent themes and not just demonize that which is associated with black youth. With regard to that safety question- Hold on, before we go to the safety question though, let me push back a little bit. Sure. I love hip hop, but I also am not sure if the country musicians, like if their credo is that these first person narratives belong to me and I want you to say that like, I don't lie on record. And so I just, I wonder how do you respond to the person that says, all of that might be true, but I'm not talking about country music. What I'm actually talking about is, is like this particular MC who says, I don't lie on record. And so you- Yeah. I don't, I just don't know if country, you said that they had the same level of violence. I agree with that, but I don't know when I grew up listening to, I mean, Tupac and Biggie got murdered when I was a child. So like even if I agree with that, I am going to say that I grew up in a generation where the very rappers that I thought were like the best and were really complicated and saying a lot of things, I thought that one of my real challenges as an adult now is that two of the greatest artists of my generation died because they lived their lyrics far more than I wish they would have. And this is not a critique of them, but I guess- I understand. It's a pushback though. They did live their lyrics far more than I wish they would have. Right. So let me, I'm going to push back too. So a couple of things for, if you want to read more about this, not you, like people in the audience, Wrap On Trial, a book by Eric Nielsen and Andrea Dennis that really sort of delves into this idea about whether or not. So even, I would say to you, Dwayne, even the lyric, what is it, however you framed it, my lyrics are not a lie or my verses are not a lie, even that is hyperbole. So you are absolutely right. I'm not sure if it's hyperbole. I'm not sure if it's hyperbole. No, but literally what I was going to say is unequivocally, yes, people died in the industry, right? People kill and there is violence in the industry. The question is, and this really begins to get at the second question about crime, right? Which is that one doesn't presume that because Biggie and Tupac died that all rap music is violent and it was the music itself that was biographical, that everybody else's rap music is biographical. In other words, we over extrapolate from examples. That's exactly what I try to avoid in my book is like the taking of the anecdotes and there may be a lot of them, but that doesn't mean that my client, right? Who lives in Washington, DC and does hip hop on the side as a source of healing, as a source of expression is also, is something more than hyperbole. It's always a source of commerce. It's a source of commerce, right? I know how to make money, right? For country music, we call that good business, but let me just say one more thing about country because I don't want to lose this point in like dirty country, all the stuff. Like, look, they're also, when it's not hyperbole, they're also anecdotal examples of artists who've raped women, right? Like so we don't use those same narratives to say, well, see that country artists or that, whatever. I'm just, I'm not, you know. Yeah, I mean, I want us to say it actually doesn't matter. If even if none of it is hyperbole, even if all of it actually happens, we should not extrapolate to a whole people or a whole camera based on what is actually true. And I think that that's what happens. You know, I think that that's what I'm saying. I don't need to resist the reality that like maybe everything Jay-Z said is true. Maybe everything in Nars said is true. Maybe everything Taylor Swift said is true. I don't know how many bad boyfriend she had. I mean, it could work that way, right? But I'm saying even if everything she said is true, I don't think that we should extrapolate about all white women based on what she said. I think we should extrapolate about all black men based on what Jay-Z said. And so I was just trying to say, I don't, and when they say rap on trial, I mean, the reason why rap is on trial is because we want to extrapolate to this larger group. And that's why it was kind of articulate the way I did it, but it feels like the chapter is doing both things though. It's trying to say, don't extrapolate on who my clients are based on whatever you think is true. And I think that we do that way too often, you know, you have 2%, 10% of people in a given community causing all of the chaos. That's right. And that's how you judge everybody within that community. That's right, that's right. And that really goes straight to the second question that you asked, which is this question, like what do we say to people who are deeply worried about crime and who, you know, who perceive this moment wherever we are in the pandemic as an uptick in crime. And then the, I mean, you nailed it. It's like, there are like, I would say even less, 2% of the people doing that, carjacking and the, you know, the homicides. I was at 2%, unfortunately, but yeah, it was, right? I was in the 2%, but yes, it was literally 2%. And in fact, within that 2%, it's all kinds of gradations and range and differences of who people get to be. That's right. And I'll say on that point, like you being in the 2%, like that's also the, so not only is it, so I'll finish my first point, which is this idea that it's the small number of folks and we then extrapolate and we want to criminalize all black children as a result of that. And we begin to criminalize normal adolescent behaviors. But then I go one step further and talk about even within that 2%, like you said, there are grade, you know, gradations within that 2%, but we treat all black youth who are in that 2% as if they're on redemption. Not even as if they, we don't even get treated like the people within the 2%, we treat it like Jeffrey Dahmer. It's like, you know, it's like, you know, it's no, you know, it's no redemption. I wonder though, all of this is compelling and it's all like, I believe all of it, but you've seen it play out in court. And so I guess I wanted to get a sense of, what do you feel like your work as a defense attorney has taught you about how you can move the needle by knowing some of this stuff. Oh, great, great. I gotta tell you, we have, you know, so I, you know, am a criminal defense attorney and a law professor, right? And I will tell you this, because I'm still practicing through my clinic, let me be clear, I represent children in conjunction with my law students that nothing that I write is meant to be, you know, for the academic, you know, intellectual inquiry. It's for changing. It's about bringing about reform. And so I think in court, we can move the needle slowly, difficultly, but one, litigating, like, so I mean, there's so many levels. I'm gonna say, you know, direct representation of children in court naming these issues, challenging these issues in a lingual framework. Also, it's systemic reform, it's policy, advocacy, you know, in front of lawmakers, changing laws that decriminalize adolescents and that impose severe, racially disparate sentencing. It's that level of work. And there's also training and education, you know, across the country with all of the state actors, judges, prosecutors, police officers, defense attorneys, not all defense attorneys are open to or aware of, are deeply committed to these racial justice issues. So it's all of that. It's, you know, resource development, like writing a book so people can read and think about it. So I do think we are moving the needle. You'll see, you know, we think about, I think about, you know, there are now finally some state high courts that have explicitly acknowledged that race is relevant in some of the critical legal questions like search and seizure. And so I know there are lawyers who are not on this library call, but understanding that, you know, most of us take it for granted that we can walk through the streets of our neighborhoods, that our children could go to school without undue intrusion or interference by the police. And part of what moving the needle looks like is helping folks recognize that black children are more likely to face some sort of state intrusion. So more likely to encounter police at schools, more likely to be arrested at school in part because of the racial biases that we have in society. So unpacking that some ways in which, you know, kids are deprived of just being kids, right? Having a temper tantrum in the same way you did, the ways in which children are experiencing, black and brown children experience trauma, right? In contact with the police, not because any individual police officer did something to that child, but because that child grew up in a country watching image after image of police violence. And again, not saying all police officers are bad, I always go out of my way, you know, to say that, but that black children have reason to be afraid of police interference. So I would, I would say, I mean, it's interesting because I believe that, but I also believe that we had a right to walk around the street as if we aren't afraid of the police. So I am not afraid of the police. And I feel like I get it. I'm not giving any kind of talks to my kid. Yeah. Are you? Hell no. I think my kid has a right to walk down the street and not be afraid at all. And this is really interesting thing about what does that mean in context of how you deal with the world and how you deal with something, like if the police press my kid out, you know, like how do you deal with that? That is a really interesting question, but I don't think the answer is the talk. And actually, I just, I've just, if the answer is the talk, then the answer, I'm not even gonna say nothing because that's gonna be crazy. So I'm not even gonna say what my response is gonna be. But let me ask you a different question. Cause you said something that was really interesting, right? And you just said a lot in your answer. And I love all of the different ways that we could respond. But what I thought was interesting as a defense attorney, trying to make these issues become a part of the record, I wonder what kind of just specific strategies or motions. I always think about that Ted Talk, Brian Stevenson did when he was like, I decided to write a motion to have my 15 year old black client be to like a 75 year old white man in court. He didn't file that motion. I don't think he filed that motion, right? But I wonder if, I wonder what would happen. I wonder what all the kind of motions like that that we might file. Because I remember when I got sentenced and my lawyer filed a sentence in memorandum and he never found file sentence in memorandums in cases like mine. And what's interesting is, is when me and my homeboy, he's still in prison now. His name is, I need to actually I need to do something. I owe a letter for him. But his name is Marquis Ternich. And he's still in prison now. But I remember when he and I wrote the ACLU saying that, look, he got this 60 year sentence which is basically deaf in prison. And he didn't rape, murder, or rob anybody. And that was our letter, which you could call a motion. And the ACLU said, we don't deal with issues like this. I wonder how might we deal with these kinds of issues that still exist? Literally do the court because we pretend like we have a way. But for a long time, a lot of the righteous people who do this work now, didn't care about this shit in 1996, in 1997, in 1998. And they might not care about it in 2023. If we don't present more publicly, the kind of framework that folks could use to animate these issues in ways that exist beyond just shouting like mass incarceration, mass incarceration. So I just wonder if y'all have done anything that you feel like I should tell somebody about this. We felt it didn't work, but it's worth noting that this is where we tried to push in front of a judge and in front of a prosecutor to change how they thought about a specific issue that was relevant to a specific client. Well, guess what? So I really, my whole last two to five years, actually certainly three years, our entire mission at my office, the Georgetown Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative has been to push that agenda. The development of legal pleadings, the oral arguments that one makes to specifically challenge the relevance of race. And so I put in the chat, I didn't put out the whole article just cause I wanna keep talking, but so what does all of this mean? It means we have a racial justice toolkit that we now have that has pleadings that we are collecting from across the country on ways in which we can expressly litigate race, race in the Fourth Amendment search and seizure context, race in the confessions context, race in the sentencing and disposition context. We are out on the road doing trainings with lawyers, defense lawyers, and now even prosecutors about how do you file that motion? We have what we call forensic exercises where we have small groups of lawyers come to us and we get them on their feet and we moot. Here's the argument that you make. Here is the legal case that you can make. And this is part of what we're getting at that finally some state high courts, some state supreme courts have finally said race is relevant. So in Washington DC, people have said that, and in many of Massachusetts, I could name them, but there are states high courts that have said that it is no longer appropriate to consider flight from the police, meaning running away from the police as some sort of consciousness or evidence of guilt for a black or brown person. Why? Because there are alternate reasons why black folks would run. That's just one easy example, but there are many, many pleadings. And this is new work, as you said, Duane, this is new work, but we've got sample pleadings that we are constantly writing and getting out and letting lawyers learn how to practice the stuff. What is really cool, I got this poem. It says, a confession began when I walked out of that parking lot. A confession began when I walked black out of that parking lot. A confession began when I dressed for a day that will find me walking black out of that parking lot. There's so much to be said of a black boy with unkempt hair. He fits the description of the suspect. Suspect is running, but what black boy ain't run from things far less frightening than the police. And that's it right there, this notion that what do you mean my running is evidence of my guilt? But what I love is your excitement about this. Because honestly, it's not clear that any of this is going on to other people. And so for us to do this talking for people to hear how excited you are about it and for you to talk about the work that's happening on a really granular level, I think it makes us recognize that it makes me want to be a lawyer. I might fuck around, go to law school. Come on, Rob, come on. We got a space for you. It says, I want to get a couple of these audience questions in. One is, and honestly, so I won't call out the people who ask these questions. But the first question is, are you hopeful of real change? How do you both envision carceral police reform? I mean, honestly, I think that that's an easy one, because we couldn't be excited about the work we do if there was no hope for real change. I think that, and this is kind of the thing I said about the talk. If I gave my kid the talk, to me, that suggests that I'm not hopeful for real change. And I have to ask myself, what weight am I'm willing to carry when I think that this is what I need to equip my kid with to walk out into the world. And I actually don't know what the response is to that. So I feel like that's not what I equip my kid with. But what do you think? Are you hopeful for real change? I would love to answer that. So there's the whole question, but I would love to answer this question about the talk piece, which is chapter five of my book, Black Adolescent Identity Formation. I specifically grapple with this question, what is a Black parent to do? And the way I think about it is exactly very similar to what you said, but I come out maybe a little different, which is that on the one hand, a Black parent wants to prepare their children for these inevitable moments of discrimination, these inevitable moments. And it doesn't have to be just policing, right? But inevitable moments of exclusion and disappointment so that they can be ready, so they can have the tools, so that they can have the mental resources to handle that moment, while at the same time, not over-preparing our children so that they're scared all the time. I literally talk about this in chapter five. So that their mental health is not compromised, such that they believe that every person who doesn't look like them as an enemy, such that they can't walk down the street without fear. And so it's a very delicate tightrope that I think Black parents walk. And I come out this way. I come out like I don't know how not to give the talk, but that we have to learn to offset that talk with a conversation about Black pride, a conversation about hope, a conversation about allies, a conversation, all the, there's what they call the legal, I'm sorry, the racial socialization. That's sort of the academic term. Like how do you socialize your children to grow up in a country that has clear race differentiation? I don't want them to find out one day when they show up at school or they show up at work and they're disappointed because they didn't get the opportunity or worse, they were hurt or they were arrested and treated wrong. So I get you, I respect that perspective, but I wonder if there's a way to do the talk with the other pieces that sort of create the buffer so that you don't walk around society afraid. Before I get to this other question from the audience, but I wonder, I still feel like I feel like there's a lot of Black folks that don't have anything to fear from the police at all. And that, you know, we subsumed the class question within a race question. And actually I feel like a lot of times in my own life I've had to struggle with more discrimination from Black institutions and from Black people than the White folks. And I also feel like there's a lot of Black folks who co-opt the narrative that is about the struggles of my life and it has become a part of their life work, but they don't do what you do, right? They're not defensive attorneys. They don't have this real passion for their clients. They don't even know their clients. They've never been in prisons, but they talk about criminal justice reform. And I wonder, is that attention that I have just invented in my head or is that attention that you recognize as you do this work going across the country? Yeah, so I have seen it, but I would say this. This is, you talk about hope, you know, and the question earlier that this is, and I so feel you on that, you are absolutely right. Just I have to stop and validate that point that people doing the work haven't been on the ground and don't know the impact of the system on real people, right? That said, right? That said, I almost wanna have a moment of grace because we need people in the work and that we can teach people, right? That we, when I go out, I literally, I say this in the book, if you wanna know how to make the world a better place for black youth, ask them, right? Ask them. I also, people say to me, what is the number one thing that I need to do? I borrow something from, you know, Brian Stevenson, which he borrowed from, you know, people before him, which is get proximate, get proximate. When I talk to students, my law students, and they say to me, how do I make the most change? I say, before you do any policy reform, I need you to go be a defense attorney. I need you to get out or a community organized. I don't need, you know, you see what I'm saying? Get out on the ground, be proximate. Get in the community, hear what they say, right? And understand, let them drive the agenda or educate you on the agenda. And so I think some of that is well-meaning people who don't know how to do it. And so that if we could give them, we could help them, if we could talk to them, you know, remind them, go ask. Go ask, don't be presumptuous because that's a form of bias in and of itself, right? That we need your guidance and intervention. And I say that even for myself, you know, who has, and somebody wrote in the chat, you know, asking the book, the read, you know, my book, I, it's hard to be a black person. I personally have not been to jail or to prison, but you better believe I come from a family that very much has, you know, my brother died in prison, right? Like it's on and on, like it's hard to be a black woman in America and not be directly impacted, right? How was it, how was it? Cause that's one of the questions, you know, how was it written about that? You know, I think it's interesting that you reveal that as a black woman, as a law professor, because I do feel like for a long time that wasn't permissible in terms of like the kind of shame that we carry around, the proxy shame, you know what I mean? And so how was it writing about that in the book? Absolutely, Joanne, you hit it on two different fronts. Let me just tell you, I was blown away. So chapter 11, right? The 11th chapter of a 12th chapter book and I almost got paralyzed. I found it, chapter 10 was hard to write, chapter 11 was hard to write. Chapter 11 is where, I mean, there are various points where I reveal what's going on in my family, but when I got to chapter 11, I cried so much and I was paralyzed at times. And I, you know, I thought I had resolved all that. I thought I had worked through all of that. But to relive that, and I, you know, what was a level of secondary and tertiary trauma that I just didn't, you know, I didn't expect to have. I also, the shame question, wow, you name that, because I have a brother. So I had a brother who, you know, died in prison, but I also have a younger brother. And I literally felt like I had to send that chapter to my younger brother and say, look, I'm about to put this out in the world. Are you okay with this, right? And so, because of that shame, that I love you, I don't feel ashamed. But you know, you could be a rapper though. Right. One piece that I would tell people actually, like in terms of grappling with this story, is I would say people should listen to take hip hop as art and ask a different question. What would you think about, like Biggie's ready to die album, if it wasn't, if it didn't have to be autobiography? Right. And I think that album is one of the most profound takes on the struggle of being a young person in America. And it's like, what would you think about some of Tupac's best songs, like Brenna's Got a Baby, that actually does talk about some of the things that we don't talk about in terms of the trauma that young people experience? Like if we thought about this music as art, we would immediately begin to discern what we need to discard because it is not meaningful enough to be a subject of conversation. And I do think that's what we do with other genres. I think maybe it's because hip hop is too young, but when you think about country music and you think about Jolene, even when you think about like dude that kept getting locked up, like Merle Haggard and folks like that, I think that we let that work become art. And so that's why when we hear it and it's talking about some of these things that are the same that you hear in hip hop, you asking yourself, well, does this matter as art? With hip hop, we don't ask that question enough. And that's why rap is on trial because rap is being considered as biography instead of art. That's right. And also on that point is that rap is also, you know, when you talk about like, you know, biggie songs and the lyrics, some of that is like healing and expression, right? Like, so it's art, but it's also like we prevent because we don't create spaces for black youth and black young adults to talk about this trauma because it's taboo or, you know, the ways in which they say it is inappropriate and poorly received, we don't create healthy outlets for these kinds of conversation. And so it comes out in music, right? And so that's another thing. I actually, it's so ironic we're having this conversation. I just got back from, unfortunately it was at UVA, but a rap on trial conference. It was a two day conference where rap artists came and scholars got together. We all talked about the range of benefits and value of rap music and hip hop art. So anyway, you can find some of that, you know, writing about that conference online. Well, you know, one of the things I want to say before is I can't even, you know, I've known you for so long. I can't even remember how we met, but of the many people that I've known when I was like, you know, not even imagining a career in the legal field, but sort of just trying to take the opportunity to lend my voice to talk about some of these issues that I felt like really mattered. And I was talking about it from my experience. I think that you were one of the first people to take me seriously, like as a thinker and not just somebody who was talking about the fact that they've been in prison. And it makes me realize that what's brave about this book is that you're telling some of these stories about your personal life. And I think that's great. But I also think what's also like just quite lovely is that, you know, I think you'll give a lot of people permission to recognize how they could exist in this work and in this field by doing things and thinking about how your stories echo the things that you do, but your personal stories don't have to be the center of the things that you do. And so I'm really glad that you spent some time just talking about, you know, first you framed it out as this is what's going on, but then you actually got really specific and talked about how your clinic is doing that and how you guys are doing trainings. Because ultimately I do think one of the things that like I struggle with, but I think one of the things that people who have been in the system struggle with is finding a space to have things to do besides telling the stories. And I think that's why it's powerful to think about how you told these stories, but it never exists as just stories. It exists as, it's never just a string of anecdotes. It's stories that are meant to animate these fundamental things that happen as opposed to, you know, I think what some other people do as opposed to what happened in the Zimmerman trial on the prosecutorial side. It was just a story that was meant to animate this notion of bias. And it had nothing behind it. It was just all it had behind it is all of the cliches and the stereotypes about black folks that allowed the jury to like buy into this like dangerous black kid narrative. So anyway, I'm really impressed with that. And I appreciate you writing the book. And I wonder if there's anything else you wanna tell the folks. You can ask, actually it's one more question that I didn't ask. And I wonder if you could maybe take us out with anything you wanna add and then answering this final question, which is a really hard one. What do you say to folks who flat out deny that there's racial bias in policing and in the courts and et cetera? I mean, I'd say you throw your book at them and be like, read this and then tell me if you still deny it. But what do you do with that 20% that you mentioned earlier who will deny no matter what? So that's a really beautiful question. And I, you know, am not someone who, you know, who gives up, right? And so to the extent that I get the opportunity to be in those spaces, you know, with folks who flat out deny it, you know, I'll keep working at it, do my best, try to share stories, right? Whether there's stories in this book, but like, you know, telling stories that try to resonate. And like I think about George Floyd and how that moment, watching the killing of George Floyd on national television changed so many people who thought it wasn't true, right? So it's figuring out those stories that really are almost impossible to disagree with. So there's that. The other thing is, to be honest with you, Dwayne, I have to recognize as a black woman, right? That there is, but so much that I will be able to do within the, how do I wanna phrase this? I gotta preserve my mental health, right? I was actually just having this conversation, you know, with some younger folks in a mentee kind of context that I am gonna fight as much as I can even with that 20% who's dug in, but there are days when I can't fight that fight. I'm gonna have to understand that I need the rest of the 80% to carry us over the line. And that if there's that 20% that I'm not gonna move, there's that 20% that I'm not gonna move and I can't like die inside. I can't, you know, mentally and physically deteriorate trying to win over that 20%. If that makes any sense. So it almost sounds like giving it up, but it's not. It's preserving one's self and one's own humanity by not being beat down over and over again by the 20% who just won't buy in. All we need is 80%. That's, you know, to make all the difference in the change in the world. So I'll say that. And I think the last thing that I like to say is something that I say in the book and a psychologist friend said to me that every single child deserves at least one irrationally caring adult and that children would be better, would do better off if they had a team of irrationally caring adults. That means we know that teenagers will be teenagers. Let them be teenagers, right? And that we know they'll make mistakes. But what we do is we guide them, redirect them. We don't shame them. We don't incarcerate them. We don't criminalize them. We don't label them. But we redirect them. And so that's what I, that's my call for everybody to do, right? It's, you know... Imagine if we had an irrationally caring system. Yes, oh, yes. Yes. Like if a judge was like, you know what? My judge told me I'm under no illusion that sending you to prison will help. Yeah. And then he sent me to prison. It's like... Oh my God. See? See? Yes. He just had to be irrationally caring. He didn't have to be irrationally caring, you know? Just caring, right? Yeah. But no, I believe that. And you know what? I think to everybody watching, I hope that we're all irrationally caring about a kid in his world and at least one kid in his world that doesn't belong to us. So... I love it. I love it. And thank you. I gotta say, you are truly, truly, you know? It's easy to take you seriously. This idea that you grapple with, how do I do more than tell my story? You've done way more than tell your story. You have moved mountains and I have followed your career since I remember. I remember several times that we met, but me being on the phone with you, having conversations with you and me listening, as you're thinking about what are you gonna do next? And me thinking this brother's about to turn it out and you did and you do. So thank you. Thank you both. That was super powerful and super hopeful. So I love that. And Dwayne, you did a great moderation, wonderful reading of the book. Kristen and both of you, thank you for joining us at your bedtime and sharing it with the library community. Friends, that document has all the links and you'll get a follow-up email with all of that. And we appreciate your time and your dedication to what you do. All right. Thanks guys. I'm gonna try to knock down this deadline. Me too. Take care. All right. Bye everyone. Thank you. Bye-bye.