 Good evening everybody Welcome My name is Elizabeth Sackler, and I had a great time this morning when I walked out the door and was able to walk out the door and saw the sun Shine it's it's been a while. It's been sort of like I understand living in Seattle Which is a whole other thing? Welcome this evening To our part three of states of denial the illegal incarceration of children women and people of color Parts one and two of our series if you were here was sentenced to change with Piper Kerman and also mass Incarcerations impact on black and Latino women and children with Sophia Elijah and They can be found if you weren't able to join us They can be found online if you put in Brooklyn museum org slash EAS CFA Elizabeth a Sackler Center for Feminist art slash video You will be able to see those two earlier parts and there are hundreds of other Great programings that we've done at the Sackler Center available there, too so I'm happy to welcome you tonight to the Cantor Auditorium and this evening screening of the documentary film Crime After Crime which will be followed with a conversation with a conversation by a conversation With the starring attorney who has joined us from the West Coast Joshua Safran and his co-counsel Nadia Costa was unable to be here due to a family emergency and I'd like to extend my thanks to her for all that she has done with Joshua And tell her that she is missed here this evening and then we will have a book signing Joshua's new book and there'll be an opportunity then on stage for one-on-one conversation and questions with Joshua Last summer. I met Ann Tucker I had really the good fortune to meet and Tucker who is the founder of the avoda Dance ensemble and she came into my life in a kind of an extraordinary way she had a 30-year career with avoda what she founded and She added a jewel. I'd like to say into their crown She started dance Residencies and workshops for York Institute correctional institution up in Niantic, Connecticut And it's the only state Women's prison in Connecticut. It is a maximum and minimum security prison there My first visit to York was with her was with Joanne and it was last fall and I have since then continued to do art workshops with the ten inmates and I'd like tonight to thank Joe Lee who is not here he's a librarian specialist and he's dedicated and He's remarkable and it wouldn't have been possible without him and the reason that this is so important is because of the content my first workshop there included a PowerPoint of the dinner party by Judy Chicago, which is up at the Sackler Center permanently and I focused attention on five plates and followed that with an art studio session for the ten women who had enrolled for the workshop and Using paper plates and acrylic paints and collage materials and colored pencils they created their own dinner party inspired plates and Their focus which was very intense and wonderful morphed into delight and then to an inmates suggestion to produce an entire table Complete with the runners and the goblets and the silverware in the heritage floor that you see On the dinner party and it is their dinner party and they have titled their work shared dining shared dining is what a mess hall or cafeteria is called in prison The plates that they made Represent women whether mythic or real historic or contemporary who have inspired each of them each of these ten women and These are their plate names feminine energy Eve the Virgin Mary Juliet Shakespeare's Juliet Lena who is a great aunt? Phyllis Porter who is a victim of one of the artists Princess Diana Rainey who was one of their moms Danica Patrick race car driver Malala as in I am Malala The following didactic Was written by the artists the inmates and it reads as follows Inspired by the dinner party and the women in it We were moved to honor the women who have touched our lives Our plates represent their strength struggles courage and achievements These women are models of who we aspire to be Though our materials are meager we have not been limited by the lack of resources our imagination resourcefulness and creativity Allowed us to turn commonplace objects into art and it is signed the women of York. I Am returning this Monday To put the finishing touches on the piece with them because on May 22nd The Connecticut's prison arts program annual exhibition opens at the University of Hartford and It will open with shared dining Installed and on view to the public it will be one of 18 Connecticut prisons represented in the show and I have watched art as a healer and I have watched the transformation of one idea Turn into an enormous and beautiful Project For great of great pride for the women who worked on it and indeed it will be also up at the penitentiary So that everybody there all of the inmates all thousand. I think there are 1200 total Will be able to see it and since 1978 the prison art classes have taught artistic skills They assist inmates to develop non-destructive modes of Communication and provide guidance in understanding the learning process the creative process the process of critical thinking and The process of self-awareness the current director is Jeffrey Green. He lives here in Brooklyn I don't know if he's here with us this evening He's wonderful, and he is the master planner of this initiative in July of 1913 in the New Yorker Rachel Louise Snyder in her article a raised hand Provided horrifying statistics women comprise roughly 85% of the victims of domestic violence One in every four women is a victim of domestic violence at some point in her life of the 6,000 women Incarcerated in this country over 80% are survivors of domestic violence rape and other forms of abuse the laws have rendered battered women Criminals and have protected their batterers and Thanks to attorneys such as Joshua Saffron and Nadia Custa the California laws today allow for Incarcerated survivors of abuse to petition for their freedom I would like to describe to you a little bit about crime after crime, and then we will watch the documentary crime after crime was completed in 2011 and it's a documentary film directed and produced by Yohav Potash Premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2011 has since earned 25 major awards Including the Robert F. Kennedy journalism award the National Board of Reviews freedom of expression award and the Hillman Prize for broadcast journalism the film was a New York Times critic critics pick and Earned the Henry Hampton award for excellence in film and digital media presented by the Council on Foundation And the pursuit of justice award presented by the California women's Law Center in May 2011 the film won the Golden Gate Award for documentary feature at the 54th annual San Francisco International Film Festival, and it was later picked up by Oprah Winfrey's network for broadcast there so we will watch the film and Resume upon its completion. Thank you very much It gives me a great deal of pleasure to introduce to you Josh Saffron Josh You're gonna sit in chat for a minute if you'd like to sit down I just want to read to you that Josh Saffron is an author and attorney and he says an occasional rabbi Right very occasional. He is the author of the critically acclaimed new book free spirit growing up On the road and off the grid Joshua's a nationally recognized champion for women's rights and his LSF get for survivors of domestic violence and the wrongfully imprisoned First work. He's received numerous awards and his website is at www.jsaffron.com And I thank you for joining us watching watching a movie that movie again. How many times have you seen it? I have seen that would be too many times which is hard to believe because I think it's an amazing movie But I my six-year-old says it best, which is you seem to cry a lot Well, how did you get involved with the making of the movie how did Joe and yeah so the the filmmaker is One of my closest friends were sort of best men at each other's wedding. It was one of those deals and when I was in Law school he and I kind of Collaborated together on a short film called minute matrimony about a drive through wedding chapel sort of a commentary on today's fast food culture and what if love was the same dished up in the same way and He had me play these sort of There were some strange parallels. I was the Jewish groom in a black Jewish wedding that involved a gospel choir That sang Havana gila and dancing rabbis and that kind of thing. It was a comment And it was a short film and then when we finished that project He said well, what let's do another movie. Let's do something else together And I said well, I'm I've graduated from law school now. I'm a real person. I have a mortgage and you know I can't you know, I can't do that but I'm doing this pro bono case maybe we can do a documentary about that and We talked about it. He said, you know domestic violence is not an issue that people will go to a movie theater And sit through 90 minutes of it's just too heavy. So thank you all for proving wrong and quite frankly the your client isn't Innocent in the way that someone who's exonerated by DNA is innocent and really audiences want to know that the person they're rooting for is You know completely innocent sort of speak and I said, okay, you know, okay, fair enough But he followed you for seven years and you came out So we so I kind of kept as a friend, of course I was updating him about where we were in the case and finally he was like, you know This woman sounds really amazing if you can get me into the prison, right? Let me kind of screen test her and see how how she shows up and one of the secrets about California prisons Is they're almost as hard to get into as they already get out of So it took me about five months to figure out this trick like well if I hire him as my legal videographer Then he's not the media He's not a filmmaker and if he happens to be swinging the camera around wildly while he's in the room You know, what do they know and So that's sort of what we did and he met and he sat down with Debbie and I was sort of very poker-faced because I'm You know Just playing my role as an attorney and there's this guard that's kind of passing back and forth, you know on the side of the window there and He asked Debbie questions for about five hours on that first day And then when we and the main interview with her is from that actually from that first day The one where she looks sort of the youngest, you know It's really interesting Joshua because it's it's such a moving film And there are a lot of tears and a lot of reason for a lot of tears in it But they're the outrage of it in many ways Sometimes and occasionally during the course of the film get sort of subsumed By the emotion of it by by and certainly ultimately in the end of how how thrilled we are like You know a great movie that this woman is free But here we are faced still With an outrage of justice What happened to Cooley and how often is this continuing to happen now? Yeah, so as you may gather I had a hard time sleeping When this case sort of was over because it didn't feel over to me Cooley was still out there And he of course was running for Attorney General at that time on his law and order record and You know, I really wanted Debbie's family to Continue the litigation and continue sort of a formal exoneration so we can sue him and bring them to task And it was very hard for me to hear from them. We're done This is a this criminal injustice system is a system that has ruined our lives And we don't want to have anything to do with it ever again And I kept you know, I kept saying but the civil process is more civil than the criminal There's money in this for that, you know, and they just said we don't care about the money We don't care about anything. We're just done So it wasn't really until the film premiered at Sundance and I saw sort of the reaction In the audience which was you know like yours I think and although there was a fair amount of booing and hissing because the audiences there tend to be very kind of Interactive the evil right They booed the right people they booed Cooley and then the next day the American Bar Association kind of online Journal Ran an article and the headline was LAD a featured in Sundance documentary audiences boo hiss And at that point I was like, okay, you know Debbie all along I've been wanting her exoneration in the court of law her exoneration and Cooley's condemnation are gonna come in the court of public opinion And that's the way it's gonna be and her legacy will be assured and so will his And what about the laws? In the state of California and also in the rest of the world. I mean in terms of You know women who are who are domestic, right, you know, so the battered women's syndrome. I mean Yeah There's good news and bad news. The good news is almost every state has What is what was then called a bad woman's defense now from an intimate partner battering and its effects defense And that's good. So that means that women today at least should have the benefit of Provide telling their story The bad news is there's a generation of women like Debbie or generations of women like Debbie who are Incarcerated before these laws are passed who don't get to reopen their cases They don't in 49 of 50 states California remains the only state that actually has a Formal avenue for these women to reopen their case. Is there something that we can do about that? There is and I am embarrassed that I don't have it in front of me. It's a long complicated name There is a bill that's been introduced in the New York State Legislature that's Take note everybody. It doesn't lend itself to an acronym, but but you remember the whole thing. I can't it's the It's like something like domestic violence survivors Incarcerated domestic violence survivors justice act or something to that effect. Does anybody here know about that? All right, so everybody can look it up and yes Yeah, is that right? Right. Oh, might as thing culture. Okay. So and that's that's something that we didn't have any Our team didn't really have any role and other than a little bit of cheerleading from the side. We did, you know Juma All right. So the question was who's sponsoring the legislation? So we have a whole other discussion which is why we're going to be continuing the series So these are the kinds of things that we will put on our list that we need to provide for it for the public But let's that's for the permanent to get back here. So you're the only state still we're the only state because of Debbie's case I'm the California law has been amended twice. Yes, which is great one to sort of clean up the shenanigans from people like Cooley to give explicit instructions to prosecutors not to mess this up, which is great and the second is the definition The opportunities for post-conviction remedies has been lowered So it isn't it's no longer just women who are convicted of murder, but now women who are basically convicted of any felony So a lot of times the classic is the women are these getaway drivers Which means they're in the car the husband or boyfriend or significant other goes into a liquor store And comes running out and says drive and she drives and of course, he's robbed the place You know, so it's opened up wherever wherever you can show that had The admission of this kind of evidence of battering and test expert testimony really would would have undermined the confidence in the original Conviction these women can now present their case and they're by and large, you know Grandmothers or you know mothers who've been in for 20 30 years Without really any hope of release and I do want to give one great thing that we have been a bit of part of I think New Jersey may actually beat New York in this legislation and there's a Bill that's at least tentatively called Debbie's law, which we're working with Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg in New Jersey Who's an awesome lady who describes herself as a Jewish grandmother? but she's of course the majority whip of the majority leader of the Democratic Party in the legislature and A 15 year old girl saw crime after crime at the Long Island Film Festival And was so moved by it because she was 15 and Debbie was 15 at the time that she was Taken by Oliver Wilson. She organized a screening at like the JCC back in T-neck and her parents Along with this girl, Mikaela is her name. They sort of pressured the local senator to come to the screening Who happened to be the Senate Majority Leader and there was sort of like mob? Psychology at this screening. I don't know if there are any legislators here today But when the movie ended someone got up and said how come New Jersey doesn't have a law and everyone looked to the state senator Who on the spot pledged to pass legislation. Oh, I have to call the mayor. We'll have to get the governor do it It's a great ambush opportunity We've done I've flown out twice to meet with Loretta Weinberg and to meet with Advocates in New Jersey and I'm excited to be available here. I'm your cheerleader. Yeah, let me know what I can do You know, it's it's very interesting the film is now three years out Yeah, and it doesn't feel the least bit dated which is the good news and the bad news It's mostly in many ways the bad news But it has such an arc to it the story has so much information about the Injustices that this country is looking at in relationship to mass incarceration That I think it's a great primer in a sense if you if you will I mean it really it really gives you an overview and specifics of of the horrors that can happen and the escalation of women in prison is astounding and we have had earlier panels that have discussed actually that Problem that situation I'm looking at this movie and that this is the second or third time. I've seen it and I'm thinking about Debbie working Doing the work on the little computer things. I'm thinking this is free labor So how much is tied into? prisoners who are working within the prisons and providing work for companies not to mention Who was it who said to me, you know, if you have How many Millions of people's just two million people incarcerated how many cans of Tomatoes you need to prepare meals What kind of business is incorporated in addition to the privatization of prisons? but With Debbie's working That was just part of her life there that was a few hours during the day, right every day that she would work and get paid She she actually seven dollars a week She was as well. No, she was actually beginning to approach I know, you know, I can't remember the numbers but at the time I remember it was she was the highest paid inmate or the highest Paid class of inmate right in the prison and she I mean she was below minimum wage But she was approaching it which was actually astounding because many of the women got paid, you know A quarter an hour or whatever it was right So it is there was a joint the sort of joint venture program they call them in California Of course the problem many of Debbie's sisters as she called them her Women she was serving taught life with Are convinced that it was that electronics manufacturing that exposed her to the toxic Materials that caused her lung cancer. So the other staggering fact is that Debbie She passed away, you know at 50 and 49 is the average life expectancy of a woman inmate in California So that kind of lets you understand the circumstances that we're dealing with and there's the entire prison medical system in California Is under a consent decree and in 2005 district court judge found that every six to seven Every day What is the statistic? Six to seven every day six to seven California inmates die needlessly was like one of these needlessly needlessly just because of basic a Lack of access to preventative health care and basic health care. They just don't have any infrastructure for that Debbie was Wasn't that way, you know, she would have her lung cancer would have been discovered years before when it was So what happened to Steve Cooley? Where is he now? So Steve Cooley we felt we were sort of the feather on the scales that helped him lose that attorney general race He was pretty He looked like a fool After he lost that race and and we did everything we could to sort of help him lose that race We had a special trailer that was just focused on Steve Cooley that we showed a lot during the election He then he then was up for re-election as district attorney shortly thereafter And in large part because of crime after crime He was brought under a lot of pressure to not run again and he did not run again so there's now District attorney Lacey is an African-American woman a Democrat is now the DA in LA and Cooley has sort of Slythered off into obscurity and retirement and are you still in touch with Debbie's family? I am yes. In fact, I've been touring with Debbie's daughter Natasha the younger daughter and Natasha and I have been doing a lot of the New Jersey trips and Her other daughter to Keisha is retiring from the Air Force this year having she's also a CPA and Like 45 she's retiring because she's done her time And Natasha is doing well and they're they're really sort of keeping up their mother's legacy and and we see you know bits of her bits of her in them, which is rewarding one of the things that I felt was also ultimately successful in the in the films talking about the diversity of women who are victims of Violence and spousal abuse and you mentioned your story. Yeah in there. Do you want to say anything about that here? Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the What's sort of not shown here is that when I first took Debbie's case? I didn't know exactly why I took the case I kind of left at the opportunity I had some shameful and humiliating secrets in my past that I had never talked about with anyone not even my mother and Once I took this case. I kind of naively went into this maximum security prison for women me being who I am and said Great Debbie tell me your story and I'll write it down and make it a public document We'll get you out of here, you know thinking that you know prison's bad You're gonna do whatever it takes to get out. So not a problem, you know, and she wouldn't talk to me She wouldn't say all of these things and she basically was Uncomfortable with me and at a certain point I had kind of a sit down with her and I was like look you have to be honest You have to be more forthcoming etc. And she said look, you know the things that happen to me weren't the hands of a man You're a man. I don't even really know you. I'm just not comfortable talking with you about these things So I said okay, and we kind of tried to break the ice. Well, I'll come visit you We'll talk about other things etc. So on one occasion I said Can you tell me anything that was sort of funny? I know that it was an awful situation that you were in was there something that Sticks out as being funny and she had this memory and she said yeah, you know after he was done whipping me He would whip me and after he was done whipping me He would put steak on my welts to bring down the swelling and it was funny because he was both whipping me but also healing me and I had a very visceral Memory to my own childhood at that moment something that I had just not thought about and really never expressed And I said oh, I forgot about the raw meat and in my mind I was thinking oh, yeah, you know, how does one know that that if you put raw meat on a wound it brings down the swelling It's not the kind of thing you would intuitively know and yet everyone in these Family violence situation seems to know the trick and she looked at me and she said what do you mean? You know and I said well in my household it was funny too because we were vegetarians We weren't allowed to have meat at all because to kill an animal was murder But it was somehow okay for my stepfather to beat the hell out of my mother and then put a steak on her face to bring down The welt on her, you know the swelling on her cheek and Debbie kind of gave me this look inside Which was oh now I see why you're here? Because in her mind she was very suspicious why are you what what who are you why are you here and she was like Oh, and then she proceeded to sort of interview me in a way that made me jealous I wish that I had those interviewing skills And she got this whole story out of me and something that I had never talked about and I had this strange realization of wow I'm in this maximum security prison for women There's the sniper tower the barbed wire the the bars and this is my first therapy is with this convicted murderer interviewing me and We really bonded with that in part because you know, I was disclosing something that I never disclosed before and we had all these commonalities and After that I think Debbie said later that she felt like we're a couple of war veterans like rolling up our sleeves and comparing scars and Trading stories and through that process. She began telling me her story And she really gave me the courage to come out and and tell my story which is part of what this book free spirit is about and At that point I kind of realized oh, yeah, that's why I took this case. It wasn't you know into it you know, I didn't know consciously but of course and Debbie really felt in many ways and you heard an audience in the movie that you know a lot of people say well You know domestic violence happens to poor black women in South Central LA and that's that's okay Because it's over there or something and Debbie really felt that that my mother's story and my story were important because And Debbie couldn't believe it. She was like your mother was the least likely victim of domestic violence, which is true I mean my mother brought me up learning about her story not history because history was sexist Literally when my mother was asked what's your favorite sports team or who are you rooting for in the big game? My mother would say well, whichever team has the largest population of urban poor fans Because domestic violence rates will go down if the home team wins You know, that was her level of consciousness about it and here was a woman and part of what my book is about is how does that woman who who was what she called sort of gay by choice because politically She didn't want to associate with men and she dated women and then ultimately and unfortunately began to date a series of awful and more and more awful men but So Debbie really encouraged me to sort of talk about that and it was the strange moment for me where I had to shift from My lie now is I guess my most shameful and humiliating experiences are now my defining characteristics, you know Was that healing for you? It was incredibly in writing your book and telling your story. It has been it was incredibly scary The San Francisco Chronicle wanted to do a profile on Nadia and I The legal team sort of what motivated us and I think they had some sense of what may have motivated us And we both said absolutely not we're not doing this this profile and Debbie scolded us and was like You know, you told me that I need to tell my story and it would be healing and help to end the cycle of violence And it's not my fault and I had nothing to be ashamed of and you know, how come you can't tell your story so When that article came out I had this long night and we worked in the law firm that you saw what these beautiful white carpets and you know My secretary who's always offering to do my dry cleaning even though I wasn't exactly sure what dry cleaning was because I grew up without anything like that. But I had this long night of like Oh, no, I'm gonna walk in tomorrow as this damaged goods crazy person who like lived through this crazy hell And they've had all these homicidal Responsive wanting to kill my stepfather and you know, I talked about all of that to the newspaper And I was sort of shocked when I came there was one partner who I worked with who basically wouldn't give me any work after that and was like He was just it was too much for him. He's like I'm too much just too much, you know But I was really pleased that both my fellow attorneys and then also clients Immediately contact. Oh, you're so brave. Thank you for telling the story And then that amazing when you begin to see that statistic that it's one in four women Suddenly everyone's like, oh, yeah, you know, this happened to my sister Oh, this happened to me or I had something similar all these people are coming out of the woodwork I'll have to come out of the woodwork, but it shouldn't be. Oh, yeah. Well, it happened, too I mean that that's part of what our challenge is here And I think and part of why I wanted for the Sackler Center to do the series is to raise awareness for people who Really are not aware or are somehow have it off their radar. It's not part of their life or Do not work in these areas But most of this country does not realize that we are in a mass incarceration human crisis here which has been planned and executed and I think we're Possibly beginning to see it a change a turn It's the front a lot of front page stories right now about here in New York about Rikers Island one thing and the other So I think that it probably would be helpful for women to support women I guess by telling their stories were Sons and daughters also to tell stories of their experiences I think it's also important from a cultural point of view that we don't start Stereotyping or making assumptions or continuing assumptions or creating assumptions I think it's hard enough for people coming out of a prison system to somehow manage to Be reincorporated and incorporate themselves back in and that's a whole other evening To discuss but which we won't do now, but there is a lot I thank you all for coming Joshua. Thank you for he flew in from the West Coast to be with us this evening This is really an opportunity for us And Before you leave there are two things One is that I want to let you know that Anita Hill is going to be the 2014 Sacro Center first awardee this year and that will be on June 5th So I hope you all will join us and also that Joshua has brought books with him This is an opportunity for all of you to come up on stage to pose your personal questions Or not so personal questions to Josh any questions you have and perhaps buy a book and Have him sign it for you and I thank you. Oh, yes. There's somebody here Senator Ruth Hassel Thompson is sponsoring the bill for New York State Great. Thank you for that information and thank you all for coming this evening. Do join us on stage, please