 Hi. Hello. Welcome. Thank you for being here today. My name is Rebecca Taffel. I am the director of programs at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. And I am pleased to welcome you here to what will be different, a conversation on women who are incarcerated in a changing America. I don't know if any of you happen to see the Sunday review section of The Times today called Justice Springs Eternal, this front page article talking about mass incarceration in today's America. So I'd just like to thank the New York Times for following our lead. This is the 21st program in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation's ongoing series, States of Denial, the Illegal Incarceration of Women, Children, and People of Color. Elizabeth began the series back in March of 2014, and it's been here at the Brooklyn Museum and at the Sackler Center since then. All of our previous programs are online on the Sackler Center's website as an ongoing and available resource, so you can go to www.brooklymuseum.org slash E-A-S-C-F-A slash video and see all of our previous programs. I want to thank the NOVO Foundation for their ongoing and continued support of this program series. We're very grateful. And I also want to thank today's speakers and panelists who you will be introduced to shortly, but it's so important for people to tell their stories. There is truth and power in stories, and every time we speak to someone and share our truth, we know and see their humanity, and together we can create a collective impact, and that's so important today. So I'm pleased to introduce you to Brian Tate, who is our partner on today's program. He's with the Tate group, and he's done a fabulous job putting this program together with us. So Brian, if you'd like to come up and say a few words and get this program started, I would welcome him into the stage. Thank you, Rebecca. How are you guys doing today? Excellent. You know, as Rodney Dangerfield would say, you're a good-looking crowd. I want to ask everyone, if you're comfortable with moving forward, to please move forward so that we can be a really close community as we have this conversation. I know a lot of you are probably comfortable in thinking, why on earth would I want to change in my seat now? I'm in such a comfortable place. But if you come up, you know, just even on the other side of these pillars or just closer to the stage, that would be great. It would mean a lot for the panelists as they conduct this conversation. Thank you so much. So I'm a marketing strategist and what's been called a culture creator or something like that, which means that I create and produce a lot of projects. And it was never my thought or intention that what would be different conversations on a changing America would become a series of conversations. It was really just intended to be one. And it's now become a monthly traveling panel discussion series that's held at cultural institutions and other locations across New York City. And we started last year, last December, at New York Live Arts in Chelsea with a conversation on what will be different for women's lives in a changing America. And Elizabeth Sackler was one of those panelists, and that's where she and I first met and began our conversations and our new relationship. And that was such a powerful discussion around women's lives today and looking forward. That it seemed that there might be a real opportunity, never mind the need, to continue this as a series of conversations. And I began to reach out to different presenters around the city to ask them about hosting these kinds of talks. And just got really great responses. The next one up was the Reuben Foundation's 8th floor gallery in January for what will be different for Muslim Americans in a changing America. And we just wrapped three in a row up in Harlem at Gavin Brown's Enterprise where Gabriella is from. And we did what will be different for black activism, what will be different for religious activism, and what will be different for environmental activism one after the other. It was a whirlwind. And it was such powerful people and conversations there. And Elizabeth Sackler and I had begun talking about any number of things and she asked if I would consider bringing the conversation here. And we have, which has resulted in today's talk. I just want to, before the program gets underway, I want to tell you a couple of things. We just confirmed next month's conversation is going to be at the Park Avenue Christian Church. What will be different for LGBTQ activism. And I haven't announced this publicly. I guess now that I've started, I'll announce this now. But I'm working on a really big one around the travel ban. And this will be a series of conversations with members of each of the communities that have been affected and targeted by the U.S. travel ban. So that's in development. But when it comes, it's going to be big. So if you would like information about these next conversations that we're doing, please, if you reach out to me at my website, TateStrategy.com and just say that you want to be on the email list, I'll put you on the email list. And otherwise, just look forward on Facebook and that kind of stuff. Okay. We've got a great program for you today. We're going to start with a brief performance by someone who is a dear friend of mine and just an incredible, incredible writer, performer. Writer-actress Lisa Jesse Peterson has worked with incarcerated youth for 18 years as a teaching artist, poet and residence, reentry specialist, New York City Board of Education, GED teacher, outreach coordinator, and New York City Department of Corrections program counselor. She was featured in Ava DuVernay's acclaimed film the 13th and on two seasons of HBO's deaf poetry. Her one-woman play on mass incarceration, the peculiar patriot, has toured in more than 13 U.S. penitentiaries and is scheduled to premiere in New York in the fall of 2017. Please give a very warm welcome to Lisa Jesse Peterson. For Philando Castillo, Samuel DuBose, Ayanna Jones, Troy Davis, Corinne Gaines, Alton Sterling, Tyree Kane, John Crawford, Chavis Carter, Kendra Chapman, Oscar Grant, Michael Brown, Rachea Boyd, Freddie Gray, Jordan Davis, Terrence Crutcher, Deborah Danner, Walter Scott, Keith Lamont Scott, Romali Graham, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Aki Gurley, Sandra Bland, Sean Bell, Eric Gardner, and the thousands of why me howling from beyond the grave. Blue-black brown baby buckshot shorty rock, melanated Prince King kissed by the sun with your solar-blessed skin, sculpted like a god, mastercrafted in my womb, first womb, ancient womb, safe and sacred womb, African fertile soil, black gold diamond oil, mineral rich, mama me her she eye we stirred you up good boy, you potent, powerful, wonder warrior of the world, you who always had the planet head nodding to your beat, got the globe axis leaning and tilted like your hat, call it black swag, black cool, cat daddy funky blues, rock jazz, juke joint, sugar shack sanctified, niggoy clunk type of, stank funk ump type of, monster 808 on the microphone check one two one two, type of boom to the back, the boom back, soulful genius encoded in your DNA, divine nappy archives coiled in your hair, the creator's rhythm love child and natural air to planet rock as poetry somersaults out your mouth, your slang is slung around the world, what you say, how you say it, what you wear, how you wear it, how you do it, urban high koo it, it's showtime, Olympic ghetto gymnastics, double back flipping to it, a one-handed handstand pop lock Harlem shaking to a wrong-dejaunt pirouette and shell toaditas on crowded moving subway cars to Brooklyn, world-class concrete symphonies underground ballet for a dollar donation, it was born ready baby, an effortless magic, a planetary humanitarian gift you have given the world to uplift rhythmless people from offbeat purgatory, you who have been blessed with sacred sounds, magic tones, cosmic frequency and a spirit so thick its medicine healed us, carried us, lifted us, lit our path through dark days over troubled waters, became our golden guide where we clung to while navigating grotesque madness, middle passage, American plantation terrorists, real life, Freddy Kruger, all day, all nightmares, me, you, we, we spoke different languages, we had different tongues but with one anointed spirit and the holy drum we loved and created more and more magic because we are our own antidote and no matter how many of them study your magic, grow more human from it, package and sell it, proclaim themselves, black spurts on it, critique it, define it, make millions off of it, feed their children, children from it, finally realizing, deliberating power over it and pay you to poison it with a parade of your pathology, rewarding hungry tattooed minstrels to demonize it and then do just like they did God, colonize it, remember baby, this is still your shit. Do like you always done did, be bad! Not bad meanin' bad, but bad meanin' good, switchin' Maruzzi to shit, make fertilizer, use your secret weapon equalizer and make black love, make black love, make black love, activate the magic, love who you are and just how bad you be and multiply because the children are thirsty and the soil's too dry and we are in a state of emergency. I know your spidey senses feel this and since you have been blessed a tremendous alchemist, turn this thing around. Ring a bell, spit rum, beat the drum, burn sage, blow smoke, shake a tambourine, roll a coconut, boil a pot, sprinkle herbs, take a bath, chant, sing, clap in the clearing, catch the ancestor spirit, catch the ancestor spirit, call on shongo, oya, yemenya, obatala, setmet, heruru, herukutira, atan, amenra, and all of them and then check your intentions and root it in love because mama, me, her, she, I, we, stirred you up good boy. And sidebar message to all the rappers who read books and create inspiring art, keep speaking the truth, be ye unafraid to be awake, stand strong courageous warriors of the might, today's hip-hop aquaman swimming against lyrics of death, struggling to bring forth light as corporate columnists have infiltrated our sacred art, dangling dollar-stuffed pinatas we swing at to catapult from poverty, bursting through papier-mache dreams of making it out the hood to buy mama a house, finally escaping, oya, that money is intoxicating, but the soul pays a price as our children imitate a sick, unhealthy life. This is on purpose and by design. To poison the music, to seep into your psyche and twist your mind, this evil strategic plan rewards the lowest of who we can sometimes be. Pussy-popping strippers and gun-toting rappers with bad knees sleeping for the label, not a bone in your back. How you gonna let the holy drum get hijacked using beats that are hot with rhymes that are not always only talking bout, talking bout, what you talking bout? Drugs, murder, bitches, money, money, money, money, murder, murder, murder, death in your dick. See the devil in the air using toxic radio waves to suffocate our babies when I'm sick. Question. Who are the gatekeepers or the playlists? Who approved the rotation of what we hear and what we see? Who tells the artist yes to this and no to that, filtering our magic that's good and only releasing the crap? And when did life-affirming hip-hop become a death sentence for your career? May the ancestors embolden the bones in the backs of all the enlightened masters of the microphone for not falling for it, cause these are strange and dangerous times and the enemy is fucking with our shit. Oh, blue-black-brown baby buckshot shorty rock, melanated Prince King kissed by the sun. Where do I begin to explain the fury you have faced? History books and Bibles erased you. Hollywood rewrites insults and defaces you. Cops, courts and vigilantes chase you, murder you and then blame you because you defy every lie your enemy has told about you. These English patients who built their self-esteem on white supremacist cockamamie false facts, broken toothpicks, twisted studies, rabid research and fantastic fibs. So how dare you have the audacity to live and survive the unsurvivable hundreds of years of insanity, rape, murder, torture, psychic trauma, 400 years of relentless crimes against humanity. And you still shine? You still fly? You still got your magic? What are you talking about? These jokers are just jealous, baffled by your brilliance, your soul-force-resilient and refusal to not be beat, though a little broken, scuffed up and tired. You have always been more powerful than your oppressor as you should cause mama, me, her, she, I, we, we stirred you up good boy. You mystic master of mystery You taught the Greeks everything they know as they set by your feet learning math, medicine, astronomy, philosophy, geometry, sacred masonry and prayer, how to turn papyrus into paper and extract wisdom from trees. How nature is your greatest teacher and supplies all your needs. You built the sphinx and colossal statues in stone that mirror your broad nose and thick lips on your face long before telescopes. You studied outer space, cosmic communicators with intergalactic alien life. Science fiction was a fact. New ages, old age dating back to when you built pyramids and monuments and landscapes in accordance to the stars. Then you civilized Europe. This is who you truly are. Best believe they know it, but you forgot it. This is why I write to remind you. I must remind you. I must remind you so you never forget your strength is biblical. So outrageous, so surreal. Sometimes it seems mythical. You are the mighty phoenix soaring from the ashes of the slave. The real life in your face resurrected God's son. Remember how you built a black wall street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1921 and in just 12 hours it became undone, bombed by barbarians. 21 black churches, 21 black restaurants, 30 black grocery stores, two black movie theaters, 19 black millionaires, black private jets, black schools, black hospitals, black bus system and 9,000 black men, women and babies, bombed by beasts. Jealous American terrorists, jealous of you, hated you and bombed you because they're jealous of all that you are and have always been because even in the face of insurmountable hate you still come back on top again. This creates fury and bombs to be dropped on you. 300 black men, women and babies slaughtered without a history book mention or a national monument for this national monstrosity. Woo, baby, this country is insane and has gone to great lengths at waging a continual campaign to destroy you, crush you, deny you, trick you, stop and frisk you, Jim Crow you, incarcerate you, murder you, criminalize you, demonize you, admire you, then ignore you, rob you, steal from you, copy you, want to be just like you, pretend to ignore you, dismiss you and use you and never say thank you. This is a deadly and unnatural place for you. So while you break dance between bullets, giggle at jackals, glaring from squad cars, trick or treat with terrorists, play hide and seek with prison bounty hunters, play your music real loud and run to the store for iced tea and Skittles and jaywalk back to Grandma's house and sell loose cigarettes and loose DVDs and shop for a toy gun and Walmart and play with it in the park and drive a car with your busted tail light. We mothers pray, we pray. A Harriet Tubman, please make him invisible prayer because even though I'm afraid I don't want you to be scared so I pray. I pray I have a lambswold, burnt bronze, black Jesus, fish fry and walk on a water, water to wine, multiply crucifixion, resurrection, miracle prayer for you because this and still is a deadly place for you and where do I begin to explain the fury you will continue to face? Oh, baby, there's so many layers for me to explain. I'm exhausted by rage, absorbing so much pain, fighting energy bandits and my own damn depression. Surfing waves of confusion in the whole wide world, obsession with racism, white supremacy. It's a mental illness, but it's a powerful lunacy. So remember your magic warrior. I said remember your magic warrior. Conjure your genetic memory. Conjure your genetic memory. Honor the ancestors and expect miracles because we are our own antidote. And remember this, beloved, there will always be hateful, ripped ties, but if it's one thing, I know she. We know how to survive just like we did it before. We'll do it again with love. Demonstrate love. Demonstrate love. I love you wounded warrior. My beautiful sunflower lilac dandelion lotus blade of grass growing between the cracks of concrete because you never accept defeat because you always find the light. You always find the light. You are the light. My blue, black, brown baby buck shot shorty rock, neminated Prince King kissed by the sun and sculpted like a god. All endings are beginnings for something brand new so what you, me, we gonna do because this shit is a one. That's right. Thank you. Lisa Jesse Peterson. Moving right along. You are Lisa's book. You can pre-order on Amazon right now. I'm embarrassed by saying that you all need to be yourselves a favor. Seek out her book. It's phenomenal. All day. A year of teaching kids on Rikers Island. I'd now like to introduce, I want to say that, you know, with each of these conversations that we do, we've been so fortunate and blessed. You know, as we take on these different kind of issues and we engage with various communities, we do this with understanding that our, that our efforts and our work together will be imperfect because we are imperfect. But at the same time, we are compelled to do this work and to have these conversations. And we also know that our allies are vast. These people here at the Brooklyn Museum, wonderful allies. Elizabeth Sackler and her foundation and her center, phenomenal allies to us. And we're also very fortunate to count among our allies the folks at the ACLU who are at the front lines are doing so much phenomenal work. In terms of, on the one hand, we have to imagine, we're working to imagine the world that we want to create and what we need to do individually and collectively to create that. And the ACLU does so much work to help make that real in protecting our civil liberties and our civil rights. And we're so fortunate that they've come to give opening remarks at each one of these conversations. So, I'm very pleased right now to introduce Megan French Marcellin who serves as the policy research manager at the ACLU. Her research portfolio focuses on issues of criminal justice, particularly those impacting formerly incarcerated persons. She is the author of the forthcoming report, Bullies in Blue, The Origins and Consequences of School Police. Megan holds a PhD from Columbia University in U.S. History about the post-Katrina political economy of New Orleans. We're very thankful that Megan is going to give some opening remarks to set up the panel discussion. Please give her a warm welcome. Good afternoon. I'm not sure. I want to follow that. I think we should just all go home now. I want to thank the Brooklyn Museum, the Sackler Center and the TAKE Group for having this kind of conversation. And I want to thank the courageous women sitting in front of me for sharing their stories and speaking truth to power. We are in dark times indeed, although I would say that started long before Trump. But this is a time where discussions like these that have the potential to be liberatory are most important. Angela Davis once said, Prisons do not disappear problems. Prisons disappear people. And that is certainly true of women. Put another way, our modern criminal justice system is at its foundation designed to eliminate the voices of men and women who have challenged an unjust and unequal world. Now we live in a country that incarcerates 2.3 million people. And our mothers and our sisters and our nieces and our aunts have been rendered virtually invisible by this system. And I would say by advocates as well. And yet women are the fastest growing sector of our prison population. Between 1980 and 2014, the number of women incarcerated grew by 700 percent. And of particular significance, over 120,000 mothers are today behind bars. Black women are twice as likely to experience incarceration than their white counterparts. And while women suffer in the same ways that men do, they also suffer in ways that are uniquely gendered. Women suffer unable to see their babies, victimized by sexual violence. Daughters and sisters suffer without growing up with a mother. These are things we need to keep in mind as we walk into this unknown territory that is the Trump administration. And although we now know that Jeff Sessions has indeed been confirmed and Trump has said some things, we don't really know what will materialize under criminal justice policy. But the indication is one for alarm. Stop and frisk warfare on low-income communities, the potential for martial law. Trump has recently ordered three executive orders with regard to law enforcement. And they set a draconian tone that recalls the Reagan administration's war on crime, justified with the same lies, the same call to fear, the same actions. The least talked about, but perhaps I think the most revealing is the third, which issues an interagency war against drug cartels and gangs. If we are to read into this within his inauguration comments, one can imagine a return to an era where MRAPs roll down the streets of South Central and Compton, where gang injunctions are used to disrupt and erupt in warehouse entire low-income communities of color. I truly believe mass incarceration is the most important civil rights and civil liberties issue of our time. But I take a page from formerly incarcerated advocates across the country that are leading the movement to say that the struggle to end mass incarceration will never end with decarceration alone. If we see decarceration as the goal, we fail. If it alone will not change the structural conditions of inequality in communities decimated by the wars on drugs and crime, these communities will continue to be stripped of access to education, housing, public benefits, and other support services unless reform is matched with truth, reconciliation, and a profound investment in communities. That takes vigilance. It will take a broad-based movement led by the people most impacted, and it will take a long-term strategy of understanding what the world which we fight should be. The Trump administration demands the end of silos, a moment where activists and advocates alike must see commonality between the ICE raids that have happened across the country in the last month and the police terror enacted upon black and Latino communities, where we understand Islamophobia as connected to the increasing hyper-surveillance in low-income areas of the intersections of detention of all kinds. This is a bleak picture I present, and I've been known to be called the past mess, but I think there actually is hope in this, and part of that is because most of criminal justice policy is not going to be fought at the federal level, but actually at state and local community levels. For example, the past election cycle saw critical reform at state levels, 17 states used referendums to address collateral consequences in the reductions in prison rates, California passed Prop 57, which changed not only the way juveniles are sentenced, but created step-down programs for people in prison, Delaware scaled back three strike laws, Florida eliminated certain mandatory minimums. This is not a moment to simply be Trump reactive, and I say that because while we could potentially wage the next four years as a war of fighting every single thing he puts up, we need to have a broader vision for what the future is to hold. We must continue to fight these fights at the level at which they're being waged. We need to raise voices in unison. In criminal justice, I think the most important thing the ACLU has been doing has been building bonds with organizations on the ground to make a difference, to actually grow grassroots collaborations with those who have been most impacted by this system, and who hold the keys to solutions that are both meaningful and restorative. And if we listen to the voices most impacted, we will always be listening to women. So, thank you so much for your time, and I can't wait to hear the panel. Thank you, Megan. Okay. There's a quote that I want to share with you by an Aboriginal activist artist named Lilla Watson, and I had this up on my phone so I could read this, and then I changed something on my phone. So just bear with me for just a second. She says, I came across this quote and it seemed to capture so much of the spirit of these conversations. I just want to share this with you here. If you have come here to help me, you're wasting your time. But if you have come here because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. That's the spirit with which we engage these conversations. I'd like to now introduce the panelists for today. I'm going to read briefly from their bios. I think you all have these sheets, so I'll just say this briefly by way of introduction. Elaine Bartlett was 26, a hairdresser in Harlem with four children when she agreed to take four ounces of cocaine to Albany for $2,500. She'd hoped to buy furniture for her home and Thanksgiving dinner for her extended family, instead set up by police informant. She was charged with a first offense felony, sentenced under the Rockefeller drug laws, and spent 16 years in prison. Upon her release, she became an advocate for people imprisoned under similar circumstances. Her struggle to rebuild her own life and family is the subject of a book, Life on the Outside, The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett by Jennifer Gorman. Elaine. See, now I have to read the whole bios because, you know, Rusty Miller Hill is director of reentry services and community programs at New Hour, a nonprofit group that supports children and mothers during and after incarceration. While incarcerated at Albion Correctional Facility, she was an early beneficiary of its AIDS counseling and education program. She became a peer educator at Albion, and later the deputy of prison programs at Pathstone Corporation, and the co-chair of a correctional association committee that helped pass landmark legislation to create oversight of New York State's corrections, HIV, and hepatitis C programs. Rusty is a tireless organizer and advocate for women who have no voice. Rusty Miller Hill. Bernalda Rivera is a proud mother of five and grandmother of five. She is a sales associate at Michael's Arts and Crafts, where she just celebrated her one-year work anniversary. She is a graduate of the Women's Advocacy Project and the Women's Leadership and Media Project, both run by the Women's Prison Association. She is currently working to complete her high school equivalency at New York State University of Manhattan's Educational Opportunity Center. She loves people and is excited to share her story to make positive change for women in the criminal justice system. Bernalda Rivera. Jake, Angie, Wadlington began giving voice to incarcerated women in writing her own story in 2004 in the Suffolk County Riverhead Correctional Facility. After her release, she kept writing and read to law students and helped empower women coming out of jail to write with women from the larger community. Numerous task forces working on second chance legislation have read her stories, which examine life during and after incarceration, and what happens when women with felony convictions seek employment. She is currently the VP for Trauma Services and Youth Gang Prevention at the Hall Leadership Academy, Angie Wadlington. And last but not least, Malika Sardisar is Google's Senior Counsel in Civil and Human Rights. Before joining Google, she co-founded and led the Human Rights Project for Girls, which focused on gender-based violence against young women and girls. As a human rights lawyer, she led the effort to shut down Craig's list of sex ads that served as the main site for the trafficking of children, ended the federal practice of shackling pregnant mothers behind bars in U.S. prisons, and successfully advocated for millions in federal funding for treatment services for at-risk families. Newsweek has named Malika one of 150 women who shake the world. Malika Sardisar. I've said more than enough now, and I'm going to go sit down, turning it over. Thank you. It's an honor to be with you all today, and it's an honor, privilege, blessing to be with each of you here on this panel. I wanted to start us out by each of you talking about what your experience has been with the criminal justice system, some words about the years that you spent behind bars and what you need us to know about those years spent behind bars. Wow, that's a lot. I went to prison in 1991. I went to prison as a mother of a 13-year-old and a set of twins and a, who were nine-month-old and a 11-month-old little boy, and I went in addicted to drugs, not knowing who I was, searching, and during the three years that I spent incarcerated, I almost died. As a result of learning my HIV status and finding out that the prison that I was in, the state correctional facility that I was in, was not ready to address HIV as a disease of women, and I learned that I had to have a voice in order to save my life. After applying for medical clemency and being denied, I knew that I didn't want to die in the prison, and so I became an advocate by default. And what I found out was that it wasn't about me, that it was about the other women, or women in general. When you're cut away from your family, I was an Albion correctional facility. I was near the Canadian border. I live in New York City. My family is from the Bronx, so expecting them to travel to see me during that time was a hardship. My mother was raising my daughter. She was working, and she was struggling, and it was irresponsible of me to think that I should put that pressure on her to bring my daughter to see me, so we communicated by telephone and letters. And she tried to take care of all of my children while I was gone and realized that the burden was too much for her. And then eventually my sons went into foster care, and one day I was sitting in front of a counselor, and he said to me, your children are being brought to court for adoption on Monday, and if we were to give your children back right now, what could you do for them? And I was halfway into my sentence, I still had about maybe a year and a half to go, and I sat in front of him and I said, there's nothing that I can do for my children right now, and that it was okay for them to be adopted. My ignorance, because I have a right as an incarcerated woman to fight for my children, and no one told me that. 25 years later, I'm still searching for my sons. So what I want as a result of this is for you to make me visible again. Because during the time that I was gone, I became invisible. I left my community as a mother and a partner, and I returned as a single person homeless. So today I'm hoping that we will become visible to you once again, and you will understand that women are a part of our community, and that when you remove them from the community, you remove the pillars of the community. That's a hard act to follow. Good afternoon, everybody. I want to commend everybody for coming out to hear our stories, and I hope that you all really take something from this room and spread it back into your communities and really understand what mass incarceration is. 84G0068 is what I was known as for 16 years. That's not the woman that sits here before you today. I did 16 years under the Rockefeller drug laws a first-time offender. When I got arrested, I had $5 in my pocket. I lived in a project apartment, and I paid $127 a month. There was nothing in my career, in my history, or in my home that indicated that I was a kingpin under the Rockefeller drug laws. But that's the centers that I receive, 20-to-life centers. First time being arrested, first time ever being in trouble. There's so many things that they could have done with me besides incarceration. I never said I was innocent. I was guilty for the carry in that package. My reasons were survival. I am not ashamed of anything that I have endured or went through. I took a bad situation, and I made it positive for me and my family, and for all that are going through the same thing. We need to understand that we live in a society where they abuse us, they torment us, they put us down constantly for the mistakes that we do. Everybody got skeletons in their closet. Everybody has done something at one time or another in their life that you're ashamed of or you don't want anyone to know about. And a lot of us carry our secrets to our grave. But you mean to tell me that something I did at the age of 26, I've been home 16 years, and they still hold that against me. And they have tried to take me down twice since I've been home, even though they know that I didn't play a role in any of it. One was hindering prosecution, a law that was not used in the United States in 32 years. But because the man that I choose to love or fell in love with committed a crime, you followed me and knew I was in the public eye. You've seen me speaking and fighting against your laws and stuff, but you still came in the rest of me and put me and my family through that again and had my kids thinking that you was going to send me back to jail once again. Like 16 years wasn't enough for you. After that, I lost my son. I went into a transitional apartment to receive help. Now I'm going to tell you, we have a lot of organizations that do a great job, and I'm not going to take anything from them. But all of your organizations and all of the other front-in-the-front, I'm here to let you know. Stop it. Get off the bandwagon, because we don't have no time for it. I went to receive help after I lost my son, my first born, who was my shining armor. When I walked out of prison after 16 years, my son Apache stood there alone. I left him when he was nine years old. I basically raised my children from prison. I lived in three worlds. The vision room, the institution, and the world I knew outside that I wanted to hold so deeply into to go back to. And every day I told myself all I had to do was go home. All I have to do is go home, and everything will be fine. On 2000, January 26, I was released. I got clemency from Governor Bataki out of all people. But yet, when I sat across from that man in Albany at the same table with him, he didn't even recognize me. I was nobody to him. I was still a number and not a person. With that, I'm going to say this. We have came a long way. We have came a long way. But we still allow the system to divide us. Now, I understand that women have different issues. I'm a mother first. I'm a woman. And I came out and went on 53 interviews before I landed a job. It took an agency that had contracts and paid half my salary for me to become an employee. Not that I didn't have the qualifications, because when I was inside, I ran a co-off-craft cruise. I did everything in there just to keep busy from losing my mind because I knew what I was going through in there. And it was hell of me. A lot of officers helped me. We became friends. They became my mothers and fathers and my big sisters and brothers. They're as good and evil and everything. So I'm not going to sit here and just throw the stone at corrections. What I am going to say this, we need to change policy and procedures. And in order to change that, we have to begin to hold these seats. In our communities, we are failing our children. They are policing them in school. There's no education. There's no jobs. And they are killing us by putting the drugs there. We are not the chemists. We are not the ones bringing these drugs across the border, but yet our communities are getting flooded with them. When I came up, you was either a user or a seller. You didn't give us that much opportunities. And we become a product of our environment. Now, I understand everybody got their PhDs. Well, I got a PhD in life. I had no other choice. But I'm going to tell you like this, we are in a state of emergency and it's going to affect all of us. Everybody with their little white houses and their big windows, they're coming for your kids too because there is no separation. There is no separation. And I'm going to tell you, it does not, if a person takes someone's life, who are we to judge them? If you sentence me to 25 to life and I go to board, how are you going to hit me for something I did 25 years ago? So where's the rehabilitation? You talk about rehabilitation, they are creating animals. They are treating our children like animals. And guess what? Where are they coming? They're coming back to our communities. Who's going to have to deal with them? All of us. There is no separation. And they need to understand that we are tired. I've fought for 16 years inside and I've been home 16 years still fighting. I went to a transitional apartment to get help because I had a nervous breakdown because I lost my child. Something that I've worked into this world. Something that didn't judge me no matter when society judged me. My boy stood by me. A good kid. And I felt he wasn't supposed to leave this earth. He did so much for so many at the age of 38 and he used basketball as his tool to save our community. We all have a calling and I feel we are all gifted and I'm going to save this. I believe that anything we want to do is capable. After 32 years, I changed the Rockefeller drug laws. It wasn't planned but God walked me through this. That book that Jennifer Garnerman wrote, that was not planned. I didn't sit there 16 years and wrote that book. It happened because of the events and what was going on in my life and the torment and the anger and everything that I carried for them 16. Because when I first went for clemency, they denied me. They said that I didn't admit my crime. How's that? You gave me 20 life for four ounces of cocaine. We go to parties and see more than that. You glamified that on TV. You understand? Now you've taken our kids because they have a talent with their music. You're making them act like animals and put their own community down. I'm going to say this. It took 32 years to change the Rockefeller drug laws. I've been home 16. I've been out 16. I don't have 32 more years to play with these people. Good afternoon. My name is Brinel de Rivera and I'm here to talk about my experience and my incarceration. In 2005, I was in a domestic violence situation and my son was about six years old. I left him with a neighbor. I left him home with my neighbor and my significant other took my house keys, ran out the house. I asked for time out. I left my son home with my neighbor and when I was coming back home, which I was drunk because I needed a time out, I found out that I was going to get beat up again and slaughtered all over the floor. Long story short, I was on my way home. My boyfriend was going to beat me up again. Mind you, I already had a black and blue. My eyes were swollen. What led me to jail was that I did something where my boyfriend took something that didn't belong to me and my son was removed from my house that night that I... I'm sorry. My son was six years old and he was removed from my home due to my boyfriend taking my son from my neighbors and bringing him upstairs to the house. I didn't have a clue what was going on because when I was on my way home, I was going to get beat up again. Brandon was home. My ex-boyfriend left Brandon home alone to go find me and beat me in the street. So on my way home, he's approaching me and so I picked up a bottle and I'm like, oh, you're going to hit me again, huh? So I was arrested because... I am so sorry. I'm just so nervous. So what happened was I was charged for neglect because I'm responsible for my son and that's a long story short. It didn't matter who left my son home alone, but I was charged for neglect. I was... I hit my boyfriend in front of the sergeant and I was arrested immediately because I assaulted him. So can you imagine? Anyway, I was arrested and then from there, I didn't see my son for two months. I didn't see him for two months. So I went on a binge. I went on a crack binge. I'm like, you know what, you took my son and I'm just going to go smoke some crack. What the hell, you know? I need to heal myself right now. So in the process of me being incarcerated, my son was placed in numerous homes throughout the agency. He was placed in five different homes until I lied to ACS and I said, well, I want him with my sister, which was actually my neighbor. And yeah, my son was placed with my neighbor, which was, you know, was the best thing that happened, but the worst thing that happened because we weren't really sisters, you know? And to tell you the truth, I went through hell in prison and it tore me apart because I know I've messed up my life and I screwed up my son's life for the 18 months that I was away and to this day, I look at him. I'm like, you know what? I'm so thankful for him because he changed my whole life around. Like that boy has changed me for the better. I'm sorry he couldn't be here today. He's got homework. But every day that I went by while I was incarcerated, I felt deteriorated. I felt like I wasn't worth anything. I felt like I was the worst parent ever and I just needed help. Like when I came home, I didn't have a clue on what I was doing. When I know that I came home to our children, I paroled to our children after Phoenix House. I went through Bayview for like an hour and then I went to our children. No, I went from Bayview, I went to Phoenix House, which is I paroled out to our children and then from there I was like, okay, now what do I do? Like how do I work this? Like I need help. I don't know what to do. So I didn't have a clue. I didn't have a clue on what to do and how to do it. All I knew was that my focus was my son and I wanted him out of the system and the system was not going to take my son. They were not going to do this to me. I was not going to... Yes, I messed up my life and I screwed up. At the end of the day, I'm a mother and I'm a sister. I'm a friend. I'm a human being and I deserved a second chance. And so here I am today with you guys and I hope you guys take this serious and for all you young people out there, please listen to your mothers and to whoever because we're not just trying to be tough on you. We want to be tough on you because we love you and we don't want you to fall on your face and walk on our shoes. We just... Yeah. Thank you. I was a youth incarcerated. I got in trouble. When I was 17, I sold drugs to undercover cop and it was for my significant other who was like 15 years older than me, I think. But I did go into the Rockefeller. I was looking at 15 years for my first offense and then I stayed in Riverhead County Jail. I live in Long Island, so Riverhead County Jail. I stayed there for about almost a year and after the Rockefellers changed and all that good stuff, I was given four years flat. Out of the four years, I did 20 months. I went to Bedford, which was horrible. It's for five and a half and up. I was ever doing five years and up. This girl tried to kill me in there. By this time I was already 18 or 19. And then I went to Albion for like two weeks and then my final destination was Lake View Shock Brexial Facility. So it was boot camp. They say it's to tear you down to build you back up. So they shave your head. They have drill instructors. There's a lot of funny business going on in there. I'll tell you that, to be honest. I was doing it. But how the women were treated, how the girls were treated, because we were all young, if they mouthed off, the one drill instructor used to beat them right in the corner of the mess hall or anything like that. I've seen a lot of women get beat on each other and a lot of the officers, even in Riverhead, they just don't care. You're not human anymore to anyone. They don't realize what they're doing to the families on the outside. So I have a lot of friends that, you know, everybody has their own lifestyle. I have a lot of friends that go in and out of jail, meet the type of person that I am, and I've been there, done that, and I've had no friends visit me, only my parents. I would go visit the jails and they would just degrade them. And I would see you from the outside. So I started, when I was in Riverhead, I started writing with a workshop, her story. And we had graduations and we, you know, we tried to tell our story so we weren't silenced as much. So throughout the years, I wrote, you know, my memoir. I had gotten a few things published throughout the years, but my passion was to always go back and help the youth. My passion was always to go give voices to the women. So I would go back. I had ended up going back into Riverhead jail, maybe for like six months. I was being trained as a facilitator. And they ended up taking that program from us, but it's just, they forget. They forget who you are. They forget that when the people are coming in from the outside, they want to be there. And they steal that from the girls. So we were there and then we just disappeared. So we're just another person who abandoned them. And I think that's really important for the women, children, you know, because they have the teen center over there. I think it's very important when the people from the outside and they're dedicated and they want to help to allow them to. Don't take it from them. When I was released, I was released to my parents. I was on parole for five years. My first parole officer, I had three. So the first one was six months probation, like extra parole. She was horrible. She wouldn't let me drive. She wouldn't let me work. I had to go above her head because I knew what my rights were. I ended up getting my license and driving and being able to go back to work. And then I was transferred to another parole officer. And I used to work overnight. So she used to try to violate me for being out curfew. So I would have to go to work at 1.30 in the morning. If I had left at 12.40, she would be at the door, which was violation. She's not allowed to do that. I didn't know that at that time. Or I wanted to come home. She would come at 7.01 to see if I was there. After a while, I started playing her. Like, all right, I know when she's going to come. So I started to go out. But then my life started to get a little crazy. And I had to slow it down and reevaluate everything. And I finally got rid of her because I got a dog. But she hated dogs. She's like, if you don't get rid of the dog, I'm going to violate you. I got rid of her. But my final parole officer, she was amazing, Miss Owens. I was able to communicate with her and talk to her. And she helped me with programming. And she stood by my side. She was able to introduce me to people. And she accepted it. Like, she wanted me to do better. And that's, I think, that's important, too. Like, when people are coming home, they need to network. They need to have their people. But they have to be willing to do it. And then parole officers have to be willing to accept them more, in my opinion, from what I went through. Even now, like today, I do a lot of advocacy work. I do race to age. I do reentry programming. I do now trauma services and gang prevention. The police officers at first, I was talking to actually one of my friends yesterday. And he was like, I met, you know, when you first came home, you wouldn't even look us in the face. Because, you know, no police contact. So I used to work at a deli. They used to come, you know, eat. I used to run into the back, lock myself in the walk-in box. They're like, you wouldn't say nothing to no, you know. And now he's like, and look at you now. So we do, like, I'm able to, like, I went to Switzerland for the cat convention. And none a thousand years did I ever think that. But I always wanted to change the world. I just didn't know how it was going to happen. You know. And I know I'm not going to change everybody, but I could change one person at a time. So this is, I'm changing the world. I want to thank each of you for grounding us in the lived experience. Because so often these conversations around mass incarceration don't begin with the lived experience. And I want to talk about women and girls and all of the attention that is coming to how we need to end over-criminalization of black and brown communities. You know, as you know, right, the majority of women behind bars are mothers to children, to children under the age of 18. Up to 80% of women behind bars have been in some way subject to some form of sexual violence. We know that for girls behind bars, it's even higher. And that for girls behind bars, often the reason why they are even criminalized is because of sexual violence, right? A girl runs from a home where there's sexual violence and she's locked up for the status offense of running away. Or we take a girl who's being bought and sold for sex and we charge and convict her for prostitution, even though she's not of the age to consent. I've spent a number of years going to women's prisons and seeing that there was nobody there to visit the women. You know, at the D.C. jail, one side of the jail is for the men, the other side is for the women. All of the families are where the men are locked up. Nobody for where the women are. I've sat with so many women who, you know, and you know this, that experience of when you go inside, the women are mourning, right, because of the children. And what I don't understand, after over a decade doing criminal justice reform, I still don't understand why it is that your stories, your experiences, your expertise, the lived experiences of those that I had the privilege to bear witness to who were behind bars as mothers and girls. Why is it that your experiences and that of women and girls is not part of the conversation on ending mass incarceration? Why, again, at this critical moment, right, where we're finally saying that we messed up with the war on drugs, that we are over-criminalizing black and brown communities, why is it that women and girls are missing in the conversation? I think that a lot of it has to do with the way we look at incarcerated people. As it was said, you become a number, you become invisible, you become less than human. And I think that in order to begin the conversation, we have to become visible again. You have to see me, all of me, every part of me, not just this part, but the emotional, the physical, and the spirit. You have to see all of me, and you have to see my trauma that is embedded inside of me. So that means that someone has to be held accountable. And I don't know if that conversation is ready to be had, but I know that in spaces where we gather, that we as the experts, the individuals who have lived experience, need to begin those conversations and tell our story in a way that brings support, but also creates the visual so that you see me. And not what you want to see, but what I bring to you. So I think that's the beginning of it. You can't have a conversation if people don't recognize that you need to be there. And so today, as of many today's, we hear again, sharing our story, becoming vulnerable to individuals, communities, so that they understand what it is that we go through. As women, with histories of incarceration. Also, I think that we need to listen to the language we use, because although women are views and girls are views, so are our boys. And I think as we talk about incarceration, we should not keep separating the men, the women, because we are all families. The men are husbands, their fathers, and their mistress as well as the mother. So I think when we talk about mass and incarceration, we got to talk about the family unit. Everybody as a whole, there is no separation. You know, they separate us with everything. They separate when, even for me, inside, after I didn't make the first clemency, I had to learn what clemency was. I had to advocate from inside. I had to take a group that came in there and supposed to teach me how to act and tell her, listen, I'm a group out. If you're not going to give me what I need in this group, then I don't need to be here. 16 years, I haven't done everything in here. And what we did, we made the group, the advocacy group, for the drug cases, because they had domestic violence in there. They seen the need for domestic violence. They seen the need for the aid program that we developed and created for the women to take care, but they didn't see the need for the drugs. And it wasn't that we were trying to separate ourselves from the violent crime. I felt that they had support. I had nobody. When my mother was 6'4", 450 pounds of women from Burnham, Alabama, all my life, my mother was a strong woman in my life. You understand? She kept us going. She had 7 of us and she took care of us. And I didn't care what she had to do to raise us and make us survive. No parent teaches their child and wake up in the morning and say, I want you to be a criminal. I want you to go out there and commit a crime. So do we live in a real world or do we live in a fantasy world? My mother, when I got arrested, my mother had three kids already in jail. Two upstate, two brothers upstate and a sister that was strung out on drugs and going back and forth into Rackers Island. Now the difference is, had my sister went to Bedford, it would have saved her life. You understand? They sent me to Bedford for 20 years and you destroyed my children life and all my siblings because I was the oldest female in the house. I had a brother older than me, but everybody looked up to me. So when you gave me a sentence of 20 to life, which didn't make sense, you could have put me under house arrest. For the money that you spent to house me, you could have educated me and made me a better mother. You could have put my kids through school and my grandkids. You understand? It's Neha Belford. Stand up for one minute. This is my granddaughter. I came home and I have eight grandchildren now. I have one that's getting her master's degree this year. I have a young man in college who didn't have a relationship with his father because my son went to jail too. And when I talk about breaking a cycle, we got to understand with everything against us, our kids go to jail. So my son went to jail. My brother's in jail. His two sons are in jail right now. So it's a vicious cycle and it's not only affecting the females. We have to stop separating. We are families. We come from a community that's failing us. We have churches on every other corner. And guess what? What are they doing for the kids? What are they doing for us when they give us $40 and kick us out after 16 years and send us back to our community? We can't get housed. We can't get a job. We can't get anything. But yet, they want to throw salt on me because I sold some drugs. If I didn't sell it, I would have been using it. So what's the difference? One is not no better than the other. If I take somebody's life, I got to live with that the rest of my life. Who are you to judge me? Because it's about survival. You understand? First of all, our kids don't go nowhere. They don't close all the community centers in the neighborhood. They're not teaching them anything. Our kids get left back in school in the first grade. So what did I say about our communities? But yet, they want to blame the panel. You were a teacher. You went to school to be educated. You're supposed to know how to handle us. Why are you throwing 40 and 50 kids in one class with one teacher? How chaotic is that? Then you're policing us in our communities and you want us to be okay with that. You're coming in our communities now. You're holding court on the street because you're killing us. You're taking out our men. You know why you're taking out our men so you could stop us from reproducing? So when we have these talks, they need to be real. And the reason that they don't have us on the front line, because they don't want the truth out, but the truth is already out. You understand? Just like now drugs is a medical problem and a mental problem. When I went to jail in 1983 and I left my kids nine, six, two and one, we was a mental problem then. You understand? I was a mother on welfare. I wasn't living no life for rally. And in the 16 years that I did in Bethlehem Correctional Facility, because I stayed there the whole 16, I ain't meet one kingpin, but this is who you created these laws for. So we're there because it wasn't locked up with me. It was women like me suffering whether it was from abuse, whether it was from just being degraded your whole life that you don't even know where to begin. I'm not ashamed of what I went through and where I come from. No, you know why? Because I didn't write that book life on the outside, but I'm on that front cover because that's my story. And the only reason that that happened, because when Bataki made the Rockefeller drug laws his palette to get in office, all the journalists wanted to come in and recognize us now. Now they want to come in and interview us. Why? Because it's political for them. We got to understand power and we got to be political like them. And don't tell me about it can't happen in our communities. We can't rebuild our communities. We can't sit in them seats because we can do anything that we want to do. Look at the population that's coming out of prison. We're coming out educated. We're coming out ready for them, activists, and we're telling the truth and we're shining the light on everything. I would love to sit down with Trump. I don't have a problem. I don't fear him. You know why? Because I live this. I breathe and live this. And let me tell you something. That book is not so much about prison, so I want you all to read it and I want you to give your honest opinion about it. Yes, it's about the Rockefeller drug laws and the injustice, but it's more about what a mother endures after 16 years to come home and find out that her family has built their own prison in a project apartment. My part, the happiest day of my life, I kissed the ground when I walked out of Bethlehem, the happiest day of my life, and when I turned that key to that door, the reality hit me in my face. You understand? I had to live that. I had to go through that. I had a sister that was dying of the virus that didn't even want to look me in the eyes because she was so ashamed. My children didn't know how to deal with the A virus. Nobody went in there and taught them and gave them training. And let me tell you something. When my mother got so sick that she couldn't come and see me no more, I had all type of agencies going in there, still bringing my kids. Because without my kids coming to see me and me having that visiting room, that private thing that kept me going for them 16, I would have lost my mind. God knows because that man helped me and he gave me the knowledge, the wisdom and he gave even though when Jennifer Gonderman came in to me, she wasn't coming into me. She had already got a grant to write that book. She was going to write that book about anybody that she could get. It was about her. It wasn't about us and the fact that I was sitting near suffering and I was at my end. But I took that and I turned it and I said, yeah, you're going to use me, but you know what? I'm going to use you too. Even if I don't get paid off it, guess what? My message is going to get out there and these damn laws are going to change. And all these families are not going to endure what I went through and what I had to come home to. Well, when I came home, I was freaking pissed off. Okay? That's just the bottom line. I was angry at the whole world. No one was trying to help me. I had to be my own advocate. Just like Elaine, I had to do my own advocacy while I was incarcerated to get my son to come and see me. That happened because I made it happen and I made them footsteps. Listen, it wasn't hard, but it was hard because I didn't know where to start. And so when I met people like Elaine, Rusty and Angie, those are my sisters. And so I met so many people in prison that are so beautiful and deserve to be there. At the end of the day, I've learned to speak up for who I am today. I'm nobody perfect, but I'm a human being and I deserve to be with my son, my family, and everything. Life turns upside down when I fell in the hands of addiction. Okay? And it started at a very early age. But by being here today, this means so much to me. I don't care about the money. All I care about is that you all can learn something from this today and take it with you and spread the news because I'm not going to shut up. I'm going to keep on talking. I'm going to keep talking as long as... Listen, if I can make you tired of being tired of listening to my story and share my little story with someone else and I'm going to keep on talking. But when I came home and... Oh, my goodness. I'm just getting so worked up right now because I wish my son was here because you will see the big man that he's in college. He's doing the right thing. He does jitsu. He spins me on the floor at home. And I love it. No, seriously. You know what I mean? But I'm a feisty one. Don't get it twisted. At the end of the day, coming home from prison is hard for anyone. Man, women. Listen, I have someone in the audience right now that just came home and it's hard. The person's in a shelter, struggling to get a job. The hell with the CEO from Perot? What the hell is that going to do? Day for day. Give these men and women that are coming home a job. Give us a second opportunity to stand on our feet and rise up. Education or no education. We all deserve to work for a living and to move forward in life. You don't want to stay stuck? I don't want to stay stuck in the projects. I mean, listen, if that's where I have to be, that's where I have to be. But at the end of the day, I want a house. I want to get me a car. How is this going to happen if I never have an opportunity? Think about that. I feel like what we're missing is women like us in the audience. I don't like to separate it either, but I don't want to say it the wrong way. It's going to come out wrong. Sorry. Men get the glory of it. Men face-wise, in my opinion. If you see a lot of things getting done, you see men on the front. In my opinion, because of where I've come from and what I've done, women aren't really... A lot of women from where I'm from, they don't want to speak up. They don't want to put themselves out there because we're so quick to get judged by somebody, even we judge ourselves a lot. It took me a long time to get to where I am. I'm 31. I don't have children. It's very hard to relate. I have siblings. I have my parents. It's so hard to find women that are willing to work together and not judge each other. I wrote a piece. I wrote a piece and it's them, us equals we. I can't even remember because it was so long ago. In the beginning of it, I judged what I thought about women that were incarcerated. I kept judging and judging and judging. Because you know ECNTV. Towards the end of it, it's me. I'm able to stand up. When I first came home, I didn't talk to anybody. I didn't want anybody to know I was incarcerated. I felt that I put my family to shame and now it's like a right, well, yeah, I have two families. You don't like it too bad. It's your problem, not mine. But I worked hard for it. I worked hard to get to where I am now. I do have my nervous tics all the time when I have to share my story, but I was able to stand up because I had a network of women that were willing to stand up with each other and not point fingers. When I was in Riverhead Jail, we used to be nasty to each other. I was on a youth tier. We were disgusting to each other. We used to do very vile things. Why are we willing to do that to each other? Inside. I made it for when I come home that I was going to do something different for the youth, for myself, for women behind me, for my siblings, because I didn't want them incarcerated. I didn't want nothing like that for them. Now I mentor a lot of young girls and I give them a voice. I don't allow them to be silent. If they have something to say, say it, we'll deal with it afterwards of how it was said so we could be brought up. I have a 11-year-old niece and I don't want her to be silenced. We grew up Muslim. It's hard for her in public schools and stuff like that. Definitely nowadays. I want her to have her voice and be able to speak. I think that's important. Yes. We need to recognize the fact that we are powerful and strong women and that we have a voice and that society creates barriers to keep us from raising our voice. But we are stronger than that. We are more resilient than that. The idea of having community behind you, of having the coverage to stand up once, then twice, then three times and bring community with you gives you the backbone that you need. No one, like Elaine said, no one grows up to say, today I'm going to be an addict or tomorrow I'm going to be in jail. It doesn't happen that way. It is a process. And returning to the community is a similar process, but it has to start somewhere. And what I've learned is that it might start with me, but it doesn't end with me, that it is more than me. It is my sisters and it is the unity that we share. It is the lived experience of being inside and being cut away from your family and your friends and your community and rebuilding that community wherever you are and then gathering the strength from that community to make it. How do you think she survived hurt 16 years? Three years sounds like a drop in a bucket when you look at her 16 years, but the experience is the same. I was incarcerated. I was traumatized. I was ripped from my family. They had to learn to live without me. I had to learn to live without them. And then I had to learn how to come back to the community who wasn't ready for me. They had no clue. They didn't know what to do with me. That's right. For six months. And it wasn't because I couldn't go home although that was part of it. It was because I needed to create a space that I felt comfortable in because everywhere I went was not welcoming to me. I used the clothing pantries, the food pantries. That's how I made my way back home. I had to shove a pantry bag in the door so that I could be recognized as a person again because the shame and the guilt of losing my parental rights, of being an addict, of going to jail, bringing that shame on my family, that's something that you don't wake up and say, okay, today I'm going to embarrass my whole family. It happened. But at the same time, it is because of their love and strength that I'm able to sit here today. It is because of my sisters in the community who have the lived experience that gives me the courage to share my story. Everybody has a story. Everybody in this room has a story of how they got to where they are. They are, but at what point do you open your ears to hear the story and take from it what you need in order to move on? You know, I think it's also about holding the foundations and the advocacy organizations responsible too, right? So I know I went to lots of different meetings with funders where I was begging the funders to give support to the situation of women behind bars or girls behind bars. And I often got the pushback that, well, that's not where the numbers are, right? And it's true that the lion's share of individuals behind bars are men. And there are women too. And as you said, we have to talk about it as all parts of the community because that's how it plays out in people's lives. And so I want to make sure that we also hold accountable the foundations and the advocacy organizations to be mindful of all parts of the community and making sure, right, that these kinds of spaces or women's voices are present, are supported, whether it's through a grant or it's through making room for them when it comes to a congressional hearing or a state hearing. So speaking of policy and advocacy, I think it's an interesting observation that we've gone from when you all were put behind bars, a conversation then was crack cocaine mothers, lock them up, they've abandoned their families, they've committed crimes. Addiction on the part of a mother is criminal. In fact, it was so criminal that we were also putting pregnant women behind bars because a crime they were committing against their baby, their unborn baby. So there was a real trope around mothering and criminalization and now, with the opiate addiction, that's shifted. Interestingly, now that the demographics shifted, the languaging now is more, this is not about criminalization, should not be, we should understand this is a public health crisis. But earlier we were not afforded a recognition that this was a public health crisis. So that's policy. A policy decision is made. Do we criminalize this in the context of law and order? Do we see this in the context of public health? So you have President Trump, Attorney General Sessions, and I'm going to give you some Democrats. You have Senator Booker and Senator Schumer. And they're all here. And you, as the policy recommendations, you have Democrats who are also alchemists, who are also warriors, who also made everything happen out of absolutely nothing. What do you, as those women, mothers, young women, what is the policy recommendation that you give to these individuals but who have incredible power over what policy looks like in the next four years? What do they need to do? What's the one policy recommendation that needs to happen so that we no longer are seeing so many women and girls locked up and torn from their families? Quickly because we only got a little bit of time. So the first thing is for non-violent crimes that you need to do diversion. You need to keep families intact. You need to remember that when you take a mother or a father out of the household that you remove one of the pillars of the family and you destroy that family. Everybody does the time, not just the person incarcerated, the entire family. And to recognize the need for more mother, children or family orientated services. There aren't many. Maybe one or two drug programs actually provide opportunities for moms and to treatment with their children. A mom would rather stay in the street and struggle, addicted than to go into treatment because the end result of CPS or ACS or however you look at it involvement and the fight that like Bruni went through to get her children back. And then the shame and the guilt and society looking down. So create more diversion programs to keep the family intact. What happened to home arrest or house arrest? If I have to do time let me do it at home so that my kids are not disrupted. So that I don't have to go to the shelter system so that my kids don't have to lose their community their schooling and have to be placed in a different school. And the other thing is to remember that not everything is worth criminal charge. Not every crime is worth the criminal charge. That money that you spend booking me through central booking and fingerprinting me could help me in getting some services that I need because my health care might not cover all of that. And so I need those support you know and because addiction is acceptable today they make it acceptable for everyone they'll make it just acceptable for white people or white boys or white girls make it acceptable for black girls and brown girls and green and and black girls make it acceptable for all of us. You can't have it both ways. You got to make it all the way across the board because had this been me today I wouldn't have went to jail. My family would not have been interrupted. I would not have a felony conviction. You know I wouldn't be struggling inside the prison that is created on the outside as a result of going to jail because I still carry that with me everywhere I go. I would be in the box and all those other things but you know what at the end of the day I'm still a felon a convicted felon and that's what they see first. So we work hard at removing that stigma so the language has to change. Change the language you know are we stored citizens? I'd never stop being a citizen. Exactly. I'd never stop being citizens harder than I become restored. I'm still a citizen and you take my money. When I pay my taxes how am I not a citizen? You understand what I'm saying? It's those little things. The vote, the right to vote once you're all parole you can vote. So let me know what my rights are help me to reengage back in the community in a positive manner. Those first 30 days are the most critical. We're the services. Don't drop me off at Frustin Boulevard at 12 o'clock midnight and tell me here's $40 and go about your way. Because the pimps and the drug dealers and everything else is out there waiting for me. And if I need a fighting chance then I need to know that the program is going to be out there waiting for me. It don't matter what time I get out. And it doesn't happen. So when you say whole people accountable, whole people accountable. We are the programs that offer services after nine to five. We are the services that I need as a parent a woman coming out. Mental health services substance treatment services. And why is it okay for Johnny over here to be medically addicted and me I'm the junkie. Because I'm black. Not fair. Not fair at all. And how long do you think that we're going to sit by and let that happen to us as a community as people of color? It should be you have to look at if you're going to create legislation make it applicable to everyone across the board. I work in Long Island. I see it happen every day and I think about coming home to Harlem and my son at 22 getting pulled over and going to jail. You understand what I'm saying? So it's not about me anymore. Now it's about my children and my grandchildren and I need to make it better for them. And as a community we need to make it better for them. Because they don't have all the tools that they need and the resources are being slowly taken away from us. I also wanted to say that when we look at change we're looking at change. I walk in my neighborhood every single day and I see so much mentally ill people undocumented. It's crazy. Homelessness so many people out there that are homeless so many people that have mental illnesses so much stuff besides being in prison like you're in prison already with your mental illness you know even to those people that are out there like that why can't we make change when we talk about change let's talk about change. Let's just not talk about it. Let's do something about it because like it's bothering you're building all these shelters but you're sticking all you're sticking everyone in one room that doesn't need to be in one room. When we talk about mental illness someone who has a mental illness in the street like I can't even say what kind of illness but there's so many people walking around like zombies and they don't even know what the hell they're going so can we start with the communities because like if we don't fix the community down the street where we have these sex offenders and mentally ill people and homeless people we're sticking everybody in one room but not everybody needs to be in one room you know and I think Elaine said it best she said they're taking away our community centers and after school programs we have nothing for our kids so what are we supposed to do my son is away at college and it just popped in my head and he comes home during the holidays and he said to me he said mom what would I be doing if I wasn't in school and I said and I had to say to him you know and so you have to make that distinction but I feel sorry for the corner boys because they don't ever leave the neighborhood and they don't have anything to look forward to you know so you know while the school is responsible we have a responsibility to our children to break the cycle to show them something different I don't hide my criminal path I let my children know because I don't want you to make the same mistakes I made that in Long Island it's okay that addiction has become acceptable because it's not acceptable you know you have a choice either you can or you can't you know indulge so it's not acceptable for me but these are things that I create standards that I create values that I have for my family that you have for your family and at the end of the day you want what's everybody else wants I want the white picket friend 25 kids and all of that but I can't get that because now I am in a caste system that says because of my felony conviction I can only attain XYZ and so I work hard every day to break that ceiling because I know I'm better than that you know and in order for that to happen I need to have a community behind me that supports me in that journey and it doesn't matter where it comes from you can be an ally or you can be a person who has been impacted by the criminal justice system but together we have to make the change because what's going to happen to the next generation because they won't be able to vote they won't be able to get jobs they won't be able to buy a house so what's going to happen is we're talking about classism right? so we talked about racism very briefly we've talked about sexism when you ignore women and now we're talking about classism because we're talking about the fact that you're creating a class of people that are less than society's level and what's going to happen to them and if we don't break this cycle and the community to address the needs of the community instead of ignoring them like everybody in one room I like that, that's a big room but everybody is supposed to fit in there and it's not like that everyone has their own individual needs but we need a sister that is going to assist us in creating the changes that need to happen so I want Angie and Elaine to wrap us up with those guys who have their hands on the levers of incredible legislative power what do you say to them to make the lives of girls better who are being locked up? I would want them to retrain anybody who's working with the public I do trauma services retrain them, that's what we're doing now in Suffolk County Elaine for the women I want to tell them that you're correction officers parole people after I came home was at my first book signing my second book signing was at State Albany with you and I made sure that everybody knew who I was so even if you don't come to us and acknowledge us we're not going nowhere and we're coming to you anyway any shape and form that we have to at the end of the day these are our kids and the reason I have such a problem about us separating the men because are you a mother, do you have sons? okay all the women and most of the women have sons okay we are raising kings and queens and to separate our men we separate our kids you understand what I'm saying to you because my son went to jail as a product of what I went through he went to the street at 12 my mother didn't take him and say Jamel I want you to go out there to the street and get on that corner and do this and that and then our men is the ones that's going to impersonate our daughters so if we don't touch every family member we're keeping the cycle going because they want us to believe that our men are animals but I'm going to tell you like this as long as we separate each other because I don't care what in your life what steps you walk to get you involved in the criminal justice if it was a man that was older than you if it was your boyfriend or the one that you loved guess what you went along with that and you played a part everybody have to take responsibility for the roles we play too you understand and like I said I never said I was innocent and if I had to do all over again with the circumstances that I grew up with and where I was at at that time it would have happened again so in order to change that educate us give us the skills that we need put our money back in our communities that you're counting upstate our census money and it's going to their communities up there rebuilding their communities you allow us to come out of prison and go our men is good enough for you to take the bus loads into them towns and rebuild their towns bring them to our town and our hood and let them come rebuild our hood while they're incarcerated so I know we have a little bit of time to take questions from the audience my name is Eileen Kelley I'm from the Osborne Association and I wanted to offer a resource Osborne coordinates something called the New York Initiative for Children of Incarcerated Parents it's a coalition of many many many city and statewide groups that promotes policies and resources for families affected by mass incarceration so it's got activist campaigns going on and meetings and conferences and things I think that might be useful to people who want to learn more and follow up more so you could just look at Osborne Association google it and look up more the New York Initiative folks have other questions the first thing is really just to thank you it's so important to have a voice and I actually I was a teacher I'm a mom I don't know where I just want to thank you I believe from the experience I've had isolated from the experiences that you have had it's so important to have a dialogue so if there's a way of getting these women into the community and giving them the voice that will open up the windows so people can hear them cause crimes are committed and people turn around and they say I didn't hear anything the same thing happened in Nazi Germany the government said it's good we're going to capture all these people and we're going to make a superior nation the citizens have to hear your voices I'm Gail Smith from the Women in Prison Project at the Correctional Association happy to see you all Rusty you said a brilliant thing about how to tell policy makers about diversion and community based programming I wonder for everyone else I look at the system it's so punitive for people who have been charged with nonviolent and sometimes also violent offenses that they have done in self defense because of coercion if there's in the criminal legal system but possibly in the criminal legal system or possibly in the community that could be provided instead of punishment what would that be job training so that our kids can come up with often corners and go to work and feel that they are able to work we need to know that if you don't teach anything if this is all I know I'm on survival mode I'm not out to hurt you or the next individual or the next family when they incarcerate us we create our own worlds when they talk about rehabilitation there's no rehabilitation there we rehabilitate ourselves the long term is that in Beffett Hills when I first went to Beffett I was scared to death I know I've been going to prison all my life to see my men and my brothers but I never thought I would end up in prison for 20 to life you couldn't have told me that but it happened so when I went to prison I went by what I seen on TV what I heard how violent the men's prisons is and everything else I didn't know what to expect but I knew I had to survive because I had four kids that I had to get back on to sacrifice and took my four kids with no problem so I didn't have to worry about my kids going to foster care you understand but my mother was already taking care of siblings' kids so that made her have 13 in the household a three bedroom apartment you understand the things that we endure and our parents endure and our communities endure they can't even begin to recognize or imagine because they don't live like that they don't go through that I never knew what it was to have my own bed until I went to prison and that's deep living in America like Donald Trump says I'm going to make America great again well we got two Americas so which one are you living in because I'm living in the opposite end my name is Florence Parkins you know you said there's a lot of churches in the community what can the churches do to help so one of the things one of the things that I did when I first came home was I went to a good family friend who was a pastor of a church and I said to him I've heard that there are many churches that have prison reentry programs or they have they have this prison services you know because they come up to the jail they evangelize once a month and then they're gone right and my thing was if you're going to come up here and see me I need for you to be there when I get home right and so what we did was we did a survey of all the churches in Harlem just about right and so what we found was that many of the existing prison ministries or services ministries that they have in the churches consisted of one person or maybe two people right and so the idea is that you provide a service that is sorely needed and I spent six months when I first came home educating the faith based community around the needs of incarcerated women coming home right so we need support I need a place I need a mentor I need someone who's going to just not pray for me what's going to help me navigate systems right because I don't know how to go to public assistance or I don't know how to open up a bank account or I don't know how to fill out this application for employment or I need a place to volunteer or I need some clothing just so that I could have a decent outfit to put on when I go to these places to ask for help beyond and you know what I got I got I'm sorry but she's only here one day a week and today is not the day and so I began to work with other churches and begin to put those things in place Reverend Ann Bovier Reverend Ann Bovier started started coming to the prisons and really really working and she brought other prison ministries with her and we began to see support and services so the the chaplain at Bayview Correctional Facility created a parenting program that if you were engaged in a parenting program you would send a free van every weekend to pick your kids up and bring them to see you at the prison right? I didn't have to pay anything my mother didn't have to get out her bed all my daughter had to do was get up get dressed and know that on Saturday the van was coming to pick her up at 11 o'clock and they was going to bring her back home after the visit and they brought her to the prison to see me and we began to rebuild the relationship so by the time I got back here we were working on something that didn't have to be manifested on the outside it happened organically inside while I was still incarcerated and services like that that needed to happen you need to recognize that these women that are incarcerated they're coming back to the five brothers Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, Long Island we're coming home and they're going to let us out and we're coming to sit in your church and we're going to need your help and we don't need not being disrespectful the lip service or the laying of hands we need tangible services that are going to benefit us that are going to be supportive of us so if you could help me if I could come by the church and maybe ride the van to go to service because I don't have a metro card because I can't afford to get a metro card I'm a public assistance case and I have to wait those 45 days and I don't have money and I don't want to turn a trick on a corner I don't want to have to sell a package just to create money for myself that if I come to the church and I say can you help me get here that you're not going to look at me and say oh she's just a money trying to grub money that you're going to give me the real service that I need even if you say well I'll go with you I'll say let's go come on help me and encourage me to sit there while I'm waiting the eight hours that is going to take for somebody to see me to fill out the application so I don't get frustrated and go back to what I know best because simple real simple stuff hands on real life stuff and I just think I just think we need to also recognize if you go anywhere in the city we got two churches on this corner we got another church on this corner two blocks down we got another church I mean there's more than enough churches around nobody is saying that one church has to take this on by themselves if each church agreed to deal with five to ten blocks we're rebuilding our communities we need to teach civics so that our kids can begin to understand the government in which that governs them so they can understand how they're being policed on the street he's talking about bringing back stopping frisk no other community would even allow the police to stop their kids like that if they're walking in a group no other nationality is going to allow that but us as Americans we have become so complex that it's okay they've been doing things to us for so long that it's alright we have to accept this we don't have money to change it we can't change it we can't vote it's not going to change nothing well everyday I got to walk in my community and look at these kids I got to look at my grandkids I have a grandson that's four they'll be visiting him in jail the way I had to visit my son my brothers and all my male friends that came from the neighborhood no so where do we begin to stop it and we have to let them know our men are not animals yes they have been treated like animals for so long until they are beginning to act like it and all this thing new young men about your hands down with your drawers showing that it came from jail guess what lies cause you're not walking around in prison with your pants down like that that came from your hip hop community getting up there with their ass out cause they don't know no better cause they got them so brainwashed and when I say that we are all responsible we are all responsible so there is no throwing salt at the other what it is is having these conversations and letting them know that we're not going to take it no more you're going to have to deal with us the same way you lock us up and throw away the key guess what we're here now we're stronger than ever and we're not going back and we're not going to keep letting you use this as a recidivism to keep sending our children back you're not going to make my grandkids feel that it's okay to be police in school and on the streets cause they with their friends and they having fun or they may be smoking a little bit of weed really no you're going to educate them you're going to give them options then if they break the law they're going to do their time and come out and try this again I think we might have time for one more I have a comment I think I've been in many spaces where we're having many conversations and yes women are important but I have to agree with Elaine if we keep leaving the men out of the conversation in this type of space specifically not you have your conversation over there and we have ours here if we come together and have a conversation together then I think we are creating a new model for our children you know we don't want our male counterparts to feel like we are more versed than they are and by saying that what I mean is that I go everywhere and I'm educated empowered supported and then my partner who has the same background as me is not getting that you know he is not getting um go back to school help you find a job you know support services come to this program they're not getting that they're getting that CEO one paycheck every day for six months and then it's gone and then you back out there on the ground you got to find your own job you got to go do the five days the whole thing and at the end of the day I'm coming home talking about I was here and they told me this and I feel so supported I love you baby but I got to go here today and nobody is talking to these young men about where they need to be where is their place you know when we looking at young girls and you know young people where is their place like we have to create a space for them so that they feel included in the conversation you know and I think that's where we're missing it you know this is a great space for us but when we're talking about young people we have to bring both male and female together because they have a voice and they need to be heard and it needs to be a joint conversation because how can I teach you to respect my daughter as a young woman when you don't respect yourself as a young man and I want to give credit to Angie and the work to raise the age because I feel like that type of youth-led initiative that we've seen here in New York and is happening all over the country has really been about young men and women taking this issue on and insisting that our correctional facilities that are for adults are not places for our children and I think that's where a lot of that work that you're talking about is being done and I want to recognize the hard work that you've done around that campaign because they lock us in I was locked in 23 hours a day and until I started with the women's writing group I wasn't able to do anything and then I started being able to stand up for myself and know what I want and then help the other girls and work inside the jail because they don't have like and this is what I was getting at before with the separation of the men and women and where I'm from Riverhead jail men have everything, women have nothing the youth have nothing the girls, they have a male tier for the teen boys and they have nothing for the girls and the men work in the jails and it wasn't to separate in any type of way of that it was just to let it know that men have everything in the jails and we have nothing, so what are we coming to we have nothing helping us and then any programs that are in for the women they get snatched the writing program got snatched the horticulture got snatched they had another crafting got snatched all for the women so that's why I was saying this with the separation of standing that and I think naming that doesn't diminish anyone else it doesn't diminish the men and boys to name the ways that our women and girls are being left behind let me join you at the federal level you know we have, we had this effort at the federal level last summer to pass criminal justice reform most states are still shackling our women during labor and childbirth now one member of congress stood up and said I'm going to change that practice through the legislation I'm going to add an amendment to this legislation that's around all these areas of criminal justice reform to say you know what that draconian practice that's like from the mid-evil times ought to be stopped so I think it is I join you in the importance of naming the many ways that our women and girls get left behind and honoring that we do that as a collective not to be divisive but to be holistic in the way that we talk about the demand for change I'm going to go ahead sorry I didn't want to be rude but I was just wondering like why do you think that headed women are hailed at a different standard and considerations both and when they get out of the program why is there a different standard in women and women during incarceration why is there a gap jails were built from jails and prison were built for men period that's first and foremost so when women started come in they didn't change anything they just created a section for women women struggle to get sanitary pads and daily living needs addressed in the correctional system unlike men I don't know why it is that way it is that way we work very hard to change that there you go there you go that's it that's it no there you go that's it that's Donna that's my sister Donna so we know this and so we work really hard to bring attention to it so that it can change but you know what we don't want to change so much we want it to be gone period you know and so we working towards end of mass incarceration so that we can have a world where we can just be who we are and stay in our communities and live in a manner that is supportive of the entire community you know I feel that if they if they will build like community centers for women and like poetry poetry community centers where I can learn how to be a poet like my sister over here someone to mentor me when I'm coming home sometimes like that you know it's not an easy thing to sit up here and just tell you my story because I have so much to say and at the moment my head is like a cloud but when I came home in 2005 I needed someone to say you know what I need someone like Donna like Rusty and like my sister right here I needed someone to just take me and say you know what I got you I got you let me help you fill out that application for that job let me help you fill out application to go back to school how about that Brunelda let me help you let me just help you let me guide you so that you don't have a hard time we all need that men women children we all need that we need someone to mentor us to listen I'm not going to be 52 this year I still need a mentor please by your means come see me after this and mentor me because I still need help okay and I'm not joking I'm not perfect I'm not here to say that I'm 10 times better than what I was yesterday but I still need help we need community we need community based programs for women and men coming home let me just add one thing and I think that we really need to understand that being incarcerated psychologically it does something to everyone that's incarcerated everyone that goes through that it affects you in one way or another a lot of times when we come home we are so busy with our lives and trying to get our lives back trying to rebuild everything we're carrying the guilt everybody's looking at us first of all when I came home my youngest daughter was 17 you know what her words to me was I never did nothing as a mother to go to jail in the first place and be taken away from my kids she's 32 today and she still carries that so incarceration affects everyone the community in which we come from our families and when we come back out to society we come back out to the same communities even though I got clemency from Bataki and they released me to that project apartment when I got there and complained about the conditions in which my family was living they reminded me you ain't supposed to be here in the first place if you don't be quiet we'll evict your family out of the project and y'all all be homeless so these are the types of things that we have to deal with that's never talked about that nobody knows my children wanted me there they loved me it's not that they didn't love me but I grew in a way that they didn't grow and then who am I to come home and judge dumb by how they're living right now because we survived this we still here so you need to know we survived this ain't nobody after grandma died our world crushed we didn't have nobody yeah you had all them people coming here taking us to the visit room this and that but who helped us who helped my aunt that I done seen go from a loving caring aunt mother to drugging I don't even know who this woman is but I'm glad she's back off the street and laying in that bed right now you understand by recognizing the way each of you is an alchemist Angie you went from sorry you went from that experience to returning home and giving yourself a new life a new journey and being part of the writing workshops and raise the age and a voice for change that is powerful and persuasive you came home you stabilized your family yourself and now you are a champion for other families who are going through this process this horror of incarceration you came home you also gave resiliency and life back to your family you wrote a book and despite having to bury your son you are still out there insisting on justice and you also returned home demanded that your family have a better life built that life for them and then you're giving mothers and children who are suffering incarceration the chance to have a bond that is unbroken you are all alchemists you will have all done this incredible work of creating power and life and defiance and resistance and that is an excuse for the rest of us thank you I want to thank Brandon I want to thank the panel again and thank our moderator Malika Sardisar I also want to thank the Brooklyn Museum Liz Sackler Elizabeth Sackler Foundation and Center Megan with ACLU much appreciated again there are more panels coming up at the end of April we're at Park Avenue Christian Church for what will be different for LGBTQ activism and even more to come after that so if you'd like to be on the mailing list just hit me up at TateStrategy.com and I'll be happy to add you thank you all so much for coming out