 Honored to be here. Sandra Annette Bland, Sandy as everyone called her, was born in 1987. Her mother, Geneva Reed, raised five girls on her own. She received a bachelor's in journalism at age 23. Traffic tickets plagued her as a young adult because Texas has no income tax. They add extra charges to tickets or poor people's tax as we commonly call it. A similar system exists in Ferguson, Missouri. In 2009, Sandra Bland was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor possession of a small amount of marijuana. Her arrest was predictable. Nationally, one in five people her age were smoking marijuana, but black people are more likely to be charged. Another traffic stop would gain her a possession charge with a small plastic bag with one. That amount would barely make three joints. In Texas, it was enough for another possession charge. On July 13, 2015, three days after being arrested for a traffic stop on her way to a job interview, Sandra Bland was found hanging from a jail-issued garbage bag noose in her cell. Her mother settled in 2016 for a $1.9 million wrongful death suit. No officer was ever arrested. This poem is for all of us who die under the laws of state-sanctioned violence and violent laws. If black women could be cut down, no, removed gently from American terrorism, who would break our fall? Which direction will we travel to feel safe? Wild is the wind. If we could turn in this skin, these sharpened bones, this brain full of power and history, who would we resemble? Invisible doesn't come in black. How many nervous breakdowns? How many funeral black dresses? How many fibroids? How many nooses? How many of our bodies must be raped, cut into pieces, burned inside garbage bags, buried? How many of us blossom a beautiful, a beautiful tree of life and pray their pride is a cut down the middle, reduced to trunks or a close friend doesn't die, simply climbing their limbs, attempting to grow outside this gritty soil they were planted. I put a spell on you. Holly hobby ovens, girl scout cookies and Barbie dolls. Don't prepare our revolutionary daughters, born with cakes and wings to have a pig's knee pushed into their backs. Girls raised by wolves taught to disappear, to be quiet, to not talk about it. How much breath is allowed space in the state of Texas? A place that has sucked the life out of countless miscounted, uncounted, brown, poor women die here. I got life. Sandra Blank got the death penalty for a traffic stop. Her body was 28 years young. How to make sense of our bodies? Bodies burned by cigarettes. Bodies smoked out their own neighborhoods. Bodies with abandoned lungs and hearts. Bodies mistaken for women when they are still girls. How do we construct a survival guide? A poem for our daughter's bodies without throwing up our breakfast. How do our mother's bodies not implode after telling our sons to comply, to not speak, to keep their heads down, to allow their bodies to be dragged by racist police? Jim Crow ain't never flown with this much wingspan. Eagles running for safety now. For the reach is deep and southern and Midwest. Shadows the east, lands in the west. Texas, you will always be Mexico in denial. Poe Ron Allen asked for his body back in 1996 and we are still waiting. We want our bodies back. We want our bodies back. We want our bodies back. We want them returning to mothers without blood, without brains exposed, without humiliation, without bruises, without glass, without fire. We want our bodies back. We want our cities back. We want our culture back. We want our land back. We want our streets back. We want our freedom. We want our justice. We want our bodies back. We want our bodies back. We want them wrapped in white silk. We want them paraded around the White House. We want these flags you stand up for at baseball games and have masks. We want national holidays to honor our bodies, our knees, our prayers, our ears, our genitals, our eyes, our feet, our fingers. We want 21 gun salutes when we enter a damn room. We want our bodies back. We want our bodies back. We want them anointed in oils. We want them water on your neck. We want them remembered. We want them worship on Sunday. We want our magic. You try to buy it. We want our essence. You attempt to steal. We want our elegance, our sex, our walk. We want our cool, our recipes, our intelligence, our science, our stars, our history. I want my Moroccan nose. I want my holy water breasts. I want my messiah legs. I want my alien arms. I want my Ivy Coast mouth. I want our breath back. I want our time back. I want your foot off our girls' backs. I want all your badges back. I want you to evaporate into dust like swatted moths. Don't you cut me down from the news? Don't cut me down from the news. Let my legs dangle for the devil. What a spectacular magic show. Why you turn the cameras off? Why you turn the cameras off? This is a simple ballet. You got front row. This is your venue. This cell, this hole is no one's home. It's no place for a woman to die. You probably never heard of Judith Jamison, Catherine Dunham. Or we know how to get our lays in the air. We know how to elevate, use our bodies to tell a story, a middle passage, a survival of lynchings. You have always loved our bodies under your control. Don't you touch me. Don't you take me down, murderers. Don't you touch my body. Don't touch my music. Don't touch my patience. Don't touch my corridor. Don't come near my window. Don't talk to me in that tone. This body of work got work to do. I'm resurrecting my body in new forms daily. Watch for me in your deepest sleep. Black is the color of my true love's hair. Listen for my songs. Watch for my walk. Listen for my voice, my black girl at a tumor. Watch my body resist your death traps. Watch me rise. Watch my rebirth. Watch us rise up from this new Jim Crow, from these new unspoken apartheid laws. We want our bodies back. We want our bodies back. We will take them, protect them, raise them. Remember you, Sandra Bland. We will never forget your brown body, your mind, your pride, your spirit, your love, your vow to do God's work. We want your drive from Illinois to Waller County back. We want all our daughters back, and we want them back now. Thank you. Thank you, Reform. I love you. Thank you. Thank you, Jessica, for that incredibly, incredibly powerful introduction to this panel. I feel like we all might need to take a deep breath because that was so moving and so powerful, and we thank you for sharing your words with us. Quickly, I do want to remind everyone that at the DPA booth, we still are taking monetary and supply donations for our brothers and sisters in Puerto Rico. If you can give money, please do, but if you can give batteries, adhesive tape, flashlight, any of these things that we take for granted every day, the most basic of supplies would be incredibly helpful. So please, please make that happen. Thank you. I also want to thank Asha Bandelli who helped conceptualize and brought this first ever All Women's Plenary to a reform conference. The fact that I am up here and not you is just one example of the way that you uplift other women and make them recognizable in this movement. So thank you so much. That ultimately is what this panel is about. It is about highlighting the ways that women have shaped and led this movement and how we have led this movement even if it's been from behind the shadows just like we've led every other social justice movement in the history of this country. And it is a way to envision what a women's led drug policy movement would look like if we did not have to compartmentalize ourselves, if we could bring our whole selves to this work, if the qualities that women possess in abundance like emotional sensitivity and compassion and empathy were not seen as professional weaknesses but were actually recognized as the critical strengths that they are and vital to doing this work. And it's also about recognizing that even as we want our voices to be heard at the table that there are countless scores of women whose voices are completely silenced, that the fact that I have access to this stage and this microphone is an absolute privilege and that there are trans women, women of color, women in Mexico, Central America, South America, pregnant women, mothers who have been victimized, criminalized, stigmatized, brutalized and killed under this drug war regime just for their mere existence. It's about uplifting their voices, ensuring that they have a voice at this microphone. And so even as we have established, even as we have brought together this incredible panel, we recognize that there are so many out in the audience, that there are so many in this movement who could be up on the stage with us. And even as Cassandra Federique is an amazing moderator, I think that would be too much of a task to bring everyone up here. But we do want to recognize just a few folks within DPA and in the movement at writ large, Tamar Todd, Roseanne Scotty, who have for many years shepherded DPA and our drug policy, Monique Tula, Manny Woods, Lynn Zimmer, Marcia Rosenbaum, the list could go on and on. And of course all of you. So thank you so much for the work that you do. We realize that your expertise could be up here along with all of our panelists. So with that, I'll go ahead and introduce them. First, our moderator, Cassandra Federique. Yeah. DPA's gender and racial equity moral compass within our organization. I'll bring her up. Susan Burton, founder of a new way of life and all of us or none of us. And since we are in the building, a CNN top 10 hero. Jessica Kermore, poet, CEO. Already done. Chloe Cockburn, program director of open philanthropy. L. Hearns, co-founder, BLM and executive director of Marcia Johnson Institute. At UNICEF's Hernandez, a California policy coordinator for DPA. Yeah. Julita Lemgruber, coordinator of Center for Studies on Public Security and Citizenship University. Join us from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Lynn Paltrow, the voice of all pregnant women. Founding executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women. And of course, Deborah Small, executive director of Break the Chains. Please join me in welcoming them all. Good morning. I want to highlight something that Lindsey so eloquently laid out. Drug Policy Alliance is a national organization working to end the war on drugs with all of you. And one of our main strategies for doing that is through legislative advocacy. And even within our organization, most of you know us through our grants program, through ASHA, or through the residence offices that are in your states. But one of the key central groups in our organization that people don't really interact with is one that you often don't really think about. And even within our organization, we take advantage. But our Office of Legal Affairs has been run by all women for a very long time. The women that execute our legislative victories are some of the bravest people that we've worked with, and they consistently get forgotten. But on this stage, when we're having this all-woman palenary, I want to be very clear that the women of OLA could fill this table as well. And so it's not very often that they get the spotlight, so if they are here, I would really love for them to stand. Jolene, Tessia, Tamar, Lindsey, Joy, we miss you. Thank you for executing the vision and providing national and international technical support throughout figuring out how to end this war on drugs. Thank you. So now let's have a conversation. So if you've been to this place before or you've seen any of these women, you know that they are all powerhouses. I have the unfortunate position of being the moderator of trying to regulate the brilliance, but as we know, prohibition doesn't really work, so... The next session is at 2.30. I just want everyone to be clear, so we'll have some fun. If you have to eat, you do that, but you will get some spiritual gems out of here. So let's get this started. So they haven't seen these questions either. It's going to be very interesting, so you'll get a lot of freestyling. So the first question I really want, I think anyone can ask or answer, is the moment that we're in currently nationally is shaped, as Michelle Alexander, a lot by whiteness and racism and structural inequality, and it's also very much shaped by the way that we treat women and the way that we uphold principles of patriarchy. How we disrespect and dishonor women. They're intellect, they're expertise, what they do. And it seems ingrained, as if it is innate, that we are set up to hate women. So what needs to change in our cultures, language, attitudes, beliefs in order to honor and make space for all women, regardless of race, citizenship, sexual orientation, sexual assignment at birth, age or ethnicity? What needs to change? That's the first question. And we can't spend all day on that one. Go first. Well, I think something that DPA does really well, and I think I've had the opportunity to experience, is that whenever there's a new role opening up, even when it's outside of our organization or within our organization, we think about who needs to be in this role and who has traditionally held this role. And we've seen that in many organizations, including ours, a lot of it has been white-dominated, male-dominated. But if you look at our offices throughout the state, you'll see that there's this amazing change happening, but it's being driven by women who have had the opportunity to take up these roles that we have not traditionally had. So something that needs to change is with organizations and folks, when there are positions opening up of leadership or within organizations, really think about how can we uplift those people that have been most impacted, traditionally women and women of color. I want to speak outside of DPA. Go ahead. So I'm the founding director of a new way of life reentry project. So I am black, as you see, and I'm leading a organization that started out in California, but we have intentions of taking it nationally. And I intentionally build the leadership of formerly incarcerated women, both black, brown, white, it doesn't matter, but I intentionally set out to create an environment of opportunity that will raise the numbers of women who are in leadership. And it might be just a small effort, but it is what it is. It's an effort and it is a bearing fruit. So I know that, I mean, I can't change people's minds, so I don't waste my time trying to change their mind, but I am using my time to build that leadership. So I just want to say, I know both A&E season Susan talked about organizations, but I'm wondering what will it take to honor women that are not involved in organizations? What will it take to honor young girls? Well, good morning. I think this is a really important question. And I'm still a little sleep, so forgive me. This question is a great one to start out with because I think it provides great grounding in a foundation for what will come in the conversation. But generally what I believe needs to change and the work that I do at the Marsha P. Jensen Institute in changing is really our belief in participation in white supremacy. And it is that I believe that if we start with, it will unveil the ways that we've bought into systems that are unfair to not only women, but to all marginalized people. And so when you start at the root of an issue, it unveils all of the many branches that are ill. And so for me, in order to pursue any attempt at liberation or black power, it is in that that you must start and end with the way that white supremacy has really created opportunities for some and not for those who look like me or come from places that reflect the lowest of places in this country and across the world. Thank you, Deborah. Thank you, Cassandra. I forgot to do that thing where it says if you want to be taken seriously as a woman and also thought of as kind, you have to stand with your arms akimbo for 10 minutes before you talk. I forgot to do that. Could you raise your hand if you know someone who's been pregnant? Okay, look around the room. Now, keep your hands up. Look around the room. Okay, so I think this is a cognitive science thing. We all know that pregnancy only lasts nine months. 16% of people with uteruses don't ever get pregnant or at least don't get pregnant and give birth. I'm one of them. But somehow we don't include pregnant women from the beginning of any policy that we create that is related to this. But when we do housing first, does housing first incorporate pregnant women that start out as one person and end up as two? Does it really think about family and parenting in that housing? Is it family housing? If we're talking about safe injection rooms, does the first iteration of that argument include people who might be pregnant and need those places? And I think not. Just all of you, it's all of us. I think there's something about the way in which we think of pregnancy as a one-off, as something that's sort of like a minority, an issue that'll come up later, or worse, it's the third rail issue we can't touch. But of course, you can't make the trains run without a third rail. That's full of electricity in life. And yesterday we had the beautiful speech about how the drug war is about white supremacy and can't get resolved until we address racism. And Michelle Alexander pointed out what a lot of people are feeling, that especially around this opioid epidemic, we got nicer as folks got whiter. Absolutely true. And much more empathy when it was white folk. Absolutely true. But there is a group that's left out of that empathy and that's left out of that niceness that is pregnant people, white and black and rural and urban. And they are the exception. When the whole opioid epidemic, I keep looking, so Professor Patricia Ochin is going to be looking at this, when the opioid became the newest epidemic, there was an interview, and it was white, or she scanned as white, April, and they have her on the screen and guided by her doctor. April did what they thought was best. She stayed on methadone for her entire pregnancy. The result, the baby was born dependent on drugs. What did it feel like to know that the use of methadone had caused so much suffering? And April says, oh, I can't explain it. I mean, it killed me. I mean, and then she breaks down crying. So we keep leaving out people with the capacity for pregnancy. We keep leaving them out. If they were fully included and if the people with, the primary responsibility for childcare were included, we would be spending as much time on dismantling the child welfare system as we need to spend on decriminalization and dismantling the prison industrial complex. And the main thing I want to say that needs to change is a social, economic, and political construction that treats women as property. At no matter what age they are, everything that we're talking about, and it's not exclusive to the United States, this is a global problem. No matter where you are in the world, women are disproportionately subjected to violence, partner violence, state violence, all kinds of violence because they're perceived as not whole people, independent people, but as property of their husbands, their fathers, the state, the system. Sometimes even prisoners of their own universes because when you're pregnant, they care more about the baby inside of you than they do about the woman who's carrying it. So for me, we really have to change the way in which women are conceived of in society as second-class citizens, as someone else's property, as people who do not have complete, total independent agency. I would like to say a few words, but first I would like you to listen to this. Where do you think this is going on? Anybody has an idea? Syria? A place where war is going on? No, this is in Rio. In a favela in Rio, in a favela, a slum area in Rio, where women are trying to protect their children from the bullets coming from the police. So today, as in many Latin American countries, women are in the center stage of a fight for their rights, for the rights of their children in poor areas, and Rio is a terrible and dramatic example of this. Last year, the police killed in Rio, only in Rio alone, 925 people. In the whole country, the police killed more than 3,000 people. So what we are working with now is trying to bring this fight of these women for their rights, for the rights of their children to the center stage in the debate. So we are working with young people from different favelas, some of them are here, and they are the ones that are going to work with these mothers. They are learning about what the war on drugs is about. So they are learning that the war on drugs is on them. So this, we are working with 15 young men and women from different favelas in Rio, and I think they will be the ones making this bridge, talking to these women and helping these women realize that no, it's not right for the police to go into the favelas and kill their children. No, it's not right that because a few of these young men in the favelas are drug dealers, the police can enter the favelas with violence and kill people every single day. So I think what we need to do in Rio and in many cities where poverty is being confronted every day with police violence, there's a lot of work to do and we're trying to give voice to these women, women who will certainly be at the center stage of this fight against this inhumane and absolutely unjust drug policy. So, thank you. So based on your answers, what I'm hearing is conversations about white supremacy, I'm hearing conversations about censoring pregnant women, I'm hearing conversations about censoring the most marginalized, I'm hearing conversations about opportunity and I think what I'm trying to pull out is where does white supremacy start, where does patriarchy pick up, where does capitalism come into it and how does that affect, how does that come through a globalization lens? So if we're talking about changing culture and we're figuring out how can we honor women, what are the different lenses that we need to incorporate in the way that we open up this conversation because Lynn, you talked about pregnant people and Deb, you talked about the fact that women are considered property no matter where you live and you played a tape of a very real experience of women and real. Susan, you talk about making sure and being clear about women who are formerly incarcerated have an opportunity to show up and to lead and to be developed which is the same kind of opportunity that Eunice talked about, about creating opportunity for women. But Elle, even within the conversation around women, how is it even in this current conversation right now that we're missing the mark on where all these different issues are threaded through? I love these questions. Even on the paper? That's why I love, because I've been sneaking looking at the paper. Now I told y'all it was early. All of those were really great examples. But one of the issues is that we are responding after. We are responding after a woman gets pregnant. We are responding after the police shoot us. We are not responding before. So we're not responding to the conditions that are already informed before there's any opportunity to take a life, before the infant mortality rate has any opportunity to increase amongst black women in this country. So there are conditions that are already designated to communities of people, to groups of people. And these conditions have plagued this country globally for centuries. So for me, that is why I said the conversation in terms of what needs to shift and change must start with white supremacy. And it's not just the foundation of what your understanding of white supremacy is, but how other people are experiencing white supremacy. And so we've seen movements that have been started by people fed up with the police murdering people in their streets. It wasn't started because you saw those people responding. They were responding directly to something that they were experiencing every single day. So once we actually get to the very root of what exists before any of these other things transpire, then we'll really get to the peace that must take place before any life is created. And that really, for me, is the action piece. What exists before I even consider that I might have sex with someone and have a baby, or what exists for me before I ever become addicted to a drug, or before I ever become incarcerated. I spent a great weekend in jail, and it was not because I was a great protester, it was because I was black, and I was trans, and I was a woman, and I had no way of defending myself. And so the only way to assess how to deal with me, it was to put me in a jail. And it was those conditions that really informed for me how I came into the understanding that white supremacy really, really is the root of all of the troubles that I've seen and the troubles of the people that I come from. So Chloe, I'm getting to you right now because how do you fund the condition of being a woman? If the way that the philanthropic setup is based on how you are experiencing things. We fund people that are hungry. We fund people that are coming out of incarceration. We fund people that want to learn how to read. We fund people that are not housed. But what Ella is saying is that before we even react to the things that happen to us, there is a condition of being a woman. And starting from that precipice, how does philanthropy move in a space that is reactive as opposed to what Ella is saying is that foundationally we have to create the soil from which we can grow healthy human beings in this society. Okay, thanks for that question. Chloe Coburn is a logitee. I work at a foundation called Open Philanthropy based in San Francisco. I'm from Brooklyn. Thank you, my new neighbor, Asha. So I'm trying to pull together a bunch of thoughts and I'll say some things that are like me trying to be, you know, approach the aura of Deb over here but as like a student, a student. So the thought that was coming to me earlier in this conversation is that, and I will get to your question, is that white supremacy is power through separation. And I think this speaks to what you're talking about in terms of property, capitalism, extraction, zero sum. And white supremacy says you're important to the extent that you separate yourself and like get access to this power and leave other people behind. And that can impact a whole spectrum of people from white people, dare I say white women, biggest problem in America up here. All the way through. So I'm thinking about if white supremacy is power through separation, then as a woman I think, well, you know, I want to build power through connection. And as a funder, I want to think carefully about the ways in which white supremacy has constructed the power relations between funders and grantees and structures that relationship of access to voice and essential resources and makes us gatekeepers. Even women who are in philanthropy, people of color in philanthropy get encouraged to separate themselves from the field and have access to that power, maybe to help those that they came from, but they're supposed to be separate instead of being connected. I've been told many times, you're overexposed, you're making yourself too vulnerable. So I'm going to start with my fellow advocates. And that goes against the grain of what we're supposed to be doing. So I'll bring in one more thing and then get to your question, which is that so Danielle Sared was telling me recently about a conversation she had with Lorenzo Jones, who many of you know, about how do we think about the question of white people who are incarcerated? Like how do we relate to that when it's so critical to center racial justice and the extreme incarceration and criminalization of black people and other people of color in this country? And Lorenzo said reportedly, and I apologize to him if I'm mangling his words, which is that the obligation of white people who are incarcerated is to fight for what's yours and others as well. And that to me is that sort of spirit of connection which is like you're bringing others along. Instead of getting access to power by jettisoning your people and coming to hang out with power and some semblance of liberty and safety from oppression that you're bringing others along which can feel risky but can also I think be quite powerful. So to your question of how to fund the condition of being a woman, I think I don't actually know the answer to that question. I don't think I've done a good job of thinking hard about this. I don't think certainly in the criminal justice philanthropy space that I'm thinking about we're not like centering women. It's a very disparate field. We were just having a conversation about this before. But I think that the principles that I am trying struggling towards around power through connection rather than through separation is something that I am trying to infuse into my work. I should not just say my work, our work. Michelle, are you here? Yes. Michelle Crencel is my amazing colleague at Open Philanthropy. She's speaking on a panel this afternoon and she's awesome. Part of what we are trying to do in our work is to bring that ethic and those values of connection and bringing everyone along together. I hope that that would set a foundation for good funding for women's oriented philanthropy as we move forward. Susan, I'm sure you have opinions about that, right? Because I'm thinking about advocates and thinking because as advocates we get in the room and we go to the bar and we're like, they should fund this. They should do that. This is how I would do it if I was a funder and then they become a funder and it's actually harder than you think it would be. But what I want to ask you... Okay, girl. Let me stay grounded here. So I feel like my work or I know my work is urgent. Women are the fastest growing segment of the prison industrial complex. I started a new way of life out of a minimum wage job changing diapers for old people getting their medications reduced washing their clothes and grocery shopping for them. Because nobody cared that we were being thrown back into the streets after being tortured in prisons. So that's how I started a new way of life and I never even thought I would ever need other resources besides the resources that our little community could come up with. That was very little. But it's grown. And I started a new way of life 20 years ago and we have a little budget and we have a legal department now and an organizing department and a policy department and a distribution center about 25, 30 of us work around the organization in South LA and we have five houses in the LA area and have helped over 1,000 women come out of prison and about 300 children have been able to get back with their moms and their moms are happy and the kids are happy and I'm happy and we started all of us with services for prisoners with children but we're formerly incarcerated people. You know what I'm saying? We're kind of not on the table but kind of down here. Watch these white male lead organization that has showed up in the last three years and they got multi-million dollar budgets from philanthropists and we've been here 20 years and we, you know, ride Peter to pay Paul and we struggle to grow yet we still grow because as women, you know, we can make a dollar holla. You understand what I'm saying? You know, we know how to get the coupon and take it wherever it needs to go to get to put the meal on the table whatever that might be but I look and I'm like, damn! They just, they just showed up they just showed up year before last and they got, they got 40 employees did you look at they 9.9? Like what the hell? So, you know, and this is coming from philanthropy. Okay, so you pat me on my back stop patting me on my back and stuff my pocket. So, one last thing I have a track record of getting it done. You know, it ain't no risk here you can bet on us getting it done we women have always gotten it done and I could do more if I had a little more. You don't got no more though. You taking my mic? I love. I just want to say before you start Debra and then Julita I see you on the side is that even in this moment even though everyone here knows as Lindsay said that women have been shaping the movement and the work every civil, every rights movement has been shaped by women thought we don't trust women leadership we never trust black women leadership some of y'all not clapping because you didn't hear me we don't trust women and we damn sure don't trust black women some of y'all look scared some of y'all might not know where this sentence will end but some of you look scared during Michelle Alexander's talk too that's right and this is what it means in action what we're talking about here is that sometimes we don't know how to get the answer because black women are walking the walk but we have to figure out what it is that they have because we're more likely to trust a man to make decisions that women have already decided would not work and we're confused as to why we're in the same spot so people y'all just really need to grab your seats and just like gut on this ride with us like seriously because we're here no we're here to deliver some stuff to you so thank you Cassandra because I want to take us all the way back to the beginnings of drug prohibition and remember how they justified this shit to begin with they justified it that they were doing it to protect women which women? white women let's say that again the first drug laws were passed against actually Asians the very first drug laws were passed in San Francisco which was not always a liberal paradise alright and they were directed specifically at the Chinese population and the specter was these Chinamen alluring these white women into the opium dens and corrupting them and then 10 years later it was these black men alluring white women with cocaine and corrupting them and then later on it's the Mexicans who alluring white women with marijuana and corrupting them and it makes you wonder is there something special about white women that makes them easily corruptible last year they delivered us Trump and so I realized what they were afraid of your mic is off Lebra your mic is off saying that this is a system I really want us to I'm being joking but I'm serious about it though because all throughout this country's history women and women's bodies have been used as the justification for passing progressive criminal justice policies and then those same policies are turned on those women it's not like they've protected us they haven't protected white women because they're dying now of drug overdoses just like white men they didn't protect black women or brown women but the idea of it there's a reason why Donald Trump came down the escalator calling Mexicans drug dealers and rapists because that's a formula that still works so let's just call that let's see that and let's like actually bury that are you awake now? alright she let us like war it's quite difficult to say anything after Debra Small Debra Small went to Brazil last year and I mean you know she just became a star so everybody just loves her in Brazil but I wanted to relate to something Susan Burton said you know this is an issue which is a central issue in Brazil today women in prison of those who are incarcerated in Brazil today 35% are in for drugs 67% of the women are in for drugs so 35% of the men and 67% of the women and we know very well who these women are so they are the ones dealing drugs you know in the lowest stages of this drug so called drug organization so they are the ones who are caught for very small amounts of drugs those are the women that sometimes are in the poor areas taking care of kids that are the children of people who are involved in the drug business and this basically this 67% of women who are in prison today these are women who are the leading figure in their families so they are the ones that support their families so they have no husbands they have nobody to visit them I know Susan this is the same thing in the US so women go to prison nobody goes visit them sometimes the husbands are embarrassed to go to prison because they have to be submitted to all those humiliating experience of going into a prison so many women are abandoned you go to the males prison and you have you see those long lines of women coming with bags with everything for them and so this is an issue that all of us should be concerned because everywhere in the world the numbers of women in prison are going much faster than the numbers of men in prison for drugs so I think that all of us that work in this area this should be a central concern how are we going to support this women which are really in the structure of the drug trade in each and every country so they are the ones they are bearing the burden of going to prison for being sometimes with what they are doing is actually not big in the local structure of drug dealing getting to prison for various reasons this is the same in the United States and we could go on discussing why this is growing so fast and did you want to I just wanted to offer Deborah thank you so much I just thank you so much for providing us all with some clarity this morning I said I was asleep but I said you know the shit that wakes me the fuck up so I'm clear I'm clear I just wanted to offer that what is also really essential and really important to consider in this conversation or in this question around philanthropy specifically is the stain there is a great stain of America's guilt that moves throughout philanthropic and so in those spaces you have to consider who has access to informing who has resources and where those people come from and if you have spent your life being a part of solutions then you know would exist in these spaces when I left the Franklin County jail in Columbus Ohio I left with no shoes on I left with no shoes on and no idea that there was some huge big old movement that awaited me I had no idea that people were funding people to end things that I had experienced that was not my reality and that is not the reality of the people that I came from so I think what's really really important to consider is who is literally fighting for their humanity who's fighting for their right to actually be acknowledged as a woman in this country and abroad trans women are not only being murdered but we are literally being pushed out and kicked out of the movements that we informed that created their funding we are literally being removed and kicked out of the spaces we've informed that have supported you all coming into great faith about America's great sense so I just think it is really really important that while we have the ears of philanthropy because I'm sure you all are present hello that we understand the issues that our communities are facing so when we are screaming we want the police to be abolished it is not because we are hateful or we hate white people it's because the police are literally killing us all of us all of us but specifically black people and we've seen this play out with the murder of Sandra Bland we've seen this play out with the defense and then the murder of Korean games so one of the things that philanthropy has to do is to stop pretending as if what we are experiencing is something that they can replace with a policy or a women's march because you funded a women's march and Charlene Alliles was murdered so you must have some context and also some good faith not only in black women's leadership but in the very things that have created things that have responded to black women's leadership and the reality of black women's leadership is it's not going anywhere as long as you keep killing us we're gonna keep baby listen so I just wanted to offer that to you all to understand that we have always created the opportunities to resolve what you all have not done is created the opportunities to enter and sustain and that is something that has to change I just feel like I'm just gonna turn my questions over because that's not what's working right now with this space Soyoonesis and Land I'm gonna come to you and Chloe I'm gonna come back to you so just so you know you're in the queue this conversation that we're having right now is about more than reshaping the field because I think when we use the word reshape it erases the work that's already been done by women so this conversation we have right now by highlighting and elevating the work that is done by women in various rights movements is multi-layered and I think going back to Lindsay's introduction in the framing she talked about what it means to bring your full self into this work and as a woman I think there are so many things that are overlooked and underappreciated about what it takes for a woman to be in struggle to build movements to sustain movements and as a young drug policy reformer that is a woman what are the things that are underappreciated about your role what are the things that the people that manage you don't always recognize or acknowledge when you're going to the legislature when you're lobbying when you're negotiating your humanity for what amendments or policies that are supposed to inadequately address the condition of your womaness what does that look like in a field that has been I don't want to say predominantly but has been marketed as white, male, lead what does that look like for you so someone that really wants that doing this work you have to think like an advocate and not like an activist in our policy realm and I really sat and thought I was like how do I think differently there's no other way that I can think but when I really thought about it it was the experience of being a woman and the way that we feel the way that we take information the way that we think about others it was looked as a negative and it was kind of given maybe you shouldn't think that way and Lindsay mentioned it in the introduction that's the kind of shit that really helps us move a lot of good policy it helps us make it so well no these amendments are not acceptable but I think that the way of thinking that selflessness selflessness is something that's always really put down in these spaces like I'll go to like lobbying meetings for example or like a lot of these political meetings and it's like mostly white men in suits and being a woman and not having given certain trainings because well you're still young or maybe this is not the right type of work for you that has really kept me from learning a lot of things that I've had to force myself to learn because I wasn't given that opportunity because maybe I wasn't the right person for the role because of how I think about the work and so I think when we go into these spaces we're often like not even given a chance to speak up or like we're not even like our positions are not taken seriously and or I've seen where you come up with something it's kind of dropped off in the meeting and then someone else brings it up but because it was a man to bring it up I was like oh shit that's amazing I was like what happened to me more than once and I swear and honestly it's because I'm a woman and I'm a young woman and I'm a woman of color and it's like maybe your experiences aren't not really benefiting this political meeting that we're having and that's bullshit because it's because I have these experiences because I am a woman of color, a young woman I can speak to more of a lens that's just generally just a single lens which comes from the white male dominated work that we do silent I'm going to ask you this question and I hope you give me some grace and you take it where you want to in keeping with this theme of the qualities of women that are seen as weaknesses when we think about the realm of the movement and we think about the realm of this work what are the false distinctions that are made about women what are the false distinctions and also what are the things that our movement is not responsive to when women are pregnant you're asking what are they not responsive to I realize from what I said before a couple of things you may not know so let me just say that women there's a law in Wisconsin that was passed in the guys of addressing the so-called crack baby myth that gave the state of Wisconsin the power to take any woman into custody from the moment she's carrying a fertilized egg if they, if she lacks habitually lacks self-control in the use of an alcoholic beverage or controlled substance to a severe degree exhibited to a severe degree to the extent that there's a substantial risk to the physical health of the unborn child and so forth and what that means is women who've gone in for help who are not using drugs or who admitted to using drugs in the past find that the next thing they know they're out of hearing where their fertilized egg or embryo has a lawyer and she does not and she is ordered into either treatment or jail or a mental hospital and that law's been in place for 20 years and even though we have with the help of the drug policy alliance the argument that this government is using to defend that law is if you don't keep that law in place how can we control those pregnant women and this fallacy that is a true across movements that somehow no woman no pregnant person can guarantee the outcome of her pregnancy and one of the biggest concerns right now is that prenatal care really hasn't addressed the maternal mortality and infant mortality rate in this country which is so overwhelmingly black and women they said if you give us control over the women we will be able to have healthy babies which is the biggest lie ever so that's one place in Alabama they passed a law called the chemical endangerment of a child law that was presumably to punish adults who took children to dangerous places like meth labs and prosecutors argued that pregnant women's wombs are dangerous places and if they use any controlled substance under the chemical endangerment of a child law and this Alabama supreme court said you're right in Alabama a child is a fertilized egg and any controlled substance even one prescribed to the pregnant woman hundreds, 500 women have been arrested there most of them rural white women now that follows the history of targeting black women and using the crack baby myth and using the legacy of slavery in black motherhood to get that idea across but I guess this may not be the direct answer but this is the opportunity the drug war is laying the foundation for the criminalizing abortion and I don't mean punishing doctors I mean locking up the women we are already locking up women who've given birth to healthy babies and use the drug war as an excuse to do that the place where there's the brown and black women in the country disproportionately and white women have their children in the child welfare system which is a mechanism of surveillance it is like being on probation and parole without ever having been tried or convicted of a crime and without the right to counsel at most stages of your proceedings so one of the things we have to do is recognize the connections that when they arrested Jenny McCormick in Idaho she got a hold of a drug called myzoprostal so by the way none of the criminalized drugs are good at ending a pregnancy and that's pretty much why so few pregnant women actually use any criminalized drugs because if they were good at ending pregnancy and 85% of the counties where they don't have abortion facilities they'd be using them the drugs that can safely end a pregnancy are myzoprostal and mithopristone when Jenny McCormick used that drug to end her pregnancy she was safely at home she was arrested and how did the AG defend doing that they said well I have to be able to arrest women to protect their health where did we hear that before what is the justification for the war on drugs that's a war on people we're gonna protect your health by locking you up that does not stay within the confines of the drug war the drug policy movement and in Georgia when a woman got a hold of myzoprostal and it was found out that she used that drug to end her pregnancy she was first arrested for malice murder and when the prosecutor felt he had to drop that because of the work that we had done national advocates for pregnant women they then charged her with possession of a dangerous drug what was that drug myzoprostal so what we have to do in order to protect everyone I don't know about centering because sometimes that sounds to me like you have to switch all your priorities and make them the focus of consequences for everyone including people who get pregnant and give birth whether it's in prisons and they are still being shackled where it is where they cannot get adequate prenatal care where hospitals are closing and midwives are not coming in and replacing them so I think as movements one of my places of hope is that that is becoming clear and clear that the right to abortion is going to be upended by the war on drugs it's going to take white women recognizing that and it's going to take working on white supremacy to end the attack on abortion just like the war on drugs and that will be the beginning of really changing this thank you we don't have that much time left and I want to give all of you the chance to answer this question and we're going to start from my right that's my trick yes still can't tell what would what will because now the harm reduction coalition is led by a woman drug policy alliance is now led by a woman what will our drug policy movement look like when we trust women leadership we'll move forward much quickly I think that you know I would like to look at this issue from a perspective a historical perspective so what have we been able to achieve and looking back at what we have been able to achieve it's easy to know that you know some of these positions that were occupied by we can compare in many ways in many countries positions that were occupied by women and positions that were occupied by men and I can see this in Brazil as far as the drug policy work more and more women are leading this work in Brazil in various ways not only in angels not only in stronger organizations but I think that women are beginning to lead the way in there where they live in their favelas in the slum areas in the different cities because these are the ones that are filling the burden of what the war on drugs has made the results of the war on drugs in these poor areas so I think that more and more this is what I see in Brazil more and more women refusing to admit that you know police violence is justified because there is a war on drugs going on so I see this more and more so there are more mothers that don't want to accept that the police is treating their children differently because they are dealing drugs we just had one case I just want to mention this case to finalize we just had one case last week in Rio a woman was in the streets and the police came and the police was beating two of her children two of her sons because they were in the streets and the police supposed that these kids were dealing drugs so the police came and violently was violently beating these two boys so the mother just some time ago mothers would accept that so they were doing something wrong so they would accept they are not accepting anymore so this mother last week in Rio she refused to accept that the police was beating her two kids so she fought for their two kids she confronted the police and you know what happened the police with the gun so the police didn't want to kill her but the police at that moment so the police with the gun the police hit the woman's hand with the gun and she died the following day in the hospital and she was fighting for her two kids she was showing there that poor black women are not going to accept police violence anymore they are not going to accept police violence in the name of the war and drugs so Cassandra I think that we already have examples of what that looks like already so I just want to be clear that things aren't really going to change until we put women of color and trans women of color in those leadership positions when that happens there's going to be so many lens that we can look at all the work that we do all the different communities that exist but we've seen we've seen already when it's just you know when it's not a woman of color or when it's not a trans woman of color leading an organization then people get left behind so until we change that then we're not going to see dramatic changes and we really need to put that forward and when those positions open up uplift those people I think when women get fully into the leadership of this movement what we will see from the ground up is the transformation of communities to become healthy and vibrant and thriving communities and you know we all you know women we're out there and we're working and we're trying to bring about what change possible through our own individual work and I believe if we get we can become more collective and supportive creating that bridge and that synergy and that connection between one another both locally and nationally and I just want to say that a new way of life has been shown as a successful model and what's happening later this month is a replication model that will be that will be opening up in New York City and it's the first of the replication model that will that will provide a safe space a safe house for women as they transition out of incarceration back to the community this is done for formerly incarcerated women by formerly incarcerated women and one other thing I just want to do a quick shout out too about is wellspring advisors and the women's foundation has created 10,000 copies of my book Becoming Miss Burton and next year I'll be going on a tour into prisons because I believe that that book is an important book for incarcerated women to be able to read and this is just the things that we do as women to help promote the healing that needs to happen because of the war on drugs through the war on drugs I operate from one question always when I approach my work and that question is can God depend on you and I ask that question in this space not because I want you to declare your love for God I believe religion is a personal experience and because I'm sharing my voice that is a personal experience for me but I believe that the people are also God and so I believe that if you have a connection to the people and you have a connection to women then you have a connection to the opportunity to have a revolution and that is what is required not only for the drug movement but every movement I think there is a lot of movements that individualize themselves without actualizing a bigger picture for those who are impacted by all of the movement's work so if you are able to have a visuality in your two minutes let me hurry up but yeah if you are able to do that I think that you can really move into a space of understanding what revolution requires and what is required of you to answer that one question that I posed at the beginning so not being a myself an ally of the drug policy movement so it is hard for me to propose a vision of what we will look like when we trust women leadership but I can say just from my own position of someone who is a very proud supporter funder of your work Cassandra and your work Asha I think that should be the beginning and as you said this work is already happening but I am really excited about the momentum that you are creating and what you are building here and I will say that just a little bit about what I think has allowed me to do that make that grant I think as I said before the higher up you go in philanthropy the more money you control you have all these movement friendly low dollar funders who are super down but the higher dollars the people command or the bigger foundations the less you are supposed to fund movement work the more afraid people are to fail and when you are afraid to fail to serve your sort of special wisdom that tends to drive people to fund men or to fund white men to fund safer more reliable things so what is exciting to me about being in Silicon Valley is the Silicon Valley funder is that they are risk tolerant by values they want to fund risk now as we know in Silicon Valley there is plenty of white male power that willingness to fund risky projects women of color lead for example necessarily because the people they are willing to take a risk on are white men but I am not from there I am the daughter of a trail blazing journalist woman really strong force in my life Leslie Coburn and I am a lefty and I am from the east coast and like I hang out with you guys so when I go out there my politics and values plus we are open to risk means that we can open the door to more resources going to exactly what you all are talking about and I hear you out so what will the drug policy look like when we trust women leadership that is for you all to tell me but I hope to channel a lot more resources in that direction Asha's a minute I am a white Jewish lesbian mother of twins I have never been pregnant I what I want to say is I have had the privilege and I think of it as a privilege for most of my life working only for women now that is white women and what I can tell you is there is nothing about having ovaries that guarantees that we are better administrators leaders or more in touch with our feelings what I can say is that those women who are brilliant and amazing should have that chance for leadership and I have benefited from every one of them from Asha and Deborah Billy Avery, Lily Allen and it is the individuals who because of their ovaries because of their skin color have not had the opportunities but at the same time just wanting to say that every one of us has an obligation to figure out how we treat each other no matter what equipment we come with So I agree with Lynn I don't think that there is anything magical about having women as leaders that guarantees that you are going to have a better result look at the American feminist movement that was led by leaders and had no problem kicking women of color and pour women to the curb when it came to dealing with abortion and contraception so for me that's not it now I am encouraged and extremely hopeful about Monique and Maria you know what I'm saying so I don't trust women I trust them and what I hope and pray is that the values that they have that I've heard them articulate in terms of their vision for their organizations and for their movement is able to be realized but I know that it will only happen with the support and cooperation of all of us because leaders can't do anything if they don't have people supporting them Thank you for your patience and I want to say again thank you to our speakers if we can give them one more round of applause