WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.160 --> 00:00:06.840 I was so shaken by my conclusion that mass incarceration 2 00:00:07.360 --> 00:00:12.479 is mass elimination. It is, yes, a project extracting profit 3 00:00:12.520 --> 00:00:15.880 from our bodies. It is also a technique and a 4 00:00:15.960 --> 00:00:21.360 tactic of banishing unwanted communities. That shook me to my 5 00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:26.640 core and it required that I in a deep way 6 00:00:27.440 --> 00:00:32.839 change how I work and become mostly directly accountable to 7 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:35.479 the community based organizations who are doing the work to 8 00:00:36.040 --> 00:00:37.960 end the age of mass incarceration. 9 00:00:42.240 --> 00:00:45.000 From futuro media, it's let you know us say, I'm 10 00:00:45.040 --> 00:00:50.560 Marie Inojosa. Today a conversation with Kelly Leitel Hernandez, whose 11 00:00:50.600 --> 00:00:55.040 work documenting mass incarceration can help us to imagine a 12 00:00:55.160 --> 00:01:02.200 future beyond it. Kelly Idl Hernandez is a leading scholar 13 00:01:02.320 --> 00:01:07.080 on race, immigration, and mass incarceration. Last year, she was 14 00:01:07.160 --> 00:01:12.400 named a MacArthur Foundation Genius Awardee for her project Million 15 00:01:12.600 --> 00:01:16.679 Dollar Hoods, which maps and documents the fiscal and human 16 00:01:16.800 --> 00:01:20.800 costs of mass incarceration in the city of Los Angeles. 17 00:01:21.400 --> 00:01:25.160 Based at UCLA, the research at Million Dollar Hoods shows 18 00:01:25.160 --> 00:01:28.600 that the Los Angeles government is spending millions of dollars 19 00:01:28.640 --> 00:01:34.399 to incarcerate people in predominantly black and Brown neighborhoods with 20 00:01:34.520 --> 00:01:38.080 renewed calls to defund the police. Kelly argues the money 21 00:01:38.160 --> 00:01:43.160 used for incarceration might be better spent elsewhere, and then 22 00:01:43.240 --> 00:01:46.240 her team takes it one step further and uses the 23 00:01:46.360 --> 00:01:55.600 LAPD's own data to create what they call equations for liberation. Kelly, 24 00:01:55.880 --> 00:01:58.720 I want to welcome you to Latino, USA and really 25 00:01:58.760 --> 00:02:00.440 just say thank you for all of the work that 26 00:02:00.480 --> 00:02:00.760 you do. 27 00:02:01.880 --> 00:02:02.800 Thank you for having me on. 28 00:02:02.920 --> 00:02:06.040 I'm a big fan of your work. So let's go 29 00:02:06.440 --> 00:02:09.000 to the very beginning. You grew up on the border 30 00:02:09.200 --> 00:02:11.960 in San Diego. I'm actually wondering if you can tell 31 00:02:12.040 --> 00:02:14.600 us a little bit about some of the formative experiences 32 00:02:15.080 --> 00:02:18.920 that you started asking when you were little that basically 33 00:02:19.040 --> 00:02:21.280 ended up driving some of your research today. 34 00:02:21.840 --> 00:02:25.000 When I was growing up in the nineteen eighties, the 35 00:02:25.040 --> 00:02:29.160 border was such a highly policed space. The war on 36 00:02:29.240 --> 00:02:32.720 immigrants was at a high pitch. The border patrol was 37 00:02:32.919 --> 00:02:36.640 snatching people away off of buses and off of transit lines, 38 00:02:36.680 --> 00:02:37.600 off of the street. 39 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:40.640 And you remember seeing this, Kelly, like, how old were you? 40 00:02:40.680 --> 00:02:43.000 Where do you remember? Was it news reports, was it 41 00:02:43.080 --> 00:02:44.600 stories you were hearing in school? 42 00:02:44.960 --> 00:02:47.800 It was all of the above. You were constantly hearing 43 00:02:47.919 --> 00:02:51.919 about people being taken away. There were also friends who 44 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:55.600 lost family members to deportation. So I don't come from 45 00:02:55.600 --> 00:02:58.399 an immigrant family. It was not a threat that came 46 00:02:58.440 --> 00:03:01.960 to my home and even and so that kind of 47 00:03:02.360 --> 00:03:06.640 tyranny of terror of people being snatched away felt very 48 00:03:06.760 --> 00:03:10.240 visceral to me as a child. And so it was 49 00:03:10.320 --> 00:03:14.880 those formative experiences of feeling that community members could be 50 00:03:14.919 --> 00:03:18.239 taken at any time, and asking my father when I 51 00:03:18.320 --> 00:03:20.560 was very young in this I remember very clearly saying, 52 00:03:20.560 --> 00:03:24.600 you know, Dan, why do they get to take people away? 53 00:03:25.840 --> 00:03:27.560 And he just told me one thing, And it was 54 00:03:27.600 --> 00:03:29.280 more in the tone of what he said than the 55 00:03:29.320 --> 00:03:33.640 words of what he said. He said, because they think 56 00:03:33.960 --> 00:03:38.200 they're illegal. And there was the tone where he clearly 57 00:03:38.680 --> 00:03:43.400 despised the illegalization of human beings, and he was telling me, 58 00:03:43.440 --> 00:03:47.400 as a young child, that what is happening here is wrong. 59 00:03:48.400 --> 00:03:51.320 So the first history I wrote was a history of 60 00:03:51.360 --> 00:03:54.560 the US Border Patrol, and that became my first book. Midram. 61 00:03:55.400 --> 00:03:58.960 So you, Kelly, you end up, in fact writing a 62 00:03:58.960 --> 00:04:02.160 lot about the history not only of the border patrol, 63 00:04:02.440 --> 00:04:06.880 but also about the history of different kinds of human caging. 64 00:04:07.640 --> 00:04:13.840 And you end up making this link about immigration, mass detention, 65 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:19.640 and mass incarceration, and that these things are intimately linked. 66 00:04:19.640 --> 00:04:21.960 And I'm wondering if you can take me to that point, 67 00:04:22.320 --> 00:04:25.200 were you as a young woman or as an academic, 68 00:04:25.240 --> 00:04:29.039 where you're just like, oh my god, I see the 69 00:04:29.080 --> 00:04:30.240 connection is right there. 70 00:04:30.640 --> 00:04:32.800 Well, I gotta say, I think I always knew it 71 00:04:32.880 --> 00:04:35.320 from the time I was a child. So I was 72 00:04:35.360 --> 00:04:37.880 growing up as a black girl in the borderlands at 73 00:04:37.920 --> 00:04:40.080 the time that the war on drugs was hitting its 74 00:04:40.120 --> 00:04:44.280 high pitch, and so I'm witnessing in my own community 75 00:04:44.360 --> 00:04:47.640 what is happening, especially black youth, in terms of us 76 00:04:47.680 --> 00:04:50.760 being snatched away on drug charges and on other forms 77 00:04:50.800 --> 00:04:53.680 of policing. And one of the things that was very 78 00:04:53.720 --> 00:04:57.520 curious to me was how in San Diego you had 79 00:04:57.560 --> 00:05:00.360 the boys in green and the boys in blue, and 80 00:05:00.480 --> 00:05:02.680 the boys in green policed the brown folks and the 81 00:05:02.680 --> 00:05:04.640 boys in blue policed the black folks. 82 00:05:04.880 --> 00:05:07.040 Okay, okay, wait a second, I need to stop you, 83 00:05:07.160 --> 00:05:11.320 because unless you really know the border you grew up there, 84 00:05:11.360 --> 00:05:14.559 then you may not understand that the boys in blue, yes, 85 00:05:14.600 --> 00:05:17.920 that they're the police, but the boys in green are 86 00:05:17.960 --> 00:05:21.599 the border patrols. So what do you remember in terms 87 00:05:21.600 --> 00:05:24.359 of like seeing the boys in blue and the boys 88 00:05:24.360 --> 00:05:26.160 in green when you were going up Kelly. 89 00:05:26.560 --> 00:05:28.880 Well, what I noticed first was that the guys in green, 90 00:05:29.400 --> 00:05:31.760 who had the uniforms and the guns, just like everybody 91 00:05:31.800 --> 00:05:35.159 else and all the authority, weren't coming after us black kids. 92 00:05:36.080 --> 00:05:38.279 And that struck me as curious because it felt like 93 00:05:38.360 --> 00:05:41.279 every other police officer was coming for us, so why 94 00:05:41.320 --> 00:05:43.240 not these guys? And I knew there had to be 95 00:05:43.240 --> 00:05:44.920 some kind of connection. I didn't know what it was. 96 00:05:46.120 --> 00:05:51.240 So as I moved forward through my studies, I first 97 00:05:51.279 --> 00:05:54.640 really focus I dig in deep on trying to understand 98 00:05:55.200 --> 00:05:58.560 what was going on with immigration law enforcement, in particular 99 00:05:58.640 --> 00:06:02.280 why it became so constant, traded, and singularly focused on 100 00:06:02.400 --> 00:06:07.000 at that time Mexican immigrants, now increasingly Central American immigrants 101 00:06:07.040 --> 00:06:09.760 as well. And once I had that under my belt, 102 00:06:10.040 --> 00:06:13.000 and I was then prepared to come and think in 103 00:06:13.080 --> 00:06:19.000 new ways about the rise of mass incarceration. And as 104 00:06:19.040 --> 00:06:22.400 I started to put the pieces the historical episodes together, 105 00:06:23.320 --> 00:06:26.599 it became more and more clear to me that one 106 00:06:26.600 --> 00:06:30.000 of the most important ways to start thinking about mass 107 00:06:30.040 --> 00:06:34.920 incarceration is to first pull apart one of the greatest 108 00:06:34.920 --> 00:06:38.720 mythologies of the so called American story, and that mythology 109 00:06:38.839 --> 00:06:41.920 is that we are a nation of immigrants. I didn't 110 00:06:41.920 --> 00:06:45.120 grow up in a region where we were a community 111 00:06:45.200 --> 00:06:50.080 welcoming immigrants. In right, we were a community that was racializing, terrorizing, policing, 112 00:06:50.200 --> 00:06:53.919 locking up and removing people. And once I started to 113 00:06:53.920 --> 00:06:58.320 pick apart that mythology and I listened to really radical 114 00:06:58.320 --> 00:07:01.760 indigenous scholars and radical black skins who are telling us 115 00:07:01.800 --> 00:07:03.680 that this is not a nation of immigrants, it's a 116 00:07:03.760 --> 00:07:08.240 nation of settlers. That a certain small population is entitled 117 00:07:08.240 --> 00:07:11.480 to land and life, and the rest of us are 118 00:07:11.760 --> 00:07:16.200 here to work and to labor and be removed. Then 119 00:07:16.240 --> 00:07:19.080 I had a conceptual framework to be able to pull 120 00:07:19.120 --> 00:07:24.720 together the stories of immigration control and mass incarceration. That 121 00:07:24.800 --> 00:07:29.200 immigration control is about managing the international flow of non 122 00:07:29.240 --> 00:07:33.680 white workers into and out of this nation of settlers, 123 00:07:34.640 --> 00:07:39.680 and that mass incarceration has grown as a mechanism to 124 00:07:39.800 --> 00:07:43.640 control black emancipation and mobility in life and well being. 125 00:07:44.640 --> 00:07:47.800 We have a shared enemy, the human caging may have 126 00:07:47.920 --> 00:07:53.120 different manifestations, right, It might happen in an immigrant detention center. 127 00:07:53.440 --> 00:07:55.920 It might be called detention, It might be called deportation, 128 00:07:56.080 --> 00:08:01.080 not punishment, and that mass incarceration happened under the rubric 129 00:08:01.400 --> 00:08:05.400 of the criminal justice system, the criminal legal system. But 130 00:08:05.480 --> 00:08:10.360 we are having shared experiences of being surveilled, of being released, 131 00:08:10.840 --> 00:08:16.200 of being interrogated, picked up, locked up, and removed from 132 00:08:16.200 --> 00:08:16.960 our families. 133 00:08:19.320 --> 00:08:24.080 So you're a historian, but you faced a lot of 134 00:08:24.080 --> 00:08:27.800 obstacles when you were gathering material for your book City 135 00:08:27.840 --> 00:08:33.000 of Inmates, which is basically looking at mass incarceration in 136 00:08:33.120 --> 00:08:38.000 Los Angeles. But what ends up happening that you, as 137 00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:41.959 a historian, you can't get the answers to your questions. 138 00:08:41.920 --> 00:08:44.680 In writing City of Inmates is definitely the most difficult 139 00:08:44.720 --> 00:08:48.320 work I've ever done in terms of recovering the archives, 140 00:08:48.360 --> 00:08:51.959 recovering the record of what has been done by whom 141 00:08:52.120 --> 00:08:55.720 and to whom and at what cost. And in that case, 142 00:08:55.800 --> 00:08:57.840 I was telling the history of the US of the 143 00:08:57.920 --> 00:09:03.240 rise of mass incarceration from the Los Angeles Why los Angeles? 144 00:09:03.280 --> 00:09:06.200 Los Angeles is important because it operates the largest jail 145 00:09:06.280 --> 00:09:09.160 system in the United States, which cage is more people 146 00:09:09.200 --> 00:09:12.920 than any other nation on Earth. Los Angeles is also 147 00:09:12.960 --> 00:09:15.400 important because if you want to talk about the diversity 148 00:09:15.600 --> 00:09:20.120 of incarceration of immigrant detention of youth, detention of federal prisons, 149 00:09:20.120 --> 00:09:22.439 of state prisons, of local jails. 150 00:09:22.480 --> 00:09:22.959 And more. 151 00:09:23.679 --> 00:09:26.800 All of that is cited right in Los Angeles County. 152 00:09:27.200 --> 00:09:30.240 So that's why the LA story is really important. But 153 00:09:30.280 --> 00:09:32.040 when I went out to try to find that LA's 154 00:09:32.080 --> 00:09:37.320 story was extraordinarily difficult. Why the two institutions that are 155 00:09:37.360 --> 00:09:41.920 responsible for jailing people here in Los Angeles, the Los 156 00:09:41.960 --> 00:09:46.040 Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff Department, had 157 00:09:46.080 --> 00:09:50.480 both either destroyed or refused access to their historical records. 158 00:09:50.920 --> 00:09:53.120 What I ended up having to do is create this 159 00:09:53.160 --> 00:09:56.720 thing I call the Rebel Archive, And what that was 160 00:09:57.040 --> 00:10:01.240 is following the tracks of the people who fought the 161 00:10:01.320 --> 00:10:04.440 rise of mass incarceration. So the people who broke out 162 00:10:04.440 --> 00:10:09.680 of jail, the people who litigated against their criminalization, the 163 00:10:09.720 --> 00:10:13.479 people who rise up in rebellions such as the wat's uprising. 164 00:10:13.960 --> 00:10:15.880 They could have talked to anybody I could have talked to. 165 00:10:16.480 --> 00:10:17.360 I'm gonna want to talk to me. 166 00:10:17.360 --> 00:10:19.360 Didn't want to beat my bays up. And the only 167 00:10:19.400 --> 00:10:22.480 way the way we can never get anybody at any 168 00:10:22.520 --> 00:10:26.199 time to listen to a right We got enough to 169 00:10:26.240 --> 00:10:29.800 know that person had to file out late at the beginning. 170 00:10:29.960 --> 00:10:33.719 The people who take to the radio waves and advocate 171 00:10:33.760 --> 00:10:37.000 on path of their community, and even against the greatest 172 00:10:37.160 --> 00:10:41.160 of despair, dare to sing love songs to one another. 173 00:10:45.960 --> 00:10:49.000 So all of these are rebel reflections, and I gather 174 00:10:49.120 --> 00:10:52.240 up all of that and I'm able to tell the 175 00:10:52.320 --> 00:10:56.959 story of two centuries of how LA came to build 176 00:10:56.960 --> 00:10:59.679 the largest jail system in the United States. 177 00:11:00.320 --> 00:11:03.040 I want you to talk a little bit about that shift. 178 00:11:03.280 --> 00:11:07.000 A lot of people think of academia and academics as 179 00:11:07.120 --> 00:11:10.280 being removed from the community, and frankly, just looking at 180 00:11:10.320 --> 00:11:15.199 boxes and books and papers, you start off as an academic, 181 00:11:15.480 --> 00:11:18.240 and so when things end up getting difficult for you 182 00:11:18.280 --> 00:11:22.280 in terms of the archival stuff the laped, you go 183 00:11:22.400 --> 00:11:25.000 deep into the community and in fact you begin to 184 00:11:25.240 --> 00:11:30.400 work with community based organizations. And I'm wondering how that 185 00:11:30.559 --> 00:11:31.440 was as a scholar. 186 00:11:31.840 --> 00:11:34.400 I made a pretty radical shift. I took a sabbatical 187 00:11:34.440 --> 00:11:38.880 and I spent a year listening. That's it, just showing 188 00:11:38.960 --> 00:11:44.000 up and listening and learning from community about what are 189 00:11:44.040 --> 00:11:50.320 the major concerns building relationships. And it was in that 190 00:11:50.480 --> 00:11:54.480 year that there was a meeting at the Chukos Justice 191 00:11:54.520 --> 00:11:58.800 Center run by the Youth Justice Coalition, and I believe 192 00:11:58.800 --> 00:12:01.240 it was folks from Disney are now and others. We're 193 00:12:01.280 --> 00:12:06.440 talking about data. We know what's happening to us and 194 00:12:06.480 --> 00:12:08.760 to our families, our loved ones, and our neighbors. We 195 00:12:08.880 --> 00:12:11.800 know when we're getting arrested and what we're getting arrested for. 196 00:12:12.880 --> 00:12:15.880 But when we go to the LAPD in the La 197 00:12:15.960 --> 00:12:19.240 Sharf's department requesting the data, we can't get them to 198 00:12:19.280 --> 00:12:22.360 hand it over. I thought, Okay, well, maybe that's something 199 00:12:22.360 --> 00:12:25.240 I can do to contribute as a scholar. We have 200 00:12:25.320 --> 00:12:29.600 this letterhead of these institutions of higher learning UCLA, right, 201 00:12:30.200 --> 00:12:34.280 maybe we can wield that power in a certain way 202 00:12:34.320 --> 00:12:35.640 to get access to the data. 203 00:12:36.200 --> 00:12:39.280 So you're realizing the importance of having this data, and 204 00:12:39.320 --> 00:12:41.920 you decide that you're going to use your position as 205 00:12:41.960 --> 00:12:46.160 a scholar essentially to intervene. But you intervene in a 206 00:12:46.320 --> 00:12:52.280 pretty unconventional way by deciding to sue the LAPD for 207 00:12:52.400 --> 00:12:53.679 their own records. 208 00:12:53.880 --> 00:12:56.840 Hell yeah, toe the LAPD. So don't tell me, no, 209 00:12:57.440 --> 00:13:00.000 that is the worst thing you can tell me, because 210 00:13:00.080 --> 00:13:03.920 that is going to drive me harder than ever to 211 00:13:04.040 --> 00:13:04.960 get access. 212 00:13:08.760 --> 00:13:13.320 Coming up on Latino USA, Kelly Ldel Hernandez tells us 213 00:13:13.360 --> 00:13:15.599 about her battle in court with the l A p 214 00:13:15.720 --> 00:13:19.280 D and her fight to liberate an archive of data 215 00:13:19.600 --> 00:14:12.280 on mass incarceration. Stay with us, Yes, A, we're back. 216 00:14:13.120 --> 00:14:16.000 Before the break, we had been listening to historian Kelly 217 00:14:16.160 --> 00:14:19.960 Lytel Hernandez. She's one of the nation's leading scholars on 218 00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:25.120 the subjects of race, immigration, and mass incarceration. Although Kelly 219 00:14:25.280 --> 00:14:29.120 was trained as a historian to do archival research, she 220 00:14:29.200 --> 00:14:32.760 faced a critical problem. Most of the records she was 221 00:14:32.800 --> 00:14:36.440 looking for about mass incarceration in Los Angeles had been 222 00:14:36.480 --> 00:14:40.840 destroyed by the local police department itself, and she was 223 00:14:40.880 --> 00:14:45.280 being denied access to existing records. We did reach out 224 00:14:45.320 --> 00:14:48.320 to the LAPD for comment about the lack of access 225 00:14:48.360 --> 00:14:52.800 to historical and existing records, but we didn't get a response. 226 00:14:54.240 --> 00:14:59.840 So back now to my conversation with Kelly Lytel Hernandez. So, Kelly, 227 00:15:00.040 --> 00:15:04.120 you're at this community meeting, it's twenty sixteen, and you're 228 00:15:04.160 --> 00:15:08.280 talking about data and about how the LAPD is refusing 229 00:15:08.360 --> 00:15:12.160 to release that data on who they're locking up. But 230 00:15:12.360 --> 00:15:16.000 as a historian, you know that a record does exist, 231 00:15:16.080 --> 00:15:20.120 and you in fact know the power of something like 232 00:15:20.360 --> 00:15:21.840 that kind of record. 233 00:15:22.200 --> 00:15:26.080 Absolutely, So I was very blessed to be in conversation 234 00:15:26.200 --> 00:15:29.200 with the ACLU of Southern California, and so on my 235 00:15:29.280 --> 00:15:32.800 behalf and the behalf of many others. The ACLU sued 236 00:15:32.840 --> 00:15:36.360 the LAPD and one in a settlement a new era 237 00:15:36.960 --> 00:15:41.040 of data transparency and record transparency. And as part of 238 00:15:41.080 --> 00:15:44.840 that settlement, the ACLU was able to provide me with 239 00:15:44.920 --> 00:15:48.080 access to one hundred and seventy seven boxes of the 240 00:15:48.240 --> 00:15:51.640 LAPD's historical records, and we sat down and we figured 241 00:15:51.640 --> 00:15:54.640 out what we wanted to do with it. We decided 242 00:15:54.640 --> 00:15:57.240 we wanted to map the cost of incarceration here in 243 00:15:57.280 --> 00:16:00.800 Los Angeles. So we developed together this problem called Million 244 00:16:00.840 --> 00:16:01.440 Dollar Hoods. 245 00:16:01.440 --> 00:16:02.160 It does just that. 246 00:16:08.000 --> 00:16:11.240 When you go to our website million dollar Hoods dot org, 247 00:16:11.720 --> 00:16:16.600 what you will enter into is a map of Los Angeles, 248 00:16:17.160 --> 00:16:20.400 and on that map you'll see certain communities that light 249 00:16:20.520 --> 00:16:23.960 up and read. Every one of those communities that lights 250 00:16:24.040 --> 00:16:26.880 up and read is where we're spending more than a 251 00:16:26.920 --> 00:16:30.320 million dollars per year locking up local residents. And so 252 00:16:30.600 --> 00:16:34.360 we used that information to make an argument that we 253 00:16:34.440 --> 00:16:36.800 need to move that money out of policing and incarceration 254 00:16:37.120 --> 00:16:40.680 and into making people well. Because in most of these neighborhoods. 255 00:16:40.720 --> 00:16:45.960 The top two charges are substance related do UIs and 256 00:16:46.000 --> 00:16:49.760 possession of drugs. So we have been making the argument 257 00:16:49.800 --> 00:16:53.120 about shifting resources now for a long time, we were 258 00:16:53.360 --> 00:16:56.280 on the outside banging to sort of get into the 259 00:16:56.280 --> 00:17:00.360 center of the conversation. With the uprising this summer, it 260 00:17:00.400 --> 00:17:05.160 has become one hundred percent clear that shrinking our investments 261 00:17:05.240 --> 00:17:10.359 in policing and incarceervation to shift resources over to health 262 00:17:10.400 --> 00:17:15.720 and well being really is the only option that we have. Love. 263 00:17:19.240 --> 00:17:21.840 The Los Angeles City Council approved a one hundred and 264 00:17:21.880 --> 00:17:25.240 fifty million dollar cut to the Los Angeles Police Department's 265 00:17:25.240 --> 00:17:28.920 budget on July first. Those funds will instead go towards 266 00:17:28.960 --> 00:17:33.480 services like mental health and housing, particularly in underrepresented neighborhoods. 267 00:17:34.080 --> 00:17:37.960 Although many people only see it as far as quote 268 00:17:38.040 --> 00:17:42.400 unquote defund the police, you're actually saying it's a much 269 00:17:42.520 --> 00:17:46.920 larger concept. So what does that look like for you? 270 00:17:47.400 --> 00:17:50.119 And is it feeling closer now? 271 00:17:50.400 --> 00:17:53.040 Yeah? I think this is the essential question. What does 272 00:17:53.119 --> 00:17:56.639 that new system look like? And to me, it looks 273 00:17:56.720 --> 00:18:01.000 like when we as individuals are crisis, or one of 274 00:18:01.080 --> 00:18:04.720 our loved ones is in for example, mental health crisis, 275 00:18:05.080 --> 00:18:07.600 that we have someone who we can call who will 276 00:18:07.640 --> 00:18:10.720 come and support and get them to the services that 277 00:18:10.760 --> 00:18:15.680 they need. It looks like when we are in financial crisis, 278 00:18:15.920 --> 00:18:21.120 and our communities have perpetually, historically lived in a constant 279 00:18:21.240 --> 00:18:25.720 constructed financial crisis, that we're going to address that with housing, 280 00:18:26.000 --> 00:18:31.000 with economic support, with employment, not with caging. Listen. I 281 00:18:31.040 --> 00:18:33.159 also sit on something here in Los Angeles called the 282 00:18:33.160 --> 00:18:36.760 Civil Brand Commission for Institutional Inspections. And what we do 283 00:18:36.840 --> 00:18:39.399 is we go inside the jails and we inspect the 284 00:18:39.440 --> 00:18:42.880 conditions inside. And I can affirm and I can attest 285 00:18:42.920 --> 00:18:47.520 for you that we are filling our facilities with people 286 00:18:47.520 --> 00:18:51.520 who are in crisis, who need support and services, who 287 00:18:51.560 --> 00:18:55.320 don't need tiny little cages and aggressive treatment. 288 00:18:55.800 --> 00:19:02.080 So I'm thinking about these huge institutions. I'm thinking about 289 00:19:02.640 --> 00:19:06.640 mass incarceration. I'm thinking about private policing. I'm thinking about 290 00:19:07.200 --> 00:19:11.639 the massive amounts of money in the detention deportation industrial complex. 291 00:19:12.400 --> 00:19:15.280 And there's a lot of talk right now about abolition. 292 00:19:15.720 --> 00:19:18.920 Let's just use that term abolition. What does it mean 293 00:19:18.960 --> 00:19:21.399 to you and how does it apply to the moment 294 00:19:21.520 --> 00:19:25.080 and the institutions that we're confronting right now? And do 295 00:19:25.119 --> 00:19:28.520 you use the term abolition in regards to these institutions. 296 00:19:29.040 --> 00:19:32.359 Yes, I certainly do. I am an abolitionist, and I 297 00:19:32.480 --> 00:19:37.320 use the term abolition I think historically, and so one 298 00:19:37.359 --> 00:19:41.159 of the ways that scholars and organizers have helped us 299 00:19:41.200 --> 00:19:44.600 to understand our contemporary crisis is to understand how we 300 00:19:44.640 --> 00:19:49.040 got here. First there was enslavement, and then there was 301 00:19:49.119 --> 00:19:53.680 Jim Crow, and now there's the new Jim Crow mass incarceration. 302 00:19:54.640 --> 00:19:57.320 It's that historical trajectory that we have to keep in 303 00:19:57.359 --> 00:20:02.320 mind when we're tackling mass incarcer It's not just about 304 00:20:02.520 --> 00:20:08.879 reforming enslavement, reforming Jim Crow, right, It's about abolition and 305 00:20:08.960 --> 00:20:13.040 building up new systems and structures that create the possibilities 306 00:20:13.080 --> 00:20:15.719 for thriving lives. We have yet to do that in 307 00:20:15.760 --> 00:20:18.639 this country, right because at the end of enslavement we 308 00:20:18.640 --> 00:20:21.080 get a period of emancipation, which led to Jim Crow. 309 00:20:21.760 --> 00:20:23.440 At the end of Jim Crow, we had the Civil 310 00:20:23.520 --> 00:20:27.440 Rights movement, which led into the age of mass incarceration. 311 00:20:28.320 --> 00:20:32.160 We have yet to fully invest in the well being, 312 00:20:32.960 --> 00:20:38.080 in the health and the possibilities of bike POC lives 313 00:20:38.160 --> 00:20:41.720 and queer folks in this country. We've got to begin 314 00:20:41.800 --> 00:20:44.479 to do that for the very first time, and in 315 00:20:44.560 --> 00:20:48.160 the path of doing that, we will defund the police 316 00:20:48.400 --> 00:20:52.920 right that they have sucked up too much of the resources. 317 00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:55.959 They have sucked up the logic of our safety when 318 00:20:56.040 --> 00:20:59.520 in fact police do not keep us safe. Schools keep 319 00:20:59.600 --> 00:21:03.480 us safe. Employment keeps us safe, Housing keeps us safe. 320 00:21:03.840 --> 00:21:10.600 Tackling core cultural issues around patriarchy and sexual violence will 321 00:21:10.680 --> 00:21:12.199 keep us safe. 322 00:21:12.400 --> 00:21:15.920 There is a lot of activism around creating solidarity among 323 00:21:16.000 --> 00:21:20.000 Latinos and Latinas and the African American community black organizers, 324 00:21:20.640 --> 00:21:23.800 because really, if you think about a new administration coming 325 00:21:23.840 --> 00:21:27.840 into power, this would be a kind of essential power 326 00:21:28.040 --> 00:21:31.639 coalition if African Americans and Latinos get together on the 327 00:21:31.680 --> 00:21:35.280 issues of mass incarceration, mass detention, and mass deportation. So 328 00:21:35.400 --> 00:21:37.199 what are you seen on the ground? 329 00:21:37.680 --> 00:21:42.159 I see incredible movement within, for example, the movement for 330 00:21:42.240 --> 00:21:47.120 Black Lives. I see an extraordinary capacity to think about 331 00:21:47.200 --> 00:21:51.320 all of the structures of racialized harm that run from 332 00:21:51.400 --> 00:21:54.000 our local jails, to our state prisons, to our immigrant 333 00:21:54.000 --> 00:21:59.840 detention facilities, and a new openness to understanding immigration control 334 00:22:00.280 --> 00:22:04.040 has a black issue, one around the high rates of 335 00:22:04.280 --> 00:22:08.399 black deportation, but also acknowledgment of black Latin X communities 336 00:22:08.440 --> 00:22:12.000 as part of the larger Black community. I am hopeful 337 00:22:12.000 --> 00:22:13.919 that we are going to do this and walk this 338 00:22:14.080 --> 00:22:15.000 path together. 339 00:22:20.320 --> 00:22:22.760 So we're going to pause here for a moment, because 340 00:22:23.160 --> 00:22:27.640 Million Dollar Hoods is about more than just data and reports. 341 00:22:28.040 --> 00:22:32.160 It's also about doing this work in the community. Kelly's 342 00:22:32.200 --> 00:22:34.560 been working with young people, many of who have been 343 00:22:34.560 --> 00:22:39.200 impacted by the criminal justice system themselves. So after speaking 344 00:22:39.280 --> 00:22:41.280 with Kelly, we decided to reach out to some of 345 00:22:41.320 --> 00:22:44.440 her students and here's a little bit of what they 346 00:22:44.480 --> 00:22:47.600 had to share about how this project has impacted their 347 00:22:47.680 --> 00:22:50.760 lives and how it's inspired their own work. 348 00:22:50.800 --> 00:22:56.960 Now, my name iss Michelle Servan. I'm a fourth year undergrad. 349 00:22:57.240 --> 00:23:00.119 I have had close loved ones that have been in 350 00:23:00.119 --> 00:23:02.840 the cursoral system. We're currently are in the cursoral system. 351 00:23:03.320 --> 00:23:05.560 So as a student, I use ce LA. That's something 352 00:23:05.560 --> 00:23:08.720 that really shapes the work that I do, and I 353 00:23:08.800 --> 00:23:11.679 think that's actually one of my favorite memories of undergrad 354 00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:14.639 We read this book about this woman who talks about 355 00:23:14.640 --> 00:23:17.840 her experience in the carcoral system and how she created 356 00:23:17.840 --> 00:23:22.560 this community organization for formally incarcerated women in LA. So 357 00:23:23.280 --> 00:23:26.879 that book gave me an idea to create a map 358 00:23:27.160 --> 00:23:31.760 of different resources in LA, like different food banks, different shelters, 359 00:23:32.040 --> 00:23:35.919 free Wi Fi, all these different resources for people who 360 00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:39.680 are re entering. And I remember I went to Professor 361 00:23:39.680 --> 00:23:43.439 Hernandez to show her, and when I showed her the map, 362 00:23:43.600 --> 00:23:46.800 we both started crying. It was so beautiful to take 363 00:23:46.880 --> 00:23:50.520 something that we read about and see it come to life. 364 00:23:51.000 --> 00:23:53.760 I realized that they had given me the skills to 365 00:23:53.880 --> 00:23:56.800 produce things that people can use. I want to have 366 00:23:56.880 --> 00:23:58.879 learned how to do that or got in that inspiration 367 00:23:59.000 --> 00:23:59.920 without million dollars. 368 00:24:01.359 --> 00:24:04.080 My name is Andrew Gerredro with a million dollar hoods. 369 00:24:04.160 --> 00:24:07.520 I was a policy fellow and a oral historian. I 370 00:24:07.520 --> 00:24:10.439 grew up in East LA with family members in and 371 00:24:10.440 --> 00:24:12.879 out of jail and then a prison, and some of 372 00:24:12.920 --> 00:24:16.800 my earliest memories are visiting jails in prisons throughout California. 373 00:24:17.600 --> 00:24:21.240 The data, it's like quantitative proof of our experience. I 374 00:24:21.280 --> 00:24:24.400 see studies all the time of oh police stop black 375 00:24:24.480 --> 00:24:27.080 drivers at disproportion of rates, Like these are things we 376 00:24:27.200 --> 00:24:29.880 already knew. It's just that it may be seen as 377 00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:37.800 more legitimate when done through these academic institutions. During one 378 00:24:37.840 --> 00:24:39.840 of the weeks, Kelly was talking about like the rise 379 00:24:39.880 --> 00:24:42.960 of mass incarceration. She held up a book by a 380 00:24:42.960 --> 00:24:45.800 professor from Harvard and she's like, each one of you 381 00:24:45.840 --> 00:24:49.080 could write this book. And when she said that, I 382 00:24:49.160 --> 00:24:51.800 truly believed her. 383 00:24:55.520 --> 00:24:58.960 Kelly's students also talked about how their vision of abolition 384 00:24:59.359 --> 00:25:01.200 had been shared by the project. 385 00:25:02.840 --> 00:25:06.320 My name is Terry Allen. I serve as the director 386 00:25:06.359 --> 00:25:10.440 of Oral Histories. I think one big piece of Kelly's 387 00:25:10.440 --> 00:25:13.440 just mentorship and her guidance is allowing us to choose 388 00:25:13.440 --> 00:25:16.960 our own abolition journey. And I think for me, through 389 00:25:17.000 --> 00:25:19.400 my experience with MDH, it has led me. 390 00:25:19.440 --> 00:25:21.119 To pursue law schooling. 391 00:25:21.480 --> 00:25:24.520 When I think about my abolition work, I think about 392 00:25:24.720 --> 00:25:30.119 how there are laws in place that are perpetuating and 393 00:25:30.160 --> 00:25:35.040 that are maintaining the structural inequalities. So I'm big on 394 00:25:35.720 --> 00:25:38.960 how do we become experts in our own field and 395 00:25:39.000 --> 00:25:41.760 how do we use those skills and knowledge to not 396 00:25:41.840 --> 00:25:45.639 only impart knowledge into our community members, but also to 397 00:25:45.840 --> 00:25:47.320 change to fix the system. 398 00:25:48.640 --> 00:25:52.800 My name is Corbenfelder. I'm a graduate student researcher. The 399 00:25:52.840 --> 00:25:55.760 system's not going to go away tomorrow, and for the 400 00:25:55.800 --> 00:25:59.359 people that are stuck in it, we need to make 401 00:25:59.440 --> 00:26:02.880