fifty years ago people who looked like
me lived in terror and I don’t mean the
afraid type of terror I mean terror like
we ascribed to other countries like
Afghanistan and Iraq and Turkey and
Syria they were bombed and brutalized
and murdered and lynched often with the
non protection of law enforcement and
sometimes even with the complicity of
law enforcement and we look back on
those times and look at images of those
times and we think to ourselves how
could we have let that happen how could
we let four little girls get bomb in a
church and nothing happened I never
would have let that happen how could we
let a 15 year old boy get so beaten
beyond recognition and nothing happened
how could we have let that happened I
would never let that happen I want you
to pause and take a look around the room
right now I’d like to actually do it I’d
it’s not like everything and look who’s
here
in DC the nation’s capital all amazing
people now I want you to look around
again and see who’s not here in
particular people that look like me
we’re in chocolate city
I never wants you to look in an empty
chair the same way again because these
empty chairs could look to be filled
with people that look like me and if we
ask ourselves why aren’t they here I’m
going to tell you that it’s because
they’re physically incapacitated from
being here either because they’re in
jails and prisons or because there are
neighborhoods that they can’t escape and
right now we’re doing the same thing
that people 50 years ago we’re doing
because this civil rights this Human
Rights crisis is happening on our watch
there are two point three million people
locked up in jails and prisons despite
the fact we make up 5% of the world’s
population we make up 25% of its
incarcerated population there’s another
five million people on probation or
parole one misstep away from being on
top of that aggregate number despite
making up only 11 percent of the
national population african-americans
make up almost 50% of the prison
population 100 percent of the children
in this world are locked up in the
United States 90 percent of the women
who were locked up in this world are
locked up in the United States
seventy-five percent of them are mothers
and 50% of them will have their parental
rights terminated while they’re locked
up one in three black men born today
will spend some time in prison one in
three black women right now has a
relative in prison 14 million Americans
have a criminal record and there are
50,000 collateral consequences that
impede their successful reentry back
into society there are more segregated
schools now than there were on the
evening of Brown versus Board of
Education there is more representation
of Congress for people of color and the
period of reconstruction immediately
following the Civil War than there is
now
indeed there are more people under
correctional control in this country
right now than there were slaves on the
eve of the Civil War it’s time for a new
civil rights movement this isn’t news to
anyone especially those of us in in
marginalized communities and yet nothing
happens nothing is happening we’re
waiting for someone anyone the next
Martin the next Malcolm the next Rosa to
take us to the promised land but we’re
waiting and we’re waiting
I’m tired of waiting because every day
that we wait more of us die more of us
go to prison and more families and
communities are destroyed when I was 19
years old I remember standing in front
of a police officer handing him
thousands and thousands of dollars of
cash that I had made over the course of
that summer and I remember handing him
the little bit’s weed that I had left
over from the pounds that I’ve been
trafficking from Philadelphia to Boston
and back I remember looking this police
officers facing to him looking back at
me with this look of disdain and
frustration and disgust because I’d
become a statistic and I remember
sitting there in that moment thinking
myself man I am in trouble
but in my 19 year old mind what trouble
look like to me was went something like
this
my parents are gonna ground me I’m gonna
get my cell phone take it away they
might take my truck because I was using
it in my drug trade and if college finds
out I might get moved out of my dorm to
another norm on campus that was my idea
of trouble I had no idea what I was
doing was a federal crime I had some
idea what I was doing was a state crime
but I had no idea that the penalty for
what I was doing was a 10-year minimum
mandatory sentence and because of that
10-year minimum mandatory sentence the
likelihood that I pled out to that was
about a hundred percent and by pleading
out to that the deprivation of lots of
things that we take for granted would
have started right away I would have
lost the access to public housing I
would have lost the access to financial
aid I would have lost the access to get
a loan I would have lost the access to
get employment I would have lost any
professional licensure I had I would
have lost my driver’s license and
because of the deprivation of all those
protective factors the likelihood that I
reinterred the criminal justice system
went up and up and up each time I
touched the criminal justice system I
would commit more serious more violent
crime and so finally I would end up in
state prison
and they know any of that standing there
I don’t know how close I was to the edge
of a rabbit hole the thousands and
thousands and thousands of people that
look just like me fall down every year
and if that police officer wanted to he
could have pushed me over and down the
rabbit hole I go but he didn’t because
I’m here in fact I did get grounded I
got to go back to college a graduate
from college a little labor force and
what worked there for three years I came
out of the labor force I went to law
school stayed there for three years I
came out I went to the DA’s office I had
a wonderful career highly decorated I
was able to do a TED talk in 2015 and I
met John Legend and from there
everything changed I worked with
celebrities and artists and actively
athletes and activists everyone that you
could think of and last October I got to
sit with the 44th President United
States of America and talk to him about
criminal justice reform and last
Saturday last Saturday Oprah Winfrey
said she was glad to finally meet me and
it added no don’t clap the reason that I
get to be here the reason that all
happened because the police officer
pulled me over pulled me over in my
driveway the police officer pulled me
over was a white man the police officer
pulled me over was my father when I was
three years old and won the lottery
I was in an orphanage in a foreign
country in two working-class white
people came down to that foreign country
picked me out of the litter they raised
me in a white class town I went to white
working-class schools I had white
working-class friends and in that moment
when my father put the handcuffs on me
and brought me Darla’s station taught me
a lesson he came home he handed me a
shield and a sword that shield was white
privilege
and that sword was the thing that I
would go on to use my career to take it
to protect anyone that tried to take
away the privilege that I had that I
could give to other people all of you
sitting in this room have the
opportunity the power and the privilege
to do that whether you know it or not
you have shields and swords to protect
those people that need it the most I
walked in the DA’s office on my first
day and I started fighting against
people who was trying to take the
privilege that I would bestow on these
young men away from them Stan Lee up
there in the left hand corner robbed two
people with a fake gun we’re supposed to
go to prison for 10 to 12 years and when
I asked Stan Lee why he robbed those men
he didn’t tell me about the gang that he
was in he didn’t tell me about how he
was trying to be the man he told me that
one day he came home and his mother was
so tired so sad that she was throwing up
and she was crying and Stanley never
wanted to feel that again what did
Stanley want to do he wanted to go to
college he went to graduate high school
somethings nobody in his family had ever
done he wanted to play baseball he
wanted to get looked at by the pros he
wanted to buy his mother a house and
move her out the hood I don’t know if
you can see that but that’s Stanley
pitching in college pitcher of the week
is a rookie Stanley he’s now a sophomore
he’s studying criminal justice he got
the honor roll last year for the first
time and major league scouts already
looking at him every other one of these
young men were accused of crimes that
should have landed them in state prison
but as a prosecutor had the opportunity
with my shield and my sword to protect
them from that rabbit hole every one of
these young men safe to are now employed
or in college this is what our criminal
justice system can look like
in front of me I see the new civil
rights leaders of our time each and
every one of you who has a shield and a
sword regardless of what you do I don’t
need you to be problem prosecutors I
don’t need you become judges or cops I
just need you to do something different
every day that’s gonna make mankind
better and here’s how you’re gonna do it
I’m gonna tell you the life trajectory
of every single one of these young men
and women we know now that children in
utero of a mother who’s suffering from
toxic stress whether it be abuse or
substances or environment or just
poverty their DNA is being reconfigured
to inherit that toxic stress that makes
their brain smaller that makes their
development slower and that makes them
more likely to have a problem in school
enter the child welfare system entry
into the juvenile justice system
entering the criminal justice system to
end up in prison
those are unborn children telling us
please do something before I go to jail
in Massachusetts there were roughly
eight hundred kids locked up in our in
our department services seventy-five
percent of them had on average three
interactions with the child welfare
system before the age of three let me
say that again seventy-five percent of
the roughly eight hundred children live
in Massachusetts dys right now had on
average three interactions with child
welfare system for abuse and neglect or
malnutrition before the age of three
those are nonverbal children telling us
please do something I’m gonna go to
prison
by the time those children reached the
first grade they’ve been read to on
average 18 hours from the ages of 0 to 6
somebody took the time to sit down with
them for 18 hours and read to them that
number and this in the communities that
we come from is 2400 hours put in a
different way the kids in my community
here 30 million less words than those
from the suburbs that gap in cognition
that gap and literacy that gap in
development has been shown to correlate
to entry in the criminal justice system
those are children telling us if you
don’t read to me I’m gonna go to prison
those children then go on to middle
school and not having the ability to
learn to read they’ve certainly lack the
ability to learn from reading and
instead of saying excuse me having a
hard time over here nobody took care of
me until now our children will have the
capacity to do that so what do they do
they act up and what do we do as adults
when they do that we reinforce the same
message they’ve been hearing since they
were children since they were in utero
we don’t have time for you we don’t have
the money for you we don’t have the
resources for you and we shame them we
punish them we kick them out then those
children reach a point called
adolescents in their high school and
they have the opportunity to leave
school and we’re surprised when they do
even though we’ve been reinforcing that
message every single day to them shame
on you
and what do they do they go out and find
other children just like them and
meanwhile when I was doing in high
school or when you were doing in high
school we called it a team a club a true
but we’ve realized this word when young
people of color do it outside the
boundaries of school we call it a gang
and what is a gang it’s a group of young
men who love each other so much that
they’re willing to die for the other
person and they’re willing to kill for
the other person you put a uniform on
them we call them soldiers and police
[Music]
and when they finally do that one thing
that horrible thing we say shame on you
now I have all the time all the money
and all the resource to lock you out for
the rest of your life every single day
that you leave your house you have the
opportunity to do something anything for
the benefit of mankind whether it’s
volunteering or voting or visiting or
taking care of a young mother saying
something to a young man that you’ve
seen in the streets donating to
something writing a check if you have to
because 50 years from now we’re gonna be
looking back on this time the same way
we look at 50 years ago and like dr.
Martin Luther King says in the future
it’s not the words of our enemies
remembered it’s the silence of our
friends so how you want to be even
remember 250 years from now there’s
someone who heard this talk and did
nothing or someone who said I picked up
my shield I picked up my sword I
protected someone that had less than me
I was one of the new civil rights
leaders of our time help me
join me and if you picked the ladder I
guarantee you you will die wealthier
than you can possibly imagine
thank you very much
[Applause]
me lived in terror and I don’t mean the
afraid type of terror I mean terror like
we ascribed to other countries like
Afghanistan and Iraq and Turkey and
Syria they were bombed and brutalized
and murdered and lynched often with the
non protection of law enforcement and
sometimes even with the complicity of
law enforcement and we look back on
those times and look at images of those
times and we think to ourselves how
could we have let that happen how could
we let four little girls get bomb in a
church and nothing happened I never
would have let that happen how could we
let a 15 year old boy get so beaten
beyond recognition and nothing happened
how could we have let that happened I
would never let that happen I want you
to pause and take a look around the room
right now I’d like to actually do it I’d
it’s not like everything and look who’s
here
in DC the nation’s capital all amazing
people now I want you to look around
again and see who’s not here in
particular people that look like me
we’re in chocolate city
I never wants you to look in an empty
chair the same way again because these
empty chairs could look to be filled
with people that look like me and if we
ask ourselves why aren’t they here I’m
going to tell you that it’s because
they’re physically incapacitated from
being here either because they’re in
jails and prisons or because there are
neighborhoods that they can’t escape and
right now we’re doing the same thing
that people 50 years ago we’re doing
because this civil rights this Human
Rights crisis is happening on our watch
there are two point three million people
locked up in jails and prisons despite
the fact we make up 5% of the world’s
population we make up 25% of its
incarcerated population there’s another
five million people on probation or
parole one misstep away from being on
top of that aggregate number despite
making up only 11 percent of the
national population african-americans
make up almost 50% of the prison
population 100 percent of the children
in this world are locked up in the
United States 90 percent of the women
who were locked up in this world are
locked up in the United States
seventy-five percent of them are mothers
and 50% of them will have their parental
rights terminated while they’re locked
up one in three black men born today
will spend some time in prison one in
three black women right now has a
relative in prison 14 million Americans
have a criminal record and there are
50,000 collateral consequences that
impede their successful reentry back
into society there are more segregated
schools now than there were on the
evening of Brown versus Board of
Education there is more representation
of Congress for people of color and the
period of reconstruction immediately
following the Civil War than there is
now
indeed there are more people under
correctional control in this country
right now than there were slaves on the
eve of the Civil War it’s time for a new
civil rights movement this isn’t news to
anyone especially those of us in in
marginalized communities and yet nothing
happens nothing is happening we’re
waiting for someone anyone the next
Martin the next Malcolm the next Rosa to
take us to the promised land but we’re
waiting and we’re waiting
I’m tired of waiting because every day
that we wait more of us die more of us
go to prison and more families and
communities are destroyed when I was 19
years old I remember standing in front
of a police officer handing him
thousands and thousands of dollars of
cash that I had made over the course of
that summer and I remember handing him
the little bit’s weed that I had left
over from the pounds that I’ve been
trafficking from Philadelphia to Boston
and back I remember looking this police
officers facing to him looking back at
me with this look of disdain and
frustration and disgust because I’d
become a statistic and I remember
sitting there in that moment thinking
myself man I am in trouble
but in my 19 year old mind what trouble
look like to me was went something like
this
my parents are gonna ground me I’m gonna
get my cell phone take it away they
might take my truck because I was using
it in my drug trade and if college finds
out I might get moved out of my dorm to
another norm on campus that was my idea
of trouble I had no idea what I was
doing was a federal crime I had some
idea what I was doing was a state crime
but I had no idea that the penalty for
what I was doing was a 10-year minimum
mandatory sentence and because of that
10-year minimum mandatory sentence the
likelihood that I pled out to that was
about a hundred percent and by pleading
out to that the deprivation of lots of
things that we take for granted would
have started right away I would have
lost the access to public housing I
would have lost the access to financial
aid I would have lost the access to get
a loan I would have lost the access to
get employment I would have lost any
professional licensure I had I would
have lost my driver’s license and
because of the deprivation of all those
protective factors the likelihood that I
reinterred the criminal justice system
went up and up and up each time I
touched the criminal justice system I
would commit more serious more violent
crime and so finally I would end up in
state prison
and they know any of that standing there
I don’t know how close I was to the edge
of a rabbit hole the thousands and
thousands and thousands of people that
look just like me fall down every year
and if that police officer wanted to he
could have pushed me over and down the
rabbit hole I go but he didn’t because
I’m here in fact I did get grounded I
got to go back to college a graduate
from college a little labor force and
what worked there for three years I came
out of the labor force I went to law
school stayed there for three years I
came out I went to the DA’s office I had
a wonderful career highly decorated I
was able to do a TED talk in 2015 and I
met John Legend and from there
everything changed I worked with
celebrities and artists and actively
athletes and activists everyone that you
could think of and last October I got to
sit with the 44th President United
States of America and talk to him about
criminal justice reform and last
Saturday last Saturday Oprah Winfrey
said she was glad to finally meet me and
it added no don’t clap the reason that I
get to be here the reason that all
happened because the police officer
pulled me over pulled me over in my
driveway the police officer pulled me
over was a white man the police officer
pulled me over was my father when I was
three years old and won the lottery
I was in an orphanage in a foreign
country in two working-class white
people came down to that foreign country
picked me out of the litter they raised
me in a white class town I went to white
working-class schools I had white
working-class friends and in that moment
when my father put the handcuffs on me
and brought me Darla’s station taught me
a lesson he came home he handed me a
shield and a sword that shield was white
privilege
and that sword was the thing that I
would go on to use my career to take it
to protect anyone that tried to take
away the privilege that I had that I
could give to other people all of you
sitting in this room have the
opportunity the power and the privilege
to do that whether you know it or not
you have shields and swords to protect
those people that need it the most I
walked in the DA’s office on my first
day and I started fighting against
people who was trying to take the
privilege that I would bestow on these
young men away from them Stan Lee up
there in the left hand corner robbed two
people with a fake gun we’re supposed to
go to prison for 10 to 12 years and when
I asked Stan Lee why he robbed those men
he didn’t tell me about the gang that he
was in he didn’t tell me about how he
was trying to be the man he told me that
one day he came home and his mother was
so tired so sad that she was throwing up
and she was crying and Stanley never
wanted to feel that again what did
Stanley want to do he wanted to go to
college he went to graduate high school
somethings nobody in his family had ever
done he wanted to play baseball he
wanted to get looked at by the pros he
wanted to buy his mother a house and
move her out the hood I don’t know if
you can see that but that’s Stanley
pitching in college pitcher of the week
is a rookie Stanley he’s now a sophomore
he’s studying criminal justice he got
the honor roll last year for the first
time and major league scouts already
looking at him every other one of these
young men were accused of crimes that
should have landed them in state prison
but as a prosecutor had the opportunity
with my shield and my sword to protect
them from that rabbit hole every one of
these young men safe to are now employed
or in college this is what our criminal
justice system can look like
in front of me I see the new civil
rights leaders of our time each and
every one of you who has a shield and a
sword regardless of what you do I don’t
need you to be problem prosecutors I
don’t need you become judges or cops I
just need you to do something different
every day that’s gonna make mankind
better and here’s how you’re gonna do it
I’m gonna tell you the life trajectory
of every single one of these young men
and women we know now that children in
utero of a mother who’s suffering from
toxic stress whether it be abuse or
substances or environment or just
poverty their DNA is being reconfigured
to inherit that toxic stress that makes
their brain smaller that makes their
development slower and that makes them
more likely to have a problem in school
enter the child welfare system entry
into the juvenile justice system
entering the criminal justice system to
end up in prison
those are unborn children telling us
please do something before I go to jail
in Massachusetts there were roughly
eight hundred kids locked up in our in
our department services seventy-five
percent of them had on average three
interactions with the child welfare
system before the age of three let me
say that again seventy-five percent of
the roughly eight hundred children live
in Massachusetts dys right now had on
average three interactions with child
welfare system for abuse and neglect or
malnutrition before the age of three
those are nonverbal children telling us
please do something I’m gonna go to
prison
by the time those children reached the
first grade they’ve been read to on
average 18 hours from the ages of 0 to 6
somebody took the time to sit down with
them for 18 hours and read to them that
number and this in the communities that
we come from is 2400 hours put in a
different way the kids in my community
here 30 million less words than those
from the suburbs that gap in cognition
that gap and literacy that gap in
development has been shown to correlate
to entry in the criminal justice system
those are children telling us if you
don’t read to me I’m gonna go to prison
those children then go on to middle
school and not having the ability to
learn to read they’ve certainly lack the
ability to learn from reading and
instead of saying excuse me having a
hard time over here nobody took care of
me until now our children will have the
capacity to do that so what do they do
they act up and what do we do as adults
when they do that we reinforce the same
message they’ve been hearing since they
were children since they were in utero
we don’t have time for you we don’t have
the money for you we don’t have the
resources for you and we shame them we
punish them we kick them out then those
children reach a point called
adolescents in their high school and
they have the opportunity to leave
school and we’re surprised when they do
even though we’ve been reinforcing that
message every single day to them shame
on you
and what do they do they go out and find
other children just like them and
meanwhile when I was doing in high
school or when you were doing in high
school we called it a team a club a true
but we’ve realized this word when young
people of color do it outside the
boundaries of school we call it a gang
and what is a gang it’s a group of young
men who love each other so much that
they’re willing to die for the other
person and they’re willing to kill for
the other person you put a uniform on
them we call them soldiers and police
[Music]
and when they finally do that one thing
that horrible thing we say shame on you
now I have all the time all the money
and all the resource to lock you out for
the rest of your life every single day
that you leave your house you have the
opportunity to do something anything for
the benefit of mankind whether it’s
volunteering or voting or visiting or
taking care of a young mother saying
something to a young man that you’ve
seen in the streets donating to
something writing a check if you have to
because 50 years from now we’re gonna be
looking back on this time the same way
we look at 50 years ago and like dr.
Martin Luther King says in the future
it’s not the words of our enemies
remembered it’s the silence of our
friends so how you want to be even
remember 250 years from now there’s
someone who heard this talk and did
nothing or someone who said I picked up
my shield I picked up my sword I
protected someone that had less than me
I was one of the new civil rights
leaders of our time help me
join me and if you picked the ladder I
guarantee you you will die wealthier
than you can possibly imagine
thank you very much
[Applause]
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