Factually! with Adam Conover - Social Justice, One Bite at a Time with Daryl Atkinson

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

Racism in the way America polices its communities is so deeply rooted, it often seems intractable. So how do we make progress? According to this week’s guest, civil rights lawyer Daryl Atkinson, the answer is “one bite at a time.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me once again as I talk to an incredible expert about all the amazing things that they know that I don't know and that you might not know. Both of our minds are going to get blown together and we're going to have so much fun doing it as we always do. Now, as we've discussed on this show before, our criminal justice system is wildly discriminatory and destructive. It punishes people of color at disproportionate rates. A study a few years ago found that Black men

comprise about 13% of the male population, but nearly 35% of those incarcerated. One third of Black men born recently can expect to be incarcerated in their lifetime. A third. But despite that astonishing rate of over-policing and over-incarceration, it seems to do nothing to prevent the fact that people of color are also the biggest victims of violence. They're 22% more likely to experience violent crime than white people. And as I've covered before on every TV show I have ever done, and on this very podcast, before, on every TV show I have ever done and on this very podcast, despite decades of protest by those being most harmed, it feels like little in our criminal justice system has changed. The problem seems to be intractable, somehow woven into the structure of American society.

So we end up using the most brutal tools to punish the most vulnerable people in America over and over again. You could be forgiven for concluding that nothing can be done about it. Well, guess what? Nothing could be further from the truth. Progress is possible. In fact, between 2000 and 2020, the gap between black and white state imprisonment rates dropped by 40%. And that's just a start. According to a new study out from the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, there are real steps that we can actually take to reduce inequality in crime, victimization, and criminal justice involvement. And to learn what they are, we have one of the committee members of that very report, who also happens to be one of my very favorite guests we have ever had

on this show. His name is Daryl Atkinson, and he's the co-director of Forward Justice, a law, policy, and strategy center dedicated to advancing racial, social justice, and economic justice in the U.S. South. In other words, he is one of the most important civil rights attorneys working in America today, and he's also someone who has been incarcerated himself in the past and can speak from lived experience on the topic. He's hands down one of the most inspiring people I've ever spoken to. He is someone doing the work on the ground to reform one of the most destructive and deadly systems in American life. And you are going to love this interview with him. But before we get to it, I want to remind you that I'm going on tour this year. If you want to see me do stand up comedy comedy in a city near you, head to adamconover.net to get

tickets and see all my tour dates. And if you want to support this podcast, which I want to remind you is a completely independent production, well, head to patreon.com slash adamconover. Just five bucks a month gets you every episode of this podcast ad free. It gets you a ton of other goodies and it gets you my eternal thanks that you are all again is patreon.com slash Adam Conover. And now without further ado, let's get to my interview with Daryl Atkinson. Daryl, thank you so much for coming back on the show. Thank you for having me, Adam. You're one of my favorite guests to talk to. We had you multiple times on Adam Ruins Everything. You've been on this podcast more than once. Criminal justice reform, reform of the criminal legal system is something we've talked about extensively

on this show. You're on a committee for the National Academy of Sciences that just put out a new paper on the topic, right? Can you tell me about that briefly? Sure. The National Academy of Sciences put together this committee on reducing racial inequality and crime and justice. And I was one of the committee members and we produced a report. And before we started rolling, you were starting to tell me that there actually have been some improvements in the statistics of how unequal criminal justice or the criminal legal system is in America. Is that the case that that like the over the past few decades, things have in some respects started to trend in the right direction? started to trend in the right direction? Yeah, I mean, I'm going to preference improvements in some places, real intractable problems in others. And it's going to lead to, you know, one of the major points of the report is that there is no one silver bullet. There is no one single thing that we can do to make wholesale improvements to the system. We have to do a lot

of things. And so this mixed story, you know, when I came into the field around 2004 and five, Around 2004 and five, you know, the prison population was nearing its apex at two point three million. Over the last 12 years, that incarceration rate has decreased almost 20 percent. Wow. The overall prison population is down 20 percent. Black male incarceration is down 30 percent. Wow. So that's part of the good story. The racial disparities associated with are still pernicious, but they decrease. At one time, the incarceration rate whites to blacks was six to one. Now it's down to four to one. Still very bad, but that's a big move. But it's some progress, right?

While at the same time, we're still having some really intractable problems when it comes to violent victimization. African-American men and Latino men ages 15 to 35 are, you know, the highest percentage of people who suffer serious violent crimes as far as homicides and violent assaults. When it comes to women, sexual violence, violent victimization and domestic violence. Indigenous women and other women of color are facing those at the highest rate. So there are areas where there's still real intractable problems where we need to focus attention. But there have been some improvements over the last 15 years. And what do we credit those to?

A number of things. It isn't just one thing, right? And I think it's before we get to, you know, people want to immediately get to, all right, what do we continue doing? And there are some things that we need to continue doing in the criminal legal system. But I think what the report really tried to hammer home is that we didn't just get here by accident. It contextualized how the criminal legal system has grown and what is historical moorings from the very beginning of this country with slavery and settler colonialism and westward expansion and what happened to indigenous folks and how the criminal legal system was used to, you know, manifest both of those particular phenomenons. But in addition, you know, we also talked about the social forces, FHA redlining, some of the other social policies outside of the criminal justice system that really contributed to concentrated and cumulative disadvantage that creates a recipe. When you have cumulative and concentrated disadvantage, you have a recipe for violence, for crime, for other types of contact with the criminal legal system. So the report did a good job of contextualizing that as well,

and really trying to understand what are some of the drivers, both outside, because we got to understand what those drivers are outside of the criminal legal system, as well as some of the drivers within. Yeah. But are you saying that maybe some of those drivers outside the criminal legal system are improving somewhat in some way? I know you said it's many, many things combined, but... Some of the drivers outside of the criminal legal system, like I mentioned, racial disparities when it comes to housing, when it comes to homicide victimization, when it comes to some of the other disparities with regards to wealth and income inequality, all of these external forces contribute or add to the environment that makes crime likely to happen. You know, when you have virtuous, healthy, vibrant communities where there are jobs to go work at, safe and affordable housing, you aren't in a food desert, meaning that the bodega or the

corner store isn't the only place that you can get food. You aren't living in an environmental superfund where you're near the landfill or a lot of pollution or the apartment complex or public housing area has lead pipes. And we know that lead, there have been numerous studies, lead leads to cognitive deficiencies that have been directly linked to violence. Right. Yeah. You have all of that cumulative disadvantage around you. to cognitive deficiencies that have been directly linked to violence, right? When you have all of that cumulative disadvantage around you, Adam, that makes crime and violence much more apt to happen, right? And so those are the social forces outside of police, prosecution, prisons that help create an environment where people can end up in the criminal legal system. So we can do criminal legal reforms inside of the system, like ending cash bail, not having fees and fines, being more lenient when it comes to drug crimes and

things of that nature. But unless we are also addressing some of those macro forces outside of the system, our efforts will not be as fruitful. You listed all these factors that have caused this problem. And so many of them, as you point out, go all the way back to the founding of America or before and persisted for centuries. And so many of them are woven deeply into the fabric of American society. You know, housing discrimination is not something you can pass one law to fix. It's something that has, you know, it has deep roots, not just historically, but in public policy. The mass of American policy is all pushing in that direction. And so I know that about about crime, about the criminal legal system, about discrimination and

inequality in the justice system. But once I start expanding my view and I look at all those other factors, I it starts to make me despair a little bit sometimes, because I'm like, OK, to fix this problem that that hurts so many people, it's hurt you, it's hurt people I care about, it hurts me as well, you know, we're all suffering the harm on a daily basis. To fix it, we have to reform all of American society. We, you know, it starts, the task starts to look so big. Yours, and I'm just somebody who, you know, I'm a comedian, I do a podcast for a living. You're living it every day. You're doing the work every day. And so, I mean, how do you feel about it?

Do you feel that we're able to make that progress? Or does it become too much to bear sometimes, thinking about how much work needs to be done? Yeah, you know, it's a both and, right? It's a both and, right? It's both doing what can be done today to make the system a little bit better while still having a North Star. And I'll explain it this way, Adam, your listeners might get a kick out of this story. Right. So back in my my hustling days, we used to go to this bar and grill called Chee Burger Chee Burger. They had a one-pound burger. We would drink and maybe have a couple of funny cigarettes. They would have this one-pound burger. We'd go watch Monday Night Football and we'd try

to eat that burger. If you ate the burger, they would give you the burger, they would cook it, and then they they weigh it and put it on this huge bun. And then they give you a mess of steak fries. And if you could eat it, your face would go on to the wall of fame. Right. People who successfully ate the burger. Right. And we would go and we would fail miserably. We would never finish it. Right. And one day we saw this guy who we recognize from his face being on the wall of one of the members of the wall of fame who had successfully eaten a burger. Right. And we gave him the rock

star treatment. He was like, man, you are the man. How did you eat that burger? And he said something so simple, but so profound. He said one bite at a time, mass incarceration, structural discrimination, the transformation of this country and of this world, really. But let's just focus on our country, the transformation of this country. What we want to do is that big, huge burger, right? We got to take one bite at a time out of it. So we're going to end some cash bail over here. We're going to get some sentencing reform. We're going to create ban the box or give voting rights to people formerly incarcerated. All with the North Star. We got to get rid of what's on this plate. Yeah.

So we can have something new. So we can have our virtuous Cobb salad that we want to have. Once that messy burger is gone. I really wish I knew who cooked this burger for us. It would be better if we didn't have to eat the burger in the first place, you know, but I guess the people of the past cooked it for us, let it, let, let, put it on our plate. And now we're the suckers who have to eat it, unfortunately, but one bite at a time. It's a beautiful one bite at a time. One bite at a time. That's a beautiful message. Um, but so look, you, you in the, uh, in this report,

you've laid out this burger, right. And, and all the bites we could take out of it, what the problems are and how we can make progress. And a lot of what you're talking about, the causes are things that I've you and I have discussed before. There are things that have been covered in the news. You know, the media has been a bit more willing over the past couple of years to talk about the causes of these problems and talk about the solutions. There's also been an enormous backlash in America against reform of any kind and against, you know, the desire to look directly at these problems. You saw it even in last year's election cycle. There was a huge backlash against reform of any kind. How do you view that? I think we

haven't talked since we went through that entire backlash cycle. How does it feel for you as someone who's doing the work every day to see the public dialogue shift so far in the direction of reform and having a clear-eyed view and then shift so far back again. Yeah, it's not unexpected. These are traditional political tactics, right, that are used around electoral cycles to gin up fear, to gin up racialized anxiety around crime and things of that nature. and things of that nature. Now, look, certain indexes of violent crime have gone up, but they aren't like completely out of historical proportions that we've seen at other periods in our recent history. The other thing that I think the report does really, really well is laying out the evidence that the false choice, the false dichotomy that is put forth

in the media is not true. And here's what that false dichotomy is. On the one hand, you either have law and order and all of the punitive tactics, stop and frisk, no knock warrants, all of the punitive tactics that come with that to keep people safe. Right. That's the only way you can keep people safe. That's one choice. Or you have justice in equity and you either have to choose between the false choice of law and order and punitiveness or justice and equity and lawlessness. And the report breaks through and says, no, that's not true. We can have both. And we deserve both. We deserve both safety and we can decarcerate. We can end cash bail. We can incarcerate. We can end cash bail. We can end stop and frisk. We can shrink the overall size of the carceral state and still keep communities safe. And we can do that in an equitable way. Right. By reducing, like we talked about, overall incarceration, racial disparities, things associated with the bad aspects of the criminal legal system. So we can do both. It's a false choice to think that we got to do one or the other. Right. Yeah. And the report does a really good job in laying that out. But the problem is there's a lot of

people in the media, a lot of people in politics who want to force that false choice upon us and want to, in fact, say actually any reduction in the prison population is de facto equals a rising crime, you know, or is dangerous. Is this the existence of bail reform at all? The existence of sentencing reform at all must mean that things are going downhill. And it's often hard for me to understand as someone who's really evidence-based about these things and, you know, talks to folks like yourself and, and try to take a clear eyed view of like, no, the criminal legal system is harming people. We want to reduce those harms while keeping people safe. That should be possible to do both. There are folks out there who, I don't know what their motivation is. Maybe it's just

pure cruelty. Maybe they just like it when people are locked up, um, uh, even when it's unnecessarily. But it's very hard to make progress when you've got people who are not having the argument with you in good faith out there in the public sphere, isn't it? Absolutely. And that's why we got to expose those folks for who they are. Yeah. And really just try to persuade people with the truth, Yeah. And really just try to persuade people with the truth, because the more and more people know the truth. Right. Like, no, here's what the evidence really is. We can we can chew gum and walk at the same time. Yeah. There are a lot of things that we can do within the system to make it better that isn't going to compromise public safety at all. within the system to make it better, that isn't going to compromise public safety at all. And let's just be honest about that. Folks have motivations around, you know,

electoral gains and, you know, hiding in racial anxiety to achieve those electoral gains. But we got to keep eyes on the prize and just try to win more like minded. You know, I think most folks try to come to the table as well meaning people and once you can show them you know the the evidence and uh the strength of your position then we can win them over yeah yeah no i i believe that and if you if you approach people in good faith even when there's the bad faith folks out there if you approach every person you talk to they're always going to be there they're always going to be there. They're always going to be there. But that's not most people. And you can go to most people in good faith and and make the argument really clearly. So I'm curious about you said, you know, there are rates of violent crime that went up in some places that, you know,

historically, we're still at a 40 or 50 year low of crime rates in america and the crime rates in a lot of those places are already going down again in the last year uh so there's not a there's not one clear story about crime in america that it's rising or anything like that but there's certainly heightened fear um and i'm curious about in your work how how you explain that how you uh how you explain that, how you how you feel that we should deal with it while not accepting the false binary? Yeah. You know, it's you know, it can be like like like you like we talked about earlier. It can be difficult with folks who just want to get their agenda across. And sometimes that's some of the policymakers that we have to deal with in North Carolina. We have a conservative, both House and Senate. But you try to

meet people where their values are. Some of it is around second chances with, you know, people who might have evangelical kind of leanings. Some of it is around fiscal responsibility that we can do these things cheaper. You know what I mean? I mean, we're costing. You talk about if you a small G kind of person, if you a small G conservative, you want to talk about big government intervention, talk about the carceral state. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. As a huge governmental footprint, we could be doing that a little bit cheaper. Right. Particularly in our return on investment in very good. So you can appeal to those people that way, right? Because that's their values. So I think it's different ways to that we've, you know, found that where we can talk to folks that meet some of what their priorities are to get some of this work done.

Well, on that note, let's take a really quick break. We'll be right back with more Daryl Atkinson. OK, we're back with Daryl Atkinson. So when talking about reforming the criminal legal system or reducing inequality in how we prosecute people in this country, what are the values that you aim to start with that you try to connect with people on? You were just talking about values before the break. Yeah, we we the committee thought it was really important to kind of lay out principles that jurisdictions can follow, because some folks might take latch on to one policy prescription. Some people might latch on to another program, but if you have these guiding principles, that's what's going to be what moors the particular jurisdiction to continued improvement. And one of them was reckoning and reconciliation, realizing that our criminal legal system has done great harm. So, for example, in some of the police accountability work and

prosecutorial accountability work that I've been a part of nationally, police chiefs and prosecutors will meet with certain historically Black and Brown communities, some of the leaders there, and brown communities, some of the leaders there, and acknowledge that some of their predecessors did not prosecute overtly racist acts. So like when the lynch mob came and lynched someone, there was no prosecution. That's the system acting in a racist way. So you can either over-prosecute or you can under-protect, right? And so there have been instances where both the police have over-enforced, right? Like the Rodney King or the Eric Garner or the George Floyd situation, right? That's the over-policing. But then there's the under-protection too, where there have been race mobs, where there have been extrajudicial killings like a Trayvon Martin, right, a Zimmerman. Right. And so reckoning and acknowledging with communities that these things has happened can bring legitimacy to institutions that these communities were once suspicious of. That's truth and reconciliation, right? Being really, really open about data, about body cam footage, about participation in citizen review boards is really important.

came out and said it, using and integrating impacted communities into the policy development, the knowledge generation, the implementation, and the evaluation throughout. Impacted communities have to be at the center of developing their own solutions. And this is what the ivory tower is saying is going to produce the best results. And then lastly, one size isn't going to fit all. What works in Seattle may not work in High Point, North Carolina. That's why we need these guiding principles because the programs may not fit exactly. Some policy things though that we can do. Yeah, please. In cash bail, the fact that it's not a predictor, the two as a lawyer, a defense attorney, the court is premised, your pretrial released are premised on two things and two things only,

your pre-trial release are premised on two things and two things only, whether you're going to show back up for court and whether you are flight or public safety risk, right? Are you coming back to court and are you an immediate public safety risk if we let Adam go? Yeah. Right. Those are the only two things, not how much money you have in your pocket. Yeah. Do you have 50 grand tonight or can you raise it? Exactly. Do you have in your pocket is the determining factor of whether I can get out of jail and keep my job, keep my apartment, keep my dog, you know, keep my family intact, drop my kids off or whether I can't. That makes no sense. Yeah. More drug policy reform where we can take decriminalize what are really public health issues. And I think we're seeing more movement potential where we're seeing some slippage.

Everybody's mad about Fentanyl. Yeah. And I get people are dying. Yeah. But maybe rather than a prohibition kind of mentality, we've been losing that war. We've been losing the prohibition war. And I mean, it's nothing to laugh at. I mean, and I know you don't mean it in any way in a negative way, but we lost one hundred thousand people last year. we lost 100,000 people last year, Adam. 100,000 people overdosed last year because our mind is stuck on this same Nancy Reagan, just say no prohibition kind of mentality, right? Yeah. In fact, that prohibition mentality is part of what's led to fentanyl taking over the streets because people who were not able to get one drug started going for another yep and if we were more concerned rather than teaching folks this is how you do not die you don't mix your opioid with alcohol or other adulterates we're using our law enforcement officers rather than apprehending

folks mostly solely on apprehension. Let's distribute test kits so folks can test their drugs to make sure that they aren't going to take anything lethal. Right. Yeah. We could be really doing drug education in schools where we're teaching kids like, look, this is a lethal dose. If you do this, we're not endorsing it. But if you do, this is how you do not die. You know what I mean? So folks can live to make a different choice tomorrow, right? Instead, we have this very draconian. Oh, stop it. It's bad. You're bad. This thing is terrible. You're morally blameworthy. We push people to the shadows. They don't get treatment. And then they and then they fall out dead and they can't live another day to make a different decision. We got to do something different. And we can continue down this path, which we know the story. We know how the fentanyl and make everybody being mad at fentanyl is going to end. It's going to end just like the crack cocaine story, right?

And then we found out, like, look at all this harm we've done when we could have chosen a different path, right? Yeah. It still seems, though, when we choose those paths, right, cash bail reform. New York did cash bail reform. Then six months later, they undid it because there was a huge backlash and there was an election on the way. I actually don't know what the status of that policy is there now, but my understanding is much of the gains

were reversed. Or, you know, I talked about harm reduction on my show six, seven years ago. And of course, I was not the first to talk about it, but that was, you know, I did my whole segment on it. People were talking about it, safe injection sites, things like that. This is how we save lives. And you still cannot open one of these things politically in America, or they've tried, you know, maybe a city here or there. If Eric Adams were to try to open harm reduction clinics in New York or if Karen Bass is going to try to do that in L.A., they would be eviscerated by the press. And so it's you know, I do wonder when you put these policies out and you put these reports out, does your mind ever go, OK, what's the next step? How do I get how do I build consensus so that we can actually do these things politically?

Yeah. You know, I was fortunate enough to visit. I've been fortunate enough to visit some other countries that have grappled with this problem. I visited Portugal, for example, and Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001. And they did that because they were having tremendous problems around overdoses, around hep C and HIV rates, bad public health outcomes, bad criminal justice outcomes. And so they made some changes and they decriminalized all drugs, all drugs in 2001. And since that time, the racial disparities in their prison population has gone down. Wow. The HIV and hepatitis C transmission rates have gone down. Wow. They have a dissuasion commission that if you now if you're caught trafficking, they still treat you like traditional criminal justice system. But if you are a user,

you go to this dissuasion commission that includes a public health official, a social worker, and a criminal legal judicial official. And they work out a treatment regime or they offer you a treatment regime to deal with your particular problem. And but they, you know, they're a smaller country, got nationalized medicine and their whole approach to dealing with these issues are completely different. And the reason they came to this conclusion, because some of the most affluent people were perishing, were dying from overdoses. I think we're getting there, Adam. You know what I mean? To where this problem has no respecter of portion, no respecter of income, class, race, what have you. Because of that, it's going to force

us for, like at one time, access to Narcan, you needed a prescription. Now you can get it over the counter. You know what I mean? Stuff is changing. Yeah, that's true. We're trying to keep people alive.

You know what I mean? You can't recover if you're dead. You just can't. We're just trying to keep people alive. You know what I mean? You can't recover if you're dead. You just can't. So we're just trying to keep people alive, right? And I think seeing examples from Portugal, from some of these other countries that have safe injection sites, let's keep them alive. They might be safe injection siting today, but two years from now, they might be clean. They might be safe injection siting today, but two years from now, they might be clean. Yeah. But you'll never see that story of the day. That's the thing.

Let's keep people alive. Yeah. It's such a simple message. And the example, here's the problem. Examples of European countries tend to not work as well in America as we wish they would. You know, we say, hey, how about we do health care a little bit more like Denmark? How about we do healthcare a little bit more like Denmark? How about we do prison a little bit more like Norway? How about we do drugs a little bit more like Portugal? Maybe one day we'll take an example

of the countries that are having the most success and adopt some of their methods. But I'm so happy you're there fighting for them. Tell me a little bit more about, you know, apart from this report, the work that you're doing in north carolina because i i i admire the work that you do so much and i i always love hearing what you're the latest cases that you're arguing you know yeah north carolina um we are we i don't want to sound like things

called north carolina i don't want to sound like daryler, but we're in a dark period in our state, man. I mean, our legislature has been had took a conservative right turn after the election of Barack Obama in 2010. In 2010, that also coincided with the census and development of gerrymandering and the maps. And so they locked in some of the legislative wins at that time and have been concentrating power when it comes to that branch of government, the legislature. And when the legislature would pass bad laws, us in the advocacy community would have a backstop that we could go to another branch of government, the judiciary, as a backstop and sue the General Assembly when they made a bad law, right? We did that in our felon disenfranchisement case. We sued around the General Assembly's practice of denying people the right to vote who are on probation, parole, post-release supervision. Some 56,000 North Carolinians who live in community,

pay taxes, work jobs, drop kids off at school like everybody else, but had no voice in electing their representatives who made the laws that govern their lives. Right. So we sued about that in 2019. When we sued, the composition of the Supreme North Carolina Supreme Court was six to one Democrat. Supreme Court was six to one Democrat. Now that doesn't guarantee you any kind of outcome because quite frankly, Democrats and Republicans have been equally culpable when it comes to mass incarceration and mass criminalization. But we felt it gave us at least a fair shot. Over two election cycles in 2020 and in 2022, that six to one partisan advantage flipped to five to two Republican. All the while, we are matriculating through the court system. We're going up the various levels of the court. So in 2020, we win at this stage at the trial level in a civil case called summary judgment is where you can go to your judges and say, we have enough evidence right now for you to decide this case.

Carolina's practice of making you have to pay all of your fees, fines and costs before you could obtain an unconditional discharge to get your voting rights back. So it operated like a poll tax. The average probationer in North Carolina owed $2,441 and they would have to pay that money before they get their voting rights back. So you could have two North Carolinians, right? Two North Carolinians convicted of the same crime, given the same amount of probation, given the same amount of fees, fines, and costs. And the one that had $2,441 could buy their voting rights back. The one who didn't would be stuck on probation and they could never get their voting rights back. The court said that that was unconstitutional in 2020 under two different provisions of the North Carolina Constitution. Incredible. That same year,

though, we lost two Supreme Court justice seats. So we go on to the next level of the case. We go to trial in 2021. We win on all of our claims, our racial discrimination claims and our free election clause claims. When we won that summary judgment, that probably unlocked the vote for about 7,000 folks. We win that trial that unlocks the vote for the other 49,000. So now 56,000 people have their right to vote. And that went up to the court of appeals. We won there. And last year, starting July 27th, 2022, everyone in the community on probation, parole, and post-release supervision could register and vote. We had a Freedom Summer Tour where we text blast, phone banks, and all of those folks, direct mail, had

15 in-person events around the state. I drove from the mountains of Asheville to the coast of Wilmington, North Carolina, some one thousand seven hundred and fifteen miles, letting people know about their voting rights, that they could participate for the first time since radical reconstruction. Could people who were convicted of felonies who lived in the community, who were under supervision, they could have their right to vote. And we brought all of those people to the polls or as many of them to the polls last November. That's incredible. At the same time, that's happening. And we lose another Supreme to Supreme Court justice seats. Wow. And now our case is at the Supreme Court. And now our case is at the Supreme Court. And I go argue before that court this last February, February the 2nd.

The composition of the court is five to Republican is also five to white to black. Right. Wow. And we packed that courtroom out at nine thirty in the morning on a February Thursday morning. 930 in the morning on a February Thursday morning, we had a courtroom full of 60 people. They had to have overflow. We had another overflow of another 50 people. We took a sterile environment where it's only lawyers and judges normally talking to each other. And we put the people in there to where those judges had to look directly at the folks that they would potentially take their voting rights away. Yeah. Now, this court has signaled who they are because we had two previous rulings from I told you about these election cycles that were happening. The court before it changed in 2022 ruled against our maps, our constitutional, I mean, our congressional maps. I'm sorry. That were drawn because of the census rule that they were unconstitutionally gerrymandered and ruled against voter ID. that they were unconstitutionally gerrymandered and ruled against voter ID. The new court, only four weeks later, says we're going to rehear those cases.

Wow. Those are big decisions that they're rehearing. That's unprecedented, Adam. That is never done. And you should read the dissent. It's a short dissent in one of them. And Justice Anita Earls, she says, she lays it out. She lays out historically how this is never done. It has only happened four times in the history of North Carolina where the Supreme Court has reheared a case from another term and has never been done within four weeks of a previous ruling. Four weeks. Four weeks. The only thing that changed was that there were new justices in the robes.

The facts were the same. The law was the same. and they are rehearing these cases. So the conservative majority, both at the General Assembly and now at the court, is acting in a hyper-partisan way, really not respecting the rule of law and trying to generate certain outcomes. But, you know, we're hopeful we still get a look. I still got to be hopeful because they haven't ruled in my case yet that we still get a fair outcome. You're waiting for the outcome of this case currently of your case, the felony disenfranchisement case. That is correct. I mean, this is why you're one of my favorite people to talk to, because the work you do is so it's so moving that you're there making that effort every day under very trying circumstances that you the deck, the only thing that I'm, the thing that hardens me is that this isn't new for our folks, meaning that the deck has been stacked for a while. You know what I mean? And we still have been able to make progress, right? You know, that

bending the moral arc of the universe, you got to put some elbow grease behind it sometime. And it just bending on its own, right? So we're continuing to put that elbow grease in North Carolina. And, you know, if the court chooses not to act in our favor, we're then going to go to the General Assembly and make them change the law. So this fight will continue. See, this is the antidote to pessimism, because talking to you, I know so many people who are so I know a lot of people in a position of privilege who are so despairing all the time, like, oh, we're we're fucked climate change and, you know, Republicans and Trump and they're depressed all the time about everything. Like, oh, who cares? I'll give up.

And to hear that, you know, from someone in your position, who's, who's waging the battle in a more difficult circumstance than a lot of people I know here in California. Right. Right. But that, yeah, I mean, all you can do is, is wake up and, and fight, fight another day and, and keep pushing. I mean, it's that mean, it makes me realize that duty is really incumbent upon all of us. Hope is a discipline, Adam. It's a discipline that we have to study. It is a discipline that we have to practice. And it's easy, like when you go to the gym, it's easy to push the bar when there's no resistance, right? So we got to put, you know, we're exercising our hope. We're exercising our faith against resistance. We got to practice that because it's easy to be hopeful when everything looking good, right?

But now you got to exercise that hope. You got to practice that hope because, you know, if it's hopeless, there ain't no chance. But as long as there's some hope, we got to practice that hope because, you know, if it's hopeless, there ain't no chance. But as long as there's some hope, we got to keep practicing that faith that we can turn things around. Yeah. I mean, when you're when you're doing that, you know, you're traveling around the state, you're phone banking, you're bringing that message to folks that, hey, you can vote for the first time since radical reconstruction. I mean, how personally meaningful to you is it? I mean, have you had the experience of telling somebody that, hey, we won this victory for you and you can go vote today? Absolutely. And sometimes, you know, it's telling some people who may not agree with you. And I'm going to tell you a funny

story, right? Please. So we have this texting app called Hustle where we can text like five, 10,000 people, right? And so we're texting them about the voting rights win. And one of them calls me back and he has some questions and I can tell, you know, just from his accent that he was distinctively Southern and a Southern white man, right? And he's asking me questions. He was like, Hey, Hey, Hey, Bo, this thing for real? I said, yeah, yeah. I said, yeah, man, you got your voting rights. Oh, hell yeah. Hell yeah. I'm going to vote for that damn Trump. And I said, you know what? Yeah, I'm going to vote for that damn Trump. And I said, you know what? I said, you know what? That's OK, because that's your choice.

Because we actually believe in this thing called democracy. That is one person, one vote. And you get to choose who you want to vote for. Even if it is somebody who I disagree with. Yeah. We ended that conversation and he had his information that he needed to know. And I did my due diligence. Right. Because that's what this thing is really all about. You get to choose. Hell yeah, man. That's that's a beautiful story. I never thought I'd hear a beautiful story that ended that way. But that's it. Oh, man. That's the best of democracy right there. Well, I want to try to make this a little bit actionable for people.

Actually, here's here's a question I want to ask you first. The very first time I interviewed you on my podcast, this was, I think, after one of your Adam ruins everything appearances. You came down to our studio for the older version of the podcast called the Adam ruins everything podcast. You remember we were in a small little studio together and we were having a real heart to heart. It was like late at night after a day of shooting. And I was asking you, you know, what's the, what's the end game for the criminal justice system? You know, do you, do you feel that at the end of the day? And, you know, I asked you, I asked you this as somebody who I knew, you know, formerly incarcerated yourself at the, at the end of the day, is there

any reason to, to lock anybody up or is there always something better that we can do? And you said, I remember you said to me, you know, Adam, like in my heart, I'm an abolitionist. That's what you said to me maybe six or seven years ago. That term has become a lot more prominent since then. It was maybe a little bit easier to say back in 2015 or whenever it was we were talking. And I know a lot of folks today who identify themselves as abolitionists about the criminal justice system. I also know folks who say, I don't think we should use that language. I think we should, you know, our goals should be something different. I'm a little bit curious about how you frame it now and how you think about political change after the rise of phrases like defund the

police, which I know what I think that means. Other people think it means something else. You know, there's debate about that term. I'm curious about, you know, as someone who's enmeshed yourself in change, what do you see the end goal as being and how do you characterize it to folks? Yeah, you know, at Forward Justice, we are committed to advancing social, racial, economic justice in service of achieving the third reconstruction in this country. And so folks might be like, what does that mean? You know, and we use history kind of as one of our teaching points. of our teaching points. The first Reconstruction, 1865, 1877, you had the passage of the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendment, which remixed slavery, gave birthright citizenship, and gave the right to vote to Black men. Second Reconstruction, 1959, 1971, you had the passage of the Fair Housing Act, Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. And so what a common thread between those two periods was.

One, you had directly impacted people and allied white folks working to end the form of racial caste, which was slavery in the first Reconstruction. Now, the same second Reconstruction, you had directly impacted people, Black folks and allied white folks working to end that form of racial caste, which was Jim Crow segregation. This third reconstruction, we're going to have to have directly impacted people and allied white folks to end this current form of racial caste, which is mass incarceration, mass criminalization. But that ain't my ending point. That is not the ending point of just ending the bad thing. And that's what we learned from those other periods. We want to end the bad thing, but we also want to build our Cobb salad.

Remember, we're moving that burger away. We're going to build our Cobb salad, our virtuous, our reconstruction community. What does that look like? Right. Yeah. And so for those two periods, one of, and this is why our unlock the vote work, our voter rights restoration work was so seminal to our theory of change, because in both periods, you had an expansion of the ballot to a previously excluded group. First period, 15th Amendment, Black men, second reconstruction, Voting Rights Act, passage of voting rights for people irrespective of race or national origin all across the South. Third reconstruction, that's the elimination of felon disenfranchisement all across the South to unlock the vote for a new electorate to help us build

this virtuous Cobb salad. So we see the pursuit of a true multiracial democracy, which has always been fleeting in this country. That has never been a secure thing, right? A true multiracial democracy where one person, one vote can participate and elect representatives to govern their lives. We've never really mastered that as an American experiment. So can we get that part right? Right. Can we get that part right? And then we can talk about some of these other foundational building blocks that are that are essential. We see it with the first and second. Education was critical. And right now, the fight around a true telling of what education is, a true telling

of what history is, is at the center of it. So know, I had the privilege of working with, you know, one of our sister organizations, Spirit House. And when they think about safety and what it takes to keep communities safe, right? They have people engage in a simple exercise. And we would go into community, have people center themselves, close their eyes, think about the times where they felt the most safe. And then they'll go around the room and they'll ask people to share those reflections. And folks will talk about,

man, when I was at the community block party, or when I was at grandma's cookout, or when I was at the church picnic or the church raffle, right? And at the epicenter of safety and these descriptions of safety was family, was community, was that social cohesion. Let me tell you what they did not talk about, Adam, and what they never talk about when they talk about safety. They never talk about the police. They never talk about, oh, when those tactical helicopters were flying over the neighborhood, I felt really damn safe. They never talk about when terrorists knocked down the door across the street. I felt really, really safe. They don't ever mention those things as far

as what is the epicenter of safety. And when you talk to a mother, whether you're talking to her from the West side of Chicago, or whether you're in West Seattle or West Appalachian, they all just want a safe place for their kids to live and play. They just want an opportunity for them to be able to thrive and climb the social ladders of this country. And we should be trying to create that environment for everybody, irrespective of their zip code. And that's what the third reconstruction, that's what the beloved community would look like. Daryl, that's so beautiful. People might not have been able to see me the whole time. You had me nodding like crazy. What a gorgeous vision.

And I think when you just connect that to one of your earlier points, the idea of having the community input, having the community determine what does safety look like to What, what will make us feel safe in our community is one of the most important things. Um, and I think it's something that when, you know, uh, affluent white folks are thinking about what makes them feel safe. Um, they should be thinking about folks in other communities. Why might they, why might they not feel safe? You know, helicopters in LA are a perfect example. Nobody feels safe when a helicopter goes overhead. Um, and do you think someone in another, in another neighborhood is feeling safe if they have helicopters, if they have over policing, et cetera. Um, but when it comes to building, I, I love your entire vision about, uh, multiracial democracy being, being the goal or being at least our least our first goal that we're trying to hit.

So for folks listening, for folks watching, what are steps that they can take to try to build that democracy in their own lives? Because a lot of times, again, this stuff feels vague. It feels theoretical. It feels like policy choices that someone else makes. You're one of the people, though, who is fighting for it daily and who's doing it on the ground. So how is that a fight that that, you know, we can join wherever we may live in the country? Yeah, you know, so it's always easy to hit the red donate button and to a worthy organization. So you can go to WWWforwardjustice.org and obviously support

our work. That's an easy thing to do. But we also on our www.unlockourvotenc.org page have a place where people can volunteer and you can volunteer to phone bank, to text bass. We still, until the court changes his mind, until it takes the right away, we're still phone banking. We're still trying to get people to register until that right is taken away and people can take part in that. We're currently organizing for an advocacy day where we take people from all across the state, directly impacted people and their family members, take them to the General Assembly so policymakers can hear directly from people who've experienced some of these things about what they need. We're organizing around that, and people can phone back and text blasts and help us achieve those goals as well.

Incredible. Daryl, thank you so much for being on the show. Normally, this is when I would ask people where to plug, but you just did such a beautiful job of it. So I won't take up any more of your time. You have so much important work to do in North Carolina and across the country, and it's always a joy to catch up with you. And I hope we get to do it again soon. All right. Thank you for having me on. Well, thank you once again to Daryl for coming on the show. If you want to support his wonderful work or just learn more about it, head once again to forwardjustice.org. I also want to thank everybody who supports this show at the $15 a month level on Patreon. Some recent names

are Robin Dunlop, Jeffrey McConnell, Nisi Pods, Brian Taboney, Leslie Coach, Sean Garrison, Raghav Kaushik, Always Sunny McPwoninator, Ashley Molina Diaz, Ask, Ghost, Francisco Ojeda, and Dark Avenger. If you want to join them, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. I also want to thank our producer, Sam Roundman, and our engineer, Kyle McGraw. If you want to follow me online, and if you want to see all of my tour dates, head to adamconover.net or at Adam Conover, wherever you get your social media. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you next time on Factually. That was a HeadGum Podcast.