How to Be a Better Human - How to create a more just future with your community (with Raj Jayadev)

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

How would you describe your community? And what if the stories you tell have the power to save someone from injustice? With the popularity and support of movements like Black Lives Matter, it seems the world is reckoning with how we think about the systems and institutions that support mass incarceration. Today’s guest, Raj Jayadev, wants us to focus on “proximate, intimate change” in our local communities and courts. He is the co-founder and coordinator of Silicon Valley De-Bug, a community organizing, media and advocacy organization based in San Jose, California. For over a decade, De-Bug has employed a methodology they call “participatory defense”, an approach where families whose loved ones are facing the criminal court system can use their stories to transform the landscape of power in the courts. Raj and the De-Bug team have expanded their work into the National Participatory Defense Network, with hubs in more than 30 cities. His community organizing and writings have been featured in the New York Times, BBC, and TIME Magazine. In 2018, Raj was selected as a MacArthur Fellow. If you’d like to learn more about participatory defense or get involved, you can start at: https://www.participatorydefense.org/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. There seems to be a big shift underway in the United States and actually around the world when it comes to understanding crime and punishment. And as we rethink policing and prisons and prevention and all the interconnected systems around them, it seems to me like more and more people are getting involved and invested in these issues, which is great.

But if you're like me, to be honest, you may have gone to some marches and called some elected officials, maybe. But then I still drive by courthouses or detention facilities without thinking much about them, maybe without even noticing. And today's guest, Raj Jayadev, he called me out on that. He challenged me to think much more deeply about what that means. What does it mean to mindlessly walk by these institutions, but to never actually go inside of them myself. Raj was awarded a prestigious MacArthur fellowship back in 2018. Those are the grants that they sometimes call genius grants. So yeah, he's a

smart guy. And he got that award for his work on participatory defense, which is an idea that he's going to tell us all about. But more than just demonstrating ways to get involved, Raj also helped me to understand how a system that is built all around punishment, it impacts families and whole communities, not just the individuals who are on trial. Look, while so much needs to change within the court system in the U.S., our conversation also reminded me that no matter where you live in the world, whether you live inside of the United States or outside, whether you've had direct experiences with criminal charges or whether you have never had those experiences, we all have a stake in how our society processes crime and punishment.

This is an episode that pushed me, and I'm really hoping will push you, too, to explore new ways to engage in reform in addition to marching or posting or reacting. It can be really hard to find your place in the pursuit of a more just system. And honestly, Raj was there too at one point. Here's a clip from his TEDx talk. This is my favorite protest shirt. It says, protect your people. We made it in the basement of our community center.

I've worn it at rallies, at protests, at marches, at candlelight vigils with families who have lost loved ones to police violence. I've seen how this ethic of community organizing has been able to change arresting practices, hold individual officers accountable, and allow families to feel strong and supported in the darkest moments of their lives. But when a family would come to our center and say, my loved one got arrested, what can we do? We didn't know how to translate the power of community organizing that we saw on the streets into the courts. We figured we're not lawyers, and so that's not our arena to make change.

And so despite our belief in collective action, we would allow people that we cared about to go to court alone. But we have a solution. We decided to be irreverent to this idea that only lawyers can impact the courts and to penetrate the judicial system with the power, intellect, and ingenuity of community organizing. We call the approach participatory defense. in just a moment we are going to hear more about what the power intellect and ingenuity of community organizing looks like in this situation what does it mean to participate in defense we're

going to dive into that after this quick break if you're at a point in life when you're ready to lead with purpose, we can get you there. The University of Victoria's MBA in Sustainable Innovation is not like other MBA programs. It's for true changemakers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology. It's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors. For details, visit uvic.ca slash future MBA. That's uvic.ca slash future MBA. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering And we are back.

Today we are talking about courts, the law, and justice with Raj Jayadev. My name is Raj Jayadev. I'm a community organizer in San Jose, California, with Silicon Valley Debug and the National Participatory Defense Network. What is participatory defense? Yeah, participatory defense is a community organizing practice for families and communities whose loved ones are facing the criminal court system and immigration court system on how they could impact the outcome of cases of their loved ones by being an extension of the defense team,

and then also collectively transform the landscape of power in the courts. It's interesting because you use the word participatory defense, which makes me think that the standard method of criminal defense in this country is not participatory. Yeah, not at all. I think by design, the court system is meant to be exclusionary, that is supposed to shrink people, to strip them of their sense of agency and power and control, and force people in the decisions that they feel they're making in isolation without any sort of ability to sort of direct where they go and how the experience is going to be. And so to make that experience, which is, I think, explicitly stripping of power, to make it participatory, to say people have license and ability to impact the outcome of what that experience is like, that's what is different than what was happening before we started doing this. It seems like in so many different areas in our society, there's this disconnect between how we imagine things are, which is often how we think they should be, and then how they actually are. And I think maybe that's nowhere more pronounced than in

the criminal justice system. Right. I mean, the court system, despite like what TV depicts and movies and the dramas usually aren't that sensational, don't have that level of kind of human tension or even the issue of justice kind of isn't in the atmosphere at all. It's really more like an assembly line. People come in, they get told what's going to happen to them, and then they leave or they stay in prison or jail and they wait for the fallout of what incarceration is going to do to them and their loved ones. And a lot of the work that you're doing is trying to disrupt that assembly line and to actually put some humanity back into it, both on the side of the people who are watching themselves or their families go through this as a defendant, but also on the

side of the judges and the prosecutors, seeing them as people, not just another number that they're going to put in prison or charge with a crime. Yeah, courtrooms, I think for the courtrooms to facilitate mass incarceration at the rate and levels that they do, they have to dehumanize the experience. They have to make it a sterile environment where it feels like it's moving widgets on a conveyor belt. And so the way to challenge that is to penetrate that sterility by sort of dissolving the rhythm and the walls of the court and bringing life and humanity and family and community into the courtroom. And then conversely, almost figuratively bringing those decision makers like judges and family and community into the courtroom. And then conversely, almost figuratively, bringing those decision makers like judges

and prosecutors and juries outside of that courtroom and into the real life and the real lives of people in community. And so we decided to penetrate the courts and use the one know-how that we had, which was the ethic and spirit of community organizing, of collectively problem-sol solving, collectively moving together. So that way people didn't feel alone anymore. And that's really what the root of participatory defense is. It really was a

growing experience. Like when we started, we used to have, so, you know, a typical thing that happens when an injustice is happening to one individual in a community, we used to have... So a typical thing that happens when an injustice is happening to one individual in a community, we essentially were irreverent to this idea that community couldn't do things in the court, that it had to be reserved only for the lawyers and judges, and gave ourselves license to move from the knowledge and power of the community. That knowledge grew with each new case we worked on. And then that circle kept expanding with each new family that came in. And then we kept what tactics and strategies worked and learned as we went. The craft of this approach of organizing

is so urgent and the stakes are so high. But also, even though the losses are crushing, the victories are so inspiring. And you could see the transformation in people when they first come to one of these weekly meetings, thinking that there's no hope and there's no possibility that the loved one's coming out of prison or jail, that they have no ability to affect what's going to happen. And then they keep coming each week. They meet other people that have actually freed their loved ones. So they start kind of leaning forward in their chair. And then all of a sudden, they're able to have impact and bring their loved one home. And when their loved one comes home for that new family that's just starting the journey, it lets them know it's possible.

Because who they're seeing aren't people that necessarily have initials by their names, or aren't people that are supposed to be the ones entitled to make change. They're people that are supposed to be on the receiving end of that injustice that have turned that around entirely. So they see a commonality and they say, "'Okay, that could be me too.'" So it they see a commonality and they say, okay,

that could be me too. So it has been a learning process, each new case. And then, I mean, I consider us kind of in the first generation of this really. Well, so with the idea that you are still in that first generation of this, can you talk to me about what some of the victories or success stories that have stuck with you? Yeah. I mean, they, they happen, um, faster than I could even recount now. Um, which is a real testament to, to the power of community, but also that, that, that was latent power that was there all the time, but just because of the designs of the system of being so exclusionary, uh, of almost having kind of like a figurative moat around the castle of the courtroom that said, don't enter, and you don't have power here, and you don't belong here. For them to

penetrate those walls has led to wrongful arrest, not leading to convictions, to acquittals at the trial level. People even having the strength to go to trial instead of taking that first plea, because they know they're not alone sitting in that jail cage. There's not only their public defender, but an entire community that's supporting them. There's been folks that are coming home from post-conviction sentences. So people that never thought they'd see daylight are now home. And so from the whole spectrum of where people have been traumatized by incarceration have also been points of intervention where we've been able to liberate people really based on their own strength and power and sort of, like I said earlier, just not taking no for an answer. So, yeah, that's what we see. As you talk about that, a lot of the effectiveness of your technique, it relies on the power

of storytelling and being able to tell a story and get someone to see a person in a different light or maybe as a person in a way that they hadn't seen them before. For me, coming into this conversation, I don't think of storytelling as like a powerful social change move, right? It kind of feels like it's like entertainment or even maybe frivolous. And yet for you, this is really at times even like a life or death thing to be able to tell the story well. I feel you on that term storytelling.

It doesn't seem like something that would be like sort of the razor's edge of social change. But I guess I consider it more like truth-telling. And with the criminal punishment system, it is essentially telling a subjective narrative about somebody, depicting who they are based on a singular act or their contact with the system and all the racial dimensions and class dimensions that that represents. But what that also means is it means that there's an impulse within that person and family for their truth to be told. Like when you said earlier, people don't even get their day in court.

Why that is such a deep, profound sense of frustration isn't just because they want to, you know, exonerate themselves or litigate the case. It's because they've never had an opportunity for the truth to be on a platform. When we'd walk back to the parking lot, the most common thing we'd hear from people wasn't, oh, I hate that prosecutor or that judge is racist. We hear all that stuff too. But the most common thing people would say is, I wish they knew him like I know him. Or I wish they knew her like we know her. And as organizers, our role was to transform that impulse into some tangible, actionable step. And so we created the tool of the social bio pack. We said, so let's make sure this court understands them through your eyes, through your lens, through your experience. And so you have all those photos in your photo album. You have all

those letters at home. Let's put that together and let's tell a coherent, strategic, tactical story that refutes the narrative that has been depicted or laid over on top of your loved one. So I think that's why the storytelling is bigger than the tactic. It's a way to shift the grounds underneath the court of how someone is understood or even how those decisions are made. So I imagine many people listening, right, are going to immediately connect with the sense of like having a loved one who is in the criminal justice system somehow. But there's also plenty of people who don't have that personal connection at this moment. How can they also be involved in this type of a movement? How can they lend their support

as community members or as people who care about justice? I mean, I think the first thing people should be able to do is look within the proximity of their own community. Meaning like when we talk about mass incarceration and the criminal punishment system, it all seems pretty abstract and large. We're talking about millions of human lives, and we're talking about an entrenched racist system that was built from slavery. So it's hard to see how you get any sort of toehold of impact. And the reality is all those major social political forces that we talk about and understand a little bit better now than we did before collectively as a country is happening at their local courtroom. The courthouse

that they drive by every day to work or they walk by, all those injustices that you read about when you read Michelle Alexander's book or you watch the movies, the documentaries, that's all happening every day at that institution. And the only thing that's allowing that institution to operate in the mechanical, cold, inhumane way that it does of processing people is because people drive by. They walk by. They're not looking at what's happening inside the machinery of that place. All that action is happening in the local county courthouse. And so what it means for the community that wants to get involved, the first thing I'd say is reach out to a local participatory offense hub if there is one in their city. Because all these conversations are proximate, intimate, and based on the local landscape. And they'll say, hey, we need people at court

on Wednesday because we need the judge to know that this person has backup. Or they'll say, hey, look, we need someone to push back on this district attorney's office that is racially profiling and upcharging on people from this part of the community, from the black side of town, for example. And that's an elected position. And you want to make real proximate change about freedom and liberation? We need you voting in this way. Or it might mean really, there's a term people use, court watching, which is literally being in the court, occupying it, and not only watching the court, but letting court decision makers like judges know that they're being watched, that their actions will have consequences publicly. So there are actionable steps that people could take, but the key to that,

to making it effective and kind of not self-involved, I guess you could say, and kind of not self-involved, I guess you could say, is to follow the leadership of whatever the local community organizing engine is that's doing the work. And that work, I think that the one that will feel most tangible, that will feel most transformative, but also contribute to this larger historical movement of dismantling an unfair, unjust, racist criminal punishment system is going to be within the proximity of their local community. And so it's not only a

question of like where to act, it's a question of when to act. And people living in this moment right now are living at a moment where we can make the type of change that, you know, our grandkids will be looking and talking about. So, you know, I mentioned Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow, and the book concludes by saying the only thing powerful enough to challenge mass incarceration is a mass movement. You know, you kind of leave thinking, well, I need to read the sequel because like, how do you build a mass movement? Okay, we are going to take a quick break. But when we come back, we're going to hear from Michelle Alexander, who wrote The New Jim Crow, which Raj was just referencing. And then we're

going to talk more about what practical steps we can each do to build this movement. We will be right back. If you're at a point in life when you're ready to lead with purpose, we can get you there. The University of Victoria's MBA in Sustainable Innovation is not like other MBA programs. It's for true changemakers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology, it's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors. For details, visit uvic.ca slash future MBA. That's uvic.ca slash future MBA. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era,

dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Before the break, Raj was referencing the book The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. It is a hugely influential work that has shaped how many people talk about mass incarceration in the United States. But more than just talk about the problem, we want to talk about the solution.

How do you end The New Jim Crow? Here's what Michelle Alexander had to say in her TEDx talk. So what do we do? What do we do? in her TEDx talk. So what do we do? What do we do? Well, my own view is that nothing short of a major social movement has any hope of ending mass incarceration in the United States. And if you imagine that surely something less could do, somehow we could tinker with this machine and get it right. Consider the sheer scale of the system. This system is now so deeply rooted in our social, political, and economic structure, it's not going to just fade away or downsize

out of sight without a major upheaval, a fairly radical shift in our public consciousness. Now, I know that there's many people today who will say, well, there's just no hope of ending mass incarceration in America. Just as many people were resigned to the old Jim Crow in the South and say, oh yeah, it's a shame, but that's just the way that it is. I find that so many people of all colors, few the millions cycling in and out of our prisons and jails is just an unfortunate but basically inalterable fact of American life. Well, I am confident that Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks and Ella Baker and Ann Braden and all those young people who risked their lives getting on buses and taking freedom rides

to the South to end the old Jim Crow, they would not be so easily deterred. So I believe we have got to pick up where they left off and do the hard work of movement building on behalf of poor people of all colors. That was Michelle Alexander. Now, one of the things that I think is so powerful about your work, Raj, is that you are laser focused on that question of movement building. That is your bread and butter. So how do you build a movement that is powerful enough to solve a problem as huge as this? I think the way to do that is in the classical sense of understanding mass movement,

which is proximate, intimate change from people that aren't necessarily on posters and history books and have big Twitter followers or whatever, and doing it in a way that then contributes, even without knowing it, to this larger cultural political shift. And that's what people will be doing if they do actually step into that courthouse. I will say, too, the other thing that will happen,

so I'd say reach out to a local participatory fence hub, reach out to a local court watch group, reach out to a local public defender's office that are doing that work day group, reach out to a local public defender's office that are doing that work day in, day out, and are often not funded or supported in the way that those that are given resources to lock people up are. And you'll find that some of the issues are so nuanced and layered that the only way you understand them is if you see them in court. I want to ask you a language question, which is, I've noticed that a few times I've said

the criminal justice system and you've said the criminal punishment system. And I imagine that is not a coincidence that you and I have referred to it in different ways. I think being really specific about language is always important in this work. So I have an idea of why you might call it the criminal punishment system. I wonder if you could kind of elaborate on that for just a moment. Yeah, I started hearing people say, my friend Alec at Civil Rights Corps, who's done incredible work nationally around not only issues like bail and pretrial justice is the first person I heard talking about it. And it's like you said, like certain words all of a sudden help illustrate what you're feeling. You know, criminal justice system never felt right because that word justice is such a lofty,

value-ridden term. And when I think about incarceration and the purpose of it, like what they're really trying to do, what I see them trying to do is punish people. And so that's why the term I think is appropriate. I'm also thinking about like the nitty gritty of when you're putting together these social biography packets. I imagine that for a lot of people, it's not necessarily natural to think like, what is the most compelling parts of my life? What's the most compelling parts of telling this person's story? So what are some of the tips that you give them to be like, here's how you can connect with someone else. Here's how you can make someone see you and your loved one as more complete than just the worst day of their life,

or then the image that they have in their head that's not even accurate at all. What do you tell them? Like what makes a good sociobiography packet? The best ones are the ones that are built in partnership with the defense attorney. And the reason why I say that is, you know, the notion of like writing letters, character letters, for example, is not new.

It's something that gets asked about all the time. You know, what we found was like, there was a disconnect of people were saying the same word, but they had a different experiential point to know what that word meant. What do I say that could tell this court more about who my nephew is besides that case file? And what people tended to do is write kind of generalities just because you don't know what to write. So they'd write, he all the allegations that has been laid out by the prosecutor. So what they really needed was something more intentional. And so they needed to say, for example, if it's a drug-related charge or some sort of act that was fueled from some substance abuse that was unaddressed, there would have to be something that says, you know, as a family, we understood what traumas caused the substance abuse that was unaddressed, there would have to be something that says, you know, as a family, we understood what traumas caused the substance abuse. He understands. She understands.

We also have other family members that have been sober for X number of years. They're going to be mentors for this person. Here's the living environment they're coming home to. Here are the supports they're going to have. And so it's fleshing out something that is addressing what these kind of like templated arguments the prosecutor has. So it's more personalized because otherwise what would happen is a defense attorney then is in conversation with whoever it is, judge, prosecutor, and they say, why should we do something different than we've done every single case in these type of case profiles? What is different? And there has to be something particular. And so the things that people are writing about, that they're talking about, are evidencing through photos, are responding to those

specifically to say, there is a future here and they're not going to be alone and untethered in the world. There's people around them that are invested in their success and well-being. If there's hardships and challenges, they should be understood and lifted up because it may be a miracle that they survive those things. If you face those adversities and those hardships, Judge, DA, probation officer, what would you have done? Would you have made the same decisions? And that people can change. And so those are the kind of things that end up living in a packet. What do you say to people who I imagine this argument comes up a lot, which is kind of the you did the crime, you do the time. And I imagine that that side, the people who are coming at this

like that, they're not really interested in the humanity. They just think like, you are defined by this. There's a law and there's punishment. How do you get them to see that in a different way? Well, I think the way to look at it, the most sober way to look at it, so to speak, is what's the end goal here? And I'm assuming the end goal here is that people feel safe and people feel whole. And what we've done with the court apparatus with incarceration for hundreds of years is really

think enforced a racist classist philosophy that has been sort of described or a sort of generous way of understanding it, it's been a social experiment. Is the way to deal with harm when people commit harm or have been accused of committing harm, is the way to deal with that vengeance and punishment, is that the most forward-thinking, clear perspective that arrives us to this end goal that we want? And so is it better for them to be disenfranchised, for them to be stigmatized, for them to have been traumatized, to then come back? Is that going to make them better people, less likely to be involved in something that is described as harm?

Or is it more likely? And so the immediate knee-jerk impulse for vengeance and punishment is not a thought-out way of addressing larger social ills. And so as a society, we have to think more grand. We have to think more down the road and learn from the lessons. It's beautifully put what you just said. I don't have anything to add other than just that, like, if you look at it in that way, it does become, at least to me, a very crystal clear piece where how could you not, like, how can you just keep trying this thing that is not working over and over and over and over and feel like there's any justification to that?

Yeah. And just to add real quick, it's like, because we get asked that, you know, people get asked that a lot now with like, say, defund police, like, which is sort of the same question is like, if you dismantle these institutions, then what do we do? And I think that's like the wrong question. Like, the question is exactly what you said, which is like, do we want the same outcomes? Like, and if we don't, then don't we have to try something different? And aren't we entitled to that? And don't we deserve that? And that's not just about the people that come to our meetings. That's not just about the people that are in cages. That's literally for everyone, because

it is ultimately, you know, it feels like we all live in these silos and are individualized from one another. This is a collective exercise. This, quote unquote, experience injustice is a collective experiment. So we have to try something different. What is one thing, a book, movie, TV show, idea, piece of music, could be anything. What's something that has made you a better human? idea, piece of music, could be anything. What's something that has made you a better human? My son has made me a better human. I don't know if I have to describe why, but my son has made me a better human because he's given me a purpose and a larger generational generational understanding of what the purpose of my life is. And the purpose of my life was,

is to be some generational memory, some baton between my grandmother, who he's named after, who was in a village in India that was living a life that is, I think, a description of values in a way that persists in our people. And for me to deliver that to my son, Nanjapa, who is a living expression of those values on another continent in a different time frame, so that those values could exist in a different context so that he can make the impact that his grandmother dreamed of. Yeah. He's also like dangerously cute. So.

Oh, well, Raj, thank you so much for speaking with us and thanks so much for making time to be on the show. It's been a real pleasure. Thanks, Chris. That is it for today's episode. I'm your host, Chris Duffy, and this has been How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to our guest, Raj Jayadev. You can find out more about his work by visiting participatorydefense.org.

On the TED side, this show was brought to you by Abhimanyu Das, Daniella Balarezo, Frederica Elizabeth Yosefov, Anne Powers, and Cara Newman. From PRX Productions, How to Be a Better Human is brought to you by Jocelyn Gonzalez,

Pedro Rafael Rosado, and Sandra Lopez-Monsalve. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts

that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not, just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push, find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca.