1 0:08 biggest misconception about misdemeanors is that they are minor to start hearing more and more stories
2 0:14 of voter suppression that broke my heart they're the ones that are using the
3 0:25 [Music] system
4 0:32 my grandma was fighting for integration back in her day and i'm fighting for the same thing now
5 0:41 the problem is the system is working the way it's supposed to
6 1:12 we're recording all right
7 1:17 sometimes i feel like my life ended that day my car died on the side of the road a
8 1:24 cop walked over to my car and asked me if i needed help and i said no john clark was convicted
9 1:29 on a misdemeanor gambling charge and was forced to work on a chain gang i just remember being pushed
10 1:34 like being cornered into a wall i was just starting out life and i didn't
11 1:40 think i had anything to hide mary gay was sentenced to 30 days plus court costs for stealing a hat i was arrested that
12 1:46 evening it was a misdemeanor that was the beginning of the nightmare that i had to go through
13 1:52 henry nelson was arrested for using abusive language in the presence of a female and was sent off to the coal mines he
14 1:58 said you're going to jail and i'm like what for
15 2:10 misdemeanors have historically been the chump change crimes that we didn't pay attention to
16 2:17 [Music] i just got beat up by the police last night but i could have lost my life
17 2:23 13 million well that's about 80 percent of all american criminal documents 80
18 2:30 of what our criminal courts do is misdemeanors the story of misdemeanors is the story
19 2:37 of law enforcement continuing to prioritize african americans mexican immigrants america's so-called
20 2:44 criminal class you act like i really just committed a serious crime i did do something illegal you crossed the crosswalk
21 2:50 you might see two or three police standing and waiting cops to jump out the van anytime anywhere
22 2:56 [Applause] the misdemeanor system has not gotten its fair share of blame misdemeanors
23 3:05 are the invidious first step in the racialization of crime in this country too often
24 3:11 arrests for minor crimes devolve until police violence and death for black and brown people
25 3:32 [Music]
26 3:44 they got me jaywalking not wearing a seatbelt my taillight was out i was arrested
27 4:03 how far back that goes is a really dark [Music]
28 4:12 story
29 4:18 reconstruction was an error when four million african americans made it out of bondage and were able to
30 4:24 achieve at really high levels whether it was in business in education
31 4:31 different ways of prosperity that really threatened white supremacy
32 4:37 [Music] they elected many black men to positions
33 4:42 of power [Music] of course that was a sea change from how
34 4:49 power had been exercised during slavery and a lot of white folks just didn't like it
35 4:58 they were nostalgic for the old days of overt white supremacy and so they
36 5:05 subverted reconstruction if you look at misdemeanors and you
37 5:10 track them from the reconstruction area to modern day you see the fingerprints everywhere of white supremacy and control of black
38 5:17 bodies the bland owners they had nearly lost everything
39 5:23 and the only way to get that back is to somehow corral the black labor force back into the same
40 5:29 plantations that they had once worked the most effective way of forcing
41 5:35 african-americans back into this condition that would be so similar to slavery was to begin to criminalize black life
42 5:42 itself misdemeanor offenses for incredibly trivial or made-up things
43 5:48 what should have been tiny penalties for non-existent defenses turn into years of people's lives where
44 5:55 were you taken i was taken out to the camps where did you sleep
45 6:02 slept on some hay chain was on me i'm being put into handcuffs i'm being
46 6:07 dragged into this cold space i don't have anything to cover myself and i'm asked to sit inside of this tiny
47 6:13 little room and i have no idea why i'm there was there any jury that tried you no sir
48 6:20 did the recorder ask you whether you wanted a lawyer no sir and i thought that i would have time to
49 6:25 talk to a court appointed attorney so we could talk about what happened i can ask them to get other you know pieces of evidence that
50 6:31 would prove that hey i'm poor it wasn't like i was trying to run off with this money did they furnish any copy of the charge
51 6:37 against you no sir they did not did they give you any opportunity to
52 6:43 plead to any accusation it never gave me anything at all when they asked me how i played i played no
53 6:49 contest i didn't understand that no contest is the same as guilty and that i would walk away with a
54 6:55 misdemeanor that would affect my ability to get hired
55 7:06 the justice system after emancipation was weaponized against black people
56 7:11 it perpetuated slavery by making the mechanisms of enslavement
57 7:17 pretty much the same family separation back-breaking labor people having no rights
58 7:24 you could be sold on the steps of the courthouse that you were convicted in and given to the highest bidder a whole
59 7:32 separate criminal code that applied to african americans
60 7:37 was established many misdemeanor offenses are best understood as mechanisms of
61 7:44 social control they're not designed to catch dangerous or guilty people
62 7:49 but rather they are tools we give them to police as additional ways of exercising their authority
63 7:57 some of these laws were overtly race-based and with others then and now the
64 8:03 understanding was that the laws would look race neutral but they would be applied and
65 8:08 enforced almost exclusively against black people for these governments to sell prisoners
66 8:14 into slavery you first have to arrest lots of people there's a big problem with that though
67 8:20 there's just not enough crime for this system to work and for it to be profitable the state
68 8:26 governments of the south had to invent new crimes
69 8:33 southern legislatures which are essentially run by confederates at that time
70 8:38 are trying to re-inscribe a form of slavery through a system of laws called black codes
71 8:47 a whole category of new statutes passed in almost every southern state that attached these enormous penalties
72 8:54 to what were in reality very minor thefts those were laws and
73 9:00 many others like it that were only ever enforced against african americans
74 9:05 and so it became a way to have a basis for arresting huge numbers of black people
75 9:11 i don't remember much about writing the check john owen was caught taking six years of
76 9:17 corn from a cornfield and was arrested under the black codes
77 9:23 this is four dollars and we have one two three four five six seven seven times
78 9:30 four is twenty eight dollars so just this pile right here is how much i went to jail for owen was
79 9:36 put in jail for months until he was finally tried for theft i have a theft charge it's
80 9:42 death by check i had money in the bank but i didn't know how long it took for checks to process like i know better now
81 9:50 i could have donated plasma gotten 25 under a sentence owen was leased in the
82 9:57 convict labor and sent to the chain gang where he served two years for the corn and a third year for the court costs i
83 10:04 was in the hayes county jail for a total of 45 days for 25 worth of food michael brown
84 10:13 who was the teenager who was killed by police in ferguson whose death led to the
85 10:18 explosion of the black lives matter movement he was stopped for jaywalking he stepped
86 10:26 off the sidewalk and was walking in the street and there was a local criminal ordinance that made it a crime
87 10:32 to do so african americans are being cited for jaywalking
88 10:38 at three five ten times the rate of white pedestrians the legislatures of
89 10:44 the white south make it a crime to walk alongside a railroad in an era which there are no paved roads the
90 10:50 easiest way for a poor person to get from one place to another is to walk alongside a railroad that law
91 10:56 didn't say this only applies to black people but those were laws that were only ever enforced against
92 11:02 african americans all of us engage in what would be considered to be
93 11:08 minor crimes and for some people it's crossing the street at the wrong time
94 11:13 but if you're black or brown then it becomes categorized as something that's criminal
95 11:19 so what are you doing didn't use the crosswalk all i'm trying to do is go home man i'm tired i just got off of work
96 11:26 nandi kane says he was walking home from work when it happened since i felt like they were going to
97 11:31 draw a gun out and shoot me in my back i'm tired of all this [ __ ] man
98 11:54 um vagrancy laws were passed that
99 12:00 essentially meant any black person who was found on the streets unemployed and couldn't show evidence of work
100 12:06 was a criminal a vagrant trespass laws originate from this idea that african americans only belong
101 12:13 in certain spaces and at certain times and so they give police officers the ability under the guise of law to
102 12:21 dictate where an african-american person can be what time they can be there and how they
103 12:26 can operate in certain spaces my kids daycare was inside of one of the buildings to the um skyway
104 12:33 so i figured i'd take a walk find somewhere to sit down and um wait on them to get there i'm going to new horizons to pick up my kids i was
105 12:39 sitting there for 10 minutes monroe dolphis was standing in the train yard when he was grabbed by the
106 12:45 sheriff's deputy monroe stated that he had not committed any crime why are you going to go to
107 12:50 jail i'm not doing anything wrong hold on hold on can you hold on please i'm not no no come on brother brother this is the
108 12:56 fault at this moment i saw my children's daycare class and their teachers and
109 13:01 everything um walking past while this was happening he took the taser and drove it into my leg and pretty much
110 13:08 at that point it lost all control of the leg the deputy later claimed that the crime committed by dolphus
111 13:14 was taking a 25-cent tent of fish from the lunch pail of a southern railway worker unable to provide any evidence to
112 13:20 support this the charge was changed to vagrancy and i kept asking them what i was being
113 13:26 charged with they'll create false charges just to make sure that everything is perpetuated judge
114 13:34 longshore found dolphis guilty of misdemeanor vagrancy and sentenced him to five months and 20
115 13:40 days of hard labor and the minds of tennessee coal iron and railroad
116 13:46 going back to the vagrancy laws of the late 19th century the people who make those laws have in
117 13:52 mind another group of people for whom there is an inherent threat to their livelihood like breaking
118 14:00 barbecue ordinances and public parks or sleeping in dormitories that white people don't think you live there
119 14:06 i have every right to call the police it allows law enforcement to regulate whether or not certain
120 14:12 behavior for one group of people is deemed a criminal and another group of people is just
121 14:19 frivolous activity many people remember the starbucks debacle in philadelphia there were two
122 14:25 african-american men at a starbucks the employee had them arrested for loitering where they're clearly not
123 14:31 engaging in that behavior
124 14:37 loitering is a police tool of choice it's the go-to offense that police often use to impose
125 14:43 their authority in the misdemeanor system there is no conduct to minor no act too small that the state cannot
126 14:51 render a crime black people charged with a misdemeanor are 75 percent more likely to be locked
127 14:58 up than white people you have to realize that these laws didn't happen by chance they were
128 15:03 part of a a system to continue to oppress black bodies our misdemeanor system
129 15:10 includes all kinds of offenses and some of them can be quite serious domestic violence
130 15:16 dui but most of the time we treat minor harmless conduct
131 15:22 as misdemeanors traffic offenses jaywalking order maintenance offenses spitting
132 15:29 driving on a suspended license for failure to pay a fines and yet these minor meaningless
133 15:35 misdemeanors can have terrible consequences for individuals
134 15:43 [Music] to understand the misdemeanor system
135 15:50 follow the money the accused are paying for the judges
136 15:56 the prosecutors and three and a half million dollars off phone commissary at the jail it's a
137 16:02 known money maker they call it the 20. family member transferred money
138 16:21 today's system is estimated at 80 billion dollars
139 16:27 the misdemeanor side of it it is a way of saddling people with fines and fees
140 16:32 that will put money in the pockets of the administrators of that system the first time i got a
141 16:38 ticket my insurance had lapsed so i got the speeding ticket and i got a no insurance ticket at the
142 16:44 same time the next time i got pulled over i was arrested for driving with a suspended license i paid the tickets
143 16:50 pay the court costs paid my fees and fines but they said we're driving with a spinner license the punishment for that is we're going
144 16:56 to suspend your license for two years i would often have to choose between paying my inspection or my registration
145 17:02 or paying my light bill or other bills that i had i had to drive my car to get to work
146 17:08 because i had a construction job if i needed to take material to the job i couldn't take plywood or two by fours on a bus
147 17:20 i felt like there was no way i was going to be able to take care of the kids on my
148 17:26 own while you were out because i didn't know how long you were going to be in jail this officer saw me a young hispanic guy
149 17:33 driving a 63 impala and said you know what that guy he's up to something i was trying to go to work
150 17:39 trying to pay bills and he's treating me like a hardened criminal that misdemeanor charge ended up becoming something that i
151 17:46 couldn't get rid of
152 18:00 they are being treated as revenue sources charged daily fees for being in jail
153 18:07 supervision fees tether fees drug testing fees database fees to fund bail bondsmen
154 18:14 private probation companies electronic monitoring companies drug testing companies
155 18:19 it is disturbingly similar to the way that we saw african-americans being exploited in the
156 18:25 post-war south
157 18:47 [Applause]
158 18:54 i'm the mario davis uh linebacker of new orleans saints i was born and
159 18:59 raised in mississippi pretty much raised by a single mom entering into my second year of college
160 19:05 me and a teammate were caught shoplifting groceries from from walmart it kind of
161 19:11 felt a lot more like a drug bust than uh us having stole some groceries
162 19:18 the bail was set at ten thousand dollars and you know i have ten thousand dollars the football coaches bailed us out a
163 19:25 misdemeanor is supposed to be able to uh be in front of the judge within 90 days but this is not happening this is
164 19:32 not happening in our country we have people who are spending seven eight months in jail who
165 19:37 have not even been
166 19:44 [Music]
167 19:50 sentenced cop arrested me and i was charged with the misdemeanor the term chain gang
168 19:56 was coined on account of the shackle worn by convict laborers they said okay listen we're gonna let you go home now
169 20:02 but scram's gonna come and uh put a monitor on you they were taken to an anvil where a
170 20:08 rivet was pounded into the ankle cuffs to keep them closed then the cuffs were chained together the
171 20:13 initial fee to get on this ground was 250 that's just to have it put on then after
172 20:20 that they charged me 220 a month for the actual monitor many of the convicts suffered from shackle sores
173 20:27 ulcers were the iron ground against their skin gangrene and other infections were also
174 20:32 common right after they put it on me you start causing these really severe sores and rashes
175 20:38 and their attitude pretty much is it's court-ordered it's by a judge and you'll wear it or you can go back to
176 20:45 jail the emaciated convict laborers worked their entire days barefoot but the shackles were always on their
177 20:51 ankles they mined in them slept in them and those who died of disease or beatings
178 20:57 were buried in them what they're doing is unjust what they're doing is profiteering because you you're paying
179 21:02 them you're their slave with their shackle on your foot
180 21:28 i remember this hopeless feeling just overcome me i couldn't take care of my family the
181 21:34 biggest misconception about misdemeanors is that they are minor the full consequences of getting a
182 21:41 misdemeanor can be astronomical it hurt me for 10 years and it
183 21:47 completely disrupted my life and i have been trying to figure out how to get my life back on track
184 21:53 this will be a part of my story for the rest of my life when people
185 21:58 are booked into jails for a week or a year or even a day you just
186 22:06 cannot avoid the trauma that inflicts upon you the moment you hit the jail you don't
187 22:12 come out of that unchanged or untouched you witness trauma you witness violence
188 22:18 and it changes you it changes your community i tried to get a job at amazon where my
189 22:23 roommate worked i called to walmart and i called to several other retail stores
190 22:29 i got turned away because i had a misdemeanor charge for theft not enough people talk about what it
191 22:35 means to have a misdemeanor on your record it can determine the kind of job that you get to the kind of housing that you
192 22:41 can qualify for to the kind of schools that you can go to a lot of people
193 22:46 are harmed for life because of the smallest infractions they're being rendered homeless they're
194 22:52 going without food without medication their children are suffering due to misdemeanors i lost my housing
195 22:59 shortly after that i lost my vehicle which led to me losing my job and it was
196 23:05 just one thing after another like like kicks to the face
197 23:10 i had full custody of my children they had to get to school we had to
198 23:18 sleep in the car waking up at like four in the morning getting to a laundromat to make sure that they have
199 23:25 clean school uniforms and work so hard and all of that was ruined by one charge
200 23:31 one misdemeanor ruined my ability to get even just basic work
201 23:43 they can't get a job if they have to check a box that says they've been convicted of a crime they can't even
202 23:51 rent housing because they got poor credit when they received a ridiculous
203 23:57 500 dollar speeding violation so this system was designed both to extract
204 24:03 from people but also to marginalize their presence in society
205 24:24 it's going to be a mass grave site this is the dormitory we stupid crowd
206 24:30 these are the beds they're right beside each other and this is the space everybody just
207 24:36 dying and getting sick and [ __ ] like this [ __ ] serious as [ __ ] bro you all right
208 24:42 you want me to go get the police no what have you done this [ __ ] you ain't gonna do nothing about it
209 24:49 this [ __ ] literally in this [ __ ] dying bro i don't know what to do
210 24:55 one of the worst places to be during this pandemic is locked up in jail the
211 25:02 same horror story is emerging of the unchecked spread of infection and inmates essentially being left to
212 25:07 die now jaywalking or theft of a small amount or any sort of vagrancy type of behavior
213 25:16 can lead to your incarceration and eventual contracting of the virus and death
214 25:21 i've been in jail for two and a half months for a ready death a non-violent crime that carries a
215 25:27 misdemeanor charge for the price value of um less than a hundred dollars there's been three deaths
216 25:33 two being inmates one being a guard as far as like people who are working for the facility
217 25:38 they're like intertwined they could easily be catching it that's how one of the guards caught
218 25:43 it my life is in danger
219 25:56 [Music] these human beings aren't valued enough
220 26:04 for us to apply the same kinds of safety measures there that we are in other sectors of society
221 26:10 if it wasn't already bad enough that you are booked into jail because you didn't have the money to pay
222 26:16 the ticket and your license is suspended that is now life threatening to you
223 26:22 sheriff's office is now releasing non-violent inmates as a next step in mitigating the spread of copenhagen
224 26:28 hundreds of inmates have been released from shelby county's jail in an effort to put fewer people at risk
225 26:33 for coronavirus
226 26:41 19 thousands of misdemeanor defendants are rightly being released it's clear that these individuals should
227 26:47 have never been incarcerated in the first place we can tell by the fact that after these
228 26:53 releases we haven't seen any sort of crime wave
229 27:01 there's a different type of crime wave that should concern us though and that's the crime of violence against black
230 27:06 people post civil war [Music] [Applause]
231 27:15 state violence has historically been used to intimidate people of color especially black people
232 27:21 we see this all throughout history
233 27:30 misdemeanors they have almost nothing to do with public safety
234 27:36 what misdemeanors do is give police an extraordinary amount of
235 27:42 discretion with any minor offense premised on the idea that the black man is a threat
236 27:53 misdemeanors are a very specific mechanism that legalize violence toward black
237 27:59 people and keep them in a very particular place not just as individuals but as an entire community of people
238 28:08 when we look at so many cases in history often what started as an investigation or a claim of a petty misdemeanor
239 28:14 offense led to police officer supported and sanctioned racial terrorism
240 28:21 all too often we see police exercising that terrible authority of violence
241 28:27 against people who have only been suspected of the most minor of crime
242 28:35 the problem isn't bad apple cops the problem is the system is working the
243 28:41 way it's supposed to
244 28:51 [Music] police shot this boy outside my
245 28:57 apartment they kill him
246 29:15 [Music]
247 29:36 pretty good
248 29:42 [Music] i'm so sorry
249 30:06 why gray appeared to be unable to walk and was screaming as he was carried
250 30:12 feet dragging on the ground to a police van
251 30:18 [Music] i know i know you just on your job
252 30:43 [Music] please
253 30:50 my life could have so easily been taken in that skyway
254 30:56 george floyd goes to show further that the most minor offenses
255 31:03 even no offense at all could result in death the very purpose of racial terrorism is
256 31:11 control is social control what we have seen in the killings of
257 31:18 those accused was that misdemeanors became the gateway for police violence and murder
258 31:32 [Music]
259 31:41 we are seeing decriminalization we are seeing citations instead of arrests we are seeing people let out of jail we are
260 31:48 seeing pushback against fines and fees but at the same time there is so much more work that needs to be done
261 31:56 who defined what a misdemeanor is the whole thing was built on exploitation on racial violence
262 32:04 on building up industrial capitalism we should not be locking up people who speed who are too poor
263 32:12 to pay a fine or a fee who loiter or trespass or jaywalk they're not dangerous they're
264 32:19 not scary there's never been a good reason to lock
265 32:24 up anybody for petty offenses like slavery back in the day the law
266 32:30 itself is doing the work of oppression the criminal law is providing the
267 32:36 authority to arrest black people to punish black people to kill black people
268 32:44 and ultimately the real crime is that we're black
269 32:56 [Music]
270 33:34 when officers use their discretion and still choose to arrest low-level offenders instead of siding and releasing them
271 33:40 they are choosing to lock a human into a cage we wouldn't even put our dogs in
272 33:55 we got 123 people out of the hayes county jail yesterday
273 34:06 it eliminated the penalty for being caught driving with a suspended license from another two-year suspension to a
274 34:12 90-day suspension
275 34:22 don't allow the outside world to corrupt you don't don't allow the
276 34:28 outside world to tell you who you are
277 34:37 i wanted to be a voice for those who are not able to be a voice for themselves
278 34:48 [Music]
279 35:53 you