Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel. Gio here. It's been a minute. I am fully aware that this is a super late video. Probably all of you have moved on to other stuff, but I wanted to cover the spring 2022 anime season. I made sort of a first impressions and which shows you should watch a couple months back, like five months back, I don't know, but I decided, you know, I got to cover it. I got to talk about it. So let's get started. I think there was a total of either 42 to 46 shows. I said, you know what, there's a lot of good stuff coming out. I think I want to cover as much as humanly possible. And I had to stop at 20, I think it's 26 different shows. It got too chaotic. I don't know how some of the more popular any tubers, is that the proper term? I don't know how they do it. I was losing my mind with so many different shows, plus paying attention to the books I'm reading and streaming that I'm doing on other channels and stuff like that. But nonetheless, here we are talking about some good old anime. Healer Girl. I believe this was done by Studio 3 Hertz. I didn't know about the studio. I didn't know about the series, but I liked the poster for it and the premise was interesting enough. Also, quick side note, I'm running things off of what I remember of these shows, which I think will be funnier for you because I don't know if I'm going to be able to fully describe all the different shows that I have listed here, but we're going to try. So back to Healer. I really enjoyed the premise of it. It is essentially this alternate reality where we have a new branch of medicine and that is music. You heal through music. It's a really weird, but yet really interesting concept. The idea that in real life they say music can heal the soul and it's good for you to listen to certain frequencies and people always say stuff like that. So this series takes that to an extreme and actually has people singing and using music to heal, to help heal and it works in conjunction with the other types of medicine and all that stuff. I thought that was a really fascinating topic and you have three main characters, three young girls who want to be professional healers and they're starting out as apprentices or rookies or whatever and throughout the series they get better and better and get go through exams and stuff to get licensed and just like a regular medical professional would do and all that stuff. I thought the music was absolutely captivating and beautiful. At times I got a little misty eyed. There was something very emotional and raw about the performances and this show essentially turned out to be a musical which I didn't think I was going to be a fan of. I didn't think I was going to go down that road of watching a musical anime but Healer Girl I thought was pretty cool. It's only, I think it was only 12 episodes and out of the 12 half was devoted to what I actually wanted to see which was the healing aspect and with the surgeries and all that most of the episodes are dedicated to the girls, the three girls on their journey in school and camping out and stuff like that which is it's fine but when you have such an interesting concept and you're playing around with the concept of music in the medical field I kind of want to see more of that. Still animation was solid, characters were good, the concept was interesting as hell so I definitely would recommend it plus the frickin music and singing expertly done. Ascendance of a bookworm season three. Finally my favorite isekai returns. I am so happy about it. I love the series so much. Now we have new adventures as mine is working towards her goal of printing books and there are of course a lot of people that are against that because they would rather rule through fear and people not being educated and stuff like that. Of course there's the whole magic aspect to it. The ending of this season really paves the way for some epic storytelling in the upcoming seasons. Hopefully it does get renewed for a fourth one. I haven't read the manga I've only seen the show but I am super excited to see what happens next. There's a huge twist towards the end that I did not expect. The season started out pretty tame. I mean mine is fighting off these nobles and merchants that don't really want her to succeed and when I say fighting I mean more like a political play not actual fighting. So that was interesting. Then there are subplots of an orphan kid that shows up a baby at the orphanage and what happens to that kid? Mine herself. There's stuff that happens. She is being targeted by assassins and kidnappers and stuff like that and it all leads to a pretty awesome confrontation at the end that really shakes the status quo for all the characters in this series. Tomodachi game. I don't know what I was expecting. This is a series that really surprised me because I thought it was so well regarded at least the manga. I thought I was really going to enjoy the anime and like several aspects of it. Essentially you have these kids and they get involved in this deadly survival game where their friendship is put to the test and they have to rely on their trust and knowledge and companionship to get through the games. They have some money debt on their heads and if they lose the more debt they get or they can pass it along so it's a strategic game. The concept is interesting but I did not like the animation whatsoever and I really disliked 90% of the cast of this show including the main character and I get that's sort of the point. You're not going to have a lovable protagonist that's fine but everybody was just so edgy and I hate using that because it's an overused word these days to describe characters but it was a really edgy show and a lot of edgy characters saying really edgy things. Have I said edgy enough? Probably not. I mean if the show would have gone in different direction maybe I would have liked it but each episode just kept escalating on the craziness with really random plot twists and having the whole confusing rules per game just I don't know it was the least exciting death game survival show that I've seen. I was mostly interested just to see what the hell was going to happen next in terms of the overall plot. I'm quitting heroing is super unexpected I didn't think I was going to like it as much. You have this character that has a lot of secrets to him he is sort of this chosen hero type character the savior of the world and he suddenly decides to turn his back on humanity after many years and tries to recruit himself as a lackey for the villains that he used to find this demon lord dragon princess and a lot of comedic things happen because of it. I won't go into details but there's a twist when you find out the character's origin that I was not expecting and it really elevated what should have been a mediocre fantasy comedy series action comedy into something a little bit more special. The characters are really fun the animations not that great but I enjoyed the plot and the twists and turns that I do recommend it just on that alone give it a shot if you're interested birdie wing what the hell did I think of birdie wing it's it's a bad show but it's so bad that it's freaking great and I loved it it's this wonderful gay mafia golf sports anime that I cannot recommend enough it is so absurd you have some of the craziest characters in sports anime history the whole fact that it's golf of all the sports that you can represent in anime form you picked golf you have a main character playing to support friends and family and then it transforms midway into like a regular sports series as the character you know finds a rival friendship and enrolls in the school by the end so we get a promise of a season two and I am so excited I also watched the pokemon he's swinging snow I hope I said that right it's essentially a three episode digital thing that the pokemon company uploaded to their youtube channel that you can watch and subbed or dubbed or whatever and it's based off the pokemon arceus game really simple story but beautifully animated if memory serves you right it is studio mappa which they do amazing work and yeah I don't know I mean I'm so tired sorry of the pokemon stuff with ash and all that I've always wanted to see the original games adapted in anime form not just like ona's or ova's or like a movie I want a full flip series or maybe an adaptation of the pokemon adventures manga stuff like that instead of the ash stories shield hero season two I was so hyped that shield hero finally returned but if you go back to my first impressions video I quickly made note that the animation really suffered like the first two episodes that I saw when I made that video looked like I was watching the middle of a season and it was sort of like filler content and I was a little bit worried about that and oh boy I was pretty much right because this season was all over the place I mean from what I've gathered for from the manga side of things people weren't super excited because the whole turtle deity thing isn't the most exciting thing and they said oh wait until that's over because the next stuff is pretty exciting so I was doing that because honestly the whole turtle stuff could have easily been solved in like a films worth running time like a good 90 minutes you could have knocked that story out but instead they dragged it out I think they did six or seven episodes and that led into the team of naufumian gang crossing into another dimension and you meet a whole bunch of characters over there it's an isekai within an isekai and that stuff was really exciting but it was so rushed it was six episodes of a story arc that could have easily filled out the whole entirety of the season it was it was all over the place poor pacing rushed the characters just looked bad and overall just really disappointed by it I am looking forward to season three because it has some new characters that people are hyped for I'm looking forward to that hopefully the animation improves and we get a better show as a result day I'm on recipe for happiness this is sort of a slice of life with this girl that runs away from her father I think and she starts working at a bakery the that's a like a mom and pop shop and the family there they have the mom and dad they have a son who comes back he was this failed indie artist I don't know if I'm saying it right I don't know if he was successful or not I don't remember the thing is he was a musician now he's going back into the whole bakery thing sort of you know he defied his parents and wanted to do his own thing which I think a lot of people can relate to and he forms a bond with the girl and essentially sort of becoming her father figure it's a really nice wholesome series however in the midst of all the chaos that was happening in my life during these three months I was barely paying any attention to day one but most of the episodes were nice fluffy wholesome shows that I highly recommend if you just want to lay back and get a really nice drama slash comedy I thought it was worth it maybe on a rewatch one day I'll get more out of it but overall just a nice middle of the road beautifully written show komi can't communicate season two or part two whatever you want to call it it's more the same komi getting new friends new adventures eventually we got to a point where the last or like episodes out of the 12 episodes 9 10 and 11 just looked really off like they got the C team over there to work on it I was really concerned I even tweeted about it because I thought it was just so random that we got some really really rough animation for komi can't communicate but overall more the same take it or leave it I thought it was fine just a nice slice of life adventure with these cast of characters going through school life and komi of course getting over her social anxieties and meeting new people and friends and new experiences which is always great miss shah I'm going to watch for this miss chiku and the little baby ghost if you take miss kobiashi's dragonmaid take out all the ecchi stuff and the dragons and replace it with an overworked girl working at this office in japan and switch out the dragons with yudei or ghost that's sort of what you get in this series the ghosts are absolutely adorable some of the cutest characters to have ever graced tv screens and the entirety of human history it is that absurdly cute just a nice comedic slice of life series they get into several hijinks it's a pretty easy going show nothing too major when it comes to the plot but just the dynamic of having the little ghost girl she's so adorable and just wants the main character to rest and not overwork herself to death it's pretty sad that we have to have a show like that because that stuff happens in real life but nonetheless I'm glad that this exists because it is such a funny wholesome little series that I would look forward to to sort of relieve the of my stress of hectic week I think it aired on Thursdays so I really enjoy watching it they get into more adventures with other characters there is a cat spirit that is super adorable and stuff like that so if you're into the whole yokai paranormal stuff and the cute sea chibi stuff when it comes to anime I think you'll be right at home with this one skeleton knight in another world it's another isekai this character this man gets trapped into or young adult whatever gets trapped in this fantasy world as his favorite character happens to be sort of this skeleton looking dude and he's trying to figure out what to do he eventually befriends this voluptuous looking elf girl sorry I have to make up parentheses but I that's one of my favorite tropes in anime I do love me some elves yay so they go on adventure she's trying to help them cure the curse as he puts it but that's not really what's happening he's just there in this skeleton body and eventually through some hijinks he ends up helping her to free the other elf girls that have been enslaved in this kingdom that's very medieval-esque with a lot of douchey rulers and conspiracies all that stuff it's pretty freaking standard and it kind of borrows heavily from other shows and other hell even the character designs right to have a skeleton person you immediately think of irons from overlord so not necessarily the most original of the bunch but it was so funny enough and I did like that even though they were using cg to animate the the big fights and all that stuff it didn't look weird it wasn't as intrusive as other series it it felt kind of nice yaboi kong meme I hope I said that right I think this is one of my favorites and it's probably gonna be on the list for favorite shows of 2022 I thought it was fantastic music series you have a girl aiko she wants to be the top singer and you have kong meme who is a historical figure from the romance of three kingdoms and he ends up dying in his time period and gets reborn in modern Tokyo it's that type of series displaced characters and him figuring out how things work falling in love with aiko's music and promising after befriending her and all that stuff promising to be her agent and take her to new heights of course he has that strategy in mind from wartime in china so he's going to utilize that those strategies to make her the top artist in japan with her edm and acapella and acoustic songs her english songs if you love music if you want to celebrate life and through music and artistry I think this is the show for you I loved it it's by progressive animation works they're one of my favorite studios and they're adapting the manga obviously I think they did a fantastic job adapting it really worth your time I highly recommend yaboi kong meme only 12 episodes I think you're gonna love it heroines run of the show basically an idol series I'm not a fan of idol shows I typically avoid them not my thing so with this one you have a wonderful girl and she is she gets involved with two popular idols that are going to the same school as her this high school in tokyo or whatever she went there because she wants to be a track star running and marathoning and all that stuff and she enrolls in that school and gets caught in high jinks with the idols eventually she keeps a secret that they went through some things and one thing led to another and she ends up getting a job as a in-training manager for the two boys she doesn't really know anything she's sort of a country girl if you will but she starts learning about them and why people love idols so much and all that it relies heavily with idol tropes and the fandom and the craziness of that stuff which is pretty insane in real life so I think they captured it pretty well the ending of the series is super weak compared to the start I didn't like the resolution for it some of the main conflicts towards the end just were super rushed and just really weird the way the final conflict got resolved I didn't think they were gonna go down that route and everything would be resolved just like that when in reality if that were to happen in you know in real life you'd be looking at jail time you'd be looking at lawsuits it'd be pretty interesting but the main character steals the show and I would recommend watching it just for her and the voice actors I think she did a phenomenal job and easily the highlight of that series summertime rendering this easily is on my list for best show of the year I'm absolutely in love with this series where you don't really understand what's happening it turns out to be one of these series that they go into time loops and this mystery keeps repeating itself day after day you have this character that is arriving to his hometown coastal islands in Japan and one of his friends passed away and there's a mystery behind it because they think she was murdered so he starts investigating and finds out there's a conspiracy in the island sort of these urban legends with shadows replacing people it gets crazy it gets weird and the whole thing is that when crap hits the fan and the character bites it he loops back to the start when he arrived at the island so now he gets another shot to solve things and that mystery keeps intensifying and more and more crazy stuff happens I highly recommend it the manga got published recently by udon comics and the show is stuck in disney plus jail but nonetheless I do recommend it it is done by olm one of my other favorite studios just wonderful beautiful animation character designs look really crisp almost movie-like I really recommend it I think it'll be worth your time and if you can't watch the show get the manga love after domination this really surprised me and this is one of my favorite comedies of recent memory you have this parody of the super sentai genre you got the was it the gelato team of five rangers they're all gelato themed with the same colors that you would expect you know red blue green pink and yellow and they fight the gecko army this evil army of bad guys that want to take over the world and destroy everything the plot twist is that the red ranger or the red gelato he is in love with one of the high lieutenants from the gecko bad guy society or whatever and they're in love and they're trying to hide it from their respective camps and that leads to many comedic hijinks I really enjoyed this it's a very sweet funny series that if you like monsters kaiju max sentai super sentai stuff you're really going to enjoy it I thought the comedy was cute and pretty well paced and it's the type of show that you can tune in and have some fun switch your brain off and just enjoy it for the craziness and move on with your day satisfied kawi asama season three or ultra romantic I wasn't huge into the first season it took me a bit to fall in love with it I thought season two was much better and improved on everything from season one the jokes were better the comedic timing the character performances of the voice actors and all that stuff so with this now it's a well crafted oiled machine the characters are fantastic there's more lengthy arts of stories instead of like the previous seasons where it was heavily episodic with mini adventures now we have long chunks of story playing out through several episodes all culminating in the school festival where something major happens could we see the confession that we've all been anticipating well I don't want to spoil it but you're gonna have to watch to find out I didn't like that the finale was an hour long that was great the animations just as good as the other seasons and by now all these actors they just know their roles perfectly and you're just gonna love it it's wonderful I highly recommend it if you've never seen it definitely give season one a shot I think you're gonna be a fan pretty quickly the executioner and her way of life this took me by surprise I didn't know I was going to be liking an isekai yuri heavy series that plays with the tropes and plays with the notion of being an isekai series being off world and how it literally is the foundation for the entire series you see this is a world where people they get isekai into and this sort of alternate earth where it's heavily on magic and spells and all that stuff they feed off the energy that these kids have and it builds into the society of it there's a quick spoiler that I'm going to reveal but at the I think it was like episode three or two you find out that everybody in this town aside from their original language they know Japanese thanks to all the isekai characters all the boys and girls that are being thrown into this new world and their knowledge of Japan and their technology has influenced this new world and sort of become like a cult or a religious affection towards these kids and this other place in you know in our area our world however the overabundance of this and the energy and all that it gets pretty technical and convoluted it sort of reminded me of like the magical girl stuff like the the new magical girl stuff that goes dark with its themes and all that it's sort of reminded me of that plus the fate series so all this excess magic and the influence from these isekai kids led to some calamities that cost the lives of many thousands of inhabitants in this world so now this part of the church they seek these kids and they want to take them out and kill them with the ruse that they're going to send them back to their original world but they're actually executing them the main character here is tasked with doing that with another character i don't want to reveal it but let's just say that as the series progresses there's a lot of exposition and world building so keep attention to what you're watching it isn't like the other shows that i mentioned i did like it some people were not 100 on board but i did love the character designs and i did like the whole concept of you know the fact that it's an off-world series and isekai and that being the basis for everything sort of the the glue that binds this world that world together i thought that was pretty cool and it made me a fan so i am looking forward to a season two or maybe i am looking forward to reading the manga we'll see i'm gonna put you this one i hope i said that right pretty simple story romantic comedy kind of bizarre comedy at first of these two characters one she is super tiny cute and pretty hilarious with her deadpan humor and then you have the guy in this equation who's kind of a klutzy buffoon at first but you get to fall in love with these two characters as they become friends and get into some hilarious situations there are a lot of cutaway gags and references to other stuff from shonen jump and other anime and stuff like that so if you're into that type of comedy you'll be right at home with it it doesn't get too serious maybe a little bit towards the end but it's more on the emotional side really fun characters that you want to root for just a silly good time in my honest opinion dance dance dance sir i think i probably said that wrong i didn't think i was going to fall in love with a ballet themed anime but again this might be one of my favorite shows of the year i absolutely loved it you have this kid that he's he's always wanted to get into ballet but social norms dictate that you can't do that because that's for girls and that's kind of weird and you want to get into that so his father gets him to try out i think it was taekwondo or karate or some martial arts sadly his father dies early in his life and that sort of stunts his potential growth and he's sort of stuck in this place of wanting to please the other boys by participating in every club like the sports club music martial arts and not really fulfilling his passion which is dance and ballet he gets an opportunity when he meets this girl that her mom has the studio and in that studio she has a cousin the girl who is this introverted young kid who has gone through some really heavy stuff there's some really heavy subject matter in this but i think it's a worthwhile story it's a great emotional story of growth of the main character to see him at the start not really take it seriously and have this sort of epiphany and awakening that this is what he was meant to do and go through all the motions of finding out that oh i am talented but there are people that are better than me so i gotta work at my craft i gotta understand that i'm jumping into this new territory people are gonna look at me weird it doesn't really matter i'm just gonna keep moving forward and doing my thing that type of show beautifully crafted i i yeah the proportions of the characters you know they're based off the manga a little bit weird with the long necks and the eyes circles the rings inside the eyes it was just a little bit off putting it first but i got used to it pretty quickly i do recommend it wonderfully animated a beautiful story i'm really excited for a season two this was one of my favorite shows of the year love all play i'll be honest with you this is one of my least favorite shows of 2022 i think it's just okay you have this character that wants to get into this prestigious school and try out bat minton he loves the sport and fun fact i do too i actually played it back in the day really fun so he gets he goes into the school and plays the sport and you have all the usual tropings when it comes to tropings is that the word whatever all the usual tropes when it comes to sports anime with the drama of meeting new teammates forming those bonds of course there are the students that want to put their rookies through hell they get into the first tournament together singles and doubles practicing people get injured this there's drama involved with certain characters you've all seen this before it's a beautifully crafted show and the voice cast is great and it's it's a component middle of the road sports drama unfortunately i didn't stick with it i watched the first half the first 13 episodes it's still airing as of this video i didn't go back to it i didn't go back to it because i had other shows to watch but if you want a nice solid dramatic sports theme show love all play could be it speaking of odd sports fanfare of adolescence this was an original anime and this is based off of jockeys and horse racing you have a main character who is this former idol he quits and he wants to pursue his passion which is horse racing of course the agents and the fans don't take it too well there's controversy he enlists in this private school for jockies and you meet all the other characters and they all have big dramatic stories and all that stuff and you go around the series examining each one a lot of heavy stuff happens in dramatic moments and the whole learning how to race and connecting with the horses it was really interesting and the music was absolutely special because of course um uh savano is working on it which is always great one of my favorite music composers but overall i just didn't find it super interesting that i wanted to keep going i did finish the whole series but it wasn't something that i was looking forward to the premise was interesting but the pacing and direction was a little bit all over the place there were a couple interesting stories and a couple interesting things that happened but the overall cohesiveness of it wasn't as enticing as i would have liked in the heart of kunoichi zubaki this is another silly series that i kind of really enjoyed and i do recommend watching essentially you have this tribe of kunoichi female ninjas they've never stepped foot outside the the their land and they don't know what men are like and they've never met a member of the opposite sex zubaki she's a wonderful character i really enjoyed her arc and her story and the way she interacts with the other ninjas the animation is probably the best thing about the show it is fantastic and i really enjoyed watching high ninja moves that i've seen on like freaking naruto or whatever just expertly drawn and animated really cool stuff that i wish other ninja shows would emulate and and had that sophistication like throwing a like a fireball jutsu or substitution or a clone jutsu all looked really solid granted this was only 13 episodes whereas other ninja shows are like hundreds of episodes but you know what i mean the series has some jokes because they don't know what men are like and they kind of repeat the same jokes all throughout and most of the series is just dedicated to examining all them the many squads within the tribe uh the three men the three women squads i should say and they're all fun funny wholesome characters some are crazy others are just plain weird but overall it's just a fun simple series spy family finally it aired just a wholesome series Anya is one of the best characters in manga and now she's one of the best characters in anime just a really nice twist on the whole spy genre and having characters come together to form a family they're all fantastic the series is expertly drawn i believe it was cloverworks and wood studios if i remember correctly expertly drawn and great characters solid adaptation of a very popular manga that i've read i'm not up to date with it but i've read a small chunk of it and i thought they did a really good job of bringing spy family to life in animation form and obviously the highlight the the show stealer is Anya with her crazy kooky eccentric nature and her abilities and all the crazy stuff that she gets involved with and just how damn cute and wholesome she is as well as her parents spy family easily one of the best shows of the year highly recommended it's a show that everybody can watch and enjoy together i highly recommended for non anime fans wanting to watch something more recent instead of the usual stuff that people like to recommend try spy family out you'll love it shikimori is not just a cutie i remember doing the first impressions and i was not that impressed it's essentially a story based on a feeling towards your boyfriend or girlfriend and that's it you have these two characters that love each other shikimori she's cool she's a badass and that's it that's the whole premise of the show just them getting to know each other i guess getting to know each other a little bit more forming deeper relationships with each other and of course the other kids in the high school or middle school or whatever it's that and they go on episodic adventures in school and like dates and all that it's great but there's not much of a substance there with the plot other than characters deepening their bonds with each other i guess i don't know it did lead to some wholesome scenes but overall it was just a really fluffy type of show which i'm not opposed to i love watching every type of anime every type of show out there i just thought it was funny that the plot is just based of a feeling a feeling towards your loved one and not like this happened so now they're gonna do this and force stuff to happen because of plot reasons no it's just a chill time with kids in high school going about their daily lives and loving each other and being friends and all that stuff the final one on this list don't hurt me my healer i really enjoyed this it's essentially this parody of like souls games for example this rpg element with the medieval aspect and souls aspect to it with the creatures and the magic effects and the healers and the elves and all that you have karla possibly one of the smartest cunning and overall annoying characters of all time and i absolutely loved it she is one of my favorite characters from the shows that i talked about on this episode love the series so much the main character alvin he is a wimp he sucks he's a horrible rookie adventurer but he gets tangled up with karla this elf and she is such a smartass that you can't help but love she will annoy you at first but just go with it because i think that's the charm of the series and how she just twists everything all the narratives to suit her and how how much of a smartass she is it's super annoying but really funny at the same time and i just fell in love with the series and i loved every single episode it was really funny animation is nothing to write home about it's just perfectly okay but her relationship with alvin and the other members of a party that forms is really funny so if you're into rpgs and souls like content or video games and you like a comedy i think you'll be right at home but don't hurt me my healer oh jesus i'm done okay so that was the episode it was super long thank you so much for hanging in there i know i know you'd rather see the voiceover stuff with like overlays and trailers and all that stuff but i was super late making this it's been a rough couple of weeks for me to create content on the platform and it really i really struggled and suffered because of it but i'm sort of back and i will be making more videos frequently i'm just hopping on that training and getting my groove back on uh so thank you so much if you want to see more stuff like this uh reviews and first impressions talking about anime and manga subscribe to the channel and hit the notification bell a week and get them is this channel's name geo here signing off thank you so much god bless stay safe out there i will catch all of you on our next episode


Mary, did you know? Mary, did you know that your baby boy would eventually become one more brown child killed by state powers? Did you know that while your baby boy was hanging on the cross that his cause of death would be suffocation? He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. Mary, did you know that our hearts break beyond all the words that we have to give for all that is still wrong with our world? For all that your son came to heal? Mary, did you know?


Well, hello everyone. It's such a pleasure to be here. And I am especially excited about this panel and opportunity. And it's rare that at SoCAP or in general, we get such a diverse group on the stage that we have organizers, activists, athletes, investors, African-American, Bengali-American, Latinx, white Jewish, that have been coming together around a particular issue. And in this case, we're talking about private prisons and their role in mass incarceration and family detention. And we're here today to talk about how this diverse set of actors has been collaborating to address this critical social issue, but also using it as a real example of how diverse actors can collaborate on any social issue. And in general, we talk a lot about the idea that there's a money story behind every story, that any social issue you can think of, there's connections to corporations, to investments, and that as we interrogate these, we can really be more effective as activists. I'm Morgan Simon. I'm founding partner at Candid Group. We work with athletes, actors, families, and foundations that want their money working for social justice. And we are very proud members of the Families Belong Together Coalition, and as all of us are on this stage. So excited to share some of that experience. I want to provide a little bit of context to start knowing that, particularly at SoCAP, we have a lot of folks internationally who may not know of the many ways in which America is very unique, that we have close to 4% of the world's population, but close to 25% of its incarcerated people. We lock up more people than any other country. And we're also relatively unique in relying on private prisons to do so. That means companies who make more money, the longer and the more people who are locked up. And in the case of mass incarceration, it's over 10% of people who are held in private facilities and then in immigrant detention, over 70% of people. And that's a big part of why private prisons have been central to this debate around immigrant detention in the US and how families belong together, came together to address this issue. But I want to kick off with someone who is really there from the start. Sochi Yoseguera from Mamas Compoder, to share a bit about how did private prisons become so central to this coalition of 10 million activists across the country? Yes, thank you. Thank you for being here. My name is Sochi Yoseguera. I am a National Campaign Director for Moms Rising, and I lead our work for the Latinx community, Mamas Compoder. And Moms Rising is a nonprofit, a grassroots organization over a million members around the country. When we had the crisis of family separation in the summer of 2018, there was something really visceral about knowing that you have children or you work with children and they're being taken away from their caregivers for political and monetary reasons. And so we started thinking, well, how can we really make a difference? How can we have an impact and offer a solution for our members to take action? Instead of making more noise and create more chaos, we decided to go after the private prisons that are working on family separation and family detention, because 70% of ICE detainees right now are housed in a private prison. The two main corporations that are the private prisons that are imprisoning these immigrants and criminalizing them is a geo group and C corporation. And what we did, we decided to go after the money, the loans that, and Morgan could explain it better, but they heavily depend on the loans from banks. And so we decided to use our consumer voices, organize our members, and get together with a coalition of over 120 organizations, partner organizations, that we're feeling the same way. How can we make an impact? How can we make a change? And we gather in a families belong together corporate accountability coalition, which we have what it's called the inside-outside strategy. Inside strategy, basically talking to investors and putting pressure from inside the company. And my panelists will talk a little bit more about that. But the outside strategy is basically using our consumer voices. The moms will bring over 7,000 mothers came to drop off petitions to stop financing private prisons to the local branches with their strollers and with the superhero capes. And we will go in and talk to the executives and the branch managers and say, we don't like this. We don't like that your bank is sponsoring these human rights violations. Please stop. And so we did several mobilizations. One of them was very creative led by Morgan. That was break up your bank. Don't break up your hearts on February 14. Then we had big hearts. And so that was a way that we came up to deliver on Valentine's Day these petitions. And so we have been so successful that up to today, we have had nine banks that declare and that announce that they will stop financing the private prisons. Absolutely, clap for that one. I'm going to pass it on to Morgan. Sure, absolutely. And it's just been such an honor to work together the over million members of Moms Rising Nationwide that have been taking such a leadership position across all 50 states in the country. I'm going to turn to Jasmine, who I have the pleasure to work with at Candid Group and who has been leading real money moves, which is our nonprofit educational initiative that's been very active in this campaign. So that makes Jasmine in general an expert on the money story behind the story. And I'm curious if you can share a little bit more on what that is and how that applies to private prisons. Definitely. Thank you.  My name is Jasmine Rashid. Like Morgan said, I'm the director of real money moves and also work with Candid Group, which is a registered investment advisor out in Oakland. I think it's really important to ground our understanding of private prisons and immigrant detention centers in this country knowing that they're a relatively new phenomenon. They started in the 1980s and were officially codified. But this idea of commodifying and profiting off of particularly vulnerable communities who were incarcerated is nothing new in our country. This is just the latest iteration of it. And this iteration, this business model, is pretty straightforward. It's make as much money as possible by locking up as many people as possible for as long as possible. And that is why we speculated and we believe that Geo Group and Corsivic, these two publicly traded giants in the private prison industry, have spent upwards of $25 million on lobbying over the past three decades, which have included laws for harsher, sorry, for ICE, ICE enforcement. And they have both served on the board, served in the committee of ALIC, which drafts model legislation for criminal justice laws, such as three strikes you're out, which many of you may have heard of, mandatory minimums. And though Geo Group and Corsivic say that they don't participate in lobbying, trusted partners of the Justice Policy Institute and other researchers in the space would definitely agree otherwise. So I believe that private prisons are permissible in the United States because of three key myths. And those are that they would save money to government, that they would result in better conditions for incarcerated populations, and that they would reduce recidivism, which is a huge problem in our country upwards of 70% of people who are entered into the system are likely to return. But now that we're 30-something odd years down the line and we actually have the data, we know that those three myths aren't true, right? So often, if a person is incarcerated in a for-profit private facility, they're going to cost upwards of $1,600 more per year per inmate than a federal or state facility. It's definitely more violence that's happening inside of these private facilities, not just for inmates, but also for guards and for staff. And there's extremely high turnover rates in these communities where private prisons have turned up. And recidivism has increased. And this is all really intuitive when you think about this core business model of that bottom line. You're going to make sure you're not spending external money on safety and on training or rehabilitation. That's just not part of the business model. And some of you may remember in 2016 when the Department of Justice announced that they were phasing out the federal use of all private prisons for those exact reasons, as well as documents that human rights abuses. Obviously, that phasing out was overturned, which is why we're still in the room having this conversation today. I also want to point out in terms of financial structure that private prisons are structured as real estate investment trusts, structures of REITs. So for investors in the room, you know that means they get some great tax benefits. But on the flip side, they're required to distribute 90% of their profits to shareholders, which makes them extremely, extremely reliant on bank capital, like Zosir was mentioning, specifically term lines and credit loans. And that first came really into public consciousness with that moment of the crisis at the border when people started asking, who's funding this? Where is this money coming from? And the answer was we are. Both through our taxes, private prisons have billion-dollar-year contracts with ICE, which is about $2.8 million of taxpayer money a day. But then that other piece, really honing in on the bank credit lines and term loans, which are necessary for these private prisons to run their day-to-day operations and to expand any facilities. So that's why at Candid Group, as registered investment advisors who have this grounding in social justice, we saw that it was our responsibility to contribute that financial knowledge to the activists who are already on the ground and the trenches doing the work, who know how to get campaigns done, who know how to win, but using that financial story, that money story behind the story, like Morgan mentioned, as a really powerful tool and leverage point for winning campaigns and figuring out those key pressure points. Fantastic. And can you share a little bit more about how the Real Money Moves Initiative came together specifically, what that's looked like? Yeah, so Real Money Moves first came at the same time as Family Detention really came into public consciousness. And this idea that we wanted to make sure that activists in the space had those financial tools, but also leveraged the visible platforms, public platforms of influencers. So people like Derek, who reached out and said, I'm interested in impact investing and I also want to make sure my money is aligned with my values. I don't want the money that I'm making to support my family, that I'm investing, to also then be locking up someone else's family. Because knowing, as consumers, when we put our money in the bank, the bank is then lending that out to these private prisons. So since then, we've grown to be a resource and a 501C3 to make sure that all these different campaigns, private prisons and beyond, are able to have that really strong financial activist training in their work. And Real Money Moves over time came together with over 30 athletes and influencers, a number of cast members of Orange as a New Black, saying that they did not want their money in private prisons. And then at the same time, some committed 10 million to social investing to save. We want to really be thoughtful about not just where we take our money out, but where it really should live in the world. And Derek, you're one of the early adopters and supporters of Real Money Moves. If you could share a little more about how you got involved and with such a busy life and schedule of how this became an issue that you were so passionate and committed to. Yeah, so it was around 2018, the summer of 2018 when the crisis at the border was happening and it was getting a lot of attention. And it was really actually after the fact in which DNFL protests were going on, actually during the same time. And a lot of the protests were about mass incarceration and police brutality. And the one reason why I think a lot of athletes can relate to these issues is because a lot of them, including myself, were affected by issues like mass incarceration. Like if you look around in any locker room in the NFL, chances are probably 75 to 80% of those guys in there have a family member that's locked up or has been locked up, myself included. And so that really hit home for us and that really resonated with us. And it was like, okay, there's all these issues. There's the family detention at the border. There's the mass incarceration issues, the things in which guys are protesting. And so you can only protest for so long. It's like after the protests or during the protests, what's the action? Like what's the followup? And so for me, that's how I was always thinking of it. Like, yeah, we can take knees and raise fists, but what are we really gonna do that's tangible to affect change? And so when Maureen brought the idea and the campaign of real money moves to me, I was like, yes, this makes a lot of sense. I think we could get a lot of buy-in from guys in the league and the influencers alike. And so for me, it was an easy ask because it was like, hey, talk to your teammates about talking to their advisors about divesting from private prisons. Send them a note in the email and say, hey, look, can you make sure I'm not in GL Group, Core Civic? What is it called now? C Corporation? Core Civic. Is it Core Civic? I said it wrong. Okay. Well, so a moment on that, this goes back to how nefarious these things are that originally it was Corporate Corrections of America, which made it pretty clear that sounds like a prison. Core Civic, that could be like an after-school program, right? It sounds like really benign. So it goes back to good branding can change the face and also confuse people. So it is Core Civic and GL Group. So, I mean, they kind of slide under the radar, you know? Like you're looking at these issues and you're like, wait, how is this getting to this point? And you have these giants, like you referred to them as just kind of operating and making profits and nobody knows about them. And so what this campaign did was expose those players in this game and really had the voice and the momentum and influence of guys like myself and my teammates in my locker room and different influencers. And so it really shined a light on it that was necessary to really get the conversation going in the masses. So it was a very successful campaign, I would say. It had a lot of momentum and led to, I think, what you see a lot going on in terms of these banks divesting or not cutting ties with these entities. So it was a very tangible thing that made a lot of sense to guys like myself and in the locker room. And I think the other element with influencers, it meant that we were able to get these conversations into very different places than had been in the past, so to actually have People Magazine do a feature on private prisons because they care about influencers and what they're up to. And the way that that changes when someone is hanging out on the checkout line, what might get into their news pipeline and the importance of that mass presence, given the whole point was whether you had $100 in the bank or 100 million, you were connected to this issue. And I think for all of us, the ability to read the news and not just get mad but get even, to feel like we can really be protagonists and play an active role has been very exciting. And I want to turn now to Matt Nelson, Executive Director of Presente.org, which represents over 600,000, I think, Latinx. Half a million, yeah, five percent. Half a million. Latinx, activist nationwide advocating on a number of issues and has been fantastic strategically as we muddy through these waters and all these different players. I wanted to ask if you could share a little bit more tactically what has happened in this campaign. Great, and thank you so much. This is amazing to be here. It's so great to work with such incredible partners. And as we move to get free, so how is everybody today? You all right? How's SoCAP going? It's a beautiful day for justice today. Like Morgan said, I'm Matt Nelson. I was born in Columbia. I grew up in Minnesota, which makes me a proud Minolumbian. That's right. And Presente really is at the intersection of building power, changing culture, and staying present day. And I got into some of this private prison work in 2013 when we specifically focused on how the private prison industry was expanding into states. They were expanding their contracts and they were focused on, they had a new model of business, which was focused in Florida about getting youth facilities. And this was before they were really into the migrant space, but their model was in order to maximize profit, knowing that if you lock up young people, teenagers, mostly black and brown teenagers, they are more likely to come back into the adult system. So they came up with this idea of why aren't we building youth facilities? And so we got involved and we actually, at that point, went after their institutional investors and were able to pull $300 million out of institutional investing from the private prison industry. And then from there, really pressured the federal government and it precipitated into the federal government saying, we're gonna cancel contracts, as Jasmine mentioned. But tactically, it was similar to what's going on now, is that you do need multiple strategies involved. You do need active engagement. And quite frankly, you need a lot of leaders from a lot of different sectors in order to make this happen. And I think we're gonna get into that a little more about how we made it. But I do wanna say a bit more about how the private prison industry started. So in 1983, the album of the year was Thriller. Scary, right? But even more scary was that was also the year that Corrections Corporation of America formed. And they formed with the founding principal, and it was a quote from one of their co-founders that said, look, we can sell prisons just like we sell cars, real estate, and hamburgers. People are not hamburgers. Locking people up for profit is akin to slavery. And that, no one should be in the business of something that's like slavery. And so then let's go back to the Thriller album to 1983 in that while this was happening, the mass incarceration boom of the country was happening. So in the early 80s, there were less than 700,000 people locked up in US prisons. Now it's something like 2.2 million. So in the time, in the private prison industry knew this, they knew that there was a boom of mass incarceration, why? Because the governing policies were criminalized, communities of color, and changed the doctrine of incarceration from rehabilitation, as Jasmine mentioned, to punishment. Prisons were for punishment. And the third strategy here was give law enforcement more flexibility to target communities of color and poor people, because again, like more than a third of people when they are incarcerated are unemployed. And so you have this confluence of white supremacy coupled with corporate domination that really is the core of the private prison industry. So the remedy is what we've seen in the last year, what we've seen over time is this incredible leadership, heroes, the heroes who are on the front lines of this migrant detention, not just in the US, but present their worst with people in Central America following the caravans understanding what's going on in other countries because money flows transnationally, our organizing also has to be transnational. And it's the leaders who we centered, it's the mothers, it's the people directly impacted, it's the family members, those are the best people positioned to find the solutions. Because a lot of our folks and a lot of Latinx folks, you know, we face the dual crises. And I'm sure at SoCAP you're talking about the existential threat of climate change and war and how to move money away from those existential threats. And coupled with that is the daily, what I would call a violent fixation on criminalizing migrants, Latinx people and other communities of color. And so in order to do that, we need deep solidarity, we need courage and compassion that what we've seen in this campaign, and that has to replace the cowardice and corruption of the private prison industry and any elected official who supports them. I love that frame of courage and compassion. And I'd love if you could share more of what are some of the ways that people have shown up with courage and compassion, whether at bank branches or through petitions, like what actually led to some of these victories. And I do want to make sure it's really important as well to reference that historical context, right? That families belong together as a relatively new coalition. There are certainly activists who have been working since 1983, right, to address private prisons. So we stand on the shoulders of giants and are so thrilled to get to be part of this overall legacy. So to note, this is a much broader victory, but just to highlight a bit of what are some of the actions that kind of led to the current announcements. Sure. So the coalition I think was very strategic and disciplined and in first engaging, first having the research, going to the banks, engaging them, really giving them an opportunity to be transparent about their involvement in private prisons and then make, we had both the financial argument as well as the moral authority of what was going on here. And as we escalated the internal conversations, we at any moment could put thousands of people around the country in the streets at bank branches. Again, we had some very brand name banks who were the first to be focused on and the first to pull out of private prisons like Wells Fargo and JP Morgan. And so a lot of these banks knew that we could show up whenever we wanted to. And I think the other piece of this was really the narrative power. Like, and part of that narrative power is, yes, mothers showing up with strollers and kids saying like, these children who are detained could be my children. This could be us. It's a really powerful narrative to have financial experts show up and say, look, there's no financial reason for this. The industry is a mess. The risks are too high. It's powerful to have athletes and influencers say, look, we're taking a stand. We're moving our money. We believe in this. We're part of this movement. We're part of the solution. And I think that's what it took and quite frankly, like when I think about how the dreamers, the dream walkers started 10 years ago and walked from Florida, from Miami to D.C. Saying undocumented and unafraid went from being criminalized to being heroes with the 80% approval rating across the country. That's the type of narrative shift and the type of cultural change that then is part of the powerful formula to move the biggest financial institutions and to do the right thing and not just for the short term. And I hope somebody talks about how like real money moves is sort of leading and Kendi Group is leading on ensuring that the victories and the progress we made continue and will be there for the long run. So to speak a little bit to those victories because I think it's really critical to acknowledge what's actually happened, right? So as Sotri mentioned, nine banks that represent 100% of the publicly known credit and term loan providers for GeoGroup. That's big. Yeah, you get a little woo to that. You know, something to celebrate. And then over 60% of the banks that have provided the credit and term loans to CoreCivic. So there are a couple banks that are still outstanding. There's National Days of Action coming up. There's the opportunity to check and see if your bank has made the commitment yet. So I would invite people to check out realmoneymoves.org, follow hashtag families one together, real money moves, right? If you want to kind of keep in touch and join the ever-growing movement. But it is really important acknowledging that we've made some progress but we have still a long way to go. And I want to take a moment to really talk through what are the other financial elements that are still part of the story? Jasmine, if that's something that you'd be able to touch on of really how are the prison companies reacting to this news, right? We're seeing it on the political landscape. I know you're heading off on a red-eye tonight to be working more on that political side. What's happening in terms of politics and then markets and how is that impacting private prisons? Yeah, so on the political front, we've seen a lot of movement in terms of getting private prisons into mainstream conversation. If you've been watching the Democratic debates or just following the news there, there's several presidential candidates who are talking about their comprehensive plans for getting rid of private prisons, which is a big deal. We've seen places like here in California completely agree to stop the use of private prisons and we've seen major, not just banks, but institutional investors like CalSRS and CalPERS both agree to divest and we're seeing just more and more at local levels. Individuals passing legislations or putting legislations forward that would stop not only the use of private prisons, but the financing of private prisons from any banks that are chartered in their state. So on the political front, we're seeing a lot of movement and just really conversation, which this time last year was not really happening. And then I wanna talk about stock prices. See, we have so much fun around the office for like, I wanna talk about the stock prices, right? We make it really great. Yeah, so if we had a screen, I would just let the kind of graph speak for itself. But, so geogroup and core civic at the levels that are out right now of their stock prices, the last time levels were this low was when the Department of Justice, like I mentioned before, in 2016 announced the federal phasing out. So that's where we've returned to. The one year returns for investors is down 30%. So when you compare that to other real estate investment trusts, so in their investment class, they're significantly, significantly underperforming. But I think perhaps even more telling about kind of the state of private prisons and how these companies are feeling is to actually just hear what they're saying. What are, how are they responding to the movements and what are they saying in SEC filing? So I'm gonna read a really fun quote from one of their SEC filings, this is from geogroup. They wrote, and I quote, increase public resistance to the use of the public-private partnerships for correctional detention and community-based facilities in any of the markets in which we operate and or if other banks or third parties that currently provide us with debt financing or that we do business with, decide in the future to cease providing us with debt financing or doing business with us, such determinations could have material adverse effects on our business, financial conditions and ability to operate, right? So not, not looking too good in terms of, yeah. So say that last line again, material financial impact, can you unpack that? Yeah, so as a part of that I also wanna mention that Fitch and Moody's, these traditional credit rating agencies have since, because of the, that cutting off of totally 87.4% of all of those known bank credit lines and term loans to the private prison industry since they have that financing gap, the credit rating agencies have downgraded the status which is going to make it more expensive for Geogram and Core Civic to find borrowing partners to fill that gap and we can anticipate that, okay, there's other financial players in the game, right? There's private equity and though banks are particularly uniquely placed in order to be able to fill that financing gap because of their capacity, which really needs to be fast and on hands, we are seeing a few private equity firms and asset managers that are engaging in this space but really out of just investors that we've talked to representing close to three billion assets under management and we've asked how do you feel about this issue, we're seeing that there really is no appetite for investors to touch this industry anymore just because of this reputational risk, the human rights concerns, but also like Matt mentioned before financially, it's kind of a mess, which is exciting, but that, like Morgan mentioned, doesn't mean that there isn't still work to be done, right? The fight isn't over, there's still these five banks that are financing, there's also bonds that are in the market which are also making sure that these companies continue to run their day-to-day operations and I think I just want to mention that this conversation of, for us, it's ending private prisons so not just ending private prison financing or at least speaking for myself, I want to see the end of private prisons has to be positioned in the larger conversation of criminal justice reform as a whole, right? So this needs to be looked at as a sound investment, if you will, to free up the time and resources and people power of these amazing people who know how to win, know how to do these campaigns so that they can work on making our communities safer and healthier and more free and if you have never engaged in activist campaign, I think the same way that many activists and kind of everyday people are saying, oh, I can engage in financial activism, if you have never engaged in the activist world and you have this financial knowledge, knowing how to do things like how to file a shareholder resolution is really, really valuable and really strategic for these movements that need to have all these different pressure points, like I said, because they know how to make our communities healthier, safer and more free. Absolutely, all really great points and I think also critical to highlight in the broader landscaping conversation about decarceration, this isn't just saying, oh, we want public prisons, not private prisons, right? What we really want is, well, and some of us want no prisons at all and a greater emphasis on mental health services, on drug treatment, on sentences that actually make sense, right, rather than the sort of arbitrary mandatory minimums through strikes, these policies we mentioned before that have been very beneficial to companies that might make money off having more people locked up for more time. So the idea is that, why don't we work on just reducing the overall population as opposed to saying that it's about, you know, public prisons being a walk in the park either. So what's also been really exciting is to see as people are moving away from private prisons where they can go to, right, because sometimes divestment campaigns can feel a bit like whack-a-mole, right, of like, which corporation is gonna do some terrible thing today? And that's often a critique of sort of ESG with an impact investing of, if we're just kind of screening out but not being more conscious of, well, what is the positive impact that my money can have? Are we actually going as far as we can go? And it's been really amazing to see Derek's leadership in really emerging within the impact investment sector in transitioning your own portfolio to impact. I wanted to ask if you could share a little bit of what are some of the opportunities that you found to really invest in something different than private prisons and what you're doing with the Kingdom, your impact investment initiative? Yeah, so I would take it back to 2016 and this is right around the time that, you know, I had watched the 13th documentary on private prisons and Kaepernick was protesting and it was a very volatile environment around social justice. And for me, I was always looking at what's the action? Like what's the action item for alleviating this and remedying this issue? And so one of the things we did back in 2017, 16, 17, we took about 100 kids from HBCUs to South by Southwest to expose them to the tech industry to get them in a room full of decision makers with companies like Microsoft, Twitter, Google, MailChimp and a lot of them got jobs out of that and internships and so for me it was like, okay, there's a reason why obviously people are getting locked up, this policy, it's, you know, corruptness, it's private prisons, all these things, but a lot of it is, a lot of people don't have options so they're committing petty crimes and getting locked up for it. So if there are options for kids and opportunity to do something else, right, then you start to alleviate it from a different vantage point. And so that was one initiative that we've seen had a lot of ROI and was a very good outcome. More so me personally, I started to transition most of my money out of the market. I always wanted to see what my money was doing and when you're investing into the market and to these ETFs and these funds, you're taking a passive role. You're not really understanding what your money's doing and where your money's spending the night and for me that wasn't really sitting right and so after reading Real Impact and consulting with Morgan, like I really started to educate myself on what the possibilities were in the impact space. So as I transitioned out of the market, I reallocated the things like affordable housing and invested in Bitwise. It's a company founded by a Latina founder in Fresno that gives technology training to underserved minorities and so that was something that was tangible for me. Invested in macro, a company that tells positive stories about minorities and so these things made sense to me and it seemed like I was playing whatever role I could play and that made me feel good. I could sleep good at night knowing that my money was working in positive ways. Fantastic. So I hope people have been inspired about all the different ways that we can work more closely together as financial activists, as organizers on the street, of what are the ways that we can really apply this sort of collaboration to so many different social issues and I wanted to close off before we take a couple questions with Sochi and Matt, if you could share a little bit of ways that this community can really support grassroots organizations and efforts. Yeah, thanks for asking. Jasmine mentioned that we are working, we're targeting five more regional banks and on November 14th and 15th, we're going to have deliveries in Alabama and Tennessee. If you know anyone in Birmingham and Nashville, please let me know. We would love for people to join us and to be there with us when we deliver our petitions and we're gonna have signs outside. We'd love to see kids, moms and so those two places, we're targeting five regional banks and I believe that these banks are also, some of the executives have been executives for, I don't know exactly the name of the sector. Board members for the prison companies as well. Yeah, of course. No conflict of interest, right? Totally okay. So these are the next steps. It will be wonderful if you follow the Candid group presented, moms rising, every single action that you take, make sure it has a big impact.  We do deliver them and every single one counts. So please keep taking actions. Thank you so much, Matt. Right, and that's a great point. Like we've had pretty incredible numbers on the campaign petitions and all of those may seem like big statistics, 100,000, 500,000 million, but statistics are people too, especially with organizations like ours and so we really are committed to that, to making sure that the people power moves things. No disrespect to cockroaches or rats but I think the private prison industry operates a lot like cockroaches and rats and so they're gonna be, in terms of rats, they're gonna be looking for the next, they're gonna be trying to sniff out the next, you know, disgusting way to make profit. And when Corrections Corporation of America formed, they actually had like another partner entity that was called Hospital Corporation of America that was in the business of essentially cutting corners in hospitals in a way to make profit and as you can imagine that didn't turn out very well. But what I see for where these companies are going is that e-carceration is a big deal.  And so I think it's up to us to understand where they're going to expand and be able to be there to make sure that there's not money for their next scam. You know, and there's other smaller companies that are part of the industry. So for instance, there was a company that researched how much can you charge for a bag of chips at a prison? That's a rural prison. Let's say it takes an average of three hours to drive there for families. If they calculate it, if it takes an average of three hours to drive there, you could probably charge $7 a bag. If it took an average of four hours, you could probably charge $8.25 a bag. And so going back to this model that is inherently wrong and needs to be cut off in any way possible, I think we actually have now the infrastructure to go where they wanna go and stop them before they do any more harm. All right, well we will close out on that call to action and would love to have everyone in the room engaged with us. We're gonna take a couple questions. We're gonna talk about questions, which are the following. Questions have a question mark at the end. They are relatively brief. They're directed to a person. And then hopefully they'll be answered. So we're gonna start here in the back. And all right, yeah, we should be good. Thanks. Thank you all. So I fundamentally believe that private capital, which includes the financial services industry is necessary to change some of the wrongs. That's why we're all at SoCAP, right? That's what social capital is. So I started my career 30 years ago as a banker in London financing private infrastructure projects, including the first privately financed public hospital. I think today bankers involved in this industry have been accused of profiting from locking people up, holding slaves and I guess now cockroaches and rats. I do applaud that you have cut off the funding or are in the process of cutting off funding for a business model that has not met its goals and has not been successful. I feel as strongly about mass incarceration, recidivism and the issues around immigration as anyone else in the room. But like I said, I believe that the financial services industry and private capital have a role to play and some of the solutions you've talked about are sort of entrepreneurial and small, but it seems to me that cutting off private prisons, which again I applaud you for, is sort of the low hanging fruit in addressing these societal issues. And so I guess my real question is, how are you going to change your language and become friendly with the private funding markets so that they do bring the banks included back into funding solutions that the government is not addressing? Did you want to direct that in anyone in particular or? Whoever feels the most negative about the financial services industry or maybe some of the, it's really about the activists and the banks working together, so maybe the activists. Yeah, I guess I can start. And actually like through this campaign, I've actually been very heartened by the role of finance and money and the power that it has to change how we think about incarceration. And I thank Morgan and Jasmine for really leading that and showing that there is an alternative. There is an alternative to the type of brutal, horrible for-profit torture that these particular, that this industry has represented over the last 35 years. There is an alternative there. And like Derek mentioned, there is a way that you can actually do a lot of good through finance, through money. And I think that's powerful. And I think part of it, and why I'm excited to be at SOCAP is, we have to expand our imagination around how can we actually transform and create a situation where people do have opportunities, where there's not a focus on punishment and criminalization, but it is on opportunities and dignity. And I think that most of the, there's so much out there around what Derek was saying about if we actually have a baseline and protect and affirm basic human rights, we can go a long way in not needing the type of mass incarceration system. And so there are choices to make, I think for private equity and quite frankly for this particular type of capitalism. It can either go in the way of doing the most harm for the most profit or it can partner with communities to find a better way and quite frankly change the culture around money. I think it's also really important to acknowledge, mind my taking the proverbial mic, that all of these major banks had environment, social and government's policies, ESG policies, right? And a couple of them actually even quoted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, right? That these are institutions that have clearly stated we do not wanna be financing companies that have clear human rights abuses. So then when there were credible reports of human rights abuses within private prisons, including reports from the Department of Justice, right? Under the Trump administration, just to be clear, right? So this is not about political bias, but just the inspectors going in and seeing what was happening in facilities like Adalanto in California, that when we were going to banks saying, you have a policy that says that you do not wanna support companies that have human rights abuses. Here's some reports saying this is happening and you've made this commitment to your shareholders and to your customers and we'd love for you to fulfill that. And I don't see that as at all in congruent with them funding future interventions that are absolutely supportive of human rights in a way that is integrated with the policies that they've created. I do wanna make sure we get to hear from other voices in the audience. Take that, Sochi, the question of are we thanking the banks that have been joining us? Hey, why don't you take it? You can support them. I'll take it and I'll say yes. I say that not only do we have these public-facing protests, we're getting on the phone with these different banks and we're actually talking to the human rights lawyers that they have on staff that they hire because they wanna be better. They want to make sure that their role in the world is aligned with the values they're saying because as we move to this market economy that is really focused on consumers being conscious about what their money is doing, we want them to be going the right direction. We're not saying that banks should be, we're not trying to demonize banks through this campaign, but we are trying to make sure that all of the companies that are using our money to fund their business practices are aligned. And I also wanna agree with you and thank you for bringing up the question but this idea of low-hanging fruit because I agree, I think private prisons in many ways are a low-hanging fruit, a low-hanging fruit that has extremely high rates of sexual assault among children, women, men that has extremely high rates of human rights abuses and a low-hanging fruit that I really believe we do need to get rid of in order to join the bigger fight of a forming a criminal justice system. Thank you, which has been opening up us to a lot of different conversations, like Morgan mentioned, we're flying to South Carolina tonight into tomorrow morning and we're gonna be front row at a criminal justice reform watching President Trump speak about how he believes the future of criminal justice will be shaped in this country as well as all of the Democratic primary candidates. So being able to get in those spaces and ask those questions through private prisons, really this is just the beginning. And just to add quickly, I think one of the hopes with these type of collaborations is that it brings more proximity. Like I do think these advisors should be visiting facilities, should be going with us and really seeing what's going on and finding solutions together. We have another question, I think, down here. I also, Jasmine, I wanted to thank you for that comment because the mass incarceration crisis in this country is huge and there's no single strategy that will solve it. We have to have multiple strategies across all the problem areas in order to be successful. And so private prisons is one part but it's a big movement. Definitely. My name is Tanay, I'm the founder of Freecap and I have been incredibly inspired by all these folks on stage to launch a publicly traded fund that's divesting from prisons and investing in companies that can actually create policies that can reduce mass incarceration rates in this country. So my question is how, what does a publicly traded company look like as an ally in this space? Like what are some of the ways that corporates can actually help as opposed to be a problem? I think there's a couple pieces in the shareholder landscape that have been really powerful. Talk about unbelievably low hanging fruit is open hiring policies of the number of people who come out of incarceration and are not able to get a job for the incredibly dumb reason that the idea that if you haven't, basically if you served your time, the whole point is you served your time and that it's hard enough to come back into a society that may or may not be familiar to you, that you may or may not have support from family or friends, you gotta find a home, you gotta find a job and there's often that box and a job application have you done time and how incredibly exclusionary that can be. So there have been national campaigns around ban the box that have been led by a number of investors of filing shareholder resolutions and otherwise looking to have publicly traded companies just get rid of that restriction and that's the type of step that companies can choose to do proactively, right? They don't have to wait for shareholders to demand it but I would hope that in the context of a fund like yours, right? That it would be equally looking at how do we get out of these prison companies but then also what are some of the practices within companies that can better support returning citizens as they move on in their lives. So we're gonna do one more and I think we've got the candidate in the back. Yeah, you. Yes, sir. Hi, my name is Joe Engle coming from Sacramento and our publications. We created a publication for immigrant know your rights which actually made Fox and friends but not in a positive way but we were as a batch of courage and so my question is what are the communication needs? What like who's not getting the message? What does the general public need to know about this that they don't know already? Those are my questions. Anybody can answer. So I do think that there's no such thing as a general public and we like to think about it is that what do we need to win and how do we figure things out together? I do think there's a big shift happening and 2020 is gonna be essentially the proving ground of whether or not the model can hold the current model of private prisons can it hold? There's a good chance that it can't and we actually have to be building this narrative of what does a rebuild look like? I take inspiration from some of the detention facilities in Mexico and in Central America that are now being turned into trauma support centers and we're at a point where we can rebuild from the hopefully what will be the ashes of the private prison industry as we know it and so more aspiring narratives knowing that we have people on our side and knowing that we have this wave of culture that has been universally disgusted by what's going on with family detention and so it does open up the space as an invitation for quite frankly remaking how we deal with incarceration and democracy in this country. And the one other small kind of culture shift I'd say in that same way we often think about family separation is sort of how it's been portrayed in the news of the Trump family separation policy but it's really critical to think that any time we incarcerate someone and separate them from their spouse from an aging parent from anyone in their life that's family separation. So this is not a new phenomena and we need to be equally outraged in the case of adults as we are children and that I think that's one of the narrative shift pieces that is really important as we continue on. That is the time that we have for today and I think this conversation just goes into the levels of complexity in getting down to critical social issues and their connections to finance and I'm just so honored to get to be in this work with you every day and hope that you all join us. Thank you so much. Thanks to our panelists. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Yeah. Great.


God, it seems like a thousand years ago I Fought my way out of that cave Became Iron Man Realized I love to you. I know I said no more surprises, but I was really hoping to pull off one last one The world has changed None of us can go back. Our best And sometimes the best that we can do is to start over All these people die when everybody they should move on some do And not us Even if there's a small chance We owe this Everyone is not in this room to try whatever it takes