Thanks for coming. Before my presentation, let me do some advertisements. As you can see, this is musical, musical is customary, it really is a distribution made to promote free and open source of work in schools in Taiwan. So there are many educational open source, and of course the government is also inside. This year we have the 12th version. So in this session, I will tell you two and a half successful story in Taiwan. Two and a half, yes. And let me introduce myself first. I am an open source developer and translator promoter in Taiwan, but mainly the translator promoter. I am a tele-translator promoter. And we try to promote free and open source of work in the past because mainly in schools. But sometimes we also promote in enterprise or government. And we have an association in Taiwan. This is just to promote open source. And now I have a company to provide open source solutions to enterprise or to the government. So the first story is done by my company. This is my company. We are both open source company members. We are expert in open source solutions services. The first story is in Iran company, Taiwan. It is actually a small company. We have the population. But the director here supports free software very much. So the background of this story is actually in 2008, they tried once to open the office double. They tried once. And they asked a commercial company, service company to help them. And the service provider gave them a solution. The solution is tell them to use portable. They made a lot of USB sticks with open office portable version. And tell them that you can use this one and you can save your work in this stick and you can take everywhere. Even at your home you can work at home. So you can imagine that it is not an attractive solution, especially to those colleagues in government. So no surprise. But why it failed? Actually in my opinion, I think there are several important reasons about the first time, the first trial, why it failed. The first of course, this project asked users to change their software practice. That is from Microsoft Office to Office, right? This is a very difficult thing. I believe that everyone who ever tried to remember over office or revoke, they were having the same thing. But besides software practice, they also asked them to change their hardware practice. USB stick, right? They made a lot of USB sticks. And tell them that if you want to work with your document, you just plug in your USB stick. But if they forgot to bring the USB stick, they could do nothing. That happens, yes. Because we have never heard some complaint from the users. One day he forgot to bring his USB sticks and he received an ODF file and nothing to do because they didn't install it in the computer. And he had no USB sticks, so he had nothing to do. But actually, the most important reason should be this. Only in the other country, they received a lot of POC files from outside. All the other countries from central government they sent a lot of Microsoft Omega files to them. They are really upset there. Can you see something? So, in 2014, two incidents changed the condition. The first, of course, is UK government, right? I bring everyone here to know this one. In Taiwan, we have a union called Nation of Development, Tuxedo. That's a very high-level union in Taiwan. And I believe that the director in NDC would like to promote ODF for a long time. So this incident is just a chance for him to start migrating. It is very important because just as I have said, if we promote revolts to a union, to a county, to a city, but the whole environment is still not using revolts, that would be total useless. This is the man the director in NDC started to promote. Okay? That's one. And the second incident is, of course, budget. What does that mean? Because even now, even today, even in the county, they are still using Windows XP. Yes, that's true, even today. And they are using Microsoft Office 2013, since they failed to migrate to Microsoft Office just now. But you know, Windows XP stops upgrading, right? Start supporting. So they plan to upgrade the Windows XP to Windows A, but then they found a very tricky thing. Because Office 2003 could not work on Windows 8. That means they need to upgrade both Windows and Office at the same time. Right? That's the choice. If they want to upgrade, then there's no choice. So the total license fee is about $100 million, just for a year and a half. Just for a year and a half. $100 million. But do they really have no choice? No, of course they have no choice, right? So from the beginning of this year, the director of Iran County started to see the game about migrating to open office. Actually, they are still stuck in open office. So they started a project and made a public building. But the comment of the project is to have changing courses, to teach users to use open office. Again, they are using open office. They have no idea about liberal ethics. Okay? I made a project. And during the meeting, I told them that compared to all the other competitors, I must be the only one who really cares about how to migrate liberal office and open office in your day work. All the other competitors, they have a very big computer training community. But they have done nothing about open source. They just want to give you change costs and make money, and that's all. But for us, we are really the one who has been fighting in the open source world for more than 20 years. I'm really the only one who cares about to migrate liberal office into your work. So I got a bit. So the project started from March. And the first thing they asked me, which version should we use? And I recommended them liberal office 4.4. That's the most stable version. In the first step, the first step we have then is to deploy liberal office. We deploy liberal office to the whole company. We tell them that, just install it. You don't need to remove your Microsoft Office. That's okay. Just install liberal office. And after installing the liberal office, when you receive the file with only F, it will automatically open with liberal office. That's the first step. And of course, training costs. In this project, we have 80 training costs for right-of-care and impress. And it's very interesting that in the session, this morning about migrating call 2. The training costs is right-of-care about the impress they have, basic intermediate advance. But in our training costs, we mainly focus on right-of-care. And the students is from all the units in the schools. Not only the unit in the government, but also from the high schools and the elementary school. The employees there, teachers there, even nurses there, to do our training costs. The main topic of our training course is this. About the correct concept of making a document. Why do I say this? When we try to convert Microsoft files or XML files to the ODF file, we know that the successful rate is not high, but then we found that almost 90% of these problem-making files were because they used very ridiculous ways to make that document. Again, an example is this. Have you ever seen a file with tables, but the table was made of a lot of text blocks? Have you ever seen? Oh, you've seen that? A lot of text blocks, you know? Really? So when this file convert to ODF, of course, in a mess, right? Another example is that once you receive a phone, he asks us why he couldn't edit anything in his table. A lot of people are strange. Why can't you edit in the table? And finally, we got the file from him. Ah, he draw the tables with the graphic to, you know, in the document. Draw the tables. He didn't create the tables. He draw the tables himself, one by one. Oh, he couldn't edit, but he had no idea. So the topic of the training course is about telling the correct concept about making a document. If you have correct concept, no matter you're using Microsoft Office or Libre Office, you could do that since correctly. And we found that if you do that correctly, the convert successful rate is raised a lot. Okay? So I remember in the community that we also talked about the converting problem. Actually, we found that almost 90% of the problems. And in the project, we also got help from the government. The director really supported free software, and he would come to the class, a certain season in the office. He would come to class and tell all the colleagues in this class telling not why they want to migrate to the Libre Office because of the project problem, because of the central government ODF migrating, and he would, every class would come. Then, this is very interesting. They have an order to all the units, telling not you can only send ODF or PDF only. If you want others to edit, you send ODF. If you don't want others to edit, you send PDF. And they will publish every day who's still using Microsoft Office, publish the unit name, every. If we don't have the help from the director of the unit, the people there will still use Microsoft, right? But this really happens. And what we have then is to help it to convert some old Excel files, especially for accounting units. They will have a lot of functions that will help them to convert, and sometimes we don't convert, but once we receive a file, and he also uses incorrect way to make the document. So I just sent an original file back. I didn't recover from them. I just tell them, OK, this original file has several problems. If you really want to know what problem you really want to learn, we can go visit your unit and tell you part of that. We didn't just convert for them and send back. No, we tell them that we found out you have such problems, and we would like to go visit you and tell you what problem is. OK, so we also answer questions that sometimes we will promote the office and other friends open source of work. For example, sometimes we will each of these escape in the course of the press, yes. OK, now the current status. The first thing to say is that, this is part of the National Development Council. They made the OBL become the National Standard Format in Taiwan. And it has become a national policy to use OBL, but from this year, they focused on OBL itself, not the legalities. They tell people that you can use anything you like, as long as you give me OBL file. But then they will find that if they use the Microsoft Office to generate OBL file, OBL file, it will be in a mess. Really. So their goal is to fully migrate OBL to the legal office in 2017. But compared to the central government, the ERA County is really a migrant repatriation, not only OBL. And now I believe that it is very successful now. OK, so now the main comparison of the user, the main comparison is about OBL does not have enough enjoy of iOS editors. iPhone 1 enjoy office in enjoy, but in iOS, I didn't find a public office editor. So if you have information please, just tell me. So that's the current status of the ERA County in Taiwan. OK, then the second story is the core topic. That is not done by my company, but this is our partner. OBL is also very good company. And this company founded by a very senior company member. And they learn Esper in open office, in the legal office, OSSII. And Kotlin is a very big company in Taiwan. The employee should be more than 10,000. More than 10,000. And here is the LCD Baylight Module. OK, the background is still, of course, the budget problem, because according to Microsoft's request, the license fee they need to pay is almost earning in a whole year.  And for them, almost, it's in the whole year. So from the 2010, they started to think about this. And OSSII started to help them since then. First step they do is to clarify what they really need. This is a very classical, isn't it, popular, EA content access, but how many people use access? Right? How far do I need to pay access? Since only less than one person really uses. And also, in the operating lines, they just need to run some automatic tools. They even don't need the windows, you know? So they're starting to clarify what they really need. And then OSSII started to help them to eventually plan how to migrate. That's also a very important step, because they really basically are almost all the units in the company to understand what they really need. And they started to plan in such a big company what they really need.  I will talk about that later. Of course there are training courses, but they just gradually change the use of practice, not one time. Not one time. Gradually. And OSSII developed an OS office, not directly from Libre Office, but mainly solved some problems about Chinese characters and the performance. So when dealing with Chinese, this OS OS office is much suitable for them. But the China branches, they use WPS. Do you know what WPS is? It is also open suite developed by China's developers. But it should not be developed from Libre Office, I believe. But that's very popular in China. So they even forced them to use WPS in China. I think the hybrid solution is combined with Microsoft Windows, Ubuntu Linux, OS Office, and they also keep some work in Excel in case they receive files from outside. But not many. Maybe about less than 10% I believe. Microsoft Results. In 2012, when actually now when they started, you know, they started the cross funding and all the rest of the usage. They passed. Everybody getting Windows, instead of Microsoft. So this is two simple story. The key factors in this case, I believe, the most important is, of course, the support and determination from the spirit unit, from their boss, from the director in the government. That's the most important. And the second, right people, right? If they don't want, if they don't ask for the really health fund, for the community, just from the commercial company, that would be just like Sub-8. We are really the ones who knows how to migrate and how to face the problems. This is also a very important factor to migrate. Using an unified version, it will simplify and avoid many problems caused by universal difference. But they have a problem, and we don't need to ask. For the version we use, 4.4 or 5 or 5.4.1, we just use unified version. Then it will upgrade, maybe half a year or once a year. It will upgrade but not very frequently. Because for users, they just use those features. They don't need to upgrade too frequently. Now, the challenge is in Taiwan, of course, about the Chinese characters. And I believe, later it will have a session about Japanese vertical writing. His problem will also have the same problem, vertical writing. But all ex-office, he solves some of the issues. But you'll have many to deal with. But this is even more important. And I think it may be, it can be key factor. What's that? Audio generated by Microsoft causes a lot of problems. And in the session, by the CEO of Microsoft Taiwan, he animated that he really added a lot of things in his generated audio file. But he said he has no choice because audio is lack of those features. He taught people that Microsoft has a lot to improve the LF. That's what he said. Actually, this is not the labor office issue, but we still need to use that. So maybe I will try to let the Taiwan government to sponsor or to support the development teams in Taiwan to try to deal with this problem. And of course, back to upstream. And I also try to do them to support TDF, to cover TDF. So this is the whole success story. Because we are still moving. But please tell the world, Taiwan is now migrating to audio and the labor office. Thank you. Do you have any question about Taiwan's experience? So I have a topic with questions now. This is my writing, my research. This is OX office. So you said it's derived from labor office. Is there a reason why, or maybe just a timing thing we can't upstream some of those improvements? Yeah, there was some patch upstream. But for example, for some patch that formed sorting. Yeah, in the labor office, in the labor office in Chinese version, the Chinese form will be in the bottom of the list. But they will try to put it in the top of the list. So that Chinese user could easily find the fault. But such patch may not be suitable for committing to upstream. But maybe we could just make that a minor little consideration. Yeah, that's true. Of course, I'd like to tell the government in Taiwan to try to cooperate with PDF and other government.  Okay. You said Microsoft was extending the ODF files. Yes. That in itself is perfectly allowed, although if you're standardizing on ODF, it may be best to standardize on clean ODF without the extensions. Because the labor office also saves extensions in ODF files. So if you want to have the highest interoperability, you should exchange clean ODF files without the extensions. Unless you really need some of the extensions. But it would be better to save without extensions. But that's an option in the save dialogue. In the save options. I believe that we may need the developers to try to solve this problem. Okay, I will try to tell them. But that's saved from the Microsoft office. So when opening with people office, do we have the option to ignore the extensions? Yeah. Okay, I'll try to. I have a really good question. One of the things I've tried to do is to clarify what we've extended inside of ODF we've published. So we have the key pages, etc. that try to promise the list and have the mitts and all that. So we're very open about that. I would guess that you'll be surprised that Microsoft doesn't do something similar to explain exactly how they extend the ODF and so forth. But if there's anything that we can contact, etc. I think that would be really helpful so that we can see how both pieces offer our extended ODF. And then if there are commonalities and say, okay, those are maybe prime candidates to be included in the experiment of the ODF. It is something that's basically is only cable being extended as an extension. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This one, right? Yeah, it works. It really works. It just took a few days later, almost nobody sent using files. It works. Really. It's very important for them to do this. We can say to force them using the office. Though, we didn't publish tell them that we still they will keep Microsoft off, of course. But Microsoft 2003 could not save ODF, you know. So you have no choice but to use your office. That's all. Actually, before before I started my company I also had the project like what I have said. We have worked to promote open source and free software in Taiwan schools for more than 10 years. Okay. Before I had my own job but I still have them to make this distribution and I also have we have many teachers supporting us and their computer classroom is full of physical even more tedious new but we have worked on promoting in schools for more than 10 years and from last year I started my own company to promote in government and in Paris. Yes. I believe that in Asia right now maybe only Taiwan have a project to promote open source in schools. To spread this to all other countries back in Indonesia and Japan Okay. Thank you.


What's up everybody? Jason from jazby's case breaks.com shows a 1920 panini noir basketball This is a two box half case break random teams number five You're getting 30 total spots everybody gets a random team the NBA two box break Yeah, in fresh case chasing some Zion. Have we hit a Zion out of this already? I know last time I was here on Wednesday. We did it, but it's been about three days So I have no idea but let's do the break dice roller customer names bought straight up Robert Grice Shackleton with two Kevin G and James the last two last about module and from Rob down to Jeremy Sello 16 and 17 and then hops down to the Did you hit one Ryan nice man? Let's roll it and we got a two and a one three times one Two oh it was just a base, but it was out of 25 like the base autograph for Just a base card. Those are still big money cards though right at the top Shackleton on the bottom three times teams one two three thunder Don't have the Sacramento Kings three times. I have no idea. Did they really in the last three days? I don't I know I know last time I was here on Wednesday. I took Thursday off and my normal Friday Saturday off, but We'll find out then right Ryan Harold you got the thunder Ryan Shackleton with the Clippers Kevin Mendoza You have the Cavaliers Oliver with the Spurs Rob you have the Raptors Robert Grice You have the Nuggets Blake with the Lakers Brian As with the Nets Scott with the Mavericks Matthew with the Pistons Aaron with the Magic Jeremy with the Wars Michael Hughes with the Suns Gregor with the Hawks Ryan Shackleton with the Bucks Kevin With the Knicks Kevin G Proust you have the Jazz Quinn with the Heat Ryan Ryan with the Bulls Scott with the T Wolves James with the Rockets and Pacers Ross with the Celtics and Rocio with the New Orleans Pelicans Jeremy with the Hornets and Anthony with the Grizzlies Ryan with the 76ers Michael Hughes with the Wizards Kevin M with the lasers and Ryan with the Sacramento Kings I don't know Mike. That just depends. I don't know how I don't know Do we have any random teams up for NT yet? I'm assuming I'm assuming that we are probably going to do some type of sell-a-pack breaks for NT random teams But I mean who knows people might just step up and just take that random team risk at a chance at like a you know $8-9,000 pelicans team which probably what they would have cost like an a picker team somewhere somewhere high up there You know, oh, you mean those ones. I think I'm gonna go straight up random team break Maybe I mean we could always sell them that way I don't I don't expect people to buy them yet because it hasn't dropped I think someone that's gonna drop 900 bucks wants it to break that same day So I mean it may we may have to do some sell-a-packs I'm sure if we have to we will but who knows maybe maybe on release day or closer to that people start buying But I guess I have to play by ear All right guys anybody want to make any trades if not where you're just gonna start you got to think though like Gotta think a random team break with all 30 teams it'd be like over 500 bucks spot Probably all right, let's go to trade with another trick. All right. Here you go guys noir basketball Second half. I'm sure we'll be on the floor soon unless Nick already did it Jasper's case freaks at GMO Steven Jasper's case freaks at GMO. Oh really? I was a little low then Yeah, yeah, I figured like 550 maybe around there would be pretty fair Hold on Steve. Let me write it in for you. She could just copy it Which there is a lot of teams in NT though that are close to that $500 price. Don't get me wrong There's like a lot of teams still in the couple hundreds, but how it is two box break half case One two three four five six two one two three Let me write this on here And I'll put RT number six on the box It's gonna go that was crazy 90 bucks for 99 spots really Number is number 100 a redemption slot Mike. I'm assuming right. I don't know there's gonna be a lot of creative ways to break open NT this year because Honestly, it's by the most expensive NT we've seen in such a long time if not ever I Mean just the start-off price for this is ridiculous So this is like the most expensive Think about it. I think NT like last year 1819 was like selling for like maybe a little over a thousand dollars a box maybe two and Even then Mike That was really expensive and it wasn't until Luke. They're just really like broke out. Oh, that's it All right, Malcolm Brogdon one out of 25 for the Indiana Pacers James with that one James Harden. Oh How about that Jersey number 13 little eBay one-on-one out of 99 rookie Bates Graham Williams 10 out of 99 Celtics one Ross Little relics here. Oh gee 48 out of 99 for the Toronto rafters Ravado Luca Samnick 64 out of 99 relic Spurs and the Andre Hunter 52 out of Hock's gonna Gregory Yeah, and it's just good to understand everybody else that does it differently, you know Because I think it's kind of a little frustrating when it's like well, how come you don't do it like this person How can we don't do it like that? And so it's like well, we have our different rules, you know Jalen For the Sun's rookie autograph 74 out of 99 So definitely just got to pay attention to the rules and we got a sneaker spotlight autograph coming up And it's Colin Sexton 41 out of 99 for the Cleveland Cavaliers Going to Kevin with the Cavs Kevin Mendoza And another one back-to-back sneaker spotlights Laurie Markin One out of 99 I believe they were close to like eight nine thousand somewhere on their vanilla gorilla. I don't know Somewhere in that higher range These are actually cool cool ass Shoes like leopard print So Chicago Bulls that's going to Ryan Redmond And what did you look at this guys? We got ourselves a job Moran autograph 39 out of 99 Who has the Memphis Grizzlies Anthony are with the Grizzlies? I mean, it's a very expensive prize. Well, and I know some of us may not agree How are people gonna spend that much on a guy that really has improved in much la la la? It's true but you know, some of these people aren't doing it because They love the guy. They're doing it because There's gonna be someone else that's not gonna take that risk in a group break and it's just gonna pay straight up 25,000 You know what I mean? It's just that's just the way it's gonna be I don't know. I expected to go for a little bit more, but I wouldn't be surprised if it starts off at 25 Maybe 30,000. That's just a guess. I don't know So it really is that worth of a risk if you can triple your money Now that's it's gonna be very hard. There's only 99 true RPAs including obviously the ones out of 25 the ones out of 10 Etc. Etc. But the true RPA is out of 99. There's only 99 of them. So I Mean the odds are it's gonna be really tough for you to hit one, but when you do I Mean, you're pretty much in the clear. It's gonna be pretty insane. That's for sure And I hope I mean I wanted to be me if I ever get a chance to break NT We have enough cases and I break it on Senate But I just hope one of us pulls here either me, Nick, Joe, whoever it is, Sean Whoever's break-even we do personal boxes. One of us gets his eye on just so that way at least we can say we got one Redemption. All right, and out of 10 actually miles bridges three out of 10 for the Hornets Go base BAM out the bio To 99 a little chipped up right here as you can see for this go back to 99, but Again, I don't know if people have been able to contact me, but yeah, the cards have been getting really stuck to these boxes. So Most are pretty chipped up already Paces with that one Romeo Langford relic miles bridges to 99 Doug McDermott to out of 10 for the Indiana Pacers Indiana for the James Like Indiana's hitting pretty well Bruno Fernando Little eBay 101 99 out of 99 Atlanta Hawks going to Gregory Gordon Hayward 48 out of 99 Boston Celtics and we got a redemption and it is in focus signatures Admiral Schofield for the Washington Wizards going to Michael Hughes and the last hit is going to be a Laker legend Mr. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar five out of 99 Autograph for the Lakers LA Lakers going to Blake Nose on this one could be in the second half, but we did manage to get ourselves a little John Morant in The first box which went to Anthony. Congratulations. There you go guys Next one is in the store or I don't know if it is in the store, but it should be soon. Let's run it back guys Jasper's case breaks


So, my name is Avista Yub. I'm director of the Fellows Program here at New America. Thank you for joining us for this conversation as Zwayne launches his new book into the world today, which is actually New York Times Reviewed. This is one of our 20th anniversary series events. New America celebrating its 20th year this year. We were founded in 1999 as a civic platform that really engaged with new ideas and helping amazing writers like Clint and Dwayne publish books. It was one idea that came up during those radical first few years and 20 years later we've helped support over 200 fellows who published over 116 books. Actually, I think 116 is yours. Nine films and also several award-winning books as well in our first Pulitzer this year. So, what was once probably just considered a radical crazy idea is actually proven to be very successful 20 years later. So, with that, I will transition the conversation over to Dwayne and Clint. I will give a quick introduction of each and then I'll transition over to Dwayne who will actually open with a poetry reading from his new book. Dwayne Betz is a Class of 2018 Emerson fellow here at New America. He is now the author of four books with the publication of his newest book today and including the 2015 collection of poems faster to the Reagan era. He's a graduate of Yale Law School and he's received fellowships from the Soros Foundation, Pan America and the Poetry Foundation at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies. Joining him today to moderate the conversation is Clint Smith. Clint is actually one of just our newly accepted Class of 2020 Emerson Fellows and he's completing a book on how the word is passed, a narrative nonfiction project that explores the relationship between place and public history in which you travel to different sites throughout the country examining how each of them reckon with or fail to reckon with the relationship to the history of slavery and Jim Crow. His book will be published by Little Brown in the next year or two. He's also a prolific poet so it's an amazing opportunity to have two very dynamic writers who just know how to bring words together in ways that are both beautiful, articulate and also very informed. So with that, Clint, the conversation's yours or actually Dwayne, did you want to start with a poetry reading? Can I get a book? Yeah. I cannot get a, I think I changed it. Okay. A lot. Okay, a hard one. Yeah. So I'm gonna read, if we pass a book then I promise to read from it. Thank you guys for coming. This is a lot of people. This is, I didn't know it was gonna be this many people there. Neither did Aristotle who was like, I'm coming today because it's raining and ain't nobody coming to hear you in the rain. I was like, I don't know man, I'm kinda decent. He's like, nah. You know. So I'm gonna read a few. We do have copies of the book. I'm gonna read the first poem and I'm gonna tell you about it just so that, so what I'm gonna try to do is I'm gonna read some poems that's thematically connected and I'm gonna read the first poem, it's called Guzzoo. And this poem is a Persian sort of Persian form. And the thing that you should listen for is the poem is each, so the first couplet is all it's written in couplets and the idea is that each couplet is like a pearl on a string of pearls. And so it's a part of a unit, but it's also its own thing. And in the first couplet, it has a line of repeats, a phrase of repeats at the end of each line and it's after prison. And then in each subsequent couplet before you hear the phrase after prison, you'll hear a word that's rhyming. So in this case, it'll be suspect, expect, dialect and the idea is that that's just the form and the notion is how do you structure the circle a theme or a topic? None of that was relevant, but sometimes it's cool to know stuff like that. Oh, the other thing that is relevant is that you signed your name in the last couplet. Guzzoo, name a song that tells a man what to expect after prison.  Titus Gouffard painted my portrait, then dipped it in black tar. He knows redaction is a dialect after prison. From inside a sail, the night sky isn't the measure. That's why it's prison's vastness, your eyes reflect after prison. My lover don't believe in my sadness. She says whiskey in that time is what left me wrecked after prison. Ruth, paper maker, take these tattered gray sweats. Make paper of my beard. In the past, I won't reject after prison. The state murdered Khalif with a single high bill, always innocent. Did he fear time's effect after prison? Dear Wharton, my time been served. Let me go. Promise that some of this I won't recollect after prison. My mother has died. My father, a brother and two cousins. There is no God, no reason to genuflect after prison. Jeremy and Forge rejected the template. Said for it to be funky, the font must redact after prison. Now, the reason why that couplet is really cool, it's because I broke the rules of the other thing too. Because if you notice, redact doesn't actually rhyme with reflect and all of the other ones. And so I was like Jeremy and Forge rejected the template while I was also in the very phrase rejecting the template. That didn't matter, but I just wanted to tell you. And so since I broke up the poem I want to tell you one other thing. So this poem also was like a guide to a project that me and my friend Titus Kfar did. And so the line, so what I did is I was like old school rapper that shouts out all his friends. So Titus Kfar, he painted a portrait of me and we did this series of prints. And so that refers to that. But we also got, I bought a whole bunch of towels from prison that was made by prisoners in Virginia. And I also got my homeboys to send me their clothes.  And they sent it to us and we made paper out of it. So when I say Ruth, paper maker, take these tattered gray sweats, make paper of my bid, a pass that won't reject after prison. It's actually literal. And Jeremy and Forge, we created a font for the project. So when I say they rejected the template, they rejected the existing fonts and they created their own font for the project. And it was like for them to make it funky. The font must redact. And actually like the font, we redact spaces in the font. That's like the feature of the font.  Anyway, he came home saying, righteous, kuchi and jab turkey, all in lost years, his slings are protect after prison. The printer silk screens a world onto black paper. With ink, Eric reveals that we, Eric reveals when we neglect after prison.  His wife and baby girl gave him love to protect after prison. And then the fools say, you can become anything when it's over. Told him straight up, ain't nothing to resurrect after prison. You have come so far, beloved. And for what? Another song? Then sing, Shahid, you're loved, not shipwrecked after prison. I like clapping after parties. That is dope. I personally like throwing money at people after parties. I just, you know, they do it at church. You know what I mean? So whiskey for breakfast. My liver, a wash and all but drags of a charred old cask. Soaked in Bali's amber, shadowed as blood dim as a sail in the hole. Survived, brackish prison water, only to become collateral. The things that haunt me still drown now, Francie, and nearly 50 pounds of brick cube rocker, Spirittis frumenti, a gallon of whiskey weighs eight pounds. And all of this becomes a man confessing that he's riven and I drink. Mornings I turn sunrise into another empty glass and a dozen angels diving behind a mire, I swallow to save my body from itself or scream. Me and even the cherubim lost in that smoky, dense comfort, lost in darkness. And sometimes I swear even God has no alibi. I'm gonna read a couple more. I'm gonna read some, some that I think are. So maybe we'll talk about this, but I just want to say this is y'all get the book, y'all might get the book, y'all read the book. It's like one of the things about being a poet is this is really hard to be a poet and not turn your poetry into a dating ad.  But if you want to write about incarceration, if you want to write about the lives of black men, if you only write about the things that you have expressed, oh, what's going on, man? You made it. He was mad at me a few weeks ago because I was supposed to go climbing with him, right? And then I told him three minutes before we were supposed to go get on the boat that I wasn't going to make it, that was really bad for him. Now, if I wanted to really show you the kind of person I am, I will put that in a poem. But because that makes me horrible, I'm never going to say anything like that publicly, right? But anyway, so I wrote these poems and they're all in the first person and it's because I want to be, if I want to be, people say shit like the people that's closest to the problem, I'm closest to the solution. I don't know if that's true. Sometimes if you're closest to the problem, you're just closest to the problem. But I wanted to write about what it means to be close to problems and be close to problems that you don't want to talk about. So some of the stuff is like rough and I'm going to read a few of these and then me and Clinton talk, me and Clinton talk. Night, in the night, night asleep, her eyes woman, my woman, I name her as if she is mine. As if these hours that pass for the night belong to us, my nights belong to the memories I can't shape. My night and this woman, my woman, she tells me how it wasn't supposed to be like this. This insight, another Hail Mary, another haymaker. We live somewhere between almost there and not enough, almost there. Her dreams and all that she lost for me is a kind of accountant. My woman, not my woman, not this night, not these nights. The mind is less mine, more hurt, more hover than anything else. Shadow cloud, or as she says it, you stalk me until I submit it. Love shapes itself into my hands wrapped around her throat. Have you loved like that? I'll call you P.O. It's the thing she says on this night with the men I robbed still lingering. A threat to the freedom I imagined she gave when we became cliche, neck it, tangle. This is always about me. How violence called to me like my woman moans when she thought all this was the promise of more than a funeral. When I grabbed it like that the first time her legs held me tight. My woman thinking the sales in my past can make her control this. All the ways I starve.  She stared at me once and said she saw her brothers doing life in my eyes. And this night when we talk to each other, it is in shouts. The quilt of solitary sales I've known confess that my woman has never been my woman. How ownership and want made me split that bastard's head into a stream is what I'll never admit. What she tells me, prison killed you my love. Killed you so dead that you're not here now. You're never here, you're always. Her eyes closed at night and I awakened and swear she stares at me. She is saying that brown liquor owns me. Saying that the sales own me and that there is no room for her unless she calls the police, the state calls upon her pistol and sets me free. So I read two more and then I want to shut it down. I'm gonna read this one because I like the title. On voting for Barack Obama in a Nat Turner t-shirt. This is actually about me. The ballot ain't never been a measure of forgiveness. In prison, people don't even talk about voting, about elections, not really, not the dudes you remember because wasn't nobody black running no way. But your freedom hit just in time to see this brother has stepped in with the burden with the albatross, willing to confess that he knew people like you and you are free. And you are what they call out and off papers and living in a state where you're not disenfranchised. In prison, you listen to the ballot or the bullet and imagine that neither was for you. Having failed with the pistol and expecting the ballot to be denied. But nah, you fell free and in line, notice that this is not like the first time you and the woman you married got naked and sweated and moaned and pumped up a room not belonging to either of you. That lady is with you now and the kid is in your arms and you are wearing a Nat Turner t-shirt as if to make a statement at the family reunion. Everyone around you is black, which is a thing you notice. And you know your first ballot will be cast for a man who has to swag the seams inherited. It's early, but there's no crust in your eyes. You want it this moment like freedom.  Name a dream more American than that. Especially with your three felonies serving as beacons to alert anybody of your reckless ambition.  And she lets you hold your boy while voting as if the voting makes you and him more free. Sometimes it's just luck. Just having moved to the right state after the cell door stopped clinking behind you. The son in the arms of the man was mine and the arms of the man belonged to me.  I should have read that yesterday. My wife was like, you don't have any happy poems. I think that's a happy poem. I should have read that one. How are we going to do 20 minutes and leave 20 minutes? It's exciting to be here with Wayne. And we've been in conversation a couple of times throughout the years. Dwayne, we have similar research topics and so the book that I'm writing for New Americas, intellectually related to the issues of incarceration and has threads of these issues in there. But it's a little bit different as it deals with slavery but my dissertation, which is on its way to being done, it is, we're gonna get there. February 1st, I'm gonna turn something in. There will be words on a piece of paper. It's on the experience of people sentenced to juvenile life without parole. And so I spent a year going back and forth to Philadelphia. Pennsylvania has the largest concentration of juvenile life or juvenile lifers in the world. The United States is the only country in the world on the books that sends children to spend the rest of their life in prison. And so I'm specifically interested in how people sentenced to juvenile life without parole experience education while they're incarcerated. What does it mean to try to get a degree? What does it mean to read a book? What does it mean to write a poem? What does it mean to learn when learning is stripped of its vocational and social utility?  And so reading this book and knowing Dwayne and sort of his journey and his broader work, there are obviously a lot of sort of interrelated strains in that and one of the things that is, I find interesting and I find as a tension is that so many of the people that I've spoken to spoke about specifically solitary confinement as transformative space in their individual educational journeys and that going to the whole something happened there, either they met someone or the time in which they were alone and like could do nothing else led them to books in many ways led them on a trajectory from illiteracy and motivated them to learn and sometimes gave them an informal community of learning in ways that ultimately were really generative for their lives and the tension and I'm always feeling and trying to name is like, you don't want so many people, I think so many people have written in their memoirs about that, so many people I've interviewed have talked about that, but I don't wanna fall into the trap of making it seem as if like going to the whole was a good thing, right? And so even though solitary confinement is the space where so much transformation can happen, it is also a place of immense violence and psychological torture. And I guess I'm thinking of generally, how do you think of, did you experience that tension? How do you think of like learning in those contexts? I think it depends though and I think and I bristle, like every time people, I call prison cages too on occasion, but I bristle with even when you say it's a cage, right? Because like, I know people that spend their whole life in prison and you know, when you assert that it's a cage, also you assert that the other thing, like you say, there's no social or vocational utility to education, but it's immense social and vocational utility to education, even in prison. Like I am who I am because I was the person who was helping somebody get in the GED.  I got myself out of prison 60 days earlier. I got them out of prison five years earlier.  I mean, he paid me at Oodles and Noodles, but I ate well for three weeks. And so that is, so I think one of the challenges is that, you know, how do we think about incarceration in prison as something that's more complicated and nuanced and imagine how people that serve in time have had to think about, you know, if we decide that this is just a place, if we decide that it is just your approximation of hell, and it really is just folks approximation of hell, because none of us have been a hell either, right? If it just becomes your approximation of hell, then there is no ability to think about it in any kind of rich way. So yeah, I know a lot of somebody I was listening to a podcast with this, I'm not gonna say the podcast, but I was listening to a podcast and the guy was like, I went on a silent fast and I went on a retreat.  Why is that not the hole?  And he was talking about how this profoundly changed his life. And so it's not this, I think we're afraid to say, like I think we're afraid to talk about the freedom that comes with constraint, which is all a gazelle is. It's an enormous amount of constraint. You gotta figure out what words Ryan would expect. When the last time that you listed a number of words that rhyme with any word, right? When's the light like, so even as a writer, the gazelle is an enormous amount of constraint. The sonnet is enormous. The last poem in the book is a crown of sonnets. But again, it's an enormous amount of constraint, but it's freedom in that. That I mean, everybody's gonna access that freedom, but some will. And I think what happens, so for those people who you don't told you those stories, maybe it was just like the space that was needed for them. But I don't know if we need to one, generalize from their experience about what conditions of solid circle confinement may do to people. Because like one of the things that comes with solid circle confinement is all of the other variables about whether or not you could deal with the shouting or whether or not you could deal with the noise, whether or not you imagine the decision of being in a hole is some type of choice that you had some proximate control over, whether you checked yourself in a hole, or whether you just able to abandon. And like, you know, this is like one of the most frustrating things about prisoners.  What happens?  And you kick in the door and the door doesn't open. Like that's what breaks you, right? So it's not even just like being in a hole, that's the thing that happens is some people aren't equipped emotionally or intellectually to deal with what it means to just be absolutely deprived of those types of possibilities.     And I said, this is all about me or something.  But he was like, it's not about you. And he was like, he was spitting on a door, he was throwing a chair, he got charged with assault for throwing a chair at the door. I don't know how because the door was made of like steel. He got charged with assault, was spitting, attempted assault for like spitting at the glass that the spit was not gonna go through unless it was like sephalitic spit. And I still don't know if it would have worked there.   And then what was crazy to me is the whole reason why he was degenerating though is because they tried to take in the population. Can you just explain what that means? Folks who might not know. Oh, so he was in a hole because he like checked himself in.  And then all of that time had been served and they were saying now it's time for you to go to general population. It was a smallish prison. They didn't have a lot of sales in a hole. And they was like, we need this space for somebody who's actually a threat to the institution. And he just flipped and he snapped and so he got this other series of charges. But I was in a hole that time and I missed the Super Bowl.  Like I gave somebody the finger and I didn't have to demonstrate in that way. Sorry.   That's one of those things that I don't like talking about.  And another reason I don't like the word cages is because a lot of people live in dorms. And so we were living in a dorm. We were living in a barrack and we were supposed to go outside. They didn't let us outside. And I was like, you forgot to let us outside. She was like, no, I didn't. I let y'all and I got mad. And I was like, bitch, that's why I'm like talking to y'all. And she was like, what you called me?   I was like, this is my, you know. And then I was like, but I didn't mean anything by it. And I walked away and I told the other guy to let me out. He was like, no, we already opened the door. I was like, motherfucker, you lying. And I just like tapped my finger up against the glass. And they said that they were afraid of me. And they made me go to the first unit manager. And the guy didn't.  He sent me back, made them let me go outside. They waited to do left and called the next supervisor and say they were afraid of me. And they put me in a hole.  And they gave me 15 days in a hole for giving do with the finger. And I remember that experience because that hole was like, I had like 46 days before I went home.  And the Eagles were about to be in a Super Bowl when Dominic Minerva, Terrell Owens, and I just knew they won and they didn't. And I felt like it was my fault. But, and they just gave me a Bible to read.  I was like, you gotta let me out this motherfucker. Can you describe what solitary, to the best of your ability to describe what solitary confinement is like? Because I've heard some people do this thing where, I imagine it's impossible to describe unless you've been there. And I imagine it's also different in different prisons and jails, but like some of my people say like you locked yourself in the bathroom for an hour long. Yeah, maybe like, it's like, cause it depends, different prisons is different. Some prisons you in a hole, but you could, you could talk to people and you could see people and you could see on a yacht and you could yell and talk to people on a yacht.  Some prisons you in a hole and you could lay on one prison I was in a hole for like six months. I could lay on the floor and talk to the dude beside him.  You talk for like three, four hours a day, laying on the floor, talking through a vent. So you can't see them when you're... You can't see them, but some prisons, like the one I was at then, it was just like a really narrow pathway.  You couldn't see through the window and that was like oppressive. And you could kind of yell out the vent or you could yell out the door, but you know, you didn't really know who you was talking to. So it kind of depends on what prison you were.  So you couldn't sleep through all the days and the door was so thick that you couldn't yell or talk to anybody. So you would have mattress at night? You would have it from five o'clock on. So they would take it at eight o'clock in the morning. So you couldn't like sleep during the day. It depends on what institution you're at, how clean the hole is, it depends on what institution you're at. How often they let you take a shower, what it looks like when they let you outside for rec.  How long would you go? Three hours.  So it depends. I mean, it was different from every institution. But I remember all of them though.   So you don't forget. So in that way, maybe it is like dangerously oppressive, but yeah, and even that poem night though, that's what the poem is about too. It's like the challenge and the fallibility of somebody who's been in prison or their own memory of that experience.  So that story isn't necessarily true. Yeah. One of the things I was going to ask next is in the book, I think it's mostly all in first person. And some of the stories are autobiographical and some of them are not. Like, how did you think about what it meant to, why, how did you make a decision to make everything in first person, even the stories that were not specific to your experience? And was there to hear around that, right?  And I was so glad that the cat in New York did this review before the book came out and that I don't know this motherfucker and when he might be in this room right now, I literally don't know what he looks like. And I'm glad though, because he talked about this very thing.  I ain't sexually assaulted nobody.   But like, and I drink, but like I don't think I'm alcoholic. Like it's a whole lot of shit ahead that I just think does not capture me at all. She say, why put it in the first person? It's because I got a really good life. And I feel like it's something obnoxious about me trying to tell all of these stories that I want to tell and constantly shifting those stories away from me. So then what happens is like, I get to be the hero of this narrative.  Like, why does he talk about them? And I think, but also I think that like, we want to start these conversations that we don't want to have, you know? Like, I'm tired of people talking about mass incarceration.  Nobody talks about who should be in prison. Everybody talks about who shouldn't be in prison, right?  And then everybody wants to talk about prison now and it's okay for somebody to be locked up. But we never talked about it in the context of our own lives.  And I remember sending one of the poems to poetry.  I have recorded it, because I started to say poetry should live. And so the way to make poetry live is if I write something that I think is dope, I'll record it into this contraption that's like my cell phone, my camera, my video camera, my spy equipment, like it's everything, right? I recorded it into this and I just texted it to somebody.  And I- So poetry is poetry magazine. Oh, poetry. It's a magazine called Poetry. Yeah. It's confusing because you're like, I sent it to poetry, and you're like, really?  He sent it to his poems to poetry, did he send it to a son or a haku? No. Yeah, thank you. So, but I sent it to them and he was like, yo, this is dope. We'll publish it. And I was like, oh, You sent it to the audio record. I sent the audio recording. And I was like, oh, that wasn't really, really why I sent it. You know, like, one, I feel like it's super unofficial.  I'm excited, you know, publish it. So then I get an email back and I'll read the last on it. I just, I'm not gonna read the old poem, but I'll just read the last piece. It says, and live without regret for your guilty pleas. Shit. Mornings I rise twice, once for account that will not come and later with the city's wild birds who find freedom without counsel. I left prison with debts no honest man could pay. Walked out imagining I'd lapped my troubles. But a girl once said no to my unlistening ears. Dismayed that I didn't pause. Remorse can't calm those evils. I've lost myself in some kind of algebra that turns my life into an equation that zeroes out regardless of my efforts. Algophobia means to fear pain. I still fear who knows all I've done. Why regret this thing I've worn? The sentence bouquet, house shredded and torn. And so like they email me and it's like the way and I don't know if you know this but it seems like somebody might've got assaulted in that last sonnet. And we just, and I was like, yeah, yeah, I was like, yeah. I was like, all right, we just wanted to make sure because you know, seems like you assaulted somebody. And I was like, no, it doesn't seem like I assaulted anybody, right?    And also I wanna give you a chance not to come out like that in our magazine, right? And I was like, well, sometimes I didn't do it.  And nobody talks about it ever in verse.   And I was thinking about the book as a one-man show from the very start. And I was like, well, if it's a one-man show from the start and if it's all these stories, I think it's apparent that all of them aren't the same person.  Somebody read my last book and was like, and I had a line that said, I sold crack to pregnant women. And somebody, a reviewer, wrote a review and said, in this book, Reginald Dwayne Betts submits to selling crack to pregnant women. And I was like, well, what is it that maybe wanna defend myself so much?   They belong in prison. We all want people in prison. We don't ever wanna say it. And so I was like, if I write this book, then I gotta at least confront my own feelings about all of these things. And then maybe like end up in this situation when I'm having a public conversation about it. And I guess, thinking about what are the, cause you read this book and you don't know, and you have no blame that's here to preface, that like this is not all autobiographical. And I guess I'm thinking too of what this, what it looks like to write something like that in the first person in ever, but also in a me too era moment in which like people's thinking around how we collectively reckon with the history of people who have harmed women and others, what that looks like and that there's no, and I don't, you know, did you ever think of putting an author's note? Did you ever think or making clear that these were like, either stories of other people or composites or were you just like, I am willing to accept that people may think that this is me given my, the fact that you are writing a poem about prison and coming out of prison that you wrote a memoir about being in prison. Like it's very much entrenched in your own narrative. Like, how do you sort of hold those things together in the way that you were thinking about it? Or were you just like, I want it to be messed up? No, I mean, I guess I'm afraid for my children.   How could we never hurt him fighting? Like, how is this possible? You know, like, I suspect that my kids, like, even I'm afraid of what my kids will think.  Like, so I, so in that front, I think I'm kind of clear. My family, maybe I'm concerned, but I think they know me.   No decisions. No, I mean, I sent her the book. Like, you know, if you got time to read it, but you don't read it, you don't read it. And I was at a reading once and I started to read night.   And it was like a bunch of friends and I was like, it was like at one of these dinners. And I'm reading it.  But no, but then there's other poems that I think strike some kind of balance. You know, it's like, if absence was the source of silence, which is a poem about what it means to be raising sons and having to talk to my sons about the violence that the hands of men do. And that poem was born out of a real experience. I used to get on the train early in the morning to go to New York for work. And one morning I'm out, it's like three o'clock and walking to the train station. And this woman saw me as I turned the corner with a new fort. And swear to God, it's like her whole soul jumped out of her body. And she ran into the street.  So the day I came home, my mom, how long has it been now? 14, I came home March 4th, 2005. Not that I remember the exact date. So I guess it's been 14 years almost. And a little bit more than 14 years. But the day I came home, my mom told me that she got raped. Like a couple of weeks after I got locked up.  You know what I mean?  All the conspiracy theories. My mom was like, yeah, I got raped. Another bit of black community, you know? Don't white people don't need to come around today. They just, they don't come around here unless they buy and drugs.  And took her five years to go through the prosecution.  Say my mom was lying. My mom got raped. The gunpoint, she runs into the middle of the street. Right?  But the first time she just said, what happened, let it go. We can talk about it again for 10 years. So 10 years later, people asked me if I wanted to talk to my mom on a podcast. My mom wanted to be interviewed with me.  No, she don't want to do that. But she's an adult. So I'm gonna ask her, let her make her own decision, but don't expect too much.   So my mom says, yeah, sure. I was like, okay. So she's like, should we prepare? I was like, no, no. So I mean, what are we gonna say? I was like, I don't know. I mean, she'll ask some questions and we'll just, you know, we'll just play it by ear. So we go on. Lady asked my mom, how was it going to trial for your son? Face of time in prison. My mom was like, well, you know, it was really difficult because at the same time I was going to trial for the person in prison.    So we talked about it.  I wasn't a single defense attorney she could call. Not one, not no public defender, not no righteous, I'm against mass incarceration, motherfuckers ain't exist at all. And they always want to be super righteous. They want to like, they want to tell this story that like they need to defend as other people. And I'm like, where was they when my mom got raped, right? And so, so then, so then I write this poem or I'm trying to broach these questions.  He went to prison. He was able to disappear, right? And ain't no real way to know what people locked that for. For things separate from those from the rape or for the rapes. Yeah, yeah.  So like, I'm supposed to advocate for the decrease in incarceration. And I can't even have a conversation about what it means to like wanna see somebody not in prison who's committed a sexual assault.  But I don't know, I just don't think that that should be my primary concern.        And I'm certain that people who know me know who I am. And so I don't know, I just didn't, I might just be really, really reckless though. And I might super regret this later on. You know what I mean? I might regret it later on, but on the front end, I was like, maybe I'm just gonna trust. I'm gonna trust that what I'm trying to do is create conversations. And I remember telling, and I talk about my mom there, but I only talk about it because she talked about it and I asked if I could talk about it. And I talked about it because I spent, I spent a decade talking about mass incarceration. And then that spent five minutes publicly talking about what it meant to know that the black dude, like that this happens all of the time in our communities. It seemed like a woeful, woeful failure on my part to imagine a system without prisons and not at the same time imagine a world without rape. And we not imagine a world without rape if we can't talk about it. And then if the only way that I could talk about it is to situate it in somebody that we can mutually have discussed for, then they ain't really willing to talk about it. So you know, for like three seconds or when people read the book, I don't know. I mean, maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, but I think it's more of a... Before I turn it over to audience, I want to, I'm curious about what was the texts and the writers and the books that were most formative to you while you were away? Oh, while I was away. Lucille Clifton, who I wrote a piece about recently in the New York Times. Ethertonite, who I wrote about in my first book, my first line in my memoir comes from Ethertonite poem, Auguste Hedda Lee, which is one of the reasons I really liked the Carolyn crochet, the review that came out in the New York Times. Cause I don't know her either, but she just like peeped the connection between like me and Auguste Hedda Lee because like all of my books have had guzzles in it. Steinbeck, Wadman, August Wilson. But if you don't put up read, man, I've read this dude that wrote this book. Man, what's this doing? And you wrote a book called, Man, read everything, actually. You know, I read all kinds of stuff. I read stuff that I thought was great, stuff that I don't like now. Alba Murray, a trained whistle guitar, was like a fantastic book. It had this line that was like, her problem wasn't, her problem was that she didn't understand it being human. Man, she had to suffer like everybody else. Like that should always stay with me. I don't know, I've read it the past time. I've read it the past time. I've read it to become a better writer, better thinker.  Oh, I'm ignorant. When I found, as soon as I got my sentence, because I was gonna go to school for engineering, I was gonna go to Georgia Tech and play point guard.  And I was a lineage, it was Kenny Anderson, it was Travis Best, then it was gonna be me, like great Georgia Tech point guards. And I got locked up and was like, I can't be an engineer from prison.  And this was at the jail.  Had no clue what that meant. The first book I read cover to cover was A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines. Like did I opened up and didn't finish reading until I was done? That should profoundly change so much about what I think. And now I like profoundly dislike some things. Cause like, how horrible must that be to say that like what you desire is to make a man go to the death to get executed about that book? About that book. Like it's like profoundly disturbing now. Cause I'm like, no, that's not what I'm gonna do.  I don't know if I could accept that as my responsibility. So the thing to think about the books that you read that were like, I've recently had some books that I've been thinking about that were incredibly formative to me that now I go back and look at and I'm like, oh no man, that was, that was, I even, even classic tech, like even native son.   Like I just don't even understand. I don't understand how that worked.  The motherfucker was innocent.  He was innocent until it came time to murder a black woman who was riding with him.  No, that's, that's the summation of my, my tension with Richard Wright. So let's open it up for folks who have questions. We do have people walking remotely, so please turn your microphone on. Oh, what, we do? Yeah. Aristotle, you gotta catch a microphone. For sure. My name is Aristotle Jones. I work for the Urban Institute in the Justice Policy Center. And I know DeWayn kind of personally now, thank God. But in her novel, Alice Walker, The Color Purple, she writes that time moves slowly, but passes quickly.  What have you learned about yourself? What have I learned about myself? I think, I don't know, I don't know, man. That was like existential. What have I learned about myself? A long time ago, I thought, this is what I've learned about myself actually. I thought that, I thought I had all the answers actually. When I was young, I was convinced that I had all of the answers. And I thought that I was better than everybody else around who I expected to go to prison. And I expected like most of my friends to go to prison because we smoke weed, a lot of us sold drugs, there was guns around, I just expected people to go to prison. And I went to prison before everybody and it devastated me. And the one thing I learned about myself from that experience is, what changed me is that I don't think I cared about people as much before then. And so maybe what I've learned about myself since then is that I care a lot about people and prison made me care a lot about people.  You should probably be more concerned with your own safety, but I do think over the time, and then that's the one thing that's followed me throughout my whole life is that I care a lot about other people, or at least I try to. And the other thing I, yeah, I don't know, I think that's it. Or maybe it's also though, what I've learned is that so much of what we expect to be is in my life at least has been premised on what I've been willing to say that I expect to be. So when I decided to be a writer, I had no clue what it meant to be a writer. But it was like, I was in prison and I was so down that I could imagine something that I had no clue of if it was possible. When I came home, I realized that I allowed myself to be constrained to my ambition by my surroundings. Even when my surroundings were academic institutions. So had you talked to me when I was living here in 2010, 2011 about law school? I'd have been like, I got three felonies. What I look like going to law school. Even though I had been working on legal issues, the only thing changed when I ended up going to law school was that I was at Harvard Law School when I made the decision, writing inside the law school. And I find it kind of disturbing because I would think that we could become things without being proximate to them. But it was easy for me to imagine being a student at Harvard Law School. This is when you were on fellowship. This is when I was on fellowship at Harvard's Radcliffe Institution. And me and my man, Uzo O'Waila, used to go to the Harvard Law School's cafeteria to write because we didn't know anybody. And it was there that I decided to go to law school, but it was really only because I was there. And it was actually because somebody else had said that they got it in my fate and then went to law school. And I was like, huh, you could do that?   Which should not be the way, it shouldn't be the thing that we have to see to make a decision. So those are the two things. And in some ways I was more bold about what I was willing to dream when I was in prison than when I was free. I'm Gary Decker. I work for the Alliance for Youth Organizing. And I wanted to have a question for both of you to discuss. Clint, I know you write a lot about imagining a world without prisons and prison abolition. And Duane, you talked a little bit today about the necessity of prisons or that some people should be locked up. And I was wondering if both of you could talk a little bit about if those futures are reconcilable. And if not, why? How much time we got left? I'm sure we have four minutes left. What I'll say, I think something that's helpful to keep in mind is that abolition exists, conceptions of abolition exist on a spectrum as many other things do, right? So even in the era of antebellum slavery, different abolitionists had very different notions of what it meant to get to that point, right? William Lloyd Garrison had his own conception of what it meant. Frederick Douglass had his own conception. Nat Turner for Harriet Tubman, John Brown. John Brown was like, all right, we're going to blow up Harper's Ferry. Frederick Douglass, you're trying to roll. Frederick Douglass was like, you crazy. I'm not going to do that. He asked Harriet Tubman. Harriet Tubman was like, I don't know you. What are you doing? This is a lot. So even, I think it's important to remember that abolition has different connotations for different folks. And when I think of abolition as a North Star, I think of it as like, what does it mean to build the sort of world in which prisons become increasingly and increasingly less relevant to the society that we live in? What does it look like to provide the types of jobs and social services and resources and health care and the sort of general society that makes it so that so many people's lives are not put on a trajectory in the first place that ultimately would lead them to exist within the carceral state? And so it's more of a sort of paradigm of thinking differently about what type of world we have to build to make prisons less relevant and to diminish the power of prisons. Does that mean I think that there should not be a place where you put some people who represent an immediate threat to people's safety and people who have committed harm and represent continued threats to other people? I do think that I believe that one can be an abolitionist and still believe that there are institutions like that that should exist. But that's not what current prisons do. Current prisons operate very differently. And it's tough, right? Because I think issues of sexual assault, domestic violence. I mean, and part of what also I'm clear about is that I know if somebody ever did something to my kids, somebody ever did something to my family, I would want that person. In that moment, I would want that person to go to prison. I would want them to suffer. I would want them to hurt. I would want them to spend the rest of their life in a cage. I also don't think that my emotional response to harm that has been committed against people I'm proximate to is what should dictate public policy. I think there has to be. I think, and it's complicated, right? Like victims' rights are important. Are also sometimes, depending on the state you're in, I would say disproportionately informing what the sentence of someone will look like. And that's not to say that it shouldn't count at all. But it is to say, how can we think holistically maybe a little bit differently about the sort of entire thing? That's my two-minute answer. No, I think I agree. But also, and I don't think I was making a case for the need for prisons. I think I was hoping that I was making a case for the need for a hard conversation about what we believe should happen in certain situations. I mean, most of the prisons that exist in the United States right now are horrendous. And they are probably criminogenic just because of the conditions, the lack of resources, just because of the lack of resources for those who work in prison institutions.  So I would say that maybe I was just saying a need to have a more complicated conversation. And the other thing though is I'm not sure if like victims drive our responses to homicides.  But I'm not sure if, I mean, most of the people that's locked up probably had cases where the victim didn't show up at all. I mean, you've got a burglary case, you're going to jail. And a lot of people that end up going to jail aren't going to jail because they're at one charge. They're going to jail because they had three charges before. And so I also think even though, you know, where has an outside influence? And this was my criticism of like the whole notion of progressive prosecutor.  It's our laws. It's like the sentencing guidelines. You know, like if the sentencing guidelines permit you to get 120 days for DUI, then you're going to get 120 days for DUI because you created a structure that says, listen, you could have got three years. I gave you 120 days. It looks like you gave this person a break. So I actually think that we actually should be more thoughtful about reconsidering what we conceptualize punishment as being. And frankly, to say that punishment or culpability shouldn't exist, which is often how we read the abolition conversation, it's like, well, you also can't deny me agents. Like I cajacked somebody. I also want to feel like I paid my due. Now we can have a better and a more adept. We could be more adept at having a conversation about what does it mean to pay what you owe. But we're not even having that. So when we talk about abolition, and I do think it exists on the spectrum, but sadly, when we try to enter it like AOC had a recent tweet and she was like, and don't talk to me about violence. You know, we know violence matters.  You know, you having this whole conversation and I haven't heard yet anybody talk about reform and the sentencing guidelines. I haven't heard anybody yet saying that the most profound problem facing prosecutors in the state of New York is that, say, Louisiana, because we both know a little bit about Louisiana, the most profound problem facing prosecutors in Louisiana is that you could get 95 years for robbery. We don't need to talk about abolition. We need to actually talk about why it's insane that you could catch a robbery beef and get 95 years in prison. And so why isn't the tweet about that? This is why I'm not a politician though. Because I'm thinking, no, because no, because I'm thinking about my man who's doing 37 years because he got four robberies in four different counties and he only got nine years for each robbery and he's still locked up. But Malvo is the case that we're hearing today. Malvo responds for 12 murders, but in the same state of Virginia, a motherfucker that's doing like 60 years who ain't killed, nobody can get the lawyers that represent Malvo to represent him. And I know, because I asked. I know, because I tried, right? And so, you know. Let's do one last short question. Hi, my name's Nina Satija. I'm a reporter for The Washington Post. Oh, wait. I don't disagree with the thing you said earlier. That's all. I totally get it. No offense taken. You mentioned being tired of this conversation happening around mass incarceration and I think progressive prosecutors and I totally identify with that. And I'm just wondering what, but that's really what's dominating the media. I mean, that's what's being talked about in this whole conversation of criminal justice reform is happening now on the presidential candidate level, but it doesn't feel like there's a lot of real like nuance to it or real meaning to it. And I guess I wondering if you can talk about that. And I mean, sort of in a very, yeah. I haven't heard the word. I mean, I've been watching all of the debates. California locks up more people than like any state in the country, maybe Texas rivals California. I'm certain that the sentencing guidelines in California just as atrocious as the sentencing guidelines in every state in the country. I think they just changed them up. They didn't change. I'm certain that they didn't. Cause they've had like a huge drop based on, if there was some Supreme Court case. It was a ninth circuit case that said that they had to reduce their prison population. And I mean, but I would say this though, what California has done now is that California has been the best state on like allowing parole for juveniles, for all of the juvenile life is, and then up in when people could get parole. So first it was like, if you were juvenile, then it was like, if you were 21, and I think now it might be if you were 25. I think California has been great in doing that, but that's not a part of the presidential debate either. So I guess I'm just saying, I don't know if it's a, I don't think it's a national conversation about the fact that we incarcerate too many people. And then even if we say we incarcerate too many people, it's definitely not a national conversation about the fact that it's too many people currently incarcerated. Like we all have a conversation about how one thing that could happen is in 1994 when Bill Clinton passed the crime bill. I mean, one of the things that they did was they linked the funding for building new prisons to truth and sentencing. And so you don't have a single presidential candidate saying, if I'm elected president, I'm gonna find a way to incentivize states to bring back parole because I know one of the things that happened with the 1994 crime bill was that you had a massive amount of states across the country that got rid of parole in response to this nebulous, nebulous thing we call like truth and sentencing. So I just, I don't know if I would, I just don't know if I could honestly say that we're having a national conversation about mass incarceration. And so maybe what I meant is that I'm just frustrated and exhausted with a conversation about incarceration that doesn't seem to touch the lives of people I know.  It just doesn't seem to revolve around them. And I think what is true is that there is a disconnect between what actually, so the conversation everybody's interested in mass incarceration now. And I think it is true that there is a disconnect between the people's desire to want to end mass incarceration and like the actual, and what that political conversation looks like and the actual like functional ways in which you would actually decarcerate, which means you would have to let out a lot of people who ostensibly have committed real harm against other people. And that looks like a very different conversation, right? Like it's one thing if the mythology of like the nonviolent drug offender and Johnny John on the corner, like getting locked up for 25 years for selling weed, like that's a very easy, palatable political narrative that like everybody can say like this is wrong, we're gonna end mass incarceration, make sure that kids selling weed, aren't locked up for 25 years while medical marijuana is making millions, millions of dollars. That's true. That's also like a very small percentage of the conversation, right? Same thing with private prisons.  It's true. It is egregious. It's also only 8% of all prisons in the country, right? So it's part of it. Is that like if you shut down private prisons, they letting them guys go home? Right, no, exactly. I mean, maybe we just didn't have a heard their part. And I think that that, and I resonate with Wayne saying that piece about like the conversation has to be presented in a more complex way. If we are to, if we, if you just want to let out people sentenced to nonviolent drug offenses, that's fine, but that's not ending mass incarceration. So if you want to actually end mass incarceration, if you want to move toward a society in which we don't have 2.2 million people in prison and jail, we don't have 11 million people cycling in and out of jail every year. We have to think very differently about, as Wayne was saying, like what these long sentences are. Like, should somebody, like I've spent the past couple of years with people, a lot of folks who like, when they were 15 years old, they took somebody's life. Should that person spend the rest of their life in prison? And like, that's the real question. Like, should that person spend the rest of their life in prison?  So people don't talk about it, but that's the only way that you actually move toward a decarcerated society. So I think we're all out of time. So thank you all for joining us today. Books are on sale, so if you'd like to come. You can't come and not buy a book. Yeah, and if you decide to burn it, at least buy it first. And so please join me in thanking Dwayne and Kim for having me. Thank you.