- Greetings, everyone, we're very happy
to have all of you here
today for today's event
titled a discussion on black
lives protest and democracy
hosted by the Ash Center
at Harvard Kennedy School.
My name is Megan Francis,
and I'm a visiting associate
professor of Public Policy
here at Harvard Kennedy School.
I'm also an associate professor
at the University of Washington.
We look forward to a lively discussion.
So please contribute questions
in the chat box on YouTube
and we will get to a few of them
after the formal presentations.
A few things to note,
we will be recording today's session
for educational purposes,
and everyone who registered
will receive a link,
which can be shared and we encourage you
to share that with others.
The Ash Center has additional
programming over the summer
and hopes to keep everyone engaged.
All right, so right now it's
a defining moment in history
and gathered with us today on Zoom
are three experts that can
help us better understand
the present moment,
and if what you hear
surprises you and rages you,
or perhaps if you disagree,
I want you to sit with why it does.
But I don't just want you to sit with it,
I want you to do something
because part of what I
think the present moment
has highlighted is not just
how much needs to be done,
but also how much needs to be learned
and a whole group of people
that need to be listened to
in a way that they have not before.
I also want to acknowledge
that we are gathered here on the Zoom
during a very, very difficult time.
It's been two weeks of intense protests,
which are ignited by the
murders of Breonna Taylor
and George Floyd.
I wanna introduce our guests very briefly.
We have a lot to get to today
and with not enough time for it.
I'm gonna introduce them in the order
that they will speak.
First we have Leah Wright Rigueur.
She's an associate professor
at Harvard Kennedy School
and at Brandeis University.
We have Kaneesha Johnson,
who is a fourth year PhD candidate
in the department of government
here at Harvard University,
and with us we also have Dr. Rhea Boyd,
who is a pediatrician at the
Palo Alto Medical Foundation.
Before we get to our esteemed panelists,
I wanna provide five minutes
of historical context
to understand the present moment,
and part because I'm always struck
by how much people do not know
about the long history of
racial violence in this country.
So a lot of my work that
I've done in the past
has focused on the NAACP's
organizing around racial violence
in the first quarter of the 20th century,
and I wanna get to that in a moment.
My current book project,
however, examines the political
and economic reconstitution
of the American South after the Civil War
and what is so interesting
about this time, right?
What is so interesting about the 1870s
and the 1880s and the 1890s,
is how immediately after the Civil War,
how most southern states,
they passed new laws,
in terms of the meaning of
the first state legislature
with a specific focus
of wanting to entrap black people again.
So they pass new laws
and then they practice
discriminatory policing,
and what you see all across the south,
and again, directly after
the Civil War in this country
is you see in terms of jail
and prison populations
expanding dramatically.
You also see the building
of new state penitentiaries
all across the south.
So in terms of that, I say that to say
that to understand kind of the
the anger and the frustration
around policing in 2020
means to go back not
just in terms of the '60s
but to push that back even more.
What happens because it is
clear, at least for black people
at the end of the 19th
and early 20th century,
but the most important
thing civil rights issue
is racial violence.
That before African
Americans can go to school,
before they can own a house or vote
they have to have the right to live,
and so Ida B. Wells is organizing
around lynching and mob violence
at the end of the 19th century
and she really raises
alarm in this country
about what is happening to
black people in this country,
by actors of the state, as
well as by private actors.
The NAACP picks this up
in the beginning part of the 20th century
and that is really the
centerpiece of the agenda
is protection of black lives
from lynching and mob violence
by state actors and by white vigilantes,
and they launched this
massive, beautiful, wonderful,
important campaign in this
country around racial violence,
demonstrations in the street.
They tried to pass an
anti-lynching bill in Congress,
why can't we still pass that?
They are also in the
courts and federal courts,
there's this important
Supreme Court decision
called Moore v. Dempsey,
that the NAACP is behind
that is passed in 1923.
They are also trying to get the attention
of Woodrow Wilson, right I know,
and Warren G. Harding, in
this earlier period boat,
and they want both presidents
to make a statement condemning lynching,
and I think what is really interesting
and the reason why I always
highlight this moment
is because black people have been fighting
for the right to live forever.
All of American history
is filled with stories
about black people trying to live
and if you don't know that
you have to think about why
you don't know that history.
It's not to ashame people, right?
But it's to ask about, to
think about the differences
in the lives and the stories
that black people tell their children
and other people to tell their children.
The other reason why I
think it's really important
to understand that racial terrorism
is part of the way black people live life
is because sometimes for many,
it's right there on the surface.
Sometimes it's not on the surface,
but for many of us,
it's always simmering below,
right beneath the surface.
So I just wanted to provide
a little bit of that historical context,
in terms of to understand
the present moment,
because and this is the
last thing that I will say,
because it's not just about
police violence, right?
It's about so many different
institutions in this country
that have failed black people,
and it's about also as
well as corporations,
it's about how we continue
to marginalize black lives
in the way that we live and
many Americans live life.
So in this moment, I really
want us to think about the ways
that our actions have, and
our institutions, right?
Our institutions have contributed
to the unmattering of black lives
and I want us especially
during this talk with you,
as you listen to these panelists
and as you move forward
throughout your day
and throughout your week,
think about the actions that
you can take as an individual
and as a community, and
also in your institutions
about how to make black lives matter.
With that, I'm gonna turn it over
to Professor Leah Wright Rigueur.
Thanks so much.
- Okay, thank you, Dr. Francis
for that great background and history.
First, I wanna say thank you
to everybody who's listening out there.
I also wanna say thank
you to the Ash center,
and also to Dr. Rhea Boyd
and Dr. Kaneesh Grant
for participating in this
and putting it together.
I think now is a time where
we actually have to speak out
even more than before.
That in fact, one of the
things that we should be doing
and I haven't really
noticed this very much
in larger conversations
about the protests,
about the moment that we're in right now
is actually providing a context,
a larger context in history
for what is happening
and why it's happening right now.
So one of the things that
I wanted to start off with
is really acknowledging
the fact that so many has
changed in the last four years.
One way to kind of pinpoint this
is think about four years ago,
most people could not
except for black people,
but most people could not say
the phrase Black Lives Matter, right?
That was actually an
extraordinarily hard thing
for people to do.
If we were having presidential debates,
where people were like, of
course, lack lives matter,
because all lives matter, right?
It was a qualifying statement,
and now, right, we have all races,
there's multiracial movement
of people chanting in the street,
including even a certain
senator from Utah, right?
Who was a presidential candidate in 2012,
chanting the phrase Black
Lives Matter, right?
In defense of justice.
So I just wanna point
that out to highlight
just how different the moment
is that we are in right now
to acknowledge that.
There have been over 140 protests
across 50 states and
territories in America,
more than 50 states and
territories in America,
including big cities, small
counties, towns all over
and there have been hundreds
of global protests in solidarity.
And I bring this up
because I think it signals
how important the moment is.
I think if we're talking about optimistic
and kind of visions for outlook,
I think it signals
that we are on the verge
of something transformative
and that it is spurred in large part
and completely underlined by
the idea of black protests
and also the actionable
items of black protesters
in this longer historical
legacy of black coat protest.
So what I wanna do now is talk
about what exactly is this moment?
How did we even get here?
And then why is this
something bigger right now?
The first part of this
is really thinking about
all of these incidents
happening back to back
to back to back, right?
The nation is still mourning
the death of Ahmaud Arbery.
We're still jogging in in remembrance,
in memory of Ahmaud Arbery.
We're still learning the
depths of Breonna Taylor
with the horrific death at
the hands of the police,
when we get this gruesome,
absolutely gruesome and horrific death
over Memorial Day weekend.
So we haven't even finished mourning,
actually grieving and mourning
and we can't mourn because
we are in quarantine,
and it is in the midst of a pandemic.
But we haven't even finished mourning,
when we get this nearly nine minute video
of state sanctioned murder
against a man who in his dying breaths,
cries out for his mother, who
has been dead for two years.
That is powerful, it is transformative
and it is a wake up call for many people
because there's no longer any way
to avoid or pretend or wear blinders,
and I know some of my
colleague in the panel
are gonna talk a bit
about how this quarantine shapes.
But one thing that we might think about
is that the quarantine actually turns off
the ability of many
people to escape or deny
what is actually happening
right in front of them.
Now, but for black
Americans, this is not new.
This is actually a reminder
that we are without sanctuary, right?
That we are without sanctuary,
that this is not unique.
At no other time in history
has there not been a moment like that.
And I'm gonna repeat that
'cause it's really important.
At no other time in history
has there not been a moment like this.
And by that, I mean,
black people have always had
to reckon with these forces,
because black people,
as Dr. Megan Francis pointed
out in her opening remarks,
have always been under assault.
So it's not simply a reaction
to Ahmaud, Breonna and Floyd.
It's not simply righteous rage
at one particular incident.
These protests emerge
from a longer history
of black Americans being
subjected to brutality
of a racist state and
unequal institutions.
So it's rage at being denied
access to the American dream
to being historically
and continuously excluded
from the promise of American citizenship
and to being exploited by a system
that consistently plunders
and takes from black people.
So I wanna point out a
couple of specifics here
that I think the panelists,
the other panelists
are gonna elaborate on.
So the protests we see now
and protests that we can
look at historically,
are about the overlapping
failures of America.
So we're talking about
a system of capitalism
that has not worked for
black and brown people,
and that has left millions of unemployed
and underemployed, right?
And that's historically and right now.
Black people are experiencing
the highest rate of unemployment
in the country, right?
George Floyd was in
Minneapolis looking for work
when he was murdered.
We're also talking about the failures
of American healthcare system
and the repeated health crisis
that disproportionately
affect black people.
So we're in the midst of a pandemic.
I've mentioned that several times
and that's in part why we're
so attuned to the moment,
but when we think about
the murder of George Floyd,
George Floyd had COVID-19
in his lungs when he died.
So we can't avoid that either.
We're also talking about the failures
of an educational system
for black and brown people.
There's a new study that just came out
that shows that 40 to 60%
of black and Brown students
are falling behind or
absent in remote learning.
So there are inequities built
into that system as well.
And then finally,
well, this might be
blasphemous for me to say
in a public policy school or forum, right?
We're also talking about the historical
and continuing failures of public policy,
public officials and public institutions
in the lives of black people.
So essentially, every
single aspect of the state,
of the American fabric
has failed black people
and has failed black people repeatedly,
and that is where the
protests are coming from.
This is why somebody like George Floyd
becomes symbolic of a movement.
His death picks up on
trends and highlights trends
that we've literally
seen for 400 plus years.
So it's the inescapability
of that potent mixture
of racism and inequality
that's built into the
very fabric of our nation,
and it's horrific and our
inability to escape it, right?
So that's what we're talking about.
So what black people have
consistently used protests for
and done through protests,
is to declare to the world
that the system is not working
and that we want to live.
So this is why we often hear things like,
I can't breathe.
Black Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter, too, right?
And this is also I wanna
point out and highlight
why black protest matters.
We don't really talk
about this larger context
and history of black protest,
and I think I've given you
a kind of a broad overview
of what goes into black protest.
But I also want to point out,
and this is actually
part of a larger project
that Dr. Megan Francis
and I are working on,
that black protests makes
the point quite clearly
that the state is illegitimate.
I'm gonna repeat that again,
because it's really, really important.
The state is illegitimate
and that is to say that
the social contract
which governs our lives
and has historically failed black people
and continues to fail them.
So the safeguards that we envision
when we think or talk
about American democracy
has failed black people.
It doesn't work for black people,
it was never meant to
include black people.
So what I would argue
and what I would point on and
what I want us to think about
is that black protest actually
represents our best chance
as a true democracy for all people,
because it highlights the
ways in which democracy
actually doesn't work
for very many people.
So we can see it with the NAACP,
we can see it with the
civil rights movement,
we can even see it with
the black power movement,
we can see it with the
anti-apartheid movement,
and of course, we can see it most vividly
because it's in our lives right now,
it has been in our lives for
at least the last seven years
with the movement for black lives.
So I'll stop here by saying
before I turn it over to the
other panelists, by saying,
I started off by noting
that four years ago,
we couldn't even say Black
Lives Matter as a nation.
But the fact that many people can now say
Black Lives Matter,
and that we're actually
seeing not just rhetoric,
although we are seeing
a whole lot of rhetoric
and not so much action,
but the fact that we're
actually seeing actions,
that we envision power,
power of the state, power of institutions
that even some corporations
are looking inward
to say, how can we be different?
That white people are talking
about how have we
contributed to this harm?
And what can we do to
change that harm, right?
Actually it's a whole church testament
to the power of protests
and power of black protests,
in particular, for all
people in this country.
So with that, I'm going to mute myself
and turn it over to our
fellow panelists, thank you.
- Thanks so much
and first, I just want
to say how thankful I am
to be invited to speak
with a group of such
incredible black women,
who are carving out space
to speak to these issues
that not only impact the way we think,
and understand policing
and punishment, racism and democracy,
but also really acknowledge and honor
the people who are impacted
by these systems every day.
So I want to use this time
to reflect on how policing
is but one part of a
deeply interwoven system
of punishment and surveillance
for many people who live
in the United States,
especially for black people.
So it shouldn't really be news
or that policing has existed
in some form for centuries,
and while the historical
underpinnings of policing
would not be recognizable today,
the first forms of policing
in the United States
began as a social control
mechanism for black people
and for other racially
marginalized groups.
So some people who write on this history,
I'm thinking specifically
about Christian Williams here,
point to some of the
earliest forms of policing
in the United States.
Taking the forms of slave patrols
who were created to
capture enslaved Africans,
and then in the northeast we
had these Indian constables
who were created to
police native Americans
and then protect residents from them.
And it wasn't really
until the mid 19th century
that police forces
throughout the United States
began to converge to a single model
with aspects such as 24 hour service
and personnel who are paid
by salary and not fee.
Since we see these
informal modes of policing
transformed into the modern
police departments that we know
funding began to drastically change.
If we would just look
at Boston as an example,
in 1825, less than $9,000
or just 2% of the total city budget
was allocated to all phases of policing,
which included only nine police officers.
In contrast, today in Boston,
it spends close to 420 million dollars,
or up to 15% of its annual budgets
and employs 2,200 police officers.
And Boston still pales in comparison
to other cities like Chicago,
who spent an excess of 40%
of their budget on policing,
not to mention the billions
that are made within the private sector
from policing technologies.
And there have been a
number of studies recently
by Allison Harris included
who show that departments
who are facing budget stress
are associated with
higher rates of citations
and other offenses that
carry fee punishments.
So they're effectively
relying on punishment
to be able to continue their paychecks
and uphold these systems.
So as policing mushroom to
become what we see is today,
in recent decades, we've also
seen a huge transfer of power
from various state programs
to either a policing model
or directly to the police themselves.
They are absolutely everywhere.
In 2008, the census of state
and local law enforcement
agencies reported
that in addition to the 16,000
general enforcement agencies
that we have,
there are also additional
1,700 special jurisdictions
and that ranges from school police
to public health special police.
And so as these tough on
crime measures were adopted
in the criminal legal
system during the '60s,
they were also adopted into
all of these other sectors.
So as Professor Rigueur mentioned earlier,
if we look at schooling
in the 1960s and '70s,
it was not common at all to
have police in schooling.
Less than 1% of schools
reported to ever having
police officers in the school,
but by the '90s, 54% of public schools
reported having station
law enforcement officers.
And this punitive turn did
not make school safer at all,
but it did lead to children,
particularly black children
to be funneled into the
criminal punishment system
and experience punishment on mass.
And these racial disparities
can be seen as early as preschool,
and we know that these systems
have democratic consequences.
For Ashley Weaver and Amy Lemonis
spoke about how these increased contact
with the carceral state
serves as a socialization
into democracy and the state.
And some more recent studies
have found that young adults
who experienced punishment in schools
are much less likely to engage in voting
or to volunteer in civic
activities later in life.
So as we've seen the policing increasing,
we've seen school punishment increase,
we've also seen in recent decades
that funding of other social services
have been completely slashed.
The welfare reforms of the '90s
meant that the safetiness
available for people
started to complete disappear.
Participation in the SNAP program
or what's more commonly
known as food stamps
was fell by almost half
and that cannot be explained
by declines in poverty alone.
And then we see in the '90s,
that there has been a huge
criminalization of black parents
and black families,
and we can see that in the
tropes of the deadbeat dad
or the welfare queen,
and so we've seen black
families and black people
just being funneled and
inserted into the carceral state
and this has happened
in so many other systems
and it's been documented by scholars
and community organizers.
So in my own work,
I've looked at how these
various forms of punishment
are completely piled on to
black communities in particular,
and how it just becomes
an enduring presence
in every single aspect of their lives.
Another point I think we
should really think about
is the ways that policing is
absolutely a global phenomenon.
The United States
borrowed from the
English model of policing
and the anti-black practices
that began in Britain
and then were transported
to the British colonies
are still present in both systems.
And today, the United
States have partnerships
with a number of other countries,
and where we are actively
trying to explore
our mode of policing or
our model of policing.
So there are police
professionalization programs
between the US and Mexico,
and there are international
law enforcement academies
in 85 countries throughout the world.
So whatever we're doing in this country
is does not stop at the
borders, it goes far beyond.
So I know I'm running out of time,
but when people see these uprisings
within black communities,
I think what's really
important to remember
is that the black
community is being policed
in every single aspect of their lives,
and then when we see these brutal murders
of Breonna Taylor, of George
Floyd, of Tony McDade,
and the countless others,
we're recognizing that this
system has been designed to
and is still working to hurt us
and we just don't wanna take it anymore.
And this is a really exciting moment
to see people start to take seriously
the notion of abolition,
and see public officials
start to respond to that.
And so when we're talking about defunding,
or abolishing the police,
it doesn't just mean that
police departments in isolation,
it means this entire system of policing.
So it means taking money
that has been increasingly
funneled to the police
and the carceral state,
and then reinvesting in services
that support communities,
and to ensure that they don't
turn to wealth extraction
to try and make up for that money lost.
And people who are working in
community organizing spaces
know this to be true,
and that's why it's so
important to take their lead
to effectively dismantle the system.
They've done the work to imagine
a world without policing.
They've done the work to
look at how technologies
and how data have further
entrenched the system.
And we shouldn't fall
for this capitalism take on police reform
that completely ignores
the decades of work done
by black feminist abolitionists.
Abolition is not about asking
what do we do without the police?
It's about thinking of the
number of possibilities
that would come with 120 billion dollars
that we don't spend on the police,
and that's why I'm so excited
that these conversations are rising.
So I'll end here and pass
it on to the next panelist.
- Hi, everyone, I again wanna start
just by thanking Professor Francis
and this powerhouse panel
of black doctors, y'all,
Professors, y'all, like
it's an honor to be here
and it's so dope that y'all invited me.
So, I'm gonna take a little
bit of a different approach
to talking about the intersections
between pandemics, policing and protest.
I think it's important
to start by acknowledging
as many of you have,
that we have a habit in this country
of ritualizing forgetting, right?
We are practiced in the habit
of forgetting the history
that so many of my
colleagues on this panel
are trying to remind us of.
When we forget so often
that we make it like a national pastime,
when folks simply offer now
to remember what has happened,
we pretend that that's liberation.
But I want to remind us from the start,
what we are asking for today
is not simply a remembering,
it's reparations, it's remuneration,
it is a shift and policies and resources
that prioritize black lives.
Don't tell us Black Lives Matters
if you can't show us in your
institution and organization
how they do.
Okay, so I wanna start there.
Part of that forgetting
started during the COVID-
19 pandemic, right?
We saw the alarming emergence
of racial health inequities
in the pandemic,
and many folks and the media
and much of the public discussion
centered around either
individual behaviors
of African Americans,
blaming folks essentially
for the fact that they were
disproportionately suffering
from this new virus,
or around what we called
underlying illness
that black people just magically
had more of, or poverty.
Those types of analysis,
were a part of our ritual forgetting
of why black people
disproportionately suffer
poverty and disease in this country.
Just to take poverty off the top, right?
So many folks
and Professor Rigueur
already said this, right?
Like, African Americans had
the lowest median income
of any group in this country,
and then if you map onto
that the current unemployment
that has soared as a part
of the economic downturn
from COVID-19
that has predominantly
affected African Americans.
Our unemployment rate has not changed,
since April it went up point 1%,
and I believe the most recent figure
is 16.8% of African Americans out of work,
just among those who lost
work because of COVID-19
nearly half of African
Americans lost their job, right?
So poverty alone doesn't quite
describe the impoverishment
that has happened to African Americans
as a result of how racism shapes
their prospects for employment
and equitable wages in this country.
Underlying illness, here
we're gonna make a connection
between COVID and policing.
So follow me if you can.
Police violence is a health problem
and we have been saying it for decades.
The Association of Public Health,
the American Association
of Public Health officials
have basically said since 1995,
police violence is a
public health problem, why?
Because number one off
top police kill people.
Nearly 1,000 people are killed by police
in the United States, every year, right?
But if you don't die in that encounter
you also may be subject
to injuries, disabilities,
mental health impairments as a result,
and some of the most profound
data among the health facts
regarding the health
effects of police violence,
look at the effect on the population
that witnesses that violence.
So if you zoom out of the 1,000 people
who might die in police encounters,
we have to think of
the exponential numbers
who just experienced force
during the police encounters,
which is much more common,
and then you have to zoom out
to anyone who witnessed that,
either in-person, on their
cell phone, on the internet,
or through a secondhand account.
We have decades of research that tell us
that witnessed violence
accumulates in mental health
impairments like depression,
anxiety, PTSD, right?
That usually we describe
around like soldiers
and leaving war,
where you re-experience
and you participate in
hyper vigilant behaviors
to avoid that happening
to you in the future.
For Kids, it can contribute to headaches,
changes in your sleep patterns,
changes in your behaviors,
like in young children,
increased irritability,
or in teenagers, increased
withdrawn behaviors
or increased isolation.
It also can affect the
long-term health of populations
because we know that
chronic exposures to stress,
shift how the human body develops,
it shifts in fit brain development,
lung and heart development,
and as you become an adult
it increases your risk of
things like heart disease,
lung disease, cancer, and
mental health impairments,
like Alzheimer's and depression.
So if we know police violence
does all those things
and we know that African Americans
disproportionately
suffer the physical harms
of police violence,
you can't say that
increased rates of COVID
are simply underlying disease.
Those underlying diseases are rooted
in forms of structural racism,
like we're witnessing
with police violence,
and we have to make that connection
and stop forgetting that
that's how this came about.
I think, I also wanna say a word
specifically about the protest
because in the light
of these intersections
between various forms of
institutional violence
that live in our healthcare system,
that live in our policing system,
that live in our employment market,
like in light of those
intersecting forms of violence,
we also have to think about protests then
as a public health intervention.
I said this on Twitter
and I'll say it here now,
protest saves lives, especially
black protest, right?
Black protest wasn't just
about the black liberation movement.
It is the foundation
of women's liberation,
of queer liberation in this country.
It is the foundation
of the civil liberties
and protections from discrimination
that protect all of us
when we leave our homes
and try to use public systems
or go to your workplace,
and we have to understand
the roots of civil unrest
as the source of those protections,
and when those protections
provide greater equality
and when you're fighting
for greater equality
to save your lives, protest saves lives.
So I also wanna say that as a clinician,
and as a public health advocate,
it is really important that we shift
the framing that we're
putting around protests.
The last thing I'll say,
is a number of people have raised concerns
and a number of journalists have asked me,
well, will protesting
increase risks of COVID
in the population.
Particularly in the black population
who already had disparate
rates of infection and death?
First, I'll say the disparate
rates of death are enormous.
African Americans who live
in majority black areas
have a six times higher death rate
than white Americans who
live in majority white areas.
So it's six times higher.
It's an enormous account.
Like there was one estimate
that more than actually one in 2,000
of all African Americans
in this entire country
have died of coronavirus.
The effect of coronavirus
on African Americans
has been enormous.
And so when people bring
up these arguments, right?
They try to pretend, right?
And forget that there are so many forces
that are threatening black
lives in this country.
And they say, "Oh, but black
people shouldn't go outside
"because of the enormous risk of COVID."
And I started with that data.
I said, "No, I believe
it is an enormous risk."
But then you have to ask
every person who asked you that question,
every journalist, every
public health official,
like what are the enormous risks
that are compounding black folks,
that despite that six times
increased risk of death,
they would still go to the street, right?
That's what we have to
be asking ourselves.
And there are so many risks
that we are compounding historically
and currently in our
practices, in healthcare,
in our workforce, right?
Across the state
that we need to be
confronting and thinking about
and that's what protest
is enabling us to do.
- Whoo!
So I was muted most of the time
but I'm over here banging the table.
So many good points were raised.
I always learn so much from all of you.
I wanna just highlight a
few things just very quickly
'cause I don't wanna leave them
even though there's gonna be
a video which I will return to
and assign to some future students.
One, remembering is not liberation.
Oh, my goodness!
That's like a title of a book.
The failure of technocratic
policy solutions.
Yes, absolutely, the interlocking
political institutions
that feed the system
and how it doesn't just
stop at our borders, right?
About how we also export
the carceral system.
Protest as public health intervention.
I wanna read the article.
The transformation of Black Lives Matter
from 2014 to where we are here in 2020.
Okay, so these comments are so rich,
they have helped us paint
a more clear picture
of the present moment.
However, one of the refrains
that I'm hearing from black friends,
colleagues and community members,
is that more needs to happen
than just listening and learning
that our responsibility
in the present moment
is to do something.
So I wanna move this conversation
to think about a question
that the civil rights
icon Ella Baker proposed,
which is, how do we confront
injustice, collectively?
If the present does not
work, what else is possible?
What is something that would dramatically
transform the present
that can meaningfully contribute
to power and capacity
building for black people
for this country?
I'm gonna go in, I know
Kaneesha mentioned abolition,
so is that okay if I do Kaneesha, Rhea
and then Leah.
This time I'm gonna put
about two to three minutes to answer.
- Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, I think I alluded to this
at the end of what I was saying earlier.
I think that the next step
should be looking at the
community organizers,
who are working in community,
they understand the history
of the different locales
across the US of how to
effectively dismantle this system.
So one thing that I want to uplift
is a group of abolitionists,
organizers put together a
campaign called 8 to Abolition,
and I think that it
perfectly describes the steps
that we need to do next.
And what I love in particular about this
is that they acknowledge
that police abolition
is not just abolishing the police,
it's about fixing housing,
it's about fixing schooling,
it's about fixing all of these systems
that the police have trickled into.
So I think it's very clear
that we've put all of our
money into these politicians,
into these decision makers
that just are distributing it wrong,
and they're putting it
into the wrong places.
So I think that we need to
take the money out of them,
out of the systems,
pass it on to these community organizers
who know where to redistribute it
in order to keep the community safer.
Yeah, that's my grand show answer.
- Great, Rhea.
- Yeah, so I'll take two takes on this.
I think as a pediatrician,
I think one thing
that I'm going to be
pushing really hard for
is police free schools.
I think, Kaneesha you set
this up so beautifully
that we pretend again
that like the current use
of police in our schools
is the way that schools have always been,
or that there is data that suggests
that it makes kids safer at
school to have the police there,
and that simply isn't true.
The data as Kaneesha well summarized
says that the more police
you have in schools,
not only are kids at risk
for harms and violence
that some of us have witnessed, videoed
and shared on social media
of kids while they're in the classroom,
but also just the increase
expulsions and arrests
and suspensions from school
that again, predominantly
effect black children,
Latinx children, indigenous children,
and we can no longer have that.
So we need to promise our kids
that we will give them
a learning environment
that is free of the violence
and surveillance of police.
I'll also say that we in healthcare
have an enormous amount of work to do.
So one of the 8 to Abolition,
like part of the conversation
we're now having about abolition
is we need to defund the police
and in its place
we need to place healthcare
essentially, right?
We need more mental health officials,
we need more social workers,
we need more care models,
that can then take the
place of the crisis network
that police used to provide.
But, I'm sorry to say,
we in healthcare are absolutely
not ready to take that role.
When you think about histories
and current practices of
structural and physical violence
against black and brown
folks and their bodies
that has long lived and healthcare
and it continues to live today.
Don Berwick, who is kind of like
one of our huge health
policy minds in healthcare,
who now works at IHI and things
about quality improvement.
He's always quoted as saying like,
basically, any problems
that we, have in healthcare,
usually Hue says this around quality
are a form or tell us not
that the system is broken,
but actually that it's
working as designed.
And I use that when I talk
about health disparities a lot.
Health inequities are not a sign
that the system is broken.
When you have racial health inequities,
that is actually a product of our system
working as intended.
So if we know that our
system can still reliably
and systematically create
decade after decade, generation
after generation gaps
in health care outcomes,
including gaps in premature mortality,
where African Americans have
the second highest mortality
of any group in this country,
second only to indigenous populations.
For decades, black Americans
have the highest mortality rate
but for the last five years,
indigenous populations have
the highest mortality rate,
and I also have to say have
higher rates of police violence
and police killings.
We know that we as a health care system
have allowed that to happen
right under our noses, right?
And not just right under
our noses, with our help.
If you know that black
women who wanna have babies
have a two to three times
higher risk of dying
within that first year
of having their baby.
When you know black infants
before they reach their first year of life
have a two times risk of dying.
That's not something
that lives outside of
our healthcare system,
that's at the root of how we deliver care,
of who we say is worthy of that care
and the dignity with which we provide it.
And so as we talk about further
changes that need to happen
and shifting to a health
center, or a wellness centered,
or care centered crisis response network,
we also have to talk about
the immense amount of changes
that we have to make in healthcare
to ensure that when we are entrusted
with caring for black bodies,
we do a much better job
than we're doing right now.
- Okay, so I just first
wanna give a shout out
to Kaneesha and Rhea
because they have just
answered this question
quite beautifully
and so what I'm gonna try and do
in order to add to the conversation,
is to talk a little bit more generally,
particularly around actionable items
that people who are watching right now
can actually do in their day-to-day lives.
But I also want to preface that by saying
that there is no solution
that we're talking about,
that isn't going to take
an enormous amount of time.
We're quite literally
talking about generations,
centuries of inequality
compounded over time
and so any solution that we're looking for
even though I know a
lot of people on here,
are like quick, give me
something that I can do.
Any solution that we're talking about
is actually going to take investment
is going to take work
and most importantly
is going to take time.
So we have to think about
this as a long game,
as a marathon,
something that we are
working towards constantly
and there is no quick fix solution.
With that said, there are things
that maybe I'd like to call
survival actions that you can do, right?
So there are things that
we can do in the immediate,
that will have an immediate impact
but also will work towards the long run,
these long-term solutions,
and really overturning racial inequality
and other forms of inequality,
particularly economic inequality
and will have measurable impacts
for us to change the world.
So the first thing that we can do
is in terms of like survival items,
is talk about goal setting
and what are the goals
that we have in mind
or the goals that we can achieve,
that are achievable in the short-term,
and that comes in many
different forms, right?
So it could be something as
easy as local voting, right?
Which also does matter,
but it could also be
contributing resources.
Contributing our money
to bail out protesters.
It could be something like
volunteering your time,
whether it be in a march,
whether it be at a center,
whether it be in the larger community.
And so there are a whole host of things,
I think Dr. Boyd pointed out
a very good point about like
how there are actionable items,
in terms of removing police
officers from schools, right?
That's something that
can be accomplished now
and in fact, we saw that Minneapolis
the Minneapolis Community
Council voted unanimously
to remove police officers from school.
So that is something that
has immediate results.
I also want to point out,
to highlight what Kaneesha argued,
and pointed out this concept
of defunding the police
and I think one of the actual items
although we have to be vigilant
about how it's parceled out,
is we see this in some
place like Los Angeles
and several other locales which have said
we were going to pull money
out of this bloated budget
that we've set aside for policing
and reinvest it into black communities
most harmed by these policings.
Now part of the reason I think
we have to be vigilant there
is because when we look at
the size of the budget, right?
And the way in which money is allocated,
it actually may not,
150 million dollars may not
actually be a lot of money.
So, but part of what we can do
is support and advocate
for measures like that.
The second thing I would say,
is education and enrichment.
And I'm not talking about
listening to a podcast
or read a book, although
you should do that too.
What I'm actually talking about,
is educating yourself, right?
On these issues and then educating others.
And I'm actually gonna
put this challenge out
to white people,
because I think black
people have been doing this
for their entire lives.
It is part of their life, it
is part of their identity.
So I'm gonna say the real
challenges for white people
to actually come and
think about what it means
to be educated and to be
enriched on these ideas
and to then spread these
ideas within their community.
The biggest thing I
think, to think about here
is what actually does it mean
to expand our imagination
of what is possible.
That is what education and
enrichment actually helps us do.
And so part of that is
turning our attention
to the people on the ground,
and I think Kaneesha and
Rhea both mentioned this,
but the people on the ground
who have been doing this
work for generations,
in particular, black women activists
and black woman protesters
who have been doing this
for now centuries.
I mean, Megan pointed out Ida B. Wells
that's not a fluke,
that's actually part of in feature
of how black women's activism
has really defined itself
through this country.
So there are ways in which we can turn
to the people who are doing the work
and acknowledge them and go to them
and look for them for solutions,
but also to really just
expand our understanding
of what and really wrestle
with what is possible.
What can we do creatively?
And then the last thing
is actually a concrete immediate thing
that people can do within
their own organizations.
I know right now it is fashionable
for corporations to put out
and institutions to put out statements
about Black Lives Matter,
we stand, we support systemic,
et cetera, et cetera.
But part of that is we also know
that it's good for the market, right?
Good for corporations.
A better instance
would be to actually look
within the organization
and saying, what am I
actually doing tangibly
to make sure and ensure
that black lives matter,
that black lives are protected,
that black lives are not harmed,
and that I am not actively
doing harm to those black lives?
And the sad thing is, I think right now
is that a lot of corporations
including those corporations
that are saying yes, Black Lives Matter,
actually aren't doing
that internal legwork.
Talk to your black employees
because your black employees are not okay.
So those are a couple of
things that you can do,
that we can all do to get free.
- Excellent, so I just wanna
amplify a point of reflection
and then a quick comment here.
I'm gonna take the
moderator's prerogative here.
One about the importance here, right,
of acknowledging the
work done before, right?
I think for me, one of the
things that's interesting
is seeing some of these new
possible policy proposals
that are coming forth
around police reform,
or these kind of lukewarm
that are not really abolition
but are dressed up as,
but I think it's really important
that we focus on those
fighters, Ida B. Wells,
Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore
survived and punished critical resistance.
These organizations and these black women,
indigenous feminists who have
long used different types,
different forms and strategies
around harm reduction,
around accountability, right?
That we look to those and
we call those forth, right?
Organizations at our schools,
the Harvard Divestment Campaign,
at the University of
Washington where I'm at
there has been long standing organizations
focused on disarming the police,
focused on decarceration.
So I mean, I think that's important
that people look out in
terms of wherever they are,
where their kids go to school,
and think about and try to
connect with the organizations
and the organizers who have
been there a long time.
Reflecting on them what Dr.
Boyd mentioned around school,
something that I actually spent
a little bit this morning,
I tweeted about the Seattle
Teachers Union voted
to end, and I'm not sure, I
don't think it's official yet.
But for it to end, police
officers in schools
and as somebody who did
K-12 public schools,
it's weird for me 'cause I
obviously work in this area now.
But I realized somewhere in college
and in the nice manicured hedges
of Rice University in Houston, Texas,
that it was weird to be in a place
without a very strong police presence,
that part of the naturalizing in my mind
around the police and normalizations
that I saw them everywhere,
when I walked into school building,
during classes, after
classes, at school dances
that they were just everywhere
and I'm very excited about a possibility
for me at Garfield High
School without that, right?
And then at the same time,
the other part of my tweet
was that there was one guidance counselor
for the entire class
of 450 students, right?
So that already kind of let us know
what was actually valued
and what was important.
The last thing I'll say here,
in terms of I think what's
really important to also focus on
on this point of not just institutions
or not just corporations,
but also institutions
with all these statements
is to look internally
and to figure out like what
you have done in the past,
it's not just about moving forwards.
But, I think part of the work
in terms of moving forward
is to reckon with the past forms
of racial injustice, right?
And I'm thinking here,
top of mind right now
who have profited off the black people
is the music industry and
the sports industry, right?
It's not enough just
to say that we recognize
that black people matter
and we're gonna do more
work in the present, right?
But do you pay your artists appropriately?
Do you pay your graphic
designers, appropriately, right?
Do you pay your athletes
and their agents that
are black appropriately?
And if not, then you
need to think about like,
talk to those people and to
try to rectify the wrongs
that have happened in the past.
So I think that also
should be part of that.
I wanna go now to the
Q&A from the audience.
I see a lot of really,
really great questions.
One thing that like I think
a number of us touched on
in our comments that I
wanna pull out Karida Brown,
who is an incredible sociologist at UCLA
asked in the questions,
what does this moment mean
for ushering through a
comprehensive reparations bill?
Many states are proposing them,
what does history tell us
about how to push through
racial justice legislation?
Anybody willing to take that?
- So I'll jump in.
I'm just gonna say something really quick
and then I would actually
encourage Dr. Francis
to jump in a little bit here too,
particularly with her
knowledge of the NAACP
and the different ways
that they have advocated
and successfully advocated for change.
The first is that historically
reparations for black people
has been an extremely uncomfortable topic
for the rest of the nation,
but in particular white people
and that there is very
little, if any support
for reparations for white people.
With that said, I am deeply heartened
at the fact that during the
2020 presidential primaries,
several of the candidates,
including Castro, including Cory Booker,
including Elizabeth Warren,
actually had platforms
that included reparations.
Alright, so prior to this,
it has even been just a debate
to get a conversation
going about reparations,
and here we now have
several of the candidates
actually discussing this.
What I would say is that one of the things
that protests has shown over
this longer historical record,
is that now, a moment like now
is actually really good
for pushing through
the kind of racial
transformative legislation
that could actually make a difference.
And also the point I said earlier
about thinking imaginatively
and thinking creatively.
One of the ways that we can do this
and I think Dr. Boyd pointed this out too,
is that reparations isn't simply
like what people think it is, right?
A cash payment or something like that.
But actually, it's reinvestment
into the very communities
that have been harmed by these policies,
or people that have plundered
these black communities
and exploited them for so long.
So now is the kind of perfect moment
to really have this conversation
and also push people who
have long been uncomfortable
with the conversation and
with the idea of reparations,
to think imaginatively and think largely
about what reinvestment into communities
that have been harmed actually looks like.
- That was so amazing,
I agree with everything.
I just, one small thing
that I wanna add on
is that reparations have been done
in many other parts of the world.
In the UK, the biggest government payout
was to formerly like to slave owners,
and they recognized that
they would end up losing
all this money once slavery was abolished.
And so it's just like I think
what we have to think about now
is it's being done for
certain groups of people.
Why can't we just do it
for this group of people?
So I think it's really trying
to think of the benefactors
of reparations as we're
talking about it now
and just recognize that has been done,
and why are we not doing it
for black people in America?
- Okay, we're gonna go
to another question here.
In terms of discussions about
the longevity of the movement,
what are we doing or what can we do
to ensure that this is a
long-term shift, a durable shift
and not a moment that people
forget next month, next year?
- I could say a couple of things.
I think, one, I think you
guys have done a great job
of setting up for the audience,
all of the work that has gone
to take us to this place,
like all of the language,
and all of the blood and sweat
and other forms of
protest that had to happen
before this current generation
could even have the word
abolition in their mouths.
So I think we are so grateful to that work
and it speaks to the arc at
which this progress will happen.
Like I think we are trying to push forward
and lock in a new set of laws
that push us a little bit forward
so that the next generation
could take it even even further.
But I would like to challenge
those of you who hold positions of power
and to think broadly
about what power means,
whether you are in a role
to hire folks in your organization,
whether you're recruiter,
whether you work directly with community
and have power over their
access to the resources
you can provide.
Like those who are in positions of power,
ask ourselves how willing are you
to ensure that your job
looks totally different
tomorrow and into the future forever?
I think we all have to be willing
to take on a certain amount of sacrifice
of what we used to call normal
and the way that we used
to interact with the world
because the change that
we're bringing about
isn't just like a law is gonna change
and then that'll trickle
down into our lives.
It's like, you could change now
before the law even changes,
like there's no reason
most of our workforce
has to be predominantly
white at this point.
There's no reason the
highest unemployment rates
have to be among African
Americans right now.
You can do that without a
law forcing you to do it
and I hope people will.
I'll also say, the last thing I'll say
is, I think Professor
Rigueur you brought this up,
like this is a multiracial movement
and I think it's why it's
so powerful right now.
It's not just black folks in the streets,
folks who called them themselves allies
are actually surrendering their advantage
and standing next to folks,
literally risking their own
health and wellness, right?
Literally risking the
physical harms of tear gas,
and arrest and all of the confrontation
that's happening with police right now,
and I think that really matters.
and so I also wanna ask
people as much as you can
to continue to do that.
The fact that I think this is so strong
is because it's multiracial
and the longevity of this moment
depends on our ability
to continue to foster
this multiracial movement.
- Yeah, just wanna jump in real quick
and say that one of the things
that Dr. Francis asked us to
think about before this panel
is she was like, what
makes you optimistic?
And I have to say there are two things
that really make me optimistic,
particularly for this
idea of long-term change.
One is the involvement in the
leadership of young people
on these issues.
They are at the forefront.
I mean, protest movements
have largely been led by young people,
but the extraordinary energy
and kind of just imagination and vision
that young people have been
displaying in this moment
is exhilarating, it is exciting,
and these are individuals
who aren't necessarily brand names.
They're not on your TVs,
they're not in your homes,
but to see them actually
going out and doing the work,
understanding the risks,
but still going to do the work,
should be inspirational for all of us.
And then the second thing
is I really just want
to echo and reinforce
what Dr. Boyd said,
which is that this is
a multiracial movement
and we've seen people jump in,
who just four years ago, right?
Three years ago, just
wouldn't be in this protest,
wouldn't be in this uprising,
wouldn't be in this rebellion
in ways that we're seeing right now.
So it does give me optimism to see,
in particular, white people
actually really questioning
the kind of role that they can play,
but also questioning the kind of harm
that they have done in the past,
and then what they can do to rectify this
and I think sustaining
that kind of relationship
is going to be crucial to
sustaining any kind of long-term
and I mean, long, long,
long, long-term movement.
- We are almost out time.
So I actually think
that's a great place to kind
of do a quick round robin,
in terms of this question
about what gives you optimism
and what gives you hope?
Can I do Kaneesha, Dr. Boyd
and Leah, do you have
anything else to add?
- Yeah, thank you.
I feel like I'm just gonna echo everything
all the wonderful words
that have been said so far.
I am really motivated by
the courage of young people.
So not just their involvement,
but their ability to stand up
and question the systems of injustice
and power that need to be dismantled,
and then also
just the intergenerational
conversation that's happening.
You have people who have been
involved in previous movements
talking to young people, sharing ideas
and recognizing this time for
new ideas to enter the room.
Well, I'm gonna be honest,
I always struggle with the whole question
and the optimism question,
and it's not because I'm pessimistic,
but it is because this has
been a long time coming,
and if you've been saying these
things as folks like I have,
and you've hit a wall,
you worry about that wall coming back up,
and I worry about that.
I actually worry about the backlash
to what this moment is right now.
I worry about the people
who are organizing
just as hard as we're organizing
to keep the status quo in place
or maybe even retrench it even further.
So I have a lot of concerns.
I think it's why many
of us are up at night.
It's why we feel like we're
sprinting in this marathon,
I know we're kind of frankly exhausted.
I do wanna say something positive, though,
I will say, I feel grateful
for this space right here.
I think I never thought
Harvard Kennedy School
would invite a person like
me to a platform like this
to start talking about abolition,
and that, I think is good.
I similarly in some of my organizations,
like the American Academy of Pediatrics,
have been able to have
conversations about police violence
that I've wanted to have
for years right now,
and people seem more ready
and maybe that also is good.
I don't know what the future holds,
but I'm gonna work
so that my work can
give other people hope,
and I'm gonna be looking out
there at all of y'all's work
to offer give me hope that
we are moving forward.
- I just want to say quickly,
I wanna echo what the panelists said.
But I also want to give a shout out,
I think, to the people
that are doing the work,
particularly, highlighted in this panel,
that gives me an enormous
amount of optimism,
and I'm not just talking
about people on the ground,
although people on the
ground, and these organizers
have been doing this work for generations.
But I'm really buoyed
by kind of like the work
that Kaneesha Johnson
is doing, for example,
or the work that Rhea Boyd is doing,
and then the work that
Megan Francis is doing
and it's just such a pleasure
to be able to actually have conversations
about that in this place.
and then have all of
you out there listening,
and be able to kind of
implement, ideally, hopefully,
a lot of the suggestions
and a lot of the ideas
that we've suggested here today,
because that's how you make change, right?
That's the first step for making change,
and I really look forward to
more of these conversations
and more of these actionable things
that we can do in the future.
- Yes, I think I'll end on saying just,
I so appreciate you all for
gathering here on the Zoom
and for having this conversation.
When I was approached by the Ash Center,
it wasn't that we want you to do this,
it was that hey, would you be interested,
like, try basically meeting me
a little bit about where I was,
and now the only thing
that I could think about
is that I wanted to hear from black women
in different areas about their work,
about how they were understanding
and how they were working in this moment,
and I'm just like my soul
at least feels filled today.
Because I've been so exhausted.
Like, Rhea saying, I've
just been super tired,
and it has been a sprint
because so many of us in the academy,
outside of the academy,
have been working on raising these issues
for a very long time,
and it feels that there's this moment
that we don't wanna let any of that moment
slip through our fingers, right?
Because we know,
we always know that the other
side is organizing, right?
To stop the amount of
progress that has happened.
That's what also the history
of American politics tells us.
But I will say in terms
for me, what gives me hope
is teaching, teaching this year race,
inequality in American democracy,
as well as philanthropy
and social movements,
will the revolution be funded?
And in both those courses,
I taught about abolition
to a group of students in both courses
who were like, huh, what?
And that really, though,
like throughout the course,
developed a really critical analysis
of the criminal punishment
system in this country
as well as their duty
to think differently
to imagine differently,
and to watch my students minds change
from accepting something
as is presented to them
to questioning the foundations of them
and how it impacts other
people around them,
I find really, really just invigorating.
Also, just really wanna shout out the work
of LaTosha Brown of black voters matter
And in part, I'm saying that
because there's so many organizations
who have been doing the work,
this is something that we've
heard echo from this panel.
For years, black woman
who have challenged us
and have already, like helped
us to radically imagine
what the future looks like,
in which black people are
actually treated equally,
and are valued in our society.
So just really like wherever you are,
out there in the world,
to try to connect with those people
and those organizations.
From the Ash Center at
Harvard Kennedy School,
we really wanna thank you for being here
and my deep, deep gratitude
to the panelists today.
Thank you so much
and I hope to see you another day, bye.
