Paula Lehman Ewing, an award-winning journalist and author, joins the podcast to discuss her debut book, "Reimagining the Four Stories of Abolition, Autonomy and Forging New Paths in a Modern Civil Rights Movement." Central to the conversation is the concept of the prison industrial complex and its pervasive impact on society, highlighting the need for a complete rethinking of justice beyond mere reform. Paula shares her insights on the systemic issues surrounding mass incarceration and emphasizes the importance of amplifying the voices of those directly affected. She draws on her experiences and interactions with individuals like Ken Oliver, who spent nearly three decades in prison, to underscore the resilience and intelligence of those within the system. The discussion also touches on grassroots movements and innovative approaches to achieving social equity, urging listeners to consider new definitions of justice that prioritize community and restorative practices.

Paula Lehman Ewing, an award-winning journalist and author, converses about her pioneering work in criminal justice reform and her debut book, "Reimagining the Four Stories of Abolition, Autonomy and Forging New Paths in a Modern Civil Rights Movement." Ewing's exploration of the incarceration system unveils the often-unseen struggles of those locked away, emphasizing the necessity of rethinking our approaches to justice and social equity. Ewing's personal journey highlights the influence of her grandmother and mentor Ken Oliver, whose resilience and wisdom have shaped her understanding of the complexities surrounding incarceration and social justice advocacy.

As the discussion progresses, Ewing delves into the intricacies of the prison industrial complex, explaining how it operates as a web of economic and surveillance systems that disproportionately affect certain communities. She draws historical parallels between current practices and past injustices, such as the convict leasing system in the post-Civil War era, revealing the continuity of exploitation within the justice system. Ewing's insights are particularly poignant as she addresses the real-life implications of these systemic issues, using examples from her research and interactions with incarcerated individuals who are striving to create change from within the system.

Ewing advocates for a shift towards restorative justice, a model that focuses on healing rather than punishment, and she shares stories of individuals who have taken the initiative to create community-based solutions. The episode encourages listeners to engage with social movements and consider their roles in advocating for change. Ewing's call to action resonates as she urges the audience to remain curious, challenge binary thinking, and explore how they can contribute to a more just society. This conversation serves not only as an exploration of Ewing's work but also as an invitation for listeners to reflect on their understanding of justice and the importance of amplifying the voices of those affected by the prison system.

Takeaways:

• Paula emphasizes the importance of remaining teachable and curious throughout life.
• The prison industrial complex is a complex network that extends control over society.
• Restorative justice offers a more effective way to serve victims than traditional incarceration.
• Ivan's story highlights the need for community investment to combat recidivism effectively.
• Abolition movements must think beyond binary political solutions to achieve real change.
• Critical Resistance aims to shift power from prisons to communities through grassroots initiatives.

Links referenced in this episode:

• reimaginingtherevolution.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• BuzzFeed News
• Just Mercy
• Greenwood Bank
• North Atlantic Books
• Penguin Random House

Mentioned in this episode:

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My guest today is Paula Lehman Ewing.

She's an award winning journalist, social documentarian and author specializing in criminal justice and social equity.

Her debut book, Reimagining the Four Stories of Abolition, Autonomy and Forging New Paths in a Modern Civil Rights Movement, amplifies the voices of incarcerated individuals and advocates for social justice.

We welcome her to the podcast.

Well, Paula, welcome to the podcast.

How you doing today?

I'm doing great.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's good to have you on.

Looking forward to this conversation.

I've covered this topic on so many different ways before and haven't really delved into the particular part that you bring to this conversation.

So it's going to be an exciting opportunity to talk about one other aspect of how we deal with things that are going on in our country, in our world.

So looking forward to this conversation.

Yeah, I am too.

I have listened to some of the other guests on this topic, so hoping to add some something new.

I think you will.

But before we get started, let me ask you my favorite question for my guests.

What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Well, I mean, I grew up with a Jewish mother, so I'm chock full of unsolicited advice, but I would say is to remain teachable.

My grandmother, Audrey, she passed away last year and she was 96.

And every summer she would go to college to a seniors program to learn.

And I thought that in a day and age where we have all the answers at our fingertips, perhaps we have gotten a little cocky in terms of what we think we know.

And I have found to have much more profound conversations with people of all sorts of backgrounds by asking questions and remaining curious and remaining teachable, remembering that maybe I don't have the answers to everything.

I love that you kind of mentioned your grandmother.

Are there other people in your life who served as an inspiration for you or even a mentor on your journey?

Yeah, you know, especially with my book Reimagining the Revolution.

A huge mentor and inspiration for me is Ken Oliver.

He's mentioned in the book several times.

I worked with him in a grassroots organization called all of Us Are None.

He still does work in Fair chance employment and he still does work to sort of help with justice causes.

But he was incarcerated for almost 30 years.

He spent eight of it in solitary confinement.

And he never gave up.

He educated himself.

He's one of the smartest people I've ever met.

He's educated me.

He's always been really tolerant of my, you know, naivete.

He's always pointing me to certain writers.

But, you know, he's the reason why Frantz Fanon is in the book and not just kind of the more modern thought leaders.

I love that.

So give us a brief overview of your book and tell us what inspired you to write it.

Sure.

So the book is about organizations and individuals strategizing to exact change in radical new ways.

So people that have looked at the protests on the street and said, this hasn't got like, you know, this has looked pretty much the same for 60 years, and it hasn't gotten us to where we need to be.

Let's get off the street, let's strategize and come up with something new.

And so the book is about my interactions with people in the organizations, about their ideas.

And, you know, I think it came from a couple places.

I was a criminal justice reporter, and it's not unheard of for someone who looks at the system of mass incarceration in the face to have a difficult time remaining objective about it.

You know, Chris Geidner was a BuzzFeed News editor.

He's the legal editor for BuzzFeed News.

And he left to pursue a nonprofit working on reform measures in criminal justice.

Scott Budnick did the Hangover movies.

You know, he started volunteering in prison, left the movie business for a couple years, and the next time we saw him, he did Just Mercy, which is not funny as not like the Hangover movies.

And that's what happened to me.

I was a criminal justice reporter, and I and I decided to get more involved.

And I thought that that was really.

I was like, well, what if there's something else out there?

And so that's again, where the teachable stuff came in.

And I decided to look for people who were being.

Who are trying to get change exacted in a new way?

One thing you, one term you mentioned in your book I don't think people think a lot about is the industrial prison complex.

Can you define that for people who may not be familiar with that concept?

Sure.

So the prison industrial complex is a large network of surveillance and economic systems that interweave to control certain elements of society.

So if you have a surplus population or workforce, they will.

The prison industrial complex will use things like electronic monitoring to make sure.

That anyone who has already done their time is still under surveillance after they leave, thus extending the power of the prison and control of the prison of that person.

It also takes the form of prison labor.

One of the things that we're looking at right now is incarcerated firefighters who are in Los Angeles trying to fight those fires.

They're able to do that because the state pays them a dollar versus their counterparts in the firefighting field who make well above that.

And so that's sort of how the prison industrial complex works.

It then makes the state kind of dependent on those firefighters, thereby creating a reason to keep people in prison and to continue expand the.

The budget and control of prison departments, which are largely unregulated and tend to just kind of operate under their own set of guidance.

Wow.

I grew up in Louisiana, so one of our worst prison abuse systems was Angola.

And you had people working in the fields in Louisiana from the prison complex doing something you just described for basically pennies on the dollar.

Yeah, Angola.

I write about Angola in the book.

Because, I mean, when you.

When people talk about slavery not being a thing, and then you look at Angola prisoners harvesting the same fields and plant that used to be plantations as people who were kind of captured under Fugitive Slave act or kind of the convict leasing laws that came out, like, you could be.

After slavery was abolished, you could be convicted for vagrancy, and then they could put you back to work.

So.

So Angola, I think, is one of the starkest contracts, one of the starkest reminders that.

That it's still a problem.

Yeah, most definitely.

So.

So you write about some important people in your work, and one of them I want to kind of talk about is even Gil Kilgore.

Tell us a little bit about his story and why is it so prominent in your book?

Everyone loves Ivan.

So I.

When I started writing the book, I checked in with Glenn Martin, who is formerly incarcerated, and he was.

He founded Just Leadership, and he's been involved in a number of things.

He has a great saying that the people who are closest to the problem are farthest from the solution.

Are farthest from the solution.

And he said, if you're going to write a book about oppression, the people who you should highlight should be at the closest to the oppressor.

And I know a guy.

And so I was introduced to Ivan.

I had heard of him.

The organization I worked for wrote an amicus brief for Ivan because he had.

The prison was trying to transfer him.

He had recorded COVID protocols being broken inside prison.

This was, like, right before they became epicenters for.

For Covid outbreaks.

And the prison department didn't like the PR that that got.

And so they were doing things to try to get Ivan in physical danger.

So I had heard of him.

Glenn told me about his organization, United Black Family Scholarship Foundation.

And I found it really interesting and that it was, you know, I think ideas coming out of prison, they are able to.

And I kind of talk about this in the chapter about.

With Hashima Denim, who's also incarcerated.

They have this sort of view of society that's frozen.

You know, we're all out here, you know, putting out the next media craze, whatever is like the crisis of the week.

And they sort of have this idea of a society that they're able to visualize and then use their experience to come up with something different.

And because everything's been stripped away with them, they can start from the.

They can start from nothing.

They can start from zero.

Which I think is kind of an underlying theme of the book, the idea that abolition means come up with something that hasn't been thought of before, come up with something that uses different vocabulary, that uses different schools, that uses different resources.

And so that's where Ivan's idea came from.

He was.

He was.

He couldn't get work after he was released from prison in Oklahoma.

He was forced back into the underground economy.

And, you know, he knew to.

He knew one way to make the money that he needed, and.

And that led him to, you know, the same sort of outcome as many people who fall into that trap and ended back incarcerated.

So he said, okay, well, then what could have been done differently for me, because.

And he decided that it was.

You know, he would have been more invested in his community if people had made him feel like he was a part of the community.

You know, Ivan came out and he worked on the revitalization, which ended up being the gentrification of downtown Oakland.

And then they priced the units so that he couldn't live there.

But maybe if he lived there, he would have been more cognizant of his neighbors.

He would have been more invested in seeing it succeed.

And so he is developing an organization that does that, that trains community members so that they have a way of being economically independent, and then they revitalize their own neighborhoods where they're going to live, so that everyone has a stake in that community.

I know in the church, we love change.

I'm sure most organizations do.

But because we are so resistant to change, how do we tackle something as big as the prison industrial Complex because let's face it, in order for it to succeed, people are making money off of it.

So how do you begin to reform a system that has no desire to reform?

Well, so I think you take reform off the table.

I don't think that reform is, I mean, prison started as a reform, right?

It started as a reform to capital punishment and then convict leasing was a reform to slavery, and then Jim Crow was a reform to, you know, like the Confederacy.

And so you have these things that are reforms that have allowed the prison industrial complex to evolve rather than dissolve.

And so I think you need to start from scratch now.

I don't think that it's safe for anyone to say, okay, just let everyone out of prison tomorrow.

That's not safe for communities, that's not safe for the people in prison who have not been given any road to release.

But you have to start thinking about what justice will look like without those sort of norms.

You know, if you're, you're talking about people in church and, and they talk about change, they also talk about forgiveness.

They also talk about, you know, this idea that, this idea of like, justice.

And I don't think that people are finding justice in incarceration anymore.

There seems to be, you know, with DNA evidence and wrongful convictions and the things that we're learning about the human mind not being fully developed until they're 25.

You know, it seems to be, it seems to be kind of a, a catch all for society's ills.

And it doesn't seem to be fixing anything.

So I think people are.

I think the first step is to think beyond how can we make prison better and sort of think about how can we serve justice without it.

I remember when I was working on my research, I ran across the idea of restorative justice and how I was being applied.

I believe it was in Australia or New Zealand.

It was in New Zealand, actually.

And I remember one of the drawbacks for that was the judges didn't want to do it because it took too much time and too much effort.

Effort.

So it kind of fell apart because, like, that's just too hard.

Let's just do the prison system because that's easier for us to kind of manage.

So if we, if we did tear this down, like you talk about, do you have some thoughts of what that new system might look like?

So restorative justice is really interesting because saying, like, it's easier to just throw people in prison.

Restorative justice is actually a more satisfying experience for victims of crime.

And that, that's who we're trying to seek justice for.

Right.

We're not just trying to like punish people cause we think they're bad.

We're trying like people are complicated.

I've made mistakes, everyone's made mistakes.

That's what makes us people.

And so restorative justice is actually geared toward the victim who finds more satisfaction than they do in traditional court.

You know, I think that I like the ideas of putting, I think there's some good, good out there.

I think that it needs to, that it needs to be handled on a lot of levels.

It needs to be handled.

You know, there's a school to prison pipeline.

So like as, as young as school age children know we have kind of militarized security in prison.

That kind, I mean in school that sort of makes kids feel like they're criminals anyways.

Like why not if that's what society expects of them?

So it has sort of that element to it.

And then you have the element of, okay, well if you have like the idea of amends, so if you have done a wrong, how are you going to right that wrong to that person?

So, you know, Hashima gives a great example of this in his chapter where, you know, if someone is, if someone has killed the head of a family, right, let's say like, let's take worst case scenario that them going to prison and you garnishing their prison wages to help support that family is not helping that family.

So maybe, maybe justice in that situation looks like that person working, that person being isolated in a separate community until reparations are made to the family that's been harmed.

Maybe it looks like a restorative justice conversation where you can't be held accountable without an account of what you did.

So if a family comes in and tells you like this is who you took away, that's accountability, that's taking into account the entire situation.

And so I think something like that is a lot more, more effective for exacting justice and, and keeping communities whole.

I like some of the things that the reformers you've mentioned in your book came up with.

You want to share some of the things you discovered from your research of working with people who were incarcerated?

Yeah.

Well, so first, there are two kind of categories of incarcerated people.

In my, in my book, there are the activists, Ivan Kilgore, who you mentioned, Hashima Denim, they're both incarcerated in California.

They've both come up with these amazing ideas.

Ivan's organization is the rebuild.

The element that I focus on is the rebuild program, which I like I said trains community members to make livable wages and then restore their own communities and then have an investment in maintaining the integrity of those communities.

Hashima is, is the autonomous infrastructure mission.

And he basically has designed communities independent of the state.

So they have closed circuit economics, they grow their own food, they have their own security system, they have their own education system.

And they have.

And they've actually put a lot of those into place.

And it's, it's in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

It's working quite well.

And then there are the incarcerated artists.

So each chapter is introduced by a piece of art that was drawn by someone during their incarceration.

One of the artists is still incarcerated.

And I think one of the great things about it is that there's so much more forgiving than we are.

Society has said, I want nothing to do with you.

Go live in a cage.

And they are all, whether they're artists that create these beautiful drawings or like amid a place with no beauty and no joy, or they're an activist who are reaching back to better a society that they might not even ever get to be part of again.

That was really powerful for me as an experience.

So I just had a guest on my show and he wrote a book too about the situation of.

I think it's.

His book is about leveling the playing field.

Was never level.

Was kind of his.

His thought.

And we focused on in that podcast, and this will probably go back to back with that because it's a really interesting conversation.

We focused on the fact that education and social justice and housing are all kind of part of a bigger problem.

And if you don't solve all three of those pieces, you end up creating a pipeline to the prison complex.

So if you just fix education, but you don't fix the housing disparities, you're not going to have the income to be able to pour into education.

As you look at just this part of it, this prison section of it, how does that influence and really kind of trap communities into a cycle of just repeating the same problems over and over again or just recycling more and more people for this industrial prison complex?

Right.

So they.

There's no.

Well, I kind of touched on it earlier.

Like there is no rehabilitation element in prison anymore.

In fact, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion that said the states have decided this isn't about rehabilitation anymore, it's simply about punishment.

And so when you do that and you take someone who is then released but still on electronic monitoring, or they can't get a job because of their felony conviction, or they can't live with their family because Section 8 housing doesn't allow for someone with a conviction history.

You don't let them vote because of felony disenfranchisement laws.

Those things emit signals that you're never going to, like, you're not going to be able to come back here.

You're not part of the society.

You made that mistake and we're going to judge you by your worst day and that's the end.

So if that's as best as it's going to get, what kind of motivation does that person have to, if you keep telling them you're never going to be anything more than a criminal, why would they try?

Right.

And so I think that, you know, a lot of this has to do with, I think, I think it's, it has to do with non binary thinking is like my, it's my one takeaway.

If, if you, if you read the book and you only take one thing away, it's to think beyond conservative and liberal, to think beyond good and bad, to think beyond, you know, like prison and then just letting everyone like, you know, anarchy.

So people don't, people aren't.

People are complex.

And so society is complex.

So you can't take a system like a political system that is, that is binary.

And at least in this country and say, all right, well, let's have politics fix society.

You don't need a political solution to societal problems.

You need a social solution.

So that's what I would take away.

I'm not sure if that answered your question.

No, it did.

It was good.

You also mentioned in your book a grassroots organization called Critical Resistance.

Tell us a little bit about what that is hoping to accomplish with the work it's doing.

Right.

So the, so Critical Resistance is one of the, I call it the OG grassroots organizations that are still out there.

It was founded by Angela Davis, Rose Baez, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, all people who have been fighting since the 60s.

I think it was at that time, 500% increase.

This massive building that had gone on in California to create, I think it's something like 34 prisons.

They target specifically the prison industrial complex.

Ivan kind of focuses on communities and stopping that revolving door.

Critical Resistance looks at shipping power away from the prison industrial complex and putting it into communities.

So if you have, you know, taxpayers are paying for empty beds in California prisons right now because they've emptied a lot of those places.

But the prisons still want their money, and so they still want that budget.

And, and so when they talk about, well, I'm not going to pay for a criminal to get an education, well, you're just paying for him to sit there.

Might as well have him do something better himself so that when he's your neighbor, eventually like 80% of people in prison are going to be released.

So, I mean, there's those sort of education programs, and so that's what critical resistance is working on.

I talk about their initiative to close 10 prisons in California.

They've.

They're halfway there, which is very admirable.

And with those funds kind of creating things that you mentioned, putting it into public education, putting it into health care, putting it into things that better communities and that don't break them apart.

I mean, one of the things that they promised during the building boom of prisons is that they would bring economics to these small towns.

And what they did is no business wants to go there because there's a prison in the background.

So like, so the towns never got the, the income.

And so that's what they're doing.

They're looking at the real needs of the communities and they're figuring out how the resources that are being poured into empty beds and essentially just human cages can be used to better communities.

Tell us about Greenwood.

So Greenwood is my tricky chapter.

So Greenwood is a bank.

It is based out of Atlanta, Georgia, and it has a very unique cast of founders.

Ryan Glover is the kind of serial entrepreneur that spearheaded it.

And then the other two founders are Killer Mike, Mike Render, who is part of Run the Jewels rap duo.

He also has an amazing solo career at this point.

And Andrew Young, Ambassador Andrew Young, who was a close confidant of Martin Luther King and he orchestrated the Birmingham March.

So I became interested because why wouldn't you?

It's like, it's.

I mean, it's like the start of a joke, right?

Like a civil rights activist, you know, an entrepreneur and a rapper walk into a bank.

Like what?

Right.

So that starts off immediate.

Yeah, so.

So I looked at what they were doing, and essentially what they're doing is they're creating what they call compassionate capitalism.

And it is a bank that is for communities of color, specifically black and Latino.

And they invest, they build that power of capital in order to exact change in society.

Now, the reason why it's difficult chapter is because true abolitionists, including Angela Davis, who is literally the chapter before, think that capitalism will always perpetuate racism, human exploitation, you name it.

Like capitalism is, has not is, has historically not worked out for people of color.

And I totally understand that argument.

I think the reason why I still included them in the book is twofold.

One, you know, Bobby Seale, who is one of the co founders of the Black Panther Party, he said if you're going to get, if you're going to fight systems in this country, that I'm paraphrasing obviously with, you know, if you're going to get economic and political gains in this country, you're going to need capital.

And that's coming from, you know, a very radicalized group that Angela Davis was closely tied to.

And I also think that their form of capitalism, you know, just, I don't think it's like it's, it's not a capitalism I've ever seen.

I've never seen a capitalism that like cares about people.

You know, they, they get, every, every month they give out a grant to a business, a startup.

They do financial literacy classes, they create.

They've partnered with various organizations that you know, take, you can round up when you do a deposit and then that, when that roundup will go towards giving meals for the community.

And so they're doing it in a way that like yes, it's a bank, yes, it's, it's churning out capital, but it, to me it doesn't look like capitalism.

I can understand why that would give you some interesting challenges.

Your book has been, is well researched and I'm, I'm always curious when you do a book with so much research, what were some surprising revelations that came out of your research?

It's a good question.

You know, I think, and it, it seems so obvious now but that we have locked up so many people that there are such smart and talented people in prison.

You know, I sort of like yes, I think my, my training as a recovering journalist sort of like I read a lot of books and I, and I came across a bunch of data and I wrote it all down and, but what I found was, you know, the teachings of like George Jackson was what came out of prison and it's become this sort of makeshift educational system for, for people who become resilient and become self taught and become open minded.

You know, Glenn Martin, who I mentioned before is a great quote in the book where he says like I don't think black and brown people like asked to go to prison to become resilient.

But that's what's happened.

So it's just like, so I don't get.

It's not great.

They unfortunately have a big moment of pause to come up with these, with these really incredible ideas.

And so I have found some of the teachings coming out of prison and the writings and the artwork to be profound and quite humbling because they're very talented.

So for people listening to our conversation going, yeah, I really want to, I think something needs to happen.

What is your book's call to action for the normal everyday citizen who goes, yeah, something's wrong, we need to do something about it.

So two things.

One I mentioned before is non binary thinking.

So challenge yourself when you hear there are only two options to think of a third.

I, and some people say like, oh, well, you're talking about like a third party candidate.

I am not talking about a third party candidate.

I'm talking about refusing to look for societal, for solutions to societal problems in a political.

Stop looking for political solutions.

Look to social movements.

You can, if one of the groups in the book speak to you, seek them out.

They're always looking for volunteers or come up with, you know, there are people who have been trudging this path for a really long time.

Kind of check in with them, remain teachable, and just sort of start having conversations about how we can, what does justice really look like?

Come up with your own definitions of what justice look like.

To me, it doesn't look like prison anymore to me.

Safety doesn't look like calling the cops anymore.

So I, you know, come up with those definitions, find people who, who are already kind of trudging that path and then use whatever tools you have to help them trudge.

My tool is amplification and writing.

I can, I can tell a story.

I've been, I decided I want to be a writer in fourth grade.

So I, you know, my, my fourth grade teacher told my parents, like, I'm so sorry, she's not going to be a consultant.

Like she wants to be a writer.

And so, so like that's what I'm, that's, that's what I can do.

I can tell stories, I can amplify people's voices.

You know, Ivan has four books of his own, but you heard about him in mine because I have that kind of access, so I'm going to use that access to elevate his story.

People with large social media platforms can do the same thing.

People with, you know, multimedia experience, they can tell stories in a visual way.

Maybe you have, you know, excess funds that you can use to, to help these organizations kind of get that capital that they need to fight economic and political battles.

And so that's what I would suggest.

So what do you see the future of the prison abolition movement?

Oh, God.

I mean, what I'm hoping is that the prison abolition movement has been a, a story of playing catch up.

You know, the system has evolved.

It looks different, it's maybe not as overtly racist, but it still has grave racial undertones.

And I think that's becoming, the idea that it's not working is becoming more mainstream.

So I hope that the next iteration of that is that the movement doesn't have to play catch up anymore.

That at some point it'll, it'll develop a strategy that takes into account all the evolutions of the past and prevents them in the future.

To me, that looks like.

Not that.

To me that looks like no carve outs.

Right?

I mean, what, what's allowing California to employ firefighters for a dollar an hour out of prison is.

This is the loophole in the 13th Amendment, the exemption that allows them to be treated as slaves because of the, because they committed a crime.

So today that looks like when you call for people to be released, you don't, you don't say non violent versus violent.

Right.

Like we're looking.

First of all, those definitions I think are very misunderstood.

And second, that sort of carve out while, like, I think appeases voters to an extent.

If you, if you really research it and explain it and look at it, that kind of carve out will only allow again another iteration.

It'll make harder to abolish it completely if you just keep putting.

Well, except for these guys.

Except for these guys.

Except for these guys.

So, so that would, that's what I'm hoping is that they find a way forward that takes into account evolutions of the past and that they can get ahead of it.

So I love to ask my guest this question.

What do you want your legacy to.

Oh, God, I don't know.

I wanted to be, I want to be a storyteller that caused people to think differently.

I don't know.

I, I, you know, one of my favorite, my favorite writer, to be honest, is, is Hunter S.

Thompson.

And the way that he just basically like threw up on, on a page and then, and it like.

But it made your mind like think like, yeah, you're right.

The people at this, the people In Las Vegas, they are acting like animals.

You're right.

You know, I think that.

I think that that that's what I want to do.

I want to take.

I want to tell stories that take people into places where they might not have otherwise have access and to.

And, you know, open their eyes to new possib ways of thinking.

So what upcoming projects are you working on?

So I am writing a second book.

It is very early stages, so, but I am going to be, you know, Reimagining the Revolution started as a digital journey.

So I'm doing a number of interviews and profiles that are online.

If you go to reimaginingtherevolution.com there's a blog that's been started and the big project is Scotty's Vision.

So the artist that is still incarcerated is Scott Smith, and he's wildly talented.

This is his over there.

Oh, cool.

And this portfolio is like all the stuff that I refuse to giveaway.

So.

But I have opened a store for Scott.

And so, you know, one of the things is, you know, I want people to, you know, as a journalist, I felt weird about payment in a monetary form.

It was more about, like, amplification.

But as an incarcerated artist, Scotty, that doesn't help him.

So what I've done with his permission is I've opened a store of his artwork.

And you can get prints, you can get bookmarks, you can get originals, you can get commission pieces.

And all of the proceeds fund Scotty so he can get tools to create more art.

And so if you go to reimaginingtherevolution.com and you visit Scotty's Vision, you'll see all of Scotty's amazing artwork.

Not all of it, but a good swath of it.

And you can purchase a piece for yourself.

So where can people find your book Reimagining a Revolution and connect with you on social media?

Reimagining the Revolution is available in most stores.

Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes and Noble.

It's published by North Atlantic Books.

Excuse me.

It's published by North Atlantic Books and distributed by Penguin Random House.

So it's available in most places.

Social media.

You can find me on Instagram and Instagram, Facebook and YouTube at Reimagining the Revolution.

And I just joined Blue sky, it's tronblue and all that information.

If it's too much, just go to reimaginingtherevolution.com and you'll get links to everything.

Well, Paula, thank you so much for tackling this very difficult issue.

And talking about topics that we don't often think about, but it's really important for us to look at as we try to solve some of the internal problems in our country that we just don't often think about and make.

And also making the stories more human.

So we can see that there's not just situations, but they're actually people impacted by some of the policies that we make.

Yeah.

I think that when you tell the story of another person, it's easy to relate to because I think people forget we have a lot more in common than we have in uncommon.

Well, thank you so much, Paul, and blessings on your work.

All right.

Thank you so much, Keith.

Thanks for having me.