Yale Psychiatry Grand Rounds: January 6, 2023

January 06, 2023

Information

Nicholas Dawidoff, author

"The Other Side of Prospect: On Telling a Story of Violence, Injustice, and the American City."

ID9353

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00:05Early on the summer evening of August 1st,
00:082006, on a mournful New Haven,
00:10CT Side Street, an elderly man from
00:13another town who just cashed checks
00:16worth nearly $2000 was sitting
00:18in his cream colored luxury car.
00:21A young stranger appeared at his
00:23window and killed the man with a
00:25single point blank gunshot to the
00:27neck from a 45 caliber pistol.
00:29A 45 is a weapon so powerful
00:32it's a handheld artillery piece.
00:34Few people are murderers.
00:35If you are still kill strangers,
00:38far fewer again are capable of
00:40such an intimate execution.
00:42Another stranger, a 16 year old boy,
00:45was blocks away at the time,
00:47inside a pharmacy went to prison
00:49for the shooting.
00:50Whatever muted outcry that followed
00:52in the city was soon undercut
00:54by the settled belief that these
00:56were the things that happened.
00:57The conditioned insignificance of
00:59the crime carried its significance
01:02in three men inextricably bound
01:04by violence was the gone.
01:06Grandeur of cities,
01:07the end of new beginnings, and old,
01:11unresolved American history.
01:15Thank you so much for having me,
01:17and thank you on such a
01:22sort of complicated format.
01:23You're here or you're not
01:26here and however you are.
01:28Thank you for coming and thank
01:30you for that lovely introduction.
01:33I I think that place matters
01:35in how we grow up.
01:37We are all products of our environments.
01:40I grew up in late 1970s
01:42and early 1980s New Haven.
01:44New Haven was then a remarkably
01:47diverse city of neighborhoods.
01:48It's also highly segregated.
01:50In the 1950s,
01:52New Haven became known to government
01:55officials as America's model City.
01:57And in more recent years demographers have
01:59called it the country's most typical city.
02:02Because it is a small city with
02:04big city problems built on a scale
02:07that allows for unusual scrutiny,
02:08New Haven is perhaps more accurately.
02:10A representative city.
02:13Michael Jefferson,
02:14who's the city's leading civil
02:16rights and criminal lawyer,
02:18grew up in the Bronx.
02:19He says New York was too big.
02:21He said it was only when he came
02:23to southern Connecticut State
02:24University for college and then be
02:26law school and began to work here,
02:28that this smaller city could function
02:31for him. He says like a microscope.
02:34I could see American life.
02:35He could see how the country works.
02:38Most of us spend our youth in neighborhoods,
02:41our delimited worlds.
02:43If, however,
02:44you were me and came of age in
02:47between spaces, lived on one floor.
02:50Were rented 2 family house with a single mom,
02:53a teacher who filled my life with
02:55books and also her anxiety about
02:57making her salary last the month,
02:59and you had a severely mentally
03:01ill father living in and out of
03:03institutions in the streets in another state.
03:05You might feel a peripheral remove as I did.
03:09There are many ways to know your hometown.
03:12I had a little business when I was a kid.
03:15Shoveling walks and raking
03:17leaves and mowing people's lawns.
03:20And with the money that I earned,
03:22I would ride to downtown New Haven
03:23and spend the money at local shops.
03:25And in those days most of them
03:27were still family owned.
03:28Or you had that feeling anyway,
03:30and where you bought things,
03:32and what you bought them,
03:33and the people from whom you bought
03:35them and the people around you.
03:37All of it gave me anyway,
03:38a sense of being a public participant.
03:41The merchants came to know me
03:43and my tastes and my habits,
03:46and they informed and deepened them.
03:48And I still, when I walk around my office,
03:50I still look at the spines of
03:52books that I bought as a child,
03:54at places like the Foundry Bookstore
03:56or Brookhaven or the alcohol or
03:59the Brenmar Bookstore or Atticus,
04:01eventually.
04:01And there I see my people and
04:05you know my city.
04:10You know one way to think about childhood
04:12as is as a succession of awakenings,
04:14moments of sudden, luminous clarity.
04:17And then you say, this is how the world is.
04:19And for me, my world changed in
04:227th grade when I became a tuition
04:24free student at a private school.
04:26I drove across town every day
04:28past the Winchester gun factory,
04:30and you could just tell from the
04:32parking lots how many cars there were
04:35and from the employee entrances and
04:37things and the more and more disused.
04:39Buildings, that things were
04:40not going well there.
04:44One of the ways I spent my a lot of my time
04:46was playing youth baseball in New Haven,
04:48and as I advanced through the
04:49various age group leagues,
04:50I traversed the city on my bicycle.
04:53At my new school I saw more children
04:55that I could count who had braces on
04:58their teeth to straighten their teeth.
05:00But that summer I played shortstop in a
05:02Baseball League and working class Fair
05:05haven on a field near the projects,
05:07and one day out at second base.
05:08There was this kid with a long Italian
05:10surname who all of us called rap.
05:12And he smiled and I could see
05:14that he had braces.
05:15And then it occurred to me that of all of us,
05:16he was the only one.
05:21Another year, I played baseball
05:22in a black neighborhood not far
05:24from the Winchester Gun factory.
05:26There I had teammates and opponents
05:28whose battered apartments and
05:29worn clothing suggested families
05:31struggling to meet their basic needs.
05:33I couldn't be sure of this, because as kids,
05:35we didn't talk about any of these things.
05:37We just noticed there was a day when I
05:39stood in uniform on that dusty field,
05:42looking out beyond the bleachers,
05:44and I was thinking about it,
05:45and I was thinking about how right there,
05:47just up that hill across the street,
05:48called. Prospect.
05:49Was what every town he kid like me
05:52thought of as paradise for young people,
05:54as Yale University.
05:55And there there were green lawns that were
05:58kept lushly groomed for Yale universities,
06:00almost entirely white student body.
06:02And to me thinking about it in that moment,
06:05and I remember this very vividly,
06:07it wasn't just those divergent extremes of
06:09wealth and poverty and relative opportunity.
06:12It was the in your face proximity
06:14that was the juxtaposition,
06:16juxtaposition.
06:16Everything was right there.
06:18And it was bewildering to me as a kid.
06:21And I was standing there and I can feel it.
06:22Still standing.
06:23I'm standing out there on the field and
06:25I'm looking and I really still feel it
06:27every time I think about this and it
06:29becomes very formal in my mind, the locution,
06:31and it's like, why should this be?
06:33How can this be?
06:35And you know,
06:35I had a pre and adolescent voice,
06:37so it didn't sound like that in my mind.
06:39As I'm saying it goes very high.
06:41But you know,
06:43I I just thought this is this is wrong.
06:48So I became an adult,
06:49and I left home and I went to New York.
06:51But whenever I come to New
06:52Haven to visit my mom,
06:53I would see this dynamic of these
06:55two incongruous new havens,
06:56and that it was only intensifying.
06:59I could see that things were only
07:01growing more prosperous around Yale,
07:02while Newhallville seemed the
07:04same or more forlorn to me.
07:06The Yale and Newhallville should be so close.
07:09The college right there and yet so far away,
07:11I found really unsettling always.
07:14And I wondered why a city
07:16should be so divided.
07:18Every few years,
07:19the New York Times would publish an
07:21article on the two connecticuts and the
07:23wealthy state with its impoverished,
07:25violent cities.
07:25It's also Hartford and Bridgeport, right?
07:27New Haven was by then an
07:29archetype for demographers,
07:31measuring genie indexes and
07:33growth ratios for inequality.
07:34And if you look at newhallville,
07:37you would see if you didn't know what it was,
07:39you would see almost an American,
07:42every town.
07:42It could be anywhere across the country,
07:45which to me was the point.
07:49Overtime it grasped that New Haven really
07:52was a representative version of what
07:54remains a persistent American problem.
07:56From New York to Trenton to
07:58Philadelphia to Baltimore,
07:59and out on across the Heartland
08:02fully formed American working class
08:04neighborhoods without any well paying work.
08:07As with my city in Chicago, Saint Louis,
08:10Palo Alto, Los Angeles and elsewhere,
08:12the walls of elite universities were all
08:15that separated them from another America.
08:17So in 2012 I decided I would move back
08:20home from New York and try to answer my
08:23childhood question of why this strange
08:25juxtaposition juxtaposition should be,
08:27and what it might mean for current
08:29versions of kids like me and those I've
08:31grown up with and play baseball with.
08:34I wanted to write a book that explained
08:37the many forces over time that could.
08:40Explain in turn how a city was
08:42and comes to be,
08:43and in the particular way that a
08:46young people surrounded by opportunity
08:48that's unavailable to them feel
08:51about it in the most extreme.
08:53I was interested in the enormous but not
08:55well understood problem of gun violence,
08:57how it happens and how it
09:00affects and reveals communities.
09:02Newhallville, I would discover,
09:04was a classic post industrial
09:06American community.
09:07It was once a place formed by work.
09:09New Haven existed long ago at the foundation
09:12of a new idea in American labor history,
09:16homes for workers that existed
09:17separately from the place of employment.
09:20When Eli Whitney required skilled hands
09:22to work in his gun factory out across the
09:25Hamden line off of what is now Whitney Ave.
09:28he built them houses and he created
09:30what we now call whitneyville.
09:32Called it whitneyville then.
09:3450 years later,
09:36New Haven was a World Center
09:38for carriage manufacturer.
09:39People like to say later that New Haven was
09:41to carriages as Detroit was to automobiles.
09:44Carriage industry was big for boosterism,
09:46but it was there were a lot,
09:49a lot of carriage factories and this
09:50was one of the great centers in the
09:52country and hence the world at the time.
09:54George Newhall was the owner of a
09:56successful carriage business that to keep
09:58up with labor demands needed housing.
10:00And so the houses that he built,
10:01you can still see some of them
10:03on Thompson St.
10:04came to be known as newhallville.
10:06Soon enough,
10:07you know automobiles replace carriages
10:09and the Winchester gun factory
10:12replaces George Newhall's bills.
10:14Carriage factories,
10:14The Manufacturing center of a
10:16classic working class community.
10:18Every wave major wave of European
10:21immigrant came through Newhallville.
10:24These are unskilled, undereducated.
10:26Irish, Italian, German, Eastern European.
10:29Each wave arrives does labor that is tedious,
10:33often exhausting,
10:33but that it's virtuous that
10:35you could learn to trade.
10:37How to command a machine?
10:39Earn enough income to buy houses,
10:40cars,
10:40move up and out to surrounding communities.
10:43Provide a better life for your kids,
10:44often education.
10:45The final wave of this was the African
10:47Americans who came from the South,
10:49especially South Carolina,
10:51during the Great Migration.
10:52And in the 1950s and 1960s,
10:54people who lived through it
10:56described newhallville as beautiful,
10:58as the most risen black
11:00neighborhood in Connecticut,
11:01with the highest neighborhood
11:02rate of African American home
11:04ownership in the state of Flurrying,
11:06flourishing Southern neighborhood
11:07in a northern city.
11:09Where people grew okra and
11:11Peaches and beautiful roses.
11:12You could walk down the sidewalk and
11:14just by smelling tell who baked the
11:16best upside down cake in the neighborhood.
11:18People were formal in the sense
11:19that they went to the grocery store
11:21wearing their church clothes,
11:22including gloves if you're a woman.
11:26There was a close remained a
11:28close connection to the South.
11:29One farmer would load up the back of
11:31his pickup with greens in the Carolinas
11:33and he drive overnight to New Haven.
11:35And then you drive around Newhallville
11:37calling get your vegetables here,
11:38and people would rush out the same
11:40as they did for the hot peanut
11:41man when he made his peanuts.
11:42They always sold out very fast. Even today,
11:45if you look around you from now on,
11:46when you're moving through New Haven,
11:48you'll see lots and lots of
11:49South Carolina license plates.
11:50And that's why there remains an
11:52incredibly intimate and close
11:54connection between the North and South.
11:56And, and in particular that
11:58community in those days,
12:00Newhallville was notably safe.
12:01Everybody said that.
12:02Nobody locked their doors.
12:04It's the trouble comes when the
12:06work goes away.
12:07It's a painful irony.
12:08It's one of the most painful
12:09ironies I can think of it always.
12:11I'm an emotional person,
12:12and it makes me emotional still,
12:13all these years after I began this
12:16project that when the gun factory closed,
12:18gun violence came.
12:23So I had a subject, but not a story, right?
12:26Not a way of creating a narrative
12:28that would reveal and illuminate
12:29what I hope to know and to say.
12:31As a narrative nonfiction writer,
12:33my work involved relating the
12:35lives and experiences of others.
12:37Not myself, typically.
12:38And in this way I would also be
12:40following the example of Virginia Woolf,
12:42a fiction and nonfiction writer who
12:44exhorts herself in the common reader.
12:46Face the facts of other existences, grapple
12:49with the mechanism of external things.
12:51Report the speeches of men
12:53and women who existed.
12:54Independently of herself.
12:56In other words, be generous.
12:58Think about others as a writer,
13:00or you're not being a good writer.
13:02Back in New Haven,
13:03as I explored my incipient subject,
13:05I learned about kids who've been
13:06arrested for building their own guns.
13:08I saw pictures of the guns,
13:10and these were incredible machines.
13:12They were designed toward the forces.
13:14I was amazed.
13:15And I was also, again,
13:16another irony,
13:17overcome by the notion that these
13:20were children who are getting
13:22into serious legal trouble for
13:24something that had once been the
13:26mainstay of the city's economy.
13:28It was easy for me to imagine how
13:30these young people capable of such
13:32ingenuity could have been engineers
13:34or research scientists had they
13:35grown up elsewhere in New Haven.
13:37But they were juveniles,
13:38and it was really hard to talk with them.
13:40A lot of people tried.
13:42Even I was, as I was trying.
13:43One day,
13:44a New Haven criminal lawyer called me.
13:46He'd heard what I was doing,
13:47and he wanted to tell me about one of
13:49his clients, a young man named Bobby,
13:50who was from New Whoville and had been
13:52in prison at that point for eight years,
13:54since he was 16, for having,
13:56the lawyer said,
13:58been coerced into confessing.
14:00Coerced by police into falsely confessing
14:02to a new Hallville murder that, again,
14:05the lawyer said he hadn't committed.
14:07The victim was an elderly
14:08black man named Pete Fields,
14:10who'd grown up on a South Carolina
14:12farm come to New Haven in the 1950s.
14:14And as I suggested that many people
14:17had he had done really well,
14:19moved up and away,
14:20and he lived in a large house
14:22in a town outside the city.
14:23He fields had been killed
14:25while visiting newhallville,
14:26his childhood neighborhood.
14:27He'd probably been set up by people.
14:29Knew he was coming that day and
14:30would have a substantial amount
14:32of bill paying money on him.
14:33The lawyer said that this
14:35case might inform my project.
14:36The point seemed to be that Bobby's
14:38life trajectory had been shaped by the
14:40isolated neighborhood he grew up in,
14:42that if what the lawyer said was true,
14:44he had in effect been seen for who he was.
14:48More broadly,
14:49by growing up in segregated isolation,
14:51hits like Bobby were more more
14:53vulnerable to all kinds of trouble,
14:55including overzealous police officers.
14:56The parallel point I would
14:58just want to say about.
15:00Releasing is that you can't solve
15:03crimes without accurate information,
15:05and people who don't know and trust you to
15:08know and trust them won't help you when
15:10you suddenly need them to solve a murder.
15:12On a snowy Sunday, I visited the lawyer
15:15who'd called me, and this is live.
15:16His office was in, you know,
15:18New Haven is full of former large mansion,
15:20like houses that are now businesses.
15:22And he was in the top floor of a
15:25former huge house, and he was up
15:28under the eaves surrounded by boxes.
15:29I think he was in sweat clothes.
15:31And he was immediately.
15:33I mean, I just thought of Dickens.
15:35I mean, he's just such a character.
15:36And he was so he was so full
15:39of conviction and purpose.
15:40And he just said look in those boxes.
15:43And see what you think.
15:44And I started looking through the boxes,
15:47and I didn't know this man,
15:49and I was no more of an expert
15:51on such matters than I assume,
15:53most of you and I had no idea
15:56who this person was.
15:57Or whether he was innocent or guilty.
15:59But it was compelling,
16:00and the materials at first glance seemed
16:02persuasive and also seemed to speak to
16:05some of the questions I've been asking.
16:07So I went to the Cheshire
16:09Correctional Institution,
16:10where I met Bobby,
16:11and I liked him right away.
16:12He seemed frank and candid qualities
16:15and vivid contrast with with what
16:17the lawyer said he had done right,
16:18which was falsely confessed to the worst
16:20thing you could do to another person.
16:22I began visiting Bobby regularly.
16:24I met with people in Bobby's
16:26immediate community.
16:27I met.
16:27At least familiar with his case,
16:29with the ways of the department.
16:30Again, I'm no expert, but there was for me,
16:33a growing sense of his innocence.
16:35There was also a growing sense
16:36that he was a good subject.
16:38As readers, you know that not everybody is.
16:42I thought this about Bobby partly
16:43because of things he told me early on,
16:45which were things like, don't make me a St.
16:48I'm not a St.
16:49There was his willingness to relate his
16:51flaws unflattering parts of himself.
16:53And let's be clear,
16:55nobody believes that they'd in
16:57under any circumstances falsely
16:59confessed to committing murder.
17:01But Bobby two,
17:02wanted to understand why he had
17:04given in to police pressure.
17:06It was coercion, but Even so,
17:07Bobby believed he had to justify his action.
17:10And overtime,
17:11he convinced himself that he
17:13must in some way deserve it.
17:15I found that incredibly complicated
17:18and moving outside himself.
17:19He was a really observant person.
17:22Bobby had the ability to inhabit
17:24the lives of other people and
17:26express them later with rare recall.
17:28He had sympathy for suffering men and women,
17:30and he was just generally perceptive
17:32about people and their motivations.
17:34He could describe his childhood
17:36and the childhood of other people
17:38with detail that made me see it.
17:40He could also talk about how
17:42it felt to be
17:43other on the other side of new
17:45Heaven's invisible railroad track.
17:46Bobby was the rare kid who'd ridden
17:48his own bicycle all over New Haven,
17:50seen both of its sides.
17:52He called himself a traveler.
17:54He said that one of the qualities
17:56of Nice neighborhood isolation was
17:57that you were so stuck in place you
17:59didn't know what a future looked like,
18:01much less other experiences,
18:03other parts of the city or the country.
18:07The pervasive hopelessness around him,
18:09he said, expressed itself in many ways.
18:12People took comfort in everything
18:14from exercise to food and drink.
18:16The sex and family and love
18:18and alcohol and drugs.
18:20Some few had so much trauma,
18:22most notably exposure to violence at a
18:24young age, or the loss of loved ones,
18:27or parental addiction or severe neglect,
18:29that it led to an emptiness of spirit,
18:32a lack of hopeful sense of future,
18:34or a desire for agency.
18:36And they became violent themselves.
18:39I don't think I have to emphasize
18:42to this audience that people
18:43who become violent are very,
18:45very rare.
18:48Living in a vulnerable place and
18:50not far from a section of the city
18:52where kids are growing up with
18:54futures that seem so promising was
18:55painful for kids in newhallville.
18:57They'd see the blue panic phones around Yale,
19:01but not in Newhallville,
19:02where there was much more cause for alarm.
19:04And they'd see Broadway all lit
19:06up and shimmering for Christmas,
19:07where their neighborhood,
19:08as with Bobby, always described it dark.
19:11And they said that these countless
19:13contrasts could increase despair and
19:15alienation that in rare instances,
19:17could combine.
19:18In very at risk young people
19:20to have lethal results.
19:22To me it seemed intuitive that there
19:24would be an emotional relationship
19:26between gun violence and stark,
19:27juxtaposed inequality and
19:29inequity and inequality.
19:31This is not something,
19:32as I was working on this that was widely,
19:35you know,
19:35written about or thought by
19:37people who were professional,
19:38you know, scholars of this.
19:40But there were some people
19:41who were thinking about it.
19:42And so I just talked to
19:43anecdotally with people,
19:44and one person I spoke
19:45with was Anthony Campbell,
19:46whose yales chief of police
19:48who spent his life.
19:49Thinking about inequality and it's
19:51depleting consequences for young people,
19:53Campbell considers it crucial that
19:55his own Harlem childhood took place
19:57far enough from the campus of
19:59Columbia University that he didn't
20:01have to confront the educational
20:03opportunity he thought he'd never
20:04have and assumed was not for him.
20:06His mother was a corrections
20:08officer at Rikers Island.
20:09His father was in and out of prison,
20:11and when Campbell became the first
20:12member of his family to attend college,
20:14he joined the Yale class of 1995.
20:16He later received a master's
20:18degree from Yale Divinity School.
20:20We joined the New Haven Police
20:22Department and eventually became its
20:24second black chief before returning to Yale.
20:26Campbell told me that there were
20:27potent implications for young
20:29people living close by,
20:30an elite college, and yet a world away.
20:33When you can walk 3 minutes,
20:34he said,
20:35make a right and see nothing but
20:36wealth and security and well-being happiness.
20:38People with bright future outlooks hopeful,
20:41and you're looking over your shoulder
20:42because you might be harmed.
20:43You worry about eating rent.
20:45That wealth becomes a magnifying glass
20:47that takes any light and turns it
20:49into a laser beam that cuts you to the core.
20:51Young people,
20:52Campbell said,
20:52are forced to think to themselves.
20:54They don't care.
20:55They're right there.
20:56They have to notice and they don't care.
20:58And that becomes I got
20:59to do what I got to do.
21:03In the community where many young people
21:06felt they had no agency beyond protection,
21:08guns could be a source of
21:10agency and power and prestige.
21:12When I ask people from New Haven serving time
21:14in Connecticut prisons about an intelligent,
21:17academically gifted newhallville teenager
21:19who'd become neighborhood famous for shooting
21:22people before being murdered himself at 17,
21:25the explanation one young man who knew
21:27him offered was where he come from.
21:29They glorify violence.
21:30People want recognition.
21:32It comes from carrying a gun.
21:33The shooting at people,
21:35the shooting people to killing people.
21:36There's a feeling of you don't give a ****
21:38anymore, shoot somebody, it's nothing.
21:41Typically, those who commit St.
21:43violence exist in cohorts in
21:45what researchers call networks.
21:47They might be victims one
21:49day or perpetrators the next.
21:50And what they have in common is fear.
21:53Even in American neighborhoods
21:54that are statistically dangerous,
21:56the sources of violence are
21:58very small number of people.
21:59The violence resembles shark
22:01attacks in beach communities.
22:03It doesn't take much for
22:04everyone to be terrified.
22:06Bobby and other young people,
22:07both inside prison and not,
22:09spoke of young people's fear of violence.
22:11How exhausting it is that it
22:13distracts you from everything else,
22:14including school classes,
22:16that the anxiety is distorting.
22:19Most kids who had guns got
22:20them to protect themselves.
22:22I heard about a young man in Hartford
22:24who put on a bulletproof vest every day
22:26with his underwear while getting dressed.
22:28All this in one of the wealthiest
22:30states in the country.
22:33I consider it to the enormous credit
22:35of Bobby and many other people who
22:37took on this delicate subject and
22:39spoke with me about it because
22:40they wanted members of the public
22:42to know of their experience so the
22:44public could better understand
22:45the experience of others like him.
22:47Here's a brief sense of how it can
22:49feel to be a kid in a neighborhood
22:51where there's gun violence.
22:57I should tell you just
22:58a couple of things here.
23:00You'll remember that Bobby called
23:01himself a traveler because he rode
23:03his bicycle all over the city.
23:04He had an alleged codefendant in his
23:06murder case who's a kid named Kwame,
23:08who was younger than he and Kwame
23:10because he hadn't a majestic
23:12bond which he couldn't meet,
23:13spent his 15th and 16th birthdays in prison,
23:16and everybody who knows Kwame says
23:18that he was ruined by prison.
23:20They all hung out at a little corner store,
23:23which they referred to as the two
23:24four because it's open for 24 hours,
23:26just like a little neighborhood.
23:29You know, convenience store.
23:30But it was the bright lights for
23:32the community and the kids all
23:34would gather there and, you know,
23:36boys and girls and men and women,
23:38and there'd be music and dancing.
23:40And it was, it was sort of the spot,
23:41but it was also the spot where
23:43trouble originated, too.
23:45When Bobby goes to prison,
23:49he goes to Cheshire prison and.
23:53Oh, wait a second. This is.
23:55I'm so sorry. That's the second reading.
23:57I apologize. This violence is.
24:02So I said that they're exposure to
24:04violence leads to more violence.
24:05And what I'm going to read to you about
24:08is actually a beloved newhallville event,
24:10which was the round Robin basketball
24:12tournament that happens every summer.
24:14It's the best players in the city come
24:16together and they play at a court
24:17which is in the center of Newhallville.
24:19Then if you know about say,
24:20the Rucker Playground in Harlem or W 4th St.
24:23in Greenwich Village,
24:24it's a similar thing.
24:26We're really,
24:26really good basketball players
24:27come and a whole community.
24:29Turns out people would be like 5 deep
24:30at the fences and things like that.
24:32And everybody would be there to watch.
24:34But there had been a spate of
24:36shootings around Newhallville in 2018,
24:37and so nobody was going,
24:39and people were scared.
24:40One of the people who was going,
24:43though, was a guy named William June,
24:44Boy Outlaw, who'd been a person who'd
24:46spent time as a child in Newhallville.
24:48He'd spent a lot of time in
24:50federal prison because he'd been
24:51involved in a violent drug gang.
24:53But upon release,
24:54he completely changed
24:55and transformed his life,
24:57and he become a violence interrupter.
24:59So I'll just read you this little section
25:01into this tense neighborhood moment,
25:03steps from where Bobby had lived
25:05before he went to prison on the last
25:07Sunday and July arrived the street
25:09out outreach worker William June,
25:11boy Outlaw with a lawn chair,
25:13which he sat down facing the court
25:14from right smack in the middle of
25:16the sidewalk along Shelton Ave.
25:17his address as long ago as his own
25:19youthful street days were beginning.
25:21Here in the summer heat,
25:22outlaw was resplendent in his
25:24great bodily girth,
25:26set off handsomely by Chris
25:28checked shirt designer sunglasses.
25:29And the goal tooth,
25:31Sherman Malone,
25:31a leader of the anti violence
25:33organization outlaw workforce,
25:34said of him. You can't understand.
25:37You can't succeed in the criminal
25:39world without real skills.
25:40But it's very hard for us to
25:41find people who are not still
25:43entranced with their skills.
25:44William isn't,
25:45but Williams like a politician.
25:47Sure enough, the lawn chair became a
25:50congressional office, attracting a
25:51procession of seekers and supplicants.
25:53Among them was a young man in his
25:55late teens with a dark blue sleeveless
25:57shirt and strain all over his face.
25:59Sleeveless wanted outlaw
26:00to know that another kid,
26:02notably small and swaggering, whom he named,
26:04had stolen his purple bicycle.
26:06Both were from the housing
26:08project three blocks away.
26:09When sleeveless briefly left his
26:11bike unlocked outside his apartment,
26:13Swagger had ridden off on it.
26:15Sleeveless seemed both subdued and
26:16yet holding within him a deep anger
26:18to be without his bike and reduced to
26:20pressing his case to outlaw kids in
26:23newhallville, outlaw would say later,
26:24have so little that what they
26:26do own matters too much to them.
26:28One crucial thing.
26:29Like, not just sleeveless.
26:30It was his means of periscoping
26:32trouble in the near distance and
26:34evading it as outlaw and sleeveless.
26:35We're talking swagger came into view,
26:37swooping down Shelton Ave.
26:39on sleeveless bike.
26:40Spotting sleeveless,
26:40he banged a right turn and
26:42disappeared along Brewster St.
26:43toward Dixwell Ave.
26:44Sleeveless turned back to outlaw and said
26:47in a flat voice that either wanted his
26:49bike back or swagger owed him 80 bucks.
26:51Outlaw told sleeveless the bike would be
26:53returned if it was really his, but was it?
26:55He hadn't stolen in himself, had he?
26:58No, it wasn't a stoley sleeveless.
26:59That his cousin had given
27:01it to him three years ago.
27:02Sleeveless didn't want any beef.
27:03He didn't want anything at
27:05all except his bike.
27:06Sleeveless look far beyond tired,
27:08like the oldest teenager in history.
27:10The furrow and his brow was a two-month
27:12ditch. Would outlaw help? He ask.
27:14Effort emanating outlaw would help.
27:16Sleeveless closed his eyes and took a breath.
27:19He opened his eyes and blinked them
27:20for the first time since he'd arrived.
27:22Outlaw telephone Kermit,
27:23Carolina,
27:24the popular neighborhood native who'd
27:26been the Hill House High School principal
27:28and was now in charge of youth stat.
27:30A city government organization that
27:32partnered with assorted social
27:34service and law enforcement agencies,
27:36identifying and working with the most
27:38at risk kids in the school system.
27:41The stories Carolina cell phone
27:42contacts list could tell were
27:44so tragic people wondered how he
27:46retained his well known bonami.
27:48Within minutes,
27:49a Carolina arrived at outlaws,
27:51chair clad and dapper black workout gear.
27:53He was also a former state championship
27:55winning both Hill House basketball coach.
27:57In no time Carolina and Outlaw had
27:59communicated with Swagger about
28:01sleeveless bike,
28:02which swagger agreed to return in
28:04exchange for a $10 finder's fee
28:06he negotiated from Outlaw.
28:08Then, almost right away, here came swagger.
28:10Lean, diminutive.
28:11Structure and strutting,
28:12everything about Swagger advertised what
28:14was true, that he had friends with guns.
28:17To look at him was to confront Sleeveless's
28:19just around the neighborhood predicament.
28:22As a young person in the neighborhood,
28:24you have to prove yourself so
28:26many times to those who tried you,
28:27and it never, ever stopped.
28:30The two peace negotiators pulled Swagger
28:31aside and talked to him vigorously.
28:33The agreement was brokered,
28:34the $10 paid over,
28:35and then Outlaw said sternly to swagger.
28:37That's the end of this.
28:39It stops here.
28:39I don't want to hear anything more.
28:41He looked meaningfully at Swagger and
28:43told him I gave you 20 bucks last week.
28:46He meant the crime paid, but not forever.
28:48Only now did swagger quite leisurely depart
28:51and then return minutes later with the bike.
28:53It was a simple mountain bike model,
28:55and not in fact purple,
28:56but red with uneven streaks of blue
28:58spray painted over portions of the red.
29:00Both coats of color had sustained
29:02abundant scrapes and scratches,
29:04and the frame tubing was
29:05well buffered with use.
29:06A thick chain with lock was
29:08coiled around the seat post.
29:09Swagger walked off without
29:10looking at sleeveless.
29:11Sleeveless had never looked at him.
29:13One swagger was gone.
29:14Sleeveless hopped on his
29:15bike and rode away as he did,
29:17outlawing Carolina simultaneously
29:18yelled to him to use that chain.
29:20From now on,
29:21slave was called back that
29:22the chain wouldn't work.
29:23Because he couldn't unlock
29:24it from the seat post,
29:26outlaw and Carolina agreed that
29:27the second cone of paint probably
29:29did mark the bike as a Stoli.
29:30They had pessimism about Swagger.
29:32He was close to another neighborhood
29:34kid with an ascendant St.
29:35reputation.
29:36Everything outlawing Carolina
29:37knew about Swagger made them
29:39very worried for sleeveless.
29:41And this time,
29:42when handguns had become widely
29:44accessible to young people and accepted
29:46way among them of settling arguments,
29:48beefs that ended in death had
29:49begun over much less with swagger.
29:51Living in his apartment complex,
29:53how was sleeveless?
29:54Going to navigate his day-to-day,
29:56neither outlaw North Carolina could
29:58anyway promise sleeveless as well-being.
30:00Was he now in peril for snitching
30:01to them about his bike?
30:02Or is being paid to return by Keith
30:05Stolen a sufficient victory for Swagger?
30:07And sleeveless as possible, breach of St.
30:09Code could be overlooked.
30:11Could swagger if scammed with
30:12sleeveless to play outlaw for some cash?
30:14Unlikely,
30:15but Outlaw and Carolina never
30:17estimated the ingenuity of teenagers.
30:19It was likewise easy for the two
30:21violence interrupters to imagine
30:23sleeveless becoming so cornered by menace.
30:25He might acquire a gun for himself
30:26and try to take out Swagger,
30:28which would solve sleeveless problem
30:30and also armor him with a street reputation.
30:33Sleeveless didn't seem like
30:34that kind of kid at all,
30:35but she never knew how.
30:36Thermal pressure in the canister.
30:38Only bad choices could transform
30:40someone into a shooter.
30:42Getting the gun would be the easy part.
30:43For sleeveless,
30:44one could be arranged at a price
30:46not much more than the value
30:47of a beat up mountain bike.
30:55Mass incarceration speaks to mass poverty.
30:58Prisons are full of people who grew up
30:59in poverty, talk to people in prison and
31:02involved there for violence, and they
31:04say that nobody there is straight bad.
31:06The phrase commonly here is I'm
31:08a product of my environment.
31:10Prison is its own environment.
31:11It's defined by stress and boredom
31:14and regret. What it takes to succeed
31:16in prison is different.
31:17What it takes to succeed out here,
31:19people in the external world.
31:20Events. In the external world,
31:23they remain in a sense the
31:25age of when they went in.
31:26They make it through and then emerge,
31:28waited by the experience of
31:30making it where they've been.
31:31One day I received a call
31:33from Bobby's lawyer.
31:34The state had reinvestigated his case and
31:36Bobby's conviction had been overturned.
31:372 hours later there I was at the prison,
31:39watching a man be told that it all
31:41been mistake. He's going home.
31:43When a person is released,
31:45mass incarceration gives way to mass reentry.
31:48People emerge to a society that seems
31:49mostly to say you ****** ** go fix yourself.
31:53Uniquely, these are people not
31:54in a position to do that.
31:55They have their on their biography,
31:57whatever landed them in prison to begin with.
31:59The experience of being in prison itself,
32:01which is again notably stressful.
32:03I saw the challenges in federal
32:05reentry court in New Haven,
32:06which I attended across a
32:08year for research purposes.
32:09All the people there who were in the
32:12courtroom were to serve as help and buttress.
32:14People just getting back on their
32:15feet after a long time in prison.
32:17The judge, probation people,
32:19social workers, mental health workers,
32:21lawyers,
32:21and they're all there just trying to
32:24help recently release men succeed.
32:25They wanted them to succeed,
32:27but the struggles were so acute.
32:29It's a good moment to point out
32:30how tempting and yet problematic
32:32it is to generalize about people.
32:34The more we individuate,
32:35the more effective we are as writers,
32:37police, teachers, doctors and employers.
32:40And re entry.
32:41So often you are where you've just been.
32:44Bobby's a good example of how
32:46difficult reentry is.
32:46He was exonerated for something he
32:48hadn't done, but he still emerged,
32:50marked by his nine years of incarceration,
32:53with a scarlet key on his chest.
32:55He's still 16 and lived experience
32:56of the world around him he'd
32:58been plucked from as a teenager,
33:00and now he's asked to be an adult.
33:01He would repeatedly tell me, Nikki,
33:03I don't know what I'm good at.
33:05No, he had no marketable skills in the world.
33:07His failures in his disappointments piled up,
33:10rejected for job after job.
33:12When he went to Home Depot,
33:13they wouldn't hire him.
33:14To gather the shopping carts in
33:16the parking lot and put them in
33:18the central location.
33:19Bobby became so lost and
33:20in need and then depressed.
33:22It was heartbreaking.
33:23It was seemed to me so unfair.
33:26But he used to tell me how being perceived as
33:28something less drenched people he grew up
33:30around with shame failures hit them harder.
33:32Kids would stop going to school because
33:34they already felt up against it,
33:36and making mistakes at school made them
33:38feel so much worse about themselves.
33:40To be clear, these were kids with
33:42as much promise as any others,
33:43and I just always would think
33:45about those gun inventors.
33:46It's a difficult thing to imagine
33:47the future purpose of education.
33:49And you don't have enough examples
33:51around you of people attesting to
33:52it with their own life experiences
33:54and you have to take it on faith.
33:56As for Bobby,
33:57here's a quick sense of him early on
33:59during his re-entry when his priority
34:01was his 16 year old kids priority.
34:03And it's what I like apologize again.
34:05It's what I began to tell you before about,
34:08you know,
34:09the Bobby's been a traveler and that
34:10Kwame was his alleged Co defendant
34:12and that they hung out at the two,
34:13four and that Bobby's prison was in
34:16Cheshire and that the police officer.
34:19Who?
34:20One of the police officers
34:22who coerced his profession,
34:23the one Bobby was more intimidated by
34:24his guy named Clarence Willoughby.
34:28On any day when Bobby could again
34:30be a traveler, moving around,
34:31interacting with people,
34:32he was at his most optimistic.
34:33He wanted his life to permanently open up.
34:36Across the difficult first year after prison,
34:38the former boy on a bike now made earning
34:40a driver's license his top priority.
34:42Back when Bobby turned 16,
34:44his driver's license wasn't,
34:45for him, a defining American moment,
34:47or even on his mind.
34:48Somebody could always come and get you,
34:49he said.
34:50Or buses, or your friend's mom or dad.
34:52We'd all pile in,
34:53growing up in a disenfranchised community,
34:55many 16 year olds from Newhall.
34:57Well, didn't pursue their licenses,
34:59Glen Worthy,
34:59the Newhallville native who was principal
35:01at Hill House High School, said.
35:02When it comes up with kids,
35:03they say hush Mr.
35:04Worthy, I don't want to talk about that now.
35:06Mostly they can't afford it.
35:08Beyond the hundreds of dollars
35:09it cost to become licensed.
35:11Many Newhallville families own no vehicle,
35:13making it impossible to secure a
35:14car in which to learn to drive and
35:16then to practice and then to reach
35:18the Department of Motor Vehicles,
35:19which was miles away out in Hamden.
35:21There was also the reluctance to fail,
35:23sometimes felt by kids who've
35:25already endured many defeats.
35:27Bobby's friend Shea described
35:29getting a license as extra stuff.
35:31She had been 21 and away at
35:33college when she finally got hers.
35:35She said that for newhallville
35:36kids she grew up with,
35:37there was no drivers Ed class offered
35:39at Hill House and no way of getting
35:40to the high school in Hampton,
35:42where such courses were held.
35:43Perhaps the license wasn't even necessary.
35:46Bobby's mother and father hadn't,
35:47so far as he knew, ever had licenses.
35:48A lot of people were on from right
35:51around without licenses, Bobby said.
35:53This was a practice known to many in
35:55Newhall Villas, driving or riding dirty.
35:57Dirty was versatile slang with
35:59many applications.
36:00Shea said that everybody she knew
36:02growing up was dirty somehow. Suspended.
36:04License, no license, no insurance.
36:06Car taxes.
36:07Let my insurance lapse because it
36:09was either phone bill or insurance.
36:11Food or insurance.
36:12Which would you rather pay?
36:13Car insurance that was.
36:15Let me pray.
36:16This is a lot of people and you have
36:18to drive to make money at your job,
36:20so you take a chance.
36:22Bobby was determined.
36:23He talked about the drivers licenses.
36:24His golden ticket said to him,
36:26it means the world because
36:27when I have my license.
36:28You can get a job outside New Haven,
36:29where it's safer.
36:30Bobby's desire was to be upstanding,
36:32not someone who resorted to driving dirty,
36:34who remained unlicensed
36:35because he'd been in prison.
36:39Bobby thought that having the license
36:41would now finally make him feel liberated.
36:44Bobby's cousin Koya helped
36:45him to get the formal process
36:46started with a learner's permit.
36:47She and Granddad gave him a few driving
36:49lessons, and then Shay took over.
36:51They had glorious times
36:52together out on the road.
36:53She loved to drive,
36:54and so did he for months after
36:56his release from prison.
36:57She help Bobby enroll in an 8 hour
37:00accredited course on safe driving practices.
37:02There he sat in the backroom of the
37:04classroom behind all the teenagers and
37:06enjoyed learning about the potential
37:07on road dangers of a messy car,
37:09about how passenger weight
37:11distribution affects turning radius.
37:12After completing the course
37:13came the qualifying tests.
37:14First written and then rode.
37:17Bobby went to the DMV in Hamden
37:18to take his written examination.
37:20By the time he got to the
37:21DMV he was visibly shaking.
37:23The atmosphere at the squat
37:24brick DMV building didn't help
37:26with its uniformed guards.
37:27They'll smell the dulled faces
37:29of all the people standing by.
37:30The DMV could have been a
37:32correctional institution.
37:33Bobby began his test,
37:34and soon a question about Skids slid him
37:36so far off course that he became rattled.
37:38Rushed through the remaining questions
37:40just so he could get out of that room,
37:42get out of that building.
37:44He failed the test by one point.
37:48Afterwards, he could barely speak.
37:50He was so crushed.
37:51The next available test date in
37:53Bobby's part of the state was at
37:54the Cheshire DMV in mid-april.
37:56He could have waited a few days more
37:57and gone to a closer Connecticut town,
37:59one where he hadn't been incarcerated.
38:01But he was eager to defeat the test,
38:03and besides, Bobby felt no
38:04need to avoid Cheshire.
38:05His time there was someone else's mistake,
38:07not his. He began studying the manual.
38:09He said hard.
38:10On his second written test,
38:12a Bobby arrived at a coffee shop in
38:14Cheshire 3 hours before his appointment
38:16time and prepared like an athlete.
38:18He hydrated with water, ate a banana,
38:20and limbered up with practice tests.
38:22He wanted a victory in Cheshire.
38:25He had all been memorized the manual,
38:26but these practice tests asked
38:28for knowledge of the specifics of
38:30tire alignment and teen curfews,
38:31areas outside the manuals coverage.
38:33What was up with these non manual
38:36related questions?
38:37When Bobby answered one incorrectly,
38:39he jumped up,
38:40nearly knocking the table over.
38:41On the way to the DMV,
38:43Bobby passed the prison.
38:44The Cheshire DMV was a much smaller
38:46building than Hamden and had the hospitable
38:48ambience of a National Park welcome center.
38:51As he went in,
38:52Bobby was making nervous jokes and saying.
38:53You're not nervous.
38:54I'm not feeling.
38:55I got this.
38:56His dark 26 year old face contrasted
38:58with the rosy white teenagers who
39:00arriving with their parents for the test.
39:02As the woman at the front desk signed him in,
39:04she took a practice glance
39:06and said you'll do fine.
39:07Then she advised Bobby, take your time.
39:10Once registered,
39:10Bobby disappeared down a hallway.
39:1240 minutes later he emerged, arms raised,
39:15roaring, high fiving, cheesing.
39:16His test score had been nearly perfect.
39:18There have been several questions
39:19identical to those on the practice test.
39:21It seemed like all the answers were
39:22popping out, he said, speaking.
39:24The joyous rush. I'm soaked.
39:25I'm turned. I'm ecstatic.
39:26I'm so soup from the car.
39:28He made calls, left voice messages.
39:29Passing the prison,
39:30he brought up Detective Willoughby.
39:32I don't bear him any grudges, Bobby said.
39:34It's not my heart to do that.
39:36People can do wrong things and
39:37it doesn't make me hate them.
39:38I'm just letting people be who they are.
39:41Bobby would have to wait three
39:42months before taking his Rd.
39:43test in mid-july,
39:44deferring his wishes that he knew how to do.
39:48And he was so steadfast
39:49about license preparation,
39:50it seemed worrisome to think
39:51what would happen when there
39:52was no longer the upcoming Rd.
39:54test to organize his life.
39:55He enjoyed practicing with Shay, she warning.
39:58It's no more smooth sailing
40:00church drivers today.
40:01Bobby, don't let anybody break your flow,
40:03which was not to say Bobby
40:04wanted the process to last.
40:06I can taste it, he said.
40:07When I pass, I'm going to cry.
40:08You'll see tears.
40:11The day before the road test in July 2016,
40:13Bobby drove around the city
40:14practicing what he judged was
40:16weaknesses. He reminded himself to
40:17check his mirrors every 5 minutes,
40:19to note the speed limit,
40:20to place his hands six hours apart on
40:22the wheel near the two four store.
40:24He said. We were sitting there when they
40:25pulled me off the porch and arrested me.
40:27It was raining.
40:28Then he beeped a greeting,
40:29explaining that was swami and them
40:31Kwamis group was out there every day.
40:33Bobby drove so well you could
40:35forget he was practicing.
40:36Then when he made a small error,
40:38forgetting to signal for a lane change,
40:40his hands trembled.
40:41And wanting something so much.
40:43After all the waiting,
40:44everything happened very fast.
40:45The large graying white man and sunglasses,
40:47a blue agency issue polo shirt
40:49and blue khakis approach Bobby.
40:51The man looked like a
40:53country boy state trooper,
40:53and it turned out bobbye examiner was
40:56a retired suburban police officer.
40:57He asked Bobby to get into the driver's seat,
41:00to turn on the car's ignition,
41:02to use his turn indicators first right,
41:04then left to press the brake pedal.
41:06As the car crept out of the parking lot,
41:08Bobby signaled left and something in the air.
41:11Lifted.
41:15Now I'm just briefly going to
41:18finish by discussing a little bit
41:20the nature of the work I was doing
41:22and how I approached my research.
41:26And they're just basically bullets.
41:28But as a writer, your first
41:29obligation is to the objective truth.
41:31As best as you can learn it,
41:33the truth belongs to your reader.
41:35There's no absolute validity,
41:36but there is accuracy and description,
41:38representation and facts.
41:40You can't understand St.
41:42violence without understanding the
41:43conditions that undermine people,
41:45the legacies of the past,
41:46of racism, corruption,
41:47and the ongoing unfairness related to every
41:50kind of opportunity that forms city life.
41:53The recurrent truism that's
41:54revealed to me over and over.
41:56Even though people got really
41:58tired of talking about it is what
42:00an awful ongoing plague racism is.
42:02The horrible ongoing cost
42:03for everybody in the city,
42:05and that isolates a cohort of people
42:08together generationally in poverty.
42:10I spent so much time trying to
42:12really document how a neighborhood
42:14becomes segregated.
42:15This is not something people
42:17were eager to reveal at the time,
42:19but you could make discoveries.
42:21I found interviews,
42:21for example,
42:22with a cohorts of real estate agents
42:25from the 1950s.
42:26And I found old documents with
42:29restricted racial covenants.
42:30And of course both white people and black
42:33people remembered and told of those times.
42:35I thought of the neighborhood as
42:37the main character of my book.
42:38Accordingly, I would,
42:39over the course of this project,
42:41interview more than 500 people,
42:42some of them many times.
42:44Mostly I met people because
42:45somebody else vouched for me.
42:47I followed the line of Bobby's
42:48case and the people involved
42:50meeting people everywhere from,
42:51you know,
42:52kitchen tables and police stations and Law
42:55Offices and schools and parks and prisons.
42:57And I wanted it to be a
43:00representative account.
43:00And there were so many subjects to
43:02understand within the broader subject,
43:04and that would be everything
43:06from industrial history.
43:07To policing, to reentry to housing and so on.
43:09I spent a lot of times in libraries
43:12and archives looking for documents
43:13and my bibliography grew massive
43:15and I used the documentation again
43:17to help what was a fundamental
43:19fundament of this project,
43:21which was talking to people.
43:23One reason to read everything relevant
43:25is you better understand your subject
43:27right and you know what to ask.
43:29I always wrote out all my interview
43:31questions for everybody beforehand
43:32and I created an order and a
43:34structure to the interviews,
43:35but before I ask people questions.
43:37I introduced myself a little bit,
43:38as I did to you all,
43:40and I told them about my life and my subject.
43:42I think if you are sincere and
43:44make your own self vulnerable,
43:45you have you.
43:46You establish trust and one hopes to
43:49report some aspects of my project.
43:51It required asking people to
43:53dwell on things that were the
43:55worst parts of their lives,
43:56and that is a big emotional commitment
43:59and a big emotional request.
44:01And I had to be aware always
44:03of how upsetting
44:04the experience can be and the
44:06people express being upset.
44:07In many different ways, over and over,
44:09I reminded myself that you're responsible
44:12for your entire subject, for everyone.
44:14At the end of every interview,
44:16I asked my subject if,
44:18given our conversation,
44:18they had worries about how I
44:20was thinking about anything,
44:22if I seemed in danger of making mistakes,
44:24either mistakes of fact or tone.
44:26If I was having, you know,
44:28if I was coming to wrong conclusions,
44:30if, my if, or even assumptions.
44:33I was crazy for feedback and
44:35I used to check back with.
44:37All sorts of people making sure
44:39what I was thinking or hearing
44:40seemed true to broader experience.
44:41So as an over and over thing and
44:43I'm just so appreciative of how
44:45patient people were with me.
44:47Other requirements of the project
44:49were neutrality, balance,
44:50critical distance, transparency.
44:52And these things all really
44:54do exist for a writer.
44:55You can affect the truth of
44:57what you're trying to describe.
44:58One of Bobby's sisters had young children,
45:01and in our basement,
45:02our kids were older and we had
45:04the clothes that they had used
45:06when they were that age.
45:07And some of them were in
45:09really good condition.
45:10And it's just as people
45:11passed things on to us,
45:12I want to pass things on to them.
45:13But my editor at The New Yorker
45:15said I couldn't do it.
45:16And these are the rules of writing
45:19nonfiction that many editors have
45:22spent a lot of time drafting and.
45:24Umm.
45:25The reason for it is is that you
45:26can compromise your impartiality
45:28and you can give people both
45:30unfair expectations of how you're
45:32going to portray them.
45:33But more even more important
45:34than that I think,
45:35which is pretty important,
45:36is that you can distort reality
45:38as it exists for a Community.
45:40So I think it I decided ultimately
45:41it was best to adhere to the common
45:44standard of journalistic ethics,
45:45which if you want in your own small way
45:48the public to glimpse something accurately.
45:50I think that was the only way I was
45:53writing about neglect and indifference,
45:55and I knew that if my book.
45:56Things very wrong.
45:57A skeptical public would neglect
45:59and be indifferent to it.
46:01A book like this is so easy to ignore,
46:03especially because it's not cheerful.
46:06It's really confusing because happy
46:07endings in books and in movies and on TV,
46:10these are great and everybody needs to see.
46:12Happiness needs to have reasons
46:14for and causes for hope and
46:17for optimism and belief and.
46:20And you know,
46:20people who come from the community,
46:22like I the the one that I was describing,
46:25people do succeed.
46:26People do emerge and live the dream,
46:28but it's so much harder.
46:30And that's really the point of it.
46:31It's there are so many unhappy endings,
46:34too many unhappy endings,
46:35or at least ambivalent endings,
46:37and it's such a waste.
46:39Umm.
46:43So this is a hard part for me. So.
46:49I3 of the young people I got to know
46:51while I was writing the book were shot
46:53and killed in the course of that and.
46:58I just, you know, they were
47:00all they were all really.
47:06And, you know, endearing people.
47:09And I just think it if you're going to.
47:12Write a book and come into,
47:14you know, tragedies like that,
47:16you, you better be honest and
47:18honorable about how you do it,
47:19because otherwise nothing would get better.
47:23I I you know I I hope you're.
47:30I hope you're on. I'm getting the
47:32sense that this is hard to do.
47:34And one of the reasons it's hard to
47:36do is because there's so many topics
47:38within topics involved in the project.
47:40And it took me 3 months
47:41to create the structure.
47:42And I did it by organizing index
47:44cards with everything that I wanted
47:46to say like a freight train.
47:47And it's completely arbitrary
47:49which structure is like.
47:50So like in a freight train
47:51when it passes you,
47:52you can see a blue car and then a tan car
47:54and a rust colored car and a green car.
47:56And I was just moving them around
47:57for a really long time and I just,
48:00I think that in some way as a writer.
48:03The structure of what you're doing,
48:05the way you create a conversation,
48:06or the way you create a book,
48:07it has in some way to modify or
48:09take the shape of the broader
48:11things that you're thinking about.
48:12And you have to be alert to the perils
48:14and pitfalls that you're up against.
48:16And these are things that I don't think
48:17I need to telecommunity like yours about,
48:19but I'll just say them too many writers
48:22are filled with high minded intentions
48:24and they become near missionaries,
48:26you know, and saviors,
48:27and they want to enter another
48:29world and report back or something.
48:31And this is just.
48:32This is just.
48:33Leads people to simplify poor
48:35neighborhoods and it makes them seem,
48:37in the simplifying seem lesser.
48:39Or it makes alternatively,
48:40there's a long history of people writing
48:42about poverty and making it seem somehow
48:45garish or too dysfunctional or something.
48:48You know?
48:48It leads to books that are
48:50mainly about suffering,
48:51and I didn't want to do that.
48:53I think hardships are real,
48:55and describing hardships are important,
48:57but there are real reasons that
48:59people are proud to come from
49:00communities like Newhallville,
49:01and there are most of the people,
49:03there are law.
49:04Fighting people who love their community and,
49:08you know, in the few people there,
49:10and it's a very small number of people who,
49:12for reasons personal to them,
49:14are disrupting the community.
49:15These are not things that most
49:18people in the Community have
49:19anything but real aversion to.
49:21And it's important to say that.
49:22It is likewise important to say
49:24that even the people who are most
49:26disruptive in the Community have
49:27their own complexities as people,
49:29and that a writer can pathologize
49:31and be dehumanizing.
49:32And so for me, I'll just tell you that.
49:34Some of the most significant I I read
49:36really fast and if you look at this
49:38book you'll see a long bibliography.
49:40But some of the books that meant
49:41the most to me were actually
49:43allegedly works of fiction.
49:44They're probably more auto fiction,
49:46but I would really commend,
49:47if you haven't read it,
49:48Claude Brown's 1965 classic
49:50of Harvard's Harlem St.
49:52Life,
49:52which is itself a great migration story,
49:54which is called manchild in
49:56the promised land.
49:57And I would recommend Douglas
49:58smarts portrait of Post Industrial
50:00Glasgow which is called Shuggy
50:02Bane and Elena Ferrante's books.
50:04About Naples, they have an uncanny
50:06similarity in their portraits of how St.
50:09violence functions in those
50:11communities in Europe to Newhallville,
50:13and what all of them have in common
50:16is generational poverty and a kind of
50:19discrimination that runs through it.
50:21The one area where I didn't always
50:22tell the truth had to do with names
50:24and the reason I I I I hope I'm
50:25not taking too much of your time,
50:27but I just want to say that the
50:29reason I changed some names was
50:31because of advice from.
50:32Law enforcement, people in prison, St.
50:34outreach workers,
50:36educators worry that if you
50:38mention in our time,
50:40which is a social media time,
50:42if you mention people who have
50:44been involved in violence,
50:45it can be misconstrued by people
50:47who might not read the book,
50:48might not have context,
50:49but hear that somebody's been mentioned
50:51and allegedly disrespected and that
50:53name can be put up on social media and
50:55it's just little things like that.
50:57Just like the bicycle, which can
50:59lead to something that is so severe,
51:01social media and the access to guns.
51:03Really had an enormous effect
51:04on street violence,
51:06a lethal effect.
51:08Also,
51:08something I did was I changed a
51:10couple of names of people who I
51:12was mentioning just for the way
51:14the book ended up only at the
51:15worst moments of their life.
51:16And these were private people
51:18and it seemed really unfair not
51:19to describe them in any kind of
51:21with any kind of fullness.
51:22So if you're just describing the
51:24worst moment of someone's life and
51:25they are a that you know it was of,
51:27no,
51:28it wasn't like I was describing Martin
51:29Luther King or Abraham Lincoln or something.
51:31It wasn't anybody whose name,
51:33whether it was Joe or Bob or Pete,
51:34would mean anything to people.
51:37And I'll just a couple of
51:39conclusive thoughts.
51:39I think a lot as I as I think back
51:42on this project about the negative
51:44consequences of unfamiliarity
51:46among people in the same city,
51:48that the costs of for city residents
51:50living in different parts of town,
51:52not knowing one another, is enormous.
51:54For teachers and for students
51:55and for police and for employers
51:58and the people they hire and for
52:01medical professionals,
52:01everybody is more complicated.
52:03They seem more alike.
52:05And that was the kind of thing
52:06that I just felt as a kid in those
52:08bookstores or in those other
52:09stores in downtown New Haven.
52:10People who study policing have
52:12found out what I found anecdotally,
52:14that what most people want from
52:15police is a fair hearing to be heard
52:18and respected and treated with a
52:19sense that they are individuals,
52:21that the police have some understanding
52:24and ideally compassion for them
52:26in their trials.
52:27This is true also in the relationships
52:28between the groups that I mentioned,
52:30citizens, educators, officials,
52:32writers, doctors.
52:33All this is in a way another way of
52:35saying that we run into trouble when
52:37we generalize about people and we
52:39forget that everybody's complicated.
52:40You there? I I said before,
52:42but I really emphasized the need
52:44for hope and optimism in life.
52:45Whether you're the practitioner
52:46or you're the person who is,
52:49you know, if I'm a writer,
52:50who I'm writing about and that
52:52what happens to young people and
52:54also to anybody if we don't have
52:56any expectations of of of a of a
52:58fulfilling future and some sense
53:00of agency in your life and then.
53:03I just over and over the shipwrecking
53:05consequences of living in fear.
53:07And then I just want to say that
53:09a reason that New Haven is a sort
53:10of is a wonderful place to live,
53:12and it really is,
53:13is that there are so many
53:14different kinds of people here.
53:15It's just a small place,
53:16but it's such a diverse place.
53:17And it was a real gift
53:18for me to grow up here.
53:20And it's been that to come back.
53:21And there are so many people here who
53:23have been dedicated to the public
53:25good and to the lives of others,
53:27just as Minneapolis as a city,
53:28which is known for having more theaters
53:30per capita than any other place,
53:31you haven't kind of known for having more.
53:34Nonprofit Social Services and
53:36social justice institutions,
53:38going back to my childhood
53:39than anywhere else.
53:40But new New Haven has problems
53:42that no individual can solve.
53:44And, you know,
53:45I I know an exceptional mother with
53:47roots in newhallville who is a devoted,
53:50hard working,
53:51thoughtful and kind person.
53:52She has two sons,
53:53and both of them have been shot to death.
53:55And she needs help and she knows it.
53:58And she thinks she needs change.
54:00And the kind of help that she needs
54:02can only come from big institutions.
54:03Like government and like universal
54:06major universities and like companies,
54:08people who have power and leverage,
54:11they you know,
54:12there has been no post industrial
54:13solution there,
54:14new holes all over this country and
54:16then that is still something that
54:18is not really within the purview
54:20of researchers or government
54:21officials to me is just.
54:23I I just don't understand it.
54:25Finally,
54:26I just want to mention again the
54:28scathing consequences of being
54:29considered somehow is less and it
54:31makes for humiliation and shame and guilt.
54:33I would distinguish shame and
54:35guilt by saying that guilt is the
54:36feeling that you did a wrong thing,
54:38a feeling of responsibility
54:39for a wrong action,
54:41while shame comes from the sense that
54:43there is something wrong with you,
54:44that who you are is the reason
54:46you have to feel remorse.
54:48And then I want to just end on a grace
54:50note and say that Frederick Wiseman,
54:52the great documentary filmmaker.
54:53I was once talking about his work
54:55and somebody in public and somebody
54:57asked him about it and he said that
54:59his work ultimately every project
55:01is motivated by love and that no
55:02project could be finished if he
55:04didn't begin to feel that way.
55:05And that was certainly how I felt.
55:07So that while there's a lot of upsetting
55:09things and as you I'm apologize,
55:11but as you can tell,
55:12every time I talk about it,
55:13some of it becomes fresh in my own mind.
55:15You know how much sorrow and
55:18there is in in in this story.
55:21I met so many people who I just felt
55:24that way about and I feel at that
55:26core is the real optimism that I feel.
55:28And also I just generally feel that
55:31these are problems that the problems
55:32that I'm describing can be solved and
55:34it's much of it is indifference and
55:37confusion rather than impossibility.
55:38So I hope I didn't go on too long
55:40and thank you so much for your time.