Yale Psychiatry Grand Rounds: January 6, 2023

Transcript

• 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.