What's Good with Prosecutor Races

[00:00:00] What's good Ohio? I'm your host James Hayes and this is the Whats Good Ohio podcast

[00:00:20] where we talk to the activists, organizers, visionaries and good trouble makers coming together

[00:00:25] to make our state better for everyone. No exceptions. I'm joined as always by Sarah Rohanberg

[00:00:31] from Policy Matters Ohio. Whats good over at Policy Matter Sarah?

[00:00:35] Hey James, its good to see you. We just released a paper that we have been working on for

[00:00:41] almost six months about the landscape of childcare in Ohio so that has been the big thing

[00:00:47] going on with policy matters. We are hopefully going to be talking to some folks on one of

[00:00:53] the next episodes here too, specifically about what's going on. But since we're about

[00:00:58] a month out now I just want to plug the day without childcare rally that will be happening

[00:01:03] at the state house on Monday May 13th. A lot of childcare facilities across the state are

[00:01:08] going to be closing and trying to get our state to fund our childcare system adequately

[00:01:15] basically. So that's been our biggest focus at the moment.

[00:01:20] Whats going on over at Ohio Voice James?

[00:01:22] Not much over at a highway voice this week. There's not much good going on in general's

[00:01:29] outfills personally. I just wanted to take a moment and start the show just to shout

[00:01:34] out a friend of mine and a really powerful organizer. Columbus Ernest Lever who is going through

[00:01:41] a really tough time right now in the hospital at the moment, recovering from that really

[00:01:45] challenging episode. And just wanted to take a moment just to shout him out. He's been

[00:01:51] building really cool stuff in the city for a little while now with the Royal Oak initiative

[00:01:57] where he teaches kids chess and there's a lot of youth outreach and also with Blackman

[00:02:00] build and just take a moment to throw him some love and also his wife Ivory and daughter

[00:02:04] Zimaya as they are helping him recover. So yeah we're going through it but really excited

[00:02:10] for us to get into this episode today and hear from others about the good work they're

[00:02:14] doing in Ohio. Well we will definitely keep him in our thoughts and if there is anything

[00:02:19] people can do to help, we will put it in the show notes. We will do that. We will do that

[00:02:22] for sure.

[00:02:37] We just had a primary in Ohio on March 19th and with that the candidates on the ballot

[00:02:42] for the November election have been decided. A lot of folks have been organizing around

[00:02:46] on prosecutor races, particularly in Cuyahoga County and Franklin County. Today we're

[00:02:51] rejoined by Keisha Krum, lead organizer and executive director at Greater Cleveland

[00:02:54] Congregations to talk about what's good with prosecutor races. GCC has been working

[00:02:59] around these races for a long time just to give you all a little more context around the

[00:03:04] prosecutor race in Cuyahoga. This year will be the 10-year anniversary of the murder of

[00:03:10] senior rice who was shot in November of 2014 by Cleveland Police outside of Cadillac

[00:03:16] Center. There was a huge uprising in the city after that and after that and one of the

[00:03:22] results was that the prosecutor at the time, and against he was out in 2016. Since that

[00:03:28] time GCC has been on the ground pushing and has continued holding the prosecutor's office

[00:03:33] accountable over the last decade. A lot of the work that they've been doing has led to some

[00:03:39] of what we'll talk about today and how the primary race played out. We're really excited

[00:03:44] to be joined by Keisha to learn more about the work that GCC has done, talking more about

[00:03:49] the importance of prosecutor races more broadly and just hear about what's good with prosecutor

[00:03:54] races in Ohio. Welcome Keisha. What's good? Thank you.

[00:03:57] Yeah, well this is Ohio so it's always good. It's been really amazing organizing Ohio.

[00:04:07] I moved here in 2019 to actually work with GCC so I started in November and then in February

[00:04:14] we had a thousand-person action around criminal justice where we were actually announcing the

[00:04:22] commitment from the county executive at that time which was Armand, Boudish and Cuyahoga County

[00:04:27] the creation of a crisis diversion center which was actually the first of his kind in the

[00:04:33] state. That was a resource for police and families to take people that were having an

[00:04:39] mental health crisis and so prosecutor Amali actually was an ally in that campaign and really

[00:04:48] helped to leverage the conversations with the county executive's office and his office to

[00:04:54] actually utilize the crisis diversion center and that was one of the things he talked about on

[00:05:00] the campaign trail and to his credit in our credit I think he has been good on that and I think

[00:05:07] what we talk about in organizing is that there's no permanent enemies, no permanent friends,

[00:05:12] just permanent interest and for GCC and prosecutor Amali like in 2016 which was before I came to GCC

[00:05:24] but when he ran against McGinty as you talked about the history of Tamir Rice, Amali ran as

[00:05:29] the reform candidate and won that election like as a newcomer and GCC was really pivotal in creating

[00:05:39] a ground swell around the change along with other people and as GCC put on a candidate's form

[00:05:46] with a thousand people at that time and I think that helped to really showcase this opportunity that

[00:05:53] Kyle Hogue at County was ready for change in the prosecutor's office and I think in 2020

[00:06:00] prosecutor Amali ran on a post and so what we saw in 2024 because there's been continued work

[00:06:07] on this issue when you look at wrongful convictions I think our county leads the state and innocent

[00:06:15] people being convicted of crimes and doing jail time. The increase of number of people being

[00:06:22] proposed for the death penalty and where we were really digging in was the youth bind over work

[00:06:29] and so a youth bind over is essentially a juvenile 14, 15, 16 or 17 that commits a serious crime

[00:06:38] and that child can be then transferred to a adult court. And I remember when I came in 2019

[00:06:44] we'd actually had a small action where we had a prosecutor Amali, we had Judge Sheen and then Judge

[00:06:52] Russo and they were coming to talk about the opening of a third drug court and so this drug court was

[00:06:58] really designed to work with people that particularly people of color because the drug courts that

[00:07:06] existed before were not really accessible because of the criteria and so they changed the criteria

[00:07:12] and that was actually the first time I met prosecutor Amali and it was really great to see

[00:07:20] reform and progress and how the prosecutor was thinking about crimes and really giving people

[00:07:27] a second chance. We also knew there was this tension and I think at that time the NAACP

[00:07:34] and the Urban League were actually talking about the youth bind over rate so this was in 2019

[00:07:40] and so they just got worse and so for GCC we were hearing that and again as we say no permanent

[00:07:51] enemies, no permanent allies, just permanent interests are interests aligned where we were working

[00:07:57] to really move policies that we thought were going to get at decriminalizing mental health

[00:08:04] and really began to shift criminal justice in our county. Could you go a little more in depth into

[00:08:10] what a bindover is? I know you like briefly mentioned it but just dive a little bit deeper into

[00:08:16] that for someone who has never heard the word like me. Yeah absolutely the Marshall project

[00:08:22] this would be a good flag for has a great article that explains what's a bindover

[00:08:28] and in our state there's two kinds of bindovers. One is mandatory and so that essentially means

[00:08:36] that if a child and so when we say children we are talking about children 14 to 17 is involved

[00:08:43] in a situation where there is a gun that can be listed as a mandatory bindover. There's another

[00:08:52] kind of bindover that's called discretionary bindover which is where the judge and the prosecutor

[00:09:00] have the discretion so they have the choice to say this child has done x, y and z we think

[00:09:09] that this child should be removed from the juvenile system and put in the adult system

[00:09:14] and tried as an adult. And so when that happens the child when they get transferred they lose

[00:09:21] their rights as a child they essentially become an adult. So you have a 14, a 15, 16 or 17 year old

[00:09:29] child that becomes an adult and some cases the child has been involved in murder

[00:09:39] and in other cases the child was in a group of other kids that were

[00:09:46] creating a lot of mayhem or as the kids say, wiling out and all of those kids get charged the same.

[00:09:56] So if one kid has a gun and just charges the gun and there's five kids with them all five kids

[00:10:02] are charged with the same charge. So GCC has been really digging into this since 2021

[00:10:12] to like so we spent about two years just doing research to like meet with people that were

[00:10:18] experts in the field also meet with families and children that were in these kinds of experiences

[00:10:25] to just try to understand what was going on meeting with judges lawyers public defenders

[00:10:30] private attorneys prosecutors professors policy walks just to like understand what's really happening

[00:10:40] and then December of 2022 GCC did a education form we called it justice for our children which is

[00:10:49] really understanding bindovers. And that's when we really got very clear that there was clear

[00:10:56] injustice happening in Caihoga County because what we learned is that Caihoga County leads the state

[00:11:06] and youth bindovers. We learned that other counties that are bigger than us

[00:11:13] and actually have significantly less bindovers. And we've learned that for example one of the counties

[00:11:20] we talked to was saying that their judges are very clear they say to the prosecutor,

[00:11:26] we're not binding this child over. We're going to keep this child in juvenile system. So there's

[00:11:31] actually a culture of seeing children as children and really honoring brain development. So that was

[00:11:38] the other piece that we learned is that his brains aren't developed until they're 25.

[00:11:44] In our society we have a lot of things that we say children can't do like children can't make

[00:11:49] decisions about consensual sexual relationships they can't make decisions about voting until they're

[00:11:56] 18. They can't get their driver's license until a certain age. And so I think we're clear in our society

[00:12:03] about like the ability that children have to make rational decisions. And I think what we've seen

[00:12:11] in our criminal justice system, particularly in the juvenile bindover piece that that's been a shift.

[00:12:18] And we also learned that that happened in the 90s when all of this 1992, when all this discussion

[00:12:26] around super predators, this theory that there was going to be these super predators released

[00:12:32] on the community. And so it created this across the country, all these laws that change,

[00:12:39] remove the judges discretion to keep a child in a juvenile system for rehabilitation and create

[00:12:48] mandatory bindovers and then made it harder for discretionary bindovers. And that fell disproportionately

[00:12:56] on African-American communities. And what we've saw here is that 98% to 88% of those children are

[00:13:06] black boys. And so it's a heavy levy that's like, you know, really been leveraged. And so what we

[00:13:16] wanted to do in December, because we were really clear like, wait, this is bad and it is unjust.

[00:13:27] And a lot of people had no idea. And I mean, these are people that are

[00:13:33] people that want to create change, people that believe in justice, to believe children or children.

[00:13:39] And they didn't know. And so we were really clear that if we're going to get people to want to

[00:13:46] be able to afford change, we also have to create the moral outrage that this is not right.

[00:13:56] And there's another way to do it because all the other counties are doing it differently.

[00:14:03] And so are we different because we're special because our kids are worse and sometimes being

[00:14:09] different is not bad. But we think in this case, it wasn't really leveraging our community.

[00:14:17] And we also know that the data shows that children that are sent transfer to adult, adult system

[00:14:24] when they get out, there's a higher chance that they're going to recommit crimes. And it doesn't

[00:14:31] make our community safer. It might seem like in the short term, but in the long term we're paying

[00:14:38] for these choices like over and over and over. And there's alternatives. And so that was the part

[00:14:44] we were like, wait, we don't have to do it this way. None of the other counties are doing it this

[00:14:49] way. And those alternatives to like give children a chance to rehabilitate because they kids change.

[00:14:58] When the data shows that even like some of the kids that have been the worst offenders by the time

[00:15:03] they're 21, they've calmed down. They see the world differently. They do things differently. And I

[00:15:10] think we might even sit in ourselves like, yeah, when I have a lot of friends right now that have

[00:15:15] 15 year olds and like, oh, Lord, some of the stuff that their decisions are making is just crazy

[00:15:25] for their children. And so that's part of it I think is on us as a society like how are we really

[00:15:31] engaging our children, giving them opportunities and options, and also making sure that families

[00:15:38] have what they need so that they can take care of their own children.

[00:15:43] And that's such an important point too, I think, is that especially in a post, not that COVID is

[00:15:50] done, but in 2024 now like there are so many fewer spaces for kids to go do anything than even 10

[00:15:58] years ago when I was in high school and everything costs money. I just I don't understand what we

[00:16:04] expect kids to do. And also additionally adults don't thrive in adult prisons. So why the hell would

[00:16:14] we be sending children there? Exactly. And so that's the like, it was interesting because like as we

[00:16:20] laid out like our county's the worst, that there's other alternatives, the science is very clear.

[00:16:30] It was also the sense of that wait, like sometimes some of our children are killing people

[00:16:39] and that is never okay. And that we had to be very clear, this is a complex issue. There are victims,

[00:16:47] there are people that have lost their children, their mothers or fathers, their grandmothers,

[00:16:52] they're never going to be with us again. And we have to honor that. And and we have to hold our

[00:16:59] children accountable. And we also have to give them a shot to change because they're young,

[00:17:08] they're going to get out. They're coming back to our communities. And so we've had to really grapple

[00:17:15] with all of these different complexities to it's not a simple issue. So like we're very clear

[00:17:22] about that. But we also are like just because it's not simple doesn't mean we should walk away from

[00:17:27] it either. No, it's certainly not simple, but it is one of those things where it's all about how

[00:17:32] do we have safety, you know, as a community incarceration, punishment, these strategies have

[00:17:39] been proven to not necessarily produce more safety. They might produce us a feeling of security

[00:17:45] in the moment, but they don't get to the reason the root of why we have instability, why we have

[00:17:52] violence in our communities. And so often I hear a lot of you, we're brought up with super predators

[00:17:57] sort of frame and comment, you know, and how some of these ideas that like what is the root of crime?

[00:18:02] Is it something that comes from some sort of something wrong with people, some sort of pathological

[00:18:07] issue in communities or is it actually structural, you know, is it is a, you know, we have so few

[00:18:14] options and pathways. And and you were talking about how other counties that you use alternative

[00:18:21] approaches to doing things. And I also know that a lot of this particular issue around

[00:18:28] by endovers became a huge animating or animated the debate in the this most recent primary.

[00:18:35] And it was in large part why the local parties cited not to endorse the incumbent, oh,

[00:18:40] Malley. And so I just wanted you to talk a little bit about that because it's one of the it's an

[00:18:43] example of strong issue organizing having a real impact in the election. And it's you know,

[00:18:50] just the result of the work that y'all had been doing for the last couple years.

[00:18:53] Yeah, that's a great question. And so I think that we knew and like after we understood the facts

[00:19:01] and who this impacts. And also that the prosecutor arguably is the most powerful

[00:19:11] actor and criminal justice because the prosecutor has unfettered discretion

[00:19:17] in a way that I think we have a hard time imagining like we see the blunt end of it. But there's also

[00:19:26] discretion and using that power for innovation. So as we knew that and we our December action in

[00:19:33] 2022 just created this like, I think the tsunami of like whoa, this is wrong. And we can do better

[00:19:44] and there's other alternatives. And the prosecutor is the most important person in this discussion.

[00:19:53] It's also the juvenile judges, but like the prosecutor's power outweighs the juvenile judges

[00:20:00] in this in this dynamic, right? And so I think what what we saw was that this organizing of

[00:20:08] creating this moral outrage and also giving our community the tools of like science and data and stories

[00:20:17] that and an alternative that issues became really clear and like undeniable that things have

[00:20:25] to change. And that the prosecutor has to do different and the judges have to do different.

[00:20:32] So what we saw like coming into the election and so GCC is not partisan. So we don't endorse

[00:20:39] oppose or support candidates, but we do educate in a very edgy way. And our critique about

[00:20:48] our county and particularly the prosecutor Malle's policies around youth bindover

[00:20:56] became I think just this like flag in the ground. I'm like, we can't ignore this anymore. And so everywhere he went

[00:21:04] and because we like we heard different discussions like I went over to Collinwood where the their

[00:21:10] civics 2.0 were asking questions and 50% of those questions were about youth bindover

[00:21:18] and we didn't meet with any of those kids. Now one of their teachers was a member of one of our churches

[00:21:24] that was at that form and knew about our issue work. But it just created this ripple effect. And then I

[00:21:31] think that Matthew on grabbed onto it. And so he created infographics and videos to like really talk

[00:21:40] about that there are other ways to deal with this. And we know that because we see it in our state

[00:21:46] like it's not even like you got to go to California to see something different. It's like just go

[00:21:52] down to Hamilton. Just go to Franklin. You'll see it. So it was exciting to see that our work

[00:22:00] really helped to shift a conversation in our community and to provide like real critique

[00:22:10] about a policy that could be different. And that that was shaping an election, shaping election

[00:22:16] conversations and that people were making decisions based on that. And so it was like a huge

[00:22:25] action of dismantling this status quo around the democratic machine. And now you know this is

[00:22:33] a Democrat. We're not even talking about like Republicans or independents we're talking about

[00:22:39] this is kind of a democratic stronghold. These are democratic candidates. And it was just I think

[00:22:48] interesting to see how the real like effective work of organizing of taking that anger,

[00:22:56] turning it into real possibility for change and shining the light on policies. And to see that our

[00:23:04] elections cycle can give us a chance to call out, to have people be held accountable or have to like

[00:23:13] you know stand up for like why did you make this decision? Why are you doing this?

[00:23:18] And that's a part of the prosecutors unfettered discretion that the prosecutor can make all kinds

[00:23:25] of decisions. And we as voters have no way of asking like why did you do that? Why are you not

[00:23:32] doing this? In a way where they the prosecutor has the pause has to like defend

[00:23:41] why they're doing that. And so we heard the defense right that our kids are worse,

[00:23:47] grab his eye or and you know our leaders like looked into that research and that's just not true.

[00:23:54] It's it's clearly a policy is clearly a choice. And then that choice can be different.

[00:24:01] Yeah and all that kind of led to one of my favorite moments of any election season I've ever seen

[00:24:06] when y'all were accused by the prosecutor O'Malley of extortion. I believe is what I saw on the

[00:24:12] headline and when he refused to come to the candid for him that y'all held this year. So

[00:24:17] and it's what I appreciated about it was he so distinctly described the art of organizing in

[00:24:24] one of those quotes. I was like you can just get rid of the week-long trainings we do and just

[00:24:28] just have people read that article and I believe he said they try to get you into a room

[00:24:33] and fill it with people and get you to take a stance on an issue. And I was like yeah

[00:24:39] it's kind of what we're trying to do here but I was just wondering if you could share that

[00:24:44] they're just you know paint the image for our listeners about that it was then and

[00:24:50] and what happened with that. Yeah so it was that was a moment of in some ways you could say a

[00:24:57] badge of honor and organize them because it's like you knew you really did something to

[00:25:05] get under a decision maker's skin where they couldn't just ignore you anymore. They couldn't

[00:25:13] co-opt you to like get you to do what they want and like focus on other things because there's

[00:25:19] other things this is such a small issue. Why don't you guys focus on like keeping kids out of

[00:25:27] getting in trouble which we actually are doing that too and they attack you because they know

[00:25:34] that your claim and your power is something it has to be reckoned with and instead of wanting to

[00:25:40] be accountable you lie and that's that's essentially what happened and so the essence of this is that

[00:25:47] we've been in lots of conversations with all the candidates we'd sent a letter to them actually

[00:25:53] in December about our candidates form asking in the comm laying out what it was going to do

[00:25:59] and then there was lots of emails back and forth between prosecutor Amali and GCC to even decide

[00:26:08] if the prosecutor was going to come. And so we finally got an agreement to do a briefing

[00:26:15] with the prosecutor because he said I want to know everything you're going to ask.

[00:26:20] I want to know who's speaking out on all the details. We're like okay we have nothing to hide.

[00:26:27] We will be transparent. We had a group of 15 leaders that were on that call. We also took really

[00:26:34] serious one of their critiques of us was that we were talking about the kids that were committing

[00:26:41] crimes and we weren't talking about the victims. And so we had to really dig deep to say like

[00:26:47] what are we going to really do around this question of victims is not just about lip service

[00:26:53] and saying like we honor victims and we want to you know the loss and the things our children have done

[00:27:00] are not okay. So we built a relationship with Brenda Glass who has developed a multi-purpose trauma

[00:27:07] center and it's pretty incredible. They do amazing work of really helping families who

[00:27:14] are dealing with violence, heal and get back to life and keep them safe. And so we learned about

[00:27:21] our work and we learned that they also do safe shelters. So the prosecutor's office actually

[00:27:27] calls up Brenda Glass and asks like can we send people to your safe shelter to keep them safe

[00:27:34] and witness protection. So known entity very credible the attorney general's office gives

[00:27:41] money to this program, the city of Cleveland reputable but also a program that you know they used

[00:27:48] to have safe 17 safe shelters now they have 11. So we thought okay this would be a great

[00:27:56] middle space to meet their critique say to prosecutor Amali and the candidates we care about

[00:28:02] victims let's put our money where I'm office. And so on this phone call which we have a transcript

[00:28:10] of like every word, every um every period everything we Brenda Glass was on and she laid out

[00:28:18] what she does prosecutor Amali says hi to her she says hi to him and she asked the question about

[00:28:25] an investment in that program to help them you know get to the safe shelters and never

[00:28:31] end the conversation did he say like you can't say that or like this is extortion it was it was

[00:28:38] just this like oh well GCC knows about the budgeting process and we were like oh really how do

[00:28:44] you know that? And he's like well I know because before this happened we actually got the county

[00:28:51] can executive René to look at increasing the public defender's budget. Because one of the things

[00:28:58] we figured out in our research is that the public defender has a stellar track record of keeping

[00:29:04] children in the juvenile system versus private attorneys who don't have such a great record

[00:29:13] and they have a better record of sending his to adult court. So anyway there's been a lot of steps

[00:29:19] to get to that moment. So we met, we laid out all the questions prosecutor Amali never asked

[00:29:27] for clarification he never anything we gave him all the questions so we had I think we had five

[00:29:33] questions so we were going to ask it this form and we also said like this is a draft we're still

[00:29:39] figuring things out and so as we got closer to the date we were we circled back around like hey

[00:29:47] we haven't heard from you are you coming? And we also sent him a letter oh because this is what

[00:29:54] it was to like he sent a letter back to saying that he wasn't coming and why he wasn't coming.

[00:30:02] And so we responded back and we refuted all of his points because it was just like some of the things

[00:30:08] that he was saying were just not true like at all. And so we wanted to make sure that

[00:30:14] he knew from us that this is not true like you can like you use Marcy's law as an excuse but Marcy's

[00:30:24] law doesn't say you have to listen to the families to define what the punishment is going to be

[00:30:31] and what the charges and what the cases are going to be right which he was trying to say to us that

[00:30:36] like I can't do that because of Marcy's law well that's not true and that he couldn't

[00:30:42] invest in a program for victims which does not true either because his office does do those things

[00:30:50] so we were surprised when we get a phone call from a reporter saying that like prosecutor of

[00:30:59] ballet just like lobbies and ex-extortionist of GCC. And we were like what?

[00:31:07] Like really? And so it was this great moment I think for our leaders in our organization to

[00:31:14] remember that politics in Kyle Hoga County as a blood sport until we know that when you're

[00:31:22] really challenging power that when they can ignore you and they can't like co-op to they will attack

[00:31:29] you. And that was clearly an attack to try to like attack the reputation, the credibility and the

[00:31:38] power of the organization. And I was so proud of our organization because they just they stood up

[00:31:45] they were very clear this is this is a lie and like for the prosecutor to lie is a big thing like

[00:31:55] we've been down at the courts to actually watch the court hearings and when kids lie they get

[00:32:05] consequences for that like it affects their credibility it affects lots of things in their cases

[00:32:11] and so we have this like hypocrisy. And so our challenge at that moment was to be clear with our

[00:32:18] people though we did not extort the prosecutor GCC organizes to create change we did not ask

[00:32:26] them for money for our organization we're a dues based organization our members pay dues

[00:32:31] we have donors we get grants we're clear that if we're going to create good trouble we can't use

[00:32:39] their money to do it because I was just taking away. So it was a it was a I think like our folks

[00:32:45] just felt like okay this is a sign that we are really doing what we the mission of GCC is to create

[00:32:53] good trouble and to really challenge power in a real way where they can ignore you they can't just

[00:33:00] buy you off they you know have to attack you I mean the other option you had was to negotiate

[00:33:07] and that's what you're trying to do like come be accountable to the citizens tell us where you stand

[00:33:13] on these things so that people can make an informed choice about who they're voting for

[00:33:20] and that's what we were trying to do. So it was a it was a strong moment for our organization

[00:33:24] and I think a weak moment for the prosecutor.

[00:33:42] I think you sharing that story one thing that really sticks out to me is the idea of like when

[00:33:47] you are someone who has been in power and had control accountability feels like an attack right

[00:33:54] like you feel like that power is being threatened which good because we're threatening you.

[00:34:02] But that's insane I can't believe that like to publicly lie and also just be accusing organizers

[00:34:10] of extortion like well this has been absolutely excellent. I want to add an idea.

[00:34:17] Yes please do. The interesting thing too like so labor unions when they're organizing to actually

[00:34:25] create unions they do they have this term called inoculation where they get the workers to say like

[00:34:31] look you're organizing to take money from the boss and the boss is not just going to smile

[00:34:38] and say like here take my money the boss is going to say they're going to they have a bag of tricks.

[00:34:45] So we actually started to like think of this as a good trouble buster's bingo because what are all

[00:34:53] the tricks that the status quo uses when you try to really like share power and create change

[00:35:04] and this is like textbook like the first thing they do they call you mean they call you bullies

[00:35:08] they call you extortionist so it's like oh okay we know what we're doing and so that helped to really

[00:35:15] for our leaders to just have a confidence that like yeah this this is a sign we are doing what we

[00:35:23] are meant to do. We're not just here playing nice games to be liked we're here to organize for real

[00:35:33] change and to get the status quo to change the way they operate and the way they treat our children.

[00:35:41] Well that is the perfect ending sentiment here I feel like because yes that is what we should all

[00:35:48] be working towards could you Keisha just share with us ways to stay connected with GCC how we can

[00:35:56] continue to support the work that you are doing yeah so you can stay connected with GCC follow us on

[00:36:02] our Facebook Twitter and our Instagram page you can also check out our website and also if you're

[00:36:09] interested a May 7th at 7 p.m. we're having another criminal justice form on a jail before trial

[00:36:18] I'm really looking at this broader system of how bull are treated when they don't have enough

[00:36:24] money to get out of jail and that they're stuck in jail even though they haven't been convicted

[00:36:29] of a crime and what that does to their life and what that does to our community so you can join us

[00:36:35] for a May 7th action you can also if you're interested in our criminal justice work you can

[00:36:41] be a part of our team and learn more about the work that we're doing amazing thank you so much

[00:36:47] for joining us today this has been a really great conversation well thank you it's been really fun

[00:36:52] yeah no thanks so much Keisha you know y'all been doing really really great work on this issue

[00:36:57] for years now and you're one of the groups I know can put a thousand people in a room whenever you

[00:37:03] kind of want to essentially and that is not something every every group that says they're organized

[00:37:08] and can do so I know that y'all do organize people and you build build real power y'all take on real

[00:37:14] fights and so it's really cool just to hear some of the reflections on the work that y'all have

[00:37:20] done around this particular issue and I know we could talk for like three or four more hours just

[00:37:26] about this as well as a number of other things that y'all do and have worked around so I'm sure

[00:37:31] we'll have you one again down the road yeah y'all are always getting into good trouble like you said

[00:37:37] and really really appreciate everything that y'all and GCC have been doing right well we appreciate

[00:37:43] all high voices and we love the partnership call out we're here to keep doing things to make our state

[00:37:50] better

[00:37:58] as always visit whatsgoodohio.com for show notes and links and subscribe to whatsgoodohio wherever

[00:38:03] you get your podcasts we'll see you next time to keep talking about what's good here in Ohio

[00:38:19] you