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Crystal abolition is for everybody is a podcast that tackles the sometimes-difficult conversations around prison abolition. I’m Crystal.
Graham And I’m Graham. This season is about the media’s involvement in carceral or abolitionist thinking-
Crystal How it uses narratives to impact, radicalize, and shift culture.
Graham Just a reminder friends, though the title of this episode may give you some warning, remember that harm itself tends to create situations of alternate harms.
Crystal There will likely be other painful topics brought up too. Take care of you.
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Crystal Hi everyone. Welcome back. In this episode, we will be talking about media misdirection. And what we mean by that is that the story that we are hearing, celebrating, or being afraid of is not actually the story. And I know that sentence in itself carried a lot, and is very, very deep. So we are going to spend this time this episode, talking about what that means for each of us, and giving you all you know, tips and advice on what to look for when you encounter these stories. So Graham, what is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about media misdirection?
Graham There’s something I’m thinking about based off of your description of media misdirection is, yes, that is a lot. Like the way you describe the sentence is a lot for people to take in. What we’re watching isn’t the truth. And then I’m thinking about some exercises I did during training for some of the coaching work that I do. And they had an exercise about storytelling. And the basic narrative of the exercise is you tell a certain story of a phase in your life in a certain way to elicit a certain response out of the audience. And the message behind that is: we tell stories, humans, like, individuals tell stories. Like if I’m trying to convince Crystal that I’m upset that my mom did something, I’m going to tell the story in a way that gets Crystal to be upset with me. I’m looking for alignment. And so like, it’s really not that confusing to see the media doing something like that. It’s really not that nonsensical to think that the media would absolutely have a narrative that they’re trying to convince people of. Like, I’m thinking about a show that I’ve watched before called “Pit Bulls and Parolees”. I’ve seen clips of it on social media. And the narrative behind “Pit Bulls and Parolees” is, it’s so like, it’s so unthinkable that people who are incarcerated would have any compassion whatsoever. And that these exceptions to the rule are carrying and training a dog. And that’s not really the case. Like, what’s really taking place is, you know, human beings have an ability for compassion, regardless of mistakes or choices that they’ve made in life. And that’s, and people that are incarcerated are starved for compassion. So more often than not, like, they jump at the opportunity to work with animals. There’s extensive levels of dog programs in the prison system in California. So that’s something that came up for me.
Crystal Yeah, I recently visited a California state prison. And during that time, a person, an incarcerated person gave a speech. And he talked about the dog program that was in there. So he trained, trained dogs for veterans and people with disabilities. But the program was being cut. And he was talking about just how devastating that was for him, and how the prison didn’t apply for the grant again. They didn’t care enough about the program to you know, to sustain it and maintain it. So this individual was pretty devastated that his partner of a few years was was being taken away. Another thing that comes to mind when you talk about that, Graham, is incarcerated firefighters. It’s kind of strange, right? Because when you hear about incarcerated firefighters, you hear a lot of folks, you know, in the comments and all that, thanking them for their work. But we don’t think about how firefighters experience forced labor. They’re literally paid 15 cents, 30 cents a day, sometimes $1 if there’s active fire situations. And I know Ra, the co-host for season one and two, in Season One, she talks about how when you’re in the women’s prison, they’re forced to, you know, to go into the firefighter program. She talks about how a lot of women try different, you know, unsafe things, so that they don’t have to go into it. Because it’s just so physically exhausting. It’s traumatizing. Because when you become a firefighter and you get that training, not only are you fighting fires on the outside, but then you are in charge of taking care of the emergencies that happen inside. So she talks about having to take care of women who are beat up by a CO, or taking care of women who tried to commit suicide. So, you know, to the listeners, the next time you hear about firefighters or read about firefighters, I do invite you to think about how they’re forced into this career path. Well, not a career path because they can’t even get a job once they come home, as a firefighter.
Graham That’s a good point.
Crystal But they’re forced into this labor and forced into being further traumatized.
Graham Absolutely. And then the media, when they, so California is known for extensive fires during the fire season. And we see story after story go up about this fire, that fire, this brush fire, this forest fire. Every time–I’ll say this because I don’t know if it’s every time–almost every time, if not every time, there is a prison firefighter force that is there tending to that. They are putting their lives on the line. They are sacrificing greatly. It’s extensive work. I have friends in men’s prison who have gone through the firefighter program. Just like you said, finding a job when they get home is almost impossible, if not impossible. There’s very few programs that allow you to enter CalFire, because of your record, mostly. But I mean, all of the fires that you hear, from what is the fire season? July to October, that’s essentially our fire season. It’s more than half of the year. There’s, there’s incarcerated firefighter forces at every single one of those fires. People die, people are maimed, people are injured for the rest of their life. And you never hear that. You just hear of the work that firefighters are doing. They’re, they’re getting $1 an hour while they’re out at fires, and maybe $1 a day while they’re in at fires. So that’s some media misdirection right there.
Crystal And then still called inmate firefighters. Like, they’re sure to put that “inmate” and show the pictures of them in their orange jumpsuits and orange gear, to make sure that you know that they’re inmates. Not just firefighters, but inmate firefighters.
Graham One hundred percent. That’s part of the use of certain terminology, like, buzzwords that the media uses. Because they know that there’s a profile. They know that there’s a social profile that people have about people who are called inmates, felons, convicts, parolees. They know that they can use these words and incite automatic assumption about what that person is about and who they are.
Crystal Mmhmm. And even when you hear the stories that they label as feel good stories of the quote unquote “felon” who saved the baby from drowning, the quote unquote “felon” who pulled this woman out of her burning car after a car accident. I invite the listeners to think about what those words, like what emotions and feelings they bring up. Because you are seeing that this individual saved another individual, but then they throw the word, convict, felon, inmate, in the mix. And we have been trained to feel icky. To really not trust them. To say that they are deserving of X, Y, and Z because of these labels. And like we talked about in this season, all of this is purposeful. They’re doing this to elicit a certain emotion or response, kind of like what you talked about Graham,
Graham Yeah; they lean on the assumption that the person is inherently bad, and that they’re an exception to the rule. Because this, you know, the media is basically saying this bad person did do one good thing. All this bad, they did one good thing. And it’s a way of highlighting the story, but also making it seem like it’s an exception to the rule, when really it is the rule. Anybody is capable of doing things that benefit other people. Humans have compassion. One mistake in your life, or a series of mistakes and bad choices in your life doesn’t define you. But the media takes that completely by using the buzzwords.
Crystal Has that ever happened to you, Graham?
Graham It happens a lot. So it happens a lot. Because, for my job with Success Stories, I deliver a program in prisons. And the idea is always, the most common message that I get from other people is “Oh, that’s good. Those people need that.” No, everybody needs that. Every human being needs to, like develop emotional intelligence, have an awareness of the systemic harms that are taking place and how we’re feeding it. It’s not about “those people in prison” that need that. Like, but that’s a, that’s just a misconception that people have is like, “Oh, we’re cooked out here. We’re done.” No, nobody is done. Everybody needs to engage in self-work.
Crystal Yeah. What about, like, stepping foot outside of the prison? Like what has been your experience coming home after being incarcerated for so long, and just being attached to these labels all the time? I mean, even now, after years of doing the work that you’re doing, and you know, becoming the amazing person that you are, I’m sure those labels still come up for you. Not to put you on the spot.
Graham Yeah. Well, they do come up. They come, like before I got involved in the work I’m in now I worked in, like moving companies, consignment stores. There was a presumption about like, something came up missing once at one of the places that I was working. And I got along with greatly with everybody. I made a commitment when I came home that I would never hide what I did, like what I was responsible for. I would never hide where I came from, that I was, that I’m fresh out, and something came up missing in the store. And I remember that whole day getting the looks. Now, you know, the likelihood of me stealing something at my work and thinking I’m going to get away with it is super low anyways. But the assumption was, “Oh, well, you know, he’s committed, he’s done stuff like this before. He’s been in prison. So he probably did it again.” And then when it showed up at the end of the day, it was as if nothing happened. There was no “I’m sorry”, nothing like that. I didn’t expect that anyways. I, you know, I expect the assumption to take place because there’s a stigma around it. The media continually reinforces that stigma, I think is, is the message. Like, that didn’t start with them, with the people in this store where this took place. It started with the messages they received that reinforced fears.
Crystal Right, that happened…well, I’m sorry that happens to you, first of all. I can’t, I can’t imagine what it’s like just being stuck with something for life. You know, no matter how much work you put into yourself and you know, back into the community. That also happened to my brother. As I mentioned in this podcast, this is the second time he is incarcerated. He came home after the first time he was incarcerated. He was away for like five years. And he came home for a little while, a couple of years. And when he got a job doing construction and doing, you know, work in a factory, he had that label with him from the get go. It was so hard for him to get that job. And once he got that job, he was the one that you couldn’t trust because he had just gotten out of prison. He was still on parole. And when they let people go with that job, he was like the first to get cut, just because of his history, unfortunately. So, it sticks with you. You know, we, we celebrate prisons so much. And we celebrate cops so much as being, you know, the answer, to keep us safe; as being, you know, the answer for rehabilitation, you know. And this country has invested in only one tool, and that is prison. And so often, that tool seems like the only solution. And it might be. But that doesn’t mean we have to celebrate it. And media does encourage it. And you see how this continues to affect everybody in their everyday lives, and doesn’t allow us to find solutions that actually help our communities or actually help the Grahams of the world. So that we can, you know, move towards the future where we don’t need prisons, we don’t have these labels. And it’s actually, like a community-invested world. And the media is highly culpable of continuing this all the time with all of the headlines. Whether you’re watching a show or documentary, Jeffrey Dahmer, whatever it is, it’s everywhere. They have TikTok for cops now. Every time it’s, I’m like, “Y’all managed to make these cops like funny!” You know, with like, donut donut crabs on the uniform. And even I find myself laughing sometimes at that.
Graham Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s a whole PR campaign. It’s, it’s really interesting because they do not–the media– one of our guests spoke of it being the fourth estate, and that stuck with me. I’ve always said it’s the fourth arm of the government because the, you know, every branch of the government asserts a different, you know, factor of life. There’s legislative, judicial, executive, and the media basically, dictates what we think. It’s a propaganda machine that’s continually pumping out information. And it tells us the tone of the day, the zeitgeist. I find it really interesting that, you know, if you watch TV, and you watch a court show, a cop show, the interrogation process, the process of court looks really organized. It looks step by step, the cost of, the process of interrogation looks really organized. Like these cops come in, they asked some prompting questions, and the person immediately admits that they were wrong. And likely in the show, they were wrong, they did do something wrong. But what takes place is very, very different. Court is not organized. It’s super backlogged. It’s very individualized in terms of like each position, DA, public defender are all trying to assert their career. It is not about finding justice in any, like if a, with a 98% conviction rate, 90% of that is plea bargains. A show wouldn’t be interesting if they talked about plea bargain. It just wouldn’t. So, like, with with my case, I was fighting 36 to life. And I fought it for about a year and a half to almost two years. And I went and I picked two jurors. I went downstairs, ate my little bologna sandwich with my shackles on, went back up. And they offered me the first deal and went from 36 to life. I’m going to trial. I’m going to get the next sentence, to here’s 15 years. Except this, you’ll be gone in a month. You can go eat ice cream on the yard and walk laps. There’s no walking laps in county jail. County jail is designed to make you want to get out of there by any means necessary.
Crystal Yeah.
Graham The reality–I guess my point in my long ramble there is that the reality of what’s taking place is nothing like what takes place in court shows. And nothing like what takes place in the interrogation room.
Crystal You know, they, the US prides itself a lot in the jury selection and jury duty and this and that and it never happens. I had a friend who, you know, a couple months ago, I told him about this, and we’re in our late 20s. And he was genuinely shocked that 90 something percent of people just take plea bargains. And that’s something that I learned as well when my brother was incarcerated. Because I would ask him, you know, there’s so many lies, like so many things that are untrue: “Are you going to take it to trial?” And he you know, he’d been in prison once before. He kind of learned and he’s like, “Nope”, he’s like “The first deal that they give me, whether that’s five years, 10 years, 20 years that’s what I’m taking. And I’m going with it, like that’s the best that it’s gonna get.” And you don’t hear that when you watch shows or movies. It’s always this dramatic trial with jurors who are diverse. And that’s not true at all. I will say, in the media, in my experience–let me know what you think–there is some accuracy with the cruel way that the cops treat the person that they’re interrogating. I’ve never been in an interrogation room. But my brother has told me, recently told me actually, about that experience. And it sounds horrible. And when you watch it on the news, they make us cheer for the cop, and getting like, the answer out of the bad guy. What do you think about that?
Graham I think that’s somewhat true. In my opinion, it’s somewhat true. I’ve been through multiple interrogations. It’s a terrifying process. These cops, the interrogating officers, have your life in their hands, and they know it and they let you know that continually. Also, like something that isn’t shown in, in TV shows that’s super cruel is that they have no rules in that room. It’s the Wild West, they essentially can do whatever they want, they can lie to you; they can tell you you’ll go home, if you just tell them what’s up. So you get a kid in that room. That’s why there’s so many juvenile convictions that are getting overturned right now. Because they can tell you whatever they want to. The goal isn’t to find the guilty person. The goal is to get you to admit that you are the guilty person, whether you are or not. So it takes a very well intentioned person, not just police officer, but well intentioned person that’s working an eight hour shift, that their job is to find the person who did it, and they got someone sitting in the seat who’s about to break, and they’re not going to do it? Like, they have to really have some core values that, like assert that the concept of justice as it’s taught to us. Because I mean, for one, confessions, once you confess, that’s it. For two, the plea bargain process is sending you to prison; the justice system is working exactly like it’s supposed to. A lot of people don’t know that. If everybody just said “No, I refuse to take a plea” and went to trial, the justice system would collapse. It would not exist. If we have a system that says “Justice is a right to a jury trial.” But if every person within that system actually went to trial, it would collapse. Because they couldn’t financially afford to send everybody to trial. They couldn’t get people there within a timeframe that’s reasonable; you’d have a trial date two years out, because the courts are full. Then, it’s not, it, then it’s set up to fail. It’s set up to do exactly what it’s doing now. And it’s just to get butts in beds in the prison system.
Crystal They’re already backlogged. When my brother was incarcerated, I remember the attorney was like, towards the end, he’s like–this was 2019–and he was like, “I’ve had a case since 2008.” He’s like, “Like my best advice to you” and he pointed to each one of us, “it’s like, you continue living your life. You continue living your life, you continue living your life. This is going to take a while.” Because, I mean, just with my brother, it was like 30 something people. So, it takes a long time. And even as you’re talking, Graham–if you’re comfortable–would you mind sharing more about what interrogation was, was like for you? Because I feel like, like I mentioned, when you look at it in a movie, we are cheering for the cop to get the truth out of the individual. But we don’t talk about the trauma that the person who is being interrogated goes through, and sometimes even the guilt, perhaps, of the information that you disclose. And I think a lot of the times when that happens, we kind of forget empathy, and just caring about human beings. And don’t think about, like the before part that led to all of this. So I’m just curious to know, your, your experience with that and how it affected you.
Graham I think that’s a really good point. Because, you know, we’re kind of taught that, just based on punishment and principle that we don’t think about what took place, that led to what took place. We think about reacting now. So when we’re watching a show that has two well-meaning cops, because typically in the show, they’re well-meaning cops. They play good cop, bad cop; they give you a soda; they get you to talk. It’s the conversation, and you outline all the terrible things you did. That’s what you think takes place. It’s not far from the truth. They do play good cop, bad cop.
Crystal And in the shows they take the little can and put it in a plastic bag for fingerprinting because they tricked the bad guy.
Graham Yes. And sometimes they do that too. Some of that stuff is accurate. But I mean, if you think of the process of good cop, bad cop having no, no like, ethical rules, right? Like, imagine if you–if you and me walked into a room and our goal was to convince someone of something, and I said “You take the negative role. I take the positive role.” You can say and do whatever you want. Anything you want to get this person to break and say this, because that’s essentially what takes place. And the shows don’t do that. It says that they have to operate on a specific ethic. Really, in the interrogation room, there’s no ethic. And it’s a process of convincing someone, let’s say me, during my interrogations. These cops, who I know are my adversaries in this case. I’m aware that like, they’re cops, I’m arrested. So they’re not on my side. They go through mental manipulation to convince you that they are on your side. That is their whole purpose. That, you know what, like, we just want to fill out this paperwork, we want to get this done. You’ll probably go home today; this isn’t a big deal. Anything they want to say. So an easily susceptible mind can can just fall into a trap and admit, which happens a lot. There’s so many false confessions that are getting overturned on a daily basis.
Crystal And then I think about your daughter. Think about your mom; she on the older side.
Graham Yeah. They’ll tell you that your co-defendants already told on you. “Don’t worry, they already told us everything. We know this, this, this.” Make it sound like they know everything. Like it’s, it’s a process of manipulating your mind. It’s not a process of finding truth. It’s a process of creating, creating truths that may not be truths at all.
Crystal Yeah. And we see on the media, and we celebrate when somebody’s wrongful convictions get overturned. And we celebrated, as you know, individual redemption stories. But we don’t view them as, you know, routine generational abusive system, systemic failures. That is a failure, if anybody spends any amount–well, first of all–if anybody spends any amount of time in prison, that’s a failure. But if somebody spends time in prison, that was wrongfully convicted–you know, social media, I see all the time, people celebrating that and good for him, and he deserves all the money. Oh, my gosh, only $1 million. He deserves 1 million for every year that he was incarcerated. You know, and we like to cry with the videos of the individual hugging mom or hugging daughter for the first time after 20 years. And we don’t think about honestly, just how we have failed as a society that we have put prisons on a pedestal and use them as the ultimate answer. Use cops as the ultimate answer to keep us safe when they really don’t do that.
Graham Yeah, that’s, that’s probably the the biggest media misdirection in terms of incarceration, and the justice or injustice system, is that they make it seem like that’s the only solution. This is the only way that we can solve this problem is: if there’s disruption in your neighborhood, you call the cops, the cops come, they respond, they go to court, they’re convicted, they go to prison, and they learn. And that’s pretty much the way that it’s told that it works. And there’s so many other solutions outside of punishment. There’s science that backs that punishment doesn’t work. And the media doesn’t talk about those solutions. It might talk about some restorative justice program that allows people who have had harm done to them, survivors of harm, and the harm doer, talk to each other. But it makes it seem like again, just like the dog program, that it is the exception to the rule, when really the rule is that we are looking for continual solutions to problems to a justice system that does not bring justice. We have blueprints of, of systems that could work transformative justice, restorative justice systems that could work to mitigate harm in ways that just that punitive justice doesn’t. But the media doesn’t talk about that.
Crystal No. And I’m, I’m hoping we get to–we can get to a place where we start. I’m hoping we can bring, you know, awareness to it somehow. And you, you know, you kind of see that. You know, the Central Park Five started coming home and they put a show on Netflix and you hear a lot of people and see a lot of people talking about it. You know, and they’ve spoken about it. And you know, we celebrated when the Central Park Five convictions got overturned, and they started coming home. But, but the sad reality is that there’s a lot of people who this happens to. And we’re happy that they’re home, but I invite listeners to not celebrate this as something that is okay. As something that we should normalize. Let’s not normalize this. And, you know, let’s keep in mind, what happened during that time where this incident occurred. You know, Donald Trump took this whole ad in the New York Times titled “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY! BRING BACK OUR POLICE!”, and in it talks about how the police keeps us safe. And that personally, he is looking to punish them, that he wants them to be afraid. And we’re hearing, or you know, you hear the word super predators. That’s something you know, that we’ve heard a lot of people say, and now, decades later, we’re seeing that they’re innocent.
Graham I think that’s a really good point. People forget the era that the Central Park Five story hit, the headlines was in the tough on crime era. And it was a national precedent that was being set for highlighting mainly people of color that were committing acts of harm. And you’d see these flashes of people of color in handcuffs. And this big story hit and Donald Trump himself brought it to the headline, just like you said. Brought it to the headlines by taking out a full page ad and talking explicitly about punishing, punishing for the, for the sake of fear. And, you know, now we’re not in that era. These stories are overturned, they don’t get nearly as much publicity when they’re overturned. It’s maybe a two minute blip every other day, nothing like what, when it actually took place.
Crystal That’s true.
Graham Yeah. Because the profile, essentially, the profile has already been made. I don’t know if Hillary Clinton coined the term, but she definitely made it popular, super predator, like you said. And that profile had already been created in society’s mind by the media. It got played over and over again. And so when something takes place, that’s an act of harm, or something takes place, and we think an act of harm, that someone’s liable. We think, if we don’t say in our head, super predator, we think something along those terms, like these people are unredeemable. The things that were said were–
Crystal Yeah.
Graham Terrible.
Crystal Yeah, yeah, we do. And “They deserve this.” Yeah, you’re absolutely right.
Graham “Did they deserve it?”
Crystal Before we go, what did we miss? Is there anything that you would like to talk about before we wrap up?
Graham I don’t know if we missed it. But I think a way to avoid media misdirection in terms of solution is to pay attention to the tone of the media. Right now we’re in an era where we’re swinging back too. Looking, like in California, we have all the headlines about–I just saw it when I was at the gym this morning on the TV–it was talking about, you know, the crime epidemic, the crime. That there’s so much crime taking place, which isn’t true, based on stats and numbers. But we’re back in the era where we’re looking at it, where fear is being created, just like Donald Trump and other media sources did. So like, pay attention to the tone of the media at that time. And like we’ve talked about before, really look at what their purpose is on saying it the way they do and using the terms that they use.
Crystal Right. I think for me, it’s just really paying attention to the emotions that you were taught to feel when you see certain things in the media. And really question how this tries to sell you that cops keep us safe, that prisons are the answer, and how these stories, you know, like what, like they put people who are impacted in and question everything. Research it, go talk to people. Even like, there’s a lot of evidence that says that things being used in courts, does not happen. Bite marks, confessions, lie detectors. So I invite our listeners to really question everything and think about the emotions that they’re trying to tell you to feel. And that the stories that are told, and sold to us, are often misdirections. They remove the realities of people directly impacted. They ignore the systemic issues at the heart. And we focus a story on the latest effects. You heard from Graham and his direct experiences on how, you know, media misdirection, affected him and continues to affect him. So I invite you to think of, you know, all of the Grahams of the world who are being affected by the media headline.
Graham Think and pay attention to the stories that they’re trying to sell to you. Because it is a sales gimmick. What is it that they want you to celebrate? And what is it they want you to be afraid of?
Crystal You’ve been listening to abolition is for everybody. Be sure to follow us @abolitionIs_ on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for regular updates.
Graham If you want to continue supporting this podcast and our work overall, you can donate to support Initiate Justice at initiatejustice.org/donate
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