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EK: And so moving on to Mika. As I just want to say, first of all, I was so excited to read about you, and the work that you've done so far, just regarding criminal justice reform. Currently, I'm actually working with the Seattle Detention Center doing book clubs with them, nd I'm really enjoying every single session that I've been going to. But as an advocate for criminal justice reform, what lessons and values do you take away from your work within this area? And that matters most to your activism, and also, what would you want to share about the work you've done?

MR: Well, first, I will just say, I think it's so wonderful that you're already doing what you're doing working with the detention center while you're in college. I mean, I think that's incredible. So you... it's wonderful. I will start with the last part of the question, which is just how I've been involved, because I think, I think that "advocate" and "activist" are probably too generous words to describe me, but what I will say is I had the fortune of when I was working for the Obama administration in Washington, D.C. One of the main pieces of my work was working on President Obama's Clemency Initiative, which focused on identifying people who are incarcerated in federal prisons who had committed low level nonviolent drug crimes and who were still... were in serving unjustly long sentences based on the frankly, racist policies that were enacted during the, I think it was like the early '80s, into the mid '90s in the quote/unquote, "War on Drugs." And what I know everyone on this call knows, and a lot of other people know, and it's been written about in academia and journalism, is that the majority of people who were incarcerated due to the War on Drugs were black and brown people. And, for example, if you look at the crack cocaine differential in sentences between crack which was predominantly, unfortunately, in Black communities versus cocaine, which tended to be abused by more white folks, these prison sentences for crack were much higher even than cocaine, even though there was no significant difference between the two substances. And so what was important and what I learned from my experience working on the Clemency Initiative is that no person who is incarcerated is there in a vacuum, meaning a lot of people grew up going to schools that were underfunded, didn't have teachers like Uncle Paul who cared about opportunities for them, grew up in neighborhoods that were under-invested in and didn't have access to quality health care, didn't have access to community parks, right? Like so many factors that contributed to that person ending up in prison and involved in the criminal legal system. And if you even then peel back another layer, what's so infuriating is that we also know that communities where there's not a lot of investment in schools are areas where there are higher numbers of black and brown people. Communities that don't have a lot of public parks because, during the '60s, the Department of Transportation decided they were going to run a freeway right through a community, right? Because they didn't care because they were a low income community of color. These are all these factors that they don't just happen by chance, they happen because of discriminatory and racist policies and motivations. And so I peel back layers and layers because the outcome is too many people locked up in prison for things that certainly, activities that they participated in, but criminal activity that, had they had resources and had they grown up in communities that were invested in them, they may not have gotten involved in it in the first place. And so when you think about how we, how we treat folks who break the law, we just lock them up. And I think that it should be more focused on how do we make this person whole? Because for so long in their lives, they've just... we throw away people in prisons, and we don't want to try to make them whole.

And so that's sort of my perspective on why I think criminal justice reform is so important. And I think the Seattle JACL is a chapter that is able to draw the connection between the incarceration of JAs to the incarceration of immigrants today to the over-incarceration of Black and brown people. And it's just really, I think, exciting and a privilege to be part of an organization that can see the connections. So sorry, for the rant.

EK: No. No apologies needed. I just, I was listening to every word. But throughout that time, the entire time, I'm thinking, what a family, like what a family the Kurose family is. We just have, you have educators who are just changing the education system. We have individuals like you, Mika, who trailblaze. And so for Ruthann as well, trailblazing politics and social justice. So that's the thought I've been carrying this entire time throughout this interview. And on that note of what you're talking about, Mika, regarding just commuting sentences and how prison is, I mean, I guess it's serves to be a source of oppression, but it's an oppression that really is unjust. And I think largely, that's why I go to these book sessions because I think that there are so many individuals within the Seattle prison center that, who just are individuals who have dealt with circumstances that were definitely not their fault. And I think that recognizing that and being able to be in a community with them is, has been a big privilege to me. But just want to say thank you for trailblazing for individuals like me who are interested in doing reforms such as the achievements that you've achieved, so thank you.

MR: My mom said that if anything, we're a family of opinions. Which I think is exactly, it's probably the most accurate way to describe us.

EK: I mean, I think that without... opinions are better than having no voice. So I think that's, yeah, better than nothing.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2022 Seattle Chapter JACL. All Rights Reserved.