Jon L. Christensen: “I wanted to focus the rest of my remarks on the town hall, though, and on the health sessions that I was a part of.…”

“I wanted to focus the rest of my remarks on the town hall, though, and on the health sessions that I was a part of. There were many health sessions. There were many sessions, period, on a number of issues, and all very informative. The town hall, first, was a real powerful discussion on ways to eliminate or reduce the factors that lead so many black men and now, increasingly, black women into prison. We called it ``Disrupting the Prison Pipeline'' because we wanted to focus on positive action to really stop what was happening over the years. Too, our session was attended by, I think, over 1,000 people who were at that town hall that morning. And we discussed the disparities in education, health, including mental health and substance abuse, how poverty and unemployment in the criminal justice system, the disparities in those areas create a pathway to incarceration rather than college for so many in the African-American community. We had wonderful speakers.”