Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from Ohio, my good friend, the distinguished and dynamic anchor for tonight's Special Order, Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, for yielding and for her continued leadership and for leading the discussion on the House floor today as it relates the urgency of this Congress and America dealing with the school-to-prison pipeline mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex that so many of my colleagues have explained and exposed here on the House floor today. A few years ago I had a conversation that has always stuck with me in the area of criminal justice when I was speaking to a formally incarcerated individual who spent several years behind bars incarcerated in a New York State penitentiary. He has turned his life around and he is now an advocate for criminal justice reform. He said to me on his final day, after being imprisoned for years in upstate New York, that he had a conversation with a high-ranking corrections officer, a supervisor who he had gotten to know and thought he had befriended to some degree during his time of incarceration. {time} 2000 On that last day, he said to this young African American incarcerated individual who was on his way out, he said: I just want to thank you. This gentleman was a little perplexed. He wasn't sure what he was talking about.…”