WEBVTT

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In 1994, the Violent Crime Control
and Law Enforcement Act passed.

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You probably know it as the crime bill.

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It was a terrible law.

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It ushered in an era of mass incarceration

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that allowed mandatory minimums,

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three-strikes laws,

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the expansion of the death penalty --

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it was terrible.

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But it passed with bipartisan support.

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GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich,

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architect of the Republican Revolution,

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led the way --

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signed into law by Democratic
President, Bill Clinton.

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Also in 1994,

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I was a senior in high school
when this bill got passed,

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and you were likely to find me

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on the streets protesting
any number of causes ...

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including the crime bill.

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So that's what makes this picture
all the more surprising.

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Newt was not on the top of my
"Favorite Person in this Country" list.

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But this picture was taken in 2015.

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This was the start of a movement

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that would pass a bill
called the First Step Act.

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The "New York Times"
called it the most significant reform

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in criminal justice in a generation.

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You know, 1994 Nisha --

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on-the-streets activist --

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might be disappointed in this photo --

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some of you might be too.

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But standing here today I'm not.

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This is what I'm here
to talk to you about today.

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This is radical common ground.

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And I'm not talking about the kind
of common ground where --

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you know, we can talk
about how much we love springtime

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or "puppies are super cute."

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And it's not, you know,
compromised common ground.

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This is common ground that's hard.

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It hurts.

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It's the type of common ground
where you will be ridiculed and judged.

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But it's the type of common ground
that can secure human freedom.

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It can save lives.

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And it's the type of common ground
I was born to find.

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It's in my DNA.

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My dad was born
during the partition in India.

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After the Indian independence movement,
the country was really divided

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between people who wanted
to keep the country together

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and those who wanted
different independent nations.

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And when the British left,

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they just decided to draw a line,
the partition and make a new country.

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This started the largest forced
mass migration in human history.

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Fifteen million people trapped
on the wrong side of these new borders.

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Two million people dead
during the partition.

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And my dad was the youngest
baby in a Hindu family

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on the wrong side of the border.

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and like families all around
the border on both sides,

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they went into hiding.

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And I was told when I was little
about the story of my family in hiding,

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and one day when armed men came
into the house that they were hiding in,

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searching for families,
my dad started crying.

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And my grandma started shaking him.

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And my grandfather, in that moment,

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he made the choice that he'd sacrifice
his son in order to save the family.

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But luckily, in that moment
he stopped crying.

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My grandma, she shook him
and he stopped crying

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and I'm here today
because he stopped crying.

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But I'm also here today

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because of that Muslim family
that took us in.

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They also were held at gunpoint

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and an armed man asked
if they were hiding anyone,

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and they swore on the Quran
that nobody was in that house.

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They chose in that moment
when the entire country --

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everybody in the region,

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you could hate people
who had different politics than you,

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different religion,

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you could kill people.

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That was what was happening.

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but they swore on their Holy book,

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they chose the shared humanity

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over politics of that day, and we lived.

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And we survived.

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And I start with this story
because often people tell me

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that my mission for common
ground is the weak position.

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But I ask how was that Muslims
family's actions weak?

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Because of that, my dad
did grow up healthy in India

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and he emigrated to this country,

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and I was born here in the late '70s,

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and like most first-generation kids
I was born to build bridges.

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I was a bridge between
the old country and the new.

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And just growing up, that's what I did.

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I was a brown girl in the Black
and white South in Atlanta, Georgia.

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I was like, on one hand,

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the perfect Indian daughter --

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straight As,

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captain of the debate team --

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but on the other hand,

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I was also this radical feminist,

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punk-rock activist sneaking
out of the house for concerts

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and, you know, getting arrested
like, all the time for causes.

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I was a mix of a lot things.

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But they all live harmoniously in me.

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Building bridges was just natural,

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and I think all of us represent
a mix of a bunch of things.

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I think we have that ability
to find the common ground.

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But that's not how
I was living my life ...

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at all.

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I moved to the Bay Area in 2001,

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and this was kind of
a turning point for me;

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it was the start of the second Iraq War.

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And I was organizing
with a bunch of activists --

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of course --

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and we were thinking that probably
we needed to expand our circle

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a little bit,

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that we weren't going to successfully
stop the war if, you know --

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just amongst us.

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So we decided we'd build bridges,

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expand our circle,

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and so the great, anarchist
versus communist soccer tournament

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of 2001 was born.

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(Laughter)

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That's it.

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That's how large my circle
was allowed to expand.

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Building bridges with liberal Democrats?

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Oh, no way, that was a bridge too far.

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Local electeds?

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That was a bridge too far.

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And that was in 2001.

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And I think you'll agree with me now.

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In 2020 it's gotten even worse --

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that division, that tribalism.

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We won't sit down at dinner

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with people who voted differently than us.

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We, like, see a mean tweet
from our best friend --

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a tweet that, like,
doesn't fit with our worldview,

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and all of a sudden they're canceled.

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The purity politics of the moment gone.

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I sometimes wake up --

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I don't know what we're going to do.

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And people ask me
"how do we do that?"

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But I know about common ground.

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I feel like we can build those bridges.

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But it's not easy.

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I have a concept that I go back to,

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and it's a concept that should
be familiar to everybody

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since the beginning of human history.

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It's the idea of the commons.

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This shared place
in the center of town --

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town square,

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the quad --

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but it's the place
where you come together,

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your community,

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and you can listen to people
on soapboxes with different ideas,

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and you can be very different,

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but you come together because you know
together we're stronger than being apart.

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And today when I think of the commons,

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I extend it to the resources
we all share --

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collectively owned,

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like the air we breathe.

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I think of schools,

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parks.

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I think of the intelligence we share.

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We can share in libraries or the internet.

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And I think the internet's important.

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In this digital age,

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that shared humanity,

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that access to be together in the commons,

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is at our fingertips.

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But we're not using it that way.

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We're not coming together.

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To choose that path towards the commons
and to be with each other,

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you also have to choose love.

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That's a hard thing.

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But I know you can't go to the town square

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filled with hate for the town.

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You can't lead a people you don't love.

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You can't lead a country you don't love.

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And --

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I don't think you can change the world

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and say, "I'm only changing it
for the people like me,

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my own circle of friends,

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not for the people I hate, not for them."

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It doesn't work.

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It's a terrible strategy, it doesn't work,

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but that's what we keep doing.

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I see it every single day.

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These silos are just getting stronger.

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And you know,

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your corner of the internet,

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like Instagram or Twitter,

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we're just in an echo chamber
talking to each other.

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So I can be really comfortable in my
Berkeley Democratic Socialist commons

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and talk to all of you.

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And my dad can be in his bootstrappy
immigrant Republican commons,

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and I can watch MSNBC

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and he can watch Fox News

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and we will not know the same things.

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We won't have the same --

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I mean, we won't live in the same world.

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We may never know each other
or be with each other again.

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And I don't want to keep going
down that path.

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And I know we can get back
to a better path.

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I know we can find our way to the commons,

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and I know that because I had a first,
like, front-row, firsthand look

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at the ability to do it

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and do it on a large scale.

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And so I want to get you back
to the First Step Act

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and the criminal justice reform.

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I interviewed for a job
with Van Jones about seven years ago.

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And he's been a mentor and my boss,

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and he's actually an inspiration
behind a lot of this in the speech.

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And he told me that we were going to pass
bipartisan criminal justice reform,

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and I laughed because I thought
that was an oxymoron.

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I was in the streets --

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go figure --

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at the Republican
National Convention in 2000

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in Philadelphia,

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and we were protesting
the criminal justice system.

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And there were no Republicans
on the streets with me at that protest.

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I remembered the crime bill;

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I lived through the tough-on-crime era;

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I didn't see it.

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But he saw it and he walked me through it.

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He saw me and people like him on the Left,

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who it's always been and issue
of dignity and justice,

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that this system has been
racist since the start

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and discriminating against poor
people and people of color

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and it's an issue of justice and dignity.

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So there we were.

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But he also saw something different
from our colleagues on the Right.

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The fiscal Conservatives,

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they had an economic incentive to do it:

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they saw a system that cost
the taxpayers a whole lot of money

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and was getting terrible results

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and it wasn't making
the communities any safer.

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The Libertarian Right,

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who believe in less government,

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saw an expansion of government control,

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an expansion of the police state,

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mass incarceration is like,
antithetical to who they are.

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And the religious Right:

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second chances --

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redemption.

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These are values that they hold dear,

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and the criminal justice system
can't see those anywhere.

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And so there was common ground to be had.

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And that's what we set out to do.

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And under the leadership
of the formerly incarcerated folks

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who have been leading this forever,

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we built this bipartisan coalition
to pass criminal justice reform.

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Eighty-seven senators voted in favor
of the First Step Act,

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and yeah, President Trump signed it.

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And because we were able to do that,

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because we were able
to look at that shared humanity,

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get over our distaste
for working across the aisle,

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20,000 people have been
impacted in just the last year,

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7,000 home who would
not have been home,

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17,000 years of human freedom
restored just in the last year.

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(Applause and cheers)

NOTE Paragraph

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And Republicans and Democrats
in this election cycle,

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almost all of them running,

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are running on platforms
of criminal justice reform.

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They are trying to bring this bigger,
stronger, bolder and more reforms

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everywhere they are.

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That was impossible
during the tough-on-crime era.

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But I also look at this.

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These are the people coming home.

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In my office, we get a video
like this almost every day.

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Thousands of people coming home.

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And when people tell me
that common ground is the weak position

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or that my love for the people

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or my belief in our shared
humanity is naive,

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or that if I work with folks
across the aisle

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that I'm somehow getting
taken advantage of,

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I just look at this:

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I look at the people.

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I say, "Say that to this --

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to the folks coming home."

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Say that to those 2.2 million people
that are still behind bars.

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So now our challenge
is to make this possible

00:11:44.268 --> 00:11:46.691
across a whole bunch
of other issues too:

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human rights, immigration --

00:11:48.439 --> 00:11:49.645
all sorts of things --

00:11:49.669 --> 00:11:50.964
health care, mental health.

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I think there's common ground to be had.

00:11:52.941 --> 00:11:54.101
But it's not easy.

NOTE Paragraph

00:11:54.125 --> 00:11:56.665
If you want change in a large scale,

00:11:56.689 --> 00:11:58.160
you need large movements,

00:11:58.184 --> 00:12:00.288
and that means
our circles have to be bigger.

00:12:00.312 --> 00:12:02.981
And it's not easy being a Lefty
working across the aisle;

00:12:03.005 --> 00:12:05.036
I certainly get
my fair share of hate mail,

00:12:05.060 --> 00:12:08.464
but I think that that's exactly
the radical approach we need right now.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:08.488 --> 00:12:10.736
And so this is Jenny Kim.

00:12:10.760 --> 00:12:13.915
She is someone who is dead serious
about second-chance hiring.

00:12:13.939 --> 00:12:15.098
She wants to make sure

00:12:15.122 --> 00:12:17.726
that formerly incarcerated folks
have a pathway to jobs

00:12:17.750 --> 00:12:20.727
and that businesses make it
an amazing place for folks to work.

00:12:20.751 --> 00:12:23.740
She's also the deputy
general counsel at Koch Industries.

00:12:23.764 --> 00:12:25.560
K-O-C-H, Koch.

00:12:25.907 --> 00:12:27.323
She is an amazing organizer,

00:12:27.347 --> 00:12:29.494
and I'm proud to work
with her on this issue.

NOTE Paragraph

00:12:30.590 --> 00:12:33.158
And an issue I care deeply about,

00:12:33.182 --> 00:12:35.089
probably a lot of you do too -- climate,

00:12:35.113 --> 00:12:36.440
which seems divisive,

00:12:36.464 --> 00:12:39.050
seems like there's no common
ground to be had there.

00:12:39.074 --> 00:12:40.252
I think there is.

00:12:40.276 --> 00:12:43.491
Trump's own Department of Defense
this year released a report saying

00:12:43.515 --> 00:12:46.878
that all future wars were going
to be wars about resources,

00:12:46.902 --> 00:12:48.332
wars about climate.

00:12:48.691 --> 00:12:51.791
And so yeah, I want to find
partnership with the military.

00:12:51.815 --> 00:12:54.025
And I used to be the national director --

00:12:54.049 --> 00:12:56.557
the national organizer
for the War Resisters League,

00:12:56.581 --> 00:12:59.215
the oldest pacifist
organization in the country.

00:12:59.585 --> 00:13:01.698
But if there's common ground
to be had there,

00:13:01.722 --> 00:13:03.290
yeah, I'll partner with them.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:03.992 --> 00:13:05.472
It's not easy.

00:13:06.027 --> 00:13:09.227
The approach means
we need to find love.

00:13:09.251 --> 00:13:11.284
We need to get back
to that shared humanity

00:13:11.308 --> 00:13:12.461
and that commons.

00:13:12.485 --> 00:13:13.667
But I know this love,

00:13:13.691 --> 00:13:16.074
it doesn't just get us through
Thanksgiving dinner.

00:13:16.098 --> 00:13:18.125
It's the kind of love
that secures freedom,

00:13:18.149 --> 00:13:19.984
changes the world.

00:13:20.008 --> 00:13:21.558
But to do that,

00:13:21.582 --> 00:13:23.976
I have to step into my courage,

00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:26.374
and I want all of you
to step into your courage.

00:13:26.774 --> 00:13:28.544
Just like that Muslim family

00:13:28.568 --> 00:13:32.067
stepped into their courage
for my Hindu family all those years ago.

00:13:32.968 --> 00:13:34.178
I think we can do it.

00:13:34.557 --> 00:13:37.479
But it's a little bit uncomfortable.

NOTE Paragraph

00:13:37.503 --> 00:13:39.315
If you are who I know you to be --

00:13:39.339 --> 00:13:41.961
you know, someone who cares
about change and progress

00:13:41.985 --> 00:13:44.318
and wants to see something
change in the world --

00:13:44.342 --> 00:13:45.956
you probably want to know how

00:13:45.980 --> 00:13:49.217
but you're also a little bit uncomfortable
about me standing up here

00:13:49.241 --> 00:13:51.624
and celebrating these pictures
with Newt and Koch,

00:13:51.648 --> 00:13:53.917
talking about partnerships
with the military.

00:13:54.225 --> 00:13:55.942
I want you to feel those feelings.

00:13:56.364 --> 00:13:57.551
I feel them too.

00:13:57.575 --> 00:14:00.110
I don't enter into these
partnerships lightly at all.

00:14:00.134 --> 00:14:02.805
My entire trajectory of who I am
has made me think

00:14:02.829 --> 00:14:05.400
that it's not even possible,

00:14:05.424 --> 00:14:06.801
but I know it is.

00:14:06.825 --> 00:14:07.988
That feeling,

00:14:08.012 --> 00:14:10.000
that discomfort,

00:14:10.024 --> 00:14:14.403
that's preceded every major
breakthrough in human history ever.

00:14:15.448 --> 00:14:18.228
That's that feeling
that comes before a moonshot.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:19.500 --> 00:14:22.843
And so I want to make you
even a little more uncomfortable.

00:14:24.081 --> 00:14:27.122
I want you think about an issue
that you care deeply about --

00:14:27.146 --> 00:14:30.407
something that you want to see changed
on a national or global scale.

00:14:30.431 --> 00:14:31.676
Think big.

00:14:32.872 --> 00:14:34.866
What would resolution look like?

00:14:35.827 --> 00:14:36.986
On a large scale,

00:14:37.010 --> 00:14:39.235
what would it look like
to solve that problem?

00:14:40.137 --> 00:14:42.804
Can you get there with just
your circle of friends?

00:14:43.301 --> 00:14:44.498
I know you can't.

00:14:44.522 --> 00:14:47.381
The anarchist-communist soccer
tournament isn't going to help

00:14:47.405 --> 00:14:49.136
bring about that change.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:49.160 --> 00:14:52.906
So I want to think about how
we can expand our circle a little more.

00:14:52.930 --> 00:14:55.039
Where is there common ground to be found?

00:14:56.265 --> 00:14:59.182
Can you think of any unlikely allies?

00:14:59.596 --> 00:15:01.012
Strange partners?

00:15:01.521 --> 00:15:03.451
Further than that,

00:15:03.475 --> 00:15:04.829
who's in your way?

00:15:04.853 --> 00:15:07.504
Who's stopping you
from finding that common ground,

00:15:07.528 --> 00:15:10.079
and is there room for them in that circle?

00:15:10.550 --> 00:15:11.752
I think there is.

00:15:11.776 --> 00:15:14.238
I think we have to be able
to find it at this scale.

00:15:15.039 --> 00:15:17.996
And it means that we're going
to have to step into that courage

00:15:18.020 --> 00:15:19.178
and include people,

00:15:19.202 --> 00:15:20.711
hold our vision so strong,

00:15:20.735 --> 00:15:23.115
know that justice
and freedom is so important

00:15:23.139 --> 00:15:25.599
that we're able to include more people,

00:15:25.623 --> 00:15:28.321
love the people who might
not love us back.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:29.005 --> 00:15:30.290
And so I want to ask you:

00:15:30.314 --> 00:15:31.796
who's your Newt?

00:15:31.820 --> 00:15:32.997
Who's your Koch?

00:15:33.021 --> 00:15:35.107
Who's the military in your story?

00:15:35.872 --> 00:15:37.489
And I want you to find --

00:15:37.513 --> 00:15:40.034
choose that common ground.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:40.058 --> 00:15:41.261
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:41.285 --> 00:15:44.801
(Applause and cheers)