One in four people in the US has a criminal record; four in four have a criminal history. Attorney and artist Emily Baxter talks about We Are All Criminals, a project that examines the suffocating stigma created by our criminal justice system-and the disparate harm of that system upon poor people, people of color, and Indigenous people across the United States.
Emily Baxter is the executive director of We Are All Criminals, a media-based advocacy project and organization. Prior to this, Emily served as the director of advocacy and public policy at the Council on Crime and Justice in Minnesota and as an assistant public defender at the Regional Native Public Defense Corporation representing indigent members of the Leech Lake and White Earth Bands of Ojibwe charged with crimes in Minnesota State court. Emily began developing We Are All Criminals through an Archibald Bush Leadership Fellowship in 2012. She now lives in Durham, North Carolina. We Are All Criminals exists at the intersection of stories, statutes, and statistics. Photographs and first-person narrative humanize the destruction caused by decades of mass incarceration and mass criminalization, while leaving readers with a sense of hope and inspiration to effect change. You can find the project online at weareallcriminals.org and soon, in an upcoming book.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at ted.com/tedx