Delia Cohen is setting the stage for a TEDx Talk conference inside State Quentin State Prison in January 2016.
Scheduled speakers include: Curtis “Wall Street” Carroll, former combat veteran Ron Self, Warden Ron Davis, and outside guest former Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Robert E. Rubin and California Inspector General Robert A. Barton.
“This is a place where TED could help. It’s an invisible population represented by false TV shows,” said Cohen, a former Clinton administration White House staffer and the event’s sponsor. “I think it is important to get outside people in so they can meet the men and be moved like I was.”
Cohen was clueless as to what an inmate population was like, until attending a TEDx event at an Ohio prison.
“I thought inmates were a waste of time,” said Cohen. “I was so wrong. It blew my head wide open to see we are all human. Now lifers are my favorite incarcerated people.”
She’s been trying to replicate that TEDx experience ever since.
“I’m using my connections on a mission to bring as many people in here as I can,” said Cohen.
The original TED talks began in Southern California as an annual conference of “big idea” speeches. Social justice attorney Bryant Stevenson gave one about mass incarceration. Jessica Munoz, a founder of the non-profit organization Hoola Na Pua which means “New Life for Our Children,” spoke out against sex trafficking. There have been TED talks about everything from a better way to tie your shoes to respecting the tenacity of a “rose (person) who grew through concrete (hardships).”
TED licenses people to use their principles in TEDx events. If a TEDx talk resonates, it will be placed on the main TED website, which receives millions of views. No incarcerated male speaker has made the main site.
The theme for the San Quentin TEDx event is Life Revealed.
Carroll will give one of his famous talks about the importance of financial literacy. The Wall Street Journal has called him the Oracle of San Quentin for his stock-picking ability.
Incarcerated combat veteran Self plans to talk about a solution to stop the alarming rate of veterans committing suicide.
“Six thousand eight hundred thirty-one, that’s the number of Americans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan…73,000 plus, that’s how many have committed suicide in the same 14-year period.”
Barton has spoken on hope in redemption in the past.
Rubin is the author of The New York Times bestseller In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington. Rubin has given a TED talk on the moral duty to end poverty.
Members of SQPR have been trying to organize a TEDx inside San Quentin since 2012. After many trials, tribulations and a change in sponsors, the date is set for Jan. 22.
“This is the furthest we have gotten,” said inside organizer Brian Asey. “I had an opportunity to talk to Robert Rubin and that was big.”
“I think they are going to be impressed by the pure creativity that people in prison have to offer,” said Shadeed Wallace-Stepter.
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