Interview: Bianca Tylek of Worth Rises on Prison Phone Justice
In this episode Amira Rose Davis interviews Bianca Tylek, Founder and Executive Director of Worth Rises, a non-profit advocacy organization dismantling the prison industrial complex. They discuss Worth Rises' recent prison phone justice action on Mother's Day at a Detroit Pistons game to call out (again) Pistons' owner Tom Gores and his telecom company that profits from overpriced prison phone calls. They talk about the sacrifices families make to pay for these phone calls that are the only lifeline to their loved ones who are incarcerated.
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Transcript
Amira: This past mother's day, the Chicago Bulls went to the Detroit Pistons to play in a game, which the Pistons lost, and if you were there watching the game – perhaps you were celebrating mother's day – you may have noticed that there was some other activity going on around the game. Instead of noting mother's day inside the stadium, there was a group, Worth Rises, who used that opportunity to draw attention to a very very pressing issue of concern related to the prison industrial complex. Now, you might be thinking, wait, we're talking about basketball? We’re talking about mother's day? How does that intersect with the prison industrial complex?
Well, to answer that question and dive deeper into what's going on, I'm pleased to be joined by Bianca Tylek, who is the CEO and founder of Worth Rises, a nonprofit that is aimed at fixing the prison industrial complex. And in particular, one of the things that they have been absolutely integral about raising awareness about is private telecommunications and the harm that they do. That brings us to why they were at the Pistons game. So Bianca, welcome to Burn It All Down.
Bianca: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Amira.
Amira: So yeah, let's start right off the bat. Please tell us about Worth Rises and you know, the connections to the Detroit Pistons. Why were y’all there?
Bianca: Absolutely. So, Worth Rises, we're a national nonprofit organization dedicated to dismantling the prison industry. There is an $80 billion industry that is built around mass caging and mass surveillance, and we believe that we should shut down the industry that depends on caging and surveillance of people and shift the economy away from prisons and jails. And so that's the work we've been doing. In the last few years we've been focused heavily on the prison telecom space. Prison telecoms is a $1.4 billion industry in this country. It is dominated by just a few companies. Two companies own 80% of the market – they’re Securus and Global Tel Link – and Securus is owned by a private equity firm by the name of Platinum Equity. It owns 40% of the market, brings in over $700 million a year. And that private equity was founded and is owned by the CEO, Tom Gores, the owner of the Detroit Pistons.
Amira: I want to really unpack before we kind of dive in to Tom and his many mishandlings of this situation and the work that y'all have been doing around it to really kind of get a sense of how these harmful systems operate. So, when we're talking about private telecommunications, when we're talking about the cost, the amount of debt that folks go into trying to communicate with loved ones, what does that look like on the ground? How much might somebody be charged?
Bianca: Absolutely. So, people are charged as much as more than a dollar a minute to be on the phone with their loved ones. A simple phone call in 2021 can cost that much! That means a 15 minute phone call can run as high as 16, $17 in places across the country, charged in part by companies like Securus and GTL. And what does that mean for families? One in three families with a loved one who's incarcerated goes into debt trying to stay in touch over the cost of calls or visits, and 87% of those who are carrying that burden are women, largely disproportionately women of color. So the impact is really grave on those families.
I think oftentimes people talk about, oh, well, if you go to prison or you go to jail, you should, you know, suffer the consequences. But these are actually consequences not borne in large part by the people who are incarcerated. They're borne by families and borne by children. They're borne by grandmothers, sisters, right? Thankfully people don't stop loving their loved ones when they go to prison or they go to jail, and that's necessary, right? Because if we all did that then, you know, people would not be coming home to a community that is ready to welcome them in order to have a successful reentry. And so, you know, there are all these families that are dying to support their loved ones inside, but these costs make it nearly impossible.
Amira: I really appreciate the awareness that y'all raise on this because when we think about, oh, the prison industrial complex, it can seem so big and looming, and we can focus on sentencing or we can focus on…You know, there's many places. But these are the ripple effects, these are the maintenance of the system that goes all the way in, in terms of harm and dehumanization and things like that. And one of the stats that you just gave, I noticed that in the fall and in the winter of 2020, because of activists and groups like Worth Rises and the work that y'all are doing, it did for us Platinum Equity to make some small breadcrumb changes – that of course they were like, look, we're doing all the work, we're reforming all this stuff! But I think this really underscores why reform is not helpful, right?
When they used to be like at $25 for like a 15 minute phone call, and then you just told us now, you know, it's more closer to like $17, and they're pointing at that and they're like, aha, progress! And it's like, no, $17 to talk to a loved one for 15 minutes, for kids to say happy mother's day, to say happy father's day, that is ridiculous. So, you know, we can see in that both the effect that activism has had, but also what is kind of left ahead of us. So, yeah, y'all have been doing this, and I first took note of the work that y'all were doing around this back in the fall of 2020, especially when you watched the Pistons, like in the NBA, like many other things, lean into Black Lives Matter, talk about this and do it in a performative way. I remember the ad that y'all took out and you named other owners by name and you were like, okay, so, if Black lives matter to y’all, what you say they do, then you need to be paying attention to this. Then why you buddy-buddy, with somebody involved…
And so, I wanted to ask you how you saw the work that y'all are doing kind of borne out of other kinds of grassroots activism and movement that's happening on the ground, and what successes or changes you've seen over this most unusual year?
Bianca: Absolutely. So, you know, I think it's important to note that even this year, which has really changed the game in many, many ways, still comes on the work of even a few more years where BLM and other types of movements were getting a lot of traction and criminal justice was starting to get traction, and then that builds on years of our ancestors and elders doing work that comes off years of civil rights work before that. So, you know, this work, it's all a continuum, right? It didn't start certainly not with us, and not in the last decade and not in the last two decades, right? It's been happening for a while and, you know, we hope that every generation or every few years that we get to make more progress and more progress and more progress.
So we actually saw our first win in this work really in 2018 which is when we led the first successful campaign in the country to make phone calls out of a city jail system free. That was in New York City in 2018. And when that happened, it actually went into effect in 2019. That move to save directly impacted families roughly $10 million a year, increased voice communication by 40% overnight for people who are incarcerated. What we heard was that there was a huge influx of calls to social workers, to people who people wanted help from, right? And and so that was really exciting. We got to do that in San Francisco. San Francisco in 2019 passed policy, implemented in 2020. In March of 2021, San Diego became the third state. And in fact this month in May, Los Angeles is taking a vote.
So, that's exciting to think about – will Los Angeles become the next city? And it's not just cities, right? Even though we also see Philadelphia organizing, Pittsburgh, organizing, Miami organizing. But it's also states, states like Connecticut have been fighting. We've been fighting there for two years and we expect to win in Connecticut this year, as early as this week, and potentially make Connecticut the first state in the country to make phone calls entirely free out of its state prison system. And there are similar fights in New York, in Massachusetts, that have already introduced legislation. There's organizing happening in Michigan. There is quite a range of that type of organizing over this time, in addition to those policy reforms that we are trying to drive in one locality, one state at a time. We have regulatory work that we're working on with the California public utilities commission and the FCC, the federal communications commission.
And that corporate activism that you were mentioning, Amira, right? It's the targeting of Tom Gores and making it clear that you don't get to just run around and turn your logo black and think that that means that Black lives matters and then you support Black and brown communities, because that's not what it is, right? It's not a superficial logo change, it's not even a statement on your Twitter or your Facebook page or your website. It's more than that. And what people I think often don't understand is that this practice of exploiting people who are incarcerated and their families, not only does that detrimentally impact or disproportionately impact Black and brown communities, because we know that Black and brown communities are disproportionally targeted and criminalized by our system.
But beyond that, what people don't understand is that hundreds of millions of those dollars that are pulled out of Black and brown communities are actually funneled back to the police. Like, these contracts that we were referring to earlier, these prices, part of it is because they pay a kickback back to the local jail or state. So it's really what we call a profit sharing agreement. It’s, “Hey, I get to charge a dollar a minute in your jail and for being able to do that I'm going to give you 50% of it, so you'll get 50 cents for every dollar.” And that's what incentivizes the local counties, jails and state prisons to embark on these predatory contracts. So what does that mean? That means that we're taking…“We” – I should say, Tom specifically, and the Securuses and GTLs of the world, are taking that money straight out of communities and then giving it to sheriff's departments, giving it to wardens, giving it to the police, as we hear Black and brown communities calling to defund the police.
So you're thinking this is like entirely perverted in the way that it's being organized, and you're right. You know, Tom has made claims that they're wildly changing the situation, that they have reduced rates by 25% across the country. And it's like, let me be clear: Tom has never reduced a rate because he wanted to. Every single rate he's ever reduced or Securus has ever been has ever reduced has been forced by advocacy to actually happen and to reduce in that way. Every single percentage point that has fallen has been because of the pressure that we have raised, along with our comrades across the movement. And so yes, that's because of the New York Times ad that we took out, it's because we got him ousted from the LACMA board. It's because of that pressure that we've seen that type of change.
Amira: Yeah, absolutely. Because one of the things that underscores is this is a private company, right? A private company worth billions of dollars, whose priority is profit. We're in a year in which we saw sporting institutions, government institutions choose profit over people and lives and humanity time and time again. And it's very clear here, right? The way that they are looking at this…I mean, I was astounded to hear the way that Tom talked about this. Like, talk about not even tone deafness, but just like callous disregard, right? This motherfucker said, “It's a blessing to be an owner.” Right!? A blessing to be an owner of a private company that is doing this?!
Bianca: Trust me…He also said that he was very hurt by our New York Times ad because “he too has family.”
Amira: Thats’ the thing. And what did he invoke to fortify himself? He was like, well, I look at my African-American friends and cohort – he means the people who play for him – and he's like, look at all of the stuff they've gone through, and I'm gonna buck up and fight. And it's like, you're appropriating…
Bianca: He wants to be the white knight, right? He has a real savior complex around this, right where he's like, “Oh, this is a blessing that I'm the person in charge of this awful, awful industry and I'm somehow going to make it better.” No, you've owned it for three years at this point, and you have still yet to do anything until literally put on your heels. And then to tell us that you're going to save the industry? We don't need you to save our community. We need you to get out of it.
Amira: Exactly, exactly. And it's like, all of the double-talk that becomes a shield for the fact that, like you said, they've never reduced a rate just because they woke up on a Tuesday morning like, hey, I'm gonna be a good person today. No, it's always about pus, it’s how much can I continue to profit by giving breadcrumbs to people to get off our backs about it? Remember that at the end of 2020 there was a lot of press around this and a lot of this effort, and then like many things do it hits a cycle and it dies down. And so I was really thrilled to hear that y'all were organizing at the mother's day event, especially because as we know the disproportionate amount of women of color who are incarcerated and also are parents. We know there are awful statistics about people who give birth behind bars. And so annually mom bail outs and a lot of conversations that are raising awareness about what that looks like and how we can rethink mother's day, especially towards radical action, to think about all mothers in places that perhaps we disregard them. So I was really pleased to see that y'all were using mother's day in particular and using this Pistons game to continue that very kind of public work. Can you tell me a little bit about how that protest went down and what happened?
Bianca: Absolutely. So, the first thing I want to say is that we're in Michigan, we are working with our local partners. And so this action in particular really was a collaboration with our partners at Michigan Liberation, so, big shoutout to them for their incredible organizing and base-building. So, with Michigan Liberation, we took to to the streets in our cars, which is interesting. We did have specifically a car caravan action and you know, the car caravan was in large part led by a billboard truck. We had a three side billboard truck with loudspeakers that was playing a video of directly impacted family members talking about how Tom impacted their life, how the cost of calls impacted their lives. There was a mother whose son was incarcerated for 14 years and she paid Securus for many, many, many of those years. She's out loud sort of saying, you know, “You're a billionaire because there were times I didn't eat.”
The phone calls are very expensive and I couldn't afford them. I never could afford them, but I knew that if I didn't pay for them there would be no way at that talk to him, and how would I know how he was doing? So, there were times when I had to do without lights, without gas. There were times I had to do without food. Yeah. There were times I talked to him in the dark, but he didn't know. As long as my phone is charged up.
Bianca: There were two formerly incarcerated men that were in the video as well, talking about that impact. And so, you know, we took that billboard truck and drove that around for five hours. But that started the caravan. There was then about 15 to 20 cars that joined us and more folks who are in each of those cars. And we went over to the stadium, did a few laps around the stadium, and eventually blocked off the player and staff entrance to the building. That was a few hours before the game. We had some insight into what time everybody arrives, and so we were able to disrupt the entrance of many of the players. You know, specifically we saw Cory Joseph and Killian Hayes and Jahlil Okafor, Mason Plumlee and Dennis Smith Jr. all showed up during the action, and all were diverted.
The security at that point had obviously sort of came together, was trying to figure out what to do, where to direct players. Each of the players ended up being escorted by police security into the building one by one, and about, you know, a dozen cops later, a few tickets handed out, four tow trucks and a helicopter. We finally pulled off. But I think it was at that point that we had already made our presence very clear to the stadium, to the staff and to Tom.
Amira: That's amazing. I think it's really important to note too, you know, obviously we're a sports podcast and we think sports are the center of many things. But I do want to underscore, like, why action around the Pistons, around the NBA?
Bianca: We spoke to Tom for almost a year before we just went to the NBA. They didn't do anything. They still haven't done anything, right? The little bits and pieces that they've done are not what we've demanded or asked for. It's like, yeah, as little as they can get away with. So yeah, to be very clear, no, we actually believe in escalation tactics. And so we will always try to have a conversation with you beforehand. I've personally spoken to Tom. So, what really happened was we spoke to them all of 2019. Then the beginning of 2020 we were supposed to have a meeting with families, and two weeks or three weeks before that meeting, after three months of having it on the schedule, Tom canceled the meeting and ghosted us for the next 10 months or so of 2020. That was when we went into the LACMA in September of 2020, and after that we went to the New York Times and we took out that ad.
And that was when we really popped up for the first time in front of the NBA. It was after that we showed up the NBA that they agreed to talk to us again. But that also didn't last because, you know, I responded to them like, okay, we can have a meeting. They ghosted us once again. They sent a solid one email at the request of the NBA, and that was it. Now because of the Samantha Bee piece that was a few weeks ago and some of the stuff that's going on in Detroit, I have another meeting with them next week for the first time in a year.
Amira: So one of the things that we've seen with them is despite attempts for Worth Rises to be in conversation, it seems like–
Bianca: They only react to pressure. That's it. That's what we know. They only react to pressure. So when people say, why, why, why? No, because literally without this, they wouldn't be having conversations.
Amira: Exactly.
Bianca: We can get one email here, one email there, right? And now we're having a meeting, but it's like, you know, we've been having meetings with them for two years. At this point it's like, I'm not really that interested in having meetings with you. You're gaslighting, right? You know, I literally had a representative call me and be like, “I just really appreciate all the work you do.” No, you don’t. Stop it. [laughs] Like, flattery will get you nowhere in this conversation! I get that you're to the team, right? At the end of the day for us, it's very clear. It's very black and white. Do the things we asked you, or don't bother.
Amira: But they’re engaged in performance. They're there for the performance.
Bianca: They’re there for the performance and to say that they're in conversation, and the conversation is going nowhere. What I always tell everybody is I always recall this one conversation, this one thing that Tom said to me, and he said to me once, “Bianca, progress needs patience.” I thought to myself, like, in this moment, wow. This man with $6 billion is talking to me about how our families who are struggling to pay their bills tomorrow should have patience with him about how fast he extracts resources from them, right? And my response to him was, “Patience needs progress.”
Amira: Right. And what the hell are we waiting for anyways? For you to figure out how you still can profit? Like, what are we waiting for, exactly?
Bianca: Well, and here's the interesting thing: he not too long ago, in an interview, he said specifically, “I think they should actually be a non-profit business. I don't think this should be a for-profit.” This was like his epiphany. And as I was reading this, I said to myself, you have the power to do that! This isn't out of your hands. This isn't like…Oh, I don't know what I would do. Like, you have a power to not make money on this. You have that power. You chose to get into this business. You're choosing to stay in this business. You're choosing to continue to operate it in this predatory way. These words don't mean anything. And so, you know, he can try to formulate all of the right talking points for the public, but the reality is the reality – families are still suffering.
Amira: Absolutely. And I appreciate your energy with that, especially because it seems like too many people are very content, especially folks like Tom, to be like, I can perform empathy barely. I can, you know, perform care and concern and do all the things that are required of me, and then also be very good at wielding passive voice. Like, “This is a problem.” Like, “We should fix this.” And write themselves and their ability to do anything out of it. And that's how power gets made invisible, but we can see it. And because of the work that y'all do, right, because of the pressure you apply, we can see it. It's very clear. The emperor has no clothes. He's doing the most, and he's continuing to profit off of something that is absolutely exploitative and harmful and really terrible. The last thing I wanted to ask you, cause you mentioned the players who kind of saw it. You talk about athletic activism a lot, and I think that there's a lot to shoulder when they're navigating that space. But when you were like, all the people walking by and seeing it, I'm wondering if we're hopeful that there's maybe an impact that that had?
Bianca: Yeah. So I think the first thing I say is, yeah, I think generally I'm very, very cognizant, aware, careful, thoughtful about relying on players and expecting them to be the ones to come up against their owners, right? Which in and of itself, let’s just sit with that language, right? So, I think that's hard. I know that everyone wants to do jump to why isn’t this player, that player or whoever getting on board, do they not care? It's like, no, but they also come from, many of them, come from the same communities. Many of them don't exactly have a whole lot to fall back on. Many of them have made it and aren't trying to be martyrs. Not everybody wants to be and should be required to be Colin Kaepernick, who lost his career over this, right? And so, you know, we want to think about what are thoughtful ways to engage players that also protects them, and part of that also means organizing others who have more power, like what about the other owners, right? Where are they in this game? That's why we're talking to the NBA. That's why we're approaching the board of governors, because those other owners, they were also part of all those conversations about BLM. They were also doing all these things and guess what? They have a ton of power, right? They're Tom's peers. So, you know, I think what we know after the action that we did last week, having been able to have some follow-up conversations with some of the players that, you know, they were surprised they were shocked. They didn't know, and they're learning now. So where that goes, who knows? But you know, I think we are in touch with a few and we're hopeful that there is enough of a mass that it creates safety for those who want to speak out.
Amira: Well, Bianca, thank you so much for your time, your energy, the work that you do. For anybody listening who wants to support the pressure that Worth Rises is applying, how can they help y'all out? How can they, you know, donate? Where can they subscribe for updates? How can they get involved?
Bianca: Absolutely. So there's a few things I would tell you to do. One is you can subscribe to our newsletter and donate on our site at worthrises.org. You can follow us to follow up with all actions and everything going on on Twitter and on Instagram @WorthRises. You can also, if you're interested in getting involved in prison phone justice work in your community or beyond, visit connectfamiliesnow.com. And if you want to take action against Tom you can visit connectfamiliesnow.com – you can also go to worthrises.org/nbagores to take action. And so there are many, many ways to raise your voice.
Amira: Yeah, absolutely. Let's get Tom out of the paint – because they can't resist a sports metaphor. [laughter] Bianca, thank you so much for joining us on Burn It All Down.
Bianca: Thank you so much for having me, Amira.