AM 00:02

So hello, my name is Alex mark and I'm a volunteer with UCLA Law COVID-19 Behind Bars data project, I want to start by explaining how we plan to use the conversation we are about to have. Our conversation is not legally privileged, we will not keep what you say confidential. We plan to make transcripts and recordings of our interviews available for use by future researchers in the general public and portions may be posted online or discussed and posted on our website or other published writing. I want our conversation to flow freely, and I realize that you may discuss a sensitive topic or mention a piece of information that you later realize would like to be withheld. If you request it now, at the end of the interview, or later on after further reflection, we are happy for you to review the transcript of our conversation before it is made public and to redact any portions you deem necessary from the transcript and the recording. So, without further ado, could you please introduce yourself?

CK 00:55

Yeah, I have a question though, is the transcript redacted, like my name?

AM 01:01

If you want it to be we can redact any portions of the transcript.

CK 01:04

Okay, but it will be like posted and say, “Corene Kendrick said all this”?

AM 1:10

Yes.

CK 1:11

Okay.

AM 01:13

Yeah, at the end of the meeting, we can discuss that more.

CK 1:14

What’s that?

AM 1:15

I said, we can discuss that for as long as you want once were done with the meeting.

CK 01:19

No, okay. That's, that's fine. That's it. Thank you for telling me that. My name is Corene Kendrick, and I'm the Deputy Director of the ACLU National Prison Project.

AM 01:30

Well, thank you. So first of all, I was, I wanted to start by asking how your experience working as an advocate and a lawyer changed from the start of the pandemic, especially in terms of how your relationship with your clients changed working remotely.

CK 01:51

So, at the start of the pandemic, I was not working at the ACLU, I was working at another organization that advocates for incarcerated people, the Prison Law Office [aka PLO]. But so, in March, when the whole country went on lockdown, I was no longer able to visit our clients who we represent in class action litigation, in prisons and jails in Arizona. And, you know, to the extent we communicate with incarcerated people through the mail, it took a little while for the office to kind of get a system in place for continuing to scan, read and respond to the mail, given everybody was working remotely. So we had to move-- well we had already moved to, but we had to rely upon a cloud based database system to review correspondence from incarcerated people.

AM 02:53

And do you feel like that, you know, new system you're using, did that improve your advocacy in any way? Did it feel more efficient? And, you know, in any ways did it maybe take away from the just connection you had with, you know, working with incarcerated people before?

CK 03:12

Yeah, it wasn't really more of a new system, it just became the only system we had. Yeah, and we attempted at PLO [Prison Law Office] in the late spring and early summer of 2020, to attempt to do monitoring visits virtually, where we would have prison staff wearing full PPE, and carrying tablets, or telephones, walk through prisons, and try to direct them to show us things but it obviously, was nowhere near as useful or helpful as being physically present in the jails and prisons and being able to make the observations yourself in person.

AM 03:55

Did you feel like the staff easily-- did they facilitate your work with, you know, everything they were doing with tablets like you were saying, or was there any pushback?

CK 04:09

There was, it took a while to get it figured out how we were going to do things.

AM 04:16

Okay. Um, so, just thinking about the lessons in terms of your team and advocacy, how you responded in the short term at the beginning of the pandemic. What do you think could have potentially been done differently? Especially because at the beginning, I think none of us really knew the appropriate way to respond 100% besides just following basic guidelines and public health measures, so just looking back, where do you think you could have maybe been more responsive hypothetically.

CK 05:08

Yeah, I mean, that's hard to say, because we were trying to do everything we could within the constraints of the fact that, you know, we didn't want to be the ones accidentally bringing the virus into the prisons, so, or potentially exposing ourselves or our families or loved ones to the virus. So, we just had to make do with the technology that we had in place. And so whether that's, you know, trying to set up confidential legal calls, to speak to class members trying to do these virtual tours, which, you know, didn't work very well, because they were either, you know, either had to have some sort of Wi-Fi connection for the people holding the tablet or a cell connection and a lot of prisons, yeah, you know, there is no reception. So, I'm not quite sure I'm not quite sure what else we could have done. We tried using all available means of communication to stay in contact with class members and incarcerated people, whether it was, you know, through these virtual monitoring tours where, you know, we could see people on the tablet, but it wasn’t confidential when we would talk to them if an officer was holding it [tablets], or legal calls or just continuing to correspond through US mail. You know, one thing that I did in one of the cases that I worked on, which was a, which is against the Arizona Department of Corrections, was that early on in the pandemic, we had a community town hall meeting on Facebook Live, I believe, I I'm not the tech person who set it up. But it was, it was myself and a couple of other attorneys who worked on this class action lawsuit about medical care. And it was open to members of the public. And we had a couple hundred family members of incarcerated people and concerned citizens who participated. And then according to the statistics of you know, who was watching, there were several thousand people who, who watched the video, because it was live streamed and saved onto the ACLU of Arizona's Facebook page. And I think that was useful to speak with the family members of our clients to try to explain everything that we were trying to do, both in the case, in terms of advocating for improved conditions with the pandemic, but also to explain to them what we were trying to do to stay in contact with their loved ones. Obviously, you know, the incarcerated people and their loved ones were terrified, rightfully so, about what would happen when the virus got into the prison systems and would tear through. And I, in hindsight, we probably should have done more of those [livestreams with family members]. Not just-- we did, I did a couple more in Arizona for that case, in the subsequent 15 months, but perhaps not quite as frequently. I actually did one last night with some family members. But probably, you know, I think I think it may have been, in hindsight, a good idea if we had done that with our California prison cases and our jail cases at the Prison Law Office. And, you know, I moved to the ACLU in November of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, and still work on the Arizona case. And since then, I have been making a concerted effort to try to do these kind of townhall meetings on virtual platforms, on a monthly basis, facilitated by the ACLU of Arizona.

AM 09:12

So since you've been having more of those town halls, do you feel like your role has shifted at all and just not only being someone to advocate for incarcerated people and, you know, their rights and our system, but trying to give their family, you know, the information that they need and would really help them right now?

CK 09:35

Yeah, I mean, prior I feel like prior to COVID, I did have a fair amount of contact with family members and loved ones. You know, there are limitations. These are class action impact litigation cases. You know, this case has a class of 32,000 people. We're not a direct legal services organization. So we don't represent people individually. So, you know, over the years, I've had a lot of contact with family members and with support groups in the community, especially in Arizona that advocate for incarcerated people.

AM 10:13

Do you find that, um, you know, are there established groups? Like you just mentioned a support group that work with the ACLU and these groups a lot? Or is it usually the ACLU and I've seen organizations creating those support systems.

CK 10:30

It's a mixture of both. The ACLU of Arizona has a group that is led by formerly incarcerated people and system impacted people and family members of loved ones, and they work with other criminal justice reform organizations in the state. Some are kind of more established nonprofits and others are much more grassroots community based organizations.

AM 11:00

So you mentioned Arizona, clearly, but since you started working with the ACLU since its National Prison Project, have you been mostly working all over the United States? Or have you focus more on any one region or something else?

CK 11:15

So after when the pandemic began, the National ACLU made an effort to file lawsuits on behalf of people in prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers across the country. The national ACLU has filed about 20 cases against immigration detention centers, and approximately 12 to 15 cases against prisons and jails. That's mainly been county jails, and then Federal Bureau of Prison, and US Marshals Service facilities. And those are across the country. And one of my roles is kind of overseeing all of the jail and prison litigation that we have going on. At this point, in June 2021, they're all at various stages in the litigation process, some have settled. One, we received the relief we needed, and the case was discharged last week, and then others were continuing to litigate and are in discovery.

AM 12:31

What would you say are some of the like, the major differences between litigating immigration detention facilities versus other carceral facilities?

CK 12:41

Detained immigrants have more rights because it's a different legal standard than for people who have been convicted of a crime.

AM 12:51

I didn't know that. Um, do you think is—I’m trying to think of the way to phrase this question. Do you feel like the criminal legal system, as it stands, is set up to make it more difficult to advocate for people who've been convicted of a crime than for detained immigrants which sort of goes along with what you just said.

CK 13:22

Yeah. The Prison Litigation Reform Act doesn't apply to immigrants or civil detention.

AM 13:28

Okay. And to be quick, the Prison Litigation Reform Act, is that also known as the First Step Act?

CK 13:36

No, the Prison Litigation Reform Act is the PLRA. It's a law that was passed in 1996 that makes it incredibly difficult for people who are held in prisons and jails and juvenile halls to litigate in federal court. It puts up a lot of procedural roadblocks and obstructs their access to justice in a way that no other disfavored group in this country is singled out and denied access to justice. I have a lot of thoughts about the PLRA.

AM 14:06

Please, no go on.

CK 14:09

No, no, no, that's not related to this.

AM 14:13

So is this like, I might know the sort of casual name, is this just the 1990 Crime Bill that, that you know, we heard a lot about in the news last year. I mean, I know, Joe Biden worked on it. It was bipartisan. It's sort of-

CK 14:29

It's the same, it's the same era. It was when Bill Clinton, it was it was all from 1996 when Bill Clinton was running for reelection, and Newt Gingrich had taken over Congress and so the Democrats decided that they needed to pander and, you know, create myths of super predators and in the Crime Bill and pass legislation that made it incredibly difficult to litigate death penalty cases in federal court and then also pass the Prison Litigation Reform Act.

AM 15:02

So, Prison Litigation Reform Act, at least in the 90s, then was more or less trying to be as tough on Crime as they could be, I guess the reason I'm thinking is today when we hear about prison reform, I think the conversation is more about trying to be making more humane system. But no, it's just interesting, but how do you feel like the act you just mentioned, how do you feel like that still comes up in your day to day litigation and the advocacy you're doing now?

CK 15:40

Well, the PLRA. Yeah, it infects and impacts everything that we do because if we're going to litigate in federal court, we have to check all the boxes. There are numerous restrictions on access to the court. One of the key components of the PLRA, which was definitely implicated in all of the COVID litigation is there is a requirement that's called the ‘exhaustion requirement’, which means that before an incarcerated person can file suit in federal court, they have to show that they have exhausted their administrative grievances, and the practical effect of that over the past 25 years. And how the courts have interpreted that is very stringent. And it also has incentivized prison systems to create Byzantine grievance systems for incarcerated people to navigate with very short timeframes. Lots of hoops to jump through. And a lot of courts have been of the mindset that if you fail to cross one T or dot one I, they can toss your case and not even review it on the merits. It's a procedural bar. It's an affirmative defense, that the that the prison and jail systems can argue, and how this came up in COVID, is the fact that it [Covid] was an emergency. And people needed, you know, access to masks and hygiene supplies and social distancing and all those things and they couldn't, you know, wait to go through the grievance system and the exhaustion-- and exhaust to the highest level. And oftentimes, it's two or three levels in the normal timeframes. Because a lot of times, you know, you file your first grievance, it goes to the captain of your unit, they have 30 days to respond, and then you go to a second level, they have 60 days to respond, then it goes to headquarters in Sacramento, or, you know, wherever, and then you get a final response, and then voila, you have exhausted your grievance, you can now go to federal court. And in the COVID situation, people were dying, and didn't have time to exhaust and there are some very narrow exceptions in the case law, where basically, if prison system argues failure to exhaust as their affirmative defense, the plaintiff, the incarcerated person can get over it by saying “there was an emergency, the grievance system was not available to me, because, you know, I was stymied,” or, you know, there are these little exceptions. But what we saw increasingly across the country, as either pro se prisoners suing or advocacy groups bringing suit was a lot of courts would look to the exhaustion doctrine under the PLRA and say that people had not exhausted their grievances before coming to court seeking things like access to PPE or hygiene supply or orders that the prison system, you know, put the beds six feet apart. So that was very frustrating.

AM 19:07

Yeah. Why do you think there was just so much stubbornness on the part of the prisons to keep these Byzantine measures, like you said, when this was a public health crisis, I mean, this was not only a human rights crisis for incarcerated people, and you know, everything there, but this was going to affect everyone and probably outside of the prisons, too. So, what do you think it was, that was so embedded in the system that made it still this difficult to get people out when they needed to be?

CK 19:52

I mean, I really can't speculate what's in the hearts or minds of prison officials or elected officials, especially during COVID, and why they acted the way they did or why they didn't act the way they didn't. So I really can't say what they were thinking or what their motivation was. As advocates, you know, we kept trying to point out that the virus doesn't stop at prison walls, the virus can't tell the difference between an orange jumpsuit and a green prison guard uniform. You know, everyone's vulnerable to this virus and to infection and even if the prison officials or the elected officials did not care about my clients, I would have hoped that they would have cared about the people who work in their facilities, and the communities surrounding their prisons. And in hindsight, it really gives me no joy to know that we were correct in our predictions that the failure to decarcerate a lot of prisons and jails would result in infections and deaths of people who worked in the prison, besides the people who lived in the prison. Lots of people in the prisons and jails died, unfortunately, or were infected, and to this day have serious lingering effects. But our prediction that the virus somehow doesn't know how to discriminate between people in orange jumpsuits and people in green uniforms proved true. And we saw prison staff in Yuma, Arizona, the warden of the prison in Yuma died of COVID. And we saw a massive outbreaks in prison communities, which, you know, it's a bit of a chicken or an egg situation that the virus come into this rural community and then go into the prison and then come back or vice versa. That's-- future epidemiologists might be able to trace it. But you know, it really impacted a lot of communities. When there was the outbreak, the massive outbreak at San Quentin, which is in Marin County, luckily, that's in the San Francisco Bay Area. And after all of the Marin hospitals were filled up with incarcerated people, hospitals, in the surrounding counties had to accept people from San Quentin. Unfortunately, places like Yuma County, Arizona weren't so lucky. Because Yuma County, Arizona is four hours from San Diego, four hours from Phoenix and on the US Mexico border and the border with California. And there's only one small regional medical center there. And the entire county and community and hospital was filled, both with people in the community and incarcerated people who were very, very sick and dying from COVID.

AM 23:14

Did they take most of the residents in the prisons to hospitals, or were they usually cared within the prisons?

CK 23:25

I think it really depends on the prison and the patient. I mean, I do know that across the country, you know, when people got sick enough, they would send incarcerated people to community hospitals. But as it was community hospitals we're sending back very sick people who are members of the community. So, it stands to reason that the same would probably happen to incarcerated people. And because there's so much security theater involved with taking incarcerated people to offsite hospitals. It caused a lot of disruptions to community hospitals. Again, back to Yuma, Arizona, some whistleblowers that worked at the Community Hospital, actually went to the media to complain that the prison guards from the State Department of Corrections who were “guarding” ((CK does quotes with her hands)) people with COVID, who were on ventilators, not that they were going to jump up and run away, we're like not wearing masks, not observing certain things, were kind of getting in the way, were insisting that incarcerated people needed to be handcuffed to beds even though these people were unconscious and on ventilators. So it definitely, you know, the problems in the prisons spill out to the community and to the community hospitals.

AM 24:54

Did you speak with any incarcerated people about how they felt the staff were handling the crisis?

CK 25:03

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

AM 25:05

And what was their response typically?

CK 25:10

That it was not being handled well. Or that some staff minimized it. It's, you know, prisons are just microcosms of our society. So the same way that there are COVID deniers in the general population in the community, there are COVID deniers inside prisons. And so, yeah, you know, some incarcerated people would tell me that custody or health care staff would minimize the severity of the threat, or, you know, repeat some of the more outlandish conspiracy theories and talking points about the virus.

AM 25:55

Yeah. You also mentioned you said “security theater” couple minutes ago, what do you mean by that? I'm just curious.

CK 26:06

So you know, how, like, when you fly through TSA, all that production, I consider that security theater. It's not really making you safe. But it's, it's a big show. It’s the same thing when very sick people--prisons do not send people to the hospital, unless they're really, really sick. But somehow, there's this idea that people who are incarcerated who are going to the hospitals [note: meant hospitals I think] need to be treated like, you know, they're about to jump up and run away. So oftentimes, you'll have situations where somebody who's very ill, or elderly, or is completely incapacitated by whatever is taking them to the hospital, will be accompanied by a couple of guards and then they will insist upon 24/7 Officer coverage, literally sitting in the room, or sitting outside the room with them. Depending on the prison system, and the officers, they may handcuff people to a hospital bed from anywhere from two to three points of attachment, even if the person is unconscious, or has recently had some medical procedure where medical staff need to like access an IV or do things or get somebody to get up and stand up and walk around and get their blood circulating. So that's what I mean.

AM 27:38

Yeah, no, that's theater. It's not making them more safe. I mean, this is sort of open speculation so if you don't have an answer, that's fine. But what do you think is the root of like this almost, frankly, cartoony response to trying to make sure prisoners, or incarcerated people don't jump up and leave, like you said, at any point. I mean, it's, it's not realistic or grounded in reality, and it's dehumanizing. And so I mean, do you think is it cultural? Is it? Do you think it's the staff feeling like there's financial incentives behind it for them? Or something else? I'm just curious.

CK 28:31

Yeah, again, I can't speculate, speculate as to what goes on in the minds of people who write these policies, you know, America's carceral system, unlike a lot of foreign countries, is based on this worst case scenario sort of mentality. So, you know, whatever happens, they just assume the worst case scenario is going to happen. Yeah, I don't, I don't understand how somebody who's, you know, 75 years old and unconscious, and on a ventilator is going to suddenly jump up and run away. Or, you know, how a woman who is in the midst of labor is just going to pop up and, you know, stop and run out of the hospital. But there, there's this this big theater production. And, and that's just something you see. It's absurd. It really is absurd.

AM 29:33

Yeah, that's a good word for it. And it also reminds me what you said about COVID. Our response to COVID as a society being reflected in our prisons because this is also our response to Criminal Justice and how we handle people who have committed crimes reflected in our prisons. I think more obviously, because this is you know, that is part of the system but how much of it do you think just has the capacity to change culturally? I mean, if we were to I mean, I just think there are so many, it's so deeply embedded in the way America functions, financially and culturally and legally and so where do you see our system becoming more humane? I mean, what do you think some of the first steps could be?

CK 30:36

Well, I mean, you know, some, there was some decarceration as a result of COVID. Across the country, California released people from the CDCR state prisons earlier than their release date. They did not do enough to release people who were medically vulnerable due to age or disease who posed no risk to the public or very, very low scores on public safety risks. But people were released, the Judicial Council in California issued a statewide emergency rule that the presumptive bail amount for most, most if not all misdemeanors, and low level felonies, and wobblers would be $0. And jail populations across the state plummeted and went down significantly. And similar zero bail orders were put into effect in other parts of the country. There's other states where the state prison systems reduce their population significantly, some voluntarily, some because they were sued about it. But the sky didn't fall. You know, currently, there is an uptick in some parts of the country in the homicide rate. But otherwise, crime has not gone up despite the hysterical rantings of some politicians and amplified by some members of the media, but the reality is, the sky didn't fall. And so as an advocate, I think it's very important to figure out how we can avoid going back to the status quo. The zero bail order [note: I think this is referring to the California zero bail order], unfortunately, expired in 2020, after it was in effect for a few months, and the jail populations in California went back up because you had all these people incarcerated on misdemeanor offenses who couldn't pay bail, so they were incarcerated due to poverty. And so, I think there needs to be an adult reflection on this, a reasoned reflection that's based on evidence and statistics and not whatever, you know hot mess the media wants to slap on for clickbait about crime running rampant, but really rethink like, why are we incarcerating people due to poverty? Why? Why are we locking people up for misdemeanor offenses? So, I hope that once we're kind of a little bit past the pandemic and catch our breath that across the country, there'll be brave public officials who will start to ask these questions about things like, why do we lock up people for these minor offenses? Why do we lock up people for very long life sentences? One of the excuses that was given by, for example, in California by Governor Newsom for not releasing people who were elderly or medically vulnerable, who had incredibly low score rates [referring to threat to public safety scores] was because they were, quote, “violent offenders”, or in many cases, they were lifers who had been convicted of a life sentence due to a manslaughter or murder charge. And never mind the fact that there's abundant statistics that show that the group of people with the lowest recidivism rate in California, when paroled, is people convicted of murder. There's this hysteria and this fear, again going back to the worst case scenario, you know, that just one worst case, that we can't release them. And so, in the case that has been going on for years against the Department of Corrections about the medical care called Plata [Brown v. Plata]. The judge in that case, Jo n Tigar from the Northern District would hold hearings on a regular basis with prison officials and the Court Appointed Receiver who oversees medical care and the plaintiff's counsel and repeatedly implore Governor Newsom or his staff, you know, who the judge was hoping was maybe watching this hearing over zoom, to consider releasing more of these people because the judge felt that his hands were tied and that legally he could not order their release because of the existing law. So that's a very long winded way to say that, you know, I think I think there needs to be some serious reflection about why we have 82 year old incontinent people sitting in diapers, you know, using wheelchairs, who have a multitude of medical conditions that puts them at serious risk of death, or die and they live, you know, cheek and jowl with one another. And elected officials are too scared to release them, even though statistically speaking, these people are of zero risk to the community, and are costing the state a lot of money to provide the medical care, and it's serving no purpose, it's serving no purpose at all.

AM 35:53

That's astonishing, especially what you said about the judge imploring Newsom, essentially, because his hands are tied. But, so first of all, I didn't know that about the recidivism of people who commit homicide. That's really surprising. To me, it just sort of highlights how so many of our crimes in America are branded is like a Scarlet Letter where it's not about whether someone is actually a dangerous person based statistically or on the facts or a public safety or public health hazard, but just how we decide to view that, or it's subjective, which I think is a huge part of the problem. And then also going back to the uptick in homicides, I think it's interesting that last month, Larry Krasner, still won his primary in Philadelphia, in spite of his progressive approach to being a district attorney in Philadelphia, and the city did not reject him. And so I wonder if just city politics in general is becoming more progressive in terms of criminal justice? And, you know, I think the local system might be a place to start there.

CK 37:34

Yeah, I mean, district attorneys have way more power over who's in prison than the governor does. So, the state, the state gets people at the end of the process. It's the district attorneys and the prosecutors and the police that initiate the process of criminalizing poverty or racism.

AM 37:58

Do you feel like progressive district attorneys can truly make a difference in the system? Or are they too embedded in the way we already handle crime here in this country?

CK 38:11

No, I definitely think that they make improvements in the system.

AM 38:15

Yeah. I've heard the skepticism. But I mean, like you said, they have an enormous amount of power on who goes to prison. And then, in terms of policing, because you mentioned that too, after the protests last summer, I think there has definitely been a shift in public opinion. And how he police in this country, at least in the short term, there was, and I think it's possibly too early to tell where public opinion really lands. But do you think that as politicized as criminal justice has become, does it give you any sort of optimism and push maybe shift in public opinion, nationwide?

CK 39:14

I think I mean, it's too early to tell. So I don't know. I mean, it's hard because you certainly want to be optimistic, but I also am a realist, so I don't know how it's gonna end up in the wash.

AM 39:32

Of course. Yeah. Overall, what are the biggest lessons you think you would take personally and professionally from working within the carceral system during the pandemic?

CK 39:54

I think it's been, you know, very difficult for all of us who do this work. You know, we were thrust into this triage situation. I don't necessarily feel like, what I'm going through is really, and what I went through, even compares to what my clients had to endure. So, you know, to talk about it, to talk about, like, how it impacted me, or my co-workers seems rather self-indulgent on my part. So I, I don't want to like really kind of talk about, oh, woe is me, this is my suffering, but because I, as difficult as it was, I think, to be an advocate and feel so helpless, and unable to do more, to help people in the prisons and jails and immigration detention centers who were just, you know, sitting ducks for this virus, I, I can't even fathom, you know, how it must have felt to be living in a dormitory with 200 other people with a diagnosis of two or three different chronic medical conditions. And just knowing that all you have is a dinky little piece of fabric to put over your face. And if you're lucky, you might get a free bar of soap that's like, you know, half the size of a pack of cards. And that's, that's all you have to protect yourself. You know, I'm, I'm very lucky, you know, I have a home, I was able to isolate, I was able to use technology to connect and be connected with loved ones and friends. You know, I was able to get the right kind of masks and do all the things I needed to do to keep myself safe for the past year and a half. And it was still, you know very difficult time for me like everyone else, and especially knowing what my clients were going through. But what my, the torture that my clients have endured for the past 15 months is just unfathomable. And not just the clients on my cases, but every human being adult or child who has been incarcerated since last year.

AM 42:48

Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to clarify. We're, you know, with these interviews, we're especially just curious how your work changed in terms of your advocacy efforts, tactics, strategies, because of the nature of work during the pandemic? So, um, I think that was also how my question was directed just less in terms of how it may have affected your life personally, but, you know, for the future, this could happen again. And we, you know, we really want to make sure we try to learn as much as we can, just in terms of what advocates can prepare for next time, because I think you spoke to it. It's unfathomable. I mean, I can't imagine. And so, it's, it just makes the work I think all the more vital. But I think you said torture, and that's accurate. I don't think there's a better word for it. But I really appreciate you taking the time for this interview. And so, before we go, I was wondering if you have any other final thoughts?

CK 44:23

No, not that I can think of, but I really appreciate everything that you guys are doing at UCLA to work on this. And I do remember, I think it was like around March 20 or something. I sent an email to Sharon Dolovich. And I was like, you know, it'd be really helpful if like you or some of your students could try to, like could you do a Google spreadsheet or something because it's hard to keep track of all these COVID things happening, and I certainly don't take credit as any sort of genesis for it but Sharon kind of started gathering little pieces of information and then next thing you know, just, it just kind of grew. So, I really I mean, the work that you guys at UCLA have done in the past year has just been so invaluable for all of us as advocates. It's really been helpful.

AM 45:21

Well, we're gonna keep on working, it’s definitely not over yet.

CK 45:27

No, unfortunately, not.

AM 45:29

Now. Alright, I'm gonna stop the recording.

CK 45:31

All right.