Revcom.us recently talked to Akeem Browder, brother of Kalief Browder. Kalief spent three years at New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail before charges of allegedly stealing a book bag were dropped, and he was released. Kalief never recovered from the torture inflicted in this prison, and took his own life in 2015. Following are edited excerpts, with editorial notes and footnotes added for accessibility:

Revcom: This is a really, really important story… so, maybe we could start with what happened to your brother and what this says about the so-called justice system.

Akeem Browder: Yeah, one, I’m happy you worded it as the “so-called justice system” when there are so many inequities and injustices that happen due to the system and from the system itself.

My brother was one of the many victims of the prison pipeline system, was 16 years old in 2010 and was arrested for allegedly, an allegation of stealing a book bag. When the officers arrested him he had no book bag on him. He didn’t know of this alleged book bag situation, and expressed himself, that he’s not the right person, like he didn’t do it. Of course they didn’t listen, they left it up to a judge. But when going into the criminal justice system or the court system, you are imposed a fee to get out of jail, that’s called bail. His bail was $5,000 for allegedly stealing a book bag and was incredible, and my family couldn’t pay that. We come from the Bronx, which is the poorest congressional district in America. And yet $5,000 was just not something we could have done at the time. And so Kalief then was sent to Rikers Island. Now, with any other skin complexion, any other neighborhood, or even with a different social economic status, it wouldn’t have even been a crime. And if he were even found guilty of the crime of this nature, it would just be community service had it not been for one of those three categories, skin complexion, socio economic status and/or community. But for him there was the commencement of a death sentence. He spent three years on Rikers fighting the fact that he didn’t do what they were alleging of him.

Revcom: He was on Rikers for three years just waiting for trial because he couldn’t pay bail?

Akeem Browder: Exactly. What people don’t realize is jail and prison, even though we speak of it synonymously, they are two different things. Jail is where people go because they are being accused of a crime and they cannot come out because they cannot afford to pay bail. And so when you are accused of a crime, you are innocent until proven guilty, and so that means you are not guilty in the moment and you are waiting for that chance to be proven innocent [Ed: or rather, “not guilty”], or proven guilty because you already are assumed to have your innocence. But by being in Rikers Island or in any other jail across the county, it gives the presumption to the community members and to society that you are guilty because as you just pointed out, you’re like wait, what? He was just waiting for trial?

Revcom: It really is guilty until proven otherwise, if you can even get to the point where you can try to prove yourself not guilty.

Akeem Browder: Exactly. And then two of those years while he was on Rikers Island, to make the time that he was there, he didn’t know how much time he was going to be there, he was just waiting. But they put him in solitary confinement which, for those who don’t know what solitary confinement is, it’s a torture tactic, it’s a tactic to make you so uncomfortable, and there are a lot of things that happen after like mental illnesses that is contributed from being inside solitary confinement cells. But inevitably, since they’re doing this to you while you are innocent, you can only assume that when it is being done to you it’s a tactic to hurry up and get you to plea, to take a plea bargain and get out of your situation faster. And so since he wasn’t taking the plea bargain that were being offered to him to say you’re guilty, even though he knew he wasn’t, they then put him in solitary confinement, they being the court.

Revcom: And how old was he for the three years he was in Rikers?

Akeem Browder: Well, he went in when he was 16 years old.

Revcom: So he was being treated as an adult?

Akeem Browder:  As an adult, yes

Revcom: And what was the basis for that?

Akeem Browder: Well, anyone in New York that’s 16, at the time, because when he was arrested in 2010, anyone 16 years old is considered an adult, which is, just to say, wait, we don’t even allow people to drink or smoke or go to a strip club or even join the military until ages over that of 16, meaning you’re not adult enough to join the military until you’re 18 years old, you’re not adult enough to drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes until you’re 21. You’re not adult enough to go into a strip club until you’re 21. But you’re adult enough to go to jail at 16 years old.

Revcom: This goes against what even the Supreme Court found as the definition of youth and why they shouldn’t be treated as adults.

Akeem Browder: No, they shouldn’t, because just psychologically, if we already have those parameters, like you can’t go into the military and take a life if you go to war, or to even be trained to fight in the military, if we don’t allow you to be adult enough for anything that’s like that or even go to a strip club or like I said, to drive a car, but yet we could say you are old enough to be held criminally accountable for your actions, yet science also proves that until your frontal cerebral cortex, which is the factor that’s necessary to make a long-term decision. So if you’re making a long-term decision below the age of 21, meaning like if you decide to commit a crime, or even get in a fight, if you get in a fight at 16, it’s harder to realize that hey, I might get kicked out of school, or I might be ruining chances, or even if I get in a fight I might hit this person the wrong way and that person might get hurt, even terminal. But that above 21, even though your frontal cerebral cortex that controls that long-term decision, even though it’s just developing, it doesn’t mean you’ve mastered it. It takes time, so like a 29-year-old would think about, like oh my god, I’m 29, if I go to jail for this fight you’re going to think about that long-term decision that you’re about to make and you might not get into a fight. But at 16 years old, you’re being held responsible and accountable for some kind of criminality that you may have or may not have done and you have to make a decision, if I take a plea bargain right now, this is going to affect my long term, but I don’t know how to think for the long term because I’m only 16 years old and I’m not fully developed and so I’m going to take a plea bargain for something I didn’t do, which many people do, actually, 99 percent of this population take plea bargains, and yet they are under the age to make that long-term decision, which means you’ll have a felony for the rest of your life and be looked at and deemed as some “outsider.”

Revcom: I’m glad you brought this up because there actually is a scientific basis for juveniles not being treated as an adult, which you just laid out. And the Supreme Court even ruled on this but it still happens every day, especially to people of color.

Akeem Browder: Well, I was just about to say, let’s not take the realm that this happens and just leave it like that, which would say that it happens to everyone. But we all know that this is a disproportionate amount of people that’s being targeted for these kinds of enslavement movements. Now people should hear the word enslavement and not get defensive, because the law actually states that when we got rid of slavery, the only time that, which still stands to this day in 2022, the only time that you can have a slave is if they are considered criminal, if they are convicts.

So when he came home after all the charges were dropped, Kalief came home and they left my family to pick up the pieces. They damaged my brother—he was not diagnosed, or even experiencing any mental illnesses before being incarcerated. And then all of a sudden when you bring him back, he’s no longer the same kid that we knew. And it was left up to us to just “fix him” because, “Hey, he’s your problem now, we had him for three years, hey take him back now.” And so the Department of Corrections after putting him in solitary confinement for two of those three years, and they starved him. We have videos to prove it because we subpoenaed the court and did a FOIA request and got the videos from Rikers Island. And that’s how we did the documentary which is on Netflix that’s called Time: The Kalief Browder Story, which I did with Jay Z. And it shows the inescapable truth that Kalief was tortured, meaning they watched him because in solitary confinement you end up in such a horrible situation because it’s torture that you would do anything to get out, and if that meant you would have to kill yourself, then you would take that ultimate sacrifice. And yet Kalief would attempt it, and you see in the videos that we have in the documentary and these are unedited videos, Kalief would be attempting suicide, and the officers would stand on the outside of his cage and taunt him. And the words they say is, “Go ahead, we dare you…” or, “What are you waiting for?”

Revcom: And of course, nobody, even after all this documentation, has ever been accused, let alone brought up on charges for these crimes.

Akeem Browder: Yes, so there is a lawsuit. Kalief, when he came home, he filed a lawsuit and even though the system would then put you through all these hoops to make you seem like you’re a liar, like it never happened, they interrogate you and they don’t just hold anyone accountable. No, they are quick to damage your life and slow to help repair it, or fix your life. And so they put him through these interviews where they would try to make his story seem like it was false about what happened, but then in the end they couldn’t even do that. The Department of Corrections and the court system was working to poke holes in his story, and they still couldn’t because the videos proved everything. And so they offered him a settlement amount, and he didn’t want the money. He literally said "no," he wants to go to trial to hold them accountable, because, in his own words, this happens everyday—like right now when we are doing this interview, it’s happening—and he’s like, it’s gotta stop, in his own words, it’s gotta stop.

Revcom: That was very brave of him to do that.

Akeem Browder: They offered him $20 million to shut him up. And he said "no."

Revcom: Can I ask, you said they dropped the charges. Three years, he’s in there, and then all of a sudden they dropped the charges—what was this based on?

Akeem Browder: The fact that they had no evidence to hold him in the first place. So, logic, I’m going to say for anyone reading this, please, do not try to use logic when you’re hearing stories like this or anyone’s story, because it’s going to mess with your logic, your sensibility, meaning it’s going to contradict your sensibility: wait, but this can’t be happening, that’s not how the law is supposed to work.

Don’t allow yourself, or fight yourself is what I’m saying, fight yourself to not try and think with logic, just understand that this defies logic. Because while he was going through what he was going through, the law only states, the law in NY State, because every state is different, but the law in New York State says that if you are arrested, like Kalief, if you are arrested for a felony or accusation of a felony charge, you are to be held, if you cannot afford bail, the charges can be against you for up to 90 days. And if they can’t find you guilty of those charges in 90 days, then they have to release you, which means that charge has to be dropped because they passed the time that they can do it. Now they can extend that time using certain measures, but it shouldn’t ever be more, and they have to ask permission from the judge to get that extra time, like the District Attorney, we have to put in motions to say we need more time. And that could be because of DNA evidence, or witnesses or different things, like evidence that they are looking to get but it takes time. But in Kalief’s case, none of that was necessary because there was no witness, there was no DNA obviously, and they prolonged the time just because they had the power to. Like to get into the technicalities of it would mean we would need at least an hour to explain the crooked bail system, the crooked speedy trial system, and the crooked discovery system in which we live in New York City. And so that would take too much time, but people can visit the Kalief Browder Foundation website and we explain it on our website, and explain what we doing to try and change it while we advocate for more humane condition in Rikers. If someone has to be incarcerated, at least let it be humane because if that person, we assume that that person inevitably will get out, and if they get out and we’ve created a monster, well… then my kids and I have something to fear because now there’s a monster that’s going to be released.

Revcom: So Kalief comes home, you said he’s not the same person because of everything they did to him, how they tortured him. So then what happens?

Akeem Browder: Kalief tried to do what everyone does when they come home from jail, they try to pick up the pieces, they try to get back to life as they think it should be. And so Kalief went back to college. Well, actually, when he came home he got his GED on the first try he took the test, passed it, which just shows he had an intellect to him, he wasn’t someone who just decided now that I’m in jail, I’ll stop learning. No, he requested from me and my mom to bring him certain books to help him still learn while he was in jail. And he came home and passed the GED and then went to Bronx Community College. And so he was going through a lot of things because, obviously, the torture he suffered came home with him. The torture came home with him. He had memories, nightmares, and all of this stuff. Eventually, Kalief ended up committing suicide in my mom’s house on June 6 of 2015.

Revcom: And how old was he then?

Akeem Browder: He had just turned 22, his birthday was May 25.

Revcom: So the system basically murdered him.

Akeem Browder: Well, yeah the system had full responsibility for changing his life from the kid that I remember—my youngest brother being the kid that, he and I were workout partners. He would work out with me in the house because we didn’t have a gym. He was my workout partner, and he was also a brother to me and my other siblings. We all played Dragon Ball, ran around the house play fighting, played Yu-Gi-Oh!, watching Japanese animation, like any other kid. And yet, when he came home, one, he missed out three years of being a kid. Two, he missed out of a chance, even the opportunity, of having a girlfriend. Like most of us, are growing up and maturing and our first girlfriend comes around the age of 16 if anything at the latest. Yeah, he missed out on the chance of even having a girlfriend, or graduating from college, or seeing my brother have his first child. He missed out on home life, and the state replaced it with criminality and trying to survive in a place like Rikers Island.

Revcom: So what effect did this have on your whole family? This was obviously a horrible, horrible thing.

Akeem Browder: Yeah, I mean while Kalief was alive we were constantly trying to figure out what’s going to help him because obviously he wasn’t dealing with the memories of what happened on Rikers well, so he was silent because of the fact that solitary confinement silences you, you’re in a room by yourself, a six by eight room by yourself. And so yeah, he was silent, so he didn’t know how to speak about the issues he was dealing with. And it would come out in other ways, like he would break things around the house or he would go for long walks and get lost and so he was now a missing person. And the fact that the government was still trying to pursue him to make it seem like he was a bad person. He was re-arrested at school for getting into an argument. Like, who gets arrested for getting into an argument? What they did was the police wrote it up as an assault, and yet within the same day all charges were dropped because the teacher confirmed it was a verbal argument, so why would you write it up as an assault?

I’ll tell you another thing though, Kalief was offered $20 million to shut him up. I say to shut him up, but that was the offer during his lawsuit. It went all the way from $800,000 that they offered him for being in jail for three years. What’s $800,000 when which each person, if you look up how much it costs to house a person at Rikers Island, it’s more than $550,00 per year per inmate, per person. So if you house someone for three years at $550,000, that’s $1.5 million, and yet you only offered him $800,000. So you made money off people like Kalief, and then you offer him $800,000 not considering that one, he was tortured, his rights were betrayed and then on top of that it was all for nothing, it was over a book bag. Not to say that he was going to take the money anyway, because they went from $800,000 to one million to four million to nine million and then to 20 million because there was so much attention brought to it by Jay Z, Oprah, Rosie O’Donnell, Rosie Perez, like every celebrity that we came across wanted to be involved. And so the government wanted to shut us up immediately, and they thought, oh let’s offer him some money, he’s—for lack of better words, because I know how they talk about us—he’s a nigger, he’s going to take that money. And so Kalief proved them wrong again. He proved them wrong the first time because they thought he was going to take a plea bargain to get out of solitary confinement and he didn’t. And then he proved them wrong again by them thinking they will kill him in jail by putting him by putting him in solitary confinement—that’s why the officers allowed him to attempt suicide while he was in solitary confinement—and he proved them wrong again. And then the last time, amongst all the others, was offering him $20 million thinking he was going to shut up and take the money, because along with taking the money comes with a contract that you can no longer talk about this and that everything is done. And you can’t talk about it for five years.

Revcom: And this obviously had a huge effect on your mother.

Akeem Browder: That it did. My mother found Kalief when he took his last breath. She was in her room—Kalief’s room was right above her room—and she heard a bang against her window. And it was Kalief, he hung himself outside of his window, and his body hit my mom’s window below her. So my mom… sorry, my mom ended up dying of a heart attack a little after Kalief passed.

Revcom: I really want to express our condolences for all this, it’s just so horrific. I’m being brought to tears and anger at the same time. As you’re telling this story, it’s such an indictment of what happened to your brother, but also what happens to millions of other young men, and even women of color, in this country.

Maybe you could talk a little about the new mayor, Eric Adams’ plan to implement and/or bring back various “anti-crime” measures, what this represents. There’s obviously a connection to the whole system of incarceration and unjust court systems and what Eric Adams is now doing.

Akeem Browder: Everyone should find it dubious, for lack of even worse words, dubious of this man who is now our mayor, because one, he came in under the guise of “being one of us,” meaning he played on the Black agenda, so to speak. And then on top of that, we should be kicking our butts for even those that advocated that he would be a good, or viable candidate. Because the man was a 25-year vet police officer, officer of the law, meaning this dude, he knew how the system works and to change the words—the system, especially the police department, they use the words, like the police department in New York City, their cars say on their logo, CPR, and they write it out on their cars, any police car has a CPR. It’s courtesy, professionalism, and respect. They know how to say words that make you think, oh these are respectable careers, these are respectable people, they don’t do anything wrong. And just like the Department of Corrections, first of all their name says Department of Corrections. Yet they correct nothing. And then on top of that, their three-word motto is care, custody and control. Now, they have no care in the world, yes they have custody, but they have absolutely no control, it’s complete chaos.

Eric Adams, he was one of them, and then he’s now in control as the New York City mayor. And yet his rhetoric is, you cannot challenge me on anything I say unless you’ve worn a bullet-proof vest and a badge for 25 years. He has said this to New York City Council members who are the gatekeepers to New York. And so he has emboldened the NYPD and the Department of Corrections and now they are on a warpath.

And then, I want to say this, ah man, I’m happy I have this platform, and if you edit this, please use this, what I’m about to say. So, everyone was so messed up that this officer had just got killed recently, which I don’t want to see anyone get their life taken, regardless if you’re an officer or not, I’d rather just see them fired and not even able to work again, be ostracized, I don’t care, but not to lose your life. However, this young man had lost his life,¹ and you could hear this story all the way in California. Every news reporter was talking about it, and it was broadcast everywhere. However, did we forget that every Mayor, when they come in, there’s always a "sacrifice"? [Ed: Referring to the murder of cops in the recent de Blasio and current Adams mayoral administrations that have been used to “rev up” support for the police and “tough-on-crime’ policies.”] Please, please use this statement, there has always been a "sacrifice" when there’s a new mayor. De Blasio, do we recall, the Asian man who was shot point-blank in his car.²

Revcom: Maybe you could tell our readers about yourself, what you do, and as part of that, how you founded and are the president of the Kalief Browder Foundation.

Akeem Browder: So here’s about me, myself personally. I did not get into this field originally, I was an engineer. I went to school and got a bachelors in civil and environmental engineering from New York City College of Technology and I worked my life as an engineer. When Kalief was arrested, I had suffered already before Kalief was arrested—I had suffered being incarcerated twice wrongfully, as I had said earlier. And by that second time, Kalief had been incarcerated and that invigorated me, as I said to you, to take action. And so I left my job. I was working on a rig in New Jersey as an engineer for an oil company and yeah, I ended up quitting. I took the road of being an advocate. I was on the streets protesting, that’s one form of advocacy, and we cannot dissuade that because it is a necessary movement, just like every other advocacy. It’s a necessary movement, you can’t have one without the other. So I marched in the street, and I started this organization, a grassroots organization called Shut Down Rikers. And as Shut Down Rikers, we went to a lot of public forums—we went to the police community meetings, community board meetings, and we spoke our piece. I spoke my piece and said that we need change in this way, meaning defunding the police, reallocating the funds to our community so that we can have better social services, because I believe that’s what’s necessary. I believe we need to support our community and be that support for people that are in need, more than trying to arrest our way out of the problem. So that then led myself in 2017, doing so much advocacy from 2010 to 2017. I then ran for mayor of New York City with the Green Party, to get myself out there. I ran this campaign, which I came in third place out of 68 candidates. It wasn’t for fun, it was for a cause. I needed to make sure that change was being made. And that pushed de Blasio as I ran against him, and I’m the one that brought up shutting down Rikers. Well, then he did follow that same rhetoric, because he knew he was gonna get the masses to think his way, that he was going to do something that he obviously didn’t do. I also did the documentary, as I said earlier, with Jay Z, about my brother. It’s a six-part documentary that’s now on Netflix, but we originally did it on Spike TV and BET. An episodic show.

After all this, I decided, ok I’m going to try and change laws, I’m going to aim towards legislature because the city wasn’t listening. And so I continued my advocacy after running for mayor and was a part of doing the bill, “Raise the Age,” which was to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 16 years old. I advocated for it to be 21. But the City of New York obviously really doesn’t want to listen, so they only made it 17. So that really should make a real statement to people that no matter how much you try to advocate, they’ll try to make it seem like they’re doing something, but they only change it one year to the next. After that, I decide, they’re really not going to listen to me unless… because being an engineer, or having a background in engineering, they weren’t going to listen to me because I’m not what they considered an expert in this field of mental health crisis management. And so I decided I’m going to attain a degree in sociology, and so I’m currently finishing my PhD in sociology at Columbia University where I can then be a part of society that says we only listen to you if you have a merit because this is a meritocracy society in America. As long as I have a badge, then that’s my merit. As long as I’m a doctor, that’s my merit. If I have a master’s degree, then that’s my merit and that’s when people listen to you. And so I decided to play that game too. I’m going to get my degree, not in just anything, I’m going to get it in sociology so I can speak and understand and be a part of the masses that can make that controlling factor as a sociologist with a doctorate in sociology. So that’s where I’m at. I run the Kalief Browder Foundation, we’re a mental health crisis organization, and we are in the Department of Education as vendors for the Department of Education to teach civic engagement and social emotional learning.

Revcom: Do you actually do interventions?

Akeem Browder: No we’re not considered an intervention or education organization, or in that category. Our category is preventative. So even though we are listed as a mental health, like the government says we’re a not-for-profit, we’re listed as a mental health and crisis intervention organization. The work we do in mental health work is social emotional learning and the crisis intervention is preventative. To prevent a crisis you have to be able to give the community or the participants in your program tools that will help them to develop good relationship skills or healthy relationship skills or even healthy decision-making tools, or even just critical-thinking skills. So this is what we specialize in.

Revcom: Is there anything else you want to tell our readers, to leave our readers with?

Akeem Browder: This is something that you’re going to take down, of course, I do want to have some last words which is, I’m also a community member, I’m a father to my four-year-old son, I have full custody of my child. I’m a single father, I take care of a four-year-old boy, and I’m raising a four-year-old boy where I want difference, because the youth of our communities are usually the ones that are impacted the most and then grow up to be the one that you do not like, not you personally, but the community saying we don’t want you. And help us all to bring not just my son to a better point so in the long run we can change the rhetoric about men being “dogs,” or men being “criminals,” or Black men being “scary” or even Black women. And just people in general should be treated with a general sense of humanity. And if you want to go above and beyond, fine. But at least we should understand that this is a human being, and if I treat this human being with some kind of indignity or injustice or give them an inequitable lifestyle, put them in impoverished communities that are disenfranchised, well I’m going to have to reap what I sow. And all of us should reap what we sow. If you don’t help to change the atmosphere of today’s society, then do not cry about it later on. Because later on you get what you put into it. You don’t care about your neighbors, well then your neighbors if they happen to do something that is not tasteful or acceptable in your opinion, then try and do something to help that neighbor. We should all treat each other with humanity, and no matter how harsh I put it or kind anyone can put it, it still takes you, the person who’s listening to this to make a change and to do something different. The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over expecting different results. Well, don’t expect something different if you’re not doing anything different.

Revcom: Well, again I just want to really, really thank you for your time on this, your insights, your thoughts, and your exposure of this system.

Akeem Browder: I wanted to tell the story too, so thank you.