Pull Focus - Dawn porter - There's never been a better time

By luck the film premiered just before the fifteenth anniversary of Gideon versus Wainwright and so it was a great confluence of events that got a lot of news-press about the fact that there was a film but there's also something about seeing someone's experience that I think really enriches your understanding so a lot of articles were written but having the film I really think did contribute to the public discourse the biggest reaction I get from people who are not lawyers is they're just appalled and they just say I didn't know I didn't know what was happening I didn't know how hard it was. I feel like I can see that moment when there's just a little bit room for some more information or some other data points to enter their lives and this film does not cover everything about inch defense it's very small but I think I hope what it does is to create a wedge to create an opening so the next time they see somebody's mugshot or read about something they think wait a minute maybe there's another side I started my speeches asking people who haven't seen the film how many people's lives could you represent at once and people say, two? or five? and when you think about it that's a lot of work to do you have to investigate, you have to know their families you have to... you could see how that would seem (hard)... so then when I say they have a hundred-plus or 500 in Miami you know plus misdemeanor cases I think people because sometimes really big numbers they're so big that they're not meaningful you have to have a comparison so if I say you have to walk 10 miles but if you know what half a mile feels like, you're like wow ten miles is really... but you have to have something to compare it to and most people don't so I try to give people a sense like how many things you do at work every day? how many different projects? are you working on a hundred and fifty different projects where you have to start you have to get up to speed and where you know there is a license and somebody could go to prison if you don't do a good job that means a lot of pressure so I think people understand that and that is not so good for our justice system so and you know if anything the film has done I think it's starting to help that conversation going and then for public defenders you know I was a little worried public defenders can be really tough audience you know they do a hard job they're kind of anti-authority often but you know from many people I have heard they wanna show the film to their parents that the haven't been able to explain to people why they do their jobs and that the film helps them say say why they do there has never been a better time for something concrete and real to happen the Attorney General Eric Holder made introductory remarks for the film at silver docs this year i guess it's AFI docs now and then about 3-4 weeks later he announced a major policy shift that the federal government would not he was directing prosecutors not to pursue low-level drug crimes as felonies which is a major (change) so I'm taking all the credit for that but I think with that announcement you know what the federal government's pronouncement on drug crimes and how they should be treated is a guide, is a signal to the state's so that's a major shift the recent New York State finding that Stop and Frisk as applied just stopping young men of color is unconstitutional that's a really good policy decision and then the fact that so many states cannot afford to wholesale incarcerate people from low-level crimes so I think that there's an economic push and there's a bit of a social justice push and so there's a really great opportunity now for people who have been doing this work for a long time to come in you know close the deal and really make some reform effort so I'm pretty encouraged I tend to be optimistic person