How do we reimagine our society as a place where we all feel safe?

That question is at the heart of Carmen Perez's work as a civil rights activist, including roles as president and CEO of the Gathering for Justice,

movement to end racial inequities in the justice system, and co-chair of the women's march.

Carmen shares the importance of learning from our elders, specifically the lessons she learned for more than 20 years working alongside Harry Belafonte,

the life-changing loss that

shapes her pursuit of justice and of joy, and what happens when a person who prides herself

on her strength learns to lean in to her softness. Carmen, thank you for doing this.

Well, thank you for having me, Alicia.

It's been quite some time, so I'm happy we're able to have a conversation today.

Carmen, your sense of justice is what frames your entire life and your entire work.

And so I think it's really important that we begin with the origin story of how that sense

of justice was developed, which was not in a classroom, though you would later go on

to cultivate this sense in a classroom. It's really in your own life in one of the most

trying moments of your life that this lesson is crystallized. Absolutely. I grew up in a Chicano,

Mexican-American family, and I grew up in Oxford, which was right outside of Los Angeles.

And we, at a very early age, learned how to navigate the things we were experiencing, sexual trauma, domestic violence, alcoholism, gang violence, police surveillance. That was something that

we learned very young. And luckily, I played basketball, I played ball from the age of five

all the way to college. I ran track, played volleyball, or showed up to volleyball games, I like to say, and played softball all year

round. And so that kind of became my therapy. I remember my coach. I would come to practice

experiencing something traumatic. And my coach would be like run it off Perez. I just didn't know

that the family that I loved and the family

that I was a part of were generations involved in gangs or involved in incarceration. I had a

...