Joshua B. Hoe interviews Ashish Prashar about criminal justice reform, media, and politics during episode 128 of Decarceration Nation
Full Episode
My Guest – Ashish Prashar
Ashish currently serves as Global Chief Marketing Officer at R/GA. Having over 17 years of experience in communications, he is a seasoned campaigner, political strategist, writer, and executive building global brands. Ashish has had a lengthy career in politics where he handled communications for the Conservative Party, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and was a press secretary to the former Mayor of London, Boris Johnson – some of you might have heard of him. In the United States, Ashish worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, the 2018 midterms for the Democrats, and most recently, President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. Ashish was incarcerated at a young age and went on to create programs for the formerly incarcerated: the campaign for Clean Slate, bail reform, ending solitary confinement, and the restoration of voting rights.
Watch the Interview on YouTube
You can watch episode 128 on our YouTube channel
Notes from Episode 128 Ashish Prashar – Media and Politics
Ashish recommended “Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration” by Reuben Jonathan Miller
I referred to the book “Where You’re At: Notes From the Frontlines of a Hip-Hop Planet” about the global influence of hip-hop by Patrick Neate.
Full Transcript
Joshua Hoe
Hello and welcome to Episode 128 of the Decarceration Nation podcast, a podcast about radically reimagining America’s criminal justice system.
I’m Josh Hoe, and among other things, I’m formerly incarcerated; a freelance writer; a criminal justice reform advocate; a policy analyst; and the author of the book Writing Your Own Best Story: Addiction and Living Hope.
Today’s episode is my interview with Ashish Prashar about the media, incarceration, police and criminal justice reform. Ashish currently serves as Global Chief Marketing officer at R/GA. Having over 17 years of experience in communications, he is a seasoned campaigner, political strategist, writer, and executive building global brands. Ashish has had a lengthy career in politics where he handled communications for the Conservative Party, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and was a press secretary to the former Mayor of London, Boris Johnson – some of you might have heard of him. In the United States Ashish worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, the 2018 midterms for the Democrats, and most recently, President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. Ashish was incarcerated at a young age and went on to create programs for the formerly incarcerated: the campaign for Clean Slate, bail reform, ending solitary confinement, and the restoration of voting rights, all things I definitely agree with. So thank you for that. Welcome to the DecarcerationNation podcast, Ashish.
Ashish Prashar
Thanks for having me, Josh. It’s a privilege to be on.
Josh Hoe
Great to have you and quick congratulations, I believe you just had a kid.
Ashish Prashar
Yeah, it’s a symbolic moment. I mean, I think it’s 20 years since I was released from a young offenders institute, and my newborn, my partner’s, and my newborn was born days away from the anniversary. So it’s quite a momentous time.
Josh Hoe
That’s amazing. You couldn’t celebrate it a better way. I always ask the same first question. How did you get from wherever you started in life to where you were the Global Chief Marketing Officer at RGA?
Ashish Prashar
That’s a long question. I think the interesting thing is, for me, it does start around 20 years ago, when I first experienced firsthand, the prison industrial complex, but over in the UK, everyone has, a lot of people still have a . . . view of Europe and the UK as being more liberal and more progressive. But you know, UK prisons are equally as brutal, if not worse, in some places in the UK as they are here. And I was incarcerated at 17. I grew up in a middle-class family in London. And at16, my parents divorced. And that single event doesn’t seem like a significant one right now. But nevertheless, at the moment, at that time, led to the collapse of all I knew to be true at that moment. You know, my dad wasn’t in the best place; my mum had left. And I found kinship and a group of friends who shared a lot of conflicts, like a lot of people, you know, they’d lost people in their lives. Some quite literally had lost people to violence and whatever else. There were risk-takers and adventurers, we bonded really quickly. And we did senseless things that, you know, got us nicked many times over. And our exploits got bigger and more daring. And we got closer and closer through those exploits. And until the day we got caught. And at 17, I was arrested, charged, and convicted of the crime of conspiracy to steal, I think that’s what they still call it, from a department store in London. Some people, when they hear that for the first time, they ask what did you do? Did you raid the store? Did you hide things and your coats? It was actually a pretty sophisticated crime for a bunch of kids. We were, you know, 17. This is the year 2000-2001, that time period, we stole around 20-30,000 pounds worth of merchandise from this department store by using cloned credit cards. We have kids, who grew up on council estates, which are projects here in the United States. And they take the black metallic strip on the back of your credit card, which at that time was on the back of library cards, Blockbuster cards; if people still had those and one of the kids could program the card details of any cards onto those strips. And we kept doing that until we got caught, on the fifth occasion, at that same department store. And I knew we were in trouble, but I didn’t really know how much you know, even the morning of sentencing, I didn’t believe they’re going to send a bunch of kids to prison, because it was the first offense. If I’m being very honest with everyone listening, which I believe in . . . we got caught for obviously, I was honest with the police. We pleaded guilty and we accepted responsibility. And we were ready to be punished. But did we believe or did I believe we were going to prison? I guess not. And I don’t remember anything that judge said except that we were being sentenced to one year in prison. And it was like an out of body experience because the next thing I remember . . . below the court. And later that night we eventually got to what is Feltham Young Offenders Institute, which is like a Rikers for young people, even though they do house young people at Rikers, but it’s solely for young people. In London’s Feltham Young Offenders one of the most violent prisons in the UK. And we, once we got there, that’s when, as a lot of people who are listening and who’ve been through the justice system know, they strip your identity; they took our personal belongings, they issued us with the standard dress code, they processed us, gave us numbers and call you by your surname. And I remember one thing before the guard closed that door that night, you know, I looked in that room, and I saw just, you know, two tiny bars of soap, a plastic comb, I think, two packets of Colgate. I can’t remember exactly there. But on the bed there was a pillow and a duvet, and the cell was profoundly cold and depressing. And I think the guard said to me, the next time you’ll be out is at breakfast, and slammed the door. And you know, at this point, I’ve been stripped of my identity and freedom. And I sat down on the edge of my bed and I began to cry. And it was the last time I could be vulnerable. I knew the moment I’d stopped, I’d be a different person. I call it instinct. But I learned to shut down all my emotions and feelings while in prison. Because I knew that’s what I needed to be to survive, which wasn’t me. I didn’t sleep. The next thing I remember was the door opening that morning. And it’s the first time I saw my fellow detainees. And when I look back now I see children, you know, mostly Black and Asian working class. And we experienced everything in prison from humiliations to beatings to, you know, older prisoners being set on younger ones, by the so-called prison officers. Food taken away for a couple of days, they handcuffed young people, and make racist remarks to them. Just trying to get a reaction, frankly. And I was even put in solitary confinement for a short stint for my own protection. You know, the same solitary confinement that you know, when people have lost their life. And that was tricky. That was for my own protection. And, I think I’m preaching to the converted here that prison was never created to make us reform or stop recidivism. It just made me, it was created to make us suffer. And my life transformed, because of a one person program. My aunt in the UK, she fought for me and you’ve got to remember, at this time, I mean, early 2000s, ’90s, was still a ‘tough on crime,’ tough on the causes of crime era.
Josh Hoe
In some ways, it is again.
Ashish Prashar
And she basically fought the Justice Department in the UK to let me do my exams that I was supposed to be taking on the outside, inside, at the same time as my classmates. she fought the facility to make sure even though that was granted – Josh, you’re gonna love this – the warden wouldn’t let me have books. So she had to fight the warden to get the materials so I could study for those exams. And then she fought to make sure I was out earlier than my actual release date. Because she knew every day I was in prison, it was an opportunity for something bad to happen. And on my release, she and my grandparents gave me a real sense of agency and a safe space to go home where I was loved and supported. And look, there were still potential obstacles when I finished studying. But I knew the stigma of my record would be over me for a long time. would employers want to talk to me, you know, would people want to engage with me? Even though we’re out and enjoy our freedom, and we’re fortunate, you’re not really free, you’re kind of halfway home. And you’ve got to carry that judgment for the rest of your life. And it was only by a great opportunity that was provided to me by my grandfather, introducing me to, at a book launch, to introduce me to an editor of a Fleet Street newspaper, Fleet Street’s like our short name for the newspapers in the UK. He was the editor of the News of the World and The Sun. And, you know, he introduced me and said, Look, my grandson’s come out of prison, and he’s looking to transform his life. And the editor never asked me what I did. And I’m sure, I’m not stupid. He could find out. But he just wanted to know what I wanted to do with my life. And he saw, I think, a grafter, he saw a hustler. He saw someone who would always get the job done for a man – with a little mischief, you know, it was a tabloid – a little mischief. And he saw my life experience, all of it, as a positive rather than a negative. And more importantly, he saw me. Thanks to him, I had a career in British and American politics where I got to work alongside some of these, I would argue now, like not so good bosses, Boris Johnson, Tony Blair, and Joe Biden. So that individual put his faith in me and transformed my life. And that’s, you asked how I got to where I got to, if I didn’t get that first opportunity, you know, to work at News Corp, and then to go work with the conservatives after that, I wouldn’t be here today talking to you as the global CMO of an agency in the United States. It’s because that transformational moment was given to me by that individual.
Josh Hoe
I think many people see someone like me, or like yourself much more probably, and say, Well, you know, prison’s terrible, but you all succeeded. So it must be doing something right. What’s your take on that? I have my own but . . .
Ashish Prashar
Prison didn’t succeed in breaking me. And that’s because of the love of a lot of people, and protection of a lot of people. And even on release, even if you have all that, [there is] the perpetual punishment. I mean, we’re working on stuff like Clean Slate, which we could talk about. But, you know, the perpetual punishment was taken away, because somebody, somebody with power, gave me an opportunity. And then was almost like my sponsor through my life. So it took the good graces of individuals and people; I believe in people. But it shouldn’t take, we shouldn’t be relying on single individual acts of goodwill, so you can succeed in life after serving your time. I don’t believe in prisons, I believe in abolition. But even if you do believe in prison, and a lot of people believe that when you serve your time, it should end there, but it never ends for people who’ve experienced that. And the only reason I’ve not suffered that perpetual punishment in terms of how it impacted my job, like other prospects around me there, was because of somebody’s goodwill.
Josh Hoe
You talk about being incarcerated in the United Kingdom and how it’s somewhat similar in many ways, and in some ways harsher. Although, you know, I find it hard to imagine anywhere harsher than some of our prisons in Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, etc. But, you know, it sounds like it’s similar. You believe, I think, that mass incarceration to some extent is a British import. Is that right? Am I getting that right?
Ashish Prashar
I mean, people ask me, Why is Britain so punitive? Well, the British exported the models of state violence, you know, just think about the Empire. You know, it just happens to be wrapped in a velvet glove, right? That the Brits use concentration camps, they use this, they legalize sacking civilian property, similar to what we do with legalizing taking property for people who’ve been incarcerated. They introduced solitary confinement in a lot of their territories, they enacted laws that allowed detention without trial, they instituted bail way back when there was an empire. And, you know, people talk about Britain having a good impact on the world with an empire, I mean, no Empire has any good impact in the world. But these are all state-sponsored acts, you know, and we happen to use a lot of them on people who are incarcerated pretrial, and those convicted, those convicted now, in the same way, they were using [in the] 1700s and those people were subjected to remand without court dates, locked up in prisons for 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours without any outside light, you know, these were all done under an empire. And America didn’t invent this. It was definitely something I hate to say, they’ve made it a model that shouldn’t be copied. And maybe it will make it more brutal. But brutality is in the moment, right? So I’m sure people in India or Kenya or South Africa or anywhere else . . . . I’m sure their treatment wasn’t, was properly given there, you don’t have as much coverage, or much protections, was probably more brutal than what we see today in our prisons, frankly, you know, they had a concentration camp in South Africa, the British Empire. So evidently, we’re not the only ones who’ve done this; they just did it with a velvet glove, and the empire did lots of good for the world.
** There was a delay in the microphone here, the quote should have been:
“So evidently, we’re not the only ones who’ve done this; they just did it with a velvet glove, and THEY SAY the empire did lots of good for the world.”
Josh Hoe
Unless, of course, your country was one of the ones whose self-determination was ripped away from you, but for good things, I guess, like goods and services. We’re starting to move slowly towards harm reduction in the United States. But we’re still caught in a trap between pushing for, the answer to drugs is enforcement on one side, and trying new ideas like harm reduction and safe needle exchanges and testing your drugs on the other. You say it’s even harsher in some ways in the United Kingdom. I don’t get to talk to many people about other systems. What should people know about the way things are happening?
Ashish Prashar
I mean, weed is basically a Class A drug in the UK. I mean, it’s like top tier. I mean, we’re talking about legalizing it in New York, I’m in New York State, right. So it just legalized it and we’re going to be selling it and New Jersey started selling it last week. And in a lot of states it’s legal. Look, it doesn’t stop the fact that President Biden hasn’t kept a campaign promise to forgive 40,000 people who are in jail for marijuana. 1
Josh Hoe
It was a huge part of his . . . .he had a very large criminal justice reform thing and that was a big chunk of it.
Ashish Prashar
He made that promise because he knew the tides were turning, right. I mean, this is something that is now becoming taxable and makes people a lot of money. So it makes no sense that he hasn’t done that already. With that aside for a second, in the UK, we’re not even in the conversation of legalizing weed. It’s still like, if you’re pulled over and you’re caught with that, you’re going to jail? 1
Josh Hoe
It’s not even a ticket, it’s straight up, you’re going to jail.
Ashish Prashar
You are going to jail. So that is when you think about where the UK is. I’ll give you a perspective. During the Black Lives Matter movement and everything that happened during the pandemic, the UK, the US, you know, there was a conversation, like, how much can we get out of it is still to be determined, you know, there’s lots of bills being passed. For people who’ve been doing this work as long as you have, or other people in our circle, there has been a lot of transformation over the last couple of years, you know, if you given that we started that work 20 years ago, right, or 10 years ago, just there’s been a lot more good to come out of it, this, we still have a long way to go. But in the UK, in the middle of this pandemic, they, with popular support, spent 2.5 billion on prisons, on building more prisons to create 10,000 additional prison places. And they already have the highest prison population in Europe. And again, I’m not comparing, I’m not saying like, Oh, our system here is barbaric. I’m just saying that, and it’s a humanitarian crisis. But you know, they full-on made that a thing to celebrate, like a lot of our states, just do this on your behind the scenes, we don’t talk about it. I mean, I very rarely see coverage of new prisons being built, even though I know they do happen. They can, you know, the Conservative Party in the UK, made a point of championing that policy. They also had people on 24-hour lockdown, almost, they created solitary for every prison cell during the pandemic, to keep them safe, instead of releasing them. At least some states here, were releasing people under the Cares Act and other things, people were being released. Again, lots of prisons and jails still didn’t do that here. But across the board, the UK didn’t do any of that. You know, for people who’ve experienced solitary, I mean, that’s pain. And these are people who, you know, solitary is obviously used as another form of punishment. These people are already being punished by being in prison, but now you’re actually putting the whole prison system into solitary through a pandemic. The mental damage that’s done to people is, I don’t know, we’re not gonna see the toll of that for years.
Josh Hoe
So, I mean, we’re obviously struggling here, in a lot of ways, with these problems, where we’ve certainly not solved any of these problems, if anything, in many ways, we’re making them worse. you’re talking about it potentially being as bad or close, in Britain. I mean, I guess I want to start by saying, from a policy perspective, what are ways that this long relationship we’ve had between our countries, can we do something to create energy in both places? Do you have any vision of, not just reform here, but reform everywhere?
Ashish Prashar
Yeah. I mean, the interesting thing is we’re seeing a lot of cross-country collaboration about issues like the death penalty already. So there’s people doing work on abolishing it globally. To use a celebrity name, Richard Branson’s been campaigning about it globally, right. He’s trying to end someone being, hopefully not being put to death at the end of the week, in Singapore, and he’s also helping support efforts from our community to stop someone in San Antonio from being put to death this week, or tonight, and I think that’s a powerful topic.
Josh Hoe
The good news – I think that there was a stay; I think I read that earlier.
Ashish Prashar
That’s such a blessing. And that truly is a blessing.
Josh Hoe
And especially when it comes to Texas, because Texas, I mean Governor Abbott’s already overseen 55 executions in the time he’s been Governor.
Ashish Prashar
It’s insane that we’re still killing people today for crimes, instead of like, thinking about what got people there in the first place. They’re not looking at underlying problems. We spend so much money on so many other things, and we’re not dealing with, to your point about the original question, which was . . . we’re already doing on the death penalty. There is a global movement among businesses and people to stop the death penalty. And that’s a really harsh one. So people, I think, can naturally mobilize around something like that. But when you think about weed, and drugs and how some of this stuff has been legalized in multiple countries simultaneously, that you can expand that effort to decarcerate people who have been persecuted for doing that in previous times when it wasn’t legal, you can mobilize around things like safe substance use in countries that are already trying to deal with those issues of addiction and opioids and everything else that goes with that as well. There are issues where countries, no matter where they are, might have a slightly different entry point. But we can get a cross-country, cross-continental collaboration on these things, I’m not going to say they’re going to do everything we want to do. Right? I mean, all those things, we talked about that I’ve campaigned on and you’ve campaigned on. Are the UK going to do that? Or is any other country going to ban those things? I don’t know. And I think, but if the US does it, I think the US still leads, especially Western Europe, or the US does some of this stuff, Europe looks at that. And will follow in some cases. You know, everyone talks about humane prisons coming out of Norway and Sweden, they’re like college campuses, except that you have a fence and we should copy those. Okay, fine. We can learn from those. But there are a lot of bigger European countries that are like the UK, Germany, France, are still really punitive. And, but they do follow what we do, they are going to end up legalizing things like we are, they’re going to do the things that we do here in the United States. One, because it is a business opportunity, and they don’t want to be left behind. But two, they’re gonna see mobilization of people who want individuals who are incarcerated or have records for that in the past, to be freed in their own countries as well. The same way that you’ve seen it here because so many people have been impacted by that. I think, just even in the UK, I think something I think it’s 60%. Yeah, you’ll have to correct me, I’ll send this off to you, [but] I think 60% of all stop and searches are for weed in the UK, or they say they’re for weed, but they’re not; they just to stop and search and harass people of color. But they say they are for those things. And if you eliminated that – and these are really small amounts, by the way, that they find – if you eliminate that you’re going to dramatically impact who gets incarcerated and who doesn’t already. So I think we set the tone potentially for a lot of big Western European countries. So they’re not that progressive. By the way, I just want to [say] everyone’s like, Oh, Europe, so liberal, and everything else. But you have to understand when you think about your being liberal, we think about free education and free health care. Do you know why we have those things in Europe? Because the country, the continent was leveled after World War Two. So governments had to give people free health care. They had no choice. So they had to give people access to free education, they had no choice, these public sector things were built to help a continent recover from a colossal event. It doesn’t mean all the rest of the policies are progressive; they are as punitive as us.
Josh Hoe
So we talk a lot, in our “industry”, whatever it is that we do, about changing the narrative, and a lot of your work has been in this area. And you started out in tabloid journalism, as you mentioned a second ago. I don’t know if you’ve seen this movie or not. Have you ever seen the movie called Sid and Nancy? No, I haven’t. No, I’m an old punk rock guy. So there’s a movie called Sid and Nancy. It’s about the Sex Pistols, the bass player, Sid Vicious, and his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. And one of the premises of that movie, if there’s a central premise of that movie – and it’s odd to tie our current cultural situation back to a movie about Sid Vicious, but I think there’s something here, the central premise of that movie, in a lot of ways, is Malcolm McLaren, saying that no matter what music the band made, no matter what anyone did in that band, that the real star of the Sex Pistols was the image of Sid Vicious, it was just him creatively being destructive. And I feel like something about that is like a virus that’s infected our politics. And I feel like we’re – everything that anyone says now has a part of that kind of creative destructiveness. When you look at Twitter, when you look at whatever, what I would call performance artists now, a lot of what they’re doing is being, that kind of, you could say, anarchist, but I’d say to some extent, nihilist. And so, in your experience, you are right up front for a lot of the growth of this kind of – I don’t even know how to say it – what’s come out of, I think, all press to some extent [has] become tabloid press. So you’re sitting at the front, you’re in the front of that revolution. What are your reflections on that before we put it in context of criminal justice or anything else? I just think this one of the few times I’ll be able to ask someone who was kind of there for the whole thing. I don’t know if that was too long of a question . . .
Ashish Prashar
You asked me something. I think it’s the perfect way to ask. I think I’m gonna reflect on my mentor who was the editor for one of the most powerful newspapers in the world at the time, and one half of the world. He used to say, we don’t set the tone, we reflect what people want. We reflect their hunger. I think it’s, we have to look at our society also a little bit, and what it strives for. So when you think of tabloids, you think about how tabloids build people up, they knock people down. People love that journey, that story, that pain they, but on the whole tabloids made more from the disaster part of that. The sensationalism part of that, than anything else. Tabloids paid cops for stories, and you know, not this is not a secret.
Josh Hoe
You know, that’s what happened to Piers Morgan the first time, right? What he got in trouble for?
Ashish Prashar
Yeah, phone hacking, and so many other things. I’m not gonna say names, I’m not gonna name names, but many of my peer group who are my seniors, had very good relations with cops on both sides of the pond. The stories that you see in The Post today, and everything else about since, cops are making money off that, and it might not always be cash, it’s sometimes tickets, it’s sometimes . . . that still happens. And we are turning a blind eye to that. The cops literally sell sensational headlines, sensational stories on individuals. And it might start with Hugh Grant getting a blowjob in the back of a car, but it quickly gets into black kids being profiled, or brown kids being called terrorist suspects before anyone’s claimed a terrorist suspect because it’s one of 70 million pictures on a wall at a copy station that they want to share. And cops get paid for that. That’s insane.
Josh Hoe
Even if they don’t get paid directly, ultimately, that fuels their budget, and that’s why they have media departments.
Ashish Prashar
100%. The media department is a separate issue completely. But the ill started with that workaround, it’s been going on from like the 80s, 90s, whatever, right, that’s been going on for a long time. Now as the budgets for media departments, they are fully professionalized media departments who put out releases on everything. Now they control the narrative. And they control it simply because it’s easy news. It’s news that, as my mentor would say, is reflective of how society feels, as well. And some of that’s forced feeding over years, they’re getting the same message. I mean, the TV that we watch sensationalizes the police in the criminal justice system, the movies we get makes them heroes, and most of them are incompetent at their jobs. You know, so all that is a natural feeling inside people already, and the tabloids exploit that. And the media departments jump in with like, they don’t even need to give correct figures, because it’s, however, they want to structure the data because they own the data. And that’s the problem with that.
Josh Hoe
So I understand it’s a chicken and egg question and I understand that some of it is society and some of it is the tabloids, but before the tabloids, we didn’t have everything blowing up like it does now. So there is some relationship, I guess. The question I’m asking is how much responsibility should the chicken bear?
Ashish Prashar
How much should we bear, as people?
Josh Hoe
No, no, no. Well, whichever one, the chicken or the egg? I guess I was considering the tabloid to be the chicken but I guess it could be the egg, I don’t know.
Ashish Prashar
Yeah, I think they bear the majority of the responsibility. They’re selling us lies, stories. They’re trying to shape a narrative that we all should live in fear constantly because it sells headlines and sells newspapers and it’s clickbait, before even clickbait existed [it was] in tabloids. So they know it makes the money. So they bear the most responsibility. But we do bear responsibility to not look at headlines and actually read and find out what’s going on in our communities. You know that is the beautiful thing about social media. You’re right. Most people have made it a nihilistic tool. And people are fighting there all the time, but it also is the reason some revolutionary things have happened in our society right, too? I’ll give you a good example. Last week when those train, unfortunately, the train shooting in New York, the cops claimed that they solved the crime, they caught the guy, but it was people on the street with social media, who said no; people did this. The cops were incompetent. In fact, this guy was walking on the streets, and the cops missed him. It was people, New Yorkers, fucking proud New Yorkers, who actually called it in that this guy was here; come and get him. Now look, again, we can talk about how hopefully, you know the system, how it treats the individual, but the point being is, they would sell that lie and turn cops into heroes, right? These guys stopped like all this thing, but it was people that did that. And that’s a really simple lie. But if you can lie about that, because their initial posts were all about how the cops did all the work, you can lie about anything. Right and that’s a responsibility. There is a massive responsibility on the press to tell the truth, unfortunately, we haven’t got the press to do that. So people have got to take it upon themselves to find out what’s going on because our press I think is broken right now. You know, the most liberal institutions, the New York Times, they publish daily, they publish headlines about how crime rates are soaring, homicides are this. No one is countering that in any …
Josh Hoe
Well, I wouldn’t say nobody,
Ashish Prashar
In any media publication, right? It’s if the New York Times is the progressive publication, then what is . . ?
Josh Hoe
That’s nonsense, though. I mean, whatever. The thing that drives me nuts is when people call the New York Times a liberal paper. Maybe 30 years ago.
Ashish Prashar
But that’s the point. Right?. There’s very few publications of that stature that counter that point of view. It’s not, I’m not saying people aren’t doing it. Josh, you and me do it. We do it on social, we publish stuff, you publish stuff. We’re countering it right. But then we don’t have the microphone, we don’t have the mic. They have the mic, and they are, for good or bad no, they’re not liberal or progressive. But for good or bad they’re seen as the progressive publication. And if they’re seeing the publisher’s headlines, they are influencing people potentially, on our side of the debate that things are out of control.
Josh Hoe
So you’re talking about the economics of it, is one set of problems. The other side of the problem is that you said that people would rather see, you know, for instance, someone see a real housewife flip a table, then maybe they want to go through a detailed article about why something happened. So, how do we bridge that gap? I guess we have two questions. How can there be a more responsible, ethical, but profitable media? And on the other side, how can people become better consumers, and be more ethically responsible consumers of media?
Ashish Prashar
Let’s read history, let’s see what’s going on in our country. The last couple of years has exposed people to a lot of things that maybe people are exhausted. Let’s start there. But you need to look into what’s actually been going on in the history of this country. And many of the places that people have come from and you realize that it isn’t, you know, the state and the cops aren’t always right. Right, you have to also realize, you know, do some critical thinking. We keep spending billions more on an institution that keeps failing us, does that seem like rational spending? It’s your money, you’re the taxpayer. You know, you wouldn’t do this with any other department. You wouldn’t do this in your business. If a department is failing, would you keep spending money on that department to get the same results, worse, worse and worse? So I ask people to question their politicians, their local elected officials, as well. Ask mayors and governors to justify why they’re spending money on something that’s already broken, because you could, the New York NYPD has a bigger budget than I think, outside of six militaries in the world. They’re the seventh biggest military budget in the world. And this can’t stop crime? Clearly, it doesn’t work. So people need to ask questions of their elected officials about what a waste of money that is. Now on the journalism side of this, I don’t have all the answers, I think we need to start forming our own publications to counter that narrative. I don’t think they’re vested. I think too much of the media is owned by too few people right now who have their own agenda. And they enjoy the nature of the product that they have right now, whether it’s Rupert Murdoch and News Corp or even the guys at The New York Times; they know it makes sense to them. I don’t know if they’re going to ethically ever change. I would like to see them ethically change. I’d like to be held to a standard where they have to tell stats correctly. I mean, that should be a basic requirement of all media, frankly. And there are very few places that do that. I think the government could regulate that; if government data shows this, you can’t lie about that. Right? That should be a fact, though. The police can’t give you data, you have to get that verified. That would be amazing. But we need our own publications.
Josh Hoe
So I have to push back a little bit. There are some people we know who have publications, they’ve come out, they’ve tried to do things; there was the PO for a while that did it. It still exists technically, but it’s not at the same level. It was once you know, we have Bolts, which is the new, there are people trying to do that. But people still read the Post a lot more than they read either of those. How are we going to start getting people to read something different than the sensational when every day the Post says you are going to die if you don’t get rid of bail reform. How do we counter that?
Ashish Prashar
We’re often too serious; we talk about policy; we don’t give people easy entry points to everything right. Everybody can agree. the defund t police thing is a great example of this, you know, during the …. I did some right of center broadcasts associated with Fox and everything else. Sky News in the UK and everything else. And just put it really basic to people. You know, what does defunding the police look like? It looks like the Upper West Side. Yeah, I just said that to some people and some people on the right get that, like, you know, they get like, I would rather spend my money on museums, schools, and parks than spend it on a bunch of guys carrying guns around my neighborhood. People got it. Like, we need to think like tabloids, we need to make the entry points accessible to all people, all people because everybody has a different way of getting into a story. I actually think more Americans believe in radical reform of this stuff, then they’re given credit for, they just don’t have the same entry point that some of these publications that, I’m not criticizing them, they’re just sometimes too serious. We need our own tabloid, we need our own tabloid that brings the police down, we need our own tabloid that brings the judicial system down. We need our own tabloid to tell stories, as salaciously almost, as an easier entry point as they do to us.
Josh Hoe
Yeah, I think we’ve actually talked about that before, because we were talking about – I can’t remember what his name is – but one of the Alt-right guys, who created that whole media infrastructure for himself. But it’s been incredible. And we need to, I think we both have said, we need to be doing something like that. Even if it makes our skin crawl.
Ashish Prashar
These individuals, destroy communities, destroy homes, destroy families, destroy so much of our society and like, we’re just going to tell their stories now. Right? At the same time, tell good stories about our people. You know, we need our own tabloid, like storytellers, we need people who do this in 300 words or less, and tell you how bad the police are and what they’ve done and who they’ve hurt. And make their lives a living hell, the way that they have made our communities’ lives a living hell, like expose them for who they are. Now, I think there was something past in the pandemic, where you can get every cop’s record, right. how many times they’ve been accused of racism, assault, battery, you know, home abuse, whatever it is, right? Put it all out there in a tabloid and see how people start feeling about them, put them on the front page, put those cops and make their lives as painful as every black kid that gets profiled straight away, when any incident happens, and see how quickly the narrative changes about who’s heroes and who are community.
Josh Hoe
Interesting. So we’ve talked about the journalism part, you also worked in politics. I often look back, in the United States, to the Republican autopsy, several decades ago, when they suggested that maybe, just maybe, the GOP, given the demographic shift that’s happening in the country, should maybe be a little less hostile towards the issues that black and brown people care about. And as a result, the GOP has spent the last 30 years trying to figure out how to beat the demographic shift instead of embracing that advice. That’s my theory of the case. What do you think is going on? Since you’ve been with Prime Ministers, you’ve been with mayors, you’ve worked on big campaigns, what’s your theory of the case of what’s going on?
Ashish Prashar
With the United States? Or globally what’s going on? I mean, like, a bit of both, I think, they’ve doubled down on everything. I think the interesting thing with the United States, for me, as somebody who comes from Europe, where elections seem to be a bit more easy to figure out, is the electoral system is so broken here that they can mess with it. They’ve doubled down on a structure that allows them to eliminate so many people from the electoral register, that makes it difficult to vote. By the way, we’re not the only country doing that, right. So the UK tried to pass a voter ID record like the UK has never had . . . polls ever in its life. But it’s kind of replicating what the US is doing in Texas and Georgia and other places where they require like a passport effectively to vote, which is insane. Throughout my whole life, there’s never been any fraud in the UK, like there has been very little if any fraud here in the United States. So they’re just doubling down and isolating. They’re going all in on just trying to secure what they have now. And you know, I don’t think anyone listening knows what the end game is. It’s just eliminating democracy. I mean, that’s all it is. I mean, they tried to do it on Jan 6. I think if they get power again, I think our rights will be eroded very quickly. I don’t think they have any intention of trying to reach out to other communities. When by the way, it’s really interesting to me when I think about the Republicans over the last 20 years, they could chip away at the Democrats’ magical block right? When you think of religion, you know, we think about Latino/ Latinx people coming into the country who, you know, they’re religious. They might not believe in abortion, I’m pro-choice but there are lots of other touchpoints where they could access communities, LGBTQ communities . .
Josh Hoe
They are gaining ground in the LatinX community. They definitely are.
Ashish Prashar
They are gaining. I think we made a bigger deal out of it at the last election that they took a tiny percentage away when they actually, you know, it’s not it wasn’t that significant compared to the overall picture of the last election. And yes, they gained a small bit of ground, but like they could do that with a lot of communities, they could actually put the work in. But they think that the solution for them right now is to take away our democratic rights rather than actually appeal to a broad base of Americans.
Josh Hoe
It’s certainly less work in a sense.
Ashish Prashar
Yeah, once you get the courts and everything else on your side, it makes it a lot easier to disenfranchise a lot of people.
Josh Hoe
Unfortunately, we’re seeing something happened in democratic politics, more than I’d say, in progressive politics, but definitely in democratic politics, Democratic Party politics, where the politicians instead of when they see this happening, to some extent, they raise their hands and say, Oh, my God, this can’t be happening. But you know, especially with our issue, when it comes to Criminal Justice, they’re tripping over each other, to agree with the other side. They’re doing what used to be called during the Clinton era triangulation, only they don’t have anything to triangulate. They’re not saying here’s the issue we have popular support on. And we’re going to say that we agree with the Republicans on all the rest of this stuff, which is what Clinton used to do. they’re just saying we agree with the way, we were never soft on crime. We were never for criminal justice reform. So how can we win political ballot battles? Or how can we change this fight for democracy when politicians are almost conceding defeat before it’s even started?
Ashish Prashar
Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. 2020 Democrat politicians, they only won the election, because of the promises you alluded to earlier on. I mean, though, yes. Did Trump turn out a massive vote for the Democrats? Yes. but you, like me, saw Biden’s platform, you know, there was a lot of promises, student loans, student college debt, wiping that away, you know, releasing everyone who was convicted of a marijuana crime, getting rid of the death penalty, which the President can probably do very quickly, at least at the federal level, at the federal level for sure, and making it kind of difficult for everyone to want to pursue it as well through courts as well. So he’s, he made it, you know, let’s just go back to how he won. Massive cities in states he needed to flip, predominantly minority-driven cities, won him that election, right? Promises were made to those individuals. And he’s already broken all of them. And so the Democrat Party, those individuals, sadly, are not going to forget that and it’s, they have beyond driven me mad. It’s all superficial posturing where they say they care about communities and care about black lives, or they care about immigrants, and they care about all these things. But literally, they always get their messaging wrong. I think about Pelosi and everyone recently, and I don’t even know the way to describe this, [they] don’t lean into what won them the election. They actually have support for what won them the election. Screw what the polls say, Screw what the headline writers say. Just act on what you got elected on in the first place. You got elected on to transform our criminal justice system, you got elected on securing our right to vote, you got elected on getting rid of student debt. There are a lot of other things they got elected on. And they go back like, they just do a full U-turn because they see a few headlines. Just do the things you say, you would win. And they’re scared of how the media narrative will shape. And I think part of the problem is they’re not public servants anymore. They are literally politicians just looking for reelection and that short stint, but they don’t realize they’re not going to get, they’re not gonna turn those Republican voters in their direction ever. They’ve gone down far too down a rabbit hole. Now let’s come back out. So they should appeal to the same broad base that actually got them elected in the first place on these big issues. Look, you need to be able to talk about what defunding the police looks like, in a really simple way, like I described earlier on, like people really want to know. If you ask a normal citizen who has no connection to this issue, like the way you and me do, if you explain it to them about where you’re going to spend the money, most people agree. Most people don’t agree that the NYPD should have armored vehicles like that you can use in Iraq and Syria and everywhere else in the world where the US deploys military. Most people think that’s bonkers. When you tell them how they spend your billions of dollars, or how the Corrections Department is spending money, they would chip away at that and spend it on things that matter to the community, and I think most people are there. But the Democrats cave so easily because of a bad bunch of headlines that are basically written to make them change their opinion, that we don’t have anyone who stands up for the issues that we actually care for. I mean, there are a handful that do, you know, and a handful I know that you work with, and other individuals work with, but they are few and far between; they’re the few true public servants that actually exist, that want to help our country and our people, not just the sense of them getting reelected.
Josh Hoe
And, you know, an example of what we’re talking about here, like one of the things that really frustrates me, is I think a lot of times I see on the left as much of a desire for a strong person, you know, tough leader as there is on the right. You see what’s happening on the right; the lionization of Cuomo is now becoming, at least in certain media circles, the lionization of Adams, and in both cases, that’s pretty problematic,. Obviously, Cuomo didn’t turn out to be a great investment as the great Savior of Democrat of democratic politics. And the point is, they keep picking these people because they’re going to be the thing that wins the undecided and moderate right back. and not win or excite the rest of the base. The thing that’s winning, you know, there’s this great book, It’ll come to me in a second what the title of it is, but it’s the book that they actually teach seminars on across the country on the alt-right about politics. And they say it’s not about anything aside from exciting your base. I mean, that the only thing that matters is exciting your base and doing the thing, the red meat.
Ashish Prashar
Look, America is already in danger of becoming the cult of toughness. You know that you and I both know that, it’s there, and there’s no value. To me, there’s no value in stripping someone’s dignity. And we should all be uniting against those individuals that they’re lionizing right now because there’s so much danger involved in that cult of toughness that suddenly gets turned on all people. It doesn’t get turned on just people who are criminals, or quote-unquote, bad apples or bad people. This gets turned on all citizens eventually. And that’s dangerous whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, that cult of toughness is a scary thing. I mean, it’s Vladimir Putin, it’s all those things, when you want a tough leader, to just hurt people because that makes you feel safe. You’re opening that door up for you. I’ll tell you something. I . . . foreign policy back home when I worked for Blair, right. Someone once said to me, who resigned from the labor party, who was a former Foreign Secretary, all the things we’re doing abroad will come home to roost. Right. And, I never really understood what he meant during that period of Iraq, Afghanistan, everything else. Except the fact that you know, people will attack the UK. But he meant the drones. He meant the technology, the surveillance, he meant the monitoring, he meant the stripping of rights that we do abroad. How many people do we kill with drones? You know, the NYPD uses drones now. They monitor us with drones. They follow us around, your police. Anyone listening – your police is using military tech to follow you around to surveil you, every average normal citizen. And you might say I’ve got nothing to hide. But do you want someone following you around, you want drones above our city all day always?
Josh Hoe
People always mess this up, though. It’s not that you have nothing to hide, it’s that things that you do can be used against you in ways you didn’t anticipate. Like for instance, if you donated to someone who later you didn’t want everyone to know about it, someone says, Well, I’ll tell everyone you donated if you don’t x. It’s these little things that we do that we consider private space. It’s not that you’re doing something criminal, necessarily, that makes surveillance dangerous. It’s that every element of your life can be used against you, by people, nefarious people, in nefarious times.
Ashish Prashar
Yeah. And all the technology they’ve been using abroad during these war on terror years have come home to us, all the policies about locking people up and rendition and incarcerating people without trial, have come home to roost as well, both in the UK and the US. And that will eventually be used against every citizen if we’re not careful. So we need to break out of this cult of toughness, and that should give …
Josh Hoe
You said that this was just one example of it. But if you think about it, you know, I think on purpose, Putin couched most of his Ukraine invasion in the same language we used for Iraq and Afghanistan. And the reason he did it was because we had already said that was okay.
Ashish Prashar
Yeah, we already used that. And that’s when the UN can intervene. We already basically, this is getting off-topic, but we broke the UN, we broke the UN with Iraq. You know, we basically said that doesn’t matter. And he used exactly the same language to invade Ukraine. It’s only just the strength of mobilization in Europe and a lot of the Western world that they’ve seen so much more in Europe in the past, that they rallied around that country, otherwise Putin would have gone all-in by now.
Josh Hoe
You’ve worked with a lot of the actual, we talked about Boris Johnson, Tony Blair, Joe Biden. I’m kind of skeptical of the whole, I have always been, to some extent skeptical of the whole idea that one or two people should be making the decisions for everybody. And this is really a model, I guess it’s better than monarchy where everyone gets to do it by divine right. But I like studying presidents and stuff like that, but I’m not sure it’s necessarily the best thing we can come up with. But nonetheless, you’ve worked with a lot of these folks. What’s your takeaway? As you mentioned, we’re having a lot of problems with Joe Biden living up to his [promises] and some of that’s because his people are probably telling him that there’s no political gain they have from it; how do we change? How do we talk to someone like that? How do we change the narrative with people in power like that?
Ashish Prashar
Well, in his case, it’s just reminding . . . I think we need to get back to reminding him who got elected, how he got elected, because I think he is going to try and run again, right. So he actually needs to realize that he needs to mobilize that force. But this time, I don’t think they’re going to, he might have a bigger problem getting them to turn out this time, without keeping some of those promises that he’s made before he got elected in 2020. Right. So he needs to be reminded of that, and if he keeps him in some of the Democratic leadership, still keep saying things like Black Lives Matter and everything else. And you gotta remind them that if Black Lives Matter, you’ve got to talk about the issues that actually save communities, but also not just, you know, throwing a few dollars into HUD and everything like that; we’re talking about issues that impact 70 million Americans, you know, of all colors and creeds, but which predominantly impact black Americans. So, you know, when you think about that,if he expects to get that base out to vote this time, again, it’s a lost cause. It’s a lost cause for the Democratic Party. And it might be too late for the midterms for them, because they actually just, you know, you and me have discussed this offline, they’ve just gone down such a dark hole of putting more money on police, you know, make everything on the border, you know, tight like the Republicans want whatever else, right? They’ve gone down that path already. It might be too late for the midterms. But if they actually want to have a successful next presidential election, they have to keep those promises. They have to actually act on those things that they got elected on. they got elected on compassion, care. They got elected on, that’s what Biden got elected on, you know, like, he wasn’t Trump. He got elected on, I am that guy who, you know, he famously said, you know, as someone who’s received a lot of compassion for the loss I’ve actually suffered. It’s not that difficult to offer that to other people. Well, he’s not offering it to people who are incarcerated. He’s not offering it for people who’re still dealing with the ramifications of a pandemic, the way that he promised he would, that compassionate, that lovable Joe [who] hugs people who have been victims of gun violence, things …. and everything else. Where is that on these issues that matter to the communities that got you elected?
Josh Hoe
Well, that makes a lot of sense to me. But then, I know, and I think maybe you do too his criminal justice folks. You know, they’re good people. Some of them I knew before they were in the administration. And they agree with a lot of the stuff that we agree with, but it’s still not getting through. So what’s going wrong here? Like, what’s the problem?
Ashish Prashar
There are two schools of looking at it, I’m kind of like, flipping a coin on it. Either the old man didn’t change, and he still is the father of mass incarceration from the 90s, which is a possibility. Some people don’t want to hear that; some Democrats will hit me up for saying that. Maybe he didn’t change. Maybe it was an act. But also, his inner circle is not the right circle. You have Ron Klain, these individuals that come from an era that does believe in that sort of stuff. So he’s not hearing what he needs to hear from people, like his criminal justice advisors, people like us, and people closest to the problem, because his inner circle is so stuck in the past on these policies, that he can’t move on it. And then giving him the advice that you’re talking about where they’re like, it’s just a political suicide, when it’s really not; he would win those big cities that will flip those states without a doubt, or any Democrat running in 2024. If they actually lean into the policies that got them elected in 2020.
Josh Hoe
You have to do something that excites people. The one thing, you can say a lot about Trump, but his people are endlessly excited by him. And he knows it, and he plays to that. I don’t know what, if you go up to Democrats, ask them what they’re excited about. I don’t know. You know, there’s got to be, you have to do something. Yes, they passed the infrastructure. Yes, they got everyone vaccinated. They don’t ever talk about it, but those things happened. You’ve got to excite the people that are your base with something. You can’t just play it safe. That’s not the way it works.
Ashish Prashar
I think it’s the same thing about the tabloids we talked about earlier on, right? They’re kind of spineless. I mean, look, if you want to talk about dealing with the pandemic earlier on, right, when he came into office, he had all the goodwill in the world, right? Make flying domestically a vaccinated-only thing, watch how many vaccine-resistant individuals would have gotten vaccinated if they actually had to get one to get on a flight domestically, forget International. He had all the goodwill in the world he wasted at the beginning, on trying to appease people who are never going to vote for him, trying to make peace with individuals that brought down the last Democrat president by restricting his ability to do anything in his second term, which by the way, he calls his friends, Mitch McConnell, all these individuals, I think they spent their whole time trying to undermine the whole Obama administration. Yet he’s oh, I want to work with them. Why are we trying to appease people who already took down someone you call your brother, someone you show a lot of affection to? And you want to actually work with these individuals? Again, at that point you had all that goodwill. You should have gone in there and gone at things hard with it. I think the issue is, I think they’re just spineless. They’re scared to lose the tabloids, that don’t want them to win anyway. The tabloids like the other side, they love the controversy. And I think the difference between that, obviously, Trump abused his office, but I do think there are leaders who know how to use the office and some people who don’t know how to do it. We play by the rules. But the rules aren’t, a lot of them are handshake rules. They’re not actually like legislative laws, you actually can do a lot with the power of the presidency. And I think our presidents have been pretty cowardly on that stuff in the past, our leaders on the Democrat side, are spineless, I think they always want to play the fair game, and the other side doesn’t give a shit. And that’s what excites the other side, like Trump, for all his flaws, knew how to use the power of the office, forget the overturning of the election, stuff like that, which I think he should never be allowed to run, you should be in jail for those crimes of treason. But the point being that, at least at a really basic level, he knows how to use the office properly. Joe Biden could do a lot of his promises without Congress. He could do them tomorrow, to your point about exciting people, with clemency. You could excite people, freeing people who’ve been locked up on marijuana charges, you could excite people getting free, and people who are elderly have served 20, 30, 40, 50 years, who are no threat to society, he could win lots of hearts and minds with that; he could restore communities and restore cities and restore towns across this country, people who’ve lost generations to previous policies that we all agree now have been too harsh on people. And on the student thing, he could wipe it away with, he could wipe it away with his pen tomorrow. He could do all of that. But I just think he lacks the spine to do it and I think the Democrats lack the spine to do it. And the people who are calling . . . are on the outside by Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, and everything. I don’t think they’re on the inside. They’re not close enough to the president, or his advisors to make it happen.
Josh Hoe
Yeah, I feel bad for Bernie, man. He’s carried a lot of water the last couple years, he just doesn’t ever get to drink. My friend, Amanda Alexander always talks about the power of dreaming big and of having freedom dreams. So one of the things I’m asking lately is, we’ve talked a lot about all the problems with the system, we’ve even talked about creating our own tabloid, which I think is an excellent idea. But what are some ideas, what are some dreams that you have about changing our system?
Ashish Prashar
Dreams? I mean, obviously, like a lot of people who are very close to me, I don’t believe in prisons. So I’d like to abolish them, we actually can figure out better ways to deal with problems in our society. And you know, that means moving that money from where it’s going now to actually investing in people long term. But, you know, I think the biggest thing on my biggest dream is getting Clean Slate passed nationally, something that you’ve worked on in Michigan, something that I really believe in. I think we can all, listening to this, agree that after two years and a bit of this pandemic, I think our country deserves a clean slate. We all deserve a fresh start. And I think for me, I think that’d be a great way for us to get back out of this fucking cycle of hate, sorry, and prejudice and judgment and just start again, and I think that to me, if we can pass it in all the states that are trying to do it right now, in New York and other places, and actually even pass it on a federal level, that’d be beautiful. You know, there’s 70 million Americans impacted by that. That means probably you know, even if you’re not directly impacted by this issue, you know, someone who is, you know someone who is by association, a relative, a friend, somebody who has not told you. It’s something that would reset this country for the good, not for the bad.
Josh Hoe
One thing I always say is that for the first time, since we passed it in Michigan, that in April 2023, when automatic comes in, there are going to be up to a million people in our state who, for the first time in their lifetimes, are going to be able to walk into an apartment complex, and not worry about being turned away because of their record their first time, they’re gonna be able to walk into an employer and not worry about having to check that box, you know, because automatically, they woke up that morning, and their 4-year-old, 7-year-old, 10-year-old offense just disappeared from the public record. I mean, there’s still a private record of it. But these are the kinds of things that, like you’re saying, it’s a powerful message, it’s one of the things that no matter where everybody feels about it if someone has desisted from crime, for enough of a time for it to matter. You know, why wouldn’t you be? Why is, this just seems like a message that, that that that we should be pushing across the country.
Ashish Prashar
Look, I’ve been blessed, you know, because of my training. I’ve always been a storyteller, from my time as a journalist to working in politics and comms now. I believe you can heal through storytelling, bring joy through storytelling, bring information and enlightenment through storytelling, and that’s why I’m here. But I also think Democrats need to take a page out of that book, there’s so much healing and joy that they can bring to counter the narrative of hate that comes from the other side, but also the tabloids and our media institutions and how they frame communities, people and individuals, that [could] really unify this country in a way that they don’t, that they just can’t get out of their single-track mind of doing right now.
Josh Hoe
Is there anything else you’re working on that you’re excited about?
Ashish Prashar
I mean, Clean Slate is the big one, obviously, I mean, if it passes in New York that would be amazing. You know, it’s going to impact so many people personally, I know. You know, and I think for me, also, as someone who is raised by my grandparents, my aunt, you know, I think one of the big things that really is important to me is passing this elder parole justice bill, it’s up in New York, I forgot the name, sorry, it’s just slipped my mind, basically, which allows people to be released, who are genuinely no threat to society and served ridiculously long sentences for their crimes, and political prisoners there. So they can spend their years with their community and their loved ones, I think it’s a really great way to heal. I think we need to get there with that. But some things I’m working on, personally, you know, are a lot of Second Chance hiring initiatives. I’ve built my own programs in the UK, obviously, working with RGA right now, you know, trying to get the whole ad industry to really get people . . . here’s the thing, I always say to people, all the cool things you see in TV, they are taken from the street, those advertising guys didn’t come up with it, their culture, they just get paid to do it. And, you know, . . . happens to always either kill us, if you’re a committee of color, or make a killing from us and our ideas. And, you know, getting our industry to hire more people who have been impacted, is really important to me, also, they are the culture, you know, they are like the culture, the fashion, they’re everything. So frankly, those individuals would light up the industry in a way they’ve never seen before.
Josh Hoe
There’s a great book on the shelf behind me called Where It’s At, which is a story, the whole premise of that book is that the most powerful cultural influence in the world is hip hop, and that nothing runs the world like hip hop.
Ashish Prashar
And I think we forget that really easily in that corporate world. But you know, to leave you on that, I think the interesting thing for me is you know, we’ve been talking about politicians a lot. We talk about the tabloids a lot. But business plays a big role in this too, right? So you know, designing a more human future has to start with our people. I think, when you think about a human-led approach to everything, I believe businesses can influence the wider culture society as well, by creating that powerful new narrative, because it’s our responsibility, at least in my industry, as a creative industry, to question what ideas and values we’re disseminating, what stereotypes of biases we’re introducing, and to whom we’re giving platforms to through our work. You know, creating a new narrative really begins with questioning our past, examining the narrative that we built. Remember, the war on drugs was something that the ad industry helped the president at the time Reagan, do. We’ve built a narrative that has hurt people and harmed people. It’s essential that we find solutions to our problems now and amplify voices that should be, so we can transform that. And you know, the conventional corporate marketing model, needs to be disruptive, the typical model doesn’t recognize social issues, issues orientated around justice or equity. These issues are not going away, you know, and as advertisers and marketing leaders or other business leaders, we need to start playing a more active role on the right side of history by, by doing right by society, by doing right by people, we have an opportunity to influence culture, well beyond clients or our industries. And I think the interesting thing is our own people, our own staff, the people that work for these companies, whether it’s JP Morgan or RGA, or any other place out there, they want to do it. Right? So the business leaders will not have a choice in the end to mobilize around these issues as well.
Josh Hoe
So one thing I – although I’ve gone way off topic a bunch of times today – one thing I’ve been trying to do is get a little bit broader with folks and ask if they have any hobbies that people might not know about.
Ashish Prashar
Oh, I have a slight obsession with David Berry, you might see this photo behind me. My dad has every original record of David Berry’s first edition print, so I collect them, and it’s you know, he has a beautiful saying that is: I don’t know where I’m going from here. But I know it won’t be boring. And I feel like that’s symbolic of my life. And he’s the first person that really transformed, and Prince to a degree, that took away that need to be masculine for men. Right?
Josh Hoe
For me, it’s David Bowie, Prince, and Robert Smith, who were the three people that did that for me.
Ashish Prashar
They were just who they are. And I think that’s such an empowering place to be in the world when you can live who you really are in the world and it’s a great influence that’s had on me. I collect all his records and vinyl. And, you know, I have a huge vinyl collection in general and it’s something that I’m really proud of, and it’s my little hobby that music collection.
Josh Hoe
I kind of got into Bowie in an odd way because I was more of a punk kid and so I actually got into Bowie because of Bauhaus covering Bowie and then went back through and started getting into Bowie after that, even though Bowie had been very influential in punk and a lot of the post-punk stuff. I didn’t know that until I made the full circle. He was really influential like with Devo, and a bunch of other, you know the post-punk, especially the British post-punk but also the American post-punk.
Ashish Prashar
The Let’s Dance album era, like while people think that it’s very poppy and everything else if you think of the producer . . . all the underlying bass in it, he had punk people, he had r&b people, he had all those individuals produce what you people regard as pop today. But if you listen to the music, if you take it apart, it’s amazing. Like it’s phenomenal musical of its time. So yeah, Barry and you know, just music. It’s my hobby collecting original vinyls now. So, to your point about Brits, Depeche Mode. Michael Jackson, I have all these original singles.
Josh Hoe
I was an Echo and the Bunnymen guy but you know . . .
Ashish Prashar
The Smiths? A lot of people like Marvin Gaye and everything else, you know, we have Melvin Harold’s a really big, big fan of him. No, you know, Harold Melvin, sorry Harold Melvin. Just collecting all that stuff is my hobby.
Josh Hoe
Alright, we’ve covered records so now I always ask if there’s any criminal justice-related books that you like or might recommend to our listeners.
Ashish Prashar
Well, I’m reading Halfway Home by Reuben Miller. know what. I’m gonna recommend it regardless; Reuben is a great man so I want to you know, put his book out there and say we should read it. I think you’ve got all the some of the best behind you right now, Just Mercy and everything else, but Reuben’s new book is eye-opening. It’s beautifully written. I’m only halfway through it, but it’s a beautiful read.
Josh Hoe
So you can definitely tell I like Reuben. He’s been on the podcast twice.
Ashish Prashar
Great man. And, you know, I think we need people to tell more stories like that. I mean, it goes back to storytelling. I mean, he’s doing it through, he’s giving people access. It’s an easy read. It’s not, it’s not policy. It’s an easy read. And I think that’s what we need more of in the world.
Josh Hoe
I always ask the same last question. What did I mess up? What questions should I have asked but did not?
Ashish Prashar
Oh, I don’t think you messed anything up.
Josh Hoe
I always ask that as the humility part, but you know, it just means if there’s anything else you want to talk about?
Ashish Prashar
Yeah, I always say this to people, the two things I get asked a lot. How could you ever have worked for News Corp or the Conservatives, right? You know, I’ll hit that head-on for a lot of people listening. So I think a lot more people listening are more progressive. And as you know, if you are impacted, I just want to remind people that like, and I know people listening, to this a lot of them are impacted, that you don’t really have a choice. Like, and you know, again, we’re in the tough on crime era now, but we were in it then. The first person to open his hand to me happens to be Rupert Murdoch’s right-hand man. And as a 19-20-year-old kid, I was blown away that this individual meant to give me a job. And that individual allowed me to transform my life. And I’ve always been progressive, I always knew what I stood for. But I also knew that I had to take that opportunity, to take that step up. And when I acquired my own privilege, I left, I went and did the Democrat stuff, the Obama stuff. And I even did it publicly, I controlled my own narrative, I wrote a story in his own paper about how the Conservatives are a sham. You think oh you burnt your bridges with your mentor. And no, he just kind of one day met up with me later and patted me on the back and said, Well done, taught you well. And I think it’s important to remind you, opportunity can come from anywhere, a lot of people are really judgmental around where you take those chances, but no one who’s really impacted or formerly incarcerated, a lot of people don’t have a choice. And you got to remind people of that when they make those choices of where to work.
Josh Hoe
I think that’s a very, very powerful place to end. Thanks so much for doing this. And, as always, a real great pleasure talking with you.
Ashish Prashar
Great talking with you Josh. Thank you.
Josh Hoe
And now, my take.
As I write this, a commercial for the television show Law and Order just came on my television. The ad literally used the tagline, “why law and order?”, and then there was a strategic pause, and then “do the crime, do the time.” I cannot tell you the amount of damage that that and all the other television shows do when they repackage and manufacture law enforcement narratives into entertainment for public consumption. To win, we will need a lot less of that, and a lot more of what Trevor Noah did at the White House Correspondents Dinner. If you missed it, he said: “I love the New York Times, I really do. You are all the best, you do some of the most accurate and precise reporting and news. You never fail to write down exactly whatever the police have given you to say.” We need to aggressively defend our proposals and our people in the media. And we always need to explain why what we’re doing is better for public safety. We need to turn the public safety debate against the scaremongers in the media in order to change the narrative, to truly change the narrative. We also need to create our own platforms and embrace alternative platforms in order to get more people to hear our messages. Most importantly, we need to find ways to infiltrate traditional media and always be on offense. We should always be suggesting why the world we are envisioning will be a safer world than the current world, where policing and incarceration become our only answers to violence and crime. I guess I am challenging everyone to try to find ways to be strategic, but also to try to flip the conventional narrative and to become tabloids for good in response to tabloids for evil. The conventional narrative holds that crime means more police and more arrests are the best way to ensure public safety. We have to always argue that alternatives to policing and incarceration are actually what will make us not just better, but safer. Anyway, at the end of the day, we have to be involved not only in doing good work, but also in changing the narrative, and the way people hear the narrative in all forms of media across the United States.
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