Chesa Boudin, raised by radicals, on the songs that shaped him

Chesa Boudin [00:00:00]  Why did you do it? Why did you think that risking lives was somehow going to advance the cause that you believed in? Or why did both of you go? It only takes one person to drive a getaway car. Lots of questions over the years. 

Sophie Bearman [00:00:24] You 're listening to Life in Seven Songs from The San Francisco Standard. I'm your host, Sophie Bearman. Joining us on the show this week is Chesa Boudin, a lawyer whose professional life has been nearly as tumultuous as his upbringing. One day when he was just an infant, Chesa's parents—members of the Weather Underground, the radical group behind several infamous acts of political violence—left him with a babysitter so they could take part in an armored bank truck robbery. They were convicted of felony murder and robbery, and they never came home. So Chesa was raised by family friends. Chesa would go on to become a public defender and then San Francisco district attorney, though less than three years into his term, voters removed him from office in a recall that made national headlines. Chesa Boudin, thank you for joining us. 

Chesa Boudin [00:01:19] Great to be with you Sophie. 

Sophie Bearman [00:01:20] I remember covering your recall as a journalist, and I couldn't help but wonder, outside of the politics of it all, and the daily news cycle, like, how were you doing? 

Chesa Boudin [00:01:31] You know, it was a pretty remarkably intense couple of years for me and for my family. And the recall was just one part of that. Just to give you kind of a condensed chronology, spent all of 2019 campaigning. I got married at the very end of 2019, just about ten days after winning the election. Took office in early 2020. Covid shuts all of our lives down. Two months later, my first child was born in 2021, about a year and a half after I took office. My father was released from prison after 40 years thanks to executive clemency a couple of months after that. My mother died of a seven-year battle with cancer seven months after that. And I was recalled from office almost a month exactly after my mother's death. So it was a challenging couple of years and a lot of upsides, a lot of downsides, a steep learning curve, and a period that made me really appreciate the people closest to me. 

Sophie Bearman [00:02:28] I want to go back in time a fair bit. Can you describe your childhood? 

Chesa Boudin [00:02:33] I was born on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, not far from Columbia University. And though I had no way of knowing when I was born there that, you know, my parents were were living on the run, that they had false identities, that they were wanted by law enforcement. You know, like any other infant, I did the things infants do. I was breastfeeding, and I was, you know, learning to sit up on my own. And the daily routine was that my parents would drop me at a nanny's house with a nanny share with another kid. His parents were friends with my parents from their prenatal class. She was Dominican. We'd listen to bachata, and we'd eat fried plantains, even though our parents didn't really want us eating solids quite yet. And, you know, they'd come pick us up at the end of the day. But one day my parents didn't come to get me. I was 14 months old. And I don't remember that day. I don't remember when my friend's mother came to get me and found a way to get me to my grandparents. I don't even really remember when a judge sentenced my mother to 20 years to life or my father to 75 years to life. My earliest memories of that period are actually waiting in line to go through metal detectors and steel gates to visit my parents, to just to be able to give them a hug. And actually, when they were initially in custody, we weren't allowed any contact and we had to go to federal court and file a lawsuit just to be able to have contact visits. But I do remember the plexiglass divide coming down, after we won the lawsuit, and being able to touch my parents. 

Sophie Bearman [00:03:59] And I'm realizing now it might be useful here for the listener just to be explicit about what happened. So your parents were participants in the 1981 attempted robbery of an armored money truck. They were the getaway drivers, and in the course of the robbery, three people were shot and killed. Two policemen and a Brinks guard. So, and I want to be clear, neither of your parents fired a shot, but they were convicted on charges of felony murder and robbery. And you were just a baby. I mean, what kind of impact does going from nursing and seeing your parents every day to all of a sudden not seeing them have on a 14 month old? 

Chesa Boudin [00:04:38] It's devastating. It's traumatic. I was just starting to talk around that time. I stopped talking entirely. I demonstrated a lot of other signs of extreme stress, and it took about six weeks before they figured out a long-term plan for me. Technically, legal guardianship was transferred to Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. When I first moved in with Bill and Bernadine and my older brothers, Malik and Zayd, Malik was only about seven months older than me, and Malik said, "Chesa can't have my ball, Chesa can't have my pants and Chesa can't have my mommy." And of course, you know, now he lives in the East Bay. Our kids are great friends, and that was the beginning of a beautiful brotherhood and friendship. But it was challenging. 

Sophie Bearman [00:05:23] A little bit later, your adoptive family moves across the country. How did that distance, being further from your biological parents, impact you? And what song helped bridge the gap between you and your biological parents in New York? 

Chesa Boudin [00:05:37] Yeah. So in 1987, my adoptive family moved to Chicago. I remember vividly driving across the country and not wanting to move, not wanted to move away from my friends, not wanting to move away from the kind of ease of access to regular prison visits. As we drove across the country from New York to Chicago for that move in 1987, I was absolutely obsessed with one cassette tape that was a soundtrack to a Broadway musical called Big River, and it was the sort of Huck Finn story, I think many of the themes of that play, of Huck Finn being something of an orphan, having foster parents, being out of sync politically and culturally with the dominant culture around him. And so, you know, I listened to that, that entire album over and over again. But there was one song called "Worlds Apart" that I loved. 

Chesa Boudin [00:06:49] When my parents would call me from prison and say, "Hey, can you look out your window? Do you see the moon? I'm looking at the same moon right now," and it was a way that we would try to feel connected, even from the distance that incarceration and our move to Chicago created. 

Sophie Bearman [00:07:04] The image you paint of being on the phone and, you know, your parents looking out whatever window they had access to, and you in Chicago...it's very moving and a little painful to sort of imagine that. 

Chesa Boudin [00:07:14] That was my childhood. 

Sophie Bearman [00:07:16] And I'm sure your understanding of what happened and their crime and their role in it evolved as you aged. I mean, at seven, eight, it must have been different than when you were older. But how did you understand or conceive of their crime? And your story? 

Chesa Boudin [00:07:32] It definitely evolved. I think it still evolves. And I experienced things that are very, very common amongst children whose parents are incarcerated. A sense of stigma, a sense of shame, a sense of guilt that it was somehow my fault. And I would say things like, you know, "If only I'd been more lovable, maybe they wouldn't have risked losing me." This sense that somehow I should have been or done differently to prevent this tragedy. But in those early years, you know, I want to make two points here. One is that something all four of my parents did, which was really important, is that all of my parents were brutally honest with me about where they were and why. There was never a moment when they tried to pretend that they weren't incarcerated and that they weren't incarcerated, probably potentially, for the rest of their lives. That allowed me to ask them hard questions. 

Sophie Bearman [00:08:22] Like what? 

Chesa Boudin [00:08:23] Like "Why did you do it?" Or "Why did you think that risking lives was somehow going to advance the causes that you believed in?" Or "Why did both of you go and risk both of your relationships with me? Couldn't one of you? It only takes one person to drive a getaway car." If you thought it was so important to do this, why didn't one of you go? And one of you stay with me? Lots of questions over the years. And they would always answer me honestly. But as I got older, we could have a more detailed and nuanced conversation, and they tried to frame their goals for me when I was really little as sort of like Robin Hood. They were trying to steal from the rich to give to the poor. This wasn't about them getting money. This was about getting money for a political organization that was doing Black liberation political work. And that is, in fact, true. They weren't going to get any money. Obviously, the context is more complicated than Robin Hood. And as I got older, I pushed and probed and asked more questions. And they answered to the best of their ability. And the other thing that is important to remember is my parents, like all people, were not static. They were growing and changing and coming to terms with the harm they'd caused in ways that allowed them to be, I think, more sophisticated and nuanced and honest and emotional in their conversations with me and with others about the harm that they'd caused. 

Sophie Bearman [00:09:42] Tell me about some of the other things you would do with your parents in the visiting rooms. 

Chesa Boudin [00:09:47] In my mom's prison in particular. I mean, I should say there's a massive difference between each individual prison. And overwhelmingly, the men's prisons had visiting rooms that were pretty hostile to children, which is one of the reasons why I mostly would do overnight visits with my dad. I would see him less frequently, but the quality of those visits was really high, and my mother's visits throughout my childhood were day visits. But we had the benefit of the children's center, where we would do arts and crafts, and we could have storytime and we could cuddle up with stuffed animals. And every year we would do a kind of an annual talent show. And I remember one year my mom and I agreed to do a kind of a musical performance together, which was ill advised because I really can't sing. And my mom, she used to play guitar and she can sing pretty well—could sing pretty well. But the song that I picked for us to sing was Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car." 

Chesa Boudin [00:11:05] The reason that that song I think really resonated for me and why I wanted to perform it in that space with my mom was because it was a moment when I was starting to come to terms with who the other women in her prison were, and I would often ask, "Oh, that friend of yours, Claudia, or that friend of yours, Cheryl, or, you know, that friend of yours, Inez, what are they here for?" And it wasn't always an appropriate question to ask, but one of the things that I learned in that period, at the age of 8 or 9, as I was getting to know these other women and their stories, was that the vast majority of incarcerated women have been victims of violence, of sex trafficking, of domestic abuse, of sexual assault, have been homeless. And Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" is a song that's really about trying to escape from abuse. And so I wanted to perform it with my mom for the other women and families in the prison setting. 

Sophie Bearman [00:12:03] Jumping ahead a bit to the end of high school. You decided to take a gap year. How come? 

Chesa Boudin [00:12:08] I was planning on going straight off to college. My two mothers teamed up on me and said, "Absolutely not. Don't do that. You've earned this year. Take a gap year." They really incentivized me to—they just said, go take the time. And so I did. I spent a big chunk of that year in Central America studying Spanish and living in a very rural town. I was pretty remote and cut off from anybody I knew, and that was the design to learn Spanish, and it worked. But I was still thinking about my family. And, you know, I had a Walkman and I had mix tapes that I'd made before I left for the trip, and I would listen to those. You know, this was sort of the hip hop era. I grew up in a generation where hip hop was, you know, the rage, and Tupac was one of the most famous successful artists. I had a particular kind of affiliation with Tupac because his stepfather, Mutulu Shakur, was serving a life sentence in relationship to the same crime my parents were incarcerated for. I didn't know him personally, but I knew this connection. And when I heard his song "Dear Mama," which was kind of an ode to his mother, it really resonated with me. 

Chesa Boudin [00:13:28] And during my time in Guatemala, I actually, in my journal, rewrote the lyrics to things that were appropriate for my relationship with my mom, her history, our situation, but to the same rhythm, the same tune, the same rhyme. Most of the words didn't need to change, which was part of why the song spoke to me. After that trip to Guatemala, I came home and I actually performed kind of my rewrite of the song for her on a visit where I probably didn't speak much louder than I had years earlier in the talent show with the Tracy Chapman song. 

Sophie Bearman [00:13:58] Do you remember how your mom reacted? 

Chesa Boudin [00:14:00] Oh, she loved it. She, yeah, I mean, I'm her only son. She's, you know, I mean, any visit from me, I could do no wrong in her eyes. I mean, she was, yeah. This was—this was...particularly because I always called her by her first name. I never called her mom. And I thought of her as a mom. I would talk about her to other people as my mom. But when I addressed her directly, I called her by her name, Kathy, and I called my dad by his name, David. It was really just a result of growing up in a household where I had a mother who was there every day, and my brothers called her mom. And so I called her mom, and I needed some way to distinguish. And that was something that I know was really not her preference. But she had no choice, really, but to endure. And so this song, for all the reasons, but that in particular I think was really emotional for her. 

Sophie Bearman [00:14:48] Tell me about your role in helping get your mother released. 

Chesa Boudin [00:14:52] My mother went up for parole for the first time 20 years after her arrest. I was studying abroad in Chile at the time, and I remember being in Chile, getting the news. It wasn't really unexpected. I mean, you always hope, but we also were prepared at that time—basically, nobody got parole their first time, no matter what their prison record was. And so I remember coming back the following year for my senior year at Yale, and I decided to throw myself into her parole campaign. And summer of 2003 was going to be the next time. And so we had a website that we built, and we had a letter writing campaign, and I got the dean of Yale College to write a letter in support and got to know one of the victims of my parent's crime really well, who ended up writing a letter supporting my mom's release. And I was with my brother Malik, and we got a phone call saying that they just granted my mom parole. And we didn't know when she was going to physically get out, but we knew that she'd be getting out at that point. And it was August of 2003, right before my 23rd birthday. 

Sophie Bearman [00:15:51] I can only imagine the feeling when your mother was finally paroled. What did you do with her after that? 

Chesa Boudin [00:15:57] It was sort of odd timing. The day she physically got released from prison, I was actually in my dad's prison on one of those overnight visits, when one of the other men who was in an adjoining trailer came running over and said, "Hey Dave, Dave, I just heard on the radio, like, you know, your wife got out!" You know, it was kind of surreal not to be able to physically be waiting outside her prison for her. But if I was going to be anywhere else, it was the right place to be, to be able to have that moment with my dad. 

Sophie Bearman [00:16:24] Is there a song that reminds you of your mom finally getting out? 

Chesa Boudin [00:16:28] If I had to pick a song that kind of brings me back to that moment when my mom was released, it'd be Nina Simone, "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free."

Sophie Bearman [00:16:56] Did she love that song then?

Chesa Boudin [00:16:57] She loved it and it's one of the songs that my mom and dad listened to while she was in labor with me. It's a song that we listened to many times around her release in 2003. I then had to make a difficult decision. I was on my way off to Oxford, like about a week later, and I know my mom really wanted to, like, spend the next year with me making up for lost time, but I really didn't want, at the age of, you know, 22, 23, right after college, to put my life on hold. And I didn't want her to either. After 22 years in prison, I wanted both of us to be able to move forward together, not get stuck in the past, or try to make up for things that we'd missed out on. 

Sophie Bearman [00:17:37] In a way, it almost opened up an opportunity for her to truly be free and lose those chains. 

Chesa Boudin [00:17:42] I think that's a good way to look at it. 

Sophie Bearman [00:17:46] When we come back. Why the son of outlaws decides to practice law. Stay with us. 

Sophie Bearman [00:17:51] So you study abroad for some time, and eventually you decide that you want to study law. How come? 

Chesa Boudin [00:18:14] You know, in some ways I tried to avoid it. I mean, maybe it was inevitable. But yeah, I mean, I come from a long line of lawyers. My great grandfather was a lawyer, my grandfather was a lawyer, and my adoptive mother was a lawyer. So it was always something that I considered. I did research projects as early as middle school on things like the death penalty. And, you know, it was on my radar because of my family, my lived experience. I think my parents and people around me always kind of imagined I would be a lawyer, mainly because of my personality. 

Sophie Bearman [00:18:43] Which is? 

Chesa Boudin [00:18:44] Even as a kid I would—I liked to have kind of arguments, debates, and I liked to marshal evidence and facts. And so sometimes I would even like, you know, pick fights with my adoptive mother because she would say something and I would say, no, that's not right. And I would like then go look up the answer in the encyclopedia or show, you know, whether I was right or wrong, it was like important to me to kind of vindicate the point. And I didn't—I didn't get at that age that sometimes it doesn't matter if you're right, you just move on. It's easier. And so people always joked that, like, I was going to be a litigator. And they were right. You know, a lot of people look at me from the outside and they assume, you know, that I've sort of had a ten-year plan my whole life. But of course, if you dig in, it's just obviously not true. I mean, if you want to be elected district attorney, the last thing you do is go become a public defender, right? When I was in college, a lot of my peers at Yale knew they wanted to go be an investment banker or a consultant or a teacher or a professor, and I never really had that vision for myself. I was really focused on trying to take advantage of what I felt like were really privileged opportunities available to me because of the contrast with my parents' incarceration. And there was a song around the time I graduated from college that really spoke to that. You know, as this song from a local kind of neighborhood hip hop artist from the neighborhood I grew up in in Chicago says, "never look behind me or too far in front of me. The present is a gift and I just want to be." 

Sophie Bearman [00:20:08] This is Common. The song is "Be," it's the intro song to the album. 

Sophie Bearman [00:20:30] Is that still how you feel? You just want to be? 

Chesa Boudin [00:20:33] Absolutely. Yeah. A lot of the ways people think about the future, we can't predict. And when your parents spend as much time in cages as my parents did, it's really hard to take the present for granted. 

Sophie Bearman [00:20:45] Do you remember, going back to law school, being in a classroom and realizing like, "Oh wow, I have a different perspective because of my life circumstances," or a professor, I don't know, giving a hypothetical and being like, "You know, I've experienced that." 

Chesa Boudin [00:20:59] So day one of Criminal Law, which I took my first year in law school, it was a big lecture class, the biggest classroom at Yale Law School. On day one, the professor gives a hypothetical. Two people are walking down the street and, you know, one of them says the other one, "I'm going to rob this guy's chain." The other one says, "Cool, rob his chain," whatever. And the first one pulls out a gun and shoots the guy and kills him. And the question, the hypothetical is, what can you charge the second guy with—the one that didn't have the gun and didn't shoot him? And I raised my hand and said felony murder because that's what my parents were convicted of. It's a little known legal doctrine in the U.S. That allows prosecutors to punish someone for murder even if they didn't commit the murder. The professor was upset. He actually sort of jokingly said, "Get out of my class!" because he wanted more suspense and drama. He want people to say aiding and abetting or accessory. And I was like, "It's felony murder." And he was like, "You're not supposed to know that on day one." So I was like, I had those moments a lot in life where I put it out there, and I wanted to educate people around me about the fact that this was a very common experience for people, that millions of kids had parents in prison. 

Sophie Bearman [00:22:07] But, you know, your parents, the work they were doing was outside the law, right? I mean, that's how they approached social change. And then your approach is very much within the system. I mean, is that something that came up for you guys? Or, I'm conceiving of it wrong?

Chesa Boudin [00:22:22] No, I mean, look, I think there's a joke that my brother's wives and my wife have about their in-laws being outlaws, right? I mean, yeah, it's by definition, certainly my biological parents were operating outside the law. They committed a very serious crime and paid a very serious price for it. We all did. I was punished for their crime as well. My parents tried to change the system by tearing it down. And it's in many ways is the opposite of going to law school and being a lawyer, which is an inherently conservative profession. It's backward looking, it's based on precedent, but it's also a tool for change. 

Sophie Bearman [00:22:54] So after law school, you become a public defender, and then much later in your career, you decide to run for district attorney of San Francisco, and you made your personal family story a major part of your campaign. 

Chesa Boudin [00:23:08] Absolutely. You know, I think it was one of the reasons I got elected is that people in San Francisco recognized the benefits of having someone in office who has a multifaceted perspective on the criminal legal system. You know, I brought the decades of parental incarceration and experience with that. I brought the years of being a public defender. I brought the experience that many of us have at some point in our life of being a victim of crime. And all of that was a fresh perspective that San Franciscans wanted, so we didn't run away from it or pretend that I had a different background. I leaned into it and I campaigned on that perspective helping me be more effective, frankly, than the traditional status quo approach at addressing deep-rooted public safety challenges. 

Sophie Bearman [00:23:49] So you're elected. You give a victory speech. Let's listen to some of it. 

Victory Speech Clip [00:23:54] The movement must demand police accountability. Ending racial disparities at every step of the criminal justice system. A system that works for all of us, not just the rich and well-connected. But listen, we have our work cut out for us. This is not going to be easy. 

Sophie Bearman [00:24:23] And you were right. It obviously wasn't easy. So in your mind, why do you think you were recalled fewer than three years later? 

Chesa Boudin [00:24:30] You know, we have experienced a whipsaw in political sentiment, particularly around public safety and criminal justice issues that I think is unprecedented. In late 2020, every Fortune 500 company across the country was tweeting out Black Lives Matter and putting up Instagram posts about it. And then less than a year later, it was a dramatic shift. And so I think if you're someone who's principled and has an actual view about the politics and the policies and you're not simply following the polls, it's pretty difficult to survive that kind of a whipsaw, particularly in your first term in office and during a Covid pandemic. 

Sophie Bearman [00:25:11] Is there a song that reminds you of being recalled, something that you turned to while that entire process was unfolding? 

Chesa Boudin [00:25:20] You know, even in the joy of having a child and my father getting out, on the one hand there was like tremendous energy from all the supporters we had. The fundraising, you know, was going well. The endorsements were over the top. And yet anywhere we went, there were protesters. There were people yelling and cursing. And, there was a lot of attacks in the press. My mom died just five weeks before the recall, and for me, it was like—I was looking for music and energy that would lift me up. And one of the songs that did that was "Here Comes the Sun" by The Beatles. 

Sophie Bearman [00:26:11] Yeah, just those lyrics. You know, "it's been a long, cold, lonely winter." But, you know, "here comes the sun." 

Chesa Boudin [00:26:18] It was a difficult period. I was waking up and leaving the house before my son was up. I was coming home after he was asleep. And there was a tremendous amount of stress and negativity and pressure on me and on my team, on my family. And so, you know, it was a lot of intentional effort to stay positive and to stay hopeful in that time period. And when people said negative things to me on the street, you know, I would respond by saying, "Hey, I love you too." And just try to manifest positive energy. 

Sophie Bearman [00:26:47] Is there anything you wish you'd done differently? And I mean personally, any feedback you've taken to heart? 

Chesa Boudin [00:26:53] Are the things I wish I'd done differently? Of course. I wish that even despite Covid, I'd found ways to be more proactive about getting to know stakeholders in the community. I wish that, you know, I'd found ways to get through to the individual police departments. You know, the police command staff would never let me go visit the ten precinct stations. And I think, even though I tried dozens of times and made requests to go do that, I think I should have just done it. I think I should have just showed up. I mean, those are a couple of concrete ideas, but there's many, many other things and specific cases and hiring decisions. 

Sophie Bearman [00:27:29] One that I heard a lot of people say, sort of a refrain after the recall, was there was a sense that people just felt unsafe, right? It was like—the data didn't necessarily align with that. They just felt unsafe. And one thing I heard as a critique of you was that it didn't feel like you heard them. Instead of being like, "I hear you, I know you feel that" and just saying that, there was some disconnect. Does that ring true at all or do you push back against that? 

Chesa Boudin [00:27:54] Well, yes or no. I mean, I definitely took and still take pride in trying to implement policies that are data driven. And I think, you know, we're living in a dangerous moment for democracy, where people don't care about data and just care about feelings, because TikTok can tell us how to feel. And, you know, that's a really dangerous thing. On the other hand, as an elected official, you have to hear what your constituents are feeling. And I do think that I was focused more on data, particularly in 2021, and could have and should have done a better job regardless of the data of hearing people who are saying they were in fear. 

Sophie Bearman [00:28:30] It's a tricky balance. 

Chesa Boudin [00:28:31] Yeah, I think there are definitely times where I was too focused on the data. 

Sophie Bearman [00:28:36] So are you disillusioned today? 

Chesa Boudin [00:28:38] I am a glass half full kind of person. I'm an optimist. There is always a case to be made for the bearish outlook, if that's the direction you want to go and how your personality's inclined, but I think there's also always a good case to be made for optimism. My son has just started sleeping in a bed rather than a crib, and my father transferred his parole from New York State to California and picks my son up from daycare about twice a week so that my wife and I can work longer hours. And I couldn't be more appreciative of that. And it means the world to my dad to literally be able to get on the bus, walk to my son's daycare, walk him home, take him to the park, rather than being in a cage where he spent the last 40 years. 

Sophie Bearman [00:29:22] How did having a child change the way that you thought about your own childhood? 

Chesa Boudin [00:29:27] You know, my son's two and a half years old. By the time I was two and a half, my parents had already been incarcerated for over a year. I had already been visiting jails for over a year. And I see my son and his development and the ways in which he is dependent on his parents emotionally, not just to give him a meal or change his clothes and diaper, but emotionally connected to us. And thinking about and seeing now with a very different perspective how devastating that must have been and was for me and for our family back in 1981. 

Sophie Bearman [00:29:59] Is there a song that your son loves? 

Chesa Boudin [00:30:01] My son loves songs. He loves music, he loves dancing. But his favorite at the moment is a song called "Baby Shark" by Pingfong. We've all probably heard it, it's probably stuck in all of our heads. He insists on having little dance parties to it on a regular basis. 

Sophie Bearman [00:30:32] Two thoughts. Every parent listening is hating you right now. But—and maybe I'm reading into it too much—but this song, it's like the nuclear family, right? I mean, you hear, like, every voice of, you know, grandma and grandpa and mom and in a way, you know, your son got that. 

Chesa Boudin [00:30:48] So far, so good. He has a lot of grandparents and he has a really close relationship with all of them. And obviously my mother died when he was pretty little. But he still recognizes her in photos, partly because we show them to him and he calls her grandma and has a different name for each of his grandparents. And so he does—he likes the song not just because the music's catchy, not just because he like sharks, or the dance to it, but also I think you're right because it kind of calls out all the different members of the family. And, you know, I'm trying to give my son the childhood and the love and the support that every kid deserves and that all too many kids don't get. I had it in a weird way. I mean, I look back on my life and I think, you know, of course, if there's anything I could do to undo the crime my parents committed, to prevent those three men from getting killed, those families who were carjacked from being traumatized, to prevent my parents from going to prison—of course, I would want to go back and undo that. But I'm happy with my life and with my family and with where I've ended up. I'm less than a year into a new job as the founding executive director of the Criminal Law & Justice Center at University of California, Berkeley School of Law. And I love the job. I love the community I'm part of. I love helping to create opportunities for the next generation of scholars and judges and lawyers. I love being surrounded by people who do deep thinking, and I love the ability to have an impact on what I think we can all agree is a deeply dysfunctional criminal justice system with a longer-term horizon and less petty politics than when I was in government. So for now, my plan is to stick it out and build something great where I am. 

Sophie Bearman [00:32:31] Still changing it from the inside. Now, starting with the next generation. Chesa Boudin, thank you so much. 

Chesa Boudin [00:32:37] Thank you. Sophie. 

Sophie Bearman [00:33:02] Life in Seven Songs is a production from The San Francisco Standard. This episode was produced by me, Sophie Bearman, and our senior producer Jasmyn Morris. Our executive producers are Griffin Gaffney and Jon Steinberg. Nate Tobey is our creative consultant. This episode was mixed by Michelle Lanz. Our theme music is by Kate Davis and Zubin Hensler and Clark Miller created our show art. Our music consultant is Sarah Tembeckjian. Our studio engineer is Sean McKenna at Pyramind Studios. You can find this guest's full playlist at sf.news/spotify. Thanks for listening.