It is no small task to be up here. We would like to welcome our panelists. Starting with dan from oxford house, state coordinator from oklahoma. [applause] Curtis Taylor, oxford house alumni from North Carolina. Michael, oxford house alumni, outreach in florida. [applause] jason wilson, oxford house resident and reentry coordinator, North Carolina. Jesse. What did i say . Jesse. And ann cleveland, oxford house alumni. [applause] over three quarters of oxford house population has done some jail or prison time. In america today, approximately 60 of those in jail or prisons are addicted to alcohol or drugs. Each year, thousands of those incarcerated reenter society. However, within one year of reentry, about half of those individuals will commit another crime and head to conviction and reentry into incarceration. The experience of those who enter oxford house following incarceration is usually longterm recovery in crime free recovery and crime free behavior. In some states, oxford house has developed relationships with programs that permit those leaving incarceration to go straight to an oxford house. Other residents come to oxford house at the recommendation of drug courts or parole officers. They have found that clients tend to do well if they live in an oxford house. Not only do such intervention motivate clients to begin to master the recovery process, it also saves taxpayers the cost of incarceration and recidivism. Oxford house residents who enter from incarceration take shared responsibility for the operation of the house and most residents rise to the occasion. This kind of reallife training is rare for most individuals reentering society. The panel will discuss the need for the postincarceration recovery opportunities, practical ways to facilitate getting individuals leaving incarceration into an oxford house, how oxford houses can help drug Court Clients achieve longterm sobriety, and meet the expectation of drug courts, and how oxford house living facilities facilitate transition into longterm, crime free recovery for most residents. The panelists are all experienced in the field from the inside and the outside. Our first speaker will be dan. [applause] dan good morning, my name is dan and i am an alcoholic. I have been clean and sober since july 18, 2007. [applause] dan i was incredibly lucky to stumble into an oxford house, can we all agree on that . I want to talk a little bit about reentry. When you discuss reentry, ive been involved with it a long time and how i ended up there is a constant cycling in and out of the system with a plan to do Something Different and every time back in prison. I was able to find recovery in an oxford house. I lived in an area years ago that we didnt really have any direction on how to get people out of present. Out of prison. And reentry is not just prison. Reentry is folks reentering society, in any capacity, from homelessness, whatever area it is. If its a homeless shelter you have a relationship with, getting people back into society. And it takes a village, it takes all of us pitching and together pitching in together to understand there are folks who need our help. Its not because they dont have money or clothes on their back. That we dont want them because they dont fit us. We will lift them up and that is what my life is centered on, my passion is lifting people up and giving them something they never thought possible. Living in a home, getting into an environment where they can practice a Stable Program of recovery right away. That is done by example. Coming out of prison, there are a lot of things we dont have. I work in oklahoma today and most of the guys we get to come out have nothing more than a walmart sack. How do we accept folks like that into an oxford house and point them toward success . Giving them a hand up and realizing that most all of us, whether we have been incarcerated or not, have committed felonies whether we were convicted of them are not. Some of us just got caught. It took me 25 years to realize im just not a very good criminal. [laughter] through that process oxford house is a prime place to work with drug courts, incarceration, homelessness, but what it takes is some basic things. I work a lot and the oxford House Community and houses will say things like, he doesnt have any money. Ok. I teach houses all the time, build yourself up some money and hold people accountable. Folks move into our houses i work with people out of incarceration all the time and i will sit down with them and just tell them what they are about to experience. Here is what is ok and oxford ok in oxford house. I think we can all agree on this. It is perfectly ok to do your chore. [laughter] dan it is ok and we like that. And we like you to put a money order in the box and we like you to be employed. And we like you to work a program of recovery of your understanding. Those are nonnegotiable. What i see often is folks move into our homes and they are not explained clearly what is expected of them because the people explaining it to them have either not been there or dont understand. It is our job to get out and teach people what it takes to live in an oxford house. We deserve a Second Chance as the formerly incarcerated. The key component is the oxford house is not a shelter, it is a home for recovery. [applause] dan we are not there to provide somebody a place to live until something gets better. We are there to provide them a place to work a program of recovery. So some things that folks can do to help reentry in their areas is building relationships with your local probation and parole. Give them tours of the houses, showing them what we do and what we require. It is not a place to lay your head, it is a place to get better. And throughout the drug courts, all of those things, i feel like our primary focus sometimes its sometimes gets a little muddled. We need to focus on those basic things, those basic things. Work the program of recovery and do the basic things it takes to live in our homes. I dont have a whole lot more today, i want to turn it over, and i appreciate it. Thank you. [applause] thank you, dan. Our next speaker is no stranger from the inside or the out. Please welcome Curtis Taylor. [applause] curtis thank you, joe. Was that your polite way of saying im a convict . [laughter] curtis man. You know, i get to speak at a lot of places and ive got to say, having the opportunity to speak at an oxford house World Convention is the highlight, it is one of the highlights of my life. Right here, i am at home. This is my family. [applause] curtis yeah. Whats up, justin . My man. My name is Curtis Taylor and i am a person a longterm recovery. What that means is i have not used alcohol or any other substance for over 16 years now. [applause] curtis i found his thing called recovery, i found this thing called oxford house by gods grace and mercy way back and in 1996. You do the quick math, you just said its only been roughly 16 years. I had a little more research to do. [laughter] curtis but i did the math earlier this morning. Since 1996, i have been in sustained recovery all but about eight or nine months. That is 23 years and only eight to nine months of that was i not engaged fully in recovery. That in and of itself speaks volumes. Once this oxford house thing gets in your blood, the streets will never be the same. You will never be the same. So the last time that the disease of Substance Use disorder exhibited itself in my life, or should i say i exhibited the symptoms of this particular illness, i found myself facing two felony charges. I had been in the county jail, i grew up in the county jail, lets put it like that. But i had never been in the department of corrections, in prison. This time, there was no way for me to avoid a prison sentence. I went to prison there is more to that story but we dont have time for it and i came home may 25, 2004 with absolutely nothing. I didnt even have a change of underwear. I was wearing the white uniform that the kitchen workers from the prison wore because i didnt have a change of clothing. Low and behold, Kathleen Gibson, your wonderful chief operating officer from oxford house, was in the parking lot of the prison that day. I had no idea she even knew it was my release date, but she did. She had been keeping up with me. She was there and i walked over to her truck and i said what are you doing here . She said, look, her husband keith, my husband and i have been talking about you and praying about you and we decided youre going to stay with us for a few days and dont worry about nothing, get in the truck and it will be ok. [applause] curtis so dan talked about the things that we dont have coming home from prison. That is a long list. Cap i didnt have anything. Fortunately, a dear friend of mine helped support me and provide me with some of those things. One of the most important things that she and keith and their beautiful daughter provided me with was understanding. They werent judging me. They invited me and welcomed me, a convicted felon fresh out of prison into their home and they fed me and clothed me and 11 me. And they loved me. There andweek or so then kathleen set me up an interview at oxford house. Crosslink had been giving her a fit for about 18 months and she was strategically placing me there to fix it. [laughter] curtis so i went from there to speaking to people about my prison experience and kathleen and i develop thing called a reentry coordinator. We created a position out of thin air and all of a sudden i had a job at oxford house, how about that . [applause] and so what i need to say is that while i was in prison, i saw so many people, so many men, so many polaroid pictures of mens children and i couldnt help but think to myself, what is happening to those kids what we are locked up in this cage . And so god again to instill in my heart this passion. How many thousands upon thousands of thousands of people come home from prison every day that dont have a Kathleen Gibson in the parking lot . How many people have never heard of oxford house . You see, it is plain and simple, right . Back in 1971, i think it was, this man named Richard Nixon declared war. He declared a war on drugs. Now what he was really do was declaring a war on people. He was declaring a war on an illness excuse me, people suffering from an illness, and they got together and they said, lets do it like this. We will take these people suffering from Substance Use disorder, give them enough rope to hang themselves, let them commit various crimes and as soon as they do, we will jump on them. We will lock them up in a cage like an animal. In the meantime, we will make sure there is absolutely no treatment available to these people, no help, and to make sure that this big moneymaking machine that we call mass incarceration, to make sure it continues to be viable. We will label these folks. We will call them felons. We will call them exconvicts. It is really easy to discriminate against someone and to judge somebody to justify your discriminatory behavior when you put a label on someone. Thats why on certain news channels you hear words like illegals, it makes it easy to cast these folks into the garbage and forget they are living, breathing human beings just like you and i. How many of you have been arrested . [laughter] curtis let me ask you another question. How many of you have been to prison . All of those hands, right . Let me put my hand up. [laughter] curtis now, i am in longterm recovery for a long time, right . Im a business owner, i am the executive director of the Alcohol Drug Council of North Carolina. [applause] curtis i was the very first, as far as i know, the very first on the National Level paid reentry coordinator for oxford house. The very first. [applause] during my years with oxford house, i opened some 40odd new oxford houses and placed somewhere around 4000 people. People. D 1000 and that is just me, right . All of your hands went up. Obviously youre not in prison today. You are not using today. So each and every last one of you who put your hand up, you have a different story to tell about yourself today. You are doing incredible things in your community, we just all have time to hear all about it, right . But i guarantee you that not one of us would stand up here and say that going to prison is what eventually helped us achieve recovery. There may have been an excellent Treatment Program in that prison, but you shouldnt have to go to prison to get good treatment. Locking me up like an animal, caging me like an animal, taking away all of my dignity, all of my human rights, dressing me in a raggedy orange jumpsuit and flipflops and strip search me while you make millions off the backs of incarcerated americans. America incarcerates more people than any civilized country in the world. I think we heard earlier today, 4 of the worlds population, 25 of the worlds prison population. Its not hard to figure out. So Richard Nixon, he declared a war on drugs. My name is Kurtis Taylor and i am officially declaring a war against mass incarceration. [applause] curtis me and my oxford house family we declare a war against stigma, discrimination. We refuse to sit back and watch our brothers and sisters continue to be caged up like wild animals treated like dogs, a person suffering from Substance Abuse disorder need help, they need treatment, they need detox, inpatient, outpatient and they of course need oxford house. They need a doggone job. How are you going to call me a convicted felon and say oh, you cant get no we cant hire you because you got a felony . We cant rent this apartment to you because you got a felony . My son dont care nothing about me having no felony. He hungry. He needs something to eat. [applause] you know, addiction can be a real dark place. When i was a little kid some of you probably had the same experience. I remember being afraid of the dark at some point. And the thing that i recognize is that the very second that you flipped on that light switch, the dark ran away. And the light took over. I consider mass incarceration and the way we treat each other as a society as a darkness. And im proud to stand up here this morning and say that oxford house is that light. [applause] oxford house is that light. So to my oxford house family, you all know i wouldnt stand up here and not remind you folks, dont you dare look down your nose and judge your brother or your sister. Dont you dare sit up in the house and not answer that doggone telephone. Dont you dare sit up in that house and vote no at the interview because oh, he got convicted of a b e and we dont want no thieves in our house. Who do you think you are . They already said you might not have got caught but you did plenty. Even if it was driving a 5,000pound vehicle, drunk as a skunk, thats a crime. So dont get it twisted. Youre not better than me. Youre not better than anybody. And guess what . Im not better than you. None of us are. Were all imperfect human beings trying to do the best that we can on a daily basis. So lets cut out this nonsense. Lets shut down the prison system. Lets close it. Lets close it. [applause] lets take some of that money and fix some of these raggedy streets in washington, d. C. Im sure im over my time. But theres so much more that i could say, man. But, you know, this reentry thing is powerful. Its powerful. My life today dedicated to making sure that the next man and the next woman have the same opportunities that ive been given. Because i fully understand that if i got everything i deserved, i couldnt handle it. I would bust hell wide open long time ago. Its gods grace and mercy that im standing here today. So as a result, im obligated, im committed, im dedicated to turning around and making sure that im being a Kathleen Gibson for somebody. Ask yourself, who are you being Kathleen Gibson for today . Who are you helping . Who are you making sure got a nice change of clothes or can get a haircut to get ready to go to that next Job Interview . Who are you doing that for . Or are you so caught up on facebook . Or worrying about meeting your next baby mama that you aint got time. [laughter] that you aint got time. You know, man, you all are beautiful by the way. Oxford house is an incredible thing. I thank paul malloy and kathleen and john fox for giving me an opportunity to work for such an Incredible Organization for so many years. I thank you guys for your continued support as my journey continues. But one thing ill leave you with, if this convicted felon, i know ive been arrested over 60 some odd times in my life, i can remember getting out of jail, out of the county jail in the morning and being back that night. Yeah. So if i can go through all of that, and on may 11, 2019, graduate from shaw university, summa cum laude with my bachelors in social work [applause] if i can become executive director of an agency, if i can most importantly be a father to my beautiful daughter and my wonderful son, you can, too. Thank you. [cheers and applause] very powerful. And the beauty of oxford house, just so you know, and i sat curtis and i probably stand the stand on opposite ends of the spectrum in our philosophy of what constitutes fair and liberal punishment. But the one thing that we both agree on is the light of oxford house. And, you know, i tell this to guys when i go to the house meetings and theres problems, you know, where else in our lifetime have we ever sat at a table and discussed issues in a calm manner . Some heavyweight issues. But no one is getting loud. No one is screaming. You know, no one gets slapped. Everybody, you know, behaving themselves. And oxford house taught me that. It taught us that. That we can communicate and we can share ideas. And you dont have to agree with everyone. But certainly you have to respect everyones point of view. And its powerful, curtis, powerful. Our next speaker will be mr. Michael mckeon from outreach florida. [cheers and applause] well, hello. This is a great honor to be able to speak here. I dont know how im going to follow that, though. Ive been clean and sober since july 15, 2016. [applause] michael i moved into an oxford house in hattiesburg, mississippi. And i had a trash bag and a movein fee and that was it. The guys brought me into the house, and very early on, i started se