i would get dressed in all red ride the bus to the healed just to walk around and wait for a group of blues to approach me 1st. i'll try to fight it tagged eisen. i walk in the middle and then i'd pull out that day and, and watch up scatter when i oh, you know, watch and wound like roaches. then i got addicted to be and feared. my mom was here trying to be the disciplinarian and the bread winner. but she didn't have no help. i rebuild. it gives her what it wasn't our fault. we were in this together. and that's why i should have known then i my mom was my 1st love. up until the mid eighties were cracked became the reason to be for her. it was okay, but she had an addiction and it grew monstrous. her addiction to crap. so proceeded everything, her dignity, her ability to reason her desire to be a mother. it was one of the things that broke me. i didn't like the life that i was living, but somehow i felt helpless to change it. i felt like i was just being carried on this wave of circumstance. not being able to have a job, not being able to be the person that i thought that i could be. i just couldn't seem to get to her. i remember a few days before being incarcerated, crying out to god, and knowing how trapped i felt knowing how limited my options were. and i just wanted out of that life. i didn't sat on the corner. i didn't do drive by, but i had a boyfriend did and i had fooled myself into thinking that if i just stayed on the fringes of that lifestyle, that i couldn't get caught up. it wasn't true when we started rhonda, nothing unusual stuff but and i was on my boyfriend, was all my protestations of innocence. this fell on deaf ears. there must be no doubt about who side were. all people who commit crimes should be caught convicted and punished. their savings will be used to put a 100000 police officers on the street. a 20 percent increase. it will be used to build prisons to keep a 100000 violent criminals off the street. you will be put away and put away for good 3 strikes and you are 1993. washington state was the 1st state in the nation to implement the 3 strike policy and make it okay to put people in prison. throw away the key. there are many people who have rehabilitated their lives, who could be contributing to our young people to our families, and that door has been slammed shatt in washington state. we are still one of only 16 states that does not have the parole system. what's interesting about washington state is really reflective of what's interesting about the whole country. this country is based on fear. when you have a country that is based on or that has grown out of colonization, and slavery, people are rest easy. that's why everyone needs to be armed in this country to protect what they have. because what they have was stolen may not talk about it may not admit it, but it's there. whether you are on the red or on the blue. whatever side it is, no one fleece easily in this country. there was a drama georgia, mrs. baker. i simply want to say legislators have an inherent conflict of interest . the number one object of the legislatures to get reelected. i do get reelected, truly using ponder, podium and sam, tough on crock of the children who have been k, o. the victims of bio, the public is fed up, and that means more prison time. we have a greater percentage of our population in prison right now than any society in the history of western civilization. we have this high and mighty attitude about ourselves. i want you to imagine that as much as $60.00 to $0.70 out of every tax dollar in my county goes toward criminal justice. it is a horrendous waste of resources. if you don't care about people, it's a horrendous waste of resources on the private washing. it's very, very easy to instigate beer. that's what happened with 3 strikes because the base of the threat then became young, black and brown. men. we need to take these people on. they are often connected to big drug cartels. they are not just gangs of kids anymore. they are often the kinds of kids that are called super predatory. no conscience, no empathy. we can talk about why they ended up that way, but 1st we have to bring them to heal. and the president is asked the f b i to launch a very concerted effort against gangs everywhere. john and i were to go to the f. b i task force ever forming a task force or gangs. we mel with the drugs are privately, as you go around the country, you see communities everywhere, people who are no longer going behind their houses. this is our here. all we wanted to know is don't buy your jackson pew oliver lake. we don't come here. you've got to take a stand but are willing with leadership and with involvement, lease and direction from least not willing to take to the streets. you want to know why we're having success with our federal task force because it set him up all over the country and not all of them were kicking like we were in the wanted to know why john and i knew the gang members from work on the street and so we kind of knew who they should be targeting lou and the police started doing more suite. they went just get the kids and round him up. for whatever little reason i could could get a mana sentence, a given milan song keeps him from ever coming. that is to play doh police, keith play guns, a lease, keith kick indoors and they get the search one later. i got you. when i got you down and that damn bay in the take, they got to one them, moves all by yourself. if they caught you by yourself, you're going to jail. may not have them even been a criminal activity. they just because they were out there, they'd get him just unloading if i was walking to the corner store and i saw a house, lo further up that i thought looked nice. so i wanted to walk by in the police saw me, they would say to me, what you do when here you live around here on the narrative that we keep hearing is that there are people who are entitled to be here. even though folks know that this is not anybody's, it's not their land. so that narrative of being entitled and really protecting that is really what drives a lot the we, as a country don't want to uncover that's too painful. given a race based country, such as we are, the people that really are impacted are the poorest and the black is mm . looking back now, i'm able to see everything that happy. i wasn't able to see it, the install was unable to avoid the traps. now were set for me, a lot of was weren't, i don't wanna excuse any of the crimes that were committed because there were carm's committee, but some people didn't commit crimes and were just caught up in the friends that they chose. and it was in the friends that they chose to friends with. i grew up with, this is the neighborhood you live in these kids, you went to school with these 2 people whose auntie house she went to eat sunday dinner and most of us didn't just wake of his say, i want to be a gang member. this is what i'm going to be a life. we just grew into that because this we were exposed to when and ah, the last part of my career i had the best job. mm hm. least i had ultimate freedom to set my own targets and my own investigation as long as i was producing, they left me alone. so i didn't have a lot of supervision by the late ninety's at the hilltop area was pretty much cleaned up with a dinner. aggravated murder, a drama, aggravated martyr is the highest crime in washington. they change some law in a hard time for arm crime in 1994 that says if a murder occurred during the discharge of a firearm from a motor vehicle, then you can be subject to the death penalty or life in prison. if i would have got senses to 1st or be murder, i probably would ahead 27 years since the murder occurred during the discharge of a file from a motor vehicle on that. so he said he 70 reason that a judge did not have the ability to give them a sentence of less than life without parole. is that the legislature made it an aber voting circumstance to do a drive by shooting because he shot impulsively without knowing who was in the other car, but out of a car, only one punishment was appropriate. that law was passed because mostly white legislators viewed it as worse for gang members to shoot from a car. it was a clear reaction to the fear, black and hispanic individuals, a weapon in the commission of a crime. the promise of the criminal justice system is that it rises above race will be the title of the when i work in washington state, it's a state that is overwhelmingly quiet. that's not true when i go into a prism. criminal justice system remains broken by the influence of race. ah ah ah needs to come to the russian state. oh, never thought i'd tied as i'm phone and ignore santini devastation. i'm not getting hooked up with within the 55 when. okay, so mine is group. i'm speaking with we will van in the european union, the kremlin. yup. machine. the state on to russia for date and c, r t spoke neck, even our video agency, roughly all band on youtube with ah, blue children at st. andrew's eventual school suffered nightmarish levels of abuse, torture and child rape. and yet the office of the attorney general suppressed thousands of pages of police and evidence that identified the perpetrators in the school. i was electrocuted twice. i was only 7 years old. first too high for me. so for me to put me in the chair or by the law, i used to run over here be somebody and run here and she kept solution with himself. some of them are my relative didn't make it jerking themselves to death over doses. but yeah, what it made me, it make me the person i am today because i'm afraid i don't give up with anything. investigations were too often handled differently because the deceased was indigenous. so many of the worst criminals got away. the bishop's got away. the ones we've done most of the damage never got charged. ah your said had humanity, your sense of privacy you're surrounded by middle and humanise you feel like cattle you feel like that's not real? ah they shoot me down. searching. it's a roller coaster on your emotional well being put in a still a by pin fill with people that you don't know you never, you don't know what they're there for. what their balance is. it deprivation to your sanchez, hard to explain you're away from everything that you know. i could not conceive of my life taking place within the walls that i saw around me. we're going to give you 3 meals a day. we don't need to just say met slab or steel slab to sleep on. and that's basically it. there is no rehabilitation. there's no repair. who prison as a socializing force, a total institution, does it work? by and large, now people learn to become antisocial. it's not designed to help anybody. well, officers make sure that you understand that you are a prisoner. when you find yourself in contact with them, they tend to look down as a way of not giving you eye contact for a lot of prisoners, a kind of makes them internalize that here. nobody i don't think that as prisoners were treated as people ah, well, i'm able to use all over like martin like slavery. you know me when you get out of the guy edge. gotcha. so when i used to be a young man sitting in his room and i used to be talking about stuff that i didn't have no clue about it, i'm st. politics. policy, legislators. and i used to hear people speak about these different type of thing that i used, that hate, not knowing institutional racism. i used to hate watching cnn and see these guys talking about politics and have no clue about what they was talking about. but knowing that these decisions were affecting my life somehow. and i will say that that is kind of one of the things that she sent me on my quest. i wanted to learn. i think that the opportunities with the black prisoners caucus, with my interaction with free people, i'm able to really internalize and i'm not an offender. i'm not a prisoner. i'm just a man who happens to be in prison. one of things at the black prison, his coffee says of that they may be absent from community, but they're still a part of community in people constantly outside every single week who cared about us and homes and a let us know that we were still part of the community not always remember mary. she said, if we planned on returning back to the community, how we came in here than we might as well stay in there. and i was the president of the black williams caucus at monroe. i went to the hall for a class a infraction possession of a cell phone because i was life without. it didn't grant me the opportunity to stay at my room. i got shipped the column bay. ah. well, the black francisco office was essentially a large part of everything that was going on. but when i got here that was enough, i basically just reached out to with ministration. it was kind of hesitant on allowing us to be able to have the name, black prisoners caucus, it was too radical for them. i paid for something to have black. and i just reinforced that the black vs congress has a long productive history within the department of corrections a and so eventually it wanna leverage from scott, this is united to never been able to get going. and so now as we started to have some of our 1st meetings that the idea was now, what is it that we want to see, right? what are the opportunities that we need in order for us to, you know, really stay committed on improve yourself. you begin to meet people who've been there longer than you've been a lot. people want them since the sevens and so you realize that know what, they're really not letting people know how many got gotten 70 years or more. i don't want to be searching. you know, 124 that's a lot of that's a lot of black fathers from all that that's gone. does a lot of this constant does like this, so it's not only do you have to make a commitment, but you have to make a choice. if i still want to continue live in the life that got me here, or i want to try and live in a better life. right? we can never become somebody different, but we can them a better version of who we are. i almost immediately upon antimony cloud bay, i found out that a few guys had just started a program and they called cheats and asked for taken education and create and help me and kamani caught it. i've been honest with kids in the same so you see was on the side i was on the heels. so we was really rivals back when he can get when he came here. i seen him, he with any of the ball, the b p. c. and he won a started teens program. they came up with the idea. we was like, ok, let's do it. there were several of us were a column bay who had a lot of time to do and present and we weren't being allowed to attend education class. the priority for our education department is those individuals with 7 years or less on there. so if you have more than 7 years, which a lot of people do, you don't get a chance to get an education. we wanted to get professors to be able to come out here, but we were too far. so the next thing was do either let each program go to waste or do we figure out a way to make it flow? so later we came up, we would just teach the class work backwards from here, and then we're just gonna move on. we know that we get teach math, we know that we could teach writing. and so it was more about the skill sets that we already had and being able to just really nurture those and provide those in a classroom setting to a y equals negative a negative is positive. we reached out to a lot of prisoners, right guys, we have degrees and all the time stuff. but then we also quickly came to the realization just because you have a degree doesn't mean that you can teach. eventually we begin to find guys who teaching was something that was a lateral town. we said about creating all syllabus isn't all curriculum and in all classes with a story changing and shaping people's thinking. and from there, the worst spray when i got here and was working on the school floor, i blew by that peach classroom. and it was the 1st time i ever seen a classroom being taught without an officer and it was prisoners, live enough prisoners. and so when i seen these guys doing and stuff i had to be part of it was the money to keep order. for those who have 2 hours within the day, we decided to diversify our board. this way we can attract more students, but also we can understand each other more. so is reaching all corners. it presently with part of me coming on board with this was seeing what you guys were doing and, and wanting to get behind that. i was like, yes, finally, an opportunity for me to go and do something productive that was provided before that inmates created. we've created a support group for positivity in the most unlikely of environment with we've been kidded against one another for so long. it literally allows a prison to run itself as long as they stay separated, we got to worry about them coming together, becoming knowledgeable to fixing the social issue that end up landing them in prison in the 1st place. ah, the more that we begin to educate ourselves, the more empowered we become, the less manipulated we can be. the less oppressed we can be. now will we're begin . it's realizes that we can get more accomplished together than we can upon, you know, cuz it can take an assessment at 1st. i really didn't want to leave column by because it had things that we were doing up there. and i were so powerful in the relationship that we have with administration. i didn't think that we're gonna be able to duplicate some of those things. so i thought to stay there in my comfort zone, i continue to be, you know, the more was coming up for his time to leave. also, the more set his mind on shone and i went to my review right after that, where i spoke to my counselor and they asked me when i went to go. when it came time he transferred, they told me shout. so i was happy. i seen were to do more than i was coming and he sent word to say good, i'm glad because i mean having some problems with trying to get to pbc story here. most of the people that live in this county where it is printing. this is not a diverse community. the most diversity they have is behind these barbed wire fences. some days they have a challenge excepting me. so i can only imagine what challenges would be around black christmas caucus. the fear that i hear is that all, you know, the name as to block prisoners carcasses. it's a black gang. we should be fearful of that. people who form ignorant, shore sighted opinions about things like that. haven't taken the opportunity to participate and learn really what is going on there. welcome to washing corrections that are thank you for being here today. i attended the summer and i was speechless . i listened to the stories that were being told, the things they had to say really resonated with me and drew me in the, the things that we have been through the things that we have been around. i would worry what others would think it would. i think i go saw that was my concern. i used to think that not the gang bang was assigned a week. i only intended to be there for a few minutes to kind of check in and do an introduction. see what it was about. and when i sat down, i did want to get back up, want to help young people away make some of the same bad decisions that we may. also, we hope to be able to reach young people themselves. we believe in them and expect them to influence and add to the world must we solidify the b p. c. here we wanted to move on to the next thing and start to teach program because this prison as forest prison is, is canada mac of prisons. in our state, this is where every person 1st comes to an issue. every person, if you're transferred from one prison to another prison, you have to come to here. so as ryan, mit who's gonna be here for a while, we see everybody in a state, they have to cross our pass. i see young guys all the time come to here whose life i've influenced negatively. that's somethin