Three months after my eighteenth birthday, I was arrested for a gang-related murder. After reviewing my extensive juvenile record, the judge looked at me and said, “It’s obvious society has failed you, young man, and I won’t repeat the same mistake.” He sentenced me to Life Without The Possibility Of Parole (LWOP). Legally I wasn’t mature enough to buy alcohol or cigarettes, but his ruling made it clear I wasn’t redeemable as a human being.
My first months on a Level IV maximum security yard were intense. Every inch of ground unoccupied by prisoners was covered by a correctional officer (CO) with a mini fourteen assault rifle. Big bold letters boasted the No Warning Shot policy on every wall. Everybody was doing life or double-digit sentences. Imagine existing on a yard the size of a small park that houses the most violent gang members in California. We were there because we didn’t respect the law and ultimately acted in accord with that recklessness. The COs were there to punish us, to purge us of that criminal thinking. That created constant tension out of which arose the “us vs them” mentality. Respect was maintained by way of blade-bullet.
Juvenile Hall, camp, and the Youth Authority prepared me for prison. It was easy making minor adjustments to relax into the physical demands constantly threatening to separate my soul from my body. The difficult part was processing the emotional-mental trauma associated with an LWOP sentence. Culturally men have been misled to believe that emotions are for females only. Being caught up in feelings was a sign of weakness to be avoided at all costs. It’s almost impossible to learn how to deal with emotional conflicts when nobody is admitting to feeling a certain way.
The environment was always tense. We couldn’t be told nothing, and the COs made sure we did exactly what we were told to do. Violence was the deciding factor in determining right from wrong. That was the game we played. My neighbor was the first murder I witnessed by the state. When the smoke cleared, three prisoners had been shot for participating in a racial riot. One man died before nurses hit the yard. A few months later, it was my turn to participate in a melee. The image of my neighbor bleeding to death on the basketball court put fear in me. Contrary to popular rap music and macho folklore, nobody ever marched gallantly into the potential of death on these yards. At least I didn’t. It didn’t take long for me to notice two distinct groups of incarcerated people on the yard.
Kendog was one of the first guys I met outside of my cellmate. He represented Group One. He was a reputable gang member known for putting in work. When we spoke, he was always politicking or looking for something to get into. He showed me how to make weapons and where to hide them. If he wasn’t teaching me the criminal underworld, he was stressing about the streets. Either his girlfriend was tripping, homies weren’t sending money, or family members were dying. He had LWOP like I did and always found a way to tell me he wasn’t doing “all that time.” I didn’t know it then, but the time was taking its toll. Every day he was running out of reasons to back away from the edge of that suicidal cliff and deal with the dehumanizing sentence behind him. He began to not care about his life, and it showed in his reckless thinking and behavior. Six months later I went to the hole for a violent incident. That was the last time I saw Kendog. Sometime later, I was told he went to the security housing unit (SHU, or solitary confinement) and finally took that leap and found peace at the end of a bed sheet. Fear now had another level. This place was horrible, but could it influence me to take my own life?
Criminal thinking led to a lot of time on lockdown and in adseg (the hole or adseg is administrative segregation where inmates are housed in isolation for breaking rules). My first trip to the hole was memorable. After a certain amount of time, we became eligible to go to the concrete yard. It’s literally a yard the size of a small garage made entirely of concrete. Three things could be accomplished there. Exercise, handball or talking. I was approached by a group of men that represented Group Two. They explained prison quite differently than Kendog did. Everybody exercised. They explained that exercise would help me deal with the stress and anxiety associated with doing time. I exercised on the main line, but it was purely cosmetic. I wanted to look good. When they told me it would help me sleep at night, that got my attention. I always wondered how they knew that. They gave me books to read and ran down all the benefits of educating myself. They spoke about experiences that other men outright denied, like: missing a girlfriend, feeling lonely, and being fearful of death by blade, bullet, or sentence. It was the first time I heard that courage wasn’t the absence of fear but the ability to respond to certain situations that were more important than preserving one’s life. It was therapeutic finding out others felt the way I did. Looking back to my juvenile hall days, people came to talk to us, but none of them were directly associated with the criminal lifestyle. They would say stuff like, “My uncle’s friend’s brother’s next-door neighbor was a gang member who got locked up or killed.” That approach, although sincere in its intent, went in one ear and out the other. No way would I listen to somebody who never laced up a pair of Chuck Taylors. That old adage of “each one teaching one” is powerful when we can see ourselves in our teachers. It validates the message knowing the messenger has been tested.
These men were the older version of myself. They, too, had devoted their lives to a cause that had no space for their evolution as human beings. They taught me how to twist the long hours of isolation, deprivation, and neglect to my advantage. We had nothing but time, and, unlike Kendog, they used every second of it to study, read, and think. They reached the pinnacle of the criminal underworld, which allowed them to transcend the heights of its limitations. It would be difficult to find a group of men more dedicated to reeducation or self-awareness on the planet. They gave me hope and created space for me to recognize my true self-worth and overall potential. They took “keeping it gangsta” to another level and made it cool to be responsible and knowledgeable.
Unbeknownst to me, the seed of maturation had been planted. In 2013, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) changed its policy to restrict LWOPs to maximum security level IV yards. I’d existed in that environment for twenty years. On level III, self-help groups were offered. Although I reached the point where I knew I wanted to change, it was just a thought. I had no idea what the process was to accomplish it. Although the older brothas initiated that process years ago, no curriculum was involved. Being positive in prison was anti-gangsta, so I resisted anything in that regard. Image was everything. Ego was the driving force behind it. My homie-baby-Ant was attending groups and kept urging me to join in. After some very stern denials, I finally agreed. Ironically, the group was denial management. To this day, I still reflect on the influence of Ant’s peer pressure. My respect for him helped me find a way to respect his unusual push in a direction that was in conflict with the criminality that formed our bond. Although I was skeptical, it didn’t take long for me to identify myself in the curriculum. I began to fully understand the power influence had in the way of change.
I’m on my twenty-ninth year of incarceration and currently being housed on a minimum security level II facility. Arriving here was a complete culture shock. Not just in prisoner mentality-behavior but in the lack of self-help groups, vocational trades and pro-reform assistance from the SATF administration. There were maybe three groups being offered on the yard with a waiting list of two to three years. Immediately I was introduced to prisoners Antonio Barbs and Martin, who were in the process of forming “Creative Alternatives,” which was a program to provide self-groups in the buildings since waiting lists were so long. By the time I left level III, I had become a facilitator, and facilitators were desperately needed. These groups would be facilitated by lifers-LWOPs, without any help from the administration. I guess the power of influence would best describe how the incarcerated population agreed to give up one hour of TV time in all three buildings, without bloodshed, to provide a space for the development of self when many still didn’t believe in that cause and would never attend the groups. I mean it took a certain amount of courage to attend the groups in front of the homies. At least when I first started my journey, groups were held in the chapel, away from the judging eyes of my peers.
To date, we’ve run courses in denial management, victim awareness, gang awareness, and relapse prevention with no incidents and passed out a bunch of certificates at graduation ceremonies put together and funded by the LWOP-lifer population. A couple of years after Creative Alternatives was up and running, I got on board with fellow incarcerated person Barba Statum Sands who forms the “Better Days” scholarship fund with the purpose of encouraging, empowering, and offering financial support to at-risk youth from underserved communities to give them a realistic opportunity for a college education. To date, the scholarship fund has raised over $7,500 ($4,500 came from LWOPs on SATF B-yard). These funds were used to issue five 1,000-dollar scholarships through a partnership with the United Playaz Youth Center in San Francisco and the Pico Youth Center in Santa Monica.
Just recently, the LWOP-lifer community and their families donated backpacks and school supplies, then held a basketball game with Behind the Lines and raised 8,116 dollars to donate to Refuge Armon, a community center founded by married couple the Haleys who noticed their community consisted of 95% socioeconomically disadvantaged youth. A couple of other good friends of mine, Kenny Smith and Lindsey, formed an LWOP group (Lives With Optimism and Purpose) to strengthen ties among us here and in the communities at large. In the coming weeks I’ll be participating in a hygiene drive that will collect donated cosmetics to send to a local means shelter to help those who have fallen on tough times.
Through these associations, I hooked up with BABY (Brothers Against Banging Youth) and David Inocencio, who started The Beat Within. Both are publications for at-risk youth in juvenile detention centers. I share my experiences in letter form in order to shed light on the dim future ahead of them if they continue to make choices that put them on that one-way road with no exit for old age in society. When I first started this LWOP sentence, there was no hope that I’d ever exist outside this cage. My experience has taught me that people create hope for themselves through the love shown by other people. That’s why caring and compassion are so important. It’s that rhythm created through suffering that serenades the souls of people who sacrifice so much to ease it. It was in those older convicts, the Haleys, David Inocencio, and many groups in the community fighting to showcase our reform. It finally found itself in me and the other LWOPs.
There’s absolutely no hope in LWOP! LWOP is a slow, very torturous death sentence that doesn’t acknowledge our innate ability to completely transform through mental, emotional, and spiritual reawakening. When I think of the destruction and suffering I caused my community, the torment in my being will outlive the pulsations in my heart. I despise who I was. I know I can’t change the most shameful period of my past, but I can dedicate the rest of my life to restoring balance to the community I helped destroy by living amends and putting my best efforts into furthering that “Each one teach one” ideology.
Although the road through self-discovery has many obstacles, I’ve managed to obtain my GED. I’m currently enrolled in Bakersfield College, chasing an AA degree in communications and halfway through a vocational trade program where I’m training to be an H.V.A.C technician. In addition, I am an inside organizer for FUEL (Families United to End LWOP). FUEL has made significant gains in the struggle to abolish this inhumane sentence. With that being said, I guess hope can be defined as the possibility inside the impossible that we can make tomorrow better than today by being of service to others who are struggling to figure out who they are and how to be their best selves. How else will they learn to adjust, endure, and ultimately overcome?
