Transcriber: Bob Prottas Reviewer: Ariana Bleau Lugo
When people first meet me,
they do not necessarily
leap to the conclusion ex-con.
They may be missing the neck tattoo.
They may assume
wife, mother, professional, e-bay addict.
All of these things are also true. (Laughter)
I am part of a large segment of our criminal justice system:
Non-violent drug offender.
At the age of 34,
I was sent to prison
for a drug crime that I committed when I was 23.
On my first day, the first hour of my incarceration,
I found myself alone in a holding cell
at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut,
on the wrong side
of the biggest, most vicious,
triple layer razor wire fence I had ever seen in my life.
And what I was thinking was
I have got to get out of this place.
I did most of my time in a low security
federal prison camp.
Now in any prison, what you will find
is people of every age
race, religion,
walk of life, many walks of life.
And they are thrown together in very, very tight quarters,
in an environment that is really designed for scarcity.
And you must figure out
how you're going to get along.
And you, individually,
have got to figure out where do I fit in.
And if you refuse to do that,
your time will be very hard indeed.
So people often ask me,
What did you learn from being sent to prison?
Well, from the prison system
I learned how to mix concrete.
I learned how to handle a 14-foot
extension ladder by myself.
I learned how to solder.
I can't say that I have used
any of these skills since I came home.
(Laughter)
But I am still very, very handy with electrical work
which, believe me,
my husband really appreciates.
(Laughter)
More important lessons I learned
from the many women that I was doing time with.
How to deal with a correctional officer.
What kinds of questions are and are not
acceptable to ask behind bars.
And really, really practical Spanish
which could help prevent electrocution
and allow you to learn really valuable stuff like prison recipes.
And I mastered the recipe for prison cheesecake.
So very, very practical pointers here.
But these things were all teaching me
the one thing that everyone learns in prison.
which is how to be a prisoner.
And you have to learn that if you're going to survive.
But the most valuable lessons that I learned
where from my friends in prison.
And I learned by watching them and by listening to their stories.
And prisoners tell pretty great stories.
So from my bunky I learned how to do the time
instead of letting it do you.
And she was finishing up 8 years with great diginity.
From my prison Mama
who was called "Pop",
I learned how to find -- how to gain power and agency
in a place that is designed to take it away.
From my young neighbor Pompom,
I learned the heartbreaking truth that for some women
life in prison is safer than life on the outside.
And from my friends Nina and Allie,
I learned about the ravages of addiction.
And I recognized my own responsibility
in the harm caused to others.
I am so grateful to those women
and I carry those lessons with me every single day of my life.
After 11 months,
I really felt like I was in the groove.
I really knew how to do time.
Then what I found, just as I was getting my sea legs
was that I was gone.
Chain around my waist.
Wrists shackled to my waist.
Ankles chained together.
And I was with hundreds and hundreds
of other men and women
all wearing shackles just like mine.
I got shipped on the federal air lift.
Now some people think that ConAir is just a movie.
It's real.
And on that jumbo jet
with hundreds and hundreds of men
and a small handful of women
the sound of rattling chains was a constant.
And on that flight you could see a cross section
of our prison system.
Far too many
black and brown men.
People young and very old.
And there were people from all walks of life on that plane.
I watched a man shuffling
up the aisle of the plane in his shackles. Gray hair.
Right behind him was a much younger man,
the spitting image of him.
So obviously, his son.
That plane took me
to a high security facility in Chicago.
And after months and months of working prison construction
out of doors every single day,
I suddenly found myself in a locked unit.
No way out of that place.
And it was claustraphobic.
It was surprisingly chaotic.
There were a lot of women there
who were struggling with serious, serious mental illness.
And I was not homesick for the outside world.
I missed the other prision.
It was here that I confronted my past.
Quite literally, in the form of my co-defendant, my ex-lover
who had introduced me to crime
more than a decade before.
We were both bunked in a 6-woman cell.
And day in and day out
we had to deal with each other.
And it was there that I learned
the most important lesson,
which was
to let go of blame for her or for anyone else
about where I was.
I made my own choices.
I put myself in that terrible place.
The day came that she got shipped out again on a federal air lift.
Back to prison to do more time.
I was getting released the next week.
We said goodbye and I went back to my bunk
and I put a blanket over my head and I cried.
I was overcome by emotion.
I started out wanting to kick her ass.
And I reached a point
where I recognized our shared fate
and our shared humanity in that terrible, terrible place.
America locks up more of its people
than any other nation in the world, by far.
In about 1980, we had approximately 500,000 people in prison.
And now we have 2.3 million locked up.
Three ways that we got there.
We send people to prison now who in the past
we would never have put there.
Like most of the women that I did time with.
Second, we send people to prison
for much longer sentences than in the past.
Including for non-violent offenses.
And finally, we are very quick to send people back to prison,
sometimes for low level probation and parole violations.
Step behind the walls of our prison system
and you will find that that is where our government puts people,
not only people who are violent and dangerous,
but also people who are inconvenient.
People who are mentally ill.
People who are addicts.
People who are shut out of the new economy.
And this needs to change because as a nation
we are in a bad place when it comes to incarceration.
I think often of the federal air lift.
I think about those hundreds of men and woman
and the things that I have in common with them.
And some of those things are
because of our shared experience of prison.
But each and every single one of us is someone's child
and most of us are someone's parents or brother or sister.
And every single one of those men and women
on those planes had a story.
Their own life story and also a story about the criminal justice system.
And those stories take place in our streets and in our schools.
Take place in our courtrooms, behind the walls of prisons and jails,
and back out on the streets.
And there are 700,000 people coming home from prison and jail
every single year in this country.
I ask you if you have a story
from behind prison walls,
I want you to share it.
Because when people know
the real stories of real people then they will recognize
that our incarceration mania is a real problem.
And they will get to the same spot that I was in
on that very first day of my own incarceration.
They will say, "We gotta get out of this place."
Thank you.
(Applause)