Perpetual Interest
Whenever I have had the honor to address a roomful of listeners, preferably students. I always begin with a question. The same question, I’ll ask now: How many of you have taken out a loan of some sort. House? Car? Perhaps a student loan? I’m sure at some point, you have borrowed something and agreed to pay it back. You agreed to a certain set of conditions when you accepted that loan. One of those conditions, we can assume was to pay the loan back with interest. However, you knew once you paid the loan back, your credit score would improve and you would be clear of the debt.
For some reason all the planets align and you are able to pay the loan off. Imagine if you will, even after you paid off the loan you were still being charged interest on that loan. And not only did your credit score not receive the anticipated bump, it dipped to an all time, permanent low. How would that land on you and your family? Your future? How would that affect your decision making? What do you think that would do to your aspirations in life? How would you feel?
At this point I can tell when the audience is resonating with what their lives would look like. Then I follow with, “That’s what folks with criminal backgrounds deal with on a daily basis. Every day you live, is like a coin thrown with the care of a child into a bottomless well.” The buzz phrase in use now is: collateral consequences. Nice little package, that gives you the option to avoid looking too deep into the conditions that caused the collateral-ism in the first place.
Unless you have walked down ‘turn rows’ in brogans too small for three years. Picking cotton, squash and potatoes, under the eye of an armed prison officer.
You can never truly appreciate how long those consequences last. Even after you’ve done the time. Satisfied the requirements of your sentence, it’s still not enough. Particularly for those who have been convicted of a violent crime. Those folks can literally hang it up. Their lives are over. Even though the recidivism rate is lower, than for those with drug offenses.
Austin is the first and still the only city in the South to pass a fair chance hiring ordinance. That effort was led by a contingent of formerly incarcerated individuals nascent in political strategy, but well versed in oppression and discrimination. That motley crew of individuals set about not only to implement a measure of compassion for folks with backgrounds, but they sought to transform a system that had historically marginalized them. I was one of those individuals and that is where my political career began.
Once I tell folks about my involvement in the campaign for Fair Chance hiring, sometimes they put it together. Most times they don’t. Sometimes, I see the nodding heads scattered about the space. I tell them the same thing, I tell you now: I’m formerly incarcerated and I was the Political Director of Second Chance Democrats, the Democratic club that advocated for Fair Chance hiring in Austin. I proceed to tell the audience, that I spent 2, 095 days in prison and 4, 015 days on parole for Voluntary Manslaughter. I was charged in 1991 with Murder and subsequently took a plea bargain for 20 years.
Not once have I denied my actions and I have always expressed contrition couched in remorse. And I have long since stopped trying to explain why, I felt the need to defend myself in that moment. I accept my punishment and I’ve never made any excuses for my actions. In the days leading up to my time in prison, my father suggested that I view prison the way he viewed going into the Army at the age of sixteen — a rites of passage. I heeded his advice, for better or worse. I took that transformation God made in my life, while I was on bail into prison with me. I did my time and came home.
When I accepted the plea bargain of 20 years for voluntary manslaughter, I was naive enough to think that was my punishment.
I was under the impression that my punishment was being sentenced to 20 years in prison and once I completed that sentence, my life would go back to normal. The audience usually chuckles at that last line. And I know why they do. How could I have been so dumb to actually think my life would ever be worth anything, after taking a life and being a convicted felon? I was young and naive as I said, is my only excuse. I actually believed what my lawyer and my family told me, “It’ll all work out fine. You’ll see.”
Well 27 years later, it has not worked out fine by far. However, I have chosen to make the best of a life that was flushed down the drain at 21. I have chosen to forge new opportunities, because of my past, not despite of it. I have chosen to seize this moment, this time and this life, coupled with that lived experience; as the reason to be the change that I wish to see in my community in Austin and in Texas. I have chosen to view the last 17 years of permanent 3rd class citizenship, as my rites of passage to the present. That is what I have chosen to do, the impetus matters not. What does matter is the folks that come behind me.
Your nephew that got picked up for a curfew violation and now has a conviction on his background. Or perhaps it’s your daughter, that was driving drunk and law enforcement pulled her over and charged her with a DWI. Maybe it’s the neighbor that you heard about was hooked on prescription painkillers and you watched them take her kids away, while you shook your head. Then, maybe, possibly it’s someone close to you, like your brother or sister. Someone you were raised with, probably changed their diapers, but because of the shame and stigma — people don’t even know you have a sibling.
What are we going to do about them? Every person that comes home, comes home to a community and like it or not, that person has to make a living and needs a roof over their head.
We understand the prison industrial complex and the effect it has on the mechanisms that contribute to recidivism. So, it’s a rhetorical question. I know, without a doubt we are going to continue doing what we have always done; create amazing programs and spend money with beneficent organizations that claim to assist us, but yet leave policing and prosecuting structures racially motivated, centered and firmly cemented.
I bring the audience back out of the ‘weeds’ with a story about compassion. It’s the story, I either start or end with, depending on the audience. Obviously, with you, it’ll be my ending. I chose to end with the story, because it sums up my approach to Democracy in the hands of the poor, disenfranchised, left and forgotten. People like you and people like me. It’s a story about the power of compassion and what that compassion did to a life that was destroyed. But also what it did to a life that was lost.
I tell the story about a 21 year old kid named Doonie. Doonie was from a two parent household, with 2.5 cars parked in the driveway. His modest picket fenced backyard, was next door to Wally Freytag, head coach of the legendary Reagan Raider football team. I talk about how Doonie dropped out of Reagan as a junior and started his senior year at HT, as a freshman. I talk about how Doonie was introduced to the streets in a college dorm room. Then I tell them, the story about how Doonie had become convinced that he would be seen in a ‘cooler’ light, if he stopped letting his father pay his tuition.
Doonie decided to sell drugs to get by and get himself through school, like any smart kid from a good family would do. He found himself in a game that he didn’t know the rules to, nor the consequences. For Doonie, it was about finally being seen as something other than soft. Doonie was always a big kid and his mother warned him against fighting, so he became passive..soft. Doonie found himself being robbed in the middle of the night of money and drugs, that were not his to give. Doonie went to retrieve the drugs and an altercation ensued, that led to the loss of two lives.
Doonie stabbed Derrick Lamont Davis, who would later lose his life in surgery from the stab wound. Doonie would be charged with murder and eventually convicted of Voluntary Manslaughter.
Once entering the system to begin his prison time, his first stop was Del Valle (Travis County Correctional Complex). This is where Doonie would have the encounter that ultimately lands him in front of you today. Doonie was approached by an older prisoner named ‘Cheesy’.
“Yo’ name Lewis Conway?”, he asked. Doonie responded with a nod, it’s jail and you don’t give away the fact that you are a frightened kid. “Lewis Conway, Jr?”, leaning on his mop and giving Doonie the once over. Again, Doonie nodded. “Yo’ Daddy run them apartments off Airport, don’t he? Grant Villa. You don’t know who I am?”, Cheesy asked Doonie. “Nah. N-n-not really…”, stammered out Doonie. “Well you should. You killed my oldest son.”, and with that Cheesy mopped his way down the hallway past Doonie.
Everyone who stood in line, was just as shocked as Doonie was. For the next 2 weeks Doonie would pray for the words to say to Cheesy. There was no way he wasn’t going to encounter him again. Doonie was right. One day in an overcrowded chow hall, Cheesy sat down in front of Doonie. Doonie looked up, froze and began to stammer. Cheesy held his hand up and said, “I forgive you. I forgave you two years ago when it happened. I should have been home, but I was in prison locked up. If I had been home, he wouldn’ta been in them streets, doing what he was doing.”
In that moment, a man who had no reason and every right not to show me a modicum of compassion, heaped upon me a lifetime of it. Not only did he shower me with forgiveness and compassion, he did it in a place that was devoid of compassion. A place where compassion can get you killed. Yet, he gave the killer of his son — compassion. That’s what drives my work. That is what brings me here, before you now.
And so I pose the question to you, Gentle Reader: what’s stopping us from being compassionate enough to give people another chance at life? Another chance at dignity, respect and citizenship? An opportunity to hold a job, be a father, own a home and perhaps, run for elected office in the city he was raised in. What’s stopping us? Moreover, what’s stopping you? That is my final statement and inquiry.
