The Art of Connecting Potholes to Prisons
or Electoral Politics: The New Revolution
by Lewis Conway
Lewis Conway has almost two decades of experience in the broadcast and music industry. He spent 2,095 days in Texas prisons and 4,012 days on parole for voluntary manslaughter. He was the first formerly incarcerated person in Texas to have their name on an electoral ballot when he ran for Austin City Council. On November 6, 2018, he garnered 11 percent of vote, ultimately losing his first bid for political office. Conway is currently a campaign strategist with the ACLU. His proposal is to inform formerly incarcerated people about careers in public service, including running for elected office.
The value of civic engagement is self-evident. Research has demonstrated a connection between voting and desistance from crime. In other words, enfranchisement could lower recidivism and crime rates in general. This correlation became particularly clear to me when I, a person with a conviction, ran for office in the state of Texas. When I stood on the front steps of the Austin City Hall, having just filed to be on the ballot for the 2018 elections, I never imagined the tsunami of events that would ensue. My campaign speech included the following words:
You see folks like me aren’t supposed [to] run for office. Running for office was not part of my parole plan. Can you imagine if it was? Can you imagine what my trajectory would have looked like? Well, today we run into the history books. Today the People make history in Austin, Texas. Today, Austin embraces change. Today, Austin becomes truly a Fair Chance city. Today, we take the first steps towards becoming a more compassionate, inclusive and equitable city. A radical city. Not reckless with wanton abandon, but radical because we are willing to pursue change. Radical means to us that we are willing to pursue and implement change.
The campaign events would culminate on May 22, 2019, when the Texas attorney general released an opinion against my campaign and the Austin city attorneys’ position in support of my interpretation of the election code.
For fifteen years after my release, I had sought nothing more than to be a normal, tax-paying citizen and return to my community, quietly getting about the business of being a human again. Were it not for the scarlet letter of conviction that I carry, all of that would have been possible. From lacking a job that paid a living wage to lacking shelter for my family, I have been denied access to basic amenities and the means for self-sufficiency because of my past. The consequences that I continue to face because of that barred access include disabilities, lack of health care, homelessness, and at times even suicidal feelings.
Eight of the first seventeen black U.S. congressmen were born as slaves. They served at the beginning of the Reconstruction era. Some of these men barely three years removed from slavery were serving as U.S. congressmen, fighting for and implementing policy. These men, whose labor once buttressed the sole source of economic wealth in the South, now wrote policy that would dismantle that same insidious market of buying and selling flesh. Because they had been born in those conditions, they were perfectly situated to rehabilitate the country from its corrosion during slavery. Their understanding of how to address the issues of slavery was born of their experience, a deeper knowledge they may have never achieved were it not for their tragic origins.
But the promise of Reconstruction, as illustrated by the new leadership of black U.S. politicians, was not fulfilled. The Southern planter class led the undoing of Reconstruction and then, over the course of the next century, managed to root its evil in state constitutions, including here in Texas.
At the root of incarceration is policy, much the same as it was with slavery. And because that same evil still grips our state and federal law, we must pull policy in our direction. We need to be the ones writing policies if we want them to positively affect us. It won’t come naturally, and it only starts by understanding the core problems. Only until we determine the why, how, and who behind the proverbial pothole in the middle of the street can we begin the work of decarcerating local jails and state and federal prisons. Only until those of us that are most affected by criminal justice policy are the ones directing that policy and stewarding those resources will we see anything that looks like abolition in our lifetime, our children’s, or their children’s.
We are in what I call the New Revolution, and I want the people most directly affected by prisons to be known as the new revolutionaries. Folks like me aren’t supposed to engage politically; that’s evident in how long it took formerly incarcerated folks to get the right to vote. However, it’s folks like me that should frame the conversation when we talk about electoral politics. Folks most directly affected by the policies that govern their lives are the vanguard of electoral politics, because we seek systemic, radical, and transformational change: change that results in working families and poor people realize the best quality of life possible, and that makes arrests and incarceration the final option rather than the first.
On my last day of incarceration, I sat in a humid and suffocating gymnasium along with seventy-five other men, waiting for our release. The place was packed, and the tension in the air was thick with anticipation and trepidation. As I scanned the faces around me, my eyes landed on a familiar face. He nodded his head at me in recognition and waved me over. We chatted about the units we had been on and where we had met. As he spoke, it dawned on me — he had been released and reentered more than once. I don’t remember much about the rest of our conversation, because I was still trying to wrap my mind around his recidivism. During the early part of my incarceration when I was toiling in the “fields” picking fruits and vegetables, I had decided that coming back to prison was not an option for me.
I began to panic as he spoke and I wasn’t sure why. With every word he spoke about how he had gone home and come back to prison, made parole, caught another charge, got convicted, and was now paroling again, I grew more flabbergasted. I couldn’t imagine coming back to prison after all the days and letters I wrote home about not ever wanting to be incarcerated again.
One thing that drove the brother I was speaking to go back to prison was his refusal to get out of the streets — or so I thought. He didn’t talk about working and living a life that would keep him out of prison, so I figured I had the key to avoiding his fate: a job. If I could just get a job, then everything would work itself out. I could get an apartment, maybe even meet the pen pal I had been writing to and take her on a date. I didn’t want to be too picky, so once I was released I shot as low as I could: McDonald’s. I thought that if I could get a job at McDonald’s, then everything would work out. Just like Eddie Murphy in Coming to America, I would move from the fryer to the grill and finally become a manager. I could even list the eight years of experience I had in the prison food service department in my application. My plan was perfect, until it wasn’t.
I want to interject a thought here: What if I hadn’t shot as low as I could? What if running for office had been part of my plan of action at the beginning? What if, when envisioning my life outside of prison, I had considered being a community organizer, or maybe even a criminal justice organizer, working for a nonprofit organizing people directly affected by the criminal justice system? The problem is that I didn’t know that was possible. My background didn’t have to be a stumbling block; it could actually be a springboard.
At no juncture was I introduced to community organizing while on parole. Granted, criminal justice reform wasn’t as big as it is now, but some of my colleagues were involved all across the country back then, so conceivably I could have gotten involved as well. My parole officer made it clear that helping me find employment was not part of his job description, but sending me back to prison if I didn’t find a job was under his purview.
When I first showed up at McDonald’s after eight years of incarceration, never having applied to a “real” job before, I was eager, if somewhat apprehensive. When I was given the application, however, right below my name, in the first set of boxes the question froze me then, and would later freeze my life. The question asked about my criminal history and gave me a two-by-two-inch box to describe what happened. I was paralyzed. How do I explain the last eight years of my life, and the incident that led up to it, in a two-by-two box?
In the smallest handwriting I could manage, in as few details as possible, I wrote about why I had gone to prison. After completing the application, I felt relieved because I had told the truth, and, knowing how important it was to tell the truth, I thought, of course I would be rewarded. When the manager read over my application, he paused and looked up at me, went back to reading, and nodded his head. He placed the application down and without blinking said, “Give us a couple of days to look over your application and we’ll call you.”
Twenty years since, I haven’t received that call, nor any calls from the hundreds, truly hundreds, of applications I sent out over the years. My saving grace was growing up with a father who was an entrepreneur after he retired from working with the Texas Comptroller’s Office. Over the next twelve years I spent on parole, I was able to build businesses, and those businesses allowed me to stay out of prison. However, often those businesses were reliant on customers who were experiencing a downturn in their respective industries. At times I was working as a strip club DJ, music video producer, cooking show host, and cashier for 7-Eleven just to stay employed and out of prison.
Electoral politics became a source of possible employment when I got involved in the successful campaign to pass the only Fair Chance Hiring Ordinance in the South. That effort was led by formerly incarcerated people who were directly impacted by unfair and discriminatory hiring practices. When the ordinance met immediate resistance at the state level, we were forced into legislative politics. Natural lobbyists that we were, we led with our hearts, took on seventy-six Republicans, and won. That victory is what prompted people to ask me to run for office. It just so happened that I was unemployed during most of that process because of my background.
When I canvassed the same neighborhood I used to sell crack in to register people to vote, I was met with the reality that I was evolving from organizer to politician. It met me on the doorstep of an elderly woman I’ll call Ms. Sally. I knocked on her door and asked her whether she was registered to vote, and she said she was. I then asked her how she felt about criminal justice reform and immigration rights. She said, “Son, I care about that pothole out front my house there. Every time I back out, my back tire dips in that hole and makes my car shake. That makes my back hurt and I can’t afford to go to the doctor no more until next year. Understand?”
I realized that she was living in a neighborhood that had been historically a drug haven and was being overtaken by gentrification. All she cared about was the pothole in front of her house and my plan to fix it. I became energized, because finally I had been presented with an opportunity to connect prisons to potholes — to electoral politics.
Eventually I was elected the political director for the Austin chapter of the Second Chance Democrats, a political club started by another formerly incarcerated political advocate. If a pathway into electoral politics could do this for my life, imagine what it can do for the seventy million other Americans that share my background? It is imperative to think not only of the present but of future generations, and to consider what we need for our country at the local and national level. We need to shoot higher, and to do that, we have to push past where we need to be to land where we actually want to be.
