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tyler.com hello everyone today I'm honored have with us Shaka Senor who is the author of a wonderful book called writing my wrongs life death and redemption in an American prison Shaka spent I believe 19 years in prison 7 years in solitary
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confinement and we'll be talking about his experience and his life and all things under the sun Shaka welcome thank you so much for having me I'm really excited to be here I have so many questions for you because your world is one that's so far from mine me being the
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stereotypical nerdy white guy uh but let me start with one uh how does one best spend time in solitary confinement like what do you actually do wow that's a interesting question I mean it depends on who you are I think that's one of the
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things uh for me I was really fortunate to be literate and so I took that opportunity to read a lot of books and really do a lot of introspection you know unfortunately the way solitary confinement is set up in America is really tragic you know it's a very
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barbaric an inhumane environment and the level of mental illness in that environment is unimaginable to most people and so for me books was kind of my escape from that world and you know unfortunately for others who didn't have
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the you know the skill set to be able to read or literacy you know they end up suffering um tremendously and I mean there definitely were moments where I wasn't sure how I was going to survive it or what I was going to do to come out
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with my sanity intact and you know the gift of writing and the gift of being able to read was something that really helped me navigate all the emotional turmoil that comes with being in that environment so what kind of books did
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you read and which kind of books are more useful or better in the situation of solitary confinement I mean I read everything I have varied interest early in my incarceration I was fortunate to meet some of the most incredible mentors
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um these were men who are some of them are dying in prison now they've been in prisoned for 40 50 years when I first went in they some of them had already had 15 to 20 years in and they introduced me to books very early on and I remember them kind of trying to be a
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mentor to me at a time when I was pretty much encourageable you know I just didn't want to listen I was really hurting in a very emotionally uh tumultuous part of my life you know I was very young I went to prison when I was 19 years old and I
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thought my life was over you you know and I was fortunate to meet these incredible men who saw something redeemable in me and so they eventually figured a pathway in which was through books and the first books they well the
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first book that I actually received from them and I remember this guy named O'Neal ill and he wrote books by hand and he would give me these books to read and that he had wrote and they were about Detroit and what was going on in
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Street culture but then he introduced me to a author named Donald go and like that opened up my world to the power of reading and so I've read everything from fiction to philosophy and um sometimes just the dictionary you know I've read
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Malcolm X book and he talked about him reading a dictionary from A to Z I was really curious about the emology of words so I would study words and figure out where they derived from and how they applied and I also structured my days in
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solitary as if I was at a university so I would get up and get my workout in and then I would study a subject each hour so A Book Like goes or even Malcolm X can you get that from a prison library or is it censored or does someone send
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it to you how does that work so early when I first went to to prison you can get all type of books you know uh as I you know got deeper into my prison sent they started Banning a lot of those books uh Malcolm book is probably one of
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the most popular books in prison because I mean it's to me it's I think it's the one book about personal transformation that just permeates that environment and it doesn't matter you know whether you're black white Native American
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whatever it's something about his Redemptive story that just resonates with people who are incarcerated and often times we exchange books with each other and we would buy books so I would I would order books from different uh Outlets that sold books to you know men
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and women in prison and the prison Library it varies from prison to prison some are better than others back in the day you used to get books donated by people you know they would have Estates and they would just say hey let's donate
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these to the local prison but now it's becoming more and more more um restrictive in terms of what you can read and specifically around books that reflect Black Culture which was really something that was shocking to me so a lot of those books I read in the early
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stages of my uh incarceration are now bands like you can't get Donald G's books um the way that you used to and there are excuses that it talks about crime and and things like that but I'm like you can't get that but you can get
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Stephen King which is like murder in Mayhem can you get Shakespeare that's also murder in May Mayhem yeah you can definitely get all the Shakespearean Classics and things like that and so that's just kind of like reflects the
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contradictions in larger society so I think you were seven years total in solitary and one period of four years running toward the end of that four-year period did you feel like you were going crazy or did you have some greater stoic
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sense of calm so I went I went through when I did the four and a half year stretch I went through this moment of really just trying to figure out my life and how did I go from being an honor Ro student uh with dreams of being a doctor
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to serving on my most promising years in prison and that led me down a path of journaling and so I began to go back and try to unravel that big question of of why and you know the big questions of why and how and you know through that
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process I began to realize that I had never accomplished anything in my life and so I set out on this journey to write a book and to write that book in 30 days and so I did that wrote a second book and started a third one and then I
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fell into a deep B of depression and I probably had about three years in at that point maybe two and a half three years and I was depressed for a few months because I realized like this dream that I was discovering I didn't have a way to give
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birth to it cuz I was in an environment where it was just hard to really get my words out into the world and so I you know I was able to navigate that fortunately and you know again journaling you know letters from my father being able to really talk
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extensively with him through the written word uh was really helpful you know and so I would go back and read his letters and read books you know that inspired me uh long walk to Freedom Nelson Mandela and you know James Allen as a man think
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of and so I was constantly just challenging my mind to get through the day and one of the things that I personally live by and what I discover is if you can get through the pain of the moment you can come out on the other
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side of anything and so for me it was just about momentto moment existence and being fully present in those moments for what they were now there's a research study I was reading it suggests that as prisoners come closer to the date of their release they
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actually make more Escape attempts because the notion of release becomes more real to them they think about the outside world more do you think that's true or do you have a perspective on that I think there's a lot of anxiety
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associated with getting out of prison and especially if you're in a space where you don't even think you're ever going to get out and then that day finally comes and you look up in this two decades have gone by and now you're about to enter a whole new world and
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what I don't think a lot of people really consider when it comes to people who are returning back to society is that they're is this idea of coming into a very foreign world the world that I left didn't exist when I got out it was
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a very different world different people uh most of the people in my life had kind of you know moved on with their lives while I was incarcerated so there was definitely some anxiety of like how would people look how would they feel
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what would the conversations be like uh how receptive would the world be to me returning and who am I in this new world that I'm returning to I mean in prison I had ascended to uh being a key decision maker in in regards to what happened on
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the prison yard and now I'm walking into a new world where I have to create a whole new identity as a free man and as an adult man you know I went in as a kid and so there's a lot of anxiety associated with that and seen guys like
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blow their paroles because they get to that door and they're all of a sudden they're realizing you know the mother that was there when I went to prison like she's no longer here she's dead and they don't have anybody to go home to
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and so it's like how am I going to survive in this new world on the other side of this fence so I can't say that I've seen anybody attempt to escape but I have seen guys you know compromise their parole and end up serving more time as opposed to walking out of the
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doors free you think solitary confinement can ever be good for prisoners no in your own story you seem to give an account where it's the turning point in your thoughts that occurs during solitary and that to use coincidence and solitary was just
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terrible well I think you know one of the things that always CA some people about especially when it comes to my story and it's the idea that solitary made me who I am today in the reality is the choices I made while I was in
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solitary is what made me who I am today and it kind of makes me me think about uh our mutual you know uh friend Ben in the book is like what you do is who you are this is Ben haritz yes yeah Ben haritz and so for me it was more about
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what I chose to do in that environment as opposed to you know the environment itself changing me like solitari is and designed to you for you to come out better as a person that's like a very personal choice I had to make in some
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very tough circumstances and again I had to gift the literacy you know I've read this book called CAG of the steel and the book outlined exactly what solitaria is designed to do to a human being and so because I was aware of that
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whenever I felt those you know things happening inside of me I was able to combat that and if you're walking into that environment and you're illiterate or you don't have access to this information you don't know how to deal with being in a sale being in an
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environment where people have extremely high levels of mental illness where it's extremely hard to find any type of solid because it's very noisy very chaotic uh even with the officers you know you see how it transformed them into different
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people and how they treat uh the man in that environment and so I can't say that solitary itself done me any good in that way uh I was just fortunate to be able to make choices based on information that I had at my disposal you also
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mentioned mental illness quite a bit in your book and how common it is in prison when people receive the sentence you know something like not guilty for reason of insanity do you have views on that do you think it's a good idea we
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should have more of it less of it I think that we need to decriminalize mental illness and when I think about solitary confinement I think about a lot of the guys that I saw end up in environment and they end up being incapable of getting out because they
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consistently are in violation of whatever the prison rules are but one of the things people don't think about is that if you're dealing with somebody who has schizophrenia like they can't even comprehend the rules in a way that
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somebody who doesn't have it does and prisoners just aren't equipped to handle mental illness like in Michigan when I went to prison this was 1991 and at that time my father actually worked in mental health space and they just started
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closing down all these facilities and those people who would normally get treatment in a mental health facility started ended up in prison and once they get in it's extremely hard for them to get out because the Behavior Uh which is
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rooted in their mental illness is in violation of the prison rules so they continue to get punished over and over and over again and to me it's the saddest and it's the sickest thing about our prison system is that we have because there's not a lot
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of transparency most citizens who are paying the taxes for these spaces don't know what happens in our prison and that's crazy you know when you really think about it uh prior to President Obama leaving office he was like the
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first sitting president in about four decades to actually go inside a prison and when you think about the reality that we have over 2 million men and women in prison uh Millions more on parole of Probation and you know this has a profound impact
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on our society and we don't know what's going on in there and so if it wasn't for people like myself and the many other uh Advocates of prison and Criminal Justice Reform getting out and being able to articulate what has happened in there and what's happening
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to people society would still be ignorant to what's really going on and so for me um it's one of the things that inspired me to write the book because I wanted people to know this is what we're paying for before President Reagan there
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was a much higher rate of forcibly institutionalizing people into mental homes is that part of your ideal solution or you think it should just be more treatment and not so much coercion I think that in a society that has as many resources as we have it is
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ridiculous to think that we can't treat people outside of facilities I think people do better uh when they're in spaces where uh there's holistic health care holistic mental Wellness care care and to think that we can't do that given
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how much money we spend on prisons is pretty much a bit ridiculous and I and I mean in it's rooted in what prisons really are you know their extension of uh Shadow slavery which you know is a reality of our country when you think
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about the 13th Amendment which was supposed to eliminate slavery it actually created a loophole for slavery to reemerge in a new way and that's you know you see that in prisons where you get this cheap labor uh and and often times free labor and you know people are
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exploiting and has been exploited for years but now uh I think both parties are realizing it's come at an astronomical cost to the rest of society and this is where you've seen a shift uh in terms of Criminal Justice Reform you
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mentioned in your book I think that there were 36 cases of misconduct brought against you were you guilty of those or were they trumped up charges or how do you pretty much guilty of all of them um so they never trumped a few up
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that's amazing to me I mean I I've been I've been in trouble for some things that that I didn't do uh and definitely had but those the actual misconducts I think I pretty much did all those um and and largely when I you know when I went
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to prison what I didn't realize is that I was still suffering from PTSD from when I got shot at the age of 17 and going to prison is very volatile environment compounded that PTSD and when I went to prison I thought my life was over I didn't think I was
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ever getting out I mean I was 19 years old looking at 17 to 40 years with 40 being the only guaranteed time and as a 19y old you can barely see two weeks down the lines let alone two decades and so I acted out of that emotional
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instability that most young guys act out of when they're in that environment it's very volatile a lot of fights a lot of rebellion and for me it took years to really just you know to mature in you know nature like even now out here in
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California they recognize the brain sence that you know the brains of kids don't don't actually mature until they're about 25 26 so you're still considered a juvenile at that point so imagine if you're 19 years old you're
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thrown into this volle environment and you know you're you're told that you just have to be a model prisoner in order to get out like it's not realistic that that's going to happen and I mean and the other part of it is that it's a
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very antagonistic environment you know um it took me years to develop empathy and compassion for the officers that actually work in the environment and it actually occurred to me when I was leaving off a visit and anytime you go on a visit in prison when
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you come out of the visit you have to get strip search and I would always wonder like why is this officer so antagonistic doing the strip search and then I would just realized like his job is to look at butth holes 40 hours a
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week and that can't be a pleasant job to have and so you know the think that this is your job this is your life this is how you earn your livelihood to take care and provide for your family the reality is that you're going to be
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impacted by that and I mean you're talking about every matter of buttho hold you can think of you know uh shaving unshaven fat slim clean unclean and this is a job you know that people have and you have to imagine that it's
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not comfortable being in that position and so what does that do to a human being how does that change you when you're seeing people at their worst and most vulnerable moment as an occupation and then you have to figure out how do you treat these people when Di
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when your job doesn't even have dignity in it in his title description and so for that you know you start to think about how people are impacted and why the environment becomes so antagonistic and you start to make it starts to all
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make sense so yeah I got in a lot of trouble outside of the prison do you think the prison guards are as nice as everyone else or do you think they're systematically different how nice are they as a class of people I mean the reality is that in most of these
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environments you're talking about very rural prisons you're talking about low education um and easy entry points to an environment uh you're talking about racial Dynamics you know I was in I grew up in a city that's predominately black
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in Detroit but every prison I was in was predominately ran by you know white guards from rural communities and so there's an instant antagonism because of for in a lot of instances their first interaction with people of color is
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happening in a very volatile very antagonistic environment and you know it's hard to to come out of that environment and be a nice person and I mean I was really fortunate to meet people in that environment that were just good people you know I used to work
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with a guy I work for a guy my supervisor Recreation supervisor named Tom shite um he's one of my good friends to this day you know and he's one of the men who I work for in that environment that was super compassionate super
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thoughtful um and I mean we worked in a tough environment so the recreation center you know when we come out for yard you're talking about 300 guys that's locked in this one building it's one officer and one recck supervisor and
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maybe sometime two Recreation supervisor and the thing that made Tom special is he always acknowledged our Humanity he always was thoughtful about how he engaged us he always was trying to inspire the best in us and so I don't I
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don't I'm I'm always conscious to not portray everybody who works in the system as bad people because there are people who are well-meaning and good intention is just a tough environment to maintain that when you've been in it for so long and like even you know in
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California I've worked with people in the cdcr who are just incredibly thoughtful about how do we transform the spaces to where you can help men and women come home healthy and whole and unfortunately that's just not the norm
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around the country so there's a rebellious side in your past absolutely and there's a productive side in your present writing this book all the other things you're doing and how do those two things fit together does the rebellious
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side of you you channeled now give you greater productivity or how do you view that I mean I I think of it all as energy you know and how you choose to direct the energy and when I when I was inside in the early stag of my incarceration um I mismanaged that
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energy in a way that happens when you're emotionally undeveloped you know but as I begin to develop and mature as a man I began to channel those things into productive outputs um and it's all about identity you know I went in with a a
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distorted identity of who I was as a person you know I grew up in environment that tells you that your only outcomes can be an early death or a prison sentence and so that behavior and that that narrative is normalized and it
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wasn't until I began to change the narrative internally uh by finding ways to add value to My Life by finding ways to self-identify in a way that was healthy and whole and so now there's definitely that Rebellion like you know when I got out of prison I was so
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optimistic you know I just thought that people would say okay he served his time you you know he wants an opportunity to be employed he you know he just wants to create a space uh to be a productive citizen and sadly the way Society is set
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up that's just not our Norm you know it's hard to find employment so I've had to always create employment opportunities and you know again and I'll reiterate this over and over literacy played a major role in me becoming who I am today um and having a
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skill set as a writer it created my first employment opportunity and so for me I that energy is still rebellious but it's rebellious against Injustice you know and I use that energy and and and the and whenever I find myself angry at
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an injustice is what can I contribute as a human being to change that to help other people think about things differently to bring people in proximity to spaces that they normally wouldn't be in and so you know again it's just
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directing energy in a in a productive way prisoners as a whole at least if Circumstances had been different do you think they're an especially entrepreneurial group so I I I'll start with reframing that a little bit uh one I am vly opposed to calling people who
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are incarcerated prisoners and one of the reasons that I I am that way is because you know these are men these are fathers they're Brothers their sisters their sons their daughters their mothers and I think that until we can identify
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and recognize that part it's hard for us to help them what should we call them humans okay but we need humans who are in prison yeah absolutely yeah men and women who are incarcerated uh do I think there I think a lot of us come from a
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culture where hustling was part of our survival and what I found in my own uh ability to um be successful in the world where they're constantly telling you that you can't get employment or you can't get housing is that the skill sets
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I learned in the streets from hustling are transferable and so when I got out of prison like I hustle books out of the trunk of my car like I didn't start off with being a New York Times bestseller with a published book by a major
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publishing Outlet convergent uh penguin random house like I started off self-published out the trunk of the car and basically I use the same model that I used when I sold crack cocaine you know it's like you buy low sale high and you know you create profit uh create
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margins um based on how you invest and and even with just networking like I learned that in the street I learned that in order to survive in the street you need to have allies in different areas is and you need to have
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Partnerships if you wanted to be successful as a a drug entrepreneur a pharmaceutical a street distributor uh you need to figure out how to be you know networked in in different not even just different neighborhoods but in different cities so those are
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transferable skills and the leadership that I developed in in Street culture and in prison even in in in underground marke in prison like I ran a lot of the hustles in there early on so basically um you know I would I would run what we
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call uh sucker stores or black market stores and they have incredible margins so it's like you buy one product from me then you owe me to uh when you get your money and so uh that skill set transfers to any uh entrepreneur Endeavor and a
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lot of men and women in that environment have that skill set but they also have many other skill sets there's brilliant artists in that environment there's brilliant singers and athletes and creators and um and I think it's it's
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one of the spaces where now people are starting to realize we've been throwing away Talent you know and and I always think of it from this perspective right I did I was I was a fellow at MIT media lab I did a prison hack there one day
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and basically I gave him five design challenges based on how we survived in prison and they were as complex as making a tattoo gun out of a tape player motor a ink pin and a good Tire string on to making a lighter out of batteries
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and wire and these are things that men inside prison do all all the time to survive and when I did this hackathon none of the students were able to complete it in the time that was aot it was about 3 hours you go in any prison and guys will complete that task in 30
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seconds and so basically you know instead of you know when when you when people get caught in there they're put in solitary you make a tattoo gun you're put in solitary whereas if we're really thoughtful about what are the best
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outcomes we can produce how about we get this person in the engineering class and figure out how they can utilize that skill set when they get out of prison as opposed to punishing them for figuring out how to survive what's the most
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common medium of Exchange in prison you mentioned doing these deals um what's the central item trading is it dollars is it cigarettes so so when I when I first went in it was um it was cigarettes cigarettes was the pretty much the most steady currency and then
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that was taken out they banned cigarette smoking in in prisons and then stamps became the currency because you can send stamps to the Free World and have your family exchange that for currency and then it becomes food and uh Cosmetics so
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you know soap has value in in prison uh you can trade that off for food and things like that and you know everything has currency and it's it's one of the things that's kind of interesting about the environment when you think about the
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history of currency in the world where back in the day you just Bartered and you exchanged things and the same thing happens in prison so you know what what I learned from that is that money is only based on the idea behind it and
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what value you assigned to the idea behind uh the particular form of currency you choose exchange and the same thing is in prison the individuals who are incarcerated what are their senses of humor like is it different on the inside or just the same are they
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funnier it is it is probably one of the most fascinating quick witted spaces you can imagine you know I I did a interview uh some years back with Trevor Noah and I remember telling him like yeah I was like prison is hilarious and he was like
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no no no that doesn't seem like a a quite a good narrative but what I what I always explain to people is that you can't survive that environment without the ability to laugh at the absurdity of it uh at the ability to laugh at the you
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know craziness of it the creativity of it and I mean you have some brilliant brilliant uh com comedians in that environment there's actually a comedian who's free now uh Ali sadik who's just an incredible uh storytelling he's a
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great comedian um and that Talent is abundant in that environment I mean guys crack jokes all the time the officers crack jokes you know it's one of the things that is universal you know is laughter and you need that in order to
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survive hardship so you're removed from a big part of the world for about 19 years and then you get out and put aside the law crime prison all those topics just think of it as having been somewhere else for 19 years what to you is the biggest surprise when you're out
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again not about how people perceive you or anything to do with that just the world technology was unbelievably shocking to what in particular everything I mean like when I came home I remember the first time the year you
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went away again is so I went in in 1991 so this is before the internet was even a thing right right um you know and so when I came home and I realized you can like Skype people yes you know it made me think about the Jetson you know the
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things that we grew up I grew up as a kid watching and we never thought would possible I mean cars that talk you know telephones smart technology um all those things were overwhelming they were fascinating but also a bit overwhelming because I
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realized that in that 20 years that I had been gone like the world had created a whole new language you know and even in the 10 years since I've been home you know so much has changed in that time period and so it was just a a quick fast
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learning curve you know and when I got out I remember like the anxiety so I didn't even know the difference between like a word document in the internet and I remember every time I was like getting ready to save a Word document I would
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always ask you know is this going to get a computer virus because I didn't know the difference between those two things so I had to you know a quick learning curve I had to learn all this new language and you know I'm a nerd too so
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um I'm just you know I'm a cool nerd though but I I love it I love learning you know I love the idea of of how to utilize this as a writer and as a content creator and so it was just fascinating to come out and discover this this fascinating technology and and
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all the different ways that allows us to connect today what about social Ms did anything surprise you I would say socially I think the thing that I'm most shocked about now especially given you know the prominence of social media in
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in the world is how mean-spirited people are toward each other who and toward people who just have different beliefs and how easy it is for us to just cancel people because they don't believe what we believe or they don't see things the
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way that we see things it's like the world that we live in now seems to be very volatile in terms of human interaction I think what social media has done has really just exposed us for who we truly are um you know it's in in years past it was easy to kind of mass
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racism and mass you know gender bias and mass you know misogyny and and all these different things because we didn't have the level of transparency we have now and so I think that you know this is part of our growth you know you have to
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have that transparency you have to have something that challenges the way that we think the way that we see things and when you have that it it's very uncomfortable early on but hopefully um and maybe this is just the Optimus in me
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I think we'll get through these rough periods and and find what I believe is our common core values of being Humane and compassionate toward each other so you think racism is perhaps today more transparent not necessarily higher but
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more in your face and more disturbing yeah absolutely I'm not even Disturbed bad because I I know that it's always exists I know that's one of the things that when you're in in an environment like prison is super present you know
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and it's very clear that we live in a very racist Society it's you know when you get out to society and you realize like you know racism shows up in different ways though there's systemic racism there's implicit bias there's ignorance you know there's blatant overt
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racism and I think the reason that it exists in form that is is existing is because as a country we've been cowardly and just saying hey this is what has happened here right uh you know we're coming up on 400 years New York Times is
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doing this incredible study or or examination of you know the 400 years since 169 when the first uh enslaved people were brought to the shores of America and now when you think about that it's been 400 years that we haven't had an honest conversation we haven't
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had a national apology um and I think until we have those things we'll always grapple with um you know the reality of racism in America and how it permeates so many aspects of our culture and to me I think it's just cowardly and lazy
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thinking because once you can say hey this was really a terrible thing that's happen in having other people and we see how it impacts other people you know uh and you see how systemically it it hurts and harms people then you can have a
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real conversation other than your own book what book or movie do you think best captures life in a US prison H what book or movie H I think it's really complex I don't think we've had any real good movies in a long time about the
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American judicial system in general I think there was a show of the night of on HBO was really interesting um and and I think it highlighted some things surprisingly I would say Orange is the New Black was really more accurate than
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people would would believe um I think when they see us uh specifically the the the fourth part of that uh was really um intriguing in terms of like showing people how this system is so flawed and from a documentary standpoint what Ava
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de ver did with 13th was just brilliant like because it connected all the dots between uh the 13th Amendment and what's currently happening in terms of mass incarceration um there was the CLE Browder movie which was really about
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this young man who uh was accused of a crime he didn't commit and he went through two years of solitary confinement and when he got out he was unable to to you know unpack all the things that happened to him and eventually committed suicide
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and I think that was just such a tragic story and a narrative that we should all keep our eyes on because it's happening to so many people but I definitely think we're poised for something that's more about the human journey and what happens
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to humans on the inside and what even leads to people being in prison and so I'm hoping to be able to add to that narrative in some way soon I'm much older book Jack Henry Abbott in the belly of the Beast do you know it I
34:00
haven't read that one uh I've read a lot of books about prison probably more than I care to remember but you know I think the the the Redemptive stories are are super important um and needed you know so would you say that in prison you in
34:14
some way discovered religion when I was in when I was in prison I mean I grew up in in in a household where my mother went to church you know in a community where church was a big part of you know that experience um so I wouldn't
34:28
necessarily say that I discovered religion in prison I went through several iterations of figuring out what my spiritual journey is you know I study Christianity I study Islam I study Buddhism um and what I realized for me personally that my spiritual journey is
34:45
really about learning you know an ability to connect with other human beings and to me I think the greatest scripture ever written is nature itself you know if you think about the infinite nature of the sky or the depth of the of
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the ocean to me I think that's metaphors for who we are as human beings like our infinite ability to connect and the depth of which we can really stretch you know our imagination across any sector if we're present to it um meditation is
35:12
a big part of how I live my life uh mindfulness being super present in the moment is really important to me because I think the moments are all that we have and so you know I I I studied religion a lot early on in my incarceration
35:27
um largely the influence you know of Malcolm X in his journey uh that self-discipline that he was able to developed through his religious practices and just the Curiosity of like you know historically what we've thought about a divine power you know bringing
35:44
all of this magic into the world as we know it now and so I'm still on that Quest still on that Journey I'm still learning you know that's the thing I love about life is every interaction is an opportunity to learn do you think of
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yourself as a black Muslim the way Malcolm X was no I no longer subscribed to uh the Islamic faith um I've actually haven't subscribed to that faith in years and decades uh I think some of the principles of um all the faiths you know
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it's one of the things that I love is that I can pull from any of those tenants and doctrines something that's useful and meaningful uh to my life spiritually today I probably study more Eastern philosophy than anything cuz I'm
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really about self-governance I'm all about uh personal responsibility and accountability and I don't think that you have to DFI that in order to be successful and to be spiritually connected I think that it's just you know a pathway uh to deeper learning
36:38
when you don't have the restrictions of uh somebody else's Dogma the milanic Islamic Palace of the Rising Sun what role do they play in prisons um it was a very small uh group uh within Michigan prison very unique it formed in uh M
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Michigan's prison and it was really a combination of uh social activism with uh religious theory behind it and uh the group has has legally been disbanded in Michigan prisons uh because it was labeled as a security threat group but
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it's one of the spaces where I learned the most about life and what how I wanted to show up in the world um you know it's through that pathway that I got introduced to a a wealth of knowledge you know and the ability to study and learn and be disciplined in my
37:23
practices and um it played an integral role in my development as a man and you became a manager of sorts a kind of personnel manager yeah I was I was a leader at and and so every uh space there every prison has a you know its
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own Temple or its own space of practice and I was often time the either the educational director the spiritual advisor um and as a spiritual advisor it comes with a great deal of responsibility that's the equivalent of being a a pastor or Deacon or whatever
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the name is for the church or Imam for the Muslim faith and you know with that that pathway of leadership you know I really was able to grow in terms of understanding how do you uh Practice What You Preach because it's very
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difficult to do in prison it's a very volatile environment uh but it was through that pathway that I was able to refine my own personal principles and evolve as a leader if you're looking for a deputy of sorts to carry out some task
38:23
reliably or to be allied with you what qualities do you look for how do you spot Talent you as venture capitalist so speak as a VC if I was a VC um you have been a VC yeah basically of sorts right uh to me is is is people who can honor
38:38
and actually follow through on what their word is uh Innovative thinkers you know people who are thinking about not only their personal agenda but how does what they bring to the table add value to the organization and and I think you
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know I've been executive director uh CEO of organization since I've been out out of prison and you know in my hiring practice it was always about what are we missing in the company that we really need you know listening to Ben sometime
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uh who's uh not only a great friend of mine but he's kind of like my default Mentor I don't know if I've ever even told him that uh but he's such a wealth of wisdom and you know one of the story he tells is about talking to a woman who runs a all women based company and he
39:24
asked her a question about why and what does she look for and she said helpfulness and that you know women often times are more helpful than men and what I think of in hiring practices or in recruitment of Partnerships or
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things like that is what are skill sets that I'm lacking because otherwise you end up hiring somebody who's like you and then you're just running down the same Railroad and you're not able to accomplish as much so I'm always thinking about what are uh skill sets
39:52
that I don't have um that or what my organization like now I'm building up my own creative content company and I'm always thinking about okay what are the skill sets that I don't have like I know I can create the content can deliver the
40:03
content but what are the intangibles that I need in order to be successful as a content creator in in the world and so it's always those things that often fly off people's radar and in prison you know there there were different things
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that were needed you know you when you're running an organization that environment you know your your preoccupation is with safety um but it's also with how do you create allies you know and like that's a different skill
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set so you're looking for somebody who's diplomatic somebody who understand how to create space for both parties to walk away with their manhood intact and with their safety and wellbe secured so it's always about those intangible uh skill
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sets it seems to me from my great distance that a lot of men in prison uh have women on the outside who are very strongly attracted to them how how do you think about that why do you think there's a special attraction to men in
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prison I mean or do you think it's not true I think no I think it is true I think there's I think part of that narrative and beautiful women too especially beautiful women yeah um I I think I think there's a few things that happens uh one is there is the the
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Intrigue of mystery you know like who are these men and and and you know there's also the power Dynamic you know somebody who can survive that environment there's something powerful about that aura that that attracts uh people into that space I think there's
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also you know the refining of the principles that often time are sought out you know the intelligence the you know the cultivation of of you know emotional uh presence and then there's the there's also the other part of just
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like the safety of knowing that this person isn't out here running a muck and that they have you know their undivided attention so you know those relationships can be help and productive or they can be very unbalanced and
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dysfunctional in a different way but you know it's all type of relationships that show up in that environment now you're from Detroit let's say a philanthropist came up to you and gave you the power to give away say $20 million to Detroit in
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some way do you have any thoughts on how that money should be spent absolutely I mean I I love my hometown I mean I live in LA now and I love La uh but I have a personal deep relationship with Detroit and I think Detroit is one of the the
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greatest places for husters and grit like you can't survive in that City without you know being a hustler or having some type of grit you know and then you know um Detroit is like essential to the fabric of America in a
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way that people don't often think of um the automotive industry you know it's where it emerged at in Detroit so without Detroit there's no car industry you know uh mtown music I don't know many people who have not heard a song from mtown and very ious ways and so
42:57
we've contributed mightily to American culture but what I would create would be a very high level Tech inspired entrepreneurial School uh a school for Hustlers you know that that includes all the technology um but also you know even
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vocational I think that's those trades are often overlooked you know and we live in an economy now where uh people are looking for uh labors and carpentry and electricians and plumbers and things things like that so it'll be a hybrid
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School of Technology and Vocational um but with that Detroit Swagger added to it what from the history of Detroit music is especially important to you um the history of Detroit music man is so much you know um I think about when I
43:43
think about mtown I think about the Brilliance of Barry Gordy to really find and discover talent that was just blocks away you know one of the best Venture capitalists of the century right absolutely absolutely I think one of the
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greatest entrepreneurs the greatest uh curator of talent and when I when you think about where the talent came from I mean Diana Ross was in Brewster projects and you know so much talent was right in this little uh two or three mile radius
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you know like that part resonates with me but the other thing that really uh excites me is you know techno music and a lot of people don't know the roots of techn Music being in Detroit you know like now we have all this m music I
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think they call it like emo edmi have some fancy name for it now but it's rooted in in techn music and The Architects of that music you know grew up in Detroit and started there and so you know when I think about music culture like those things really M
44:38
matter to me and you know of course Marvin Gay and you know what's going on is so Timeless and it still applies to where we at uh in America right now and and I mean like that music you know the musical Legacy there is just
44:50
unparalleled do you think that hip-hop music today is a revolutionary or a conservative Force I think it's revolutionary I mean you know it's the most um influential culture in in the world right now there's nothing more influential in terms of music you know
45:06
then hip-hop uh hip-hop as a culture but rap specifically as an element of that culture and you know I'm fortunate to now be in conversations with a lot of artists you know I just uh spent some time with ti on on a panel in Atlanta
45:21
where we got a chance to talk about criminal justice and so basically you have these artists who are using their platform to talk about you know social impact um I just spent time with nas who inspired me when I was incarcerated like
45:34
his song One Love I felt like it was a personal letter to me and so to be able to come full circle through our relationship with Ben and and spend time with him and just show him how his music is inspiring people to think about life
45:48
differently you know there's nothing more revolutionary and turning around the hearts and minds of men who are environments where there seems to be no hope so I still think it's revolutionary even though even though a lot of it has been commercialized I'm always finding
46:02
artists who are really pushing envelope you know artists like Jay Cole and Kendrick Lamar who are doing like super Innovative things and Shifting the way that we see the world which do you prefer more Middle Eastern food or muffins Middle Eastern food by far uh
46:15
Detroit excellent in and near Detroit right absolutely I mean some of the best food outside the Middle East uh definitely happens in Detroit so I love that food the lawn was sold food which is uh my next favorite if you think
46:29
about your life and where your life will go do you see traveling to many different places as an integral part of what you will learn next or how does travel fit into your vision of yourself absolutely I mean I I've been fortunate
46:40
to be able to travel a lot um I'm coming up on 10 years of Freedom you know and where do you want to go and how do you think about where you will go so yeah so I'm actually kicking off my my 10 years of Freedom this weekend I'm I'm
46:52
celebrating with uh uh with Ben being man has treated me to a an amazing uh weekend of Just Sports engagement so it'll be like a a brother weekend uh it's kind of funny because people be like y'all got a bromance but uh he's
47:07
just an incredibly thoughtful friend and his wife Felicia who's like my big sister uh they've been so kind and gracious and and helping me really celebrate life you know they've given me an abundance of gifts in that way of life experience and saying hey you
47:22
should go out and just celebrate you know you're free now so we're gonna kick that off and then December I'm taking a trip to uh Ghana you know for two weeks and it'll be the first time country yeah it'll be the first time that I'm
47:34
actually taking a real two- week vacation uh you know I've had other cool trips uh Felicia and I went to the Dominican Republic a few months back and you know that earlier this year and that was an incredible experience to go over
47:47
there and and just explore that country and so I'm celebrating by doing 10 uh crazy different experiences some of them inquire travel I'm going to Tokyo at some point I'm going to skydive probably around the the celebration anniversary
48:03
of my freedom you know it's really about taking a leap of faith uh because under any other circumstance I never would have been just jumping out of an airplane I'm afraid to do that I don't I don't even know if I'm afraid yet I just
48:14
didn't think it was something I would be doing but I'mma do it you know I think fear is all the reason and motivation to do it you know the more fears you conquer the more pleasant life becomes you were thinking about the problem of
48:25
re ISM people who upon their release commit crimes again what do you think we can do to improve our accuracy a fo will commit crime again and who will not do you feel we're optimizing now or it's all screwed up so I think a couple of things about recidivism that people
48:41
don't know is one most people who go back don't necessarily go back because they committed a new crime often times they go back because they've committed a technical parole or probation violation and there's there's a an organization that's led by uh van Jones
48:58
called reform Alliance who's doing some incredible work about reforming a probation system and that's based on uh the rapper Meek Mill he was incarcerated he was sentenced to two to four years for like the most ridiculous uh Pro I
49:11
mean probation violation you know he popped a Willie in New York and broke up a a fist fight with his friend and some guy who accosted his friend and they violated his probation and then sentenced him to two to four years and a
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group of us you know when I was working with cut 50 uh that was led by Jessica Jackson at the time we created a campaign the free Meek Mills campaign along with Rock Nation um and now they've you know shifted that into a whole new movement to um in probation
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you know technical probation and parole violations and so one of the things is the restrictions that people have so just say for example I was out on parole and I was jaywalking and an officer approached me and said you know what you're jaywalk and I'm
49:59
writing you a ticket I have to go Paro report that to my parole officer and my parole officer can decide whether to violate my parole because I've come in contact with law enforcement again and so people go back for stuff as
50:13
ridiculous as jaywalking people go back because they can't pay fees and fines um and if you can't pay your fees and fines you end up getting your parole violated and it's kind of ridiculous when you think about it because it's so hard to
50:26
find employment so I think to disrupt that uh one we need to do away with these technical violations and secondly we have to create space for people to find employment and housing when I got out of prison I didn't know that it was
50:39
legal to discriminate against people with a felony and housing I didn't know that it was legal to discriminate against people with felony when it comes to in some states voting so you can pay taxes but you can't vote in some states
50:53
you can be barred from employment by having a felony on your record a lot of people don't even know that you can actually be um charged more for life insurance if you have a felony um you can't use TSA which your taxes paid for if you have a felony so there's
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literally 40,000 collateral consequences of having a felony on your record and so it's exceptionally hard for people to get out of prison and to not only survive but to thrive at any level you know so people often times end up
51:26
resorting back to hustling just to take care of themselves and provide for their family and I think those things are easily fixable in prison did you have to pay those crazy fees and fines we read about like 10 times the normal price for
51:38
a phone call yes absolutely uh at one point um it was costing about $15 for a 15minute uh phone call so literally a dollar a minute uh they're not as high now but they're still higher than what we pay like even now to to to talk to my
51:52
friends I have to pay like 5 to 10 cents to send them an email but I can send emails to anybody in free Society all day for free uh and I still pay for their phone calls and they call it's probably about uh $3 per call now far
52:07
more than what I PID for my phone bill and so you know it's just ridiculous how that environment exploits the families of you know men and women who are incarcerated and often times these families are poor and can't really
52:19
afford to stay in contact with their family members or go see them or go visit them now some people argue that if we either legalized or decriminalized drugs this would make for a better nation and also improve our prison problems do you have an opinion
52:32
absolutely I think that drugs you know the choice to use drugs are personal choices and that you know adults should be able to choose what they do with their bodies like I don't you know you think about when I when I personally think about inner city life and
52:48
conflicts that happen most of the conflicts happen as a result of using alcohol as opposed to using drugs like I don't know no many weed smokers that want to do anything other than you know eat good food and watch Comedy and laugh
53:01
and or do something creative uh whereas you know alcohol on hand often times can be very volatile so I just think we over uh legislate people's lives in a way that's not healthy and we see that now with places where marijuana has been
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legalized like you haven't seen an increase in in crime if anything you've seen a decrease uh the the unfortunate part of that is that the people who in past have been you know sentenced for drug related offenses are finding it
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really hard to enter enter that industry uh and make money off that so now the same people who at one time was creating laws to uh incarcerate people are now creating laws that are creating opportunities for their friends to
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financially benefit and I think we need to change that model and make it easier for people who uh were at one time incarcerated to you know engage in that industry should we all just stop drinking alcohol voluntarily but stop all together no cuz I love tequila so
53:58
I'm definitely not signed up for that uh but what I you know my point in raising that argument is again it's up to individuals to do these things responsibly and if not then you accept the consequence that comes with
54:10
irresponsibility and I don't think that that should be any different uh with the usage of you know marijuana and you know I can't you know say about other drugs I mean again I still think it's a personal choice that people make I'm not going to
54:23
advocate for people to become open a addicts but I think you know decriminalizing it you know can definitely figure out different ways to deal with that like I think people who have opio addictions or any other schedule I think it's like schedule one
54:37
drug addiction should be treated as opposed to incarcerated some employers now are they've stopped asking job applicants if they have any kind of criminal record do you think this has a major positive impact small impact no
54:50
impact any opinion I think it has a major positive impact so for example um in June I stepped down as the um executive director of organization here in La called anti-recidivism Coalition it was founded by Scott butnick who's most often known for uh
55:08
producing the movie Hangover but he founded this organization about six or seven years ago now and the idea was to help men and women return to society healthy and whole and one of the things that we did at that organization is we
55:23
hired most of the staff so when I left about 68% of the staff was system impacted meaning that they had been in prison from anywhere for 3 years to 30 years and I can tell you some of the best workers with the highest skill set
55:38
highest level of commitment that you can ever imagine uh us being on time mean being an hour early we also uh uh created Partnerships here in LA with uh vocational trades so a lot of our members are actually building the current LA La Stadium the new Ram
55:56
Stadium uh there's a lot of our members who are working in the film industry now as a result of this organization the firefighters we know that that the wildfires are a major issue especially now here in LA and we created a partnership with LA fire and and we
56:12
created a fire camp in Ventura where formerly incarcerated uh men are now getting employment to fight these fires and they're they're very uh committed you know they're they're the way that we show up in these spaces like people Rave
56:27
about that work and so for me it's really about do we create opportunities that give people hope that they can contribute to society in a meaningful way and I promise you that when you hire people who are system impacted you're
56:41
going to get some of the best employees ever and they're going to show up in a way that's going to make other employees have to step their game up and so the more that we're doing that the more that we're normalizing that these are people
56:52
who had a moment in their life where they were at they're at their lowest point and that now we can create an opportunity for them to engage in a way um that contributes a great deal to society I think it's ground baking and
57:06
it change the world and Arc anti-recidivism Coalition is currently being led by a guy named Sam Lewis who spent 24 years in in prison and now he's running an organization that has a a big staff two two officers one in La one in Sacramento
57:24
and they're just doing incredible work over there my last two questions they're both philosophical first at several points in your book you talk about the ethical code of not ratting on other people do you view that in pragmatic terms something you think is just the
57:38
right way to be is it a view you've moved away from did having other people rat on you change your view at all where do you stand on that ethical code right now I get asked that that uh question often and you know I grew up in the old
57:52
Street Cod you know where if if you are agreeing to participate in this culture you're agreeing to all the consequen that come with it and that means that if you and I commit a crime together and I get caught then I have within that code
58:10
to keep my mouth sh like me telling on you or or giving you up that violates that code and that's just a principle thing and as a man like I still stand by that principle like I'm not going to do anything that I can't handle the
58:22
consequences of and I'm not going to give some somebody up to lessen the burden of those consequences when I agree to this culture I think what people often miss when it comes to the no snitching code is they try to apply that to Citizens and it doesn't apply
58:38
there you know if somebody breaks in your car and you you you're a working Citizen and you report that to the police that's not snitching uh that's making sure that you get your insurance paid uh as a citizen who pays taxes and
58:50
that you're provided with the services of the officers uh fortunately for me I don't live in the street code anymore and I don't live in that culture so there'll never be a circumstance where I have to put that theory to test again um
59:02
in my personal life but you know I I I prefer people don't engage in that culture at all but I always tell the young guys that I Mentor you know if you're going to make that decision to participate in this culture then you have to be prepared to deal with all the
59:17
consequences that come with that final question is it worth to do Injustice or to have Injustice done to you is it worth to do Injustice I think it's worth to do Injustice I mean it's unfortunate when you're a victim of Injustice but to
59:32
consciously be unjust toward other human beings I think that's you know far worse than what the you know what they end up experienced as a result of your Injustice so if you have a choice to be just always would choose that over being
59:46
unjust Shaka Senor thank you very much and again for our listeners I very much recommend shaka's book writing my wrongs like life death and redemption in an American prison thank you thank you so much for having me thanks for listening to conversations
1:00:02
with Tyler you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes Stitcher or your favorite podcast app and if you like this podcast please consider rating it on iTunes and leaving a review this helps other people find the [Music] show