Mass Incarceration and The Missing Men with Dawan Williams

During his 10 years in prison, Dawan Williams was able to meet some of society's "Missing Men." These men served as mentors and guided Dawan into a process of change. Since returning home 6 years ago, Dawan has dedicated his life to mentorship and serves as the coordinator for Mural Art's Restorative Justice Guild program and as the program director for No'Mo. In this episode, Dawan describes the impact of paternal incarceration, the importance of personal accountability,  and how to respond to crime in restorative and productive ways. Ultimately, he explains how responding with compassion and support is a far better deterrent of future crime than punishment.

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Transcript

Welcome to critical conversations. My name is Abbie Henson and I'll be the one conversing with our guests. And I also serve as an assistant professor in the school of criminology and criminal justice at Arizona state university. After the killing of George Floyd, my social media blew up. I kept seeing posts and reposts and stories all about criminal and social justice issues.

However, much of what I was seeing were just flat words that lacked voice and depth and nuance. And so I wanted to create a space where those words could come alive. I wanted to engage in dialogues with people who had actually been impacted by the criminal justice system, whether through their own experience research or both, I felt this was the moment to think critically to examine the complexities of our system in place today.

And to figure out how to move forward in a way that allows for equity and true justice. So I started hosting live webinars, both in an attempt to have the audience be active participants either by raising their hand and joining the conversation, or by contributing a question to the chat box and to also build a sense of community and togetherness in a time when we were.

So isolated through quarantine. So all of the episodes that you're about to hear on this podcast are converted from those live streets. And while it can be really overwhelming to think about how to change a massive system, that seems so ingrained in the fabric of our society by participating in these conversations.

And yes, You just listening to this podcast is participating. That is where we are. See true change beginning. Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining my critical conversation with Dwan Williams. After spending 10 years in prison, Dawn was released six years ago and has since served as a mentor for many in the community.

He works as the Guild coordinator for Philadelphia's mural arts restorative justice program, and is also the program director of NoMo, a youth program that helps with job readiness and court advocacy, amongst a variety of other services. I hope that you enjoy our conversation and feel as inspired as I did in speaking with Dhawan and hearing his story as always, please continue the conversation.

Once the episode is up. About five years ago, I got partnered with a prison based fatherhood program called fathers and children together, or fact. It was created by a group of men inside who all had life sentences. I was brought in as a researcher. I was observing the classes and interviewing some of the program participants.

And one of the groups of men that I interviewed was a group of recently. Reentered men who had graduated from the program inside and Dwan was one of those men. And so at the time Dawn was, and is still working with mural arts, Philadelphia with their restorative justice programs. I was very taken by Dawn and his passion and his ability to speak on these issues.

In a way that feels very approachable, but also very well fleshed out. And so I am excited to have you on here to tell us more about just your experience. So if you want to talk first, just give a brief intro, your titles, what you're a part of, and then we'll dive into some of your life titles. I'm a father husband, community member.

Family man loved the people. Um, I serve as the, uh, restorative justice, uh, program coordinator for mural arts and, uh, as the chief operating officer for no more PA fat the program in which we're speaking on and how we met Abbie, we feel that particularly when the fathers are removed from the household, the cycle of incarceration will continue.

Going through what I went through personally, by doing 10 years, six days, 12 hours, 37 minutes and 13 seconds street of incarceration. I decided to become a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem. So here we are today with Dr. . Thanks for having me on the show. Yeah, for sure. Something that, and we can just touch briefly on this before getting into the life stuff, because I think it's important when we're talking about children, I'm incarcerated parents and thinking about the issues in the communities most impacted by mass incarceration.

If you can talk about very briefly the transformation, because you speak about this often the transformation you saw in your son from when you were incarcerated to when you got home. 2004 at 9:19 PM. And when I first was arrested, my son, little DeWine, you know, he was just, his mother had just gotten impregnated with him.

So her first nine months of pregnancy in each and every birthday after that, all little DeWine knew of his father was only with the prison would allow. You know what I mean? A 15 minute phone call and that's back when phone calls were like 15, $20 a pop a letter, you know what I mean? We'll visit. And when, once you leave the County jail and you go.

Six seven hours away, you know, to a state prison visit, sorry, or something that's less likely to happen amongst the community that I'm from. Because in order to visit a loved one in prison, in order to support a loved one in prison, you're going to need three things. You're going to need a driver's license.

You won't need a car. You're going to need a bank account and a debit card. A lot of people where I'm from, I'm not saying all a lot of people where I'm from that's, that's not likely. When we're talking about resources and we're talking about being underrated, my son and I have the children, but the story with little DeWine and I is always unique because, you know, she was pregnant with him when I went away and he didn't have the opportunity to have no time at all with me.

He was, you know, getting into trouble in school because you know, it was no, it wasn't that male supervision. It wasn't that father, it wasn't, you know, the resources now there was other people in his life. Yes. Ma'am that looked out for him. This guy, father William acne. He took care of my son and he still to this day looks out for my son, you know, and me, but it's nothing like having that father there that's in that role, doing what he is supposed to do.

So with that being said fast forward, when I returned home from prison, there still was a transition. Don't think for a minute to have once a person, is there all you got to do is be there. I had to prove when not necessarily prove I had to show. Not only my son, my children, my family. I had to show the world that you can turn this thing around.

I had to show the world that no, we're not just supposed to go to public school and fight and wear nice clothes and don't learn nothing. I had to let my son know that it's cool to be on the honor, roll all the time. And once you, once you make the honor roll, you keep up that level of consistency. His behavior.

Once I came home, that's when the process of change began. He has consistency structure and discipline. Now he's being properly resourced with a real man with a real father. Now, when I put myself in position as a grown man, as their father, as the husband, as the, you know, the son and the community member and the leader, when I put myself in the best position to do what it is that I need to do as a man, as an adult.

Then that increases the chances for my children. There was a lot of things that we seen in our neighborhoods and our very households that did not help us. That was non conducive. So what I had to do was I said, you know what? Y'all right. Society. All right, family. Y'all right. I am a Loomis. I was crazy.

Some of that, that, that stuff was just unacceptable. I'm going to turn it all around, not just the crimes, but all the stuff that we're supposed to do, but they're also supposed to have jobs. We supposed to, you know, own business and we're supposed to flourish. We're supposed to continue to climb. They continue to elevate.

So what I decided to do in prison, Dr. Henson was turn it all around. I wanted my sisters, I wanted my family, my mom, my kids. I wanted, I wanted society to be proud of me. I wanted to do the right thing. You know, I felt like doing the wrong thing was easy, but let me try doing it right and see how this thing plays out.

So for me, doc, a light bulb went off in my head as a man that I'm not going to be able to sell drugs and commit crime that bring in large quantities of money. That's not going to happen. Nobody gets a pension and retire and lives happily ever after and moved to Arizona state. So I said, okay, I'm going to do it differently.

Then I'm gonna choose my freedom. I'm gonna choose. You know, being a man and I'm going to try to stop other young men and other, uh, individuals, whether they, from where I from or grew up how I grew up, I'm going to educate the world about all angles of this thing. We now know as a mass incarceration, that it was just being on the bus to Graterford.

That you have this revelation, right? There was some time that it took to get to the place where you're looking in the mirror saying I can't lie to myself. So what did it take to get to the place where you, as you say, started that process? Change the group. I wanted my children. I felt like they deserve me anything if I want to be different than my father.

And then, you know, if I want to be any different than my father or any of the men, you know, who I feel as though could have did a better job than I need to, the change starts with me. But how did you know that? How did you decide that? What day did you decide I'm going to change. The day that I decided I'm going to change.

I can't even say today, because like I said, it's not a light switch. It's a process, but the more and more I kept having those self-reflecting moments. If you continue to do the same thing, you're going to get the same results and that's complete insanity. So again, For me, it was just, uh, it was, it was those, it was those moments in incarceration and it really hard to describe it.

Not really hard to describe, but there's those deepest, darkest moments and incarceration. And when you talk to people in it, that's been incarcerated for a long period of time. They had to tell you. A light bulb, just, it goes off and it goes out and then they come back on again and then they go out and come back and then one day it just stay on it.

You'd be like, yo, you know what, that's it? That moment was at some point in prison. I want to say along the, uh, I want to say the seventh, eighth year, kinda like when I got introduced to FAC in them classrooms with lifers. That sentence to die. Right? That's been in prison for the last 25, 30 years. And he was teaching those classes and that's what it went off.

That's exactly. When the light light bulb went off. Dr. Henson, when I was introduced to, uh, fathers and children together, that's when the light bulb went off fast. Once things started to be, when I was like that, these men are so intelligent, they got the, they got the best program. They got their program was better than the program that the prison told me that I had to take in order to be able to make parole.

You understand what I'm saying? So for me, it was like the things that was being pointed out in this fatherhood program by men who was, who was sentenced to die in prison, who will never have a chance according to now. And their only chance at redemption is raising up younger brothers like myself, who have a chance where at the time I was a younger brother who got the opportunity to go back out.

It was fact man, and a lot of the things that they was pointing out, I used to do a lot of reflecting on top of the reflecting I was already doing up until that eight year point. Right. Cause I got the greater for the round two, August of 2012. Yeah. I was coming up on eight years then with two to go and I was just like in cruise, I went down there.

My intention was just to fly under the radar, get close to the home and go home. But I got involved as so much because down there I met a lot of the missing men. A lot of the men that was missing from Philadelphia for years, decades, people that had read about magazines, newspaper articles, news stories, and they had turned it around and he was trying to tell me like, this is not what you want.

You know what I mean? You know, I, I began, when I said that light bulb comes on and it goes off, it comes on, it goes off, it comes on, it goes off, but it really stayed on when I got involved. Would you say then that, as you said, what led you on the path to prison was the absence of those men? And so this was the time where you were actually seeing those role models for the first time where you were being touched by ideas from, I think it's a combination of both, both doc, because although, um, I make, I can say that I was not properly resourced and that is true in a lot of different factions.

I went to prison by personal choice to, I made a choice to do what I did. I knew that that was wrong and I was smart. I was always highly intelligent, always kept a job, but I chose. To do what I did. And I did it because I felt as though, like, that's what I wanted to go do for some money. I didn't want to go work and all that kind of stuff.

I wanted to sit around, like everybody else, I saw collect dictate, drive nice cars and do what I wanted to do and live this false fantasy in my mind that would never go away. And I was just living happily ever after. So for me, this is easy right here. I don't have this doesn't re you ain't even got to sink.

You know what I mean? For, for some people that's smart, some things it's like, you ain't even gotta think you can do some of this stuff in your bed. You know what I mean? So it was a lot of personal choice, but had I had other opportunities had I had the up the right people consistently in my ear saying, yo, you, the next city council member, you can make $117,000 a year doing this or doing that or doing that this go round.

I put myself in a different position. Okay. Yes. I can say I didn't have the resources. Nobody showed me. Right. But now I know that I did. I know this stuff now. I know that the deck is stacked against me. I know that I'm seven times more likely to become incarcerated and you know, I'm more likely to recidivate.

I sat and I looked at all of that stuff before I left. And I said, look, you messed this up, this on you. So you get out and tell us about the programs that you've been involved in. So I got out, went to a meeting and of course I was involved with this program inside of Graterford. I was going to an external meet and I ran into you, Robin  at the time was the restorative justice program director over at mural arts.

Nobody knew I was coming home. It was a big surprise. Nobody knew that I was successful upon a pill. That I gave a lot of time back and I was coming home. So when I walked up, the natural reaction from everybody was like, yo, Oh my goodness. We thought we would never, ever, never, ever see you. Robin was like, look, I'm running this program, you know, down at mural arts.

I got these young guys that are 18 to 20 young men and women, 18 to 24 years old, they're going to probation and it's a mess down there. Those are words, you know, it's a mess down there and she was like, you should come down, just, just come down and introduce yourself and talk to them. We can add some, you know, add some stuff to it.

I went down and I haven't looked back. That was six years ago when down and introduce myself, the kids love me from, you know, from the beginning. And I haven't looked back. It's that simple. I haven't missed a day of work. I've never been leaked. I've never been a no call, no show. I've never, never, none of that stuff.

None of that stuff. That's attached with people who look like me. Come from where I come from, been through what I've been through, whatever the statistics are, the story it ends right here with me. Excludes me. I'm a part of whatever percentage that they say it don't happen to. I said, yes, this is a non-profit.

Yes. I'm used to live in a certain kind of way when I was home. But guess what? I made 19 cents an hour in jail, sweeping up slot. You know what I'm saying? So I'm going to stick right here. Where is that? I'm gonna do God's work. I'm gonna save these young men and women, whoever listens to me, I'm going to share my story and see what we do differently is we don't brag in bolts.

We don't make our past history a medal of honor when we're presenting these things to this generation or to whoever to professors, when we're going out, speaking and traveling the country, man, we're acknowledging that we made a mistake and being in prisoners is like something that you don't want. It has no place to be.

You don't want your mom, is she on it now? You don't want your mother to have to go through that. You're trying to go through somebody's metal detector and they tell your mom, yo, you got a wire in your bra. You can't come in, you gotta go up the street to Walmart and get something. And then you lose your parking spot.

Then you come back and it's only 15 minutes left on the visit. And then they talking crazy to your mom. I don't want them going through that. Oh, I've seen it. I've seen it me away then. So many people going to be affected by my love. You know what I mean? You know, just what I put into the universe, you know what I mean?

And I thank my mother for that because she raised me. Right. And I chose to do wrong on my own. She showed me. Right. Like I know how to do everything. I know how to, like I said, always kept a job. I was smart. I wasn't no dummy in school. I graduated on time. I wasn't no F and D my problems were behavioral.

My problem with, because that idiot, that fool sperm donor reminds me. He didn't want to do his part until the men step up, retake the village. We're going to continue to turn on the news and see what we see on the news. So that's why I decided to get involved. Where was your father's father?

Yeah. So this is like the breaking generation that I've found? No. No. And then would you say that the men inside, would you say the majority didn't have their father? I would say a good 80 to 90%, but there's always that other 10%, no matter what we want to say, this the six, six are we say 99, because it's still that 1%.

I got personal friends that I grew up with. They had the mother and the father and got anything they want. And still slipped a lot of the times it's because the man missing or lack of resources, but a lot of the times this thing is situation on circumstantial. Because even if you take the positive of the positive kid, right.

And you put them in the, you put them in a pot of boiling water, eventually going mill. So if you take a kid from Beverly Hills, California who grew up the first 10 years when he was 10 years old, the first 10 years of his life living in Beverly Hills and the fresh Prince of Bel air mansion, then all that goes away and then he moves straight to North Philadelphia, or he moved straight to, you know, uh, Atlanta, Georgia, or he moved straight to, you know, the, the Heartwood where's going down at, you know what I mean?

In Calvin, he moved up to Compton Crenshaw. Know, but the thing that's overlapping about what you're saying, these, these, the North Philly, the Crenshaw. It's just because those neighborhoods don't have programs. They don't have resources. It's not, it's not about the people who are living there. It's about the opportunities, right?

It's about the opportunities that are lacking there or not presented there. And I think it's bigger than just an individual level issue. And I think that that's something that we really have to hammer when we think about shifting perceptions, especially when then. We can have people who are supposed to protect us, understanding why these actions are taking place.

We have to challenge what we deemed criminal. We have to challenge what we deem bad because. Yes. Murder is inherently. I would say a bad thing. Yes. Rape is inherently, I would say a bad thing, but there are a lot of gray area issues, especially when we're criminalizing public health issues. Right. We're criminalizing, vagrancy, we're criminalizing, anything having to do with drugs.

We're criminalizing homelessness, we're criminalizing all of these things and we have to challenge why we're criminalizing those things and who were then. Labeling as a criminal. And I think something that you spoke to, and we can wrap after you have the final word, but when I asked your title, your first title was father.

And you spoke about your mom's experience with you inside and how you're. Incarceration impacts so many more people. And I think something that's problematic is that we give those incarcerated the master status of in me. And with that, we negate all of their other identities. We negate the fact that they're a father, that they're a son, that they're a brother, that their friend, that their community member, we take away all of these identities when they still exist.

Right. They still exist in it. There's still a broad impact. And so we have to think about the multifacetedness of individuals and the fact that people make mistakes and who were willing to turn a blind eye to, there are law breakers and they're criminals, and those often look very different and we're often willing to give those law breakers.

A second chance and criminals, not, uh, vice-president of the left and our president and vice president elect. Right. Um, how you just said, like, we always, you know, want to forgive lawmakers, but don't necessarily want to forgive people. Who've actually broken the law. So it's like a devil, it's a double-edged sword.

You know what I mean? Forgiveness should be forgiveness, right. It shouldn't be the end, all be all. And we just hope that some things, you know, get done with this next administration. So. You know, hopefully, uh, men who've been incarcerated, they'll be given a second opportunity to be able to turn it all around because of it's about forgiveness.

And I'm going to forgive you and vote for you. Why can't you forgive me? And let me go take the test and be a cop. I wouldn't have killed that dude last week. He would've listened to me. You got to give them something to respect first, not just a uniform. You know, that's why I don't, you know, I'm not real big on the suit game and all that kind of stuff, suits when needed.

But for this work right here, it's about the conduct and character thoughts, deeds, and actions and sincerity. Okay. It's about understanding the people. It's about being able to speak the language of the people. Do you know that 90% of prisons and police officers come from the communities where they cannot even.

Understand or relate to the people and who wished they'd been assigned to protect a lot of that has to play into this thing called mass incarceration. And I just believe wholeheartedly if we operate with pure intentions and bring your best self every day. We can move the needle. Yeah. I agree with that.

Speak a little about what exactly you do first with mural arts. We'll get into Noma in a minute, but what exactly is it that you do with mural arts mural art, shout out to Jane Golden, the executive director of mural arts, Philadelphia, Jane Golden. I love you. Jane Jane Golden started mural Lawrence Abbey with a paintbrush and a vision.

A little bucket of paint, a paint brush, and a vision, and she grew it into one of the biggest art. I can't even use the word organization. It's bigger than that. The biggest art movements in history and she's inspiration from Jane by the way. And I don't mean to derail from the, from the question asked, but I get a lot of inspiration.

And if Jane Golden can do that, imagine what I can do. That's how that's, how I'm coming with it. So at mural arts, we have a restorative justice program for men and women that are justice involved, 18 to 26 years old. And then our other program is for older ages, 18, anywhere to, you know, 50 years old. It's our reentry program for young men and women.

That's reentering society coming home from the County jail on probation and parole, you know, from underprivileged neighborhoods and, you know, certain, certain class of living and stuff like that. We teach them scaffold and mosaic training. We also teach them just a series of workshops and parents and, and job readiness.

And. Life skills and social media awareness. And then at the conclusion of the in-house, we pair them up with the lead artists. And what we do is we move out into the community and we start making like a mural project. We're doing a major carpentry project. This position for the young men and women in a program, they make $14 an hour.

Part-time, you know, uh, we provide them with like transportation and a lot of different supportive services. Uh, we do like rental assistance and we help with like cell phone bills and food packages and things of that, depending on the needs of the particular partner or client at the conclusion of the six months they graduate, we have a full-time job developer who helps them all.

You don't move into some sort of full-time employment. You know, whether it be, you know, a city job, you know, uh, construction warehouse, some of our kids wanted to go to trade school or go to like community college. So our job developer helped them set them up with like different grants and things and stuff like that that becomes available.

That's the city of Philadelphia, restorative justice Gill program at mural arts. I think some people might say 18 to 24, 26. That's too late. That's too late. What would you say to them? So it's never too late. I would say second chances make champions right. And stuff. And I would say sometimes we're going to need a second, a third and a fourth chance, 18 to 26.

Isn't it's not too late. That's the targeted age. Okay. 18 to 26 is a very age that. And in our community, in the community where I'm from, it's almost statistically written that by the time, you know, in between the ages of 18 to 26, you know, you're alive, would it be like incarcerated? Certain crimes committed against you.

I don't even like repeating that stuff because again, I chose to remove myself from those statistics because I know what those statistics say. So a lot of the times I can almost like still hear those guards saying, yeah, you're going to come back because, and they like you going out to a job and they like, you know, you're going to be able to go to school and none of that kind of stuff.

So we'll see, when you get back, we're going to hold this bag for you. That's what they used to say. I think that the, the, the age of 18 to 26 is very important. I think I looked at the NoMo website and something that I really appreciated. And I think when we think about where to invest in the community, when we're transferring funds away from the criminal justice system, I really appreciated the strengths-based approach that NoMo takes.

And on the website, it talks about how. You probably know the verbiage better, but essentially it was saying, we're not viewing these kids as problems. We're viewing them as opportunities and they are part of the program development. We're not coming at you saying, we know what you need. This is what we're going to do.

You're asking what do you need? And, and then, and then working off of those strengths. And so I think that that's. So important because, and I think that's why I wanted you to talk today because we're doing this right now. This is part of it. And then you also have the experience at that program where you need to include community voice.

You need to understand what the needs are. And I think when you're talking about these stigmatizing statistics, they're often based on. Stereotyped and stigmatized research that doesn't actually draw from lived experience. And so even when my, when I did my dissertation, I was interviewing fathers in Southwest.

And one of the reasons that I wanted to do this study or, or work with these men was because in working with fact, one of the things that a lot of them had spoke about is. Even though I know that you're saying there are a lot of kids in the community that their fathers are absent. There's also mad dudes in the community that are stepping up.

And I think that that's something I really wanted to highlight was that we keep hearing the Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, Debbie dad. And although there's some validity to it, there's also another side of the story. The fact that you are part of this movement and it's a movement, it's not just you. And I think that that's, that's important to say and show, and the fact that you guys.

Value the voices of the children is so important. So can you talk a little bit about what they are asking when we're doing our curriculum, curriculum development, right. The same way. Excuse me, let me rewind to take the same way with like, how you just said, uh, doc, uh, when we're, when we're developing these programs for men coming home from prison and the needs of people on parole and the needs of black men in the community, who do you need at the table?

You need the people affected. Hello? So if you're going to be talking about building a curriculum and a program for kid, why would we not have them at the table when this is for you? Why would I not say, Hey, let me get all y'all let me get five, six, five girls, five boys in here. Let's have a seat. What do we need to be doing?

How could I have handled that differently? The other day, when you was on your phone, I told you to get off what are y'all need to see from, uh, from, from all my instructors here. What do you want to do in 10 years? What do you want to do when high school is over with day one, it might not be college. How mommy want me to, or daddy want me to, but I don't want to say none because I don't want to let them down.

You know, I really want to open my own bar. I really want it. I've been doing this online tree school, Mr. DeWine, and I really want to do this, do that. You got to find out what they want. So all those y'all see us all over social media and we doing this and we doing that. And even through a national pandemic, we've, we've been able to.

Continue our program and then moved to remote learning. We owe a lot of that to the children and the families, you know, uh, of the normal PA FAC program, you know, because the kids they're very vocal. It's a family there. I promise you, you know, Abbie, it's grown into a real family where they know that we're here to help.

And would you take a different approach? How sometimes I wish people would have taken with me when I was that age, hear me out and see, we broke away from a lot of the false narratives in which a lot of us was brought up or do, as I say are not as I do. So what do we do about kids or people who are doing the right thing?

And they're walking home from playing basketball and they have their slides on and their basketball shorts and not their work uniform. And they're doing everything right. They went through NoMo. They know what a bank account is and the cops come profile them or mistaken identity. They get taken. I think something that's difficult is that the society we live in to some degree.

Of course it matters what you do. And I wouldn't say that so blanketly, that it doesn't matter, you would just get targeted anyway. But I think that there needs to be not only internal change in terms of resources given and in terms of opportunities presented and role models, but there also has to be external change because to some degree there's still going to be that stigma.

So, how do you think, like the things that we can control or the community can control are the things that you're doing. Right. So how, how deep do you think that can influence experiences with the police or the potential to be incarcerated? You're saying they doing the right thing and then they still get into this encounter with the police.

Right. Doing the right thing. And he doing the right thing out of bank account, going to work out his programs and then the mistaken identity by the police, or he still get shot. How do we prevent that? Is there a way you can't prevent that you can't prevent? I can't stop a cop who's whose intention is to go out here and be a butthole today.

You can stop me. If I intend to go out here and be a butthole today, all we can do is teach the right thing when we're teaching it. This is how you conduct yourself around a police officer, regardless of what he do. This is what you do. No matter what you stick to this still can't guarantee the outcome, but you're, you're, you're more likely to be okay.

The same thing in the neighborhoods. This is how you carry yourself in the neighborhood. You shouldn't be. I shouldn't have that music banging all in your air. Okay, your phone should be away in your pocket. You shouldn't have those slippers on outside. That's a breach, you know, all right. But they, they do that.

So whatever, but you, you know, you should walk on this, you should walk near the light, you know, you know what I mean? And if it ha you know, you can't stop. If somebody, you know, set out to go do something to somebody today, but all we can do, Abbie, is teach the right thing. Okay, because you know, my have another personal story, my son, little DeWine, one of the team who's gay fat.

Do you know, honor roll student program, bank, account father, great kid. You know, standing in line at the football game. Shots rang out the wine gets shot. You know what I mean? That sent me over the edge, but I had a better understanding. Yes, I was infuriated because it was my son. I'm only, it was a different type of rage and fury this time though, my region fury was only because my child is hurting.

It wasn't a, as the, who did it or none of that, because see, I knew that other side and all that kind of stuff, I knew that I can say, Oh, okay, I'm getting ready to go do something now. And guess what? It wouldn't be a year later. And I still be sitting in there looking stupid. And guess who wouldn't be answering my phone calls or coming up to come see me or cause remember, remember you gotta add them three things.

Now you've got to have a driver's license, a car and a bank account to do anything for anybody in prison, in a common sense. And I can't even say that because a lot of our parents and grandparents and families are getting older, they ain't got time to be sitting on no phone trying to figure out JP and how to send it.

And they put all them things in place for that. So, so this time it was different. So, like I said, even in that moment, I told the wine, the right thing, the right thing. I don't want to see that young man go to prison. I want that young man in a program. I want to be his father too. I think that's one of the, that's one of the foundations of restorative justice, right?

If he had a father, like the one got a father in a whole setup and situation, like the one guy, he would not be out there in the street shooting, no guns. I guarantee you that if I would've had with little DeWine had, I would not ever would've ever even been thinking about getting into enough the way in the world.

Tell the story about the looting and how you dealt with that and how you think that you could maybe influence. The ways that police officers or whoever supposed to be protecting us can implement some of the actions that you took. Okay. Dr. Has, and let me say this first, I want to back you up four years ago.

Uh, uh, July, 2016, myself. Okay. I have been out of prison almost two years. No fender benders work in no violations. I got permission to leave the city of Philadelphia to go visit my brother who was in prison at Allenwood federal penitentiary. Uh, the ways app had took me one exit away from my exit. I ended up in this small town.

The cop seen me rolled by. He held me up for an hour. The video went viral. That's a clear example right there of something that you asked me about the children. What do you do when you you've been like, you know, this leader, this pillar, you've tried to like, you know, this change that, look, I'm not this, that and the third.

Right. But although I spoke up for myself that day, You know, all I could, all I could really do was, was keep the needle moving and not focus on that and not allow that to take me back to my deepest, darkest moment. So I utilize what I teach, practice, what I preach, not accepting it for what it is, but at this point is my word against his, why am I sitting here?

He could kill me right now and still go home and eat steak and still get paid. And nine times out, it's going to be like, Oh, he had a record the story with diluting, right? You know, um, everybody saw what was going on in the country, you know? Well, uh, recently there was a protest and unrest and Philadelphia young man was killed about a Philadelphia police in West Philadelphia.

And, you know, they went around the city of Philadelphia, breaking into stores bloot and Robin steel or whatever. They can get the hands on. Uh, they walk past the normal PA FAC program that we just moved into. They bust the window, ran inside. You know, some things came up missing, but when the word got out citywide statewide as to what had happened, two young men had reached out to us like, yo, I'm sorry.

I apologize, man. I really feel bad for that. Like, I didn't know that this was a program. You know what I mean? That help people, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, yo, I'm out of pocket. The establishment that we have now, it used to be a sneaker store and that sneaker store went out of business during the last protesting and rooting back gluten back in may, when George Floyd happened, that was a sneaker store location.

They went trashed it, looted, it stole everything. The store was never able to recover. You know, they got out of the lease, the owner, do some things happen and boom, here we are. So they kind of thought it was an old sneaker store. One of the young men had a week prior to the looting that weekend before the looting happened, he had filled out an application for our restorative justice program was trying to do right.

So he saw who it was. We told him to come on in and they apologized. You know what I mean? We gave them both a job. We gave him both some clothes, you know what I mean? One of the young men, you know, um, his father's doing 20 to 40 years at a Pennsylvania department of correction. See that hit different for me.

Young man is 15 years old. He's a little, the wines age. My son. Okay. His father's in prison during a long time. That could have been my son or just any capacity when you remove the man from the household. And then his mother is forced to have to work two jobs to keep a roof over his head. This young man is just out here and they told us, they said, look, it was on Instagram.

Everybody said they was meeting up at city hall. We got the city hall where the cops had everything sewed up. So we just branched off and just started breaking and stealing they kids, man, you know how many adults I know that wanted to go out there and get some free stuff. You know what I mean? So imagine an unsupervised kid, 15 years old with no father and nobody checking on him, you don't mind.

At least my mother got up and checked the room on us. It was count time before I went to prison, but that was this a sense of accountability and responsibility. And that was before cell phones and technologies and cameras everywhere. Okay. So these kids being, kids don't even know each other, never even met each other, have a conversation with each other.

They just end up walking in the same crowd and running in stuff together. We gave him jobs, took him in our program, gave him food, gave him, uh, you know, new clothes, soap, deodorant. You know, we looked out format. Most importantly, we gave them fathers, not biological fathers because nothing can compare to your biological father, but there's nothing like that.

Father figure. And both of these young men have been to our doorstep every single day, since then, one of the young men, the 19 year old, he started work today, uh, with the restorative justice program at mural arts. And he's working, you know, part-time but our program, he come Friday. They, they helped us clean everything up.

They've been volunteering. They've been bringing the other little friends and stuff from the neighborhood. This was the work that once went on in the fifties, sixties and seventies, when we used to do for ourselves, the foundation of the work that we're doing. The village approach takes a village.

Thank you so much for participating in my critical conversation with Davon Williams. Next episode, I'll be speaking with Laken. Jordahl a borderlands campaigner with the center for biological diversity. We'll be speaking about the border wall construction and the devastation it's causing to the ecosystem, wildlife and indigenous communities in Southern Arizona.

We'll also be speaking about the activism taking place in indigenous communities to combat the walls construction. I hope you'll tune in, expect new episodes every other Monday. And don't forget to subscribe. I'm Abbie Henson, and this was critical conversations.