Reflecting on Aging and Life After Incarceration

In this episode, David Rothenberg spoke with Clifford Rice and Deshawn Kenner about aging in prison. Both Clifford and Deshawn spent many years incarcerated, and this time offered them an opportunity for self-reflection and personal growth. Together, they reflected on their progress after incarceration.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:02

Hello, I'm David Rothenberg hosting this podcast, The Re-Entry Reality Check of the Fortune Society, a nonprofit organization which advocates for the formerly incarcerated and for men and women still in prison. We also provide multiple services for the thousands who walk through our doors each year. Thank you for joining us. There are so many discussions about crime prevention and dealing with young people. There's another population, older men and women who change their lives at at an older age. And uh we're with Shaun Kenner and Clifford Rice, not exactly in the first blush of youth, either men. And so we want to talk. Let's start with you, Clifford. You were how old when you got out of prison?

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Uh 20. When you got out? When I got out. 20. 12.

unknown 1:09

Um.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Oh, the year. But that so how old were you? 2012, so I would have been 52, I believe. 52. Well, you have to tell us.

SPEAKER_03 1:17

I wasn't there. No.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

I'm I'm in my head, I'm just, you know, fiddling with numbers. 2012, I'm 66 to be 67. So I was 52, 52 at the time.

SPEAKER_03 1:27

And Deshaun, how old were you when you came home? 42 years old. And how much time did you do? About 20 years. Straight. Straight. So you went in as a kid?

SPEAKER_02 1:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:37

And uh how was your were you on the instalment plan?

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Yes, I was on the installment plan, and uh the last time was 12 the life.

SPEAKER_03 1:46

Um you started going away when you were young?

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Um my first time I was 30. So I wound up doing a little more than 20 years back and forth.

SPEAKER_03 1:58

So and and you both came out and have been counselors at the Fortune Society. Clifford's now retired. Uh Deshaun has moved to another place, and we'll talk about what you're doing now. But you were not only had reshaped your lives, you were both instrumental in helping other people. So I I think what people don't haven't heard a lot about, about which people haven't heard, get it grammatically correct, is at what point as you were maturing did and what were the influences that turned your life around? Um and you both have your own experiences. Cliff, go ahead. Go ahead, just want.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Uh my moments of change were uh based on deep self-reflection and my need to give myself a chance. There, you know, places like the Fortune Society, which uh which I consider home, as many before me have, many after me will consider as home.

SPEAKER_03 3:00

But you but you weren't at Fortune. You were for you were in prison for 20 years, and you said you you started doing deep reflection. Is that possible in a prison rev environment? And I I assume that there were barriers. How did you overcome those barriers and what were the influences?

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Well, there's there's no barriers to see deep self-reflection because you're by yourself in your cell at the end of the night, or when you're in a box or shoe, special housing unit. That that deep reflection allows for accountability, and that accountability is directly connected to awareness. So I had to become aware of my actions and what I was doing. The correlation to places like Fortune, Hudson Lake, and that if they provided the opportunity for change. See, um awareness without, you know, opportunity keeps the cycle going. But the opportunity helps create the transformation that we need to make. So I was just at a place where I had the opportunity to go back to school and be start my education.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

So there were things there were things that influence you on that self-reflection. Can you identify people or th or aspects? Was that education?

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Um, before I got into education, I I guess it was just the observation of the jail demographics changing. Uh, when I came and I was younger, you know, we wanted to bent on who could do the most pull-ups, who could run the fastest, who could lift the most weights. And you kind of grew up in jail on that way. But as I got older, I started to see the younger groups come in. 17 with 70 to life, 18, 80 to life, 20 years old with natural life. And I was afforded the opportunity to be a facilitator for anger management or ART when I was in prison. So it allowed me a closer look at the cycle which was coming, and I had to realize like it's the same neighborhoods, the same zip codes, the same area codes, the same neighborhoods. When the younger brothers are coming in and they knew the older brothers or they knew of them, and I just I just I was I became conscious of the cycle in the system, and I didn't realize that the system was real, right? We sometimes think we are making our own decisions, but based on the system, which is you know basically developed on our policies, the government, where we live. It's a very precarious thing where you think you're making your own decisions sometimes. They want you to be accountable. You're expected to be held accountable for your action, but there's so many other variables that, you know, can push you in an other direction.

SPEAKER_03 5:52

Deshaun, I accept your definition of what worked for you, but it's the same situation for everyone, and yet others don't make that choice. It's like when somebody comes to Fortune and says, Fortune saved me, and then the next person said, Fortune didn't do anything for me. It's the same place. People make their choices. So what I I'm trying to dig deeper. You say you're you're d you're very uh well explained how watching younger people coming in and that permitted you to reflect, and but somebody sitting in the next cell may not have. So I I'm suggesting that there might have been why were you receptive to that? Was it from things you read and s were you a reader? Were there were did you have people in your childhood that gave you the impetus?

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Well, I never I don't believe that I started out life wanting to be bad. I I loved school, I loved education, I love the uh the the the the prestige of lawyers, police, the fire department, community workers who did community service. You know, it's just I didn't have that structure in the home. See, 90% of the things that go wrong in our community are directly connected to what goes on in the home. Now, because that's a whole nother topic to answer your question, is everybody's trauma is different. Everybody, we you gotta take into consideration the variables of uh IQ, you know, emotional development, intellectual development, you know, uh, you know, that trauma, how deep it is on your life. So what might have been a little bit easier for me to pull away from after the so much, you know, tyranny in my own life, it was it was very difficult. Now, somebody, did I have a real mentor? I I had no real mentor. I I just knew that I wanted to do better. You sound like you became your own mentor. I had to become sometimes you have to be your own, you have to give yourself your for your own first opportunity.

SPEAKER_03 8:02

See, I'm fascinated by your description of doing self-reflection. And and then the second part of that is you have to get to the point where you're able to do self-reflection because you're not overwhelmed by all the other factors that can do let's j let's find out if uh what Clifford's journey was. And so you came out at 51 and you immediately got involved in very positive things. So that was a turnaround in your life.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

No question. But but now, because the gist of your question is when did the the process change from negativity to positivity? Okay, and I bring up this story a lot when especially when I speak to you. The story is that I always heard you on the radio, even though I had to put, you know, I had to put the walkman next to the windows, I can hear so I can hear your show. You had the show on WBAI. And I used to hear of it. And I sp and I heard about the castle. But still, there's a process that I taught here before I retired, and and and it's called the re-entry process or the recovery process, which is combined. And one of the questions that I always asked is when do what is re-entry and when did re-entry begin? Generally, when you're in the re-entry process, there's something that happens behind the wall that triggers that. And for me it was 9-11. Because people don't realize if you're in a maximum security prison and there's World War III, that they'll just leave you. They'll leave you in your cell and they'll just lock you in and they'll leave because they can't have a violent uh uh uh felony offenders behind their back. So it's not a movie, it's it's rig.

SPEAKER_03 9:56

Are you saying that 9-11 made you feel that you were disposable?

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Yes. And it made me feel more helpless than I ever felt in my life.

SPEAKER_03 10:03

And then you became motivated to do the self-reflection that someone was talking about?

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Absolutely. 9-11 was the scary because you know they shut off the phones, so you couldn't call home. I was fortunate because I was in uh in a in an honor prison. Uh I was in uh um downstate cadre, and downstate has since been closed, but that's the intake for the whole system. And I was there for eight and a half years. But in any case, at that point, I had only been there a year and a half. When 9-11 happened, so they shut down the phones. You can't call. You don't know if your family's in that building. You don't know what's going on. And it was the most helpless feeling that I had. And what I promised myself on that day is I said, no matter what happens, even because I had a 12 to life sentence, even if they never let me go again, I'm not gonna be stupid like that no more. And so I said that literally those words inside my mind. But I also have a substance use history. And although I was abstinent, I was still thinking the old way, so it's no difference. My recovery and my re-entry process started on the same day, 9-11.

SPEAKER_03 11:15

So, but uh I'll pose the same question that I threw it to Deshaun. You explained what worked for you, and that and that makes sense, and it's dramatic and it's interesting. But there were lots of men that were right there with you. Right. So now and they were not affected, everybody is Deshaun said, we have sponsored in different ways. In digging deeper, I'm wondering if you can identify those things early in your life that made you capable of seeing that that open door.

SPEAKER_02 11:46

Okay, so now I have my my situation's a bit more unique in what Deshaun was saying, it's a whole lot about what's going on in the home. Um, my father was a policeman, and my mother was uh a correction officer. And so that's the household I grew up in, but I grew up in East New York, and so the biggest thing that that I addressed was in the community outside, and it wasn't a whole bunch of role models like he was speaking of. Plus, I had another side of the family.

SPEAKER_03 12:18

Well, so with a with a police officer and a correction officer, you knew what law and order was, but did it apply to you?

SPEAKER_02 12:25

So that's what I'm saying. The the I had it instilled, but like Deshaun was saying, you can have the information. If you don't apply it, then I had the information. It took 9-11 for me to do that deep reflection that he spoke of. And so now I have the information and now I need to start applying it. So now, like I said, no matter what happens, I'm gonna be different. And so, how can I be different? I'm already older. When I got in there, I was 39, right? So I was already looked up as a father figure, uncle, big brother, whatever, and that's how I was respected in there. They called me Mr. Rice in prison, right? Um, and so I used that. I didn't allow them to call me anything outside of not OG, none of that. I did because I I had to walk that talk. And in order for me to do that, whatever I said, I looked like and I acted like and I spoke like.

SPEAKER_03 13:23

So you both sound quite motivated by self-discovery for different reasons. And I've met many men, women coming out who slip, who fall back, because while they had the same, not the same stories, but similar realizations, there were barriers and obstacles out here that they couldn't surmount. How did and and then probably no different than the two of you? Do you can you identify obstacle Deshaun, can you identify things that made you say I can't do it, but I'm but I'm going to? And how did you do it?

SPEAKER_00 14:00

I didn't come home with a negative, pessimistic mindset that there was nothing I could do. In my mind, I had the I I'm gonna, the opportunities were here. The community organizations were here, the family support was there. But the the choices were there. The choices are always there. Like you say, the answer is always in the room, the choice is always in front of your face. So I had to just be willing to give myself the opportunity to take advantage of these opportunities that are around us. You have community-based. I didn't have to come to Fortune when I first came out of prison because I had people that supported me. And I didn't I didn't waste their time on mine. Uh when I didn't they had this thing with applications, and I always tell, you know, my clients and people I mentor that, you know, you don't drop one application, you drop 100 applications a day or week. You get a virtue, you get a an electronic resume. Because people who don't have felonies are being told no.

SPEAKER_03 15:04

But life, whether you've been in prison or not been in prison, has obstacles. Like no question. So you have to have the um the will, the ambition. The mettle to rec to first to recognize that it's a barrier, and then how do you overcome it? Did you find anything anything along the way that you identified as a challenge? And then how did you pass it? How did how did you overcome it?

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Um I I don't recognize any. I came home. My my the top thing I wanted to get when I first got out was my driver's license. I wanted to finish school, so I went back to school when I finished my bachelor's degree. Right? After my bachelor's degree, I said I'd take any type of job. I got a job with um Osmos Utilities, they checked utility poles. And it was hard work. I had to dig up, I had to dig maybe about 30 ditches a day, and then put the dirt back in them so they could check and treat the electrical poles that, you know, runs our country. Um and I just didn't stop. So I I had, I've always been stubborn in that way where there's no opportunity that I said, you know, I couldn't have. Maybe I couldn't be a police officer, but that wasn't my ambition anyway. I just really wanted to do education. While I was incarcerated, I wrote three books. I wrote uh No More Mistakes, I wrote 12 Paths to Power, and I wrote Conversation with a Killer. And these were all based on my own thoughts and how I broke the cycle for myself. So when I put them in those books, I put them in there to share these techniques with other people on how they could also break free of those uh mental shackles of I can't, I can't, I can't. Because you have people such as yourself, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X that showed us that, you know, the community is ready to receive you. There's a place for you. There are people that are fighting on our behalf, and I do a disservice not to honor that.

SPEAKER_03 17:10

When you became a counselor at Fortune, you probably met people who came in as quote, clients, participants, who couldn't read and write and didn't have the access to the information. How do they m navigate it?

SPEAKER_00 17:24

We help navigate. That's the that's the that is the responsibility of a case manager of a channel.

SPEAKER_03 17:31

You did meet people who couldn't manage manager.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

I met hundreds, thousands of people that came here who didn't have it all together. But when you are social, when you're in the social work field and you you're doing the work, your responsibility is to help these people find their way. I have to help them find a way to say. But if they if they can't read and write, if they can't, we have wraparound services. Here you have G D downstairs. You can you can learn to read and write. Like you have Miss Kim or various others who take these programs with Jim. Jim had in them when I was here at Fortune, that'll help you. You have to start on a level that you're at. If you can't read or write, you gotta learn your vowels, your consonants, and you gotta start with simple things. Cat, hat, rat.

SPEAKER_03 18:14

I remember meeting a lot of people who, after nothing for a while, realized that they were concealing that they couldn't read and write, that they had learned how to put put it over put over on people.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

I think people look like they were reading the newspaper that couldn't read and write.

SPEAKER_03 18:31

Yeah, yeah. Clifford, and and and inside couldn't. I've heard stories of guys saying, oh, his handwriting is so bad, can you ex, can you read and they that was their way of so Clifford, um at the same journey that uh uh well the same question that I asked your journey is your own coming out. Did you were you able to identify barriers? Were there things that stymied you that you had to overcome, and how did you do it?

SPEAKER_02 18:59

Again, I had a unique experience, although part is Deshaun's is my story as well. I wrote I'm published poets, I've got a couple of books, I got a novel that I'm getting ready to continue working on. Um I was blessed with even with a life sentence work release. And my family moved out of New York, so I had to live in the work release facility. I wound up being a work release for 33 months. So if you can picture leaving every day with just civilian clothes on and then having to go back to prison every day and strip search and then putting greens on, and I had to do that for 33 months. And so now people say, wow, you must have buggered. No, I said I was a knucklehead before that, and there were some things that I needed, and I needed to remember what I could lose. So every day I was experiencing going back to prison, literally, for 33 months. So that afforded me the opportunity that Deshaun spoke of to say, listen, I can't take this for granted. Right? Then the other thing is my crimes forhibited me from getting certain jobs. Like I couldn't get a job at McDonald's. So one of the blessings is for me to be a counselor, right? Because uh your background has no bearing in that in in social work. It's an advantage almost.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

It depends on the company that you work with.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

Oh, well that's there's that.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Certain companies you they they're not taking you as a case manager. But see, that's why I say companies or organizations like community-based organizations like Fortune afford you the opportunity to do these things to get back. Your past becomes your expertise.

SPEAKER_03 20:39

Yes. But you know what it I compliment you both, and I don't want to short short shift it, but the fact is education clearly was an advantage and a key for both of you in recognizing the barriers and the opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

Absolutely. But this formal and informal education. Yes. Well, street smart there's street smart. Street smart, but I mean, I'm also I don't have a a a bachelor's degree. I all I have is a GED, but I was able to be a system. But you read all the time.

SPEAKER_03 21:12

I read I read while I was using So you both became counselors at Fortune, and as I asked Sean, you both met many men and women who had similar criminal records as yours, but not the same reading or insights, or and sometimes, you know, because somebody doesn't does time doesn't mean they're street smart.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 21:34

We met a lot of people who've done time and are street dumb.

SPEAKER_02 21:37

That's it.

SPEAKER_03 21:37

That's why they don't. So how do you both use your expertise, which it is, and having done time, having had negative experiences in your life, self reflection moving along, and then f coming into contact with men and women looking for. Help who don't have that foundation that you both have had.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

Okay, so now say this the blessing of Fortune Society is telling my story because every agency doesn't allow you to do that. I can tell these clients. That's therapeutic for you, every time. The people come to see. When they come to see me, they hear my story. So they know that I'm being real. And they also this it's kind of hard to tell me what you can't do and I was able to do it. And I've been through the same experience.

SPEAKER_03 22:34

Can somebody who's 17, 18, who's just been arrested at Rikers Island, um, when they if you tell them this your story, you're a you're an old man and that's the past. You don't do they do you get you created. That has never happened. They they don't ever say you couldn't possibly understand what I'm going through.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

That has never happened. And the reason why, first of all, as a positive and negative to that. The negative is you could be glorified for your negativity. But the positive is I've been the writer's island. I used to laugh and say, I was at Riker's Island so much I thought they was gonna name a building after. That's first thing I use that as an icebreaker with the kids. So you use that glorification and then undercut it. Because I'm not bragging about where I was. I'm not happy about what I did. I have remorse for any of the crimes that I committed. I'm not happy about that at all. And one day is too long. But the other side of that is that I did what you did. So you cannot tell me you cannot do what I'm doing. Whatever help you need, I can help you. Now, the other thing he was speaking about.

SPEAKER_03 23:43

When you say I can help you, how do you help them?

SPEAKER_02 23:46

It depends on what their issues are, right? So if you want to speak about not being able to read and write, we have ABE classes downstairs. ABE means that you're literally learning your ABCs from the beginning, right? We have those classes. Whatever you can do paperwork-wise, I can help you do that for now. And then we go from there and we and we keep growing from there. The point is I'm catching more of what you're attempting to come towards, which is you got a whole bunch of people that are not doing what we're doing why. Because it's not everybody's time. That's the number one thing, right? He did it one time, even though he did 20 years in one stretch. There's people that has done 20 years and then went back and did another 25. The thing is that everything isn't for everybody all the time. I didn't get it until I got it. Right? I didn't get it until 9-11. But I was going back and forth from 1992. All right? But I didn't get it until 9-11. And so the issue is then I can't blame you and judge you because you didn't get it when I got it. And I have to uh um open the door for the possibility that you might not necessarily be successful right now, but come back, keep coming back, because I'll be there for you and I'm not gonna judge you. I can't judge you because I did it. I messed up and I kept doing it. I'm a six-time felony fan. So how I'm gonna say that too.

SPEAKER_03 25:16

And the world and you haven't given up on you, and so we have to say to the world. So I'm listening to the both of you, and I must say the insights are fascinating, and anybody who presumes to be in criminal justice should really hear what you both have to say, because uh you both have really agreed that there's no simple thing and that everybody's different. So I want to go into another area. You you both well have well explained in the criminal justice thing, but what about your personal lives coming home, having lots of institution, institutional background, negative past? Have you been able to assume lives as middle American well not middle Americans, but uh how how are your lives is what we call well, relationships and and living and can you go to a movie and have dinner with friends and um and feel comfortable? Right. Is there a point where uh I remember uh in the early days of fortune, uh a guy told me that every time every time he went to Howard Johnson's or McDonald's as he was leaving, he'd pick up the silverware. Because he and he said he never felt like he belonged in those places. He always was back in the mess. So how do you how do you adjust who wants to start on terms of uh are you a civilian? Do you feel like you're a full-fledged civilian?

SPEAKER_00 26:40

I do. Uh when I was released from the system, I took on the responsibility of being a civilian. And like we know, most citizens of our country are struggling. And I chose to struggle legally instead of illegally. Right? So that means I had to get my butt up, I had to go look for jobs, I had to make ends meet. Maybe I wasn't the most proficient with technology. I had to I had to pour into that. I had to pour into myself. These are things I had to do when I decided to go back and get my master's degree from John Jay. These are things that I had to know that they were going to be tough and they weren't gonna come to me easy. Nothing comes easy out here.

SPEAKER_03 27:22

But were there ever times when you felt that the habits of prison couldn't be shaken?

SPEAKER_00 27:29

I've never felt that way. You know, it's like Have you met people that have? Of course I've been. I have a friend whose name is his name is Rich, and we had a conversation not too long ago, and he st he talked about how his his uh his partner always questions him because he wears his slippers in the shower. And like, why do you wear your slippers in the shower? And I told, and he said, Is that is that strange? I said, you have a psychological shackle that you need to break. You have a feather on your brain. You need to break anything that is related to prison. You are not there. You have to be conscious of where you're at and what's going on, and you have to leave that mentality there.

SPEAKER_03 28:15

All right, let me ask you a deeply personal question because I know you will. And I've met your two babies who are beautiful and dormant.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

Call your grandpa Dave.

SPEAKER_03 28:22

Yeah. Um approaching fatherhood, do you did you have guidance as a child? Do you know what father, the what what are the what are the rules of fatherhood as you see it?

SPEAKER_00 28:35

The fatherhood, the rules of fatherhood as I see and know, are be the to be the parent that I didn't have. So whatever my my father lacked, I'm picking up. Whatever love I didn't get, I I never played catch with my father. He never took me to a basketball game. We he never gave me any special insight on life. He never talked to me. You know, there are times when you and I alone and we talk and you give me insight. I didn't get that from my parents. They were young and they were they were in their own struggles.

SPEAKER_03 29:09

When you're alone with the babies, because I know sometimes uh the woman in your life, you have you've told me I have to pick up the kids at daycare. How do you interact? Uh your oldest is what? She's gonna be three going on 30.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Your oldest is gonna be three going on 30 um July. July 10th should be three years.

SPEAKER_03 29:32

Very precocious, very bright, life never stops asking questions.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Never. We pour into her. I approach her with love, I approach her with patience, I approach her with respect. And I'm teaching her to respect herself, respect her space. And hey, parenting is a routine. I hate routines, but you there's certain things that your kids need. They need to be in bed at a certain time, they need to eat a certain time, they gotta be at school a certain time, they need to be picked up at a certain time. You have to, like Eric Erickson would say, or Maslow, they have to have their basic needs and you have to watch them unfold. So I'm playing her life. I'm walking right, we're walking right beside her every step of the way.

SPEAKER_03 30:11

I'm fascinated by the concept of doing what you didn't have, which means you didn't know what you needed, or maybe you knew what you needed after the fact, but as a child, you don't know that until you look back. So okay, the difference with me is And your phone just went off. Before I even get to your relationships, technology, did you did either of you have a hassle coming out with technology?

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Because when I came out, um this was now let's this is 2009 when I went to work with it. So, like I said, I was out every day. Within two weeks, I was working. Um, I had they the cell phones they had when I went in was these giant things. You had a lot of money and you and they was in the cars in the movies. So they didn't have these little flip phones or whatever that I had to learn. My mother, of all people, she said, listen. Because they ain't have Facebook, they didn't have Google, they didn't have none of that when I went in. My mother said, open up three emails and keep playing with it, you'll like it. And that's what I did.

SPEAKER_03 31:12

And let's let's talk about do you uh do you have a com if I may probe into your personal life? Sure. Do you have a a comfortable life? Do you sleep well at night? Do you have no I have insomnia? I don't I don't is that from prison or from before?

SPEAKER_02 31:28

I don't know. Um no, I I uh it it might have something to do with prison. So how do you sleep? Um how when do you sleep? I have to take a sleep aid. Not you know, an over-the-counter sleep aid. Uh uh nothing that could have me back using again.

SPEAKER_03 31:46

Because this one next to me, when he visits me, if I if he sits on my couch, he's asleep against it.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

That's right. He sits with a low bottom.

SPEAKER_03 31:56

In the middle of a sentence, I think, oh, he's a he's gone, he's good. No, I know everybody's a command.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

Two or three in the morning, unless I take a sleep sleep aid. I have to take a sleep.

SPEAKER_03 32:08

Do you have people in your life?

SPEAKER_02 32:09

Yes. Um, so four sons and and a daughter, and my and my wife and I are raising the granddaughter, and she's six. I just dropped the office school. Do you have a relationship with your parents? Are they alive? Absolutely. They're 85, both of them. Um the cop and the correction officer. That's right. I spoke to my father's not only a retired cop from New York, but he's a retired chief of police from Virginia Beach. So, and my mother's retired. And how did they deal with your incarceration and your parents? They weren't happy about it. I'm their oldest child. And but the the issue is if you could think about what it must have been like for them. They couldn't necessarily be there. So, like he was speaking about getting it from the home. They couldn't be there, they were working. And your hours for police and corrections is crazy. So you got all these strange babysitters, stuff like that. Then they got divorced when I was 13. So I didn't have a relationship with my father like that. As a matter of fact, I resented him for many years. Like, but have you been able to establish one? Absolutely. Listen, that's that's I called him yesterday. I called both of them at least once a week. I called my mother twice a week because she has some medical issues. But I speak to both of them at least once a week. There was a time when I first came out that I didn't realize I needed to do that. I do that because I want to, but I didn't necessarily realize it. So getting back to the original question, he was speaking about the shower. When I first got out, I went to the shower with my underwear on and washed my underwear in the shower.

SPEAKER_03 33:48

Because that's what I'm saying. How long did that go on? Six months? Did you did somebody point it out to you or did you realize that we didn't have a chance?

SPEAKER_02 33:59

No, because there was nobody to point it out. I was living in a I was living in a veteran's rooming house. So So when did it occur to you that people don't take showers with their underwear on? I don't know that it was an occurrence more than a again, deep reflection about like, listen, why are you doing this and you still gotta do your laundry? Like, you know, just common sense stuff, and it's not like somebody's there that could see me in the shower. I'm living in a room. You couldn't even have women in the building. So, I mean, you know what I mean? So it was just a mindset. But but part of what I was teaching here is I can go in the dining room and I could tell who just got out. Because they're sitting down and they can't, they got their arm here and they're eating like this here because they don't want nobody to leave two F.

SPEAKER_03 34:44

You know, how I know who's no unfortunate when you walk down the hall and you say good morning, the ones who look terrified and don't respond, they're new. Somebody who's been here a couple of months is taken one, hey, how are you? What's up? Absolutely. It's it's fascinating. But that's part of the decomposing. That's right. So you have to you have to release those shackles. Well, I've always said that the single most you might reflect on it, the single most important ingredient at a place like Fortune Society is to create an atmosphere of trust.

SPEAKER_02 35:13

Right.

SPEAKER_03 35:14

Because until trust comes in, uh then uh people are not going to be open to all the insights that you have to offer.

SPEAKER_02 35:23

And they'll tell you that in a minute. Well, you get ready to, and no, we're not, no, we're not that at all. Uh at all. But it takes day after day, week after week. And showing them, right? So that's also part of the reason why I could use self-disclosure about my experience. Because it's letting you know that it's okay. And and and and and I extreme I feel that's extremely important. But back to the to the shackles of the mind. The issue is what do you want? And so I ask these questions. I'm I wrote like I said, I'm a published poet. The two poetry books, my poetry asks questions. I don't, I don't, because the answer is gonna be different for you than it was for the next person. So I asked a bunch of questions in these in these po in this poetry, and I and that's what I did here. So I asked a question. I'll give you an example, David. When I when I retired, right? They gave me a nice party in room 223 over here, right? And they all came in and I conducted the retirement like as if it was a group. So I actually went around the room to everybody, what is your experience with me? So some people was put on the spot. But that's how I did group. You don't get to say, no, I passed, none of that. No, everybody asked, oh, you want to pass for now? Okay, but I'm still coming back to you. Because you need to ask yourself why, who, what, where, when, how, why this thing is going on. Why you had fortune. Because Perole said, No, that's not why you had fortune, because Perot told me I had to do what I didn't do. I ran. I just got it together this last time. So you always have these choices. So I throw these questions out there because they're so important for you to find out who you are.

SPEAKER_03 37:09

Well, I find you're both extraordinary on the subject, I must say. And so, uh, for closing, I'm gonna ask what it might be the toughest question of all. What have I not asked you that I should be that should be asked on this topic? And you don't have there doesn't have to be an not having an answer is an answer.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Uh you should be asking the question on what what keeps us going. See, it's not the first day out of post uh department of corrections that we are worried about. Everybody's happy you're home, but it's the days after that. How do you stand up to the test of time to not recidivis or not to go back after you get out? And my answer to that is um every night you have to reflect. You have to you have to question yourself. You have to do a checklist of questions, you have to do some metaphysical thought, you have to lay there. Contemplation is very important. It keeps you aware, it keeps you conscious, right? And then you have to, or you gotta ask the person, are they taking advantage of the opportunities afforded to them? And more importantly, are they giving themselves an opportunity to partake in the opportunities like people such as yourself have trailblaze for?

SPEAKER_03 38:30

Clifford, you what what did I not ask for you? I should have for you.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

Um I believe it's a similar similar question. What are you doing to maintain and my response to that is people You can't have people in your life. You have to be a you have to be unafraid of sharing when you're struggling. You have to have people in your life that can check you. You can't have a bunch of people in your life that's just gonna yes you and allow you to hurt yourself and neighbor this. You cannot have that in your life consistently. You have to have people, you gotta have David's in the world. And really, and I mean, and I mean that your your your um insight and even the idea that you did this. My mother just told me a story yesterday, David. She was my mother just told me a story yesterday. She said that Fortune Society came and did a play at Rikers Island, all the way back in however early that was in the 70s when she was working there. And she remembers that. And she said it was such a fantastic play. All of those. And we still do it. And we still do it. So I'm just I'm just saying this. You have to have those people in your life that you could go to when you're struggling, that you could be honest with, and those people in your life that's willing to let you know your stuff stinks when it does. Like, okay.

SPEAKER_03 40:08

Clifford Rice to Sean Kenner. I would suggest that anybody who's in the arena of criminal justice should listen to this podcast. I thank you both for your words, your wisdom, and for the life, the life that you're both leading. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 40:25

And if they can't, go pick up those books. They're available on Amazon. No more mistakes, 12 Paths to Power, Conversation with Akeller. I'm on LinkedIn and Instagram as my name, Deshaun Keller.

SPEAKER_02 40:36

My name is Glifford Weiss, and thank you all.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

Give me one more chance to try and make it right. Give me one more go.

SPEAKER_03 40:57

Let me see the light. Thanks very much for joining this podcast. I'm your host, David Rothenberg. If you need more information, or if you'd like more information about the Fortune Society, check out our website. It's quite simply fortunesociety.org. A lot of information on it, as well as all of our podcasts.