Listen to Diane’s interview with Greg, released after 30 years.
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Video Transcript
Greg: Hello.
Diane: How are you?
Greg: I’m doing good about yourself.
Diane: Oh my gosh, it’s so nice to see you in regular clothes and just even if not in person, you look great.
Greg: Thank you so much. It’s definitely nice to be in something regular rather than some prison blues and all of that stuff.
Diane: Oh my gosh. How many years were you there?
Greg: 30 years and 25 days.
Diane: Holy crap. We just gotta let that settle in for a second. That’s crazy.
Greg: I’ve been out for six months.
Diane: Has it been a roller coaster?
Greg: Yeah, it’s been a roller coaster of a lot of different things. Just trying to acclimate back into society. But I think I made a point before I even came home to really be mindful of how much energy I put out into the world and into navigating the world. So I’ve been very methodical and calculated in every step I take. Everything I do has been very slow and very easy, very smooth and I do a lot of check-ins to check on myself a lot to make sure that I’m continuing to go at a very mild pace.
Diane: You’re so mindful. We call that mindfulness now, I’m sure.
Greg: Yeah. I guess it’s a time when it’s worth everything.
Diane: It’s so impressive that you’re able to gauge yourself and then that helps right with triggers and all that stuff you went to the groups for.
Greg: Absolutely. When I was ready to go, Diane. I spent so many years just like really doing a lot of deep work and I was just ready to leave prison. And so I think one thing that really helped me with this transition was the fact that I was already free before, before I was physically free, like mentally, emotionally. I’ve been out in the world for a long time. There was a time when I was like in the grass of prison early on, coming in young, coming in at 20. But as I’ve gotten to my older years, it was like, you know what, no, this ain’t for me. You say this won’t be my final resting place. That’s for sure.
Looking 30 years, is there, could you pinpoint? A time when that happened for you? Was there a transformation?It was so much those moments were very gradual for me. It was like things that were happening, like with my family, like really wanting to be out there with them. I have younger siblings and just family members like my grandmother who I was always really wanting to get out there into the world and be around because I’ve been away from my grandmother since I was a baby. And just wanting to just be better than who I was and wanting to be in a better position than I was. I didn’t want to be in prison, then I got to a point where I started to look around the prison-like man, this is just a horrible place. Like everything about prison is just horrible, and I think in terms of like transformation or like they say that light bulb moment I guess you could say is actually what I got to San Quentin 2012 and I got into a group, I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with No More Tears, which is a violence prevention workshop class and I remember meeting a woman named Elizabeth that lost two of her children to gun violence. And I was in prison for a violent crime and I just remember listening to her share her story, just seeing her be so emotional and you could see the emotion, you could see the anger, you could see just so much going on in her. And I just really at that point said to myself, this is the type of harm, if not more, that I cause somebody else’s. It was just, I got to a point. So I said, I’m never going to commit harm to anyone ever again. It was, and that’s what it was about. It was just about me just realizing it. That I committed an atrocious crime and I can never take that back and the family members never have their loved one back, and I was true when I went to the parole board.
Greg: I went 2023, I was given a recall of sentence by the Department of Corrections and I went back down to court to get to 1170 to get my sentence overturned and the family members were there, family members there. Some of them were there from that when I came to prison and then they were like there was a younger family member that wasn’t even alive when I committed this crime and she spoke and so I just really just showed me like, it just continues like generation after generation, May 28, 1994, changed the course of that family’s life forever. And I was the cause of that.
Diane: Oh my gosh, that’s a lot to be able to sit across that table by yourself and sit there and take that in and listen to them. So tell us what happened back then in your frame of mind.
Greg: So I committed my crime when I was 20 years old. And so from the time I was 10 years old to the time I committed my crime at 20, I was homeless. I started running away from home when I was 10 years old because I was running away to get away from the violence in my household, that neglect, the emotional abuse in my household. And so I went out there into a world at the age of 10 years old, a lot of fear, a lot of anger, a lot of resentment, and just a real dislike for the adults and people in positions of power. Because of power, I was always abused in my house from my experience. And so I just went out there and I just started trying to survive as a 10-year-old kid. It’s just unfathomable to think of a 10-year-old kid trying to survive in a big world. But that’s what I was trying to do because I didn’t have any other choice. I had family members that I possibly could have gone and talked to, but I didn’t trust anyone because there were adults and I thought everybody was in coercion with my mother and my sister’s father. And so over the years, just going in and out of foster homes and a lot of juvenile facilities and boys’ homes and things of that nature, a lot of the abuse ensued. It seemed like I was always like the new kid in the area. Cause I was bouncing around from foster home and foster homes. And so there’s a lot of abuse in foster homes. And so my coping mechanism back then was always just to run away. From those situations, on May 28, 1994, some friends and I, were just walking to Shakey’s it was Memorial Day weekend, we were just out having some fun, and a friend of mine bumped into a guy’s Jeep, and set the alarm off, and a gentleman came outside and accused us of trying to break into the Jeep, which we weren’t, it was just a total accident, my friends and his girlfriend were just horsing around and just actually bumped into it, and so The guy goes back into the house and then we start walking back around to the Shakey’s restaurant and the guy comes back out in that same jeep, but this time there were like several other individuals in the jeep with him. So we were walking in front of Shakey’s and they pulled up in front of us, and they all jumped out of the car. They again start to accuse us of breaking into the jeep and we’re trying to beg and plead our way and say, no bro, it was an accident. But they weren’t having it and one guy punched my friend, Damon, and then that’s when the big brawl started. And I didn’t notice at the time, but one of my friends saw the guy getting in a Jeep and he went back home and got a gun. I ran to him and grabbed a gun from him and I ran. And that’s when I shot Frederick white with the gun, shot him while he was trying to get inside the jeep. I saw another individual trying to run inside Shakey’s and I shot at him through the salad bar and grazed him. And then the final act is when I came outside of Shakey’s and we were running, going back down the same way we came down an alleyway and I saw another individual And I ended up hitting him in the head with a gun, and then we just went back to my friend’s house, and I take full responsibility for the crime I committed like I don’t make any excuses. I will say that I was still carried on, carrying that resentment and that anger and that shame from my early childhood, and I didn’t have the coping skills I have now to be able to defuse a situation or have enough courage to just walk away from the situation without feeling any shame for walking away. And it just felt there was just a part of me that just wanted to get back at not only the individuals that we got into this altercation with, but it was about getting back at every single person that ever hurt me in my life. And that gun represented power that I’ve never ever had in my life. And it was almost like I couldn’t even control that feeling that I had. I just had so much pent-up anger inside of me and I just wanted to get it out. It’s unfortunate that somebody lost their life and other individuals were harmed because I couldn’t deal with my own life stressors. And so just looking back at that day, that’s what it was, it was just a young man that was broken down, beaten down, and just really emotionally suffering. And when I got that gun, it felt like all the suffering was going to be over. But afterward, that wasn’t the case. When I got back to my friend’s house and everybody was, Man you saved us, you rescued us, part of me felt like, okay, I did something admirable for my friends. I protected my friends. But then reality started to sink in, like I shot somebody. And then the next day we saw the newspaper clipping and that somebody had died. And right then all of that acknowledgement and all that praise. That kind of made me feel and gave me a little bit of self-esteem all of that Left and it was just like depression, just stress and worry, you know all those Negative emotions started to sink in because I realized like I damn I took somebody’s life and yeah, and I was in that state. I was in that state for a long period of time and shortly after I was arrested. I was arrested on June 14th, 1994. And I remember sitting in the side of a holding tank back then and just sitting there, and my life was over.
Diane: Holy crap. That’s heavy. I can tell in your voice all the work that was done and how you’ve looked at it. And I don’t think a lot of people know that when you’re in prison and you’re going through these groups, they very much make you say their name, and know who he is and his family and really live that empathy of that person as a full human. But I’ve heard a lot from people like you who’ve been there and it’s a strength to be able to finally be seen and heard. It’s having that gun. It’s just taking control when you’ve never had it. Thank you for sharing that.
Greg: For sure. I spent a lot of years, 30 years in that place and just really trying to just look at not only my life but just living in a lot of shame, a lot of regret, just thinking about like how much like harm like I really caused and there’s nothing I can ever do to ever change that, no matter how many times I say I’m sorry, none of that changes the fact that somebody’s life has forever gone. And a part of my change was in some way saying, sorry, and in as limited capacity as possible, sorry, and acknowledging the harm Trying to absorb this information, try to understand like these concepts behind like criminality and healing and remorse and empathy and try to just grasp these things and get to a place to where I could understand like why was I committed a crime to live in accountability, take responsibility for the harm. That was caused by my crime and also be in a position to model that rehabilitation for other individuals who also have committed atrocities and want to somehow try to redeem themselves from that and be better people and Tap back into the humanity that was lost because that’s what it was all about Like we lost our humanity, you know a lot of times folks go into these spaces And it never fails. Like someone was always harmed as a young kid. Some things went through things in their life. Like I say, I don’t justify it. I don’t minimize it. I don’t make any excuses. But I also recognize that there are causes to why people do the things that they do. No one just wakes up and says, Oh, I just want to just commit a crime is something that’s led to that moment, but I would also say that, at the end of the day, you still have a choice. Like I still had a choice when I got that gun in my hand, I had a choice, and share my story and just work on myself. It’s just bigger than me now. Like my life is just not my life anymore. My life is ever connected to a horrible event, and I can never get past it. I don’t want to get past it. I’ve forgiven myself for it and I’ve moved forward in my life to try to be a better person and try to give what I can to other individuals. But the fact still remains. It still remains like this is something I did, and this is something I’ll take with me to my grave, and I think a lot of people think that you have individuals who are in prison they’re just these horrible monsters that are just incapable of being redeemed, and that’s just not true, people commit crimes, and yes, we can’t take that back, but what we can do is be better people that never commit crimes again like that ever. And people that also contribute to the in-prison community and the outside community, like you’ve been in San Quentin for a significant amount of time and you saw the work that individuals are doing in there and you see how profound that the media center, the newspaper, the paper. The Uncuff podcast, Ear Hustle, all of these different organizations and the media center, and the tours that come through San Quentin. So people are really getting a chance to see all the humanity that’s happening in there. And it’s just like things that you’re doing with humans and just humanizing, putting a heartbeat to the people that you. That you come across in this printed place because a lot of times it’s just a face, a number, a prison number, and for some reason, I guess folks think that there’s no heartbeat. That goes to these prison numbers, but there is a heartbeat, and it just takes for people to open up their hearts and have an understanding and just look like you don’t have to like anyone that’s incarcerated. You could hate people, however, you feel about people, but in the day, it’s about understanding, and if we could just get people to understand That people do horrible things when they feel horrible inside. Like we use the terminology, it hurts people. Also when those hurt people become healed, they become healers of the world. And that’s all I just want to be a healer, a healer, and a peacekeeper.
Diane: Oh my gosh, it feels so good to hear you say so much of what you’re saying. And I think what’s important for listeners or anybody, free people that haven’t been impacted by incarceration, the number one thing that I hear coming from you and that we’re trying to scream out over here in our little part of the world is that large majority, 99. 9 percent of the people incarcerated didn’t wake up one day and say, this is what I’m going to do, but it also feels really good to hear you say, I don’t want to get past it. I feel like a lot of people I’ve interviewed, do at some point have to move past it to get there. But it’s also nice to know that this is part of you. This is your journey. You can’t do anything about it, but yet make amends.
Greg: It’s hard to live in. So accountability is one of the hardest things. For someone to do. I know it was hard for me and for a lot of my experience in dealing with sitting in circles with other men being accountable and talking about the suffering that they’ve been through because everyone wants to live in this toxicity Of being masculine and not showing those type of vulnerability, showing those type of emotions, and you get into that dangerous cycle of what it is to be a man and to be tough. And you forget that we’re all born with these feelings and these emotions, we’re all born to love and to care and to want to be loved and to want to be cared for and want to be accepted. And so I know for myself when I was able to just look at my early childhood and just really understand that none of it was my fault that it happened.
None of it was my fault that I had parents who were abusive and neglectful and mistreated me. It wasn’t my fault that I was a victim of this. I was an innocent little child, and I began to develop this belief system that violence is how you solve issues because I saw violence in my household. I saw my sister’s father walk around with a domineering demeanor, raising his voice and posturing and instilling fear. And so that just showed me that, okay, this is how you get respect. And then you go into. A community and this is how you see other individuals operating with violence, and so you have that distorted belief system that this is how you’re going to get your needs met, right? And then, obviously you commit harm and then you come and sit in these places and really start to look at yourself. And then you have to be like that was definitely a distorted belief system. Have to go back in and retrain the way you think. You have to develop your value system, your belief systems, you have to stand on integrity, you have to have morals, you have to have something that’s Edifying to not only your soul but something that can be productive that you can give to some other people. And yeah, so early childhood stuff is like a pivotal moment for a lot of people, certain things that happen in your life, if you don’t get help for. In your life, you’re going to begin to spiral out of control, and it’s just going to grow progressively worse until the time you commit a crime, whatever that crime may be. As long as you continue to carry all of this anger and all this resentment and this distorted belief system with you, it’s only going to end up in disaster.
Diane: It’s going to come back and haunt you. You’re going to have to live with it. That is crazy.
Greg: So I live in my crime every day. It doesn’t deter me from being smiling, loving, from caring, but also knowing that it’s an obligation. I have an obligation now like I have to share my story, hopefully, it can uplift, it can inspire, change minds, change hearts, change beliefs, and that’s all I can do. I can only do my small part. I’m going to work with what God gave me.
Diane: I feel so good to hear you say that change in heart, change in beliefs.
With all this knowledge we’re learning about you, I can only imagine what you’re up to today. So bring us to what you’ve been doing for the last six months.
Greg: So I was released July 23rd, 2024, one week after my birthday. So that was who I was…
Diane: Was it your birthday?
Greg: 51st birthday. So the month of July is the month that I was born, and also the month that I was reborn when I was released from prison. And so July is a very beautiful month. And so yeah. I got out and went to transitional housing for a little while. I’m still in transitional housing. And I started working for the Uncut Podcast. I’ve been working with KAOW Public Radio for the past since 2012. And I’m a full-time employee now. And my official title is a Leadership Fellow. And what I’m doing right now is just, I’m learning all the ins and outs of the program. I’m actually hosting the fourth season of Uncuffed, I’m the host and taking you on a personal journey of my life and also continuing to introduce stories from San Quentin and also CIW prison now, women’s prison. We finally got our program in there. And so I’m super excited about that because we’ve been trying to get our program inside the women’s facility for some time now. So finally the women have an opportunity to have their voices heard as well. Be able to tell their own stories. And so super excited about that. And yeah, I’m just living out in the world. Just trying to adjust to all the new things in the world. I’m learning a lot about Zoom, have a lot of Zoom meetings, and am learning a lot of Slack and Google Docs and spreadsheets. So I’m taking what I’ve already known and just taking it a little bit further and yeah, just enjoying life. Like the world is beautiful. There’s a lot of beauty in the world. There’s a lot of suffering in the world. And I’m just holding space for it all. And I’m just taking it one minute at a time, one step at a time, one breath at a time, one thought at a time. I’m not trying to get anywhere and too fast.
Diane: Yeah. Such sage advice. Such great advice. What did you have, do you have any family that you’re able to see?
Greg: Yeah I got a chance to go visit my sister and my mother back in Long Beach for Thanksgiving. Oh, I got a chance to go to a Thanksgiving dinner. Do a lot of my family members get a chance to hang out with folks? Obviously I haven’t seen them in not only 30 years, but even years before that, some folks haven’t seen me since I was a really young boy. And it was great seeing everyone. It was great seeing the family enjoying the time with them. It was really nice. It was really nice. To go back to Long Beach haven’t been out there in a long time. And so it was nice, a lot has changed in the world. But a lot of things are still the same.
Diane: It brings me to tears thinking about you seeing people you haven’t seen since you were a baby or just a little guy. Oh, that must just feel so cathartic.
Greg: Yeah.
Diane: Yeah. You’ve been way too many years in that.
Greg: Yeah. Everybody’s gotten a little older, just time doesn’t wait, time continues to move on, and 30 years ago,, I was moving at a really rapid pace in my life for a lot of reasons, and I never did take the time to just stop, I wasn’t in a position to just stop and appreciate life because I wasn’t in that type of mental state to appreciate what I was going through. I was suffering and so the beauty has always been around me, but I just never got a chance to experience it. And so now being out in the world healthy and healed and a whole, full, complete human being. Now I can appreciate the world. Like I take a lot of walks. I go to the marina a lot. I go to the beach a lot. I go on trails through the hills. Different areas and just appreciating the beauty now because, it’s now I can finally just appreciate what I see now at 51, I can appreciate all of this magnificence around me and the road is a gorgeous place, and a lot of folks have always asked me like, Greg, what is the one thing that you want to do when you get out? And I was like, you know what? I just really want peace and quiet. I want peace and quiet because my life has just been so noisy. And so loud for so long, I get a chance to experience peace, go to the beach and just hear the water, hear the birds, hear the wind, that’s the life I envisioned before I even came out here and it’s coming true. Everything that I thought about on my way out the door is coming true. I wanted to see how Greg at 51 with this type of mindset showed up in the world. How does this person show up? Because the last time I was in the world, I was suffering. Now I’m healed and I feel healed, and I walked out into this world and it’s easy to navigate the world because I’m coming from a different place now, mentally.
Diane: How’s it been out here being alone now? Cause you, all your formative years for 30 years, you were never physically ever alone, never for a second, not to go to the bathroom, not to take a shower and the noise and, the prisons that I’ve been to and those, you hear those chains and that metal and it’s constant and those alarms and those guards, how are you adjusting to that?
Greg: I’m adjusting to peace and quiet. So well, like I have dreamed about sitting still sitting in silence. Without having to worry about a celly, flushing the toilet or wrapping, or rustling around in the bed, or an announcement on the microphone, doors opening and closing, child time, work time, yard time, Yard recall, fog line, all of these different things that just get embedded inside of your mind, coming to the officer, coming to the door, escorts. What’s your last two? And you have to say your CDC number. K 07041. I don’t have to say that. It’s so interesting. One day I was sending my mother’s birthday in December. Just this past December, I was sending her a birthday card and I wrote her address on the birthday card and I was getting ready to put my address on there. And it dawned on me that I was writing an address to the place I’m in now and not writing a prison address. I wrote my last name and for the first time in 30 years, I didn’t put my Department of Correction and Rehabilitation number behind that name. And I was so emotional. I was like, damn, man. All these years, this number has followed my name. Now I can write my name without that number.
Diane: You got me in tears. Holy cow.
Greg: That was just amazing. That was amazing. And yeah. So just being out here and being able to have autonomy, to be able to go in a refrigerator and grab something cold to go get some ice without having to struggle going into the child hall to get some ice from somebody, just simple things that human beings just do, I just get to do it. And I noticed Diane that like for a little while, like I was constricting myself. I was putting limits on myself because I was so used to being limited. And I had to remind myself, bro, you’re free. I heard it was a free ride, like I bought a car from my coworker some months ago and so that’s been good. That’s given me the freedom to just come and go. And if I have an urge, I have a desire, I can just go get in the car and just, Oh, I don’t have to, I don’t have to wait. If I want to see someone, I don’t have to wait for someone to come visit me on a Saturday or Sunday, I could just go, it’s just having that freedom is just amazing. But after spending so much time in prison, I have to constantly remind myself. That I’m free because that PTSD is real like I was trapped in a small isolated space and now I’m not isolated, I’m not in a small space I could stretch out and it’s interesting that you have to get used to having choices and options, that’s not the easiest thing to get used to. Forget it. Cause you quickly divert back to that constriction, those limitations.
Diane: There’s one thing I haven’t asked. I asked somebody about this. So you’re inside and you really don’t have responsibilities, someone else does your laundry for you. Someone else makes your food for you. How does that feel or what does that mindset do to you after a long period of time?
Greg: That’s interesting as well because I remember using the laundry for the first time. So I used to wash my clothes inside of prison, I would get a bucket and I would wash my clothes. Now, I can take my clothes and put them inside and wash them and dry them and have the machine wash and dry my clothes for me. And that’s getting some use to. And also, I remember going and grabbing a paper towel and only grabbing one little piece of the paper towel. Now, had I been in prison, I would have grabbed just like a stack because when in prison. You become very wasteful because you have access to this stuff all the time. I’m not paying for anything. This is why the state is paying for it. So you waste stuff. You get five, or six rolls of toilet paper, you go through a roll of toilet paper in a day. Now being free, you’re mindful, Oh no, this toilet paper is not free. This toilet paper costs, and this paper towel costs. This water cost. I’m not gonna just let this shower just run for 30 minutes. I’m gonna jump my butt up in there and get out in a timely fashion.
Diane: Soap’s costing you money.
Greg: Yeah, that soap costs, toothpaste costs, you’re not getting money sent to you from your family, putting money on your books. You’re not going to the canteen or getting packages. Now you gotta come out here and work, you can’t do any bartering with Top Ramen or bars of soap or toothpaste Nah, you can’t walk up to somebody on the street and say hey, would you like to exchange something for this bar soap? No, they didn’t work. People won’t have true currency out in the world. And so yeah, so just things like that. You just have to get used to being responsible, and paying attention to finances. Paying attention to finances because things in this world are expensive. As you’ve been out here longer than me and I’m finding out, going to McDonald’s and getting a hamburger and the fries and then a soda. It’s not as cheap as it was back in 1994. You go buy a fast food meal you’re gonna spend upwards of 15 to 20 bucks, so it’s just things like that you just have to just pay attention to. But in all that, Diane, I love it. I love paying bills and being responsible because the first time I’ve ever paid bills in my life is the first real job I’ve ever had. I love putting gas in the car as expensive as it is. It’s still my car. I love all the responsibilities Of being a citizen because that’s what citizens do. Citizens are responsible people and that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a citizen again. And so I’m going to take on all the responsibilities of a citizen and I’m going to take it with a smile. All the long lines, the people cutting in front of me on the freeway, all the lawlessness that’s going on in the world. I’ve accepted all of it. It’s so funny. I was telling someone that I spent all these decades in prison following rules. And then you get out into the world and nobody’s following the rules. People are just going absolutely crazy out here in the world. I remember I was driving, I’m always driving at either the speed limit or below the speed limit. And a little old lady just drove up on the side of me and she had the nerve to just look over at me and then just hit the gas. And I was like, all right, grandma, I’m continuing to go the speed limit, but yeah, then all in all, The world is beautiful and I’ve been blessed to have a second chance at life and I’m going to take full advantage of that second chance at life.
Diane: It sounds like you are and it’s only been six months and you’re enjoying every second. I’m not sure this is a good analogy and not that we’d ever want it to go this far, but some people out here really need some 115s written up about them.
Greg: Gina.
Diane: People online like you do in prison.
Greg: Yeah, people need some reminders definitely of their freedom and they need to have some perspective put in their face of Hey, look, man, there are other alternatives. If you don’t want to be out here in this world, abiding by laws and rules.
Diane: I’ve taken a whole page of doubts, words that you’ve shared today. What would you say, but is probably one of my last questions for you, and then let you add in, if there are things that you want to add. But what would you say to someone who is maybe looking at your resume, whether it be for a job or an apartment or a house, and they’re like, Oh, no, he’s been in prison, not hiring him. I don’t feel comfortable living next door to him. What would you say to those people?
Greg: I would just first say put the paper away and talk to the individual because the person that’s represented on the paper is totally different than the actual person if you get to know him and I believe in second chances and I believe people, I believe in the human capacity to change and I would just hope anyone that was judging me based on a piece of paper would take the time to get a chance to know Greg. Don’t look at Greg that’s in writing, look at Greg that’s in the human form that’s sitting in front of you. Get to know him, listen to his story, listen to where he came from, who he is today, and what he plans on doing in the future. And I guarantee you, you’ll have a change of heart.
Diane: That’s a mic drop right there. That was almost easier to do back in 1994 when we didn’t have so much digital technology, there’s you and I can go a day and do a thousand transactions with a thousand different people and never have to actually have any conversation with who that person is.
Greg: Exactly.
Diane: Yeah. We’ve lost a bit of that by just baking it more transactional than actually looking at the humanity of it all.
Greg: And that’s sad. That’s sad because, as an employer or someone that’s in authority to get housing. You miss out on the opportunity to really give to enrich your company if you’re an employee and also to give somebody a chance that needs it and is going to do very well with that chance, and so it’s just like anything, which when you discriminate against people, you destroy humanity, and a prison record, a bad decision should not cause a person to have to miss out
on opportunities in the world, you because many people who are incarcerated are incarcerated because of a lack of opportunity that was presented to them. And then now people come out and you still are faced with a lack of opportunities, and so it’s almost like a slap in the face that you just basically just tell the person you’re not capable of changing. And that the worst that you could ever do to a person is to diminish who they are as a human being and diminish and take away their progress.
Diane: Yeah, especially after the punitive situation, what we’ve done to them like you’re in your case for 30 years, and then we carry that over when you’re out. That narrative hasn’t changed. Well gosh, you’ve educated me in so much today that hopefully we can get you in front of more people and get that voice heard and change that narrative so we can change the world and make us a healthier place, give chances to those people coming out without giving them a chance. There’s no way for a whole community to heal, not just one person, but the whole community. We’re all gonna pay the price for not getting involved.
Greg: Absolutely, you know, that’s why these, you know, all these platforms, you know, podcasts and video, everything that’s, everything that’s giving the greater society an idea, a true depiction of what’s really happening inside of these places. There are some amazing people inside of these places. And people will be mind-blown by the creativity, the humanity, the love, the compassion, the empathy, the remorse that’s happening inside these places. They would be mind, their minds would be blown, but if you just open your heart up and open up your mind up and just, just listen. Just listen for yourself. Listen for yourself, you know, we’re not trying to convince anybody about anything, this is what is happening. Transformation is taking place. You know, hearts are being changed. People are doing difficult work. And so, I just hope society gets a chance to listen to all of these various platforms and, just see, like, have a heart, have an understanding for people.
Diane: Transform each of the taking place. I love that.
