#1993 - Josh Dubin & Bruce Bryan

31:40There's no knock -in in the cell blocks who hit this guy to wake him up. They know that they know drugs are ubiquitous in prison. They're everywhere. Yet, you know the procedures that are in place are not there, the safeguards are not there. To protect lives because they don't see you, your life, it doesn't matter. Right? It's a huge sense of being devalued. Human life is completely devalued in these institutions, your numbers. And once you leave, or someone else will take your place. And that's the attitude of the prison and dust your complex as a whole. You know?

32:22What's terrifying is there's been no talk to mitigate all the problems that lead to the prison industrial complex. There's no one's talking about getting rid of it. No one's talking about getting rid of private prisons. No one's talking about trying to figure out a way to other than just policing to do something about these communities to keep decade after decade. Being a place where no one is hope. And every politician says, let's get, is either get tough on crime? Yes. Or light on crime. Right? Right. Right. But no one says, instead of getting tough on crime, why don't we get tough on the social condition?

33:02Is that produced crime? Yes. Because no one is born in criminal. These are conditions that people come out of that drive them unless you are not right unless you have some serious mental health issues. And you're just like this, you know, you're obsessed with children, little boys like we talked about last night in the company club, or you're a pedophile or something. And you need some serious mental health work. No one is talking about dealing with the crime, gender, the factors that exist in poor communities across the country. When you look at New York City, the Bronx is the poorest community, poorest borough in New York City.

33:41Brownsville is the poorest community. Both of these communities, both of these places are, you know, crime is high, violence is high, right? Drug use is high. Because the social conditions are that bad. Right? And the cycle continues. You know, it's a cycle because people are living in not just poverty, they're living in concentrated poverty, generational poverty. So my family grew up, one family grew up in the projects that children wind up growing up in the projects. Right? Unless someone comes and breaks that cycle. Unless the serious intervention to break the cycle of incarceration or intergenerational incarceration, it continues to be perpetuated.

34:27And the problem seems to be that every politician is just concerned with getting elected. So they want to say whatever the people want to hear. And if the people want to hear, get tough on crime, it's that. But you don't hear, we need to eliminate all the, all the areas of our country that are creating these issues. We have to fix that. They have to fix it. It has to be a concentrated effort. It has to be, I've always said, you want to make America great. Have less losers. How do you have less losers? You have more people with opportunity. You figure out where people don't have opportunity. You provide opportunity.

35:01And you pour all the money into that. We obviously have billions of dollars to provide to Ukraine. There's always something. There's always something that they come up with. Where they need trillions of dollars for this and billions of dollars for that. Green energy and this and that. There's no better use of resources than making better human beings, giving human beings opportunities. And maybe it's time to stop relying on the government for it. Because politicians, it's almost like when I think of a politician now in the context of helping solve these problems, it's almost like, you know, wouldn't it be nice for me to be able to fly?

35:41Yeah, that'd be nice, but it's not going to happen. Right. You know, so what we're trying to do with the Pearl Mudder Center for legal justice is to get the word out to even the private sector. If we can create self -driving cars and artificial intelligence and send people into space, this is a solvable problem. I mean, one of the things that has been, I mean, I don't know why I needed this as like some epiphany because I've been doing this work for close to 20 years. But lately, I have been struck by the cases that we're working on in a way that I haven't before. And if you ever want to see like the true, the best way to articulate this, how fucked up this country is in terms of racial disparity and the mistreatment of minorities in this country, go visit a prison.

36:52Singsing as a program where we'll talk about it where they take people from the community and say, here's what is going on here. I have routinely sat across a table like this in a small room in the legal visiting room at Singsing. Let's just take Singsing, for example. We recently, one of our new clients was sentenced to 70 years, 70 years for a first offense in which the extent of the victims' injuries were four stitches. This man, Sheldon Johnson, served 26 years. And I took a look at this case and I said, how is this possible? A few weeks later, I'm visiting with a man who's serving 25 to life for the alleged robbery of $200 in which the alleged victim has a condition where one eye is shut and the other eye had multiple surgeries that were never disclosed to the defense.

38:12You know, and... Is it when I went in this account? Yes, there's no evidence. And he's the only eye witness. And he's the only one I know. No pun intended. And he could not identify the person. And that wasn't disclosed. And then not the extent of his eye issues. You couldn't hide the fact that one eye was closed. But the point I'm trying to make is that it is extraordinarily rare for me to be hearing these stories and the person sitting across the table for me is a white person. It's always a black man or a Latin man. And it begs the question, well, you know, what do we think? African Americans have a higher propensity to commit crime?

38:59That's not it. It's exactly what Bruce is talking about. And what I hope to do is to continue to get the word out because we so often have people writing us, calling us, sending us emails, DMs on Instagram, how can I help? Right? And one of the ways that you can help is getting involved in communities that are poor, whether it's volunteering at a community center. In areas like Brownsville, whether it's donating funds to community -based organizations, whether it's corresponding with someone, and it's just getting the word out in a way. And if you're going to be a politician for the young generation, you know, you have to actually not look at what the public is wants to hear or what you think the public wants to hear.

39:56It's okay to run and lose as long as it becomes, you know, a way to propel a message in a certain direction. What people try to do, their idea is to run and run with, they have these ulterior ideas that they don't divulge, run, and then try to implement them. This is the idealistic utopian view of the president. Here's the problem with that. I think when you get into office, they set you the fuck down and they explain how everything really works, and I think it's very terrifying. And I think we're probably a break of conflict all over the world, and there's all sorts of problems they're constantly dealing with, and they don't want to hear jack shit about what you want to do for communities.

40:37They want to know how much money can we get for these military industrial complex corporations that have been sponsoring your campaign that have been helping get things across on whether it's social media or mainstream media, whatever narratives you want pushed, whatever the pharmaceutical drug companies want pushed, all of this is very clear. This is not conspiracy theory anymore. Now that we know, like with the release of the Twitter files from Twitter with the FBI, we know they're involved in narratives. We know they're involved in doing these things. We know they're involved in putting agent provocateurs into all these organizations like that Governor Whitmer, lady who got the kidnapping plot to get her 14 people, 12 of them, where FBI informants.

41:22And that's just fucking insane. So all this stuff exists. This is not conspiracy theory anymore. I think that's the problem. What happens when you get in office? You're dealing with a fucking tsunami of bullshit, and it's just deeply ingrained. It's just like the system of these impoverished communities is deeply ingrained and generational. I think the culture of the deep state is also deeply ingrained and generational. The culture of the relationship that they have to money, to whether it's money from the bankers, money from the pharmaceutical drug companies, the military industrial complex. There's sensational amounts of money that can be had.

41:59And we're seeing it in motion right now in what many people are framing as a just conflict in Ukraine, but there's also an insane amount of money involved in this. And you have to be very careful, but whatever the fuck the narrative is that's being discussed, when there's an insane amount of money involved. That's what's going on right now. And I think that if we as people, what I like what you're saying is if the United States, and if you can get businesses involved, and businesses can actually generate revenue from rehabilitating communities, if they could figure out if Haliburton can figure out how to rebuild Iraq after they blew it up, which is one of the craziest things of all time.

42:38You got a guy who's the CEO of Haliburton just happened to be the vice president of the United States, and then they get no big contracts to rebuild shit. He decides to blow up. I mean, it's wild, right? But if they can do that, if there's profit in that, how is there not profit in rehabilitating neighborhoods? It seems like profit for everyone. But that's how that's why we're continuing to do this show. I cannot tell you, I say it every time I'm on here, you'll get tired of it maybe, and maybe it sounds like, you know, asking and I will kiss whatever asked there is to kiss this show has become such an important platform for us because watch this ready.

43:16I spoke about this before. There's a case in California right now, the case of this guy, Pierre Russian, right? The attorney that's handling it is from a big law firm named Greenberg Taurag, his name is Jordan Grazinger. He is this kid really was accused of murder in 2011. He's sentenced 50 years to life. There's one witness. His guy's name is Robert Green. He's a serial felon, seven time felon. He doesn't identify Pierre Russian until three weeks after the crime. He is a crack addict who admitted that he was high at the time the crime was committed. No physical evidence implicating Pierre Russian.

44:10Two other witnesses at the scene when this shooting took place say it was not Pierre Russian. So Jordan Grazinger sends me a direct message on Instagram because he heard this podcast. Now here is a global law firm that has vast resources and he said I just want to do something. How do I get involved? He learns about this case and gets the pro bono department at his law firm to take it up. He now has declarations from the only witness. This guy, Robert Green, who has totally recanted and said he made it all up. He has another declaration from another witness saying that Pierre Russian, actually the other guy that was convicted of this crime said Pierre Russian had nothing to do with it.

45:08So the question becomes now what can you, so look it's a testament to the power of this show and this platform that this guy is hopefully on the precipice of getting out or saving a life. But the question becomes well what can you do as a listener? Grab your pens. All right. You can write to the Alameda district attorney Pamela Price at 1 2 2 5 Fallen Street in Oakland, California 9 4 6 1 2. And I know you can just rewind it if you miss the address. Write DA Pamela Smart and ask her to please release Pierre Russian. There's a petition called a petition of habeas corpus, which I think translates in Latin to the body holding of the body.

45:58Can I stop you for a real quick spell, Fallen F a L one F a one. So it's Alameda district attorney Pamela Price 1 2 2 5 Fallen Street. Oakland, California 2 Ls. Yes. So Fallen the 2 Ls. And you know, I know that the case is on her radar. I think that she is a read about the case Pierre Russian just how it sounds. And the more we let district attorneys politicians know that the public is paying attention. I can tell you from my experience that of being on this show that the DA's listen. I've had them reference appearances on this show acting like how could you say that about Douglas County, Kansas, you know, but then, you know, they get 1000 letters.

46:59And they realize that politically it's not going to look very good to keep an innocent. What is the hold up? You know, these wheels of justice grind slowly and for a man like Bruce, who is sitting in there and having to, you know, witness violence on a day to day basis. Unthinkable conditions where he sleeps in in a room when he's put in in what they call the box or the whole and has rodents crawling across his chest as he sleeps. I'm not making this shit up. This is this was his day to day existence. Pierre Russian is in similar circumstances. You can make a difference to write a letter read about the case, the habeas petitions are out there to read them.

47:46And, you know, I think that we just need all I can do, all I can think of, we could have grandiose ideas. It would be amazing if a big corporation didn't decide to donate a lot of money because they felt guilty about what happened to George Floyd. And then all of a sudden it became the summer of like corporate guilt and everyone starts donating. You don't donate because it's invoked. You donate because you actually want to make a difference and take it from little old me. You know, I know that I'm one grain of sand on a massive beach. But what Bruce said and I've said it before, I'll say it again.

48:27I've done my fair share of drugs and my altering substances. There is no feeling like helping restore somebody's life and freedom. Nothing. Nothing comes close to it. So if you want to be another grain of sand on that beach, hopefully the grain of sand will form a sand castle. And then there'll be more sand castles and people will start paying more attention. That's all I can think of as just an individual and an organization to keep on doing is to keep banging the drum. And the more we bang in and the louder we bang it. So again, I thank you for the platform. And I want people to be able to see and witness these marvelous human beings is such a waste to have them locked away behind prison walls when you know you hear him speak Bruce just accepted a position with the pro -mother center for legal justice.

49:21He's going to be a criminal justice reform advocate and a student mentor not because I feel bad for him. Not because I think, you know, oh, he's because he's earned it. Listen to him speak and listen to his command of the issues. So I sometimes find myself like I feel like I'm trying to climb I feel like sysphus sometimes right and the boulder keeps rolling back on me. And then I get a you know you get a little taste of what that's like to help you know stand next to him last night and watch a comedy show. And then we were walking down the street and just hear him inhale a breath of fresh air or this morning before we came here.

50:04He saw the pool at the hotel and teared up and said I'm going in and I heard this like with like child like wonder the splash and like you know I went over and he had both arms in the air. He said take a picture of me. I still got it. And I thought I fucking blanked and I thought to myself this must be the first time he swam in over 30 years. And you know it was just to be able to watch that and to be even a small part of it. It's just like makes you feel like getting up the next day and with a smile on your face with the will to want to do it again and help someone else. I want to touch on something that Joe said.

50:53I think investing what people are realizing is the huge talent pool that exists behind prison walls. These guys can they can help drive the economy outside of just being incarcerated. If you spend the 80 billion dollars a year on incarceration across the country. These guys you can't you know you got all this you got guys that guys are make anything in here man out of just you know just anything I see guys make statues like this from paper towels and soap. You say what the hell so the talent pool is broad if we willing to invest in people right if we invest in the social infrastructure and tap into that that that that cultural capital that exists behind prison walls.

51:42And just start beginning to invest in people instead of things and prisons right. You know we got we got to learn to just really say well is prison the right answer who's who's corrected from prison prison corrections has never corrected anymore. It's the person that engages in introspection and says I want to make a change. But the even in even when you look at the investments that they make in law enforcement if law enforcement. With the answer to crime would be the safest place on the planet of America be the safe place on the planet because we got more cops than anywhere else. Right so we give so much over time and we give our money to the police officers and they granted they you know they're they're important right but.

52:29They don't solve crime they don't prevent crime it's just that simple they just don't right when you invest in people and you provide them with opportunities. To create better lives for themselves into a lot into you know I hand up so they can pick their families up out of poverty. That's the change that's the difference. I mean in conservation would go down exponentially if people began to feel like they were important to feel valued because someone's investing in them. This is where it gets dangerous because the prison industrial complex is a business and the business protects itself. There's been prison guard unions that have lobbied to keep marijuana illegal in states because they want work which is one of the most evil things you could ever consider.

53:13That you're using human beings as batteries so you can generate money keeping them in a cement box that you essentially using them as batteries to generate money. The whole thing is fascinating that you brought that up. I read about that recently and I thought that I misread it. I did not understand the connection at first it kind of went over my head that a union would fight to keep marijuana legal until I started to like say well wait a second you're just missing the obvious conclusion here. One of obvious conclusions is you know the leading the leading cause of contraband in prisons aren't like family members stuffing things down their pants and coming through it's guards it's prison guards.

54:05Of course. And you know I just think that I guess where I get frustrated when you said this is where it gets tricky. Where it gets tricky for me and where I get frustrated and feel like overwhelmed. I'm listening to the two of you speak and thinking to myself you both get it right. The question becomes to me well how do we make it happen. So how do you how do you rebuild the community like Brownsville Brooklyn right. Everybody knows Brownsville because Mike Tyson comes from there Zab Judah comes from there some pretty famous fighters come from there. Biggie Smalls comes from there. Reddick Bow.

54:51And you know they're not going back there Shannon bridge. Shannon bridge. Let's go. Shannon the kid. Shout out to Shannon. Yeah that's my guy. So I don't um they they go back and try to do what they can but you know it's like start with Brownsville. Why how do we solve the problem. Is it us trying to convince the owner of a sports team a billionaire a philanthropist someone to go like let here's a plan. Let's go to the mayor Eric Adams and propose this community center. I mean I just don't know what and this is like not this might be out of ignorance for me because I can only take on what I can take on.

55:34I'm sure there's some people out there trying to get this done. But I think the more influential voices we can get behind an idea. Let's try this experiment in one community. I just I'm at a loss for. I know what I know how to do I know how to see a case and know that someone's innocent and fight for it. I feel I feel like I know the right levers to pull to get that done. It gets way more difficult and intimidating to me trying to figure out well how do we solve this bigger social problem. But I think it starts with shows like this. It's just a conversation from different walks of life you know coming together and really talking about real issues.

56:16So you know it's really an honor to be here with you Joe. It's an honor to be in your comedy club last night and it's definitely an honor to be here. It's an honor to be here with you too. Really really appreciate it man and it just gets the conversation out there right. And hopefully people will hear the conversation and people will begin to galvanize and say well what can we do. At least the the thought is out there. And we've put it out there many times now and I feel very blessed to be your friend and feel very fortunate that you have you've come on here and trusted this platform with all these stories because it changed the way I thought of our system our legal justice system.

56:55I have a completely different opinion after having conversations with you and that's not just me. It's everybody who listen to these conversations. So you're talking about millions and millions and millions of people have heard these conversations now. It's a crazy number and we've done a lot of them now. We keep doing them and as we keep doing them it gets out more and more and more and slowly but surely something's going to happen. It's going to have to if we value humanity. If we really value our community which what is what our country is supposed to be. It's supposed to be a united group of human beings.

57:30That's right. It's supposed to be a big community and we can isolate it into neighborhoods. We can isolate it into cities but reality we're supposed to be on the same team. If we're on the same team if you care about these people how how is it possible that you can continue to ignore it decade after decade and it's going to take a lot of work. This is not going to be a thing that you're going to fix because you have grown people that have been indoctrinated into these horrific ways and these people have to somehow or another have hope to change. Which is a big thing for people. It's hard for people to lose weight.

58:05It really is. Just stop eating food is hard to do. It's all you have to do is not do something that you know you shouldn't be doing and it's hard to change your whole life. Have you been involved in gang banging and drug dealing because you had no other options and you had no other role models and you had no other examples anywhere around you of people that had hope. And you felt like well the rest of the world is different and what we got here sucks and that's just the way it is and I'm just going to be a part of it. And that's how human beings do. We imitate our atmosphere whether it's positive or negative.

58:40We're a part of a tribe and this tribe should be expanded. You should be expanded to the whole fucking world but at the very least we have to be an example here in America. We have a possibility because of these kind of conversations because of this narrative. We have a possibility to change particularly the way young people look at it. This idea that people that live for blocks away are different than people who live right next door is nuts. We're all just humans and if there is a community that's fucked it's better for everyone if we chip in and do whatever the fuck it takes to re -engineer that.

59:16And it's going to take a long time. There's an old saying from gambling and pool they would say you got to get better the same way you got sick. Meaning if you're gambling say if I got you stuck like $10 ,000 you're like okay all or nothing like fuck you. Fuck you double or nothing fuck you we play for a thousand dollars. So then I win 11 ,000 and then another thousand now I win 12. You can't just win one and get it all back. You got to get better the same way you got sick. It's a long road. Hey listen that's you made me feel better both you. So you know look there's no I just you know there's no magic bullet.

59:55Yeah there's no magic bullet and you know is there any one size fits all? No and look I told I told Bruce last night you know it's an odd thing to get recognized for. But you know a bartender said to me hey aren't you that guy that helps get people out of jail and I was like man that felt so good. I don't know where if you saw me on 2020 most definitely was probably on this podcast or you know like I was pulling into into the Arya in Vegas. And you know the valet guy goes hey I aren't you well I've seen you before you help innocent people get out of jail. I saw you on Rogan I get that a lot and I always take a minute to stop and say you know do you want me to help you know point you in the right direction and how you can help so many people take me up on it so you guys made me feel better.

1:00:53I mean look I just there are moments where I feel like is the problem ever going to get you know solve it is frustrating to me. So frustrating and that's why I'm so in your debt because we had Joe and I had this idea Bruce you don't know this a couple of years ago where you know he committed to doing this once a quarter. And of course I thought really is he really going to do it and not only is he done it but allow me to bring you know an exonery on every time and you know first we had Robert Jones and then Derek Hamilton and now Bruce and I hope that people not only see the humanity in these men but see the talent and see the I mean think about these three men right Robert Jones said I'm going to one day get out of here and put on a suit and come back in and out.

1:01:44I hope the people that need help and he did it. Derek Hamilton known the country over is probably the brightest legal mine in the prison system. Said one day I'm going to get out here and I'm going to help the people inside and not only has he done it he's like a he's like a meteor. He's like a streaking comet of a human being I've never seen anything like it district attorneys conviction integrity units when he calls they pick up the phone and they they have meetings at district attorney in Manhattan. You know Alvin Bragg say what you want about him my opinion is he picked up the phone when Derek called about about Sheldon Johnson and you know there is this great group of lawyers called.

1:02:35The C .A .L. the Center for Appellate litigation and they had brought the case you know right to the goal line and they said you know we need the DA's year. You know can you just sort of get this and there's some great people in that office Brian Crowe that really want to make a difference and you know we met with the DA in Manhattan and he spoke to Derek and then you know Sheldon gets released. So yeah it does make a difference and I think that for Bruce you know when I heard about some of the programs that he created from on the inside can you tell Joe about and the listeners about the gun by back program and voices from from within.

1:03:17Yeah voices from within I'll start there. There's a group of men that founded it prior to me coming into syncing. Lawrence brought me John aging for last quest they started this program and it was a progressive program that was designed to they were they wanted to redefine what it means to pay a debt to society. And they've been doing just that so they begin doing this progressive work inside and and and created this event called choices which is choosing healthy options and confronting every situation and what they do with these choices events is they bring in children whose parents are incarcerated and then begin you know having what they call playback theater which is they have a young person talk about a dilemma in their life and then they have two of the.

1:04:07Guys incarcerated actually played out so the person can actually visualize what it is that they went through and see the opportunities to make better choices. So that's one of them but also the civic duty initiative we found it in Sullivan myself and a guy named Joseph Robinson and Stanley Bellamy who was also just granted clemency out he had 62 years he did 37. What we did we begin you know finding these poor in poverty communities and whether they've been upstate or in the inner cities and decided that what we're going to do is we're going to do a book drives we're going to raise money in prison through these prison organizations to buy backpacks and school supplies for children of incarcerated parents.

1:04:52And we did just that we gave you know we gave thousands of books away we raised tons of money to contribute to a gun by back up but through a church bottom in Albany with a revenue by the name of Charles Muller who had a program Albany was being ravaged by violence and his program had run out of money. And so I reached out to him and we collaborated in Sullivan you know correction of facility and decided that we're going to put out pull out resources and see how we can come together we also want to bring in some young guys so that we can talk to about youth violence. And this has been going just continues to go on like the youth assistance program yeah that they have both in syncing and in a few other prisons in New York State I was on the app team in syncing where they bring in 30 at was youth in my group I had you know I had some young kids that were from El Salvador who were dealing with you know MS 13's and I had one young guy when young girl tell me that.

1:05:57They had to leave El Salvador because where they lived you know their friends were all in gangs and what they did was they would play soccer with the heads of the rival gangs and I had that that that made me cringe I had never heard anything like that until this and this kid this kids were like 18 19. And they had to I literally leave the country because their family is like if they stay there they have to be in a gang. I mean these these kids said that their friends would literally play soccer with the heads the decapitated heads of rival gangs. So these are some of the kids that we you know we've been able to reach and talk to through the app program it's never enough because sometimes they bring in kids that are never be at risk sometimes they bring in kids from high in society that have no business coming in there they're going to be successful right.

1:06:55So you know sometimes we have a little issue with that but the other program is chosen a promise NYC I've been working with them for the past decade. Why are they bringing children from privileged society. It makes absolutely no sense. I think that for me if you want my personal opinion I think that they bring them in to show them what they can do and what they can control right you can possibly one day be in control of a prison or a corporation because you bring in these kids from my society that they're literally never going to come they're never going to see the inside of a jail. So they're bringing the men so they get the inner workings of prison so they get enter into the prison industrial complex on some level on some level but not become we know they're never going to be in constant because it's a viable business it's not going away it's never going away and you have if you decide to go down that road you have a guaranteed source of income.

1:07:53I mean the product that we made in New York State Prison is go by the it's called core craft this is on the stock market core craft you know the core craft is making a poetry in one prison green haven they make couches tables like this. How much do guys get paid what they make 16 cents an hour 10 cents an hour literally and they have to do it. Oh yeah you don't go to program you you go into the box in 2000 guys refuse to go to the core craft because they didn't want to build cells they had a group of guys that found out that there was steel coming off of the van they unloaded a truck. Group of prisoners were forced to unload a truck and they realized what they were unloading were bars bars and doors and they said hold on man they opening up a shop where we have to build cells.

1:08:45So a few days they all these guys says we're not doing that we're not building cells for our kids all these guys went to the box and they shipped them from a close prison that's close to their family green haven they shipped them to Clinton. And the box for the lesson the box is solitary confinement so you don't have to labor for 16 cents an hour you get confined to solitary confinement. Yeah you got a misbehavior report nine times out of 10 when you go for that misbehavior report you found guilty and you penalize for not engaging in slave wages slave labor that is a fact this has gone every prison when covid started a lot of people don't know where the hand sanitizer was coming from it was coming from great metals right it was coming from great metals and at one point you know government quote what was he had it on the news we got a sand hand sanitize the guys are making and this was for sale at one point.

1:09:46And so that's another form of extraordinary profit of course even more profitable than making iPhone which is wild because it's already evil yeah I mean from everything from you go from okay New York made 11 million bottles of hand sanitizer now it has 700 ,000 gallons it can't get rid of. Wow they said they spoke first and said he makes no apologies for single handedly solving a hand sanitizer shortage oh really spoke person hey how'd you do that maybe you should make an apology for how the fuck you did that I absolutely love this show that you can pull this stuff up in real time yeah in real time you can see guys like formal Queens prosecuted John Scoppa you can real time real time you can Google.

1:10:40Yeah, let's Google the more Queens prosecuted John Scoppa yeah and you can see what his conviction was and this is a guy that has a history of doing this for just the fact that this core craft that's what's called yeah the fact that this is a profitable entity that you could trade on the stock market and the the very people that are working there are essentially slaves when when Stephen King when Stephen King wrote Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank redemption which became the movie Shawshank redemption and there was a you know the part of the movie where they talked about the the work program and how some genius figured out that there was cheap labor to be had in prisons he didn't base that off of some fictional whim you know when he was up at night chop chop it away on that typewriter that was based on this been going on for decades and decades and you know I think that it's it should shock people and it should it should be a rallying cry you know if you've never been in a prison before and you know it's just sort of occupies a space in your mind as it's just a bad place that I don't want to be in ever and I wouldn't want my family member to be in that's okay you could live your life that way but you can also take notice of the fact that you know somewhere between four and seven percent some estimates of the people in there are innocent and some of the other people that are in there just made a mistake and you don't throw away a life because they made a mistake and to and to see some of these sentences you know 50 years 70 years and it's not just in California where there was a three strikes rule to see sentences getting doled out that are de facto life sentences to children the children Michael Dawson Sheldon Johnson was I think 17 or just turned 18 and the guy get sentenced to 70 years on a phone call and the first defense look this is a beautiful moment I don't know Jamie has a picture I sent it to him like two weeks after Bruce got out we got word that Sheldon was going to get out and get resent so Bruce said I want to be there when he walks out and you know he got all that so that is them face timing me as Sheldon walked out of the gate and JJ Velasquez is the other gentleman on the other side of Sheldon JJ Velasquez is you know it took one guy who believed in JJ this this investigative reporter called named Dan Slepion who believed in JJ amongst many other people that believed in JJ JJ now goes into sing sing regularly and runs a program there called the Frederick Douglass project and he does it with the professor from Georgetown Mark Howard and he goes in there and he brings people in from the community to try to show them the humanity that is behind prison walls there there was over a hundred years of over incarceration and wrongful incarceration in that a century in that picture it would be nice it would be nice to invite Joe to go in one day going with a JJ we tell JJ man we all for the extended the offer to Joe Rogan and his team to come into a sing sing one day with the Frederick Douglass project come in and meet some guys and see and see what it's like we should do that you know what else we got to do that I got to take a leak so it's paused right here anybody needs a leak we'll be right back sorry so so you find that dude this corrupt let's pull this guy out there you look at that fuckhead Queens lawyer convicted of robbing witnesses get 30 months sentence that's it that's it so that guy put you away for 29 years and he gets 30 days for being a piece of shit 30 months excuse me whatever and he's done this for you know to countless people it's incredible Nathan May people versus Gary Steadman 30 months is not a security in all those cases they all got out right out they all goes cases with subsequent the overturning how many cases do you think this guy was involved with the 30 to be honest with me countless because even as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney he's been around forever he has count yes he has countless lawsuits against him several allegations against him how crazy is the only give that guy less than three years well look it's crazy it's crazy no matter what any way you look at it you know I am the thing that gives me some hope in situations like this is the current district attorney in Queens is a woman by the name of Linda cats and she did something pretty extraordinary in this case which which you know you have to recognize it when it happens when the governor is considering someone for clemency they check with the district attorney's office where they were convicted and the Queens County District Attorney's Office who is also reinvestigating Bruce's case that's conviction integrity unit is you know I mentioned earlier is reinvestigating his case did not oppose Bruce's grant of clemency extremely rare in a murder case where on 11 year old boy was murdered for them to not oppose so that's you know what I think that is the she deserves a recognition for that her office is a recognition for that and what we can hope is that we keep on making believers out of them by presenting cases like Bruce's you know people like to make broad generalizations whether it's police officers prosecutors I think I hate it when people do that about anything there's good and bad and all professions and I just think that you know when you see people trying to make change happen even if it doesn't go sometimes at the pace you want it to happen at as long as it's moving in the right direction it deserves to be recognized and applauded so I just wanted to make sure because it's easy to like see this guy who was a former Queens prosecutor and then you know make a dangerous leap that therefore all process is going to be a real thing niej and Accuse's where you know what kind of investigation and just taking the kind of the government here your friend hired anotherson essentiel today is like to question why not call both of them if you are true on the outside of the court and not his experience because her job actually is exactly has he just happen to be I by one that finally got caught and it was interesting he didn't get caught until he was a defense lawyer he became a criminal defense attorney and he got caughtih a big shit.

1:17:59He didn't just come down with a like a like you come down with a cold like a case of the bribes. One day, you know, he wasn't like, oh, this sounds like a good fucking idea. This is learned behavior. This is the way he learned to work the system in my humble opinion. Um, and you think this is like that? I mean, this goes back to the 80s. Yeah, absolutely. There's there's others like that. I mean, happened in New York with the so -called mob cops, right? Yeah. Or how about that guy in Pennsylvania that was sending foster kids to jail? Are you talking about the kids for cash with the private prisons?

1:18:35Yes. Until the young kid killed himself. Yeah. He was a young up and coming wrestler. And he was, he was sent to jail for, for, I think pushing his stepfather and cutting school. So he sent to the juvenile. But what happened was in the private prisons, you had to maintain a certain capacity. It had to be filled to like 80 % capacity. And what happened was these judges, if they were, they were charged with keeping these jails filled, right? So as long as they kept them filled, they got a kickback. It's called kids for cash as a documentary on it. Yeah. I know. Yeah. I know about it. You know, it just, when, when Joe asked me, um, and this happens and there's others like it, I think it goes down, it comes down to, um, this ugly part of, of human nature, where, you know, I love the quote, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

1:19:33But I also think even a little bit of power can be super dangerous. And, you know, you see it in, you know, all facets of life, people get a little bit of fame. They get a little bit of notoriety or they get the ability to have influence over someone else. Give you an example. As it relates to Bruce for people that don't, to think that this doesn't happen. As soon as Bruce was granted clemency, all over the papers, you know, when a governor grants clemency, it's news. There's people that oppose it because they get, you know, the 60 ,000 foot, um, news headline view of it and don't know shit about the facts of the case.

1:20:13How could she have done that, you know, letting a killer out, they have no idea, of course, about this guy Scarborough, about any of the facts of his case. And the people that read those papers are often corrections officers too. And just to show you like the final stretch of discipline, I think, for Bruce is, you know, there's good corrections officers that I'd go in and visit Bruce and knew what we were doing and knew what our, what the pro -mother Center for Legal Justice is about and knew the Derr -Cammleton used to be in prison and turned, you know, his life into basically a mission to help others that have been wrongfully incarcerated or just that need a second chance.

1:20:57And there are others like the CEOs that find out he got granted clemency and don't want to see him go home. That's right. And all of a sudden, he starts getting fucked with by one corrections officer that is baiting him on a constant basis, calling him the worst names that you could possibly think of, trying to get Bruce to do something so that it would somehow, keep me in jail. Yeah, keep me in jail. And it was happening so often that one time, you know, there was a lot of people involved in the effort to get Bruce out on clemency and legal aid and great attorney named Elizabeth Felbert working on his exoneration cases, my co -counsel.

1:21:43But there were also students of mine, right? Part of our Legal Justice Center is that we have a clinical program where Derrick and I teach these students. We get tennis semester. They have a seminar where they come in for two hours a week that we teach in law school. And we teach them about all disciplines of forensic science, how it goes wrong, what to do if you spot it, whether you're a prosecutor or defense attorney, how to if you're a prosecutor, rely on it in a way that does it justice in the name of science, right? There are certain conclusions you can draw about blood spatter. You just can't make ridiculous conclusions like saying what instrument and from what angle in the manner in which it was swung, right?

1:22:35So you get my point. But then they also have 10 hours a week of field work where they come to my office and do work on actual cases. So they worked on Bruce's case. As did, you know, I have a partnership with Jay -Z and his mother, they have the Sean Carter Foundation and we have the Josh Dubin Fellows at the Sean Carter Foundation. They worked on Bruce's case and they wanted to meet Bruce. So they came in and met Bruce, some of them and some of my students came in. I hadn't really ever seen Bruce mad, exacerbated, let's see him emotional, but never losing as cool and I came in one day and when you go to visit someone in a maximum security prison, it's a real ordeal getting in.

1:23:30And it's really sad. You see families coming in and it's very emotional. Sometimes there's kids with them and you know, you would think as an attorney or as law students, you might get treated a little different. But you come across the wrong CEO, the wrong corrections officer. Yeah, I don't like the way you're shirt, saying to a female student is a little bit too low or you're not wearing a bra. I mean, it's kind of like like really? That's what you're saying and take your pockets and pull them out. I want to see the bottom of your feet, you know, in any event, we're waiting to get into the visiting room and all of a sudden there's this loud crash against the door.

1:24:12It's behind bars and you know, all of a sudden there's a lockdown because an inmate punched a female visitor in the face and you know, and it was the person that was visiting him and they were rewinding it on the surveillance as we were waiting. So the students were already like, wow, this is this is some crazy shit. And then we get go in the visiting room after they sort of cleared that situation out after 40 minutes or so and Bruce came down and you know, he's as cordial as he is intelligent, which is to say he's always just super warm and comforting and two of the students that have worked on his case for quite a while were in the visiting room with me.

1:25:01And he sort of like blew past them and said, I can't take it anymore. Everywhere I go, every time I see this corrections officer, he is trying to goad me, he is trying to get me to do something and it was the closest I had seen him to tears because of the prison experience. You know, this guy still works there? Absolutely. And it was that it was during a major lockdown where over 200 and incarcerated people, as things were brutalized. It was so bad that they locked the prison down for about a week to bring in a special search team. So when we were called for visits, what they would do was they would have an officer come to yourself, get you, handcuff you and bring you to the visiting room.

1:25:53I get called for a legal visit. And who decides that they want to be the officer to come and escort me? This officer, John, right, that's had a hard on for me for some reason. So I'm like, oh man, I got to visit now. This guy is going to handcuff me and take me so I can't even defend myself because the prison was locked down. In fact, that was a major New York Times article as well. The abuse that took place at Sincsing in November of last year when they locked the whole prison down. That's the case that Bruce Barquette and Epstein and Marty Tankflip took on. Big article, they came into the prison, shut it down and began picking certain guys out, cracking ribs, cracking heads open, just abusing guys.

1:26:40So here, this guy comes to get me. I had no idea it was you that was on the visit. But in my mind, I'm saying, I swear, I hope it's my lawyer coming to visit me, man, because this guy's taking me. So he's antagonizing me, hurry up or you won't go on your visit and just joking at me, joking at me. So I'm handcuffed and I'm maintaining my composure. I see a sergeant down. Tell him, listen, man, get your dog off me, man. So the sergeant knew me and he tried to save something to the guy. But the guy, he listened right then and there, in route to the visiting room, he's steady trying to go with me, trying to pull me out of my character.

1:27:20You know, so it just became so stressful, man. That's why I came to that. I was like, man, I was so glad that it was you that came that day. But I was just glad that he didn't actually put it, because he was on the verge of putting his hands on me. If it was in a, I, because I was handcuffed, it was isolated area, he would have definitely jumped on me because it was open season in November. During that, during that lockdown, it was open season on guys in the joint. I've had sings in that day. For whatever reason, that special team came in and just started like crushing people. And some of these guys, I'm talking about six, eight, six, nine, they're from different prisons.

1:28:01So they come in with their military uniforms and they're stomping, they're stomping before like they're doing a walk, like they were like on a military run. And they're pulling guys out the cell, man, and the question. So it was, it was a, it was a moment for me because I had no idea how this guy was going to respond or how I was going to be able to, you know, defend myself. And I know I'm on the verge of getting out. And I know what he's trying to do. So my mind was just focused on getting out, trying my best not to pay this guy on my, but it's hard. It's hard dealing with them in no situation because they got up a hand and a lot of them are abusive because you can do that with and like you talked about power when you can do things knowing that there be no repercussions.

1:28:47You wear the Stanford prison expan? Very much so. Yeah. Where they took the students and they divided them into correction offices and incarcerated people. And what they did was the officers took on the other, a group of students took on a role of correction offices and these group of students took on the role of prisoners. And it became so intense. I don't know if you're familiar with this. It became so intense. Very much so. The group of students who were acting as a playing the role of correction offices became so abusive based on the false sense of power that they literally had to end the study.

1:29:27They had to end the, they had to stop it. So what is that? This is the part where I start. It goes back to power. Well, yeah, I know this is the part where it gets me feeling real shitty about humanity because you see it even in TSA agents. You see it and you know, last night we were going into a place to eat and I had the I had the audacity to ask again, where do you order from? And the guy was working on the journey of the door and what a shitty attitude. He gave me about it, right? Like because he's the bouncer. And I was like, you know, five or six years ago, I learned, I learned the strength in silence.

1:30:15And I learned the strength in restraint because I was not going to fix that guy. You don't have to respond. Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, and I'm going to be who he is. And I learned, I've learned from being around people, you know, like you and you've taught me a lot about, you know, what it means to really listen and, you know, sort of impressing upon me how important martial arts is, right? And just watching you move. You don't feel like you have to peacock your accomplishments in front of it because you have a sense of your, yeah, security. Yeah. Knowing who he is. Watching guys like like James Prince, who is so comfortable with the silence, because he doesn't need to show off.

1:31:03And I learned that it's the insecure among us. It's the weaker among us that will either abuse the power or pop off. And the more I exercise that restraint and, you know, resist the urge to say something back, the more gratified I feel afterwards. But what bothers me about this power thing, that's fine. I could exercise restraint. It's taken me many years and a lot of therapy to get there. A lot of introspection.

1:31:47But what does it mean? I think it is. And they know they're in an experiment and they're given that taste. And then they abuse it. And I see that the airport with TSA agents, I see it, you know, if you make a kid a safety patrol in an elementary school, it just seems to be something that has to be guarded and approached a lot more. A lot more. A lot more carefully. Intentionally. Yeah. Yeah. I worked as a security guard when I was 19 at this place called Great Woods. Great Woods is in Mansfield, Massachusetts, like a concert place. And almost immediately, everyone on the security team developed this attitude of us versus them.

1:32:32The audience, the people that were coming to the show, they were all fuckheads, they were all, they all didn't listen, you had a yell at them, you had a tell them what to do. And there was a culture of doing that. And these people behaved almost exactly the way you describe in the Stanford prison experiment or you describe with cops in some occasions, these people, they were terrible to these people. And it was normal. And I found myself doing it, like yelling at people and stuff. And you realize, like, what is, like, I realized at 19, I was like, what is this weird inclination to like make it us versus them?

1:33:03Like, I go to concerts, like, I could be them. Like, I'm the same, it's the same person, only 19. None of this makes any sense to me. But there was a clear natural pattern of behavior that emerged, that it emerges in war, it emerges everywhere. It emerges whenever people have ultimate power over other people. And it's power that's not earned. That's a big part of it. Like, to be a person that has that kind of power and influence, that is an extraordinary position to be in. And you have to be an extraordinary human being to manage that ethically and morally. And most people are not extraordinary.

1:33:38That's the reality. So if you're given these jobs with the extraordinary responsibility to people that have never developed character, they've never really developed compassion and a true empathy for other people and a true understanding of their strength. And they're always trying to puff their chest out. They're always trying to peacock. That's the worst person to ever have that position. Because now they have this unqualified position of power. They didn't do anything to earn it, but they have it. And they want people to listen. If you don't fucking listen, no, you have to listen. You have to listen.

1:34:11That's what it is. You have to listen. I mean, is it is it natural or of a socialized into thinking? This is how a correction officer is supposed to act because we've been taught that this is how he acts. We've been taught that a bouncer has to be this way and that's tough. And he has to have this attitude of us versus them. So I'm not sure if it's a natural inclination as much as I think it's we're socializing to believing that there's that, but there's also another element. The other element is the person that's in that position of power, particularly police officers, you're dealing with an input of negativity and people lying to you and people committing crimes that's never ending.

1:34:52You want to talk about PTSD. I mean, guys go in combat and they come back with PTSD and we recognized it. We recognize it. We understand it. We don't think for cops that way. How many cops have PTSD? How many cops are terrified every day, every time they pull someone over? How many cops are deeply ingrained in this blue gang, this us versus them mentality. And they you've ever seen the 75 that documentary, Michael Dowd. Yes. Yes. You recommended it. Holy shit. It's about a super corrupt precinct in New York. Brooklyn. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. It's amazing, documentary. But this guy first day on the job witnesses someone get murdered witnesses and they shut the fuck up.

1:35:34They threw a guy out of window. Like, you know, like you shut the fuck up. And it's like, I guess I shut the fuck up. And like, this is what we do. Stealing money from drug dealers. Like setting up hits. I mean, it was all inside the business. Maybe we have to rethink the way we teach people because I think that I think it's a combination of what both of you, I think it's a Nate, unfortunately, in human beings because we're not with everybody. It's a Nate with people that get unqualified. That's right. Well, look, maybe there needs to be there needs to be not maybe there needs to be better training of law enforcement for sure because they need to be, you know, desensitized or sensitized, you know, whatever their background is needs to be taken into consideration.

1:36:26But I couldn't agree with you more. You know, I can't stand when people that are so far left to start talking categorically about police officers. What a fucking hard job. And of course, there's great cops out. I mean, you know, so I look, I went through it myself recently, teaching. I had done one -offs before, but I'd never taught consistently. And I'm looking at these young future lawyers and they look up to you just because you're the professor. And I have this moment, and it took a lot of work for me and a lot of therapy and deep introspection and a particularly humbling experience for me to really take a long hard look and say, who are you, Josh?

1:37:13And who do you want to be? I had always equated vulnerability with weakness, probably my whole life. And I, you know, there's issues tied up with my father and all kinds of shit that that sort of led me that way to thinking that way. And I don't know if I told you this, Bruce, but I had a moment with you actually in public where I had to fight the urge. My instinct told me, don't do this. And then my sort of my new project, project of sort of reinventing myself and how I think and sort of having this as close to an awakening as I could have. Sort of won the day for me and said, it's okay. You know, I had Bruce come to my class at Cardozo Law School and teach four days after he got out.

1:38:14I wanted him to the students to see the fruits of their labor because some of them had a met him yet. And he came to my class and, you know, like the faculty was cheering when he came in. It was a really a beautiful moment. And he came in sat in front of a group of lawyers. Jamie, I think I sent you a picture of this also. This is an extraordinary moment for me. I sat next to him and I was so overcome with emotion. And I was like, I bit a hole in my bottom lip because I was trying to fight this feeling of guilt that I had for letting this man sit there for four years and I didn't write him back.

1:39:03And I had never addressed it with him. And I, I apologized to him in front of the class and I just started weeping. And I felt so good that I allowed myself to be vulnerable in front of these students. And I got to tell you I felt a shift in the way they looked at me from that moment. I wanted them to know that it was okay to be vulnerable and that just because I have a quote unquote position of power that they need not look at me as being on some sort of pedestal. I started sitting sometimes in class so I could be at eye level with them because I read a lot about, you know, being a young father, how sometimes just getting on a knee and being at eye level with an adolescent changes the dynamic when you are trying to teach them or discipline them.

1:40:06And it was, you know, it was like a great moment. I felt more like a man in that moment. More like a man, a strong man in that moment than I have, you know, and many other times in my life when I thought I was being cool or really filling some insecure void in me. Yeah. You know, and that's something that I've learned dealing with guys like Derek, Bruce, a lot of other exonerees. This is a big strong man, right? And he's one of the more vulnerable people I've met, authentic, allows himself to cry when the feelings come over him. I've seen you do it. You know, it's the strong and secure among us that I think you're, there's a long way of saying I agree with you that I think if we teach our kids more that just because someone is in a position of power doesn't make them better or more commanding.

1:41:08And if you are ever put in that position of power, you remember what it's like to be on the other side of it. I really go to great lengths to try to do that with my children, with my students. Am I perfect at it? No way. I'm trying though. And maybe, you know, the more we we do that with how great is it when a police officer helps you? You know, it feels great. I had some help with the ATM card. Remember, well, my first day coming and taking the train. Right. You came over and said, you need some help with that money. I said, yeah. And you had every and you had every reason not to want to trust them.

1:41:45Of course. It wasn't. It was your your your MTA card to get on the subway. Yeah. Because when he was before he was in, there was no MTA cards or token. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard to get your shit together and there's no God book. It's why it's why one of the things before I came home, one of the things that Josh said to me, he says, what's the one thing that I can do for you that I can help you with? And I thought about it. And I said, the most important thing is therapy.

1:42:22I mean, PTSD, right? The trauma that we experienced from being kidnapped for 20 something years. The trauma that you experienced from being behind prison walls and being dehumanized and being labeled the number for decades as opposed to being a human, right? See, it's easy to dehumanize. The first day dehumanize you, right? And they take that from me and then you begin to internalize that in a few of this way about yourself. Feel like you're less than. So I asked, John, I said therapy. And I think that kind of surprises you when I said that. It did. It surprised me in that, it surprised me and it didn't.

1:43:08I think Bruce is highly evolved person for especially considering the circumstances. But your emotional intelligence is such that it shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did. But it's very rare for me, just in my own experience for people to get exonerated or sort of long prison sentences to recognize that they need that. I mean, for me, it's had such a profound impact in my life to have a person to speak to that understands how the human mind works and what human psychology is. Some people don't believe in therapy. I'm a strong believer in if you get the right therapist and you're willing to take that journey.

1:43:54It can be, I feel like it's like going to the gym for your mind, like the feeling that you get after you go to the gym and you feel like that release of endorphins and whatever else gets released, which I'm sure Joe knows would better than I do. But I just feel that way from my mind and being able to trace back sort of like where my trauma comes from. We all have traumas, human beings. It's been, it surprised me but it didn't. I'm grateful that you entrusted me to help you with it. I think that more people, we read these stories about the wrongfully incarcerated and they seem like feel good stories, right?

1:44:41But the sad truth is that the vast majority of my clients that get out struggle terribly when they get out. There's just no way to undo the psychological and psychiatric damage. You could hope to keep it in check. But the vast majority of them struggle really terribly with PTSD, social anxiety, general anxiety, difficulty sleeping, difficulty trusting. And a whole litany of issues. That was why I was so great to see you just out last night smiling. And you had a couple of the top of the line comedian. The guys served beyond the old show. And guys are funny, man. That was good. That was good, man.

1:45:31I've at least said in the actual what the guy says, you got to take them to a strip club. At least the average guy that comes out, he normally says, what's the first thing they asked for? You got to take me to a strip joint, man. Yeah, it was like, well, the person will remain nameless. But I was like, no, I was like, actually, that sounds like 20 inch left. And I can say, but I was like, actually, no, not only do I not want to go there because I find them to be sad places with, you know, girls that probably have a lot of trauma. But more importantly, he doesn't want to go there. You know, and he was explaining to me, it was interesting.

1:46:14He had dinner with someone that had gotten out recently and he said, this guy reaked of the penitentiary. And I don't want to give off that vibe. I have a second chance to re -invent myself. And I just think it just speaks volumes about him, not that he should be like applauded for not wanting to go to a strip club right when he gets out. Some people want to do that. And that's cool. Yeah. I'm begrudge that. They got make $8 to. Yeah. They got make $8 to also you're still on this path of improvement. Yes. You're out, but now you're on a more free path of improvement and wide, wide, divert that.

1:46:53Yes. Right. And like I said, you know, I made a decision that prison wasn't going to define who I was, nor what I can become. So, you know, once you begin that process and you say, I'm going to take this particular path. You got to go all the way with it. And I'm with them, guys, once I'm, I'm in, I'm in. I'm going all the way with it because once you begin to really reflect and you become aware of how you've been duped by the system and how the system was designed to continue to do that and to create this permanent underclass because that's what it does, right? It creates a permanent underclass.

1:47:31So, you got a group of formerly incarcerated guys who, many of them still dealing with dyslexia. They can't read, can't get educated. Many of them are still dealing with barriers towards getting a decent job. A lot of them can't go back to the housing projects because, you know, if you convicted from projects oftentimes, they didn't want to allow you back to live to reside there. Really? Yeah. So now, so now you have to find housing somewhere. And you're limited to a meaningful job with a lack of education. Do you know Jelly Roll? You know, the musician Jelly Roll? No. Fantastic guy. Got arrested for arm robbery when he's 15.

1:48:14Wound up, doing time, gets out, turns his life around, becomes this mega huge artist. I mean, he's, he just won, he does like his, some of his music is country, some of his music is hip hop. It's like country hip hop. Yeah. It's all kinds of, his voice is sensational. And he's such a good dude, such a good dude. I'm just a salt of the earth person. He couldn't buy this house that he wanted. I mean, this is a guy who won three country music awards just this year. He came, it was in Austin. He came to the mothership that night on cloud nine because he wins these awards, comes to see Ron and then finds out that this house that he thought he was buying, he can't buy now because he's a felon.

1:49:04I said, they won't, they won't let him in the community. It's a gated community on a golf course, his beautiful house, his dream house. This guy's been out for a long time. He's been a productive member of society, not just productive, but he's a massive celebrity and a great guy. Like you would want him as your neighbor. Yeah, it breaks my heart to hear stuff like the, he was convicted of 15, huh? 15. He's a grown -ass man. He wasn't him carrying the gun with somebody else. He was there. The whole thing was a disaster hanging out with the wrong kids, young and dumb, not raised well. You know, just like he tells a story about his childhood.

1:49:40It's terrific. He's just, he's a guy who pulled himself out and then his people still don't want to believe. Just meet the guy. Just go meet. He's got tattoos all over his face. You know, people get weirded out by him. Yeah. Just go listen to his mother fuckers voice. Is he singing in this?

1:50:06This is the rhymin, right? He's playing in Nashville at the fucking Grand Ole Opry. The man is amazing. Get it, Jell -E -Roll. I love it. But a great guy. I'm a living one. Like you would want him in your community. So this is underscoring the point that we made earlier, right? It should not take being wrongfully incarcerated for Bruce Bryan to lose, to realize his potential. It shouldn't take wrongful incarceration for Derek Hamilton and the scores of other people that realize their potential. There should be opportunities as their children. Right. If you give people a path and they learn during that path that it feels good to improve and grow, that is like the most important thing you can teach a child.

1:50:53That you want to, if you want to have be lost, don't do anything. If you want to be depressed, don't do anything. That's right. But if you find something that you really love and you do it and you pursue it and you get better at things, you get better at being a person, you get better at all things. And there's a great value in that and it's difficult and it has to be difficult because if you don't struggle, you don't grow. And no one teaches people that. No one teaches kids that. No one teaches that there's a beneficial kind of struggle. And you have to become disciplined and you have to have a mindset of improvement and you have to understand that you are very blessed to be a human being that's existing in this incredible time.

1:51:372023 and you live in America, go get it. And someone needs to guide people. They need to be there. You need like real mentorship. You need hope. You need a place where someone can go and shit's fucked. You need like real guidance. It can be done. It can be done. Look, it's like my mom was my hero in ways in which mothers can be heroes to kids. But for me was something additional. We go into the community. She was a fourth grade teacher and she taught kids that had, you know, education or special needs, you know, learning disabilities. And we would run into her former students and they'd come up to her with a tear in their eye or give her a hug and a kiss and say they called her dooby.

1:52:23All her kids called, you know, my last name can be dooby, dooby, doobies. People used to play with it a lot. My mom was, you know, all her students called dooby. You saved my, you know, you changed my life. And so I always have had deep reverence for teachers. And I had this experience with my son, where he, I think he was in kindergarten or pre, he might have been like pre -K. And here I am a civil rights attorney. And I remember him coming home in pre -K. You're like four. And he's telling me about Martin Luther King getting killed. And I remember thinking to myself, God, that's so, so young for him to be learning about death.

1:53:09And isn't this too young? And I had a great rapport with his teacher. It's a really awesome guy named Olu Bala. It's still at the elementary school in my son one. And I went and spoke to him about it. And he pulled me down the hall. And he said, listen, I've been watching the way African -American men have been treated my whole life. You know, he's an African -American man. And he said, and the only way I know how to try to write this is to help create different human beings. You know, a different kind of human beings that understands empathy, young. And then I read the book that they were reading.

1:54:09And it was so fucking appropriate. And I felt really idiotic in that moment because everything, the way that he articulated it to me was, you know, I want them to understand now the difference is beautiful and to be celebrated just as I know you teach them at home. And that stuck with me. I mean, my son's 11 now. This is, you know, seven years ago. And it stuck with me. And every time I see him, and he said to me sometimes, he didn't know what I did at that time. Every time I see him, I say, man, I'll never forget what you said to me. It really like changed my perspective on how important it is to teach our kids at a young age that difference is good.

1:54:55And it means strength to be vulnerable. And that power is not something to be abused. It is something to be treated, you know, with the intention to help other people to provide service. Right. So yeah, there's something that we can all do. Having children and bringing a human being into the world is that should be like such a sacred thing. You know, so I feel like I get, you know, my advice that I get on parenting is from people that are sometimes younger than me, but had kids earlier. You know, like some of the best parenting advice I got was from Andre Ward. He's 10 years younger than me, but he had teenage kids when my kids were babies, and I just loved to watch him as a father.

1:55:46But it's another great example. That's the guy who's gone through the fire. Right. This is a guy's developed character through struggle and through accomplishment. Right. And that's why he's that guy. And sports is one of the great ways to do that, especially combat sports. The problem is there's also the downsides of it, the people that don't make it, the people that get brain damage, the people that get fucked up. There's that too. That's real. You know, it's not a fucking 100 % path if you choose combat sports. But if you do choose combat sports and you become an Andre Ward, that's an exceptional human being.

1:56:20That's a guy who won world titles with one arm. Yeah, not only that, but, you know, was from the worst possible situation and the worst circumstances with, you know, parents that had real struggles, a biracial kid that, you know, was like sometimes very confused about, you know, his where he fit in. You know, that's why I let this around myself with people like him because he's just, you know, he's a beautiful parent. He's a beautiful husband. You know, and he does so many great things. Even his response when Canelo knocked out Colville of, and they offer him a big money fight with Canelo while he's still in his athletic prime, says like I think I serve boxing better as a commentator.

1:57:07This is a guy, you know, they're probably throw millions of dollars out of millions of millions of dollars. Many many many many big millions. Probably the biggest payday of his career. Yeah. And he's like, you know what, I think I did it. I'm done. I won gold medal in Olympics. I won two division world champion. That's it. Undefeated. That's it. Takes a lot of incredible character. Yeah, he's a guy that's grounded man. Yeah, but, you know, there's no growth without without pain. Right. Growth comes at pain. Yeah. Comes with nothing. They, they tell you that in physical condition, right? No pain, no gain.

1:57:41You gotta rip that muscle. You can't live in that's deal. You can't think you're gonna live an easy life and that life's gonna be exemplary. It's not going to be. That's my, see my question for you, Bruce's, you know, having been out three and a half weeks, four weeks. Are you, are you feeling overwhelmed? Not at all. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling great. I'm here with you and Joe Hogan. We just went at a comedy night last night. I got a good night. If anybody met you, they would have never guessed in a million years. You just look like a dude who's seen his friend, haven't seen your friend a while.

1:58:18Out having a good time. Big smiles all around. Know what he would have guessed. Three and a half weeks ago, you incarcerated. No one. The way you handle yourself is incredible. I appreciate that man. It's incredible. The lack of bitterness, just the sheer joy that you have, just interacting with people, you know, it's amazing. Life is about relationships. If I can sum it up in one word, it would be quality relationships. And that's what life is about. And you can't build those relationships being bitter. Bitterness only consumes you. Yeah. Right. You know, there's a study that came out recently.

1:58:54I won't get it wrong if I try to attribute a source. But there was a study that came out recently about longevity and happiness. Who lives the longest and who lives the happiest lives. And it's the people that have close personal relationships. Right. Have you read about this? Yeah. And yeah, that's hit home for me. You know, lately more than anything is that having a few good quality people around you just makes you, it propels you forward. People that are happy for your success, that propels you forward, not looking to, you know, tear you down. Which brings us back to these communities that have been just immersed in violence and crime forever.

1:59:42You know, there was a guy we had on way back in the day who was a cop in Baltimore. And one of the things they found while he was on the job was a docket. It was a list of crimes that were committed in like 1976. It was all the same crimes and all the same areas. And this just like feeling a futility, just like this feeling of watch, I was, what are we doing? Like what is this? This is insane. Like this is not, this is not fixing anything. This is not, you're not making it better. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about that in one of his books. I don't know if it was outliers or one of his books about that.

2:00:20Not even David and Goliath. Yeah. Maybe it was that. And he talked about Baltimore specifically about how, it's the same point you made earlier, that the vast majority of the prison population in New York comes from the same seven neighborhoods. So we know what the problem is. Look, maybe, maybe the best thing to come out of today for me personally is the fact that in times where I feel like, is it enough? It is enough. This show is enough. I mean, doing this work brings you into a community of people. You know, and I would encourage folks listening to this that get sort of like intimidated or like, I don't anything about that.

2:01:02You'll find a community of just great people. That's right. That want to help. Like there's this, this photographer named Rick Winner, who is a super well -regarded famous dude. He's taken these iconic portraits of like Christopher Walken and a whole bunch of other celebrities. And you know, my wife somehow, you know, was referred to him to take headshots of Derek and I for the opening of our center. And his style is that he gets to know you and talk to you as he's photographing you. And he was so moved by the work and just meeting, I think it was really meeting Derek, right? That, you know, he kept in touch with me and said, I have this great idea for a project that I want to do.

2:01:56As you get people out, when you find out you're going to get them out, I'd like to go interview them in prison and then capture sort of the contrast between them being inside and then them getting out. So it seemed pretty ambitious to me because most prisons aren't letting some photographer in with a film crew to film people. And he was super persistent. And you could see that, like, how inspired he was to do it. And his agent told me, you know, I've never seen him this dedicated to something. And you speak to the guy and he's sort of infectious in his in his humility, you know, there's something special about him.

2:02:46So I floated the idea to Bruce and Bruce was like, yeah, let me, you know, let me meet him. So he's now embarked on creating a documentary about Bruce and our first three releases. So he sent me a trailer to this documentary that he's working on with Bruce. And I think it's a good sort of summary of what we've been talking about. Would you mind if I share it?

2:03:18I don't know if you're familiar with the parable. The dandelion and the wild orchard? Well, the wild orchard, it only thrives in growth in a particular environment, right? A dandelion can thrive in just about any environment. So sometimes if you snow outside and you see a dandelion just coming through the grass or the crack in the concrete. So I decided that, you know, I had to be that dandelion. I was going to thrive despite where I was at.

2:03:50When they took him, they took me. I get him back. Whether you guilty or not, you still want to honor the potential of that life that was lost. Despite being not guilty, incarceration was always in some way trying to honor the potential of Travis. You got to be there to support him no matter what. He deserves everything that's going to be coming to him.

2:04:42Oh, my sisters and brothers, hugging my mother and seeing my mother is going to be the joy of my life and seeing that it's going to be the joy of my life, right? Mommy! Mommy! He said, any time for school, he said, Mommy!

2:05:11Man, I can't even describe it. I'm excited. I feel the love and the support that I'm just at free. I don't come so when I feel free.

2:05:28I felt like a load was lifted off my shoulder. Like, I can relax now. I realized that a lot of times I've been tense. My shoulders are up but they just were able to just drop down. Without me acknowledging it and realizing it, it just dropped down and I'm just so happy to see her my mother and dad.

2:05:49So yes, I have tremendous regrets. The course of my life, I've learned that. I can have those regrets and still love what I see when I look in the mirror because I've done the work to become better than I was yesterday. I'm still able to to live and do and be better and do better, right? Because if you want more, you've got to be more.

2:06:24Just those quotes right there, so powerful. Whew, that's a tear -jerk. It's amazing. Yeah, all right. This is the trailer and when will this whole thing come out? It's a work in progress. For those of you that want to help, look, there's a go fund me for Bruce Bryant. It's interesting. You saw the T disappear at the end. I always knew him as Bruce Bryant with a T at the end. That's not his name. That was the name the prison gave him. They added a T. That was why it disappears at the end. So there is no more Bruce Bryant. That was the prison version of him. He has an Instagram. It's at Bruce .brion .br .yay and 24.

2:07:19On his Instagram, we will have a link to his go fund me. He has any little bit helps. Bruce is trying to get back on his feet. There's his go fund me. So, you know, and for those of you that want to get involved in any way, I try to answer as many of your messages as I can. I have a lot more help now because we have the center. But, you know, whether it's writing to the district attorney of Alameda County, Pamela Price, reaching out to Bruce and making a donation on his go fund me page, even just dropping him a nice line. So many of the people that were there the day he got released. You know, it's almost like hanging around with you where you never know if there's going to be someone interesting hanging around.

2:08:11We were talking to one of the comedians last night. He's like, you know, I'll be hanging out with someone and not know that they mapped the human genome.

2:08:22I'm bringing some weird people at Greenland. It was the same thing like on the day of Bruce's release. I would see these people and say, how do you know Bruce? He reached out to me because he saw he read an article about the work I do or I reached out to him because I read an article about him. And, you know, what you come to find is that he is somebody that holds on to relationships and good people and, you know, those good people will continue to get him through.

2:08:59I just can't thank you enough for giving us, again, this platform. And I vow that every time I come on, I'm going to have a new person to hopefully inspire people and, you know, keep telling these stories until the grains of sand on the beach start to keep on, you know, build. And maybe we'll be on here talking about a new community center in Brownsville, you know, or a program that we start to help teach kids a different way. Well, we're not going to stop. Well, I can't tell you how every time I come on here, I tell myself that's the last time I'm crying. But thank you so much for having us. And it's my pleasure.

2:09:44Launa, so tell these stories. It's just, it's really important. Yeah, listen, I never anticipated in a million years that this podcast would be anything remotely close to what it is. And if I can take what that is, that platform and use it to highlight things, like what you're doing. And what you've done, I mean, there's nothing, nothing more important. Thank you so much, Joe. Thank you. Nothing more important on what you're doing. Get my voice out. You know, giving us a voice to share with the people, inspiring and encouraging people to get involved, contributing to humanity, man, because it's going to take all hands on that.

2:10:28Yeah, I think you're right. You know, the best of us got to help inspire the rest of us. And you're one of the best of us, man. Just like, Josh is, man, you guys are some of the best of us. And it's going to take y 'all to inspire the rest of us. And, you know, you got a team player here, man. I think what we're talking about when we talk about community, when we're talking about having people in your life that that inspire you and have people in your life that you admire. And this is also a part of that community, this podcast, all these podcasts, they're a part of people's lives. Even if they don't know anybody like that, where they are, they're filled with despair.

2:11:11They're in a place of no hope. You still know now that it's out there. That's right. It's out there. There's going to be a reality is we need each other. We need each other. What are we, if not, but for the collective? We're nothing. No one knows more than you when you get put in a hole. It's the worst thing they could do to you. I mean, you're locked up with murderers and convicts and the worst punishment they could give you is leave you alone. You're beautiful, man, Joe. Really? It's all you. So you, both you guys, I just want to extend my gratitude, man, and just, you know, my oceans of gratitude to you, man, and deepest appreciation for.

2:11:51I have the deepest appreciation for you, too. And hopefully this is just the beginning, and we can continue to do 100 percent more worse. And Josh and I be back at the Comedy Club again. We just laugh all this time. We need to get some more laughs. We got to get Domingi to do a set. Yeah, yeah. Do some magic up there. I think also it's like, you know, these conversations are infectious. They're contagious. And they spread. And people understand things now that they didn't understand before. Trust me, these conversations that we had. Some people have very callous views of things that don't affect them personally.

2:12:26And this gives them an opportunity to see things in a very different way. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Let's wrap this up before we cry. Again. Before we cry. Bye everybody. Bye, everybody. Thank you.