Welcome welcome welcome to our expert. I'm Dan Shepherd. I'm joined by Monica Mansou Hello, we have a really special guest today truly truly truly special someone I think that everyone will be in awe Monica and I certainly were the amount of growth this human being it's Accomplished she is really an inspirational person her name is Susan Burton and she is the founder and executive director of a new way of life Which is a nonprofit that provides sober housing and other support to formerly incarcerated women Nationally known as an advocate for restoring basic civil and human rights to those who have served time Burton was a winner of a ARP's prestigious Purpose prize a CNN top 10 hero. She has a book entitled becoming Miss Burton from prison to recovery to leading the fight for incarcerated women Susan was incarcerated six times You know she was taking the brunt of a very flawed system and what she has done in the wake of that is just mind blowing Yeah, I've never met anyone like her.
Yeah me either. So please please enjoy Susan Burton So on these bonus Fridays, we love to give shout outs to black owned businesses that we are fans of so Monica Who do you have today? I am going to talk about red Bay coffee. Okay today red Bay was founded about six years ago In Oakland that's a neighboring city for us.
Yes, it's a Bay City. Yeah, so they took a little bit of a beating during COVID Oh, I imagine yeah Yeah, so I really want to support them and put that out there that if you're interested in some delish coffee check out red Bay coffee So the guy who founded this kibacante He's a visual artist and a former activist who organized protests in San Francisco following the 91 beating of Rodney King Mm-hmm, and he says he's inspired by the Gandhi quote be the change you wish to see in the world So let's give red Bay coffee a boost. Yeah have a nice hot cup of red Bay coffee before I tell you my company I just want to first thank Oprah magazine who put together a really compelling list of 25 black owned businesses that you could support Right now and because I'm in the mood for a glass of it I want to talk about a Jorn tea house now calling all tea drinkers This is from Oprah magazine We guarantee a Jorn tea house will be your cup of well, you know as a young girl one of Latonia cochles fondest memories was sipping Sleepy time herbal tea with her mom So when she entered a business planning competition in high school It was only natural that she created a proposal for a tea company more than 15 years later Cochle is now the owner of a Jorn tea house and artisanal loose leaf tea company offering hand blended beverages Sustainably sourced from around the world and a Jorn tea house in case I'm muddling the pronunciation is spelled a D J O U R N so please check out a Jorn tea house Susan if it's okay with you I pulled a little clip from a documentary that was made about your work Just to kind of set up how impactful it is so if you'll indulge us I'd love to play like just a minute long clip. Okay, Rob drive take it away to the bus station in you know I give you two hundred dollars and they got your ticket out of your money and put you on a bus and You're just hit it to wherever and so I arrived downtown LA It's really scary really scary and I look like I came from prison, you know I was just looking you know jeans and paper bag Everybody knows that you're from prison They know by the way you look and they know you got approached by everybody there were people asking you if you needed a ride Tell you that you look fine Drug addicts people living that life and you know they are it's so easy to get lured especially if you're scared and Can be ours I was scared and I felt like I was just standing there but naked and in that Place to go I really did and I called this Burton and I told her I said I received a letter from you And you said for me to call you and that you would pick me up and she says where are you and I told her she says I'll be there in about 15 minutes and she came and picked me up So coming to a place and be able to drink out of a glass and not plastic sleep on the mattress and not middle and to have food have choices Just stuff people take for granted.
It's so sweet. She's a good lady. I'm glad she picked me up Oh, man, what's it like to hear that? I mean, it's really really sweet kind of about tears in my eyes because Angela emailed me last week and she wants to Start a place in Texas.
She's in Texas now She's married and she she wants to start a home for women down in Texas Oh, she was here in February and I told her go get a nonprofit status set up your mission really think about what you want to do Get a name and all of that and she did it. She says I have my nonprofit status You know, so one of the things I've been doing is helping other people to replicate our model Yeah, she knows first-hand what it's like. So if she wants to go pick up women from the bus station that again released from jail Let's get ready to do that I guess when I heard that clip and I saw her talking in the sincerity in her eyes as much as you can know it on an intellectual level to hear How many people have zero options? They're alone on planet Earth and it's scary and for you to have written her a letter and for to have just one number to call And for her to be brave enough and vulnerable enough to call.
Yeah, it's just incredible and I'm pretty in awe of you So I think we're on the same road. I'm 16 years sober. You're sober. Yeah.
Yeah, I'll be 23 23 Yeah, the fourth young and 23, honey Yeah, October next month. Oh man. Are you from Southern California? Yes, I am I was born in Los Angeles County in East Los Angeles and so what was it like what happened and what's it like now as we say?
Yeah, well, it was pretty hard and confusing as a little girl I should have been you know dressing up my dolls and playing instead. I was trying to figure out how to keep the dress on me Yeah, yeah, I just want to say I do share that I share some sexual trauma And it's pretty life altering. Yeah, I mean when you learn the statistics that like 80% of us ended up addicts It seems pretty obvious that it's pretty destructive. How old were you?
I think I was around three or four and my mother would drive to Camarilla State Hospital with my auntie to pick up my auntie's boyfriend And I'd be in the backseat and I'd be terrified and I'd become you drive down a long a long driveway And the driveway is lying with palm trees and when I got to palm tree 22 I just knew he'd be walking down those steps and I was trying to fade away never faded away But at about three or four he would come home from Camarilla every weekend and he would harm me. Yeah, abuse you abuse me And my wife has read your book I haven't had time yet to do it But now I'm very interested in you and I do intend to read it that your book is called becoming Miss Burton Yes, becoming Miss Burton from prison to recovery to leading the fight for incarcerated women It's unbelievable Monica and I were talking about it before we got here and I said you know if you look at the gap between say who Brad Pitt started as and Who we became whatever amount of real estate that that took to go from that to that That's a tenth of what we're talking about from you to have gone from six times incarcerated to now doing the work You're doing it's one of the most staggering turnarounds of anyone we've interviewed as we talk about this I just I had one thought that I'm curious about do you feel less vulnerable in writing than you do speaking about it? Or do you have a similar level of comfort speaking about it as well as writing it? So I think it's about even across the board something happened for me when I got sober that I no longer felt vulnerable I felt safe and for the first time in my life that I had ever felt safe and with that feeling of safety and protection I just carry on I go forward and I bring as many forward with me that want to go Yeah, you probably feel a little bit more in control when you're sober and you're in charge of your own decisions Where as you weren't for so long?
I guess you know from a little child I never felt in control and feeling out of control perhaps the drugs and the alcohol I guess calm me down or mass the pain and the trauma of not being in control and being subject to so much violence abuse Sexual abuse and trauma but when I got sober that whole surrendering thing You know I felt like I was in the love and care and protection of a higher power Uh-huh your story is I know it so I know about that when you're a little girl And then you I have to imagine when the first time you used was there a sense of like oh my god I can cope like for me it was oh man. This is the feeling I was searching for I had different techniques You know I think a lot of people in your situation or when I was in you develop like a tics I had a lot of ticks you know I had OCD stuff I did to try kind of control what little sliver of my life I could but when I when I drank alcohol I was like oh here's the optimism I could only experience optimism through getting drunk It was my first kind of feeling with it and I wonder I know you've had stages of your addiction But it must have felt good right out of the gates when you tried that yeah I think that it was fun at first and it was relaxing and I could sort of escape and then you know It gets progressively worse But I think that it was the escape that I was looking for from all I was feeling inside Yeah And so one part I know is that on top of this childhood you had everyone who's had a child's worst nightmare happen to you Your five-year-old little boy was hit by a car and I know that or from what I've read about you that that kind of Escalade of the addiction, but was it already present prior to that or did that yeah? I had already experimented. I had you know played around with marijuana I had had sniffed cocaine a couple of times.
I had drank, you know fine kobosier So yeah, I had engaged before but when I lost my son when he was killed I guess couldn't hold anymore pain Yeah And I took a deep dive into a big bottle And I tried to drown all of the pain and the grief and the loss and the rage because it was a policeman Uh-huh who was driving the car that killed my son and it was the police department and nobody ever even acknowledged my son I never remember anyone acknowledging my daughter tells me at the funeral that the chief of police at the time Dural Gates came up to me and said he was sorry, but I don't remember it. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure you're just in a coma I don't know I can only imagine yeah Just frozen with loss, but I imagine you're caught in a loop where you're just like this can't be and I must be able to reverse time and fix this Like just accepting that that's a reality is almost impossible I mean there was anger that the policeman never ever even got out of his car Oh, it was a loss that my son is gone It was just a lot going on and I didn't know what to do with it every time a black man is killed today The sadness of the loss for me wakes up Yeah, and I can kind of feel the mom what she feels as a result of whatever the incident is But the loss is the loss and so I feel it every time every time the policeman is not held accountable Yeah, I feel it I would imagine doesn't just feel like do you think we're all just disposable like you can just hit one of us and you don't need to Get out of the car and you don't need to call and apologize like I guess that's that would be the only thing I could Interpret from that well, you know, I had to do a lot of healing and forgiveness work for me Yeah on all of the incidents all of the loss all of the tragedy and you know I tried to think about what could have happened in the incident of that policeman how he's trained And what their protocol is while it doesn't make real sense to me that they operate like that But that's the way they operate, you know, that is the way they operate that is the culture of the system Police is the system exactly so I had to do some big work to get beyond that And I had to get beyond that to enable myself to do what I do today to have empathy to have compassion to have smarts to have Heart to have determination to have commitment. Well, I'm sure you've heard in our group that resentments are like drinking poison Hoping your enemy dies.
It's exactly it ends up killing you, right? The last laugh they get is that you let it burn you alive and then the other part is that I wanted to be sober And I wanted to be the best that I could be yeah And until I could address that until I could let it go to the best of my human ability Then I don't think I could have moved on I couldn't have been who I am today and I felt a lot roll off of me Yeah, and there's no tempting man. I like I love holding resentment I like to have a little vault in my head where I keep track of everyone's indiscretions so I can hold them accountable someday I had this little incident at home where I had a bunch of bed spreads and I was gonna take over to the houses and they were in my car And I left in my car overnight and someone broke my window. Oh boy and took them all out I didn't get mad.
I didn't get angry. I just thought why don't somebody give that person a job? So you're walking around the night doing windows and I and at that moment I said, you know something has happened for me Because I'm really supposed to be mad about my car window being broke I'm really supposed to have a have a grievance there. Yeah.
Yeah, this is objectively offensive for me I guess a lot of it too is just muscle memory and it's practice But the thing that I've come to really embrace is when someone does something to me I got to say one of my first thoughts now is not that I was wronged is Gratitude that I don't have to live with the thing that they just did right now once your son was killed You start entering the prison system, right? What was your first experience waking up in a jail or a prison? So after my son died I would go to sleep longing for him and I would see him in my sleep and I didn't want to go to sleep So I would stay up until I was exhausted and one of the times I stayed up the police woke me up as I pulled over in my car And took me to jail and it was quite chilling quite chilling experience I'm thinking I'm going to jail and I'm thinking about the loss of my son as I'm going to jail with the people that kind of like killed my son Yeah, and you know, they put you in jail and it's so dehumanizing and so hard and yeah, you know So inhumane you lose just everything I had to try to turn off and I had learned to turn off his little girl right there disassociating disassociating Just be walking around in my body, but not in my body disconnected to all the senses that say, you know When they strip you out of your clothing and search your body you have to be somewhere else because it's an act of violence It's an act of abuse. It's an act that happened so many times before you've lost control of your body yet again Yes, I just read this great book I don't know if you've read it called the body keeps the score have you ever heard of that book?
I've heard of that book, but I haven't read it. Oh, man I recommend it so much as someone who grew up with a lot of violence a lot of trauma learning how your body stores that what it does Your brain and how rewires things and yes There's a little bit of a chapter about the doctor and his road to studying this and he had worked at the VA hospital for a long time And he was saying that he started noticing at the VA hospital several times a day someone would completely lose their composure You know a patient they'd scream at a receptionist They'd throw stuff they'd thrash around and what he started observing is that a lot of these people that have had really bad trauma for the rest of Their life every little thing feels life-threatening You know that you're back in that situation where you were too little to defend yourself And now this little thing it feels to you like it's your life's on the line And you'll never let someone take advantage of you again and that your reactions are just so over the top as is mine often were I have to imagine as jail and prison there must be so many people in there that are also survivors of great trauma and their Mechanism to control themselves must be greatly diminished was there just tons of chaos and other people having a hard time I mean you had these different personalities in the jail You have the people who want to control the jail You have the people that want to be in with the people that control the jail and you have the people that just want to Sort of be invisible within the jail, but you know there was not a lot of reactionary stuff in the jail Or in the prison because you'll be in control right there's no where you can go with it except to the whole and nobody wants to go to jail Within the jail right nobody wants to go to solitary There's some time there's fights and breakouts and misunderstanding, but you know, it's not like it's a rampant thing Anyway, it wasn't like that while I was going to prison. Yeah, I haven't been in 24 years now That's a good stretch now when you got out on your sixth time You entered for the first time a recovery home and that experience was completely mind-blowing to you, right? And it was the opposite of all your experiences in prison and you use the word humane It's like the first time you had been treated humanely Yeah, and you must immediately recognize like oh that jail isn't set up to rehabilitate anyone It's not set up to help anyone get some tools.
It's probably just making everything worse which would explain the really high recidivism I can't say that word Recidivism is what that's a hard one Recidivism, you know, I think it helps explain that But can you tell me like what that was like to enter into a place where they were genuinely wanting to help you get the tools? You know, that was the place where the safety descended around me and around me and I was able to Ultimately pick up my bed and walk it was a place in Santa Monica It was by the beach it was a place that was well-resourced and the people were friendly carrying Compassionate but stern right compassionate but really clear and stern about what I needed to do if I wanted to recover and it wasn't a command It was an opportunity. It wasn't I had to do but do you want to do and I say it was like a buffet of well-being And whatever you wanted from the buffet, you could partake in it. You could get the baloney or you could get the prime rip I'm making a little baloney on top of that prime But you know, I mean, you know wherever you are there's people that are doing things and people that are not doing things Of course there's opportunity to do the things good things So so as a result I was able to get weekly counseling for the first time in my life I was introduced to the 12 steps.
I found a sponsor out there. She's still my sponsor I made friends. I went to art shows people invited me places. Nobody was inviting me any place by the time I got there Nobody was inviting me but the prison they wanted me back Yeah, I'm not my left prison guard said burden with keeping the bed for you And I said I'm going to get a job and he said the only job you'll ever have is in prison.
Oh gosh So what I want to say is I'm going back all right I'm going in the morning I'm going to pick up a woman and bring her to a new way of life I'm going to take her to freedom So you leave this recovery house or maybe you haven't even left But you're introduced I would imagine to the concept of service right as part of our program Yes, we serve other alcoholics and we're there for people and then I don't know about for you But for me I learned that while I'm helping someone else It's hard to think about myself and all my problems are really just thinking about myself and all my bullshit needs That don't even need that freedom I used to get from getting drunk exists within service because I can too busy focusing on the other person to obsess about myself Now was that your introduction to service was the 12-cell I was at Claire. Yeah, I've been a bunch of their fundraisers Yeah, yeah, I was at Claire and I saw people coming and selflessly giving of themselves on a regular committed basis And they were happy. Yeah, you know, they were doing it happily Yeah, and I never had saw a demonstration of the altruistic unselfish giving of oneself Yet to me that was even a red flag like if you come at me with a smile My first thought is what are you after? I don't trust that well?
I'm safe now And I'm learning about how people live in other places Mm-hmm other than South LA and I see the genuine this one thing that you develop when you have the type of life that I have Is a sense of who people are who's real and who's fake who's real whose memory? Correct, you know, so so I saw them as authentic and I wanted it, you know And so they say if you want what we have then do what we do. Yeah, I love it a program of attraction Yeah, so at what point though, do you decide? I'm gonna actually turn that service to people that are getting out of prison that are taking these bus rides They're getting dumped next to skid row and they got $200 of which they just blew some on the bus ticket What clicked for you that you decided that was gonna be your thing?
I went back to Santa Monica I was the secretary of the meeting the first meeting I ever stood up in and said look what alcohol has done to me Shaking and trembling and I went and I worked with this woman and she asked me to move in and I saved all of the money That I made working with her and I mean I say to the point I spent $10 a week Well, you saw my say $12,000 in the 90s, which is that's hard to do man. I was yeah I was trying to save money in the 90s any easy, you know, I was so disciplined and I didn't understand why I was being so disciplined Spending but then the idea came when talking with my sister-in-law and another woman named Mitzi and let's do something I'm reflecting on what happens in Santa Monica people don't go to prison for the things that we went for in South LA People are giving help there's resources. So I said we got to make a resource. Oh my god.
I never dreamed I was taking on so much But it's all right and it isn't that crazy it goes back to what we were talking about earlier about the systemic nature of all this stuff That the idea that in South LA that concept doesn't even exist or at least was completely off your radar And I'm sure most people's like that's so telling I mean I asked the judge my third time going to prison I told the judge what had happened. I asked for help could there be any help for me and he sent me to prison and To think that there could have been and there should have been something different I mean today what I went to prison for is a misdemeanor Well, also you have a health issue right if I have a health issue prison's the last place on stopping Yeah, the last place. Yeah, so you just start showing up at bus stops, right? Well first I get a little house I take three of the 12,000 them days you could put three thousand down on the house and get it So I take three thousand dollars and I think 3,400 and I put it down as a down payment on a little house and I call it a new way of life There was a little place in the big book where they talked about you would be having a new way of life And I had a new way of life and I wanted to spread it I wanted to show other people how to have a new way of life And I'd go down to the bus station where Angela talked about getting off the bus And in those days I'd wait every day the bus comes in at a certain time twice a day and women from prison are walking off that bus And it's not like we were strangers.
These are people I knew these were people just like me I did time with them and I offered them to come to a new way of life And you just start letting people live in your house and my first question is was there any fear associated with that because again, you know I was a scumbag I ran with other scumbags I wasn't super excited to get back in the ring with them I know the possibilities towards it was there any fear for you to be inviting people into your home? There was no fear. There was only hope hope for something dear friend What I realized is I could have and I should have had that opportunity that I got out in Santa Monica So I brought that to South LA to support the kindness the commitment the consideration I didn't have as many resources as they had in Santa Monica But I had as much love as they had in Santa Monica. Well, you have more goodness in your pinky than I've gotten a six-three body Yeah, yeah, you got an abundance of that now But there's a lot to learn there's one thing inviting people into the house and maybe giving them a warm meal But then you just start adding layer after layer of services and help and you're so competent that you could have figured all this out I mean let's just start with figuring out how to be an NGO right to be a nonprofit How did you figure that out?
So I sat down and I googled some stuff and I had a friend who helped to put it together And then when I sent the paperwork off so you send it to the state first That's before you can send it to the federal government and you get a state Incorporation and it's just the articles that you write down and I did the best that I could put those articles together It was enough to get the muster and get that certificate from the state of California And then I put those articles with articles of incorporation Mm-hmm and I sent those to the federal government and then I went back and forth and back and forth if you call the people They'll talk to you. They probably want to talk to somebody Instead of just you know, push your paper all day So I went back and forth with this guy and he eventually sent the nonprofit status it arrived on Christmas Eve get out of here What we have feeling like that's a lifetime highlight. It was good But see I got the nonprofit because this church told me I needed it if I wanted to get bus token Oh, okay I wanted bus tokens to give to the women because I was running out of money to send them everywhere I'm a bus and I went to this church called thing first AME. I heard about it a bus program They had and I asked them for bus tokens and they said I had to be a 501c3 and that's all I wanted was bus tokens Oh, yeah, I can't I mean not a cat or a worm I mean not a cat or a worm, but they're not open up the surprise right?
Yeah Pandora's box Pandora's box So that 501c3 says opened up so many other doors and all along the way when you talk about putting layer on top of layer There's been these spark points to head be in a direction that would allow me to do my high powers wheel in my life Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare We are supported by better help if you think you may be depressed or you're feeling anxious stressed or overwhelmed better help offers License professional counselors who are trained to listen and to help you can talk with your counselor in a private online environment at your own Convenience from wherever you're comfortable And I think this episode in particular sheds a light on tools and learning to better oneself with the help of other people I don't think nearly any of us can do it by ourselves We all need help and better help is such a great place to find that help better help counselors have expertise in a broad range of areas such as anxiety grief depression Relationships difficulty sleeping trauma loss and more better help can give you access to help that may not be available in your area Simply fill out a questionnaire to help assess your specific needs and get matched with your counselor in under 48 hours easily schedule secure video Or phone sessions with your therapist plus exchange unlimited messages everything you share is confidential join the 1 million plus people Taking charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced better help counselor better help is an affordable option and arm Chari's get 10% off your first month with a discount code DAX get started today at better help calm slash DAX That's better help h e l p calm slash DAX talk to a therapist online and get help we are supported by calm now 2020 has been a lot And we could all benefit from less stress and more sleep in our lives It's so important to take care of ourselves and invest in our well-being during times of anxiety That's why we are excited to partner with calm the app designed to help you ease stress and get the best sleep of your life And when you relieve anxiety and improve your sleep you'll feel better in every part of your life calm has a whole library of programs designed for healthy sleep Like soundscapes guided meditations and over a hundred sleep stories narrated by soothing voices like Stephen Fry Kelly Rowland and Laura Dern I want to have a story read to me by then I use the calm app every night you do I do I love it And does it put you in a peaceful glorious state of mind? It really does it makes me feel really relaxed going into my bedtime over 85 million people around the world use calm to take care of Their minds and get better sleep for arm cherries calm is offering a special limited time promotion of 40% off a calm premium subscription At calm calm slash Dax that's 40% off unlimited access to calm's entire library and new content added every week get started today at calm Calm slash Dax that's calm C.A.L.M. calm slash Dax Now just asking for help come easy to you That's a real hard thing for me and clearly it sounds like it from your story I can hear that you were vulnerable enough to ask people to help you I can't do it all and it's not all my responsibility to do it all Uh-huh, you know, we have a shared responsibility around safety around health around creating opportunity and healing It's not all my responsibility. So I will ask for help and you know, I got tough skin if you say no, it's okay.
Uh-huh But I hear they say don't say no to Miss Burton She's gonna keep calling yeah, I guess what I come it's not unreasonable what I'm asking for yeah And how did the needs of the women leaving prison differ from the needs that men have? What are the unique hardships that women are facing generally when they get out? So one of the things that we know is that when men go to prison the women stay there any time you see a Visiting line at a men's prison go to a women's prison. You don't see that type of line.
Oh, we're the worst We are the women are abandoned when they go to prison the children are removed and they are just about abandoned the man Usually goes on and gets another woman or what have you yeah? So first of all the woman is alone without any supports. She's vulnerable just because she's a woman you heard what Angela said I felt buck-necked Yeah, I had nowhere to go and I had nobody but anybody was waiting and ready to pick me up and then usually we as women I feel like I'm the grounder and I'm the healer and I'm the kind of caretaker of our community of our health of our well-being and That's my responsibility So I'm trying to get back in the role of my whole responsibility But there's nothing to hold on to mm-hmm and then my children are gone and I have to earn my children back through the court system Mm-hmm And that's really really difficult to do so, you know We have a whole campaign that we've launched called give me my baby back Mm-hmm Kristen my wife was telling me one specific story from your book becoming Miss Burton where a young woman had left her child in the car while She ran in to get I don't know diapers and stuff yep and got three years in prison for that That's England Archie not some classes on parenting or not the help she needed I think she had postpartum depression during that time and yes, she got three years She didn't get the help has she been in Santa Monica has she been white? Yeah, she'd have probably got the help that she needed because I saw that happening when I was in Santa Monica I would also argue if she was a man if she was a man and went into the store There's this kind of you know misogynistic yes responsibility that you know, they don't make us take on they're like Oh, yeah, you had to run in and get some you know, whatever the hell you had to get you know I never thought about that, but you're right.
Yeah, the bar so low for us two confessions I want to tell you something in grit came back to the new way of life She is our civic engagement coordinator right now right now She's over with eight people that she is directing to do some proposition work We were trying to get back to vote for people. Uh-huh. She's gotten all her children back Mm-hmm and when she got back to a new way of life her 14 year old had been passed around the group home And she and the 14 year old was pregnant. Oh, she's a grandma now So she had all this stuff yeah to take care of and overcome and to bring her family back together But with support and her own determination she was able to do it I think it's so important to hear your story because I think a lot of people feel wrongly So that the people don't want help that people just want to be on their own path and that they would do those things anyway Even if you offer them help and you are proving that that's not true if you give someone a little support They run with it.
Yeah, I think that's really powerful Yeah, you know as someone who's sponsored people It's always so heartbreaking when you come to love them and you connect with them and then they go out and I'd imagine in your case It's just amplified by if they go out. It's also like delaying if they'll get their kids back It might be back to prison. You must have had your heart broken a million times along the way. Have you?
I've been disappointed, but I've learned that people are human and we make mistakes Mm-hmm and we have to see people through that too. Mm-hmm. None of us are perfect human being Yeah, so a lot of times I see so many possibilities in people But supporting them to see those possibilities is what we want to do and they might not do it immediately Yeah, that don't mean that we throw them away at that point. Yeah Yeah, we might back up a little bit and let them have their experience Yeah, but still they're praying and hoping and trying to be a positive force You know, you can send energy all around the world So you send them some positive energy or what have you but you leave room for humanness.
Yeah now Let's let's go through some of the just incredible results. You've had so California has the highest recidivism rate got it That's only my 11,000th attempt at it At 65% of paroles will return to prison within three years or jail and You're a new way of life success rate is 78% Wow or it was when I at the time that I read that number Yeah, that's that's so encouraging right you would think with that kind of data that you could convince people This is the path, you know I think people are really looking at what we've done over the past, you know three four decades and that they are Convents that we could and should be doing something different I guess it's shifting the machine to understand it's a new day So the machine doesn't get it as quickly as people do but we're still working towards shifting that machine to just a little support Yeah, you can make a difference the average cost to keep someone in prison in California is $47,000 a year So you have an option to pay $47,000 to keep someone in a cement box to make them probably worse to ensure that the vast majority will return or The services you're providing cost a third of that It's one third and then the outcome is they're productive and they put money back into the system And they then help other people and even if you've got no heart you're the Grinch Let's say you're the Grinch who stole Christmas fiscally. This makes a lot of sense doesn't it? Yes for me I was like, oh, I lost her I Okay, so now this is from 2015 so I'm imagining that it's even greater than this but as of 2015 you have helped 850 incarcerated women you had returned 160 children to their parents.
What are the numbers now? Do you know them off the top? You're at I do so over 1200 women 1200 Talk about like the one day at a time right one day at a time you can add up to 23 years one person at a time Yeah, 1200 isn't that mind-blowing? Yeah, and over 300 children Wow, I mean it's beautiful Sometimes I walk into the house and the kids run over to me and grab me around the leg and then that some of them Can you hardly say my name and you can see in the eyes that they know that I'm the reason They've got to come back with their mother and their mother's grateful.
It's just beautiful and what started with your one house How many houses now do you operate? We have ten now ten the same events in the pause society just gave us a convent Oh my goodness. Yeah, that's what I said to They gave you a convent where that out in Montebello. We transformed that into a reentry home It just opened last week.
Oh, no, we modeled it and painted it and made it real bright and cheery and oh, it's beautiful And how many people will that be able to house it? It has nine bedrooms and it has a place for four children So nine women and four children each woman has her own bedroom there and a supervisor She's got to come out and do a community garden because it sits on like acres and acres of land. Can I park an RV there? It's got a huge parking lot.
Can you tell the story when we talk the other day on our zoom? You gave us an example of some of the day-to-day things like the woman who needed a cell phone Yeah, I think it's important to hear the little steps it takes for people to get what they need and when you told us that Chris and I were talking about it for a long time after so can you share that story? Yeah, so it was a woman Spanish-speaking woman She just knows a little English and she had dropped her cell phone in the toilet as we all do She was scared She had made a mistake and she was about a week out of prison and her friend had brought her the cell phone And she was scared to tell the friend that she had dropped the cell phone in the toilet because she thought she'd get punished And she was just really really terrified So I let her know that it's okay to make a mistake and that punishment was not gonna happen to her that punishment was a behind her what she had now was support and I took her to the store and at the store the guy says well the cheapest phone that we have is $180 a phone that she dropped in the toilet was $329 So she reaches into her purse and she pulls out the money and she's ready to pay for a new cell phone And I says wait a minute does that phone have a warranty and the phone had a warranty the one she dropped the way she dropped So just those types of things happen all the time all day long people are over where I'm just walking into a store Oh, it drives me nuts. I get in these arguments with folks and it's like well Why can't they do x y and z?
Why can't this person blink and it's like well? I'm gonna guess that when your dad took you to the hardware store you watched him interact with people and you Learn some things and if you don't everything's new. Yeah, yeah, everything's new and different and really really fast So they have to learn the computer. They have to learn all of the gimmicks, you know women say oh I just got a cruise I'm fixing the corner cruise girl.
You ain't gonna go on a cruise. They finna get your credit card information No, you don't have any back stuff. Yeah, and then yeah, and then a language barrier I mean if you put me in Moscow and I got to buy a phone I went to college I don't think I can do it, you know, yeah, that's incredible So you got these tiny little life skills you got to help people and have the patience to walk them through it and hold their hand And sometimes that's all someone needs we have to care enough about the well-being of our fellow man And I mean we could put it in the like the word of patience But we just have to care enough about one another yeah now your daughter was 15 when your son died and imagine that that relationship Was probably strained by everything that's happened. And how is that today?
It's good. Oh, man. Yeah, it's really really good We're going up the Palm Springs for our birthday on September 24th. So her birthday is the 26 of September My sister 27 and we're going up to Palm Springs for about a week and chill out.
Hopefully us five is open Yeah, and then I have a granddaughter and all of us are going up together And does she have any interest in being a part of your organization a new way of life? Well, when I first incorporated she was a board member. Oh, okay And she did that for a while about seven years. She caters for us.
She brings food to us. She likes to cook So that's how she gets involved. She actually wants to run be a part of the HR department But you know sometimes you family and business and good Yeah, so I want to stay big a good relationship with her. So yeah, you want to be a mom.
I want to be mom. Yeah, I want to be boss Yeah, yeah, that gets sticky. I'm currently my daughter's teacher and that's not going very well Spend all day trying to get her to fill out three pieces of paper. It was yeah Really quick just to go over because I really really want people to go to it's a new way of life.org Yeah, that's the website.
Yes, and people can donate or get involved there. Yes a new way of life.org is our website You can go there and see all the things that we're doing one of the things I'm really excited about is building out this national network What we've done at a new way of life is we've found a solution to Reducing the recidivism and reuniting families and bringing folks back into the community in a way that keeps all of us better off So I've developed a skill set and expertise and now I'm training people Yeah, 17 states two countries and we're helping people to model reentry in their respective communities We need these places all over the nation and some services that people might not even realize that people need help with that You're providing is there's legal issues, right? So trying to get people's records expunged maybe so they have access to different jobs We do that free you do that free we do that free we'll help you get a license if you're Barded from a license because of a criminal record. We have free legal services.
We help with family child reunification We have attorney and three staff members that help you get your children back and all of our services are free and you have a distribution center, right? Where you've given out millions of dollars worth of household goods. Yeah, not anymore about two years ago Yeah, about two years ago. We stopped the distribution center, but we used to have our own bad bathroom beyond right We we distributed oh about three million dollars of products every year it was robust you have programs to teach people Community organizing you leadership development classes and then not policy advocacy.
What's that? So like we're trying to now pass proposition 17 It was a policy the legislature passed it to go on the ballot to restore the right to for people to vote So we want some policy around family reunification women go to prison and when they get home They have no more parental rights. We want to stop the clock on child reunification timeline what they call fast track adoption We want to stop the clock on that so that would be some policies that we would introduce but you know trying to make a better world There's some police accountability policies that are in the legislature now some police training policies in the legislature trying to do things The way we do it in america do policy to get it done Now I just want to end with this observation, which is you are capable of so much It's really astounding and I think many of us I suffer from this and it's shameful You know, I'm in a position where I could do probably a ton and yet I feel overwhelmed At times by the different social problems we have or I I will feel like I don't have a big effect and to see you build this thing from nothing With everything against you with a criminal record with all these things have you shocked yourself at what you're capable of Yeah, you know, sometimes I might be getting introduced and by the time the introduction is over. I'm almost crying Sure, sure, you know just to hear what has happened and what people are saying and it's just a gratitude that swells up in me Yeah, well, that's the real self-esteem, right?
That's the real one. That's the real one You know for people who are listening I just hope someone would think what you've accomplished and what deficit you were up against and just how much you've been able to do One step at a time learning about something else tackling that little by little this thing grows into this amazing organization I just hope everyone feels as inspired by it as I do because it's truly truly remarkable And I have a lot of gratitude that there's people like you and that they're not all like me. I'm so grateful To you. You know, you're a good guy.
You're a good guy. You know, it's a right to transform to thank you, Susan It's a real honor. I'm in awe of you and I hope people go to a new way of life.org We commit that we would like to make some donations So you should expect our support and put me in your rolladex. I'll be one of those people.
Yes I'd love to be of service to you. Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you so much, miss Burton.
All right. Thank you. Talk to you later Bye