Exclusive Interview with Lori Rothschild Ansaldi | Stolen Voices & The System Podcast - Strangest Fruit

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello, everyone. This is Bob Ross. Today, we're going to do a nice painting.
No, this is Dinante Farmer, the Strangest Food Podcast's second season,
and we're here with the wonderful Lori Rothschild.
And is there another name that I need to add on there?
My husband's name. He likes me to use it sometimes. It's Lori Rothschild and
Saldé. So I am a married lady.

(00:20):
My maiden name is Rothschild, and you don't drop Rothschild. Watch me.
Put it in there. I don't want to know. A podcast called Strangest Fruit.
Music.

(00:59):
So, tell me about yourself, and I'll tell you about me.
Yeah, I was going to say I'm more interested in your story. I don't think my
story is that interesting, to be honest.
We'll hear your story first. Mine is, I mean, it's the same old story over and
over again that everybody's heard. I believe that. I believe that.
Born and raised in New York, from Long Island, New York. Got into television

(01:23):
production right after college.
Wanted to be in entertainment. Didn't know where I wanted to be, quite frankly.
And I ended up landing a position at the Discovery Channel.
And I started a little network back at Discovery called the Travel Channel.
I was a production coordinator there when they first bought the network.

(01:45):
You started the Travel Channel? I love the Travel Channel. I used to watch that.
I'm not going to say when I was a kid, but I used to watch it.
You can say it was a kid. I was a kid when I started there. Right.
Yeah. It was either the Travel Channel, Girl Wind, or the Crocodile Hunter.
So you add up those years right there. Well, I appreciate you watching us back in the day, but it was a,
it was this tiny little network that Discovery purchased and they needed the

(02:10):
first, you know, lines of staff to come in and start, you know, building a network.
So I was one of the, I was very, very blessed to be chosen to be on that team.
And that started like my entire career in unscripted television.
I went from Travel Channel to Discovery Channel, did a bunch of projects there.

(02:30):
That's where I became an executive producer. I sort of grow through the ranks. I was there for 13 years.
And then in 2010, I moved to Los Angeles to open a production company out here.
It was an Australian and Canadian-based production company opening a Los Angeles office.
And I was scouted to do that, which was really incredibly fun.

(02:52):
I always say that television production, and I think most jobs probably feel
this way, it's kind of like you're building a toolbox.
You know, in entertainment, you don't really know what you want to be.
And people will say, I'm not sure. Maybe I want to be in film.
Maybe I want to be in reality.
Maybe I want to be in audio or animation.
And I think that I had the unique opportunity of building a toolbox around the

(03:16):
people that gave me the ability to sort of watch what they did.
So I kind of built my toolbox by coming and opening that production company.
I was able to understand what it's like Like to build out, you know,
places like we're in right now, you know, putting edibles together,
staffing, and then developing content.
And then the creative sort of kicks in from there.

(03:38):
Let's go back even further. Yeah, of course. Did you have this creative thought
as a child? What was your childhood like?
I've always been a creative thinker and I've always been a creative person in general.
I come from a family that believed in education.
So to say I wanted to be an artist, my dad would sort of be like,

(04:01):
you know, copying his hat a little strange because he's like,
you know, I've, you know, sort of worked my whole life.
But my dad was, my dad was a cop.
So I grew up around law enforcement my entire life.
He, my mom actually worked at JFK airport for a long time.
And so I was like in the middle of like law enforcement and aviation and travel.

(04:23):
It was like this weird, like little thing. Yeah.
But it was always, you know, creativity was definitely something that my parents were fine with.
It wasn't like they were like, no, you have to be a lawyer or doctor or something like that.
But there was this sort of drive for education from myself that I really kind of aspired to be.
So when I started, even in high school, I remember doing production there,

(04:49):
like plays and things like that.
But I was always behind the scenes, never in front of a camera.
And I really liked the business. I kind of wanted to be in the business of entertainment.
That's what I thought I wanted to do. And that was because I had a cousin that
worked at Columbia Pictures.
And I was like, she went into Manhattan.
You know, we lived on Long Island and she went into and took the train to Manhattan

(05:11):
every day. Shout out to the cousin at Columbia.
Yeah, Sharon Gabriel. She's many years retired.
But she worked for Columbia Pictures and then she worked for,
I think it was Mark Goodson Productions, which was a big game show company.
And I remembered visiting her in Manhattan in her office when I was like,
you know, in high school and they had Emmys on the wall.

(05:32):
And I was just like, I was like, I want to be in this space.
I want to work here, you know, and I had no idea what I want.
Again, I didn't know what I wanted to do.
So I sort of, in my mind said, I want to be an entertainment lawyer.
That's, I always knew that I wanted, it's interesting. I wanted to be a creative and I liked law.
That's what I liked. That's what I wanted to do. So I went to,

(05:55):
I did two years at the State University of New York at Farmingdale.
It was a two-year school back then. It's now a four-year. So I did my business
degree there, associates.
And then I went up to University of Buffalo, which is code for Siberia.
Code for Siberia. Literally. It's like two feet of snow at all times. Like had no idea.

(06:16):
Mm-hmm. Yep. So I froze my behind off there for...
Made you move a little faster, though, huh? Yeah. I would say. Every day is faster.
I would say. Or not at all, because you're like, I ain't going to go freeze to death.
But I did my, I finished my business degree there and communications with the
intent of going to law school.

(06:38):
And then I started pre-law classes at UB, at Buffalo.
And I loved being in a law library, but I hated reading.
I hated writing and doing. I think I was taking like a torts class or something as my pre-law class.
And it was just a lot of writing and reading. And I was just like,
wait a minute, this isn't what I really want to do.

(07:00):
And I want to be careful now because if I commit to law school,
that's three years of my life that I'm going to not use in other pursuits.
So I ended up coming home, and I remember telling my dad that I decided that
I'm not going to do law school and that I wanted to work in entertainment.
And I'll never forget it. He actually had these, like, total,

(07:24):
like, New York cop from Brooklyn had, like, these, like, mirrored dark sunglasses
sitting at our kitchen table.
And he pushed them down on his nose, and he said, you're going to be poor for the rest of your life.
Such a dad, huh? My dad, literally, I have a Jewish father. I was just like,
I was like, so I literally at that moment, you know, I just knew that I had to prove him wrong.

(07:50):
I had to prove my dad wrong because I didn't, I really wanted to stay on a course
that I was just going to be happy.
I had this idea, and I still do, it's still a mantra of mine,
is that if you love what you do, you never work.
I never go to work. I come to have fun with my friends and I get to make TV

(08:11):
all day. How cool is that?
So that was really my mantras. I just want to love what I do because I want
to do it for a long time and I want to be successful at it.
And then years and years later, Travel Channel, I work at the Travel Channel,
and I was the executive producer for a show called The World Poker Tour,
which was televised poker on the Travel Channel for years.

(08:34):
And I flew my father to Las Vegas, and he was walking around with his little
credentials on, and he's like, my daughter, she's the executive producer. My daughter. Yeah.
He was like in Brooklyn, too. So he was like, my daughter is the executive producer.
Yeah. So he was proud in the end. He actually passed away a few years ago from diabetes.

(08:58):
But yeah, he was super proud in the end. He didn't care that I was not a lawyer at the end.
But it's funny how it dovetails into what I do today because now I'm doing a lot more in law.
Did you ever like sneak up on him sometimes or send him a card like,
hey, dad, I love you. Guess what? I'm not broke.
Yeah, he sort of knew. I remember like there were like little things that he

(09:20):
would see like or he would be like, you know, he I don't know,
like a car that I would rent or, you know, that I, you know.
I would jet around for Travel Channel. They were, he didn't know like how production worked.
And of course I was traveling the world, you know, I was traveling the world
on their dime. I wasn't paying for it.
He's like, my daughter, she's, you know, she's in China with Samantha Brown or, you know.

(09:44):
So he kind of had an idea that I kind of made it in television at some point,
if this is what, you know, making it in television is, which I'm really proud of my career.
I think I've made it, but I'm sure, you know, my dad thought working with Samantha
Brown was going to be the epitome of it.
That's it. Yeah. But there was one, actually, one of my first jobs,

(10:05):
I was an intern. It was my senior year of college.
I worked for the Ricky Lake Show.
I don't know. You were too young to remember. I love Ricky. Oh, good.
Ricky used to be down in the farmer's market in Englewood. Shout out, Ricky.
I like Ricky. I love Ricky Lake. Yes. And she had this amazing talk show.
And in high school, I worked in salons. I used to do nails in a nail salon through

(10:28):
high school. That was my job.
And I worked for this amazing salon, and the woman who ran it did her hair in Manhattan.
So I'm like, wow, you work at the Ricky Lake Show? Can I intern?
Can I work for free? Can I do anything there?
And so I ended up working there, and I was asked to do, and please don't ever

(10:50):
try to find this. Don't ask. Don't. I begged people not to find it.
Someone has, I know. But there's an episode where I, where I,
they put me on camera to, it was like, I'm going to dump you.
I'm dumping my boyfriend today.
It was like that. I mean, that's basically what was the topic of the show that day.
And they had me come out with a huge Tonka dump truck and be like, you dumped.

(11:15):
That was like my first ever on camera. on camera don't ever find that clip i
promise i i i don't want to ever see it but sent to you by the end of the day yeah thanks.
Yeah. But I remember doing it, and I got fan mail for it. And so they were like,
the dump truck girl became like that thing.

(11:35):
And I remember being on a train coming home from, I guess it was from the Ricky
Lake show. I think I was still there.
But I was coming home, and it was at Penn Station. And the Madison Square Garden,
I think, had a circus or something going on.
And there was a lot of kids on the train with me heading back to Long Island.

(11:56):
And a little girl goes, there's the dump truck girl.
That's it. That's it. That's where it ends. Yeah.
So you left Ricky Lake because you became a dump truck girl.
No, my internship was over, but I never did the dump truck girl thing again.
Because I was like, that's going to follow me.
That's funny right there. But I did. It was a huge Tonka dump truck.
I kind of wanted to bring it. It should be in my office now that I think about

(12:18):
it. I should get a big Tonka dump truck. A dump truck?
Yeah. Just fill it up with all type of memorabilia. You know,
because it's like that moment, right? I think it was the first time I was ever on camera.
So who was your favorite? You had Ricky. You had Jenny Jones.
You had, of course, Maury. Who else was in there? It was somebody else that
was in there. Jerry Springer.
Jerry's just in a lane of his own. Jerry's, Jerry's. You had those major people

(12:41):
coming out there. I mean...
Again, I think I'm much older than you are, but the first one was The Richard Bay Show.
Didn't see The Richard Bay Show. Okay, The Richard Bay Show,
if you can find a clip of that.
That was the very first Jerry Springer show that I can remember.
And it was, he was the precursor to it all.
And he literally would be like, what you all know as Jerry Springer,

(13:05):
he did it in a small studio, I think in like New Jersey in like Secaucus or something.
And he literally would look into the camera and be like, where did they find these people?
Like he just couldn't believe that this was
his job like he was just like really like they
were lunatics they were all just yeah yeah but
i but ricky lake was definitely i remember

(13:26):
watching her and then she was my favorite but i
loved the richard day show i would i
would record i loved it so being from
new york got a question for you because that's
that's where that's where what's what's her name what's what's the
judge name judge judy there we go i love judge hold on
because we're talking about dogs earlier uh-huh and you know how

(13:46):
she feels about a certain type of dog i don't actually i don't
know anything i've watched judge judy for
years in prison i loved judge judy until she
got her ass on the sorry judge judy just this month what happened she said the
entire pit bull breed needs to be just put down that's such that's such charge
she keeps clips on her desk that she shows people like you had a pit bull the

(14:07):
dog should be put down and i was like all right now i lost love for judge judy
like all right whatever she's probably she's I mean,
that's just a vicious breed and they should be exterminated.
I mean, that's I mean, there's a lot of people that I mean, that's just to me, that's racism.
Dog racism. It's it's literally it's like, you know, it's the owner.

(14:30):
It's like, you know, that's where it comes from.
No, I love pit bulls. Pit bulls are babies. They're wonderful.
They're wonderful. Like they're such great animals.
But I get that a lot because I have German Shepherd. bird and so
i a lot of people will say oh my god your dog
is vicious i'm like my dog is far from vicious my dog
protects me you know i'm not i'm not a this is not going to sound good but i'm

(14:56):
not a huge fan of the animal kingdom in general all right which animals mainly
shark who's wrong with i don't like sharpie it's a baby i saw jaws when i was four,
That fucked me up, dude. I'm telling you, I saw it when I saw it.
Anyway, it ruins, I blame it a lot on myself because I've allowed it to ruin

(15:21):
my experience with the ocean.
Like, I don't like, I grew up on a beach and I don't go in the ocean. I just don't do it.
It scares the life out of me and I've tried.
You sure there isn't a black man living inside you? Because we don't fuck with the water.
I've heard that about myself before, I'll tell you. I can go to the oceans,

(15:45):
but I can't go into the ocean.
I don't do the ocean. That's not for me. The other, I don't like cats and I don't like kangaroos.
I have a really hard time with those creatures. And I'll tell you,
a cat, I don't like animals that hide on you.
Dogs run right up to you, you know, and they say hello. Cats,

(16:05):
they're in your closet. They're puking in your shoe. It's not for me.
These are not, these animals are not for me. And don't get me started on a kangaroo.
This is the worst creature on the planet. Does it beat you up?
Like it'll stand right in front of you and punch you in the face.
Did you see the kangaroo drowning the dog?
Yeah. And dude had to go out there and like beat the.

(16:26):
I mean, think about, this is the work of the devil. We have a deer-headed, bouncing,
fighting, balancing on my tail, and I put my people in my pocket. I'm done.
I'm done. Do you know that if a kangaroo is being chased by,

(16:47):
you know, another animal, like if they're threatened,
and they've got babies in their pouch, they will take their baby and throw the baby. To the? Yeah.
Devil. Oh, Winnie the Pooh has created Tigger into, or whatever. No, Roo.
It's Roo. I was going to say, Tigger was a tiger. Tigger was a tiger. Roo.

(17:09):
That Roo is a sweet little thing. No. They're a terrible creature.
Well, how do you feel about platypuses, then?
I don't like them either. That's a weird-ass animal. Weird-ass animal.
Catfish. I don't like shipping animals, you know?
A cat and a fish. I don't get that. Well, catfish, that's a whole fish.
But a platypus is a duck. It's got whiskers. It's a duck. Right.
It's an otter. No, what's that thing, the flat tail?

(17:33):
It's an otter, yeah. No, it's an otter or a beaver.
Oh, a beaver. It has a beaver's ass, a duck face, and it has a poisonous thing on it.
Anytime you put two animals, like a deer head, a bount, and a rat, I'm done.
It's not, people find them to be lovely creatures.
There's certain stuff that I don't mess with. I don't mess with koalas because

(17:56):
koalas are dangerous. They'll kick your ass.
Yeah. Yeah, and they have venereal diseases or something. Yeah,
they get all types of shit in their eyes and stuff.
Get some gunk out your eyes. You get syphilis, right? Isn't it syphilis or something?
Can we get a fact check? The koalas got syphilis?
Yeah, I think they passed syphilis. Oh, I'm going to check right now.
Some sort of disease that you can get from them. That's nasty. But they don't move.

(18:18):
They stay in the trees. There's a whole fire going on out there,
and a koala got burnt, and he just stayed there. I'm like, bro.
Yeah, it's stupid. Get up and move. Yeah. But one thing I do love is my dogs.
Dogs are, dogs are. But you said something right there, last but.
You let your character, D-Face, affect how you feel about sharks. You're right.

(18:38):
I said it's my fault. It was actually not your fault. How old were you when
you watched it? So. Right. It's my parents' fault.
Eileen Rothschild. Eileen, sorry. It's your fault.
What is this? No, she didn't let me. I snuck down there watching it.
I was watching it. I don't know. Yeah. No, but I agree with you.
It is what you bring to the table with an animal, right? It's your experiences,

(19:01):
your trauma, like you said.
And that is exactly what I've witnessed with my German Shepherd.
If you've had experiences with a breed or if you've been bitten by a dog or
large dogs intimidate you or whatever it is, that's on you. It's not my dog.
Right. And you go back to Caesar. He just simply said, it's a language barrier. Yeah.

(19:23):
So the person who can't communicate with the dog or they're having a problem,
you're not speaking their language. So, of course, they're just completely ignoring you.
And then he says, with the people, if you're going to speak to the people, you go to Saudi Arabia.
And you don't know anything of what they're saying, the way that they treat animals.
You have to find some type of common ground to be able to communicate.

(19:43):
So I need to learn how to communicate with every single person,
learn about every single thing. That's why I called it racism before.
Think about it. Judge Judy has no idea about anything about a pit bull.
Because if she did, she wouldn't say what she said. But because she's bringing
her own trauma and fear to the table, right, put that on Jewish people,

(20:05):
put that on black people, put that on any person of color. It's the same thing.
It's learned. It's all learned behavior that we then project. Right.
Question is, humans have the free will to learn. Right.
But the question is, what are you going to do? What is the action behind it?
Right. That's right. Oh.

(20:26):
You're a judge. You have this big
platform where millions and millions and millions upon people view you.
And one message. And you're the highest paid judge. So people are really going
to watch you. Right. Because they want to study where the money goes. Right.
To project that on a platform so the whole world and all of that can see.
It's like, wow, you just damnated one specific group of animals to just,

(20:47):
all right, they're done with.
Yeah. Just imagine if she told them. Answer Donald Trump.
That is a subject right there. It's real tricky.
I mean, I'm just saying. I mean, you can say that about anyone who has a platform.
Right. And they spread their version. And that's what social media has given

(21:07):
everybody a platform, right?
Right. We're doing it right now. We have a platform that we're using to communicate something.
And the larger the megaphone, the bigger the platform, the larger that message
gets spread. gets out into the world.
Judge Judy has a responsibility with her platform.
She just damned an entire breed of dog just by what she said, right?

(21:29):
Same thing with, you know, Donald Trump is the epitome of, you know, disgrace in my opinion.
But, you know, that's the responsibility we all have as we communicate anything into the public.
And he's kind of, he's real forceful with his antics because you come to me
right now, Because he's done this before with the people getting out of prison.

(21:52):
I'll let this person out, I'll let this person out, I'll let this person out.
And it's kind of like you put people in a chokehold with your antics and your power.
It's like I see a lot of celebrities. I got a list of celebrities.
I got a whole list where I've seen them and we talk to the same people.
You will go on social media and defile yourself.

(22:14):
You'll defile your people. You you you create so much content and do this,
that and other based on somebody else's life, because I know that's not you. We know that's not you.
Or you you do it for the purpose of, I don't know, to sell your integrity.
I call it soul selling. I tell when I see people doing things like that,
you're selling your soul for a jelly roll.
But what happens when the person that has the power like Trump or any other

(22:37):
president, like we can go back to Bill Clinton. Right.
You can never get me to go vote for Bill Clinton, his wife, any of that type of stuff. Why?
Because after over 20 years of pushing mass incarceration, Bill Clinton was
the one that said, I don't even think we need three strikes.
We need one strike and you're done.
The same man that sent a mentally disabled kid to, he went to see.

(23:00):
The kid was so gone. He said, when I come back, can I finish my chocolate chip cookies?
Mentally incapable of understanding what was happening
having his last meal and just generation
after generation but when a guy like trump says hey i'll let
your family out of prison yeah if you come to vote for him yeah what do you
think people are gonna do yeah of course like you really just forced our hand

(23:22):
like all right you're gonna let my person my family member out of jail so the
the powers that be and then and the hypocrisy yeah it was the just the level of
hypocrisy you've been in the industry for for a long time and it's something
that i'm getting into it's not something that i wanted to get into you know
when they say you have a certain calling this you just it's going it's going

(23:45):
to lead you that way my book was written so i'm just,
going along with the pages yeah and to see people we have christopher stone
on my killing these my brothers these my guys and what a lot of people don't
know is that we were once worse enemies If you look at,
if you look at gang stuff or wherever you want to look at, we're worst enemies.
Worst enemies. We're never to get along. You're from this side of the tracks

(24:09):
and I'm from this side of the tracks.
It's really heavy into the rap music and stuff. And when I talk to these dudes
and there's a lot of careers that they've helped a lot of men get.
So a lot of people that have reached out to these men and said,
oh, you know, this, this, that or the other, but it's no follow through.
You'll get on Instagram, social media, and post a follow-through,
but in all actuality, it's all cap.

(24:32):
It's a slap in the face to these men because it's like, this is the life that we actually live.
You just portray it. It's entertaining. That's right.
But as a person who has years in the industry, how do you not become calloused?
How do you not become bitter? How do you not go up to the people's face and
tell them, man, you are fake, you are phony or do like Damon Dash did.

(24:54):
What's the guy, Lee Daniels? You owe me three million dollars. Right.
Do I have to really come up here on the stage and put your ass out here as being
who you are and knowing the truth? We don't want to be hero killers.
Right. The world sees you as a hero, but I know the truth behind you.
Yeah. So how do you combat with that?
By not doing it myself. You can't fix other people and you can't tell people

(25:19):
how to live or, you know, you can just be the example.
Again, I don't have a huge platform.
You know, I have 20,000 followers or something like that. 20,000 followers.
That's funny. That's funny to me. I mean, that's what I have.
I mean, I'm an executive.
You know, I'm a mom from Calabasas. I have, you know, I run a television production, you know, company.

(25:46):
But, you know, when you, everybody has a platform is basically the message, everybody.
So my teenager all the way to Kim Kardashian, right?
It's like, or Ariana Grande, I don't know who's winning at this moment, or it could be Kylie.
I don't know who's number one on Instagram these days, but it's,
all of it is responsibility to yourself, right?

(26:07):
So for me, doing what I do, I do unscripted reality television,
which has a connotation to it.
And there are shows out there that I would gladly watch with a bowl of ice cream
that I would never produce.
I don't need my name associated with adults behaving badly.

(26:27):
I just, that's not, that's not creating what I wanted to do when I first got
into this business, which was documentary television.
And I'm telling you this story because that's, it's the same thing for,
you know, anyone who gets into whatever job that they're into and they have a platform.
It's like, you do it to the best of your ability, but you also,

(26:49):
we can't forget to have a moral compass.
This right you know because in my
opinion shows like black ink
or see that's why i like miss that's why i like
you see she like she gonna get up here and say what the hell she
want to say is she gonna say it exactly yeah i'm gonna
jump over here and i'm gonna get straight to it this is how i feel
i just i mean to me it's part of people know this about me this is i'm not afraid

(27:14):
to say you know I watch those I would watch you know love and hip-hop or let's
just say like real housewives or whatever it might be I watch it but I could never produce that,
And the reason is because I feel like it perpetuates bad behavior.
Love and hip-hop and black gang perpetuates a negative black stereotype in this culture.

(27:37):
Everyone thinks that that's what black culture is. It's not what black culture is, you know?
Black culture is the black family that lives next door to me, you know?
By making everyone feel like they have, like, you know, these women have big
wigs or gold teeth and they're flipping tables or they're punching at each other
or whatever they're doing, and they're fighting each other, that's not helping

(27:57):
create a new conversation around black culture.
That's not something I would do. I don't want to be a hypocrite.
I don't want to be known like that. So yes, I do television true crime shows.
I do a lot of them. And really, those are a love letter.
If you think about any of the true crime shows that are on ID or Oxygen or some
of them on Netflix, whatever, you know, they are a love letter to law enforcement.

(28:21):
If you look at it, Right. It's someone tragically gets killed and the good guys save the day.
That's what that's what people want at a true crime television.
That is not a fair depiction of law enforcement. Right.
And I'm a daughter of one. Right. And until you, I have to balance that.

(28:42):
That's the reason why, and I'm so grateful that it happened to me the way that
it did, that wrongful conviction came as a story to me by mistake. take.
I remember someone sending me the link to the Kevin Keith case back in 2016.
And I was doing a show called Murder She Solved at the time.

(29:04):
And it was about women who solved, they're the ones that went out and solved
a murder because law enforcement wasn't listening to them.
So they took it upon themselves and became sleuths or whatever.
And she was from Ohio and she said to me, Lori, I know you like my story,
but you have to look at this one.
This is a guy named Charles Charles Keith, his brother has been wrongfully convicted

(29:24):
of murder, blah, blah, blah, this whole thing.
I'm like, remember, daughter of a law enforcement, was going to go to law school,
working in reality television.
And my first instinct at that moment was everybody in prison says that they are innocent.
My first instinct. I had no other thought process around it.
And she sent me that link no short of three times before I had a day where nothing

(29:49):
was on my schedule and I was able to click it.
And from that moment on, I became a criminal justice reform advocate.
Is that, you know, was that what she wanted from me? Is that what she was trying to do?
No. Was it God's hand in the trajectory of my career? Probably.
I believe the universe had a higher being. There's no reason I do what I do.

(30:12):
I still don't know why I do what I do.
But, you know, I mean, I do. I advocate for a great, not only for wrongfully
convicted people, but I'm also very heavily into reentry.
And working with prisons on that. Oh, that's something I would like to touch on.
So I think that's why I'm sitting here other than me hating kangaroos.
But anyway, getting back to like the whole platform thing, that's,

(30:33):
to me, that's the responsibility we all have.
Social media has created that
all of us have a voice and it's really about us, how we use it, you know?
Are there people out there that I can't stand listening to because I know better
than the public knows about them, that they're not nice people,

(30:53):
actors and actresses that I've worked with that are terrible humans?
Absolutely. Am I going to shout it out to the world? I don't care. They do it themselves.
Karma's a bitch, right? But I just don't want, I don't want my name associated with it.
So my platform and my, you know, what I was going to before about,

(31:14):
you know, Black culture, whatever,
my company, every project that I choose to do, the filter, if you would,
on if it's a big city project or not,
is it creating a meaningful conversation with the viewer?
What am I trying to project here? What do I want them to think about as they watch it? It's a medium.

(31:36):
It's a piece of art for them. That's what I got into this business was about.
It's really about documentary television and culture, right?
And travel channel. I really like exploring culture.
And so a couple examples. I did a show on John Wilkes Booth not too long ago.
I was contacted by people who said that they were related to John Wilkes Booth

(32:01):
and that he never died in the barn,
as history books tell us, that he actually survived the barn and that a proxy
was put in to show the American people that they caught the killer.
But he actually got away and he had a bunch of children and their his legacy
lives on like he lived for many, many years, which I thought was a really interesting,

(32:21):
you know, kind of investigation. Right.
So, an ex-FBI, actually, no, he's not an FBI.
He's part of the U.S. Marshals. He and I did the investigation together.
So it was on History Channel.
And what's really interesting, it's, yes, that's a way in to tell the Lincoln
story again, right? It's interesting to do it that way.

(32:42):
Through a, could history have lied to us kind of idea. It's a mystery.
But the bigger conversation at the time that that show actually premiered was,
it was really based. my gut was telling me that when is it okay for the government to lie to us?
Is it ever okay for our government to lie to us? Like Trump or Biden or whoever is in there.

(33:09):
And I was thinking at the time that back in 1865, you know, Lincoln,
you know, getting, you know, having a president and assassinated, right?
At that moment in time, the Civil War was just coming to an end.
And the Eastern Seaboard was basically burnt to a crisp.

(33:29):
We were a country that is trying to pull itself out of war.
And now you have the president assassinated. Or so they say.
Oh, he was shot. He was definitely shot. It's whether or not Booth,
the guy who shot him, got away with it or not, right?

(33:50):
So we know that Booth shot him at Ford's Theater.
We know that. We know he jumped, you know, from where Lincoln was sitting and
broke his leg and then went into the Maryland countryside to hide.
What we don't know, what we didn't know in the show is whether or not they actually
found him in that barn and smoked him out.
History tells us they smoked him out. Sounds a lot like Christopher Donner. Right, right.

(34:14):
They smoked him out of the barn, and then, you know, and they shot him and whatever.
They're saying he escaped the barn.
But history tells us that they got him in the barn and they brought his body
back and, you know, whatever.
And then they avenged Lincoln, you know, they got Lincoln's killer. But what if they didn't?
Would it have been so bad for the American government to simply put another

(34:39):
person in that position and say we got him just to keep the country at bay at
that time where the Civil War had just ended?
We were trying to get rid of slavery. trying to do all these things,
you know, it's an interesting conversation.
It's a meaningful conversation. What would you have done?
Back in those days? It was, you

(35:02):
know, to me, it's like I can see how that question could have happened,
how people would have thought that the country would have, I mean,
they lie to us every single day, don't they? Aliens exist.
Aliens exist. Aliens exist. Can nobody out there tell me this morning when you

(35:22):
couldn't get on your Instagram and your Facebook that, yeah,
how the hell TikTok working, but Facebook and Instagram not working?
On a, on a election, on a, during an election.
Mm-hmm. I know what's going on. Yeah.
I mean, it's just like, so anyway, all of my shows have to have that sort of
appeal to it. That's what I chose as my platform.

(35:42):
Substance. Any of my, any of my shows, well, I can give you that same sort of
reason. And that was a show that aired on History Channel back in,
I guess, 2020, I think it aired, right before pandemic. Yeah.
It's horrible. I don't even want to think where I was at during the pandemic.
I was in jail. Oh, no. Were you really in prison during it? Yeah, I was in prison.

(36:05):
And was that the lockdown safe for you? Meaning, did they take precautions? No, they killed us.
Yeah, they killed you. It was, first, they gave it to us.
So we watched it. We watched, I was in New Folsom and it was showing the news
and they showed that one cruise ship circling in the Oakland Harbor.
And they said, we can't let this cruise ship come on. They wouldn't let it dock.

(36:26):
And I'm sitting there with my sail main. I'm like, they finna bring,
they finna let it on. Watch.
Instead of just letting the people stay on there and fix whatever you got to
do, put a big bubble, whatever the hell you got to do to get it right.
They let the people undock in, I guess, Frisco or Oakland and shit just went
haywire. And then they had us still running around.
They came with the lockdown. So I was in, I ended up being transferred and I

(36:51):
was going to court, but they wouldn't let us go to court.
So I was sitting in the Corcoran hole for the entirety of the lockdown and all
the doors are perforated.
So if a CO comes in, if you fart the wrong way, somebody's going to hear you.
If you sneeze, it's going to travel through three different buildings.
And they came through and we noticed, I seen them like, man,
that dude sweating in our food.

(37:12):
You could see them sweating. They were coughing, sick, and visits had been canceled.
There were no visits. So the only outside interaction is with the nurses and
the COs, and it just swept through.
There was no medical aid. Nobody can, you already can't go anywhere.
And just to hear your next door neighbor gasping for air for his last moments of his life.

(37:34):
And if you get sick, they punish you. So when you get sick,
they take you, they strip you down, butt naked to your boxers,
and put you in some shower shoes,
and they walk you to the security housing unit, and they leave
you back there until it's done so if you die back
there it is what it is and being
in that dust bowl of kern valley new delano old delano corcoran sad f all those

(37:55):
prisons live they're all right there in that dust bowl so we'll watch the news
and just see the rising a thousand something dead here a thousand at this prison
and we're like what what do we do so it was Because they killed us.
I would say they did it. They covered it up.
Me as a person, I support certain movements, but I noticed that as a person

(38:19):
in prison, the prison population has a gray spot.
We're expendable. So we can die
off. You can come and test whatever medications you want to test on us.
You can test whatever chemical agents, mace, and combatants that you want to
do on us, and nobody's ever going to hear a peep about it because we're the
trash of the world or we're the animals.

(38:39):
Yeah. And it's a horrible thing that's easiest to see is.
To see it and then feel it because then you end up getting COVID.
So to see the die is dying and then you're like, okay. I get it.
And then you get it and to feel like your spine is being ripped out of your
back and to have cold sweats and heat sweats.
And if you're shaking writing the letter because you have the chills.
Yeah. And just to know that your letter may not never get to your family because

(39:02):
you have the celebrity killers.
You know, you have the guys that, the guy that had all his kids chained up that
was having sex with his kids. Oh my gosh, that's terrible.
So there are celebrities in prison. Yeah.
So they get so much mail at one time that it takes us two weeks to three weeks to get our mail.
So about time I'm hearing about Auntie Josephine and Uncle Leon dying.

(39:23):
Gosh. They're already in the ground. Yeah. It's months later.
Because somebody's, these people are sick.
They want to get paid. And he's a local celebrity that people want to get a hold of.
So just to see that. I never thought about that. Yeah.
That was, I mean, look at Charles Madison. They built an entire yard just for him.
An entire yard where he has gardens and he
gets to plant watermelons when he was alive and sirhan sirhan

(39:46):
they flew a man on a helicopter and built that spot just for
these men just for like who does
that the guy that killed bill cosby's son yeah they live
in the lap of luxury and the average joes you
walk around and do this or the people that
have touched kids yeah they get special
privileges yeah and that's something

(40:07):
that i want to ask you as a
mom as a woman and
as the daughter of a former police
officer how do you feel about that because
i i've seen the oprah series and i
was pissed i was like wow so they
you build an island you put

(40:29):
the rapists on the island rapists pedophiles you
say here you can live a normal life on this
island wear regular clothes and all this but you don't
provide rehabilitation and they
live there and they walk there and they ask the lady what is it that you do
she said well i take kids because i feel like i can help them sexually that's

(40:50):
the creation of the devil to me yeah i agree that's that that doesn't make any
sense and seeing people as a convicted person.
To see a person go inside the prison system and continually get out.
So you went in and you've raped this person or molested this person.
This is, I mean, I just came across a case, two cases. Mm-hmm.

(41:16):
Not the same. Not the same, but equally troubling. No, one's more troubling.
A white guy, New York, New Hampshire, somewhere up there, he was convicted of,
I think it's pedophilia,
but basically looking for little girls on the internet, getting their pictures.

(41:41):
I think he He tried to molest or he did molest somebody, whatever it might be, a child, a minor.
He was a father and a husband living a secret life behind the door, right?
And finally he gets convicted. But there was multiple photos of little girls
and who knows what he actually did, right?

(42:02):
Because they can't prove. Whatever was proved in court is what I was able to read, what I would say.
I don't know the rest of the story because we all know this more.
With those kind of people.
He got seven years. He got seven years behind bars.
Then there was another guy, an actor here in L.A. Not too long ago,

(42:23):
he was in that movie Superfly. Mm-hmm.
Kaylin Williams Walker. Kaylin Walker. He was also a rapper and whatever.
She was reading his story.
And his story is he came to L.A., really good-looking guy, had the world at his feet.
His music was working. and he got cast in a couple of movies.
He was linked to Halle Berry, I believe.

(42:45):
And he came into a lot of cash as a kid, early 20s.
And he starts doing what normal, young, good-looking 20-year-old guys do in LA.
He starts dating girls and dating girls and telling girls that he's going to
take them to dinner or take them on a photo shoot or whatever it might be. And.

(43:06):
If you look at the transcripts of the court, it looks like he's raped 30 women.
Raped 30 women. But if you look at or if you talk to him or if you look through
all the different pieces of that puzzle, these girls thought they were going
to get with a really good looking guy. And when it didn't work out, they banded together.

(43:29):
Here's a letter from one of the girls asking for a million dollars to clear his name.
And so and he by the way got 50 years
to life and they couldn't i i don't
even know if they were able to prove a rape 50 years to
life black guy 50 years to life i don't know there's just this there's i have

(43:51):
a i have a very hard time i you know i also think that that that case in particular
was happening during the me too movement by the way old white jury here in California.
And again, I wasn't there. I don't know exactly Kaylin's story,
but there's a lot of, there's just pieces of it that seems unfair.
How does a white guy with little girls on his phone and molesting children get seven years?

(44:18):
And then this guy that can hardly prove it.
And you could see, if you look up his name, there is a posting from,
I think, the Van Nuys Police Department when When they were actually doing that investigation,
they were like, if you ever met this guy and, you know, if you know more victims, call this number.
It was almost like they were scouting women to join the band.

(44:41):
Madam. Against this guy. What's the best way to kill a man?
I don't know. Assassinate his character. Assassinate his character.
We can go back to, let's look at the story of William Leitch.
Have you ever read the movie? Yeah, yeah, yeah, William Leitch, no.
Break down what's been going on with that. Let's look, remember the old movie,
Rosewood? Yeah. But I'm infuriated. It creates people.

(45:02):
Yeah. And then the message that it gave. Yeah. I've had my bosses,
white bosses, bring me into the office. Ray, remember, because I called him.
I was infuriated. I'm talking about pissed. Yeah, it's like,
I get upset, but when I get pissed is when I can't defend myself. Right.
Let me match the intensity. Let me give you exactly, if that's what you wholeheartedly

(45:23):
want, let me give it to you. Let me give it back, right.
But don't hide and do something. So it was, I worked a job for a while.
And my boss is a top guy, trained on all that stuff. And my boss said,
we need to talk to you in the office. I said, I don't know what the hell we need to talk about.
There's already been friction there. And I was like, yeah.
Such and such called and said that they quit. And I said, why?

(45:44):
No, first she called me and said, D-Don said, what did you do?
So I didn't do anything. I've been sitting right here doing what you told me to do.
She said, this guy called, walked off the job and said he quit because he doesn't
feel safe around you and he doesn't feel right with you being there.
She said, what did you do? And I said, well, look at the camera.
I've been sitting here the whole time doing my job.
I said, oh, we forgot. When the black man doesn't show up to work with a smile

(46:05):
on his face and being a jester and being everybody's entertainment and I'm taking
my work serious, it's a threat because you can't understand me.
I said, maybe you need to get more people here with a little more color and
get some people with the friends that they need to other than what they watch
or the little likes that they do.
Maybe you'll know how to communicate more and understand that some of us just

(46:26):
have a stern face. We're thinking, you know, they would quit and then their
girlfriend would call after because he couldn't win.
Girlfriend calls away from Africa where she's doing something with dogs and
says, I quit. Same story.
And she says something else afterwards. Yeah, I don't feel safe around them.
And at one point he tried to jump into my car and force himself in there.

(46:48):
And I sat and I said, wow, that's strange. And my boss said,
that's strange because you never told us about this.
And I said, when was this? When we're supposed to be working.
I said, how am I forcing myself into a car where I'm invited to,
where I have to go with a dog to go and train?
Then I thought about it and said, we need to have the football talk with you.
I said, what's the football talk? He said, you know, you're a black man.

(47:10):
You have a lot of tattoos. You've been in prison. You have a certain move about
you that can be intimidating. dating.
So maybe you should down, this is what they say, you should calm down on who
you are so people can feel safe.
And at that moment, I said, oh, I see exactly what it is.
So you face that. And then another, I have two of those stories right there.

(47:33):
I can look at it and be like, damn, this could have been me.
And the other story is when I speak about the whole rape and the sex offenders
thing, it hits home for me way more close than a lot of people.
Why? Because I have a sister who's meant to be handicapped who
was raped not only her but three
other kids and not only that this man lives
10 minutes down the street from me and I know where he lives and I

(47:56):
can't do a damn thing about it so you did this
one time two times three times four times and you
only got four years for it and to add fuel to the fire
is that she can never get that back and she'll never
understand what you've done but I understand what you've done you took advantage in
a major way yeah so i'm sitting in
prison and my mom sends me a letter and
says yes he's at that prison and i look out my back

(48:19):
window and i see him walking to work and he's on the other yard
so i feel different about and people
say well all the crimes are the same no they're not see when gang members commit
a crime against another gang members it's mutual why because we both know we
signed up for it right we both know what it is right but when you prey on the
innocent i had to walk a kid home the other day because a man was touching him.

(48:43):
And I said, do you feel safe? And the kid said, no. And this grown-ass man was
just grabbing all on him. And I chased him away. He turned around.
And our society is so fucked up of what we accept.
Everybody thinks it's some type of prank. Everybody thinks it's a game.
They think it's a joke to where this dude was hugging everybody,
grabbing them. And I'm like, y'all don't see this?
And then he grabs this little boy. And I said, what is going on?

(49:05):
He said, I was walking home from school.
I bought some chips because I want to make money.
Because obviously, you know, parents not there. we live in the ghetto
and he's like I want to hustle I said all right you feel
safe he said no I said you know this guy he said now you just start following me
he was like I don't know him from Adam and Eve so I said I'm gonna walk you
home and we're walking home all the little kids were outside I said all y'all
go in the house run and they all ran in the house all the adults stayed out

(49:29):
there look this kid was so scared that they ran dropped his keys jumped the
gate climbed the gate to his house left his backpack and ran in the house and locked the door,
and this dude's out here I'm sorry I'm sorry what are you sorry for the cops
only come when a crime is committed not to prevent it that's right so me as
a man of morale and dignity and substance not not somebody that's hey pull out

(49:51):
your phone and take a video of this right
i had to let him know if you touch him
again life is going to change right i had to be like that and if things would
have happened and i went to prison i'd have been complete and content with it
because at least this kid know that this man is not going to take something
from him you're not So that's why I asked your opinion on your viewings of that because it's strange.

(50:15):
It's a completely different, I mean, I find it very hard to stomach those cases
because I can't see the human behind the eyes in those cases. Right. I can't see it.
And I'll say the same thing for murder. I can't see the human behind a senseless
act of murder taking another person's life. I don't, I can't see that.

(50:40):
Do you believe a man can be forgiven for murder?
I do. What is, what is the act of senseless murder in your vision, your eyes like?
Well, it's hard to say, right? It's like, you know, what I call senseless makes sense to other people.
I don't pretend that I've ever been in the position that a lot of people in
this world has been in. I've not.
So you studied the law, so you understand the difference between killing and murdering. I do.

(51:06):
But I do believe that there is, I don't judge someone by their worst act.
I don't allow that to, I believe in rehabilitation of people.
For the most part, I do. I've seen really where in my gut, I believe that people can be rehabilitated.

(51:28):
It falls on them to be rehabilitated.
Is it possible? Yes.
I've worked with a lot of amazing doctors and mental health specialists that
work in reentry and rehabilitation on some of the most heinous acts.
And they've seen people change.

(51:50):
So I believe in it. I've also seen the other way where they don't want it.
Or they can't get out of their own way, whether it be a mental health issue,
whether they fall back into the same trappings of their life.
I've seen all of that. So I don't judge people for their own experiences in life. I just don't.

(52:18):
It's a very difficult thing to say that I can see a killing be justified.
I can't. That's why I don't believe in the death penalty.
You know, I have very stern opinions on that.
What is your opinion on death penalty? If you were to hurt my child,

(52:39):
I would justifiably in my head kill you and go to jail for it.
Thank you. finally somebody who has the fucking
understanding not am i allowed to
curse in here of course somebody has fucking understanding i have to
say it freely somebody has fucking understanding how this works so when
people ask go ahead because you made that was

(53:00):
the perfect sense of it all if it's me right
and you've hurt me and come after
my child that's the that's the epitome me right i
will take the responsibility and i will i
am fine because i'm taking it on myself right when
the government does it that's a whole separate thing in my opinion the government

(53:22):
gets it wrong so many times and this is a human led a human aired process one person you get it wrong.
One person, you've killed an innocent man, which we know they've done that before,
makes it that inoperable to me.

(53:44):
I have the understanding of... Oh, and by the way, I'm a Christian.
I believe in Jesus Christ.
Oh, huh. I'm a Catholic girl. Right. I cannot wear a cross around my neck and
say aye for an aye. Can't do it.
Right. Then I'd be a hypocrite. I don't, I don't, that's not what we were taught.

(54:05):
That's not, and so people standing
behind their moral code of Christianity doesn't work for me. Right.
Growing up in a Christian household.
Baptists, families from the South, you know, they fall into Freemason.
Oh, really? Yeah, my uncle. I've been to the— I love that.
You go there, and you stand outside, and you see, like, oh, why am I going to

(54:27):
this raggedy-ass building?
You go in, and you're like, wow, like, this is, like, it's some real court being held in there.
But very smart people, hardworking, like, for my uncles that I knew of.
It's fascinating. All of that
is fascinating to me. The books and just the learnings and the language.
Don't try to recruit me. I know there's some of y'all out there.

(54:48):
But the death penalty or just, well, let's go back to the murder and killing.
So growing up in Compton, I'm pretty sure whenever you meet my boy Lamont,
you're going to meet him. You meet Christopher.
Growing up, it's dog-eat-dog. Yeah.
If I walk down the street and I see nigga killer on the wall, how should I feel?

(55:13):
If I walk across the tracks and people don't even ask me where I'm from and
they just shoot, how should I feel? Right.
If I'm going to my household and I live in a group home where they put padlocks
on the refrigerators and I can't eat freely and I'm living like an animal, how should I feel?

(55:33):
If nobody cares about me and I'm just a child walking the streets,
why the fuck should I care about anybody else?
If I haven't tried to shoot it, you would do anything wrong to you and you try
to come at me and you keep on doing it and you blatantly put it on the wall.
Forget niggers. F niggers.
No matter where you go, you go to Long Beach right now. In 2024,

(55:54):
you'll see nigger killer on the wall. You go to Compton, you look over there,
you'll see nigger killer on the wall.
I was standing on the porch the other day. It's bigger than the gang thing because
gangs always go back to race.
Gang started because people were in low-income areas. They came from the South. It was impoverished.
The police were at the time coming, taking advantage of robbing and stealing.

(56:15):
So they needed somebody to protect.
So they would go out into the night and take stuff and bring it back to their
families. And everybody was together. That's what it initially started out.
And then one day in some fall or summer night, a train stopped in the middle
of Watts loaded with guns.
And then one day somebody figured out, hey, I know how to create cocaine.

(56:36):
And not that, no average person in the black community knows how to make cocaine.
That takes some science. That takes some stuff. So if I have all these elements
against me. Yeah. What are you going to do? And I got a gun.
Now as time passes, that was the way of a 12 year old black boy.
That was me. I can only speak for me, but as time passed and years passed and I look at.

(56:59):
But you didn't feel like, and, and, and I think I asked this because again,
I, this is not where I come from at all. And I'm not trying to pretend I know. Right.
You don't really have a choice, do you, when you're a kid? I mean,
shout out to Andre Spicer because Andre Spicer, he's the second district assemblyman down there.
One out of about 100, 200,000 dudes, he's a city council member.

(57:25):
Yeah. And when he ran for city council, they put illegal votes up against him.
Yeah. So what type of message did I send? I mean, you have a choice,
but then you don't have a choice. If I want to eat, do I go stand outside the
food bank that they might not have because comp and it's broke or do I go rob somebody?
Yeah. That was the reason why I started robbing. I was like,
all right, I'm tired of being in the Department of Children and Family Services. Yeah.

(57:48):
You'll pay somebody $4,000 to dope me up and keep me in the room all day,
but you won't give my own mother $4,000 in assistance to take care of me herself
if she knows me best. Right.
They don't care. So if I'm just a paycheck and I'm somebody's money,
why not just get out here and And grew up myself.
I'd rather live on the streets than live where somebody has complete control over me.

(58:10):
So, and then as you get older or, there's certain things that you just feel that you have to do.
It's the jungle. I mean, it's the jungle. I get it. It's the jungle, yeah.
It's kill or be killed. It's exactly what you said. Pretty much.
I mean, has things changed in Compton yet? Because in, let's say,
the early 90s, Compton was called Chopper City.
Yeah, the most AKs, everything was.

(58:30):
And they had about, I believe, if I'm looking at my studies right,
200-something murders a year to this current day, something like 19 murders a year.
So it was— And what was the change? What do you think was the change? What happened?
You may have taken away the guns and locked up the guys that were committing
crimes or who you thought committed crimes.

(58:52):
But what did you replace it with? I mean, are streets safe?
I wouldn't think, no. I mean, you left an entire city just left to— Shambles.
It's streets are tore up.
So are the murders just being committed somewhere else?
I mean, everybody's mom and daddy's locked up.

(59:13):
And then everybody was either moved out of Compton or left Compton.
It's just a place where it's just dry. Like, businesses are shut down.
It's just dry. It's hard to get stuff there. You can't, anything.
They tell you, when you want to come to Compton, don't ask the city to do anything.
Bring your own shit because we're broke. And don't ask, don't let them have

(59:34):
any control over the money because why?
Your money's going to come up missing or they're going to find a way to just get over.
It's just horrible. I mean, I see beautiful things. I see the horses. I see the people.
But those are the people. But if you're not going to get a people or anything,
then what? but it sits right next to LA.
You can drive right outside of Staples City. And that's what I'm saying.
It's like for a city that has so much to allow that to happen to our own people,

(01:00:00):
you know, and you have a lot, there's so much money here.
Money. You know, to allow that to be, it's like, you know, and that's why.
Fellas, we need to get a date where
we can take her. We'll take you down there. Yeah. I want you to like.
To drive down Long Beach Boulevard and see women butt naked,
butt naked, 15 bundle, huddles of 15 selling themselves.

(01:00:23):
Selling themselves, yeah. Little girls all the way up to the grown-up,
like it's like we in Tijuana or something, to see that right there and then
across the bridge to go, you can tell the line.
Once you get to the Long Beach Bridge, it's Long Beach Police Department.
No prostitutes allowed.
But from Long Beach Boulevard all the way to Watts, down that street, do what you want to do.

(01:00:44):
And you know to walk through
and see those i asked him i mean you all right and what's going on and they
like and then these chicks they're forced yeah they're
forced some of them you know some of them i explained it to my lady because
she's like why are they out there why do they do this and i was like there's
different forms of prostitution yeah you got the ones that are trafficked you

(01:01:05):
have the ones who feel like they're forced or they have the the mental capacity
not to get out of this lifestyle.
Some of them were just providing for their kids.
And some of them just have a dude out here taking full advantage of them,
and they're going to pay him. They're pimps, yeah.
And I asked the council member, why is this happening? He said, because it's the norm.
He said, I hate it. He actually said, he said, I hate to see it.

(01:01:27):
He said, because the cops don't care about the ladies.
They don't care about the women. They want the pimp that's sitting in the house somewhere.
But how are you going to catch him where there's cameras everywhere?
And they use the cameras, their own cameras against them.
But it's the school systems. It's just.
Yeah. It's a system that's designed. And then I look at all these people that

(01:01:50):
are from the city and that shit is.
If I had a multitude of rappers, basketball players and all that,
and they were from one place and they all left out and they never came back.
There's no reason why the Compton Walmart is the Compton Walmart right now when
it was the Compton Swap Meet.
They closed that down. I don't know why all these major, yes,

(01:02:11):
all the rappers out there, I hope you hear me because I've been saying this for years.
You built a Walmart instead of building a school of performing arts. Yeah, that's so true.
Health clinics. Yeah, there's so many other things.
Safe havens, but you built a Walmart and let Walmart come and gift you with
a stupid-ass game called Comptonopoly.
Oh, right. Right. Here, play the game to remind yourself of the city.

(01:02:35):
So it's just broken people. But there's good things going on like this.
We did a docuseries, and it really brought people together.
My boy Vince was there. So I was like, man, that was my first EP.
And my brain was hurting at the end of it. I was like, all right,
it's done. I'm ready to go to sleep. Leave me alone. Never do that again.

(01:02:56):
No, I'm going to do it again because I love a good fight.
Anything given to me easy, I don't want it. It's like, all right,
just like when your dad told you, you know, you're going to be broke for the
rest of your life. I'm that type.
Tell me what I'm not going to do. And that's enough motivation.
I'll be right back. Don't worry about it.
What is your viewing on the prison reform situation?

(01:03:18):
So, like I said, I got into criminal justice reform through the Kevin Keith
case, which was a big podcast on Spotify.
It was Kim Kardashian. is that the guy that was from chino that
they said escaped from the the no i well
he was on death row she went up there to see him but he was

(01:03:39):
oh different case i didn't work on that case this is
the case out of ohio kevin keith he was we we know he was he's been wrongly
convicted of a triple homicide there over 30 years ago now and we know that
because we know who the real killer And it's a terrible story of small,

(01:04:01):
white town America.
It was a black-on-black crime. They didn't give a shit about any of the people involved.
And it was a...
And it was a corrupt police department that they knew exactly what was happening all along.
They had corrupt cops working against the blacks there.

(01:04:22):
And he basically got framed for a terrible triple homicide.
Two women and a child was killed.
Two children were shot. They survived. It was a terrible, terrible, terrible crime.
But that case got me involved into understanding all of the different pieces
that can happen in a wrongful conviction from really bad police work.

(01:04:49):
I mean, such bad police work that if when I started looking at it,
I found things they didn't find.
I found police reports that they didn't pull in for discovery, you know, evidence.
Doesn't it upset you like this? It's like, hold on.
No, well, it did. You can't see this? No, no, no, it did. You didn't see this?

(01:05:10):
Really? Of course they did. Of course they did.
But they had blinders on because they wanted Kevin Keith to take the fall for this crime.
And when you're police, that you work for people who have been elected to their positions,
and that they get their jobs based on wins, and they are, you know,

(01:05:33):
in this case, not all, But in this case, a bunch of white boys that couldn't go to college.
Talk that talk, Lori. So they became cops.
And now they put a gun on their hip without ever giving them any training at all.
No sociology, no psychology, no nothing.
They come out of high school playing football, thinking they're hot shit,

(01:05:57):
to putting a badge and a gun on their hip.
They knew exactly what they were doing. It goes back to the origins of policing.
The new Jim Crow. She says it right in there. The new Jim Crow.
They didn't want the poor whites and the poor blacks getting together to come
along to cause an uprising to overthrow the people that have the power to be.
So they said, we need to give you a title. So here, we need you to go on patrol all day.

(01:06:19):
That's exactly what happened. They knew it wasn't me. I wasn't.
I'm not Sherlock Holmes.
It was all there. Nobody gave a shit. Why? Because it was black on black crime.
That's why nobody gave a shit they they put their head they wanted to get kevin
keith off the street he knew too much they put him away not only that but they

(01:06:42):
gave him the death penalty,
he was on death row and i talked to kevin all the time and he said to me once
i'll never forget it he said laurie they've already killed me three times he
i think it's two or three times he had his last meal. Can you imagine?
That's how close he came. So I've done that.

(01:07:07):
I've already signed away where my body was supposed to go. I'm dead.
How much more dignity can you take from a person who didn't commit a crime?
Was he a drug dealer? Yes, but that doesn't make you a murderer,
especially of a child and two women.
So that's where it started for me, that
I had to go down that path to be

(01:07:27):
able and what i really ask a lot of people to do
is to go down the path ask the hard questions
nobody wants to nobody wants to do it okay
then then that's going to be the legacy that they have in their platform but
my legacy and my platform won't be that because if you see something and you
know about it and you do nothing about it you're complacent you're just as bad

(01:07:50):
as those other people and actually when we talked to chris and lamont But I...
I sit there and I toss them. I'm like, bro, whatever it is, you finna come up out of it.
Yeah. Like, as much people as we reach out to and we don't get the response
back, I just use it as motivation. I tell them to use it as motivation. Right.

(01:08:13):
Tell them all we need is a few good men, bro. I tell them we need a few good men.
And everybody, they doing it for other reasons. Yeah. And your heart's not in
it. That shit backfires on you. It does. And you don't know how many people
are going to get touched by those flames.
So I tell them keep that shit a hundred. I'm going to keep it a hundred.
Because at the end of the day, what do I have to lose?
Let's really look at it. Yeah. You went and convicted some men of something that they didn't do.

(01:08:37):
Yeah. It's so blatantly, California's real blatantly disrespectful.
California's about close as Mississippi is with how they handle their law.
Blatantly disrespectful. So
disrespectful, it's like, okay, he was never identified, so fucking what?
This is a case, I'm dealing with a case right now, with a guy out of Oakland,
rapper, hugely talented kid. Hugely talented.

(01:08:59):
He was not there. He was not at a crime.
The killer went by a different name.
He was identified by a habitual and self-proclaimed, as being high that night,
drug user, black guy, red baseball cap, gray car.

(01:09:23):
So what'd they do? They found a black guy with a red baseball cap and a gray car.
That's all they have. That's the Pierre Rushing case in Alameda right now.
I just wanted to see him in Salinas. He's on a really hard yard there,
too. Pierre Rushing. Pierre Rushing.
He's from Oakland. He's from Holly, 77th and Holly. Bars can't order boo.

(01:09:45):
He's a great guy, really hugely talented, and a warrior.
And my biggest pain in the ass. He's my biggest, and I lovingly say that.
Because he calls me every single day just to remind me of his innocence.
Because he has to, because no one else is listening. And everybody else might

(01:10:09):
think that, you know, take that jail call.
I take them all the time. I have to.
They're there. I'm out here. Right? But Pierre, it was, the victim in that case is still a victim.
Dewanye Taylor was killed because someone thought that he stole their iPod back
in the early 2000s. Shot on the streets of Oakland, dead, kid.

(01:10:31):
And the killer had a moniker of the letter C.
Pierre Rushing doesn't even have a C in it. He wasn't there. Yeah.
And the other part of that story, again, going back to what you're saying about,
again, the blinders, and you don't even need to have an identification.
They'll just put you in. Right.

(01:10:52):
When police questioned him, they said, where were you on April 15th?
Pierre instinctively says, April 15th. That's my dad's birthday.
Where was I? It's tax day. It's my dad's birthday. I would have,
I would have, because you know, if nothing significant happens on a day,
you don't remember that day.

(01:11:13):
Do you know what you did last Wednesday afternoon, four o'clock?
No. Right. Because nothing might have, maybe if you went to the dentist, you'd remember that.
Right. But Pierre had to think of that. April 15th. Okay, my dad's birthday,
and it's tax day. Where was I?
And he went through in his mind and thought, I got him a gift.
I was at my grandmother's house. He was putting it all together.

(01:11:35):
That's what he tells the police. I knew I saw my dad that day.
I was staying at my grandmother's house.
He rattles that off. You know what the cop forgot to say?
3.15 a.m. Where were you at 3.15 a.m. on April 15th?
Because Pierre would have said, I was sleeping at my grandmother's house with

(01:11:57):
my girlfriend Lauren, his alibi witness.
But instead, the cops said he lied. He didn't tell us the truth of where he was on April 15th.
No, if you ask someone, anyone, 3.15 a.m., that's the day before.
Now you talk about April 14th. Right. And who's going to think,
what am I doing up at 3 in the freaking morning?

(01:12:19):
Let's just say you went to a club. Let's just say you went out with your friend.
That's not April 15th in your mind it's April 14th because you're still living the day before right?
You instinctively, you're either sleeping or where was I the night before that's
the 14th so they called him a liar they made his alibi uncredible and his alibi

(01:12:41):
witness an uncredible witness who was the district attorney at that time?
Well I could tell you who it is now it's Kamala Price and she's not helping
either So if you ever see any of those little hashtags on Pamela Price's page,
hashtag what about Pierre Rushing, that's me and all of my team doing it.
Because, you know, again, you have politicians running on criminal justice reform platforms.

(01:13:05):
She's in office. I hit somebody. I didn't hit Judge Joe Brown with the hashtag.
Judge Lafus was the hashtag. Steve Harvey was the hashtag.
Right. I hit everybody one day. You'll see it one day.
But anyway, I'm just going back and I'm spewing off what you're telling me is
that, and again, what lights my fire in criminal justice reform in this space
is that they needed nothing to put these guys away. Nothing.

(01:13:29):
They just did. And they didn't think about it. And putting people on death row,
there's a guy that— They're still sitting in a county jail after they cleared the death row.
Their men have been sitting in a county jail for 10, 15 years.
You know what it's like to sit in a building that doesn't have windows?
They don't have windows in there. There's recycled air for 15 years because
you're waiting for the laws to get that shit together.

(01:13:51):
And my case was one of the first ones to go up with the juvenile stuff.
Oh. I like it, but. No, I hear you. Prop 57.
People, we dropped the ball with Prop 57 because Prop 57 should not have been
handed back for the courts to have control of. No, CDC.
Takes forever. CDC should have never had control over that. Oh,

(01:14:12):
our computers have to upgrade or we have to do this and put that.
No, no, no. It was easy to send all them people in there, send their ass right back.
Yeah. I sat in a court case. For you, I see the fire. I see you got that passion.
It's funny because you're Catholic Christian and you're sitting across from a Muslim.
So that lets people know that you don't have to have the specifics of it,

(01:14:35):
as long as your morale and your equality is on point. Yeah.
And I was going to court. court, and this is the blatant disrespect of the law
and the law enforcement.
I say the biggest gang in California is the law enforcement. Absolutely.
I was going to court. So a correction officer said, oh, yeah,
you know, you broke my leg in seven different places. You assaulted me. You did all this.

(01:14:59):
Complete lie. The warden even said it was a complete lie and dropped it in a facility.
The money game is so hungry for all these smaller counties. Don't think L.A. County is the worst one.
No, there's people out there that act and follow just behind L.A.
County and are more disrespectful.
Why? Because L.A. County has a TV in front of it. But these little rural towns

(01:15:20):
out here, Kings County, yeah, all those I own and whatever that shit is up there
by High Desert, told my lawyers to their face.
Christopher Hawthorne from the Loyola Law School, F.D. Chironi,
all these lawyers that came up there. They said, do you know where you're at?
This is Kings County. yeah for us
to get a conviction is like shooting fish in a barrel with those prisoners

(01:15:43):
we don't care if they committed the crime we just
want a conviction right so i fought it for three years
and my my lawyer said she came to
me she said i've never heard a district attorney use over 30 objections in my
whole 20 years of my career as a practicing lawyer and as a professor she objected

(01:16:03):
everything and the judge just let her do it she said you're looking at 50 to
life over something where you never even touched anyone. That's okay.
When the prism dropped it.
So my biggest regret was taking that deal.
Taking the deal, yeah. It went from 50 to life, and they dropped it all the
way down to willful resisting of a peace officer.

(01:16:24):
I regret taking, not fighting it. Why?
Because I knew I was going to lose. I know. I got the fight in me,
but I knew I was going to lose.
I hear that all the time from guys. I hear it. That's a very real thing.
And it's so sad that it's, you can't even fight for your own integrity and your
own honesty. You have to fight.

(01:16:45):
You have to fight to see. It makes you feel like even when I'm right,
I'm wrong. You're wrong. Yeah. Why not? Why not? Right. Just do it.
It's exactly the same mentality of what you grew up with. Right.
You know, I can't, I have no, it's not giving me the choice. Right. Right.
And that's just, it's broke. That's why, and I always, you know,

(01:17:06):
people say it's broken. It's rigged. Oh, yeah.
It's rigged. This is not a problem. This is, that guy who got seven years for
a pedophile of children, seven years.
Nobody knows where to help. That's a guy that deserves to just sit.
Give him a week on death row.
Where's Jared at? Mr. Subway? Yeah. These people get out. I just,

(01:17:30):
and they get out. Yeah, you're going to put them on the sex offenders list.
That's going to happen and they're going to live. And yeah, and I pray,
I really do. I pray and believe in rehabilitation.
I really would like to believe that everyone has within them the ability to
learn from mistakes and be better people and be better neighbors.

(01:17:51):
I really do believe that. I have to believe that. It's on them to do it.
It's on them to do it. And it's on all of us to try to give the opportunity
to the people that are coming out of prison. Now we're going to shift to reentry.
Their ability to live, to live. They've done their time.

(01:18:11):
Give them the tools that they need to become active members of our community.
I've never met a more dedicated group of people than men who are just about,
or women coming out of prison and ready to go home and ready to get jobs,
and they can't get hired.

(01:18:32):
And they can't do it. That's probably one of the reasons why I went into dog training on my own.
The reason why I wanted to train and because you get out –.
Men that get up, just how you said it, so eager, so eager, so eager to work
in the workforce takes advantage of them. Yeah.
Because you get caught into that workforce dependency.

(01:18:55):
Yeah. You can't take a day off. You're always working. And I used to sit.
They hold it over your head.
Exactly. And I used to sit there and you feel like you have to do more than
everybody else because they're already looking at you as an ex-con. Yeah.
And let's keep it real. Amazon with these major contracts that they have with Geocorp.
Yeah. How do I know this? For people out there, I'm not talking out of my eyes.

(01:19:16):
This is shit that I experienced.
Went and tried to open up the dog program in Long Beach with Geocorp.
Had the head of Geocorp fly in from Florida, Miami, to sit down.
And they shot it down. Yeah. Why?
Because the community said, we don't want cons running around our neighborhood, let alone with dogs.

(01:19:37):
And when it came to funding, somehow we came up with the funding.
Still shot it down. So I went in there and I told the director to her face.
I said, look, do you want to be a star?
You can be the star. You can be the head of all this. Yeah. You can have that.
I don't want that. I just want to work and have dudes be able to be bosses. Yeah.
Because not everybody was born to be a worker. Right. Not everybody was born to be a follower.

(01:20:00):
Some people generally have that
natural knack to be a boss and you have to provide them with the tools.
If not, they're going to self-destruct because they're not living and being
who they are. Yeah. It's an identity crisis.
We have an identity crisis growing up in the black community.
What is that? And especially Hispanic community.
We don't talk to white people. We don't seek help in the mental health department

(01:20:20):
because that's just not what it is.
Or you somehow get set up and end up on some meds and dependent on opiates.
There's reasons why there are certain rules that were put into play because
you get taken advantage of. Yeah.
And that process that dudes are going through. I had a guy come back from work.
He said, man, I couldn't get a job. We said, I refuse to take the job.
I said, why, bro? What's going on? It's an essay dude.

(01:20:43):
And he said, man, they try to make me work in the ice room. I was like,
you just got out. A job is a job. He said, nah, fool.
I said, he's not this big. He said, nah, fool. This is the reason why,
homie. And check this out. I was like, what?
He said, they wanted me to work in the ice room because of my tattoos.
I can't work in the front. But I'll be a little monster that you got working

(01:21:04):
in the back, spinning the wheel.
And I shook his hand. I said, I respect that, champ. I can't do anything but respect that. this is.
You can take on all the work. You can be the best worker. Yeah.
And we see it. The world doesn't think we see it. We see the eyes.
We see the people looking.
We still see people lock the car doors when we get out of the car,
when we walk up and we walk into a room and everybody gets quiet when they were

(01:21:27):
just talking. We notice the little shit.
Yeah. Or if I walk up to this person, one person stays, two other people leave.
We learned that in prison. Those are instincts that we learned for survival.
So our senses are way heightened, but our faces don't show it.
And we see all the little things.
So when I start noticing oh certain checks were
coming up this way or you know they tell you don't get
put on the salary at certain jobs I didn't know this so I

(01:21:50):
was taking advantage of yeah and they don't want people like me or Chris or
Lamont or people like you to be in these type of settings why because you're
going to give them the truth yeah you're going to get the truth and that truth
is going to hurt these people that's right and that hurt is going to make them
feel that fire He'd be like, all right, now I know what's going on.
Or face the reality of their own demons.

(01:22:13):
Yeah. I'm talking about the people, the guys that don't know of it.
Oh, yeah. Oh, this is how you do this. Right.
Or this is how you write a check. Right. Or this is how you're going to get
this. I have juveniles that I was working with at Kill Patrick.
Kill Patrick. And they called me. I said, what did you do when you first got
out? He said, bro, they drove me from the halfway house to the GR line.
Yeah. Why are you taking kids fresh out of juvenile hall to go get genital relief?

(01:22:37):
Well, there's this, I'm part of the National Reentry Association for Reentry,
and they do a reentry simulation for people who have never gone through the process, right?
And what happens is it's a huge ballroom, and everybody, as you walk in, get a folder.

(01:22:58):
And inside the folder is who you are. You've now become this person.
So I became a woman getting out of prison who has children and a boyfriend.
I forgot what I did. It was, you know, robbery or something like that.
And then on the other side is what I have to do for the next two weeks and five bus passes.

(01:23:21):
My social security card, and I think a DVD player to pawn. That was in my folder.
And every 15 minutes of the simulation, you have to go through this checklist of things to do.
Well, the first thing I did is because I have kids at home, I went to the food bank.
When I got to the food bank, I used the bus pass to get there,
got to the food bank. She's like, yeah, we can help you.

(01:23:44):
I need three forms of photo ID. I need a photo ID and two other forms of ID.
All I have is a social security card. She goes, you're going to have to go to
Health and Human Services, which is all the way on the other side of the room.
By the way, you need a bus pass for that.
Now it's the second bus pass gone. Get to Health and Human Services.
The line is around the corner, just like it would be in normal, right?

(01:24:05):
And by the time I got up, and it was run by the Florida Department of Corrections.
That's where this Rantree conference was.
And by the time I got to the front of the line ding ding
ding the first 15 minutes of the simulation had ended and i'm
like what do i do they're like take a bus you
have to come back tomorrow we're closed and the

(01:24:25):
florida department of corrections are hysterical laughing at me because i'm
like but i need a photo id to go get my food at the food bank like i'm gonna
starve and they're laughing they're just laughing i'm like why are you laughing
like is this real is this the way he goes this is this is what it's like, right?
And by the time that simulation was

(01:24:45):
over, I had already gone back to jail because I had failed a drug test.
I had tried to sell my blood, my plasma, to get money.
When I went to pawn my DVD, it was March Madness, and they were closed for three
days, so I couldn't pawn it.
Just the things, just how we're set up to fail.
We're setting people up to fail. This is the the reality of our reentry system, right?

(01:25:11):
And what I wanted to do immediately and what I plan on doing,
and I'm talking to everyone about it, not only California,
but I want a federal system of reentry where when you walk out of prison, you get a photo ID.
It doesn't have to be your driver's license, but your photo ID,
your social security card, just so that you have the ability to go and get what

(01:25:36):
you need immediately. Because that was the worst thing I've... No photo ID.
I've never had... I went to prison when I first turned 14.
So I was trying to, as an adult, I just spent 18 years in juvenile hall,
CYA, in maximum security prison.
And I just finished fighting a case on my last three years for 50 to life.

(01:25:56):
And I got out with just the clothes on. I was homeless. I went into prison homeless
and I got out of prison homeless.
And I went to the halfway house, but I didn't know anything about Social Security
card because I'd never seen it.
Department of Children and Family Services destroyed all my stuff.
So I had no Social Security card, have no birth certificate.

(01:26:18):
What did they give you? They gave me nothing. Nothing, just clothes?
No, they gave me nothing. They gave me nothing.
And since I, you know, no family or anything like that because I don't have
any contacts, I just told them I spent a little money.
And I'll admit the money that I did make to put the clothes on my back to get
out of prison, it came from selling wine in prison.

(01:26:39):
I had to, I would have got out with anything. thing. So I had to take prison
stuff to the streets with me.
I had to take prison soap to bathe on the streets.
I had to still use my shower shoes from prison on the streets until I finally
started working after a 90-day blackout period.
And then the locations that they have you at.

(01:27:01):
The location is, I was stranded in Watts one night at 11 o'clock at night and
my ankle monitor is on and they're supposed to pick you up.
I'm like, yo, I'm stranded in Watts. They just had a shooting at the train station
and the back is on fire because they're protesting.
You guys going to come get me? They said, no, find your way back home.
In the middle of Watts, 11 o'clock

(01:27:22):
at night with an ankle monitor on as a man in prison all that time.
So it's... And what about the halfway house? What was that experience like?
Well, I went to GeoCorporate and that was the MCRP. That's when you still have
to finish your time. Okay.
I don't know if it's a penny-pinching. Man, let's just keep it real.
It's penny-pinching. It's people not giving a damn. And it's the prison industrial

(01:27:44):
complex just making a giant profit off of it.
You get to a halfway house, CDC drops you off. It's a miniature prison.
Most likely, it's in an industrial area.
So the one that I was at was next to a meat processing factory.
It was next to a plastic factory.
You smell it. It was just all this. It's right off the Artesia Cherry Freeway.
Instead of you having rooms, they have you in cubicles.

(01:28:06):
So this is one cubicle it's two bunk beds two bunk beds two bunk beds okay and
there's lockers lockers and it's just a room this is a fine room just full of
bunk beds and lockers and cubicles,
they feed you in a cafeteria like prison you have to get up and go to class it's like prison,
the curriculums aren't even right for guys getting out of prison so there was

(01:28:27):
conflict because they would be wanting to teach us about sexual assault stuff
and we're like yo none of us in here are in here for any type of way or shit
like that. So we don't want to hear that.
Community showers. It's not private. So you go in there as dudes just in there
taking showers. Yeah, no technology.
And they have a thing called the, if you've heard of the stop program.
Now, I don't know what the stop program was created for. I'll speak on what

(01:28:50):
I've seen from the stop program being there and seeing this.
Stop program is designed to give you housing, but they also go out on the streets
and pick up homeless people. Yeah.
So they go out and recruit homeless people. They bring them in.
Bring them in. And they say, hey, this is your area.
And they were doing this during COVID. So you're bringing sick people in, know it damn well.
But they know if I had you here for the next two weeks and you don't manage

(01:29:13):
to run out of this program, I get to keep that contract money.
So after the two weeks, I don't care. And if you feel like running out, go ahead.
But they keep you there for two weeks. So they keep those guys for two weeks.
And once they're done, they're like, all right, now we can get the money.
And then, all right, you can leave if you want to. So I seen it.
And I don't think that it was, it wasn't beneficial.

(01:29:33):
It was beneficial for the fact that you're out of jail and you're not on the street being a bum.
But as far as being beneficial, like, yo, I'm a dog trainer.
And I told him, look, this is my career.
They said, you need to go work at Amazon. I said, why would I go work at Amazon
if you know you're going to run a background check and within two weeks you're
going to fire these dudes?
Right. So you're just here, go work there, go work there. They make the money.

(01:29:55):
We fulfilled our contract.
I'm not going to go work at a rubber factory. Why don't you work there?
Because it's butt rubber. I don't want to inhale it. You're not giving me safety masks. Right.
What about me purchasing a car, having my family going to drive me places?
No, you're not allowed cars here and you can either use a bike or use the bus.
My certain specific skill set only allows for me to work with dogs.

(01:30:16):
Right. How do you put a dog on a bus or a bike?
So I would have to ride a bike in Geocourt to Culver City every day and back,
four hours there, four hours back every day.
Then they get back and they take my checks.
And they say, all right, we give it to you in the end. And then once you get
out, they say, hey, go cash your check.
And every guy shows up at the bank and they say, what's your other forms of verification ID?

(01:30:39):
So now I'm stuck with a check I can't cash.
So essentially I'm broke just running around L.A.
Right. And that's what happened. Then once I went into the other reentry,
it was just too many people in one house. You have 15, 20 dudes in one little ass house.
There's four guys living in one room. That's, you open the refrigerator,
roaches crawling out the refrigerator. So what do you do?
Do you stay or do you go? Like, what do you do? I stayed there.

(01:31:02):
And it just so happened that my boss at the time, Colleen Steckloff,
who's a celebrity dog trainer.
And I told her, look, I'm going to be investing in a dog trainer.
I want to be a, like, completely, I want to live dog.
Dog and she was moving out and she said look
you can go up there and live up there and you learn dog and
you'll be there that not i'd have been back on the streets yeah it's just that

(01:31:24):
fast the trigger i've seen about 75 of the guys that went into that halfway
house either dead or back and do 75 that's the plan and it's a revolving door
but it's like nobody wants to listen because Because it's like,
why would I take away from my money to help you?
And it's like, yo, bro, we're saying the same thing. We're saying the same thing.

(01:31:47):
And that's when the detachments come in or those character defects.
The ego comes in or the people that say, hey, all right, you can get here.
I'll let you in, but you can get here. But don't ever think you can be here or get here.
And that's what's happening. And that's why I sit there and I talk to my bros and sign.
Mind i'm like man you got so many of these like all it takes is for one big

(01:32:09):
person you don't even have to get more money just do a repost and watch what
it does right because real people are looking for real things yeah it's true
like with you i i purposely did not go read anything about you.
Oh it spoils my moments is i want to sit
there and i want to read a person i want to look at them and see all right what
are you about i want to get a feel for a person that's you know what's what's

(01:32:31):
the method to your madness and what's your end game yeah i
mean i the same same i
i didn't look into any of this i know ray but i didn't
i don't like to come into these conversations with like anything canned like
here's what i'm planning to say in a podcast right because i am a television
producer so i know that it doesn't come off authentic but the other thing is

(01:32:55):
is that i I genuinely don't have an end game, to be honest.
I never thought of myself as being an advocate or getting into this conversation
or becoming part of this world.
I've been touched by God. I've been, you know, it's whatever you believe in,

(01:33:16):
the universe, something spiritual.
I have nothing, I have no other explanation as to why...
That case pushed me to who I am today, where, you know, I have,
you know, 12 guys I advocate for.
I work in reentry. I started my own charity.
I know a lot of rich people, and I wanted them to also see my passion.

(01:33:40):
They saw me go nuts over—I had the other side of my family, my husband's side
of my family, is Italian.
Big Italian family with a lot of people in it, and they're very loud and obnoxious.
And a lot of them, lovely people, but they can be obnoxious. They know about it.
You know, they have very strong opinions about what they know and what they've

(01:34:01):
what they've experienced in their life. Right.
And my father in law is also law enforcement.
He was a lawyer. And and I have family members that are also part of the government
and have very specific ways of seeing the world that are likely not like mine.
And that's OK. OK, I that's what America is about.

(01:34:22):
I want people to be able to voice their opinions. And I'm not going to try to
sway you, but I'm going to give you my reasoning behind it.
If you see something in that that you take away and that changes your life.
Awesome. If it doesn't, that's your journey, not mine. That's the way I see it.
I'm not trying to, you know, there's too many of too much of that happening,

(01:34:44):
I think, in the country for, you know, families breaking apart over,
you know, politics and, you know, all this crazy shit that's happening.
But my, I know what I was going to say is that when I started on the Kevin Keith
case, my family genuinely, my mom was one, you know, my family was one thing,

(01:35:05):
but my husband's family was completely different.
They couldn't understand why I was on this bandwagon, you know,
and they needed to see it.
They needed to understand it. And now they're all advocates.
Now they all rally behind it.
You know, I also, you know, I have, I just have strong, I guess,

(01:35:26):
because I have a strong opinion on it, number one, but number two,
because what I've seen until you know what I've seen, you can't tell me I'm
wrong until you get all the information.
And I'm very willing. And I mean, obviously I did an eight episode podcast on
it, but it's hard for me not to,

(01:35:47):
continually talk about that case, especially when I was two feet into it,
right? Right. They didn't want to hear it anymore.
They didn't want to hear it anymore. They would fight over it.
But they and they would say to me, you know, this is your journey.
You know, this is you could go. You're on this like quest to get some guy out
of prison like we're not.
And that's a reckoning they had to deal with once they saw what I was actually doing.

(01:36:10):
And now as I'm on this journey, the other part of the Kevin Keith,
who, by the way, Kevin Keith is still in prison to this day.
I want to talk to him. Oh, he's the greatest. You would love Kevin.
Kevin is, Kevin, I would let you have that conversation with Kevin because I don't do it justice.
His way of seeing the world is inspiring.

(01:36:33):
He teaches me something every time I speak to him. He's an incredible human being.
And he does a lot of work inside a prison. He has a program that he created
that's called Wordmasters that, you know, his thing is about helping the guys
around him, including himself,
because what he realized is that when he went in front of parole boards,
when it was available to him, he didn't know how to present himself.

(01:36:56):
He didn't know what he—these are lawyers. These are people that—and judges.
Like, how do I speak in front of it and not sound like I'm a thug,
you know, because that's what they're characterizing me as. How do I understand
what's happening in front of me?
How do I write letters to people that they're going to take me seriously?
How do I stand in front of people? So he created this thing called Wordmasters

(01:37:19):
where they're reading from the Bible, but they get up and they do public speaking.
So that these guys, because these are all his yard mates, his bunk mates and
whatever, he was seeing that they were having the same problem.
They didn't know how to advocate for themselves. They didn't know how to speak. week.
And so now he's franchised that in a bunch of prisons in Ohio, which is wonderful.

(01:37:40):
I want to help him do that and expand it into more of a national setting.
But anyway, I don't know what my end game is. All I know is that if I see something
that I feel like I can fix...
With Kevin, it was, I saw something in that case that no one else could see.
And I remember thinking, if we could just get this to the right people,

(01:38:03):
they would have to let him out.
My naive, you know, being naive at that point. If I could just get this to, who can I bring this to?
And at that time, we were talking to a lot of people. I mean,
I met from, you know, from T.I.
To Mary J. Blige to, I mean, Common.

(01:38:24):
I had so many people that we went out to.
And the story of Kim was really, it's kind of funny.
The Kim Kardashian connection was
that I was under contract at the time at Fremantle, which is in Burbank.
And I was doing crime. I was their crime arm, if you could imagine.
We were doing, like, little crime shows. And meanwhile, they're doing like American

(01:38:45):
Idol and all these other shows.
But they were also doing Family Feud. They were doing the Family Feud franchise.
And one of the producers would walk past my office and I was that crazy person.
I don't have it here, but my old office, I looked like a detective because I
was doing the Kevin Keefe case.
So I had pictures of people with strings and, you know, and police reports.

(01:39:08):
I had a war room. Yeah. And he'd be like, what's happening in your office?
This. We do game shows here. Like, what is this?
You know? And so I invited him in and tell him about the case and,
you know, and got him really jazzed up about it.
Like, I'm like, this is a documentary. I'm doing a documentary.
This is where my head was. I have to get this case out to as many people as possible.

(01:39:28):
He's innocent. I'm going to get him out, blah, blah, blah, the whole thing.
And he came back a couple of times and learned about the case.
And one day he came in And he said, hey, you know, Celebrity Family Feud is
doing the Kardashians versus the Jenners or the Wests versus the Jenners because
Kanye and Kim were still together at the time.

(01:39:48):
And would you be okay if I mentioned this to Kim?
And I'm like, sure. Like, it's never going to happen, right, kind of thing.
Like, getting someone's attention like him would be really hard.
And I was like, absolutely. Just, you know, I'll send you material and you can talk to her about it.
Never thinking it was going to happen. And I'll never forget,

(01:40:11):
I got a phone call on a Friday night at my house, if you ever want to come over.
I do pizza and a movie with my kids. And I'm usually about— What kind of movies are we talking?
We watch it all. I mean, you know what we watched? We watched,
by the way, we saw Dune 2 last night. Go see it. So good.
So good. Did you like the Marley movie? Have you seen it yet?
Which one? The Marley movie.

(01:40:32):
The Bob Marley movie. No, no, no, no. My daughter wants to go see it.
I'm supposed to go next weekend.
The one, is it? Yeah. Yeah. I'll go next week. You haven't seen it yet?
I've seen it. Oh, you saw it. It's really good or no? It's good.
I mean, it's good. Why is he saying that? Is he in it or something? No, I wish.
They should have had me play Bob. I was like, why is he saying that?

(01:40:53):
My daughter really wants to see it next week. But I saw June last night.
But we watch him. It depends.
We watched The Nutty Professor two weeks ago. I introduced him to The Nutty
Professor. Oh, he's a classic.
So now she goes, Hercules, Hercules. Never.
Never. But anyway, so this night we were eating pizza.
And likely a full bottle of red wine could have happened.

(01:41:15):
Likely happened. And it was probably around 10 o'clock at night.
And my phone rings. It's a Friday night.
And my kids are in bed at this time. I'm alone drinking glass of wine.
I remember being alone drinking glass of wine.
My phone rings and it's an unknown number, which I never pick up.
And I'm like, this is strange.
Right. No, and I never pick up an unknown number. And I did.

(01:41:38):
I was like, who's calling me? I go, hi.
And it happened to be Kim's.
I forgot what her title was. So she introduces herself, and she's in Miami with
Kim at 2 Chainz's wedding.
And she said, I swear, because I was like on the Twilight Zone.
I thought I was drunk. I thought I was dreaming.

(01:41:59):
She's like, Kim really wants to meet you and talk about this case and blah,
blah, blah. And I'm like, sure. And I'm like, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I live in Calabasas. I can meet wherever you want. I can even come to
the house if it's easier or whatever.
I don't know, what do you say to someone, right? You're like an idiot.
Do I get the hot air balloon to fly me over the hill?
I have to get through the gate, you know, kind of thing.

(01:42:23):
And we made a date to like, she's like, we'll be in touch.
You can come over next week. And I remember clicking off the phone and going
into my kid, who at the time, my oldest, my son was probably 11 or so.
I don't know, 11 or 12 years old. And he was sleeping and I go, wake up.
And he goes, what's wrong? I'm like, Kim Kardashian just called. I'm going to her house.

(01:42:44):
And he's like... And you're lying all over. And I'm also, like,
slapping myself in the face going, did that just really happen or am I just drunk?
But no, it really did happen. And I went to her house about a week later and
talked about the Kevin Keith case.
And within hours, she was wanting to help. And, you know, and again...
I was looking for a giant megaphone, right? That's what I was talking about

(01:43:07):
earlier in this conversation.
The giant megaphone, you know, in this world, that's the best way I can kind of give your,
anybody watching or listening to this, an idea of how important this is.
Kim Kardashian, I don't know how many numbers, what her numbers are,

(01:43:29):
her statistical numbers on like Instagram, let's just say.
But her platform, her followers, she's got more followers than some small countries have people.
So she's the queen of her own country. Right. And those people are all around
the world and they're megaphones for her.

(01:43:49):
That's how powerful her brand is. You know the crazy thing about Kim?
I studied her. You did? Yeah. I sat down, I was like, all right,
let me check out what's going on. So I've seen where she started,
read up on her dad, read up on her mom.
Moms, if I could sit down and learn hustling from her mama, I would sit down
and learn from her mother. She has a master class. You should watch her master

(01:44:10):
class. It's incredible. No, I want to learn from her.
I don't want the unedited. I want to give her a shot of Hennessy and say, well, let's talk.
Show me, just give me the whole get down. I hear she's lovely.
But just studying and then watching how she was shadowing people.
How she was like, all right, she set out a plan and she said,
I'm not going to stop. And I'm going to get this shit done.

(01:44:30):
Yeah. And then when she started doing the legal stuff, I kind of questioned that.
Because I was like, hold on, this ain't your field right here.
Because you see a lot of people that don't want to do this.
I'm like, man, and us, the people that's in there or the people that's like,
all right, all we're doing is like show us something.
Show me something. I want to see something. Show me something.
Is this another gimmick or anything like that? Show me something.

(01:44:51):
There's a lot of copycats. There's no one stuff like really bust a move. Yeah.
You know, my biggest person that I seen that was doing stuff.
Nipsey yeah like that's he
was our he's like our only voice to be he was
the only voice that was able to do it he was the only
person that was teamed up with karen bass before

(01:45:13):
everybody started y'all can everybody don't want to shoot karen bass
down and all that she was the only person that had nipsey
hustle up there talking about giving formerly incarcerated jobs not
basic ass jobs of no offense to the people that's mopping floors
but jobs where you're actually your own boss and
you have companies he was the only one
that she was working with to do that type of stuff and the work that

(01:45:34):
he was doing so we after he died everybody's like man
we skeptic we we want to
know la doesn't have that anymore like yeah you do something big and you die
they find you somewhere overdose or they find out you didn't embezzle some millions
worth of dollars and ran off somebody so it's like who do we believe we believe
right yeah kim kim is one of the most impressive people I've ever met.

(01:45:59):
I believe that the passion and the legal part of Kim's background obviously
comes from her upbringing and her dad,
but she realized very early that her platform could do good.
And once she got a taste of that sense of giving someone their freedom,

(01:46:22):
I think she could never look back.
It's a very similar trajectory, different from mine, but similar in that when
you know something, you can't unknow it.
And she's not the type of person that can just go a little bit into something, dip their toe.
My sense with Kim in the time that I worked with her is that she goes full-fledged into all of it.

(01:46:49):
Her personality doesn't allow her not to.
She's just that girl. She's probably the hardest working human being I've ever met.
I don't know all of you very well, but that's the truth.
And for myself, I mean, I don't, I just don't know where she finds hours in the day.
I could send her a message and she responds to me, even when she's got four

(01:47:13):
children, how many businesses, she's flying all over the world.
She's helping people get out of prison.
She's putting time and effort into becoming a lawyer so that she can also be
knowledgeable when she walks into the rooms and understand what it is she's advocating for.
Will she ever be a barred attorney? I don't know.

(01:47:36):
Does it matter? Of course. We won the questionerships in about two, three years in a row.
It was originally a farmland with a lot of produce and stuff that came out of it.
It was named after a white-eyed man. I think James Compton or something like that.
And there's just a lot of produce, equestrian ship things. There's like all,
you just walk around and you'll just see horses. Horse country.

(01:47:58):
People just riding horses in the street. In the middle of the street. Yeah.
They did a national walk where it was like over 2,000 horseback riders that
went on to the protest at the Compton Courthouse. Just nothing but horses out there.
That's cool. Yeah. Are we good? I'm trying to think if I like horses or not.
Going back to my problem with the animal game stuff. Horses,

(01:48:19):
they give you a natural respect for animals.
Where people lose respect for them, they give you a natural respect. Yes.
Because you can't push a horse. No. When a horse feels like walking, it's going to walk.
Right. you have to really be in tune with yourself and how to
move your body yeah you're right without just talking and the
animal is no i know i know it's um i have a niece that is an equestrian and

(01:48:40):
she's it's i i just again like it's and i'm like why am i afraid of i guess
i'm not afraid it was that talking horse that was that talking horse yeah and
it's freaky see it's not funny it's just,
freaky it's just not for me i mean it's like you know i just it's i don't know
so you don't I don't like Frenchies now.

(01:49:01):
I'm sorry. Frenchie Bulldog? Yeah.
They're weird, huh? See? Is that, see? No, no, no. It's the breathing.
No, I have friends that have them, and I love them.
The only thing about a Frenchie is that sound they make. It's the breathing. I know.
Well, they have, like, that piggy sound that, you know, and then they have,

(01:49:22):
I'm giving you sound effects. That's for you, okay?
That's for you. And then there's like a, their bark is strange to me,
but they're, they're very, I mean, I love old dogs. Real whiny.
They're a little whiny. I, you know, I can't, I love old dogs.
I can't, I can't go against them. Wait till I show her my, my profile,
all the dogs, the rescues.

(01:49:43):
Oh, believe me, I'll, I might take one home.
So don't show it to me. So what I was talking about is, so after the whole Kevin
Keith thing and the Spotify podcast,
that launched in, the podcast launched in April, I'm sorry, in October of 22, I think it came out.

(01:50:04):
And obviously it was just a flood. As soon as, I guess it was right when Kim
started doing press and my name became attached to hers in that way,
I started getting flooded with a lot of guys reaching out to me. Mostly guys.
I think I've only had a few women. Yeah.

(01:50:26):
I started to, I used to think that Kevin Keith was a unicorn, right?
Again, I mean, think about where I came from. My experience has been middle
class America, Long Island, New York with a law enforcement father.
So I had no idea what I was tapping myself into. I had no idea,
but I really thought that Kevin was a unicorn.

(01:50:48):
And when I started to see these other stories and started acknowledging what
was happening and working with attorneys and other advocates.
I couldn't imagine there was so much work to be done. There was so many people I wanted to help.
There was a guy that was on death row, Rubio Gutierrez. He was on death row. I think it was Texas.

(01:51:11):
And I remember sitting at the beach one day, my kids, and the call came in from,
I think it was Roderick Reed, Rodney Reed's brother.
And he called me and he said, Laura, I need your help. We, this guy has,
you know, he's going to be executed on like a Tuesday. I think it was Saturday.
And I'm like, okay, okay. What's happening? He's like, this guy has an innocence claim.

(01:51:32):
You know, it gives me like a very, like, you know, I'm like,
send me all the information.
I'll get right to work on it. Let's see what we can do. And it was Saturday.
And I remember Ethan, my son saying, but mom, it's, that's not enough time.
He's going to be executed on Tuesday. day how are you going to do it
tomorrow sunday i'm like still alive you know and the mentality of of believing

(01:51:56):
that you can get something done even with a small amount of time and we did
rio gutierrez got a stay of execution and with a lot of help from a lot of advocates including kim,
but and you know for the government that actually that actually gave him the
stay but realizing how how much work that needed to be done.
And then I actually did a project for Discovery Plus called Prison Detox.

(01:52:21):
There was this amazing story of a woman.
Of a small town sheriff in a very small town called Dequeen,
Arkansas, which is about an hour and a half north, I think, west of Texarkana.
Tiny little town, one stoplight.
And he had this, and everybody grew up there. Everybody grew up there and stayed

(01:52:44):
there. So it was like a multi-generational town. Nobody really left.
And so what he was seeing was this influx of methamphetamine into his area.
He was the town sheriff. And he grew up there.
And so he was watching people come in and out of his jail for low-level drug
crimes. They would get it, they would offend.
They would go to jail for 90 days.

(01:53:07):
And then they'd go out and they'd re-offend and come right back.
It was this revolving door.
And they knew, you know, they went to high school with him. They knew his brother. They knew his sister.
I dated her. You know, I know your mother, are, whatever it might be.
These were all people that he knew.
So he realized, he said, but wait a minute, just by sending them out,
they're just going back to the same life. They're not, we're not fixing anything.

(01:53:28):
This is not the way law enforcement is supposed to run, right?
Small town. By the way, during pandemic, they didn't even believe the pandemic
existed when I got there. Oh.
These are the kind, this is the kind of place I'm talking about.
And this sheriff, His name is Robert Gentry and he's incredible.
He and Chris Walcott are these two incredible human beings that are that really

(01:53:52):
saw human beings for being human beings and not being animals in a cage. Right.
And he said, what if we created instead of putting them in jail for 90 days
and doing nothing? What if we made it a rehab?
What if we made a 90-day rehab where we give them the tools they need to stay

(01:54:13):
focused on their sobriety, then when we let them out,
we give them nine months of aftercare where we track them and we give them a
place to be and the tools necessary to stay away from the people that are going
to get them back into the same place they're going to go.
Let's give them the tools that they need to be successful. And what if at the

(01:54:37):
end of that year, three months in, nine months out,
we say if you do it, at the end, if you stay sober and you don't re-offend and
you do all these classes and stuff, we expunge your record.
We clean it. So you're able to get a job and you're able to become that person
that we know you are inside before the addiction got to you.

(01:54:59):
And he has a 70 or I think over an 80% success rate.
Hmm. This is a small town chair thinking big, being progressive.
So we did a show there called Prison Detox for Discovery+, where we documented
that for Discovery+. And that's what got me into the reentry,
low-level drug crime world.

(01:55:21):
And at the end of 22, knowing where I am with a megaphone, with people with
larger megaphones in Hollywood, working in television, And I said,
I have a responsibility.
I've been given a responsibility to spread the word.
So I created a 501c3 called Stolen Voices, which in my mind has three pillars,

(01:55:44):
wrongful conviction, working on reentry project, including the photo ID that
I'm really passionate about doing.
Low-level drug crimes inside of that, because I believe in Robert Gentry's plan
and helping the addicted become not addicted to get them before you put them back on the street.
And then the other side that I saw and the third pillar is family assistance,

(01:56:08):
because when one person goes to jail, the entire family goes to jail with them.
And I've seen people mortgage everything they've owned, everything they own,
especially with a wrongful conviction case.
They will go to great lengths to go bankrupt to prove their family member's
wrongful conviction that they were innocent.

(01:56:30):
And people spend a lot of money on bullshit lawyers.
And then what happens? They lose because the system is rigged against them.
And that family goes into poverty. that person's still in prison,
and now you've corrupted an entire generation of people.
And it starts all over again. And it starts all over again. So that's what Stolen Voices is.
It bans wrongful conviction attorneys, attorneys from a lot of different law

(01:56:56):
firms around the country now, and advocates.
We also partnered, you mentioned Chris Hawthorne. We partnered with Loyola Marymount
University and Loyola Law School. We're doing a clinic.
So, you know, my sense is that, again, creating the megaphone,
if we can get these stories out there, if people knew just what you're doing
right now, by exposing people to the truth about life in prison,

(01:57:21):
about being incarcerated, being formally incarcerated.
What it feels like to go through the reentry process, what it feels like to
be wrongfully convicted, what it feels like to be on death row,
right? All of these things are our storytelling.
That's how we communicate to the public. Well, in post-conviction,
that's essential, right?
So what I want to do is teach lawyers who are coming out and passionate about

(01:57:44):
the post-conviction space to understand to work with the media.
Because in a social media world where Adnan Syed is on Serial Podcast or the
story of Kevin Keefe on for Spotify or Stephen Avery on Making a Murderer,
they have become household names because their cases are ridiculous.

(01:58:08):
But they are not unicorns.
That's why the Innocence Files on Netflix is so popular, right?
Or Jason Flom's Wrongful Conviction podcast. cast.
Those stories are essential to bringing the story.
What actually happened that night where someone lost their life, but you didn't do it?

(01:58:29):
What happened that night? Who's hiding something? Who's covering up something and why?
Tell me the story of why I should believe your innocence. Tell me the story.
Now, if we could create those stories and put them out there,
right, and allow people to advocate for For our brothers and sisters who are
going to prison wrongfully,

(01:58:50):
or even if it's a low-level drug crime, what Robert Gentry is doing,
tell those stories. Why? Because that's what makes change.
So that's what Stolen Voices, we're giving the voices back to the people they
were stolen from. Tell your story. Go out there.
Make the change. I don't believe that, or I firmly believe, I'll say this,

(01:59:12):
that nothing in your life was not by design. You were meant to be sitting here.
You are meant to be doing exactly what you're doing.
I don't know why God chose you for the path that he put you on,
because some people have really shitty paths that they have to go to to get
to the place where they feel like it's worthy, right?
Where, okay, now I understand it.

(01:59:33):
I didn't have that path. I had a very different path.
But that's the path that was chosen for you. There's no mistake about it for me. It's the walk.
You gotta, I mean, one of my biggest inspirations was that movie, Australia.
Yeah. The Walk, yeah. And remember the little boy, he was like,
man, me not white man, me no black man, me just creamy.

(01:59:55):
Yeah, exactly. He's great. He said, come on, it's Grandpa. We're going to go
on a walkabout. Yeah. You made him take off his shoes.
That's just, man, me and Lamont talked about this the other day.
And as mad as we get, because I get upset, I know he gets upset.
Say you're sitting in prison for something you didn't do.
You're sitting in one of the worst prisons in the state of California.

(02:00:17):
Yeah. And within the next five minutes, this man could be dead. Yeah.
For something that he didn't do in there. Yeah.
And I tell them, just look at the extremes that it took.
Look at the extremes that it took for me to turn my life around. Yeah.
You know, sometimes we need that. People only change when they hit rock bottom. That's true.
You know, and I had to have everything stripped because I know,

(02:00:39):
So I know for a fact that if I didn't come to jail, I'd be a statistic just
like my father is who's a cold case.
And just till last year, I outlived my father, who lived to the age of 32. Wow.
You know, so. That's hard to, that's hard to, yeah. We have to walk through
the fire. And that's why I say God testing.
He want to see how much, I want to see how much. Because if you can survive

(02:01:02):
this, and you can survive all these obstacles that I have in place,
without breaking, without selling your soul for a jelly roll,
without taking these little bullshit chump change deals,
without going getting on your knees begging these people who just going to take advantage of you.
You can stay this path and stay who you are and loyal to you and to the small
knit circle that you have.
Don't worry about it. I got you. So you got to have blind faith.

(02:01:23):
You have to have blind faith. So I'm just, let's do it.
As long as I'm not doing anything wrong and I'm going right,
I know wholeheartedly that I'm giving my all.
And the people, like, look at the people we got. We got NYU graduate.
I call him little Spielberg. That's my guy.
We got Vicente. day i came up
with the idea said hey man let's do let's do a docu-series on comp

(02:01:44):
and and the culture out there i have anybody to
call so i'm like man let me call my guy he said come on let's do it and i'm
learning from them as i go along and then they're learning because they're like
we've never seen a side of the city or we didn't know that this happened and
it's exposing the guys out there to hey you don't have to go work with these
shysty ass producers you got a dude right

(02:02:06):
here that you can actually here we can pay for this this
this in advance so you give them the platform to
be like hey i got options now to where
you didn't have options before i don't have to go and sell you
know cocaine and nothing like that i look at rowdy rich and those guys like
man like look at that dude in prison it's a 16 year old dude riding through
conference right now in the rolls royce yeah okay it's material but just look

(02:02:29):
at that i mean he if he has money to do that most likely he's gonna have his
mom in a better place his kids aren't going to be in a better place.
So if we can do that and just shine a light and find these megaphones and gyrochopters,
whatever they are, that's the whole point. I mean, you keep talking about it.
And it is part of the legal strategy now in post-conviction.

(02:02:52):
In pre-conviction, lawyers are taught never to talk to the media.
Why? Because it could really hurt your case.
But on post-conviction, when now you have to change the narrative to what happened
in, Because you got a fair try at court, right?
If you went in front of a jury, you had a jury of your peers, right?
Were they really a jury of your peers? No. And those real stories have to come

(02:03:17):
through in order to change the minds of the people that think they know what happened.
Because there's always another there's always another narrative I'm watching
the Scott Peterson case right now again because the Innocence Project just took
up Scott's case and and you know.
When I first heard it, I was like, why? Right?

(02:03:39):
Because I only know what the media taught me about Scott Peterson,
Lacey Peterson, beautiful girl who gets thrown overboard in the San Francisco
Bay with a pregnant woman. It was horrible.
The most horrific thing. I think it was actually on Christmas that that murder happened. Right?
It's just a horrible, horrible story. Oh, and he had, by the way, a blonde girlfriend.

(02:03:59):
It was like the typical, like, what an asshole, you know, when you see it on the news.
But for the Innocence Project to take it, I was like, there's something more to the story.
Because they don't just take cases. And we went in there and looked at their lab, the machinery.
I'm nosy. Like, you seen, you came in. I'm walking all around the office.

(02:04:20):
I'm looking at people's office. I want to see who in here. I don't know what
the hell might happen next.
And then I just, I want to know, like, is it lived in? Is this something where
people actually live? Something actually come in here or is it like a stage?
But that's the thing. It's like there's you have to change the narrative around
cases because people only get what they think they know based off of what they

(02:04:40):
heard in the news or what they read about or.
And by the way, what spoon fed to you in the news, because everybody knows you
got an algorithm on your tick tock or on your social media.
So you're getting spoon fed what you want to hear.
So how do you get out of the algorithm and actually hear what's truthfully happening
around the world? Transcripts. Dig deeper. Don't take it for face value. Right.

(02:05:03):
I mean, I'm going to ask this to the world. I want people to go and look at this.
Does anybody out there know who and where the longest political help prisoner
was in the United States? Political help?
Political help prisoner in the United States. All right. Someone's Googling that. They'll Google.

(02:05:24):
That man, he knows. But that man was Rochelle McGee, and he was housed in the state of California.
He had been to the parole board 18 times.
He was close to 70, 80 years old when he got out of prison. Oh,
I do. And then the McGee case. Yes. Nobody knows about that.
Nobody knows. He was like 80, right? 80. Couldn't even walk.

(02:05:45):
Yeah. Had a tube sticking out of his neck. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
All because he was in the van going to court and all the things happened that
transpired with the George Jackson thing. It was, yeah. He was, yeah. Yeah.
But people look at it, they say, COs hated me. Oh, he did this,
he did that. They were on my profile. I said, look.
Is it back in the courts? Because your job is just to be there and be a correctional

(02:06:07):
officer. It's not your job to be a DA or anything outside of that. Yeah.
But really look at it. If I'm a man that knows I'm innocent and you give me
an opportunity to go free, you think I'm not going to take it? Yeah.
Yeah. Because what if he would have got out when he tried fighting for his freedom,
which they granted him over 40 years later?
Yeah. He would have been free and not been stuck in prison with all that turmoil

(02:06:29):
and seeing all the horrific things that he's seen.
Awesome. phone so it's two sides of every story man
absolutely the biggest thing that i learned from the guys in
there but i learned the legal shit that i'm happy for is
that always pay attention to what enter a courtroom
with clean hands mean go back to
the basics if there's any type of wrong faulty stuff in there is the violations

(02:06:50):
all that that's that's unclean hands something is wrong something's wrong when
we ask the cop before we wrap it up we ask the cop the rampart cop for existence
for example we had the actual cop that went to prison for that.
And he and people asked me why would
you interview that man he went did this he stole this
he shot people he did this he's he's yeah

(02:07:12):
over 50 percent of his paperwork was corrupt
so if i didn't ask him would you be educated right
how would you know if i didn't ask him all you
would think was what you've seen on training the movie where it's
just a little small but if we dig into details tails and you ask
this man why he did what he did why did he turn rogue it's the
same reason why men in the military turn rogue it's the

(02:07:33):
same reason why guys won't join the gangs and do the things that they
do and i asked him he said because i felt betrayed by the people that i cared
about the most he said because and then he also said i got shot two times and
they cared for me physically getting out there getting their money then they
cared for me mentally yeah and when i found out they didn't give a fuck that's not it that was that.

(02:07:54):
Yeah that's a rule that's a rule yeah so before we wrap it up,
before we wrap it up we need to get a date where we can get you down there to Compton.
We'll set that up tell me what and,
what can we look forward next and most of all we need to do some teaming up
I want to build like a I want to be part of the Megatron that's being built
I don't know that's the wrong one Optimus Prime,

(02:08:17):
Optimus Prime I'm trying to
we're trying to be a part of the Optimus Prime We want to build this job.
We already are linked.
I don't ever see advocacy as competition. I work.
I try to work with as many groups as I can.
And I welcome, I need the help. We need the help. That's how much work needs

(02:08:40):
to be done. And we need the voices.
So, you know, I'm going to continue to build Stolen Voices as much as I can,
get a lot of people to rally behind it.
Like I said, there's a lot of law firms now that are offering pro bono work for innocence cases.
Pierre Rushing, who I spoke about before, we were able to get him pro bono work
through an amazing attorney, Jordan Grotzinger, from Greenberg Trurig here in L.A.

(02:09:05):
I mean, his family could never afford what Jordan has been giving him.
Now, in that case, they're the only witness, the high guy that said red baseball
cap, you know, gray car, black guy.
He recanted. We have a recantation from the only witness.
There is no case against Pierre Rushing right now in the state of California. So why is he?

(02:09:30):
Hashtag, what about Pierre Rushing? Now you know it. Oh, she's hitting with
the bottom. I see what's going on.
That's Pamela Price's problem. You cannot run on criminal justice reform platforms,
have an innocence case staring in your face with some of the biggest advocates
in the country backing it.
And you're going to turn around and say, well, not sure.

(02:09:54):
What are you not sure about? And by the way, talking about CDCR,
here's a kid, right? Here's a kid, Peter Rushing.
I use the word kid. He's not a kid. He's just younger than me.
Came out off the streets of Oakland.
Had an entire career ahead of him in music.
Legitimately had. Let me check this dude up. I hear you. I've never seen who

(02:10:18):
he is. Peter Rushing. Interesting.
And he gets locked up on a crime he didn't commit.
And I told you about the 3.15 in the morning. I mean, really heinous stuff in his case.
And he goes to prison and he has a record of defending himself in prison.

(02:10:43):
Right? Because you're in no prison. That's what I find kind of strange.
I noticed that there's been men that have gotten out before.
The prison stuff, they wipe clean. Well, here's my, well, I'm not sure about,
I don't know many of those cases, but I think a lot of people look for,

(02:11:03):
oh, he might be innocent, but in prison he has a really bad CDCR record.
He's been in the hole for four or five times or whatever. If you knew Pierre
Rushing, here's a guy that came literally from the streets.
You wrongfully convicted him and put him in prison with a bunch of people who
the majority of them are rightly convicted.

(02:11:24):
And now he is voiced, like I said, he's a big pain in the ass.
He is voicing that he's not supposed to be there. Do prisoners want to hear
that? No. So he's been...
He's on a really tough yard up in Salinas, and he's just gotten himself into
a place where he has to project himself.
Now he's much better. He's a little bit more controlled. He's been in for a

(02:11:47):
long time. He knows it. But at the beginning, he didn't.
People in the government will say, well, can't support him.
The CDCR record isn't clean. this this that's trash
so he's he's defending himself
in a in a place is a caged animal now
in a place he doesn't belong with a bunch of people who want to kill him and

(02:12:08):
you want him not to defend himself no that doesn't what none of it makes sense
and i'm not going to advocate for you because even though you're innocent you
got into a fight on the yard that's some trash I always compare that, especially.
You can have people watch a baseball game. Yeah. And watch grown-ass men have a full-blown ride.

(02:12:30):
These dudes swole, jacked up, busting each other upside the head.
And all of America goes, bravo.
But a man, possibly on a prison yard, around people that he doesn't know,
supposedly society's worse than one boiling pot, and you expect him not to defend himself?
Right. Be an angel? So somebody's supposed to hit me, and I'm supposed to lay

(02:12:51):
on the ground and just let it happen.
That's exactly what he said. I'm supposed to get stomped on,
and I'm supposed to... This is exactly what he said. Do you know what it's like
for the people out there?
I'm advocating for this man right there. If you've never been on the ground
and had 30 men stomping on your head, if you've never been stabbed,
if you've never been able to see that type of amount of violence in your life,
it's one thing to see somebody get shot.
But it's another thing to see a man take another person's life with a handcrafted

(02:13:15):
weapon and just watch him kill him, and the gun towers don't do anything until it's over.
I mean, if the tower is going to protect me, all right. But I know you're not
here to protect me. You're here to stop it when the violence is done. That's all it is.
And that's something that he has to live with every day. You don't know when
your door is going to open up. People can run in there and do something to you.
You don't know how many people who may think that you have done this and now

(02:13:38):
you're protecting yourself over that.
You don't know any of that because until that door opens up and he's out here
on the streets, the game is still on.
And that game is when in the jungle, you play with the rest of the animals.
Period. So for people that are going through this stuff, no, you have to fight.
It could be worse. He could be in YA where you really have to fight,
where there's sexual crimes going on every damn day. That's why they closed it up.

(02:14:01):
So this, that's, yeah, that is, yeah, I don't like that. Yeah.
You put him in that predicament. Remember, Judge?
Yeah. Put him there. You put him there. You asked for that. Yeah.
And you know what? I, I, I have, again, I, I've never been in prison.
I've never lived prison.
You can see it in his demeanor as a human being, the amount of just the dignity

(02:14:27):
that has been, that has been, that sits on his soul.
It takes a lot from you, like people. Yeah. And then when you get out here, Mr.
Russian, remember this, society is not rehabilitated.
And that's something that you may get out when you, when you do get out,
I'll say this, when you do get out, word to Allah, they're not ready for you, bro.

(02:14:49):
Nobody's out here ready. It's a lot of faking. It's a lot of phonies.
It's a lot of people that told you stuff while you were sitting in there and you're going to get out.
You're going to walk into their household. You're going to see them sitting there doing that.
You're going to see the wasted time that people told you that they invested
in you, but they really didn't invest. It was just cap.
You're going to see all that. You're going to see the world out here and it's
horrible to see it, but hold on to what you learned in there because that's

(02:15:10):
going to help you make it out here.
All my best friends are in prison or they dead or they getting out of prison and they're fighting.
Don't let it break you. Don't let these people break you. Don't let the system
break you. It's a reason.
It's a reason. You could have died when you was out here and this could have
been God putting you away, putting you on the shelf. I need my trophy to get
put up for something. Let me just shine you up real quick.

(02:15:31):
Let me teach you about patience. She said it herself.
You was wild at first, but you had to go through that patience.
You had to get that sober. You had to fight yourself.
The biggest fight we all will ever have in our life is the battle that we have with ourselves.
So fight yourself. Everybody else, don't even worry about that.
You got to fight a man on the yard fighting, but only match that energy.

(02:15:53):
Because first time you hit a dude, you hit a dude and you're hitting where you're
supposed to be hit, everybody else going to sit down because not everybody's a leader.
So if you fighting leaders, that's because you a leader, bro.
And they know who to pick on, man.
So once you get out of that situation, come out here, man. Let's eat.
Let's really get to work. I'm looking for people to work.
We shorthanded, we need to work and we hungry. It will never stop.
No man is a grown man either. as long as

(02:16:15):
you evolve and you learn something new every day it's constant evolution
constant evolution so it's
all love bro I know where you at I was in Cork and you in Salinas you
in the hot spot you in the middle of the hill so once you get out of there holly
look me up on the thing I want to give me my yeah for real and I got major love

(02:16:35):
for the bay they know that so you know to to wrap this up because I know you're
a very busy lady I really really appreciate I appreciate it.
Mr. Fab, a person that we interviewed when we was up there in San Francisco,
we just aired one of his, aired his episode.
He made, he gave us a title and it was Unusual Alliances. Mm-hmm.

(02:16:57):
You got to think outside the box. You got to meet people that you wouldn't necessarily ever meet.
And one way of doing that is the same way that you did it with your family.
No matter what you say, I'm going to throw this shit in your face.
You don't got to like it. You don't got to take it there, but you're going to see it.
And then you also said you got 20,000 people that follow you.

(02:17:19):
All it takes is one person out of that 20,000 to shake this shit up. That's true.
That's all we're trying to do. Right. I really appreciate it.
I love the unusual alliances. I think that's great. I think that's a great phrase.
For real. That's the way the world should work. If only we could actually be
unusual alliances instead of the usual alliance. Oh, we are.
Right? But I love that. I think it's great. I appreciate what you're doing.

(02:17:42):
And remember, telling the stories is what creates tolerance.
That's what creates understanding. And that's what allows people to say,
hey, wait a minute. it. I run a big box store.
I'm going to create a program where I'm going to bring in people to give them
jobs of dignity when they're not working in the back in the ice chipper machine.

(02:18:05):
Let's give them all a chance to rehabilitate and become part of society or a
lawyer that's going to work pro bono for someone because they believe in the
human condition that you're not defined by your last worst thing that you've done.
There are people out there that actually want to help. They will help.
But we have to get those stories to them. You know?

(02:18:26):
And Pierre Rushing is a great example of that because Jordan Grotzinger was on a podcast.
Just like what we're doing right now, talking about Pierre Rushing's case.
Jordan heard it, came aboard, free lawyer.
He's going to get him out. I got to do it. We're going to walk him out of prison.
It's going to happen. I know it is. And his job, and what I told you before,
again, I don't know why God chose you for the path. I don't understand it. I never could.

(02:18:53):
The only thing that I can imagine that it's for is for your story to change other people's lives.
You're doing it. Pierre's going to do it. Kevin Keith has already done it in his own way.
So that's what it is. It's a fucked up way of getting there.
But it's the same for me, you know? Same for me.
Maybe my job is to just show my family what is possible. And listen,

(02:19:17):
I have two children who are white Calabasas kids.
They are strong civil rights advocates.
And they always will be. My daughter plays competitive softball, number 42.
When you get a chance, tell them to look up where the song Strange Fruit came from. Strange Fruit?
Okay. You know where it came from? No.

(02:19:39):
Strange Fruit. Strange Fruit floating in the breeze.
Strange Fruit hanging in the wind. And so it was a song written by a Jewish man.
And Maya Angelou sung it as a song of protest. Ah.
And the song Strange Fruit is a depiction of black men and women hanging in
the trees, swaying in the winds. Mm.

(02:20:00):
And their blood drips and stains the leaves.
So it's a song of protest. And I was like, well, what's the name that we have?
That's beautiful. Strangest Fruit Podcast. Strangest Fruit. And so.
Yeah. Since we have all the Instagram people out here. That's super cool.
This is something that I want the Instagram people will end this.
It it's real it's real it's real cool and you

(02:20:23):
said about stories so i seen a post that's why it's
funny the algorithm instagram pretty sure my phone listening right now
it's gonna come up with all type of topics you're gonna get a lot of kim kardashian
later but um
and i asked that's when i asked i'll tell you about that
later but um i was looking at a post that went up and
it said if maya angelo would have died at 20 she would have died prostitute

(02:20:48):
and a single mother and if Malcolm X would have died at 20 he would have died
as what was it Detroit Red a woman beater yeah and a scammer,
if they would have both died at 20 nobody would have known their story so since
they did live let's take time to realize that everybody has a story to tell

(02:21:08):
amen so amen just something to wrap that up with that's a good way to wrap a podcast right,
thank you I appreciate it it's national hugs for thugs.
Thank you for having me it's so good to hear your story thank you.

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Exclusive Interview with Lori Rothschild Ansaldi | Stolen Voices & The System Podcast

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