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Our Stories
Frank T. Williams
San Francisco, CA
I am a recovering addict, ex-offender, and a man today. I last faced 25 years to life for drug charges.
Since, I've beat those federal drug charges, I turned my life around to a power greater than myself.
I went to two colleges at one time. I am a certified addiction treatment speacialist and a member of the California Association of Alcohol and Drug Educators, and recieved my AA degree in Liberal Arts from Skyline College and College of San Mateo in San Mateo County, California.
I went on to get my BA in Social Work at San Francisco State University. I will have eight years in January. I have been doing volunteer work since April 1997 with different organizations in treatment, to criminal justice systems to hospitals and institutions.
Today, I am the director of the Senior Ex-Offender Program in Bayview Hunter Point, San Francisco California, the first of its kind in the world.
We have held two annual In The Trenches Awards fundraisers, whereas, men and women who were formerly incarcerated and in recovery, are change agents and change makers today. Working to assist others who suffers from social ills, considered outcasts, jailbirds, dopefiends, hopeless, useless, change their lives around through intervention, education, empowerment, motivation and social learing along with positive reinforcement. These men and women received honors from Congressional Leaders, Senators (state and congressional) mayors, City and County Board of Supervisors,Governor, State Assemblymen and secretary of state. Most prestigious awards given to those who are the true leaders making a difference in the those considered lost, lives.
If you know of people like this, they can be nominated for the third annual In The Trenches Awards coming in July 2005, in San Francisco.
I am a writer on www.gibbsmagazine.com and I write about social ills. I write spoken words/poetry. I write to wake up those who are not aware of social barriers created to keep one confused so that they will give up and become dependent on institutions. I write because I have a passion and I love people and I do believe in them.
I am commited to those who are incarcerated or in hospitals and therapeutic communities, that when given the word and love, and educate them with truth, that they can shake the forces that has been a lie to them since birth, subliminal messages and overt messages to demonize our moral consciousness and behaviors so that we can be poverty tools for the economic gratification of capitalism.
I am a recovering addict. I am and I AM. I am a proud man with ambition to reach as many men and women as I can and tell the women to close their legs and tell the men to treat one another and self with respect. I go into the belly of the beast weekly, jails, and teach to uplift people who made mistakes and ensure them that their lives have a purpose.
The group we conduct in the jails in San Francisco is called End The Chaos.
I meet politicians, community leaders and citizens and I am not afraid to let them know who I am today and where I were yesterday. I have no shame in my past because the road I took was for a reason.
So that I may rise from the ashes of shame and embarrasement, so that I may rise from the ignorant into the minds of light, so that I may become an intrigal part in this life called creation and become a reminder to those who suffers that all is not for naught but for a purpose..to rise and give glory to the Most High and do His Will and awaken those who are not caught up in ego's but embedded in issues and pains.
I have lost my father in law on my couch on day three of his detox before he could get admitted into Liberation House, a residential treatment program.
He was an alcohol and died in our house. This devasted my wife and myself. I was second guessing myself while in school to become a couselor. Thanks to my support, I didnt use, I got through it. The following month, my wife had a miscarriage and I lost the baby I always wanted, that almost killed me and our relationship. But I did not use. The following month we lost a cousin who was killed behind a twenty dollar rock of cocaine. This again, rocked us sort to speak, no pun intended. I can go on to going blind in one eye behind four minor strokes and having my artery cut and clean, while my relationship was on the rocks, but I did not use. Then, a fire destroyed our apartment two months before graduating from SFSU. We lost everything, over $80,000 worth of materials including my first chip to sports memobillia, pictures, clothes and jewelry, with insurance tha
This past Saturday, October 23, 2004, All of Us or None, California Coalition of Women Prisoners, Legal Services for Women with Children, Family Advocacy, Bayview Hunter Point Multipurpose Senior Services--Senior Ex-Offender Program, San Francisco Public Defender Office, Up From Darkness among thirty other organization held a Peace and Justice Summit in San Francisco discussing the discrimination that formerly incarcerated people are confronted with to city officials and community leaders. Over three hundred people attended.
I will leave you with the speech that I gave; and may God bless each and everyone of you. Remember, how you believe determines your success and or your failures in life.
HOW LONG WILL JUSTICE BE CRUCIFIED AND THE TRUTH BEAR IT?
By Frank T Williams
Good day ladies and gentlemen, elected officials and city leaders, community based and faith based organizations, All of Us or None, the media and citizens of the Bay Area.
I would first like to thank Dorsey Nunn and Linda Evans and the staff of All of Us or None for having the moral courage for bringing together formerly incarcerated citizens, elected officials and community leaders together to sit on a panel and listen to the Voices of those who has and are suffering a mighty blow dealt out by the ugly seed called, discrimination.
Re-Entry means re-entering, so one must look up the meaning of enter to understand that the word means to go or come into a place. So, in the context of those who are incarcerated, when they leave prisons or the jail settings, these people will re-enter society, a place where they have been, back where they rightfully belong. These men and women will transition from one state of being (institutions) to another form of life in society.
They will transition in 2004 backwards in time in contrast to 1963, before the civil rights bill was passed by Lyndon B Johnson. Segregated to small rural towns and urban cities during a time when segregation should of ended in 1964. Discriminated upon in Oakland, San Francisco, Fresno, Los Angeles, Salinas, Pittsburg, Antioch, Richmond, Placerville, Sacramento, Eureka, to name a few cities and towns in California alone, when discrimination should of ended in 1964. Denied equal justice as to those who are called citizens, under laws, which were created with underlying purposes to the reasoning of their births or creations. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, How long will justice be crucified and truth bear it?
These are difficult times. We are losing a generation to greed and power. We have 442,300 African American men between the ages of 24 to 29 incarcerated across the United States due to poor educations, unemployment, and daily stressor to which in some cases these kids were born not to make it, tell me How long will justice be crucified and truth bear it?
In the California Department of Corrections we have over 56,000 Hispanics, over 47,000 Blacks and over 46,000 White Americans incarcerated whereas California has the largest number of incarcerated inmates with 162,317 second only to the great state of Texas. How long will justice be crucified and truth bear it?
It is becoming a norm of our society, no longer hushed but viewed as apart of our culture, incarceration is. I am here to discuss re-entry services. I was asked to speak about re-entry services. There are a great deal of people who has vested interests in assisting others who has lost their way, in turning their lives around. But many of us, who work in this field knows that continuum of care, are only a phrase that sounds good. Too many of us that work in this field know that enough money is not being spent to assure and assist in the transitioning of an ex-offender.
Re-entry Services for the most parts consists of labor for low pay or room, board and food. Re-entry Services for the most part consists of minor computer skills and job searches. Re-entry Services for the most part consists of alcohol and drug treatment facilities (institutions) used as a tool to stabilize a person from homelessness until that person can find a menial job and move into a high crime, high risk area and become high risked at being violated for being in the present of other former offenders. How long will the set up continue? How long will justice be crucified and the truth bear it?
The truth is that these human beings are used as poverty tools. The destiny of formerly incarcerated people are set for them to fail. The system designs programs that would work but fund them little so that they will fail.
If you study re-entry programs you will find that component are little or less in some and are not well rounded to complete continuum of care to give our people a chance to really make it. If you call, getting by, making it, then you too have the mindset of those who have designed a failing system.
It takes a little more than that.
It takes a little more than releasing a person from prison or jails without an identification card and expects that person to get into a shelter after being released from jail after 5pm. It takes a little more than releasing a person from prison earning a dollar a day from being incarcerated and released in 140 days with less than 140 dollars because that person had to buy dress outs for forty dollars and a bus ticket that cost another 40 dollars, leaving the person with 60 dollars, on a Saturday evening, with no where to get services or knowledge of, it takes a little more than that.
It takes a little more than filling out an application and having the gift of conversation to gain employment today. And, if you mark X in the box, on that application, your chances of getting hired is null, unless it is in a treatment facility. These are some of the things the formerly incarcerated are up against. And, it takes a lot more than what they have been issued to make it. It takes a lot more.
Discrimination can be subtle such as letting a person parole out of incarceration on the weekend with no resources. Discrimination can be subtle like sending that person for treatment in a high crime area, a non profit, that is barely making it itself and using the person s limited gains of general assistances to keep the program afloat is not giving the person who is slighted by the laws of this land a greater opportunity to advance because the program is trying to exist.
The criteria, the standards of morals and values you want it to be learned by those who had acted out in misdeeds, but once they have served their time, they are treated ill, look down, talked down, threaten to be violated, rejected, scorned, and neglected which sounds a whole lot like back before the 1964.
I can't say a whole lot about Re-Entry Services other than the few that we have is a given. The few that we have are in place. California Department of Correction budget for 2003-2004 is $5.7 billion dollars. The average yearly cost per inmate is $30,929 and per parolee $3,364. Ninety percent of these inmates are paroled to their last legal resident. The charges of property crimes in California are 21% and drug crimes 21%. The inmates have an average reading level equaled to the seventh grade. Why isn t more being done and done right?
Once a person does their time how does re-entry take place in California?
Listen, California has 19 re-entry centers operated mostly by public or private agencies contracted by California Department of Corrections. There are 190 parole units in 84 different locations and sub units. There are FOUR PAROLE Outpatient Clinics and 150 clinicians.
All of Us or None, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, Family Advocacy Network, The Bayview Hunter Point Multipurpose Senior Services Senior Ex-Offender Program, Up From Darkness among other organizations are advocating for true Re-Entry Services.
The moral universe can understand that the $30,000 dollars a year used to housed a person in prison; that money should be used as community dollars to assist that individual for organizational, educational, housing allotments as a benefited investment in that individual life so that he or she can become self-sufficient and not dependent on the socially constructed systematic self-defeating paradigm that exists today. The present does not work effectively and a new paradigm should be implemented that would ensure quality of life, continuum of life, safety of our community, reunification of our families, and these monies should be used for the basic fundamental of life, not for one to just exist behind the bars.
Society cannot exist with its present conscious. Society will not live at peace with its present conscious. People want to live with their God given rights and given equal opportunity.
Incarceration cannot become apart of the norm. Re-Entry Services should be implemented enormously and crafted carefully because in the US there are over 2.1 million people incarcerated and this is not normal, and they will be coming home. You cannot continue to lock up those who you failed to teach, who you failed to help or assist, whom you failed to employ; and you cannot continue to lock up those who you failed to house, who you failed to uplift, who you failed to listen to when they cried, who you failed to support, who you failed, who you failed, whom you failed! How long will justice be crucified and the truth bear it?
I say to you and will leave you with this, the homelessness was a clue to you when it started growing about 20 years ago, war on drugs was a clue to you when the epidemic of crack cocaine became prevalent within our neighborhoods over 20 years ago; ex-offenders are your weapons to solve the problems within these streets. Re-entry Services should be connected with City and County employment so that these men and women can be trained and employ by them, the State need to train and employ them, Community and Faith Based Organizations need to continue to train and employ them.
When given the chance to be men and women with dignity and the means to earn a honest paycheck to provide for self and family, then, a human life is saved; then a family is saved; then a whole community can be saved through social modeling and positive reinforcement that says and speaks to mistakes and miss-opportunities. Life gets better with opportunities.
Give us our true opportunity and lift the dust of shame from our future for we have shed our past, and our lives bears witness that as time goes on everyday must pass, and let it pass, let it pass for the bites and sting of discrimination will not hold us down but will only cause us to rise in a mighty way with our voices ringing high, How long will justice be crucified and the truth bear it?
Thank you.
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