How did you learn how to read? One A-B-C at a time. My cellmate convinced me that I could read. When I got my indictment, I wanted to know what was on my indictment. I never told my lawyer that I couldn’t read until after I learned to read. He gave me three pieces of paper and said, “Here’s your indictment. Read it and it explains everything you need to know about your case.” That was the first piece of paper I ever read – my indictment. Why were you illiterate? Would you say the school system failed you? That was part of it. The school system was part of it and my mom was part of it. You know what they say, it takes a community to raise a child. And I failed myself. It was my responsibility to get what I needed and make sure that I could read and function. I didn’t find it important in the trades that I was looking at: robbery, burglary, stealing cars, pimpin’ – why do you need to know how to read? Getting a “regular” job was never an option? I didn’t see myself doing that. I didn’t know anybody that had a regular job. I grew up on Figueroa, which was the hoe stroll. My friends didn’t “work.” And you didn’t think that those career paths – robbery, burglary, stealing cars, or pimpin’ – would have a negative outcome? Nah, that was a part of my neighborhood. A kid can become his environment. If you’re around crime, at first you might shy away from it, but if you stay around it long enough, pretty soon you’re accustomed to it. That’s why drugs are so accepted in our neighborhoods. The reason it’s so hard for a drug dealer to quit is because his neighborhood doesn’t despise him. It’s attractive. People look up to you when you’re a drug dealer. You’re rewarded for it. Right. You get to go to VIP. You get all the girls. Everything a person wants can come from selling drugs, so why wouldn’t people sell drugs? What’s the deterrent? I would think a potential life sentence would be a deterrent. Well, they don’t know about the jail time. Most of them don’t know about the Feds until it’s too late. These kids don’t know anything about the Feds and the mandatory minimums. Do you think the mandatory minimums are an effective deterrent? Absolutely not. Totally a waste of time. I’m 74 // OZONE MAG
working on reforming the laws. I’ve teamed up with the NAACP and we’re gonna start a program to reform the mandatory minimum sentences, not only in the Feds but in the state [judicial] systems as well. You don’t think that lowering the mandatory minimum sentences would encourage more people to get into the drug business? Well, [the mandatory minimums] haven’t stopped drug dealing, we know that. We know drugs are more plentiful on our streets. We have more people in prison. So it hasn’t worked for the past 40 years. How would lowering the sentences help? We’re not saying right off the bat that it will help, but we’re saying it won’t hurt. Because it isn’t working. Throwing people in prison and throwing away the key absolutely doesn’t work. I believe we have to come up with programs that really work. We have to start addressing the issues that are at the root, and that’s lack of knowledge and lack of opportunities. These laws have nothing to do with that. I believe we should go with an ounce of prevention instead of a pound of cure. That’s what our government is doing now – throwing pounds and pounds of cures on a problem that for 45 or 50 years has been a waste of money. The drug problem is worse than it’s ever been. Murder rates are up. Snitchin’ is up. Do you think the government has been going to war against the wrong people? Should they be targeting the user and focusing more on prevention instead of locking up the dealers? [The government] should focus on the user and try to prevent people from using. Locking [dealers] up is just not the key. This is not a criminal offense. It’s a victimless crime, because nobody is gonna come in and testify and say, “He stuck a gun in my face and robbed me.” There’s never gonna be a victim in these [drug] cases, so they’re gonna have somebody who’s in trouble already and decided to snitch come in and testify and say he saw you do something to somebody that’s never gonna come to court. Then he’s gonna get off so he can go out and sell drugs again, so it’s just a perpetuation of the problem. Incarceration is definitely not the answer. We’re spending billions and billions of dollars every year on incarcerating [convicted drug dealers]. Just to take me to court cost [the taxpayers] $3 million dollars. Just to take me to court! Then they kept me in prison at $40,000 a year for 20 years. And when you take a drug dealer off the streets, how many other drug dealers come in