YouSaid · the spoken record

Phedra Ellis Lamkins

lines on the record: 39
first: 2019-06-03
most recent: 2019-06-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Government's thumb. And you all fail to see walk, kids of the sun. I'm on this road to righteousness, steady fighting the wicked. Seems like growth, love and spirituality is extremely restricted. Kids caught in the cycle at to the shelter world, it's explicit. On your worst enemies, you wouldn't wish it. I know because I lived it. But this life is not a burden. Nah, cause I'm that seed planted in the garden of grief. They try to drown me statistically. Put me through some shit you wouldn't even believe. But instead of dying, I rose from the deaths of despair to breathe truth for share. Soon I found myself the heir to the knowledge's lair. Now it's up to me to train my mind to learn how to share. Many stop and stare, but I'm many off to care. They rather shop and hate than bring these kids up and congratulate society our future's fate and it doesn't look pretty. So before the last grain of sand falls in God's land, what will you build to grow and with sand? Thank you.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To believe that you can achieve all that you seek, it just leaves one question What's your seed? Thank you. And you know, to like kind of answer a question, like, if you don't got no purpose when you get out, you're going to end up right back in because you got nothing that's going to bring you up out of that. So I just want to say that because that's what everyone has a seed. Everyone has a seed to plan. You got to believe in that seed and believe in yourself. So this last one is called What's Your Seed? I actually wrote this one when I started changing my life when I went to community college. I wrote it before the other two. So it means a lot to me. Like a scientist, I'm mad. Creativity flows out of me. Like knowledge to history. Likewise words to a revolutionary. Like the power and the people, but nobody is listening while the father clock of life just keeps on ticking. Life hitting you with trials and tribulations and manuals still don't get it. Y'all need to wake the fuck up and get on with it. If not, when judgment day comes, don't look at me to save you because I wasn't the one. But while you're gonna go on with your funds, steady stacking your funds, you feel the biggest test, kid, you had to prove you was worthy of the son. Instead of bringing peace to the world, they brought hate and guns, put him in the kids test, said half some fun, then prove to the world costa just out of killing the dumb blinded by the gun.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thank you, thank you. So this next one's called The Dream. Many underestimate the power of the mind. But what really lies inside the complexity of the emotional pathways that lead us to act in a certain way? What drives us to manifest positive change? Is it love? Is it pain? Maybe it's the dream that we all dare to scheme, this dream to be free and all live in peace, but it seems just to be that but a dream, a dream that seems impossible to conceive, or is it? We create our limitations gate. It's the power of your mind that can grow with time or deplete with lies, depending on what vibe you choose to feed inside. It begins with the light that burns deep and bright. The young activist that just wants to raise their fists to fight for the people in and out of sight because you see, it's not just about you or me, but we, together we can be this dream that we dream. But in order to achieve this dream, we all need to see that I am you and you are me, that beating in your chest is your first clue. Purpose. You feel that? That's what we need to remember when faced with the choice to endeavor. It's the power of your mind that leads you.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is it our choice to endure, or is there a power much greater than the plans and the hate filled hearts, waging a war on the people and the power within, a power capable of manifesting revolutionary change? A change that ripples through generations in time seated in this message trying to reach your mind through a rhyme because you see the powers in the people and the passion that's in our hearts. But change only start when you shine the light on the dark, beginning within ourselves and branching out to the people, educating each other to fight for our right to be equal. No one who walks upon this earth is illegal. All this misguided hate and bigotry is spiritually lethal. Empowerment make for each other starts with the peaceful, not that it's celebrating. Don't let the con steer you wrong, the power you hold within remains strong. You just gotta believe in the power of your seed to plant amongst the weeds of the world's evil deeds, to grow strong like a tree to feed the minds of the future. But first you must take your time to find your design that creates change in people's lives one day at a time. Then you will see it begins within thee. So may the life you lead be the life others seek. Be the change, lead the way, and ask yourself, what can I do?”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thank you, thank you. My end goal is to open a group home with an art therapy program because art, creative art therapies, like, it's so powerful. I can't stress it enough. Like there's no words that I can even put express to explain how powerful it is. So yeah, without further ado, I'm just going to spray my pieces then. So thank you. And I just want to say, you know, thank you because this is a privilege of me being on the stage because a lot of my loved ones and people I don't even know. We lost to the streets and the system, they don't get the same opportunity. And I'm just thankful and I don't just do this for myself, but I do this for my people and everyone's still behind those walls who are lost, you know, and I'm just, I got this motto. It's called Be the Change, Lead the Way. All right, so this is Bloom. So this first one's called Just Us, a little spin of justice. Is it just us who see no justice and no peace struggling to achieve the American dream? A dream just to have an opportunity to succeed, but somehow we're so far to reach. Car and the system got designed to keep us at war. At war with each other, a storm is blowing right outside of your door.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I also just won a national scholarship to go study abroad this fall where I'm going to study psychology, neuroscience, come back, go to DC, do an internship, come back, and then I'm planning to get my PhD in positive psychology and my end goal. Thank you.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But by the grace of God, I was taken and arrested when I did because where I lived at back home, my boy ended up stabbing this dude to death not even an hour later. So if I didn't get arrested when I did, I would be in there for murder. He's doing 25 with an L right now. And I just really, you know, just started to see that my chances were running now. And I got out and you don't change overnight. It's a process. And putting that work in, but it's so important. And I got out in and out of county, but then, you know, I started to change my life and really see the education was the way to liberate myself. So I went back to the old school, got my high school diploma, and then I went to community college when Jason was saying, like, you know, just hide.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And call my first case when I was 11 when they just passed Prop 21, and then I went to the system. When I was 13, I started writing for the B, and the B really gave me a voice, gave me a way to express my truths in my way. Because going through the system, you know, you're constantly trying to go through all these therapies and stuff, but you don't even have language growing up and not being, you know, showing what you're feeling or you just learn to speak with the language of violence and aggression. And that's, you know, that's what I learned to speak. So over the next few years, I was in and out of the system. I became a war of the court, so I was in group homes, you know, being locked up and then being on the run and then just in this constant cycle. And it wasn't until I got released two months before my 18th birthday and I was, my mom's boy didn't want me at the house, so I was homeless, you know, serving crack on Army block. I don't know if y'all from the city, but out on the blade on 26, you know, and then I started, you know, changing my life. And when I caught a tenth murder charge day before my 18th birthday, I fought that whole case in solitary.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Before I share these pieces, I want to share a little part of myself, and I feel truly important to really paint a picture of the power of healing and redemption and creative art therapies. I'm from Norfolk Road City, California. It's not too far from here. My beautiful struggle began when my father committed suicide before I was two. So I was raised by my strong single mother who had to work multiple jobs. She came up the gang culture as well, and not just working jobs, but taking care of my grandmother who was mentally ill, but most of the time it was me and my brother taking care of her. So I had to grow up really fast. During that time, growing up in the streets and trying to find my identity, you know, we all go through those times trying to find our identity and being biracial and a lesbian growing up in the late 90s, early 2000s. I try to find my place, you know, and I found my place in the streets and I started gangbanging when I was 10 and being a girl smaller than everyone else, I had to go hard. In the streets, you were all in or you're not. You're not going to survive. So, you know, I was fully committed.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The opposite of humanization is criminalization. If you can criminalize a whole population of people, oh, everybody in the neighborhood is bad, all the people from that racial group are bad. If you can criminalize a whole population, then you dehumanize them and then anything can be done and people won't respond to it as if it's my child. Nobody says, oh, my God, my child's on drugs? Give him 17 years in prison. Nobody says that. People say my child needs help. And so what I would say is that the opposite of criminalization, though, is humanization. And so art and technology, which helps us to humanize and spread these stories, is really critical.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nobody wants to be defined by their worst moment or their worst mistake, as you've said many times. And so for me, I don't know, but I do know that everybody in here has a lot of power in the matter. And everybody in here has a lot of ability to turn it. And I think it's trying to happen. I think the fact that this many people are here, the fact that CNN put this up, I think it's trying to happen. Your voice, Topeka Sam's voice, Lewis Reed's voice, the voice of people who are directly impacted, people who are coming out of prison. You're right. Everybody doesn't come out of prison as whole as you. Everybody doesn't come out of prison and have operas as their best friend. In fact, most people who haven't gone to prison don't have those things.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the hypocrisy of a society where almost everybody's addicted to something and nobody can survive. Think about this. These phones we carry around. If I told you right now that for the past three months, we have been audiotaping and videotaping everything you've been doing. And we're now about to show it on the screen. You would run out of here. Because none of us are as good all the time as we're supposed to be.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And part of it is telling people, look, I went to Yale Law School. I saw more kids doing drugs at Yale than I ever saw doing drugs and housing project. Period. And none of those kids even saw a police officer. If they got in trouble, they went to rehab or France. They sure they go to prison. And yet four or five blocks away, those kids doing fewer drugs because they had less money and selling fewer drugs because they were dealing with a different clientele. They almost all at least got arrested if they didn't go to prison. And yet now we sit here and say, well, I can't, my God, I can't hire you. You're a drug felon. You know what I”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No pressure, no diamonds. There are diamonds behind those walls. There are people behind those walls that are much wiser, much braver, much stronger, much more creative than 99.99% of people who are on the outside. When I worked in the Obama White House on a Friday, I was at San Quentin doing my work. And then on Monday, I was in the Obama White House reporting for work. So I went from the jailhouse to the White House in 72 hours. And even under the Obama administration, the smartest people in the Obama administration were no smarter than the smartest people at San Quentin. But the wisest people at San Quentin were wiser than anybody in Washington, D.C. All I know is that I have to tell the truth as I see it.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a spiritual problem. And separation is the enemy. That's the problem. And unfortunately, you have now both political parties preaching separately. Those red state people, those bigots, those idiots, those Trump voters, they are terrible. It's almost like, you know, we in the blue, we are good, they're bad. And it's almost like a colonial thing. Like the people in the Red State, these unwashed heathens that need to be conquered and converted to the NPR religion and force-fed some kale, you know, until they can rise up to our level of civilization. I mean, like, this is how people talk. Separation and superiority. And of course, you know how the other side does. And so for me, it's a spiritual problem. Separation is the enemy. And so I have discovered all these diamonds behind those prison walls.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think this is the key question for American society. I don't have an answer, but it's the key question. It's become almost numb to throw out the numbers, but we have the biggest incarceration industry in the world here in the United States, trafficking in human flesh. Trafficking in human bodies on the stock exchange, you have private prison companies that get more money the more people who are locked up. And there's no business model in deincarceration. The business model is in incarceration. But what I do know is this. This is a political problem kind of. It's a policy problem. Kind of. It's an economic problem. Kind of. It's a spiritual problem for sure.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's more honesty about what's really not working. We know about the policies and things like that, right? But once the policies work, there's real humans coming home with deep, deep trauma. You know, my first 10 years in prison, you know, I was in solitary my second year, and I ended up in solitary my seventh year that extended to my 11th year. So I did a total of seven years in hell and I was fortunate to have that breakthrough. But what about the men and women who don't have space to reconcile their past? And what is our responsibility? Ultimately, I guess the question is, what is our societal responsibility when it comes to welcoming those men and women home in a healthy way?”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And now we have many men and women coming home, and I deal with them all the time, and they're broken and they haven't been able to make peace. You know, as we think about the victim and them working through their trump. But there's also work that those of us who perpetrated a violent crime have to do on our own. And when I say on our own, oftentimes on our own, because in most cases, we're scary. People are afraid. Like you've killed another human being. I don't know if I can trust when you're upset or when you're angry or when things aren't going your way that you won't react in that manner again. So, how do we create a space?”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Transformation in these things, right? And then I put the work in. That's not the norm in prison. This is not the norm in prisons throughout the country. And so one of the things that I'm always thoughtful about is like, how do we Normalize restorative justice? How do we normalize redemption? You know, when you watch somebody in their worst moment, it's one of the things that I love that, you know, Sheriff Tom spoke about is that he met him in his worst moment. He met Jason in his worst moment, right? But he was also in his worst moment.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As executive director, anti-recidivism coalition, our staff is comprised 54% of system impacted men come out of prison. A lot of them have armed robberies, homicides, attempted murder. I have scores of friends who are coming home after the war on drugs campaign. Thousands of men and women come home every day who have served 15, 20, 30 years in prison. They haven't gone through a restorative justice process. Because for years our prison system was designed for nothing more than punishment. And as somebody who was deeply immersed in that environment, and I know the type of works it takes to get there, right? I know what it takes to transform a life. I can honestly say I was super blessed and fortunate because I was actually literate when I went to prison. And so I was able to read books that inspired me. I was able to read Malcolm and read Mandela and read books about personal transformation.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really want to push the envelope a little bit. Eight episodes. Reconciliation, restorative justice happening, right? In small pockets throughout the country, some prisons are a lot more progressive with creating space for that. But the reality is it doesn't happen for everybody. So a lot of men, I work with men and women every day that come home from prison.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Easy job and not try or put together a company to like, you know, make, I don't know, pictures or something. I don't know But she's doing the hard thing the hard way for the right reasons. So all I'm saying is this. The culture is not a show about criminal justice, first of all. We have to market it that way and promote it that way, but it's not about that. It's about humanity. All of us have done something that we profoundly regret and don't have any way to apologize for. All of us have had something done to us that's hard to get past. And the stakes are higher in our show. But this is humanity. This is the human condition. And yet in our culture, empathy is no longer trendy. Compassion is no longer trendy. It's about the cancel culture, the call-out culture, and it's poison. This is the human condition. We have to be able to listen to each other, to forgive each other, to hold each other, to help each other. That's not fashionable. And so we wanted to put some medicine back in the culture.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To go talk to. It wasn't like there's thousands of people for us to go talk to, but CNN said if you can find more, shoot it. So we shot it. Why am I saying all this? I'm saying to say that from my point of view, we're at a point where those of us who have privilege earned or otherwise, those of us who have positions of power, those of us who have positions where people have to listen to what we say, we have to push. Phedra Ellis Lamkins is here and she's an African-American entrepreneur in the tech space, female. You know, they say that's like a plaid unicorn or something like, you know, it's not even supposed to exist in fantasy land. And yet she's building a company called Promise, pushing technology to solve some of these problems in the community and winning, right? You know, she doesn't have to do that. She could have taken it.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or on the right wing is catch a killer. But true crime as a whodunit genre doesn't get to the truth because a lot of times we know who did it. And we already know who did it. It's about the truth long after the crime, which is that growth is possible for people who have done harm. And healing is sometimes impossible for people who've been harmed because of separation, because we don't let people actually eventually come back together. And so I say it was worth the risk. And so we did it. It was a little bit nuts. We showed it to CNN. Look, that day when we did the first one, I literally, I cried so hard when it was over that my nose started bleeding because my blood pressure was so high. It was just such an intense thing to see a man who would kill someone's mother sit down with the daughter 20 years later and try to explain. And we showed that to CNN. And at that point, you know, we had no other”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't raise your hand. And so now that's been established. But then the way that the danger is that then, well, okay, but if you're not innocent and if you're not nonviolent, well, then we really don't have to care about you at all. And we have all these funerals in the community. And we have all this harm and we can't talk about it. And I said this true crime genre has to be hacked and used for something.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But honestly, that's how we got the messy truth on the air. I think it's a very important point. I mean, for me, I felt like this is the moment. I feel like criminal justice reform is finally becoming a mainstream conversation. The problem that we have right now is that there is a level that people won't go to. So we can have the conversation about innocence, right? And that's an important conversation because that begins to chip away at people's confidence in the system that innocent people are being put away in prison. So that used to be risky to say that people that our system, our American system, is putting people to death who are innocent. That was radical, but we've been able to establish that. Then we went to the nonviolent drug offenders. They're guilty, but they're guilty of stuff that you did in college, so why are they in prison? Or maybe you did this weekend.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our idea was we wanted to do media that would be healing, that would be positive, that would be transformative. And living in Hollywood and all that, you get a lot of side-eye looks at you when you talk that way, as you know.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we saw what happens when you create space for that. You know, Tom's a remarkable man. Christy is extraordinary woman. And the courage that they exhibited was honest. You know, she went from, you know, I want him to die in prison because we can't kill him because of the particular crime to forgiveness. And so as we think about this show, how do we amplify that part of the message? How do we get people to understand that people do change in a very real way?”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can imagine I struggle with this episode. I've watched a few episodes. I've actually struggled with all of them. And for those who may not know my story, I was convicted of second degree homicide. And while I was in prison, I got into an altercation and I punched the officer in the neck and almost killed him. Family of the man whose life I'm responsible for taking. One of them reached out to me and extended a letter of forgiveness during my incarceration. The officer that I got into the conflict within prison advocated for me to die in solitary confinement. And so as I've done this work over the years, that's one of the areas in my life I haven't been able to reconcile. So watching Jason come out and seeing that through the lens of his 17 year old self. Knowing where he was back then and knowing that I was him back then.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just disappeared. And you saw these two guys who had literally tried to kill each other last time they saw each other have this conversation that I bet they couldn't have with any other human being. I haven't processed And there's a lot of stuff in this series I haven't processed.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess one has to go terribly. Like, that was basically my view. And so I didn't have any hope in that one. I was just waiting for him to come out and, you know, say some stuff that wasn't going to work. And as soon as the door opened, just something changed. Both of them became something different than they had been up until the moment they saw each other. Something fell away. between men There's almost always some shielding in a patriarchal society like you'll tell a woman you just met more than you'll tell your homeboy you've known for 20 years about how you actually feel you know it's just the trap in between white and black people is always a lot of golf in between cops and black people it's like planetary levels of gulp and all”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That one was the hardest one for me to do because my dad used to be a cop. Yeah. My uncle Milton just retired from emphasis force a couple years ago. So that one was hardwood for me as much as I do criminal justice stuff and as much as I've been against police brutality, that's always your fear when you have failing member who's a cop. And you can see me struggling in this episode to be my usual sort of like open self. Like I was really tight. I was really trying, but I wasn't succeeding in this episode. And I told Jason that I don't think this is going to go well. Tom has admitted that he's got racial bias. That was powerful. Which was a big deal.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The journey toward redemption is one I understand on a very personal level. And you and I, we've been friends for a while and we've had a chance to talk about what does redemption look like for people. What is something that you would say really stood out to you? as a lesson that we can all take away to create space for redemption to happen. Doing this whole series has changed me in ways I haven't really caught up to yet. Now, when I'm on TV and we're supposed to be cheering each other up over some tweed or some other nonsense that's going on, which is terrible stuff. But I have a hard time getting as petty and shitty as you have to be to do good television. And then jeopardizing my career, I have to figure out some way to get petty again. I have some answers for you.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Staying ever mindful that I will never grasp the gravity of the destruction I caused you that day. I stay primed and fueled to walk boldly, purposefully into any and every venue to answer my call, to carry his memory in my heart to others with a message of life of promise, even on the lowest rung to all. Hope is eternal. Believe it. A bright future can spring from even the darkest past. The words that I now other, I do so to breathe life into those who may feel that they have guessed or last.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your loved ones so deserving of everything good, unaffected by me, unfortunately there wasn't me. Thank God there is also you through which His life still lives through the memories and lessons in love, the affection and joy and promise and hope and countless other memories I'm sure, though I cut them way too short. Now illuminated to the precious sanctity of life, the gift of the beauty and purpose that lies within us all.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the eyes of others. Relevant, so unattainable, it seemed for so long, so empty, such a void, I fell barren to the core. My attempts to self heal, I thought while I was perfecting. If I get more, I'll be more. Value was in the M more. Irrelevance was in the not. In genius, I believe back then. Feel bad. Fill with stuff. Feel good, but not for long. Try again. Something's wrong. The pattern I repeated, a revolving door in my life. Try to feel feeling full just temporary. Once again, feeling empty setting in. The writing expectation that a life, his life, our lives, should be unrestrained and unimpeded by the untrue, self-defeating, and outwardly destructive thoughts and behavior of someone just as me. Stand in the way with an idea, a belief, and some time, to cowardly step with hollow purpose to fill a void that was never real.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For so long, I have dreamt of just how, what to say, the right words, but everything just feels so flat. So now here I am resigned to having faith in the process, releasing my heart to you through the words, praying that they will do, sparing even the slightest amount of any additional hurt. In no way did you deserve these years of torment, the anguish, the pain, the emptiness, perhaps even bearing the burden of having to be strong for others when support was the furthest thing from your mind. You didn't deserve such a fate. I'm sorry. Sorry that on that faithful day, I largely treated others like I felt, empty and devoid of any value. I saw your loved one as an object, though human, an obstacle to my hopes and dreams, hopes and dreams of belonging and feeling relevant.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All intents and purposes. This piece, I loosely call it a piece. It's more a letter and the recipients of which are going to become readily apparent as I read this. Excuse me, I'm sorry. My please have just a few minutes of your time to say how much I'm sorry for destroying your life. Strong words that fall so short I can only imagine. How can I, especially I even begin to measure the impact of what I've done, the loss, the pain, the emptiness, the sorrow, the guilt, what ifs, if onlys, is that a good start? Maybe, I don't know.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm Chris Lyons, and I lead the Culture Leadership Fund here at Andreessen Horowitz, a strategic investment vehicle that connects the world's greatest cultural leaders to the best new technology companies. This segment of the A16Z podcast was based on an event hosted by the CLF in which we featured a special early screening of Van Jones' new series, The Redemption Project, followed by a fireside chat between Van Jones and Shocka Sengor. The Redemption Project is an eight-part series that looks at victims' families and a wife-altering crime as they come together to actually meet their offender in hopes of finding personal healing or peace. It's a rare glimpse into the U.S. prison system and also the incredible human potential for redemption through restorative justice. In this episode, Jones brought together a police officer who was shot and the man who committed the crime decades earlier when he was only 17 years old. In addition to the conversation between Van and Shaka, you'll also hear two spoken word performances.”
2019-06-03 · a16z Podcast · a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source