Hi, folks. Mike Eidson here. Before I officially start the show, a few things. One, you’re all in store for a really wonderful interview. My guests today are discussing important topics, but beyond that, they are also sharing their personal story with the public, and that’s not an easy thing to do, and I want to thank them both for doing this. My hope is that this interview gets to people in similar situations and that it can be helpful to them.
Unfortunately, during parts of this interview, due to some technical difficulties, I can sound fuzzy or like I’m on fast-forward. I re-recorded some of my parts of the interview, and I used whichever recording of my question pulled you out of the interview the least. My guests sounded fine, so the issue is only on my side. I am working on this issue and will make sure things are fixed before I do another episode.
Lastly, since I’m doing this disclaimer, anyway, I’m going to go ahead and put what’s usually the closing segment’s information up front, too. So, there will be no closer this episode. Real quick, the two main links to consider are the two organizations we refer to that are working on rights restoration. They can be found at http://www.picoflorida.org/ and http://www.restorerights.org/ . And the YouTube video about Mass Incarceration will be linked to at this part of the transcript [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaPBcUUqbew ], and the statistics listed there are provided by http://www.prisonpolicy.org/ .
And now, without further delay:
Hi, everyone, welcome to The FloridaProgressives.Com Podcast, Episode Nine, for July 11th, 2014. I'm Mike Eidson. This show delivers news and updates via interviews with activists around the state on the issues that you, the people of Florida, care about.
This time, we return to the issue of Rights Restoration, but we will also talk about how incarceration affects family members, through the story of a mother and one of her daughters.
LaShanna Tyson returns from Episode Seven. She is an activist with PICO United Florida and the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. She joined this rights restoration movement so she could turn her 13 year sentence in prison into something positive. She is also a real estate agent and a first-year Paralegal Studies major at Seminole College.
As an activist she is talking to lawmakers and educating the public on issues such as housing, employment, and education. The barriers put in place in Florida to those three things can prevent successful reintegration. She advocates on behalf of returning citizens, especially women. She is also playing an active role in the growing movement to amend Florida’s Constitution to allow for automatic civil rights and voting restoration for over 1.5 million Floridians who are disenfranchised.
Shalante Tyson is a grad student at University of Florida, where she’s majoring in child psychology, with goals of becoming a doctor. She is one of LaShanna’s daughters.
Shalante, LaShanna, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
Shalante:
Thank you.
LaShanna:
Thank you for having us.
Mike:
All right, so this interview will be a mixture of the big issues like rights restoration, but also, the personal side, the family story so far.
LaShanna, just reading your bio, between your activism work, your job as a real estate agent, and being a full-time student, last time you said you were taking four classes every semester, right?
LaShanna:
Yes.
Mike:
And you’re also mother of three, so that’s like, four jobs, right there. So my question is, when do you sleep?
LaShanna:
[laughs] That’s a good one. I have very limited sleep. But it’s my passion for what I do that keeps me going.
Mike:
That’s great. It’s been a little over a month since we last talked. I want to remind the listeners what the central issues of rights restoration are. To quote the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition: “Florida is one of only three states that permanently strip all individuals with past felony convictions of their civil rights, including their fundamental right to vote, even after the completion of their sentences.”
Last time you talked about some of the success stories, when they were restoring civil rights, back-to-back-to-back. Has anything like that happened in the last month or so?
LaShanna:
We actually went to another clemency hearing, just a couple of weeks ago. And once again, they were restoring the rights of people. It wasn’t as many people that I saw there this time, as there were last time, but they were restoring the rights of some of the people that were there, not everyone.
Mike:
Do you think the Rick Scott administration has been better in doing this the past year or so, or has it been about the same? Because I read somewhere, I think it was PICO United’s website [ed: yes, it is, see here], that only 1% of ex-felons get their rights restored, even during the 11 to 13 years.
[See this part of my other interview with LaShanna Tyson for more on the 11-13 year wait time for rights restoration.]
LaShanna:
I can’t speak about last year, because I didn’t know too much about what I was doing; I was just out here fighting on my own.
But I can say that not enough people are getting their rights restored, because I firmly believe that once a person completes their sentence, whether it’s through probation or parole or whatever, completes their sentence fully, that their rights should automatically be restored.
It serves no reasonable purpose for them to take them away, other than to control the vote, and to keep people discouraged and caught up in a system that tends to recidivate them, rather than rehabilitate.
So, I did a -- I think I sent it to you -- where I was interviewed by a television station, and the governor came on right after me, and he said that when he thinks about automatic rights restoration, he thinks about the victims.
But everybody has a story, and they’re judging you, once you’ve completed your sentence that the judge handed to you, and I think that’s just wrong.
Mike:
Right. What I’m thinking about, I’m trying to imagine myself in your shoes --
LaShanna:
You can’t.
Mike:
-- I know, that’s impossible, but I’m trying to connect this a little bit. 13 years in prison, you get out, and you are not truly free yet, until you get your full civil rights abilities back, and it’s just such a cruel thing that Rick Scott has done, and those other two states. It’s an extra punishment; you think you’re free, but there are all these restrictions put on you.
LaShanna:
I’ll tell you how it felt. It felt like, when I was released, I thought that I was free, and it felt like somebody dropped me down between two buildings that were closely put together, and I was trapped. I couldn’t turn, I couldn’t move. That’s how it felt.
When I came home and I was told I couldn’t go back to college or get a job… I’m facing legal discrimination. I’m less than everybody else that’s walking around, because of my past, and that’s a horrible feeling.
Mike:
Yeah. Shalante, what do you think of the type of work that your mother does? The activism, I mean.
Shalante:
I’m very proud of her for it, even though I don’t really [laughs] talk about it much. I’ve seen how she’s had trouble getting a job, and just being seen as equal to other people, so I think that the organizations she works for, kind of, lets her be an advocate for other felons, including herself, so I’m just really proud of her for that.
Mike:
Shalante, will you tell me a little bit about how your relationship with your mother is, right now? Like, how it is currently, and how it was growing up, while she was in prison.
Shalante:
Growing up, we’ve always been really close, but when she first got out, it was a huge transition to try to re-establish a relationship and everything, because I wasn’t used to having her here, outside of prison.
So, it was a huge transition, it was a lot of strain on our relationship, I think it’s been a little better in the last -- it’s three years since she’s been out, since she got out in 2011. But like I said, it was very difficult because I wasn’t used to having an actual mom there. But our relationship now is a lot better than it was when she first got out.
Mike:
Yeah. Who were your parental figures during that? Was it your father, or your god-mom that LaShanna mentioned in the last interview?
Shalante:
It was my god-mom and my grandma.
Mike:
So, did you visit her at all? LaShanna, is that something that you wanted, having your children visit you in prison? Did that happen?
LaShanna:
Yes, it did. God has been with us the entire way, Mike, and my kids came to see me every other week, when I was in Ocala, and when I was down south, in Miami, they came once a month. But we were able to remain together, as a family.
Mike:
That’s fantastic. And, on a personal level, and with many of the activists that I’ve talked to, your mother is considered a hero, and the other people inside this movement, that are doing this type of work, because it’s such a huge thing.
One thing I wanted to point out was how LaShanna recently was advocating online that people need to get out the vote for this November. You know, typically, in midterm elections, not many people get out and vote. LaShanna, when you talk to people that were never incarcerated, and they aren’t really concerned with voting, what do you think about that? Because, obviously, you are not able to vote right now.
LaShanna:
It makes me sad when I hear people say, “Oh, I’m not going to vote, it doesn’t matter anyway.” It really saddens me to encounter that, because people are just oblivious to the power that they have right at their fingertips and they don’t utilize it. Like, our ancestors died. They were bitten by dogs and water hosed down and lynched and everything, for the simple right to vote. And it’s sad that 50-something years have passed and they still don’t go out and vote!
So it really pains me, because I know now that that’s truly the only power that we have. And if we’re ever going to make a difference, we’re going to have to unite, and we’re going to have to go out and vote.
Mike:
Exactly. I always think about how nothing would make Rick Scott happier than Democrats giving up on voting, you know what I mean?
LaShanna:
Mm-hmm.
Mike:
So you definitely got to get out there. We have elections coming up in August and in November, so I really hope the turnout is great this year.
[More on FL elections at http://election.dos.state.fl.us/calendar/elecdate.shtml . The primary is August 26 and the general is November 4.]
[More on FL elections at http://election.dos.state.fl.us/calendar/elecdate.shtml . The primary is August 26 and the general is November 4.]
Okay, so we’re talking about the big issues, we’re talking about the smaller, personal issues, and I did want to ask you, LaShanna, this might be a tough question, but you told us a bit last time how it was to go from inmate to activist. And you also talked about how the first thing Attorney General Pam Bondi asked you was, “What was your crime? What were you convicted of?” Last time you said you were “with the wrong people at the wrong time and got caught up in the situation.” So I wanted to ask you, what were you convicted of?
LaShanna:
Armed robbery with a firearm. I drove the car in a robbery that went bad. And I ended up turning myself in a couple of weeks after the crime happened.
I remember not being able to take care of my kids, not being able to eat, being scared, but more important, hurting, not for me so much, but for my victim’s family. I just could not get it off my heart; I couldn’t get it out of my head. I couldn't imagine the pain they were going through. Even though I was going through pain as well, their pain had to be a hundred times worse than mine.
I ended up turning myself in to the Orange County Jail. And that was a hard thing to do, because I had to walk away from my babies. I didn’t get to see them. I knew if I saw them before I went to jail, I could never walk away from them. So I just didn’t even go over to where they were at my mom’s house, because I knew if I saw them, I could never do it. So that was very hard for me.
But I knew that I had to do it, because I [inaudible], but it wasn’t worth the risk of having it come back on my children at a later date. And I love them that much, to do what I had to do, to keep that from happening to my babies. That was the hardest thing I had to do, was to walk away from them, and go and turn myself in. But I did it.
Mike:
Who exactly were you robbing?
LaShanna:
It was a store in Orlando.
Mike:
So, 13 years in prison, you’re thinking about the crime you committed, you’re thinking about getting out, all this. Getting through and reinventing your life. We talked a little bit earlier about how you’re doing so much: you’re doing your real estate agent work, you are in college, you are doing a lot of activist work. In the last episode you were on, you talked about the role that God played, getting you through prison and kind of guiding you since you got out of prison. Do you want to speak to that at all?
LaShanna:
Absolutely. Thank you for bringing that. I can attribute everything that’s in me and my children’s lives right now to God, and God only. He gets all the glory in this. Because I did what needed to be done when it needed to be done, Mike, but without hesitation. I went to jail, but not only did I go to jail, but during my incarceration, I used to get my god-mom to send me books on grieving and healing. And she thought they were for me. They were never for me, because, you see, when I got to jail, I got to know that God was real. I had gone through all my life thinking God didn’t care about me, because if he cared about me, and if he loved me, he would never let me suffer, me and my babies. And I just wanted to be loved all my life, and I did not see that God loved me.
But when I was in jail and I sent those books to that address -- I looked in the phonebook and I found the address, and I sent those books on grieving and healing, I would mail them to them. So one day my lawyer comes flying out to the jail, and she’s mad with me, because my state attorney, Jeff Ashton, got mad with me, because I was sending letters and those books to that family to let them know how sorry I was, and I’m not a bad person, and if I had known that it’d turn out that way, I would have never participated, and I would have called the police, because I’m not that type of person, and she basically told me, she knew what I was doing, and so, when she left, I just said, okay, if I’m going to prison for the rest of my life, I might as well just... I might as well just do it big, then.
Because nothing mattered to me. If I ever got out, I still had my life, my kids still had their mom, and so… I got my friend to call on three-way, she called that store on three-way, and the victim’s brother answered the phone. And he cried. I cried. And I just told them that I was so sorry. And that if I could trade my life for his, I would.
But I couldn’t, so all I could do was do whatever they gave me in the courts. And before he got off that phone, Mike, he forgave me. And when he forgave me, God forgave me. And when God forgave me, I was released. I was free, indeed.
I am free right now. As much as Rick Scott and the executive clemency board would like to think I’m not free, I am free. Because God has set me free, indeed. But we are still his kids. And I believe with all my heart that as long as I continue to do exactly what God has for me to do in this life, everything, every barrier, is going to be knocked down. I don’t know how. All I know is I go out on faith. So when God opens the door, I walk through it, and I say exactly what he puts on my heart. Every single time.
Mike:
Okay. So that really shows the weight you had on your shoulders while you were incarcerated and also the strength you got throughout your sentence.
I want to quote from the animated “Mass Incarcerated in the US” video, you may have seen it on YouTube, it’s been around a lot. [Note: this video’s statistics were provided by http://www.prisonpolicy.org/ .] “Now we have this habit of thinking of prisoners as something very external to society; after all, there are literal walls between them and society: walls capped with razor wire and watched over by people with guns. But millions of prisoners are released each year.”
“And you think it's hard to get a job in America? Well, we make it intentionally more difficult to get a job once you have a conviction on your record, not to mention just to live your life. Convicts are ineligible for welfare, student loans, public housing, food stamps…” Is that all true in your case, LaShanna?
LaShanna:
The public housing is true for everyone. I never tried to get welfare, but I remember when I came home, I was trying to get Medicaid, and I can’t get Medicaid. I still haven’t been under a doctor’s care. I have diabetes, and I have had it, since right before I was released. I was hospitalized right before I got out. And I don’t have Medicaid, and I can’t get it.
There’s a lot of truth to those things. It’s just like they’re saying that we’re evil, we’ll never be any good, but I tell you, if you break a crayon, it’s still going to color. We’re just broken people.
Mike:
Mike:
Yeah.
LaShanna:
People who have made mistakes. If you ever get that chance to come back out [into society], nine times out of ten, people want that second chance. But when you come home, and society ostracizes you, I mean, after a while, it’s like you tell a kid that they’re stupid, you’re going to start believing that you’re stupid, so if you say “felon” long enough, on the applications, on everything, you say “felon” long enough, people are going to start to feel like they’re bad. But me? I’m a human being. And I’m doing what God has for me to do. So I don’t believe any of that “felon” stuff. I’m a returning citizen.
People who have made mistakes. If you ever get that chance to come back out [into society], nine times out of ten, people want that second chance. But when you come home, and society ostracizes you, I mean, after a while, it’s like you tell a kid that they’re stupid, you’re going to start believing that you’re stupid, so if you say “felon” long enough, on the applications, on everything, you say “felon” long enough, people are going to start to feel like they’re bad. But me? I’m a human being. And I’m doing what God has for me to do. So I don’t believe any of that “felon” stuff. I’m a returning citizen.
Mike:
Mm-hmm.
LaShanna:
There are so many LaShannas right here in Florida. You can go to the grocery store, and they’re right there. Go to the movies, they’re right there. But they’re afraid to stand up and say, “I’m a felon,” because of the way that we’re ostracized. But they’re everywhere. So [people] think that “felon” is a murderer, is a child molester. It’s not so. Felons are everyday people, just like you and me.
People see me everyday and they’re like, “Oh my God! I would’ve never thought that’s what felons look like.” But they’re everywhere. And I just want to encourage these people, it’s okay to be afraid. You have to stand up. That’s the only way we’re going to take back our freedom, is to stand up in unity and say that, “I am a felon…” “I am a human being,” not a felon. “I am a human being who made a mistake and I want my place back in society.”
Mike:
Shalante, when you hear your mother talk about things like this, what are you thinking of? Are you agreeing with her?
Shalante:
Yes. I just get very emotional about it, so I try not to say much.
Mike:
Mm-hmm.
Shalante:
Because I see the struggle she goes through every day, just trying to reintegrate into society, and it’s not fair at all.
Mike:
I know you are very busy with your own programs that you are majoring in at University of Florida, but do you have any interest, besides your regular line of work, in becoming an activist, and following in your mother’s footsteps at all? Or is this more her fight?
Shalante:
I support her, but I don’t think it would be something that I would do. But I definitely support what she’s doing and I’m definitely behind her.
Mike:
Mm-hmm. Are there any other things you want to say, growing up for you, dealing with your mother incarcerated, that you want to share?
Shalante:
Well, it was very difficult, and it still is difficult sometimes. Even, going to school, people would talk about their parents, plural, and I didn’t have either one of my parents at the time, so that was something difficult for me. Things like, Christmastime, and living with my Grandma, it wasn’t a very positive experience. So I did have a rough time growing up without her. I didn’t get to talk to her every single day like most children did. When they came to school talking about their parents, I didn’t get much of that, because there was a certain time that we could talk and a certain time we couldn’t talk. I didn’t get to see her as much as other kids [did their parents], so that was very difficult, as a child.
And even now, they’re like, “Oh, she must be a bad person.” Or, “Did she not care about you guys, to go out and do something like that?” It’s just the constant thing that I have to explain, that she’s not a bad person, and that people make mistakes, and that she was struggling. She had three children at a young age, so it was difficult. But that doesn’t make her a bad person, because we all do make mistakes.
So that’s something that I always have to explain to people. Because, even if they don’t say it, you can see it in their faces when I tell them that my mom was in prison. That they’re judging her.
Mike:
Yeah. To go back to go the quote I was talking about, with food stamps, now, a lot of people tend to demonize this whole idea of getting federal aid for food, but it goes so often to working people, the wages are so low that Wal-Mart and McDonald’s support the food stamp idea so that working people can use this federal assistance, but even that is denied to ex-felons in some cases.
And let me go back to the quote: “They are often socially disconnected from community and family support structures.” Would you say that that is an accurate statement? I mean, obviously, you’re incarcerated, you’re far away your family, did you feel like your community support structure was strong, LaShanna, or did you feel like you were out there, alone?
LaShanna:
I felt very much alone a lot. But let me make one thing clear: I never came out here looking for a handout. I don’t want a handout.
I’m going to be fifty years old in a little while. And I made a goal while I was in prison, that by the time I got to fifty years old, I was going to be able to look back on my life and say, “Look at what I’ve accomplished, after all this, look at what I’ve been through.” So I never wanted a handout when I came home, nor do I want a handout now.
I don’t want any type of assistance from them, I just want the right to be able to go and get a job, and if I have to work two or three jobs, I worked that in prison for free. So nobody wants a handout. We’re so used to “workcall.” We’re so used that word “workcall,” that we can come out here and work two or three jobs. But guess what? They won’t let us! So I can speak for myself: I don’t want a handout.
And if they’re not give me an opportunity, I’ll make a way. That’s one thing that prison taught me very well. They gave me a bag of lemons to survive off of, I know how to make good lemonade, lemon cakes, lemon pies, lemon chicken. I know how to survive off of a bag of lemons. And they gave me that same bag back when I got back home. And it shocked me at first, but I got my bearings together, and I started coming up with different lemon recipes, because, Mike, they’re not going to put me in a box.
Mike:
Yeah. Well, I wasn’t trying to be offensive or anything --
LaShanna:
No, it’s okay --
Mike:
-- okay, because I believe in student loans, I believe in food stamps and public housing --
LaShanna:
-- Yes, I do, too.
Mike:
-- especially since so many workers are not given the wages and the benefits that they deserve.
Okay. One more point from this quote I wanted to list, and this kind of goes to the incarceration of America, the whole system that we have. “America has about 4% of the world's people and about 25% of the world's incarcerated people. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Over the last 30 years, that number has skyrocketed, increasing over 400%.” What are your thoughts, LaShanna, as a person who has been in the American prison system, what do you think when you hear these staggering numbers?
LaShanna:
I think of, if this was Africa, it would be called apartheid. And you would have President Obama sending the troops over to help them fight the apartheid in their country. But it’s happening right here in the United States. And nobody’s trying to help. Nobody’s even trying to see what’s going on right here in our own country. And it’s a shame. We can get involved in everybody else’s flaws, but we can’t even take the time to take the speck out of our own eye.
Mike:
Yeah. And another facet of this is that there’s no secret that there is institutional racism in the justice system. For example, black Americans often serve longer sentences for the same crimes than white Americans. My question for you is, have you seen this happen in the rights-restoration process as well? White Americans getting preferential treatment?
LaShanna:
I can’t really speak on that. I’ve only been to two rights-restoration hearings. But I can tell you, yes, it is absolutely true that there’s a big difference, when it comes to color. And I will revert back to 1998, when I was in the county jail, with a girl named Carrie Workhauser. Her crime was more heinous than mine. And she got probation. And I got 15 years in prison. And we had the very same prosecutor, Mr. Jeff Ashton. I saw her in prison, just as she was about to get out. So they sent her to prison long enough to get a number, and then she went home, with, I think, three years probation, while I served 15 years in prison. And her crime was more heinous.
The almighty and all powerful: they have the power to determine who they’re going to charge and how they’re going to charge them. So if it’s an issue with racial disparities, that’s where it starts at, right there: in the state attorney’s office.
Mike:
As the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition says, the ban, the civil rights ban, basically, on one million Floridians, "continues to disproportionately impact people of color." Republicans may disagree with that and pretend that we’re all colorblind, but if you actually look at what’s happening, I mean, case after case, you see that disparity, like you mentioned.
Now, I am hopeful, personally, that the next generations, Shalante’s generation and the people after them… I feel like we’re becoming less racist of a country, but that would still take a while to reach the justice system, I think. What do you think?
LaShanna:
I’ll let her answer that one.
Shalante:
Personally, I don’t think that racism will ever be completely out of the system, at all. I think it’s just going to become more covert. It’s going to be more hidden in our society, but it’s still going to be there. I think it will always be there, honestly, just because of the history.
Mike:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I don’t think anybody could say we would be completely without racists, but what I’m hoping is that we can start really looking at these situations where people are discriminating based on race or any other factor and try to fix them.
LaShanna, what is restorative justice? I saw that you had mentioned this on your Facebook feed just recently, and that you said that you had went to an event in Miami. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
LaShanna:
Restorative justice. Yes, I can tell you. Restorative justice is a panel of a mom and a dad, the dad who also happens to be a preacher. Both of them had lost a son to gun violence. The pastor was shot at the same time his son was and he was helpless. He couldn’t move to go over and help his son, who died.
And they sat next to me in chairs, and I represented the other side of the coin, and everybody dug deep inside of their souls, and they just spoke about how the crime had impacted their lives and the things that they go through on a day-to-day basis. And I was the last person to share my story. Because it’s all about healing.
Society seems to want to hold the victims of crimes in that moment, never allowing them to grow or to heal, as well as they try to hold the people who perpetrated those crimes in that moment. You see what I’m saying? Everybody seems to be stuck in that particular moment, but I feel like there is true healing in listening to somebody else’s side of the coin, taking into account their side of the coin. There’s much healing when a perpetrator of a crime can honestly say “sorry,” can honestly hear about how their actions impacted your life, so that they’re held accountable for their actions. And I believe that there’s healing all the way around.
I know it was very good for me. It was very good for me when my victim’s family forgave me. When his brother forgave me, I was truly free, and I feel like those two people that were in Miami on that panel with me are truly free. I was even invited to come and speak to perpetrators. Because there are so many people hurting, even the perpetrators’ families, like my daughter, they’re hurting. There are so many people that are hurting.
I’m not asking society to say, “Aww, she’s got a sad story and everything,” but people make mistakes. Some people just get caught, some people don’t get caught. But at the end of the day, I’m still a human being. And I’m better than I’ve ever been in my life. And that’s probably the truest thing that can ever be said of a person who has done a significant amount of incarceration, because you truly, truly start to appreciate what you take for granted.
Mike:
Last time I asked you, LaShanna, when we were closing the interview, was: is there anything else you want to say to the listeners. This time, I’m wondering, is there anything else you want to say to the activists, the ex-felons that may be listening to the show, or members of PICO United Florida or the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, is there anything you want to say on behalf of those two organizations to try to get your message across?
LaShanna:
First of all, I want to say to anybody who’s doing the work that I’m doing that I love them. Keep up the efforts. And the message to everyone else: we’re not going to stop fighting until we are not second-class citizens any longer. We’re human beings, not felons. We’re human beings, at the end of the day.
Mike:
Okay, great. Shalante, is there anything else you would like to add to that?
Shalante:
I just want to put the message out there that it is possible to get past struggle, and actually grow up and be somebody, despite the struggles that people go through, despite the struggles that a child of an incarcerated parent would go through. It’s still possible to fight to be somebody.
LaShanna:
That’s right, baby.
Mike:
Absolutely. All right, well, on that wonderful message, thank you both for joining the program today, thank you LaShanna for all the work you do, and I hope you both have many happy years to come.
Shalante:
Thank you. You, too.
LaShanna:
Thanks, Mike.
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