A Knock at Midnight(102)
In the kitchen, Mike leaned against the wall, listening attentively as Sharanda talked about her vision for her food truck. “I want to hire all men and women from the halfway house,” she said. “Remember how terrible those first few weeks were? Trying to get a job, the way people would look at you when they found out you had a record, with disgust almost? I want people to feel welcomed. Give them a real chance.”
“I know that’s right,” Alice said, helping herself to more peach cobbler. “I’m working on a new play and would love to hire a production team coming out of prison.”
Sharanda cooking in her food truck instead of her cell, Alice staging her plays on Broadway instead of in the prison chapel—imagining all the possibilities of their freedom brought me so much joy. Both had been set to never breathe air as free women for the rest of their time on this earth. Their presence was nothing short of a miracle. Yet here they were, in Sharanda’s own kitchen, breaking bread together and laughing. And I got to be with them.
The joy was great, sweetened by the pain underlying it. The laughing, loving, brilliant people in this room, clearly no threat to anyone, had spent a collective one hundred thirty-three years in prison as a result of the disastrous policies of the so-called War on Drugs.
My phone rang. Corey had said he’d FaceTime, and now here he was, larger than life, calling in to Sharanda’s dinner from a yacht on the Riviera.
“Corey, look where you are!” I exclaimed as he panned the turquoise sea with his phone.
“Life after life!” he said.
“Is that Corey? Let me say hi,” Sharanda said, and I passed her the phone.
After almost twenty years locked in a concrete and steel cage, Corey had hit the ground running. As senior adviser to Diddy at Combs Enterprises, he was counseling Diddy on strategic business decisions. He would frequently send me “Coreygrams,” videos of him enjoying freedom’s small pleasures: Eating fresh lettuce. Dipping his foot in the sea. Biting into a fresh croissant. Each “gram” was punctuated with a joyful “Life After Life!” His energy and light empowered me every day.
* * *
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WORDS CANNOT BEGIN to touch the exhilaration of seeing my clients free and living their best lives.
Even Keyon, my very first client, was free—released in 2018 after thirteen years, just in time to attend his daughter’s high school graduation. And he was doing well, too, promoted to sales manager at his job at a car dealership after only eight months. Now thirty-six years old, with the support of his loving family, Keyon’s life was beginning anew.
As I lay in bed that night, sated not only with food but with true kinship, I thought of the long journey we’d all taken together. My clients were family. They taught me that freedom meant much more than an opening of prison gates, and even more than an end to draconian sentencing laws. It meant economic liberation and independence to determine one’s own destiny. The beast was not just a failed criminal justice system but a culture deeply rooted in economic oppression and history.
Through my criminal justice work, I have encountered some of the most brilliant minds humanity has to offer. We must not only free them from prison, we must act to unchain their creative and entrepreneurial powers to better the world.
A man I deeply admire, businessman and philanthropist Robert F. Smith, encourages us all to be thoughtful and conscious about our highest and best use. In the wake of my clients’ freedom, I started to ponder just those questions. How might I combine my corporate experience and love for the art of the deal with my passion for people directly impacted by the criminal justice system? I want to change the narrative, to shift the paradigm. I want to highlight and celebrate the world-changing impact that formerly incarcerated people can have when they are placed in environments where their energies can be used not merely to survive but to thrive.
There must be a fundamental shift in the core of what we believe about justice. There is no doubt that laws need to change. Unduly harsh sentencing laws have caused untold misery at great expense. But systemic change does not all have to come from Congress or state legislators who move with no sense of urgency even when human lives are at stake. Systemic change can also come from directly impacted people when they are out of survival mode and have access to opportunity. With every freedom secured, my clients are pushing forward a movement of power and human potential that this country has been locking away for decades. The ripple effect of their liberation and the positive impact they will have on their communities and all those they encounter will help to create systemic change.
This life has taken me on a remarkable journey—one that continues to transform my understanding of justice and the very definition of freedom itself. Every day I celebrate the lives of the many people who have given me the privilege of representing them. In so many ways, they have freed me, too.
* * *
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A FEW DAYS after the dinner, I answered my doorbell to find a postal worker holding a large, heavy box. It was a package from Chris. He was being transferred from Lexington back to a high-security U. S. penitentiary—a decision we had fought and lost— and had given me a heads-up he would be sending me some of his books.
When I slit open the white box covered in dozens of stamps, a handwritten note fell out:
Please take care of these for me, Brittany. I don’t want them messed up in the move. They’re all I’ve got!