David Heppard is the Co-Founder and Director of Vision and Values at The Black Rose Collective: www.theblackrosecollective.org

Transcript is available here

In this episode we explore David’s life in prison, how he educated himself, began his journey of healing, and the remarkable turn of events that led to his release. We recommend starting with episode 1, available here.

 Excerpt from the episode: I think that the inability of the system to be able to see humanity is, is a large part of the system's problem because they want to be efficient and they want to remain productive and that you forget that we're talking about people.  If you really look at it like all these aspects of their system are built in a way to really make you focus on the failings of an individual, but it really points to the failings of a system.

They talk about. Folks need to come to the penitentiary to get rehabilitated,  and you gotta ask yourself  when were they ever habilitated to begin with, right? You gotta ask yourself like, what does this even mean? What you're saying is there's something wrong with them and now we need to make it right.

But the fact of the matter is like, well, you criminalized poverty. What was wrong was poverty.  I believe folks at their core are all brilliant, beautiful, and amazing. I really believe this. I believe accountability with relationship feels like love, and accountability without relationship feels like abuse. And I think we have a system that wants accountability, but they don't want no relationship.

They don't want to take accountability for the parts that they played in the results. How do you come up with a solution if you're not being honest? - David