Damon West

My mom told me that day, though, she said, Damon, no gangs, no tattoos.

You come back as the man that we raised or don't come back to us at all.

And man, I was stunned.

I was floored, right?

How am I going to deliver on this promise?

But she didn't leave on that.

She said, Damon, do you understand the debt you're going to pay to your father and I?

I said, yeah, mom, I got it.

Mick, what do I know about prison, man?

I've never been to prison.

I'm a white, middle-class guy in America.

I don't know why it's been to prison at this point, man.

Yeah, yeah.

Brother, I get back to my pod in Dallas County Jail.

I got two months before the prison bus comes to get me, man, and I'm frantically asking every guy that's been to prison before, how am I going to survive?

What am I going to do?

And every guy I'm talking to, Mick, black, white, Asian, Hispanic...

they all say the same thing, that you got to get into a gang.

They said, you won't survive where you're going, physically survive without a gang.

But there was this one guy that was so different, Mick, this older black man named Muhammad.