Damon West

The Aryan Brotherhood, the Aryan Circle, the White Knights, the Woods, you will fight all the white gangs first.

If you survive the white gangs, now you're fighting black gangs.

And the white gangs send the black gangs after you.

The Crips, the Bloods, the Gangster Disciples, they're going to all collectively tee off on this independent white guy who won't get with his own race and his own kind where he belongs.

He said, but if you survive all that, and you can survive all that,

You will earn the right to walk alone.

He said the strongest man in prison always walks alone.

Walk alone.

And he told me the truth about fighting, Mick.

He said, West, you don't have to win all these fights, but you do have to fight all your fights.

Some days you're going to win and some days you are going to lose.

He said, it's OK when you lose.

Get up.

Just get back up.

And that's what he's telling me.

Get back up.

But Mick, when he's telling me this back in 2009, I'm looking back at this guy like a deer in headlights.

All this violence and terror I'm about to walk into.

That's when he said, hey, West, let me break this down for you a different way.

He said, I want you to imagine prison as a pot of boiling water.