Reginald Dwayne Betts

speaker

250 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 7 Aug

Reginald Dwayne Betts’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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It's Been a Minute · What's a pathway to freedom? Reading. · 7 Aug 2026 podcast

If if if you are a a older woman that is is is is volunteering for the no cube bike racing and I stop and I read you a poem because I wrote a poem about riding a bike with my son.

And so I I kind of think that what we need is more zealots for literature.

We need more people that are saying that this might actually transform what the world looks like.

I mean, it does go back to books being a pathway to freedom for me because

You know, every time I struggled to get a job or to be accepted in society because of my criminal record, I would go back to college.

And that would provide me with, you know,

actual sustenance and intellectual sustenance because I would get student loans, I would get scholarships, and I would get space to build up credentials and and kind of to build up a resume and a reputation that could compete with my criminal record.

I was in a PhD and law program because I wanted to be a law professor and also because I couldn't afford rent in the local community and I could afford student housing.

And and people say things like, I'm a hustler, and and I am a survivor.

You know, I knew that I could take care of my sons better being a PhD student and having my loans for for on forbearance while I was a student and being able to get a three-bedroom and student housing than not to be able to afford the two-bedroom that I had in the community.

But but the truth is though I'm also an artist and I kept coming up with ideas and dreams.

And so I felt like, you know, people don't read poetry as much as I want them to.

What if I started to learn things by heart?

What if I did a solo show, a theater piece where it was just me on stage for 40 minutes?

I convinced a foundation to support the project.

And during the process of working on this show, I got six of my friends out of prison.

Yeah.

And all of those stories are interwoven in the creation of the show.

But the thing was after that happened.

Um some folks from the Mellon Foundation asked me what would I do if money wasn't an issue for people who were incarcerated.

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