Damon West (3:09)

So I think the best place, Michael, to start this thing is the trial. May 18, 2009. I'm standing in front of a jury in Dallas, and The jury, these 12 men and women, they've listened to a six day criminal trial, and a six day trial is a long trial for crimes where no one was physically hurt. Because these burglaries that we were committing all over Dallas for three years, no one was ever home. And I went through a lot to make sure that no one was ever home. Like, one of the first burglaries I ever did is I broke into a U.S. post office and I stole a mailman uniform, mailman bag, mailman hat. So I had to blend in and society. Right? Well, because just because I'm a meth addict and I'm breaking into houses to feed my drug addiction doesn't mean I don't have a preservation of life instinct, because we all have that, right. And I was a pretty smart guy. So I was able to apply a lot of skills intellectually to a very bad habit I had in life. I was a drug dealer, a drug addict, breaking into houses, and I became the leader of a bunch of other meth addicts breaking the houses. It was a Berkeley crew, right? Yeah. And so as the leader of it, I'm trying to figure out ways to not, you know, for no one to get caught, for us to be able to do this as long as possible, because it was all about getting high. And the jury heard this story about Damon West. They had it all. I grew up in a little southeast Texas town called Port Arthur, came from two parents that were married for 55 years. We were in mass every Sunday and good student growing up, great athlete, Division 1 college quarterback. By the time I was 20, I was a starting quarterback on a Division 1 team at the University of North Texas. So I get injured against Texas A and M in 96. That's when the drugs start. Cocaine, Ecstasy, pills. But functional addict, graduate, college, move off to Washington D.C. i worked in the United States Congress, worked for a guy running for president. And then in 2004, I moved back to Dallas to be a stockbroker for one of the biggest Wall street banks in the world.

Michael Knowles (4:59)

Now, so far, the whole part of the story is, look, you had this great promising career. It's so weird that you became a criminal. But then you say you worked for Congress and you worked in finance. Well, now I'm assuming you're a criminal. That's, that goes without saying. Those are, that's training grounds.

Damon West (5:13)

Now I'm, now I'm with the real crooks. Right? Yeah, but, so, but yeah, I work for one of the biggest Wall street banks in the world. UBS Union bank of Switzerland. And it was in Dallas, and it was at that job when I was introduced to meth for the first time. Another broker introduced me to meth one day when I was sleeping at work.

Michael Knowles (5:27)

Okay, now hold on, I, I want to take it. You're, you're got this good career, you got this good future potentially because you're this D1 athlete, and then you say you hurt yourself, you're out of sports, and then you start doing drugs. So this is before meth, before you're at ubs. Why do you start doing drugs once you lose sports?

Damon West (5:47)

The answer to that question is addiction. I'm an addict and today I'm in a program recovery. I work a 12 step program recovery that helps me deal with my addiction. But addicts can't live life on life's terms. That's the very definition of addiction. And when we get into doing drugs and alcohol, we're putting chemicals in to change the way we feel. Something's wrong in our lives. And instead of dealing with what's wrong in our lives, we put chemicals in to, to deaden that pain.

Michael Knowles (6:13)

Right?

Damon West (6:13)

And so that's why I got into cocaine and ecstasy and the pain pills, because it took me out of the miserable world that I was in where my identity of being a college football player had been removed from my life. And growing up in Texas, you know, Friday Night Lights football was everything. It was my entire identity.

Michael Knowles (6:30)

That's an Amazing cause, because you could see someone saying, look, man, my mom died and my dad went to jail and, you know, my dog bit my sister. And I don't know, all this bad stuff happened. My girlfriend dumped me, so I started doing drugs because my life was terrible. But for you, basically everything in your life was great except you could no longer play college sports. And that in itself was enough for you to say, you know, what time to time to fill that pain.

Damon West (6:59)

I made the monumental mistake that I see a lot of people making, Mike, as I wrap my identity up into something external. And we can't do that. You know, your identity will never come from the car you drive, the house you live in, your bank account, the friends you have, the job you have. The job you have. Your identity is who you are on the inside. But I never had developed that because being a college quarterback and being the star high school quarterback in a town in Texas, you know, that was my identity. And when it was gone, I was lost. And that's on me because I didn't handle the adversity well.

Michael Knowles (7:29)

But you had never been into drugs before.

Damon West (7:31)

I mean, I smoked pot, I drank alcohol, but nothing hardcore. Yeah, the hardcore stuff happened when the, the big, you know, the big life altering event of losing my college football career, when that happened, I was lost. And I spun out in this, this world of like, you know, like I said, it was cocaine first and then ecstasy, but. But I was a functional addict. I want to add that in. Like, I, I was always a drinker. I was alcoholic, but I was a functional addict. A functional alcoholic. I graduate college. You know, most people can't do that if they're stuck in their addiction. I go off and have these great jobs. I mean, I worked in, like I said, worked in Congress, worked on Wall Street. But that addiction is still there. It's never going away. And in 2004, when this other broker introduced me to meth for the first time, it was like touching a live wire. Yeah, meth, man, I was instantly hooked just like that. It's the most evil, most destructive, most addictive drug ever created by man because it's made in the lab. You know, people that got to see Walter White and see Breaking Bad, the stuff is made in the lab. So when I become a drug addict, I start giving up my goals to meet my behaviors. Another thing about being an addict is we give things away. We give up our job, our home, our car, our savings account. Our families are tethering to God. 18 months is all it took, Mike, for me to Go from working on Wall street to living on the street.

Michael Knowles (8:51)

So why did you do the meth? So you're working this job at ubs. I'm sure it's a stressful, but what do you want? Did you want to thrill or did you just want to get through the day?

Damon West (9:00)

Yeah, I was just sleeping. I was sleeping at work. I was passed out. The other broker saw me sleeping. He's like, dude, you can't sleep on this job. Markets are open. You're messing with people's money. They'll fire you if they catch you sleeping here. He said, come on out of the parking garage, man. I'll pick you. I got something that'll pick you up. And that was the day I took my first hit of meth. I thought we were going to do a little cocaine in the parking garage, to be honest with you, man, because that's what I was into at the time was cocaine, right? But, man, meth was a live wire, and I was instantly hooked. And, I mean, it took no time for me to lose my job at ubs.

Michael Knowles (9:28)

It's just. It's kind of funny. I don't mean, you know, obviously it's very sad, but it's funny that you did the meth so you could keep the job, but then because you did the meth, you lost the job to do the math, Correct?

Damon West (9:40)

Yeah, correct. And. But I didn't see the red flags because I'm in stuck in this addiction, and all I care about is the meth. Right. Even whenever I've lost everything and I'm living on the streets and, you know, living in dope houses, I still don't see that, hey, man, I got to get out of this thing. I go in deeper.

Michael Knowles (9:58)

Yeah, even. Even losing the athletics. You know, you lose the athletics, so you no longer feel like a cool guy. So you don't want to feel like a loser, so you start doing drugs, which makes you into a loser. Yeah, that's an amazing. It's just so.

Damon West (10:14)

It's the power of addiction, too, by the way, because when you're. When you're in your addiction like that. Look at all the stuff people do in their addiction, man. Yeah, they give up their families, they give up their lives, their jobs, everything. You know, now is your view of it.

Michael Knowles (10:27)

Because that resonates for me, because I think it would resonate for most people out there that when you have an attachment to something disordered, it makes you go crazy. It makes you do crazy things and give up other goods. Sometimes I hear people talk about Addiction. And it's as if they say there are two kinds of people in this world, addicts and non addicts. And I have plenty of friends who are addicts and recovering addicts and all the rest. But that's not how I view it. I view it as all human behaviors are habit forming. Good behaviors are habit forming, bad behaviors are habit forming. Some people more easily form habits than others. Maybe, but that this is a risk for anybody. Or is your view more like. No, I just was born as an addict and it didn't kick in until I did my first line of blow.

Damon West (11:13)

No, no, I would say that a lot of it's environmental, man. It's the stuff around you. Like, I, you know, I certainly think there's some hereditary components to being an addict, but I don't think that that's the big thing that kicks it off. There's, you know, there's stuff that happens in your life. You're exposed to certain things. There's a lot of people that you could say they were born into a family with a bunch of addicts. So maybe they have that gene in them, but nothing ever kicks in, right? Yeah, but also, if you don't try the things that are the ones that are going to be the most toxic to you, the most addictive to you. And it doesn't have to be drugs or alcohol either, does it? I mean, it could be food, money, clothing, shopping, sex, pornography, the Internet, the list goes on ad nauseum of this could be when people give up their goals to meet a behavior that's really my bar of what? Who's an addict, who's not an addict. It doesn't have to be this thing where you say, oh my God, they got involved in drugs and alcohol. It could be the person you see that gives it all up for gambling, gives it all up for pornography addiction.

Michael Knowles (12:09)

It's not original, but someone described addiction as just narrowing the scope of pleasure, such that I think what gives me pleasure, playing my ukulele, smoking my cigars, having a drink. I guess that's something. A good meal, long walk on the beach, a good book, you know, I don't know. We can all list all these things that give us a lot of pleasures. Playing with my kids, whatever. Whereas for an addict, it's pretty much the addiction. That's the only. You would give up anything else for the addiction.

Damon West (12:39)

Getting high. Yeah. And I would do, more importantly, is I would do anything to get the high. And that's what the jury was listening to, this guy, you know, the jury's not looking at it. From the conversation we're having today, like, well, this guy's an addict, man. There's obviously something went off the rails with this guy. The prosecutor put this case on. This is an organized crime case too, by the way. This is rico. This is like the highest level case they can bring.

Michael Knowles (13:02)

This is not just street crime.

Damon West (13:03)

This is not just a burglary because you had been.

Michael Knowles (13:05)

Okay, so hold on. You, you get into the drugs, you lose the job at ubs, you're hanging out at drug houses and stuff like that. At what point do you start breaking into people's homes?

Damon West (13:15)

Yeah, it wasn't immediate. The, the crime started off with low level crimes like, like, you know, breaking into cars, breaking the storage units. Then it escalated to burglary. And look, I want to say this right here, burglary is a very serious crime because my victims, when I broke into my victim's homes, I didn't just steal property from my victims. I stole something way more valuable from my victims. I stole my victims sense of security. Right. And that is gone. And look, I've got a family now. I've got a wife, I've got a stepdaughter, my mom lives with me on my property now. I can't imagine someone doing to me what I did to so many other people. Yeah. And my victims, you know, they're going to live with that for the rest of their lives. You know, because in Texas you can't apologize to the victim of your crimes. It's a felony. So you can't reach out and make apologies to anybody. So I'll never be able to apologize to the victims of my crimes because it's another felon. They'll send you back to prison in Texas if you reach out to your victims. Oh yeah, they're very serious about that in Texas.

Michael Knowles (14:08)

So I kind of get it.

Damon West (14:09)

It makes sense. I think the, the whole idea of that is like victims of very harsh crime, violent crimes.

Michael Knowles (14:15)

Yeah.

Damon West (14:16)

These crimes that we committed, no one was ever home. No one. We never saw our victims. They never saw us. So thankfully it's not a physical contact crime. Yeah. Yeah. Which makes it non aggravated. Which is going to play into the story because there's two different kinds of crimes in Texas. There's aggravated crimes that where someone is physically hurt and then there are non aggravated crimes where there is no physical. Yeah, this is the category that I'm in. So I'm gone to trial for a six day trial on a non aggravated RICO case, engaging in organized criminal activity. There's about a dozen other meth addicts in this whole RICO indictment.

Michael Knowles (14:50)

So these are the guys in the crew.

Damon West (14:51)

Got men and women, young and old, male and female, black and white. Because addiction doesn't care who you are, but you're.

Michael Knowles (14:58)

Or you're the main guy.

Damon West (14:59)

Basically, I'm the main guy.

Michael Knowles (15:01)

So it starts at your Robin storage units or whatever, you know, low level stuff.

Damon West (15:04)

And that was just me by myself doing that stuff.

Michael Knowles (15:07)

So then how do you, how do you become like a mob boss?

Damon West (15:09)

Whenever mob boss is.

Michael Knowles (15:11)

I'm being slightly hyperbole.

Damon West (15:12)

Yeah, but, but I mean, they, I would say mob is more organized. What we were was just a bunch of meth addicts breaking into houses to feed our addiction. And when I say I was the leader of it, I was kind of the guy that would put it all together because I would, I would case the places out that we're going to break into, you know? Yeah, I would. Because you get addicted to that too. You get addicted to the whole process of getting ready to commit a burglary. Right. And so this is all part of it. And I had access, man. Look, I'm a white middle class guy breaking into uptown Dallas. You know, there's not a lot of people that can just break into uptown Dallas without drawing a lot of attention. Yeah, and what I was doing too, to deflect some of the attention is, you know, I would take property from these, these burglaries. Sometimes it was in the form of a stolen car because I was the mailman before, you know, I was going into the mail room and finding out who wasn't home. So these are the places that we're hitting and these people that are out of town, if I can find their key fob in their, in their condo or their apartment, I can go to the parking garage and take Mercedes, a Land Rover, BMW, and I can go drive that vehicle full of stolen stuff that's traceable. Laptop, checkbook, all this stuff. Different things you don't want to keep from a burglary. And I could park that vehicle in the neighborhoods where I want the cops to look. South Dallas, East Dallas. Places don't look. Places that, where the people don't look like me. And so for three years, that's how we're evading this thing. We're, we're staying out of the, the limelight because cops are looking in other directions. The evidence points in other directions. But how do they catch you? Well, it's how all crime goes down. Everybody talks. They got my partner in crime first, my partner in crime was a guy named Dustin. Dustin. Dustin got arrested 10 days before I did. It was the day I got arrested was July 30, 2008. So it's about a year before the trial, right? I'm at this. I'm at this apartment I live in in Dallas. I got my dope dealer sitting next to me, a guy named Tex. And I'm telling Tex, we're passing this pipe back and forth. You don't want to be here, brother. The cops are closing in. The end is near. They got Dustin. And just about that time, the window on my right blows out and shatters. Flashbang, grenade across the floor. I scramble to try to get out of there. It blows up in my face. Bright white light, loud noise, right? Blows me back on the couch. And when I came to, and I can see and hear again, there was a cop standing over me in full SWAT right here. His boot was on my chest, the barrel of an assault rifle. My eye socket, screaming, don't move. Don't move. And I'm like, man, don't worry. Don't worry. You got me. It's.

Michael Knowles (17:31)

I'm not gonna move.

Damon West (17:32)

And so one of the SWAT team officers yelled out out loud, we got him. We got the uptown burglar. And that was it, man. That was the day it went down. And so I knew. I knew my time was limited after, you know, people started getting picked off, the cops started arresting people. I knew what was going down. You think about, like, you brought the mob, so we'll dovetail into, like, goodfellas, right? Remember the scene where Ray Liotta is really paranoid? That's me the last few days that I was free. Yeah, because I know it's going down. I'm watching cars going down my street. Like, that car looks suspicious. And it turns out they really were. They were casing my place. But.

Michael Knowles (18:06)

But everybody talk, and you knew they were going to get it.

Damon West (18:08)

Everybody talks, and that's the nature of crime. And that's a preservation of life instinct, too. I don't hold any ill will, by the way, against anybody in the burglary crew that. That spoke up. It's not their fault I went to prison. It's my fault I went to prison. I own all. That's the thing. Today, you're looking at a guy that's owned all of his mistakes in life. I did everything they said I did. I'm guilty of it all. But on May 18, 2009, you know, standing in front of a jury, I haven't Accepted any responsibility. The jury's looking at a guy, they're like, man, this guy had it all. And he became the leader of an organized crime ring and had all these opportunities that maybe some of them don't even have in life. And the jury deliberated for ten minutes. Ten minutes, man. Like, I don't know how much law and order you watch. Yeah, but if a jury's gone for 10 minutes, you smoked you? Yeah. They brought me back in the courtroom, and the judge read my sentence. He said, damon Joseph west, you are hereby sentenced to 65 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Michael Knowles (19:03)

How old are you at this point?

Damon West (19:05)

I'm 33 years old.

Michael Knowles (19:06)

So that's a life sentence.

Damon West (19:07)

It's a life sentence, and 65 years is life. And in Texas, they stop calculating time at 60. They don't tell juries about this. But when you get to prison, you realize that you get a timesheet every month tells you how much time you've done on your sentence. The max is 60, because 60 is the average lifespan of a human being who was 17 that went to prison in the first place. Because that's an adult, right? So 65 is life. The jury gave me life. First felony conviction ever. Probation was on the table, Mike. Probation was on the table, But I knew I wasn't getting probation because I'm guilty of everything. I thought I was going to get, like, 20 years, but I got 65. And, man, they took my breath away. That right there was my rock bottom moment. That's the first time I realized, man, something's got to change, and something is me. But I had no clue how to do it. Right. Right after the trial was over, their handcuffed me to get me out of there. They. They take me in this little side rooms. Got a bulletproof glass. The. The place where you normally talk to your attorney. Yeah, yeah. They bring my parents in about five minutes later, on the other side of the glass. They decided to give my parents one last visit before I go to prison. They felt sorry for my parents because I. My dad couldn't talk. I broke my dad, man. My dad was in stunned disbelief that his son, who once had all this promise in life, just got a life sentence in prison. So my mom does the talk, and she's like, baby, debts in life demand to be paid. And you just got hit with one hell of a bill from the state of Texas. But you did everything they said you did. So you have to pay that debt to society. You owe Texas that debt. Now you owe your Father and I debt, too, because we gave you all the opportunity to love and support, to be anything in life. And that's how you just repaid us. It's not going to work. She said, so here's the debt you're going to pay to us. When you go to prison, you will not get in one of these white hate groups, one of these Aryan brotherhood type of gangs. She said, you will not get any tattoos while you're inside that prison. No ink, Mike. Yeah. She said, no gangs, no tattoos. Come back as the man that we raised or don't come back to us at all. Man, I'm stunned, man. And I'm looking across at my mother like, man, she can't be serious. But just to back it up, she said, do you understand the debt you're about to pay to us? And I'm like, yeah, mom, I got it. And about that time, the guards come and they. They take me out of there and they take me back to my pod in Dallas County Jail. And I've got two months before the prison bus comes to get me to go serve a life sentence in prison. 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's telling me the same thing. You have to get into a gang in Texas. They have a law that if you get a life sentence in Texas, you have to live with lifers, only you don't live in a general population for prison. They want the life sentence people in one place so they can keep an eye on them. And so those life sentence people also get the fence off their mind. You live on a building with lifers for five years, you can't come off the building. It's an island on the prison.

Michael Knowles (21:51)

Is the idea that those people have nothing to lose, so they're more dangerous.

Damon West (21:55)

Yeah. And they're the ones most likely hit that fence and try to escape. So once you get someone, you kind of have to break someone's will in a prison for about five years, because once you get acclimated into prison and the escape instinct kind of goes away for a lot of people, not for everybody. There were guys in there that talked about wanting to escape all the time. I wasn't one of them. I always had hope I would get out through the front gate. But in Texas, you get a life. You get a life sentence, you have to live with lifers. And so that's what these guys in counties are telling me. You're about to go to the roughest part of prison there is, the most dangerous part of prison, where there's no hope. You have to get into a gang. You have to. You won't survive any other way. Except for one guy. This. It was an older black Muslim guy named Muhammad. Now, this is important. I'm telling you his demographics in prison.

Michael Knowles (22:43)

Most Muhammad's I know are not lily white.

Damon West (22:45)

Yeah, but this guy, to say that he's black is important because in the code in there, everything is about race. Right. The blacks don't intermingle with the whites. He's an older guy, I'm a younger guy. And on top of that, he's a Muslim and I'm a Christian.

Michael Knowles (22:59)

Yeah, yeah.

Damon West (23:00)

So. But he always comes up to me. His name is Muhammad. He comes up to me every morning, checks on me. He seeks me out. You know, I didn't seek this guy. He sought me out in there. And every day he checks on me. So this one day, he comes up, he's got a cup of coffee in his hands, had a smile on his face. He said, you know, man, I've been watching how you're dealing with these knuckleheads and these dummies talking about, you got to get into a gang. He said, don't listen to these fools. He said, do you want to keep the promise you made to your mom or your dad? And I was like, yes, Muhammad, I do. But I don't know how to do this. He said, let me tell you what prison's really going to be like. And that's when he kind of explains it to me. He said, the first thing you understand about prison is that prison is all about race. Race runs the whole institution of prison. And that's the way. He said, that's the way every race wants it. By the way, we all break off in our own racial group in a prison to keep the peace. In a prison, you have less chance for racial war if the whites are with the whites, the blacks with the blacks, and the Hispanics stay with themselves. So to your point at the beginning of the podcast and you say you don't know where you'd go. You'd have your choice between the whites and Hispanics. They would take you in.

Michael Knowles (23:58)

Yeah, yeah, I could pass.

Damon West (23:59)

Which you're not going with the blacks. They don't. Because you can. That's because race is everything. He's a racist, King. He even explains to me, he said, when you go into the day rooms, you'll see TVs in the day room and there's Rows of benches in front of the TV sets. He said, the first row, you can't sit on that road. That's for the blacks. The blacks have the numbers in prison. He said, by the way, he said, it's an upside down world from the world, you know, now where blacks, right. They are in control in there. And like, you know, you look in America kind of the, the hierarchy just in population is, you know, whites, Hispanics, blacks.

Michael Knowles (24:29)

Yeah, yeah.

Damon West (24:29)

In prison it's the opposite. It's blacks, Hispanics, whites. So he's telling me the first row of benches, you can't sit on that row. That's for the blacks get your head smashed in. If you sit on their row, the second row, you can't sit on that row either. That's for the Hispanics. They don't want you on their bench either. He said, the third row of benches is for the white people. He said, now sometimes you'll be in a pod. There's no third row of benches. If you get into a pod like that, white people sit on the floor. That's the way it works in prison, he said, so don't get into a wreck over this race thing. But he said, pay very close attention to race. Never forget about race, he said, because when you walk in the door, the white gangs get the first dibs on you. Yeah, yeah, that's what he's telling me. Like the Aryan brotherhood, the Aryan circle, the white knights, the woods. He said, they're coming at you, man, and they're going to try to break you. He said, if you can survive the white gangs and you can survive this, then you're going to fight the black gangs. And the white gangs will coordinate with the black gangs. They'll send the black gangs after you. And the black gangs, they're going to be in concert with the white gangs to get you where you belong.

Michael Knowles (25:25)

Go to hallow.com knowles kenna w l E S We're deep in Lent, walking steadily toward Holy Week, the cross and the resurrection. This is not a season for the half hearted. Lent is a summons to conversion, to strip away what dulls the soul and return to God with sincerity. This time of year demands movement, prayer, fasting and self gift. And our sponsor Hallow helps you do that. Do not drift through Lent. Live it. First, prayer Hallow can help you build daily habit that makes room for God's voice. They have meditations on the passion, scripture, reflections and the sacred music. Real prayer that draws you out of noise and into encounter. Next, fasting, yes, from food, but More often from what's poisoning your interior life. Gossip. Constant scrolling. Cynicism, Complaint. Fasting is not punishment. It's clarity. Frees the heart and make space for grace. Finally, give real charity always costs something. Offer patience when you'd rather be sharp. Mercy where you've been hurt. Love when it's undeserved. Download Hallow today.

Damon West (26:19)

I love Hallow.

Michael Knowles (26:19)

It's a wonderful app. Spend intentional time in prayer and meditate on God's love for you. You can get three months free@halloween.com knowles Forgive my ignorance. What are the differences between the white gangs? I kind of thought there was just one white gang in prison. It was like one for the whites, one for the blacks. What is. There's the White Brotherhood.

Damon West (26:42)

They have the Aryan Brotherhood. There's just a few. I'll give you a few of the white gangs. The Aryan Brotherhood, the Aryan Circle, the White Knights. Let's say those are three different white prison gangs. And every one of those gangs has their own hierarchy in there, and they all report to their own leaders and they help. The gangs are basically an extension of the criminal street gangs that you see out here in America. They're the same gangs on the black side. The Crips, the Bloods, the Gangster Disciples, they're all connected to the Crips, the Bloods, the Gangster Disciples out there. The White Knights, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Aryan Circle, they're all connected to their gangs on the outside and inside prison. They run drugs in there. That's one of the things they do. They run drugs, they run cell phones. They've got to get guards that they can turn to make this happen. And so that's what happens in prison. You see a guard get turned by an inmate, and you can see it happening, man. The first thing that happens is a guard does a favor for an inmate, and then the favor becomes something they can't get out from because the inmate will say, look, I got you now. You did me a favor. You've been doing these favors. I'll turn you in unless you start working for me. And then the guard will start working for this inmate. And that's how.

Michael Knowles (27:50)

Because the guard did a favor for the inmate.

Damon West (27:53)

Yeah. And sometimes the guard some. There's some correctional officers out there that are looking for that. Right. They want. Again, most correctional officers are not down with that. But there are going to be bad. Just like there's anything else. When there's going to be bad apples in a group, there's going to be correctional officers that are looking for that because they can make a lot of money doing it.

Michael Knowles (28:10)

But there's not. Like when the guy. When the white guy comes up to you and he says, hey, you know, here are your applications. You can go to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. You can join the white circle, the Aryan Brotherhood, or the. Is there any meaningful difference or it's just. They're just related to different gangs on the outside.

Damon West (28:24)

I mean, I think there's going to be meaningful difference depending on where you are. It's all going to be depending on where you are, what pod you're on in prison. Every piece, every part of prison has their own dynamic of who the power players are. So when this guy comes up to me the first day, he asks what family you're going to be a part of, they call the gangs families. And this guy's actually saying, I'll let you choose which one of these white gangs you want to be a part of. But you got to pick one. Yeah. And so that's. To me, I can't pick any of them. And my mom made me promise I wouldn't do it. Right, right. So. But they, for the most part, they're all about the same thing. They're all about. It's a protection thing, too. But here's the thing about it that I found out when I was leaving prison. So when I leave prison or I'm in a facility where everybody's made parole, but two weeks out, there's a table full of Aryan Brotherhood, Aryan Circle, all these guys are sitting together, and they look miserable. I walk by the table like, man, what's wrong with y', all, man? We're about to walk out of prison.

Michael Knowles (29:18)

Yeah.

Damon West (29:19)

Oh, man. Yeah. But when we get out, we got a report. I'm like, I got to report to my parole officer, too. They're like, no, idiot. We got to report to the gang. And I'm like, you mean this isn't over when you're done? They're like, this is for life. If we don't report, they come out to our families, and they eventually come after us and kill us for life because they wouldn't stand up and fight in the first couple months of prison, put their life on the line. I'm so grateful to my mom for what she made me go through, you know, like, makes me make that promise. I go through it. I'm either going to die in that place, but I'm not coming back like that.

Michael Knowles (29:49)

Right.

Damon West (29:50)

These guys are going to have a whole life where they go out and commit more crimes because they are affiliated With a criminal street gang the day they walk out.

Michael Knowles (29:56)

Yep.

Damon West (29:57)

Man, I was like, oh, wow. Blew me away that this thing is for life. I didn't understand it because I didn't get wrapped up in their lives. I didn't understand the dynamics of it. They all want. They're. All they're trying to do is get you to go with your own race. They want you to join the white. The black gangs want you to join the white gangs. They want you to be on the other side so you're not this independent white guy that causes a wreck out there one day. He said, if you can survive all this and you can survive all this, you will earn the right to walk alone. He said, the strongest man in prison always walks alone. He told me the truth about fighting. He said, you don't have to win all your fights, but you do have to fight all your fights, huh? And he said, man, some days you're going to win, and some days you're going to lose. He said, don't worry about when you lose. Get up and keep fighting. No one's keeping track of your wins and losses. They just want to see if you're going to defend yourself. That's it, man. That was the secret to fighting in prison. Don't worry about winning and losing. Just show up to every single fight. Don't miss a fight. And, man, I'm looking back at this guy like, you're looking back at me right now like, oh, man, like a deer in headlights, right? That's when he's like, all right. He said, hey, man, let me. Let me break it down for you a different way. He said, I want you to imagine prison as a pot of boiling water. And he said, anything we put into a pot of boiling water will be changed by the heat and the pressure inside that pot. He said, I'm gonna put three things in this pot of boiling water and watch how they change. A carrot, an egg, and a coffee bean. Yeah. So here's where I first heard the story. The coffee bean. It was the summer of 2009 in a jail cell in Dallas County Jail. Ten years before John Gordon and I write a best selling book all over the world called the Coffee Bean. So he walks me through it. A carrot goes into a pot of boiling water, hard, but becomes softened to the boiling water. Yeah, you don't want to be a carrot. He said, the egg goes in with the soft inside the shell on the outside protects the egg on the outside. But inside the shell, the soft liquid core, the yolk, the heart Becomes hardened. You don't want to be an egg in that place. You're going to find more eggs, he said, than anything else, though. He said the coffee bean, the smallest of the three things, small like you, has the power to go in that pot of boiling water and change the water to coffee. He said it's the only thing that will change the watch. It's a change agent, right? The powers inside the coffee Bean to change the water around the coffee bean. And he said, if you're going to come back, someone your parents recognize, you have to be like that coffee bean. And that's what he's telling me. You have to go in and change this place with the power inside you. And he said, it's not going to be easy, man. It's going to be hard. He told me what the first day of prison would look like. He said, when you walk in the door, he said, first of all, they're going to separate you from everybody else because you're a lifer. So when you get off the prison bus, you're separated out. You'll probably be the only life on the bus. There's not a lot of lifers on a prison bus. So they're going to separate you out, take you to life sentence building. He said, when you walk in the life sentence building the first day, do not run to your bunk with the guys that are scared. He said, when you walk in the day room the first day, put your bags down, put your back against the wall and let it happen. And I'm like, let what happened? He said, your heart check. The heart check is the most important fight you will ever fight in prison. They call it a heart check because they want to see what your heart's bumping. They want to see what you're made of happens on day one. He said, you're going to be approached first by a white guy because you're white. The first guy that's going to approach you is not a threat to you. He's an information gatherer, He's a scout. He'll ask you one relevant question. This first conversation. What do you want to be a part of? And he said, man, get him out of here.

Michael Knowles (33:09)

Aryan Brotherhood, please. Where's the application?

Damon West (33:12)

But he knows that I've made this promise to my mom, my dad, so I can't say that. So he's telling me, get this guy out of your face as fast as you can, Damon, and get your head on the swivel and get ready. Because the second guy coming up to you, he's not coming to talk to you, he's coming to hurt you. He's the enforcer. He said, when the second guy gets within range of you, put your fist in his mouth. That's how you get the jump on the first fight. And this is in the summer of 2009. My name is called out. Shortly thereafter, the prison bus is there to pick me up. He has four words for me on the way out the door. The last words he ever said to me in prison and county jail before I went to prison. He said, hey, west, be a coffee bean. Those were the four words that really changed my life. Because those four words put the power back inside me. And what's interesting about this conversation that I've had with this guy Muhammad is the day that I get sentenced to life in prison. I came back from the trial that day, and I go back to the pod, and of course, it's a very high profile case. So it's been on the news, and all the guys in the pod have seen it. No one will come near me, man, because I think they're afraid they're going to catch a life sentence, right? Yeah. So I come in, I'm like this pariah that comes in. Everybody's just staring at me like, this guy just got life. And he's walking around us now. You know, Muhammad was the only one that came up to me. He said, hey, man, listen. And that's what he said. He said, I saw they gave you six dimes and a nickel. And in prison, every 10 years, dime, every five years, a nickel. So he said, I saw they give you six dimes a nickel, man. It broke my heart. And you could see that I wanted to cry. He said, don't cry out here. You can't. You can't do that, man. You just got. You got hit with life. You can't cry in here. He said, but you can go to the shower and cry. He said, go grab your shower stuff, get to the shower, get it all out one time. Don't ever cry again. So I go to the shower. May 18, 2009. This is two hours after the jury sentenced me to life in prison. My life is gone. My mom said, this conversation with me, shower water comes on. And as soon as the water hits me, man, I start crying like a baby. And I am like, like, God, I don't know what to do. I'm coming back. I'm talking to God, man. And I'm like, man, I don't know what to do. I'm lost. And this is like the moment where God's telling me, I got you. This is going to be all right. You have to trust me. There was no admonishment, though, Mike. It's not like, you know, God was saying. Jesus was saying to me, well, you didn't listen to me. And this is what happens in life. No, it was like, all right, we're gonna go through this, too.

Michael Knowles (35:26)

So were you at this point, religious, like you said? You grew up, you'd go to church, but were. You probably weren't all that practicing. But would you have called yourself religious? Would you have said you were a Christian?

Damon West (35:40)

Oh, yeah. I grew up Catholic, so I grew up in the church. When I went to college, the wheels came off as far as the religious stuff goes. And I think a lot of people have that story, right? They get to college, they kind of just start chasing things. And I was always, like, chasing other things besides faith.

Michael Knowles (35:58)

I got girls, I assume girls, drugs,

Damon West (36:01)

alcohol, you know, and eventually crime. I mean, but I got so far away from God. God didn't leave me. I left God, you know? And so whenever I got arrested, my mom reminded me of that, that she had. My mom was a very faithful woman. She's got prayer plaques and crosses all over her house. She's like one of those moms, right? But she reminded me when I got arrested about this prayer plaque that she had had on my wall as a kid growing up called Footprints in the Sand. And she's telling me that, you know, you have to get on Christ's back and let him carry you through this. And this is, man, I'm going through Dallas County Jail, and I'm coming off dope. I still think I have a chance to get a small prison sentence and I can be out soon getting high. But, man, on May 18, 2009, I got hit with life in prison and all. That's what I said. It was the first time I understood that something had changed, that stumbled as me, because there's no more, like, talking my way out of this. Yeah. And so when I'm in the shower that night and Christ is talking to me, he's telling me things that I'm familiar with, like, get on my back. I'm going to carry you through this. And it's wild because I look back at this and I think about Muhammad, and you're going to hear about some of the other messengers I met along the way. I think that's what Christ does, is he sends messengers to us. And messengers can come from anywhere, man. Yeah, the messengers won't Always look like you. They won't come from the same background as you. But that's why they're the messenger. Right? They bring a message from a different place, a different view. And I think that the thing about life is we have to be receptive to all the messengers to get all the messages. I'm not expecting a black Muslim man in county jail to be the guy that's going to deliver this message that's going to help me out throughout this whole thing and literally transform my life after prison with the Coffee Bean message. But that's who Christ sent to me.

Michael Knowles (37:41)

You know, I totally buy this. And I think we entertain angels unawares sometimes kind of awares, you know, at least in retrospect, I think that might have been an ugly. I think I've talked to angels, and that's what angel means, is a messenger from God. But it's also kind of funny from the Christian perspective that one of the messengers would be named Muhammad, because the Muslims say there's no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet, his messenger. And I don't think the reason I even mention it is because something about Providence, the divine ordering of the universe, is that it's kind of funny sometimes. It's delightful, actually, when you look back in retrospect. And it is kind of funny that you say, I was speaking to Christ like Christ was speaking to me, and one of the guys that he's using to speak to me is named Mohammed.

Damon West (38:30)

Yeah, but that's the thing. I mean, like, you. You could either have a mindset where you would say, well, that can't be who he could send to me, or you could say, he could send anybody because he's the creator of the universe.

Michael Knowles (38:43)

Yeah. This is actually a theme that's come up even in this series. And I don't mean this as a joke. I mean this 100% sincerely. In my experience, this is gonna sound funny. And I don't mean angels have been black guys. Like, I've done, like, the people. When I think I've spoken to an angel, most of the time it's been a black guy. And the fact. So the fact that you say, you know, it's kind of crazy this black guy came up to me, I say, well, in my experience, that actually is how it works.

Damon West (39:09)

I don't. People's mileage may vary, and I think that it's up for your interpretation. So if you think that was an angel, that was an angel. You can't. Everybody's got the ability to have their own perspective. In life.

Michael Knowles (39:22)

Well, hold on. But I don't agree with that. I don't think that when I say I think I talked to an angel one time, people are going to think I'm nuts for saying this. But you're saying the same thing. Well, you're saying a slightly different thing. But when I think I spoke to an angel, I don't think that a. A human being was just, like, really nice to me that day or even being used for a special purpose. Like, I. I literally think I spoke to an angel. I think there is a yes or no answer to whether or not this person is an angel. And I think I've come to an answer. Like, I think I've come to the correct answer, but I guess I could be wrong. So, like, I. I don't know that it, you know, and I'm saying I

Damon West (39:59)

believe, like, if you say that happened to you, then I'm saying I believe that you had that experience.

Michael Knowles (40:05)

But I could be wrong.

Damon West (40:06)

You could be wrong is what I'm saying. But that's not for me to say. It's never going to be for me to say or for someone else to say, hey, Mike, you're wrong. There wasn't an angel because they don't live in your body. They don't know what you. They don't see what you see. Position determines perspective. Three words together that make a lot of sense for a lot of things in life. Position determines perspective. If you say it was an angel, then, okay, I can live with that. Yeah. You won't. It's not my place to tell you. It's not. Because I think that everybody has their own experiences in life. And again, we talk about, you know, I'm a faithful Christian and I believe that Christ is capable of anything. Right. And use anybody. And that's what I know from my story. Muhammad's just the first one. There's going to be other ones along the way. You know, this little Hispanic bank robber that I meet in prison named Carlos. I'm going to tell you a story about him in a little while, too. But there's going to be other people on the way that he's put my life. And like I said, the trick in life is to be receptive to all the messengers to get all the messages.

Michael Knowles (41:00)

You know, I love this point, especially on position relative to perspective, because in the field of semiotics, this seems like it's far afield, but it's actually exactly what you're talking about. There's this idea that there are signs and they Point to something. We're talking about providence. We're talking about getting signs and wonders. There's something that points to some other thing. But one of the ideas within the study of signs and symbols and meaning is that meaning, it's not like a sign is just like a stop sign. Like that's the sign and it means stop or what. That signs and meaning actually are a relationship. So there's the thing that you call a sign, and then there's the signified, the thing that it points to. And then there's the interpreter. There's the cognitive power. There's what. And that meaning is actually in that relationship.

Damon West (41:54)

Sure.

Michael Knowles (41:55)

And so it's got an intellectual aspect and it's got a kind of real aspect, and it's. And from a guy looking from the outside, he might have no idea what you're talking about.

Damon West (42:05)

Right? Yeah. Because he hasn't lived your life or lived in your shoes. And that's the thing. Your experiences in life make up the world that you see. Your world's determined by the experiences you have. That's what you have in life that's unique to anybody else, your experiences only you have lived in your life. So you see things a totally different way than other people see it.

Michael Knowles (42:26)

But.

Damon West (42:27)

So I just. I want to, like, lay that out for the audience. Like, you're going to meet a lot of messengers in this story that Damon west didn't get to be sitting in this seat with you today on his own. Damon west had a lot of help along the way, and this help was sent to me. And I believe in all of our lives, when we come to a place where we are open and willing for that help, we see the help. Like, and I think people. People want help for a lot of different things, but they're not ready to surrender. Right. They feel like they still have this control over life. There's only four things you can control in life, man. And everything else is God's. You can control what you think. You can control what you say, what you feel, and what you do, you know? And when I say you control what you feel, what do you do with your feelings? You know? And when you have these feelings, how do you handle those feelings? That's your control. You control that. Right? So what you think, what you say, what you feel, and what you do. And if it's not one of those four things, who controls it? Right. This is the case for a higher power, for a case for what I think is the case for Christ. Right. I don't control anything else. But if I can focus on those four things, I can really impact my life. That's giving up this idea of control. And I think so many people I met this chaplain, this little volunteer chaplain in prison named Ms. D. Ms. D. She was probably about 84 years old when I met her. She's passed away since. Passed now. But she told me something one day in the chapel in prison that I'll never forget. She said, if you're going to pray, don't worry. But if you're going to worry, don't pray. She said, you can't have it both ways, right? You want to either let God do his job or you're going to do his job.

Michael Knowles (44:02)

This is a famous saying of Padre Pio, the Italian Catholic mystic.

Damon West (44:07)

Maybe that's where she got it from.

Michael Knowles (44:09)

Pray, hope and don't worry. That's what he says.

Damon West (44:11)

Yeah. So she said, if you're going to pray, don't worry. And if you're going to worry, don't pray. So but I'm getting ahead of myself in the story. So, you know, the prison bus comes to get me, picks you up. And then whenever you get on a prison bus in a Texas, the Texas Department of Criminal justice, first of all, at the time, the Texas Department Criminal justice had over 100 prisons. I think they got 104 left now at 110 when I was in, there's at the time about 150,000 inmates in the Texas prison system. So it's a very big system that I'm going into. And the prison bus picks you up and they shackle you up to another human being. So you sit handcuffed to another person. The bus rides go on all day. Man, you're just weaving in and out of Texas, picking up people at county jails to drop them off at a prison. There's fights breaking out on the bus. People are scared, people are nervous. There's no bathroom breaks on a prison bus because the bathroom is a five gallon bucket in the back. You know, if you got to hit, you've got to go to the bathroom. You hit the bucket. But remember, you're handcuffed to another guy. Oh, man, he goes to the bathroom. You go to the bathroom, number one or two. So it happens all the time with these prison buses. You got to get to prison still. So now you're at prison, they've unshackled you, they've showered you, they've shaved your head and processed you through the whole thing. And that day when I got to prison, they separated me out from Everybody else kind of like what Muhammad said was going to happen. And they take me to the life sentence building. So I go to the Mark Stiles unit in Beaumont, Texas. Stiles is one of the toughest prisons in Texas. It's a maximum security level five prison in Beaumont, Texas. It has about 3,000 men on it. It's. I know it's one of the toughest prisons too because I did time there. But also you're going to hear when I got out of prison, I went back to school and got a master's in criminal justice and then became a professor at the University of Houston downtown teaching a class called Prisons in America. Like I'm the only professor on the planet to teach a prisons class.

Michael Knowles (45:51)

Yeah, I think more professors should go to prison, but that's.

Damon West (45:53)

Yeah, so. But Stiles is a very hard prison. It's one of the toughest in the system. So I get to styles 3,000 men. Lifers don't live with those 3,000. We live in a building called Seven Building. Seven Building has 432 people. Every man's got life. 95% of these guys will never see the free world again. It's the most hopeless place on earth. And I walk in the first day, got a mattress under one arm, a couple bags of property. Within five minutes I'm approached by a white guy, just like Muhammad said, a little bitty ball headed white dude, tatted up from head to toe. Even his eyelids are tatted up. He gets in my face, he says, hey white boy. He said, what family are you riding with? They call gangs families, gangs, not a family. He said, what family you riding with, white boy? And I'm like, man, get out of my face. I'm riding with God, man. Just leave me alone, man. I'm riding with God. He laughed at me. He said, God isn't here, white boy. He said, we kicked him out of here a long time ago, but we're here and we're going to come get you. You need to get ready, white boy. He runs up the stairwell on the right side and man, this is a massive. There's three levels of cells in this place, this huge room. And inmates are yelling all way the hey man. I'm standing there waiting because I know it's coming and coming on the third tier. Biggest corn fed white dude I've ever seen in my life, man. He's an ogre, man. And he points at me from the third run. He's let me know he's coming. I'm watching this dude walk down the stairs, man. Huge, muscled up dude. This dude has no neck on him, man. Bald head, swastika all on top of his skull. I know, I'm like, oh my God, man. This guy comes up at me and I did what Muhammad said. I reached up and hit him first, man. I got him in the mouth as hard as I could. Boom.

Michael Knowles (47:23)

Yeah.

Damon West (47:23)

And in 20 seconds, the fight was over, man. He beat me from one side of the day to the other. Didn't phase the dude when I hit him, right? Yeah. This is the neighborhood I live in, man. So within 20 minutes, the first fight in prison is over. I've already lost. I'm dragging my things up to my cell and I meet the second messenger, Carlos. Carlos is a little bank robber from San Antonio, Texas. About 5 foot 4, little Hispanic guy serving 99 years for all the bank jobs. Real nice guy, though. He's a real nice guy, but it's prison, man. You could be a good guy in a bank.

Michael Knowles (47:52)

One of the sweetest bank robbers.

Damon West (47:54)

One of the sweetest bank robbers ever. But he's a good dude and he was a very, like, knowledgeable person. And I needed something like that. I needed someone to explain how prison works. Because I'm not this fish out of water. My white middle class guy in America who's never even understood what the prisons look like on the inside. This guy's my guide, man. He's a walking teacher, you know. So he's explaining things to me in there when I first get to prison, you know, even like how you use the toilets in there because the toilets have a button. There's no flusher on the toilet. But the toilet is more than just a toilet. In prison, the toilet is for everything, man. You are going to do your dishes in the toilet. You're going to. Oh yeah, you do your laundry in the toilet. And he's telling me that the toilet is like our sacred thing in our cell. The cell has a bunk bed, a desk and a toilet. He said that toilet. We do everything in that toilet. We do our dishes in it, we cook with it, we do our. We. We do our laundry in it. Every week we're going to do our laundry, wash your sheets in there. He said we have bleach, that we're going to clean the toilet out before we do all these things. And. But when you go to the bathroom, you have to hit the button. Keep the water moving the whole time. We don't want anything to sit down.

Michael Knowles (48:56)

Toilet.

Damon West (48:57)

Nothing. Not number one or not number two. So, like, how am I Supposed to know that, man. Yeah, like, that's not something they taught me in college, Right. No, but that college education is not important anymore at this point. It doesn't even help me at this point. In fact, I would say it made me more of an outlier, man. I mean, like, I'm the most uncommon person I know inside this prison. Right. No one likes me, so. But he watched me go through this, man. It takes about two weeks to get through the white gangs. After that, it was the black gangs, just like Muhammad said it would be, you know, And. And Carlos is telling me, man, he's like, you got. You just got to keep going every day. And so.

Michael Knowles (49:30)

So what do the black gangs say?

Damon West (49:31)

The black gangs are fighting me, man. They're. They want me to get with the white gang, but they. So they go up and say, like, hey, Jeff, this is.

Michael Knowles (49:37)

You need to go.

Damon West (49:38)

This is over. As soon as you go find a family, this is over with, man. And I'm like, nah, man, we're going to keep doing this every day. And so they take me up on it. Like, in the first two months, I probably get in three dozen fights and lose 75% of these fights. I'm fighting almost every day in there, Mike. I mean, it is, like. It is a bloodbath. But remember, Muhammad said you don't have to win the fights. Yeah, you got to fight the fights. And in prison fight, man, you just got to show up out there and fight. And when you're done fighting, you say, I'm done, man. You throw up the towel. And they have, like, really only one rule in prison fighting is you can't hit a guy on the ground. That's it. Really? Yeah. Well, it's for a fairness factor, right? Because this guy's on the ground. If we beat this guy on the ground, it's going to attract wardens and everybody else, because you can't have a guy going around looking like the Elephant man banged up like that. If you get too banged up in a prison fight, those guys will lock you in your cell. They won't let you leave. People will bring you food every day. The whole pod takes it upon themselves to feed this guy every day until his wounds heal. Because you can't have a guy walking around the prison just banged up with knots all over his head. It happened all the time.

Michael Knowles (50:43)

That totally subverts my expectations, because I'd figure I've had this fear. I've had, like, nightmares about this, that I just commit some crime, and I get life in prison. Exactly Your situation. And I don't know how it happened. And now it feels like my life is over. And I would have this fear that I'd walk in and whether it's the skinhead or the black guy or whatever, they're gonna come up to me and not just beat me up, but kill me. Like, kill. Like, they will beat me. I'm not.

Damon West (51:09)

You know.

Michael Knowles (51:09)

Look, I know this might surprise you. I'm not the best scrapper out there, and that I would. They would crack my skull in, basically. But that doesn't quite happen.

Damon West (51:19)

No, no, it's. I mean, it's possible to get killed, but I'm not a guy that's going around running my mouth and popping off and everything like that. They know that I'm trying to fight against the grain. I've told people, man, I can't get to a gang. I made a promise to my mom. They were laughing at me, man. They're like, your mom's not here, dude. You are. And you're gonna be here for the rest of your life with us. And it was. I tell you what happened. It was a Monday morning. Six weeks into prison, still fighting the black gangs. I get up that Monday morning, I'm this close to being a broken man. I mean, the violence and the terror, It's a lot, man, and I don't know how much more I can take. I made a decision that Monday morning to use the one thing I haven't used to earn respect, and that was my athletic ability. My God blessed me to be a tremendous athlete in life. I was a Division 1 starting quarterback at North Texas at 20 years old. I'm a baller, man. But this rec yard where you play sports, the most intimidating place I've ever seen because it was the most segregated place I've ever seen. Every sport on the wreck yard was segregated by the color of your skin. It was like walking back in time in America. Let me walk y' all through the wreck yard real quick. So you go out to the rec yard. First thing you see is sand volleyball. Sand volleyballs for whites and Hispanics only. Handball. Big concrete handball walls. All races can play handball in prison. But if you want to play a game of doubles, your doubles partner has to be the same skin color as you. You can't mix the races to play games, the weight set, just like you see in every prison movie. Everybody wants to push an iron in prison. All the races can lift weights. But if you wanted someone to spot you, you want someone to work out with you, your partner Your spotter, same skin color, you're not working out with it. The chow hall. You couldn't go to the chow hall and sit down at a table with people from another race. Race was everything. And by the way, every race wanted that way. That's how they keep the peace in there. Here's this guy that won't conformed everything, right? So that Monday morning, six weeks in, I face my fears, I go out to the wreck yard, I pass up all those other sports I just told you about, and I went straight for the basketball court. Who do y' all think runs the basketball court in there? Right?

Michael Knowles (53:13)

Yeah, probably not the white guys.

Damon West (53:14)

The black guys, they run it. The brothers run it. And there's no white boys allowed in the basketball court because that's the blacks domain, right? But I'm gonna tell you why I chose a couple of sports that Monday morning to earn my respect. I know that in America, in our country, sports is our great uniter. It is, man. It's the one thing that brings Americans together like nothing else can. I mean, you just look back on time in history of our country, man. Take the civil rights, man. Before there was Martin Luther King Jr. There was Jackie Robinson, a baseball player. You know, in the south, before you integrated lunch counters and integrated everything else, you integrated locker rooms first. You know, I knew sports had the power to bring me in that in there. So I go out there that Monday morning, got myself at a game of basketball. They let me play basketball. But it's nine on one, man. It's not five on five. My old teammates don't want me out there, right? But I go out there and keep showing up. I'm like, I'm fighting these guys either way. Either I'm gonna fight them playing sports, I'm gonna fight them back on the pod. And I found out that when I would fight them playing sports, playing basketball, I didn't have to fight the rest of the day on the pod. It hurt less. Yeah, it was hard. I'm taking some rough shots. This lasts for six days, man. It's on a Saturday. When it's over, man, they. The wreck is called. It's over. All the guys circling around in the wreck yard, I'm like, man, what's about to happen? And it's the black guy circling me up. He said, wes, you don't have to worry about the blacks anymore, man. You're good to go with us, man. You took everything we had. You gave it back when you could. That took a lot of guts, man. So look, man, we're going to let you go live your life, man. You're an independent now. So, man, right? At two months, Mark, man, the violence is finally over. The threat to my physical safety has been removed. But it wasn't because those guys made a promise to me they can't keep. There's no black man in a prison that can keep other black men from jumping on a white guy. That's just suicide. Right? Because race is everything. Yeah. And I did what I had done all my life, Mike, is I cut corners, man. I was a corner cutter. Just a corner cutter all my life. I was always trying to look for the angle, man. So I'm like, you know what? I don't have to fight every day. I'll go play basketball with these guys. That's all I fight. And Carlos told me, he said, man, don't, don't. Don't do that. You don't belong in that basketball court. So at this point, these guys are coming by and grabbing me to play basketball every day. Now I'm out there with the blacks playing basketball. The whites don't want anything to do with me, but the blacks have let me come in and play basketball every day. So I've got this, man, I think this is great. This is swell. So it's two weeks after the earning my respect part of the rec yard. I'm coming in off the rec yard that day, and Carlos is waiting for me, man. And he looks agitated. He said, come with me. So we go into the stairwell, and under the stairwell in a pod is. We're really the only place where the cameras can't see. That's where people do a lot of fighting on the stairwell so the cameras don't see them.

Michael Knowles (55:49)

Yeah.

Damon West (55:50)

He said, listen, man, when you go to the shower today, blackjack is going to be in there to work to rape you. Now, blackjack is the biggest rapist in prison. This guy is about 64260, big black guy, loves to rape white guys. Does it a knife point and he's HIV positive. This guy is death in so many ways, man. Man, biggest rape is in there too, man. And I'm like, man, Carlos, I said, man, I'm not going to go to the shower. Then he said, you have to go to the shower, he said, because if he doesn't rape you today, he's going to rape someone else. Now you got two problems to deal with that could end your life. He said, I told you about playing basketball at the blacks. I told you didn't belong out there. That's where blackjack saw you playing basketball at the blacks. He said, now you got his attention. He said, what are you prepared to do? I said, man, I don't know. He's got a knife. I don't have a knife. Carlos pulled a knife out of his pants. Must have been this long. I don't know where he's hiding this thing. Right. He hands me this big blade. And the blade in prison is any piece of steel that's been sharpened or razor's edge. Got taper on the handle?

Michael Knowles (56:46)

Yeah, yeah.

Damon West (56:46)

He hands me the blade. I hold it for a second, move it around in my hand. I give it back to him. Like, dude, I've never fought with a knife before. I don't even know how to fight with a knife. This guy's been doing all his life. He's going to slice me up. There's got to be another weapon, another way. He said, there is another weapon. He said, go to the cell. I'll meet you up there. So our cell is 45 cells up on the third tier by the showers, right?

Michael Knowles (57:06)

Yeah.

Damon West (57:07)

So I'm waiting in the cell, just pacing back and forth going, what's going to happen? What's going to happen? Here comes carlos, and he's got some tools in his hand. So in texas, there's no air conditioning. In Texas, prison system, none. It's hot in Texas. I'm on the Texas gulf coast, too. During my time, we have these little bitty fans that are supposed to keep you cool. So Carlos takes his tool. He cuts out the fan motor in my fan. This fan motor is about 5 pounds of steel and wire. He drops it in my little shower bag, little mesh shower bag that I have, and he starts swinging it. He said, this is your weapon now. He's made a medieval ball and chain flail. He said, when you go in the shower, go in there. He said, when you walk in, there's a change area on the side. He said, there's one shower in the back. It's a one man shower. He said, go in there and turn the hot water on, get it really hot and steam in there and wait in a little change area, a little bitty space on the side. He said, now when he comes into the shower, hit him as hard as you can with the fan motor in the head. You got to get him in the head. He said, your first hit won't kill him. You're going to stun him. But when you get the upper hand of this dude, he said, do not quit swinging at his head till you see his brains come out of his skull. He said, you need to kill this guy today. And I found out later on that everybody wanted him dead. And, like, Carlos was like, all right, I'm gonna get my cellmate to kill him. Yeah. Cause I got the jump on him, right? That's why he gave me the information, because he thought, man, Wes can go kill this guy today.

Michael Knowles (58:24)

Now, was Blackjack actually going to rape you, or was that a setup just so you'd go kill this guy on their behalf?

Damon West (58:28)

Blackjack was actually going to rape him. He was there in my pod. Like, he was already there in the pod. I couldn't see him, but Carlos saw it, and he got the word from the street. In prison, they have a thing called roy. It's rumor on the yard. Roy is an acronym for that. So that's where the things come from, the rumor on the yard. So he got the Roy, and so he let me know. And so I'm getting ready to go to the shower. And I pray, man. I'm praying to the same God that I've been talking to, you know, been turning my life around talking to God. I'm talking to God again. Help me kill this guy. And I'm getting the green light in my head, brother.

Michael Knowles (59:02)

Like, let's go, David and Goliath situation.

Damon West (59:05)

Let's go. Yeah, because, I mean, like, you know, there's a point in time where you have to defend yourself, and something's going to go on. And, like, I think that God's going to be on your side for that, man. You're fighting evil, man. This guy's evil. He's going to rape me. He's HIV positive, man. I'm going to die. That's what Carlos told me. He said, listen, man, you're never going to go home alive. Do you understand what's about to happen? Either you're going to kill this guy, and they're going to give you another life sentence. They could give you the death penalty for this one. Because you're waiting for this guy in the shower to kill him. Him, he said, or he's going to do something to you that you're going to want to be dead. You'll eventually die from anyway, he said, but either way, you're never going home again. This is it, man. This is your life. Giving the weapon, man. So I go to the shower. I do everything he said. I wait in a little change area. Must have been a minute and a half or two minutes, man. And here he comes, man. The doors open up little Half saloon doors back then. And I remember this dude had a grin on his face. Blackjack had this grin on his face, and that just pissed me off, man. I reach back, I hit him as hard as I could. Boom. And he raises up the last second. I miss his head, catch his breastbone, and it is the loudest thud. And he's like a cartoon character getting shot out of a cannon. Yeah, yeah. Boom. He shoots out, drops the knife, and I'm on him, man. Mike, I am hitting this guy as hard as I'm trying to get to his head. He's got his head covered up. I'm going for his ribs. I hear ribs cracking and, man, I'm kicking at his head. And about that time, two of his gang, he was a Mandingo warrior. Two of his gang brothers have flown up the stairs already because they saw it went south on him fast, man. And these are guys I play basketball with, man. Yeah, yeah. They're like, west, don't lay another hand on him, man. He's on the ground. They said, if you touch him again, we're going to kill you. We're going to throw you off. I'm on the third tier. They're going to say, we're just going to throw you off the run. We got to do it, man. We have to kill you if you lay another hand on him. Do you understand? And I'm like, trying to reason with him. I'm like, dude, this guy tried to rape me. They're like, dude, he's a rapist. That's what he does. But he's our brother, man.

Michael Knowles (60:51)

Yeah, his name is Blackjack the rapist. What do you think he was going to do?

Damon West (60:55)

But this is prison, man. This is the world in prison. This is the world I'm in. I believe can't. And I've crossed this line, man, where I'm ready to kill another human being and I don't want to stop. I went berserk, man. I lost my mind.

Michael Knowles (61:04)

You know what's amazing is the internal logic of the guys come up, hey, man, you're our buddy, but you gotta stop from killing our aids ridden rapist. And you say, well, but he's an AIDS ridden rapist. He's gonna rape me and say, yeah, of course he is. He's a rapist. What do you think he's not Blackjack the sous chef.

Damon West (61:19)

Yeah, right, exactly, man. You know, it's like when you pick up a snake and it bite you. Like, that's a snake.

Michael Knowles (61:23)

Yeah.

Damon West (61:24)

So they're like, man, just look, just get out of here, man. Beat your feet and go. So I got my bag with me, and I go to my cell, throw my bag on the ground. And I mean, I ball up on the ground. I start crying like a baby. That adrenaline is burning off the reality of what just happened and where I live, man. And I'm just bawling like a baby, man. I passed out. I was out, man. When you have an adrenaline burn like that, your body's wiped out. And I remember waking up and I was hungry, man. One of those hunger pains where your stomach and back are touching each other. And I'm like, oh, my God, I'm so hungry. My stomach was cramping. And I heard the doors rolling. The cell doors are rolling. The cell doors roll for chow all the time.

Michael Knowles (62:00)

Yeah.

Damon West (62:01)

I'm like, okay, cool. This last chow, I'm gonna go hit last chow. And I'm like, wait, where am I? While I'm on the floor, I look over there, the bag. Bag's got blood all over it. Now I'm looking around this hiv positive guy. Yeah, yeah, I'm not cut. That's his blood, not mine. And I'm like, oh, my God. That thing just happened. It wasn't a bad dream. And I gotta walk out this door. And I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know if someone's going to stick a piece of steel in me, man. I just beat a black guy in the shower. And everything in the world says, you can't do that, man. But as soon as I walk out that, that door, that cell, prison changed forever, man. I never had to fight again. Everybody saw that I spoke the only language that everybody speaks in a level five prison. It's violence. Either you speak violence or someone speaks it to you. But you become very fluent in the language of violence. And after that last fight with blackjack, no one touched me again. Everybody saw that I could kill a man if I had to. That's what they were looking for. They wanted to see that this guy was one of us now. And there I was living my life in prison. I mean, blackjack didn't mess with me again. He would give me some crazy looks every now and then, but he's a predator. Predators are not looking for a tough prey. They want the easy prey. They don't want someone that's going to bash your head in with a fan motor if they try to rape him. He went on to rape other people, and that was just what he did.

Michael Knowles (63:10)

And.

Damon West (63:10)

And I went on to work on myself and started, like, chiseling away at this life I want to have, man, and become that coffee bean.

Michael Knowles (63:17)

What an amazing lucky break, though, where you get all the goods that come from demonstrating that you could kill a

Damon West (63:26)

guy without having to actually kill him.

Michael Knowles (63:28)

Yeah. In both the legal sense, because you would have never had a shot to get out of prison.

Damon West (63:33)

We wouldn't have had this conversation.

Michael Knowles (63:34)

Certainly not. And also in the moral sense, I think of Plato's Gorgias, this dialogue on justice. And in it, Socrates says, you know, it's actually. It's cruel to the guilty not to punish them like you have to. It's like rehabilitating them. That's kind of where we get the idea of the rehabilitation or correctional system. Like, it's actually good to correct and punish criminals. And so, like, even just from a moral sense, even if it were justified, you killing a guy would do something to your soul.

Damon West (64:06)

Yeah.

Michael Knowles (64:07)

That would actually injure you. You'd have to work through that.

Damon West (64:10)

Yeah. No, I totally agree. I couldn't agree more. I'm so grateful that he didn't die, But I don't think that was the way the story was supposed to go. And I think that it was supposed to be one of those things. You said the break is this, that I had to go through this traumatic situation, which I survived, and bring it to the point where I could kill a guy but didn't. So now I don't have any kind of fight. I don't have a fight case on me, man, because the guards aren't there. They didn't see it. Nothing happened, man. It's like it never happened. But in this alternate world I live in called pr, it was the best thing that could have happened because everybody saw, this guy will defend. He'll do anything to defend himself. He can't take another man's life. No one messed with me again.

Michael Knowles (64:45)

So you were doing a ton of drugs and pretty hardcore drugs. You can't get the drugs in prison, or I assume it's harder to get the drugs in prison. Are you going through withdrawal in the early days in prison?

Damon West (64:57)

This is Dallas County Jail when they arrested me. So Dallas County Jail, when they arrest you. First of all, there's about 9,000 people in Dallas County Jail. Jail, One of the biggest jails in America. It's like a city when you walk.

Michael Knowles (65:06)

This is not Barney Fife.

Damon West (65:07)

Like, no, this is not like a City, man. 9,000 people live in this place. Think about it in terms of, like, what that costs taxpayers. Right. 9,000 people three meals a day, 365 days a year. Jails and prisons are expensive. So Dallas County Jail, there's no detox program. They arrest you, they throw you in a jail cell with a bunch of other people. You come down off this stuff on your own, in your own time, man. I went through a period where I slept a lot, because I didn't get a ton of sleep whenever I was out there on meth for three years. Yeah, I went through a period where I slept a lot. Then I went through months of just eating everything in sight because I'm coming off that dope and I'm starving, you know, because my body. I didn't feed my body like I was supposed to, because people on drugs don't feed themselves, right? They're. They're doing drugs. And it wasn't the hardest on me. Meth was hard to come off of, but meth was typically, fatigue sets in, and then hunger sets in, so you eat everything inside. I put on about 60 pounds of fat when I was in Dallas County Jail. Waiting to go. Yeah, waiting to go to trial. When I reported to prison, I was like, 60 pounds heavier than what you see me now. It wasn't muscle, brother. I'm fighting my life. So I've been a really fat person before. So when I talk about people getting in shape, you know, physically, I've been there, man. I've had to do that. I had to get back in my shape. I've got an athletic frame. My body's not used to having that kind of weight. But so the comedown for me was getting very unhealthy, overweight, being depressed, trying to cope in there. I was trying to get guys from, like. I did some stuff with some cartel guys from the dope world, and I'd see some of these guys get arrested and come in like, hey, man, do you know any of these guards? Can you get them to bring some dope in? So the first, when I'm in Dallas County Jail, I'm trying to get people to bring dope in. I never got it brought in. My sobriety date is the day SWAT team got me. July 30, 2008. Not because I was trying to stay sober and hit county jail. I just couldn't get it brought in. But the day I got sentenced to life in prison, May 18, 2009, that was the day that I hit rock bottom. And that's the place every addict, when they get to. They get to the point of being sick and tired of being sick and tired and there's just no further left to go. Some people's rock bottom, though, is death, man. Yeah. They say in addiction we have three things guaranteed to us. Jails, institutions of death. And so the jails, the institutions. There I was, the only thing left was death. And in a way, I lost my life that day. You know, they took my. The state of Texas took my life from me. Because of the choices I made. I'm not a victim. I did everything. But as we know from the story, I went back to the shower that night and talked to Christ and got reborn again in a different life. And so. But, yeah, I was trying to get dope brought in, but I never thought about doing it again after that when I got to prison. Now, prison is a whole different thing. Prison. Remember, all these gangs run all the drugs in there. There's gang. There's drugs being brought in. There's. There's stuff being snuck into prison. The second day I'm in prison, man, somebody goes to my cell door, bangs on the door. White guy, because I'm a white guy, bangs on my cell door. So, hey, Wes, man, come over here. This guy knows my name. They got guys with cell phones in there. They look you up, right when you get there, this guy comes up and he's got meth in his hands. Ice. The same stuff I was smoking that I was out on the streets with. The stuff I was trying to get was now. Now it's in my face in prison. Day two, he's like, hey, man, I got what you want, man. I read all his story. I read everything about you, man. You love this stuff. I got it for you, man. Get away from me, dude. That stuff's caused too much pain in my life, man. Just go on.

Michael Knowles (68:24)

So what was he after? Was it, I'm going to do you a favor and then, oh, yeah, they're

Damon West (68:29)

going to sell it to you. So what they'll do is they'll sell it to you. You go buy something off the commissary. There's a store in prison called commissary. Some prisons call it a canteen. It's whatever the store is. In prison, you can buy soups, pastries, stamps, all kinds of different stuff.

Michael Knowles (68:42)

Food.

Damon West (68:42)

You can buy a lot of food in there. It's a store. So whenever you get a drug habit in prison and you're doing drugs, guys will sell you drugs, and you give them food to put in their locker. The drug dealer gets to eat well while you starve and do your drugs and then get into debt and they May kill you over it. A lot of the drama that happens in prison right now is around people that run up a drug debt with drug dealers, you know, because drugs exploded in prison in 2020 when Covid hit. Remember when Congress rushed to give everybody all that money, the COVID relief money. Two things in my life. You're probably close to the same age as me. Two things in my life that I've seen were unanimous votes. That was the war powers privileges that they gave to Bush for the Iraq going to Afghanistan, Iraq war. That was unanimous. And then this vote to give everybody in America, like, $2,400 or whatever.

Michael Knowles (69:33)

Yeah, yeah.

Damon West (69:34)

I think one person voted against it. Unanimous votes are bad. Yeah. Like, overwhelming United States.

Michael Knowles (69:39)

That's how you know it's wrong. Both parties agree.

Damon West (69:42)

So they rushed to do this. And when they passed that law and said, every American is entitled to, let's say, 2400 for the sake of the conversation, every American is entitled to $2,400 of COVID relief money. They got a bunch of guys in prison that are pretty smart, man. They get newspapers, too. This inmate in the California prison system read that. He's like, well, I'm an American. All these guys in prison are Americans, too. I'm going to write a lawsuit on behalf of everybody who's locked up. Won the lawsuit. Supreme Court says, yep, because you didn't write the law correctly. Every person in prison gets $2,400. And that's when prisons exploded around America with a big drug problem, K2, and all these other drugs. Think about it, man. Every person got $2,400 handed to them in prison. What are you supposed to do with $2,400 in prison? Man, that's a lot of soup. It's a lot of soup.

Michael Knowles (70:29)

Yeah.

Damon West (70:30)

Or, you know, the gang saw that's a lot of money that can come in our pockets. And so the gangs got bad, the drugs got bad. That's one of the things I get to do. I in there and show and share my story with the inmates, too, and the guards and like, hey, let me tell you a story about a guy that overcame a lot. So I start working on trying to become a coffee bean. And the first thing I had to do, Carlos had told me, he said, you have to stop seeing prison as a punishment and see prison as an opportunity. And it was hard to wrap my brain around that, man, because this is like, I just got done fighting a guy in the shower for my life, man. But he's like, this is the opportunity of a Lifetime, man. Because you get 24 hours a day, seven days a week to work on you. What kind of version of yourself could walk out of here? And so I. I believed it. I was in a place where I was crazy enough to believe it. He's a messenger. I see him as the messenger. He saved my life, man. He gave me this fan motor to save my life. And I start working on changing myself first. Because here's what I learned, too, is you can't change another person, but if you can help somebody change the way they think, they could change themselves. So the first thing I had to do was change me. And I started with a thinking change. Right. Prison's my opportunity. I get up every day. Yep. God, thanks for my opportunity, man. I'm going to go to work today, and. And I got into the 12 steps of AA. I don't speak for AA, but I got into 12 steps. I still work the program. I go to meetings every week still.

Michael Knowles (71:45)

Yeah.

Damon West (71:46)

But I learned how to pray when I was in AA because being an addict is a very selfish thing. And people that work a program recovery, they're very selfless.

Michael Knowles (71:53)

Y.

Damon West (71:54)

So that's why I'm working to. I'm trying to become a selfless person. But I got this prayer that I pray every morning, and I'm going to share it with your audience, because I. I want them to have the prayer if they want it for their lives. This is the only thing I pray for. I've been praying for it since prison. I woke up this morning in Nashville and prayed for it. I get up every morning, say, hey, Christ, put in front of me what you need me to do today for you, and let me recognize that when I see it, because I don't want to miss whatever that is. Amen. Now, that's it. That's the only thing I'm praying for. And that's because I believe that if I take care of what Christ needs me to do for him, he'll take care of my needs. Not my one needs.

Michael Knowles (72:27)

Yeah.

Damon West (72:27)

But my needs. Right. So there I am, filling these needs. I'm looking for ways I can help serve other people, and I come across this guy. They have volunteers that would come into the prison through the chapel. The chapel was my life raft in there, man. I went to all the chapel programming I could in there. You know, it occurs to me your

Michael Knowles (72:44)

prayer is a version of the Lord's Prayer of the Our Father. Right? Like Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. And then to your point on, like, give us. You know, just. He'll take care of my needs. It's like, give us a stair of daily bread.

Damon West (72:59)

Yeah.

Michael Knowles (73:00)

And you're good.

Damon West (73:01)

Yeah, that's it. I mean, so I'm just. I'm rewiring Damon west, and it's happening inside of a level five prison. But I'll tell you what happened in there. Had a spiritual awakening, and it's inside this cocoon called prison. I go in a caterpillar, and I'm working on becoming this butterfly, you know, in the metamorphosis sense. But I have a spiritual awakening. And that's when I finally surrendered and turned everything over. You know, I had that conversation with Ms. D when I was in there about going to pray.

Michael Knowles (73:27)

Don't worry.

Damon West (73:27)

If you're going to worry, don't pray. And now I'm living it. So I'm at the chapel one night, and they have these volunteers that come into the chapel, and it was really neat, man. These Christian volunteers would come in and fellowship with us. They'd spend time. It meant so much when someone would come in from the outside world to be with us, man, because we're in prison. In a level five prison, a lot of us are lifers, and there's some pretty bad crimes in there. My crime is a bad crime, but there's some bad, bad crimes in there that I'm around. But these men would come in there and they would live out that. Matthew 25:36. When I was in prison, you visited me, right? So this one volunteer chaplain, guy named Joe Tutoris, I met him in the prison chapel. Every Monday night, he'd be in there. Joe was a neat guy. Joe could have been anywhere he wanted to. Joe had a private jet. Joe had millions of dollars. Joe had thousands of employees. For the business he started, Joe started a restaurant chain called Jason's Delta.

Michael Knowles (74:19)

Oh, really?

Damon West (74:20)

Yeah. I don't know if you've ever been to a Jason's Dell.

Michael Knowles (74:21)

Jason's Deli is great. Yes, I'm a big fan. I drove by it. It's so this providential. I drove by Jason's Deli the other day, and I just thought. I was like, man, maybe I should stop in Jason's Deli. And I did, But I don't think about that place a lot. This is like a week ago. Yeah, that's very funny that you mentioned.

Damon West (74:33)

Joe Tutoris started Jason's Deli. It started in Beaumont, Texas, where I'm doing my time. The first Jason Delis in Beaumont, still started in 1976, had four employees in one store. This thing just blew up, man. Man. And so Joe. I would talk to Joe when I was in the chapel, and Joe took a shine to me, man. He's another messenger, right? So telling Joe, I was like, joe, I can't. I can't get these guys to follow me in there, man. I'm in the most negative place in the world, and this coffee bean thing's not working out, man. Because, I mean, I can be positive, but I can't get these other guys to be positive. They won't follow me. Joe said, these guys will never follow you until you serve them. He said, because a leader has to serve his people. Yeah. And he said, if you're not willing to serve them, why would they follow you? I said, I don't get it, man. He said, servant leadership. Servant leadership is helping other people reach their goals in life, helping to raise other people to a different station of life. Joe said, when we help other people grow, we grow. And he said, what you have to do is you have to go back to that pod. You have to figure out what your gift is, the pod, and give it away to him. You got to give it away to keep it. So I went back to the pod. I'm like, all right, what's my gift? It came to me. Education. I had a very privileged, privileged life. Mike. Mike. I'm a guy with a bachelor's degree in prison. Most of the guys I'm locked up with, their education stop somewhere in junior high or early high school, right? So I open a free tutoring service. I start teaching guys how to read and write. I'm going to transfer education to these men, get these guys ready for the GED test. And they're all lining up to take the GED because they all want to be a better version of themselves, right? And that's a very big. A man wants to be able to take care of his family one day if he ever gets out. Taught. Now he's got education. So all these guys are lined up to learn how to read and write from Damon West. And prison is a very transactional world. They tell you when you get to prison, there's nothing free in prison. And you don't want to accept something for free because the price for that may be way more than you want to pay. Yep. Fill in the blank what you think that is. So these guys are getting. Getting tutored, and they're like, west, you got to tell me how I can pay you. Can I go to the con? Can I get you some coffee from the commissary? Can I get you some stamps? How about some cookies? And I told him, I said, ma', am, don't pay it back. Pay it forward. And I explained to him, servant leadership. I served you. Now you go serve someone else. And these guys were looking for ways to help other people, and they did it, man. The guys I'm teaching how to read and write started helping other people. And they would explain to those people, you don't have to pay me for this help. You got to go help somebody else. That's what started happening in prison, man.

Michael Knowles (76:56)

I was thinking about this today, praying the rosary that the real, like, you know, Christ gives us a good type of everything we should do and be. And the symbol of Christ's kingliness, like, of him as ruler, as leader, political leader, is a crown of thorns.

Damon West (77:15)

Yeah.

Michael Knowles (77:16)

You know that's the crown, right? That's the emblem of, like, that's what rulers should think is not some gold crown with lots of jewels or something, but crown of thorns that pierces your head.

Damon West (77:27)

Yeah, that's. And that's what it is. I'm like. When you wear the crown, you understand that, like, we're all here to find ways to serve other people. And I think that's how. I think that's how Christ shows it is real. Anyway. He takes people's lives. They're broken down, and then they put. They get put back together. How do you explain that? How do you explain what's going on in my life? You know, I'll tell you.

Michael Knowles (77:53)

The way that the liberal materialist types would explain what happened in your life is they would say, well, you just realized that your life was not working out, and so you did something different, and you did it through your own power. And what's so crazy is you're giving credit to this God out there who doesn't even exist, but really it was just all you, and you don't need to have a sky, Daddy. That's what they would say.

Damon West (78:15)

Yeah, well, yeah, it's exactly what they would say. But also, I would tell people, come walk me through a prison sometime. Tell me they have a saying. They say there's no atheists in foxholes.

Michael Knowles (78:25)

Yeah.

Damon West (78:25)

Prison is the ultimate foxhole, brother. And I didn't meet a lot of people that really like. You had Lee Strobel on. I watched the episode because I read Lee's books in prison, Case for Christ, all this stuff. I mean, so he was a neat guy, but I Didn't meet a lot of people in prison that claimed to be atheists. And there was a couple of guys that would say it, I don't believe in anything. I said, well, you may be agnostic, I don't think you're atheist. It's real weird to be detached from everything, right?

Michael Knowles (78:50)

Yeah, I guess atheism. But that's really for like rich white undergrads at like Williams College or something, right? I mean, it's a little more of a privileged idea.

Damon West (79:01)

People that haven't been through anything in life, right? Because in prison everybody's been through something. So it's like everybody believes in something in there. And that's what I. You know, AA was a program I got into that was great because it didn't say you had to be a Christian to be in this group. It says you can be whatever you want to believe, but you have to, to believe in a higher power.

Michael Knowles (79:20)

Right?

Damon West (79:21)

You have to believe in something to be part of this group. You can't just be out in therapy, because that's the idea, man. We control four things. Who controls the rest of it? It's a big universe out there.

Michael Knowles (79:30)

You know something? I've never been to aa, but I have friends who are in it, who have been in it and who are in it still. And a buddy of mine who's been in it for a long time gave me this line that kind of ties in with the addiction, ties in with the crime, which is, he learned it in aa. Wherever you go, there you are. Yeah, I love that expression.

Damon West (79:49)

Wherever you go, there you are. You take yourself to the party. Every single party you take yourself. You know, that's the one thing you take with you, is you. I moved at one point whenever I was, you know, on. When I graduated college and I got into cocaine and stuff like that. After the football injury, I moved to D.C. thinking I could run away from this addiction. But it followed me there, you know, because there I was. I took myself everywhere I went. So, yeah, he's right. We learned that in aa. Wherever you go, there you are. And addicts, I think, have a thinking problem. We think about youth and we have to change those thoughts out. You got to think about something else. You got to be able to work with your thoughts again. And not because addicts. We have a three part process. We have a thought that will become an obsession, then become something physical we put in. Yeah, so thought obsession, physical. And that's really the.

Michael Knowles (80:33)

Isn't that true of all sin? Like I think.

Damon West (80:35)

Oh, sure. But like you Said.

Michael Knowles (80:36)

You said it really well.

Damon West (80:37)

It's like a singular view on one thing. That's the obsession part. When you said that, I'm like, oh yeah, he's talking about the obsession part. Say I'm someone that thinks about drinking, but I'm going to do it on the weekend. All right. So I was like, all right, I'm not going to drink all week. But all week long I think about drinking on the weekend. That's an addict. Because there's people that tell me I just drink on Friday or Saturday. I'm like, do you think about drinking all week? Yeah. Okay. Well, you may have an addiction.

Michael Knowles (81:01)

Yes. Yeah. Even you know, we're talking about Catholicism and when you go to confession. At one time I actually had to correct a priest on this because he said it wasn't a mortal sin. And I said, I think it might be a mortal sin. Which is if a thought comes into your head. Let's say you're driving in traffic and you get really angry all of a sudden, but you don't will it. It just kind of pops into your head. That's probably not a mortal sin because it's not involving an act of the will. You can't really accidentally commit a mortal sin. Or a good looking lady walks by and you get a thought comes into your head. That's not the mortal sin. But the mortal sin does creep in when you delectate on it. When you kind of, when you start fantasizing about it, start fantasizing about the drink or about killing the guy ahead of you in traffic or the girl or whatever. All of a sudden when you start participating in that, I think that's what you're describing as the kind of obsessive stage. Then you're already committing a sin. And by the way, what happens next? Yeah, you just do it.

Damon West (81:58)

You just do it. You obsess over until you do it. What's interesting too, you brought up about the thought about killing somebody. This is another aspect about prison I learned. Dude, give me a cellmate any day that's a murderer over a child molester or a rapist. I'm going to tell you why I can wrap my brain around the crime of murder. Because I think most people can too. I think most people have had a homicidal thought or two. Right? Yeah. Like you just gave the example on Trap today. I'd like to kill that sob. You know, that's a homicidal thought. You didn't act on it, you didn't obsess about it. It you didn't do anything with it. But these people in prison that are murderers, a lot of them, they went to prison for the first crime they committed. Yeah, I didn't go to crime for the first crime. I committed dozens of burglaries for. They finally caught me. But I could wrap my brain around that crime because I've had those crazy thoughts before, but I never act on them. Yeah, but a child molester or a rapist never had a crime. Like, I've never had a thought like that.

Michael Knowles (82:54)

Right, but don't those guys get killed in prison?

Damon West (82:56)

No, not anymore. They have a thing called this happened. So I get to prison, you know, I go to prison. 2009, in 2011, they have a thing called PRIYA. PRIYA is an acronym, stands for Prison Rape Elimination Act. Now, rape is already illegal in a prison. Right. Think about how bad rape was getting in prison. That they passed an act in 2011 that says, no, no, it's really, really illegal. Here's a new law that says, how really, really illegal?

Michael Knowles (83:21)

Double illegal. Now to rape people and people double, secret, illegal.

Damon West (83:26)

But, yeah, so rape got so bad, they passed a law in 2011 called Priya. And when Priya got passed, they had to put more cameras in the prison system. They had to establish new laws that said, hey, if an inmate says that they feel like their life's in danger, someone might sexually assault them, they tell a guard, if that guard doesn't act on that and separate that person from the pod and separate the person they're accusing of it while they do an investigation, then that guard is held criminally liable. If something happens, that person. Yeah, so it, like, really, like, changed. There's cameras everywhere now.

Michael Knowles (83:58)

Right.

Damon West (83:58)

And so it happened about two years too late for me to experience prison where there's a lot of cameras everywhere. But now the guys that committed crimes like that, they're. They just. Hey, man, they. They live in this world, and you can't really touch them because you.

Michael Knowles (84:11)

Because the cameras are everywhere. So they don't kill the pedos.

Damon West (84:14)

And they know that if I tell on this person, that nothing's going to happen to me. So prison's still a very dangerous place. And that was just in the Texas prison system. So prison's still a very dangerous place. People get killed in prisons all the time, but there's not a lot of, like, telegraphing it, like, okay, this guy's a chomo, and he just walked in. He's gonna have to fight everybody. We're gonna break this guy down. That used to be how it was. It's not that way now.

Michael Knowles (84:37)

A friend of mine made a passing comment to a chomo the other day, and I didn't know what he was talking. Is that like a cholo or. But then I figured out what it meant.

Damon West (84:45)

Yeah. So that's. And that's the thing. Like, I could. I lived. I live in the life sentence building, man. So you've got different kind of people that you commit different crimes. You get a lot of cellmates. Carlos wasn't my only cellmate, but, you know, I learned that. And when I went back and got my master's in criminal justice, I. I learned the academic side to my thought about living with a murderer anyway, because I live with murderers. They made great cellmates for the most part. You know, they committed a crime, they acted on this passionate thing, the thought in their head, and they took another person's life. And now they were serving life in prison, and they really weren't a criminal when they went in. You hope they don't become a criminal while they're in there. But when I got my master's in criminal justice, I learned that people that commit the crime of murder are more likely to be rehabilitated than someone who's another kind of criminal, because they were not criminals when they went into the system. Right. And if they get rehabilitation while they're in there, they pick these things up because they're still a good person. They can be reformed more than anybody else. So I was like, wow, that's interesting that there's actually the academic side to back up what I thought when I was in prison and I had murderers that were cellmates.

Michael Knowles (85:48)

So before I let you go, are there. You know, you've got the kind of academic side looking at prisons. You have a very serious firsthand account, and you completely went through the gauntlet and somehow survived without joining any of the gangs. Do you have recommendations? You always hear this from the left and the right about, oh, we have over incarceration. I think we probably have under incarceration because we still have criminals out on the street.

Damon West (86:09)

But.

Michael Knowles (86:09)

But certainly there are ways prisons could be reformed. What if you had to give three or five recommendations to help inmates? What would it be?

Damon West (86:19)

Okay, so this is a great question. Let's dive into this before we get to the rest of the story. This is great. I'm glad we're talking about this. So, first of all, I believe that the criminal justice system has nothing to do with prisons. Criminal justice system, to me, is the criminal on the street, the defendant in the Courtroom, the cops, the judges, the DAs, the defense attorneys, the legislators that write the laws. That's the criminal justice system. When prisons get a hold of people, they've already gone through the system, and society largely, for the most part, forgets about those people. Because we washed our hands of that. Remember that trial that went on? He's gone or she's gone. They're in prison now. Prisons is a whole different thing. Corrections is a whole different thing. So what I think we have to do in America first is we need to separate corrections from the criminal justice system. Make it its own system now. Make it a priority. Here's a number I learned when I was getting my masters. 95%. That number, Mike, represents the number of people that are incarcerated. They get out one day, 3 million people almost in this country are incarcerated. 95% walk out one day. They're going to be walking down your street, they're going to be pumping gas next to you. They're going to be in the line of Walmart next to your families. They're going to be your neighbors in some cases. We want these people to have the ability, the opportunity to turn this thing around. Right, right. Because they're going to come out one day. We want them to be a better version of themselves. Now, that's ultimately up to the inmate, because the inmate, like I said a while ago, nobody can change that inmate, but the inmate changes the way they think they can change themselves. But here's what I think we have to do. We have to take care of correctional staff better than we have in this country. It's a travesty. What's going on. I do a lot of work with the Bureau of Prisons now, like volunteer work. I. I get to. I tell people all the time. I change my mindset. Everything is. I get to. I get to go to every federal prison in America while I'm on the road speaking. Because my job as a speaker, I'm speaking all over the country every single week. And I get to stop in at Federal Bureau of Prison. Prisons everywhere, voluntarily walk in. And I spend a lot of time now with the staffs in there. Ten years out of prison now I'm spending a lot of time with the staff as well as the inmates. But I want to pour into those staff because when I was in prison, there were staff that made sure it was safe while I was in there. There.

Michael Knowles (88:24)

Yeah, yeah.

Damon West (88:24)

I didn't do that. They did that. They made sure I got to the chapel, to my programming that I was doing to become a better person. They had counselors available to me. I could go to the counselor when I was struggling with something. They had medical people I could go see when I needed to be healed or hurt or something like that. They had wardens, captains, majors, people that all bought into this mission of rehabilitation that helped Damon west out. Now I think it's kind of my job to go into these prisons and pour into the staff and the inmates. I've always been able to go in to talk to the inmates. For the last 10 years, this is the first time I've ever got to go to the staff and show them the example that someone got it right, thank them for the job that they do every day from someone that's been on the other side of it and been the recipient of it, but also pouring to them for their mental health. Corrections is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. In society, we celebrate in some places. I know you see a lot of people that don't celebrate law enforcement officers, and they should. Because I lived in a world where there's no law enforcement officers called prison, man. It's a very dangerous place. You know, these people that talk about defund the police, that's the same people that you were talking about are probably atheists in college somewhere. Right. I lived in a world with no cops. It's prison, man. It's a very dangerous place. But if you're in law enforcement, you're a police officer. People will buy you a cup of coffee, they'll buy your gas, they'll buy you a meal. They'll tell you thank you for your service. No one does that with correctional officers, man. Think about it. Being a law enforcement officer can be like playing under the lights in a stadium when you got people cheering for you, some people cheering against you. But being a correctional officer is like practicing in a gym. No one's watching. The Director of Bureau of Prisons told me that, you know, he took William Marshall iii, he's the director of the BOP now. He told me that. That because he used to be a cop, a West Virginia state trooper. And that's what he told me. It's like being a state trooper was like playing under the lights. Being in corrections is like being in a gym.

Michael Knowles (90:08)

Yeah.

Damon West (90:08)

So no one's there to celebrate you, but they got one of the highest suicide rates of any any occupation. Since 1997, there's been over 190 staff suicides in the BOP. 70% divorce rate. Wow. Hypertension. Their life expectancy is like 67 years old. For a career corrections person, this is a dangerous job. So here's the answer totally to your question. I believe we have to take corrections off and make it its own separate thing and understand that corrections is really just a big triangle. At one point in the triangle, you have the inmates that live in the prison system system. At another point you have the staff that staffs the prison. And the other point is the family members. And I'm not just talking about the family members of the inmates. Talk about the family members of these staffers that work in there because they take these jobs home, obviously to their families and their families go through the trauma with them. I think if we can get all three of these points to row in the same direction, I do think it's possible to understand we are all in the same mission because 95% keep that number in mind. We're all on the same mission. We all want the same things out of life. If we can get all three of these groups rolling in the same direction, then I think incarceration changes in America. Then I think the system gets better. But you have to get better communication between those three groups. I hope that answered your question. Yeah, so I've given this a lot of thought because I got into a position, obviously being a professor, an adjunct professor of criminal justice that I'm on a platform that no other ex con is on. You know, and so I've got this unique opportunity to educate the next generation of criminal justice practitioners.

Michael Knowles (91:45)

I guess there's the other ones that come to mind are Bill Ayers or Angela Davis, these sort of left wing terrorists. But I don't want to listen to their lectures. Yours, I think, is a lot better and you actually served your time, unlike those people.

Damon West (91:56)

Yeah, and I'm, you know, in my book, I did it for three years. I don't teach anymore because I'm just on the road speaking so much. But I did it for three years and I was the textbook book. You want to talk about anything in prison. Let's go over this topic and I'll tell you what I saw when I was in there. You know, but one of the first things I tell these people is that you don't want to be against law enforcement in this country. Because I lived in a world where there is no law enforcement and that is not the world you want. I don't care what you might see on TV or hear people talk about a protest. That's not the world you want to live in. Let's get behind law enforcement. And so it's really cool. Like in this life Right now to put my money where my mouth is. I found the SWAT team that took me down. This is later on in the story. This is a couple years last year. I found Dallas swat. I go meet with him. I told him my story. I said, man, you saved my life. When you pulled me out of that dope house that day, you didn't think you did it then. You didn't even know, but you saved my life. You pulled me out of situation to get myself out of. I even told him back to the angel thing. I told him I felt like they were angels sent to me by God. And my angels don't have wings. They have assault rifles and shields and helmets. They're busting the door off the hinges and coming through my windows. But they plucked me out of this world that I was in. And the SWAT team didn't arrest me that day. They rescued me that day. And that's what I told them last year when I met with them. I said, now let me tell you something. You saved my life, and I want you to be able to save the lives of other people. And your job is a very thankless job. I came here wanting to tell you thank you today. And they told me no one's ever come back to say thank you to a SWAT team.

Michael Knowles (93:21)

That's probably the first one ever.

Damon West (93:22)

But then I told them, I said, listen, give me a list of all the equipment that you need but you can't get from dpd. Maybe it's hung up in some red tape somewhere. Whatever it is, you need to be safe to come back into your families after you save up their lives. Give me the list. I'll buy it for you. God has been so good to me. They gave me a list of $20,000 worth of they needed.

Michael Knowles (93:41)

How about. How about like, five? How about we.

Damon West (93:44)

But I. But I. I told them to do it. They did it. Bought it all. I went and dropped it off to them last year, man. Went and met with them. They were just like, what perspective do you think changed in some of those men and women in that room that day, you know?

Michael Knowles (93:54)

Right. Right.

Damon West (93:54)

That the potential of what we do is so important. Yeah. That there may be another Damon west out there. It may feel like we're taking the same trash out over again, but by golly, there could be another Damon west out there. And so that's one of the things when I talk to God every day about that prayer put in front of me, what you need me to do. God told me, go find the SWAT team, man. Let them Know what they did in your life and show them some gratitude.

Michael Knowles (94:16)

You know, I was talking to a priest who's appeared on the show actually, and he said one thing that I think about. When we get up to the particular judgment someday, you know, we see everything, it's all clear, nothing's hiding, said something that we're not aware of now that will probably give us pause is all of the downstream effects of our sins. Oh yeah, like you think, you know, you do a bad thing and you kind of see it, but all how that affects everything else throughout. I mean, John Milton writes about this in Paradise Lost. It's kind of the image of sin in the world and that's probably going to be horrifying and we'll probably be, if we're lucky, we will be sobbing before the pearly gates when this happens. However, there is something else we can do, which is these little effects of just like one good thing you do. Well, 20 grand is actually a lot of money. But one $20,000 drop off of equipment, what is that? What are the downstream effects of that? That's what penance is, I guess.

Damon West (95:10)

Yeah, it's what penance is. And it's like, yeah, 20 grand is a lot of money. But it's also, God has put a lot of opportunity in my life. And it's almost like that crown you were so heavy is the head that wears the crown. Like I've got this crown that God's put on my head. It's like, hey, you're the guy that's going to show that my story, that I'm real. And I need you to show up when I call you, you know, and I'll tell you when that conversation happens. So I'm in prison and I'm, I'm serving these guys. They start serving each other. The prison changed, the whole pod changed, everybody takes notice of it. In 2015, the parole board comes to see Damon West. Now look, in 2015, seven years and three months into my life sentence, I know I'm up for parole, but I don't think I can make the first parole. And the only reason I'm up for parole is because my crimes are non aggravated. I didn't hurt anybody in my crimes. It is a 65 year sentence, which is a life sentence in prison. But in Texas at seven years, you're up for parole on a life sentence. So I go to the parole office that day. The lady from parole called me in, you know, this is inside of her prison. She's like, hey, Mr. West, she said, look, I got one question for you for this parole hearing. She said, it's going to be a one question test. The answer to my question is going to determine whether or not you're going home or you're staying in prison. But the answer to my question is not in the file about the guy I'm reading about who committed all those crimes. She points to my criminal file on a desk. She said, we don't see a lot of people like you in the system because you had it all. You had everything going for your life, every advantage, every privilege and every opportunity. But you blew through all of that. You became a drug addict, you became a criminal, you became a thief. A jury in Dallas gave you life in prison for the things you did. But instead of letting that license define you, you changed yourself inside this prison. Mr. West, you said, there's no doubt about the change you made to yourself. But what got our attention, the reason why we're here today, is you didn't just change yourself inside this prison, you changed the whole prison. She said, one man changed our prison. So my question for you is this, Mr. West, and think very hard about this answer, because your life depends on it. If you could be remembered for being anything in life, life, anything at all, she said, tell me what that one thing would be, but give it to me in just one word. Go.

Michael Knowles (97:15)

You said, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. I finally have my answer.

Damon West (97:21)

I picked something more like basic. I said, useful. And I said, I just want to be useful. And I think, Mike, I think everybody wants to be useful. I've lived in a level five prison, and I've lived out here in the free world. And every human being I've ever encountered wants two things out of life. We want to belong and we want to be loved. And some of us get so far away from those two things that we forget that that's what it's all about. But I told that lady the day I said, ma', am, I just want to be useful. And I can be useful inside this prison, as you've already seen. Or I could be useful in the free world again. November 16, 2015. I walk over to Texas prison. Not a free man.

Michael Knowles (98:01)

Yeah, yeah.

Damon West (98:02)

You're not looking at a free man in front of you because I've got a little more time left on parole. I'm on supervised release. I'm on parole. Parole in the state of Texas until the year 2073. They said 65, they meant 65, but I'm not worried about that. And they got a very short Leash on me. I had to get permission from my parole officer to be here with you today because I left Texas. Anytime I leave Texas, I have to get a travel permit. Every month I take a piss test. And if I fail one piss test, I go back to prison.

Michael Knowles (98:30)

So you could. I can't. Can I give you a cigar? A cigar, probably quality.

Damon West (98:34)

I could smoke a cigar. Yeah. I could smoke a cigar. But I can't drink. I can't do drugs. I can't go to a bar or a car club. Yeah. Yeah. In Texas, they have signs on the door that say 51%. A 51% sign is for someone who carries a concealed handgun. When you see a 51% sign, it means that establishment makes 51% of their sales from liquor or beer. It's not a restaurant, it's a bar or club. If I see a 51% sign anywhere in America, I can't go in the establishment. Violation of parole to go in. Wow. And they don't have 51% signs. My parole officer said, just look around. If the bar is bigger than the restaurant, on, it's not a bar. So. But I have a great parole officer. But, yeah. So, like, I'm not really worried about going back to prison because I'm a coffee bean. And so when I walk out that day, my parents are in the parking lot out there waiting for me. They open the gate, I go out, I take a few steps. And the voice in my head, God, says, turn around, Damon. I turn around, I'm looking back at the guard now. The guard's like, go free. Go. Can't come back. Right? But this is what God's telling me. It's not like God's coming down from the sky, but this is the voice in my head that's been talking me through Prison Christ. Right? Right. Damon, I put you through all this for a reason. You're going to go work for me now. You're going to go show everybody that I'm real. And here's the deal. If I call you, you got to show up. Because you are just a vessel. And I can find another vessel. So let's go. Let's get to work. And if you don't do the things, if this becomes about you and not about me, you're coming back to prison. I want you to see the gates before you leave. And so I was like, I got it, man. So I turned back around and run in my parents car. My mom was like, like, what happened? Why'd you stop? My mom's very spiritual. Woman. Yeah. I said, mom was God talking to me. And she said, you better listen to God. I told her what God said. She said, listen to that, Damon. And so I go back. I live with my parents in their spare bedroom. So now I'm 40 years old, out of prison, on parole for the rest of my life. I found a job at a law firm making just above minimum wage, living in my parents spare bedroom. Not your best dating profile, but I'm free, man. So I get out of prison, I start sharing my story locally in southeast Texas. I found out really quickly too. You can't go knock on the door of a high school and say, I just got out of prison. I want to talk to your kids. So it took a while for people to trust me again. And I didn't have a lot of place to speak in the very beginning. But what I did have in my parents spare bedroom, there was a mirror in there, a little vanity mirror my mom had the day I moved in. So every night for two years, I practiced my presentation in front of a mirror. My story of the coffee be. I got good, man. I got in my reps. Because anything you want to be good at in life, you have to practice that in life there's. There's no such thing as an overriding success.

Michael Knowles (101:04)

That's me with the cigars. You. I have a cigar company and I. I practiced. I mean, I smoked a lot of cigars.

Damon West (101:09)

I'm gonna.

Michael Knowles (101:09)

And I got really good at it.

Damon West (101:10)

I'm gonna. I'm gonna try to connect you with a friend of mine named Steve Harvey that loves cigars.

Michael Knowles (101:15)

Great. The TV host or.

Damon West (101:17)

Yes.

Michael Knowles (101:17)

Really?

Damon West (101:17)

Yeah. Oh, really?

Michael Knowles (101:18)

I'd love to get him.

Damon West (101:19)

Yeah, he's great. Steve's gone to a prison with me before.

Michael Knowles (101:21)

Really? Oh, wow.

Damon West (101:22)

Oh, yeah. He's. Steve's an incredible guy. Great servant, leader. He's a busy man, so. But yeah, I'll have to.

Michael Knowles (101:29)

I'd love to get him.

Damon West (101:30)

I'll get your cigar to him. So, yeah, I know he likes cigars, but. So there's nowhere for me to speak. Not. Not really. There's a few places I get to speak in the first two years, but I practice from a mirror. And I'm getting myself ready for the right opportunity. And I believe the right opportunity is the world of college football, because I played Division 1 college football. The problem is it's been 20 years. I took my last snap in 1996. Coaches don't know me, and I don't know them. Him. So. January 11, 2017. I've been out of prison 14 months. A buddy of mine in Houston calls. Houston's 90 miles from Beaumont. Yeah, yeah, he calls me that. He works in the media. Damon, get to Houston. Right now. It's the Bear Bryant coach of the year award. They're going to name the best college football coach in America tonight. The eight best coaches in the country. In this room, I'm going to sneak in. I got a press pass for you. So I drive the 90 miles from Beaumont to Houston. He sneaks in the back door at Toyota center. Handed me a press pass. He said, you're on your own, man. I got to go to work. Work. So I'm in this room, Mike, and all these coaches there, you know, I run around that room and I shake every coach's hand, and I give them a pitch of why they should bring me in to talk to their team. And every single coach slammed the door in my face. Yeah, they all said, no, man. I mean, it's just like, man, these guys are running away from me when I talk about prison, man. They're like, get away from me, dude. Like, so in one hour, I got seven nos from eight coaches. It's a no every eight minutes, man. And I'm. I'm. I'm about to leave. I'm about to walk out the door. The voice in my head is telling me to go home. But, man, I stopped before I got to the door that night. I'm like, you know what, man? No, Damon. You came to talk to eight coaches. You got to talk to that last coach, man. Just let the last coach tell you no, and then go home. Like Muhammad said, you don't have to win all your fights. You got to fight all your fights. Just. It's like prison, man. Prison was a good training ground for this. This won't hurt like prison. Go get the last.

Michael Knowles (103:07)

Just go to that last coach and punch him right in the face.

Damon West (103:09)

I did not do that. But what I did is I stalk that last coach around the room. He was the hardest guy to get through the room. His team beat Alabama two nights before for the national champions ship. Everybody was in line that night to talk to Dabo Sweeney, the head coach of Clemson. And I stalked Dabo out, hiding behind a fake plant, waiting to ambush. Now he sees me. Security sees me, too. I go to dabo, and I made my pitch. Dabo, he looks terrified. He. You got a card on you? I gave him my card, and he took it from me. He said, I'll check you out. He was gone. Well, that's A no. I've seen that no before that night. But I felt good about that no because I left it all on the field. One of the biggest takeaways from sports, right? You got to give your all. Went home and forgot about that night. Four months later, I get an email out of the blue. It's the director of football operations at Clemson University, guy named Mike Duy. Mike D's email said, hey, Damon, Coach Sweeney met you at award show in Houston. He'd love to have you come talk to the team. Do you have August 1st open, brother? I got every first open man, right?

Michael Knowles (104:03)

So August, matter of fact, I do.

Damon West (104:04)

August 1, 2017, I go speak to the Clemson Tigers, the fit in champions of college football. And when I get done my presentation night, Dabo's in my face. And Dabo is a high energy guy. He's another messenger. He's like, Damon, most amazing story I've ever heard. I've never seen my players respond like that to a speaker. He said, have you been to Alabama to talk to Alabama's football team? And I'm like, no, man, I've been to Clemson. I hadn't been anywhere. I said, alabama doesn't know who I am. He said, we'll see about that. He said, I just texted Nick Saban from the back of the room. Mike. The next day when my flight lands in Houston for my trip to Clemson, I turned my phone on. There's a voicemail and a text message from the director of football operations, University of Alabama. The Whale. The biggest program in America, the best coach to ever do it.

Michael Knowles (104:44)

They didn't let me in.

Damon West (104:45)

And then the voicemail said, hey, Damon, Dabo called Coach Saban last night. Coach Saban, can't wait to hear your story. How does August 21, 7:30pm Work for your calendar? I laughed out loud because I didn't have a calendar. I didn't need a calendar back then, right? Dabo Sweeney becomes the person, the relationship in life that believes in you and puts it all on the line. Every coach in America starts blowing up my phone because Dabo's going, Kirby Smart, Lincoln Riley, Chip Kelly, Lane Kiffin, Ryan Day. Hey, when are you talking to my team, man? It's happening. But the biggest event hadn't happened yet. The biggest messenger, the biggest servant leader is about to walk into my life. It happens in August of 18. I get a phone call. This is one year after Clemson. I get a phone call out of the blue. On the other end of my phone is a guy named John Gordon. Now, John Gordon is one of the biggest motivational speakers and authors in America, the energy bus guy. And he's on my phone. John, I know who you are. How do you know who I am? Dabo Sweeney. He said, I just got done speaking at a Clemson today. Dabo brought me off for 30 minutes to tell me your whole story. John said this before the pandemic. He said, damon, the world needs a Coffee Bean message. Let's deliver this message to the world. He said, will you write a book with me? We'll call it the Coffee Bean. In the summer of 2019, ten years after our first story from Muhammad in a jail Cell, the book the Coffee Bean came out, took the world by storm. The whole planet, man. It starts off in America. So four to six weeks. That book rides high at the top of every bestseller list. It got a global publishing deal. Global publishing deals are rare. That's when your book is printed in every language in the world. So the Coffee Bean starts popping up in Chinese, in Spanish, in Arabic, French, Italian, German, Vietnamese, Korean. Just in time for the year 2020. Remember 2020, right? Yeah. Code pandemic hits. The world becomes a pot of boiling water, and the world is searching for a message. That's when the world discovers me, the Coffee Bean guy. Damon West. My life went from this to this. Yeah. I've been on the Road 20 to 25 days of every month since 2021, sharing my story and message with corporations, groups, organizations, sports teams all over the country. But it all goes back to that one night in Houston, Texas, January 11, 2017. That night. I had seven nos in the first hour, and I'm standing by the door, getting ready to leave. If I listen to the voice of fear and doubt that night, I walk out that door. We're not having this conversation. Yeah, that's right.

Michael Knowles (107:04)

It's the last one. It's that last one. That one.

Damon West (107:07)

Stick around to get the last no. End up being the biggest. Yes. And I tell people all the time, man, you can't give up. Life gets tough. Life gets hard. You don't quit. You don't not ask your questions in life. The only question you really know the answer to in life is the one you do not ask. That answer is no every time because you didn't ask your question. I really think Wayne Gretzky said it best. Wayne Gretzky said you miss 100% of the shots you don't take in life. You have to take your shots in this life, man. God wanted something big for you in life, but you got to take the shot.

Michael Knowles (107:37)

It's interesting too. I've noticed very rare moments of despair over the course of my life. I have a pretty sunny disposition, but I've had them. And it's funny because then I think about it rationally for a second and I think, well, hold on, on. I am essentially the most privileged person that's ever lived. You know, I am in america in the 21st century. I, you know, have a great relationship with both of my parents or, you know, when, when one of them was alive. And I don't know, I have a great, I just have a great life. I just check every single box, right? And so I, if, if I can't hack it, you know, if, like, things are too tough for me, then it's totally hopeless for everybody else. But sometimes it's the people who have these privileges which every single person in America has an immense amount of privilege. It's those people who have those privileges who, I don't know, they sometimes despair the hardest. You know, there's a kind of paradox to that.

Damon West (108:34)

Yeah. You know, you gotta find what a bad day looks like. And I believe every human being has experienced a bad day. Bad days are life altered events. A real bad day. A marriage fails, a job is lost, a career is over. Something happens to one of your kids or your pets, right? Yeah. Those are bad days, man. Life changes on those days. Most of your bad days aren't one of those days. You used traffic while ago. You know, sometimes you sit in traffic and traffic bothers you. Other times you sit in traffic, it doesn't bother you at all. Is it the traffic or is it you? Yeah, it's always you, right?

Michael Knowles (109:08)

Yeah.

Damon West (109:09)

I believe firmly that we have to define what a bad day looks like and then ask ourselves on these days that we think are bad. Is this one of those days? Pretty good chance it's not one of those days. Then it's just really not a not so good day. Now we can turn this thing around. We can right the ship right there in the middle of the day. We can start the day over because we're not sinking into this life altering moment that we thought this was a minute ago. It's in your head. You've got to be able to talk yourself out of these bad thoughts and into good thoughts. And I think that people, for the most part want to have good thoughts. I think these phones have separated us from other people and communication has changed so much for humanity that it's hard to get to the positive. But that's my space in life. I Get to go out and transfer this message of the Coffee Bean to other people and how I did it. And it gives people hope. And that's a big thing in life. Everybody needs hope. It's like the movie Shawshank. I think it's the best prison movie ever because it was the one movie about prison that really depicted how hopeless prison is. And the whole movie was about hope. It was Red. Red needed his hope back. And at the end of the movie, Red tells you by getting his hope back, he's telling you on the beach in Mexico, you know, I hope I see my friend again. I hope I may cross the border. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it was in my dreams. I hope that's what he says at the end. I hope.

Michael Knowles (110:23)

Yeah, that's how. When I have that nightmare about going to life in prison, the thing that hits is the despair is the hopelessness. Because even if you say, I have to go to prison for five years, I'd like to avoid that too. But you think, all right, in five years I get out. But if you're just there, your life is over. You know, that gives you a different look until sometimes you get out of prison. So try this on for size.

Damon West (110:48)

I meet more people out here in the free world that are locked up than I ever did when I served time in real prison. Yeah.

Michael Knowles (110:53)

I believe that more people are in

Damon West (110:54)

prison by their thoughts and by their things than by steel bars and barbed wire and concrete combined.

Michael Knowles (110:58)

Yeah.

Damon West (110:58)

Of course, you can't become a prisoner in your own mind.

Michael Knowles (111:00)

That's a very Christian idea too, that the real slavery is sin. Actually, sin is what enslaves you. And, you know, so you can be a free man in solitary confinement. You can be a slave out, you know, on a beach in Boca or something.

Damon West (111:11)

Yeah.

Michael Knowles (111:11)

How'd you meet your wife?

Damon West (111:13)

Oh, man, that's a great story. So you know from my story, May 18, 2009, we've talked about the date several times, right? That's the day I got sentenced to life in prison. So when I get out of prison, I live in my parents spare bedroom and, you know, I'm making minimum wage and, you know, this guy's on parole for the rest of. Like I said, not a. Not a good dating profile.

Michael Knowles (111:32)

Right?

Damon West (111:33)

But I meet this woman named Kendall Ramirez. Kendall Romero is a nurse practitioner in Beaumont, Texas, where I live with my parents. And she meets Damon West. That's got none of the stuff. Look, now I'm one of the biggest speakers in America, right? And books everywhere. And in Demand to share my message. None of this stuff has happened. When she met Damon west, like, I didn't have a book. I didn't have anything. I had a dream. But she saw into that dream and she said, you know, look, Damon, you've paid a hell of a price for the things you've done. And. And she fell in love with that guy. And her. More important, her family fell in love with me, man. Her family took me in, warts and all, man. I get chills talking about it, man. I can't tell you how many times I laid in my bunk in prison. I thought, man, there's no one for me, man, who's going to ever love me after all the stuff I've done and man plans and God laughs. So I meet Kendall, we start dating, and then in 2019, we get married. And we pick our wedding date as May 18, 2019. Now May 18, 2009, life in prison. Ten years to the day I get married for the first time, I become a husband and a stepfather to our daughter Clara. And Clara is now 14 years old. Or as Kendall said, on May 18, 2019, you went from one life sentence to another. Much better cellmate, though, right? It's like, Carlos, I'm sorry, man. It's a much better cellmate.

Michael Knowles (112:51)

Yeah, less chance of parole, but.

Damon West (112:53)

Less chance of parole. But I'm not looking for parole in the. This one. But it's. It's great. And so one of the things I did is because these people were so good to me, her family. And like, I. When I started doing really well as a speaker and money started coming in from the speaking thing, which I never saw, none of us ever saw this coming, right? But again, God is just providing. And I said, kendall, we got to figure out a way to bring everybody along for the ride. The whole family, you know, your family, my family. So we took the money from that. We started a construction company in southeast Texas, and we, we bought a dirt pit, too, because you need dirt for all kinds of construction stuff and you need a construction company to build stuff. And the company is in Kendall's name and my mother in law's name. So it's a female owned business. And right now the company, the construction company's got like 60 employees. And yeah, they're doing great. The whole family works there. All the family works there. My. My dad passed away in 2023. Stage 4 colon cancer. But he got to see me turn around. My dad was a sports writer his whole life. He thought it was one of the greatest comeback stories Ever that he got to witness. And after my dad died, I saw that my mom was struggling in life and she was on her own for the first time. So Kendall and I just bought a piece of property and we built our house on it. And then we went, talked to my mom and said, listen, pack your bags. We're building you a house. You're coming to live with us. So my mom lives on my property now.

Michael Knowles (114:16)

That's great.

Damon West (114:17)

Yeah. So I take care of my mom now. My parents came to see me over 150 times in prison. 150 visits. My mom has got this such a strong devotion to the Blessed Mother. That's her real outlet in life. And we're all Catholic. We're still Catholic. My wife is Catholic, my stepdaughter's Catholic. We're raised here. She's going through confirmation soon. So my mom's devotion to Blessed Mother is so strong. She never let go of me, man. I never felt like I had both feet in prison. And she would, she would come to visit me over and over again. My dad would come too. But over 150 visits, no one in prison got that many visits, man.

Michael Knowles (114:51)

Wow.

Damon West (114:52)

So this back to where we started the story, man. The Messengers, man. The Messengers were everywhere. And I believe in most people's life, the Messengers are everywhere too.

Michael Knowles (115:01)

Yes, I totally agree.

Damon West (115:02)

But you just got to be open to it. And sometimes it takes being knocked down a life so great that you're like, I'm looking for messengers, God, but be on the lookout, man.

Michael Knowles (115:10)

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that. That is. I'm actually working on a book right now on this topic and it didn't even occur to me the connection. I was finally digging into it, but that the Christian view, and especially the Catholic view of the world is a very symbolic view. It's rich in symbols. Everything means something and nothing means nothing. And in our modern kind of liberal atheist life, we think that nothing means anything and it's all just kind of absurd and a tale told by an idiot, full of sand and fury and all the rest. But the Christian view, especially the Catholic view, is no, there's a lot of meaning. In fact, the world is super abundant with meaning. It is suffused and overflowing with meaning. And you have to. It would behoove you to tune in.

Damon West (115:58)

Yeah, absolutely.

Michael Knowles (116:00)

Get something from it.

Damon West (116:01)

And I believe to go further in what you're saying, the meaning, like, look, I think that most human beings, like I said, want to belong and be loved and like one of the things in life, too, is forgiveness. And that's a big thing with people that call themselves Christians and people like Catholics, like us, like, but a lot of people. And I talk to people all the time. You want to show me you're a Christian? Show me you're a Catholic. Whenever then, show me the things that show up in red ink and the New Testament. Testament. Show me love, forgiveness, mercy, compassion. Show me love for your neighbor. And when someone wrongs you, show me that stuff in red ink that says, let he without sin cast the first stone. Don't tell me you're a Christian. Show me you're a Christian. Often I can't hear what you're saying because your actions speak so loudly. In my life, in recovery, I go out there and one of the things we do at the eighth step, the eighth step in the 12 steps, is you make a list of all the people you've harmed. The ninth step is where you make the amends to. To people. But in. In recovery, we have this. This caveat. The ninth step that says, except when to do so would cause you or the other party harm.

Michael Knowles (117:08)

Yeah.

Damon West (117:09)

Now remember, I committed all these crimes. I got victims out there everywhere. I can't make apologies to my victims. That's a felony. I will go back to prison if I ever apologize to people. So I have no way to reach out to them and tell them any kind of an apology or anything like that. I just can't do it. I can't. It's off the table for me. So it's just a part of my life life. But a living in men's is when you go out in good deeds. You do good deeds, and you expect nothing in return. That's what a living in men's is. Living in men's is like, hey, I'm going to go out and do good deeds, and I don't want anything in return from it. I just go out and help other people. So that's what I've been doing my whole life. Well, there was a victim that I had, the biggest victim of all my crimes. This, just to sum it up, when. When Dustin and I broke into her condo, we stole something from her that was so sacred. Her fiance had stepped on an IED in Iraq in 2007, and she had an engagement ring in her safe that he gave her before he went to Iraq. And Michael, we stole the ring and we traded it for dope. The ring is gone forever. She was the first witness at the trial. I mean, like, I thought about this lady, the Entire time I was in prison, man, she represented all my victims because this is the one that I hurt so badly. I'm like, oh, man, I'll never forgive myself for it, is what I told myself. It was like a toxic companion that I carry around prison. And I thought, that's my penance on life. I'm going to carry this. And we talked about prison. I mean, the word penance is in the word penitentiary. But I carry around this memory of what I did to this person, and I'm not going to ever let it go. But I go around and I'm doing my thing in life and I'm sharing my story. And media picks up on it here and there. And a media station in Dallas ran my story. And I got an email one night from her, and she. It was a hearty. But the subject line of the email said, damon, I forgive you. I'm going to read you some of the emails. So I'm going to tell you about the email first. So the email, it's tough to read, man, because she's going through what it was like to see me on the news that night and then told me about the whole story of what it felt like coming to her condo that day. See the door been pried open and that she ran straight to the safe. The ring is gone, you know, but she starts talking about seeing the life that I have now and what I'm doing. And she let go of all that. Here's what she wrote me. See if I can read this. At the end of the email, she told me this, Mike. She said with that, I'd like to say I forgive you. I'm moving on in the hope that you're a genuine person with a good heart. Heart. And the hope that you put others before money or fame as you share your story. And the hope that you and your family never experience great loss or violation. Most importantly, in the hope that you feel peace in knowing that we are saved from the mistakes we make in this world. Thanks to the unfailing love of Christ. Life is such a gift. May you live it to the fullest. Damon, how hard was it for her to do that, man? Yeah, and she set me free on the end of it, man. May you live your life to the fullest. After what I did to you, you're telling me to go live my life. Just another one of those examples, man. I mean, you know, you live a life looking for what God needs you to do for him, and he'll take care of your needs. My need was that I needed to be forgiven, and I had to forgive myself. And she let me go, man.

Michael Knowles (120:38)

It's like the quality of mercy speech from Shakespeare, from Merchant of Venice. It says, the quality of mercy is not strained. You know, it droppeth like the dew from heaven. And it blesses twice because it blesses the person who is forgiven and the person who forgives. And it becomes a king, even more than his crown and his scepter. Yeah, that's.

Damon West (121:00)

Yeah, it was. Got a little.

Michael Knowles (121:01)

I got a little misty during them. Yeah, if I were in prison right now, I'd be in big trouble. Yeah, got a little misty on that one.

Damon West (121:07)

Don't let him see you cry. But out here, it's okay. And, like, I've never had a conversation with her. I've never. You know, I couldn't email her back. My parole officer told me that night. I sent it to her, and I was crying. She was crying, and I was like, her name's Ms. Bragg. So Ms. Braggs, I gotta email her back. She said, do not email her back. She said, I'm telling you, don't do it. And she said, no one else better email her either. I said, will you email her? She says, not how it works, Damon. You can't have contact with your victims, and they can have contact with you. So I can share what my victims write to me. And most of the time, it's not been a positive interaction with victims when they've reached out to me because they've seen me on social media or whatever, but the biggest one reached out to me. Man. Man.

Michael Knowles (121:51)

And you suspect she's. She knows you got the email. You know, she. You suspect she kind of.

Damon West (121:58)

I put it in a book called Six Dimes and a Nickel. Remember this prison sentence called Six Dimes and a Nickel? So I wrote a book last year called Six Dimes and a Nickel. It's my whole life story. And that's where I put the story in there. The book was about that. That chapter that that story came out in was called the Healing Power of Forgiveness. And like you said, it blesses twice. And so I hope that she has been able to let go. And she. The firm email that she said she had. I hope that's true because, you know, I cause a lot of people a lot of pain, a lot of harm, but I can't ever atone for that. And the only way I can atone for it is to go out there and go do good deeds in return. So, Mike, that's what I'm gonna do the rest of my life. I'm gonna go out and do good deeds and expect nothing in return.

Michael Knowles (122:38)

Where can people find you?

Damon West (122:40)

Oh, my website, damonwest.org and social media is@damonwest7. But damonwest.org that's where people find me for speaking engagements and all the other stuff I got going on life. And I want to really wrap this up, though, with a little bow around it. I found Muhammad. After prison, I went back to try to find the guy that told me the story with the Coffee Bean. He was dead. He had passed away. He a drug overdose. He was a drug addict. Passed away an opiate overdose on May 9, 2017. But I didn't stop there. I went and found his family, and I started a scholarship in his name. His family picks the winner every year. I fund it. It's a $10,000 scholarship called his real name is James Lynn Baker II. It's called the James Lynn Baker II Be a Coffee Bean scholarship. And every year, one little boy or one little girl that grows up in his old neighborhood in Dallas gets out and gets a better chance at life through education because two guys met in a jail cell one day. So it's a good story, man.

Michael Knowles (123:32)

That's great.

Damon West (123:32)

I love a good comeback story.

Michael Knowles (123:33)

Yeah, that's beautiful. Beautiful. Head on over. Follow Damon on all social media and maybe, I don't know, donate a little bit to the scholarship or something. You know, do these good acts, these penances are good to do. Damon, thank you so much for being here.

Damon West (123:45)

Thank you so much for the opportunity today, man. Thank you so much.