WEBVTT

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One evening,

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after watching the nightly news
with my then-five-year-old son,

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he asked me a question

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I thought I would have
a ton of time to answer.

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I thought the complicated questions
typically came at eight or nine years old,

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but my son looked me in the eyes
while I was tucking him in,

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and with a very straight face he asked me,

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"Daddy, why did you go to jail?"

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My wife and I often
thought about this moment.

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We knew this question was coming,

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and we wanted to handle it well,

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but that night I had a question to answer.

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So I decided to tell my son
how I ended up going to prison

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when I was just a 15-year old kid.

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This picture was taken
when I was 14 years old.

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That's my mom,

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my sister,

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and that cute little baby,
that's my niece.

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She's 23 now, and it drives me crazy

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every time I think about
how old I'm getting.

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(Laughter)

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This was the last photo that I took

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just a few weeks before I made
the worst decision of my life.

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A friend of mine and I,

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we approached a man sleeping in his car,

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pulled out a gun,

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demanded the keys to his car,

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and sped off.

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That decision landed me
in front of a judge

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with my mom and my sister
standing just a few feet behind me

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as they listened to me get sentenced

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to eight years in adult
maximum security prisons.

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This is the next family photo
that I took with my mom,

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but this time it was taken
in the prison visiting room.

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Now don't let the waterfalls and the trees

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and all that stuff
in the background fool you.

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(Laughter)

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This was one of the hardest
times of my life.

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In fact, for the first two years,

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I battled depression

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by living in denial
about my prison sentence.

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I would commonly say things to my mom

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like, "I mean, Ma, I know you don't think

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that this judge is really
going to keep us here through Christmas."

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And then, Valentine's Day.

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And then, the last day of school.

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And then, the first day of school.

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And on and on.

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I promised my mom

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that one day someone would see
that I was drowning in those cells,

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that someone would tell us

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that we could breathe again

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that they just wanted
to teach me a hard lesson.

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But one day, as I'm walking
around the prison rec yard

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with my friend Danny B, I asked him,
"How long have you been here?"

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And he told me that he
had already served 31 years.

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My palms immediately got sweaty,

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heart dropped down to my toes,

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and it hit me like a ton of bricks,

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because that's the moment when I realized

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that I would have to serve
all eight of my years.

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Now, the story of going
to prison as a teenager

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is not an uncommon one,

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but for my family,

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this was the most tragic thing
that had happened in our lives.

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I missed my family terribly,

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and just like every other teenager,

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I just wanted to open up
gifts on Christmas morning

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and graduate from high school
with my friends.

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And because of the intense
security in prisons,

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internet access is limited.

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There's no easy emailing,

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no texting,

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and definitely no social media.

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This means that the meaningful moments,
like prom night or college graduation

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or the tons of free content
that you and I digest every day,

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very seldom gets shared with the cousin,
sibling or best friend in prison.

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I became very dark.

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My childhood and the dreams of it,
they disappeared.

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And those slamming steel doors

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clanking shut every night
in the prison housing unit,

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they forced me to grow up fast.

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I can tell you firsthand

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that there is something
about the violent cards of prison

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that completely cripple hope.

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I even tried to push my mom away

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because I didn't want her to be subject
to the collect calls

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and the eight-hour drives
for the one-hour visits,

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those horrible body cavity searches

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that she would experience
coming into the prison visiting room.

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But as many of you parents
here know tonight

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that you can't stop a mother's love.

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So what did my mom do?

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She made a promise while sitting
in a prison visiting room.

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She promised that she would
write me a letter or send me a picture

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every day from that day forward
until I came home.

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I had six years left to do on a sentence,

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our lives were completely
crumbling around us,

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and here comes this happy-go-lucky lady

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prancing into a prison visiting room
like I'm in summer camp

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with a new plan to send me
a bunch of pictures.

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(Laughter)

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Such an interesting time.

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Little did I know

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it would be my mom's letters
that saved my life.

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My mom would take
pictures of a cheeseburger

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or a mattress at a department store

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(Laughter)

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and she would send them to me
along with a letter with a promise

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that one day I would enjoy
a fat juicy burger

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or sleep on a comfortable bed.

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My mom assured me
that there was life after prison.

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In fact, my best friends

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began living vicariously
through my mom's letters and photos,

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giving an entire prison unit a glimpse
into what was happening in the world.

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After eight years of nightmares
of prison never ending,

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being dehumanized,

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strip-searched,

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watching people get wheeled
down the prison walkway in body bags,

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I was finally released.

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And I bet you can't guess

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who was there to pick me up
that cold morning in February.

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OK, you guessed it, my sister and my mom.

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The years that we prayed for
were finally in front of us,

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and the pain of living
behind bars was behind us.

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Or so we thought.

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Like me, most people in prison
are coming home one day,

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and unlike me,

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many don't have the consistent support
during and after incarceration that I had.

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The struggle is real,

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and even I struggled to find a job
when I came home.

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Each application that I filled out
from grocery stores to mortgage companies

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to fashion retail,

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they all included the same question,

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glowing, pulsating,

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waiting for me to add my check:

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"Have you ever been
convicted of a felony?"

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Now, to be honest,

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I knew that this moment was coming.

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I knew I would have to face this issue.

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So I leveraged the mental toughness
that I build while going through prison,

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but after being declined for over 40 jobs,

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even I began to feel deflated.

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I thought that I would get my life back

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and that all those things were behind me
and things would start looking up,

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but that decision that I made
when I was 15-year-old kid

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continued to haunt me
even up until that moment.

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But while on a job hunt,

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one day I ran across an application
that asked the question,

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but this time it was worded
a little differently.

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This time the question asked,

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"Have you been convicted of a felony
within the last seven years?"

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After doing an eight-year
prison sentence (Laughter)

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I could honestly say that my conviction
was over seven years ago.

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I was able to answer that question
with an honest "no,"

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and finally I landed my first job.

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(Applause)

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I was the guy who mixed paint
at the paint store,

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and eventually customers
would come into the store

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and they would ask me,

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"Hey Marcus, how much do you charge
to paint my kitchen?"

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"Well, Ms. Johnson,
we don't paint kitchens,

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we sell you the paint
so you can paint your own kitchen."

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A lightbulb went off,

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and I launched a painting company
that became the conduit

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between the customers in the paint store

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and the painters
who needed consistent work.

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After a year or so,

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I left that paint store,

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we grew our contracting company,

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and since then I have hired
tons of other returning citizens.

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(Applause)

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I stand today with a felony,

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and just like millions of others
around the country

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who also have that F on their chest
that represents felony,

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just as my mom promised me many years ago,

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I wanted to show them
that there was still life after prison.

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I started living my best life,

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and I couldn't believe
that I was living on a cloud.

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But my friends, the same ones
I grew up with in those cells,

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they would call me and constantly ask for
pictures of this new life I was living.

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If I traveled, they wanted pictures.

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When I got married, they wanted pictures.

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But I didn't have the time
or the bandwidth to sit and write a letter

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or print pictures from my phone.

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I would commonly tell them,

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"Dude, if I could just text you,
my life would be so much easier."

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And after searching the app stores
for a solution to this problem

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and not being able to find one,

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we launched Flikshop.

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(Applause)

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I kid you not,

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did you know that
the prison phone business

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created a billion-dollar industry?

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Some of these businesses are predatory,

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and so we knew we had to figure out
how to disrupt this space.

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Flikshop allows our family members
to take a picture, add some quick text,

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press send, and for 99 cents,

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we print that picture and text
on a real, tangible post card

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and mail it directly to any person
in any cell anywhere in the country.

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(Applause)

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There are millions of families
that are becoming torn apart

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simply because they don't have
the time to write a letter,

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figure out how to print
a photo from their phone,

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make a store run to go buy
a box of envelopes,

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and then to the post office
to go buy stamps.

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We started by connecting 50 families

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and then 100 families,

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and then 500 families,

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and now today I am proud to say

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we've connected over 140,000 families

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around the country.

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(Applause)

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We even commonly receive mail
in my office overflowing my desk

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from people in prison

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like Jason.

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Jason says, "I got about
15 postcards last night

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of so many words of motivation

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that I had to write to you
and just say thank you."

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Or George, who writes,

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"Today I received about six postcards
with so much love. ...

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I do not know where this roof
of love has come from."

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I cannot believe how blessed I am

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to sometimes be able to meet a child

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who sends Flikshop postcards
to their incarcerated parents.

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Sometimes, I'm able to even
go to the White House

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and address the nation and talk about
the need for criminal justice reform.

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And this story is just incredible for me
because this wasn't always my life.

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I remember very vividly living
in a six-foot-by-nine-foot cell

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with a man that was 22 years old
and there to serve life plus 43 years,

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and thinking in my head
while I'm sitting in that bunk

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that together we probably
would die in those cells.

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Well I know that our era
of mass incarceration

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and the things that we see on the news
dealing with people going to prison

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
is a huge societal issue

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that we all have
to band together to help solve,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
but I am confident

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that if we are very intentional
about building family connections

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and environments where
they are needed the most,

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then this is a big step
in the right direction.

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I absolutely love this stage of my life,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
this chapter,

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where I'm standing right now,

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but you know who is having
way more fun than me at this stage?

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My mom.

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(Laughter)

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I love you, Ma. Thank you.

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(Applause)