An app that helps incarcerated people stay connected to their families

One evening,

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

he asked me a question

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

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

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

and with a very straight face he asked me,

"Daddy, why did you go to jail?"

My wife and I often
thought about this moment.

We knew this question was coming,

and we wanted to handle it well,

but that night I had a question to answer.

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

when I was just a 15-year old kid.

This picture was taken
when I was 14 years old.

That's my mom,

my sister,

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

She's 23 now, and it drives me crazy

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

(Laughter)

This was the last photo that I took

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

A friend of mine and I,

we approached a man sleeping in his car,

pulled out a gun,

demanded the keys to his car,

and sped off.

That decision landed me
in front of a judge

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

as they listened to me get sentenced

to eight years in adult
maximum security prisons.

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

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

Now don't let the waterfalls and the trees

and all that stuff
in the background fool you.

(Laughter)

This was one of the hardest
times of my life.

In fact, for the first two years,

I battled depression

by living in denial
about my prison sentence.

I would commonly say things to my mom

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

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

And then, Valentine's Day.

And then, the last day of school.

And then, the first day of school.

And on and on.

I promised my mom

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

that someone would tell us

that we could breathe again

that they just wanted
to teach me a hard lesson.

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

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

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

My palms immediately got sweaty,

heart dropped down to my toes,

and it hit me like a ton of bricks,

because that's the moment when I realized

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

Now, the story of going
to prison as a teenager

is not an uncommon one,

but for my family,

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

I missed my family terribly,

and just like every other teenager,

I just wanted to open up
gifts on Christmas morning

and graduate from high school
with my friends.

And because of the intense
security in prisons,

internet access is limited.

There's no easy emailing,

no texting,

and definitely no social media.

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

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

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

I became very dark.

My childhood and the dreams of it,
they disappeared.

And those slamming steel doors

clanking shut every night
in the prison housing unit,

they forced me to grow up fast.

I can tell you firsthand

that there is something
about the violent cards of prison

that completely cripple hope.

I even tried to push my mom away

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

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

those horrible body cavity searches

that she would experience
coming into the prison visiting room.

But as many of you parents
here know tonight

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

So what did my mom do?

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

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

every day from that day forward
until I came home.

I had six years left to do on a sentence,

our lives were completely
crumbling around us,

and here comes this happy-go-lucky lady

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

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

(Laughter)

Such an interesting time.

Little did I know

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

My mom would take
pictures of a cheeseburger

or a mattress at a department store

(Laughter)

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

that one day I would enjoy
a fat juicy burger

or sleep on a comfortable bed.

My mom assured me
that there was life after prison.

In fact, my best friends

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

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

After eight years of nightmares
of prison never ending,

being dehumanized,

strip-searched,

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

I was finally released.

And I bet you can't guess

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

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

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

and the pain of living
behind bars was behind us.

Or so we thought.

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

and unlike me,

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

The struggle is real,

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

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

to fashion retail,

they all included the same question,

glowing, pulsating,

waiting for me to add my check:

"Have you ever been
convicted of a felony?"

Now, to be honest,

I knew that this moment was coming.

I knew I would have to face this issue.

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

but after being declined for over 40 jobs,

even I began to feel deflated.

I thought that I would get my life back

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

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

continued to haunt me
even up until that moment.

But while on a job hunt,

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

but this time it was worded
a little differently.

This time the question asked,

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

After doing an eight-year
prison sentence (Laughter)

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

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

and finally I landed my first job.

(Applause)

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

and eventually customers
would come into the store

and they would ask me,

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

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

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

A lightbulb went off,

and I launched a painting company
that became the conduit

between the customers in the paint store

and the painters
who needed consistent work.

After a year or so,

I left that paint store,

we grew our contracting company,

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

(Applause)

I stand today with a felony,

and just like millions of others
around the country

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

just as my mom promised me many years ago,

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

I started living my best life,

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

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

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

If I traveled, they wanted pictures.

When I got married, they wanted pictures.

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

or print pictures from my phone.

I would commonly tell them,

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

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

and not being able to find one,

we launched Flikshop.

(Applause)

I kid you not,

did you know that
the prison phone business

created a billion-dollar industry?

Some of these businesses are predatory,

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

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

press send, and for 99 cents,

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

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

(Applause)

There are millions of families
that are becoming torn apart

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

figure out how to print
a photo from their phone,

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

and then to the post office
to go buy stamps.

We started by connecting 50 families

and then 100 families,

and then 500 families,

and now today I am proud to say

we've connected over 140,000 families

around the country.

(Applause)

We even commonly receive mail
in my office overflowing my desk

from people in prison

like Jason.

Jason says, "I got about
15 postcards last night

of so many words of motivation

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

Or George, who writes,

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

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

I cannot believe how blessed I am

to sometimes be able to meet a child

who sends Flikshop postcards
to their incarcerated parents.

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

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

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

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

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

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

that together we probably
would die in those cells.

Well I know that our era
of mass incarceration

and the things that we see on the news
dealing with people going to prison

is a huge societal issue

that we all have
to band together to help solve,

but I am confident

that if we are very intentional
about building family connections

and environments where
they are needed the most,

then this is a big step
in the right direction.

I absolutely love this stage of my life,

this chapter,

where I'm standing right now,

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

My mom.

(Laughter)

I love you, Ma. Thank you.

(Applause)