offenders and as well as at risk youth so the night i'd like to take this time to invite my guests sitting across from me who will be our first guest wish i had my paper or any of my paper way from with the david cowan is a director reintegration director for alliance for change from san francisco to his right is a very good friend and that we find x offenders having to deal with once they return and try to acclimate back into society our first show our first tuning rather support that's needed to assist them and to help them so that they won't reappear so the night we'd like to be able to look at some of th say that we must have a conscious awareness of who and what we are and first we have something special to offer regarding our relevant conditions and situation because as men we need to define our resources we need to control our resources and we need to defend our resources so my first question tonight is my third question is how difficulty how difficult it is rather for an ex offender to find a job in today's society my thought is what are you doing in your life that you infecting the environment so in order to actually think that you actually employable first of all you have to believe your we talked about it earlier you have to have the belief so if you believe thing you practice  mility and you try to take advantage of every piece of knowledge that you can actually get graphs then gradually camilli you will be prepared once you return back into society but it has to be a willingness to be a plus to the society versus a negative what we do on the outside is we want to see men reintegrate not just economically we don't think we think it's a disservice to expect men to just get out become taxpaying citizens and kind of fade away but there's so much more protects a potential these are these men are leaders we they are they're survivors they're capable so much and so we ask that starting from the talking about for for the that means that we want to different things we're not necessarily we don't judge their success or failure based on whether or not they go back to prison we assume that they're not going to go back to prison we would read as their success based on like how many contacts are on their phone you know how fast the nor the quality contacts are they people do their contacts the people who will provide support in whether it's emotional for whether it's somebody who getting technical assistance getting into school finding finding jobs someone who can walk to the we are really hard and mostly it's like everything else it's community based and so we just try to put feelers out there for people based on the skills that someone has  didn't have computer skills because they was most places i was gone you had to fill out the application online so i knew very little about computers they have a workshop unemployment office and you can sign up but i workshop and they will teach you skills in using computers and stuff like that you have several different agencies even i use the department of rehabilitation  they also they also pay for at the time i had a substance abuse issue and you know i really didn't want to confront it right all but i had several departments to help me with my substance abuse issue and i was able to get help from them which helped clean me up and get me ready for employment allowed to as we go any place is we don't know how to  became a pro and i probably can give a curriculum in its own telling webb how to dress and what to say but it dismayed me shop and made me more aware of what to do when out went out i knew what to tell employers i knew to tell him what he wanted to hear we discuss upon interview i didn't go into detail or anything like that but when he had given me an interview i got directly into it and he asked me about it and i just told him it was a domestic issue nobody get her a move now with my life and she's have to offer understand that you think you know what all my bars resume well i know how to do a resume well people are predicting things in the day but you can't you can't put yourself in a position where you think you know everything when and reality to pray that your wife in the baby shoes when i was young it was wasn't as much violence as it is today but it was violent but mostly it was hand to hand combat now it's more pistol  we have to be able to speak the language of the people in order to reach them we cannot exhaust self so much so that we become so elevated and that they can't reach us and we can't reach them we reach down we have to put ourselves out i mean you have to you have to understand who they are and what the conflict is we dealing with a lot of anger and i was privileged to learn from a brother when i was  it that there's three aspects to anger one is the passive anger one is the excess of anger and a moderate anger problem mama peace be upon him said we should seek the middle course so as a good thing to be angry about sunday more we have to understand what level anger we're on a lot of these young people who are dealing in the excesses where you can't think what logic and reason you just react to moderate anger allows you to be proactive in your approach so when i teach a lot of young people that that's insight within itself that gets in the listening and you know as far as my education you have to be able to empathize with the fact that they're not learning anything about themselves what they are learning is we are slaves and we want to continue to be show him that you understand sean that you understand share some of your experiences and let them know i mean what the swag you know you let me know i love men is what it is and it's what it's going to be if you take this route right but it would take exactly and if you take that route does was going to there they're they kind of try to eliminate where they think isn't healthy had a lot of time it will be it will be men who have served time will be people who have know the street and were actually the best asset they can even if not going to be successful with our our participation and without cooperating with us we can show them ways to cope with their anger in ways that will be healthy and