Susan Burton

“It seems like I was born into trouble.”

“People are released from prison so unprepared. They give you $200. We call it gate money. And you have to pay for a bus ticket back to L.A. You get off the Greyhound bus, downtown Skid Row, and you're supposed to make a life from that.”

“After six prison commitments, at the end of those, I was more broken than when I went into the system.”

“It would have been great if there were a trauma center located in our community, where you could access grief counseling and be able to address it in a healthy manner.”

“It has to be about more than punishment. We need to rehabilitate people. We lock up far too many people in America today. We lock them up as if locking them up is gonna solve the problem. And locking them up does not solve the problem. Did locking me up make me better? No, it did not. It made my struggle harder.”

“At the age of 46, in my sixth prison term, it was the second prison I was in - California Rehabilitation Center. The California Civil Education program kind of opened up all of the experiences that that I had dealt with in my life, that I had experienced.”

“One of the things about incarceration is that you're deprived. You lose all of your identity, and then its given back one day, and you're ill-equipped to actually embrace it and work it.”

“I went to pick my son up from school and walked him back and was in the house preparing dinner, and he came in the house and gave me this flower of chrysanthemum that was full of ants. And he went back out to play and ran out into the street and got hit by a car. The car happened to be driven by a LAPD detective.”

“Education, hard work, dedication, a support system, and knowing my life had value - these were what had made all the difference.”

“I can remember, as a child, the happy days of us all piling into the car and going to the drive-in. And that was a weekly routine for my father. He was a proud black man, and that all sort of vanished as America began to export jobs.”

“I got caught back up in the underworld because the upperworld really doesn't have a place for people with criminal histories.”

“We keep a woman in prison for decade after decade at a cost of $60,000 a year, and then give them $200 when they hit the gates for release. And, adios. People have to get their IDs, Social Security cards. They have to get clothing, housing, apply for benefits and services, and it's impossible to do with 200 bucks.”

“Our ancestors went through so much in a fight for us to vote. So I believe that we should engage in all civic participation. It's healthy engagement.”

“Insulin is a crisis medication.”

“Nothing good could ever have come of my life if I hadn't been able to get therapy and overcome my addictions.”

“In prison, you're issued a number of sanitary pads per month. And many times, even when you're issued a number of sanitary pads, the guards will just come in and rip your room apart, rip your locker apart and take them.”

“Telling your story is transformative. For both the storyteller and their audience, a new bridge to understanding is created.”

“We're willing to spend countless dollars putting people who need help in cages, and then when they get out we say you can't have a job, and you can't have housing, and because you don't have either, we're going to take your kids, too.”

“Many times, I left the prison thinking, 'I'm smart. I can make it. I won't get caught up again.' But you get off downtown Skid Row, and you're a target for all of the environmental harms in that area. The pain and trauma in that area is so thick, you can almost reach your hand out and touch it.”

“It's important the sheriff and the D.A. work with the community to realize real-world solutions. If they make decisions in silos, it will fall short.”