Good evening.
Thank you everybody for being here.
So I was introduced to Mr. Betts's work
during the Tucson Festival of Books.
FSC was approached to sponsor his attendance.
And I quickly said, yes.
But not because I was familiar with your work, sorry.
It's because by sponsoring your attendance,
I would be able to negotiate stage time for people
that I work with, who are currently incarcerated.
And it would be an opportunity to get them free
if only metaphorically and if only for one afternoon.
So I made it a point to watch every interview
that I could find to read your writing, to study your words.
In your memoir, "A Question of Freedom,"
you write about the name that you selected for yourself,
Shahid the witness.
Shahid rolls in the mouth like a heavy whisper, which
is appropriate because what you witness challenges
what we collectively deem as rational and just.
You go on to reflect that writers are witnesses
and with that gift, quote, you carve a voice out
of the air for others to hear.
I sent in your poem, "Bastards of The Reagan Era,"
and asked folks to create poems from it
by pulling out words and lines that resonated with them.
And those poems were read at the festival.
After the event, I wrote to one of the women
that I correspond with regularly.
She's my age, 39.
And we grew up in the same barrio.
She was sentenced to life without the possibility
of parole at the age of 14.
And I wanted to paint a picture for her of that day.
To describe how brightly the sun was shining, the energy that
was buzzing about, and to tell her about all the questions
that people asked about her.
So I'd like to close this introduction to you
and the power of your witnessing with her poem.
I stripped before this man, who knows me
by a number, the bastard.
I pretend that I don't exist.
The one from war bought me a cell.
I'm nobody.
Simply barbed wire, count time, shakedowns, fist fights.
A waste that want for more, blooming black cloud
of rhetoric.
I can't stop thinking about before I own these cuffs.
And I tell my god, I want no part of it.
And it's beyond were prayers reach.
Prison fucks with my mind until the time becomes my coffin.
We're all too damn comfortable in these cuffs.
Judge a nation by its capacity to punish.
This system is in the business of human tragedy.
Please join me in welcoming Mr. Dwayne Betts.
Thank you.