Doomed to Fail - BONUS: Real Life Stories - Incarcerated Firefighting with Brett Crawford

Episode Date: January 26, 2025

In today's bonus episode, Taylor talks with formerly incarcerated firefighter Brett Crawford. We reached out to Brett from a comment he left on a very 'gotcha' headline from the NY Times. He graciously spent some time with us to talk about his experiences in prison and in recovery. In times like the LA Fires, the news is so hectic, and we hope this can help us all understand our shared humanity just a little bit better. Follow Brett here - https://www.instagram.com/brettcrawfordinc/https://www.surr3al.com/ Learn more about the Delancy Street Foundation - https://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/ Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

Hi friends. It's Taylor from Doom to Fail. On today's bonus episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Brett Crawford. Brett is a artist who lives in Southern California. He does amazing paintings and sculptures. You can find him on Instagram. His handle is Brett Crawford Inc. And Brett used to be in prison. And while he was in prison, he was part of the firefighting program in Utah and in California. I found him by looking at comments on on New York Times article a few weeks ago during the LA fires that the article headline was you know very meant to grab your attention the LA fires are being fought by incarcerated inmates and I thought there has to be more to this story so I did a full doom to fail episode on

conservation camps where people go in and learn how to fight these wildfires and then I saw Brett's comments and he was talking about how when he was in that program how he didn't feel like he was being mistreated, he was happy to do it, and also it wasn't the thing that changed his life. It was just like a stepping stone. I thought that was really interesting, and I reached out to him, and he was very gracious and spent an hour with me talking about his experiences. So I hope you enjoy. Find Brett on Instagram, and let us know if there's any questions you have or anything else that you need from us. We're at doomed to fillpod at gmail.com. Thank you.

In a matter of the people of the state of California, first is Hortonthall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Brett Crawford, and my name is Taylor Pinnuero. I am from doomed to fail. Brett, just to give you a little bit of what my show is, I do it with my friend Fars. We've been doing it for about two years. And we started off doing like relationship disasters that and I do like history. So I did like Catherine the Great and like Cleopatra and things like that. And then we were like, there are so many cool disasters in history.

So every week we do a different story. So every week I dig into something and I'm like, I wish I could write a book about this thing. I wish this could be my job because there's so many interesting things, you know. Sure. But I've done actually a couple on fires. So I, in historical fires in particular, so I did the Great Fire of London in 1666, Chicago and San Francisco. And the San Francisco fire is different because it came from the earthquake. But the Chicago and the London research, I think, prepared me for the L.A. fires to be like,

firefighting in itself hasn't changed a ton. Like, you still need to move the water, and that's still hard. And it's still the driest has been and the windiest it's been. That's the tail of all the time. So I wanted to talk a little about the L.A. about the L.A. fires. And while I was like, and this was while it was happening. So while I was looking at it, I learned that about incarcerated people fighting the fires in L.A. And I learned from those like, gotcha headlines. Like the I found you on Instagram because you responded to an article from the New York Times. And I looked up the headline. The headline is for just dollars a day inmates fight California's fires. And I'm like, what do you want me to do with that? Do you want to be mad? Like, do you want me to be excited? I don't know. So I really appreciate it and you have experience doing this.

So I'd love to just, you know, hear. That's kind of where my background is, just, you know, researching little interesting stories and trying to put the pieces together to understand what's going on right now. You know, and that's really cool. Yeah. I think those kind of headlines drive me crazy for a number of reason. So just so the people who are watching it, I,

I was kind of a career criminal. I got started in crime and drugs when I was really young. And then I went to prison when I was 19 years old and when most kids are off to college or trying to trade school or trying to figure out what they want to be, I was learning how to be a better criminal. Because, you know, in most cases, when you go to prison, it's not a bunch of people sitting around singing kumbaya, how are we going to fix our lives? It's like, what did you do? How did you do it? how'd you get caught, who's your connection, all the different stuff. That's, I would say, from my experience, is the general consensus.

It's not a lot of, you know, trying to fix your life. It's trying to figure out how to win at the game. Because in my case, I didn't really, you know, I just got it in my head that that's all I could ever be. It was just kind of a criminal and I didn't see a way out of it. So one of the sparks that helped that is I got an opportunity to be a firefighter when I took my show. I'm from California, but I took my crime show on the road and I got caught in Utah and I had to do four years and five years, really, but I did four of it in Utah State Prison. And part of their program, they had a very unique program there, unlike any other in the nation, where they had all three crews. They didn't just have a handline crew like California does, which is guys who kind of go around.

They cut fire lines. They're very helpful. They do a lot of the hard backbreaking work of using what's called a Pulaski, which is like an axe with a hoe on the other end of it, cutting line in the dirt and falling trees into the fire and things like that. And a lot of cleanup. And in Utah, we had the pumper trucks, which are people who do, they go along with these trucks with big water in it and they try to knock down fires that are on the side of the roads caused by, you know, flas or whatever different things.

And then they had a handline crew. And then I was part of, I was in really great shape. And I was really into it. So I got to be a hotshot firefighter. And that program called Flamen Goes was the only hot shot crew, inmate hot shot crew in the nation. And it ran from 1991 through 1998. And I was there in 1994 to 1998. And so what I think most people, when they see that kind of headline that says

incarcerated firefighters for a dollar day, I think a lot of people just think they snatch some people out of prison and they say, go fight fires for a dollar. Right. And that is not the case. It's just like becoming a firefighter for a civilian is very difficult. It's really difficult for inmates to become a. the most base part that most people don't think about is most people who aren't ditties or these other folks who go, you know, to prison, get put in protective custody and they're out of, you know, away from, right. Most people go to general population. I always went to general population. And within general population, there's a lot of drama that goes on there between races and gangs and drugs and all the other madness. It's part of general population prison. and violence and all kinds of stuff.

And so in order to become a firefighter, you have to get your points down low enough by not getting in those kind of fights, which can be problematic when someone's trying to steal your stuff or just all the craziness that can go on within. So if you're lucky enough to get your points down from general population and get to go from a general population to a minimum security yard,

then you have the opportunity to ask to go be a firefighter. firefighter. And if you're accepted, then you have to go to fire school. So both in California and all the different places that have wildland firefighters, you still have to go get fire trainers. You have to learn fire behavior. You have to take a physical test. You have to take a written test. You have to do all the things that a civilian forestry department fire crew would have to do. So it's not like they're making you do it. Most people want to do it because, A, it's better food, better treatment, better It's better than sitting in your cell rotting and doing nothing. And so when I see these kind of headlines, especially this one in particular, I felt compelled to make a comment that actually really blew up much more than I thought it was going to.

People are very divided. The bulk of people are like, oh, my God, we're so grateful. This is a crazy tragedy. We're so grateful to have these guys out there working their asses off, risking their lives. yes, obviously it would be great if they got paid minimum wage so they can have a nest egg for when you get out of prison

because also the general public doesn't know that when you get out of prison you get like 200 bucks and a kick in the ass and if you're very lucky you have family that'll take you in but most of these people, me included, have burned every single

bridge they've ever had. They've fucked over lots of people. They've been an asshole because they're using them drug. This isn't for everybody. I'm not, I always want to say this. I'm not speaking for the poor small percentage of people who are in prison who didn't do it or the wrongly accused or the, they beat their, they did something, but it wasn't whatever in their case was wonky or whatever. They shouldn't be in there in the first place.

Or the, you know, the exaggeratedly sentence, people who had a piece of a dying bag of weed or whatever and they got 10 years. Right. I'm not speaking for those guys. I did crime repeatedly. I knew the consequence of doing crime would be to go to jail or prison. I did it. I got caught.

I was doing time. And I wanted a more comfortable situation than being in myself, learning how to be a better criminal. And so I went. And what I didn't expect was, is that I only ever saw myself through the vision of I'm a villain. I'm a minister to society. I knew what I was. I knew I just didn't know how to be like a person. But when we went out there and we were fighting fires in the community

and we were out with the other firefighting crews, the other forestry department people, Bureau of Land Management people, all the other people. We would do tug wars against these other people. I don't know that California gets to do that and stuff. But in Utah, we had a lot more interaction with these wildland firefighting crews. And the way they treated us with respect, the way the community treated us.

and this is a word I can assure you most people don't think of themselves as in prison like heroes like they are heroes the guys who are in LA right now working their ass off

it's people can't imagine what kind of backbreaking work wild damn firefighting is you're carrying a 60 pound backpack that has a gallon of water on it you're wearing no max like crazy hot insane clothing you have your Pulaski

in my case I was a Sawyer so I carried a 30-pound chainsaw on top of my Pulaski and my backpack. And you usually have to hike for four to 10 miles in to get to the fire before you start working. Wow. Then you work an eight hours. But that's for everyone. That's not just for inmate crews.

When you see the other parts, you'll see people say, oh, they work 48 hours shifts. Everybody works those kind of shifts. That's what makes them heroes, is you're out there. you're going to try to do as much as you can you don't work for you. You have your catnaps. You sleep on the dirt like everybody else. That is life on the fireline. You're sleeping on and tents sometimes out in the wilderness because there's no like going out and coming back sometimes. You get stuck out there. You have your little tent.

You have your little stuff. So it is really insanely hard. But people want to get a chance to go there. And they want to have that feeling of I'm a hero. And they hear from their kids. and the kids are proud of them and things like that. And it's a, for me, it didn't, it didn't fix my life. Right.

Right. My life was really a mess. But, but it was the first time that I can really remember feeling like I might be able to be something different. It was like a, you know, to use it, the metaphor, it was a spark. Yeah. It was like a spark that ignited something else. And now I have like, I'm, you know, I'm poster child for rehabilitation.

Like I have the best life, like unbelievable, you know. But it took a lot of work and a lot of other things had to happen. Like I left there, got in more trouble, ended up going to Pelican Bay State Prison, which is the highest security prison in California. And while I was there, because I had been a firefighter in Utah, they allowed me to be a structure firefighter, which is the kind, like 9-11 type firefighters, you know, everyday people who come and save your house, the guys who were battling all these fires in L.A. And so I had to go through all that training,

how to be a structure firefighter. How'd do that. And, you know, prisons are made out of concrete and steel. Right. There's not a lot of fires. Except for the riots and sometimes people catch themselves on fire because they just can't deal, you know, that kind of madness. So we didn't really fight a lot of fires.

But what did happen for me, coincidentally, is 9-11 happened while I was there. And the captain came in and woke us all up and said, you got to watch this and we went as firefighters and got to witness this awful thing in in new york as firefighters and you know we weren't fighting the fires but everybody i felt like it gave me another stronger understanding and empathy for those guys who are risking their lives there just like yeah in l-a-ar so i've been talking a lot if you want you can always cut me up no i really i'm just i'm listening and i think that it's you know i think it's very beautiful that like it took a spark of like humanity that prison is not designed it's designed to take that away

from you i think in a lot of cases and you and with the with joining the program you felt like okay maybe i can be a hero a person again like i can join and contribute i feel like that sounds very nice yeah thanks yeah that's that brings up and so going back to what i was saying about the split so there's that big group of people who are like oh my gosh thank you so much you're here heroes. And there's a smaller, a much smaller group that is banging the 13th Amendment drum. Right. I understand it. It's, it has a flaw in it that these, you know, when people say they only get paid $11 a day or whatever, they don't have to pay you shit. Right. Maybe in California, there might be an amendment somewhere to that for the statewide. But in the Constitution,

in the 13th Amendment, if you're convicted of a felon, felon, which is very ironic right now, but if you're convicted of felonies, you, they can make you work for free. Yeah, I didn't realize that until I was researching this. Like I knew the first part of the 13th Amendment, but I didn't know that second part. Yeah, the good part, you know, trying to abolish slavery. So that's my, that was one of my points on my comments is that I never felt like whenever, inevitably, whenever we have these things saying about things, people are split. And there's the people who are saying,

it's great. There's a many people who are saying it's slave labor. And then there's the very smallest group, the very smallest percent say, screw those guys. They're felons. They deserve it. They should work for free. They're lucky to get to walk on free soils to help us save our communities. So there's, you know, I understand all these different points of view. I'm more for the, you know, because I experienced it. Congratulations. I'm so happy for them. Yes, I would for them to be paid a little bit more, but money isn't the answer. I can tell you most people, I can give it for my perspective because in Utah, we were paid minimum wage.

And in California, in Pelican Bay, I was paid $11 an hour a day. And what people did with their minimum wage, which was like $7, it was from $94 to $9.8, it was like $7 an hour. What most people did with that money is they bought soups and canteen and whatever. They made their life in prison a little more comfortable, which is fine, whatever. but it's not going to fix your life. And unless you're like me, which I did save a lot of my money as money to just get out to. Because like I said, in most prisons, they'll give you whatever you have on your books.

Or in California, they'll give you $200 and say, good luck. Wow. And I, as a person who's been going to prison since 1987, not anymore. I'm just so everybody knows this far into it, I am retired. I'm a retired criminal. I don't do that no more. I, in fact, promote the opposite now. But there used to be a lot of these kind of work programs that taught you construction and things like that.

And again, people will say it's slave labor. You're doing this or something. But what I always saw it as, and most people did is if you're working in the kitchen, you know how to be a chef, or you're working in construction, you know, how to do this. And some of these other textile jobs and other things like that, you know, I don't know how much you're going to go and learn how to do if you're making license plates or whatever, you know, that kind of stuff. But I always felt like those kind of work programs. were good because they were teaching people job skills. And the only way to fix your life isn't by giving you more money.

Right. Because most people are going to get out, go buy some dope, start selling dope or overdose on dope or whatever if they have this money. So I would like to see them pay more, but it's not the answer. Right. At all. Yeah, because the stats are like, you know, coming out and like being a firefighter are very low, you know. So it's not like you're going out and getting those jobs immediately. So there has to be something else, I feel like afterwards.

And I also kind of went into, I kind of went in a circle in my brain about it because I was like, this is really good for people to be doing. They're learning a skill. They're contributing. But then like, you know, they're not getting paid hardly anything. So then I have like that conflict. And then another conflict for me was like the incentive to do this. And I mentioned this in our messaging that, like, the, that, that, that, that, um, law that will, you can get your record, the last thing you were in prison for, taken off your record.

Um, if you do it, like, I wonder if that's like a, it feels like a kind of a dankly carrot of, like a dangerous job to get that. So feel the way for you. I just don't want to. Yeah. I think that, like, the percentage of people, in my experience, the percentage of people who are in there who, who have the kind of record where they could get something expunged is really low.

My friend Joey Craig had for what I always like to mention this because it's such a tragic story in Utah. It was, him and his cousin were boys. They were like 19 years old and they got a fist fight over a girl. They both liked the same girl. They were trying, they were gotten an argument over. They were cousins. They were best friends.

Got a fist fight. They hugged it out over the fist fight. they went they went home the one his cousin got a blame breed died and then joey got charged with manslaughter and although both sides of the family like these guys are best friends they were just being dumb knucklehead boys fist fighting over a girl yeah and he died he lost his best friend please don't send in prison they sent in imprisonment he had to go do five years he was in he was in firefighting with me i think it would be great if um he could get that expunged off his record right You know, it might be a difficult one.

Monslaughter is a really tough one to get expunged. But just to kind of segue off of this, I went to a place called Delancey Street Foundation, and it's a really hard corporate rehab. Most people who go to prison, especially in California, have heard of it, and they're terrified of it. Because Delancey Street is a model where they push you every single day to be incrementally. better than you were the day before. Not a lot, just a tiny bit. And a lot of that includes peer pressure on each other, calling each other on their behaviors,

going into groups, kind of yelling at each other in groups. And in order to get in the group, you got to write down on a piece of paper what they did, which gets a whole like, don't be a snitch. You know, it's all this kind of things. You have to get past in order to get through to Lansy Street.

And for me, I was facing 12 years. I stole a couple more car. So just so for people who are watching, And there's no ditty stuff on my records, just an asshole who was doing drugs and stealing stuff to get drugs and trying to win at the game or whatever. Most of my things are like theft and selling drugs and, you know, stuff like that. But I went, so I got caught again. At this point, I had like a lot of felonies. And the judge gave me an option.

His name is Judge Parsons. I stay in contact with him now that I fixed my life. But he said, you can either go back to prison for 12. years or there's this program called Delancey Street Foundation that's two years. And I'm not great with mass, but I could do that mass. I'll take two. Shorter. Yeah. Right. And I didn't think it was going to fix me because I thought I was just forever broken. And I couldn't imagine it doing it. And what happened is I got there. I fell in love with the people. I fell in love with the ideology. I fell in love with watching other people around me fix their lives. I started to feel like I was

changing my life. I stayed for five years instead of two. So I stayed an extra three years. I became like the right-hand person to the woman who started. Her name is Dr. Mimi Sobert. And her and I traveled all over the nation, talking to judges and DAs and governors and mayors and correctional officers unions about the ways we change the criminal justice system within the prisons. Because for the small group, I would like to say this for,

any of the people who are watching that are that really small group that say, you're a criminal, you're a jerk, you get what you deserve, you know, who cares if you have rehabilitation in prison or education in prison or the things that might make up. You'll always be a criminal.

What I would say to that is 95% of the people who go to prison are not lifers. Most of them are going to get out between one and five years. There's a smaller percentage. to stay for longer than that. But if we don't find ways to help these people, I'm going to say these people, I'm talking about myself, learn a different way. We're going to get out,

and we're going to go do more crime. We might OD. We might sell something to someone else you might OD. Right. We might steal your car. So just saying, throw them in a cage, they deserve it, doesn't help anybody.

It doesn't help the criminal, but it also doesn't help your community. And I hope, it's my hope, that if you have that stance, that one of these guys doesn't get out and hurt you or your family themselves. And I really push and hope for a day when we can reintroduce more rehabilitation, more education, more programs that help people to learn that they can be a different way, whether that's a religious program or an AA program,

or a hardcore one like Delancey Street where we're going circling back to your point about the expunging your record, we don't believe that's important at all. Yeah, that's super interesting. You said that. We don't believe that getting your record expunged is important at all.

And for me, I will tell you, I got out of Delancey Street and I left San Francisco and came down south to be closer to my sister. And I went out. And it wasn't because I had a felony that I couldn't get a job. It was more that I was like,

45 years old with no real life experience or job experience or anything like that. It was more, it was less about, you know, I didn't, I just wrote no. Right. To be honest, I mean, I want to live an honest life, but I, you know, after going to Chipole and pick up sticks and writing yes, and they didn't ask me back on the next one, I just wrote no. And I felt like, well, they're either going to spend the money to check my record and find out that I have a bunch of felonies and not give me the job or they're going to give me a job

give me a chance and I'm going to work really hard. And that was my case. I got a job as a printmaker and a big printing company. And then I worked like we do in Delancey Street. I never looked at my phone. I worked through my breaks. I worked overtime without extra money. All the things it took to be able to stay on and work my way up to that company

and build the life that I have now, which is like insane. So I don't think it's my belief talking for myself that I don't believe to Getting your record expung as important as it is teaching people job skills and teaching how to have a bank accounts and teaching people about taxes and teaching people about teaching people about how to be a person. And I think that after being in Delance Street for five years and only dealing with knuckleheads like me, like most of the people I dealt with at Delancey Street. And I'm talking about hundreds and hundreds of people and going in and doing interviews at Folsom State Prison and doing interviews at San Quentin and getting people to come to Delancey Street. and fix their lives. Most people have never tied a tie to tie. Yeah.

They've never really made a real bed. They've made a prison bed because they made them make a prison bed. Right. They don't know how to, like, they don't know the value of dressing well. And I'm, where am I, I'm in my studio. I'm a painter. I'm wearing a hoodie right now. But when I go to events, I dress nice.

And learning the value of how you carry yourself and learning the value of how you speak to people and learning how to communicate without screaming at someone. Yeah. Um, these things are vital, so much more important than getting your record expunged. Mm-hmm. Because in the end, yeah, I was saying technology as well, right? Like if you, like the technology is moving so fast, like, can't just give someone a phone and expect them to like know what to do, you know?

Right. Yeah. It's like insane. When I got, when I left, I'll put it this way. I went in in 2005, 2005 is when I went to county jail, was fighting my case, went to Delancey Street at 2007. was there until 2012 is when I graduated and when I got my first phone I was like what my sister had to like walk me through it like I don't even use it like I was I'd been away from the world for seven years and I spent 18 like total time 18 years of my life in prison totally I mean like yeah you become like socially and you know like um I don't know what kind of word to use but like inept Yeah. Yeah. It's like you're a little stunted because you haven't been able to grow up, especially if you're in, like you were saying at the beginning, like in prison where people just want to like learn how to be a better criminal. And they're still, they're not talking about like, they're not being vulnerable and being like, well, I need to do X, Y and Z. What do I? What do I? What do? What? You're not saying that everybody does it. There's basically like, find this guy and he'll help you hook you up to do it again. Yeah. You rob the bank. How'd you do that? What did you wrong? Yeah. And all that dumb stuff. And I'm not saying that everybody does it. There's lots of guys that. There's lots of guys that go in there. who got caught, they got caught with some stuff. It was their first time.

I wouldn't say lots, but there's a fair share of people in there who are, um, that I hope we'll get a chance, but I think that like, if we can reintroduce these things, um, because it was,

there was a time when there was more and then, uh-oh. No, we're good. Okay. You can, you can go through this and edit it out if you want some long, long bits.

But, um, Yeah, that's my hope, is that we can find ways to reintroduce education and things. That's the book, the point of you reaching out to me was that a comment on New York Times where I never felt even though the pay was low in Utah, it was minimum, but for the work you do, it's really low. Yes. And in California when I was in Pelican Bay State Prison and it was really low, I would have, this is from, me. It's the truth. I would have done it for free. And that's the God's honest. I don't want to

promote that. I want to promote. I do hope that they get more money. I do. It would be great. The money is there. The people, one, you know, inevitably, when you make that kind of comment, it blows up. There's people who come after you or whatever. And I, a couple of different people. One guy made this comment. And, you know, this guy said, he compared me to one. Winston from George Orwell's 1984. They were still beaten down and brainwashed. And I was, you know, doing a thing where you're like fast, fast, fast, I don't know, I'm not very fast, Texas, but I was right in this whole thing.

You make you feel smart, quick, George, George, this is my life, you know what I mean? And then I post, I sent it and then I delete it because I just like, whatever, man, you know what I mean? I know that I'm not brainwashed. I know how great my life is right now. And I know how much work it was to fill. my life. And, you know, I don't need to be a rebel. Right. I'm happy, but please pull me over. Guess what I do? Pull right over. Yeah. Are you on probation or parole? I tell, I always say this.

I go, not anymore. It's always like, you know, piques their interest. And then I go into a thing. And I will tell you, a lot of police officers have given me a, that said, you know what, be careful. Yeah. You roll through that stop sign at a Trader Joe's or whatever the time one was. And they've never been crazy things. You know, whatever, they pull me over speeding over 10 miles an hour. And I tell them, and they, they, a lot of them really giving me passes. You know what I mean? Like, you know, good job. Keep up to good work. You've been out in the world for now. It's been 13 years that I've been out here thriving. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like thriving. Like, my life is awesome. So cool. No, it's amazing. And I think the one more thing about your comment that struck

me is that you were like, this, saying this diminishes the plate of an insulin. slaved person because like they had no control over their life and you at least doing that that was a choice that you made and you know you were doing it because you wanted something more productive out of your time in prison yeah that's i mean that i do i think that it means i think calling it's slave labor demeans both the guys throughout the risk in their lives right now and i believe i definitely believe it um demeans and makes light of health terrible slavery was. I wasn't part of slavery, but even if you just try to imagine a little bit to understand how insanely awful slavery was, I think they're calling

what those guys were doing because I can tell you as a person who've been on the fire line, you eat great, people treat you nicely, you treat you like heroes. You know what I mean? It's not that. And there's other industries, I'm sure, across the world and throughout time where you're breaking rocks and the little rocks and things like that.

There are still people in some the southern prisons that are out doing agricultural work and picking fruit and stuff like that for pennies. And that's terrible. But I don't think that being a wildland firefighter as an inmate falls in that category. Because they are really treated well. They do work really hard, but everybody is out there busting their ass. Everybody, every wildland crew, every structure fire crew right now that are in L.A. right now are all working crazy, you know, 18-hour, 24-hour days with little naps in between and getting back out there. And they want to. They want to try, it is, I compare it like, so I always want to say this part too, people who are like, they should

be able to go be firefighters. While they're firefighting is like being a professional athlete. Yeah. You will see some old timers. Like I was in L.A. this weekend. I said, stayed at the Marriott. I had to go do some stuff. And the Marriott was one of the host hotels for the Wildland Firefires. There was hundreds of them. And when you look, when you scan the crowd of Wildland Firefires, you will see a very small percentage of people over 35 or 40. Yeah. And those guys are crew bosses and strategic guys and things like that. But the majority of them are young men because it's really, it's like being a professional athlete. It is not for the It is really hard work.

And so I don't know that it is for most cases something that they want to do for a career other than a launch pad for you can be something different. Exactly. It's like it's a means to an end rather than an end just being like you can contribute and feel good about the stuff that you do in like whatever way. Yeah. And then I feel like I get also feeling like you get that the, I mean, I know that they're trained to firefight and do the wild.

the wild firefighting but they want to be out there like that's what they're trained to do and I feel like when you tell your 9-11 story you're like why can't I be there to help you know and I feel like that's the firefighters across the country probably felt um on on that time as well and I was I was actually in college and I in 9-11 in New York so I saw a lot of firefighters like firsthand um doing stuff and I mean they were just the most exhausted people I've ever seen in my whole entire life and the emotional toll of doing it plus like you're you know you're in LA that those LA fires like you're watching people's entire homes. be destroyed just to like the absolute ash you know so there's there's a lot of that that's that i think is work that they'll have to do afterwards as well to be like i don't know how you go to bed without looking at seeing flames for us your life you know stuff like that that they have to do next yeah i i do think we should like i hope we can talk a tiny bit about just to dispel the myth because every there's nothing that doesn't become politicized these days um and i can tell you from person who's been in like insane wildland firefight like i've fought hundreds of fires throughout Utah Idaho and Nevada where there is crazy canyon where the winds come up like that and they and places

you're supposed to avoid because the way the wind can push the flames up and stuff there's not enough water yes and 10 reservoirs that would have made it possible for our guys to stop this and if you live in California in particular. And I know that there's some people who will be here. I saw one fire captain said she was, you know, hamstrung by, you know, possibly. I also saw lots of other captains say it's impossible. If you ever notice when one house gets caught on fire, how many trucks show up? Two to three trucks show up to put out one house fire. And when you have all of a sudden, a hundred houses on fires, a thousand houses on fire, five thousand houses on fire. There's not enough water in the municipal lines. There's not enough water in the 10 reservoirs to put that out. And more importantly,

the things that can put those kind of what, this isn't a wild land fire. It is now. So that new fire that's just started is more of a wildland firefighter. But these are these are wildfires that are fires that are driven by brush and trees and palm trees and, you know, all the different you know foliage that people put around their house but more importantly is the wind the insane warm Santa Ana winds that are like you only have to watch if people pay attention that one video where it shows the McDonald's thing which yes like crazy where everything is going like this and it's like a hurricane of fire yeah right and what people don't miss is that one of the biggest tools and people see it now as it got going is the airplanes the helicopters the buck

it drops, all those things. You can't do that in 45-mile-an-hour gust winds, 100-mile-in-hour gust winds. You can't be up there with, you know, a ton of water hanging from your helicopter and those kind of winds. So they, those guys, if nature hamstrung those guys, and by the time they were able to get up there and do the thing that they're supposed to do, drop, flame retardant, drop the water, or drop all those things to help the fire crews on the ground. It had already gone past that point.

So, you know, it is weird to see all the news with people's, the arson that's going on. And I don't know if it's like if, you know, I don't know the mentality of, I haven't had a lot of experience with arsonists. That's like a mental illness. Right. that people who like fire and then they see fire and then it ignites something in them.

Yeah, yeah. And then you put the tinfoil hat on and you think is some of this started intentionally by, you know, and then when it becomes politicized, I will say there's nothing to gain for Mayor Bass or Gavin Newsom to have these fires happen. This isn't going to help either one of their community for the people who have the opinion that this is, they did this on purpose. that's that's insanity yeah that doesn't help either one of their careers whatever it doesn't help the people it doesn't help the communities it doesn't help anything so it's it's like saying we weren't well prepared enough for a hurricane or well prepared enough or it's like saying the south isn't well prepared enough for the i saw a video of someone on a truck sprinkling salt on the grounds and

like in florida right it's not going to do anything they have all that's no they can't move anywhere that you can't stop nature and and then for the people who say why it wasn't the brush cleared out the way brush gets cleared out just so for some fire knowledge for you is a couple of things nature takes care of business and it burns it or as a firefighter we would do these back burns where you catch things on fire in a circle you burn it down you knock it out you bring in crews to cut it cut a lot of the things we do on the offseason to come in with chainsaws and pull brush out

and get rid of it burning in piles. The problem is the more populated areas get and you start putting in these million dollar homes,

$2, $500 million homes out in wooded areas and in areas like this, it puts the forestry department and the BLM in a really crazy position like, okay, we're going to do this backburn.

But if this backburn gets away, then it burns up these people's, you know. Because they're so close to where they would do it to like stop it from going into the forest area. Yeah, you risk their lives, you risk their property, you risk, you know, risk their pets, the risk all the animals like that.

So it's, you get in this situation where we, where even in the Midwest, where we, by fighting fires and by putting out fires and not clearing the brush out and not being able to do the backburns where we want to, you set the stage for these superfires. And that's what this is. It's a super fire. And that is not just for California. It's the same as it is in Nevada. It's the same as it is in Idaho.

It's the same as it is in Utah. The more we want to try to save people's property and save people's animals and save the animals and save you stop these fires. And it's nature's way that they clear all that out and start your regrowth is by letting the fires burn. Do you think there's just places where people aren't going to be able to live or shouldn't live? I think that you can be really proactive. Like I'm very lucky that I fix my life. I own a home in San Clemente and my where my studio is at where I'm at right now is in Laguna Hills I because I understand find it there's no foliage around this place

my my place that I got is made out of concrete and steel yeah totally maybe because I'm institutionalized but it's very like see you know concrete and steel and I purposely look to make sure I there's a couple of videos that are out there right now of guys whose homes survived. And then we'll say, you know, because they were trying to be water conscious of the drought and stuff, they got rid of all the grass, they got rid of all the bushes, they got rid of all the privacy hedges and all that kind of stuff. And they just had kind of cactuses and rocks around the house.

I think that is in the highly popular areas, you know, in California where there's droughts, as the weather continues to get warmer, as the Santa Ant winds get more crazy. you could be safe to to a certain point. But if you're going to surround your house with privacy shrubs and those things you're going to get dry and you're not watering them and you're not building your home out of like fire-resistant stuff, all these homes are really old,

you know, especially in Althadena, a lot of those homes are really, really old. Yeah. I don't know. I think that there's a safety is a kind of like, you have to, you want to live near the water and you want to live near in these beautiful areas. Yeah.

My friend lives in Chicago and I always tell her she's going to live in the last house in America as it just gets like worse and worse on the coast. Like the Midwest will be the only place you can live because it won't snow there anymore. Global warming. Yeah. That'll be it. Right. So, yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I don't know that. I just would say I hope that people will have more empathy for everybody. The people who are losing their homes, it's really sad to see people scream. things like, you know, the people have never been to California to say really awful things about the homes that are burning. They deserve it. And it's God's all kinds of nuts stuff like that. I think I just wish that people as a person who's been really, I understand all the stuff. As a person who was at one point had lots of walls up and lots of like hardness about him and things like that and less empathy. But, you know, I think that the best gift that Delancey Street

gave me was learning how to feel. And so now I feel empathy. I learned how to to feel sadness and deal with it other than how to feel anger and deal with it. I still have flare ups in traffic. Yeah. That's fair. That's fair. I mean, that's not easy. It's not easy to say that I'm going to stop being hard about this thing, you know, just stop. And that's, that's not easy. Yeah. I think the way we don't know is by talking about it. And by the response that from that one comment I made seeing lots of people. And I got a ton of messages from people saying, And, wow, you know, I never really thought about it that way. Thank you.

And then I got a couple messages. We weren't so nice. But whatever. There's always going to be people who are in pain and who are sad or who are, who don't know how to feel empathy, who can't feel the pain that people are feeling from this right now. And I would just say to them, I hope you get there. Yeah. I think that really, I totally agree with that. I think that, like, a big part of, like, the anger around the country right now is, like, people are.

are lonely and they're afraid and they don't they're afraid to figure out how to you know have that empathy look at other people and they don't maybe don't want to but like it is a great way to like trying to figure out how to how to survive every day without feeling that because there's so much going on yeah i mean this was just like last week that we were talking and i'm like oh that's last week like and it's it's not even the end of january yet so yeah we're just going to keep living and things it's going to keep happening and you have to just like try to react to them And those guys will be out there fighting fires for however long it takes. And, you know, a lot of this, part of this, it's not a positive, but part of this is we'll learn from this.

We'll get better from this. And nature is doing what nature does right now and tearing up, getting rid of a lot of that brush that was going to burn. Right. At some point. And I think that we will find from what I understand from talking to folks who are in the industry right now, that they think that it started on the, hill that they put out the one fire that they thought that the kids started and not they didn't start there were fireworks whatever sure and you know just being kids unfortunately and that fire I'll tell you as a Sawyer who cuts down trees on fire like I've been cutting down trees that

were on fire and flames shooting out of my chainsaw that had gas and it has a special kind of gas oil and it stuff but yeah you drop those trees back into the fire so they don't fall over and start more fires. But what happens is they get so burned on the inside that the burn goes down into the roots. And those roots can can stay alive and travel underground and come back up somewhere, especially when there's crazy winds and the wind blowing the ground. And even though the wind's going across the surface, that wind penetrates the ground. And those those root systems that are on fire burn over and can reignite someplace else and take off. And that's so far has been besides the people who are the arson people.

Yeah. Wow. Which is very small percentage, the consensus is that that might be where at least the palisage fire started. And then once it gets going, you know, ripped in embers and things like that. Wow. Yeah. It would be interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. Because they just get on fire. And they don't run out of oxygen. They're still oxygen in the soil. Right. Right. Right. And it makes sense that it would, I don't know, I'm not, nah, what I know about trees from being in elementary school, it like makes sense that like the fire would go down like the living parts and it would try to like move through it, right? Like the tree would like. It doesn't, I think it's a very, I think it's really rare that it can travel far enough to do it. It can stay burning in that area and then that.

Got it got it. Ignite other stuff. So it's fire is very, um, crazy. Very crazy. It wants the fire is like everything else. to live and finds ways yeah wow well thank you for doing those jobs like that just it it sounds very very hard and yeah very difficult and thank you for it for you know taking that opportunity and and doing that and for all of the fires that you fought all over all over the west yeah it's wild yeah you're getting the mountains where it's all shaley and stuff like that it's like you know and i i lost a really close friend of mine and a bunch of other guys too by the wildest thing like Be it a wildland fire, you never know.

I talked a good friend of his name is Michael Bishop. I always like to say his name too. He was on the construction crew in Utah State Prison. I said firefighting's amazing. He joined the firefighting crew. He was on the handline crew, and they were about a mile away from us where we were fighting and kind of cleanup, and it started raining because of the thunderstorm.

And they were on a rock cropping that was wet. They got struck by lightning and 13 guys died. And my really good friend, Michael Bishop, died. And so, you know, people die from that every year, both, you know, inmate crews and civilian crews. And what I would say is that I want the inmate crews to get paid more, but I also would like the wildland firefighters across the nation, civilian crews to get paid more and to be recognized more because they die every year. And they don't necessarily get the fanfare that, you know, I'm not saying one against the other, but I'm just saying I don't feel like they get the recognition or. The fanfare that goes along with being a structured firefighter is. I think both sides are heroes, but I sometimes, unless a movie comes out about it or something

like that, we don't realize that there's guys, you know, there's three crews. Actually, there's four crews in Wilderness Firefighter. The most advanced one is the craziest ones is called smoke jumpers. And those psychos go up in an airplane when there's thunderstorms. And they watch for radar for when a lightning strikes the ground. and a fire starts, they jump out of an airplane with their, with the packs and all the things and these crazy gear that protect their neck because they have to parachute into trees. Oh my gosh.

And sometimes they get impaled in the tree, but they have this suit that is really heavy duty that they don't fight fires them, that protects them from getting impaled by a tree. Right, because you're going to a forest. Then you get caught in the tree. You have to climb down, take off your gear, climb back up the tree, get your parachute, get your stuff, come back up pack it all up then you hike three or four miles to the fire to try to put the fire out and if you're not able to fight the fire out then you call us the hot shots and we either hike in or helicopter in to the spot get it and fight it before it comes bigger and if it gets bigger then

you start calling all the other people but oh my god a wild job that's crazy um good for them man someone's got to do it i guess yeah they have the elite psychos yeah of the firefighting world is the smoke jumpers. Like, what did you do today? Oh, I jumped, I followed some lightning out of a, out of a plane. Yeah, I'm always amazed at how like the fire, when there's a fire near me, so like the by Big Bear, there was a fire in the fall and things like that. They're always like, you know, 20,000 acres, you know, and that's just such an unfathomable amount of space as well, you know?

But like, when you see a house burning down, you can like, you can quantify that and like understand what that means because you're like, it was a home. whatever, but if I think 202,000 acres, I'm like, I don't know what that means. Like that just seems like there. I don't know how many people are there, how people are fighting it. Like that, it's hard to even wrap my head around that it's happening. Yeah. When it gets those, like one right now, I think it's burning.

It's like I think it's 5,000 acres already or more. There's not, other than doing the other part of it, which is also the dangerous part of, and you'll see these guys on some videos with these canisters that are kind of, it looks like they're flinging fire. That's how you do the backburn. So you go, you try to get ahead of it. You try to predict where the wind's going to go. You cut a fire trail, sometimes with a bulldozer or sometimes with hand.

You cut that and then you start lighting it. And it would be like four or five of us walking in a row lighting this fire to try to get it to burn back towards this giant wave. So you have to get rid of the fuel. Right. And you can drop fire retardant around and then try to catch this things on fire and kind of make it burn into itself. Yeah. There's many different techniques. fighting those kind of big fires, but it is a big undertaking. And it's not, it's pretty rare than

it's happening in January, I will tell you. Yes. Anywhere in the world. So I know, I know. That's why it's not lucky, but the reason why Mexico can spare people, Utah can spare people, Nevada can spare people, all the different people who are, Canada can spare people, because this isn't fire season. Right. This isn't typically these guys, most of, a lot of these guys who were like doing community service or not community service but cutting fire lines and cutting and doing your doing your off-season stuff. I know. That's not that doesn't bode well.

It's not lucky, but it's lucky that they're able to spare the crews. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know here we're like two hours from L.A., but they sent a lot of our firefighters there. So they cut our power for a couple days during the day so that we wouldn't have fires here while people were away. that's what yeah that's the thing is that you know here we all knew before the fire hit

we were getting texts on the coast that these winds are going to be crazy PG&E was going to be putting an SDG&E was going to be putting it in my area that's we're going to be cutting the power so that the wind these 45 to 100 mile an hour winds can't whip the power lines so that they fall or explode the transformers you know because the gusts of wind so that these fires start. So they cut the power so that doesn't happen.

Once it gets started. Once it gets started, I mean, the more people trying their best, definitely the better. Yeah. And if someone could figure out how to make water not weigh anything, that'd be great because then that would really help as well.

Yeah. I mean, you know, a lot of those lines and infrastructure and the plumbing in these cities was set up, it's not to fight wildland fires or wildfires, but to fight structure firefighters of one house at a time, maybe two houses at a time, max three or four houses at time, not a hundred, not 500, not a thousand like this. Nothing can stop it. Yeah.

Totally. Well, thank you. It's been an hour. I really so appreciate talking to you, Brad. This was super fun. I'd love to have to close out. what you're doing now and where people can find you. Oh, I'm an artist, which is also another really terrible career choice until it isn't.

I mean, I got out and I was a printmaker and I waited tables at night. And on the side, I would do my little drawings and then I would go to L.A. And I'd go, look at my drawings. I was a 45-year-old man with no CV and no shows and no gallery representation. And I got snubbed a lot. And, you know, lucky for me in this time, it's the, the best time to be alive to be an artist because of Instagram and Facebook and the Dumbler and all the different kinds of, you know, TikTok for however long it lasts and things like that

where you can show your drawings without going to a gallery. And I didn't give up. And about five years ago, after going through several different galleries that some worked, some didn't work, some would be stuck with them, or not stuck with them, but committed only to them. And working through all that learning education about how to deal with galleries and how to do how to learn how to sell your work and sell your work online and things like that. About five years ago, my career really took off. And it started when I created a new story based on the 1800s version of Pinocchio by Carlo Coletti. But I wondered what happened to that little boy Pinocchio when he grew up. And I really relate to the story.

of Pinocchio because if you ask 10 people who Pinocchio is, nine of them will say he's the liar. Yeah. And I remember by reading the book and also even seeing the Disney version, I remember him as, or even the now the Guillermo de Toro version, he was brave, he was adventurous, he was

kind, he made some friends, some of his friends weren't so great. He got in some trouble, he was drinking, he was smoking. Yeah. Then some of his friends who were drinking and smoking started turning into jackasses, which was a hilarious metaphor yeah um then when his father got swallowed by the scary monster monstrous pinocchio didn't

give up he literally dove into the water and searched for his father so that the whale could swallow him and jimony on purpose so that he could save not only by the way he saved himself speaking of fire is he caught the boat on fire right you think about he's made out of wood right so he put us off in danger No, everybody burns, but whatever. Whatever, but so. Without thinking about himself or whatever, he catches the boat on fire, makes monsters, spit them out and saves himself and his father and his friends.

And for me, I, the work I did in Delancey Street, the work I still do where I talk, go talk to guys and tell them, hey, this isn't how you have to be. The interviews I did in this, you know, I taught a civics class at Stanford and talked about the way we changed criminal justice. helping other people fix their lives, helping myself fix my lives, I really relate to the idea where Pinocchio said he wanted to be a real boy. He wanted to be a human. And for a really long time when I was in all my drug addiction and crime and going in and out of prison, I just didn't really

even see myself as a human. Like I just didn't know how to be like a regular hardworking honest kind, honest human. And so I've built this new story. I never knew my real dad. So my story of Pinocchio doesn't have a Geppetto. My story kind of mixes Greek mythology. The goddess Leto was, she's the goddess of the forest, was lonely. So she kissed an acorn, planted the acorn, and then Pinocchio carves himself out of the tree so they could be together. So this is a good example. This is the toy we made of that, of him carving himself out of a tree. Oh, my goodness. This is a vinyl toy. So, and I've done several paintings of this to, to go along with that theme.

So everybody's building himself. I love that. Yeah. So that was me. I didn't, you know, a lot of people relate to the idea. This toy was called self-made. The idea of like entrepreneurship or business, whatever. For me, it was more like building my life, building myself, building my, becoming human.

And so I'm really attached to it. And I'm really lucky that art collectors throughout the world have really latched onto it. And my career has really. like insanely taken off so now that I can have this studio I have another studio next to this I have a you know really big workload I have like a two-year wait list for my paintings with 45 45 paintings in my queue and huge success with big galleries both here in the United States and in Asia and um I bought a house in California for real that's amazing yeah because you know for good or bad the houses in California really a lot of money

And I bought it from my, for money I, you know, I made and earned. And so I feel really proud of that. I feel really proud of being a hardworking, honest, kind member of my community and law abiding and retired, you know, I went on that CNN thing. And she, the first thing, she says, you're a career criminal. And I missed a great opportunity to say, retired. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, it's always that thing when you're done.

you're like, I should have said something different. Should have said something else, of course. Yeah, I should have just said, I just went, yeah, I'm a criminal. Yeah, but they were too tired. Yeah, and you turned it around and it wasn't easy, but you rebuilt out of what you had. Yeah. Super, super cool. And I just, I'm so honored you spent an hour with me.

Thank you. I really appreciate it. I have, my pleasure. We're very small, but I really, really wanted to talk to you and I really appreciate it. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, and I, because it is important to me. I do, I would, I could talk about recovery and talk about. about inmate firefighters all day long.

So thanks for us.