May 7th, my daughter was born, my first daughter, I was the father, and I had made a promise that I would never leave her like my father left me.

In May 21st, I would be sentenced to prison.

Oh my gosh.

So you can imagine what my thoughts were as I were being led back to the oldens here.

And the judge said to me, to administer society, you belong in prison.

Hello and welcome back to the Rock Bottom podcast. My guest today is Ann Tong Lucky. He was a convicted

gang member of the Dallas Bloods gang. He transformed his life to become a advocate for nonviolence

and now works to bring communities together.

There are so many interesting ideas in this episode.

Anton talks about how elements of his childhood made joining a gang seem like the only option.

And some of his natural talents led him to become the

leader of the Dallas Bloods gang. And once he was able to direct those talents towards a more

positive outcome, he found a lot of success. Once Antong is in prison, he talks about how

he is still viewed as a leader even within the prison. And so it brings up ideas of what rehabilitation

looks like, what role does incarceration play in that, and how those two can be improved.

It brings up the idea of positive leadership. I think he, in that era with mentorship, started to really understand the power he had to affect positive change in his community.

As a leader, he really started to come into his own to direct people towards a outcome that was less violent and more building of a community.

So it was a really interesting and fascinating conversation

that expresses a bunch of different ideas. I hope you get a lot out of it. I'm here with Antong

Lucky, a activist, author, and president and CEO of Urban Specialists, which is an organization

dedicated to disrupting violence in urban communities.

He's the author of the memoir, A Redemptive Path Forward, My Life from Incarceration to a Life

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