Walking it Like You Talk it - A manual for building character  

By Anthony Ross, Steve Champion, and Stanley “Tookie” Williams

“A Prologue From The Authors”

Each of us have spent over 20 years on San Quentin’s death row, and collectively we have over 70 years here. In the best of all possible worlds during the time we were being sentenced to death we should have been graduated from college, instead we crossed into a realm that so few Americans know the actual truth about.

To enter a U.S. Maximum security prison is to enter the wastelands of our society. It is an inferno Dante would have immediately recognized. A place where racial hatred and gang animosities dominates every face of prison life. It is a hard place to become whole and most who walk through the gates will leave shattered in some way.

Tossed into such a miasmic environment it was going to be solely up to us how we would survive. Being fighters, criminals, and gang leaders we were acclimated to the do-or-die approach and sustained our existence by brute force in this culture of madness. But inevitably our jingoistic stance would be our undoing.

After numerous conflicts we ended up in the Adjustment Center (a high security unit). It is a place constructed to emasculate a man’s constitution, paralyze thoughts, perpetuate aggression, extinguish the spirit, and bury him beneath indeterminate time. Life inside the Adjustment Center put us at a crossroad – the path of violence versus the path of self-transformation. Either we continue to allow the predetermined conditions to manipulate our lives, or change the course – we chose to change.

Altering our cells into academies and temples we began to study history, religion, math, philosophy, psychology, mythology, political science, sociology, and many other subjects. We became extensive readers and like alchemist we used the base elements of our own potential to transform ourselves. The process of introspection imbued us with the insight of how to conquer our negative and destructive behavior. It gave us the ability to emerge from the pathological fog that had overshadowed our lives for so long. For over a decade in solitary confinement we embarked on a path of self-awareness, right action, and redemption that we have not wavered from, nor compromised our integrity and convictions.

Our intellectual and spiritual journey have inspired and motivated us to pursue a mission to enlighten others. Our writings simply reflect our struggle to achieve self-realization under the worse circumstances. We dared to forge a new compass for ourselves, and this is what we dare others to do. We offer Walking it Like You Talk it as a blueprint to transforming your thoughts, actions, and life. It is not “the” path, but merely one way to a more positive road.

For information on Walking it Like You Talk it.

Note: From Anthony Ross and Steve Champion

In honor of our brother Stanley Tookie Williams we will steadfastly continue his mission to end gang violence. To help other accomplish self-change, and work to end the death penalty in the United States.
Rest in Peace Our Brother,
The struggle continues

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