Founder's Full Story & Vision

My name is John Bradley Dainwood. In accordance with the instructions of God, I have formed the nonprofit organization, God’s Neutral Zone: The GNZ.

Before you dive into these truths, I need you to understand something essential: I did not begin life broken. I started out as a good kid, from a good family, with a good heart.

I wasn’t perfect — far from it. Severe hypertension made school a constant struggle. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t focus. I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box. But I was trying. And I was loved.

I played Little League baseball from T-shirt league through Senior League, and then high school ball. My brother and I had a solid family upbringing — the kind that should have kept us grounded. I regularly went hunting and fishing with my father and grandfather, drawing and painting with my mother, and gardening with my grandmother.

Those were good days. Simple days. Safe days.

The Drift Begins

But because of the hypertension – now recognized as attention deficit disorder – and my inability to sit still or focus in classrooms, I began drifting toward the school skippers. That drift introduced me to marijuana and progressed to stronger drugs and then…

BANG!

Everything Shattered.

The Wreck That Changed Worlds

1970 Z28 Camaro SS—The Beginning, but not the end.

As a sixteen or seventeen year old teenager, a horrific car wreck broke my skull into four large pieces, driving the bone segments downward and inward into my brain.

That head-trauma change everything.

It left me with right side paralysis, unpredictable blackouts, and violent personality shifts. My mind became a battlefield I could no longer control. My emotions became a storm I could no longer calm. My life became a descent I could no longer stop.

I spiraled into a deep, dark, destructive hole—a place so grim that nobody could reach in to save me, and nobody wanted to, except my mother… and God.

Those early fractures – physical, emotional, spiritual – became the cracks that would later split my entire world apart. And, most unfortunately, not only my world—but those of others as well.

And, worst still,  the wreck that shattered worlds was nobody’s fault but mine. I ran the stop sign into the flatbed truck on the feeder-road and though no one else was injured, many lives were subsequently impacted.

Please know that I am not making excuses, nor trying to mitigate what I have done. I am just relaying the facts of the life conditions and circumstances that lead to my many and myriad mistakes.

The story that is about to unfold spanned 3½ decades. It is lengthy because there was a lot packed into those years.

It is Brutal. Incomprehensible. Inspirational. Transformative.

It is both tragic and miraculous. It lives at both ends of the spectrum—but maybe you can say the same of your own life.

The Pressures That Shape Us All

Before you walk any further with me into this story, I ask you to recognize a central truth—we are all shaped by the pressures and circumstances of the world surrounding us. None of us escapes them. They mold us, push us, deceive us, and sometimes they break us.

Many of you have been deceived, pressured, or pushed into situations you never wanted to be in. Some of you have survived things that should have destroyed you. I understand that more than you know.

It matters little whether we caused the circumstances we cannot escape, or whether they were thrust upon us by forces we do not yet understand. The results — and the answer — are exactly the same.

The Dividing Line Between Destruction and Renewal

We can go it alone, or, we can walk through it with God and grow because of it. No matter what the world would have you believe, the truth is this:

That choice – the choice to walk with Him instead of going it alone – is the dividing line between destruction and transformation.

“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.…”
Romans 12:2

For me, that truth did not arrive gently. It came through violence, fear, and the collapse of everything I thought I understood about myself. But in that collapse, God began the work of renewing my mind—slowly, painfully, faithfully.

The God of Another Chance

How many of you have been given a second chance? A third chance?

How many of you wish for a second chance?

Well, be encouraged. God is NOT a God of second, third, fourth chances. He is the God of Another Chance. He is just waiting for you to call on him for renewal of your mind and soul—for His deliverance. Sometimes even – as was certainly the case with me – deliverance from even yourself.

For me, Romans 12:2 was a long, long time in coming because I was my own worst enemy—But come it did.

As you walk with me through the story of this self-induced quagmire – this maelstrom of monumental mistakes – please know this:

When the hole you have dug for yourself is so deep that only God can get you back to ground level… No matter how far you are from Him, or how long it takes—He stands ready to give you another chance.

Is it fair? No. Did I deserve another chance? No.

But if you see the truth in self‑reflection, you know none of us deserve His forgiveness. It is His free gift to us. It cannot be bought or earned.

God’s grace and mercy are sufficient for everyone who would but turn to Him.

The Renewal That Changed Everything

No. I certainly did not deserve it, but He renewed my mind, soul, and body because He loved me in spite of myself. Who I had been was swallowed up in who He knew I could be after allowing Him to rule my life.

He never gave up on me.

And though it took decades, when God’s renewal began, it led me into a freedom no prison could contain—a freedom born not of physical escape, but of spiritual surrender.

These are the truths.

The Moment Everything Collapsed

On January 10, 1979, the downward spiral finally hit rock‑bottom. Running with the wrong crowd led to a robbery—and the moment everything collapsed.

I was still suffering partial paralysis of the right‑side and mental disorders. I was still trying to prove I was as strong as anyone. Still desperate to show I wasn’t mentally deficient. I had gone from school skippers & misfits to thugs; chasing acceptance I never should have sought.

The truth is simple: the downward spiral did not start with the wreck—but the wreck sent it into overdrive, into a nose‑dive that smashed into rock-bottom so hard and deep that only God could get me out of the hole.

The Blackout That Changed Everyting

And on that day, during that robbery – a robbery my crime partner instigated and manipulated me into – my damaged, traumatized brain betrayed me. I experienced a seizure, a blackout, at the worst possible moment.

In that blank, uncontrollable short‑circuit, I involuntarily pulled the trigger.

One moment the man stood before me. The next, he lay on the ground, lifeless.

I had no intent to kill him. I have no memory of pulling the trigger or of the gun firing. But the brutal reality remains: the gun was in my hand, and my actions took a human life.

The Weight of Judgment

Two days later, on January 12, 1979, I was arrested. The State of Texas indicted me for Capital Murder and immediately filed notice to seek the death penalty.

Death by Means of Lethal Injection was desired by everyone, except my family and God Himself.

Six months later, just before the jury trial date finally arrived, I accepted a plea agreement to avoid execution. I stood before a judge at a bench trial and pled guilty to the lesser‑included offense of murder.

Instead of the death by lethal injection, I received a life sentence.

Under Texas law in 1979, that meant serving a mandatory 20 calendar years before being considered for parole release. It also meant remaining in prison until death, if parole release was never granted after serving the 20 years necessary to initial parole consideration.

After serving those 20 years, I was denied release, intermittently, for additional terms that totaled 16 years — “set‑offs,” as they’re known inside the Texas prison system.

The Descent Into Survival Mode

This chain of events — the wrong crowd, the robbery, the blackout, the death, the arrest, the indictment, the plea, the sentence — forced me onto a path with only two options:

Give up, or survive by whatever means necessary.

As an emotionally distraught, brain‑damaged teenager, I was consumed by guilt and paralyzed by the looming fear of spending the rest of my life inside a cage in a maximum‑security prison. And what the hardened criminals in those facilities do to teenage boys.

Fear, guilt, trauma, and hopelessness, mixed inside me with other ingredients to form a recipe for self-destruction:

• the weight of the man’s death
• the reality of my guilt
• the brain damage
• the blackouts
• the emotional instability
• the isolation
• the threat of violence
• the uncertainty of my future

When a young mind — especially one already broken — faces overwhelming fear, emotional distress, and the hatred of the world,  it has only two choices:

break beyond repair, or switch to survival mode.

My mind chose survival.

I say, my mind chose survival, but it wasn’t really a choice anymore—it was only an instinct without conscious direction.

The Mindset That Walked Into Prison

That was the mindset I carried into the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC)—a mindset born not from evil, but from trauma, fear, confusion, and the desperate instinct to survive.

On the way to prison, shackled and chained for maximum-security transport, I was 19, 6 feet tall, weighing 145 lbs., with blond hair and blue eyes. I was still suffering brain injury and trauma that would take over a decade to fully heal.

During my six-month stay in the county jail, preparatory to a capital murder jury trial, I had heard all of the stories of how the hardened criminals of the maximum-security penal institutions abused teenagers. Because of the seriousness of my crime and eventual length of sentence, housing in a maximum-security prison was mandatory.

I was scared to death and striving desperately not to let it show. Hardened prisoners smell fear with an animalistic instinct that is as precise as it is strong.

A whiff of fear and they begin to circle, honing in for attack and total domination.

The man on the prisoner transport responsible for instantly turning my gargantuan fear into colossal rage.

The Moment Fear Turned Into Rage

I was in a panic, unable to quite my racing mind, for the first hour of the prisoner transport ride from Beaumont to Huntsville, Texas—an hour of bone‑shaking fear and the inability to think beyond the rapidly circulating thought of:

“O God! What am I going to do?! What am I going to do? GOD! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO???!!!”

It was then that the shackled man in the seat in front of me turned to face me.

Scornfully and contemptuously, he asked:

“How you going to do that time, youngster? You gonna get you a man to take care of you? How you gonna DO that time, BOY?”

The questions were rapid. They were spoken with the gleeful undertone of a twisted man who could already visualize this young, scared boy under him.

In that instant, my heart turned to stone inside of my chest.

My gargantuan fear congealed into a hard, solid, knot of all-encompassing rage.

My shaking and quaking instantly ceased. It was replaced with a calm, seething, but highly explosive anger.

I answered the questions in the manner and stance I would operate from until, many years later, God renewed my mind, enabling me to begin to see another way. The Way, The Truth, The Life, The Peace, The Love, that is found only in Jesus Christ.

“I tell you how I am going to do my time, mister… I am going to do it killing anyone who F***S with me. Are you F******G with me???”

It was said calmly, but the words carried the volcanic weight of a caged maniac whose physical rage was smothered only by shackles and chains.

With that declaration, the facial expressions and body language of both myself and my antagonizer changed—and abruptly so.

Mine changed the instant the all-encompassing and barely controlled fear congealed into a proportionate degree of suppressed rage.

The antagonizer’s changed from a hungry wolf, circling its prey, to the wariness of a wolf pack leader who finds himself, unexpectedly, in the presence of a lone wolf who is better left alone.

The man’s answer was to turn around in his seat, to face away from me, while muttering the first positive words I had heard in a long, long time:

“You’ll be all right down here.”

He meant in the maximum-security prisons we were headed to—and in my mentality to face violence that never slept. Violence that was dictated by whoever proved to be strongest.

The World I Was Entering

At that time, of course, I had no way of knowing that inmate predators were sanctioned by the Texas State Authorities and Corrections Officials: Not only sanctioned, but used in force by those charged with overseeing Management & Operations of the entire corrections system.

If you are uninterested in the documented accounts of the systemic brutality of the TDC Governing Authorities, Ranking Officials, Correctional Officers, AND the Inmate Guards they utilized, please feel free to skip the next section of detailed Federal Court Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law.

On the other hand – before we go any further – I need you to understand the world I found myself in as a teenage boy entering the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC)—a world where Hitting Rock-Bottom took on an altogether new and devastating meaning.

The Real Prison Wasn’t the Walls

The reality was this: Inside those walls, the real prison wasn’t the steel, the razor wire, the concrete. It was the hierarchy – the predators, the power structures, the silent rules – that governed everyone trapped inside the brutal environment of the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC) in the 1970s, and 1980s.

In 1972, David Resendez Ruiz initiated a civil lawsuit that, two years later, was consolidated with seven other suits from prisoners – each making the same claims of TDC’s systemic abuse – into one monumental class action civil lawsuit. For the seven cases consolidated under the Ruiz v. Estelle lawsuit, open this link: Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse, scroll down to click “show full summary” and then scroll down to “In the Spring of 1974…

Representation of the 1980 ruling of Judge William Wayne Justice for the U.S. Southern District of Texas.

1980 TDC Judged Cruel & Unusual Punishment

The following content and links are sourced from JUSTIA LAW, citing the 503 Federal Supplement volume of the Federal District Courts:

On December 12, 1980, Judge William Wayne Justice for the Southern District of Texas (Ruiz v. Estelle, 503 F. Supp. 1265 (S.D. Tex. 1980) issued his monumental, 118-page MEMORANDUM OPINION declaring TDC’s operations unconstitutional due to the documented and evidenced Cruel and Unusual Punishment foisted upon prisoners of the TDC, in violation of the 8th & 14th Amendments of the Constitution of the United States of America.

See below or Click this link for the broad statement and Conclusion of the Court.

From the first filing in 1972 to the final judgment in 2002, the case forced three decades of reforms — each reform resisted fiercely by a deeply entrenched “Good ’Ole Boy” system.

Having lived through the duration of the decree handed down by Judge William Wayne Justice for the United States Southern District of Texas and through the following two decades of its implementation – and beyond even that – for an additional decade, I am a personal, firsthand, witness, and a survivor of the terrible conditions described herein.

Oh, but don’t worry—the unconstitutional conditions are far too numerous to list. So, I am not going to get very far into the 118 page 1980 Memorandum Opinion. It was a class action lawsuit that was as massive as it was monumental.

To start, however, I will quote the  Federal Court’s Conclusion, which closes out the main body of the document ruling:

The Court Tried to Put Into Words The TDC Atrocities

MEMORANDUM OPINION: page 1391: XI. CONCLUSION

“The trial of this action lasted longer than any prison case-and perhaps any civil rights case-in the history of American jurisprudence. In marked contrast to prison cases in other states, the defendant prison officials here refused to concede that any aspect of their operations were unconstitutional, and vigorously contested the allegations of the inmate class on every issue. However, the evidence and the applicable law have demonstrated that constitutional infirmities pervade the TDC prison system.

“This memorandum opinion has, at some length, cited and summarized the evidence indicating the existence of these constitutional violations. But it is impossible for a written opinion to convey the pernicious conditions and the pain and degradation which ordinary inmates suffer within TDC prison walls-the gruesome experiences of youthful first offenders forcibly raped; the cruel and justifiable fears of inmates, wondering when they will be called upon to defend the next violent assault; the sheer misery, the discomfort, the wholesale loss of privacy for prisoners housed with one, two, or three others in a forty-five foot cell or suffocatingly packed together in a crowded dormitory; the physical suffering and wretched psychological stress which must be endured by those sick or injured who cannot obtain adequate medical care; the sense of abject helplessness felt by inmates arbitrarily sent to solitary confinement or administrative segregation without proper opportunity to defend themselves or to argue their causes; the bitter frustration of inmates prevented from petitioning the courts and other governmental authorities for relief from perceived injustices.

“For those who are incarcerated within the parameters of TDC, these conditions and experiences form the content and essence of daily existence. It is to these conditions that each inmate must wake every morning; it is with the painful knowledge of their existence that each inmate must try to sleep at night. But these iniquitous and distressing circumstances are prohibited by the great constitutional principles that no human being, regardless of how disfavored by society, shall be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment or be deprived of the due process of the law within the United States of America. Regrettably, state officials have not upheld their responsibility to enforce these principles. In the wake of their default, the United States Constitution must be enforced within the confines of TDC by court decree.

That pretty much sums up the case. I will, however, because the JUSTIA LAW publication of Ruiz v. Estelle, 503 F. Supp. 1265 (S.D. Tex. 1980) does not allow linking to specific pages or subsections of Judge Justice’s Memorandum Opinion, the continuation of this section now relies on the CourtListener version of the ruling.

CourtListener is a government‑approved, court‑validated repository that reproduces the original 1980 decree verbatim, including its internal pagination and numbered subsections.
This makes it possible to cite and link directly to precise sections of the decree – such as §1277, §1282, and others – and highlight the quoted text for the reader, all while preserving complete fidelity to Judge William Wayne Justice’s official ruling.

Overcrowding—How Big Is Your Closet???

“1277 — The overcrowding at TDC exercises a malignant effect on all aspects of inmate life. Personal living space allotted to inmates is severely restricted. Inmates are in the constant presence of others…

“1278 —…cells measure nine feet long, five feet wide, and seven feet high.  Originally designed to hold one inmate each, a second bed has been added to these cells in the last few years; almost invariably, they now house at least two inmates. Typical cells are equipped with two steel frame bunks (one above the other) attached like shelves to the wall, a sink, a toilet, a narrow shelf above the front bars, and a naked lightbulb. Inmates in the cells are provided nothing to sit on, except for the toilet-which has no seat-or bunks. No desk or other flat surface is made available to them for writing purposes…

1979 Three men in a 5 foot by 9 foot cell no bigger than your standard walk-in closet. The third occupant had to pull his mattress out and stretch it along the wall so that his head was at the bars and feet at the toilet, or the vice versa.

“1278 — So cramped is such a cell that two standing persons must squeeze by each other to pass, and an average man can stand in the center of the cell and touch both walls with outstretched arms…

“1278 — When a total of three inmates are confined to a single TDC cell, as is all too often the case, the third must sleep on a mattress in the aisle. These mattresses, and often their occupants, are constantly stepped on by others in the cell attempting to reach the toilet, sink, or door. A third person will usually sleep lengthwise in the aisle, parallel to the bunks, with his head near either the toilet or the barred door. Inmates testified that they were fearful to sleep in the latter location, because they can be injured when the doors are opened. Occasionally, four-and sometimes even five-inmates are assigned to one cell.

“1282 — The constant threat to the inmates’ personal safety posed by overcrowded living conditions in both the multiply-inhabited cells and the packed dormitories presents the most obvious harm. Penologists who testified at trial were virtually unanimous in their condemnation of double and triple celling. Director Estelle himself noted the exigent problems associated with double celling, making reference to the increased opportunity for predatory activities and the enhanced difficulties respecting supervision and control. TDC inmates are routinely subjected to brutality, extortion, and rape at the hands of their cellmates. Some of the most heinous examples have occurred in triple-celling situations, where two-on-one confrontations practically guarantee the capitulation of the abused third cellmate. However, the problems of violence also occur all too frequently in double-celling situations, where one inmate often dominates the other.

Living In A Closet-Sized Cage With Two Other Men

“I was on the floor for an extended period – off an on — for several years after my arrival to the Eastham Unit in 1979. There was an informal rule that when one of the inmates in a bunk left, the top bunk moved to the bottom bunk, the guy on the floor moved to the top bunk and a new inmate took the floor position. If you were on the floor and went to lockup, or were reassigned to another cell or cellblock, you started over at the new location.

You should try maneuvering in a standard walk-in closet that is 5 feet wide and 9 feet deep – you know the narrow kind – with two other adults…The hanging clothes running then length along one wall representing the two over and under bunks—Oh; I almost forgot. I mage a toilet at the rear on the aisle side, and a corner sink on the opposite side in there with you… Yeah, hard to believe… right?

So, I’m sure you can image the aggravation, frustration, and the volatile temperament of men living in such a conditions. Surrounded – with no space to move – breathing the body orders of men packed in cells like sardines in a can, the lack of sleep automatically incurred, no privacy whatsoever… Well, you get the picture—The entire cellblock is constantly on edge and frequently exploding into violence for that reason alone…

Never mind legitimate beefs that erupt from predators misjudging their intended prey…

Without having proved – through the use of violence – that you were better left alone—You were not.

Inmate Guards—Brutality Sanctioned

(Be sure to click the numeric hyperlinks within the quoted text to read the applicable footnotes):

“1288 — To compensate for the serious understaffing, TDC has institutionalized the use of certain inmates as auxiliary guards, to assist the civilian security forces in controlling the units. This “building tender” system maintains picked inmates in positions of authority over other inmates, despite the mandate of state law to the contrary. ³³  Moreover, these chosen inmates often brutalize their fellow prisoners, with the tacit approval or direction of civilian prison personnel. The civilian security officers augment the violence themselves, frequently indulging in acts of brutality against inmates.

“1292 — This lack of supervision means that aggressive and predatory inmates are free to do as they wish in the living areas, and their victims can be threatened, extorted, beaten, or raped, in the absence of protection from civilian personnel. No guards are present voluntarily to come to the aid of the victims or to prevent the attacks in the first place…

“1293 — Simply put, inmates live in a climate of fear and apprehension by reason of the constant threat of violence. Indeed, to escape threatened physical attacks, several inmates have deliberately violated rules in order to be consigned to some form of punitive segregation. Self-mutilation being a disciplinary offense, some have gone to the extent of cutting their arms, legs, or heel tendons to achieve temporary transfers to administrative segregation, solitary confinement, or the hospital. ⁴⁸

“1293 — Numerous examples of the inability of TDC staff to protect inmates’ personal safety were graphically presented by credible testimony at trial. Three of the more shocking events, described by two TDC wardens, occurred within a twenty month period at two different institutions. The three incidents, described in the margin, ⁴⁹ each involved physical torture and sexual abuse of inmates by their cell partners over a period of days. In each case, prison administrators concluded that individual guards had not been at fault in failing to discover these situations sooner, and no disciplinary action was taken against any of them.

Building Tenders/TurnKeys/Lead Row/Tail Row, etc., etc.

(Follow the superscripted numeric designations within the text to see documented examples and further details of the brutality inmate guards exercised on other – regular – inmates):

“1294 — A Texas statute expressly prohibits the use of inmates in a supervisory or administrative capacity over other inmates and forbids any inmate to administer disciplinary action to another prisoner. ⁵³ Disregarding this statutory provision, TDC has compensated for its chronic shortages of civilian security personnel by using inmates to perform security functions. ⁵⁴
(Italicized and Bold formatting were added to merely emphasize the existing verbatim text.)

“1295 — While these inmates now hold a number of different official job titles, in the past they were generally referred to as building tenders. ⁵⁵ (Link ⁵⁵ provides: Such inmates are officially called floor men, wing porters, wing tenders, orderlies, turnkeys, key girls, bookkeepers, count boys, field porters, water boys, lead row workers, and tail row workers. The title “building tender” was officially used prior to the enactment of the state statute cited in footnote ³³. Although official use of the title was discontinued after the statute went into effect, the supervisory, administrative, and disciplinary duties of these inmates did not change. The term “building tender” is thus used in the generic sense, to refer generally to all inmates who discharge custodial or supervisory functions. The more specific titles mentioned above are used to distinguish activities that cannot be generalized.)
(Italicized and Bold formatting were added to merely emphasize the existing verbatim text.)

“1296 — Building tenders have unofficially been given such specific powers as issuing orders to other inmates, assisting in taking daily counts of the population, keeping track of inmate movements, escorting inmates to different destinations within the prison, and distributing correspondence and commissary scrip. Some are authorized to be in possession of keys outside the presence of civilian personnel, and others operate the automated opening devices which control access to cell blocks, day rooms, and other parts of the institutions. In the day rooms, building tenders are in complete control; e. g., they enforce order and silence, operate the controls of television sets, and regulate the games that can be played.

“The fact that building tenders work closely with civilian security personnel gives them several significant advantages, which they may readily abuse. Often, their greater contact with prison officials permits them the opportunity to arrange or influence job and housing changes, and to sell their influence over such matters to other inmates. Some have access to records concerning inmates’ financial resources, and others are authorized to assist in preparing and editing disciplinary reports. Certain building tenders are able to view general inmates’ files and use the information to operate extortion, prostitution, and usury schemes. Another common practice of building tenders is to “run stores”, that is, to sell to inmates, for exorbitant prices, commissary items in high demand. A free market situation does not prevail in these circumstances; building tenders have the power to punish inmates who refuse to deal with them on the demanded financial or sexual bases.”

“1297 —  ⁶³This notorious *1297 ability of building tenders to keep and use weapons is in marked contrast to TDC’s generally effective system of curbing the presence of arms and other contraband among the general inmate population, a disparity which supports the conclusion that the lapses of officials toward building tenders are not accidental.

“The availability of weapons, as well as the other concomitants of power possessed by building tenders, allows them to engage in acts of marked brutality toward other prisoners. Of the many incidents of building tenders’ brutality shown by the evidence, those set out in the margin are merely illustrative.”

Here I think it noteworthy to draw your attention to a couple of other footnotes, and then we well get back to my personal story of lost & found/condemned and delivered.

“57 — TDC’s official computer records reveal that building tenders tend to be serving longer sentences and have been convicted of more violent crimes than inmates in the general population.
One particular building tender, Butch Ainsworth, was characterized by the former warden of the Eastham Unit as the most violent inmate he has ever known. Several bloodchilling incidents involving inmate Ainsworth were described by TDC officers and inmates. On one occasion, Ainsworth, protesting the transfer of one of his friends to another unit, cut off several of his own fingers and delivered them to a guard.”

“60 The attendant circumstances warrant the believability of the testimony of former building tender Jerry Ben Ulmer, an inmate convicted of a number of murders and serving concurrent sentences of life imprisonment-commuted from death sentences. He gave evidence that he was promised certain favors if he would cooperate with some of the officials of Ramsey Unit I. One of his commissioned tasks involved the intimidation of a writ writer regarded as troublesome by the officials. Upon being assigned to the cell of the writ writer by the *1296 officials, Ulmer slit the other inmate’s throat with a knife-not fatally, as Ulmer had planned it. Ulmer was never disciplined for the act, because a TDC captain characterized the throatcutting as self-mutilation, rather than as an assault.”

“61 — The individual building tender derives his authority from his supervising officer’s status. Under this arrangement, for example, the building major’s turnkey or bookkeeper has more authority than the shift sergeant’s. An illuminating example was testified to by Warden David Christian of the Retrieve Unit. He admitted that a Lieutenant on his unit, who was an employee of many years standing, was transferred from the unit after cursing the warden’s head building tender.”

“62 — At Eastham, some building tenders were equipped with such items as “free-world” hunting knives, two mop handles taped together, pieces of trace chain, pipes, and “baseball” (small wooden) bats.”

“64 — At the Eastham Unit, when an inmate resisted sexual overtures from building tenders Butch Ainsworth and Charlie Robertson, they decided to apply force. A former building tender, a witness to the incident, credibly testified as follows:
“They wrapped a wet blanket around him first plugged an extension cord into a socket. The ends of the extension cord were insulated, and they stuck this energized electric cord to the wet blanket. (For the additional details, click here.)

This was the world I entered when I got out of the transport bus at the TDC.

As the United States District Court determined in the section above, in the early years  of my confinement – 1979 though the eighties – the Texas Department of Corrections  was brutal.

The System Was Already Bleeding Before I Ever Arrived

That fate-deciding fear-to-rage, chain-bus ride landed me in a prison system that had been abusing prisoners for decades. In 1979, the system was overcrowded, there were still inmate guards and prison officials who were hate-filled tyrants and running the penal system in Texas with brute force.The inmate guards inside the buildings were the Building Tenders and TurnKeys.

There were five Building Tenders per cell block, and there were four cell blocks between hallway riot gates. There was a TurnKey assigned to each riot gate in the hallway.

The brutality of the TurnKeys and Building Tenders throughout the late 1970s and beyond the mid-1980s was notoriously vicious.

Gate-Slamming Alarm—An Army Against One

The TurnKeys would slam the hallway gates closed at any sign of unrest, or, when anyone they wanted to punish was between the riot gates in the hallway going to chow, or work, or administrative – mandatory – hearings…

They did not like you? They felt disrespected by a look, a sarcastic tone?  You weren’t walking inside the lines on the floor? Or, maybe they were just having a bad day and felt like taking it out on  someone? Well, it was totally at their discretion who they released their aggression on—who they brutalized.

All they had to do was slam shut the gate they were assigned to, trapping their target between two riot gates—when one gate slammed, every TurnKey at every gate in the hallway slammed their gates shut as well. This was a progression of crashing sounds that formed a rudimentary, but extremely effective, alarm system.

Anytime that alarm went off – for whatever reason the hallway gates were slammed – all of the Building Tenders (5 to a cellblock) would pour into the hallway (unless the Turnkeys were able to brutally quell the disturbance on their own), rushing to exert brute force.  Five or Six against one or two.

The Alarm (Slamming of Gates) brought the “Calvary” charging… Only, this calvary was a vicious, overwhelming force used to brutalize instead of rescue.

Any inmates not involved in the disturbance – on their way to chow or showers, on  their way to anywhere else they were required to go – were trapped between the slammed riot gates. They were expected to immediately drop to a sitting position facing the wall on whatever side of the hall they happed to be on—eyes forward so they could not witness whatever took place next.

All of the inmate guards would then converge on the problematic inmate, or inmates – in the instance of a fight between two or more inmates breaking out in the hallway, or on the cell blocks – and they would literally beat into submission those responsible for setting off the alarm and them drag them to the infirmary or to the solitary lockup cells, or decide that the incident was over and return to normal operations.

By the way, if you proclaimed it was over, and then returned to the fight later on, they punished you with beatings administered in front of the other inmates in the cell block or hallway to an extent that provided proof to everyone else that there were severe consequences, sometimes even fatal, for “bucking” or “disobeying” or “disrespecting” the inmate guards.

That was the inmate guards in the building. 

In the Fields, the Pace Was Unrelenting
Rhythm Was The Key To Survival

In the fields inmates were forced to work in, the inmate guards who kept the work squad in line and working at the fastest pace set by the Boss — the Field Officer – mounted on a horse behind the work squad, were as follows:

• The Lead-row: The first man on the squad’s assigned rows (usually 25 to thirty-two rows per squad, with an inmate on every row).
• The Tail-row: The last man on the squad’s assigned rows (at the opposite end from the Lead Row. He kept the squad pinched or tightly packed against each other in the flat-weeding line).
• The Push-lead: The man on the second row, working beside and to the immediate right of the Lead-row.
• The Push-tail: The man on the second to last row, working beside and to the immediate left of the Tail-row.
• The Strikers: Two per squad. They helped the new-boots (band new inmates to forced field work) keep pace with the squad and cleaned up missed grass or missed picked produce.
• The File Boy: The inmate that filed (sharpened) the heavy-duty garden hoes – or Aggies as they are known in Texas prisons – inmates chopped grass or scraped clean the endless acres of rows and furrows.

The rows were what they called All Day Rows. Meaning that when you arrived at the rows early in the morning – and flowed into the one-man-per-row work formation – you would start to work on a single row and work that row until the Field Captain raised his hat to indicate lunchtime. After lunch you would return to the same row, and pick up where you left off.

At the end of the day, just before the Captain would raise his hat to end the work day, you would just be approaching the end of the row you had started working that morning—and your squad had better be at the end of the row… If not? Somebody was at fault.

Of course, that would rarely happened because long before day’s end, those that could not keep up with the pace were beaten and the Strikers would “catch up their row” long before the squad lost the pace of adjacent work squads.

The Field Boss would look bad to the Captain and the other Field Officers if he could not make his squad keep up with the other squads across the massive acreage of rows. This he would not put up with.

It did not matter if you were picking cotton, hoeing rows, are mowing the endless fields that did not contain rows—Flat-weeding, as mowing pastures with heavy garden hoes or Aggies was known in TDC.

TDC field force inmates mowing (Flat-weeding) endless pastureland with heavy garden hoes—or Aggies as they are known in the Texas Prison System.They are in tight, strict, formation under the supervision of a mounted field officer, illustrating the grueling pace, enforced rhythm, and ever present pressure of the Lead row/Tail-row inmate guard system.

Each inmate in the work squad would be in a sideways stance, his stomach pressed against the back of the next man in the line, with the garden hoe raised above his left shoulder. The Lead-row would set the pace, yelling ONE, TWO, THREE—STEP!!! for regular length grass, and ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR (or FIVE) —STEP!!! for taller grass.

The rhythm of the count was set by the Lead-Row and he timed it so that at each count, the line of inmates between him and the Tail-row would strike the ground at the same instant.

Three count was striking the ground three times before stepping forward by a single step to repeat the process (striking the ground once to the left, once in the middle and once to the right, so that each inmate mowed a swath of grass three hoes wide before taking the next sideways step—in rhythm.

This was an all-day-long process. So, I am sure you can see how it would be hard for new field hands to keep the pace…but you learned quickly how to keep up, or cover up and stomp down what you had no time to do correctly, before being required to move forward one step on pace... 

Touch-Ups Just Discipline
They were Exhibitions—Warnings to All Field Workers

The beatings you received for not being able to stay on pace, or when caught stomping the grass down instead of cutting it with the Aggie, were called Touch-ups… As in, “Got one here, Boss. He needs a Touch-Up!

That would be the Lead-row. He would fight you one on one and if he lost, the boss made you the new Lead-row. If you refused to work the Lead-row position and enforce the pace, the other inmate enforcers would gang up to administer a beating that clearly set the example for the other 12 to 13 squads in the fields, working along side your own squad.

And,  of course, when the Lead-row announced Got One here, Boss, the Field officer on the horse always – without fail – announced “Go Ahead, Hand—Tighten Him Up!!! and then he would spit chewing tobacco to the right or left side of his horse and pretend to turn his head, as he watched from the corner of his eyes.

Anytime this happened, or even when two regular inmates in the work-line lost their tempers in the heat and sweat – or the cold and damp, depending on the season – of the long, long, work day, the entire field force stopped to watch… This was the only time workers were allowed to stop. Then it was right back to work—Oh, and you couldn’t stage a fight to gain a break from the relentless work and work-pace. The punishment for that was too severe to contemplate.)

The Rule Of The Game
When the Ruling Class Is Against You

These inmate guards, whether in the building or in the fields, had a free reign, and the blessing of the Prison Officials and regular guards, for the extortion of regular, non-guard inmates…

There was only one, single, rule that was available because all of the other rules were stacked and used against you.

And what is the rule that everyone recognized and obeyed? 

Proof that you would try to kill them, if you weren’t left alone. That was the only rule that kept them at Bay.

A prisoner clings to the edge of a molten pit in a decaying Texas cell corridor—a visual metaphor for despair’s depth and the unseen levels below rock bottom.

Beyond Rock-Bottom

In 1979, my first maximum security unit of assignment was The Coffield Unit, and it did not take long for violence to welcome me into a world where Rock-Bottom was just a false floor leading to another bottom, and still another, until you were living in Hell—where survival often depended on meeting violence with greater violence and the respect of other prisoners was only given to the degree with which you demonstrated the capacity for violence.

Respect Wasn’t Given; It Was Extracted Through Fear

If they knew that potentially fatal retribution would follow any action against you, well, they respected you enough to leave you alone. But the key to being left alone in a maximum-security environment is the demonstrated capacity for violence.

In a world with nowhere to run, only half of the primal instinct of Fight or Flight is available… So, upon arrival, fight is what I did. and it was one-on-one for several months, as they tried to wear me down to the point of offering my commissary in exchange for peace.

And the fights were only part of the pressures applied and they weren’t nearly as continuous or as emotionally taxing as the threats, the slurs, the menacing demeanors, the anger for made-up-reasons, that were continuously directed my way.

And all while every inmate watched me take full advantage of the Commissary that those with money could enjoy—the commissary that those without money took from those they could.

Every Interaction Was a Test of Wills

They were in a constant mode of judging who was weak enough to accept their dominance… Always trying to find that weakness. Picking vehement arguments on how you had disrespected them. Here is one little example.

They walked up to you as you in the dayroom and, in a menacing, yet offended, verbally assaultive tone, lean over you to announce, “You are in my seat, new-boot! Get the F**k out of it —NOW!!!

You had to get out of the seat, one way or another:

1. You launched out of the seat, directly into the man trying to take it, and fought over this TEST of wills, or, 
2. you got up and moved to another seat, with everyone watching. In that event, the next test would not be long in coming, and it would be increasingly more assertive, more aggressive, and then another test and another, until you capitulated, or they were convinced that you would never give in…

You would be surprised how much hate and envy is produced in a dayroom after those with money go to the commissary and return to eat it in front of everyone who has no money… In a dayroom or TV room that is 100 plus degrees with a single wall mounted fan blowing hot air like a 1950s automobile dash heater – one that blows air straight of the hot engine’s manifold – Ice-cream and a cold soda is motive enough for releasing pent-up rage through serious assault.

Violence Was the Only Language They Understood

So, after several months of fighting one-on-one, and learning the ropes of field work – several of the inmate guards in charge of my squad, jumped me in the fields. They knocked out one of my front teeth, cracked my jaw, and tore my rib cage lining in multiple spots. And it was not solely because I could not keep pace. That was the excuse.

Mounted TDCJ officer watches over a staggered inmate work squad in diagonal cotton rows — Texas field labor under the harsh midday light.

They were beating me for extortion money and the field boss knew it.

This was his reward to them for physically forcing all of the inmates in the field squad to work to his satisfaction and at his pace.

They jumped me on a day when the men on the cell block would go to spend money – if they had any – at the Unit Commissary.

The Proof Delivered —I Was Better Left Alone

After I returned from the Infirmary and when the cell doors rolled open to allow the convicts to come out for commissary, several of the men who had attacked me in the fields earlier that day confronted me. They held a list of items for $20 of the $30 allowed to be spent in the commissary every two weeks during that period of 1979.

They informed me that I would get more of the same beatings if I did not provide this money on a continuing basis every two weeks. They added that I would have to “catch the cell for some big six” later that evening.

This was prison-speak for entering someone else’s cell to be locked in with them until the doors were again rolled open. “Big Six” was a domino game and they used that as subterfuge. It was nuanced to allow me the fallacy to hope against hope that it was merely to play dominoes, instead of a ploy to rape me.

During the short months before the beating, I had prepared a prison shank—a weapon fashioned out of a bean ladle handle. So, when they rolled open the cell doors for out-for-commissary, I retrieved the shank from my cell.

The prison Shank made from a kitchen bean ladle handle, with the bowl broken off and the handle ground down to a diamond point.

Instead of giving them commissary, I gave the leader of the three the knife fashioned form the bean ladle. I sank it deep into his chest, and the other two abandoned their leader.

Violence Became My Shield

I was subsequently told by the medical personnel who checked on prisoners confined to punitive solitary confinement, and the restrictive dietary rations then in effect, that I had just nicked the muscle of the man’s heart. I had missed puncturing a valve or severing an artery, so the man had lived.

Ultimately, however, it had the same effect on other prisoners as if the man had been slain.

They viewed me in an entirely different light. They viewed me with the wariness and fear that is the equivalent of respect in the prisons of the world.

They saw the demonstrated evidence that to mess with this teenager was to risk losing their lives. They determined I was better left alone.

The Only Rule Available Was Then In Effect

My Existence Took A Radical Turn

From quaking fear to evidenced rage—from being preyed upon, to being left alone—these changes were instantaneous and directly connected to the violence displayed.

When this environmental shift was coupled with my brain injuries and disabilities, it was a combination that provided a sense of security and well-being for the first time in my relatively short confinement—a span of time that had then seemed forever in passing. Under the right – or I guess I should say wrong – circumstances, three months will seem like an eternity.

Additionally, it filled me with the bedrock certainty that such actions would guarantee that I would be left alone for the duration of my life sentence.

It was the illusion of an oasis to a man dying of thirst in the hottest part of the desert of all deserts. It was the proverbial recipe for disaster, but it was the only one available to my limited mental capacity and environmental circumstances:

Kill or be Killed… or worse.

It was the only path I could see where I might come close to being left alone for the two decades necessary for initial parole release possibilities.

It was still 1979, and I would not be eligible for parole consideration until January of 1999.

A group of predatory wolves in the attempt to rip their prey apart. The rabbit is too shocked to seek the safety of his warren… but at least he has a place to run.

With time crawling at a snails pace and seemingly endless decades stretching before me, ignorance and a damaged brain – already congealed into a hard knot of anger – became the hardrock foundation upon which I built my survival.

In that world, rage and violence were the only currency that bought respect. It was a potent, toxic mixture, but it was the only sustenance available to me. Slow, rational thinking takes too long when death is a breath away. My ignorance curtailed normal decision-making, but it gave me something in return: the raw instinct and tools to survive.

This is especially true when the only alternative is to return to a continual state of living in dread, fear, and palpable anxiety. It meant returning to the state of a rabbit for whom ravening wolves await at every hole of the warren—waiting to rip off its head and tear out its belly.

Wolves and rabbits. Nowhere to run. The ultimate showcase of primal dread—where instinct overrides reason, and violence, for those capable of it, is the only equalizer left.

Unlike the rabbit, however, humans sometimes have no place to hide, nowhere to go, nowhere to turn—sometimes the only option is to apply greater force than the looming threat, or suffer the abuse threatened.

Yet, I have learned this well: a toll is administered for most things under the sun. Sometimes the heaviest price is paid simply for doing the necessary to prevent the unimaginable.

Yes. I was my own worst enemy.

Yes. I had been and I was a threat to those around me because of my inability to make rational decisions.

Yes. I was ill-equipped and unprepared to exist in the world at the bottom of the hole I dug for myself.

Yes. I was facing overwhelming circumstances because of my own stupidity.

Yes. I was being held accountable for my own very serious mistakes and actions.

Yes. There are those in the world who feel that I got what I deserved, and most of those who don’t? Well, they think that short of Death and Hell I will never get what I truly deserve.

Yes. They are correct and I am so very thankful that Jesus paid the price so all of us – any of us – can choose the only path to not get what we deserve…

Grace Does Not Erase Consequences

But that doesn’t mean we will not suffer. It doesn’t mean that we will not have to face the darkness of our actions, misdeeds, bad choices, and – in my own case – catastrophic harm and pain to others while alive on the earth.

I am not complaining. I am not looking for pity or sympathy. I deserve none.

I am simply relaying the circumstances of a kid that turned 19 in the county jail and then went  to maximum security prison, and the actions demanded by that environment, his injured brain, and broken body.

When You’re Inside the Fire
Reasons Have No Bearing

It matters little, the reasons for our plight when we are smack-dab in the middle of torturous circumstances. It changes nothing that you, yourself, are the reason you find yourself where you are.

There is no time to think of reasons.

There is only instinct.

There is no thought of consequences—for whatever they are, you know inherently that they will be less than the certain reality headed your way…

No. There is no time, no ability, to factor consequences…

There is only, “What am I gonna Do right here and right now?”

And there is only one, true, answer:

You will do whatever you must to prevent the stark reality bearing down on you like a freight train. 

The Price of Survival Collected

The consequences of the actions taken to prevent my subjugation for two decades or more sent me to a location as close to hell as possible – in more ways than one – without dying to get there.

Arriving At The End All Roads Traveled

I had been taking wrong turns and headed to Hell for quite some time. When I got to the Eastham Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC), just three short months after entering the system. I had arrived.

Though by 1979 the billboard had been removed by Federal Court Order, for years it boldly and accurately proclaimed to newly arriving prisoners, and visitors alike:

EASTHAM: Home of the Criminally Insane. Two miles from Water. Two Feet from Hell.

The Trinity River was two miles from the building and, well, Eastham was as close to hell as you could get without dying and descending to get there.

This was the dumping ground for the state’s most unmanageable and violent criminals. Many were mentally challenged or emotionally deficient. And, of course, it was home to the worst brutes in the state.

In 1979, this was considered the absolute end-of-the-road for the Texas prison system.

The Eastham Unit Was TDC’s Dumping Ground

When inmates committed violence on their previous units of assignment, they were given fifteen days in solitary confinement. There was no permanent lockup in those days—no Administrative Segregation. After completing the punitive solitary term, they were shipped to one of three maximum security units: Ellis I, Darrington, or Eastham.

If they were violently assaultive, or unmanageable, on either Ellis I or Darrington, they were shipped to Eastham.

In those years, once you arrived at Eastham, you were rarely shipped to other units of assignment because of any violence enacted. If you killed the guy you assaulted, you were considered to no longer have an enemy on the unit, and if you did not kill him? They shipped him, not you.

You were truly at the end of the road upon arrival at the Eastham unit.

Two Feet Was the Distance Between Life and Death

Hell in maximum security prison isn’t a myth—it’s a location and a threshold. It’s the two‑foot distance between survival and obliteration. If you are two feet from another person, inmate or guard,  you are too close—excessive use of force, brutality and death are lurking in that space… In the time it takes to span two feet, violence or death could be upon you.

Keep you distance at all times—from inmates and guards.
That is also the warning of Two Feet From Hell.

And Then Came the Worst Years in Texas Prison History

And this era was several years before the most violent span of time in the history of Texas prisons…

Several years before the State lost control of its prison system to gangs and had to then regain it with a gang of their own.

Eastham held the most notorious Building-Tenders and Turnkeys and, of course, there was the continuous predator/prey cycles of extortion of the weak by the stronger—and all of it sanctioned by the Prison Officials. When the Ruiz vs. Estelle court mandates were slowly but irrevocably enforced – and the vast inmate guard system was removed – the prison system exploded with unrestrained violence.

Gangs square off on the recreation yard awaiting a move to spark a riot to decide the control of the unit.

When the Old System Collapsed, Violence Filled the Vacuum

During this era of extreme violence, gangs began to proliferate and execute their authority throughout the Texas Penal System. When the system of inmate guards collapsed, murder and mayhem erupted.

A tsunami of bloodshed struck the Texas Department of Corrections. Waves of violence burst forth because the extremely brutal inmate‑enforcers who had controlled the units were suddenly gone.

Gangs formed to fill the vacuum left by the exit of the extremely powerful, administratively sanctioned, long‑standing, and very effective inmate‑guard system.

Recruitment Wasn’t Just By Invitation

During this explosion of violence, each gang rushed to recruit members. They needed numbers and they needed them quickly. Not only did they need to defend their own against rival gangs, but they also needed to compete for the rule of the prison units and to mark out their territories of operations.

Tremendous pressure — through violence and threats of violence — fell upon individual prisoners. Men were targeted to join whichever group represented their race, city, or region of Texas.

Gangs sprang up quickly, often under loosely formulated and sometimes incoherent mandates, charters, or constitutions.

Their by‑laws were simple and savage:

Blood-In, Blood-Out.

You entered by killing or seriously attempting to kill someone. You left only by death.

Adherence To Gang Bylaws Was Mandatory
But The Need of Numbers Created A Conundrum

Snitches, homosexuals, and non‑alpha‑status inmates were barred from joining. But the need of defensive numbers often superseded the deadly consequences for both the recruited and the recruiter.

If someone hid such facts and was later exposed, a death contract was placed upon their life and carried out—usually by the same gang member who had recruited them, as a way to avoid a death sentence of their own.

Probationary recruits were also used to execute the hits. They earned their bones through murder or the serious attempt thereof.

With no firearms available, homemade knives, shanks, and bludgeoning devices of every kind were used. Many men lacked the skill to strike a quick, efficient fatal blow, so assaults were often slow, messy, and savage.

It was a brutal environment.

It was this environment in which I found myself facing the Second Death Sentence. Not from a Judge, but delivered by men who believed blood was the only law worth enforcing.

It was the moment my life was measured, weighted, and condemned by their codea constitution that sentenced me to death.

Eastham: The War Of The Gangs

Again, Eastham was the dumping ground for the entire state’s worst, most unmanageable prisoners. Because of this, hometown groups and powerful prison gangs exploded across the unit.

As gang wars erupted across the maximum security units statewide, inmates who stabbed, or were stabbed in these wars – or were shipped because the were heads of the problem gangs on other units – were sent to the Eastham.

They grew and thrived until Administrative Segregation could be built and enforced—and until the SORT task force was finally assembled to crush them (more on that later).

At the time, the Aryan Brotherhood and the Mandingo Warriors were locked in a bloody war, killing each other across the entire system.

Two of the variations of the Mandingo Warriors Prison Gang. Different tattoos mean different things, such as rank, etc.

One of the variations of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas Prison Gang. Different tattoos mean different things, such as rank, etc.

A Foundation of Lies—Wrong Decision Made 

When a captain of the Aryan Brotherhood was transferred to the Eastham Unit, he found himself severely outnumbered by the Mandingo Warriors. He needed to recruit in numbers, and he needed to do it immediately and very quickly.

In a place like Eastham, there is safety in numbers — especially when the alternative is standing alone against an army intent on killing you.

To get those numbers, he had to lie to everyone.

When he approached me, I drew a hard line. I told him specifically that I would never join any organization that required me to put it before my family, my God, or my country.

He looked me in the eye and lied.

He assured me it was strictly a penitentiary alliance – nothing that followed you outside the walls – and that no major decisions would ever be made without a majority vote from the members on the Eastham Unit.

I had no knowledge of gangs, gang criteria, gang rules—no knowledge at all. And I did not understand, at the time, that any group inside the prison walls would expect, much less enforce allegiance outside of it…and threaten your freeworld family to force compliance…

This captain informed me that no orders would be issued, that we were strictly joining together to stand against the brutality being exercised against those without numbers…

With those empty and false assurances, I joined.

It wasn’t fear so much as the instinct for survival; safety in numbers mattered when racial violence was exploding around us.

I was still 15 years from initial  parole eligibility and even though I was having to do things in prison that would prohibit my eventual release, I wanted the chance to someday return to my family…

This captain deliberately sought out men who had already proven their willingness and ability to deal out serious bodily injury or death. He focused heavily on me because of my crime and my violent prison record.

Once he convinced me to step across the line, others followed.

The Constitution That Changed Everything

About a month later, reality caught up with us.

A lieutenant of the Brotherhood was transferred to the Eastham. Upon arrival, he met with each new recruit to explain what they had actually signed up for.

He sat me down and showed me the official constitution of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas.

The words were plain, chilling, and absolute:

Nothing comes before the brotherhood — not family, not God, not country. The only way out is death.

There were many other bylaws and particulars on those pages, but I paid no attention to them—I had already read all I needed to know.

I was out.

When I explained to the lieutenant that I would not – and never would – make such a commitment, and that I had been recruited under completely false pretenses, he didn’t argue.

The Choice: Facing the Odds—facing the second death sentence when the truth of what I had joined was revealed to me.

He just looked at me.

Then the lieutenant calmly informed me:

There was no way out. Death was the only means of exit.

Marked for Death: The Second Death Sentence

Refusing their constitution didn’t just isolate me—it marked me.

Men I had known for years now watched me with a different kind of interest. To them, it was a spectator sport, where a man capable of deathly violence was pressed by the most deadly gang in the system.

After refusing the offer to live in their character‑defining world, I carried the weight of their judgment in heightened awareness. Every sound in the cellblocks felt sharper, closer, more deliberate. Every scream took on raw, new meaning…

The hit was not a rumor. It was a presence—something that followed me through the chaos like a stalking, menacing shadow appearing out of the corner of one’s eye: fleetingly, intermittently, repeatedly.

Chaos, Construction, and Classification

At this time there was major construction going on on the cell block wings A, B, C, and D as the State of Texas was desperately trying to regain control of the prisons by hiring new guards by the score to replace the removed inmate guards, and in trying to find a way to separate the violent and the gang members from the general populations.

Starting with A & B blocks and then C and D, maintenance workers and freeworld contractors rushed to retrofit the regular cell blocks into Administrative: Security Detention cell blocks. While this was going on, the State and Individual Unit Classification Committees were Identifying – record by record – who they would remove from the general population. gang members, those having committed serious assaults with weapons, or those with histories or current suspicion of smuggling drugs and contraband into the units.

The Hardest Decision of My Life

This was the environment in which I made the best, though the hardest, decision of my life—to risk losing my life for quitting something that I never would have joined had the truth been provided up-front.

Across the Nation – the world, really – prisoners on Protective Custody are the most hated people inside any maximum-security prison. They carry the enemies of their own personal histories, and they inherit the all the enemies of every other Protective Custody inmate as well. In that world, Your enemy is my enemy, and given the chance, I’ll do yours and you’ll do mine. “Do” means  what it has always meant: torture first, then kill.

This is the reality of prison life wherever you go. It was certainly true in the 1980s, and although I’ve been out for nearly twelve years now, I doubt it has changed much — if at all. Hate rules the prisons that hold the outcasts of the lowest social order. And in a world built on hate, everyone needs someone else to hate.

The authorities responsible for protecting the very people everyone else wants dead? For the most part, they hate them too.

Maximum‑security prisons in the 1980s were brutal — not only because of the inmates, but because of the administrators and guards who ran the prisons. They used snitches, coerced inmates into becoming snitches, and weaponized them to identify – and often punish – anyone who challenged their authority. They ruled with an iron fist, but they universally held those same informants in contempt. Their attitude was simple: use them until they’re no longer useful, then throw them to the wolves and find someone new.

It was a vicious cycle. And when you combine administrative contempt with the hatred of the most dangerous prisoners in the state, the result is a gruesome reality.

The 1980 New Mexico Prison Riot

In February 1980 — just before Texas lost control of its own prison system — New Mexico lost control of one of theirs. The following information comes from an official government report published by the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office and hosted on the U.S. Department of Justice (OJP.gov) website. (To view or save the PDF from this OJP.gov link, it will be necessary to click the tile labeled Downloads ↓ PDF or, you can simply view and/or download the PDF from this link: “Original PDF“)

Because the government viewer does not support page‑specific linking, after opening the PDF you must:

• scroll down to the Table of Contents,
  • You may run into a blank page while scrolling to the Table of Contents, just keep scrolling downward and you will get there.
• continue to scroll to find the cited sections/subsections in the Table of Contents listing, for the specific page numbers of the cited content:
  • use the page numbers printed at the bottom of each pdf page to locate the cited content (disregard page numbers in the margin and the PDF page-finder in the far right side navigation bar—the webpage numbering does not match the government PDF page numbers.)

These steps will take you directly to the paragraphs documenting how and what happened inside Cellblock 4 (Protective Custody) during the February 2–3, 1980 takeover.

Key Sections of the Government Report

Official Source (Government Document)

TABLE OF CONTENTS → THE RIOT → TAKEOVER

• Cutting Torches Obtained—Page 25
• Entry Into Cellblock 4 (Protective Custody)—Page 25

TABLE OF CONTENTS → THE RIOT → SECURITY LAPSES

• Access to Blow Torches and Other Tools—Page 30
  Last Paragraph:
  “Then they used blow torches to enter Cellblock 4. They used the same torches to burn into the individual cells within Cellblock 4. Finally, they used the three acetylene torches to torture other inmates.”

TABLE OF CONTENTS → VIOLENCE INSIDE

• North Wing Violence—Page 41
  Last Paragraph:
  “The violence, which varied in intensity throughout the riot, reached its peak in Cellblock 4.” 

The Deadly Oxymoron: “Protective Custody”

Cellblock 4 was Protective Custody—the place where vulnerable inmates were supposed to be safest.

Under normal circumstances, Protective Custody marked a man as having something in his past worth being killed for. It was the surface promise of safety—a promise some men had no choice but to rely on. Ex‑trial officials and police who had ended the very freedom of the men they were now housed with; men who had snitched, testified, or served as state witnesses; and those convicted of the most heinous crimes—all of them depended on the system to keep them alive.

And under normal circumstances, the system did protect them: feeding them, showering them, and working them at times when they would not be exposed to the general population. Sure, mistakes in security happened and men sometimes lost their lives, but for the most part, Protective Custody provided a measure of safety that was not available to certain men.

Protection, however, required control, and control works both ways—on the protected, as well as those threatening the protected. Control is the key to everything maximum security.

But under riotous circumstances — as we saw in the New Mexico riot of 1980 — when the system loses control to the very people who have reason to kill you, Protective Custody becomes the last place on earth to find safety.

Those are the dangers inherent to Protective Custody.

After the inmate guards were removed, however, the Warden took control to the next level. He learned to use the very illusion — safety, protection, dependency — as a weapon. And that is where the real deception began.

While understanding the raw danger and threats to inmates  of the old TDC is straightforward, the true malice lay in the duplicity of the prison officials. They weaponized the illusion of safety, deliberately orchestrating threats to deceive men into believing that official protection was their only hope for survival. The wardens didn’t just offer a flawed sanctuary; they engineered a lethal trap. By spreading false hit rumors, they coerced men into seeking protective custody—an act that automatically triggered a mandatory, real-world execution order from the inmate’s own gang.

This was the world we lived in. In December of 1980, the old TDC (Texas Department of Corrections) was officially ruled cruel and inhumane by Judge William Wayne Justice of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas (for an overview, click here). During the turbulent transition from TDC to the TDCJ (Texas Department of Criminal Justice), the Old Guard saw these federal orders as the sole reason they lost absolute authority over the prisons. And they were furious.

By “Old Guard,” I mean the directors, wardens, and high-ranking line officers who held official power within the state corrections system. Their response to the federal courts was brutal, calculated, and highly effective: divide and conquer. They turned inmate against inmate, unleashing force on those they could neither manipulate nor control. Through forced segregation, they systematically isolated the strongest challengers to their administrative dominance. They did this whenever they failed to pressure men into voluntarily entering protective custody.

The Rumor Mill as a Weapon

To execute this strategy, wardens, guards, and the snitches who served them systematically circulated false rumors. The objective was absolute: inject paralyzing division, chaos, and internal violence into every major prison gang. It was Machiavellian chess played at the highest level.

For instance, the warden on the Eastham Unit began manufacturing rumors that a specific gang had marked one of its own members for death. He ordered his guards and snitches to feed these lies directly into the population. Because real hits were already happening at a relentless pace, the warden’s fabricated threats were terrifyingly easy to believe. A single question consumed everyone’s mind during that bloody era: Who is next?

In those early years, prison gangs maintained a strict “Blood-in, Blood-out“ policy. There was no modern disciplinary option to beat a man and let him leave the gang. The only exits were death or “catching-out”—prison slang for begging officials to pull a man from the general population and lock him in Protective Custody Administrative Segregation.

Exploiting the Past

The warden understood the exact mechanics of the gangs exploding inside the walls. He knew that as rival factions fought for dominance, they rushed to recruit massive numbers to keep pace with their enemies. He also knew gangs frequently placed hits on recruits who failed to meet their brutal constitutional criteria.

Consequently, the population was full of men harboring devastating secrets. Many had snitched on a co-defendant, been caught in a homosexual act, or backed down in cowardice from a dominant inmate in the past. These hidden liabilities would ordinarily bar them from gang membership—or get them executed if discovered.

The warden held the ultimate master key: total access to every inmate’s master file and historical record.

When manufacturing the rumor of a fake hit, the warden specifically weaponized those buried secrets. He would weave real, compromising details from an inmate’s past into the false rumor to guarantee its believability. When the targeted inmate heard the rumor, he had every reason to panic. It directly targeted his deepest, hidden vulnerability.

Terrified and manipulated, the inmate would go to the very warden who engineered the lie and beg to catch-out. The trap snapped shut immediately. The moment the man entered Protective Custody Administrative Segregation, his administrative status became public knowledge. His gang—which previously knew nothing about his hidden past—was now bound by its own constitution to issue a mandatory execution order. In the calculus of the prison yard, running was cowardice, and cowardice was a capital offense.

The gang mentality was absolute: If you won’t fight for yourself, where will you be when your brother needs you to fight for him? Yet, reality on the ground was more complex. Although race was the clear dividing line of most prison gangs at the time, a man did not have to be a racist to seek refuge in them. In many cases, survival was the ultimate and only goal. Men joined because there is safety in numbers. When an entire army is standing against you, the odds of surviving completely alone are astronomically small.

To stand completely alone, you have to reach a point in your life and your mentality where death is preferable to backing down—no matter the odds stacked against you. Under normal circumstances, no one wants to stand alone against multiple people intent on killing them.

But sometimes, it is the only choice a man can make. When the alternative is living with your own proven cowardice—waking up every moment knowing you tolerated what you hate simply because you lacked the strength to face the alternative—death becomes the preferred cost. Risking death becomes the only acceptable choice to save whatever honor and dignity you have left.

Joining and Quitting the Brotherhood

It was in this hyper-violent environment that I joined—and then quit—one of the most violent gangs in the State of Texas: the Aryan Brotherhood.

When I discovered the truth of their constitution—that the gang did not exist just for safety in numbers and self-defense, and that I would be expected to blindly follow lifelong orders—I walked away. I refused to place anything above my core loyalties to my family, to God, and to my country. Joining was yet another massive mistake in my life, but it was a mistake I determined to fix, or die trying.

Because I quit, an automatic contract was placed on my life. I was forced to live in close quarters with the very men charged with carrying out my execution sentence.

It did not take long for the warden to call me into his office. He confirmed what I already knew: “The Aryan Brotherhood has placed a hit on you.” Even though I knew the danger was entirely real, and not part of his usual rumor-deceit tactic, I flatly refused his offer to catch protective custody.

The warden simply shrugged in cold indifference. “They are going to kill you, Dainwood. I can help you, but this is your only and last chance.”

The Stand Inside Eastham

I faced the hit, driven by a stubborn mental state that was as deeply entrenched as the crisis itself. All of my circumstances were creations of my own ignorance, brain damage, and emotional instability. It was nobody’s fault but mine.

But when moment-by-moment survival is against all odds, how you got into the pit matters not at all. My mind was broken, but in this instance, my heart overruled my damaged brain and demanded that I do the right thing, no matter the consequence. I adhered to the rebellious stance I had been born with: You can’t make me do a damn thing. You cannot break me.

It was the same rebellious stance that had me refuse the Eastham Building Major’s offer to work for him as a Building Tender, or work against him.

Because I had been recruited under false pretenses, the local lieutenant appealed the hit to the organization’s off-unit higher-ups. The death contract hung suspended for several grueling months while word traveled to the Steering Committee—the highest leaders of the gang—housed on other prison units, to see if an exception would be made or if the execution mandate would be carried out.

Living those months in daily, close interaction with my potential executioners was harrowing and nerve-racking. The psychological pressure was constant. Undergirding my decision, however, was the ghost of the 1980 New Mexico prison riot.

That had recently – and vividly – proven what happens to inmates locked inside protective custody when a unit is overtaken. The Eastham Unit was on the absolute verge of following New Mexico’s bloody example.

The Unprecedented Exit

Finally, word came back from the Steering Committee. I was granted an exceptionally rare grace: I would be allowed to tattoo over my Aryan Brotherhood patch and leave the gang in good standing, on the condition that I could never rejoin. The men who had followed me into the gang were given the same option; some stayed, and some quit, as I did.

In those days, exiting a gang without dying was virtually unheard of. Today, a man can sometimes leave after enduring a brutal, organized beating by multiple members. As far as I know, I was the very first person to leave the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas without violence.

The Steering Committee did, however, demand accountability for the deceitful recruitment. They ordered the existing members to hit the captain who had lied to us. They called an inmate meeting inside the unit’s Law Library for just that purpose and stabbed him multiple times – seventeen times, I was told – intent on killing him. He survived the immediate assault, though I never learned if he later succumbed to his injuries.

Looking back, I can see how deeply the old TDC system relied on fear, division, and deceit to maintain administrative control. Officials offered “protection” with one hand while weaponizing it with the other, turning survival into a lethal trap and honor into a liability.

And this was the deadly deceit – the illusion of protection – that defined life inside the old TDC, and the manner in which Officials expended lives to maintain control.

Every choice I made—to join, to quit, and to stand alone—forced me to confront not just the physical violence around me, but the ultimate truth within myself.

Before moving into this section I need to define the various types of Administrative Segregation. Other than suicide watch and medical quarantine there are four types of Administrative Segregation:

• Protective Custody
  This is where Snitches, Ex-police officers that sent men to prison before being caught themselves, men on the run from someone within the system, those who are known to have molestation crimes, etc.
• Punitive Solitary Confinement
  Short-term isolation for disciplinary infractions, 15 day terms.
• Security Detention
  Those the prison authorities and classification committees have sent to isolation lockup after having been deemed to be a treat to the peace and security of inmates and staff.
• Super Segregation
  This status is for those the prison administration and classification committees have determined that Administrative Segregation: Security Detention is not sufficient to protect others from the individuals being housed at the highest levels of security.

Maximum security prison is a series of cages within cages within cases, as I was soon to find out.

As previously discussed, the removal of the inmate Building Tender/TurnKey system in the TDC left a power vacuum because the state could not hire enough guards quickly enough to replace the inmate guards, or develop Classification Standards for dealing with the gangs and violence, in order to retake control of their prisons.

Therefore, in the year following the disbanding of the inmate‑guard regime — inmate‑to‑inmate violence in the Texas prison system reached an all‑time high, as gangs formed and sprang up across the system…

Crime‑scene outline inside a Texas prison hallway, symbolizing the unprecedented violence, gang activity, and inmate‑on‑inmate assaults that erupted after the removal of the Building Tender/TurnKey system and before the creation of Administrative Segregation: Security Detention.

In response to the dangerous power vacuum left by the removal of inmate guards, the department institutionalized SORT squads around 1982–1983. As noted in historical Texas Department of Corrections records, SORT was designed as a heavily armed, elite, prison-equivalent SWAT team.

Death was everywhere. Chalk outlines appeared wherever men fell — hallways, dayrooms, shower areas, chow halls — throughout the various units of the correctional system. Brutality was rampant. Rapes and robberies were constant.

Even the hand‑picked guards who would later become Special Operations Response Teams (SORT) members were robbed of their jewelry by inmates wearing paper bags from the commissary over their heads, with eye holes cut into them. Assaults with weapons — inmate‑to‑inmate and inmate‑to‑guard — ambushes, group attacks on single individuals, and murder were prevalent.

The State responded by creating Administrative Segregation: Security Detention, locking away anyone with violent infractions, smuggling contraband activity, or gang affiliation. Entire cellblocks were retrofitted to house extremely violent, manipulative individuals.

Men were locked in 5’ x 9’ cells for twenty‑four hours a day.

Shortly after the first forced isolation, Administrative Segregation: Security Detention cell blocks were opened on the Eastham Unit, I was placed inside one of those cells and told: “Make yourself comfortable, you’re going to be here for the rest of your life. Don’t F**K with us, and we won’t F**K with you. If you cause us problems, we’re going to put a serious hurt on you.”

They meant it.

And by “cause us problems,” they meant inmates throwing heavy canned goods, feces, urine, or firebombs made of toilet paper at them — and/or filing grievances to witness against them. As stabbings continued from inmates within the cells toward those being escorted down the run — to showers, visitations, classification hearings, medical appointments, wardens’ offices, and more — the State covered the Eastham Unit Administrative Segregation cell bars with Plexiglass.

Plexiglass covering admirative segregation cells caused inmate deaths from heat strokes and had to be removed.

Eastham Unit – Diamond grating & heavy escort shields were hung to replaced the plexiglass cell covering.

Summertime inmate deaths from heat strokes forced them to remove it and replace it with welded diamond‑grating.

Eventually, they even had to hang a track‑rolling, heavy sheet‑metal shield between the cell‑front bars and the walkway — a barrier that thundered like a freight train but kept inmates and their escorts alive and protected from those intent on causing serious bodily injury or death…

Or from those who flung feces and urine on prisoners, escorts, and staff. I was forced out of the general population and dropped into a place where danger came not only from deadly weapons and hatred, but also from the slow, smothering slide into insanity. Initially, there was no time out of the cell…

No out of cell recreation. 24/7 lockdown was the enforcement for the time frame it took to get things worked out, guards trained and hired and the ad. seg. program functional. It was Security Detention: Administrative Segregation. It was forced isolation.

This was the world I lived in for years.

It was there, in that suffocating isolation, that I learned screams could become something far worse than projections of despair or cries for help — they could become weapons.

The Atmosphere of Torment

After years in Administrative Segregation, they moved a man into the cell next to mine who screamed for roughly twenty‑two hours a day. He had one of those deep, loud voices that reverberated and bounced off anything that stood in its way. He never became hoarse.

Urine and feces stench rises like poison from the floor as one man’s thunderous screams become another’s descent into torment.

He screamed racial slurs, profanity, hatred, gibberish — endlessly. He would scream until he passed out, sleep only a couple of hours, then wake up screaming again. No schedule. No pattern. He was on psych medication — or not taking it — and the little he slept, he slept hard.

There were no sound barriers. No insulation. Only reverberation from bricks, glass, concrete, and steel. He also threw feces and urine at officers and escorted inmates, forcing me to breathe the constant stench of a sewer. As a deterrent, the administration refused to clean it up. Their policy was: “Let them smell it, and they will police their own and take care of this guy.”

Sleep deprivation combined with constant noise and constant stench is a known method of torture — and a potent recipe for inducing insanity. For a man already suffering long‑term brain injury, trauma, and barely controlled rage, there is a breaking point.

The Breaking Point

I could not take it.

I banged on the wall to get a moment of silence and told him that if he didn’t shut up, I was going to kill him. “I say what I mean and I mean what I say. If you don’t shut the F**k up, I’m going to kill you.”

He continued screaming. And screaming. And screaming…

So I sent kites — small pieces of paper with written communications folded like miniature flags to slip under the bars — to the men all down the row of cells. Men I had been doing time with for years in Ad Seg… men who were also affected by this screaming lunatic. I asked for rolls of toilet paper. They gladly gave them to me.

I unrolled the toilet paper in my cell, packed it down using a double sheet of newspaper, and forced it under my bars and into the Screamer’s cell. When it entered his cell, it fluffed back up. I pushed roll after roll until the pile was roughly three feet high, nine feet deep, and five feet wide — the full dimensions of the cell.

I built a fuse using grievance forms rolled diagonally, corner to corner, with matchsticks glued sulfur‑head below sulfur‑head in a downward spiral for about a foot to a foot and a half of the first rolled tube. I formed a long pole by inserting one rolled tube into another until it reached the deepest corners of his cell.

When lit, a wall of flame roared into life. It flashed from the top of the cell and beyond. The toilet paper and newspaper burned intensely—but fast. So, it did not kill him.

At the time, I was disappointed it didn’t kill him — that was the mindset of a violent environment crushing a damaged, stressed, fatigued, and diminished brain… the result of a tortured individual seeking to end the misery.

A Challenge to the Reader

Before rushing to judgment, try this:

Put a very thin mattress in your closet. Leave the door open. Then have a man stand outside screaming hatred and profanity at you for eight to ten days straight — sleeping only in unpredictable two‑hour periods. Add the constantly replenished — several times a day — stench of a sewer… and even then, you will not have had the wall of constant noise that is the banging and clanging of normal prison operations.

If you last the entire period, you probably should have your mental state professionally evaluated… but you won’t last a few hours, much less eight to ten days.

The Blind Eye of the System

The officials knew I had done this terrible thing. But they couldn’t get a single Ad Seg inmate who had given me toilet paper to roll over and testify. No one would speak—not out of loyalty to me, but because the Screamer threw feces and urine at everyone.

The investigating officers didn’t try very hard either. They wore his filth as often as the inmates did.

Everyone — inmates, guards, medical staff, disciplinary staff, psych staff, writ room personnel — wanted him to stop. No one dared say it aloud, but the truth hung in the air: if killing him was the only way to silence him and avoid wearing his thrown feces and urine, many — if not most — quietly thought, so be it.

As long as they didn’t have to do it themselves, they would welcome the relief.

Though I didn’t understand it at the time, I was later told – and I now firmly believe – that security personnel placed him in the cell next to me to be rid of him.

It was a brutal, chaotic world where inmate suicide victims were “found” hanging in their cells after SORT team breaches. Add to that the violent, hate‑filled atmosphere inside the Eastham Unit — which housed the worst of the worst — plus my lack of education and a brain still malfunctioning from the skull fracture, and you have the ingredients for insanity: fear, anger, hopelessness, stubbornness, rage, and lethal rebellion.

These were the regular conditions in ad. seg. without the Screamer.

It was an environment where men killed themselves, cut themselves, and even sawed through their Achilles tendons – with a single blade removed from a Bic razor – just to be sent to the hospital for eight to ten days of relief. Many returned from that brief escape only to cut the other tendon a few months later—when they could endure the torment no longer.  That was the level of desperation inside those security detention walls.

Add to that violent, hate‑filled environment — inside the Eastham Unit, which housed the worst of the worst — my lack of education, my brain still malfunctioning from the skull fracture, and you have the ingredients for insanity: fear, anger, hopelessness, stubbornness, rage, and lethal rebellion.

It was a dark time in the penal system — and a dark time in my personal demeanor and character.

And even though they could not prove that I did it – and weren’t really interested in trying to – they moved me from Administrative Segregation, to Administrative Super Segregation—placing me behind double-door isolation.

It was there, locked away from even the worst of the worst – in  the midst of violence, the constant shadow of death, and the fear of never being able to leave that cage within a cage within a cage – that I cried out to God to deliver me from myself and to be lifted out of the hole I had dug so deeply that only a miracle of God could bring me forth.

I was as low as a human being could be. At the end of the road. Exhausted. Spent. Desperate. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to turn. Ruined.

I was finally in a place where no one could help me and no one could reach me.

When you have run out of even wrong turns — when there is nowhere left to go — God is right there. Waiting.

It was there, locked away from even the worst of the worst — in the midst of violence, the constant shadow of death, and the fear of never leaving that cage within a cage within a cage — that I cried out to God to deliver me from myself and to lift me out of the hole I had dug so deeply that only a miracle on the order of the Parting of the Red Sea could bring me forth.

I knew it instinctively, certainly, beyond a shadow of a doubt: I had reached both the pinnacle and the end of my own strength.

After they walked me into the bare super‑seg cell and shut the barred door, they told me to turn and lift my hands behind me so they could remove the cuffs. They didn’t slam the door, but when I heard steel meet steel and the key turn, my heart dropped lower than it had ever been. Then they closed the outer door, turned the key, and switched off the count light.

In that instant, I knew I was done.

I staggered backward under the soul‑crushing weight of my life. My back hit the rear wall, and I slid down until I sat with my head between my knees, face in my hands, and I told God:

Oh God… You have made me strong enough to overcome anything I have ever faced… but this? I have used the strength You gave me to dig a hole so deep that it will take a miracle — like when You parted the Red Sea — to get me out of it.

(I was talking about getting out of Ad Seg—not prison. I was still well over a decade from even being considered for parole.)

I know I can’t do it on my own. You see where I’ve gotten myself on my own: a cage within a cage within a cage. I have no freedom, no purpose. I have nothing left but my determination to survive… and I thank You for that, I do… but survive for what? More cages? More anger? More frustration? More misery?

But here’s the thing… I don’t really know You. My mother knows You, and she believes You can set me free inside this evil place.

So I’m going to read Your whole Bible, front to back. Just please give me understanding — and the ability to speak it to others in a way they can accept. You know I can’t have people getting in my face or ridiculing me. So please… let me understand it, and let me speak it where it will be accepted.

It was there, in the lowest of all low places — in that deepest level far below rock bottom — that something unexpected began to stir within me. A quiet shift. The first sign of a freedom no prison could contain.

They released me from Super Seg after only several days — they could not build a case for disciplinary charges because no one would testify, and no one wanted me punished. But the truth is simple: God was the One who delivered me.

Although it took several more years for me to be released from Administrative Segregation: Security Detention, I used that time to read the Word of God from beginning to end, again and again. I prayed continually for wisdom.

And God did, indeed,  set me spiritually free within the confines of Ad.Seg. and then, He delivered me from even that—He released me to back to the general population.

A Freedom No Cage Could Contain

When God met me in that deepest, darkest hole – the place where fear had stripped me bare and rage had burned me hollow – He did not lift me out all at once. Instead, He taught me to walk, step by step, in a freedom no cage could hold and no lock could deny.

For the last fifteen to twenty years of confinement, I studied God’s Word in depth. I earned three AAS degrees from Lee College and became certified in numerous vocational trades — two of which later helped build-out and maintain this website.

The road was long. But I learned to walk with God in prison. I was set free long before I ever thought the State would ever seriously consider releasing me to serve out the remainder of my life sentence in the free world.

My redemption was long, violent, and achieved only by the grace, mercy, forgiveness, and love of Jesus Christ.

And this I want you to fully and completely know:

“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” (John 8:36)

The Renewing of the Mind

In these pages, I have laid bare my predicament, my ignorance, my mistakes, and the renewing of the mind God so graciously bestowed upon me — along with the vision He set before me.

I began by delving into God’s Word with the belief that it is the only infallible truth. I asked God for wisdom and spiritual discernment. When I encountered passages difficult to understand, I sought other scriptures to confirm what was written — never to disprove it.

I earnestly studied the entire Holy Bible. I found that when scripture is taken in context, there are no contradictions, no errors, and no unfulfilled promises — except those reserved for future prophecy.

I joined Bible studies and church activities provided by the Unit Chaplaincy. As I learned, I shared what God revealed to me.

Truly, the treasures in God’s Word are such that even in the worst storms imaginable, there can be peace, strength, and joy—because you do not endure them alone, powerless, or directionless.

As God’s Word came alive in my life, I found peace and true joy amid the chaos of living in a cage with extremely violent individuals.

I wanted others to have that same peace and joy. I shared God’s Word with anyone willing to hear it. I offered prayer to anyone who wanted or needed it.

You might be surprised how many hardened men wanted prayer — often for their families, and sometimes even for themselves.

Walking as a Witness

Eventually, I began teaching Bible studies on the cell blocks where I lived. Sometimes I preached on the recreation yards.

I joined the choir, then became a spiritual leader over the choir of the TDCJ‑ID Unit where I was housed. I even preached occasionally to the congregations in the Unit Chapel.

When a Chaplain or scheduled Prison Minister failed to appear, I provided the sermon. I routinely accompanied Chaplain Thedford to bring the Word of God to men in the Regional Medical Facility—men awaiting death or battling severe illness or injury.

I witnessed continually to the men around me about God’s promise to renew the mind—His promise to deliver, to save, and to bless those who choose the Way, the Truth, and the Life through believing and trusting in His plan of salvation and the sacrifice He made so that all who choose may enter His Kingdom.

Men were eager to hear of the God that had delivered me from myself and Ad. Seg. They asked, “What is it with you, Dainwood? You do your time like a Short-timer—Like you know you have a release date in just a couple of weeks. How can you be happy after all the time you have already, knowing that you have life and will probably be incarcerated for the rest of it?”

My answer was always John 8:36, as I explained that the type of freedom I had was in no way connected to physical release from prison and that Jesus did not come to condemn the world, but to save it—that we might have life, and life more abundantly.

• “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” 
  John 3:17
• “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”
  John 10:10

I shared with these men the certainty that they were loved, valued, and cherished by the Creator—loved to the point that He intentionally sacrificed His Son so they might receive all He has promised.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16

I provided them a road-map for walking with God:

• It is the will of God that we thank Him in all circumstances Thessalonians 5:18
• That Obedience is better than sacrifice
  1 Samuel 15:22
• God works all things to the good
  Romans 8:28
• All are called by God
  2 Peter 3:9 | Ezekiel 33:11

Men would say: I cannot thank god for being in prison, he knows my heart and that I don’t mean it. My response was the God-given truth: Because obedience is better than sacrifice, God will honor even the thanks you cannot mean because you are giving thanks in obedience to His instructions.

Just because they cannot see the benefits to others, or even themselves, for any situation, or every situation, does not mean that God is not using it for Good.

The scripture in Ezekiel 33:11 is profoundly important to men in prison:

Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?

The men would say, “But that is for Israel.” And I would explain that, as we are grafted in, we fall under the umbrella of God’s people along with Israel.

I taught them all the promises of God—promises to bless and promises to curse. All of them will be kept. The only impossibility for God is that He should lie.

• “God is not a man, that he should lie…”
  Numbers 23:19
• “The Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent.”
  1 Samuel 15:29
• “It was impossible for God to lie…”
  Hebrews 6:18

When Hope Collides with Reality

For many years, this had a good effect on the men. But eventually they began saying—first to others, then directly to me:

“There’s no use in me doing the Christian thing. Nobody walks for God like you in here, but God is not delivering you. I can’t walk like that in here, so He ain’t about to deliver me.”

They believed deliverance meant release from prison.

By this time, I had served the twenty years required to reach initial parole eligibility. I had received and served an additional fifteen years’ worth of set‑offs — release denials.

It broke my heart. It wounded my spirit to know that my relationship with God had become the very reason these men would not come to Him.

It became the reason they could not become new creations in Christ. The reason they were blocked from all things becoming new. The reason they were lost to meaningful, purpose‑filled lives.

They respected that I had not lost my mind. They respected the strength required to survive decades in prison and years of administrative segregation without becoming warped by the pressures – no self‑mutilation, no psyche meds – just me and God.

Yet they saw my continued imprisonment as proof that God would never deliver them.

A Question I Never Dared Ask

As the years passed and I learned to walk with God inside those cages, His Word became my strength, my peace, and my joy.

But in that place of spiritual freedom – freedom found inside cages that still held my body – I reached a moment I never expected.

The very walk with God that had sustained me, strengthened me, and transformed me was becoming a barrier to the men who needed Him most.

Their hope was collapsing where mine had risen. Their faith was fading where mine had grown.

And with that weight pressing on my spirit, I found myself once again on my knees, in the deepest depths of my soul, asking God a question I had never dared to ask before.

Prayers & Promises

On a Friday night in July of 2014 – several months before I would again be eligible for parole release consideration – with decades of cage‑dwelling behind me and the weight of hopeless men pressing on my spirit, I fell to my knees at the edge of my bunk, and asked a question I had never felt lead to ask of God.

My very closeness with Him – my peace, my joy, my freedom within – had become a wedge between God and the men who needed Him most.

I was that wedge.

So, I prayed:

“Oh Lord, my God! My very relationship with You is driving men away from You. In fact, my very witness is a stumbling block to everyone here. These men equate deliverance with getting out of prison—I know that You have delivered me from myself, and from the power and the penalty of sin. I know that You have set me free while in prison, but they do not want to hear that.

“I have never asked You to get me out of here, because I am guilty and deserving of nothing more than spending the rest of my life in prison and then going straight to hell. And hell was my destiny and destination, but for Your Grace and Mercy and Love and Forgiveness.

“I have told You again, and again, that I will serve You no matter where I am, even if that means that I must stay in this dreadful place for the rest of my life, and that has not changed. My answer shall ever be Isaiah’s when You ask, ‘Whom shall we send, who will go forth for us?’ It shall ever be, ‘Here am I, Lord, send me.’ But Lord, my witness is no longer good here.

“What would be a good witness—a great witness—is if You got me out of here in such a way that no one could doubt that it was anything but You that did it. That would be a great witness and proof to these men that You will deliver those who put their trust completely in You. So, Lord, I am going to ask You, will You deliver me at this parole process?”

Before I could finish the word process, my anxiety vanished. My mind became utterly still. And God answered:

“I WILL!“

Not audibly—but unmistakably. So strong, so clear, so overwhelming that I knew it was the “still small voice” my mother often spoke of, but that I had never experienced until that moment.

I was stunned.

The abrupt stillness of my mind, coupled with this declaration from God, sent my heartbeat off the charts. I had never in my life experienced anything like it, and doubt leaped to the forefront of my mind.

I had been in prison – continually – for three and a half decades.

Everyone, except my mother, believed that the State of Texas – because of my violent crime, my violence while in prison, and my smuggling marijuana and contraband into the prisons – would never let me go.

Even so, like the Apostle Paul, I had learned to be content in all places and things, and I was truly grateful to God for having set me free spiritually, while still in prison.

“Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” 
Philippians 4:11-13

There are a lot of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years in three and a half decades.

I was incarcerated for approximately 1 billion, 131 million, and 354 thousand seconds. I hated every single one of them.

Cage-dwelling seconds are not normal seconds—they stretch long and hard. Time moves at a crueler pace when you are housed in a cage. It just does.

So, I am sure you can understand that when God delivered his promise of release, my excitement and physical reaction were immediate. My heart racing, my emotions swirling upward, my mind stunned, yet wary and doubting, I continued my prayer:

“Oh Lord—is that You? I want with every ounce of my being to believe that it is You, but I don’t know if it’s You, or if it’s me, just wanting it so badly that I am attributing my own desire to coming from You.

“You know how much I have hated every single second of these three and a half decades of cage-dwelling. You know how much I want out, so I don’t know if this is You or if it’s me simply wanting it so terribly bad that I think it is You. So, I am going to ask again…”

Then, as if God might be hard of hearing or somehow might have misunderstood my question, I—slowly and with great diction—asked:

“Will… You… Deliver… Me… At… This… Next…Parole… Process?”

Again, before I could finish the word process, He answered:

“I WILL!”

I started to shake. Could this really be God?!

I was excited and almost in tears, but I still did not really believe that this was not me wanting it so badly that I was answering my own question and attributing it to God.

So, I continued my prayer:

“Oh God! I want so much to believe this is You and I do believe; I do know that You can deliver me, but—like the father of the child the disciples could not cast the demons out of – You are going to have to ‘help thou me with my unbelief…’ Forgive me, Father, but I am going to need confirmation that this is really from You.”

“…Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”
Mark 9:24

“Like doubting Thomas, I am going to have to reach into Your side and put my fingers into the nail holes. I want this so badly that I do not know if it is You or me. Forgive me for my unbelief, but I am going to have to have confirmation.”

“Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.”
John 20:27

“And Lord? You know that I’m kind of dense. You know that I’m a little stupid where You are concerned. You know that I tend to completely miss the things You’d have me do, often until I have already messed things up or missed the opportunity.

“Oh God, if this really is You, You are going to have to provide me with confirmation and, when You do, please do it in such a way that I will know for sure that it comes from You and that I understand Your answer.

“I have learned to sincerely thank and praise You in all circumstances—both good and bad—knowing that You work all things to the good to them that love You and are called according to Your purpose.”

• “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”
  1 Thessalonians 5:18
• “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
  Romans 8:28

“If it is You, I praise Your Holy Name. If I had ten-thousand tongues, I could not praise You enough, and I will witness this miracle You have done to anyone and everyone who will listen—both here and in the freeworld. If, on the other hand, this is me simply thinking it is You, confirm it and – still – I will praise You for as long as I am here.

“I will praise You for as long as I live, either way it goes—but I need confirmation, and I need You to make it clear.”

I remained silent for a time, awash in this extraordinary experience with God.

A Second Promise, Just as Certain

I took some deep breaths and then felt almost compelled to ask God:

“What about my brother, John Jones, Lord? Are You going to deliver my brother? Are you going to deliver John from his two life sentences?”

His answer was as immediate and certain as He had answered for my situation:

I WILL!

I leaped to my feet and began pacing the cell—excited, yet strangely at peace. A calm settled over me as hope solidified from indefinite longing into looked‑for certainty.

Only men serving life or death sentences understand the gut‑wrenching forces that bear down moment by moment, year after year. There is no break from depression, hopelessness, or the crushing weight of condemnation and isolation—except through the supernatural love and acceptance of God Almighty.

There is no time, no moment of wakefulness, when men serving these sentences do not have the full weight of time and the almost hopeless struggles of survival upon them.

There is no break in the battles of depression, hopelessness, and uselessness, in the war continually engulfing men serving life or death sentences.

There is no freedom from the soul-crushing weight of condemnation, of isolation, of total and complete societal rejection—except through the supernatural love and acceptance and power of God Almighty, through Jesus Christ.

It was that love that compelled me, in the greatest moment of my life beyond salvation, to ask about my brother.

I will explain the spiritual bond shared between John and me, a little later on.

He believed—and continues to believe—that it would and will happen exactly the way God relayed it to me.

Waiting for the Confirmation Only God Could Give

God’s promise – delivered with unmistakable certainty – shattered the hopelessness of three and a half decades and filled my spirit with trembling awe. Yet even with His words echoing through my soul, I knew I needed confirmation. Not because God was unclear, but because years of darkness and overwhelming desire for freedom had made my heart cautious…

I needed Him to make the truth unmistakable – something I could not misread – something no doubt could survive.

And in that fragile space between hope and hesitation, I waited — not for a sign of my choosing, but for a confirmation only God could give.

What happened next would prove, beyond any doubt, that the promise I received in that cell was real, deliberate, and divinely granted — a confirmation so clear it settled every fear I had carried for decades.

The morning after that desperate prayer—long before I expected any answer—God began to move. Not in whispers, not in subtle impressions, but in a confirmation so clear, so direct, and so unmistakably His that it shattered every doubt I had carried throughout all my years of incarceration.

It was July 11th, 2014. I had been on my knees for a long time that Friday night.
Despite the intensity of the prayer, I fell asleep easily. I lay my head on my makeshift pillow, closed my eyes, and seemingly the next moment my alarm was sounding for Saturday morning church service.

I was feeling great, as I always did when going to church. It was another day; another opportunity to praise God, to hear His Word, and to thank Him for renewing my mind. I thanked Him for transforming me from the Demoniac, Gadarene Man into the man He called me to be.

“And they arrived at the country of the Gadarenes, which is over against Galilee. And when he went forth to land, there met him out of the city a certain man, which had devils long time, and ware no clothes, neither abode in any house, but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not. (For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For oftentimes it had caught him: and he was kept bound with chains and in fetters; and he brake the bands, and was driven of the devil into the wilderness.) … Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked… Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus, and found the man, out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind…”
Luke 8:26-29: — 35 (Click the number to highlight this verse)

He turned me from a man of trouble, extreme rage, and violence, into a peacemaker.

“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”
Matthew 5:9

I knew that God would give me the confirmation I asked for. I felt in my spirit that, this time, I would recognize it and not read it wrongly.

I knew God would give me the confirmation I asked for. I felt in my spirit that this time I would recognize it and not misread it. Usually, confirmation takes time—weeks, sometimes months. The next parole consideration process was still a couple of months away.

But God was not waiting.

A Scripture Chosen by Heaven

During worship services, choir members customarily circle up, hold hands, pray for one another, and usher the Holy Spirit into the chapel. Someone always reads a scripture—chosen at random, to keep the men in the Word beyond the weekly Bible studies I taught.

That Saturday morning, when the choir director asked, “Who is going to bring the scripture?” the Holy Spirit immediately told me:

“YOU READ IT!”

Before I even realized it, I had my Bible out of my shirt pocket and into my hands.

I have an Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible—Old and New Testament—that fits into my shirt pocket. I carried it everywhere I went, answering questions and witnessing to men all over the prison: Dayrooms, Recreation Yards, Chow Halls, Hallways, and beyond.

With the Bible in hand, I silently asked God: “What scripture? I don’t have a scripture ready!”

While questioning Him, I had randomly cracked open the Bible, and the Holy Spirit said:

“Just Read!”

I had opened the Bible without giving it any thought. When I lowered my eyes to the page, I simply began to read where my eyes focused.

The Bible had opened at the Book of Acts, the twentieth chapter. So, I replied that I would bring the scripture and began to read the passage my eyes had landed upon.

I believed I was reading a scripture that one, some, or all of the men needed to hear for encouragement, conviction, deliverance, whatever—a scripture specific to them. I had been a choir member and spiritual leader for right at three years. I had taught these men hard lessons—lessons they did not really want to hear.

There was a contingent of choir members who resented that I took the first part of their once-weekly choir practice hour in a mandatory Bible study. Many join the choir for the chance to sing and play the instruments, not serve.

Still, I read where my eyes fell, excited to see what God want to convey:

“But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God. And now, behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more. Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.”
Acts 20:24-28

The Words That Shook Me To The Depths Of My Being

I was supposed to continue reading verses 29-36, Later, I did share those verses with the men—that morning – I could not – because I knew, instantly, deeply, undeniably, that these verses were the confirmation I had asked for.

The moment I read:

“…and now, behold; I know that ye all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more.”
Acts 20:25

I knew.

Verse 31 only reinforced it later:

“Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.”
Acts 20:31

I had been a spiritual leader over the choir for three years. I had taught them hard lessons, cried with them, prayed with them, and shared their burdens as family members died—and mine—and we were denied the ability to attend funerals or comfort our families.

I read through verse 28, but could not continue.

I could not yet share the verses warning that after my departure grievous wolves would enter in—though that is exactly what happened to the choir after I made parole and was released four months later.

By then, the other members of the choir knew that something was up. I was fighting tears and could not continue beyond verse 28.

The Confirmation Flooded My Being
Like Tidal Wave of Living Water

I gave up and quickly went to the kneeling altar and got on my knees.

I am not sure what all the words I spoke were, but I was praising God, thanking God, crying, shaking, and knowing beyond any doubt that I was going to be released when I came up for the next parole consideration process. The lengthy process would begin about six weeks later.

A man I had mentored came and kneeled beside me and asked:

“What’s wrong, Dainwood? Are you okay? What’s going on?”

I hugged him, crying all the more, because he had been in prison for 20+ years himself. I knew that he would understand the magnitude of being told I was going home after three and a half decades of continuous incarceration.

I told him:

“Smitty, I’m going home!!! God has confirmed it!”

I had not yet told anyone about the revelation God had given me the night before.

When I did so, however—and I told everyone—the body language and the carefully chosen words of reply clearly indicated what everyone was thinking:

“Oh Lord, Dainwood has been so strong for so long, and now when they tell him he is set off again, he is going to lose his mind—he will either kill himself, or have to be placed on psyche meds. His mind was ruined forever.”

They meant when I was denied parole release once more.

There were others concerned about what was going on with me. When I told them what God had just confirmed from my prayers the night before, they all viewed the situation with skepticism and concern for my mental and emotional health.

All of them, that is, with only the two exceptions of my spiritual brother, John Jones, and my Hispanic cell partner.

When I told John, he received it with the certainty with which God had delivered it to me, and with the complete lack of doubt I then possessed, after receiving clear and conclusive confirmation from God just moments before.

After returning to my faith-based cell following church, and telling my then cell-partner, he said:

“You’re going home ’cause you just trust God.”

His answer to every prayer request brought to him, and every problem’s solution, was always:

“Just Trust God.”

That morning in the chapel, God had spoken with a clarity I could not deny. His confirmation was unmistakable, His promise unshakable, and His timing perfect.

I did, indeed, completely trust God and His confirmation.

Yet even with the certainty burning in my spirit, the world around me did not share my confidence. Their doubt pressed in from every side – quiet, cautious, and heavy – but even this was no test for the trust and belief I then had in God Almighty.

And in addition to the Rock-solid faith provided by this awesomely clear confirmation, I had a divine connection of another sort: a God-given brother who stood with me on this promise of God…

A promise that others believed existed solely in my desperate, grasping-at-straws mind.

In the face of everyone else’s doubt, skepticism, and quiet ridicule, John stood beside me with an unshakable certainty — a certainty rooted not in my circumstances, not in logic, but in God Himself, and in the walk he had witnessed me live day after day.

John strengthened my faith with his own. Even when his closest friends doubted, questioned, and quietly dismissed the promise God had spoken, he never wavered.

And that kind of connection — that kind of brotherhood — could only have been forged by the hand of God.

A Supernatural Connection Forged By God

In prison, a man who dares to say God has promised him release is rarely met with hope. More often, he is met with pity, quiet ridicule, or the cold certainty that he has finally cracked under the weight of his sentence.

Too many men had made that claim before—men denied parole, men crushed by disappointment, men who slipped into heavy psyche-medication, reacted with self-mutilation, or in taking their own lives. Inside those cages, a “promise from God” is not seen as faith. It is seen as weakness.

Yet in the middle of that harsh reality, God had already given me something rare—a supernatural bond with a brother whose faith strengthened mine.

The Kind of Connection That Stops You in Your Tracks

The connection between John and me was forged in the spiritual realm, but even the secular world has faint echoes of it. Every now and then, people encounter someone and feel an instant, powerful certainty that something deeper is at work.

It is infrequent, but real: two lives crossing paths with a force that feels predestined.

Non‑believers call this a soulmate.

Even those who deny life after death reach for that spiritual term when trying to describe a connection so profound they cannot explain it—if they ever experience one at all.

Soulmate is most often used to describe two people meant to be together in marriage or in a rare, extraordinary friendship.

And though non‑believers reject the God of the Universe, they still borrow the word. They use it while denying the very principle behind it—that what makes them who they are is the unique, vibrant, eternal spirit within, animating the body in which it dwells.

In doing so, they come closer to truth than they would ever admit. These connections are spiritual. They are not common. They are not natural.

God Calls Us Beyond the Natural

And only God, through Jesus Christ, calls us to be supernatural. He calls us to harness His power to operate outside of the natural while serving Him and His Kingdom Purpose for our lives in the supernatural.

“If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.”
John 15:19

“I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;”
John 17:14-20

“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”
Romans 12:2

God’s Purpose Behind Divine Connections

For believers, these connections are never accidental. They are not stumbled upon. They are crafted by God—designed to unite two people whose strengths, talents, and wisdom can be harnessed for one Kingdom purpose: bringing the love, mercy, and forgiveness of God Almighty to a lost and hurting people.

When John and I first met, we both understood—instantly and deeply—that God had brought us together for His service.

Our connection had nothing to do with the physical. It was the meeting of two men determined to put God first, two spirits aligned before the introduction was even complete. We knew God had a purpose for us.

We both understood, instantly, that God had brought us together to serve Him in prison and that it would go beyond the cement walls.

It would reach beyond razor wire, beyond concrete and steel, beyond the darkness, hatred, rage, and hopelessness of men trapped in prison cages—and extend to those trapped in cages of circumstance, all of whom lack the transforming power that only God can perfect.

A Brotherhood That Carried God’s Promise

We met as free men, in the penitentiary, serving life sentences—the world having cast us aside and valued us as worthless.

John Jones is truly a man of God, doing God’s work (He has since obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in Theological Studies and is a Field Minister inside the TDCJ-ID). He is as close to me as if he came from my mother’s womb, or I from his.

And as it would turn out, he was one of only two men inside those prison walls who truly believed in God’s revelation and promise to send me out of prison to bring His love, peace, mercy, and transformative power to a hurting, hateful, and hopeless world.

That supernatural bond – forged in an instant and strengthened over years of shared suffering, shared faith, and shared purpose — became the foundation upon which God revealed His promise for both our lives.

When God spoke my deliverance, He spoke John’s as well.

And though John’s release has not yet reached its appointed hour, the fulfillment of the first part of that promise stands as unshakable proof that the second will come to pass.

Our bond was never mere friendship; it was a spiritual brotherhood woven into a divine plan unfolding exactly according to God’s time‑table — a plan that was about to move forward in my life with unmistakable clarity.

But even with God’s promise burning in my spirit and John’s unwavering belief strengthening my resolve, I still had to face a world conditioned to doubt—a world where faith was often mistaken for instability, and where declarations of divine promise were met with concern rather than celebration.

When a Word From God Collides With Institutional Caution

After the service, I told everyone—including the Unit Chaplain, Chaplain Thedford, that God had spoken my release.

When I stepped into his office that morning, carrying the certainty of God’s promise and the fresh weight of His confirmation, I knew his professional training would compel caution. Men in prison often cling to fragile hopes, and he had seen too many minds break under the strain of disappointment. His role demanded vigilance, especially when a long‑term prisoner claimed divine revelation.

But I also knew that what I was about to share would rise above systemic protocol and speak directly to the Spirit within him.

A Declaration That Tested His Training

When I entered his office, I told him plainly that I was going home.
He looked surprised and said,, “Oh, you got your answer? I didn’t even know you came up for parole again.”

I explained that I had not yet been brought up again – that the next consideration process was still several months away – but that God had told me that I would be granted parole at the next parole consideration process.

Immediately, I saw concern settle into his features. His tone shifted as he asked, “You know you are stepping out on faith here, right?”

He had seen this pattern before. Long‑term prisoners sometimes latch onto an idea, call it God, and place the last of their hope on something not from Him at all. When the outcome fails, their minds break. Some end up medicated, some lose their grip on reality,  some resort to self-mutilation and others take their own lives. It happens more often than people outside those walls would ever imagine.

His training was evident in every word, every hesitation, every measured response.

A Word From God That Required No Faith

I answered him immediately:

“Faith has absolutely nothing to do with this, Chaplain Thedford. God SPOKE these things to me. He said it. He confirmed it. I believe it, and His Word will not return to Him void—It will accomplish what He set out for it to do.”

“So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”
Isaiah 55:11

“Let me tell you about the prayer I prayed last night and the confirmation I received this very morning!”

After I had explained everything, he held out his hands and said: “Well, come on then; let’s thank Him for your parole!”

We, of course, did exactly that.

A Past That Should Have Made Release Impossible
But God

Please remember: I had been locked up for three and a half decades.
During the first half of my incarceration, I stabbed a man in the chest—nicking his heart muscle. I had set a man’s cell on fire with him inside. I had been a member of one of the deadliest gangs of the era—even though joining was based on a lie that I immediately quit upon discovering the truth.

If I were a Parole Commissioner and my file hit the desk, I would not have voted for my release. Not unless God Himself told me to.

Thank Jesus, many of these professionals know how to listen to God’s instruction. Their job is thankless, serious, and dangerous. One wrong decision can cost them their careers. It is a wonder they ever vote to release a previously violent offender.

A Unit Bracing for My Collapse

So, as I proclaimed God’s promise of release to everyone—including giving all of my possessions away because I would no longer need them—I awaited the six or seven weeks for the parole process to begin. The lengthy process would take an additional several months for the determination, answer, and eventual release.

Everyone was concerned because everyone just knew I would never be released. Some even said to me: “Dainwood, you have been so strong, for so long, I worry that when they don’t grant you this parole… I worry that it will devastate you.”

This was just a polite way of saying they thought I was going to lose my mind. Though few actually voiced it, this thought was evident in everyone’s demeanor. Everyone except for John Andy Jones, Jr.—the man who took my place as spiritual leader when I caught the chain bus to the Walls Unit to be released—my Hispanic cell partner, and my mother.

The church knew.
The general population knew.
The educators, the staff, the officers—the entire Unit knew.

They believed I had set myself up for soul‑crushing disappointment.

I could see the pity, fear, and dread in their eyes. I just laughed and said, “You’re trippin’, man! I am going to wave at you guys when I get on the chain bus to be released from the Walls.”

The Chaplain Saw What Others Could Not

Even as his training urged caution, the Chaplain chose to trust the God who had spoken to me. His prayer over my release strengthened what God had already confirmed, even while the rest of the Unit braced for my collapse.

They saw a man stepping out on what they assumed was fragile hope. The Chaplain saw a man standing on a Word from God.

Everywhere I went, I saw the quiet dread of those who believed I had reached the breaking point. But their concern only revealed how little they understood the power of God’s promises—or the certainty that comes when He confirms His Word.

The Chaplain’s prayer marked a turning point. Caution gave way to conviction. Neither of us questioned whether God would release me. The only question left was why He was doing it.

And what God revealed next—the reason for my release, the mission behind it, and the Kingdom purpose He was placing on my life—would unfold with a clarity only the Holy Spirit can deliver.

When God Reveals the Why Behind the Miracle

When the parole process finally began—stretching over weeks and then months—God did far more than open a door. He began unveiling the purpose behind my freedom, revealing a mission so profound it would redefine every boundary of my life.

During the parole decision‑making process and eventual release, other miraculous events unfolded that directly impacted my freedom. These moments are part of my testimony of God’s greatness, His grace, His mercy, His love, and His absolute inability to lie or fail to fulfill His promises.

For the purpose of this writing, suffice it to say that God shocked everyone when He delivered on my prayer—that He would release me in such a way that no one could doubt it was anything but Him who did it.

That miraculous witness became the foundation upon which He revealed why He was releasing me, and the work He was committing me to.

When Faithfulness Expands the Boundaries of Calling

The precept of the Bible is clear: when we are faithful with the little He has given, He increases our boundaries and borders.
Matthew 25:21; Luke 19:17; 1 Chronicles 4:10

The season of my prison Kingdom Work had reached its end—not because my heart had grown weary, but because my continued incarceration limited the flock over which He had made me an overseer. I had been faithful with the men He entrusted to me, and now God was expanding my pastures, enlarging my Kingdom service, and adding to the people He would have me witness to.

God sent me out of prison to form this nonprofit organization and to be the instrument He uses to address the division, hatred, callous indifference, and ungodliness that plague our inner cities.

The Moment God Spoke the Mission

It is my routine to be still and listen for God after giving thanks and making my petitions known through prayer. Often, the Holy Spirit brings scriptures to mind that I will need that day for the work of God in the lives of others—or in my own life.

On the day I found out I had made parole, this was my position: on my knees, in silence, and listening for direction from God.

This is what He said:

“I want you to go to inner-city Houston and then Chicago. I want you to start a recreation and vocational center called The Neutral Zone, and I want you to have the best graffiti artists from rival gangs paint the signs that read The Neutral Zone: Leave Your Weapons, Your Colors, and Your Hatred at the Door. Just be patient and wait upon Me. I will give you everything you need: the building, the land, the professional athletes, the vocational teachers… Everything: Just be obedient and wait upon me.”

I half laughed and said, “Well, Lord, you know my answer will always be Isaiah’s when You ask, ‘whom shall we send, who will go forth for Us;’ it shall ever be, here am I, Lord, send me, but there is one small problem here: You have to get me out of prison first.”

Immediately, He responded with, “That’s done!”

I did not even finish my prayers or say Amen. I jumped up and began pacing the floor, and when they rolled the doors for 8 am out-for-work-and-dayroom, I called Mama and told her to call the parole secretaries because God had just told me that it was done.

I told her I would call when I came in from the Chapel at 5 pm or so.

When I called, she was filled with excitement as she yelled into the receiver: “Are you ready for some FANTASTIC NEWS?!!!”

My response was to ask: “What sort of parole did I get, Mama?”

She replied, “YOU GOT A F1!!!”

There are many types of parole release programs in the State of Texas, requiring inmates to complete counseling programs of varied lengths and intensities before release. But an FI‑1 means immediate release – as soon as paperwork and processing can be completed – and though immediate usually takes several months— it is the very best type of parole in the State of Texas. It is reserved for those with demonstrable rehabilitation and the greatest chance of successful reintegration.

I found out I’d been granted parole release the same day God gave me the vision for this nonprofit organization. The day He gave me the reason He was releasing me from prison.

A Mission That Included My Brother

This vision and mission concerning The Neutral Zone also confirmed that God would deliver John Jones. He said He would deliver me from prison; He said He would deliver my brother.

John Jones was a former member of the Blood Gang, and he sings gospel like a winner of The Voice. He will be instrumental in this nonprofit organization and in the healing God will bring to our inner cities and this nation—both while in prison and upon God delivering him.

God said it.
We believe it.

A Mandate, Not a Mere Release

He had not merely promised the opening of the prison doors — He had handed me a mandate.

The Neutral Zone was not an idea born of my imagination; it was a vision delivered directly from the throne of God, confirmed on the very day He granted my release.

And as the reality of that calling settled into my spirit, I understood that everything I had endured – every cage, every loss, every moment of suffering – had been preparation for the work He was now placing before me.

What came next would reveal the full scope of that vision.

Why Houston Had to Come First

I wondered why God had said to go to Houston first and then Chicago. In time, He showed me the wisdom behind that order.

If I went to Chicago first – the city with the greatest need, to be sure – I would be an outsider, a man without street credibility or connections. Other than three and a half decades of continuous incarceration for murder during the course of a robbery, I have no ties there.

Houston, however, was different.

I had served time with many of the ex‑convicts caught in the snare of hopelessness and abandonment that grips our inner cities. I would know some of the men. And I would have a network of Prison Ministers—volunteer citizens who regularly enter the prisons to bring the message of God’s love, peace, and mercy to those who need it most.

Success in Houston would lay the groundwork for Chicago to see a real demonstration of what God intended to do—proof that I was not just another white man coming to exploit the Hood, but a man sent by God to help turn the tide.

The Hardest Part of Faith

God said He would provide the vocational instructors, the professional athletes, the building, the land—everything needed—and that I was to be patient and wait upon Him for the timing.

He said this because He knows that the hardest thing for my faith is to wait upon the Lord.

For the years since, I have done just that—although those closest to me have known me to be somewhat impatient with God’s timing. It is a shortcoming I daily strive to overcome.

God’s timing, however, is perfect.

A Nation at an Impasse

The nation is divided, with all sides intractably positioned.

The result is that not enough is being done to address the root problems which, inevitably, give rise to gang violence, police profiling, inner-city poverty, and the lack of a way up, a way out, a way forward. Division fuels fear between police and citizenry, racism, inadequate educational opportunities, and a lack of willing investors. The list goes on and on.

All sides of the entrenched and perpetual problems that plague our inner cities have some truth to their arguments and for blaming others.
All sides have some false claims or charges for blaming others.
And all sides agree that something needs to be done—while pointing to others for what is not being done.

Despite truth existing on all sides of every issue, simply raising awareness has accomplished little. It has produced bickering, finger‑pointing, and stalemate, while inner‑city citizens suffer, die, and destroy each other. as our inner-city citizens suffer and die and destroy each other.

All sides have some truth.
All sides have frustration.
And all sides are unbending.
Everyone says, “Something Needs to be Done!!!”

Our Founding Fathers, however, had the only truth that matters: Together we stand, divided we fall.

It is time to stop talking about it.
To stop bickering and pointing fingers.
To come together to rid our inner cities – and our nation – of this explosive division.

It is time to actually do something to stop the killing, the suffering, the hopelessness, and the fear on all sides.

Why Professional Athletes Matter

Here at The GNZ, we believe professional athletes can and will play a major role in transforming our inner cities.

We believe they will not want to miss the opportunity to do more than stand on a publicity platform. We believe they will want to join us to make a difference.

We believe they will wholeheartedly join the endeavor to help solve inner‑city violence, police profiling, and the lack of quality educational opportunities.

Who among us does not appreciate the dedication, commitment, drive, determination, and greatness of elite professional athletes?

Name a community, city, or environment that is not positively impacted by their presence—even fleetingly during championships or promotional events.

But what if their involvement were not fleeting?

What if they became regularly involved with the men and women of our inner cities?

What if news outlets showed real footage of professional athletes, world champions, and police interacting with inner‑city residents in staged events, seminars, recreational activities, and educational disciplines?

Continual interaction breeds familiarity. Familiarity breeds understanding. Understanding breeds love. And love conquers all.

A Call to Everyone With Influence

Here at The GNZ, we believe everyone will embrace the chance to rectify the hopelessness endured by our inner‑city citizens—and the unwillingness of society to do anything about it.

Everyone includes:

• the U.S. president

• politicians

• governors and mayors

• police and detectives

• concerned citizens

• local, state, and federal governments

We believe they will not be able to sit idly by and resist the opportunity to rid innocent citizens of ravaging hopelessness, frustration, despair, and inequality of opportunity.

We believe they will want to help provide training that brings hope and love to those with only dismal options—and helps solve the national insufficiency in workforce skills.

We believe they will want to help heal the breach between citizenry and police.

We do not believe anyone can—in good conscience—sit out the opportunity to help stem the tide of violence and intractability suffered by victims, perpetrators, and innocent bystanders alike.

We do not believe they can continue allowing personal differences to block their mutual desire to be part of the solution—one that brings humane standards to those who have long been awash in the storms of circumstance, indifference, and lack of options.

Someone Has to Start the Turning

But someone has to start the turning of the tides.

We, at The GNZ, are the someone. And you are the tide.

Yet before you can understand why God chose me to help turn the tide, you must first understand the life I lived, the suffering I survived, and the credibility God forged in me through decades of cages, violence, abandonment, and transformation.

Everything God forged in me—every wound, every loss, every moment of violence and hopelessness—became the foundation for the mandate He placed on my life.

And that foundation is essential to understanding why He now speaks through me to reach those He intends to bless.

To understand the vision, you must first understand the vessel—and the journey God used to make my voice one that inner‑city men and women will hear.

Credibility Forged in the Same Fire

For God to use a man’s voice to reach those trapped in violence, abandonment, lack of opportunities, and hopelessness, that man must first have lived the life they are living.

He must have survived the same cages, the same wounds, the same rage, the same despair. Only then will his words carry the weight needed to break through the hardness that suffering creates.

People do not easily receive correction, hope, or direction from outsiders. Our differences – racial, cultural, economic, experiential – often become barriers that prevent us from hearing one another. But when a message comes from someone forged in the same fire, someone who has walked the same violent roads and survived the same hopeless realities, it commands attention. It carries credibility. It carries truth.

That is why God can speak through me to reach those He intends to bless. Not because I am better than anyone, but because I have lived the life they live—and survived it.

When the Messenger Comes From Your World

In reality, it takes a message from someone of our own brand of existence, our own brand of suffering, our own brand of responsibility, to get our attention, to spark concern—to ignite the desire to join together and rectify the injustices done to others in the name of: “They are different from us; they will never understand us—so what does it matter?”

Professional athletes, politicians, police officers, firefighters, first responders, presidents, inner‑city inhabitants, minorities, and majorities all know this truth: those outside their realm of experience cannot fully understand or speak to their concerns. It takes one of their own to command their full and undivided attention.

Humans are instinctively dismissive of outsiders—not out of cruelty, but because we know outsiders cannot completely relate to us, even when they desperately want to.

Why My Voice May Reach the Forgotten

I survived because others—those not callously indifferent—cared enough to show me there was a better way. They taught me the way I should go by offering concern and help when I had no reason to expect either. They gave me a way up, a way out, a way forward.

I now wish to do the same—to let others know that it all starts with concern and a willingness to reach those you may have deemed unreachable, those you may have given up on.

The difference God made in my life came through the compassion, education, and skills extended into the violent, hate‑filled environment I lived in. These educators and spiritual iconoclasts entered prison to bring hope and light into a dark, desolate landscape. They brought it into the hardened, debris‑littered, scarred hearts of the forgotten, feared, abandoned, and often hated men and women of society.

But you don’t have to be an educator or a spiritual iconoclast. You don’t have to be anything at all.

All you have to be is willing to lend a hand to someone trying to climb out of the pit they find themselves in—whether they are there by circumstance, location, birth, or even past poor choices made because alternatives were few, far between, or nonexistent.

A Win‑Win for Everyone Who Joins the Work

Getting behind this endeavor is a win-win situation for everyone concerned.

Uniting for this will provide all parties concerned with the ability to join together in a much-needed bipartisan, bi-cultural, biracial commitment to providing a leg up, a way out, and a sure-footed platform for social reform where it is needed the most.

Joined together, we can be the tide that washes away the poverty, fear, injustice, and lack of opportunities in our inner cities.

If we join together, we can be the light that destroys the darkness of misunderstanding, bitterness, depression, frustration, anger, rage, and fear.

The Foundation God Built in Me

For three and a half decades, many of those emotions, coupled with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, were prevalent in my own life.

Compounding my problems, I made poor choices along the way. The only way I overcame them was through the unwarranted compassion of others who had little or no reason to lend a hand, yet did so when nobody else would or could.

Everything God forged in me – every cage, every wound, every moment of violence, abandonment, and transformation – became the foundation for the mandate He placed on my life…

To understand the full weight of that mandate, you must see how God brought me from darkness to everlasting light — and into the very vision He gave me for The Neutral Zone.

Why My Past Matters to the Mission

I include all of this because there is a direct correlation between the gangs, the violence, and the hopelessness in our inner cities, and the prisons that most of their inhabitants end up in—if, that is, they do not end up in the grave.

There is simply no way of understanding the plights of rejected and abandoned persons without having experienced it. That is why God has given me this mandate — it is the very light He cleansed me with after decades of darkness — and I embrace it wholeheartedly.

My errors in judgment were enormous. Sure, there were mitigating circumstances—as there usually are in the serious mistakes we, as humans make. But those very mistakes are living proof that God Loves and Calls everyone… He has done it for me, and He will do it for you.

That God can and will change the worst of the worst is why I provide this information. I am living proof of that fact.

The Light That Transformed a Wretch Like Me

All that is needed is submission to Him to enjoy the peace, joy, and love that are automatic when the Way, the Truth, and the Life is sincerely sought by way of biblical knowledge, and obedience to the Savior who gave His life for a wretch like me: Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

I provide this information to prove that this is not something I am merely claiming—that God gave me this vision.

I provide all of this so you will know, and can certainly verify, that I told the Chaplain, and everyone on the Prison Unit, from the very beginning – and as it all transpired – what God had said and what God would do.

First, that God had told me I would make parole and, against all odds, be released. And second, that God had given me the mandate and the particulars for the Neutral Zone on the very morning of the day I found out that I had been granted parole release.

I do not expect you to believe things I say after the fact.

Because God Spoke It—I proclaimed these things before and as they happened, and I will proclaim them forevermore to fulfill my promise to him concerning Ten-thousand tongues.

I did this despite looking foolish and stupid and weak to the close and dangerous environment of the penitentiary world, where the foolish and weak are preyed upon and routinely robbed and raped.

A Life Proven by Obedience After Release

Since I have been released, and as I waited upon the Lord to begin implementation of the vision for the Neutral Zone, I have been twice licensed as a Minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by an international organization, Lost Sheep Ministries, as well as by my church, First Baptist Church of Dickinson, TX—where I also was Ordained as a Minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ).

I have preached, witnessed to, counseled and lead to Jesus Christ, the men of the Bay Area Recovery Center in Dickinson, Texas—Baptizing over a hundred men .

I have taught adult Bible studies and preached sermons as part of my path to ordination and following Christ afterward.

Since my release on November 19, 2014, I co‑hosted the radio program Oasis Live with Pastor Lonnie Provost on KKHT 100.7 The Word every Sunday night for quite some time.

I also co‑hosted with Mr. Zeke Young several times on the Z‑Team Radio program at that same station.

I applied for and received my passport, and in February 2018 traveled internationally to spread the Good News of Jesus to Nicaragua with Pastor Bob Gibson, founder of Lost Sheep Ministries.

We witnessed to the men and women of the Hodera drug rehab center, where all but three received Jesus and the transformative power of God Almighty.

A Life Answering God’s Call

I am a man committed to following God through obedience to the Word – God Become Flesh, Jesus Christ – via His written instructions, and the unction of the Holy Spirit.

My answer, when God asks, “Whom shall we send? Who will go forth for us?” is, and shall ever be: “Here am I, Lord, send me.”

Please join me as I go. This is who I am in Christ. This is the vision God gave to me. This is the need of a nation and the way for it to come together.

This is the opportunity to not just have a platform for raising awareness and speaking of the need, which has been done for decades, but to actually do something to render aid.

This is the way to remember our forgotten men and women of the inner cities.

Not just the perpetrators of violent crimes, but the innocent citizens who are impacted by the hopelessness and abandonment inherent to people and places without a tangible way out, a way up, and a way forward.

A Life Answering God’s Call

The light God brought into my life was never meant to stop with my transformation. It was meant to illuminate a path for those still trapped in the same darkness I once called home.

The vision He gave me – The Neutral Zone – was born in that darkness,  shaped by it, and designed to confront it head‑on.

Everything I endured – every cage, every wound, every moment of violence, abandonment, and hopelessness — became the raw material God used to forge the mandate He placed on my life.

That mandate is not theoretical. It is lived. It is proven. And it is the foundation upon which The Neutral Zone stands.

What follows is how that solution took form — how God transformed decades of darkness into a mission of everlasting light, and how that light now becomes the path forward for our inner‑city citizens.

A Blueprint Born in Bondage

What God revealed to me in the darkness was not only a path out of my own bondage, but the blueprint for a national mission—one designed to confront the very conditions that have trapped our inner‑city men, women, and youth for generations.

This mission was not conceived in comfort, nor imagined from a distance; it was forged in the same fire that nearly consumed me, shaped by the realities of violence, poverty, abandonment, and hopelessness that define life for so many who – unlike me – have never been given a way up, a way out, or a way forward.

It is from that crucible of suffering that God brought forth a mandate—not merely for my life, but for the nation—one that demands courage, honesty, and a willingness to face truths we have avoided for far too long.

Before You Judge the Messenger

Before you dismiss this as the ramblings of a religious fanatic or a delusional fool, I ask only one thing:

Allow your heart to guide you.

The mission of The GNZ addresses – and offers solutions to – the national dilemma of inner‑city poverty and violence. It targets the lack of opportunities and job skills in the economic workforce.

The mission of The GNZ addresses and offers solutions to the national dilemma of inner-city poverty and violence. It targets the lack of opportunities and job skills in the economic workforce.

It involves law enforcement, the citizenry, and the local, state, and federal government, as well as professional athletes.

The program will dissolve police profiling.

Citizens and police will interact in scheduled events. They will get to know each other. They will come to understand each other’s fears, hopes, and dreams.

A Mission With an Upside for Everyone

In the endeavor laid out herein, there is a very definite upside for the president, the nation, our states, and our cities.

More importantly, there is an upside for the individuals who are lost:

Lost to poverty.
Lost to abandonment.
Lost to Substance Use Disorder
Lost to a lack of quality education and legitimate opportunities.
Lost to the gang violence that comes from within and from without.

Remembering, empowering, and leaving no one behind in our inner cities is the very heart of The GNZ and it is the purpose of my life.

Everything I have shared – the darkness I lived in, the transformation God wrought in me, and the mandate He placed upon my life – leads to a single unavoidable truth: this nation cannot heal until each of us confronts the condition of our own heart.

God’s Neutral Zone: The GNZ is a solution whose power depends on the willingness of people to face the truth within themselves. And that truth begins with a question no one can escape.

The Truth Every Nation Must Confront

Before any nation can heal, before any community can rise, and before any solution can take root, every one of us must confront the truth within our own heart—the truth that determines who we are, what we value, and whether we are willing to change.

This is the question that stands before us now: a question for the heart, the mind, and the soul—a question no one can avoid, no one can answer lightly, and no one can answer for you.

The Mirror We Cannot Turn Away From

So, I ask you:

What separates you from those you despise?

Who are worse:
those without options and means to effect change,
or those with the means and options, but choosing to do nothing?

That is a question you must look inward to answer.
And to even recognize the truth, perhaps you’ll need the wisdom of God.

A Simple Man With a Renewed Mind

I am just a simple man with a renewed mind.

A man who has received Grace and Mercy and Hope and Direction from God, the State of Texas, and the United States of America.

I have a heart for God.
I have a heart for all of His people.

I need your help to begin repairing this rent in our social fabric—to bring healing to this wound in America’s Heart, a wound that we have all done too little to heal.

We talk and argue, while it deepens and festers.

Together we stand; divided we fall.

A Simple Man With a Renewed Mind

If anything in these pages has stirred your heart, challenged your thinking, or awakened your compassion, then God’s work has already begun.

Please pray for wisdom and guidance in what God would have you do.

The Neutral Zone is not merely a vision God gave me—it is an invitation He extends to all who refuse to let darkness have the final word.

What comes next is not mine alone to carry.
It belongs to every heart willing to stand,
every mind willing to understand,
and every soul willing to act.

A Simple Man With a Renewed Mind

Won’t you do something other than argue while our citizens despair, suffer, and die?

The tide will turn when we turn it.
The healing will begin when we begin it. And the impossible will become reality when we step forward as one.

Join us, won’t you?
Navigate this site.

See what God has already done—and what He intends to accomplish through all of us working together to achieve what the world has found to be impossible…

Which is exactly how God has worked, and what He has accomplished through ordinary folk—throughout the ages…

The Impossible.

May God Bless & Keep You and Yours, Always,
John Bradley Dainwood: Founder
God’s Neutral Zone: The GNZ
Jdainwood@thegnz.org
1 (833) Our Zone
1 (833) 687-9663