Please visit @waynekramer's YouTube channel to subscribe & set a reminder because we have a few surprises coming tomorrow+ benefiting our youth Learning Lab at The CAPO Center: We've been busy! -wkHQs

In every city, every town -- youth need to be shown an alternative to the gangs in their communities. .

By applying your convictions to your vocation, by weaving what you believe into what you do, the sky’s the limit. At the Jail Guitar Doors sessions there are no inmates, only artists. A place for stories to be heard, a place to be treated with dignity and respect. A jailbreak.

. the community for at-risk youth and for those who have been released from prison. Wayne says this is all just a way to be of service. It seems to me the example he’s set is even more than that.

. share common hopes for themselves. The barriers between hostile groups and gangs begin to be dismantled. Jail Guitar Doors, along with the LA County Probation Dept, has recently instituted The CAPO Center (Community Arts Programming and Outreach) to continue the work in.

When you put your pain into a song, it dissipates. You no longer have to carry it. It gives you something to focus on beside your resentments. When asked to write on a theme, inmates begin to identify w/one another as fathers, or rappers, or guitarists, or simply brothers who.

. or your ethnic background. Music provides insight into one’s own behavior and thinking, important tools for when they go back to the community — a restorative justice that is a powerful counterweight to omnipresent racism, violence, bitterness and defeat.

As long as they have a voice and a story, there’s a place for them at the table. JGD-SUA helps inmates communicate their feelings in a nonconfrontational way and demonstrate a different and vibrant means via music to relate to other people who may not be from your neighborhood.

. over 200 facilities worldwide. Wayne has crisscrossed the country establishing songwriting workshops that every day demonstrate the transformative power of making creative connections. Inmates of all kinds have flocked to the program, and they don’t have to be musicians.

. administrators allowed a fledgling music program employing the guitars we left behind. Prison staff noted that there was less violence and a marked decrease of tensions on the yard. Today JGD-USA has programs in 11 [corr 21] prisons, with instruments of all types in.

They met resistance but they persevered. Let us show you it works, they said. And they did. I've accompanied Wayne on these missions, to the Travis County Corr Complex near Austin, TX. After a spirited “Flesh Shapes the Day” “Kick Out the Jams” & of course “Jail Guitar Doors”.

I’ve cataloged some of these injustices in “Hard Times,” “Rabbit’s Revenge” and “Lead Poisoning." Wayne Kramer & his wife, Margaret Saadi Kramer, and a small staff worked tirelessly to persuade wardens to let them into prisons to perform and preach the gospel of rock n roll.

The world’s largest mental health facilities are now the jails & prisons of this country. People of color are grossly & disproportionately incarcerated. The US prison system is a hellish purgatory, a cornerstone of a broader justice system that is racist & classist to its core.

There are about 2 million people behind bars in America, 20% of the world’s prisoners. As many as 300,000 human beings are currently in solitary confinement, and over 50,000 are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole.

“I thought people in prison were like another species. I never realized they’re just guys like me.”Then we left to go home, and they left to go back to their cages. On the bus ride back, Wayne Kramer decided to start Jail Guitar Doors USA.

. behind bars, and with rising ardor preached the redemptive power of art and music. Inmates and fellow musicians alike were rapt. Afterward the inmates expressed their gratitude. But we too were profoundly changed. As one musician said to Wayne:

Now, I’ve known Wayne for a long time. He’s a great dude, kind and wise. But as he addressed the inmates of Sing Sing he was a man transformed. His vernacular shifted. He spoke to the inmates as one of them. Honest and raw. He spoke of his life on the streets and his time.

. guitar licks on “Ghetto Blaster,” and then as nervous glances were exchanged among the guards, Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains brought the house down with an incendiary cover of Thin Lizzy’s “Jailbreak.”. And then Brother Wayne Kramer stepped to the microphone.

As we crossed the threshold, those in our party with spotty legal pasts wondered aloud if they were going to let us out. We played for about an hour with Perry Farrell rocking the Jane’s Addiction classic “Mountain Song,” Boots Riley and I dropped twisted phrases and twisted .

Wayne and Billy continued to talk on the bus ride up, as the rest of us dozed, unaware that a Saul on the road to Damascus moment was about to take place. Sing Sing seems straight out of “The Shawshank Redemption,” a gothic fortress housing hundreds of inmates.