An Army of Normal Folks - Ben and Jessica Owen: Transforming Dope Houses Into Hope Houses (Pt 2)

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

The Owens battled addiction in some of Memphis’ worst dope houses. When they left town to escape this life, Ben felt called to eventually come back to help those whom they left behind. Today, their nonprofit We Fight Monsters owns some of the very houses that they once used in, transforming them into hope houses for 75 people touched by recovery and sex trafficking.Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, it's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks and we continue now with part two of our conversation with Ben and Jess Owen right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. John Stewart is back in the host chair at The Daily Show, which means he's also back in our ears on The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. The Daily Show podcast has everything you need to stay on top of today's news and pop culture. You get hilarious satirical takes on entertainment, politics, sports, and more from John and the team of correspondents and contributors. The podcast also has content you can't get anywhere else like extended interviews and a roundup of the weekly headlines. Listen to The Daily Show, Ears Edition on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the best shows of the year according to Apple, Amazon and Time is back for another round.

We have more insightful conversations between myself, Paul Muldoon and Paul McCartney about his life and career. We had a big bear of a land, it's called Maladens, with our logo. And it was coming back on the plane and he said, will you pass the salt and pepper? And I miss her, and I said, what? So I drew that one. This season we're diving deep into some of McCartney's most beloved songs. Yesterday, Band on the Run, Hey Jude,

and McCartney's favourite song in his entire catalog, here, there, and everywhere. Listen to season two of McCartney, a life in lyrics on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Information Network and six-time Emmy-nominated news anchor, Vanessa Tyler, welcome you to

BlackLand. A podcast about the ground on which the Black community stands right now. From stories about salvation and loss. They did not love themselves enough to know their HRD status, to not pass it on to me. To dreams achieved or still yet unfulfilled. From people who have made it. We started a hospital-based violence intervention program called the IV Project,

and it stands for Interrupting Violence in Youthing Young Adults. To those who have been left behind. But no one talks about the survivors of the gun violence and the numbers rising because the gun violence has risen politically, financially, emotionally, spiritually. This is where we are.

This is Black Land. And one of the things that my father said to me before he passed away, it's like almost like a prophecy. He said that I would be helping men. Listen to Black Land on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast. Or wherever you get your podcast. Like, November comes around and, you know, we had everything on auto pay and we're burning through so much money, you don't always notice what gets paid and what doesn't. The rent didn't come out.

And they took us to court and I called her. I was like, Hey, I didn't realize any of this is going on. She's like, Yeah, you're fine. Just bring me a money order. I was like, Oh, cool. So I took her money order. I don't know what she did with it, but she didn't apply it towards the rent. Because January 5th of 2019, three linebackers show up to our house in her

gated neighborhood. They were huge. We're on talking seven and a half feet tall. Not really, but they're huge. You just talk a massive guy. Massive. And look, I'm by Grace St. Luke's in Midtown. I was on my way back or on my way to the dope man. I don't remember in our only vehicle, which we hadn't been spending any money

fixing because you don't do that. Your money goes to dope, not your vehicle. And I'm by Grace St. Luke's right there on Peabody or Belvedere or whatever it is. And I slung a ride through the block. That's it. The vehicle's done. I'm standing on the side of the road and my phone rings and it's just telling me that we have linebackers at our house throwing us out.

So in a matter of 10 minutes, I lost my only transportation and I lost the roof over my head. On his mom's birthday, my mom's birthday. And look, how many times have I said something where you're thinking, man, that would have been rock bottom? Uh, 100. That this one right here feels like. But it wasn't. This, this is where things start to get real bad. They weren't bad already.

Right. They weren't bad enough. And this is something I tell parents all the time when they reach out and they're they got a kid struggling with addiction. Like they're not gonna do anything different until they've suffered enough. Well, this could have been be suffering enough had somebody been there to tell me a better way. I scrapped together what money I could or rented to U-Haul. We threw all of our belongings into a 10 by 20 storage unit out there off of 64 in Arlington. And we took that U-Haul straight to the dope track. And we moved into the trap house that day. For those of you that don't know, a trap house is a house where narcotics and women are bought and sold. Crack house is another way to say it. And women typically sell themselves for their next.

Exactly. So the women out there, they're selling their bodies or they're some of them use a pump to fund their addiction. And at 1500s a day, that's a lot of selling. Yeah. And so most of the ones out there, they're just addicted to crack. They're 72 to 96 grand a year is what they're smoking. That's insane. But anyway, we moved into the trap house that day, you know

I had I'm a white guy in South Memphis, but I had trust because I had spent such an ungodly sum of money out there We we didn't have a vehicle we moved into the trap house. Well, it was your kid So we took the the his kids went to his ex-wife and mine went to my dad's house And the one that you had together was with us. In this trap house? In the trap house, my dad would, while we were in the trap house, I would drop James off with my dad because I didn't want him in that. It was horrible of a person as I was. I did not want him in a trap house smelling crack smoke. So I would, I did take him to my dad's house and I was, I did not want him in a trap house smelling crack smoke. So I did take him to my dad's house and I was like,

look, can you just watch James and just let us get our together? And of course that meant us just going and hanging out at the trap house for like a week without leaving, without sleeping. Eventually we would make it to my dad's house. That's where we ended up going to live. And we got married in 2018 in Starbucks because we didn't even have money for a wedding. But I knew that I love this man. I wanted to marry him.

So we got this lady on Google. We're like, hey, come meet us here. So we actually got married in 2018 in February. In a Starbucks. In a Starbucks. And then, you know so so Madison on Madison Send out the patio on Union on Union right there customer Walgreens. Yes, so so that was February So not even a year

in the middle of this chaos Yeah, but why not a Starbucks? Exactly. Exactly. It just worked. I mean, it actually oddly makes a little sense. It did make a little sense. Where's Brandon?

So Brandon. At this point. We had moved into a high rise. Overlooking the Mississippi River down there off of Front Street. Brandon was clean when we moved him. This is 1617. Brandon pulled back from us when he saw us headed in a bad direction and then Brandon went in a bad direction while I was doing good. So we had started trying to help Brandon while I was clean and she was on pills. Nobody knew she

was on pills and I'm out there trying to act like this white knight who has it all together. I'm six months sober and I'm going to save you trying to help Brandon. He ends up losing that apartment because he went back to active addiction with with heroin. So oddly enough, we ended up somehow HUSSA. I say somehow, if you haven't figured it out, I'm kind of a serial entrepreneur. I've always got some sort of hustle. We were able to buy a vehicle before the end of it. We had James, the kid you asked about, and

Brandon living in a truck with us in South Memphis. $700 truck. $700 truck. Oh, you lived in a truck? We lived in a truck that winter, the winter of 2019. The first day. Before you were living in a truck? Yeah.

And I think that that's after we decided to leave my dad's house. We park it outside the trap house so you can run it out. Yes, exactly. Sometimes we were. Sometimes we would drop James off leave my dad's house. We park it outside the trap house so you can run it about. Yes, exactly. Sometimes we were. Sometimes we would drop James off at my dad's. How do police not drop by this place and know exactly what's going on? They know exactly what's going on.

They know exactly what's going on. I don't really know why. I've never understood that. Like, if you know what's going on. I've been in that house on Woodward when it was surrounded by OCU wearing vests with AR-15s out and they never read it. Like, I don't understand. I don't know. I don't know. Now, look, I've also been arrested in front of that house. I don't want to say they know what's going on. They don't do anything about it,

because I've gone to jail in front of that house a few times. So, you know, do you process? They got to build a case and all that. Are these houses empty houses that people just squatting in? No, they're- Sometimes. They're- Well, the ones that we were in were actually they're owned by another crack. Another crack addict. Yeah. They charge daily rent.

They get paid and crack. They get paid and crack. Yeah. You've got women that are being trafficked, sex trafficked to feed their addiction, you have other crack addicts who are essentially being labor trafficked. You can use an addiction to coerce anybody to do anything. So the owner of the house is getting paid for the use of the house and cracks. So they're satisfying their habit by letting this go on. Exactly.

How many of these houses, ballpark me, are in Memphis, Baltimore, Chicago, any city. Oh, man, that's going to depend on the population, but a lot. You know, every block's got one. A few of them. A few of them. In the hood. In the hood. Right. In the hood, yeah. You're not going to find this in the way. Are you saying there's 200 of these spices in Memphis? Yeah. Yeah, or more. Yeah, there's probably that many just in North Memphis. Yeah. Just in South Memphis. Absolutely. Just in. Which means in a city like Chicago. Yeah, way more. Way more. New York, DC. Way more. You gotta remember, Memphis has not had that high of a population density. It's just and what really sucks is like I don't

think the average person understands the misery that's coming from these houses You know just nobody that's in them wants to be there. We didn't want to be there You know, it's fun to be addicted when you live out in Arlington for a minute Not for long. It's definitely not fun because ultimately you end up there You you all roads lead to Rome and in Rome in this case is the trap house and you know We've seen we've seen friends die out there. We've seen murder. We've seen overdose. We've seen rape Yes, yeah over a drug deal So over nothing over nothing a buddy of mine who went by the street named no talk

He was a mute street name. What no talk no talk Yeah, yeah, he was shot five times in the head in front of that house for absolutely no reason by a guy named Mike Wilson We called him crazy Mike crazy Mike did six years for that Six six. Yeah he's back in Custody in South Dakota now for another murder and he called his mom who is a prostitute and told her mama I'm probably gonna have to do another six. She's crazy to me. It's the value we put on human life just because they're an addict That's something's not right

Okay, so you're in this truck Brandon's in the truck your son's in the truck Are we rock bottom yet? I am. I'm rock bottom. And I'm done. I'm done. You know, that lasted for about a month. There were a couple of deaths leading up to that that really pushed me over the edge. Now, I had gone to detox a couple times during 2019. As bad as you describe detox as being and you keep going through it. You just put yourself through constant misery. Yeah. Well, yeah, you are.

And it's not just constant misery. It takes a toll on your body. I had two heart attacks between 35 and 37, trying to quit on my own. Like I told you, I was 20 something years old and I lost an organ to my alcoholism, like a whole organ I drank out of my body These are things that to a normal person would be like signs to stop but I don't guess I'm normal so 2019 we a very dear friend I Had a crack related stroke and died in that house and I

Went to detox and I told Jess is like you can come and get clean with me or I'm out of here. Done. And I hung up the phone. It was about 12 hours later that I wheeled her into detox in a wheelchair. I was like, oh, okay, cool. So we got this. We held it together for a little bit and then we both ended up back out there because we

weren't willing to go to meetings. We weren't willing to do the things we knew we needed to do. We just wanted to stop suffering. We weren't willing to put in the work to make sure it stuck yet. We'll be right back. John Stewart is back in the host chair at The Daily Show, which means he's also back in our ears on The Daily Show, Ears Edition podcast.

The Daily Show podcast has everything you need to stay on top of today's news and pop culture. You get hilarious satirical takes on entertainment, politics, sports, and more from John and the team of correspondents and contributors. The podcast also has content you can't get anywhere else like extended interviews and a roundup of the weekly headlines. Listen to The Daily Show, Ears Edition on the

iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the best shows of the year, according to Apple, Amazon and Time, is back for another round. We have more insightful conversations between myself, Paul Muldoon and Paul McCartney about his life and career. We had a big fair of a land, it's called Maladins, with our melody. And I was coming back on the plane and he said, will you pass the salt and pepper? And I miss her then. I said, what?

So I drew that one. This season we're diving deep into some of McCartney's most beloved songs. Yesterday, Band on the Run, Hey Jude. And McCartney's favorite song in his entire catalog, Here, There, and Everywhere. Listen to season two of McCartney, A Life in Lyrics on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Black Information Network and six-time Emmy-nominated news anchor, Vanessa Tyler, welcome you to Black Land. A podcast about the ground on which the black community stands right now from stories about salvation and loss. They did not love themselves enough to know their HRD status, to not pass it on to me to dreams achieved or still yet unfulfilled from people who have made it. We started a hospital-based violence intervention program

called the IV Project, and it stands for Interrupting Violence in Youthing Young Adults. To those who have been left behind. But no one talks about the survivors of the gun violence and the numbers rising because the gun violence has risen politically, financially,

emotionally, spiritually. This is where we are. This is Black Land. And one of the things that my father said to me before he passed away, it's like almost like a prophecy. He said that I would be helping men listen to Black Land on the I hard radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

So after Brandon and all of us are living in this deep truck, I'll let you tell the story about Nick Dine, but we're towards the end of May and I just woke up in an empty lot one day covered in blood without a cut on me. To this day, I don't know whose blood was on me, but I was done. I was done. I got a phone. I called my dad. You woke up with blood all over you. You don't even know whose.

To this day, I have no idea. And he had been missing for like four days at this point. Yeah, I went missing. I don't remember anything. And it wasn't your blood? One of my blood. Do you think you killed somebody? No. What do you think?

I have no idea. Probably a fight. Yeah, probably a fight. Probably a fight. But I called my dad and I got on a Greyhound bus and I went to Georgia. And that was it for me. I was done. And I told her I was like, I'm done. We'll figure out custody at James later. And we had been clean for a little while. My daughter's father, my first, my first daughter.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm catching up. You were missing for four days and woke up without a recollection of how you got where you were in the spark a lot covered in somebody else's blood. I had no recollection. I still don't. We've been able to piece some of it together because we've gone back to those places and we have communication with the people who are there. But a lot of it is just missing. There were a couple of phone calls to my parents, they could hear gunshots and screaming.

I think that second heart attack was in there at one point. My mom heard the EMS workers working on me, but couldn't get anybody to. You describe your parents as unbelievable parents. They have to be an absolute terror for their son. In a lot of ways, I almost have more regret for what I put my parents through than I do it Our kids went through because my kids didn't see what happened My parents had to deal with all of it And they never turned their backs on me like they never enabled they stopped that decades ago

But they were there when I needed them. But yeah, I woke up. It was May 26 of 2019 I woke up in an empty lot next to the trap house on Woodward, covered in blood. And I realized where I was. I'm about to go walk to that window. I'm going to get some crack right back at it. And for whatever reason, my feet wouldn't move. It was just like I'm not actually going to go to that window today. I'm going to do so. So you go to Georgia. Is that where your parents are? Yeah. My dad, I called my dad and he's like, just come home.

Just come home. So I'll let her pick up back on May 19th before I went missing. Well, we had a few, we had our little time clean and then we had something very bad happen which was my daughter's father, Nick, who I'd been friends with since I was 12 years old. Ben had actually started getting pretty close with him

and we were talking to him every day Ben talked to him every day because he was also an addict and you know, he would just call Ben What do I do? What do I need to do? And he had just gotten clean Ben was like look you need to he was asking Ben if Madison could come over for the summer Nick had no idea we were back in active addiction He looked at me like a mentor, kind of a big brother. I'm hiding it really well. And Nick had just gotten out of prison not too long before that. We were kind of helping him get back on his feet. I had convinced him he needed to get away from Memphis. He had a warrant. I convinced him to move to Alabama with some family. And he called

asking if Madison could come spend the summer and Reminded him he had just told me like two days prior that his roommate was a really weird guy and I was like, you know Jess and I aren't terribly comfortable with Madison spending the summer there with this dude So next like I'm gonna take care of that. He called me he kicked the roommate out and we're talking on plans Nick's getting a room ready for Madison. It's like midnight on the 18th, I guess. And Nick goes, Hey man, I got some at the door. I'm going to call you right back. And he never called me back because the dude at the door was a roommate who came in and

stabbed him to death. So he got murdered and this was like, you know, my best friend since I was 12. So I lost it. And then, you know, he felt somewhat responsible because he's the one that told Nick, hey, go back to Alabama. So that was a hard hit for us. So we went back out and we went and got high again.

And then that's when it got really bad. And we were so bad off that we had no money and we only had like a phone each. And we were like, you know what, we're always together. Let's just sell our phones and get another hit of crack. So that's how we ended up losing each other because we had no way to even communicate with each other at that point. We've gotten high. We had separated. I think we had gotten to fight because you're always fighting when you're high or when you're not high. That's the problem. Yeah, and her and Brandon had I guess come to meet me at some hotel or so. I don't remember but

Yeah, it was bad. So then Brandon was living in my car just me and Brandon and James And we were trying to find Ben for like three or four days And then that's when he woke up covered him blood and he called and he was like look I got to go Yep. Nick's death was I definitely carried a lot of guilt over that because I mean I'm the one that convinced and moved to Alabama in the first place I'm the one that told me to kick that roommate out and you know when I feel guilty I drink and I went into a blackout drunk But anyway, I ended up going to Georgia Told her I'm done. I was like I'm not coming back. I am not I am done

And she's like well, I'm done too But you do have to come back because you have the keys to the truck that you left locked in the ground parking lot. So she decided she was done as well. That was rock bottom for her. And I get back on a ground bus back to Memphis with the keys all along the way. I don't know how you are on your faith journey, but there were like these little guide shots for God's just telling me, you know, yeah, I'm watching, I'm watching. And one of those is when I got back to the Greyhound station,

TBI boarded our bus to search everybody, Tennessee Beer Investigations. And for the first time I'm getting searched and I know they're not going to find a thing on me for the first time. It was 20 years. It was burning ear to ear. I get off the first time. It was. 20 years in an era. I get off the bus. We get Jess. We go back to Georgia.

I remember on the way we were heading down the more. And this hit me in your little teaser when you talk about turning the rear view mirror 15 degrees. Yeah, I got my cell phone. I took a picture of that rear view mirror with Memphis behind us. And I said, I'm leaving this city in the rear view for good And I posted the social media thinking I'm all dramatic or whatever, you know And I put the phone down and not even five minutes later. I told Jeff's like God wants me to go back She's the queen talked about

Do that God wants me to go back to Memphis my work's not done. I work work? What work do I have in Memphis, Tennessee? And so anyway, on our way out of town as our little nuclear family, it's me, Jess, James, and Madison. I'm way to my parents where we started rebuilding our lives. God put it on me that I was supposed to come back here and do something. I had no idea what I thought for a long time that it has something to do with Brandon Kelly, because he was back out there bad, homeless. My ex-wife was helping us take care of him. She would take him food and cigarettes and money here and there when we thought he was going to be okay to handle it. It's hard to hit every point I wanted to hit in this period of time, but

I want to rewind to 2018. It was April of 2018. I don't know. Brandon's mom had relapsed, and this is when I was sober. Brandon's mom was in it. Brandon's mom was in it too. She lost him to foster care. They had rebuilt that relationship kind of It was I think it was April 2018 She had been silent for three days and me and Brandon were talking to her every day and either one of us realized it So we're like well, let's let's go check on Virginia And I got there right after Brandon they kicked the door in and I could smell her before I got house

So she had killed herself. Fast forward back to December of 2019, I realized I haven't heard from Brandon in three days. And I knew like there's there's no doubt. But I sent one of my employees from that business I had back when I had it all together, I've maintained contact with and he got in his car I called MPD and sure enough, Brann Brandon was dead from a fentanyl overdose. Guys, I've known you for an hour and 15 minutes and so far I know about Nick being murdered, Brandon dying of an overdose, Brandon's mom dying of an overdose, just his mom dying, I think of an overdose. Oh mom dying of an overdose just as mom dying I think of an overdose

No talk being shot five times in the head. I Imagine if we sat here for an hour and listed them all oh it's Doesn't your sheet would be full of names of names Who were either victims of violent perpetrators of violence or of overdoses. Yep. Your life has been filled with not only personal loss, personal guilt, but loss of friends and people you know. This thing is literally destroys lives. Yeah. Absolutely. So you kicked that rear of your mirror 15 degrees to the left and said, I got to come back to Memphis and you

didn't know what and irony of irony is some of the very places you stayed in as addicts, you are now rehabbing. Yeah. So here's the redemption, everybody. The crazy story that you just heard about Ben and Jess's life and marriage at Starbucks and loss of friends and abuse and loving parents who never enabled but never gave up.

And despite how hard you tried to destroy one another in your relationship, figured a way out and all of that, now you're in Georgia, you are finally really sober and clean. And you decide to start a nonprofit called Flanders Fields with an initiative called Operation Bob-Ock the block and I watched a video clip of it and I'm gonna just tell the listeners what I know and then I want you to go with it. You're basically buying empty dilapidated blighted properties many of which were these what do you call them not crack houses? Trap houses. Trap houses that had prostitution and drugs and everything going on them. And you were figuring out ways to refurbish them and make them safe halfway houses for people in recovery, I think.

But when you left and you said, goodbye, Memphis, I'm never coming back. And then somehow you felt like God was calling you back to Memphis for a purpose. Tell me how you found it in Georgia, how you started this and what you're doing now. So we used to say a prayer when we were out there all the time. It was something you were out in the streets and it was something along the lines of God, if you'll just get us out of here together. We'll spend the rest of our lives coming back for the people will be behind. He called the debt due, I guess.

Do you know you may be the fourth guest that I could think of right now. Who in the depths of the stare made a deal with God and they all warn everybody, be careful when you make a deal with God because when the deck comes due, that's one dude you don't want to pay back. Well, if you know the story of Johnna and the whale, Memphis was very much our Nineveh. We didn't want to come back here. When we started Flanders, that Sergeant that lost the leg came back in the picture.

He ended up in 2021. He ended up right where I was, crack heroin gun charges. And he called me for help because I'd helped him before. He had no idea what we had been through in the 10 year gap. Jess and I ever committed and always ready for excitement. We're like, well, we're back on our feet. I'm skipping so much. We moved out of my parents' basement.

We got a town home. We got a big house. We got our businesses back. We have currently. Yeah. That's awesome. In Atlanta or north of Atlanta. North of Atlanta.

Yeah. But you after all this, you're back in business. Absolutely. Yeah. And that is so. I mean, oh, congratulations. Quick, but thank you very much. It was all God.

And it was not us. So you rebuilt. We rebuilt the business. The business. You did everything you could to destroy on two occasions. And you're back doing it and North Georgia. One was actually given back to us because they're like, we don't know what we're doing, but you do. And they gave it back to them.

Right. So, so you move back in your parent's basement, you get a townhouse, you finally buy a home, you are sober, you're building your businesses, but the grip is now not crack and heroin. It's the people you left behind. It's the people we left behind. Is that ironic that that's the military thing and that's where your brain starts? So it's interesting you bring that up because this is where everything starts getting really crazy. As if it weren't crazy enough. As if it weren't already March, April, 21 Sergeant Deaton comes back and we're going to fund a

flight for him to get to rehab in Texas and my business partner on the Black Rifle Psy was like, bro, you need to just start a nonprofit. Well, we'd already decided we were going to start a nonprofit and we're going to call it Flanders Fields because of the poppy flower and opium and vets. So we're going to start a nonprofit, helping vets battling addiction. We're like, oh, well, here it is.

Let's go ahead and do it. So we get Sergeant moved to where he needs to be. We file the paperwork at the IRS. Again, had no intentions coming back to Memphis. This is not, we're not there yet. And in July, a Marine Corps intelligence officer hits me up and about my data company, my day job, Black Rifle, which had started with bump stocks, but is now this massive conglomerate of data that we use for digital intelligence and digital marketing.

And he's like, Hey man, you want to do something crazy? And I was like, Sure. He was like, Okay, cool. We're going, you wanna do something crazy? And I was like, sure. He was like, okay, cool. We're gonna get some people out of Afghanistan. I was like, I'm sorry, what? What did you say? We'll be right back. Jon Stewart is back in the host chair at The Daily Show,

which means he's also back in our ears on The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. The Daily Show podcast has everything you need to stay on top of today's news and pop culture. You get hilarious satirical takes on entertainment, politics, sports, and more from John and the team of correspondents and contributors. The podcast also has content you can't get anywhere else like extended interviews and a roundup of the weekly headlines. Listen to The Daily Show, Ears Edition on the iHeart Radio app, Amazon and Time, is back for another round. We have more insightful conversations between myself, Paul Muldoon and Paul McCartney about his life and career.

We had a big bear of a land, it's called Malad with our melody. And I was coming back on the plane and he said, will you pass the salt and pepper? And I miss her. And I said, what? So I drew that one. This season we're diving deep into some of McCartney's most beloved songs. Yesterday, Band on the Run, Hedgewood.

And McCartney's favorite song in his entire catalog, here, there, and everywhere. Listen to season two of McCartney, a life in lyrics on the iHeart radio app Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Information Network and six-time Emmy-nominated news anchor Vanessa Tyler, welcome you to Black Land. A podcast about the ground on which the Black community stands right

now from stories about salvation and loss. They did not love themselves enough to know their HRD status, to not pass it on to me, to dreams achieved or still yet unfulfilled from people who have made it. We started a hospital-based violence intervention program called the IV Project, and it stands for Interrupting Violence in Youthing Young Adults. To those who have been left behind, but no one talks about the survivors of the gun violence, and the number is rising because the gun violence has risen. Politically,

financially, emotionally, spiritually, this is where we are. This is Black we are. This is Black Land. And one of the things that my father said to me before he passed away, it's like almost like a prophecy, he said that I would be helping men.

Listen to Black Land on the i of regular folks are doing in Memphis, but I got to tell you how we got there. We got pulled into the evac out of Afghanistan, and we're using data to vet Afghans early on, and we saw some great success. We were able to make contact with American citizen family members. We were able to make contact with American citizen family members. We were able to determine who's good, who's bad. We're talking about like interpreters. Interpreters. Yeah.

Yep. At any interpreter. Afghan interpreters and special forces. We were able to locate some missing people. We were able to prevent the trafficking of some children. By the end of it, we were running 68 safe houses in Afghanistan that we leased, which is insane. If you think about it, I went from 68 safe houses.

We leased 68 houses and or apartments in Afghanistan. Contract signed and Daria Pashto. Two languages I don't speak. Right. We had real estate agents. We had ground teams. We had drivers. We had food delivery networks set up like all of this insane stuff. And I'm not even two years clean yet. Right. So.

That was cool. But the cooler part was this network of other really cool, regular people that were building. Now, a lot of them came from the special operations community and I didn't want anybody to feel like I had misrepresented my service. So I'm always careful to say I'm barely even a vet. In fact, I'm a junkie and an alcoholic. I'm two years clean. And so I had the conversation with everybody and instead of them being like, well, I'm a little afraid to work with you now. They're like, that's amazing. And this happened more and more and more.

And so we ended up, sorry, language, we ended up with this really great network of special operators, former CIA officers, congressmen, senators. Very scary people. Very scary, big-hearted people that wanted to help with our work. And so we ended up doing some similar stuff in Ukraine. with our work. And so we ended up doing some similar stuff in Ukraine. We ended up doing some anti-trafficking work in Mexico. And next thing I know, the same judge that had kicked me off of drug court and the man who kicked me out of his halfway house asked us if we would be interested in taking over those halfway houses and the relationship with drug court back here in Memphis.

And that is not what I wanted. I went into that meeting where that question was asked to get them to give us a letter of recommendation to do something similar in Chattanooga or Knoxville. And God reminded us of that promise we'd made to come back to the people we left behind. And so now we've gone from getting the people, our government left behind in Afghanistan to being called on our own promise to take care of who we left. So we went back to that house on Wilbur Street in South Memphis. The very house that you slept out in front of in the truck with Brandon and your son. The very house. And I went and I knocked on the door or the window.

And I was scared to death. And I asked about two women in particular that I knew we had left. And they weren't ready for help, but we kept coming back. We kept coming back and we kept coming back. And while they weren't ready for help, we started seeing other people that noticed we kept coming back. And while they weren't ready for help, we started to see another people that noticed we were coming back. And they also noticed we were clean and they started asking for help.

And so slowly we're able to get people off of that street, some of them out of that house into detox and treatment. And before long, we were able to negotiate a deal with the people that were selling dope out of that house to buy it and close it with their blessing. And today, two years later, both of those women are clean. One of them put down a 45-year heroin habit and she's clean today. Unbelievable. Yeah. So. So how many of these houses do you have?

That was the first one. And then we went to Melrose Street, which is the street that I, some of the worst days in my life before meeting Jess. You literally are going back to the very places that were the worst of the worst for you. You are literally going back and buying houses where you left people behind. You're not, it's not just a slogan. You're literally doing this. We are starting exactly where we left them.

I'm going back to houses where my blood is on the floor. Yep. And a lot of the people that saw that blood, leave his body, we're still there in active addiction. And you're buying the houses? If we can, you know, in one case we had the house donated to us. Oddly enough, the guy that runs the Delta Fair also invested in real estate and loved what we did in Afghanistan.

And he happened to own a house that I lived in with the one non-Vietnam Marine back in 2014 and he donated that house to us. Yeah. And then we have the halfway houses. And then we did buy the half, we had a mortgage in a moment, we didn't have the money to buy them outright, but we've got the same halfway house I was kicked out of. So yeah.

The same one you were kicked out of? The house I was kicked out of. You took a mortgage on it to buy it. Yeah. Yeah, and it's full. And it's full. What does full mean? All the beds are 12 men. No, I mean 12 men are in the house. Well, right now we are housing about 75 men, women and children in Memphis. On mostly our dime, some of them do pay rent in these halfway

houses, but all spread throughout the city. We've got people who six months a year, two years ago were high. These houses have to be positive. I've got to be careful, too. This house has got to be positive crap. So the way I mean, I got to believe if it's a trap house and people been in it for 10 years, those are I mean, the electrical, the walls, they probably stinks like hell, the floors. There's no appliance.

I mean, you're buying a piece of property with a frame and sometimes not even the frame. Now, the halfway houses were in good shape. And then when we opened up Sparrow house, which is a house for trafficking survivors of kids, that's that one's already renovated. But the trap houses, yeah, we have to gut them. We have to renovate them. And what's been really cool is oh roof. Yeah, so a team roofing I don't know if you've heard of them their local veteran on they donated a roof to one of the trap houses Which is amazing like we're seeing all sorts of people come and swing hammers with this being willing to bleed with this

Are you swinging hammers too? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, This is the part we never planned and this has been really cool to watch is that the guys that live in our halfway houses and the girls too, they want to help. They see what we're doing out there on the dope track and they want to give back because that's where they come from. Maybe not that same track, but a lot of them did. And so we've seen, I've got one example that comes to really two that come to mind very quickly that were huge problems on their way to getting kicked off of drug court that asked to come help us.

And the judge will straight up tell you that coming and helping us save their lives. It changed the trajectory of their life because it gave them purpose. One of those guys has graduated drug court now and he's our superintendent out there on the block on the construction projects. We couldn't do any of what we do without him. So we're not just rehabbing houses. We're not just closing dope houses. We're watching the lives get rebuilt in the process and it's what keeps me sober. I've had periods of sobriety over the last three decades that I've been battling addiction and alcoholism, but never stuck because I never had anything to fill that void.

I drink to fill an emptiness inside me, to fill a void. This work that we do fills that. I don't feel the need to drink anymore. I still have to do meetings. I still have a sponsor. I still work the steps. But this is that defining factor that made this time different for me.

I have a purpose now and I'm watching other people come alongside us and find their own purpose in it. Their purpose doesn't look like mine. It's not the same as mine or maybe it is. But regardless, they're able to find purpose through service. When you do, and I'm sure you know this, Bill, but when you do something for somebody that can never, ever, ever pay you back, it does something to your heart. When an addict or an alcoholic, especially in early recovery, has that experience,

that change that happens in their heart being of service, well, this is nothing new. If you're familiar with 12 Step Recovery, that's the 12th step. We're supposed to carry that message. We're supposed to be of service. And so we're watching this play out in real time and at scale and it's replicable. We're not special. We're not. I know our story sounds insane, but really, we're just lucky we made it. And we're really lucky we made it together. This is something anybody can do, you know, blighted houses, tax sales, like anybody can do this. I really do believe that. And even if they can't, anybody can just go be of service to their neighbor.

Five days or so after he woke his bloody self up and hauled it to Georgia and you said, hey, you got to come back. He got the keys. It was about five days, right? Yeah. Four or five days. What? I was shortly. Yeah. And then you all get on a grayhound and head back to north Atlanta and Georgia. What was the date? Do you remember about June 1st? June 1st, which is my, that's my clean date of 2019. It's four and a half years. Yeah, it's four and a half years ago. You were in a trap house with a two year old addicted with a two year old.

And you were waking up in a parking lot covered in somebody's blood with no recollection of anything that happened the four dice previous four and a half years ago. And now you're telling me you have halfway houses and stuff all over the city, currently serving 70 formerly addicted people trying to get their lives right. The people that you're a few sleep on Yep, that's correct. That's you guys can do that Plus you've got a business again, and you burned one down twice

If you can do that Anybody can anybody can and it doesn't have to be to this extreme. I Overdo everything as do I do, you know, it doesn't have to be this extreme a Week before Nick died I was in DT's which are That's alcohol withdrawal and it can kill you and I had had made the decision I was going to take my life. And I went into a gas station in the south Memphis at Bellevue and Elvis Presley right there at South Park with the BP. And I was going to steal a beer and I was going to go overdose.

I was just done. And I walked into that gas station and a woman I've never seen in my life smiled at me. Does she smile at me and something happened in my head. I'll never forget that moment. I'll never forget her face because all it took was a stranger smiling at me to decide I'm gonna stay on this earth just a little bit longer. You just listed a whole bunch of cool stuff that's happened. If that woman hadn't smiled at me, none of it would have happened.

I tell you that story to illustrate this point. It does not have to be anything as extreme as what we're doing. Sometimes just smiling at somebody can change the world. Like seriously, you have no idea what you can accomplish just by showing kindness to somebody you don't even know. Forget everything that we've done here in this city. All right There are 15,000 Afghans that are alive today because of the results of not just our efforts But a lot of organizations like us a lot of kids that thousands of children that are still alive Because I chose to stay on this earth and a lot of other good people chose to show up when nobody else would.

All because of a smile. All because of a smile. You mean normal folks change in lives? That is 100% normal folks change in lives. We'll be right back. John Stewart is back in the host chair at The Daily Show, which means he's also back in our back. entertainment, politics, sports and more from John and the team of correspondents and contributors. The podcast also has content you can't get anywhere else like extended interviews and a roundup of the weekly headlines.

Listen to the Daily Show, Ears Edition on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the best shows of the year, according to Apple, Amazon and Time, podcasts. We had a big bear of a man who was called Mal Evans, who was our logo. And he was coming back on the plane and he said, will you pass the salt and pepper? And I miss her then. I said, what? So I should pass her. This season we're diving deep into some of McCartney's most beloved songs. Yesterday, Band on the Run, Hey Jude, and McCartney's

favorite song in his entire catalogue, Here, There, and Everywhere. Listen to season two of McCartney, A Life in Lyrics, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Information Network and six-time Emmy-nominated news anchor, Vanessa Tyler, or wherever you get your podcasts. to know their HRD status, to not pass it on to me. To dreams achieved. Or still yet unfulfilled. From people who have made it. We started a hospital-based violence intervention program called the IV Project, and it stands for Interrupting Violence

in Youthing Young Adults. To those who have been left behind. But no one talks about the survivors of the gun violence and the numbers rising because the gun violence has risen. Politically. Financially. Emotionally. Spiritually. This is where we are. number is rising because the gun violence has risen. Politically, financially, emotionally,

spiritually. This is where we are. This is Black Land. And one of the things that my father said to me before he passed away, it's like almost like a prophecy. He said that I would be helping men. Listen to Black Land on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you get your podcast. We're at a at a crossroads as a civil society right now. We've been here before about a century ago. There's a sociologist or scientist, Robert Putnam, that talks about it. Yeah, we've been here before. And our faith in institutional leadership said an all time low, justifiably so. Watching what happened in Afghanistan and a million other things, the border crisis, fentanyl crisis, I don't trust our government, which is okay, because I don't feel like what we're talking about right now

is our government shop to fix. Government creates more problems than they're able to solve at a grassroots level. These are our communities. These are our streets. And more importantly, these are our neighbors. These are the people that we are supposed to show up and love unconditionally until they're able to love themselves. And we can all make a difference out there. Memphis does not have to be in the top five deadliest places in America. And before I'm willing to slow down what I'm doing, it's going to get off that list. I see you sitting there nodding your head. Then y'all are probably seeing me nod my head. If you can't listen to that and look at where you are now and what you're doing now and

understand why you no longer harbor shame now after hearing that. I just don't think you've been listening. or harbor shame now after hearing that. I just don't think you've been listening, you know? Yeah. Sure, Gil, sure, some regret, but. Not shame. No, absolutely not. What do you feel? When you hear your husband say what he just said. Just a load of gratitude. I'm so grateful because we shouldn't be here.

Y'all heard the story. I mean, we should not be here. And I'm glad that God gave us a chance. And honestly, I mean, we, you know, we did the work. We did a lot of work. We didn't sleep. Sounds like you're still doing work. We're absolutely, I mean, like 18 hours a day, my phone never stops ringing. His phone never stops ringing. We have kids that are like, hey, we need you. And that is a problem sometimes. You know, sometimes we put our kids, our own kids on the back burner,

kids that have already had to go through enough with our addiction. And I just almost hate to say this, but they're having to deal with another addiction now. It's just helping people instead of, it's just a good addiction now instead of a bad addiction. I was going to say it's healthy. Yeah.

I agree. It is a healthy addiction. Are they involved? They are. Our son, Jacob, I- It's different if they're watching versus if they're participants. Jacob has got, he just turned 18, but he went out to Evolde with us after the massacre at Rob Elementary. We got asked to come out there and I guess

initially worked with one of the first responders. We ended up providing security for 17 of the funerals. We worked with every one of the families. We fundraised for one of the girls that survived. Jacob went out there with us. It was such a godsend to the children that survived. Jacob went out there with us, was such a godsend to the children that survived. I mean, we still talk to those families to this day. Jacob went to win Arkansas and work the tornadoes with us, the fires in Lahaina, task force Lahaina. I don't know. I mean, he was literally looking for anything you can jump into. He was literally looking for anything you can jump into.

We do. But it's only where God really tells us to go though. I try to remove self-will from it as much as I can because I do go into some dangerous places. I do go into places, normal people, particularly some of that's not a special operations veteran should be going. And I know if I step too much into my own well, I'm going to get myself killed in some of these places. So, we try to go where God directs it. Right now, though, God has directed us to focus everything we're doing here in Memphis. How many houses total right now?

We've got nine. And let's just be honest. Some of these are leveraged. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is not like you're independently wealthy and you're paying cash and buying these houses. We got used to living with nothing. And even though we're making money now, we don't have excess. Our excess money goes into our philanthropy. and if that's the price that it costs to say so or so be it

Why stay in north of Georgia and do all this back and forth You must be buying a new set of tires every month that I have because you're literally going back and forth constantly You're commuting from Atlanta to Memphis like I compute to my commute to my house every day that's a good question. And I have tried to convince her to consider moving back here. I was wondering if this was going to be the answer. I think I know it. My kids, well, two of them have two addicts for parents.

The rest of them have one addict for a parent. And Memphis is not yet the place I want to raise kids. I get it. And I gotta believe in the deepest recesses of your mind. It could be a dangerous proposition for your family. We've already crossed one bridge. We're just not willing to take that risk yet. Fair enough. Comm. Yeah, exactly. Spend the wheels off some time. Exactly. I want to say one more thing.

I heard you talk about Aaron supporting kids, supporting you, Jess, supporting your friends, and then I heard you talk about Nick supporting you and you supporting Nick. These are your ex-spouses who have been, even throughout of it, remain loving and supportive, which tells me that they were two unique people that could separate the person from the addiction. Hate the addiction, love the person. I just want to give you an opportunity to speak for two or about both of those people, because they seem pretty phenomenal to me to have had their lives torn up by your addictions and still stuck by not only you, but one another as spouses.

by not only you, but one another as spouses. So we had, obviously we had a rocky road with Jess and Aaron in the very beginning, because there was, I mean, I made a lot of bad decisions, but I have often said I hit the ex-wife lottery, and I mean that with every five row by three. The ex-wife lottery. Yeah, well, he did. That's funny. I really did. You know, Aaron, I think I mentioned I've known her since I was 12 years old. She's just one of the kindest hearted people.

It has to be amazing. I've ever known in my life. Her life was impacted by addiction before me on her family side. And so while she can't relate, she gets it more than most would. And yeah, Erin. And you share children? Oh, yeah, we share five children. That's the biggest thing. You've got to always put the kids first. Always. Period.

I think it's very. Always has. Yeah, but I'm going to tell you something. Somebody could be your dad's a loser, your dad's lost business, your dad's an addict, he lives in trap houses, your dad's a piece of crap. But I sense that she's the kind of person that's like, we hate the addiction, but we love your dad. To my knowledge, she's never

said a bad word about me to the kids. We talk every day. One of my little women, Erin, I hope you're listening to this, but kudos to you for your heart and your patience. And I gotta believe she's rooting for the two of you. Oh, 100%. 100%. Yeah, Nick? Nick was, of course, he's not with us anymore, but he was, I think he was just so deep in his addiction that, and he was a little crazy out there sometimes, but I think he just had a lot of respect for Ben, because me and Nick were always down and out.

We were homeless ourselves. We never really had anything, you know, like Nick never really worked. He had a meth head for a dad and a crack head for a mom. So he's never known normalcy as I really hadn't known it when I was a kid. So he sees me get with Ben and Ben's this, you know, big time businessman and he's got his own house and he's, you know, able to pay for his own kids. So I actually think Nick really looked up to Ben and he very much valued his opinion. Nick was a good dude.

But he was a very good, he was a good guy. Huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge,

huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge nothing else. Yeah. And he just had a most respect. He is. I have no doubts about that. So we'll wrap this up with this. You heard the story of all that you've been through only four and a half years ago to pick up and and good Lord thank goodness for your parents to have a respite and to go to and now rebuild your business. Got involved helping Afghanistan people that fought for our country that were left behind and then turned that into work you're doing in Memphis now sheltering and harboring 70 formerly addicted folks getting their life back on track and I gotta believe you're looking

for the next house. What an amazing story. So if someone wants to contact you to find out more about what you did, let's say they want to do it with you, alongside you, in addition to you. How do people find you guys? So the nonprofit, there's two of them. We started Flanders Fields, which is FlandersFields.org to help homeless and addicted vets. We very quickly realized there's a lot more people that didn't serve that need the same help. So we started We Fight Monsters, websites, wefightmonsters.org. You can contact us through those websites. I'm on social media, LinkedIn, Facebook.

Give me handles. LinkedIn is the real Ben Owen. Instagram is the real Ben Owen. Facebook, I have no idea what it is, but if you just search Ben Owen, you're going to find me. I've had a ton of pictures go like crazy viral. Elon Musk retweeted one of them. I hold signs with stupid messages on them. They're not stupid. Plus, you're tatted up to hack it back, which is kind of cool looking. And you got the cool beard. You got the whole groovy dude going for sure. So I get why you'd be retweeted and stuff or whatever you call that. Yeah, we've got a big social media presence. I'm pretty easy to find on there.

And then Jess, of course, Jessica Owen on LinkedIn. And our halfway houses are Rebos Recovery, which is sober spilled backwards. Do that again? Rebos Recovery, which is sober spilled backwards. That's interesting. And so email addresses, if someone wants to email you. Email is Jess at Flandersfields.org.

Ben at WeFightMonsters.org. We're both very responsive when we can be. We're not that and then YouTube. We got a YouTube channel. It's at Monster Fighters. All right. There you have it. If you can't get in touch with you or find you through all of that, you're not trying real hard. And I don't do what I'm about to do a lot. But I'm going to say this, y'all, these are folks who were living in a $700 truck four and a half years ago.

blitzed out of their mind on heroin and crack and really fighting just to live another day. Having lost a couple of businesses, been foreclosed on a home, had three linebackers, though there are stuff in a storage unit, sold their phones for the next tip. And they are now four and a half years later, north of Atlanta, having rebuilt their businesses and not spending everything they make on themselves rather investing in the most desperate among us in our society. And if you heard their stories, they're not evil. They were addicts. And the vast majority of the people in these trap houses that are selling themselves for drugs or selling their houses for drugs or doing whatever they have to get drugs. They're people with souls and hearts and brokenness and their brokenness just has to happens to manifest itself in a way that maybe others don't and it's public,

it's scorned, people don't like it in the neighborhood and as a result, their particular brokenness we tend to shun and turn our backs on but their people with souls and lives just like just like Ben and Jess. And so I'm just going to say this one time. You know, if you want to donate to something, I can't imagine a better thing to do than to donate to turning a dope house into a hope house and entrusting it to the hands of people who know that life intimately and personally, who have now dedicated their lives and have proven after four and a half years they're never going back to trying to help those that were in the same position that them and they know it all too well.

And so they're not just able to fix houses, they're able to fix lives because they understand those lives. So if you feel so compelled, I hope you'll reach out. I have a particular affinity for what you're doing because everybody says, what are we going to do to fix it? And when you just got through saying, it's not the government's problem. This is our community and our city and our neighbors and our people. And therefore it's our responsibility. Dude, you just hit me right on the head because that's what I've been saying ever since this podcast started. I can't agree with you more. And I hope somebody listening here reaches out and helps you get the next nine houses

because it turns 70 and 140 and 140 and 280 and then all of a sudden things start changing and that 5% most dangerous city in the world gets better. And guys, I'm in awe of the lives you've overcome. And then I'm in awe of the lives you're now building and mostly in awe of the lives you are now changing. And I cannot thank you enough for spending the wheels off your car and spending the evening telling your story with me. Thank you so much for having us.

We appreciate you having us big time, brother. Nobody's coming, it's up to us. And thank you for joining us this week. If Ben or Jess Owen, or another guest has inspired you in general, or better yet, inspired you to take action by volunteering with We Fight Monsters, by donating to them, or starting something like it in your own community,

or something else entirely, please let me know. I really wanna hear about it. You can write me anytime at bill at normal folks dot us and you'll hear back from me. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and on social. Subscribe to the podcast, rate and review it. Help us out. Become a premium member at normal folks dot us. Any of these things and all of these things that will help us grow an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you next week. John Stewart is back in the host chair at The Daily Show,

which means he's also back in our ears. On The Daily Show, Ears Edition podcast. Join late night legend John Stewart and the best news team for today's biggest headlines, exclusive extended interviews and more. Now this is the second term we can all get behind. Listen to the Daily Show, Ears Edition on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Alec Baldwin. This past season on my podcast, Here's the Thing. your podcasts. is very much a form to it. You have a conversation based on that melody and those chord changes. So it's kind of like giving someone a topic and say, okay, talk about this. Listen to the new season of Here's the Thing on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm John Cipher and I'm Gerry O'Shea. We spent over 30 years in the CIA uncovering global conspiracies. Conspiracies aren't just a theory to us, which is why we started our podcast, Mission Implausible. Everyone has questions about conspiracy theories, but with our background, we can actually answer those questions.

Anyone can just start screaming about microchips and Jewish space lasers. But it's our mission to remove the bull and get down to what's real. Listen to Mission Implausible on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.