The Crusader
Williams is back on his size-16 feet in New York, ready to share the lessons he has learned since that fateful day in 2002. He knows some might hesitate to trust a convicted felon or doubt he’s a changed man. But Williams says he doesn’t ask people to believe him.
“Just watch me,” he says. “Just watch my actions.”
Williams is busier than he could have imagined so soon after being back on this side of the barbed wire. He is the vice president of Gourmet Services International and partnering with Loud Digital Network to host his own online channel. His calendar is filled with speaking engagements and charity events, some several hours away. And his cell phone rings constantly with more requests for his time.
“I can’t understand when people go to jail and come back out and don’t wanna tell nobody,” Williams says. “Man, tell somebody how bad this thing is so they don’t have to go there.”
Says his manager Akhtar Farzaie: “His story is what drives him every day. To be able to share to the youth or whomever it may be that’s willing to listen, ‘This is what happened to me, this is where I screwed up, this is what my downfall was.’ Just to share to people the ripple effect, that one split second can cause hurt to so many people.”
JW: It’s been a lot more challenging than I thought. I never imagined I’d be leaving the house at 5:30 in the morning and working 18-hour days. And I think I make it more difficult than it has to be at certain times by trying to save the world. Some days I just save the community, some days I just have to wake up and save myself. But it has to be the other way around. I never understood it on the airplane when people said, ‘Put on your own oxygen mask first,’ and I was like, ‘Why wouldn’t you want to put it on your parents or your kids first?’ You gotta get healthy first before you can truly help somebody.
How are you getting healthy?
JW: First of all putting God first, dying to my ego and staying sober, which is always a struggle. And I think learning how to say no. I learned how to say no in prison because that’s a big word in prison. ‘No, you can’t have my food. No, you can’t have my body. No, you can’t have all my time. No, I don’t agree with you. No, you’re not getting that ball on that bogus call.’ But when I got out, I caught myself being in the whirlwind [like] before I went in when sometimes people take advantage of your time.
People go, ‘Jay, come do this man, it’d be good for your image,’ and, ‘C’mon Jay, this will show that you’re doing things to redeem yourself.’ But you have to be very careful of being used in situations not for the glory of God but for the glory of the individual. It’s a fine line and you can’t be everywhere and be everything to everybody and I think that’s what got me into a lot of situations before because I wanted everybody to like me. I think right now I’m much more focused on not minding other people’s business. If you like me, I love it. If you don’t, that’s your business and I can’t mind it because I got too many things to do.
What kinds of things are you doing?
JW: One of things I never stopped, even after the accident, was doing charity events like I was doing before. But there’s never been a template for what I’m doing. Athletes and celebrities come out of jail, and most of them go back to play or they go back to making movies or songs, but they never go back and explain to somebody how one mistake or one accident will change your life forever and really mean it.
I’d be a liar if I told you I wasn’t trying to help myself. But I truly don’t want to see anybody cause any more pain to anybody. And I don’t want to see anybody in a cage, man. Everybody thinks they’re so tough and they can go to jail. I’ve never seen a newbie go to jail and not cry the first two months every night, scream and have to get suicide prevention in front of his cell.