KENNY JOHNSON, AUTHOR: The Last Hustle, FORMER PRISONER, FOUNDER: THIS SACRED SPACE Thursday, March 22nd 5pm PST/8pmEST Kenny Johnson devoted his life to crime, beginning in his early teens and served over twenty years in various city, county, state, and federal prisons. During his early years in prison, he spent most of his time participating in all sorts of religious and substance abuse groups. Hopefully, in one of these groups he would hear the magic words that would release him from the grip of his inner and outer prisons. It was his inner desire for freedom that led him and a band of truth-seekers to a meeting in the prison chapel. Antoinette Varner, his spiritual teacher answered his most pressing question. “It is my understanding that we have to wait until we die before we can receive God’s Grace. Is that so?” She replied, “Kenny, God’s Grace is here now! Kenny you think you are a convict, you think you are your name, you think you are a black man. Kenny you are none of these things.” Instantly he knew he would never be a thief again. But how do you re-enter the world outside without resorting to old weaknesses? How would he survive and how would it be possible to maintain his newly found experience of grace? “This ever present Grace supports me in each moment now.” Paroled from prison in 1997 and successfully discharged from supervision, Kenny now resides in California. He visits inmates at the San Quentin Prison, and around the world. Kenny has founded This Sacred Space a non-profit corporation dedicated to sharing the timeless message that real freedom resides within each one of us. “If there is anything worth serving, it’s this love. If there is anything worth being, it’s this love. If there is anything worth talking about it’s this love. If there is anything of real value it’s this love”. – Kenny Johnson The Last Hustle Kenny Johnson is the author of the book “The Last Hustle” chronicling his years as a criminal and how he was transformed while incarcerated. His story proves that however hard and unpromising our particular life circumstances, we can discover true happiness. He speaks of this freedom at correctional facilities the world over. His story is an inspiration to hundreds of others. For thirty-one years Kenny Johnson’s most fervent desire was to hear his name ‘ringing in the streets’ as a hustler, thief, and pimp. Running parallel with that desire was a persistent seed of spiritual longing that would not leave him alone. Kenny was arrested thirty-seven times and spent much of his life in prison, or on the run. Each time behind bars sent him into a deep and profound despair. Eventually his desire for lasting freedom would drive him to find a power that could not only get him through his final sentence, but free him from prison forever. “I had to find a power that would not only get me through my current sentence, but would free me from prison forever.”