San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

Exciting experiences for the palate

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A popular social activity on Valentine’s Day is the romantic dinner. Introducing our palates to new and exotic foods can be fun and make a lasting impression. For many, fast food or being cheap is not an option — especially if it’s a first date. Many individuals brush up on a foreign language to impress their dates as they order at a fancy, exotic restaurant. Others may opt to cook an exotic dish for their dates at home and serve it by candlelight.

“Asked On The Line” asked some of the men on the mainline, “If you could try, or learn to cook, a new type of food that you have not tried before, what would it be? If you could learn a foreign language, what would it be?”

N. Andino: “I would like to try food from India but would like to learn to speak Chinese.”

B. Muro: “I would like to try eating a big, freshly caught fish cooked on hot coals and served with a shrimp cocktail. I would also like to learn to speak Portuguese because I like Brazilian women.”

G. Pureco: “I would really like to try any Korean dish made with dog meat and I would like to learn to speak Italian.”

M. Jones: “I would like to try ‘real’ fried chicken again because I haven’t had real fried chicken in 35 years. It has to be cooked crisp and golden with salt and pepper. I would also like to learn to speak British English like people speak in Great Britain.”

V. Nguyen: “I would like to try Japanese food like sushi and tempura and I would like to learn to speak Japanese, too.”

M. Angulo: “I would like to try real, homemade menudo and I would like to learn to speak French.”

M. Morales: “I would like to try deer meat and learn to speak Chinese.”

M. Benitez: “I would like to try seafood, all types of seafood, and I would like to learn to speak a language called Mien.”

A. Torres: “I would like to try a New York steak with a baked potato and garlic bread. I would like to learn to speak French.or Italian.”

P. Feliciano: “I would like to try real Italian food and learn to speak Italian or French.”

M. Saldana: “I would like to try food from any other country except the USA and learn to speak German.”

R. Malo: “I would like to try real, authentic Mexican food and learn to speak Spanish.”

M. Lopez: “I would like to try any new dish that has ‘camarones’ and I would be interested in learning how to speak Chinese.”

M. Velazquez: “I would like to try cooking white rice, sausages with jelly or jam together. Also, I would like to learn to speak French.

December 2016 News Briefs

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Arizona — After the 2012 decision barring mandatory sentences of life without parole for offenders who were juveniles when they committed their crimes—and making the law retroactive—the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the state courts to review the sentences in several cases, SCOTUSblog reports. Justice Sonia Sotomayor explained that the sentencing judges in these cases did not consider whether or not the offender was among the very “rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility.”

Houston, Texas — Every year 16,000 to 18,000 felons return to the city after being released from state prisons, Courthouse News Service reports. Assisting the returning citizens is the City of Houston Community Reentry Network Program, which since 2008 has graduated more than 500 people from a 12-week program that offers clients counseling services with case managers, life skills classes, computer and job interview training, help with resumes and job referrals.

Kansas City, Mo. — Buzzfeed News reporter Christopher McDaniel is suing the state’s decision barring him from witnessing executions. McDaniel says he has a right “to ensure that executions are carried out in a constitutional manner,” The Associated Press reports. The state said that “McDaniel is asking this court to go where no court has gone before: declare that watching an execution is a ‘benefit’ from the government.” There’s no authority for that “or that McDaniel has a property interest or a liberty interest in watching Missouri carry out an execution,” the state’s dismissal motion read. McDaniel, a former St. Louis public radio reporter whose stories have been critical of Missouri’s death penalty procedures, applied in January 2014 to be a witness. However, McDaniel never got an official response and 17 executions have since been carried out by the state, where 26 inmates remain on death row.

New York City — Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city jails will end using solitary confinement to inmates 21 years old and younger. According to The Crime Report, solitary confinement is used to punish jailhouse infractions, in addition to securing a high profile inmate or separating suspected gang members from the general population. The practice goes by many names: Administrative Segregation, Special Housing Unit, Secured Housing Unit, “The Box,” “The Hole,” and on Rikers Island, it is called “The Bing.” Nevertheless, they all have similarities: 23 hours inside a cell roughly the size of a parking spot, no meaningful human contact, with a food tray passed through a flap in the door.

Washington — In an attempt to avoid the negative stigma connected with the word “offender,” prison officials are phasing out the word and replacing it with “individual,” The Seattle Times reports. Staff are now using the word “student” for those in classes, and “patients” for those in the infirmary. The action follows similar efforts by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and U.S. Department of Justice.

Delaware — The state received a $741,847 federal grant to improve access to free attorneys for juveniles facing criminal charges or seeking an expungement, The News Journal reports. The funding will be used to improve access to and the quality of attorneys appointed to represent juveniles. “This grant places Delaware at the forefront of juvenile justice reform,” Lisa Minutola, chief of legal services for the Office of Defense Services, said in a statement. “Access to counsel is a constitutional right and this grant will help ensure that all children have a qualified advocate at their side and the ability to pursue a bright future.” The grant comes nine months after the state received a $147,983 federal grant to develop a plan to address juvenile justice reform.

Washington, D.C. — President Obama has commuted the sentences of 944 inmates thus far, more than any other president in U.S. history, The Christian Science Monitor reports. The White House released a list of those granted more lenient sentences, many of whom were originally serving sentences that ranged from several decades to life, mostly for drug related crimes. “The President is committed to reinvigorating the clemency authority, demonstrating that our nation is a nation of second chances, where mistakes from the past will not deprive deserving individuals of the opportunity to rejoin society and contribute to their families and communities,” wrote White House counsel Neil Eggleston in a blog post. In August, the Justice Department announced that it would no longer use private prisons, institutions that have long been known for high rates of violence and safety violations.

Nashville, Tenn. —The private prison firm Corrections Corporation of America is renaming itself CoreCivic, The Wall Street Journal reports. The rebranding move was announced by CEO Damon Hininger in an attempt to diversify the company into prisoner re-entry programs, building jails, and maintaining them, rather than just guarding and operating facilities. The move comes during a public debate about whether federal, state and local governments should use private prisons and facilities to hold convicted criminals, suspects awaiting trial, and immigrants awaiting deportation.

Alabama — The execution of Thomas Arthur was put on hold by the US Supreme Court, The Christian Science Monitor reports. Arthur was sentenced to death after being convicted of the 1982 murder of Troy Wicker, his girlfriend’s husband. Though the court order did not state its reasons for the stay of execution, Arthur’s lawyers have been challenging Alabama’s lethal injection procedure, saying it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

States considering taking guns away from domestic abusers

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Many states are now considering laws that would strip gun rights from anyone who has been convicted of a domestic violence-related crime or is under a court-imposed protective order, The Associated Press reports.

Driving this are the many instances where women and children have been killed or wounded by known abusers, the report says.

Statistics show that hostile relationships sometimes turn deadly when coupled with the presence of guns, according to the report.

“…the number of privately held firearms in America has nearly doubled in the last two decades, while the number of gun murders per capita was cut in half.” Reason Magazine December 2017 REASON.COM

An average of 760 Americans were killed with guns by spouses, ex-spouses or dating partners between 2006 and 2014,” according to FBI data covering all states except Florida and the District of Columbia, says the AP.

While the issue of gun rights remains highly contentious, there is rare consensus among lawmakers and governors in support of restrictions against known abusers, the report points out.

“Domestic violence is definitely an area where there is the most agreement between the gun lobby and gun-violence prevention advocates,” said Allison Anderman, staff attorney with the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence in San Francisco, says AP.

Over the past two years more than a dozen states have strengthened their laws to keep firearms out of the hands of domestic abusers, and similar proposals in several other states are being debated this year, the report says.

The country’s strongest gun rights lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA), has shown some willingness to establish compromise. Although they’ve opposed the farthest-reaching measures, they’ve stayed neutral on others, and also have participated in rounds of negotiation, the report adds.

“There is no evidence that simply taking away people’s guns without a fair hearing makes the victims any safer,” NRA spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen said, according to AP.

Many who consider themselves responsible gun owners worry that legislation being proposed “could be exploited by vindictive ex-spouses who level false allegations of abuse,” the AP says. There is a feeling that the laws would be applied too broadly, the report adds.

But for Hollie Ayers, a Pennsylvania woman who three years ago witnessed her 2 ½ year old son shot and killed in front of her by her abusive ex-husband, the proposed restrictions are of common sense necessity. “This is a no-brainer to me,” she says.

Ayers, too, was shot in the leg and face, and her ex-husband killed himself after the rampage, the report details.

Although Ayers had obtained a permanent “protection from abuse” order against him, the judge did not include stipulation that her ex-husband surrender his weapons, even after he violated the protective order, the report says.

“The system failed my son, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure it never happens to another child or another woman,” said Ayers, who is now pushing for a Pennsylvania law that would require people to turn over their guns when judges issue protection orders against them, AP reports.

The federal government is assessing the problem as well. President Barack Obama started 2016 off by strengthening the federal background-check system, which has denied gun sales 120,000 times since 1998 because of domestic violence convictions, says AP.

Under federal law, all felons, anyone convicted of a misdemeanor domestic abuse crime and individuals subject to permanent protective orders are prohibited from buying or owning guns.

States, however, have been enacting their own laws that often match and in some cases exceed federal law restrictions. Gun control advocates are delighted over this, the report says.

Yet there are clear signs of compromise concerning what is certainly a divisive issue. As evidence, “South Carolina and Wisconsin are two states dominated by Republicans and with a strong tradition of gun ownership that have taken steps to restrict abusers’ access to guns,” says AP.

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker signed a law in 2014 requiring that people who are subject to domestic abuse restraining orders turn over their guns within 48 hours, AP adds.

And South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley signed a measure in June 2015 that includes a life ban on gun ownership for the most serious violence offenders, AP reports.

San Quentin News Adviser Retires After Eight Years

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The San Quentin News, created in 1940 by Warden Clinton T. Duffy, is at the end of an era, which began eight years ago under the guidance of one remarkable volunteer, who has decided to step down.
Veteran journalist John C. Eagan, who has been volunteering his time mentoring prisoners, including myself, in the craft of journalism, is leaving his position as senior adviser to the San Quentin News.
The legacy he leaves behind is a strong, professional, respected newspaper built from scratch. It is one of the most remarkable revivals in the annals of Bay Area journalism.
Eagan was asked in 2008 by then-Warden Robert Ayers Jr. to breathe new life into the San Quentin News, which had been on hiatus for years.
Eagan told Ayers he agreed to take the position “as long as the newspaper was not going to be a mouthpiece for the administration.”
As an unpaid volunteer adviser, Eagan oversaw publication of San Quentin News’ first edition in almost 20 years in June 2008. He was also instrumental in creating the paper’s Journalism Guild, a training project, where he has spent his Fridays for the last eight years instructing prisoners in how to be journalists.
On these Fridays, Eagan, despite his ailing knees, saunters in with the confidence of a seasoned newsman. He sports his black blazer and tie, topped off with his signature broad-brim canvas hat, creased at the crown. He takes his seat at the front of the class, sets his briefcase down and brushes his tie down to a neat, businessman’s white shirt. The day’s lesson begins.
“Write tight,” Eagan tells the class of incarcerated men. “Tell me what I need to know, and don’t tell me what I don’t need to know.”
His 80 years and fulsome experience in newsrooms command the listeners’ respect.
Eagan, who has interviewed the likes of former President Ronald Reagan and former Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court Earl Warren, gives instruction, even when he himself is the interview subject.
“What are the three most important questions you should ask me?” said Eagan, taking a break from editing articles with journalism students.
I asked how he became a journalist. Eagan set his coffee cup on the table, leaned back in his chair and smiled like a man who enjoys story-telling. And Eagan’s life and long tenure as a journalist is nothing less than a narrative suited for a novel.
Eagan was born in 1935 in Crystal River, Florida, in a home his carpenter father built. At age one, along with six of his seven siblings, he was sent to the Florida Baptist Children’s Home after his mother died due to complications with an ear infection.
The children’s home imbued the child with a foundation of strong Christian values. After 17 years in the Children’s Home. Eagan graduated from high school and joined the Army in 1954. After a stint overseas, he returned to the States and enrolled in University of Florida where he struggled to find what he really wanted to do.
First Eagan majored in engineering. All went well, according to Eagan, until he enrolled in a calculus class. The class was so difficult he changed his major to architecture, a profession that inspired him during his Army time in Europe. It also helped that his new major did not have such rigorous mathematical requirements. However, he changed yet again.
After a flu epidemic hit the college, leaving most of the school newspaper staff ill, Eagan was asked to assist. “I told the editor I didn’t know how to write like a journalist,” says Eagan.
According to Eagan, the editor’s response was: “’Whatever you can do is better than nothing.’” After the editor read the articles Eagan wrote, he called Eagan “a really good liar,” because the articles were well written and suited for publication.
“I found something I could do well, so I changed my major and graduated in three semesters,” said Eagan.
When it’s editorial crunch time at the San Quentin News, Eagan offers the slogan, “Let’s get out a paper and we’ll make the next one better than the last,” a mantra which is deeply rooted in his college journalism experience.
 

“It’s been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done in my life”

 
Eagan’s mentorship is the driving force behind elevating the San Quentin News from a four-page tabloid, distributed inside prison walls in 2008, to a 20 to 24 page, award-winning singular and respected journalism voice, which is distributed in all 34 California prisons.
“What else should you ask me?” quips Eagan, with his fingers laced together and brown eyes signaling an eagerness to tell another story. “How about the most important story in which I have been involved?”
When Eagan was the assistant bureau chief and news editor at the Associated Press (AP) in Chicago, he came across a story in a local newspaper about a doctor, Henry Jay Heimlich, who was promoting an emergency technique he claimed would eject an object, such as food, from the trachea of a choking person. Many rejected Heimlich as a quack, but Eagan asked one of his reporters, “What if it’s true?” and submitted the story for national coverage. The article was published worldwide.
The Heimlich Maneuver, as it is called now, has been adopted by emergency response officials all over the world and is credited with saving countless lives, including Ronald Reagan and Eagan’s own granddaughter.
After graduating from the University of Florida with a degree in journalism, Eagan went to work at the Fort Lauderdale News. From there he got married and moved to California and was employed at the Arcadia Tribune, where he worked as a reporter and photographer.
After a year working at Arcadia, Eagan moved to Napa.
While working for the Napa Register, Eagan was tasked with going to the family ranch of Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren on Christmas Eve to take a family picture. A month earlier, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Texas and Chief Justice Warren was appointed by Lyndon Johnson, JFK’s successor, to head a commission to investigate.
Chief Justice Warren, who had an aversion to interviews, invited Eagan to write a profile on him as long as there were no inquiries about the JFK assassination. For years afterward Eagan spent his Christmas Eves at the Warren family’s St. Helena ranch where he would interview Chief Justice Warren and take a photograph of the Warren family.
The decades of Eagan’s career took him to multiple news agencies. On top of holding positions in many news outlets, Eagan held executive positions for the AP in San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and Chicago. The last position Eagan held in the news business was publisher of the Marinscope Community Newspapers, which encompassed five weekly newspapers.
Eagan also founded the San Rafael Computer Training Center, which he headed for 12 years in the 1980s and ‘90s.
What are his thoughts about his time here at San Quentin? His pending departure brought a cloud of melancholy drifting over his usually cheerful face.
“It is time for me to step down from the San Quentin News,” said Eagan, with a hint of sorrow in his voice. “It’s time to go to work on three books I have put on the back burner for eight years.”
According to Eagan, “The San Quentin News has become an outstanding, high-quality, award-winning publication that does a remarkable job of reporting what is good and what is bad about the criminal justice system – and what needs to be improved or changed.”
Under his tutelage, the newspaper to which he devoted so much time and energy has given a voice to a part of the American population which has dwelled in the shadows.
“It’s been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done in my life,” reflected Eagan.
One of the books Eagan is writing is titled “What If It’s True?” a witty phrase drawn from the accumulated wisdom of a lifelong journalist.

Revisiting Black History’s National Movement

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Once a year, America turns its eyes toward Black history to honor heroes of the nation’s evolution from slavery to Jim Crow and the struggle for equal rights.
In 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seal planted the seeds of a Black nationalist movement in Oakland, CA, that spread rapidly to the rest of America. And now, after 50 years, the Black Panthers theme of armed militancy, which began in Black communities, has been expropriated by the radical right. The Panthers’ calling card of carrying weapons openly in public has become a disturbing part of daily American life in communities from Florida to Oregon, even on some college campuses.
Black history narratives honor the likes of Harriet Tubman, who formed the Underground Railroad, Frederick Douglass, who fought to abolish slavery, and Martin Luther King Jr., icon of the civil rights movement. They are recognized for what they did in the name of freedom, equality and progress. But not much is said about how the Panthers managed to set the tone for the politicization of weaponry by militant right-wing groups, paving the way for the “Stand Your Ground” laws and the “open carry” frenzy.
The Panthers party spread its roots into the fabric of every African-American community, expanding into a national organization with over 40 chapters throughout the United States, and abroad, including Britain and even Israel. Armed resistance was an attractive summons to people of color everywhere. The Brown Berets movement in East Los Angeles was a Chicano/Latino version of the Panthers.
Originally named the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the organization opened its first Oakland office in January, 1967 responding to a need for what its founders described as a mechanism “to combat police violence in Negro neighborhoods.” The party had a simple but important platform for winning the minds and the hearts of the people: bringing services, including food, to underserved neighborhoods.
In response to the Panthers, communities around the nation rallied to create programs such as the Free Breakfast for School Children Program, which opened up from coast to coast in cities such as Oakland, San Francisco, Atlantic City, NJ, Boston, MA, New Haven, CT, Winston-Salem, NC, and elsewhere. Free medical clinics, free clothing programs, food giveaways and educational opportunities called Liberation Schools were also established. “Each one, teach one” was the model. In addition, some cities formed Legal Defense Programs for Black tenants and those facing criminal charges.
While some pragmatists in the party toiled in the community to make improvements, some charismatic leaders, such as former San Quentin prisoner and author of Soul on Ice, Eldridge Cleaver, set out on a course of militancy. They were involved in several armed and violent confrontations with police. In its first few years of existence some Panthers as well as law enforcement officers were killed or injured in clashes.
Cleaver was appointed to a controversial lectureship at U.C. Berkeley. His official title with the party was Minister of Information. Cleaver continued with his in-your-face rhetoric, at one point calling then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan a “punk, a sissy, and a coward,” according to the Los Angeles Times. It was not long before Cleaver was back behind prison walls, his parole revoked for an April 1968 shootout with Oakland police in which Bobby Hutton was killed.
With Cleaver back in prison, a talented speaker, Fred Hampton, who rocketed into the leadership of the Illinois chapter, gave moderates hope. Hampton referred to himself as a “revolutionary.” Those Panther supporters looking for a leader to embody the values of the Black community and transform its ideology into the national movement they desired, while avoiding prison and armed conflict, saw Hampton as their savior.
However, “one of the many obsessions of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover…” according to author James Lardner, was “a premonition about the rise of a charismatic Black messiah, something he was determined to prevent.”
In response to what the Bureau described as “the greatest threat to internal security of the country,” the Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) was created to “disrupt, discredit or otherwise neutralize” the Panthers and other groups looked upon as threats.
Indeed, much of the Panthers’ downfall that they did not bring upon themselves came from FBI actions that later in Senate hearings were described as illegal and unconstitutional. But before the program ended, Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, John Huggins and many others were killed, and Panther supporters say COINTELPRO was involved.
The increasing loss of leadership around the country was devastating for the Panthers:
Co-founder Huey P. Newton was shot and arrested for murder after a traffic stop in Oakland, October 1967, and sentenced to prison.
Panther offices across the nation were raided by police who arrested numerous members.
The costs of bail and legal fees took a toll on the organization.
Besides fundraising and donations, the main enterprise the Panthers utilized to fund its operations was the publishing and sale of the Black Panther Party newspaper, which began in April 1967. Though the newspaper had an impressive distribution, it did not produce the revenue necessary for prolonged legal battles with the government.
Despite dwindling financial resources and the pressure of government surveillance programs such as COINTELPRO, the depleted organization soldiered on.
In the years that followed, Cleaver fled the U.S. to Cuba in 1974, finally settling in Algeria to escape an attempted murder charge.
Bobby Seale resigned from the party in 1974. That same year Elaine Brown was appointed to lead the Panthers. Under her leadership the Panthers “focused on electoral politics and community service.” Brown, still involved in Oakland politics today, helped Lionel Wilson become Oakland’s first Black mayor.
Huey P. Newton, who served time in the California Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo, for his 1968 manslaughter conviction in the death of a police officer, went on to earn his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz. In August 1989 he was killed in West Oakland in what police say was a drug-related murder. Tyrone Robinson, then 25, was tried and convicted of Newton’s murder.
Fifty years after its beginning, the Black Panther Party’s efforts to address many of the very issues facing African-American communities today have been absorbed by the larger and more amorphous and interracial Black Lives Matter movement. Meanwhile the Panthers’ most lasting legacy may be one they never bargained for: They inspired Whites on the right to adopt militancy backed up by firearms as a tool of intimidation.

Nine Men Complete CTE Course To Prep Them for Jobs After Parole

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The men had assembled a stage in an old industrial prison warehouse and proudly stood on its steps when they received certificates for completing the Career
Technical Education (CTE) Construction Laborers Course. The program gives incarcerated men job skills aimed toward landing them employment upon completion of their prison terms.
The nine graduates participated in a six-month program that teaches prisoners OSHA safety and construction  procedures, with a focus on concrete technology, according to the instructor, Greg Venegas.
“Sometimes it’s a challenge to get the men to recognize the importance of what they are learning. The program is connecting them to a good future,” said Venegas, who has been instructing the class since February.
In addition to providing job training, the graduates also gain an expense-paid entrance into L.I.U.N.A Laborers International, a year’s paid dues, along with a set of hand tools — all of which are provided by CTE at no expense to the graduates.
“I’ve been in the construction trades most of my life,” said one of the graduates, Phil Budweiser. He acknowledged the benefits of being in the laborers’ union, which offers workers health, dental and retirement benefits.
The program is part of the California Prison Industry Authority’s (PIA) commitment to reduce California’s recidivism rate, which is currently 54.3 percent, due partly to innovative employment training programs.
“This program has a 7.1 percent recidivism rate, which is the lowest in the nation,” Rusty Bechtold, an administrator with PIA Workforce Development Branch, told the graduates.
The program’s significant reduction in recidivism is congruous with another impressive fact: The program is active in 14 California prisons, with 70 percent of the participants being women.
Despite construction labor being a male-dominated profession, graduate Lucious Jackson remarked, “I have learned to receive instruction from a supervisor and how to get along with co-workers from all walks of life as we worked together to meet the same goal: to successfully complete the project.”
One of the class projects was building forms and pouring small practice squares of concrete adjacent to the warehouse, which provided the men practice in concrete finishing. The Nine Men Complete CTE Course To Prep Them for Jobs After Parole graduates also refurbished the old San Quentin printing shop, transforming it into a modern computer coding class that is another innovative project taken on by PIA/CTE to prepare prisoners for employment.
The laborers’ program began eight years ago when PIA began building modular buildings and decided to train prisoners to pour concrete slab foundations and install the buildings. This led to a partnership with the labor union, which assisted in training prisoners in construction, according to Bechtold.
The next recently approved project for the program participants will be removing and replacing a large swath of concrete in front of the computer coding classroom, according to Venegas.
Indeed, there is no shortage of opportunities for the program with San Quentin’s aging infrastructure needing many upgrades and repairs.
Those who are interested in participation can request a job application from PIA and submit it to Mr. Laredo. The criteria for entering the program are possessing a high school diploma or GED and a parole date.

Honoring the Life of Judith Puchner Breen

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Judith Puchner Breen, beloved San Quentin volunteer whose Video Literacy Project and passion for teaching touched the lives of many prisoners, died Jan. 17.
Breen earned a B.A. from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. from Cornell University. Her extensive career teaching English literature began at Temple University in Philadelphia and finished at San Francisco State University, where she taught from 1969 to 2006. After retiring from public teaching, she brought her smiling personality and instructing experience to San Quentin through the Prison University Project.
“The word on the yard was Judy Breen was a tough teacher,” said Bobby Evans, former student and Video Literacy Project coordinator. “With Judy, her students knew there was impartial treatment – a student is a student, no matter where you are or what your situation.”
Indeed, Breen was known for her toughness in grading English papers as well as for her devotion to spreading literacy throughout the prison population. Her passion for teaching and her understanding of the power and freedom found in literature made the men at San Quentin perfect subjects for her empathy and unique style of teaching.
Breen could be just as tough as she was compassionate. She would hand out books to prisoners with the expectation that they would complete the books – no exceptions, no excuses – and have well-thought-out responses.
This passion for commandeering prisoners and rousing them to read sparked her creation of the Video Literacy Project. Breen interviewed prisoners on video about their experiences after completing a book-reading assignment. The interviews were then played on the San Quentin institutional television channel for viewing by the entire prison population.
“Her time spent at San Quentin was in many ways the most meaningful work of her life,” said Molly Breen, one of her two surviving daughters.
When Breen was not teaching, she was an avid bird-watcher and gardener, according to her family.
“It is no longer a mystery why we became such close friends. I did not know of her love for birds and gardening,” Evans said, after learning of Breen’s passing. “I too get so much from gardening and the animals it attracts.”
After Breen departed from her volunteer work in 2011 due to health issues, Evans began a beautification project, planting flowers and other plants around the San Quentin education complex where Breen spent her time teaching. After the warmest January in California’s recorded history, the plants in the garden were in full bloom the day Breen passed.
For many of the men at San Quentin, the spirit of Breen will live in the garden, the legacy of the Video Literacy Program she created, and the world she opened up to them through her promotion of literacy.
“Judy is a friend, and we love her with warm memories of her presence here with us,” Evans said. “She was a powerful influence in her home, her career, and here at San Quentin. She would always ask, ‘What can I do?’ I would respond, ‘Judy, being here with us is doing enough. You taught classes, created the Video Literacy Project, and talked to the men.’”
Breen is survived by her two daughters, three grandchildren and five beloved nieces and nephews.
 

Zoe Mullery Encourages Sharing Creative Stories

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For many prisoners, Wednesday is just another humdrum day behind bars spent missing the free life and their loved ones. However, for a small group of men, Wednesday evenings mean packing into a cramped Arts in Corrections room where long-time mentor and writing instructor Zoe Mullery encourages them to craft and share stories.
“My experience in prison is the extreme circumstances, the under story of violence, anger, desperation, failure, shame, and oppression that pervades, provides a startling backdrop for the humor, thoughtfulness, respect, patience, and creativity I witness in my classroom,” says Mullery.
Since 1999, she has been entering the prison gates under the sponsorship of the William James Foundation, which is one of the last foundations supporting prison artists.
“I think that art, which in my case means writing, but is true to any form, is not only valuable and important for incarcerated men but for human beings in general,” says Mullery.
Mullery says she always wanted to be a writer since writing her first book, Willie the Whale, in second grade. As a child, she suffered from insomnia, staying awake in bed, writing stories in her head on a “mental note pad.”
As an adult, she lived in a cabin in the California woods with aspirations of crafting a novel. After four frustrating years, she enrolled in a Creative Writing Program at San Francisco State and graduated with a MFA in 1995.
Since graduating, Mullery has written many short stories, a few being published. In addition, she has written her first novel, which she frustratingly admits is stuck in its first draft because her life has become increasingly busy.
Mullery’s life changed in 2010 when she adopted her daughter and from her tireless commitment to raising funds to build a school in the African Country of South Sudan – a project she started after meeting, Michael Kuany, one of the “Lost Boys” of Sudan at the church she attends.
The Lost Boys (so named after the boys in the story of Peter Pan, who lost their parents and raised themselves) are a group of over 30,000 Sudanese boys who were displaced by war in the South of Sudan.
The boys walked hundreds of miles to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya to flee the violence. Along the way, as many as 16,000 perished from starvation, disease and being attacked by wild animals.
In 2007 Mullery traveled to South Sudan, which has been ravished by decades of civil war.
“Of course there were no schools, and the children told us frequently and passionately how much they wanted to go to school,” explained Mullery on her visit to Sudan “Young orphan boys slipped notes to us asking us to take then back to the U.S. so they could be educated and understand how to stop wars.”
The children’s pleas inspired a friend, Kuany, to build a school for the children of his home country. “He founded a non-profit organization called Rebuild Sudan (rebuildsudan.org) and asked me to be on the board,” says Mullery.
After six years the organization has raised over $170,000 and has the school half built.
“We still have quite a bit of money to raise,” says Mullery. “Perhaps another $120,000, but seeing the frame against the skyline has lifted the spirits of the community as well as those working towards the school’s completion.”
Several years ago, Mullery brought Lost Boy Kuany to visit her San Quentin Creative Writing Class, where he told the prisoners about his harrowing story of survival and triumph.
So inspiring was Kuany’s story, one of Mullery’s students, JulianGlenn “Luke” Padgett, wrote a fictional narrative set in war-torn Sudan, which was subsequently published in an anthology of short stories called Brothers in Pen created by the San Quentin Creative Writing Class.
Mullery has been helping undeserved writers publish their work for many years, including 15 anthologies at Delaney Street, a drug treatment program in San Francisco, two at Northern California Woman’s Facility in Stockton and six at San Quentin.
Currently the men in Mullery’s creative writing class are preparing for a public reading of their work. It will be held on July 13 in the Addiction Recovery Counseling building.
“What stories we live by, feed ourselves, create and give power to are essential to our identity and therefore our relationship to what our lives mean and what others’ lives mean to us,” says Mullery. “This is not special to prisoners. However, I do find it particularly poignant to engage stories with prisoners as prisoners are often people who have lived by stories which have hurt others and are often people who have been hurt by the stories others live out or believe about them.”
Creative Writing Class anthologies can be checked out at the San Quentin library or purchased at lulu.com/spotlight/northblockpress or at brothersinpen.wordpress.com.

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Respected Educator Leaves San Quentin

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After eight years as a San Quentin teacher and administrator, William J. Reeves has been transferred to Solano State Prison as vice principal.
Reeves started out at San Quentin as a volunteer in the Kairos religious program and took a full-time position in the Education Department in 2004. At one point he was vice principal in charge of vocational programs.
Before teaching in prison, Reeves taught students in an alternative education program. He said alternative education program students typically suffer from behavioral problems. Inside prison, students usually experience motivational problems.
“I enjoy teaching people who want to learn. That’s what the ‘R’ in CDCR is all about,” said Reeves, referring to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
As a facilitator of Academic Program Counsel, Reeves oversaw a group of prisoners who discussed educational issues and concerns at the prison. The group met once a month and produced recommendations for the administration on making the educational process work better for prisoners and staff.
“I like working with students on one level, but I also like working with teachers to help at the organizational structure of the system,” said Reeves.
After statewide funding cuts to prison education in 2010, Reeves vacated the vice principal position and returned to the classroom as a teacher in H-Unit, a change that he said he welcomed.
He could have taken a career path that would have made a rich man, Reeves said. But he knows he has a greater impact on society by helping incarcerated people receive an education.
“Follow your passion,” said Reeves, referring to how a Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford University motivated him. “The speech made me think of how I should lead my life. I thought of the last line in my favorite poem, by Robert Frost, ‘The Road Not Taken.’ ‘I took the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference.’”
His last day at San Quentin was Sept. 14.
“I am not closing the door on coming back to San Quentin,” said Reeves. “However, my career path is just going in a different direction right now.”
 

Cardboard Canines Scare Off Honkers

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The flock of Canadian Geese crowding San Quentin’s lower yard has near-doubled over the past few weeks. More than likely, the new residents are the same geese that previously lounged on H-Unit’s yard, until a duo of fanged guard dogs were deployed to run off the pesky honkers.
The dogs used to chase the geese from the H-Unit yard are imitations, created by inmate John Norris.
“It took me two days to make each dog from old toilet paper boxes,” said Norris. “I used discarded potato chip bags and old mirrors to make the tails reflective, which helps to scare the geese off.”
The idea for the cardboard canines came from the H-Unit yard officers who were unhappy with the mess that the annoying geese left behind, fouling up the walkways and recreation areas. A correctional officer asked if Norris if could make a replica dog after seeing a model Harley Davidson motorcycle he made in the prison’s hobby craft program. Norris told the officer he would give it try and the first dog was put to the test a week later.
“The dogs are working,” said an officer, who asked not to be named. “When the geese are flying in, they see the dogs and turn around.”
The geese are native to North America. Loss of habitat and over-hunting in its native range caused a large decline in their numbers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, according to Wikipedia.
However, today their numbers are on the rise and they have become a nuisance in many California communities, including San Quentin.
The administration has received a donation and is looking to purchase 5 plastic decoy dogs for permanent placement on the prison yards, according to Associate Warden Kelly Mitchell.
The geese aggressively beg and aggravate inmates and staff. They also leave a substantial amount of droppings that are known to harness bacteria
Until there is a permanent solution to the goose problem, Norris says he plans to keep making his cardboard and newspaper canines, although he admits they probably will not survive when the rain starts falling.

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