San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

Archives for September 2020

The astonishing growth of San Quentin News

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This is a difficult time for the San Quentin News. But it’s not difficult for the reasons that plague nearly every other newspaper in the country. Those newspapers are in trouble because they are running out of readers, who increasingly switch to the internet for their information.

The San Quentin News has plenty of eager readers. Its current problem is that the staff inside the prison’s walls cannot gather for staff meetings to plan and run the paper and cannot easily connect outside the walls to get the paper printed and distributed to all of California’s other 35 prisons and to the hundreds of other people who usually receive it.

The reason, of course, is the COVID-19 pandemic that hit San Quentin harder than perhaps any other place on the planet. The sad fact of San Quentin’s infection rate and lockdown has been covered extensively. Meantime, the paper’s ongoing issues depend on stories written from inside and outside the prison, then laid out and prepared for printing and distribution by former staff members who earlier had been released from San Quentin, plus volunteer advisers who help the process just as they did inside.

But the core value and mission of the paper remains the same as it says on Page 1: Written by the Incarcerated – Advancing Social Justice.

That’s unique. Across America and the world there are a vast number of publications focused on criminal justice, but almost none of them are actually produced by incarcerated persons. At the SQ News it is these people who decide what to write and how to write it — how to approach and improve the system that governs their lives. And how to raise the money to pay for it — the California prison system provides computers and an office, but that’s all. Financial support for printing and distribution comes from outside the prison system.

In time, when COVID-19 recedes and San Quentin is again fully operational, the SQ News will be back as before, entirely the product of its incarcerated staff. Between now and then, it’s a good time to run through the astonishing transformation of the newspaper.

The roots of a paper at San Quentin go back to the 1930s to a short-lived publication named The Wall. It disappeared until the 1960s when a new paper called the San Quentin News emerged. It flourished with local prison news until the authorities grew sufficiently upset by its approach and forced its closure.

Then came an enlightened warden, Robert Ayers Jr., who in 2008 wanted to revive the paper, mainly as a conduit for in-prison news. He wanted freedom of expression — “not just the warden’s newsletter” — but he had no idea how dramatically it would grow.

Ayers didn’t know how to publish a newspaper and none of the incarcerated men in his care knew how. So, he recruited three retired newspaper people and tapped four inmates who were willing to have a go at it. The first issues were 5,000 copies of four pages printed on leftover orange paper on an ancient sheet-fed press and distributed within the prison. Then, to Ayers’s amazement and delight, the paper took off. Today it is this:

• Seventeen incarcerated staff members plus seven veteran newspaper advisers plus another six volunteers from outside the walls work in a dedicated media center.
• A dozen or more incarcerated men learn reporting skills in classes offered by the SQ News Journalism Guild. Successful students move on to staff positions created by the frequent parole of staff members.
• A rate of zero recidivism among paroled newspaper staff members.
•A newspaper staff of four persons without prior experience has blossomed into a large group of accomplished writers whose work has also appeared in outside publications such as The Washington Post.
• Usually 30,000 copies of a 20 to 24-page monthly paper are printed with color on a newspaper press.
• Distribution is to all 35 California prisons, plus county jails, plus some prisons in other states and also to contributing individuals and officials focused on criminal justice.
• A significant annual budget is supported by individuals and a range of foundations including the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
• Laudatory articles frequently appear in major outside publications ranging from the New York Times, L.A. Times and Politico, plus coverage on national TV.
• A website presents current and earlier printed issues in searchable form, plus video.
• There is membership in the California News Publishers Association that includes all of the state’s major newspapers.
• There is membership by staff writers in the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California chapter.
• A Twitter account carries links to SQ News articles.
• San Quentin News Forums: These groundbreaking events pair groups of incarcerated men with groups of officials involved with criminal justice who previously had no personal experience inside a prison. The Forums began in 2011 with the department of San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón and have expanded to include district attorneys from throughout the Bay Area and the United States, judges, school teachers, defense attorneys and police departments, most recently the San Francisco Police Department.

What you’re reading now is a stop-gap version of the San Quentin News. So, hang in there. We’ll be back with the real version as soon as COVID-19 allows it.

What’s really needed are paths to good jobs

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To stop the revolving door between poverty and incarceration, the more than 70 million Americans who are justice-involved need access to employment that allows self-perpetuating sustainability.

When people come home from prison or jail, they face immense challenges, not the least of which is stigma, and the burden that a criminal record places on people’s ability to find safe, secure housing and gainful employment.

While millions of philanthropic dollars pour each year into reentry and job training programs — which are necessary for people in the short-term — we need to do more to address the long-term impacts of incarceration on the perpetual cycle of poverty.

This includes investing in skill-building that begins inside of prison.
Take my friend Kenny B for example. Kenny has been home and working for six years and still cannot afford healthcare or his own apartment because he works at a low-skilled job.

Despite his efforts to care for himself and his loved ones, Kenny remains reliant on government social services and charities — some of which are funded by philanthropic dollars.

As a newcomer to philanthropy and a former entrepreneur, it hasn’t taken long for me to conclude that attention to policy reform, however necessary, has been insufficient if we are truly to dismantle the systems that create and perpetuate the twin cycles of poverty and mass incarceration.

We have, for example, witnessed how campaigns like “Ban the Box” can serve to distract us from the structural underpinnings of inequality in the workplace for Black and Hispanic men.

Instead, we should be creating paths to employment and entrepreneurship which create self-sufficiency in fulfilling their needs indefinitely while building social and economic equity.

Expanding support for programs like The Last Mile, which teaches computer coding to incarcerated people, and the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, which offers leadership training and a six-month, in-prison “mini-MBA” program, have much greater impact and outcomes than many programs administered post-incarceration.

These programs provide support and mentorship after people are released and — because they are private — they function outside of government bureaucracy.

I know how difficult it is to reenter the workforce after prison. I also know the value of learning skills while in prison that can provide near seamless reentry into society.

I spent two years learning to code while serving a 12-year sentence at San Quentin State Prison.

The skills I learned not only paved a path to near-instantaneous employment when I was released but also provided enough compensation to provide the resources I needed to thrive post-incarceration.

There are another 2.2 million people languishing in prisons and jails, most of whom will return to their communities. They will need jobs, housing, and healthcare, and most will have to navigate the daunting aspects of reentry without the professional skills required to pursue employment compensation that will raise them and their families out of poverty.

To move formerly incarcerated people out of poverty, we must reduce reliance on job readiness and training programs post-incarceration that are solely administered and funded by the government — and, we must work to improve these programs and their outcomes, and push to remove the red tape that makes the reentry process difficult to navigate. Instead, we should fund and support job training and entrepreneurship programs for people that begin while they are incarcerated.

We also need to change the narrative that incarcerated people are incapable of learning and performing in high-skilled jobs. High-skilled employment not only provides income and stability, it also enables an individual to gain equity in homeownership, to access health care, and to pay college tuition.

Having equity lifts people out of poverty and brings self-perpetuating, intergenerational sustainability.

Death Row lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson tells us that “The opposite of poverty is justice.” Until system-impacted people attain true economic freedom, they will remain “have nots” and suffer all of the systemic injustices that come along with being poor — including incarceration.

Aly Tamboura is a manager in the Criminal Justice Reform program at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. He joined the organization in 2017, after working as a software engineer. Having spent over a decade of his life incarcerated, Tamboura brings both his firsthand experience with the criminal justice system and his strong technical skills to CZI to help advance critical reforms

The demands of the #stopsanquentinoutbreak coalition

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This article was written back in August and reflects conditions then.
After months of urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to take action to curb the spread of COVID-19 in our prison system, we are relieved to see that he is finally starting to grant releases.

The governor’s July 10 promise to review 8,000 incarcerated people for release is a step in the right direction. But releasing a mere 6 percent of the people inside California’s overcrowded prisons falls woefully short of the large-scale decarceration needed to protect the health and safety of the community.

We stand by public health experts who have clearly stated that the prison population must be reduced to below 50 percent of what the prisons were designed for to adequately address unsafe overcrowding during the pandemic.

To reach the recommended target of 50 percent capacity, roughly 2,000 people would need to be released from San Quentin alone — the site of California’s worst COVID-19 outbreak where to date, over 1,900 people tested positive.

In just the last three weeks, at least 10 people have died at San Quentin due to COVID-19, the majority of them were housed on Death Row.

Failure to reduce the population significantly will result in incarcerated people continuing to face grave risk of illness, inhumane conditions of confinement, and death.

While the incarcerated community is most at risk, public health experts have emphasized that a drastic population reduction is also necessary to prevent community transmission and bed capacity shortages at local hospitals.

In addition, the Newsom Administration’s continued focus on people with non-violent convictions ignores the undeniable truths that those convicted of serious offenses grow and change over time, that people age out of crime, and that those committed for violent offenses actually have the lowest rates of re-arrest upon release.

We urge Gov. Newsom to expand his release plans to include incarcerated people across all categories of convictions and sentencing — including those serving Life Without Parole and condemned sentences — and consider individuals for release based on who they are today.

Families and community organizations are eager and prepared to receive our loved ones and the larger incarcerated community upon their re-entry. We will continue to push for comprehensive releases as long as the threat of harm and death by COVID-19 in prisons continues.

We reiterate the demands from our coalition, as stated at our recent press conference outside San Quentin State Prison:
1. Gov. Newsom must visit San Quentin State Prison and tour the facility with the press so he can bear witness to the deplorable conditions inside.
2. The governor and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation must immediately stop all transfers between California prisons, and from prisons to ICE detention centers.
3. Gov. Newsom must begin the process of drastically reducing the overall prison population to below 50 percent of current capacity, as recommended by Amend, a group of medical professionals at the University of California San Francisco that works to transform correctional culture to reduce debilitating health effects. Amend visited San Quentin in the midst of the outbreak, on June 13. In order to achieve this level of decarceration, Newsom must grant releases without categorical exclusions based on crimes of commitment or sentencing.
4. The governor must prioritize the release of transgender people who are at disproportionate risk of harm and violence in prison. Additionally, CDCR must ensure that the incarcerated trans community has access to hormones and healthcare immediately – before and after their release.

The #StopSanQuentinOutbreak coalition is comprised of formerly incarcerated folks, loved ones with direct connections to San Quentin State Prison, community organizers, and several social justice organizations. We commit to working with currently incarcerated folks to ensure that our advocacy is grounded in their needs and vision, as we engage in rapid response work combatting the horrendous COVID-19 outbreak impacting prison facilities across California.

The Beat Within – monthly quote

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https://www.thebeatwithin.org/

Your writing should reflect a positive message that helps the youth make a better decision in life. Your stories will be read by the youth in detention centers. If published, you will receive a free copy of the publication. Your story can make a difference. Tell The Beat Within you read about them in KidCAT Speaks!

Words from the wise, quote of the month – “I believe that you see something that you want to get done, you cannot give up, and you cannot give in.” – John Lewis (1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American politician and civil rights leader who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1987 until his death in 2020. Lewis also helped organized the 1963 March on Washington. He fulfilled many key roles in the civil rights movement and its actions to end legalized racial segregation in the US.

What do you think of this week’s quote? Can you relate? What is something in your life (your freedom, your family, making a change, an education, a job) that you want to get done, and you will not give up or give in? “I believe that you see something that you want to get done, you cannot give up, and you cannot give in.”
The Beat Within
P.O. Box 34310
San Francisco, CA 94134

United States resumes federal execution in midst of pandemic

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The federal government has resumed executions during the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting unsuccessful challenges before the U.S. Supreme Court.

One condemned man argued that the use of pentobarbital to carry out his execution would amount to cruel and unusual punishment. The challenges also question whether the reasonable fears of contracting COVID, held by the family of the victims and spiritual advisers were sufficient cause to impose stays.

Three federal prisoners were at the center of these emergency arguments, made necessary by the government’s unexpected and hasty decision to carry out executions in the midst of the pandemic.

Daniel Lewis Lee was put to death July 13, Wesley Ira Purkey was executed July 15, and Dustin Lee Honken was put to death July 17. All three were executed at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Lee maintained his innocence and argued that pentobarbital induces the effect of drowning, and therefore must result in extreme pain. A District Court ruled that his argument had merit, but a 5-4 Supreme Court majority rejected his position.

The majority pointed out that more than 100 pentobarbital executions have been performed without incident. The court also ruled Lee’s request for “last-minute” intervention was improper.

Lee remained strapped to the execution gurney for four hours while the legal jousting played out in the high court. Upon the lifting of the stay, his counsel received no notice of the final ruling, and Lee was executed in the middle of the night.

The family members of Lee’s victims had also filed petitions seeking a stay due to concerns about the potential of being infected by COVID-19 while witnessing the execution, due to the presence of four confirmed cases at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, but their request was also denied.

Purkey had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, dementia, and Alzheimer’s. In his case, the Rev. Seigen Hartkemeyer, a 68-year-old Buddhist priest and Purkey’s spiritual adviser, requested a stay because of his own age and physical health issues. He contended that he was being asked to minister to the condemned prisoner at the risk of his own life.

Honken’s spiritual adviser, Mark O’Keefe, a Roman Catholic priest, made the same argument.

The Supreme Court ruled that protective equipment was available for the advisers and that the executions would be carried out, regardless of the risk created by the pandemic.

The US Department of Justice later stated: “Despite the pandemic, the government still must carry out its important duties.”

These federal actions can be contrasted against what occurred in Tennessee, where two executions were delayed when it was decided that it was impossible for the court to provide full and complete due process under present pandemic conditions.

Federal executions are in contrast to trends in the country which are shifting away from capital punishment. In some instances, it has been the inability to attain execution drugs because pharmaceutical firms no longer wish for their products to be utilized in that fashion. But there are growing changes in the use of the death penalty.

A number of states have abolished capital punishment, and its support has waned in the past few decades.

This is happening now in an atmosphere of protests and unrest over inequalities and racial injustice in cities across the nation and the world.
Keith Dwayne Nelson was scheduled for execution on Aug. 28.

For prosecutors nationwide November’s election may heat up

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The November election can bring swift and significant changes to the current criminal justice system. This will be based on the outcome of many prosecutors’ races.

Reform activists have supported the election of district attorneys who have “promised to reduce reliance on incarceration, increase transparency and promote equity,” according to the Los Angeles Daily News.

LA County District Attorney Jackie Lacey will battle for re-election in a November run-off. She was elected in 2012, and ran unopposed in 2016. This year she faces George Gascon, former San Francisco district attorney.
“If Lacey loses to Gascon, maybe he’ll do for LA what he’s done for SF. Lacey seems to not want to change her ‘lock up everyone and throw away the key’ mentality,” said Bobby John, a San Quentin resident.

In Houston, incumbent prosecutor Kim Ogg faces a contested general election in November.

Mike Kennedy, a Texas native housed at SQ said, “I doubt Texas will ever have reform when it comes to criminal justice. It’s not as bad as Cali, but it clearly needs to work their (Texas courts) death penalty stance.”
In Chicago, Kim Foxx will face multiple challengers in the Democratic primary.

The historical nature of prosecutor elections is that they usually run unopposed and serve multiple terms. There are over 2,300 jurisdictions in America that have to vote for prosecutor positions, but only 700 jurisdictions presented the voters with a choice of candidates, according to the Daily News.

In 2015 the prison reform movement took a strong hold in state legislatures. There has been a notable shift in the national conversation about criminal justice, according to the article.

In his 2016 nomination acceptance speech, Pres. Donald Trump told the Republican National Convention that as president he would return the country to a “law and order” agenda. He now reportedly sees criminal justice reform as a way to woo African American voters, the article said.

Survivor describes his struggles battling COVID-19

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The Covid-19 outbreak at San Quentin has caused the death of 26 prisoners and one guard. Ron Lee Joffrion, 55, is a survivor of the outbreak.

He has been locked up at San Quentin for the last 14 years, working for the Prison Industry Authority’s (PIA) mattress factory and assigned to a cell in North Block. He contracted the virus during a period of quarantine at the prison.

“I’m lucky to be alive, and I continue to thank God I made it this far, but I also realize that I’m still in danger,” Joffrion said in an interview. Joffrion is one of the 3,000 prisoners currently housed here at San Quentin who are not able to social distance themselves, and who face unclean living conditions and poor healthcare delivery.

He contracted Covid-19 after the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation imported 121 men from a Southern California prison with a serious virus outbreak. San Quentin had been virus-free and the men were quarantined with no infections; within a short time, thousands of men and numerous guards had it.

Joffrion’s first symptoms were the loss of taste and smell, followed by extreme headaches, and he could not lay on his back. Within hours he could hardly breathe, so it was time for him to go “Man Down”—the prison term for when you have to call for help.

When the officers got to his cell, along with a nurse, he had a temperature of 101. They took him out to Badger section, part of the prison reserved for people who were showing symptoms. He stayed there for the next five days as his condition kept getting worse.

With no improvement, an ambulance transported him to Seton Hospital in Daly City, where he was placed in a special Intensive Care Unit for people from San Quentin. There he saw a lot of guys he knew from the prison.

He was not allowed to notify his family that he was sick and near death. For weeks he drifted in and out of consciousness, praying that he would get better and see his family again—his wife and two daughters.

After 30 days on oxygen in the ICU, he was returned to San Quentin, but instead of going back to his housing unit, he was placed in some sort of medical unit recently constructed in the PIA complex. He stayed there for the next 18 days, then was told that he was no longer infected, though he still suffered from a variety of symptoms.

Dr. Coleen Kivlahan, head of primary care at the University of California San Francisco, sees up to 20 patients like Joffrion, whom she refers to as “long-haul patients.”

She estimates that there are tens of thousands of so-called “long-haul patients” who continue to experience fatigue, chest pains, cognitive issues, and that much remains unknown about the virus, according to a Wall Street Journal article.

Joffrion still complains about his loss of memory and shortness of breath, and can hardly stand on his own. He is weak and frail after losing 30 pounds and cannot stand for longer than a couple of minutes.

As harsh as the virus was on him, he is glad to have survived, thinking back to some of the guys he saw at Seton Hospital who did not come back.

He realizes that he is not out of the woods yet. The virus is still here, and he can see it around him, that proper measures are still not in place to protect people in North Block. There is no consensus on how long he will be immune from catching the virus again, but some data suggests he will be immune for three weeks, while other data says he will be fine up to three months.

SQ’s Sgt. G. Polanco passes from COVID-19

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Sergeant G. Polanco

Sad news: West Block has lost another guiding light. On Sunday, August 9, Sergeant G. Polanco died from coronavirus. Polanco, 55, a West Block unit Sergeant, is among the growing death list in our San Quentin community.

We have lost 26 [29 by printing] of our incarcerated peers, friends, and associates to this deadly disease. Polanco became the first correctional officer to die of the illness at San Quentin.

The daily interactions between guards and prisoners are always complex: from the hardliners (on both sides) who view each other with disdain to the humane, who try not to lose their true selves in this environment.

Polanco was in the humane category. In a place of constant uncertainty, stress and toxic personalities—once again, on both sides—Polanco will be remembered as a fair and impartial person and officer. Polanco had the ability and skill to de-escalate any situation with his smile and years of experience. He would respect the rights of the incarcerated.

Sgt. Polanco with his friend

If we anticipated we had something coming, he made sure that we would get it. But if you broke the rules, he would give you what you’d got coming, too. Polanco was never away or isolated from the housing unit. He was always available to listen to grievances or just have a casual conversation.

“I remember when Sgt. Polanco would work West Block, we would talk in the rotunda, where I played my guitar, about politics, old school music, and travel,” said Aaron Taylor, former SQNews Sports Editor. “In those conversations, it was just two middle-aged men talking about life, not a correctional sergeant and an incarcerated person.”

“Polanco will also be remembered for being one of the first to volunteer and help sponsor the incarcerated “Sign Language program” where incarcerated men learn signing and become mentors to the incoming deaf population.

“Polanco was always interested in connecting to the human—which isn’t normal in CDCR—but also not an outlier at San Quentin,” said Taylor.

Sgt. Polanco with his wife

Polanco embodied leadership and what it takes to be of service to your community and nation. He comes from a military family and a line of correctional officers. His uncle Lee Polanco, a military veteran and former San Quentin correctional officer, retired and became the prison’s Native American Chaplain. Polanco’s son is currently in the military.

As the coronavirus continues to ravage San Quentin, while the administration attempts to get a handle on the situation, it shows that the illness does not discriminate between guards or the incarcerated.

Sgt. Polanco will be missed not just by his co-workers, but also by some of the men in blue, whom he counseled, gave support during rehabilitative programs and debated sports trivia with.

Rest in Peace, Sergeant.
Community is Community

Sgt. Polanco with his son and wife

CDCR and how they’re handing the global pandemic

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California prison officials are doing everything they can to protect incarcerated people from Coronavirus outbreaks, except release half the population.

San Quentin’s CCHCS building

“What we are not going to do is make a bad situation worse,” said Ralph Diaz, Secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) at a recent hearing. He cited homelessness as just one example. “Also, before I would do that, I would be looking at the empty housing units that do exist within CDCR and maximized zones to reduce density at institutions.”

Diaz as well as Clark Kelso, the federal receiver over CDCR health care for incarcerated people, spoke at the California Senate Public Safety Committee Meeting July 7.

The meeting, chaired by State Senator Nancy Skinner, was initiated to review the Corona virus outbreak caused when officials transferred infected men from one prison to two others. The purpose of the hearing was to review CDCR’s plans to prevent further spread.

Senate committee members, activists, healthcare experts, and state assembly members Marc Levine and Ash Kalra lined up to have their say and get their questions answered.

Levine called for accountability; Senator Scott Wiener said that if the state wants to control the virus, it will have to reduce the prison population
Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson was so concerned about the situation, she questioned whether CDCR saw incarcerated people as human.
In his opening remarks Diaz outlined the efforts CDCR has taken to prevent Coronavirus outbreaks (see sidebar) and he responded to Senator Jackson’s remark about whether CDCR viewed incarcerated people as human: “…that’s the farthest from the truth. We care about inmates, we care about staff.”

By May of this year, there were hundreds of positive COVID-19 cases at the California Institution for Men at Chino, a prison in Southern California.

In order to protect medically vulnerable people housed at Chino, the CDCR transferred some of the men to San Quentin and some to Corcoran State Prison. Several of the transferees had COVID-19.

At the hearing, federal receiver Kelso explained the decision to move men out of CIM. “On May 23, we decided that the expanding cases at CIM posed an unacceptable risk to the last remaining dorm where hundreds of COVID-19 high-risk patients were housed.”

Although each person was tested before transfer, Kelso said the results were far too old to be reliable indicators for the absence of COVID. “In some cases,” he said, “the results were four weeks old.”

“As it turned out, two of 66 patients moved to Corcoran tested positive when they were retested at Corcoran,” Kelso said. At San Quentin, he said that out of the 122 transferred from Chino, 25 tested positive at San Quentin.
Cases ballooned at both prisons. By the date of the hearing, Corcoran had jumped to 125 active cases and San Quentin had increased to 1,106.
There were no confirmed Coronavirus cases at San Quentin until after the group from Chino arrived.

Moreover, in order to reduce the dorm populations from 200 to 100 people at San Quentin, the cell blocks were filled with two men in almost every 6×9 foot cell.

According to Kelso, doctors from UC Berkeley and UCSF toured San Quentin on June 12. They noted that the cell blocks’ poor ventilation could cause the “virus to spread very rapidly,” just like the dorms.

Dr. David Sears, a physician and professor of medicine at the University of California who was on that tour,

The #STOPSANQUENTINOUTBREAK coalition

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Participants in front of the prison’s main gate

Major protests, media appearances and a growing social media campaign are being led by former San Quentin prisoners, families of the currently incarcerated, prison reform advocates and some government officials.

“We (the coalition) continue to agree with public health experts who have said that at least a 50%reduction in the incarcerated rate is necessary for public health safety,” said James King, former San Quentin resident, member of the Ella Baker Center for Human Justice, and state campaigner for the Oakland-based organization, #STOPSANQUENTINOUTBREAK.

The campaign is “not just for people inside the prison but people outside of prison,” King continued.

Assemblymember Ash Kalra speaking to the crowd

King paroled from San Quentin in December after being found suitable for release by the Board of Parole Hearings. King worked as a lead clerk for the Prison University Project (recently renamed as Mt. Tamalpais College), the institution’s college program.

Adnan Khan and Eric “Maserati-E” Abercrombie, two former San Quentin residents, took to the airwaves via social media and radio. Both men bought awareness to the prison’s COVID-19 outbreak in a podcast interview with Brie Williams of the Geriatrics and Palliative (GeriPal) Care blog.

“Physical distancing is impossible in prison and jail,” said Khan on the broadcast. “They’re not built for it. Walkways are three feet wide. Bunk beds where you can feel all your neighbors’ breath.”

“To compound the issue, prisoners are afraid that if they get sick they will be put in The Hole (solitary confinement). So they don’t admit when they’re sick,” Khan and Abercrombie added. “The major response should be decarceration. Reduce the crowding in our overcrowded correctional facilities.”

Since returning home, the pair has worked tirelessly to bring awareness to the community.

“Many people think of prisons as disconnected from society, like a cruise ship,” said Khan. “But for every two people in a correctional facility, there’s about one person who works in the facility and lives in a community. The workers are bringing out whatever they’ve been exposed to in prison.”
Khan and Abercrombie produced short films and public service announcements through FirstWatch, a film-making program at San Quentin before paroling.

Khan is the executive director of Re:Store justice, a justice advocacy organization.

Abercrombie is a singer/songwriter whose music can be heard on the Fox Sports documentary Q-Ball and the San Quentin podcast Ear Hustle.

In July the #STOPSANQUENTINOUTBREAK coalition movement reached the gates of the prison. Chants of “Free Them All” and banners calling for action waved in the background. The coalition held a press conference that included these elected officials: State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco; Assemblymembers Marc Levine, D-San Rafael; and Ash Kalra, D-San Jose.

Some of the officials called for a continued monitoring of the COVID-19 outbreak inside California prisons. “We must sustain attention here at San Quentin and at every facility where people are sentenced for time and locked up across the state of California,” said Assemblymember Levine. “We must sustain this attention because unfortunately COVID-19 is not going away, so we can’t let our guard down.”

San Quentin’s COVID-19 outbreak ballooned to more than 2,000 positive cases and the death of 26 prisoners and one correctional officer.
Activists and family members are calling for release of those incarcerated to make it easier to control the spread of the virus inside the prison, and bringing the medical care within the system into compliance with the constitutional standards that were court-mandated.

James King arriving at the press conference

The activists are not naïve of the challenges and possible lack of political will to have major releases. But the returning citizens who have become agents of change urge Gov. Gavin Newsom and CDCR to follow that data.
“The science of people aging out of crime, as well as the CDCR’s own risk assessments that have identified tens of thousands of people as low risk for recidivism or violence, should be the criteria,” said King.

Jody Lewen, Prison University Project executive director, weighed in on what is needed during these times of trials in her July COVID-19 update letter:

What we need right now is political leadership that 1) directly addresses the public’s misguided fear of anyone who has been convicted of a serious violent crime; 2) proactively seeks out real strategies for safely housing and supporting thousands of people as they return from prison…and, above all, 4) transforms the state’s sentencing laws.
“What we do not need are legislators, advocates, or members of the media who seek to craft sensationalistic scandals out of deeply entrenched systematic problems or sidestep collective societal failures by, for example, calling for the heads of the leadership of San Quentin or CDCR.

Lewen added that things at San Quentin would be dramatically worse if San Quentin did not have its current warden.

“There must be space in this society for the humanity of every single person,” said Lewen. “The coming weeks and months will likely challenge us in unprecedented ways to respond to the question of why the lives of people in prison—including those who may have committed extreme violence—have value and meaning.”

King concluded, “We stand by ready to help facilitate and use our resources to facilitate safe entry.”

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