Residents of San Quentin participated in several events throughout 2024. Yard events Awareness Week, Juneteenth celebration, Day of Peace, Mental Health Week, Summer Blast concert, and the SQ Olympics. The events give residents a chance to enjoy festivities, but also the opportunity to be a part of the conversations surrounding mental health, collaborating with faculty staff in order to build positive communication in an effort to tear down the “us versus them” mentality for a safer prison environment. These events foster a chance for team building and breaking down those barriers of communication, not only for the individuals with language barriers, but the communication between staff and the incarcerated.

Sports events like the annual visit from Golden State Warriors is important to residents because it offers hope for people in blue. Visits like those from LA Love, the Coquitlan Canadian Angels, and residents and staff from California Medical Facility’s baseball team, are events that normalize human interactions.

Whenever there wasn’t a visiting sports team, the California model team and San Quentin residents put on events like the RC car racing event on the baseball field and the Super Bowl watch party for residents and staff in Chapel B. Many events were held in Chapel B throughout the year. One example, honoring the residents and staff who we’ve lost.

Organizations like San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, Santa Clara prosecutors, San Francisco Police Department, San Francisco Public Defenders Office, Ella Baker Center, Life Support Alliance, and For The People engaged in dialogues with residents to discuss the solutions for reaching today’s youth and the value of resources post-incarceration. Several graduations were observed and celebrated this year including the very first trucking driving correspondence training program that graduated over two dozen residents. For the first time over 70 residents graduated from Arms Down, a program based solely around firearm addiction, according to the August article.

Actor Jerry Seinfeld, and Award Winning actress Kerry Washington, former San Francisco Giants player Drew Robinson, and Poet Tshaka Campbell, to name a few, are some of the celebrities who have visited San Quentin this year to support the ongoing transformation of the infamous prison.