San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

America stagnated by “compounding moral debts”

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Two essays that appeared in The Atlantic magazine set up Ta-Nehisi Coates as a voice for African-Americans. He wrote The Case for Reparations in 2014 and in 2015, he produced Letter to My Son.

In The Case for Reparations Coates cites, “Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy.”

Coates argues, “Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.” In the article, Coates uses the in-depth history of Clyde Ross, a real person, to support the case for reparations.

In Letter to My Son, excerpted before publication of Between the World and Me, Coates tells his 15-year-old,

“Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage.” The father cites his own life and compelling evidence to say that African-Americans live under a deliberately inflicted state of violence.

Since the publication of those works, there has been little movement to push for the US to consider its “moral debt” to the descendants of slaves. Since 2015, police have killed hundreds of African-Americans either wrongly or mistakenly, yet no laws were broken in doing so.

Coates’ latest focus on African-Americans combines all of his historical knowledge in, The Water Dancer (2019), a novel full of magical realism.

The historical fiction is set during the oppressive time of US slavery. The protagonist, Hiram, struggles against what it means to have a father and brother who are white, yet his darkened skin enslaves him. In the midst of subjugation, he has his eyes on a slave woman that his White uncle owns.

Coates uses his scholarly knowledge about the Underground Railroad, fugitive slave laws and the abolitionists as fodder to set up various dramas that his characters must navigate. In doing so, Coates created a world different from reality, while at the same time a believable world based on American history.

The following narration describes the feelings involved in Hiram’s enslavement. He fo- cuses most acutely on the sepa- ration from his family, another parallel to incarceration.

To sell a child right from under his mother, you must know that mother only in the thinnest way possible. To strip a man down, condemn him to be beaten, flayed alive, then anointed with salt water, you cannot feel him the way you feel your own. You cannot see yourself in him, lest your hand be stayed, and your hand must never be stayed, because the moment it is, the Tasked will see that you see them, and thus see yourself.

The following passage points to Hiram’s acceptance of the conditions that created his stark reality as well as his detachment from humanity: Slavery is everyday longing, is being born into a world of forbidden victuals and tantalizing untouchables—the land around you, the clothes you hem, the biscuits you bake.

Coates is able to capture Hiram’s docility and hopelessness that comes with slavery, which also is a condition shared with the incarcerated and rehabilitated: So many of us who went, went with dignity and respect. And it occurred to me how absurd it was to cling to morality when surrounded by people who had none.

Coates uses Hiram’s memory to recall events in great detail as a literary device to drive the novel’s plot, which translates to “freedom by any means

necessary.”
The Water Dancer is the product of Coates’ thinking in all of his works—that African Americans are integrated to all of US history, not just segregated segments that seem irrelevant today.

The story is a remarkably poignant exploration of oppression that has happened and can’t be changed. In The Water Dancer, Coates explores the possibility of what can be changed by using historical fiction and magical realism as a guide.

Prison Truth: The Story of the San Quentin News

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Veteran journalist Ted Koppel got it right when he said William J. Drummond proves to be the right person to tell the tale of San Quentin News (SQN). Drummond’s credibility as the storyteller comes from his long and eventful career as a journalist, UC Berkeley journalism professor and his once or twice a week venture inside the SQN newsroom office for more than eight years to mentor incarcerated journalists.

Prison Truth: The Story of the San Quentin News, (2020) is a detailed account of the journey that led to SQN becoming a first-rate prisoner produced newspaper. The newspaper was reborn in 2008 after a 20-year hiatus. Maverick warden Robert Ayers, Jr. wanted to break down the rumor mill and give prisoners trustworthy information about life at the Q.

Since then, SQN has been honored with an award for “extraordinary journalism” by the Society of Professional Journalists and written about by at least five major newspapers.

Drummond began his own relationship with SQN in mid- 2012 by holding a college class in the newsroom. Since then more than 80 of his students have helped incarcerated journalists develop and structure their stories before handing them over to the more than half- dozen advisers. At SQN, the advisers, who are professional journalists, do the final editing and proofing and have done so since its 2008 resurgence.

Drummond has witnessed the monthly paper go to press in spite of major limitations:

no internet access, slow access to outside sources, no smart phones and a literal wall that keeps the staffers away from the community. Drummond notes, “What is lacking in convenience is made up for with grit and determination.”

Much of the grit and determination came from SQN’s third editor in chief, the late Arnulfo Timoteo Garcia, who frequently spoke about how Federal Judge Thelton Hender- son impacted him. After Henderson had visited San Quentin in the summer of 2010, he urged Garcia to invite as many people as possible to come inside San Quentin to see the rehabilitative efforts of the prisoners.

Garcia followed that advice by inviting judges, district attorneys, county sheriffs, state and federal lawmakers to at- tend and participate in San Quentin forums— we’ve now had more than two dozen of them—where prisoners talk about their incarceration experience, rehabilitative efforts and reentry plans.

The forums, modeled after restorative justice circles, give the outside public safety officials an authentic and intimate view of prisons and its occupants.

As a direct result of the forums, San Francisco district attorneys created a Formerly Incarcerated Advisory Board. Newly elected District Attorney Chesa Boudin said that he intends to keep the board.

Prison Truth examines the advantages of having stories told by people directly affected by incarceration. The resulting news narratives are from the vantage point of embedded re- porters.

One of the newspaper’s original mandates is to scrutinize programs designed for rehabilitation.

“Accountability interviews,” ones in which incarcerated people talk about what they did to land in prison, appear regularly. The stories not only teach by example, they reveal the resilience of the human spirit. For prisoners who are committed to rehabilitation, the articles serve as guides.

Prison officials recognize these benefits so it’s not surprising that the newspaper and its staff writers have gained the support of an assortment of public safety officials.

Drummond asks, “Are the inmate staff’s efforts journal- ism? The question he poses is bold, because traditionally, journalism has been viewed as impartial and objective with- out an advocacy role. So, if it isn’t traditional journalism, is what we are doing worth it? He concludes in the affirmative: “I believe journalism is an effective tool for rehabilitating people in prison…Journalism places an additional burden on writers: What they write must be accurate, true, and above all fair.”

I can attest to Drummond’s claim. I have learned that when incarcerated people read stories about redemption, recovery and returning to the community, they are inspired to do the same.

I have heard free people talk about the ways that articles in SQN have changed their own incarcerated loved ones. I’ve also heard free people talk about how heartening it is, for the first time, to read positive words about their sons, fathers, brothers, husbands and boyfriends.

I have witnessed children reunite with parents and incarcerated men drop gangs, dope and bad behavior after taking advantage of available programs to reunite with their families. So, is what we do good journalism?

Prison Truth gives readers the chance to answer this question.

NEWS BRIEFS

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Washington, D.C. — Gallup reports that for the first time in 34 years, a majority of Americans would rather sentence a murderer to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole than the sentence of death. The 60% to 36% difference for life imprisonment marks a shift from the past two decades, when Americans were mostly divided in their views on how to punish murderers.

Arizona — Prison officials must give clear guidelines about what prisoners can read, according to a U.S. District Judge ruling, The Washington Post reports. The guidelines must have a “bright-line” regarding permissible reading material prisoners may possess before February 2020. The order comes from a 2015 lawsuit filed by Prison Legal News, a project of the Human Rights Defense Center, when prison officials didn’t deliver four issues of the monthly journal to its incarcerated subscribers because the content in those issues was deemed “sexually explicit,” according to court documents.

Indiana — Jay Vermillion received $425,000 as part of a settlement because prison officials kept in him in isolation for 23 to 24 hours a day, CNN reports. Under state law, a person can spend a maximum of 30 days in restrictive status housing, also known as solitary confinement or segregation. Then the individual’s status must be reviewed. Vermillion’s lawsuit claimed that prison officials sentenced him to a year of disciplinary segregation, despite the law.

Lucasville, Ohio — The execution of 69-year-old Alva Campbell was called off Nov. 6 after the executioners could not find a vein to insert the IV that delivers lethal drugs. It was only the third time in modern U.S. history that an execution attempt was halted after the process had begun, reports Stock Daily Dish.

USA – The misapplication of forensic science contributed to 45% of wrongful convictions in the United States proven through DNA evidence, The Innocence Project reports. False or misleading forensic evidence was a contributing factor in 24% of all wrongful convictions nationally, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

USA – Private prisons in the United States incarcerated 121,718 people in 2017, representing 8.2% of the total state and federal prison population, The Sentencing Project reports. Since 2000, the number of people housed in private prisons has increased 39%. However, the private prison population reached its peak in 2012 with 137,220 people. Decreasing use of private prisons make these latest overall population numbers the lowest since 2006 when the population was 113,791.

USA – The number of people serving life sentences in U.S. prisons is at an all-time high, The Sentencing Project reports. Nearly 162,000 people are serving life sentences – one of every nine people in prison. An additional 44,311 individuals are serving sentences of 50 years or more, otherwise known as virtual life sentences.

Washington – Tarra Simmons, of Bremerton, who in 2017 won a Supreme Court fight to sit for the state bar exam, despite her prior criminal conviction, plans to announce her candidacy for the state House, Northwest News Network reports. Simmons is seeking to become the first formerly incarcerated person elected to the Washington Legislature, at least in modern times.

Flying Kites depicts the harsh realities of isolation in prison

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A blending of visual manipulation with a literary representation of solitary confinement

Students of the Stanford Graphic Novel Project produced a compelling and well-researched portrayal of the living conditions at Pelican Bay State Prison in an effort to show what it’s like to live in isolation.

At first glance, Flying Kites: a Story of the 2013 California Prison Hunger Strike (2019) is about Security Housing Units (SHU) at Pelican Bay. But it is also about so much more. Layered into the plot is a father, Rodrigo, doing everything he can to reconnect with his daughter, Luz. It is through their story that we understand how painful confinement is, both solitary and otherwise.

“Writing letters is the only way I can break up the monotony and loneliness of the day,” Rodrigo writes to Luz. Without telling Luz that he plagiarized Jack Henry Abbott’s memoir, The Belly of the Beast, he adds, “Solitary confinement in prison can alter the ontological makeup of a stone.”

Through letters, Luz’s feelings for her father deepen. She is disturbed when he writes descriptions of his living conditions. It is difficult for her but she works at integrating her daily life with the nine-hour drive between Oakland and Pelican Bay to visit her father.

The tragedy of Rodrigo’s relationship with his daughter derives from his eagerness to communicate—he couldn’t find the right words to express the psychological impact that long-term isolation had on him. When Luz discovers the truth, their relationship becomes strained.

In the graphic novel, the students used eight frames on a single page to show Rodrigo living in a cell. The subsequent frames get repetitively and increasingly smaller and crowded until, three pages later, more than 200 frames show Rodrigo living in his cell appear on a single page. Readers/viewers get a stark feel of Rodrigo’s lonely life.

“I spent 12 to 15 hours a day pacing. The rhythm of my feet on the concrete floor was the only thing that calmed me,” says Rodrigo as he comes to terms with the fact that he’ll be in Pelican Bay indefinitely. He adds, “Ten years later…I appear to have settled down. Yet the scream inside me has never stopped.”

Flying Kites has twists and turns—nothing is smooth and not all the problems of incarceration are solved. The Stanford students went to great lengths to make the story as authentic as possible. They used virtual reality technology to get their own taste of life in solitary confinement. They also read letters from prisoners who were currently or had previously been in solitary confinement.

There are lessons in Flying Kites universal to any reader, such as the power of family connections, accountability, the importance of believing in yourself and finding an authentic voice.

Eleven students, two teaching assistants and three instructors, collaborated on this storytelling project. It’s the brainchild of award winning author Adam Johnson. Johnson visited San Quentin’s creative writing program last August.

Although the hunger strikes did lead to the end of indefinite SHU terms and greater access to rehabilitative programs for prisoners, isolation in other ways still exists in prisons. Flying Kites offers readers vivid pictures as well as a poignant understanding of the overall living conditions for incarcerated people.

Appendix C: Interview with Charles Carbone offers extended commentary about what happened to many prisoners after the hunger strike ended.

Carbone concludes that systemic problems still exists, such as ending negative consequences from perceived associations with other incarcerated people that come from dubious or confirmed sources.

The United Nations has determined that keeping a person in solitary confinement more than 14 days amounts to torture.

Art aficionados seeking new perspectives from prison artists

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Oakland Museum

About a dozen San Francisco Bay Area art lovers in search of astonishing art ended up at San Quentin State Prison on August 21.

One of the visitors, Christine Lashaw, a curator at the Oakland Museum, says she’s interested in telling stories about incarceration. Her idea is to display San Quentin art in the Oakland Museum.

“How can we get people thinking and doing different things about the people in San Quentin?” Lashaw asked.

A curator at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, said that she’s looking for artists who currently have limited exposure to the art world, which brought her to San Quentin.

She talked about the 1940 murals produced by Diego Rivera as she stood in front of murals in the prison’s South Dining Hall that were painted by Alfredo Santos in the 1950s.

Santos won a prison art contest to paint a mural on one of the 100-foot-long dining hall walls and began painting in 1953. After completion of the first mural, prison officials decided to allow Santos to continue painting. He has generally been credited with all six 12-foot-high murals on the walls of the dining hall. It’s clear that some of the murals are the result of a community effort.

While on the tour, Tomoko noted the similarities between Rivera and Santos. She said that it’s clear that Santos drew on the work of Rivera.

In the arts studio Tomoko admired the work of incarcerated artists. “The art here is impeccable,” Tomoko said to the assembled artists. “It’s amazing to hear stories about people who have discovered their abilities and talents in prison.”

A representative from Pro Arts Gallery & Commons [located at 150 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Oakland, CA 94612] presented its publication, Pro Arts Commons, which aims to give readers an understanding of common spaces in Oak- land.

According to the Pro Arts Gallery & Commons newsletter, spaces for public gatherings have been steadily disappearing. “It is not accidental that the land and resources belonging to and affecting the whole community are being commodified.”

Some of the objectives of the organization include getting people to find new ways to reclaim public spaces as well as actively co-creating ideas, projects, programs, and published content.

Currently, Pro Arts Gallery & Commons also seeks material from San Quentin writers.

The tour ended with the outside artists and incarcerated artists agreeing to find ways for future collaborations.

Remembering another fallen brother: Robert Bruce Garrett

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The San Quentin community came together on Sept. 18 to pay tribute to the life of Robert Bruce Garrett, 69, who passed away July 30 after a long battle with cancer. He was born Feb- ruary 1, 1950.

Garrett, known to his friends as Lucky, leaves behind dozens of fellow men- in-blue, who said he was their barber. Others said they passed the day playing his favorite game, dominoes. Many more of his friends were in a Christian fellowship with him.

John “Gillie” Gillies be- came friends with Garrett at another prison and while at San Quentin shared a cell with him for seven years.

“When I first came to prison, he was there for me,” Gillies said. “He took me under his wing and showed me the ropes.” Gillies added, “He prayed a lot and always talked about Jesus – he’d read the Bible almost every night.”

Jimmy Carson who’s known Garrett for 37 years said, “I know Lucky is looking down on us.” Speaking about his friendship with Garrett in the free world, Carson added, “I met his brother. One night I had a ’55 Chevy, and we were riding around—we had the music up, enjoying the night.”

Carson talked about recon- necting with Garrett in prison about 15 years later.

“Lucky was at an AA meeting sharing, and I went up to him and said, ‘Are you Lucky?’ I said, ‘I’m Jimmy Carson.’ He said, ‘Boy you got fat,’ and I said, ‘You got old,’” which brought laughter in the chapel from about three dozen prisoners who sat with Linda and Louis Rise, church volunteers who teach a humility class.

“What a blessing Lucky was to Linda and myself,” Louis said. Referring to visit- ing Garrett in the hospital, he added, “We were totally taken aback from the love that was shown to Lucky from every- one, including the correctional officers.”

Kenny Rodgers did time with Garrett at Solano state prison.

“I knew him as a man of God and doing a lot of things for people,” Rodgers said. “I remember being on hard times, and he brought me a jar of coffee.”

Rodgers added, “He was comfortable with what was happening. It’s a joyous time to celebrate his life.”

Billy Dooley spent a lot of time with Garrett at San Quentin.

“I knew him as a man of God and doing a lot of things for people”

“This is real hard,” Billy said. “We used to play hand- ball. They called me Cinder Block—I’m short and fat, but he’d carry me to victory and tell me that I did that.” After some chuckles from the crowd he added, “He taught me how to pray and be serious.”

Billy then asked the audience to take a deep breath, let it out slowly and said a prayer for Garrett.

Here are other things said about Garrett from the men-in-blue:

Lucky was a faithful man to the study of God. He was just a real down to earth guy.

This is not a sad time. We had a good relationship. He had lots of conversations about how far the Lord has taken him.

We miss you cutting our hair in North Block. I know you’re up there cutting hair.

You were always loving and kind. You were always honest in your love for God. I will see you in heaven.

He was my barber. Lucky was a baseball fan. The only fault he had was he was a Dodgers fan.

He’d give me a buzz cut that should have taken two minutes, (but) because he’d talk about God and that’ll make it 15 minutes.

Lucky was an all-around good guy. He was my barber.

Lucky was a Christian. He loved to play dominoes. He’s up there having a blast.

We played dominoes on the yard. When I played against him, I’d try to get him off his game by talking about the Raiders.

Lucky’s favorite passage in the bible is Psalm 23. He espe- cially liked the last line.

Quentin Blues, led by Richie Morris (guitar and vocals), performed somber tunes as well as an original song writ- ten by Andrew “Boots” Hardy (guitar and vocals) with the hook, “Won’t you take my hand sweet Jesus, I’m finally coming home.”

The rest of Quentin Blues are Dwight Krizman (bass), Chris Thomas (mandolin and vocals), Mark Kinney (piano) and Joe Thurson (percussion).

Historical fiction gives account of the slave trade

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Homegoing, a debut novel by Yaa Gyasi (2016), explores the unhealed wounds of slavery, compellingly rendered through several hundred years, seven generations, fourteen characters over a span of two continents. The title, “Homegoing,”comes from an old African-American belief that death allowed an en- slaved person’s spirit to travel back to Africa.

The saga, which is conveyed in interlinked stories, follows two African tribes connected by half-sisters unknown to each other. One sister becomes a part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, while the other grows up in Africa.

The narrative has a distinctively feminine and African-based voice, making it a thought-provoking read, particularly to an American audience.

As an example, she de- scribes the sensitivity that comes from caring for someone as if it’s: An unapologetic, unquestioning love like that of the stray dog that follows the man home from work every evening, happy, simply, to be allowed to walk nearby. She describes The Castle’s interior, a place where slaves were kept prior to their trans-Atlantic voyage to the Americas as such: There was no sunlight. Darkness was day and night and everything in between.

According to a blurb on the cover by The Christian Science Monitor, Gyasi has “a poet’s ability to paint a scene with a handful of phrases.”

Homegoing’s chapter structure reminded me of There There by Tommy Orange (2019), reviewed in SQ News August 2019, where each chapter is an experience of a character. Orange shaped the storyline in the characters’ desire to arrive at a place they all had in common, but Gyasi chapters are a character’s experience that lasts a generation. Each of Gyasi’s chapters also ties historical relevance to events, examples include: what it was like for African tribes to trade slaves to the English; how blacks lived through the convict lease laws after the Civil War; what it means to be a sharecropper; the reasoning behind The Great Migration; Africa’s decolonization efforts.

Gyasi’s narratives interject a subtle sense of cruelty into how a racist society drains the life out of Black people; meanwhile, the desire of Black people to live peacefully and on its own terms is never lost.

(Editor’s note: The saga of Black people striving for meaningful existence was told in The Southern Phoenix, Rosemary Jenkins (2017), reviewed in SQ News February 2018, an historical novel that examined The Great Migration and its connection to civil-rights.)

Both novels point out what happened during the height of Jim Crow when Blacks left the south, headed north and west to leave the direct and deadly racism of the south, only to land in a place where to the sophisticated and subtle racism of the rest of America still existed—it’s called “unconscious bias” today.

Gyasi’s characters reveal the emotional toll The Great Mi- gration had on Black Ameri- cans as keenly shown in Wil- lie’s take on getting out of the south:

The first inhale of Harlem air was clean, no coal dust traveling in through the nose to hit the back of the throat, to taste. Just breathing felt exciting.

Gyasi’s description of European treatment of Africans and its reconciliation through Christian forgiveness is particularly insightful:

Forgiveness was an act done after the fact, a piece of the bad deed’s future. And if you point the people’s eye to the future, they might not see what is being done to hurt them in the present.

Two thought-provoking chapters: Yaw addresses inter- generational trauma from an American perspective while Akua addresses the topic from an African perspective.

Gyasi does not leave out the “Back to Africa” movement. In the chapter titled, Marcus she describes African-based slave history as follows:

The dirty skeleton of a long-past shame that held the place together began to show itself in blackening concrete, rusty- hinged doors.

In spite of the acute pain and sadness threaded through each chapter, Gyasi finds a way to tie things together in a satisfying ending of an epic tale of struggle and triumph.

Stanford professor audited Creative Writing class

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Adam Johnson

Professor Adam Johnson of Stanford University came to San Quentin to sit in on a creative writing class for incarcerated men, facilitated by Zoe Mullery and sponsored by the William James Association. The Aug. 21 get-together between students and professor focused on: what led to Johnson’s writing career, what creates a compelling narrative, and a review of Fortune Smiles (2016), Johnson’s collection of short stories.

“He really encourages all of us, me included, to go to the difficult story – don’t turn away from it – go to the story that we don’t fully understand or have any understanding of,” said Mullery.

The Pulitzer Prize winning author, who worked as a mason in his youth, said building solitary confinement cells in Arizona changed his life.

“We’d bring the walls up, and then I’d think about who’s going to occupy this thing, and it was depressing the hell outta me,” Johnson said.

After that, Johnson took a creative writing class to boost his grade point average and “that’s that,” he said.

Johnson talked about what he learned from Ron Carlson, his first writing teacher.

“The secret to great writ- ing is learning to tolerate the not knowing of what might be and moving forward in a story in the face of uncertainty and that it might fail,” Johnson said.

The students had read Johnson’s collection of six short stories prior to his visit and were ready with comments about the stories. Dark Meadows is the only story Johnson said he did not research.

Johnson said it was about people “who could go down paths where they could do the unthinkable” and be redeemed.

“The character was in a situation of struggling every day in his life to do the right thing,” Johnson said. “He was a character that readers don’t want to like, but he had characteristics that readers find likable.”

Johnson said Dark Meadows challenges readers’ beliefs about good and bad.

He told the students that the space for fiction is getting smaller and smaller as publishers looking for longer stories are dwindling.

As an early writer, he says, he had great experiences with editors. But, as he developed, he has found his own voice, even if he has to labor to write a single paragraph.

“The act of writing is a noble endeavor,” Johnson said. “It’s meditative – I feel that I’m an average person, but to orchestrate my thoughts, I can say something above myself.”

Mullery noted later that she’s “picky” about people interacting with the class.

“The writers that I invite are people that I really re- spect, not only as writers, but also how they conduct themselves as a writer—not to just make a buck or be famous. And I think Adam Johnson is a great example of that,” said Mullery.

Poet and thespian Donté Clark visits San Quentin

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Donté Clark

Poet and thespian Donté Clark, 29, visited a classroom at San Quentin on Aug. 11 to talk about his experiences of being a young Black writer from North Richmond, Ca.

“On the surface, my writing is about my feelings, but it’s also about freedom,” Clark told a group of six incarcerated men sitting with community volunteers, who are educators for Academic Peer Education Program (APEP).

Clark added, “I always wanted to come inside a prison to teach–but what can I offer? I came to understand, if I can’t give information, I’ll get information.”

James Metters, one of the APEP incarcerated educators, said, “Donté came in and taught me the power of resilience. He models success as an African American growing up in an urban community. He reminds me that the sky is not the limit.”

Clark talked about his early days of writing. He said the anger he felt from the lack of social or community issues showing up in literature was quelled through his own writing.

“When I was growing up, I was going through a lot,” Clark said. “My parents and teachers didn’t know how to handle me. But, writing down my feelings not only made me feel better, it helped other people.”

Clark said appreciation for his writing passion showed up through community support for a workshop geared toward youngsters. The workshop participants began performing for each other, which gained attention—which grew the workshop until the performances became community shows.

“I’m trying to help raise awareness of what’s happening in Richmond,” Clark said. “I’m getting rid of that anger. If you still have anger and bitterness, you’re still lost. I want to get to that place of harmony. I have to get rid of that emotional blockage.”

Rick Ayers, an APEP volunteer, chimed in saying, “Donté would show up any- where, paid or not paid.”

Clark responded, “The workshops are for kids in the community — they help keep them out of trouble, inspire them to stay in school— with the goal of keeping the kids going.”

Clark performed a couple of poems from his new book, KnowFreedom. Peer educators Raiveon “Ray Ray” Wooden and Philippe “Kells” Kelly followed with original spoken-word pieces of their own.

Referring to the performances, Diane Kahn, a PREP volunteer, said, “I felt as though Donté is on the level that he could speak to the experiences that incarcerated people go through.”

Clark is working on a new piece called Money and a book based on a 14-day trip he took to Indonesia that speaks to peace and love.

San Quentin workers donate more than $7,000 to non-profits

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San Quentin workers donated more than $7,000 of their paychecks to two non- profit organizations selected by Warden Ron Davis that serve young people in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“I took so much from society. Now I can give back,” said Ronald Bruce Carter at the Oct. 15 check presentation.

Tracy Herrmann said, “It’s a big difference from the past, when I’d take.”

JVP employee Tracy Herrmann

Paul Huyck added, “It’s a good thing to donate money to help society.”

The three men are part of the Joint Venture Program, which was set up by prison administrators to coordinate local business with inmate labor. The local business, Big Dawg, builds refrigeration fan units for commercial refrigeration and freezers. Big Dawg pays prisoners industry-based wages for their labor. Prison officials manage the money.

• 20% pays for the worker’s room and board
• 20% goes to pay off the worker’s restitution or to victim’s compensation
• 20% goes for family support, such as child support
• 20% goes to the worker’s savings account
• 20% goes to the worker’s inmate trust account for discretionary spending Carter said the job allows him to do something constructive.
“I take pride in everything I do,” Carter said. “Build- ing something from scratch that could go anywhere in the world—from something I did.”

Tracy Herrmann said the job “keeps my mind occupied and being productive. Plus, I’m giving back to society.”

Paul Huyck said, “It gives us a chance to put money in the bank and have a better chance of making it.”

The nonprofits, Misssey and Seneca Family of Agencies, each received a check for $3,611.29.

Misssey serves sexually exploited girls and women between the ages of 12 and 24 with personal development training and how to create life goals. The organization also provides clients a safe place and daily lunches.

“It’s a place for the girls to talk about trauma and bad experiences,” representative Destiny Webster said. “It’s a place where they could be honest.”

In regards to receiving money from people who might be responsible for some of the harm, Webster said, “There should always be a place to start over. You are proving a resource to help us to do our work. I’m honored to be here and see the people who’ve made these donations.”

Webster, born and raised in Oakland, said it was her first time inside San Quentin. “Walking through the courtyard, it looks so much like my community,” she said. “It’s a humbling experience. I believe that everyone should be offered multiple chances.”

Seneca Family of Agencies serves young people with mental health issues who suffered trauma or were negatively affected by the foster care system. The organization collaborates with local schools that have students with disabilities or have been impacted by trauma, abuse or neglect.

“The goal is for students to fully access their educational goals and thrive in school,” said Representative Harben Porter. “We strive to close the achievement gap in California.”

Seneca representative Caleb Hervey said that he joined the organization because of his personal experiences and seeing people disenfranchised in his family and the larger community.

“I wanted to be someone who gave back,” Porter said. “My values line up with the family values of Seneca.”

While receiving the check, Porter said to the workers, “A lot of people are just one choice from a life change.”

He then thanked the prisoners for the donation, adding that the money would go toward “providing education, mental health care that is family centered, with a goal of getting rid of the intergenerational problem of people having to go through the prison system.

“The contribution will move beyond our organization to those in our network—the money will be well used. You are providing healing in our community,” Porter said.

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