Last month, two world-renowned environmentalists paid visits to the Green Life program at San Quentin. One might think the environment would be the last thing that a person doing time would have on his mind, but the Green Life teaches prisoners about issues like sustainable growth, environmental justice, and waste management.
Manuel Maqueda and Julia Butterfly Hill are both interested in how prisoners are dedicating themselves to caring for the planet.
Maqueda originally studied law and economics in Spain. But when he moved to the United States, the worldwide misuse of plastics caught his attention and he redirected his career. Maqueda got involved in a documentary studying the environmental havoc wreaked by plastics on islands in the Pacific.
“It is not a good idea to make a product that is only needed for a short period of time with a material that will last forever,” he said.
Maqueda said his visit to San Quentin was an opportunity to converse with like-minded environmentalists. He also talked about artist Chris Jordan, who created a photograph depicting 2.3 million prisoner jumpsuits – one for every incarcerated American – as a visual representation of mass incarceration in the United States.
Conservationist Julia Butterfly Hill’s visit was her second to San Quentin. “What touched me about the men I met inside of San Quentin is the courage I experience in this space,” she said. “It takes courage to care about this world, the way that you do, under the circumstances you are in. That really touched me.”
Butterfly Hill sat in a circle of convicted felons as she spoke about her transformation into an activist fighting against the deforestation of America’s rainforests that began with occupying a 1000-year old redwood — an experience that ended up lasting 738 days. She attributes the success of her occupation to her stubbornness, which grew out of overcoming a rough childhood.
“The greatest obstacle to success is in the mind,” she said. Butterfly Hill compared her transformation into the person she is today to that of a caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a butterfly. The body and mind must literally undergo real change, she said. “That’s what happened to me.”