With a message of hope and inspiration for the graduates of the San Quentin Education Department’s 2008 class, Willie Rahman Green returned to the institution from which he was released only 90 days ago. Only this time, as Green pointed out to an attentive audience of over 300 gathered in the Garden Chapel, his entrance to the prison had been made through the front gate as an invited guest, while his previous trip to San Quentin prison had begun thru R&R while wearing handcuffs.
“What I bring back is hope and a message to the men here at San Quentin,” Green told the packed crowd. “You don’t have to keep coming through R&R to come back to prison. You can come through the front gate!” Green received a special invitation
to deliver the commencement speech to an audience which included graduates of the GED, vocational and college programs, their relatives, staff of the Education Department, and various prison officials including Warden Robert Ayers. If the three minute ovation he received was any indication, his message was well received by those in attendance.
After serving more than 25 years of a 33 years-to-l i f e term for a murder Green says he did not commit, Green walked out of S.Q. a free man after a Los Angeles county superior court judge threw out his conviction after ruling that a key prosecution witness had lied during the trial. Prosecutors declined to retry the case. Green says that he is slowly adjusting to the pace of life on the outside, and is not bitter against anyone, including the witness who lied during his trial.
The audience listened attentively to a man who only recently was himself a 14 yearlong resident of North Block. During his time behind the walls at San Quentin prison, Green became heavily involved in many of the programs run by the Education Dept. as both student and tutor, giving and receiving.
Many in the audience know him personally through one of his many roles as friend, fellow student, tutor, associate or mentor. Green has himself graduated with an Associate of Arts degree from Patten University through the Prison University
Project at San Quentin. And by doing so, he became one of the 74 men who have received liberal arts degrees through the program.
In addition to his involvement as a student, his determination to help others achieve their own goals and to realize their dreams led him to become a tutor for Project R.E.A.C.H., an acronym for Reach for Education, Achievement and Change with Help. R.E.A.C.H. trains inmate volunteers as tutors. Green used his math skills to help many fellow inmates to develop academically, including one of the three valedictorians of this year’s graduating classes.
Green was one of the founding members of the San Quentin T.R.U.S.T. (Teaching Responsibility Utilizing Sociological Training). The T.R.U.S.T. is a group of ethnically diverse men whose goal is to educate and empower inmates to assist them for a successful transition to a non-incarcerated life. The group also works with various citizen groups and elected officials in the communities of Richmond and Oakland in an effort to reduce crime, violence and recidivism, and to prepare inmates from these communities for reintegration back into the community. Green served the group for over five years, including the past two as chairman.
For Green, life outside the prison walls does not mean an end to involvement with the causes that came to play such a prominent role in his life. He remains in close contact with David Cowan, the man whom he mentored and prepared to succeed him as the chairman of T.R.U.S.T.. Green’s plans are to remain active networking with the various community groups, and in the recruitment of personnel for the organization.
“I learned never give up, never give up hope, and never allow anyone to define you,” Green told his listeners, who can, perhaps, define who Green is most aptly by looking at the man he has become, during, and despite, his long period of incarceration.
Julio Medina, himself an ex-convict who served 12 years in New York’s Sing Sing prison, also spoke to the graduates, and emphasized the education he received during his incarceration as the foundation for what his life has become today. Medina, the Executive Director/Founder and CEO of Exodus Transitional Community, Inc., or E.T.C., earned a Master’s Degree from the New York Theological Seminary, and is presently enrolled as a candidate of that school’s Doctoral program.
Medina’s organization is a faith based re-entry program that has helped over 3 ,000 ex-convicts, both male and female, transition back into the community. E.T.C. provides counseling, employment preparation, job, housing, health and education referrals, court and parole assistance and computer training. Medina founded E.T.C. in 1999.
“Education,” said Medina “is the most significant thing that is going to help us when we get back to the communities.” His message, much like Green’s, resonated with hope to those wearing blue in the audience. “I started from behind prison walls, I think that’s what’s important,” he added.
Medina credited education as the most critical component in state’s rehabilitation efforts and attempts to make substantial cuts in inmate recidivism rates. Education, he emphasized, empowers inmates to make changes in their own lives, and only with that power can the cycle be broken.
“Let’s stop allowing other people to solve our problems,” Medina told the audience. “We solve our own problems!”
