Editor’s Note: The following excerpt is from a Letter To The Editor from Samuel Sher, who visited San Quentin recently with a group sponsored by the self-help group TRUST.
My trip to San Quentin was one of those moments that stopped me in my tracks. It made me forget about all the insignificant and superficial trivialities in life and try to define what’s really important in life.
Inside these walls, this was home; this is where everything takes place. That really shocked me. That was a hard concept to grasp. That we are living our lives in the outside world, and here they are day after day, living a life free of that basic necessity. As we talked to the prisoners, I became mad. These awesome people are … bright and so in touch with themselves. Why are they locked up in here, being treated like caged animals? Some of these men are more competent than those living outside of prison. I became mad because all it came down to is a failure to understand them, a failure to grasp who these people are, and how they have changed, so we take the intolerant path of sticking them in prison. I became frustrated with society for being so narrow-minded.
As we made our way to the field, I became more mad to see all the prisoners divided up among race. I know it’s prison and there are rules that you can only associate with your own skin color. That is where the problem all around the world lies. We are so concerned with which group we are a part of and who we belong to that we forget we’re all the same. We are all one human species, living on the planet together. To divide ourselves and fight over something so insignificant as skin color is ridiculous and immature.
What’s done is done. You can’t change the past. And no one knows this better than the prisoners of San Quentin. Yet they are the ones who learned from their mistakes, so much so that they have completely transformed themselves as people.
We are so grateful and honored that you have taken the steps necessary to be the human beings you are meant to be. I will accept you as a member or society and a guest of my home.
Thank you and never give up.
Samuel Sher
