In honor of his years of volunteer work at California’s oldest prison, University of California Berkeley Journalism Professor William J. Drummond was invited to the White House on Oct. 22, as part of an award ceremony for serving his community.
Drummond was presented the John W. Gardner Legacy of Leadership Award on the 50th anniversary of The White House Fellows Foundation program. The award is given in “hopes to draw attention to the depth and breadth of contributions to the nation made by White House Fellows and to highlight the return on person chosen to be a Fellow.”
Drummond said he had hoped that his fellowship from 1976 to 1977 would give him an understanding of the inner workings of government so he could go back to his community to better serve the people.
“In my 50 years in journalism I have written thousands of stories. I am at a loss to remember any story I ever did that made anybody better off,” Drummond said in his acceptance speech to more than 600 former White House Fellows and other dignitaries. “But in the work I’ve been doing at San Quentin since 2012, I can see the changes for the better.”
The White House Fellows program was created in 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson with the belief that a genuinely free society cannot be a spectator society. Each year a presidential commission selects a handful of young men and women to come to Washington and work in government. The program teaches participants about leadership as they see the nation’s leaders at work and meet with leaders from other sectors of society.
Drummond was assigned to the White House Press Office in 1976 and worked as associate press secretary to President Jimmy Carter. His main assignment was liaison with the Washington Press Corps. He says the experience was an eye-opener because he got to experience the press as someone who was not a reporter, because he was on a leave of absence from his reporting position at the Los Angeles Times.
“I had to deal with a lot of former colleagues who were more interested in ‘gotcha moments’ and sound bites,” Drummond said. “That experience took journalism off the pedestal. Up until then, I thought journalism was the answer to big government. Instead, I saw it was big media companies that had a lot of influence over government.”
Drummond said he was asked to stay on after his fellowship, but he decided not to. After his fellowship, he went back to the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times and eventually moved to NPR in 1979.
He began teaching at the UC Berkeley Journalism School in 1983.
In 2012, Drummond volunteered to teach a college course in basic journalism at San Quentin. Several writers for the San Quentin News enrolled and showed Drummond a copy of the newspaper. Subsequently, the inmates invited Drummond to the newsroom, introduced him to its staff and operations and soon after asked him to join the newspaper’s team of journalist advisers. Without hesitation, Drummond accepted.
Since then, Drummond has established a relationship of friendship and mutual respect with the staff. Three times a week, Drummond, along with a few of his Berkeley students, make their way across the bridge to the prison to help the inmates research and write their stories for the San Quentin News, one of the few remaining prison newspapers in the country. Drummond often says he knows more people on the Lower Yard of San Quentin Prison than he does on the vast UC Berkeley campus.
Participating students note how signifi cant this experience is to their understanding of the purpose of journalism and service.
“I feel that journalism is very important just by bringing an issue to the public’s attention,” said UC Berkeley student Knowles Adkisson. “There’s something powerful in that you can change people’s circumstances in a positive way.”
Charlotte Jacquemart, a visiting scholar from Switzerland in residence now at UC Berkeley, has found significant variations between the American criminal justice system and that of her own country.
“The work with the inmates at San Quentin opened my eyes about how much the U.S. justice system is screwed up and how racist it is on top. In my country, we focus on rehabilitation and try to integrate wrong-doers back into society as soon as possible,” Jacquemart said.
Drummond feels that bringing UC Berkeley undergraduate and graduate journalism students provides them with a rare opportunity to learn.
“Having my UC Berkeley students visiting and working with prison journalists, I have seen stereotypes break down and young reporters gain confidence in their abilities to relate to people from entirely different circumstances and backgrounds,” he said in his Washington acceptance speech.
Before going to the White House, Drummond gave San Quentin News staffers the opportunity to write a short memo about their incarceration, which he incorporated into the acceptance speech.
San Quentin News Design Editor Richard “Bonaru” Richardson wrote: “As an African-American, equality doesn’t exist because I’ve never experienced it. But I do know forgiveness because that’s all I have.”
Staff Writer, Columnist and Spanish Translator Miguel Quezada said: “At 16 I was tried, convicted and subsequently sentenced as an adult. I grew up in the adult prison system. My question: When do children stop being children in America?”
Drummond’s acceptance speech was a hit among the audience at the White House.
“As I left the hall, many people approached me and said it was moving and the best thing on the lengthy program,” Drummond said. “One death penalty lawyer said she wept.”
A program officer from a big national foundation approached Drummond and asked him if the paper needed funding. He explained to the program officer how vulnerable the paper is to state budget cuts. However, Drummond felt that his visit to the White House was significant for purposes other than catching the attention of potential funders.
“The reason San Quentin inmates should care about the newspaper being recognized at the White House is that the people whom I met and talked to have zero understanding or appreciation of incarceration or its consequences,” Drummond said. “What I was able to do is bring authentic voices to them. The people who read the newspaper said its contents were a revelation to them.”
