Mount Tamalpais College

Student Life

Journalism at San Quentin

by

Attribution: This article originally appeared in SFWeekly on April 29, 2021. Read Story

When a COVID-19 outbreak ravaged San Quentin State Prison last May, infecting over half the incarcerated population and killing 28 prisoners, Juan Haines was one of the inmates who tested positive. Rather than placing him in the already maxed-out infirmary, guards moved him to Badger Unit, one of the prison’s solitary confinement wards.

He was quarantined in cell 314, a squalid 4-foot by 10-foot enclosure with no electricity. He was provided scant medical attention and let out only to shower once every three days. Perched on the top bunk, Haines turned to writing. Using pen and paper, he documented the harrowing conditions of the prison and sealed his report in an envelope.

He addressed his letter to the editors of The Appeal, a news outlet dedicated to telling the stories of underserved communities, including the experiences of incarcerated individuals. San Quentin’s treatment of sick inmates was no longer a secret. 

“People were dying left and right,” Haines said during a collect-call telephone interview for this story. “I’m housed in North Block. We’re pretty much double-celled in there, so it was already overcrowded. It was particularly deadly because the buildings are unventilated and the windows are welded shut.”

When Haines penned his letter, he was not only reaching out to a group of fellow human beings, he was also appealing to a professional kinship. Haines is a journalist — an incarcerated journalist — reporting from within an institution historically synonymous with silence. 

As the senior editor of one of the few prisoner-run newspapers in the nation, the San Quentin News, Haines and his incarcerated colleagues work with a team of professional volunteer staff and advisors to produce a monthly paper distributed to inmates across California prisons. Known as “the pulse of San Quentin,” the San Quentin News is a vital source of information for individuals doing time throughout the state, as it provides updates on new state policies and the latest on reform efforts.

In 2015, reporters like Haines were officially recognized as professionals when they became members of the Society of Professional Journalists. Under the guidance of the SPJ, the first chapter inside a prison was born. 

Today, over 40 incarcerated journalists work inside the walls of San Quentin, writing and producing print, radio, and video journalism that has been published locally and nationally in a variety of outlets — including The San Jose Mercury News, The Marshall Project, The Appeal and KQED.

Inside Scoop

In addition to providing his fellow inmates a stream of information tailored to their daily lives, Haines and his peers come to the table with a perspective that few, if any, reporters on the outside could hope to offer.

When COVID-19 hit, the San Quentin journalists — much like members of the press trapped inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 — were faced with a potentially lethal challenge and a serious scoop. It was the exclusive nobody wanted.

The crisis erupted shortly after the transfer of inmates from the California Institute for Men, a prison already suffering through a major outbreak. The transfers, some of whom hadn’t been tested in up to four weeks, mixed into the San Quentin population.

Haines, who tested positive for COVID-19 in June, wrote a number of stories about the conditions that made San Quentin susceptible to the deadly outbreak, exposing the failures of prison administrators along the way.

Inside the walls of the crowded San Quentin — one of several California prisons operating at more than 100 percent capacity — prisoners feared reporting their symptoms, lest they be quarantined in solitary confinement. Some had the once-a-year privilege of seeing their children revoked due to the outbreak. Others lived out their final days in their cells. 

The California State Senate is currently investigating the San Quentin COVID-19 outbreak. Many prisoners have filed lawsuits and petitioned to be released or relocated. Although San Quentin’s COVID-19 rates have dipped in recent months, infections across the California Department of Corrections’ 35 prisons persist among many of the system’s most vulnerable populations. Over the past year, almost 50,000 CDCR prisoners have tested positive for COVID-19; 222 have lost their lives. 

“It’s terrible. It’s a human rights crime of the highest order,” says Hadar Aviram, a UC Hastings law professor. In October, Aviram wrote a case brief on behalf of the ACLU of Northern California, which was representing San Quentin prisoners. That brief ultimately led the California Court of Appeals to rule that the CDCR administration had acted with “deliberate indifference” in their handling of the outbreak. The court ordered the CDCR to reduce San Quentin’s prisoner population to 50 percent capacity.

In late December, the California Supreme Court sent the case back to the Court of Appeals, effectively putting the order on hold. Today, activists around the Bay Area continue rallying for fair treatment of those behind bars. Aviram, who many regard as a leading voice of prison reform advocacy, says the ongoing litigation around safeguarding inmates during the pandemic amplified the need for reform many have long been fighting for. “I think the virus is illuminating a lot of pockets of suffering and neglect that were there before.”

Aviram works closely with local advocacy groups. Most recently, she’s joined forces with the Stop San Quentin Outbreak Coalition. The coalition, composed of lawyers, family members of inmates, former prisoners, concerned citizens, and young activists, marched to the prison walls in July with bullhorns and banners — publicly demanding that Gov. Gavin Newsom reduce the incarcerated population and take action against the California prison outbreaks.

Aviram says the work of the incarcerated journalists has been essential to activists. “What we desperately need is people trying to advocate for people inside. We can only advocate if we know the facts,” Aviram said. “Folks like the San Quentin News are doing a crucial job because they are the ones closest to what’s actually happening. They’re the ones getting the stories. It’s crucial to have journalism behind bars.”

According to Rahsaan Thomas, an incarcerated journalist interviewed for this story, prison officials do not censor the San Quentin News unless a story incites violence or is perceived to be disruptive to prison security. “As long as there’s no security issue, they can’t tell us what to say, and they generally don’t,” Thomas says.

As for the way members of the prison population — or powerful individuals on the outside — perceive his work, that’s a different concern.

“I do feel like I have to be careful about how I word things sometimes,” Thomas continues. “It could hurt me on parole board. It could affect politicians’ decisions on letting me go early. I am mindful of that.”

Thomas, who’s serving 55 years-to-life for second-degree murder, has developed considerable influence as a chronicler of prison life. 

Through the pandemic, he curated an online art exhibit called “Meet Us Quickly” centering the work of incarcerated artists with the Museum of African Diaspora. He is the co-producer and co-host of a podcast called Ear Hustle, which boasts over 20 million downloads. Working in collaboration with outside producers, Thomas shares snapshots of his daily life with the intent of breaking down stereotypes about people behind bars. 

“You get entertained and you also understand we’re just like you,” Thomas says. “They see you as a non-human, of course, they’re not going to help you. It’s very important to have journalists in here to get the story right so the public gets the full picture and correct information and they can make the best decisions when it comes to breaking these cycles.”

More to Say

As the saying goes in the news business, “If it bleeds, it leads.” And the Marin County prison’s battle with COVID-19 has served to draw a new wave of readership to the San Quentin News.

But the journalists working inside the prison are interested in plenty of topics that have nothing to do with the virus, and their mission — to “report on rehabilitative efforts to increase public safety and achieve social justice” — remains a guiding force.

“I’ve been at San Quentin since 2007, and I’ve been reporting the good, the bad, and the ugly,” says Haines, who’s serving a 55 years-to-life sentence for robbing a bank in 1996. 

“There’s a lot of great things that happen here as far as rehabilitation is concerned, and the opportunities for people to show accountability, redemption, and rehabilitation.”

Open some of the latest editions of the paper and you’ll find hundreds of inmates in caps and gowns graduating from rehabilitative programs, op-eds about Newsom’s new reform policies, or an inmate earning his Master’s of Business and Administration degree. Other editions feature prison administrators and inmates working together to host their annual Mental Wellness Week; Google executives visiting participants of the prison’s coding class; a sit-down visit between the San Francisco Police Department and the men they put behind bars; or public defenders stopping by for a four-course meal prepared by “San Quentin Cooks,” a rehabilitative program aimed at teaching skills for reintegration into the workforce upon release.

“Incarcerated people housed in jails and prisons all over the country write into the newspaper seeking to receive their own copies of the newspaper. Issues that are relevant in California are also relevant elsewhere,” says Lt. Sam Robinson, San Quentin’s Public Information Officer and administrative supervisor of the San Quentin News. “The stories I see that resonate the most are the success stories of people graduating with high school diplomas, GEDs, vocational certificates, or college degrees in addition to the stories of how people have grown and changed their lives through participation in rehabilitative programming, inspire others that they can evolve and have life-changing accomplishments as well.” 

Success Story

This was true for Jesse Vasquez, former editor-in-chief for the San Quentin News, who says his involvement with the newspaper and other rehabilitation programs are the reason he’s a free man today after spending half his life in prison. 

“We [San Quentin News reporters] want to be an instrument of social justice,” Vasquez says. “What society expects in a prison is violence, riots, drugs, and stuff like that, but that isn’t news to the outside. Minds have been trained to think that prisons harbor the most horrible of individuals, and yet you see that they’re graduating, they’re participating in Shakespeare and putting on performances.”

Vasquez was arrested and convicted for attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon after a drive-by shooting at the age of 17. He says from a young age, he knew he would likely fall into the prison system. 

“It was the way that I lived in my neighborhood, the things that I saw led me to believe that violence was a form of conflict resolution and that was the way that you solve problems.”

His own experience growing up in the prison system made him cynical. He didn’t believe that he and others caught up in the carceral system would ever find another way forward. Then, he says, the San Quentin News gave him reason to second guess his nihilistic views. He was serving time at Folsom State Prison when he read his first copy of the paper.

“I started reading the newspaper and I kind of thought it was just state propaganda,” he says. “I had never seen a prison like this. Every prison I was at had limited programming and there was this us-against-them mentality between staff and the incarcerated.”

But then, something began to change. Vasquez decided that if he were going to be locked up, he’d rather be in an institution that at least attempted to give the inmates a creative outlet and a voice. And so, when he had the opportunity to transfer prisons in 2016, he chose San Quentin.

“I can honestly say that up until the point I got to San Quentin, I was content with being in prison,” Vasquez says. “I had come to terms at a young age that I was likely going to die in these institutions. When I got to San Quentin, that contentment shifted to where I wasn’t satisfied with dying in prison. I wasn’t satisfied with staying in prison the way prison was. I wanted to do something about it because everybody else seemed to think we could do something about it.”

Vasquez, who now manages a housing program in Oakland for formerly incarcerated people, says his relationship with volunteer staff and advisors set him up for success. 

“They mentored me and helped me understand who I was and my professional capacity. That environment facilitated that growth where I’m able to navigate better. I have these skills that I developed because of the volunteers taking the time out of their day to come and visit us inside and impart to us their wisdom and understanding.”

Catalyst for Change

The San Quentin News is not only an inspiration to the incarcerated — it is a catalyst for change throughout California’s carceral system, as more prison news publications spring up around the state. Vasquez says while he was working at San Quentin’s paper, multiple prisons reached out inquiring about how to start a paper or newsletter of their own. 

The Mule Creek Post at Mule Creek State Prison, The Pioneer at Kern Valley State Prison, and Solano Vision at California State Prison Solano are active prison news publications in the mold of the San Quentin News. 

However, according to Steve McNamara, a volunteer advisor for the San Quentin News, while other prison publications are doing their best, they are all missing a key piece of the puzzle: civilian mentorship and support. “Some of the other prisons have begun to experiment with other papers, but of course what they really need in the beginning are volunteers who have some experience in this business and who are willing to devote time to get it off the ground,” says McNamara, former owner of Marin County’s Pacific Sun newspaper.

McNamara, an advisor for the San Quentin News since 2008, says those looking for proof that the paper has made a difference in the culture of the prison just need to look at the data behind prisoner transfers. As it turns out, Vasquez isn’t the only one who has sought to be moved to San Quentin in recent years.

“Inmates angle to get transferred to San Quentin,” McNamara says. “It used to be a scary place, and it is no more.”

McNamara concedes that the prison newspaper itself may not deserve all the credit. Rather, it is the underlying secret to the success of the San Quentin News that has turned the tide. Its proximity to the left-leaning, highly progressive Bay Area means San Quentin benefits from a wealth of willing volunteers all aiming to change the criminal justice system for the better.

At San Quentin, the paper is just one of ample rehabilitation activities and programs aided by thousands of volunteers — all of which are intended to build skills and facilitate avenues of success for the incarcerated.

“All the programs involve a close relationship between the participants and the volunteers who come in,” McNamara says. “They are people who are there predisposed towards believing in the reform of the criminal justice system.” 

Crime & Punishment

Although the Bay Area’s left-leaning population may drive support for programs like the San Quentin News, jailhouse journalism isn’t favored among all Bay Area residents.

“These guys are individuals who’ve committed grave and violent acts against innocent victims,” says Marc Klaas, founder of the KlaasKids Foundation, a victim’s rights organization based in the Bay Area. “They’ve been put in San Quentin and they’re put in these prisons because they’ve lost their right to public access. They’ve lost their right to be able to express their views.”

Klaas is a public figure who speaks on behalf of many victims of crime and their families. His daughter, Polly Klaas, was kidnapped from her Petaluma home at knife-point during a slumber party and later strangled to death at the age of 12 in 1993. Polly’s killer, Richard Allen Davis, sits on San Quentin’s death row.

Since the age of 12, Davis had been in and out of the prison system for both misdemeanors and felonies. In June of 1993, he was released on parole from the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo after serving only half of a sentence for another violent kidnapping in 1984. 

“When my little girl was kidnapped and murdered in 1993, we had a crime epidemic in the entire United States, and it was because there were some very soft-on-crime policies,” Klaas says.

“The guy that kidnapped Polly, for instance, had been convicted twice previously of kidnapping. For his second kidnapping, he was released from prison after serving only eight years of a 16-year sentence, and only three months later my daughter was dead at his hands,” Klaas said. “Now 27 years later there’s a movement to ensure that he’s treated fairly?”

Davis’ extensive criminal record fueled advocacy for the passage of California’s controversial “three-strikes law” for repeat offenders in 1994. The law significantly increases prison sentences for convicts with two or more previous felonies, which has led some to be handed life sentences for non-violent crimes. 

Prison reform advocates say “three strikes” leads to overcrowding in prisons, perpetuating mass incarceration, and deters incarcerated individuals sentenced to life without parole from participating in effective rehabilitative programs. 

Klaas doesn’t entirely disregard support for rehabilitation but says it shouldn’t apply to everyone.

“I believe there are individuals that can be rehabilitated. For instance, I think that people who find themselves in prison because of drug-related situations can be treated and moved back onto a positive path, but once you get into the business of hurting people, of violence against people, I think you’ve taken a step too far and I don’t know if these are people we should be rehabilitating.”

Restorative Justice

The message of victim’s rights advocates has long resonated with political leaders and, according to UC Hastings’ Hadar Aviram, that tough-on-crime position is at once understandable and a roadblock to meaningful prison reform.

“I think that it is very important to listen to victims. And at the same time, it is also important to remember that victims should not be the moral arbiters for every public policy that has to do with justice,” Aviram says. “One of the things that we’ve seen in the culture of California is that victim advocacy groups and victim’s rights movements hijack the conversation to the point that no politician on the right or the left can afford to be seen as soft on crime.” 

UC Berkeley law professor Jonathan Simon believes that rehabilitative measures should be offered to all prisoners. According to Simon, a legal scholar and historian, they are an effective means of addressing the underlying reasons individuals commit crimes, particularly violent offenses. 

“Undoubtedly, the most serious crimes generate strong emotions, but we’ve enhanced it by myopic focus on the act and unwillingness to consider the person’s life courses,” Simon says.

“If we’re going to incarcerate people we should give them access to education and other things that allow them to protect their integrity.” 

To Simon, San Quentin’s COVID-19 crisis is proof that California’s prisons have reached a breaking point and that the correctional system is in need of a serious overhaul.

“When institutions become so toxified that they’re not able to correct themselves by responding to the needs of the humans that they’re managing, it’s time to look for radically different solutions,” he says. “I think it’s hard to conclude from this COVID crisis that we’re not there.”

And yet, as damaging as the pandemic was to public perceptions of CDCR, and as much as the outbreaks amplified public sympathy for the incarcerated and sparked discussions around reform, Simon isn’t holding his breath. With litigation to thinning inmate populations at a standstill, he recognizes a powerful set of beliefs aligned against change. 

“I think it’s a sign of how durable some of these crime myths are, that even at a time when there’s a lot of agreement that we need to change things, it’s been hard to convince the state to dramatically shift,” Simon says. “There’s a whole series of beliefs that are well worn into our legal thinking about imprisonment. One is what I like to describe as the myth of debt, that somehow there’s a debt that a crime creates, and unless somebody pays the full amount of it back, that everybody else has been cheated in some way. It’s powerful. It leads to the opposite, that is a system that can’t stop collecting.”

Still, Simon and other prison reform advocates do see signs of movement — chiefly in the engagement of the young activists who speak out when they recognize injustice. 

“The Black Lives Matter movement, as well as lot of other Americans who joined protest movements over the summer in response to George Floyd’s murder, are pretty significant,” he says, “because it’s the first time we’ve ever had a social justice and racial justice movement that’s squarely focused on the criminal-legal system as the [primary] target. I think that’s very positive in terms of driving change.”

While activists around America have marched in the streets for those historically silenced, the incarcerated journalists inside San Quentin continue to fight — and write — for justice. In that battle, a pen and paper are their weapons of choice.

“I have a saying for people who want to voice themselves,” says San Quentin News editor Juan Haines. “I tell them, ‘Pick up a pen, hold in firmly in your hand, and push it forward.’”

Lily Sinkovitz is a contributing writer. news@sfweekly.com

Program Status and Our Path to Accreditation

by

Dear friends,

I’m writing several months into the pandemic, which has closed our staff and faculty off from our students, and which has begun to spread among prison populations throughout the US, at rates often far higher than in the general public. It seems at this point that it could be many months before our regular courses are up and running again.

From the start of the pandemic, we’ve been confronted with questions and decisions that feel like ethical thought experiments, but that are all too real: initially—should we keep plowing through the semester, at the risk of bringing the virus into the prison, or to pull our faculty and staff out, severely diminishing the quality of life inside the prison, interrupting students’ academic pathways, and compounding their vulnerability and isolation at the worst possible time? How do we balance risk to life against quality of life? And then, when the answer to that set of questions started to seem more and more obvious, the question that has dogged much of the world of prison higher education swiftly emerged: should we try to devise a way to continue offering credit classes at a distance, even though we know that the quality that we see as the cornerstone of our work would be severely compromised? Or more generally, once we determined that it would not be feasible to continue to offer legitimate credit-bearing coursework inside the prison, where should we focus our energy and resources? What is a college when it can’t run classes?

It seems to me that part of the pandemic experience for almost everyone has included such a barrage of practical and existential questions, at every level, exhaustingly, every day. Should I pull my children out of school? Visit my parents? Teach outdated math to my 6th grader? Am I doing everything I can to flatten the curve? Is technology saving us or poisoning us? What activities put me and others too severely at risk, and what can we or must we continue to do, to preserve our sanity? How has it all come to this? Who am I to complain, when I can sit so comfortably, in full health, on this couch, and go for a run safely?

I’m powerfully aware that my education and access to conversation and consultation with thoughtful and experienced colleagues make it possible for me to think these questions through from multiple angles and to make difficult and sometimes painful decisions with confidence. To wade through this time of crisis and unrest in America and globally, we all need access to trustworthy information; we must be able to think critically and ethically; we need to understand public health principles and basic math; we have to have a grasp of history and politics; we need to have the tools to consider claims about identity and difference carefully; and we have to have opportunities to consider others’ opinions. These and so many other areas of thought and intellectual life are vital for everyday survival, for ethical decision making, now more than ever.

So when we ask what a college is when it can’t run classes, the current calamity is teaching me that our most fundamental responsibility as a college is to help ensure that all people have access to information, learning, and productive dialogue, so that they can take care of themselves, their families, and their communities. Those who are most vulnerable are precisely those who don’t have access to these things. Our students are people who are equally owed these pursuits as rights and whose voices are equally and urgently needed in civic exchanges. Course credits and degrees are critical, but education is more than the semester grind. If we aren’t able to run classes, we can still agitate for and facilitate these crucial skills and dialogues.

So our work continues. As Jody’s letter recounts, our first thought has been for the wellbeing of the community that our campus is embedded within—that is, the entire community of San Quentin. Without physical and emotional safety, learning and thinking are difficult and sometimes impossible. And in voluminous responses to our care packages, we have heard again and again that people at San Quentin are hungry for information and intellectual stimulation. Thanks to the support of iTVS we are now planning a documentary film series to be aired on the prison television channel during the summer. We’re also working with San Quentin to make a large quantity of books that we have stored inside the prison available to the entire population. No amount of academic materials can duplicate the classroom experience, but intervening in the barren intellectual landscape of the prison however possible is especially crucial right now.

Although communication with our students is somewhat delayed by the now-overwhelmed prison mail system, it is still possible, and vital, to hear from them. Specifically related to the current crisis, we are asking how the lives of incarcerated people during this pandemic can be witnessed, so that their social invisibility doesn’t mean their history goes unrecorded. To this end, we have begun an oral history project, which we will be working with students on throughout 2020. Students will learn oral history techniques, then interview others in the prison about their experiences, and develop written narratives to document life inside San Quentin during the pandemic. Through this project, we hope to learn about and disseminate to the broader public a set of experiences and accounts that would otherwise go unseen.

We are also taking this time to continue to building out key features of our program for when we are able to get back inside the prison, exploring ways we may alter and supplement the curriculum during interruptions like the pandemic, lockdowns, and quarantines without compromising quality, rigor, and student support. We’re working with faculty and with our Chief of Institutional Effectiveness and Accreditation, Melanie Booth, to review college preparatory and credit course curricula, as well as to develop regular cycles of learning assessment. Melanie has also been leading the work of constructing the infrastructure and processes required for us to achieve Initial Accreditation status with ACCJC. We remain on track with our accreditation timeline.

During this break from the usual demands of the semester, we’re also turning attention back to our long-standing efforts to bring laptops into this prison. This would greatly improve our students’ access to research materials and other crucial learning tools, as well as prepare us better to continue providing students access to education in the future when we cannot enter the prison. In partnership with leadership at San Quentin and in CDCR, we hope to be able to provide a vastly improved technological education to our students by the time we return to the prison.

Finally, we have been reaching out to alumni and developing plans about future alumni relations. Our team has been working to locate and contact every former student who has been released from prison, to learn about their well-being and needs. In consultation with David Cowan, our Director of Operations and Co-Director of the re-entry organization Bonafide, our Director of Student Affairs, David Durand, has been working to develop our alumni services program. Our aim is to eventually maintain regular contact with our former students, and to provide them with ongoing academic and professional guidance, information, and resources, as well as other critical support services and professional development and networking opportunities.

In the wake of recent horrific reminders of the brutality of racial inequality in America, in the midst of a public health crisis that is unequally ravaging already vulnerable populations, it is clear to me is that the path forward requires a new dedication not only to the safety of the vulnerable, but also to equipping all people with skills, information, tools, and resources, and outlets for their voices and life experiences to be expressed, heard, and learned from. We miss our students terribly, but it’s some relief that we can continue to serve them from afar for now.

Amy Jamgochian
Chief Academic Officer

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

Featured Winter Events: Open Mic, Ethics Bowl, and Book Club Discussions

by

Over the past few months, the Prison University Project hosted a number of extracurricular events for students to connect and engage with outside guests.

  • On December 27, we celebrated students’ creative expression and talent with our annual Open Mic event. Students shared poetry, dance, short stories, stand up comedy, and music.
  • On January 16, students and outside guests discussed Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, a magical realist take on slavery and the Underground Railroad, as part of a series of book discussions the Prison University Project hosts to facilitate connections between students in the College Program and free people.
  • On February 14, a team of students from the College Program at San Quentin faced off against a team from UC Santa Cruz in our third annual Ethics Bowl competition. Over the course of two rounds, both teams applied principles from moral philosophy to the issues of student loan forgiveness and reproduction in the era of climate change.
  • On February 21, author Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) visited San Quentin for a short reading, question and answer session, and discussion based on his bestselling novel Adverbs. Students appreciated the opportunity to learn about Daniel’s inspiration for the book, his writing process, and his advice for pursuing the creative arts.

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

The Opportunity to Be a Living Example: On Becoming a Teaching Assistant

by

Published in the November 2019 newsletter, which you can read in its entirety here.

In 2017 I graduated from the College Program with a GPA of 3.22. Thereafter, I found myself involved with the teaching assistant program because I desired to give back to a community that has given me, and others like me, so much. My pursuit of higher education has given me insight into the illiteracy and learning disabilities that once arrested my mental and educational development, which resulted in me succumbing to the psyche of the streets, crime, and gang subcultures of society.

During my 25 years of incarceration, I’ve witnessed thousands of juvenile men of color who entered the prison system, as I did at 16, and came from a subculture that gave them the same thing it gave me: the generational inheritance of being psychologically enslaved to a mindset of the sociopath and psychopath.

This antisocial behavior that clouds over the subcultures of our society ignites within me a passion to strive for positive change—not just for myself, but for all who are affected by a system that dishonors and devalues human life and its right to thrive healthy and happy.

Becoming a teaching assistant and tutor has allowed me the opportunity not only to assist new students in their education, but also to have a platform to create positive dialogue to challenge the mindset of men who hold dear to antisocial behavior. It is through higher education endeavors and my passion for positive change that I seek to obtain my BA and master’s in juvenile justice and counseling.

My experience and observations as a student and teaching assistant have given me the ability to recognize new students’ strong and weak points in their learning skills, and have given me the opportunity to be a living example for new students to see what higher education can achieve. It is important that incarcerated students witness men, like them, incarcerated, who have achieved their college degrees, and are now displaying their educational transformation in the form of a civil servant, with a genuine heart to give back to the community.

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

Footnote to What It is Like to Be an Older Inmate Doing Time in Prison

by

Published in the November 2019 newsletter, which you can read in its entirety here.

Being incarcerated is physically and mentally stressful enough, even for a young, able-bodied person, but for someone older, the challenges are even more intense. When I invited Peter Bergne to write for this newsletter about the experience of being incarcerated while an elderly person, I imagined he would write about the vulnerability to abuse or exploitation, the sense of social isolation, challenges of accessing medical care, lack of appropriate toiletries, poor nutrition, sleeping on a bad mattress with older bones, or the fear of being involuntarily moved to another prison with far fewer programs due to one’s physical limitations. Instead he wrote a very personal account of what it is like to be repeatedly denied parole. My immediate reaction was to think he’d veered off topic, so I asked him to write some more in response to the original prompt. It was only when I saw his second response that I realized that he was in fact answering the question. I am grateful to Peter both for writing this piece, and for his patience with me. —Jody Lewen

My life as an older inmate is different in that it is more oppressive psychologically, and it is the egregious unconstitutional prison overcrowding that has made incarceration much more difficult today. This is only one issue. Secondly, the isolation and very restricted contact with people on the outside is a problem for older inmates who need better interaction with community volunteers and reentry facilities. Also, time is very valuable to older inmates who are trying in good faith to salvage what time they have left in a free society under parole supervision.

What is not understood very well by others outside in society are the overt abuses in the state’s existing parole system. Life in prison would be made a lot better and more fair if elderly prisoners would be released unconditionally without the “suitability” hurdle by the parole board commissioners if they have served more than 30 years and who 1) are over the age of 70, 2) have not taken the life of a police officer, child, or governmental official, 3) have not been sentenced to death or life without the possibility of parole, 4) have not committed multiple murders, and 5) have not been convicted of first-degree murder except for those who have been granted relief by the courts pursuant to Senate Bill 1437.

Currently, and most unfortunately, California’s parole commissioners with their excessively broad authority and discretion over the fate of life-term prisoners create an atmosphere of fear and even terror in the hearts and minds of many elderly prisoners hoping to be released on parole. Like other deserving and reformed lifers, my 15-years-to-life term is being unjustly and unconstitutionally prolonged and unreasonably hampered by findings of “unsuitability” by unduly biased and prejudicial parole commissioners who have the unfettered liberty of using any one of a dozen or more “highly suggestive reasons” as a basis for denying parole.¹ This abusive practice needs to be overhauled and changed.

Finally, in a higher dimension of human and spiritual thought and awareness, I will add that the principalities and rulers of this Earth shall never dictate to me who I am, where I may be, or where I am going, for I am a reborn child of God and a new creature founded in Christ. I will never know what it is to be an old man because I am still young in spirit, mind, and body. Only my Father in heaven knows when, and if, I will ever become an old man.

¹”Highly subjective reasons” include, for example, “lack of insight,” “lack of remorse,” “lack of appreciation for the impact of a crime on the community,” etc. Also, there is unfair discrimination due to parole applicants’ autonomy, personal beliefs or sexual orientations or tastes in clear violation of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling and precedent set forth under Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, 192 L. Ed. 2d 609, 621-631 (2015).

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

Screening “College Behind Bars”

by

On September 18, the Prison University Project welcomed filmmaker Lynn Novick and her colleagues—producer Sarah Botstein; Chris Pigott of DKC News; Julia Lourie of the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI); Salih Israil, a Bard graduate and formerly incarcerated individual featured in the film; and Elitha Smith, sister of a currently incarcerated BPI alumnus featured in the film—for a screening of College Behind Bars at San Quentin for students of the College Program. This four-part documentary was executive produced by Ken Burns and features the educational journeys of a group of students in the Bard Prison Initiative, a higher education in prison program in New York. Our students and staff appreciated the opportunity to engage with the filmmakers and dialogue on changing public representation of incarcerated people.

Students spoke to the similarities of their experience studying inside with the experiences of BPI students—the psychological difficulties of being an incarcerated college student, the struggle to manage their homework and workload alongside commitments to prison jobs and other programs, a lack of study spaces and quiet time, and their redefined sense of identity as scholars, community members, and engaged citizens. The clips struck a chord for many and affirmed their belief that higher education is an opportunity to expand minds and open up new worlds. Seeing another program helped contextualize our students’ experience in a larger movement to challenge the purpose of incarceration and shift it toward a less punitive and more restorative approach. Students formally applauded the filmmakers for making the film.

Poignant clips focused on family relationships provoked the strongest emotional reactions from the students. In one scene, an incarcerated woman Tamika argues with her mother about the merits of gaining a degree in prison. Her mother believes that Tamika doesn’t deserve a free education in prison and be given opportunities that people on the outside have to pay for. As their conversation escalates in the prison visiting room, one can only feel the palpable trauma and anguish that family members of incarcerated people experience too. Elitha, who came to San Quentin on behalf of her incarcerated brother Rodney, echoed that pain, but also shared how education opened her brother up to speaking about his crime and hold himself accountable. She expressed how proud and moved she was to watch the film clips and see him vulnerably open up about what happened for the first time. The clips of Elitha and Rodney interacting together in the visiting room deeply resonated with the students as they reflected on their own family and close friends who support them from the outside.

Elitha affirmed our students’ paths through higher education by highlighting how a person who committed a crime can’t always bring their victim back or help a grieving family, but as transformed, educated, actualized individuals, they can certainly come back to help their own families and communities, and help to make the world a better place.

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

Prison University Project Hosts Book Club Discussion with Students and Outside Guests

by

“I’m just a regular guy, a voice in the middle of a sea of voices that don’t seem to matter to most—which is why we may forever be misrepresented unless we speak for ourselves.” —D. Watkins

On July 26, the Prison University Project hosted two book club discussion groups, each with ten students and ten guests. Students selected We Speak for Ourselves: A Word from Forgotten Black America by New York Times bestselling author D. Watkins, a nonfiction commentary on representation, activism, and black intellectual thought in modern-day America. Our goal with this event was to facilitate connections between students in the College Program and the outside community, and to create space for conversations about how the reading intersects with our daily lives and experiences.

Students and outside guests alike debated the effectiveness of D. Watkins’ arguments; there was a range of opinions, which produced a lively discussion. Some participants identified with his experience and articulation of “life on the streets,” while others questioned his authenticity and recognized his ambivalence about his own privilege. A common theme that emerged was that of the tension between individual agency and structural factors that limit social change. Accordingly, many participants acknowledged that though D. Watkins’ provided some useful strategies for advancing social justice, his book generally lacked a systemic analysis.

Our questions for discussion are included below along with bios of our book club facilitators:

  • Who is the intended audience? Does this remain constant throughout the book or does it change?
  • What was most surprising, intriguing, or hard to understand aspect of the book? Have you gained a new perspective—or did the book affirm your prior views?
  • What about the book most resonated with you? What (if anything) didn’t sit well with you?
  • What connects the book’s four parts? Is there a throughline? Did any part stand out or seem different?
  • Where do you see tension or ambivalence in this book? Why do you think that comes up?
  • Have you ever felt like someone was speaking on your behalf in a way that missed your concerns? How does this dynamic play out in other communities?
  • Is D. Watkins’ critique of black elitism compelling? Why or why not?
  • What is D. Watkins’ argument for rejecting patriotism? How does he reconcile that with his Baltimore pride?
  • What do we make of his discussion of violence?
  • What is D. Watkins’ view on the importance of reading? How does that relate to your life?
  • What is D. Watkins’ definition of social change? What are the benefits and drawbacks of that approach?
  • How does this book propose that one stays connected to the community one is brought up in? Does this reflect your own life experience? 
  • How does the culture and life experiences D. Watkins discuss differ from yours? How are they similar to yours?
  • What kind of language does D. Watkins use? Is it objective and dispassionate? Or passionate and earnest? Is it polemical, sarcastic? Does the language help or undercut the author’s premise?
  • What questions do you still have?

James King

James moved to Oceanside, CA from Ferguson, MO in 1992. He has an Associate’s Degree in Christian Ministry and is currently pursuing an Associate’s Degree in Liberal Arts through the Prison University Project. He also serves as a program clerk, helping to administer the College Program from the inside.

Michael David Lukas

Michael David Lukas is the author of The Oracle of Stamboul, a finalist for the California Book Award, the NCIBA Book of the Year Award, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize, as well as The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, which won the Sami Rohr Prize, the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and the ALA’s Sophie Brody Medal. His nonfiction has been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and National Geographic Traveler. Born in Berkeley, he lives in Oakland and teaches at San Francisco State University.

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

Oral History at San Quentin Prison

by

Last fall, Voice of Witness, an organization that advances human rights by amplifying the voices of people impacted by injustice, held three classes that introduced Prison University Project students to the oral history process. Read more about the series of workshops by clicking below, and check out students Steve Brooks and Joe Garcia’s stories published on the Voice of Witness Blog.

The Voice of Witness education team is always looking for opportunities to create deeper engagement and partnership with the communities represented in our book series, so we can ensure our educational resources are reaching the students who need them the most. That’s why with the launch of our newest book, Six By Ten: Stories from Solitary, we’ve been working with the Prison University Project (PUP) at San Quentin State Prison to share VOW’s ethics-driven oral history process with their students.

The PUP college program offers San Quentin inmates free courses in the humanities, social sciences, math, and science, as well as intensive college preparatory courses in math and English. Working with PUP Academic Program Director, Amy Jamgochian, I developed three classes that would introduce students to the oral history process and give them an opportunity to practice their interview skills, both as an interviewer and narrator, as well as their editing skills.

Following weeks of planning, logistics and pursuing security clearances, I kicked off the first class by pairing students up to a share a story with each other related to their first names. It was a great way to warm everyone up to storytelling – after sharing their stories with the group, many of them realized their stories had something in common!

We then read Hani Khan’s story from Patriot Acts, which helped students begin to think about the relationship between interviewer and narrator in the oral history process – in particular the types of questions (and listening) that inspire thoughtful, detailed stories.

I was inspired by how adept the students were at contextualizing oral history, posing powerful questions about the nature of history—namely who makes it and who writes it. They quickly made connections between oral history and traditions like West African Griots, and modern day emcees.

In order to prepare ourselves for interviews during our second class, our first meeting finished with an exploration of the question, “If you had a meaningful story to share with someone, what would you need to feel safe, to feel brave?” There were many lively responses, and the class felt very connected to issues related to respect, representation, and the importance of agency over one’s own story.

When I arrived for our second class, I discovered that we were going to be in a different classroom, and one right next store to a room where there was an open-mic performance going on. Not exactly ideal when you’ll be conducting oral history interviews! However, this seemed to bother me more than it did the students, and they came in ready to conduct their interviews. After a while, we were able to turn the performance next door into part of our interview experience, as we acknowledged the applause next door as an appreciation of our interview skills!

The interviews were not without their challenges, however. Due to prison requirements the students were not able to use recording devices for their interviews, and instead took copious notes while interviewing their partners. It was certainly an exercise in maintaining focus—both when listening to your narrator’s story, and in the ability to capture the meaningful moments of the story on paper in real time.

After the interviews were completed, partners shared their notes with each other and had a bit of time to incorporate this material into their existing story drafts. Watching this process unfold, it became clear to me that this approach to oral history – and the challenges incarcerated people face documenting their stories – should be incorporated into our curriculum for Six By Ten. Before the end of class, I reminded students that our third and final meeting was going to be devoted to editing their personal narratives.

Looking ahead, we will be using the VOW blog to provide an online platform for these students to publish their stories. In our last class, our first task was to make sure everyone was clear about the process of getting their oral histories onto the VOW website. After some editing work, the stories would be typed up, proofed by the students, and then sent to the Public Information Officer for publishing clearance.

As we began our editing session, it was interesting for students to compare the editing work they had done in their formal writing, and the choices made while editing their personal narratives. Many concepts and techniques carried over, such as clarity and quality of detail, but students were also able to use different editing techniques to highlight moments in their stories that included sensory detail, a clear storytelling arc, and an overall intuitive sense of what makes for a compelling story. At the end of our editing session, I asked if a few students would be willing to read their narratives to the class. Everyone volunteered and we finished our work together in a very supportive story sharing environment.

Before parting, I took a moment to reflect on how much we were able to touch on in just three classes: oral history techniques, editing, the concept of “people’s history,” several excerpts from the VOW book series (including Six By Ten), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, quotes from Chimamanda Adichie and James Baldwin, and guiding principles for ethical storytelling. I was also glad to be able to leave some VOW books for the PUP library, so other students in the program will have access to the stories and can make connections with the lives and experiences of our narrators.

I certainly hope this is only the beginning of our work with the students of the Prison University Project. We can’t wait to share these students’ stories with you in the coming months!

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

Celebrating Student Expression at Open Mic Night

by

On December 28, 2018, the Prison University Project hosted its fifth annual Open Mic night in the San Quentin chapel and invited students to share creative work that they developed in class or on their own, such as poetry, dance, short stories, and music. It was a wonderful evening that showcased our students’ diverse talents and interests. Photos of the event and a copy of the program are included below.

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.