Mount Tamalpais College

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Remembering Eva Diez

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This essay was adapted from a speech delivered by MTC student Charles Crowe at San Quentin’s 2026 Mourning Our Losses Ceremony, held on April 10, 2026. Hosted by the San Quentin chapter of Mourning Our Losses, the annual event honors San Quentin residents, staff, and volunteers who have passed away. Crowe’s speech honored Eva Diez, a volunteer faculty member with Mount Tamalpais College. Illustration of Eva Diez by MTC student Robert Kuikahi.

Eva was a volunteer Spanish teacher for Mount Tamalpais College. She was young, and her tragic death in February was sudden. I want to begin by expressing our condolences to her family, her colleagues, and her friends. As her students, our hearts are broken. I can only imagine the depth of this loss for those who knew her on a deeper level.

I was Eva’s student and served as an aide in some of her classes. The volunteers who come in to teach for Mt. Tam are discreet about their personal lives and we know better than to ask a lot of questions. What we learn about them is based on what we see when they come inside. So we see personalities and we see character. In Eva’s case, what we saw was an endearing personality and impeccable character.

When I remember Eva, I think of contrasts. Here was this small woman with really big hair. She had this thick, rich head of beautiful auburn hair cut in an avant-garde style. The first time I saw her hair I did a double-take. But I soon realized that it was perfect for her, not just for her appearance but also for her personality. For me it came to symbolize how very cool she was.

One contrast to Eva’s petite size was her giant intellect. She was very smart and perceptive. Eva was obviously very well educated and she was a skilled educator. She spoke immaculate Spanish and she taught us to speak her beautiful language properly. She also spoke English very well with a subtle, charming accent.

Eva was both European and Bay Area all at once. She had a certain dignity and poise, a sort of Old World, cosmopolitan depth that made me feel a little like a crude colonial when I was around her. But at the same time, she had a relaxed, easy manner and a quiet humility that made her relatable and comfortable to be around. Her beautiful smile was always present and she was sometimes playful and mischievous.

Although Eva was from Spain, she taught Spanish from a global perspective. She was always bringing in beautiful color printouts of scenes from all over the Spanish-speaking world. One day she would show us images of a marketplace in Lima, Peru, and the next time scenes from a town plaza in Caracas, Venezuela. She taught not just the language, but the people and culture behind it. In this way, she honored and showed her love for her Spanish-speaking brethren all over the world, which highlighted another contrast to her small frame. Eva had a gigantic heart.

In spite of her own stellar qualities, Eva was other-directed, locked in like a laser beam on her students. She looked out for us. I once asked her for a support letter. She answered me with accented dignity, “I would be honored.” This wonderful person, who towered over me in every way except for her height, would be honored, she said, to vouch for my character. I was honored just to be in her classroom. I still have that letter. In it she wrote about the good she saw in me, and from the letter I realized that she had been watching me, searching out the good, just as she looked for the redeeming qualities in all of us.

It was Eva’s outsized heart that brought her into this prison to teach. Yes, she had the requisite knowledge and skills, but it was her heart that brought her through that gate. All of the Mt. Tam staff and volunteers are wonderful, but even among that outstanding group, Eva was extraordinary. Shortly after hearing of her death, I talked to Jody Lewen. I told Jody that I saw Eva as the tip of the spear, and Jody gave me a quizzical look. What I meant by that was that Eva epitomized the kindness and generosity of the volunteers that come into this prison.

I remember once leaning against the big wall before they tore it down to build the Learning Center. A hundred yards away, across the yard, I spotted Eva’s profile, the big hair, the perfectly erect posture, as she walked along the cyclone fence heading toward the Education B-Building. She was probably on her way to a meeting of Students Teaching Teachers, one of her routine missions of mercy. I remember having a sense of well-being at that moment, just to see her presence, even from that distance. It seemed to me that the darkness of this place rolled away before her small, steady steps.

Eva was a powerful force for what is good and just. Her death was a catastrophic loss and she is sorely missed. But in the few years that she was with us, she had a tremendous impact. She lifted us up with her kindness and compassion. Her enduring legacy in this place is that she enriched all of our lives with her knowledge and her gentle spirit. I am a better person for her influence and I know that there are others here today who can say the same. Good looking out Eva. We are forever grateful.

Gracias, Eva, por todo. Siempre te vamos a recordar. Adiós, maestra. Adiós, amiga.

Experience of an Unfinished Journey

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My chance encounter to take in-person courses at Mount Tamalpais College inside San Quentin State Prison happened in the winter of 2011. At the time, the school was an extension site of Patten College, and was known as the Prison University Project.

I was transferred to Quentin under Assembly Bill 109, “Realignment,” California’s plan to reduce overcrowding in its prisons. This was 12 years before Gov. Gavin Newsom rebranded the prison San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.

“Let’s go check out the college program,” I said to a couple of people who transferred with me from Folsom State Prison. We left North Block. Our destination was the main Education building on San Quentin’s lower yard, where we met Kara, a staff member at the College.

“You’re just in time for orientation in a few days,” said Kara. She was courteous as she wrote down our names, prisoner identification numbers, and housing assignments. Then she handed us information about the College, and paperwork to complete.

I arrived in prison with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mass communication. Journalism and writing were essentials in my major. The first 15 years of my incarceration afforded me only one opportunity to enroll in a college course, through correspondence. I was thrilled at the idea I could attend Patten College, in a real academic environment, to receive in-person instruction with a professor and other students. 

The first two courses I signed up for were English and journalism. To say the latter was pivotal to my pursuit of higher education would be an understatement, but it would be more than a decade before my plan to continue my education at an advanced level finally materialized.

Before incarceration, I considered applying to graduate school. However, I questioned the certainty of my readiness. Moreover, the unforeseeable events that led to my confinement practically dashed the idea to carry on with my studies. 

Arrest, trial, conviction, prison, and my self-imposed education—attained in every prison that became a university, and in each cell that became my classroom—taught me more about self-determination. Resiliency and my abiding fortitude to prevail under the weight of oppression had driven me. In the course of more than a decade of imprisonment, I had written more than a dozen unpublished political essays, short stories and poems. In addition, I had read nearly 300 books on a variety of subjects. 

Booker T. Washington taught me to come Up from Slavery. Viktor Frankl provided me with Man’s Search for Meaning. Daniel Levinson taught me about The Seasons of a Man’s Life. The Autobiography of Malcolm X showed me why all of this was important. George Jackson’s Soledad Brother gave me a blueprint; and Ernesto Che Guevara’s Guerilla Warfare admonished me to move “Forever onward, toward victory.”

In early 2012, I started writing for the inmate-run San Quentin News. It was during that time that I shifted my viewpoint on my situation and began to frame a plan to continue my education beyond prison. In the summer of 2019, Prison University Project offered a Black Studies course. That class provided me with an added focus on African history. In contemplation on the larger Black diaspora, it also instigated grander designs for my future. 

When 2019 ended, I had completed reading 400 books during my 23 years of incarceration. The greatest significance of those books, to me, was the fact that it was also the 400th anniversary of when the first African slaves arrived in North America. They were denied humanity, education and were forbidden to learn how to read.

I did not intend to earn an Associate of Arts degree while at San Quentin. My sights were fixed on applying to the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. That is no small undertaking to do from inside prison. Beyond the online application process, essays, transcripts, telephone interview, and other details, I needed three letters of recommendation from respectable people in the community who knew me—and not someone from my life 23 years ago. By late 2022, I decided it was time for me to execute my plan. By then, I had completed an audio engineering program at San Quentin (offered by The Last Mile), studied and had became an electrician at California State Prison Solano, earned a two-year paralegal diploma at Folsom State Prison, and worked ten years for the San Quentin News. More than 300 of my articles have been published, which included nearly 100 in other publications. MTC augmented my education with workshops and weekly lectures.

Jody Lewen, president of Mount Tamalpais College, was one of the three people who penned a letter for me when I applied for admission to UC Berkeley. I had known her for a decade, and always found it so unusual how she made herself available to MTC students, given her position and tenure with the College. She cared about the success of each student’s education, and life beyond incarceration. 

April 20, 2023 was another defining moment in my educational journey. That’s when I received a letter from UC Berkeley that read, in part: “Dear Kevin Sawyer, Congratulations! I am delighted to offer you admission to graduate study in the Journalism MJ program,” wrote the Vice Provost for Graduate Studies and Dean of the Graduate Division. 

It is doubtful I would have attempted to apply for admission to UC Berkeley if it were not for that Journalism course. I used to believe the chance to continue my education ended with a life sentence and incarceration. Mount Tamalpais College changed my outlook on that notion, and hopefully the trajectory of my life after prison.



KEVIN D. SAWYER is an African American native of San Francisco, California, born in 1963. He is a long-time member of the Society of Professional Journalists and writer of news articles, essays, short stories, memoirs, poems, journals on incarceration, and other subjects.

Sawyer’s published work appears in Columbia Journalism Review, San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, UCLA Law Review, Bay City News, Harvard Journal of African American Policy, Oakland Post, Filter Magazine, Cal Matters, Iron City Magazine, The News Station, The Harbinger (NYU), Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, PEN America, Prison Journalism Project, San Quentin News, San Francisco Bay View, Solitary Watch, The Davis Vanguard, California Prison Focus, The Pioneer, Wall City, 580 Split, Apogee Journal, El Tecolote, and many others. 

Formerly the San Quentin News Editor-in-Chief, Sawyer led the publication to win the 2025 American Penal Press Award for “Best Prison Newspaper.” In 2024, he received the Stillwater Award for a “Best News Story,” the California News Publishers Association’s “Community Focus Award,” and the San Quentin Film Festival’s “Best Documentary Film Pitch” award. In 2021, the San Francisco Press Club presented him with its “Bay Journalism Award Newspaper.” In 2019, he received an “Honorable Mention” for nonfiction from PEN America. In 2016, he received The James Aronson Award for “Exemplary Community Journalism,” and in 2014, he was on the San Quentin News staff that won the Society of Professional Journalists’ “James Madison Freedom of information Award.” 

Prior to incarceration, Sawyer worked 14 continuous years in the telecommunications industry for several corporations. He is an NCCER certified electrician, a trained audio engineer through The Last Mile, and a practiced guitar and piano player. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in mass communication with a special broadcasting option from California State University Hayward, and a Diploma as paralegal/legal assistant from Blackstone Career Institute. In April 2023, he was accepted and offered admission to the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California Berkeley.

Rapid Fire

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A loud voice at High Desert State Prison cracks to life over the P.A. system. “Everyone get the fuck down, get down on the ground! Stop, stop!”

Live rounds from a Mini-14 rifle are fired. Bodies stumble against each other. Utensils hit the pavement. A fresh stain of blood appears on the hot asphalt. The burn of pepper spray stinks in the air. Shots continue firing. Echoes of rubber bullets piercing flesh, attempting to cease racial hostility.

I am in the midst of a riot, praying to make it out alive while dodging bullets. I flash back to being five years old.

The resurgence of a familiar fear: the echo of rapid fire and smoke grenades trigger suppressed memories of trauma deep inside the mind of my five-year-old self. I close my eyes in fear of being hit by aimless bullets. After all, I had survived the disarray of a civil war in El Salvador that left me breathless and nearly orphaned me on multiple occasions. Timelines converge; old visions of spattered blood stain my current reality.

*

Hot lead rained from every rooftop in El Salvador. The peaceful avenue cracked, violently slicing the air between my five-year-old self and my mother’s outstretched hand. Rapid fires of war whipped across the stars. The Sandinista rebels had taken over the city of Santa Ana. It was a dispute between the U.S. and the Russian governments, but as a young child I was oblivious as to why our lives were full of discord and misery at the expense of foreign politics. The only thing I knew was that people were dying. I remember when my friend’s father was kidnapped in the middle of the night by Escuadron de la Muerte, the Death Squad. This was a mercenary group that killed people and left their decapitated corpses in the middle of the highways, or hanging from a bridge with placards in red lettering: “He is a traitor and deserves to die!” 

My mom would often remind me that if I wanted to stay alive, I needed to listen to her. One day, I was on the street where my mom had set up shop to sell her things on the sidewalks of the city. My siblings and I were in a big plastic container where we bathed outdoors in our underwear. It was here that she noticed people shouting and running in all directions in a panic. She demanded that we kids to get out and dry off as she started quickly gathering up her merchandise. A soldier in the National Guard pointed a rifle at my mother’s head as she tried to collect her things and pack them into a cardboard box.

My mother immediately raised her hands into the air. “I am not armed, please don’t shoot me,” Mama pleaded to the soldier, trembling from head to toe.

He yelled at her. “Are you stupid? I thought you had a bomb! Leave everything behind or you will get blown to pieces!” Then he walked away, shooting into the air. 

I placed my small hands into my ears in an attempt to block the noise of live ammunition. I didn’t know if my mother was shot. I looked up and saw the soldier’s shining boots disappearing into the distance.

My mother’s defiance allowed her to retrieve her chinaware dishes, which she collected rapidly. As people ran by, stumbling into one another in search of refuge, she begged them not to step on her dishes. She refused to leave the things that allowed her six children, her partner Frank, and herself to eat. The fear of not having a way to put food on the table was more important than her own life. This heroic act kept us safe. “I was a young mother, and I knew that if I lost our stuff, I was going to be in a bigger debt. All that chinaware was given to me on credit,” my mother explained to me years later.

My mother sought shelter for us like a wild hawk protecting her chicks, going door to door, begging anyone to take us off the streets. Making herself small in moments of desperation, her bravery ignited the flames of hopes which kept us alive. She refused to give up, even while feeling powerless.

“Por favor,” Mama beseeched a stranger who was on the safe side of a thick, rust-colored door. Mama’s tiny knuckles were bleeding as she knocked, “Tengo mis hijos.” I have my children.  

I was confused and scared when I saw my mother’s body language change. She spoke in a tone of voice I had never heard before. She moved quickly, with one child (my baby brother Amilcar) on her arm, practically dragging my sister because she couldn’t keep up. I was yelled at for not moving fast enough. I could see Mama’s fear—no one needed to tell me. Her legs were shaking, yet she moved quietly, like a deer in the wild. When an explosion erupted in the distance, one of my siblings cried, making her more jumpy and nervous, as each thundering blow grew closer and closer. 

A rebel ran up to us and told my mom to stop. If we wanted to survive, we needed to stay still between the concrete walls that were temporarily shielding us from the conflict. The walls were old, and there was hardly enough space for one person to hide from plain view. We all ran up to a corner house wall and hid in this small entrance. We found ourselves packed in, squeezing each other, gasping for air. My small body was pinned against the wall, my nose pressed into the rusty paint. It smelled like burning flesh, urine, and death. The rebel left. We waited for his return. A few minutes later he came back—he had found a place for us and other families with children. As if she was his own concerned mother, Mama asked the rebel in a quivering voice, “Aren’t you afraid that you will get killed?”

“I won’t be the only person to die for all the injustice that our people are going through,” the rebel replied and took off running, disappearing into the night. Finally, a frightened old woman cracked her door open, just enough to lend us her tidy wooden floor for the night.

In the morning, the war woke us when a radio came alive, pulling back the blanket of security. The Communist Party, Faramundo Martin para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN), announced: “Tienen media hora para comprar comida o para irse a sus casas.” You have half an hour to either purchase food or go home.

In the commotion, I sought shelter by making myself as small as possible. I tried to escape the wrath of war by hiding inside my small clothes, to make myself invisible. I stuck my little arms inside my shirt. I pulled the top over my head. “!Aqui no me encuentran!” In here they can’t find me!

“¡Edwin! ¡Edwin! ¡Deja de jugar, nos tenemos que ir, apúrate!” shouted my mother. Edwin! Edwin! Stop fooling around, we must go, hurry up!”

We flung open the rusty metal door that had temporarily protected us all and ran, every one of us, in every direction. The city had been shut down, and no one could make it home. The stores had been closed and food was scarce. The fear of ending up dead on the streets made it a race for our lives. We were caught up in the middle of cross fire. I was confused—I opened my mouth but couldn’t utter a word. Trying to make sense of my surroundings, I blinked my eyes in hopes that the situation before me would change, but the disorder and panic remained. I couldn’t understand what was happening. In a state of shock, I found myself in the streets, my little body shaking in the midst of anarchy, as if I was inside a horror movie. Folks were screaming, calling on loved ones to no avail. Distraught, I ran. All I could see in the smoke and fog were shadows running in different directions.

I felt sick from the smell of burning flesh. Surrounded by rapid fire, I sprinted into an intersection. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing—dozens of abandoned buses and cars with their doors open and their motors running. Bloody corpses littered the streets. I couldn’t understand the lack of movement in body after body, or why cars were parked in the middle of the street. Looking everywhere for my mother, I tripped and fell over a child’s body, laying face-to-face with her frozen eyes, lightly dusted and dull.

I lay on the street, listening to the eerie calm of a dying diesel motor, afraid to move, afraid she might blink. Afraid my heart was going to pop out of my small chest. Does she want to blink and say hello? Is she afraid like me?

In my mind, I tried to create some distance. I squeezed my eyes shut. “Donde esta mi mama?” Where is my mother? “¡No quiero morir alguien por favor ayudame!” I don’t want to die, please someone help me! No response. A few minutes felt like an eternity. Then, a soldier pulled me to my feet and made me walk through the dream of bodies. He took me to a church, where I found my family. Then he left. Years later, I learned through some relatives that three days after he found me, he became another bloated dream in the streets. I never knew his name.

*

These episodes rattled around my young mind into adulthood. Even now, my existence is interrupted by the chaos of prison violence; emergency responders move swiftly, responding to the trail of bloody men laying on the ground, fighting for their lives. The war in my head continues to live on; I wonder, at any given moment will this be the end of this Salvadoran refugee? Physically, I am in a riot among deadly convicts, but mentally I am lost in my own memories, all while prone on the hot concrete inside a maximum-security prison.

Book Review: Inequities Haunt Poor and Homeless to the Grave

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Persons experiencing homelessness face daunting challenges and inequities in their daily lives. Shunned and ignored, they are prodded to move along to what the author calls “the space that remains.”  

In Too Poor to Die, The Hidden Realities of Dying in the Margins, author Amy Shea lays bare the cold truth that those inequities often dog the homeless through the time of their dying and even into the grave. 

Shea presents her exposé in a series of nonfiction, personal essays that blend seamlessly into a compelling narrative. One such essay, “Remembering the Forgotten, The Space That Remains,” takes place in a modern-day potter’s field in the author’s hometown of Fresno. After a brief ceremony in 2018, the county buried 740 unclaimed dead en masse. Such burials are periodic; these bodies had accumulated for nine years. Each of the 740 six-by-nine-inch boxes held one set of cremains, all buried together in two wooden coffins in graves identified only as lot numbers 58 and 59, no names. 

“Death is supposed to be the great equalizer,” wrote Shea. “The thing we all experience regardless of our class, race, or any other identities we’ve held or experiences we’ve had in life. Yet not all deaths are created equal. Not everyone has a good or dignified death or is treated with respect and dignity once dead.” 

Although intensely researched -Shea’s bibliography spans 29 pages –Too Poor to Die is not detached, academic writing. The author doggedly pursued her topic in person, on the street, and on the road. 

Her quest for understanding spanned more than a decade and carried her from Fresno to such disparate locations as Phoenix, Boston, Salt Lake City, Lexington, and England. 

She frequented coroner’s offices, morgues, hospices, medical facilities, and homeless shelters. She delved into documentary films like A Certain Kind of Death, with its graphic scenes of lonely deaths discovered only when neighbors smelled bodies decomposing. As described in her essay, “Field Notes of a Tombstone Tourist,” Shea haunted graveyards and cemeteries to contemplate the humble spaces that hold the remains of those who die on the margin. 

The writer sought to learn from those whose daily business is caring for the poor, the homeless, the sick, and the dying, as well as those tasked with disposing of dead bodies or cleaning up scenes of death. She sought the insights of cemetery groundskeepers, street doctors, nurses, social workers, and staff at end-of-life facilities and homeless shelters. Often, the writer saw in these places the heroic efforts of those who care for the homeless and those approaching death. In some cases, she worked side by side with them. 

Shea worked in the foot-care clinic of St. Francis House, part of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless program, as a foot-care assistant. Her duties included “setting up basins for foot soaks and working with nurses to assess the condition of patients’ feet, distributing socks and towels … application of creams and powders, engaging [patients] in conversation (to establish rapport, which can result in the identification of further medical issues)…” In this role, she confirmed the importance of foot health to one who must walk everywhere and keep walking, because home is a sidewalk where loitering is prohibited. 

In Salt Lake City, Shea learned from staff and residents of the INN Between, a facility she described as “…medical respite and end-of-life care for people experiencing homelessness.” There, she sat and conversed with residents living out their final days in hospice. 

As her work progressed, the author saw how the lack of shelter affects health and healthcare. In clinics and at homeless shelters, she witnessed the intense wear on bodies from constant exposure to the elements (burns from lying on hot concrete or pavement, frostbite from the cold, among other things). She saw that without a secure place, life-sustaining medications cannot be properly stored or refrigerated, and can be lost to theft or sudden encampment sweeps. For these reasons, among others, Shea argued in her book that “housing is healthcare” (author’s emphasis). 

Too Poor to Die is unapologetic activism, a call for compassion for those who die on our margins. Shea writes, “Regardless of where we come from … we should agree that dignity in death is something that should be afforded to everyone, not just those that can afford it.” 

In prose at once stark and compassionate, the writer has tapped into an almost universal value: that the dying and the dead deserve dignity and respect. As a reader, one is compelled to consider whether those experiencing homelessness deserve respect any sooner. San Quentin News recommends this book to anyone with a heart for those on the fringes of society. 

Students of Mount Tamalpais College may recognize Shea as the director of the College’s writing program. Students may borrow the book from the Mt. Tam library. 

Attribution: This article originally appeared in the San Quentin News on May 16, 2026.

Photo courtesy of Bonaru Richardson

Memoir of an Identity Contingency

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The author Claude Steele expresses that his study shows that stereotyping individuals can, and does lead to what he calls “identity contingencies–the things you have to deal with in a situation because you have a given social identity, because you are old, young, gay, woman, Black, Latino, etc…Identity contingencies are circumstances you have to deal with in order to get want you want or need in a situation.” Steele’s introduction states that these identity transformers can cause individuals to act in ways which can limit their performance on tests, choices of lifestyle, choices of careers, and how they act in social situations to which the stereotype is relevant. The expectation of how one should appear to present themselves can be embedded into a social norm, causing stereotypical actions and reactions from agencies, as well as the general public. 

The stereotype that young African-American males are violence prone has been promulgated since the mid-nineteen-sixties until today. For example, profiling of African-American youth by police agencies, carried over from private prejudices formed by the general public, has been documented since 1968 in The Kerner Commission Report. An active ‘stop and frisk’ policy was initiated nationwide following the Watts riots of 1965. For example, Caucasian police officers have often profiled me for violating their “macho clandestine right of driving a better, or cooler automobile than minorities should have, and/or of being uppity in my dress or walk.” This became evident when I first arrived in California in 1969 and was stopped while driving a new car with the owner sitting next to me. The owner of the vehicle was released immediately. Although I had a clean driver’s license, and I was twenty-one years of age with no criminal history, I was arrested, investigated, and kept in jail for five days. (It was Friday so I was kept for the weekend, plus seventy-two hours). These profiling, arresting and harassment tactics became more pronounced as the years passed. 

After I purchased my first new automobile in 1970, I was routinely met with open looks of hostility and flagrant remarks of denigration; I was assaulted, and even almost murdered by police agencies. I was arrested fifteen times for investigation over a twenty-five year period for walking while Black in Los Angeles, while tending to my own business, or driving around in newer automobiles, with no warrants on the vehicles, nor having made any traffic violations. 

One time, for instance, I was driving down freeway 101 in Los Angeles at 60mph in a 65mph speed zone in my new Dodge Charger. It was metallic sky blue with white interior and a white half-top vinyl roof with a white racing “RT” stripe (for rapid transit) on the rear end of the vehicle, signaling it had a large engine–either a 440 cubic inch motor, or a 426-cubic-inch demi motor under the hood. The car had 7 inch deep Chrome Rocket wheel rims on the rear, and five inch deep chrome wheel rims on the front, looking as if it had just been driven off some drag-racing strip. The car was beautiful and I was driving it as if I owned the world as I was listening to my favorite tunes on my stereo. 

I had been driving in the same lane for approximately twenty miles when a highway patrol officer pulled up next to me riding on a motorcycle with a red face full of anger and shouted, “Where do you think you are going, making that unsafe lane change?” Then he pulled me over to give me a ticket as he investigated me for whatever violation he could find or concoct. It was with disdain in his entire manner as he almost proved he knew it was my auto before he pulled me over. The hatred and animosity was in his every manner as he investigated me for driving while Black and young, and driving an automobile that only White men should have. I was given a ticket simply for the profile I presented: Young and Black. 

These types of stops for persons of my race, as well as for Latinos, have resulted in thousands of unfair tickets as well as hundreds of “murders by cop” over the decades. They instill in our persons the fear of getting stopped by law officials whether one has committed the offense charged or not. After about three of these instances–the last ending with a gun pointed at my head–I ended by getting an ID in another name, trying to save points on my driving record. We never know if we are going to die or not each time we are pulled over. 

The PBS documentary showcasing The Kerner Commission Report of 1968 confirmed that “white racism” was systematically practiced in every aspect of American life in Black neighborhoods. The report detailed how redlining in housing, bank loans, job discrimination, and the alleged war on poverty, were “discriminatory practices placed in practice to legitimize stereotyping of Black Americans.” White racist policemen were actively recruited in cities such as Los Angeles by police departments to initiate “stop and frisk” with as many individuals as possible to keep them afraid of the authorities and subordinate to White authority. The war on poverty was synonymous with institutionalization of discrimination and stereotyping of all American Black youth by profiling to subvert the threat of riots. 

These social structures show that stereotyping generally comes from cultures of honor that have deep historical roots, like the ones found in the Harlen, Kentucky article that can force identity contingencies upon others, by the force of their prejudices that can start by simple greed contests. Starting out in youth one youngster tries to show off, showing the other youngsters that he has better toys, or is bigger or stronger than his peers, so he can make the rules they live by. Malcolm Gladwell states: “To be aggressive he has to make it clear that he is not weak. He has to be willing to fight in response to even the slightest challenges to his reputation, and that’s what a ‘culture of honor’ means. It’s a world where a man’s reputation is at the center of his livelihood and self-worth.” As these cultures grow that start off in ignorance of moral and social rules, they devise ways to control their family, friends, and neighbors. Even nations around the world continue to adopt similar progressive behaviors to the point where hangings, burnings, witch hunts, and even mercy killings continue the traditions unless or until moral or social law are established. They will go so far as to killing their own family members for alleged honor offenses. Tribal alliances, racial covenants, religious cults, and secret societies form fraternities and sororities, creating opportunities for draconian practices to continue long after these cultures become allegedly civilized. 

The Ku Klux Klan promulgates racism as its foundation for manifest destinies through genocide and property annexations. They both follow practices long claimed to come down from their fathers before them and demand that their followers continue those practices forever. They both claim to be gods and sons of gods on Earth. Stereotyping many classes of others has always been their method of operating. Fighting against them with the best means available is the only way to impede or slow their progress. Too many others think being aggressive and disrespectful of lives different from theirs is the only way to live on this Earth.  

The only remedy for these behaviors is for the authorities to develop a moral conscience by hiring moral officers, after screening and training them better. Then for those officers to approach each encounter as if both he and his stops of persons of color were neighbors. 

Photo courtesy of Bonaru Richardson

San Quentin YellowJacket

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I, too, dream of a carefree life in paradise. A place bursting with the small-town sentiment of “see a need, do a deed.” A place where good cheer, grace, and harmony shine so brightly that there can be no shadows. Where thoughts of pay-it-forward are as ordinary as Sunday following Saturday. Unfortunately, adolescent deeds—unfeeling, caustic deeds–assured me a possibly permanent berth in the purgatory that is San Quentin State Prison. Sentenced to life as a reckless and callous sixteen-year-old, I have come to recognize that paradise is now the solemn and remorseful reflections of a 62-year-old who still dreams.

During these past 46 years, I have worked many prison jobs: kitchen worker, carpenter, stationary engineer (HVAC), and maintenance mechanic. The major benefit of this employment was not the pay, 0.35 to 0.75 cents an hour. No, the confidence and self-reliance were the dividends that transformed this broken teenager into a young adult with marketable skills. 

Thus, my first steps to rehabilitation had begun, negating the faulty thinking processes of my youth. and creating a natural barrier to criminal thinking. Employment, work — that which embodies the discipline and responsibility of a human being at a constructive endeavor — is only one part of the story: gainful employment, however, dramatically changes that story. The dream, the grace, and the lifeline that gainful employment was to me arrived when my request to become a Yellow Jacket — an Inmate Disability Assistant Prisoner (IDAP) was approved. As an IDAP worker, I have a uniform— the Yellow Jacket. 

My duties: Rendering assistance to wheelchair bound inmates; changing their linens; carrying packages; helping fill out forms or write letters. In many ways, offering support to those men unable to help themselves. I wanted this job not for the pay ($0.25 an hour), but for the opportunity to somehow give back and serve my community. Yes, my community of the incarcerated. Like a lifesaving line thrown to a drowning man, the Yellow Jacket is the life jacket where my soul finds refuge. 

The distressing and regrettable reality of this place — prison — is that here, kindness is perceived as weakness, and weakness is a target for predators. Nowhere has the phrase “Brother, can you spare a dime?” held so much potential for deliberate deception. Legal tender in prison is violence — projected, promised, and applied. One prisoner’s reaction to another’s offer of assistance is traditionally hostility and suspicion. 

However, providence or fate — and my Yellow Jacket— have allowed me to transcend these convict customs of purgatory. When I don the Yellow Jacket, like a life preserver, the buoyancy transports me to a different place. If not paradise, then a place of paradisiacal possibilities. My fellow prisoners recognize the neutrality of the Yellow Jacket, recognizing that I am just here to help, without an agenda, angle, or hustle. The terrible truth of prison’s harsh ethos of retribution and indifference is mitigated by the tolerance and compassion conveyed by my simple yellow Jacket. 

Helping a fellow human being in need is a rare and solemn opportunity in prison. Any chance to atone for the harm and injuries resulting from the caustic deeds of my past is a crucial element allowing me to retrieve my humanity. Finding purpose and meaning in my lost life is yet another step on the path to rehabilitation and personal salvation. I may be helping others, but I am the true beneficiary. a soul searching for redemption. Redemption comes through atonement, and atonement is the solace for that weary soul in need. 

That being at Humanity’s edge, a soul in need, sinner or saint, who quietly suffers in resigned solitude, is searching for his or her own salvation and redemption. It is an emotional experience to assist and support the abandoned, expecting only indifference. At that edge — in or out of prison — where indifference is the rule rather than the exception, an affirmative service from a perceptibly legitimized person can be a transformative experience. Emotional experience stems from an understanding and insight into our essential human condition. The crying of the newborn baby signals suffering, and the last breath of the dying man, a sigh, the same. The need to alleviate another’s discomfort begins and ends with humanity’s kindred spirit, that human connection, those feelings and thoughts, “there, but for the grace of God.” As a social species, we need to interact and make connections, or sometimes, in San Quentin, we need a Yellow Jacket. 

In this environment — a state penitentiary — so full of dark and primal shadows, it is the bright yellow light of a simple jacket that continues to illuminate my dreams of paradise. Lighting the thoughts of atonement, redemption, and paradise always ignite from our moral center. our core being. That core survives through the grace of one’s commitment and obligation to principles of morality. Finding and keeping one’s moral balance starts with examples. Just one or two rays striking those dark shadows of penitentiary deception and hostility can ignite the process of self-worth, self-reliance, and one’s true human nature — generosity of spirit. 

Past the labels of “offender” and “prisoner,”  there remains a human being — flawed, regressed, and broken but remaining. On humanity’s edge, there are many labels: Homeless, Addict, Convict, Ex-convict, and sometimes even the unheard victim. A society should not label and castaway our fellow human beings. Where are the yellow jackets, where is the good cheer, grace, and harmony? 

We are, but mere mortals, with weaknesses and strengths, but commitment, participation, and accountability to our communities can make a difference. The creation of recovery and validation, where emptiness and rejection once ruled, builds a society steeped in restoration. There should be no shadows in paradise. On this edge, the gentle breeze of compassion can displace the shadows. and shine grace upon beings worthy of inclusion, respect, and opportunity. Building paradise on the edge, one deed, one dream at a time. Dreams of restoration awaken one’s faith in humanity’s forgotten and forsaken. It is not carefree dreams that drive my sentiments, but perseverance, resolution, and belief in humanity’s true nature – generosity.

The Feast of El Capitan 

by

See past the twitching tree frog striking with its tongue at the swarm of mating lace-winged gnats. And look further than the indigo-plumed birds nestled atop a jumble of banana trees. A seaside village comes alive with the restless movement of young people. In between palm leaf thatched huts, the murmurs of voices emanate from a gathering crowd. 

In the central plaza clearing, the dancing light of lanterns project flickering shadows that illuminate the faces of teenagers and smaller children who flock and eventually settle. 

Just above the ebony and cinnamon-haired heads of the young people sitting on woven nipa palm mats, a middle-aged woman’s voice pierces the din. “Please behave while Grandfather speaks. Steamed fish and rice will be served after Grandfather’s story-lesson. Just be good, and listen patiently. And enjoy these snacks for now.” 

The older and younger adults carry in trays of deep fried banana and crispy pigs’ feet appetizers and distribute them to the calming crowd. Moving past them to the center of one end of the plaza, saunters a slow-moving man with strands of braided white hair. Pearly cowrie shells and soft yellow scallops adorn his neck and torso. He carefully squats upon a low, wide bench composed of dried stumps fastened together with twine. He occasionally wafts a palm frond fan in front of his face revealing the web of creases caused by decades of sunlight, salt spray and the whip of coastal winds. 

The man takes a moment to clear his throat.

“Let me begin. Untold generations before my own, the world awoke from a frozen slumber. The ocean began in recession and slowly rose. Our original people lived on just a handful of expansive sea lands where the coast stretched on and on, requiring weeks of travel by kayak to circumnavigate. Amidst these larger land tracts, the highlands and mountain ranges eventually formed our present day archipelagos. We, as the ocean-borne, maintained ties with this network of cozy sea lands ever since.

“Our neighboring Southern cousins began sharing stories of far-off explorers uncovering the great cities of our violent pale-skinned distant relatives who inhabited somewhere past Western waters. Those same Western distant relatives who generations ago dismayed us by harming our ancestors upon first meeting—via gouging out their eyes. 

“By the ocean gods, why would I ever want to deprive my at-first enemy of the sight of our lush rice terraces and the deep azure of our hidden lagoons? Have we not, for generations, lulled at-first enemies into joining our people and partaking in our customs, eventually swearing them into our folds as new-members? 

“In the past, these violent relatives of the West arrived in what we initially called floating shanties. We later learned that they left their homelands, which supposedly spanned one hundred times the size of our Big Big Northern and Big Big Southern Sea-lands. Ridiculous. Despite their boasting, when outnumbered these Western brutes initially fled from our ancestors, and they spread stories to their people about the savagery of the ocean-borne. 

“Of the ocean creatures, we ocean-borne are a race of the least wild and savage amongst peoples of any known lands. We know we are not ravaging marauders who stalk our inner seas waiting to take unwary sea-travelers captive. 

“They had not spoken of their people who stayed on our lands over time. They who first loved our women, then later our customs and way of life. So we eventually made peace with these same Westerners by agreeing to trade bushels of our surplus produce for their hearty grain-paste and delicate pottery. Thus—we sealed a bond with these men of since we are forever linked by our common domain, the easy waters of the Sunset Sea in the West and the people who now thrive amongst us as our own.

“These new Western folk had called our lands ‘isle-lands,’ and the people of my generation started to use their foreign words like ‘islands,’ as if our homelands were somehow isolated from each other. A member is nothing on their own, remember this young people: members participate and in that way the group lives and breathes. 

“And how long would the lone mangrove shrub exist to the world were it not for the ocean to carry its buoyant seed by way of currents to local and distant shores? It’s these same ocean currents that would batter and erode the coast into beach sediment were it not for the thriving mangroves to resist its turbulence. The mangrove protects, the soil nourishes, the waters link all of life.

“And it’s these same ocean waters that brought us the men from another world, in that fateful afternoon long ago when I was known not as Grandfather, but rather as one of the first few ocean-borne members to unlock the floodgate to worlds beyond our imagination.” 

A hand is raised high and steady from the crowd. 

“Yes,” Grandfather says, “What is it?” 

Popping up from the mat, planting both feet, the energetic boy known as Benjo in his mid-teens speaks in bursts. “My parents tell me of the brave warriors who battled and defeated the sailors who first arrived. Also the elders tell me the battle was only a tale and that really, instead our great grandparents made the sailors’ stay more than welcoming. So we got all the sailors got drunk on guava liquor, and raided their camp capturing their leader. How is this possible since they now control all the harbors and ports that we helped them build?”

Grandfather nods his head, “Yes. I hear you Benjo. Lately, I’ve noticed you. You have sat close by, listening to the elders’ fireside talks these past new moons.” He motions the young man to sit. 

“The youngest ones among you know only part of the story. You might even heard parts of this story from ones who have travelled abroad.” 

A hint of ash and soot swirls in the sinking glow of early evening. “In the past, yes there was a clash between their strange world and our tiny homelands. The tale most of you heard went something like this.” Grandfather takes in a slow steady breath. 

“Upon first sighting, I could not fathom the immensity of their floating ships of billowing fabric, thick rope and sea-stained wood planks. Those vessels propelled by the breath of ocean wind somehow towered above the waves, reaching the heights greater than two coconut trees stacked root to crown. Upon the water, the wind-powered ships moved like clouds that rested a good distance from our shores, just before the rocky reefs and the watery murk of mangrove fields. Those ships are what we now call galleons. From a single galleon, emerged a few large, wide vessels not unlike our nimble one-man kayaks.” 

“In the distance, the rowing men appeared without war spears or torches. Our own armada of coastal guards patrolling by kayak escorted five rowing ships in crews of five or so of their men toward our shores.

“Their landing party of two dozen appeared first to our sands. These formidable men, armed with peculiar metal rods and long knives, guarded a stout, tall man in the middle rank. He alone carried no obvious weapon of just a salt-encrusted metal pole that held a lilting flag and tipped with a rusty spike. His body appeared to be covered in an ornate, shiny metallic plate draped over layers of woven fabric. Below the dull glimmer of a curved metal helm, his eyes shone like a twin pair of crystal blue stars on a sun-kissed face resembling the sky at dusk. 

“Of the twenty and five ocean-borne that appeared from the depths of the trees, just seven of us, including myself, made a procession lead by the head shaman. The remaining ocean-borne made a loose crescent in close rank behind our seven. We approached in awe before this man from beyond the great ocean. The shaman slid his feet in the circular, rhythmic gait of a purification ritual, while shaking bundles of smoky herbs at the star-eyed man. 

“Then that’s when the lightning flashed from the hip of one of the star-eyed’s company. After that deafening thunderclap, the shaman clasped the side of his head, as his fishbone earring and earlobe fell to the sands. Then the blood began to flow down his back. Another crackling boom and the sacred shaman met the sands motionless, face scowling at the sky. A small cavity in his neck spilled a generous flow of red into beach sands. 

“The wind ships belched thunder, splitting palm trees and sending a barrage of soil and sands to our backs. Pockmarks of craters appeared at the tree lines just beyond our procession. 

“In a quick crouching dash of ten paces with heads low to the sands, crews of two and three from our ranks pulled violently at ropes that controlled the weighted and sharp-hooked nets that were hidden in the sands. Many of our at-first enemies tumbled and tripped prone unto these snares as the talons of fish hooks pierced their palms, forearms and shoulders. 

“From twenty and thirty paces a dozen ocean-borne perched against coconut tree trunks bared their arms swinging in circular arcs holding on to tails of twine. Wrapped at the end of the tails were palm-sized stone flints that when released, connected with the heads and chests of these men from beyond. The hollow coconut knocks of these impacts confirmed the unerring skill of these silent attackers in proximity.

“At tree-lines behind us, the bulk of our defenses opened with a round of small hand spears thrown at distance using curved spear throwers, with a few piercing their intended targets. 

“Then, when maybe only two dozen face-painted bladed chargers appeared before them in full sprint toward the fallen and netted prey, a few men from the galleons showed their backs in order to hop into available rowboats, and only after firing their weapons in haste at long range. The explosions failed to intimidate the chargers. The pulse of their enraged blood coursed in their eardrums while intensifying their focus for mayhem, slitting the throats or wrists of those who resisted the counterattack.

“The star-eyed man’s inner circle formed a defensive vanguard around him with long knives and thunder-sticks after hacking through the initial netting. After discharging blasts from stowed weapons and bloodying several ocean-borne, a great number of the invading crew in the vicinity started a mass retreat to the galleon evading the coastal guard armed with long fishing spears; these deft guards aboard swift kayaks harried any remaining aggressors of those retreating.

“Slowly the star-eyed man’s gestures of surrender were made clear: The battle is over, his deep bow indicated. Release my men and I am yours to reckon with, signaled his hands and face. Then he sternly stepped toward us while suppressing two men locked in close quarters, disarming one of his own by knocking the long knife from his grasp. 

“Two days later, we allowed most of the captured crew to escape to the safety of the galleon. Wounded and strong enough to travel on, they and the rest of the crew already aboard the galleon sailed to the next way port, though their leader was not amongst that small number. At the port, the surviving men reported that their leader was boiled and stewed and served as a ceremonial delicacy to the savage man-hunting marauders who nearly wiped them out.” 

Hushing can be heard from the attentive audience. 

The elder coughs out a dry wheeze. “Some of the younger ones I see here may have heard this story of the battle at the beach front. I can tell you, it never happened. Please listen closely, this tale is repeated by these same outsiders in order to secure and maintain exclusive trade routes, thereby wedging out future competitors and other adventurers. 

“The story of the battle at the beach was told with the expectation that the story’s finale of the grim feast would become a myth and a harsh warning to future would-be invaders of this supposedly treacherous land. As a result, other foreigners dared not sail into these indomitable lands for at least a generation, which gave these original foreigners time to normalize relations with our people.”

Small piles of emptied trays have been stacked. The middle-aged woman from earlier began picking the stacks up from the mats. 

Grandfather draws in a breath of the humid and fragrant tropical air. “Here’s what I clearly remember, like the taste of saltwater, from that day long ago, weeks after one beast of an ocean storm.

“That very first galleon appeared battered, and it moored down far from the reefs. It appeared they were caught at open sea during the monsoon, surviving the latent cyclone like stubborn, lucky fools. The spotted crew were too ill to even navigate past the reef rings and mangrove fields and to reach us on the sands. Our guard escorted a few of the rowing scouts, who after beaching, could only stand by using their oars as support. The ones still in boats who remained entrenched at the mangrove barriers seemed to be the worst off, like a convoy of living cadavers awaiting rescue.” 

“The remaining coastal guard rowed out to these dying men by kayak to deliver coconut water, fermented guava juice, and dried papayas. They beckoned and appeared willing to wait even more as we delivered more food and drink and other goods in which they quickly ferried to those perhaps even worse off aboard the galleon.

“Eventually they sent just twelve men, plus their leader, whom they called ‘El Capitan,’ to drive onto our shores in order to establish trade agreements, however, at the time, we remained curious to know the purpose of these alien men who had survived the watery ravages of the waves and wind.

“They looked nothing like our dark honey-skinned relatives from the South Seas or our once-violent pale neighbors from beyond the Western Sunset Sea.Our people expressed ourselves in the best way we could to the aliens. Our people made drawings done with bonfire charcoal and used signs formed by hand. They seemed to understand and made drawings in return. They shared with us pictures from books and strange maps of the world beyond. An alien of aliens, they were then called ‘the strangest,’ as a term of affection.

“Eventually these strangest of aliens began to enjoy their stay. The strangest learned the words of our ocean-borne dialect, amazing us with their adaptability. The barking and facial contortions of the strangest El Capitan turned out to be intelligible as well, and we began to learn key words of his native tongue over time.

“Together we developed a pigeon tongue spoken in the local seas of our known world at the time. These pigeon words and phrases were used locally between the strangest and the ocean-borne in these One Hundred One Small Sea-lands. We also learned that they worshipped just a single god-man who conquered death just like our legends of lore who exist beyond death. When asked if their god-man was ever lonely being their only god existing beyond death, they scoffed at us then whispered apologies into trinkets around their necks.

“In time, the strangest began arriving in galleons that increased in number with each passing dry season. After the first, there were three, then five, and soon they began to build harbors and ports on our lands and our neighbors’, delivering endless goods and holy book men. They also traded with our neighbors of the Sunset Sea over time.

“Let it be known that El Capitan was the kindest of the aliens and popular amongst our tradesmen and especially the droves of women who swooned before his blue star-eyes. After many moons, his accompanying twelve men boarded that first-arriving galleon that still harbored beyond the reefs. The men decided to say farewell and set sail for their far-off home. Except for El Capitan, who stayed for nearly a year and married six lucky women who each bore him a baby. 

“His legacy included a score of grandchildren of whom he was never able to meet since El Capitan died of a fever during his stay. Many say he had severe homesickness, but to those of us who he lived amongst, he died smiling. He was never lonely amongst the people and wives who loved his otherworldly charm, his exotic stories and ways. You know that some of you are descendants of El Capitan, who is known in their native tongue, outside of these sea lands, as …. Ja’mellan.” 

Soft chuckles erupt from the torch-lit crowds. 

“Oh excuse me, my children. My old age is catching up with me. El Capitan’s name was Magellan. Yes. El Capitan has played a role in our history and ancestry as the great ocean-borne explorer from beyond the seas …. Magellan.” Grandfather raises both his arms, closes his eyes, and then crosses his arms over his chest. His head tilts into a bow. 

The patient crowd responds with hoots, whistles and the steady percussion of applause and foot stomps. At this cue, wisps of steam trail past several younger men and women walking and chattering while delivering a flurry of bountiful trays of spiced fish and boiled rice to Grandfather and his listeners. In all eight directions toward lands linked by endless seas, the sitting young people stretch the length of their limbs. Then each tuck morsels of the feast using just a single hand, skillfully feeding without metal or wood implements ever touching their lips. 

Headline photograph courtesy of the Community Archives of Belleville & Hastings County (public domain)

My Literacy Journey

by

My literacy journey began with a solid grade school education. I was fortunate enough to have grade school teachers who were interested in giving their students a basic ability to read and write through the grade school level. At all points I was in the top three of my classes up and throughout sixth grade. 

Grade school gave me a desire to learn in spite of the segregation of the schools at the time. I went to a Northern school in the midwest: Omaha Nebraska to be exact. I went to an approximately ninety-five percent African-American patronized school and we didn’t have any overt racial issues that seemed to restrict my education at the time—or so I thought. That is until I entered the seventh grade and had to go to another school as my grade school discontinued seventh and eighth grades. 

 At the time, there was a new junior high school just built in the African American community that would admit approximately ninety percent of new Black students for attendance.  At the elementary school I had been attending, we were expected to go to that new junior high school. But I somehow got the notion that I wanted to attend the integrated junior high school at Technical High instead of the heavily segregated new junior high. The year was 1960, a couple of years before the civil rights movement began, and a lull between open “Jim Crow” warfare in the South and openly practiced segregation and apartheid nationally. I had felt no overtly heavy sense of deprivation in my education and thought I was literate enough to go to school with White students. Literate in the sense of reading and writing at grade level, so I went to Tech. 

Only one of my relatives was known to attend college at that point; Black men who graduated from high school were known to get a ‘good job’ only at either the packing house or as garbage men. I had yet to see a Black post office worker. I had not felt the stigma of what we couldn’t do. Speaking as a member of the Black community, I only felt the facade of what we were allowed to do. I watched the stereotypes of Black people portrayed on “Amos and Andy,” and also “Rodchester” on the Jack Benny shows. I saw limits placed on my roadway to literacy to live in a wider community than my projects, but had not yet felt them. That was about to change. My literacy in life education was now to be juxtaposed to my “booklearnin” education, as Jeb Clampet would say. 

 On my fourteenth birthday I was told by my father that if I was to get another pair of socks I would have to buy them, so he told me to go out and get a job. I was steered to the Town House Hotel by my two-year-old brother. There was a busboy position working for sixty-five cents an hour, which came to about fifty-five dollars every two weeks. At that time, the legal work age was fifteen and a half. Of course, I lied about my age. When I received my first paycheck my father told me to give him twenty dollars, then to give my stepmother another twenty. I was left with fifteen dollars to buy my clothes, pay bus fare to and from work and school, lunch and any other expenses I incurred. 

You see, my father had a fourth-grade education and worked at the packing house part-time and as a waiter or porter for the Union Pacific Railroad. He was making me see that with his education he had been raising three boys and a wife, and now it was my turn to learn what I could do with an eighth-grade education. My two-year-older-than-me brother was put out when he was fifteen, and my other brother who was two years older than him was put out when he was fifteen. I was the last of his responsibilities and he was showing me the way to the real world via the door. He showed me, not told me, “See what your eighth-grade White education can do for you.” 

Upon receiving my second paycheck, my father repeated what he did when I got my first one:twenty to him, twenty to my step-mother, and I was left with the rest to support myself. The third paycheck he caught me when I came home at about twelve-thirty a.m., told me to sign my paycheck, and give it to him. I’ve never seen a dime of that money. I was at the end of my rope. I had worked for weeks, practically for nothing but my room and board, and could not afford shoes or clothes to go to school. I had been getting up at six a.m., going to school from eight to three p.m., going to work from three-thirty to about eleven-thirty or twelve p.m., then doing it all over again, with nothing to show for it.  

I got up the next day and went not to school but to my older brother’s house to sleep and rest all day. I was at my wit’s end, tired and broke. When I got home that night about midnight or thereabouts, my father told me that the school had called and said I didn’t attend that day. He told me to go get the rubber hose off of the washing machine, go to my room, take off my clothes, and wait for him to come give me my earned beating. I went to my room, packed a bag and left out of his house and never went back.  

I soon found that busboy jobs could not sustain a lifestyle up to the level of comfort I wanted to live. I continued my education until I secured a GED, which allowed me to enter Los Angeles Trade Technical College to become a surgical technician. Later I became a cosmetologist and a Class “A” truck driver to also give me better chances at obtaining higher-paying employment. All of these forms of training required me to continually read and study different subjects which increased my vocabulary.

My vocabulary expanded but not necessarily my knowledge in life. I learned more words, but not until I received and read an Abdulla Yusuf Ali translation of the Holy Quran did my life’s merged education begin to transition me to a station where I could commence to access my literacy, if I have any. Literacy is not just the ability to be able to read and write alone, but also consists of the resourceful use of knowledge, of being able to survive and thrive in one’s environment using whatever devices one can utilize. I since have found that ignorance, such as the kind I found myself harboring in facing the corrupt legal system, can still be devastating to your existence. 

The Poetry of Illiteracy

by

My name is Alex Ross. I am 58 years old and I’ve been incarcerated 31 years on a 54-to-life sentence. In 1983, I dropped out of the 11th grade because of my poor comprehension. I told everyone I dropped out because of the multiple suspensions and gang fights that I was involved in. I was too ashamed to tell them that I could not understand nothing in school but math and music. 

I was raised in a neighborhood where I was taught that fighting is how problems are solved.

My mother faced the obligations of a single mom raising eight kids alone so she decided to join the church. Soon I became an outsider to my friends who started teasing, taunting, and bullying me for being a church boy; not being able to read made things worse. 

Fighting solved the teasing problem, but it couldn’t help with the Illiteracy.

Below are two poems by MTC student Alex Ross highlighting his experiences with illiteracy trauma.

ILLITERACY TRAUMA

Illiteracy trauma 
Where those who were friends laughed at me 
Not even momma could ease the pain. 

Illiteracy trauma 
58 years old sitting in a college class? 
Still hearing the laughs from my 7th grade pass. 

Illiteracy trauma 
Raising my hand in a college class 
Happy to retain information at last 
Never realizing I Exceeded the ratio of question 
That one man should ask. 

Illiteracy trauma 
Sitting in a jail cell staring at a magazine 
While everyone else read books, papers, 
And articles written in magazines. 

Illiteracy trauma 
A safe place, called community; 
so they say? 
Where I share my Illiteracy pass. 
Suddenly I become the lesser 
Of an equal community because of my pass 

Illiteracy trauma 
Where my advice is overlooked 
Where my words have no meaning 
Where others feel less then 
If I get the answer before them 
Not so safe for the illiterate 

Illiteracy trauma 
Where we come to a prison and trust people they jest met 
With something as fragile as “I cannot read” 

Illiteracy trauma 
One day I’ll go to the Prison Board 
I must explain the lessons I retained 
While praying illiteracy do not block my brain. 
As I repeat my thoughts in my brain! 
My stuttering wards do not come out the Same 
I did not properly explain 

Denied! 
Will there ever be an understanding 
Of people who are attracted by their own brain. 

“The Place I Used to Be”

Sitting in class lending a helping hand

Never get tired of those who are where I been

A teacher’s aide who me, the kid who could not rcad?

It feels like yesterday I entered the seventh grade where

Everybody laughed at me.

Mean people unfiltered minds

Laughed, giggled,

And sniggled

Just because I could not read

How do I process this?

What does this mean?

How do I learn when I am afraid to read?

Right now this very day

My pet peeve is awakened when I read aloud.

As I sat in my class,

My self-esteem was blemished

Even the pretty girls laughed at me

The anger

The fights

Suspensions

Butt whippings

All because I could not read

Now that I am a teacher’s aid

I love helping people in various ways

I am not the smartest person,

I am not the brightest light,

I will find them help

If I cannot get it, right

No one should be in the place

I used to be.

Contributing Factors to the Extinction Vortex of Normal Life on Earth:

by

The author’s artwork, completed during MTC’s Entomological Illustrations elective

In the South American country of Peru, there exists an important stopover location for the migratory bird known as the North American sanderling. Sanderlings are similar to the tern and sandpiper species. As shorebirds, they perform some extraordinary feats.

With the uncanny ability to travel more than 15,000 miles a year, sanderlings are a superb example of God’s creative ability in the natural world of biodiversity. The migratory wintering ground of the sanderling is along the river mouths and estuaries of the two major rivers of Peru that flow into the Pacific Ocean. Upon their well-timed arrival in the autumn of each year for centuries, the agile birds frolic, preen themselves, feed, and bathe in and around the water’s edge of the estuary they have chosen. 

However, due to the Industrial Revolution and mankind’s ever-increasing dependency on the use of chemicals since the 1940s, avian populations worldwide have declined precipitously. Scientists and ornithologists from the Manomet Bird Observatory in Plymouth, Massachusetts, found that from 1975 to 1995, the population of the sanderling declined a staggering eighty percent. The birds had been closely monitored as they flew southward along the East Coast of the United States toward their wintering ground. The plight of the sandpipers was nearly as bad over the same time period.

The problem that led to the decline of sanderlings is disturbing. Nearly every stream and rivulet in western Peru reeked of pesticide molecules or PCB particles, which, no doubt, the birds were ingesting as they fed or bathed along the riverbanks. Downstream in Peru, pesticides have been and are still used aggressively to combat insects and rodents in wheat fields, orchards, rice fields, and livestock farms. Toxaphene is used as a cotton field pesticide to combat the boll weevil. The Peruvian government has been very lax and way behind the United States in the regulation and enforcement of pesticide use. Thousands of sanderlings and other migratory birds pick up and transport a substantial number of pesticide particles to various way stations on their return flights to North America. 

Scientists and ornithologists have learned that PCB contaminants in avian species have interfered with their reproductive abilities, navigation sensory systems, and neurological functions. There is now good reason to regard endocrine-disrupting chemicals as a major long-term threat to the world’s biodiversity. There exists a deep and complex interconnection between man, animals, and avian creatures in the natural environment, and as intelligent beings, we must realize that our very survival in future generations depends largely on how we respect and manage our industrial activities and products in relation to nature and the environmental habitats of other living species.

A prime example of how manmade chemical compounds and pesticides began to inflict real harm on animal life in the United States is the mink crash of the early 1950s in the Great Lakes region. Minks are very sensitive to PCB molecules or related particles and were nearly wiped out over a three-year period from exposure to polychlorinated biphenyl molecules present in fish, which are a major food source for the mink population of North America. The fish themselves had been contaminated from industrial waste materials released into Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and Lake Huron. Biologists discovered that muskrats were barely affected because they are plant eaters and not carnivores like the minks. The impact was felt when female minks failed to bear offspring as a result of being exposed to as little as 3 to 5 parts per million of PCBs. A number of minks examined post-mortem also revealed 8 to 10 parts per million of PCB molecules in their body tissue.

During the mid-to-upper 1950s, a similar decline in Britain and western Europe occurred in the case of English otters, which had been exposed to PCBs. The chemical substances in microscopic amounts had been carried by windborne air currents across Great Britain from the industrial heartland of Europe.

After decades of manufacturing and industrial development in the Great Lakes region of the United States, a spawning ground for a myriad of chemical substances and molecules had developed. Biologists and toxicologists from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that there were at least 600 different kinds of chemical compounds and toxins present in the waters of Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and Lake Michigan during a survey conducted in 1995. Both lake trout and salmon nearly became extinct before 1960 but have rebounded modestly since that time. When exposed to as little as 4 parts per million of dioxin (or 2,3,7,8-TCDD), trout eggs show significant mortality rates. At the higher level of 6 or 7 or more parts per million, all living trout eggs will surely perish. After the mink crash in the Great Lakes circa 1960, the price of mink coats for women skyrocketed in the boutiques of New York, London, and Paris.

Much further away in the 400-mile-long Lake Baikal in Russia, a related toxic chemical spill from an industrial waste dumping incident in 1987 caused the death of more than 9,000 seals. Further west, in the waters of the Baltic Sea and Wadden Sea, the populations of gray seals and harbor seals of Western Europe declined by nearly two-thirds between 1960 and 1985. They have only rebounded slightly since then.

In a different environmental venue in Central America and the southern United States, the loss of frogs has been alarming over the past four decades. The known cause, as in many other cases, is the impairment of the frogs’ hormone and reproductive systems, which are extremely sensitive to chemical impostor molecules. Some PCBs significantly limit the frogs’ ability to reproduce. Even the now-rare golden toad of Costa Rica has declined drastically in number. According to respected herpetologists from the University of California, Berkeley, a comprehensive study concluded in 2010 confirmed this trend.

It will take a few decades for the affected environments and ecosystems to be cleaned up. Many chemical compounds today are classified as biohazard materials, and extra care should always be applied when transporting, delivering, or disposing of such materials. It is hoped that through improved waste disposal methods and good stewardship, mankind will salvage and preserve the health of his planet. As stewards of our world, we all share a responsibility to manage our resources wisely, without unreasonable excess or wastefulness. 

It is of great concern to scientists and sociologists around the world what the destiny of the human race will be unless mankind is able to achieve more effective control of the environment, including the biological and chemical forces that influence it. The biological anomalies and endocrine disruptors affecting animals and avian species of Earth will, in time, have a profound impact on humans because we are all connected. There should be no doubt that the laws of biogenesis and divine creation established a perfectly balanced world, and that our presence here is a great gift—with fundamental obligations attached.

Bibliography

  • Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, 33(4): 455–520, by T. Kugiak & J. Ludwig (1991)
  • Ecology and Conservation, by C. Mason, Cambridge University Press (1990)
  • Environmental Science and Technology, 22(9): 1071–1079, by Derek Muir & R. Norstrom (1988)
  • British Medical Journal, 305: 609–613, by Dr. Niels Skakkebæk (1992)
  • Clinical Endocrine Psychology, by W.B. Saunders (1987)
  • American Journal of Epidemiology, 121(2): 269–281, by T. Colton (1985)
  • The Physiology of Reproduction, 2nd ed., by T. Neill (1994)
  • Between Earth and Sky: How CFCs Changed Our World and Endangered the Ozone Layer, by S. Cagin, Pantheon (1993)
  • Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada, 35(11): 1401–1409, by D. Hallett & R. Sonstegard (1978)
  • Distemper Virus in the Baikal Seals, 338: 209–210, by P. Ross & L. Visser (1988)
  • Suffer the Children: The Story of Thalidomide, by Dr. John Meter, Viking (1979)
  • Mosby’s Medical, Nursing, and Health Dictionary, 8th ed., by D.M. Anderson, Chief Lexicographer (Mosby’s Inc., St. Louis, 2018)

Note From the Author

On this day I would like to gratefully thank everyone in the bibliography of the article named herein living and deceased and other contributors for their inspiration which led me to draft my condensed interpretation of the crisis our world is experiencing and facing for many decades to come, both in “The Perils Created in the Manmade Production of Chemical Pesticides and Other Toxins.” We must preserve to the best of our ability the gift of planet Earth which God has so graciously given us without prejudice. 

-Peter M. Bergne, May 12, 2025

Photo and Illustration courtesy of Peter M. Bergne