Mount Tamalpais College

Creative Writing

Learning the Value of My Vote

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I never knew the understated yet entirely raw power of voting until Super Tuesday, 2024.

At 44 years old, it was the first time in my life I’d ever cast a ballot, the first time I’d had any say in the governance of my country. Afterward, as I went about the rest of my day with an I Voted! sticker beaming from my chest, I felt like a fraud. Like a liar, laying claim to something of immense value that wasn’t really mine.

Before I tell you how I got to this point, I might as well address the proverbial elephant.

I’ve been to prison. Multiple times, in fact, most recently for second-degree robbery. But I’ve served multiple terms of incarceration, starting when I was 15 years old. I’ve hurt a lot of people, and I’ve done a lot of damage that I wish to God I could take back.

I weave no pitiful tales of woe, I tell no half-truths or outright fabrications to shield me from my actions. Make no mistake, it was nobody else’s fault. I did terrible things, both on and off drugs, for which I had to be held accountable—until I could learn to hold myself accountable.

Now, today, I write to share some of what I’ve learned the hard way, through the onerous process of facing and overcoming some of my own inner shit, and from my experience transforming trauma into purpose.

I was a Cold War kid, growing up in the 1980s, being taught to duck-and-cover in the classroom, to hate Communists and fear the atom bomb. 

But in all the years since the Soviet Union crumbled, I’ve never been anything but a political spectator, the ubiquitous heckler in the stands. I knew who I liked and who I didn’t, and I parroted a lot of critical opinions built almost exclusively on ignorance. But I never read past the headlines, I had no real views of my own, and didn’t care enough to invest any energy in changing that status quo.

In truth, civic apathy was among the lesser of my character defects, as my godparents can attest. I’ve never known more honest, loving people. Some years ago, they took me in when I had nothing, when I had no home and no hope. They fed me, clothed me, loved me like their own. And in return, I lied to them, stole from them and my god-brother, and betrayed their love and trust on every level.

Somehow, although their trust was battered beyond recognition, their love for me remained undiminished. I never knew love like that before, and it sparked within me a motivation to change, to examine the ugliest parts of myself and start dealing with some of the unresolved bullshit I’ve been packing around all my life.

My godmother is a woman of kindness and compassion. Every fiber of her being is stitched and woven from love, pure and true. It’s the core of her existence, her most defining characteristic.

But my godfather’s brand of love is an amalgam, interwoven with other values like moderation, integrity, and responsibility. Head of his household, provider and protector, a linear thinker with a rational mind—when I consider the man I want to be, the man I strive to be, it’s his image I hope to see in my mirror one day.

My godfather takes voting very seriously, and with good reason. He and my godmom came from nothing, moving to California from New York after his discharge from the Army Reserves. He served as a Vietnam-era radio operator, following in the footsteps of his dad, a WWII veteran who helped retake the Philippines from Japan. 

My godfather went on to build a career as a field engineer for Kodak, Versatec, and Xerox. Now retired, he continues to serve his country as a poll worker, showing up at six in the morning to pull a 15-hour tour on election day. Voting, he says, is the quintessential expression of American freedom, and a fundamental, foundational American right. 

To drop a ballot and have your voice counted—there is no greater privilege or duty in a democratic republic like ours.

It took far too long, but in the painful process of personal change, I eventually learned two profound lessons which go hand-in-hand: how important it is to care about one’s community, and that caring means nothing in the absence of action.

My ballot came in the mail along with a voter’s guide that I perused and discarded. I didn’t want someone else’s summaries, I wanted to get my information straight from the horses’ mouths.

I don’t know how much time I spent online doing research. I checked out the candidates’ websites, YouTube’d speeches and interviews, and tried to get a feel for each one’s stance on the issues that are important to me. I called my godparents and got a feel for how their views and values shaped their preferences for one candidate over another.

Holding my ballot in my hand, I felt the weight and texture of the paper, and imagined the wealth and value contained in it when I picked up my pen and filled in my little bubbles. I wanted to treat my vote like it was something tangible, something made of gold: I wanted it to go to the candidate that had earned it.

On the morning of Super Tuesday, I looked up the nearest polling place and got my walking shoes laced up. But I felt a vague, unnamable discomfort at the thought of showing up in person. Reflecting on it later, I came to understand I still feel out of place in the world, like an unwelcome trespasser in the Land of the Free. As if maybe I shouldn’t have this powerful, profound instrument, as if holding the vote in my hand should burn.

Though still out of reach for those in prison, the right to vote was only recently restored to people on parole. It was a voter initiative that my godparents heartily supported. Running my fingers over the envelope, I knew that wasn’t something I was willing to let pass through my fingers.

I stepped out my front door and turned to walk up the street, but in the opposite direction from the polling place. In front of a grocery store in my neighborhood, I dropped my mail-in ballot in a big blue USPS mailbox. Then I pulled out my I Voted! sticker, stuck it to my chest, and took a selfie.

Down deep, I still felt like an imposter. Like a fraud. Nonetheless, I did it—I voted. 

Come November, I’m going to vote again. This time, in person. In fact, I’m going to follow my godfather’s suggestion and volunteer to be a poll worker. I don’t know if they’ll have me, but I’m going to try.

There have been times since my release that I have felt devastated and powerless. Not by anything that I have been experiencing personally, but by the stark contrast of the world before I went to prison, and the world that I have come back into.

It’s not the same world.

Being dependent on public transit, my bike, and these two feet for transportation, I have come across a number of heart-rending homeless encampments. Tent cities have sprung up like mushrooms in a rainforest. They are everywhere now, where once they seemed scarce and scattered. 

So many people are hungry and wanting, so much hope has been lost in America. I realize I have to be part of the solution now—starting with my vote.

The United States of America isn’t in Washington, DC, or some fabled “heartland.” It’s everywhere, right in front of and all around us. We seem to have forgotten that, or perhaps never learned. It’s something that I needed to be reminded of.

So I’ve gotten into the habit of taking action: Picking up trash in my neighborhood, volunteering at a food bank near my house. Come to find out, there is incredible strength in selflessness, in giving even when we ourselves are in need.

Down here at the ground level, this is where I’ve come to know my country best.

Andrew Hardy spent several years as senior layout designer for the award-winning San Quentin News, eventually becoming managing editor of Wall City Magazine, and reporting on issues of social and criminal justice. He is currently editor of the San Francisco International Arts Festival’s newsletter and is interning with California Lawyers for the Arts while continuing to write as a freelancer.

Attributions: This article originally appeared in Street Spirit. April 2, 2024.

Equilibrium

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I need some silence to cope with the madness, a peace of mind I don’t know how much longer I
can stand this, I don’t know why but I feel like crying, the voices in my head are constantly
telling me everyone I love is dying, I’m not lying, should I tell my psyche, or keep it under guise,
why haven’t I broken down, I did once or twice, but I continue to strive and continue to rise, with
weariness and tears welled in my eyes, sometimes I feel that I need to cry, I’ve learned that
crying helps to stimulate neurotransmitters, that nourish and replenish the mind, tears of joy
tears of pain, would the effect be the same, philosophies of the deranged, theories from the
insane, but all the while helps to maintain the mainframe, ellipsis and rings, soothing sounds,
dissipating bundled and crunched neurons, that were aimlessly crashing against one another, in
a state of confusion, searching for some type of diffusion.

Listening to Taylor Swift in Prison

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The first time I heard about Taylor Swift, I was in a Los Angeles County jail, waiting to be sent to prison for murder. Sheriffs would hand out precious copies of the Los Angeles Times, and they would be passed from one reader to the next. Back then, I swore that Prince was the best songwriter of my lifetime, and I thought Swift’s rise to teen-age stardom was an injustice. I’d look up from her wide-eyed face in the Calendar section to see gang fights and race riots. The jail was full of young men of color who wrote and performed their own raps, often about chasing money and fame, while Swift was out there, actually getting rich and famous. How fearless could any little blond fluff like that really be?

In 2009, I was sentenced to life in prison. Early one morning, I boarded a bus in shackles and a disposable jumpsuit, and rode to Calipatria State Prison, a cement fortress on the southern fringes of California. Triple- digit temperatures, cracked orange soil, and pungent whiffs of the nearby Salton Sea made me feel as though I’d been exiled to Mars. After six years in the chaos of the county jail, however, I could finally own small luxuries, like a television. The thick walls of Calipat, as we called the place, stifled our radio reception, but an institutional antenna delivered shows like “Access Hollywood,” “Entertainment Tonight,” and “TMZ.” I was irritated by the celebrity gossip, but it was a connection to the outside world, and it introduced me to snippets of Swift’s performances for the first time. Here and there, I’d catch her on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” or “Fallon,” and was surprised by how intently she discussed her songwriting. I didn’t tell anyone that I thought she was talented.

In 2013, when my security level was lowered owing to good behavior, I requested a transfer to Solano state prison, the facility with a Level 3 yard which was closest to my family in the Bay Area. I got the transfer, but my property—a TV, CD player, soap, toothpaste, lotion, food—was lost in transit. I shared a cell with someone in the same situation, so, for months, we relied on the kindness of our neighbors to get by. Our only source of music was a borrowed pocket radio, hooked up to earbuds that cost three dollars at the commissary. At night, we’d crank up the volume and lay the earbuds on the desk in our cell. Those tiny speakers radiated crickety renditions of Top Forty hits.

During that time, I heard tracks from “Red,” Swift’s fourth studio album, virtually every hour. I was starting to enjoy them. Laying on the top bunk, I would listen to my cellmate’s snores and wait for “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” to come around again. When it did, I would think about the woman I had lived with for seven years, before prison. I remembered bittersweet times when my sweetheart had visited me in county jail. We’d look at each other through security glass that was reinforced by wire. It didn’t seem fair to expect her to wait for me, and I told her that she deserved a partner who could be with her. But we didn’t use the word “never,” and deep down I always hoped that we’d get back together. When I heard “Everything Has Changed,” I had to fight back tears of exaltation and grief. Swift sings, “All I knew this morning when I woke / Is I know something now / Know something now I didn’t before.” I thought back to our first date, and how we had talked and laughed late into the night. We had to force ourselves to get a few hours of sleep before sunrise.

After several months, my belongings, including my CD player, finally caught up with me. I was getting ready to buy “Red” from a catalogue of approved CDs when I learned that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, or C.D.C.R., had placed me on another transfer list. I didn’t want the album to get stuck at the prison after I had been transferred, so I resorted to a country station that regularly featured Swift.

Sometimes, hearing Southern drawls and honky-tonk medleys, I’d laugh out loud at myself. But that was the station that played the widest variety of her music, from “Tim McGraw” to “I Knew You Were Trouble.” There was, in her voice, something intuitively pleasant and genuine and good, something that implies happiness or at least the possibility of happiness. When I listened to her music, I felt that I was still part of the world I had left behind.

Hitting a new yard—in this case, the prison known as the California Men’s Colony (C.M.C.)—means finding new friends and allies. Each table and workout area was claimed by a different gang or ethnic group. I’m Asian and Hispanic, and I chose to join the Asians in a cement workout area. When they asked me what kind of music I liked, I confessed that I was anxiously waiting for a Taylor Swift album. Everyone laughed. “Oh, my God, we’ve got a Swiftie on the yard!” Lam, a muscular guy, told me. “You in touch with your sensitive side? Are you gay?” He especially loved to heckle me in front of his buddy Hung, who spoke little and laughed almost silently.

I was waiting for “Red” to arrive when I saw Swift perform “All Too Well” at the 2014 Grammys. That became the song that I played first when I peeled the plastic wrap off the disc, and the song I’d stop at and repeat whenever I spun the album. (Her ten-minute version is even better.) As Swift sang about love’s magical moments, how they are found and lost again, I thought about a time before my incarceration, when I briefly broke up with the woman I loved. She came to my house to return one of my T-shirts. When she hung it on the doorknob and walked away, I was on the other side. I sensed that someone was there, but, by the time I opened the door, she was gone.

When “Red” arrived, I finally found out why Lam had been clowning me in front of Hung. “Red” was the only Swift CD that Hung didn’t own—because he considered it a misguided pop departure from the country greatness of “Fearless” and “Speak Now.” Eventually, Lam outed himself as a Swiftie, too. For six months, the three of us would work out and debate which album was best. Then Hung transferred out of the prison, taking his CDs with him.

Around the time Swift dropped “1989,” I acquired an old-school boom box. Technically, exchanging property and altering devices is against C.D.C.R. rules, but every prison has guys who fill their cells with radios, TVs, and speakers to repair and resell. I looked out for one guy, G.L., when he first hit the yard, and he became one of the best electronic fix-it guys I’ve ever met. He loved reconfiguring different speakers to get the best sound. He rewired the boom box for auxiliary cables and gave it to me. At C.M.C., I had a cell to myself, so I’d turn up the music enough to drown out obnoxious sounds outside my cell. Of course, some people always think that Swift is the obnoxious sound. “What’s up with the damn Taylor Swift?” a neighbor yells out. Another voice chimes in with requests: “Play ‘Style.’ That song’s tight right there.” By the time the song ends, someone new will admit, “That girl’s got jams.”

When you transfer between prisons, you can’t take any undocumented property with you. At the end of 2015, I gave that boom box back to G.L. and left C.M.C. for Folsom prison. After a year, I landed at San Quentin. I started working at the San Quentin News, the in-house newspaper, for a quarter an hour. Around that time, C.D.C.R. started allowing a vender to sell us MP3 players for a hundred dollars. They charged $1.75 per song and ten dollars for a memory card. Eventually, I asked my family to order one and would call my cousin Roxan with requests. “What’s up with all the damn Taylor Swift?” she’d say during phone calls. By the time Swift released her album “Lover,” in 2019, I had almost every song she’d ever released. And, when the MP3 players were restricted because crafty folks were using the memory cards in illegal cell phones, mine was grandfathered in.

One of my homies at San Quentin had a pristine radio that played CDs and cassette tapes. When he earned parole, everybody hounded him for it. He knew how much I’d appreciate such a luxury, but I didn’t join the herd of pesterers making offers, and I think he appreciated that. He gave it to me as a parting gift. I was even able to have it officially documented on my property card. The MP3 player clipped neatly into the cassette door, so now I could see my playlists while I listened. My neighbor, Rasta, was the weed man for the building, so I played Swift to drown out the guys who were lighting up outside. Rasta made fun of me, but the crowd always liked her “Bad Blood” remix, featuring Kendrick Lamar. “That’s the shit right there,” they’d say. “Who would’ve thought?”

Seven months after “Lover” came out, C.D.C.R. shut down all programming because of the COVID pandemic—no indoor group interactions, no volunteers from outside the prison, no visitors. C.D.C.R. brought the coronavirus into San Quentin when it moved some sick guys from another prison in. By the end of June, 2020, hundreds of us were testing positive and getting sick, including me. I lugged all my property to an isolation cell in a quarantine unit, where I shivered and sweated through a brain fog for two weeks. My only human contact came from nurses in full-body P.P.E., who checked my vitals, and skeleton crews of officers—the ones who weren’t sick themselves—who brought us intermittent meals. I followed San Quentin’s death tallies on the local news. Would I die alone in this cell, suddenly and violently breathless? I made a playlist of Swift’s most uplifting songs, listening for the happiness in her voice.

Alone in a prison cell, it’s virtually impossible to avoid oneself. As my body and mind began to recover, I started to question everything. What really matters? Who am I? What if I die tomorrow? I hadn’t been in touch with my sweetheart in more than two years, because she had told me that she was trying a relationship with someone who cared about her. Now, though, I wrote her a letter to see if she was O.K.

A week after I mailed my letter, I received one from her. Prison mail is slow enough that I knew it wasn’t a response—we had decided to write to each other at the same time. “The lockdown has afforded me plenty of time to reflect on all sorts of things,” her letter said. “I’ve been carrying you with me everywhere.” Reading it brought to mind Swift’s lyrics in “Daylight”: “I don’t wanna think of anything else now that I thought of you.” She was single again, and we started talking every week. In lockdown, between paltry dinner trays, I did pushups, lunges, squats, and planks in the twenty-two-inch-wide floor space in my cell. The twentieth year of my incarceration was approaching.

In 2020, the California legislature passed a law that made anyone who served twenty continuous years, and who was at least fifty years of age, eligible for parole. I’m fifty-three, and I’ll get my first chance at release in 2024. I couldn’t help but think of “Daylight” again. “I’ve been sleeping so long in a twenty-year dark night,” Swift sings. “And now I see daylight.”

These days, I call my sweetheart as often as I can. Officers can shut down the phones with the flick of a switch, and technical glitches often take the system offline, so I treat each call as if it were my last. It often feels like she’s waiting to hear from me. She tells me that it’s complicated and confusing for her, speaking to the ghost who disappeared twenty years ago. But, leaning against a wall, next to all the other guys talking with loved ones on the phone, I don’t feel like a ghost. I feel alive. Just recently, she told me, “Talking like this over the phone so much, I think we’ve gotten to know each other way better than before.” We talk about how much we have changed. “You might not even find me attractive anymore,” she tells me. “I’m not the same person I was back then.”

One morning in October, 2022, I had breakfast in the chow hall and made it back to my cell in time for “Good Morning America.” My TV doesn’t have any speakers, so I plugged it into my boom box. Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice singing an unfamiliar chorus: “It’s me, hi / I’m the problem, it’s me.” The anchors on the broadcast were giddy to announce Swift’s new album “Midnights,” and play clips from the music video of “Anti-Hero.” Swift appeared as a larger-than-life figure, arguing with different versions of herself. I laughed to myself. Here we go again.

Our MP3 distributor was always slow to release new music, so I spent a couple of weeks hearing about the album on the news, waiting for my chance to listen. Then, out on the prison grounds, I bumped into a volunteer whom I’d known and worked with for years. We were walking through the yard together when they started looking around to make sure no one was watching. After confirming that the coast was clear, they slipped me a brand-new copy of “Midnights” and wished me a happy birthday. The gesture nearly brought me to tears. That evening, after dinner, I peeled off the plastic and brushed a bit of dust out of the boom box’s CD player. “Lavender Haze” played as I read the liner notes. “What keeps you up at night?” Swift writes.

For the past two decades, sleep has not come easily to me. Often, when I get into bed, I think about the day I was arrested at the scene of my crime. Some neighbors called 911 and reported gunshots. I can still see the grieving family members of the man I killed, staring at me in the courtroom at my trial. I’m guilty of more than murder. I abandoned my parents and my sweetheart, too. There’s no way to fix this stuff.

Taylor Swift is currently the same age, thirty-three, that I was when I was arrested. I wonder whether her music would have resonated with me when I was her age. I wonder whether I would have reacted to the words “I’m the problem, it’s me.” Hers must be champagne problems compared with mine, but I still see myself in them. “I’ll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror,” Swift sings, and I think of the three-by-five-inch plastic mirrors that are available inside. For years out there, I viewed myself as the antihero in my own warped self-narrative. Do I want to see myself clearly?

In “Karma,” Swift sings, “Ask me what I learned from all those years / Ask me what I earned from all those tears.” A few months from now, California’s Board of Parole Hearings will ask me questions like that. What have I learned? What do I have to show for my twenty years of incarceration? In the months ahead, when these questions keep me up at night, I will listen to “Midnights.” The woman I love says she’s ready to meet me
on the other side of the prison wall, on the day that I walk into the daylight. Recently, she asked me, “If you could go anywhere, do anything, that first day out, what would you want us to go do?” That question keeps me up at night, too.

Attributions: This article originally appeared in The New Yorker on September 2, 2023.

The Road of Education

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As for me, my mother and father were always around. Although they were considered ‘the Scotts that fought a lot and yelled at their children,’ they always had a reputation for keeping food on the table and being a hard-working father and mother. Mom was a very good cook and she kept the house in order. As for my father, he felt as long as he worked and brought his check home to pay the bills, everything was all right.

My father was a great protector of his family. I pray at times that I will be a great father and that my children will accept me, even though I didn’t spend a great deal of time with them. I’ve been in prison for twenty-five years; when I got locked up, my daughter was three years old. I didn’t hear from her until she was twenty-one years old. She talked to me as if I had just left yesterday. I was overwhelmed that she didn’t scold me for leaving her and began to connect with me as if I was living across the street from her. 

The good thing is, I met my grandchildren over the phone. I want and need to be out there for them. I’m also aware of how important it is to be educated. My goal is to receive a diploma and hang it in my daughter’s living room so that my grandbabies will take the road of education as opposed to a life of crime. 

I had a great father and he worked but neither of us was educated. I believe that was the breakdown in our relationship as far as fatherhood is concerned.  

Mount Tamalpais College provides an individualized, trauma-informed approach to learning. Your tax-deductible gift allows us to support students incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison from enrollment through graduation, and post-release.  

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To All the Women in My Life Who I Truly Love 

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I am a 63-year-old African American son, father, grandfather, brother, godfather, uncle, grand-uncle, cousin, and husband. Having: a mother, two daughters, four granddaughters, seven sisters, two goddaughters, ten nieces, five grandnieces, a host of girl cousins, and a wife. As they began to grow into womanhood, all of these women needed me in their lives so that I could help assist them to navigate safely through society. As I grew up, the elders protected the women in our family. So, I was supposed to accept the responsibility that comes with being the eldest male.

In 1997, I was sentenced to 71 years to life under the three strikes, you are outlaw.  This is exactly how I was feeling at my sentencing hearing: out of this life on earth, a dead man walking, pass go, straight to prison. Therefore, I began to write this letter (as if I was passing away) to my wife, daughters, sisters, mother, and the rest of the women in my family. It read like this:

To all the women in my life who I truly love,  

When I am gone, just release me, and let me go. So I can move into my afterglow.  I gave you all my love; you can only guess how much love and happiness you gave me. I’d like to thank you all for the family loves you each have shown me in your own special way. Now it is time for me to travel all alone. 

So grieve for a while, there is grief, you must; be sure you comfort grief with trust, and then it will go away soon. It is only for a while, now the time has come for us to part. Let us bless the memories within our hearts. When you must come this way alone, I will greet you with a smile and a “welcome home.” I am truly sorry for not protecting the women in the family. I left you alone, so you traveling alone too. 

Those were my feelings 27 years ago being sentenced to life in prison, traveling alone.

Obviously, I have made some terrible mistakes throughout my life, which I now regret. But even when I messed things up, the women in my life were not keeping track. Today, I can truly say that women are one of the reasons why I worked so hard during 27 years while being incarcerated to become a better person. Every woman in this letter, and so many other women, have assisted and supported me on the journey. I have achieved many accomplishments during my time in prison. One of them is that all these women are still at my side today.

Time has changed a lot of things. The way I was thinking is one of them. However, there is one thing that has not changed; y’all are trusting, caring, honest, and loyal and always standing by my side through it all, guaranteeing that there will always be a bond of love and friendship between a son, a father, a grandfather, a brother, a godfather, an uncle, a great-uncle, a cousin, and a husband. That is why you all are my favorite girls, and fatherhood is very important to me.

Fatherhood

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I am a father by blood and a stepfather through marriage. Nothing prepared me to be either. 

Growing up, my ideas and imaginations of what a father was (or could be) developed from what I saw of the men who came into me and my mom’s lives, or what I saw in the TV dads who I wished were the father in my life. Throughout my childhood, none of the men carried the same name as I, and while my name has Junior at the end of it, my father was not a source of what manhood should look like. I was told that he took his leave around 1968 after a violent altercation with my mother. I wouldn’t meet him until I was twelve, and that was due to my mother’s unfortunate conviction for second-degree murder. Her victim, on active duty in the U.S. Army, was a man giving me direction and purpose until a bullet from her gun ended his life.

My chances for developing into a responsible father or partner was stymied then and there with his death; from that point on, I became withdrawn and isolated. I don’t recall anyone making an effort to help me process what happened or provide coping skills to aid in dealing with conflict. People couldn’t be trusted, not even those close to you. What would ensue would be years of self-centeredness that motivated me to only think in the moment and that didn’t allow room for planning a future for myself or with anyone. 

I witnessed a great deal of violence in the family household. Additionally, it wasn’t just in the home in which I lived, but in households of other family members and neighbors, who, in my young mind, were usually under the influence of alcoholic beverages or other mood-altering substances. Physical and verbal violence were constant and became normal fare; I would go to my room whenever I sensed either were leading to uncomfortable levels. I would hope the storm would be a simple drizzle and that crashing, thundering, and screeching wouldn’t follow. 

As an adult, my actions mirrored the emotional/mental techniques I resorted to whenever conflict arose: withdraw and isolate. With all the dysfunction and emotional trauma left unaddressed, my life as a father was compromised from the start. One incident that stays with me was a time when my sons, five and six years old at the time, saw me crouched on the laundry room floor with my head in hands, sobbing profusely. I was in that vulnerable state because I had lost my job and the mortgage was a month in arrears and I felt my wife didn’t want me anymore because I didn’t know how to communicate with her. In my sons’ eyes, I could see my adolescent fears all over again.

Today, I reflect on the past with a sense of redemption. Communication with my children is good and promising. Our reunion will be one that brings us full circle. I wait patiently for the day this chapter ends, and another begins with me as a father and grandfather meeting my grandchildren for the first time.

Nearly 90% of Mount Tamalpais College students experienced violence or abuse in childhood. If you’re moved by Carl’s words, consider making a gift to Mount Tamalpais College to support the powerful work occurring in our classrooms.

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Fatherhood

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Growing up in the 80s, in a culture forever changing, the challenges of fatherhood took on new meaning. Generational belief systems told my father to conform to the toxic masculinity and male role belief systems of the past. Manhood meant that expressing emotion displayed weakness. But in all truth, as fathers, this ‘weakness’ can be our greatest strength. 

My father was present, but was overcome by the pressure to keep my grandfather’s business ventures above water while still maintaining a healthy home life. Shame and repression of emotion drove my father to the only coping skill he was ever taught: denial and running from the pain by consuming alcohol until his body shut down, only to wake up in the hell of the following day. Five o’clock became the door to excuses and escape, a numb wasteland where family and fatherhood was lost in bottomless whiskey glasses. To be a loving father was my greatest desire, a goal I learned from my ever-present and amazing Mother, who taught me not only the value of female role belief systems, but also how to be a compassionate and loving father.

Today, on this 23rd of April, my son turns 13 years old. A once challenging and confusing time in my own life, I can’t imagine the things he is facing and experiencing being the child of an incarcerated parent. I was fortunate to be a part of his life every day until he was six and a half years old. I became the father I always wanted: loving, caring, connected, compassionate, present, emotionally available, and authentic. I made breakfast, lunch, and dinners, I volunteered at his school, and was there every step of his early development. This shaped him into the most empathetic, polite, and compassionate young man. My son is stronger than I could have ever been; his mother struggles with alcoholism and being a single mother. My son has been moved in and out of schools and homes more than I have in my 43 years. 

As a father, my fears coincide with my absence. These prison walls, along with the distance of five states, restrict my fatherhood. To be a father over a 15-minute phone call or through prehistoric letters in a technologically advanced culture that only communicates through social media and text messages is almost impossible. My fears became reality when I was told he was bullied–hit on the bus as another heartless youth filmed and posted the act. But I can’t be there! Despite the obstacles, I started writing letters titled “Dad’s Guide to the Galaxy” to teach him what school doesn’t: emotional intelligence, self-awareness, anger management, and what a father looks like in this culturally diseased and distant time.

Fatherhood is the most rewarding and yet emotionally taxing experience. It has taught me patience, wisdom, forgiveness, and unconditional love. A father’s love conquers all.

Mount Tamalpais College is tuition-free for students and entirely funded by private donations. Your tax-deductible gift expands access to learning, technology, and opportunity for people incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison.  If you’re moved by Jon’s words, please consider making a gift today.

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Papa Endured So I Could Live

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I could have died during childbirth, of pneumonia, by suicide, or by a police officer’s bullet. I was born a brown-skinned, brown-eyed, black-haired boy, with a white-skinned father and brown-skinned mother. Despite racism and socioeconomics, I survived for over fifty years thanks to my Papa. 

Papa was born into a well-heeled Spanish-Italian family in Peru. He was one of eight siblings–six boys and two girls. Papa attended college in Peru and again in the United States. All of his brothers – my uncles – earned doctorate degrees while Papa earned a master’s degree in engineering, the highest in his field. Papa was also an army lieutenant. It surprised me to learn that the World Book Encyclopedia, a U.S.-based source of information, identified Peru,  of all countries, as having some of the best-trained military officers in the world. Not just in South or Latin America–the world. 

All his life, Papa learned quickly, worked hard, and was not afraid of trying. However, his advanced degrees from Peru were not recognized, so he had to repeat his education in U.S. colleges. The only thing he could not overcome was his thick Spanish accent; white coworkers made fun of how he spoke English. Despite his white-ish skin, tech companies refused to promote my Papa because he was not an “American.” In the 1970s and 80s, he had to accept less pay for equal work compared to his white American coworkers. He had been warned that complaints of discrimination might be met with termination. 

With a young wife, four young children, and a mortgage, Papa could not afford to lose his job. Enduring humiliation to afford the mortgage payments and take care of his family was his way of protecting us and expressing his love – acts of service. Papa talked to me about drugs before so-called friends tried to induce me to try them. He convinced me that I was smart. He was there for me after I tried to take my own life during my adolescence. He advised me to stay away from gangs, which also kept me away from the police. During my incarceration, he worried about me.

My 2020 Christmas wish was to hug my Papa, but there were no in-person visits due to the pandemic. In a phone call, I told him that I loved him and missed him. The following week, on New Year’s Eve, he and Mom were hospitalized with COVID-19 and placed in separate rooms. Mom had always been crazy in love with Papa–they were inseparable. At the hospital, Papa kept asking for her. Mom survived but Papa passed away from COVID-19 pneumonia on January 15, 2021. I imagine he was in agony, alone, and worried about Mom. Before the pandemic, Papa’s sister and older brother had passed. COVID-19 took my other aunt and two more uncles. Papa died wanting to care and protect Mom – as he did for all of us.

Red Flag Journal #3: Two Tyrants

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Like many, I watched the accounts coming in from Ukraine, feeling horrified, outraged, anxious, and just sad. Contrary to Putin’s propaganda, the self-indulgent rhetoric looks less like a “special military operation” and more like a war of suppression on the humble, but proud. The Ukrainians are fighting with valor as they aggressively defend their right to self-determination.

On a macro level, Putin obviously has the national resources to export his character values  onto an ostensibly weaker, smaller, and accessible nation-state  In taking notes from the bully’s playbook, it is a ritual of a goon to find a host for their own pain, despair, and uncreative “power.” I watch the unfolding humanitarian crisis on the evening news and wonder what the ending will look like. Putin’s drama has been met with unyielding defiance: a predictable reaction of those who’ve had enough of people trying to make their world smaller through acts of dominance and control. The resistance has been inspiring. Who wouldn’t want to identify with this heroic, sacrificial, and resourceful brand of Hollywood-scale patriotism?

When I survey my past actions prior to my reformed attitude, I search for signs of valor, courage, and sacrifice. Can I relate to the Ukrainians’ unflinching dignity, the conviction to stand for something inherently meaningful? Would I put it all on the line in deference to the needs of others; hold life as a precious gift? I know the answer would’ve been a resounding no. 

Truthfully, I  share more characteristics with the tyrant. I recall the primal need to appear dominant, the need to maintain the image that I had it going on, the inappropriate overcompensating, the goofy swagger. I’d cross boundaries, grabbing more and more of my partner’s agency, colonizing their territory of self-esteem. I wasn’t the sovereign of a superpower, but my self-concept is relative, as I ruled my domestic environment like an autocrat. I rationalized my jerky entitlements; disregarding the sovereignty of my partners for the sake of my malevolent privilege. From the Kremlin to the living room in a home, how many aspirations, hopes, and dreams are overruled and ruined by insubordination toward fragile egos?  

I created collateral damage materially, psychologically, financially, and emotionally. I created false-flag operations demanding a standard I didn’t observe for myself, accusing them of straying while all along I was the disingenuous actor, for those I claimed as my possession. I sought to isolate them, cutting them off from more respectful, compassionate support networks that might embolden their voice. This dark logic isn’t as complicated as one may think. There are three basic dynamics of intimate partner violence. It has a repetitive cycle; the nature of this dynamic creates a connection where the abuser and the victim are bonded, not despite the violence; the violence and harassment escalate dangerously when the victim tries to leave and/or escape the relationship. I see my old self in these descriptions. But I also see tyranny and this helps me to interpret Putin’s mentality. Ukraine was getting too close to incorruptible democracy, Western values, and NATO. The jilted tyrant’s self-talk would include “you’re cheating on me…You’re about to leave me and we can’t have that.”

As the stereotypical ‘strongman’ dictator, from Central casting l, I postured not from a position of creative inner power, but brittle insecurities. Known outside influences were a challenge to my superpower of maximum governance. I differed from a caricature like  Putin in one aspect: he is short in stature, yet manipulates the optics to present himself as a BIG MAN. I’m a physically big guy, but I can acknowledge the wounded inner child who still feared the next blow. I demanded respect without giving it a fool’s errand destined to come home to roost. Now I sit isolated in this prison cell shaped by my choices. Deposed by irony. I’m on the wrong side of redemption. Sanctioned by criminal overreach. Sanctioned by life. Sanctioned by arrogance. The shelf life of a tyrant turns spoiled as reality exacts its dues.

I often imagine how my arc would’ve bent if I had made a connection to authentic power. What if I didn’t coerce loyalty, or love, but cultivated a personality worthy of love?

Red Flag Journal #2: Controlled

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I did not want to come to San Quentin. In fact, I tried to compromise the transfer. I was firmly, corruptly embedded at CMF Vacaville, making the best of an end-of-the-line kitchen job. At least at that prison, I could fade away like a trend. A poet once wrote, “one by one the sands are flowing,” which was reflective of my situation, as I watched the hourglass of hope drain into a chamber of self-loathing, shame, and guilt.

Once the counselor pronounced the finality of my involuntary transfer, I had the nerve to act indignant. I felt bullied, and I didn’t want to go…there. I was being dominated and forced to be uncomfortable. Oh, so this is what being controlled feels like. I may have taken comfort in the fiction of my victimization, but the irony that sometimes intersects with reality doesn’t forget to collect Karma’s premiums. I was a hypocrite. Prior to my life sentence and the seasons of consequences, I had made the dark discipline of controlling others an ideology that justified “power over” rather than “power with”. Feeling entitled to my male privilege, I needed to establish and sustain control over my romantic partners. I had to reign over these girlfriends who could defer to my ego and massage my brittle self-worth. In short, their malleability was essential. I co-opted their needs, values, and aspirations, and placed them in my personal tip jar of frenzied demands and self-indulgent expectations. I wasn’t noble. There was never a “we” in these partnerships, just a “me”.

The transfer to San Quentin isn’t the only example of humiliating capitulation and forfeited independence. It happens frequently in this sub-community as the days unfold: subtle indignities to significant prohibitions. Any resemblance to the agency is dubious or measured at best. We wake up every day on a rigid schedule of someone else’s choosing. I’m told when to go, where to eat when to shower, what to wear, and how to act. Come, stop, down (on the yard), halt, wait. There is no variety of choices in entities such as doctors, churches, exercise locations, eating establishments, or even friendships. You unquestionably take what is allotted and you like it. I got up this morning to eat another bland, unpredictable breakfast because the binary alternative is hunger. Positively, I defer to this institutional, no, patriarchal power. It is retributive, absolute, and undeniably authentic. It isn’t the infantile, cowardly, shallow form of power I exercised over my well-intentioned partners.

There was one warm summer evening in 1996, a day too nice to support the heated one-sided “argument” that I was having with my ex-girlfriend, K. I was drinking and angry, but these facts, or the context of my jealous rant, are flimsy rationalizations to cover-up inexcusable behavior. I was out of line and out of control. After K. claimed I never loved her, I set out to prove her truth wrong. Not in any loving way, I didn’t know much about that. But I knew about intimidation, coercion, and the insanity behind proving a negative. I gassed up my Maxima telling  K., “We’re going to Reno right now to get married,” with all of the crazy-eyed intensity I could muster. I made the dangerously impulsive decision to drive to Reno, hundreds of miles from our city, intoxicated, at midnight. I wouldn’t let her out of the car – she was livid, helpless, screaming, but mostly scared due to my reckless driving, which in itself was a form of abusive control. This wasn’t even close to a romantic gesture – more like a hostage situation, which is definitely familiar all these years in hindsight. 

When the “we” that was “me” arrived in Reno, I was starting to sober up while simultaneously rethinking my fool’s errand and over-the-top pride. I then became apologetic, remorseful, sheepish even. How weird is the lifestyle of an abuser? I ran the spectrum from a forced wedding to the awkward hollowness of the honeymoon stage, accompanied by its  “I’m sorry” and tears, all while corrupting the meaningfulness of these traditionally gentle,  collaborative institutions. After I drove K home, she rightfully reported me to the police, as I had unlawfully transported her where she didn’t want to go.

K. did right, not just for herself but for me, in calling the authorities since, without major catastrophic social or legal consequences, abusers usually won’t check their distorted belief systems under their own willpower. I was out of control, and undisciplined, normalizing our unhealthy dynamic. Unless something catastrophic interrupts the process I’d learn nothing from my mistakes, unwilling to search my soul or develop a conscience. 

This process is called the cycle of violence. It consists of these stages: tension building, acute explosion, and honeymoon. During the tension-building phase, the battery could nitpick, yell, threaten, criticize, become passive-aggressive, or increasingly jealous. The victim may respond with an attempt to calm their partner, silence, talkative, agreeable, a mutual provocation to incite the explosion, or a general feeling of walking on eggshells. While this isn’t a comprehensive list, my jealous rant characterizes this stage. 

Next is the acute explosion, the blow-up, which could mean hitting, choking, rape, use of weapons, humiliation, destroying property, or beating designed to punish or teach a lesson. My false imprisonment of K would fit in this category. The victim protects themselves as best they can, trying to reason with or calm the abuser; or the police are called by the victim, children, or a neighbor. 

Finally, there is the honeymoon stage, where the abuser is on their best behavior (just like at the beginning of the courtship). They are full of “I’m sorry’s”, “forgive me’s”, and love bombing with declarations of love, gifts, tears, and promises to get help, attend Church, or AA. They say they’ll never do it again, and may believe that until the next time. The victim may agree to stay in this trap, setting up counseling appointments, attempting to stop legal proceedings, or taking the abuser back. The abuser makes grand gestures, the victim feels happy or hopeful, but something will pop off (again) and the abuser will take the victim places they don’t want to go. 

There are those that would expect me to feel bad just because I’m in prison. I can’t deny this is justice: the seeds of oppression I planted in the world demanded reaping and harvesting. I made cruel choices, so the state has placed me in this warehouse of purgatory until I can figure out uncruelty; ‘til I can respect the social contract until I can align myself with society’s wishes until the ‘ME’ becomes ‘WE’.

I didn’t want to come to San Quentin, but I’m subordinate to the authority of the state. Such is the ethos of legitimate, authentic control. Last night I was told by the staff to get off the phone. I felt checked, harassed, disenfranchised, bossed, and helpless. I desperately want forgiveness from K., from society. But I know this grace would be a gift and not under my control.