Wall City: Survivors of California's Security Housing Unit and other stories

E TH IER EM PR

WALL CITY Spring 2018 Volume 1 Issue 1

Survivors of California Security Housing Unit speak SPRING 2018 WALL CITY 1

THE VIEW Photo from the San Quentin Archive

PLACE San Quentin’s West Block

TAKEN FROM San Quentin’s Education area on The Lower Yard

BUILT West Block towers over the grounds of San Quentin. Built in the 1930s, its façade looks bruised from decades of surviving the elements. It seems condemned.

Its narrow double-barred windows set atop long arched windows holding nearly 800 men behind them.

Tens of thousands of prisoners briefly passed through West Block on their journeys to one of the other 34 state prisons.

But in 2011, when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered California to bring its inmate population to constitutional levels, West Block began permanently housing men streaming in from overpopulated prisons.

Today, West Block’s dilapidated and weather-beaten halls are overwhelmed with scores of men, nearly all of them serving lengthy prison sentences or life terms.

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Editorial

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Contributors

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How prisoners change young lives Since the 1970s, San Quentin inmates have shared their experiences with at-risk teens — to teach, not scare, them how to avoid incarceration through the SQUIRES program.

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Money

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Poem

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The Plaza

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Legal

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Crossword

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Comic

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Over The Wall

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About Us

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Life after the SHU Five men share their stories about the harsh realities of incarceration at the Security Housing Unit at California’s super-max Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City.

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N A R

Better environmental practices have the potential both to conserve natural resources within prison and help incarcerated men build a better life after their release.

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Growing more than just green

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Answers from the Crossword on page 30 E

San Quentin’s GRIP (Guiding Rage Into Power) program takes offenders on a year-long journey deep inside themselves to heal the wounds of violence and violent lives.

DEDICATION by Bo Kovitz

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The men of GRIP

Implementing Arnulfo Garcia’s vision for an outstanding inmate-run magazine

From top: Eddie Herena; courtesy CDCR; Eddie Herena; courtesy Angela Sevin

Health

T O R I A L

By Arnulfo T. Garcia

Introducing Wall City

I just can’t bring myself to write about Arnulfo in the past tense.

Months into being a free man, Arnulfo was killed in a car accident while on his mission to build a supportive community for the men and women who would follow him across the walls of prison. In recent weeks, I, like everyone who knew him, have had serious trouble coming to terms with what happened.

It seems unreal, because he was and is so real to everyone who knew him. His goals are real, his impact is real.

Lately, he’s entered my dreams (in one, he grabbed me by the shoulders and

W Peter Mertz

The View

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WA LL CIT Y

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F E A T U R E S

told me “calm down.”) He appears in my mind when I’m thinking and working as a reporter, telling me to rephrase things, ask different questions. He pulls me out of bed in the morning, guides me through my days.

He’s still here. He’s alive, in all of us.

This is no truer anywhere else than in the San Quentin newsroom, where his closest friends and colleagues are continuing to realize and execute his dreams — which were really the dreams of every man and woman fighting to move forward.

Now, with the

hen the Society of Professional Journalists presented San Quen­­­­­tin News with the prestigious James Madison Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2014, the inmate staff knew they were on the right track as boots-on-the-ground reporters.

They also knew that more could be done.

We created Wall City magazine to expand our journalism and stretch our storytelling capacity. The newspaper has offered an unprecedented opportunity for those of us interested in journalism to learn the basics, understand the work to be done and practice the craft. But now we are eager to step beyond the world of newspaper, both in its word-length restrictions and constricted styles.

Over the last several years, as we have reported various short-term stories and developed our professional relationships with each other, with the community, with prison administration and so

launching of this magazine, one of Arnulfo’s latest passion projects, we are all moving forward together.

Arnulfo stood at the helm of the highly successful and journalistically innovative San Quentin News and saw Wall City as an opportunity to take it one step further.

This magazine represents yet another iteration of Arnulfo’s enduring legacy.

This is the magic of Wall City: here, Arnulfo has brought together, all at once, the catharsis and liberation of creative expression, the professional development of working in a newsroom,

and the rehabilitative power of journalism — as writers seek truth and their subjects’ stories are announced to the world.

We are publishing his editorial as he wrote it so that he can speak — as loudly and forcefully as always — to you, the audience, so that he can bring you into these walls. We hope, as he does, that you can begin to understand the incredible richness of the stories inside and the men whose lives offer wisdom to everyone, no matter which side of the wall you are.

And, finally, we want to thank Arnulfo. For guiding us, leading us forward, always and forever.

forth, we’ve begun to appreciate the unique and truly change-making role journalism can play in the prison context. Incarcerated writers are able to access and communicate stories within prison walls with an honesty and proximity that hardly is possible otherwise.

The magazine allows our writers to begin to tell important stories with more space and more creative freedom. We can utilize more tools in our journalistic toolbox — writing with candor, vigor, color and so forth … to bring audiences into our world more intimately. This magazine is

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the changes in their lives and their com- prison experiences. They all went away mitments to the betterment of the com- enlightened about how the criminal jusmunity. Preventing people from coming tice system actually works and hopeful to prison in the first place is the mission that rehabilitating offenders is the right that ties them together. People who get out of prison, they get out after changing their lives and go back into their communities. Being open and honest about their past mistakes show they are committed to breaking the cycle — healed people, heal people.

The importance of the CDCR’s Scott Kernan speaking with Garcia news forums is to give public safety officials and concerned citizens thing to do for the betterment for all communities.

In another forum, U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier of San Mateo County heard about incarceration, rehabilitation and re-entry. After hearing from the inmates, she said, “I was taken profoundly by the adjustment that so many of the men made in their lives. Most people have no idea and think that you don’t change.”

Daniel “Nane” Alejandrez of Barrios Truth-seeking and vulnerability are the opportunity to talk to and interact Unidos came to San Quentin News to discrucial elements not only in our creative with inmates who have decades of expe- cuss his commitment to the community process and our journalistic process but rience behind bars and have taken full and to reforming the state’s prisons and especially in our healing process. Pris- responsibility for their past crimes. The jails. He uses his life story and struggles ons, as they are designed today, are topic is always centered on incarceration, to connect with the prisoners. When they destructive to families. Rehabilitation is rehabilitation and re-entry. When we hear how the words of peace and human about rebuilding those relationships, first report on forums we bring readers into rights leader Cesar Chavez helped Alewith self, then with loved ones, then with a world that has honest conversations jandrez turn his life around, they are community. The only way to begin fruit- between the inmates and prosecutors, encouraged to become peacemakers. ful and honest conversations is to take teachers, judges and other concerned citSomething powerful comes from sithonest, fact-driven storytelling across izens. ting in a circle of men who all have made prison walls.

When San Francisco District Attor- mistakes in their lives and understand There will be stories about the energy, ney George Gascon came to San Quen- the ripple effect their actions have made vitality and commitment of the broad tin News, he was so impacted by hearing in the community. Hearing the changing mix of men and women who come out from men who have served decades nature from criminal thinking to social of prisons every single day — including behind bars that he brought several awareness brings a healing to everyone senior attorneys from in the community. People talk about pasts his office back inside that are full of trauma, pain and sufferThe name Wall City comes from San Quentin three ing. The healing component comes from the very first newspaper published times. Gascon did not hearing stories very similar to your own in the 1930s at San Quentin State stop there. He invited from someone whose culture is so differPrison. Since we are surrounded by dozens of prosecu- ent from yours. This allows everyone to walls and live in a small community, tors from around the open up and find his own truth. we think Wall City is appropriate. country to hear the Society, too, should hear these stories, men talk about their which is why we created Wall City.

WA LL CIT Y

a place for you to learn about people hardly ever seen and rarely heard of.

We cannot ignore the rehabilitative mission of the criminal justice system.

Journalism — evidence-based reporting and storytelling — sheds light on important questions of where we are in that rehabilitative mission. This magazine is a space for our reporters to celebrate the successes and evaluate, critically, the failures. It’s an opportunity for you to hear about men who have successfully reintegrated into society, to learn about programs that transformed the lives of men inside prison walls in inspiring ways, and to think critically about what roadblocks exist.

The only way to begin fruitful and honest conversations is to take honest, fact-driven storytelling across prison walls.

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Editor-in-Chief Senior Editor Staff Writer Staff Writer Columnist Columnist Art Director Staff Photographer SQ PIO Warden’s Office CDCR Information Officer II Adviser Adviser Adviser Adviser

Richard Richardson Juan Haines Charles David Henry Kevin D. Sawyer Curtis Carroll David Jassy Jonathan Chiu Eddie Herena Lt. S. Robinson Raphaele Casale Krissi Khokhobashvili William Drummond Sarah Horowitz Bo Kovitz Doug Levy

Copyright (c) 2018 San Quentin News. Permission is granted to republish articles from this magazine with credit.

For other licenses, please use the contact information on the back cover.

From left: Courtesy of Glen Holden; Peter Mertz

C O N T R I B U T O R S

Eddie Herena

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VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1

Glen Holden

Emile DeWeaver

Glen Holden spent 45 years behind bars. He expected to stay locked up — until he decided to be honest with himself. Now that he’s back in society, he talks about what it’s like to work his way back into the community.

He’s living an inspiring life.

Emile DeWeaver is a Black community organizer who’s been incarcerated for 20 years. He co-founded Prison Renaissance, a Non-profit organization that uses arts, media, and technology to connect incarcerated people to the communities that need them. He’s also a journalist, writer, and poet published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Mercury News and Colorlines.

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H E A L T H

M O N E Y

By Curtis Carroll

Dollars and sense for the incarcerated San Quentin inmate turns Wall Street guru

T Darrell “Mo” Washington and Daniel Plunkett doing yoga poses in the SQ Education building

A path of transformation

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organizations that have spread across more than 135 jails and prisons in 24 states.

Currently, 16,000 incarcerated people turn to Fox and the insights in his book, Yoga: A Path for Healing and Recovery (2009). Many more can expect to join Fox’s movement, which aims to establish yoga in all U.S. jail and prisons.

“There’s a desire by yoga teachers to be of service. Part of the DNA of yoga is karma yoga — service,” said Fox, who draws from years of experience in restorative justice and violence-prevention. He argues that yoga sparks increased self-awareness, which can transform a prisoner and prepare them for successful re-entry.

An Oxford University study confirms Fox’s own findings: inmates in a 10-week www.facebook.com/prisonyoga yoga program performed www.prisonyoga.org better on a computer test

of their impulse control, had more positive moods and were less stressed — perhaps because yoga is an “alternative way of being with yourself and the world,” as Fox wrote.

“It represents a personal support system that if practiced regularly can provide you with an ongoing sense of balance, connectedness and inner peace,” Fox said. “To heal the pain and suffering in the world requires us to heal our own pain and suffering, so we no longer unconsciously inflict pain and suffering on others.”

Yoga isn’t meant to invalidate the importance of other mental health services in prison, but it offers a relatively cheap and simple option that can do wonders for prisoners’ well-being and slacken some of the effects of mental health problems that come with incarceration.

With yoga, all you need is time and space.

Robert Sturman

ehind San Quentin’s baseball field, in a doublewide trailer surrounded by barbed wire, a dozen inmates sprawl out on yoga mats. Filling inside the bungalow are men, young and old, of different races, religions and worlds.

Eyes shut, they take one deep breath together. After a few moments of stretching and balancing themselves, they begin to heal not just their bodies but also their minds. As the tensions — physical and emotional — subside, they reflect on their personal histories: memories of trauma, substance abuse, and violence.

All thanks to James Fox, who has launched a nationwide Prison Yoga Project — a movement that has since spawned 11 chapters and 10 affiliate

Sarah Horowitz

Cheap and simple, yoga helps inmates manage the stresses of prison life

hey call me, “Wall Street.”

I’ve been featured in the Wall Street Journal alongside Warren Buffet, “CNN Money,” “Market Watch,” CBS and NPR. “The Kitchen Sisters” turned my story into a TED Talk. I recently met Mark Zuckerberg and we chatted about the importance of financial literacy.

This is all a bit weird to me.

At 17, I was convicted of first-degree murder and robbery and sentenced to 54 years to life in prison. Now here I sit. I’ve been incarcerated 21 years.

Before I came to prison, I didn’t know how to read or write. But I loved to look at the photographs in the newspaper. I used to get my cellie to read the sports page to me. But one day, intending to get the sports page and hurry back to my cell so that my cellie could read it to me, I accidentally grabbed the business section. An older prisoner saw me with the business section and asked me if I played the stock market. “What’s that?”

I asked him. “That’s where White people keep their money,” he explained.

That experience sparked my desire to learn to read and write. And along my path to literacy, I began to understand the power of what knowledge can bring to a person’s mind.

Where my mind went again and again was money management, which I was exposed to by reading about financial markets in the business section of the newspaper. I needed to learn what, when, where, why and how to invest in these financial sectors. Over the months, I found myself reading more about the various regional stock exchanges and what stocks were being traded at the “Big

Board” and what issues were considered “Blue Chip.”

I couldn’t afford to invest in those “Big Board” stocks — too pricey — instead I taught myself how to pick cheaper stocks. I started placing orders through various brokerage firms, and eventually began earning returns on my investments. My confidence grew, and I began sharing stock tips with other inmates around the prison. Before I realized what I had done, I found myself advising and consulting with other inmates about investing their own money.

In 2014, I created a financial philosophy curriculum at San Quentin, called Financial Empowerment Emotional Literacy (F.E.E.L.), to help other incarcerated people understand the basics of personal finance. Zack Williams (son of late actor Robin Williams) is one of the program’s sponsors.

Today, there are 2.3 million men and women incarcerated in the United States. A large percentage of them have no financial literacy. In my experience, the majority of those imprisoned in California have no concept of F.E.E.L. Upon release from prison, a parolee is given $200 gate money. Then they are told, “Good luck, stay out of trouble.” With no meaningful preparation or long-term financial plan, it should be no

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An older prisoner saw me with the business section and asked me if I played the stock market. “What’s that?” I asked him. “That’s where White people keep their money.”

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“The City of No Pity”

P L A Z A

By David Jassy

by FranCisco Vargas

Channeling emotions into music

When you walk thru the city of concrete and steel Never turn your back to the snakes, For you know their will.

They are slick and they are sly!

They will take your life Without a blink of their eye!

Trust not whom you talk, Beware of the ones, where you walk.

Within the heavy crowd in the yard is a rumble, A shot is fired! A man has stumbled But his fall was not from the bullet, This man was stuck!

And he is out of luck, Cause in this prison yard of madness.

There is no time for sadness.

For behind these bloody walls, No one will come to his calls…

In 1974, FranCisco “Cisco” Vargas spent time in a place he named, through poetry, The City of No Pity — San Quentin State Prison. The experience, he said, helped him turn his life around.

After getting out, he worked his way through the art world by specializing and painting large-scale murals on smooth or heavily textured walls. He drew upon his California Chicano-Latino heritage by combining vivid colors with classic lettering and picture imagery.

In 2014, Vargas designed and painted a mural in downtown Fresno. The mural is located on the Fresno Business Journal building, and measures 125 feet long by 33 feet high. It became known as the largest painted mural stamp in the United States.

“It was a huge challenge but one of the most rewarding,” Vargas said in an interview. With the majority of the work done alone, the mural took Vargas five and a half months.

In Stockholm’s Blue Hill neighborhood, hip-hop cleared a path away from violence

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magine if Mozart was born in a ghetto poverty-stricken, filled with drugs and violence. Then envision that young Mozart couldn’t afford instruments. Would anyone have noticed his musical genius, or would he have been kicked out of school for bad behavior? Would he have slipped into the school-to-prison pipeline? Perhaps he’d be sitting in a cell with no access to education and few chances for a successful return to society. The world would have missed his musical masterpieces.

When I was kid, I’d scratch up my mom’s record collection — jazz, classical music, R&B…. “Rock the Bells” by LL Cool J and “Don’t Believe the Hype” by Public Enemy played on repeat.

Not only was I captivated by the sounds and lyrics, music showed up as images and colors in my mind. I later learned this sensation is synesthesia — when one sense, like sound, translates into other senses, like seeing colors. At the time, I never knew the big part synesthesia would play in my life.

I grew up north of Stockholm, Sweden, in Hagalund, home to 6,000 residents, many of them immigrants from war-torn countries living in eight blue high-rise

Carmelita Vargas

than 70 percent of incarcerated people have committed, or been charged with, money-related crimes. Upon release, nearly 80 percent of them will go back into their respective neighborhoods.

I realize many people believe money management is a domain and a skill meant solely for professionals. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact, it’s a lifestyle — it’s managing what you eat, your time, your emotions, your relationships and other aspects of your life. Taken together, that’s where money management begins.

My intent is that these quarterly columns will give you the information you need to be financially literate. Because with literacy comes enlightenment and true independence.

T H E

Adnan Khan

surprise many return to the very criminal behavior that led them to prison.

The goal of F.E.E.L. is to break that cycle. We want to reach and teach those 2.3 million inmates how to separate emotional decision making from financial decision making using four basic rules of investment that are at the core of my own financial strategy. In coming columns, I’ll talk in depth about them: 1. How to properly save.

2. Taking control of your cost of living.

3. Borrowing money effectively.

4. Diversifying your financial profile by allowing your money to work for you, instead of you working for it.

These financial guidelines are especially essential to people in prisons: More

borhoods, don’t get that opportunity. Schools are underfunded, with arts and music the first to be cut.

But what else are kids really losing? Studies show that listening to music increases the brain’s “motivation molecule,” dopamine — an integral part of the pleasure-reward system. Playing live music also stimulates oxytocin, David Jassy at work at the SQ Media Center the brain’s “trust molebuildings on a hill we called “Blue Hill.” cule” and “moral molecule,” which helps My community had drugs, violence us bond with and trust others. but also positive influences, like hip-hop.

Researchers at the University of Toronto Rapping and creating beats distracted us found that weekly voice and piano lessons from the criminal lifestyle. The youth helped increase the IQ of 6-year-olds. The center was full of kids who expressed lessons also improved language developtheir frustrations through music. We were ment, relieved stress and diffused anger. passionate and formed crews of deejays, Here at San Quentin, we have hundreds emcees and b-boys, wrote and recorded of men between 18 and 22 who never had our own songs, and dreamt of making it the opportunity to confront childhood in the industry. It kept us out of the streets. pain and trauma and eventually ended up My passion — human beat-box and rap. in prison for violent crimes.

We were Blue Hill Productions, perI saw a chance for them to express themformed at youth centers, school parties, selves the way I did when I was younger. clubs and eventually got record deals. At I invited several to join in a mixtape, tell17, I signed a solo contract with Stock- ing their stories and channeling emoholm records. Years later, tions through music instead of violence.

Andres Avellan and I formed Members of different communities who a group called The Naviga- normally don’t interact join forces and tors. We had hits on the radio collaborate. At first, many of them didn’t and MTV, toured world- know how.

David Jassy has collaborated with songwide, and even produced for Seeing their reactions when they first writers and producers such as Bloodmany different artists. All heard themselves recorded brought me shy & Avant (Madonna ,Britney Spears), this wouldn’t have happened back to the music studio in Blue Hill.

Red One (Lady Gaga, Enrique without that youth center and I hope teaching them to speak their Iglesias, J-Lo), Kara Dio Guardi (Pink, its dedicated volunteers. truth will help influence the younger kids Backstreet boys) Ilya Salmanzadeh But the vast majority of who listen to their stories. Hopefully, this (Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Iggy kids, especially youth grow- mixtape will prevent youth from making Azalea) Twin (Miley Cyrus, John Legend) ing up in low-income neigh- the same mistakes.

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SQUIRES

How prisoners change young lives

By Charles David Henry

Photographs by Eddie Herena

A dozen teenage boys arrive at San Quentin and shuffle around, awkwardly trying to look cool. Flanked by rose bushes and razor wire, the Plaza is a luxuriant little square inside the prison gates. Each of them has a back-story but today the plan is to keep them out of prison ­­— courtesy of San Quentin Utilization of Inmate Resources Experiences and Studies, better known as SQUIRES. The Plaza is bounded with religious chapels on one side, and on the other a four-story “Adjustment Center,” a prison-within-a-prison housing gang bangers, men who’ve shanked other inmates, and worse.

Suddenly, Upumoni “Upu” Ama, a 6-foot-3-inch Samoan inmate, steps out to meet the teens. He and a half-dozen other inmates eyeball the teens, deciding which young man they want to spend time with during the tour.

“You’re going to spend the day here as one of us,” Upu says.

“You’re going to eat our food, walk our yard, and step into our cells. But where you’re standing right now?” The big man pauses, and throws his arms open wide. “You’re in the middle.

There’s the Adjustment Center, where the worst of the worst are. And, there’s the chapel — which signifies doing the right thing. The choice of where you ultimately want to end up is yours.”

SQUIRES has a long history. It started in 1964, when a man on Death Row was concerned about his son. Convicted murderer Ross Parker Keller’s teenage son was already in trouble with the law and might be headed to prison or worse, he feared, if there wasn’t some kind of intervention. But the boy wouldn’t share his feelings, or understand where his actions were taking him.

Keller wanted his son to taste the bitterness of prison life, and lose his freedom for a day, so he might not spend his life here. It might deter him from a life of crime. That boy’s fate is unknown — there’s not much documentation about the pro-

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gram’s early years— but Keller’s work has touched thousands of lives.

For decades, confronting a juvenile with an up-front, inyour-face approach was a traditional way of scaring troubled teenagers straight. Hardened lifers, violent men, offenders scream at young offenders, searing them with a nightmare view of the incarceration ahead if they didn’t go straight.

SQUIRES is not Scared Straight. It uses feelings instead of fear. The boys in the program get a tour of life behind bars, and they’re asked to say how it feels. SQUIRES wants them to trust the word of the prisoners, and themselves, and to look at their life in a new way.

In the late 70s, the Los Angeles County Probation Department asked the California Youth Authority to evaluate a project designed to send probation camp youth to a juvenile visitation program at San Quentin.

The County Board of Supervisors approved the youth offender program and agreed to send a small group of 16- to 17-year-olds from probation camps to San Quentin. A study made sometime later concluded that, 12 months after a visit, “those who participated in the program committed fewer offenses, drug and property offenses subsequent to their experience when compared with similar youths who did not.”

Within the year, Contra Costa County wanted access. In

SQUIRES member Upumoni Ama talking to at-risk youth on the San Quentin Plaza

time, groups of 20 to 40 kids started coming every two weeks.

Kids qualify for the program after being busted six or more times, often for violent crimes.

Wall City recently spent a day with one of them. Out of respect for his age, we’ll call him Kid. A 14-year-old from Novato, just a few miles north of San Quentin, here in Marin County, he arrived impeccably dressed in designer jeans and expensive Nikes. His eyes are wide and he looks nervously from side to side. In the Plaza, he listens to Upu narrate the history of the prison.

Before he knows it, another prisoner walks up to him. “I’m Adnan Khan,” he says, thrusting out his hand. “Those are cool

Jordans, where are you from?” Adnan inquires. “Is this your first time in prison?”

Wary, Kid acknowledges Adnan’s question with a nod.

Adnan, 32, recently elected as Chairman, has been in prison for 14 years on a robbery-murder conviction. He is an American Muslim of Pakistani heritage who has a long history with SQUIRES, including a visit as part of the program when he was 15. Though it didn’t take, he’s now an earnest believer in trying to wave off others. He is a mentor, the guy who pairs up with the visitors — and maybe saves them, too.

Adnan keeps up his conversation with Kid, looking to gain his confidence, and perhaps pick up a little trust. It seems to

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S Q UI R E S work; Kid’s fear eases as they descend together to the Lower Yard, turning that corner to where hundreds of convicts are crowded together.

They make their way past the sports players and the walkers, criminals doing their time, some clearly showing years of incarceration. In the Education Building, they start orientation.

Miguel Quezada, a second-degree murderer facilitating the meeting, establishes “three group agreements”: • Respect — “treat others like you want to be treated” • Honesty — “be honest to the group and yourself” and • Confidentiality — “what happens and what is said in the room, stays in this room.”

Like Adnan, Miguel tells them what he’s in for — it’s part of creating a safe space where boys and inmates can speak comfortably about tough personal struggles.

“Adults aren’t allowed to speak if the group doesn’t want their participation,” says David “Rome” Monroe. In another classroom, a parent is asked to leave because the boys want to speak openly and freely about their delinquency issues or the reason they came to San Quentin.

Miguel tells Kid to read the questions on a white board. Do you have problems with your parents? Are you a truant? Do you smoke? Drink? Drugs? Gang bang? Even in a small group, where he can open up some, Kid deflects some of the toughest questions.

“Your sponsor told me that you are a pimp, facing serious time in Juvenile Hall or the Youth Authority for pandering and drug possession. What brings you to SQUIRES?” says David.

“My probation officer told me that SQUIRES could help me.”

“Help you do what?” says Miguel.

“He told me I need to understand why hustling, taking money, is so important to me. Why do I want girls and women to give me money, he asks me why do I have them buying me clothes, you know, expensive jewelry and stuff like that,” Kid says.

“Is that the only reason you came here today?” David probes 14 WALL CITY SPRING 2018

THE TOUR After a morning of questions, probes, and responses, the youngsters are escorted to the Receiving and Release (R&R) section. It’s the first step to the prison for new arrivals, where all inmates are stripped, searched and processed into San Quentin. There’s bedding, Miguel says, prison clothes and personal hygiene, and a psychological evaluation, even if you’re headed to Death Row. R&R is also the last step for those released from San Quentin to the streets.

Kid wanders into Cell C and lies on the steel bunk.

“What do you think about this place?” says Adnan.

“It’s cold in there, man,” Kid responds.

They slowly walk past the hospital, Adjustment Center, and library.

Adnan presses Kid about his relationship with his mother and father.

“What do your parents think about you not going to school and all the troubles you got yourself into?” he asks.

“I only got my mother. I don’t know where my father is. I mean, you know, she wants me to do good, you know. I mean, but what can she? I mean the money I get helps with my little brother and baby sister,” Kid explains.

They stop at North Block, living quarters to over 700 convicted felons. Each 4-foot by 9-foot by 12-foot space holds two adult men every night. “Man, this space is smaller than my bathroom. Animals have more room,” Kid says sarcastically.

“Go inside. This is what you’ll get when you come to prison,” Miguel mockingly responds.

The group is escorted around to an area where 25 inmates flock together and shower.

“You like taking showers with men?” Adnan asks. was. I first, I ... started to run for the door and the bell went “Hell no,” Kid quickly answers. off, that confused me,” Kid said.

“Then don’t come to prison,” says Adnan.

The mentors tell them what happens when an inmate is sent Outside, they catch up to the group at an antechamber with to the Level Three and Four prisons to start his sentence. The a steel door fit for a siege castle. A facilitator talks about the racial conflicts, the daily violence, the seething hate as an evmen inside — not the kinds of murderers they’ve spent the eryday fact of life. Sometimes an inmate’s best friends will day with, but the bad ones that the state plans to kill. “Turn jump him, Kid hears. He winces. around fast and face the wall, they’re told, if any of the conIt keeps coming. Want to be worthy of staying in the yard? demned is brought in or out,” Adnan says as he notices how Show papers that you’re not a rapist? You hurt a kid? Get quickly Kid steps back from the above the entrance, “Cona beating. Drug deal goes bad? Get a beating. Wrong race, demned Row.” wrong time? You’ll catch a knife.

Then, more cells. Alpine is for the rapists, pedophiles, and After the cells and the taunts, the bad food and the harsh organg dropouts, all wary of beatings on the yard. Badger has ders, this summation of pain and confusion is too much for inmates waiting for their move to a higher security prison.

Kid. Carson is for disciplinary problems, where they are in solAs the day’s tour comes to an end, sponsor Raphaele Casale itary confinement. Donner, that’s more inmates on Death tells the boys, parents and youth offender organizers, “It’s imRow, plus convicts with disciplinary problems. portant for you to remember your experience with SQUIRES’ An inmate at Badger, like all of them locked down 23 hours mentors. The men in blue have gone through everything you a day, sees a SQUIRES juvenile. “Hey little boy, you’re cute,” are going through now; learn from the bad choices they made. he yells to Kid. “Come here baby, I want some of your little Every one of them regrets the consequences of their split***. I want you to be my cellie.” Another inmate joins in, just second decisions.” as an alarm goes off.

SQUIRES will continue to enThe prison rule is for all inmates to hance its therapeutic message by traindrop to the ground, but Kid and many ing mentors to break down the artifiother boys panic and rush for the exit. cial barriers that the young offenders They were stopped by a correctional build. The objective is to get them to officer and told to “get down.” talk about their problems, abuse and When the incident is cleared, the trauma. boys go to South Block for chow. Kid Because those problems extend well and three other boys, standard bag beyond California, SQUIRES is facillunches in hand, immediately complain itating networking and sharing inforMiguel Quezada counseling a teen about their turkey bologna, the bland mation about the problems that youth bread and the lifeless carrots. here struggle with and how the pro“You want this ****,” Kid pushes his lunch to the center of gram works. Internationally, teenagers suffer from the same the table. peer pressures.

“Don’t like prison food?” says Adnan.

SQUIRES’ message of congeniality has drawn praise from “Man, this **** is garbage,” he pouts. government officials, law and probation enforcement, social “This is what you get everyday,” Adnan adds. service providers, unified school districts, juvenile and youth “If you continue doing what you’re doing you’ll be eating organizations, parents, guardians and the youth. lunch with us,” says Miguel.

Casale encourages the young men to spend more time with their families and organizations that promote youth activities.

SQUIRES has in the past year developed a website to facilTHE “ROUND UP” itate sharing of information about juvenile delinquency and After leaving the chow hall, Kid and the boys go back to the youth problems worldwide. same classroom for what is called the “Round Up.” By this Will Adnan ever see Kid again, here on the yard as a fellow time, they are emotionally drained but excited from the day’s convict? There’s no way to know. SQUIRES doesn’t formally encounter; Kid is gregarious and a lot more extroverted. He monitor its results. That’s part of its confidential design. The can’t stop talking. program aims to persuade and influence but not intrude.

Adnan, asked each boy to explain what stood out about the For Adnan, it’s enough to make a start. Problems this deep tour that caught their attention. One boy said the cells were don’t change fast. Prison is the most “one day at a time” place “just too small for me to spend the rest of my life in, I can’t do you can be — work with what you’ve got, try to stay positive, it.” Another boy said, “Man I don’t like stripping so I can be and think about the long game. searched.”

But he had to take some pride when he heard Kid say at the “Man, at first I didn’t know what do, this funny look scary end of the day, “I got to tell my mom to call my probation offiguy in the cell starting screaming about how pretty my butt cer Monday, **** this prison, this **** is for the birds.”

S Q UI R ES

Adnan Khan speaking to a teen in the “Round Up”

deeper.

“I mean, my probation officer thinks like maybe I can explain why I act like this, and then, you know, I mean it could get me some help, you know,” Kid stumbles through his explanation.

David tells them about his own stray years, the drugs and the violence. “But, have you ever stopped to thinks about how embarrassing you are, how disappointing you are to you mother?” he says. “Do you realize how scared she is every time you leave her house, knowing that something bad and ugly could happen to you?”

Kid angrily stares back at him, and then looks around uncertainly. Before he can figure out a quick, slick snapback comment, Adnan, playing the good cop, redirects a question to another boy, and the cycle of questions from mentors starts over again. Kid has an expression on his face that indicates he has more to say about the situation, as the group’s attention turns to another boy.

SPRING 2018 WALL CITY 15

LIFE

after the

SHU

By Kevin D. Sawyer

16 WALL CITY SPRING 2018

Between them, five men spent nearly a century inside a prison within a prison, California’s notorious Security Housing Unit (SHU).

Isolated from contact with other inmates, they endured sensory deprivation, an unavoidable consequence of solitary confinement.

They didn’t commit any crimes in prison, nor did they violate any

SPRING 2018 WALL CITY 17

From left: Armando Flores, Johnny Barra, Guss Edwards, Isaac Flores, Joe Laredo

18 WALL CITY SPRING 2018

nite solitary confinement as a policy, the former SHU inmates have dropped from sight. How do these men return to the general prison population or society after 100 years of solitude?

At 27, Armando Flores had already served four years of a 15-years-to-life sentence for second degree murder. He settled into the prison routine and was on a regular contact visit with his then-girlfriend when they were interrupted abruptly by corrections officers. He was handcuffed and led away as his girlfriend stood crying.

It was 1989, and the super-max at Pelican Bay State Prison had just opened in Crescent City in the Northwest corner of California. Flores was taken directly to the facility’s SHU for alleged gang membership, where he spent the next 26 years of his life in isolation.

“It rains a lot up there and it’s always cold, depending on the cell,” Flores said. When he entered the SHU, the majority of its custody staff were Anglo white men — “mountain people,” as he described them. They were aggressive and had one way of running things which created a hostile environment. They’d strip search him before allowing him to exercise, alone, on the yard.

Accessing the yard was like stepping from one box to another.

“I could take about four steps one way and 10 steps the other

Eddie Herena; previous spread courtesy CDCR

rules. All but one was serving a life term. Their charge: gang membership. That was reason enough under a previous California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) policy to confine them indefinitely inside the SHU. After decades living under conditions harshly criticized nationally and internationally, SHU prisoners led hunger strikes in 2010, 2011 and 2013. The strikes, joined by many inmates throughout the CDCR, called attention to living conditions and mistreatment, which drew criticism from then-President Barack Obama and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. The strikes eventually attracted the attention and support of grassroots and human rights organizations, including the Center for Constitutional Rights.

A class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of the prisoners to end their indefinite SHU confinement. The last hunger strike ended as a federal court stepped in. The CDCR eventually settled in September 2015. The CDCR secretary agreed to stop putting prisoners in isolation for indeterminate time periods, a punishment designed to keep gang-affiliated inmates from associating with one another.

In the late 1980s, when the SHU at Pelican Bay State Prison opened, no one outside the prison system questioned the placement policy or how these men lived from day to day. Rehabilitation wasn’t offered in the SHU. And after the end of indefi-

“Entering the SHU was disheartening. I felt Pelican Bay SHU was the last stop,” Edwards said. “I felt as if I was living in a coffin and my destination was on a path that leads even lower into the ground. I felt there was no return to a civilized life.” er knew what they looked like, but you got to know them.” He said he wouldn’t spit in the drain out of respect for everyone else.

When it was time to transfer to another prison in Monterey County, Isaac Flores cleaned up. He didn’t want to leave any-

one a dirty cell, out of respect. Once on the bus, all he did was look at cars. He searched for banks, remembering that some displayed the time and temperature. The ride took him through his hometown of San Jose, California — a place he hadn’t seen in years.

When he arrived at Salinas Valley State Prison with art supplies, an officer said, “They don’t make paper like this anymore.” The cells were freezing, so he used toilet paper and soap to cover the vent. His mattress had blood on it from an inmate who’d cut himself, so Flores threw it out and slept on the metal bunk for five days. It was all new to him.

“Imagine opening the cages to a zoo and all the animals run out,” he told his brother on the phone. “Everyone is just moving.” Looking back on his SHU experience he said, “Every day I’m on the mainline is a good day.”

Johnny Barra, 41, was in the SHU for an “indeterminate term,” as it turns out like a bunch of guys. He was in there for 20 years before his release into the general population. While there, he filed many administrative appeals (grievances) regarding his term. The appeals were denied by the prison administration. The courts were no help; constantly deferring to the prison in a kind of Catch-22 situation.

Prison officials told Barra the two ways to get out of Pelican Bay were to debrief — become an informant — or die. The third way out, parole, was unlikely for a lifer in the SHU. The weird thing is Barra never served time in a general population of prisoners. He too went directly to Pelican Bay. “When I first got there, I didn’t understand the dynamics,” Barra said. “I was a little bit scared because I didn’t know what to expect. I was young.”

A lot of guys doing long bits in prison look disheveled. Not Barra. His shirts are usually clean and ironed; he shaves every day, and keeps himself fit. He carries himself with dignity and is respectful to everyone.

Who can say whether that’s how he was when he went in, or if that’s how he developed over years of living alone and trying to survive? “You’re deprived of so much,” he recalled. “For the first few years I read. Everything was on a mental level so I did stuff to keep my mind active. That’s how I adjusted.”

To keep busy, after sending his clothes to laundry, he’d rewash them with a bar of soap. He saw the world on television and began to appreciate it for the things he had taken for granted. Curiously, the scariest thing that could happen to a man living alone in the SHU is a phone call — a “courtesy call,” announcing a death in the family. He only got one, for his father.

It lasted 10 minutes and afterward a counselor asked Barra if he wanted a chaplain. He didn’t.

Lots of other people died in the 20 years he was in Pelican Bay. “I lost all my aunts, uncles, dad, grandparents, cousins — about 12 to 14 relatives,” he said. “I lost three of my aunts within three months.” He learned of most deaths in his family through letters.

He did not receive visits while in the SHU. It was too much of a hardship for his family.

There were times he felt hopeless. “I didn’t think I was go-

L if e Aft e r t h e SH U

way and I’d already be turning,” Flores said. Little things like this filled each day with peculiar forms of cruelty.

On occasional two-hour visits from family, Flores was escorted to another box where he placed his hands through a slot in the door to have them uncuffed as his relatives looked on.

“It’s kind of humiliating,” he said. The short duration of time, however, discouraged his family from visiting.

The SHU cell Flores lived in 23 hours a day is larger than regular prison cells. Though slightly bigger than Flores was used to, the cell smelled like mildew because of the dampness from the nearby Pacific Ocean. The mental toll continued each year with no end in sight.

In 1986, at age 17, Isaac Rubio Flores (no relation to Armando Flores) was in juvenile lockup for second-degree murder.

By 18, he was in county jail. “It was my birthday present,” he said. Of the 32 years he’s been imprisoned, 18 were spent in the SHU. “Once you go there, you’re stuck,” he said. “I accepted that it was home.” From 2000 to 2014 he was in a single cell.

Isaac Flores challenged his SHU placement. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone beat it on a 602 (Inmate/Parolee Appeal) or habeas corpus,” he said. Eventually, he tried to take his case all the way to the United States Supreme Court. “They didn’t want to hear it. But I took a shot.”

Once he was settled in, Isaac Flores still had to deal with life changes on the outside in a strange way. “Everybody knows when you go out for a phone call it’s a death, but they don’t know who died,” he said.

While in the SHU, Isaac Flores lost his mother to cancer in 2008, and his father in 2013. He said his mother visited often, but his father’s health precluded him from traveling to the prison from his home in San Jose so he only visited once.

He got to know other SHU inmates when he went to the recreation yard alone — they’d talk through a drain. “You nev-

SPRING 2018 WALL CITY 19

L ife Aft e r t h e S H U

L if e Aft e r t h e SH U

Inmates are kept cells in the SHU for 23 hours a day

20 WALL CITY SPRING 2018

said. “Isolation brings out the best in me and the worst in me.”

“In the course of the day, and every day, you learn to fight your dreams, real or imagined. Your survival strength and instincts kick in to keep you moving toward better days. It was always a constant struggle to obtain and keep peace of mind.”

Edwards said he was placed on a list to see a doctor, but not for psychological reasons. “I was placed on what they call chronic care, which means you would automatically be seen by a doctor every 90 days, no matter what your health condition was.” Those not on the list would have to fill out a medical form and hope they were called.

A visit to the doctor in the SHU was something out of the ordinary. “You would be handcuffed with waist chains connected to the handcuffs, with ankle chains on both ankles,” Edwards said. “Mainly because you’re never allowed to come in physical contact with absolutely no one.”

Occasionally, Edwards received visits from his family, but they were cheated out of time and only allowed an hour and a half. Even though the policy allotted two hours, staff included the time it took to get back to the cell. By the late ’90s, visits were extended to three hours.

Edwards suffered the loss of family members like many of his peers. “I lost my mother and father who came twice a year to visit me,” Edwards said. The news arrived in letters from

Courtesy CDCR

ing to die there, but I thought I’d be there for the rest of my time,” he said. “They think when we come out the SHU we’re supposed to be dangerous.” He’s not, but said he has realized those places are meant to break you down.

Guss “Lumumba” Edwards, 59, was sent to prison in 1978 for murder and robbery. After serving 27 years, he was sent to Pelican Bay SHU’s “short corridor” in February 2005 where he remained for eight and a half years in a single-man cell.

The Short Corridor was set aside for those suspected of being “shot-callers” in prison gangs.

“Entering the SHU was disheartening. I felt Pelican Bay SHU was the last stop,” Edwards said. “I felt as if I was living in a coffin and my destination was on a path that leads even lower into the ground. I felt there was no return to a civilized life.”

Writing was the only way for Edwards to maintain contact with the outside world after his wife moved to Florida, where her parents and family lived.

“I wouldn’t say we worked hard at maintaining a marriage,” he said. “We became friends when she moved.”

Like other survivors, Edwards exudes an all-too-familiar aura of pain in his face, a residual of struggling to maintain his sanity. “I’ve come to learn that isolation bears two recognizable features: One is introspection, the other is torture,” he

siblings, and from his counselor. He was allowed to make a “After 25 years of cell living (in and out of prison), they sent half-hour phone call home, but he had to pay for it. “That adme to dorm living, which is a culture shock itself,” he said. “It ministration had no concerns in regards to my mental state took me about three weeks to get a good night sleep.” when my love one had died,” he said. “Mainly because Pelican As his parole date neared, he thought about how to use the Bay was meant for serious punishment, nothing less.” skills he acquired to join a construction union. “My goal is to Edwards learned “how to mentally survive brutal condibecome a journeyman in construction. I would’ve never had tions.” Now that he is out and at San Quentin, Edwards, a lifthis opportunity if I was still stuck in the SHU.” er with the possibility of parole, feels motivated to dive into Loredo’s release from the SHU allowed him to take advanself-help programs. “I now also know there’s a light at the end tage of the programs offered at San Quentin. “Coming from a of the tunnel. Participating in these programs, somehow I now program, you have a feeling of success, like you accomplished believe that light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming something,” he said. “Now I know I can be more of a help to train.” my family because I got all these programs under my belt.

These days, Edwards can be seen around San Quentin with Now I got hope. When I go to a job site I know what to do.” the public information officer and other inmates answering For those still in the SHU, his advice is to “never give up questions from the many visitors that tour the prison. hope.”

Joe Loredo, 48, was sentenced to 13 years for conspiracy to “I don’t regret the decisions I made, but if I had to do it all kidnap with a firearm in 2004. He arrived in prison in 2005, over again, I wouldn’t let my bad decisions (override) who I rebypassing the traditional reception and immediately sent to ally am,” Loredo said. administrative segregation — the hole — and then to the SHU. Before paroling in early July 2017, Loredo completed the He spent a little more than 11 years isolated.

12-week Prison to Employment Connection program where Loredo was no stranger to the SHU program. He’d previoushe learned interviewing techniques and how to put together a ly done time in Corcoran SHU and Pelican Bay. The first time cover letter and resume. was in 1995, then he paroled in ’97. He’s also done two other “I appreciate what San Quentin has done for me and giving short stays in the Bay from 1998 to ’99 and 2000 to ’03. me the chance to open the eyes of others that are going through “Being young, I was curious. I looked forward to going the same thing. We’re showing them we’re not the monsters to the SHU because I looked up to older guys,” Loredo said. they made us out to be.”

“That was my mindset. I was hard-headed. It didn’t dawn on These men were given the opportunity to change at a prison me that every time I came to prison I would go to the SHU.” that offers a variety of programs. But there are thousands of inHe kept his sanity by playing chess, doing legal work, and mates who may follow their path, simply because punishment reading self-help books. It was all about keeping busy. “I made still trumps rehabilitation in a system struggling to change in projects like wind chimes,” using the foil from the inside of the face of politics, overcrowding, medical receivership, gangs potato chip bags. He also made jewelry boxes, baby shoes, and and violence in the post tough-on-crime era. boxing gloves. At one point, he made one jewelry box a week.

Pelican Bay didn’t offer Loredo education programs like the ones discovered once at San Quentin, where he later graduated from a Microsoft computer Where are they now? literacy class. “I never had this opportunity,” said Loredo, who did not grow up In January, the San Quentin administration notified the inmate in the age of social media. population that it is providing statewide access to self-help programs to all medium-custody inmates, even those with serious mental He also had to contend with the realhealth issues and ones classified to have special protective needs. ity that others didn’t think change was With the safety and security of the prison a priority, the officials possible for him. “We have these stereo­ responded to threats, attacks, and violence against the new types that follow us out of the SHU,” arrivals.

Loredo said. Taking advantage of the According to the administration, Armando Flores, Johnny Barra, programs at San Quentin, however, Isaac Flores, along with others were in positions of authority/ influence to order attacks against the new arrivals. Through orders changed that. He said the officers see by the administration, the three were transferred from San Quentin. he’s not what the system made him out Isaac Flores has since filed a grievance denying the allegations to be. “When they talk to you, they talk made by the administration. to you as a human being, not as an inOther inmates, who were released from the SHU and transferred mate. The counselors are the same way,” from San Quentin, have filed similar grievances.

Last year, the parole board found Guss Edwards suitable for he said. “The look I give them is ‘I told parole, and Joe Laredo reentered society. you so.’ We’re demonstrating that we can change.”

SPRING 2018 WALL CITY 21

THE MEN

OF GRIP

By Juan Haines

A few days after his daughter’s birthday, Javier Perez Trujillo and his family were celebrating at his in-law’s house, Sebastian Rios. There, Javier’s mind began turning over and over again, thinking of his sister, Norma and the mistreatment by her husband, Enrique Castrejon. He hated hearing about the abuse.

As he downed beer after beer, his happiness shifted to sadness and then anger. Javier was drunk when rage took control.

“I’m going to fuck him up,” he told his brother, Rafael.

22 WALL CITY SPRING 2018

Inmates participanting in a Spanish GRIP sessions

SPRING 2018 WALL CITY 23

Rafael took Javier’s threats seriously and left the party, heading for Norma’s in Exeter, California, to deliver the message to Enrique: “Stop hurting Norma or you’ll have to deal with me.”

But back at the party, Javier’s thoughts returned to what this

maximum-security prisons never provided him with the space.

Every day of his life behind bars, he shouldered the guilt and shame from killing Norma. It wasn’t until he got to the minimum-security environment of San Quentin State Prison and

“I WAS IN A LOT OF FEAR,” HE SAID. “I THOUGHT MY LIFE WAS OVER. THERE WAS A LOT OF SADNESS.”

Javier Perez Trujillo came to grips with his sadness over his family

Courtesy Javier Perez Trujillo

Th e M en of G R IP

In a building on San Quentin’s Lower Yard, behind a door with a sign that read “Do not peek in, GRIP in session,” Javier stood before two dozen of his peers, all perched in chairs arranged in a circle, and talked about his sister’s baby boy.

He blamed himself for taking his mother away from him at such a young age. He talked about the decades of silence and the pain that festered underneath. But now, he said, he can speak — safely and without reservation.

GRIP, as the six-year-old program’s known, is a 52-week, comprehensive offender-accountability program that takes incarcerated men on a journey deep inside themselves. Participants concentrate on how to use practical approaches to heal wounds that, more often than not, came from leading violent and fractured lives.

The goal is to learn how to feel connected, responsible to others, and part of a world beyond their own needs — and beyond their past mistakes.

The key — says Jacques Verduin, the psychologist who created the program — is to understand that hurt people hurt people, and healed people heal people.

“The program integrates the latest research about the brain, creating something that certainly seems to be engaging offenders in a way that many traditional programs do not,” said Elizabeth Siggins, senior policy advisor for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

“The program helps participants tear down the interior walls, and nobody can point a finger at them and diminish their dignity,” Verduin added. “It’s important in our society to create more dignity for the ones we call the ‘others.’ ” Lucia de la Fuente, in 2015, culturally adapted and translated the curriculum to Spanish, making GRIP the first program in California prisons exclusively for Spanish-speaking inmates, who make up 41 percent of the state’s inmate population.

Many of them are like Javier, serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole and struggling to make sense of their past and find a way to come to terms with themselves. Even more,

he and other Mexican nationals and Spanish-speakers imprisoned in California face particularly high barriers to rehabilitation and getting their lives back on track.

“It is vital and crucial to hear and learn in your own language,” said de la Fuente, who also facilitates the session. “My community should have the opportunity to choose, if they want, to take a program to better themselves, not based on whether the program is in English.”

Every week, 32 Spanish-speaking prisoners, with a combined 609 years behind bars, get a chance to sit together in

T h e M en of G R I P

24 WALL CITY SPRING 2018

enrolled in the self-help program, GRIP (Guiding Rage Into Power), that he began openly talking about that day.

Previous spread photo by Raphaele Casale

day was really all about — his daughter, who just turned five.

Uplifted, but still tipsy, he did what many Mexicans do in celebration — he took out his pistol and fired some shots in the air.

The sound of gunfire brought his family out of the house.

They snatched away the gun and put it in his truck, while someone in the quiet suburbs called the police. When the police confronted Javier, he lied, saying a car drove by and fired some shots.

Relieved watching the police pull away, Javier returned to the party as it was winding down and nearly forgot about what fired him up. Later, he drove his sister to her house, where Norma also lived.

Enrique was there, too. That’s where things went bad.

“What’s this about this message?” Enrique asked him as they stood off outside the house.

“Say to him what you said at the party,” Rafael said as he joined the group. “Tell Enrique to his face.”

At first, Javier couldn’t utter a single word.

But soon, there was yelling, arguing — then a scuffle for the gun everyone knew was in Javier’s truck. Javier snatched it first, when Norma tried to take the gun away, he pistol-whipped her and in the process, shot her in the head. A fragment of the bullet sliced into Rafa­el’s chest.

In the morning, his mind blurred, he awoke to the sound of knuckles knocking against the window of his car. It was the police.

“Why am I being arrested?” he asked.

“Don’t you remember shooting your sister?”

At the trial, the prosecutor told the jury that everything was premeditated, that Javier planned the murder when he sent the ultimatum to Enrique.

“They said that I pulled my sister down by the hair and shot her in the head because she got between me and Enrique,” Javier said.

When he was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, he felt confused about why his life unfolded this way.

“I was in a lot of fear,” he said. “I thought my life was over.

There was a lot of sadness.”

Javier had always wanted desperately to talk about, what he calls, the worst day of his life. But serving a life sentence in

a course translated into a language they can understand and identify with. In that space, they can address internal struggles, criminal thinking and confront what had gone so wrong in their lives that they landed in prison.

In Spanish, Luis Lopez says words to his

fellow inmates that, in any other setting, they’d never hear: “Track your body sensations. Know your emotions and thoughts before you respond to any upsetting situation.”

The men cradle their hands in their laps, closing their eyes

SPRING 2018 WALL CITY 25

Program aims to improve SQ and develop skills for future jobs

By Emile DeWeaver

Courtesy Angela Sevin

Th e M en of G R IP

26 WALL CITY SPRING 2018

Growing more than just green

Courtesy Javier Perez Trujillo

as the room falls silent. celebrate his first birthday, to not take him to school as you “Relax,” Lopez continused to with your other two children, Vanessa and Bryant. Toues in Spanish. “Pay atday, the baby you left at 40 days after birth is now 21 years old. tention to your body and He is a married man, just like Vanessa and Bryant. think pleasant thoughts I ask that you forgive me, sister, for not knowing how to help about your family.” you and save you from that man, so that you would not have to Here, they practice suffer anymore. I was your own executioner. I took your life self-control and then and filled it with suffering, grief and embarrassment to your self-awareness, learning children and the whole family. I just want to say to you sisto do many things that ter that the 21 years I’ve been in prison I no longer drink althey never mastered on cohol or use drugs. My life has totally changed since the day I the streets. The exercise destroyed your home. I gave my life to Jesus Christ. He is the both slows down the pace One who brought me back to sanity. He helped me find myRosario Perez, older sister. She of their lives and offers self. Thanks to him and rehabilitation programs I’ve learned is now 57 years-old and works them a chance to change to take full responsibility for all my actions and take control of as a psychologist, Colima, the way they’ve done all of my character defects that I confront day by day, in order Mexico. things in the past. Instead to continue my sobriety and to be a better person. I do it for of reacting quickly and violently, now they must turn inward, you sister and all the family. I love you sister. I love you dad. pay attention to their body and feelings, and respond thoughtI love you mom. I thank you for being here with me in all mofully to stressful situations. ments, your son, Javier.

But this meditation session only prepares them for what’s to Javier wipes away his tears. So does his audience. come next: the inmates each get a chance to speak, with con“I hope by sharing my story, I can help others to avoid the fidence and candor, about their past transgressions and take same mistake that I’ve made,” Javier said. ownership of them. Everyone is free to be as open a book as That is the power of GRIP. It’s an opportunity for men to they want, with the shared understanding that what is disshare their experiences and begin to open themselves to cussed in the circle stays there. The confidentiality allows for change. the disclosure of personal information so emotionally charged Members from the Mexican consulate attended this session that a box of tissues sits on the floor for the tears that flow of GRIP. from the speakers and listeners.

To Wilma Gandov, consul for Protection and Legal Affairs Javier stands quietly and steps into the center of the circle, at the consulate, the program enables what she called “the evothen sits in a metal folding chair. Solemn, Javier is hunched lution of people.” over, almost like he’s preparing to pray. Facing him are three “It is an opportunity for the men to safely look inside of their empty seats — one for his mother, one for his father, and one souls,” said Nadeshda Vargas, attorney for the consulate. “Profor Norma. grams like this help people realize that they are not the only Now in front of him is an opportunity to tell them things he one that makes mistakes. If the person is able to safely talk never said, things he wished he had said. Unfinished business. about their problems there can be more support. It comes from His peers bow their heads, fold their hands in prayer or over the ability to share with each other that you are able to give.” their mouths. Others lift their faces up, watching Javier as he begins to speak: To my sister Norma Elvira I ask that you forgive me for not doing GRIP’S SOLID RESULTS OUTSIDE THE WALLS the right thing. I took your life at the age of 25. I brought you to the UnitOver the last five years, GRIP has had 63 graduates of the first 300 reed States when you were 16 years leased from prison, largely through Board of Parole Hearings. None have old, when our dad kicked you out returned to prison. At a cost of about $75,000 dollars per prisoner per of the house when he discovered year, that is a tax dollar savings of almost $4 million each year — while your pregnancy of your first child, improving public safety.

Vanessa.

“These men really have come to terms with their offense and their I am ashamed of myself for not impact on the victims, their family and the community,” said Elizabeth permitting you to finish breast-feedSiggins. “The waiting list for the GRIP program indicates that it’s really ing your son, who you yet did not motivating folks to want to begin that process of change.” put a name. I didn’t allow you to see him grow and make trouble, to not

As rainfall pelted the dusty grounds of San Quentin last fall, several dozen incarcerated and free people gathered in the prison’s Protestant Chapel. They were not seeking a heavenly salvation. They wanted to preserve mankind’s future on this rapidly heating planet.

To them, it began with connection.

“If you think solar and wind power are the answers to our problems, you’re wrong,” said the incarcerated Sam Hearnes, a co-founder of The Green Life, an environmental program at the prison. “The greatest form of renewable energy is our relationships with each other,” he said to the program’s second graduating class.

The Green Life was born after CNN commentator Van Jones visited San Quentin in 2009. Jones, who was then an advisor to President Obama on environmental jobs, held forth in the chapel on ideas that he had championed in his book, Green Collar Economy, about how to create jobs in areas such as recycling and energy.

Jones had argued that those sorts of jobs would be perfect for former convicts, and wondered aloud why people weren’t given the same opportunities to recycle themselves as garbage.

“If a soda can can have a second chance, can a human being?” Jones had asked. A green life, he said, was “a return to wisdom,” a homage to ancestors who understood how to live harmoniously in their environment.

Incarcerated people are in a unique position to help when they recover from the crises that led them to prison, he argued.

Knowledge from their personal recoveries could be used to help overcome the bigger crises outside.

“Some of the wisdom and genius we need is not going to be found on Wall Street,” said Jones. “It’s going to be found in this room.”

The program that evolved from that day consists of two dozen men meeting on Saturday nights in an interfaith chapel at the prison. All of the course participants choose a project to work on, such as a worm bin and composting project, aquaculture and water catchment system, solar projects and how to live a more conscious green life.

The men learn how to relate environmental issues into their incarceration, rehabilitation and return to their families. The lessons examine community building, environmental justice,

The Green Life’s Angela Sevin at work in her garden

sustainable living, zero waste and other ecological topics.

Six years after the first graduation and about 75 graduates later, program director Angela Sevin spoke of the results.

“I consider people who are in prison part of my community,” Sevin said. “If we are gonna survive on this planet with temperatures rising, with carbon parts per million over 350 — which is considered a trend toward an unlivable planet — we’re going to need all of our resources. And that means human resources to build resilience and come up with solutions.”

In Green Life, students deeply and profoundly embrace their interconnectedness with all living things. In turn, they are able to heal and transform the way they treat each other and the Earth by overcoming patterns of neglect and abuse.

“I go back into my world on the streets and have a better feeling about a stranger I might encounter on a day to day basis, whether they are Black or Brown or White,” Sevin said.

Green Life continues to work with participants after they’re released from prison into the Bay Area. It’s committed to providing resources, connections and additional training for workforce development (such as public speaking workshops and business trainings) and via its own partners, including Impact HUB Oakland, Uptima Business Bootcamp and SPRING 2018 WALL CITY 27

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To learn more about the Green Life program, or if you would like to support any of these viable ideas for sustainable projects inside San Quentin and opportunities for people in re-entry, contact Green Life Project Director Angela Sevin at angela4change@gmail.com or go to earthisland.org/index.php/projects/green-life

Ballot measure’s implementation speeds path to parole for many

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Wes Eisiminger

with Green Life’s partners to produce media about their work, access financial literacy, entrepreneurial training and build a therapeutic community support network among peers.

Co-founder Troy Williams, a powerful and intense man who paroled from San Quentin almost two years ago, was damp from his trips through the rain. Like the onetime cellies around him, he was unbothered by his wet clothes. Prison, he knew, accustoms one to discomfort.

Taking the stage during the ceremony, Williams told graduates that he had been skeptical about the relationship between criminal justice, prisons, and environmentalism.

“I thought, ‘What do I care about trees when people are dying where I’m from?’ ” he said. But reading Jones’ book “helped me understand: If I don’t care about the world that sustains us, how can I care about the people in the world?”

Williams also talked about how valuable incarcerated men’s voices and perspectives are. “Even though you don’t see how much you affect the outside world, a lot of people feel it. They might not know your name, but people know the work you are doing inside this prison.”

After Williams spoke, graduates Wesley Eisiminger and Lynn Beyett presented their project, a plan to conserve water at the prison. California was drought-plagued at the time and as a result, showers in San Quentin had been limited to three days a week.

Eisiminger and Beyett proposed a catchment system that uses rain runoff from the rooftops of buildings in San Quentin. For each 1,000 sq. ft. of roofing, the system would gather 600 gallons per inch of rainfall. San Quentin could use the water for irrigation during the summer months to support the prison’s gardens and fields.

Changing gears, a graduate named Seth Hard-

Proposition 57 and California’s road to declaration

ing talked about how the first step toward a greener world can begin with literally walking greener.

Harding’s prison blues folded around his bird-like frame, and his eyes glinted with excitement above a wild, white beard as he demonstrated a natural way to walk. According to him, “walking correctly” reduces stress and damage to joints. He said early Homo sapiens walked in this way, and learning to “walk green” is the first step on a larger journey back to a greener life.

Whether San Quentin’s administration can implement a catchment system, or whether an octogenarian’s prescription for better walking becomes a standard on the yard, the Green Life crew seemed to feed on each other’s energy and ideas.

“I am always amazed by the wisdom and insight of people cut off from society,” said Tamira Jones, a representative from Earth Island Institute, which fiscally sponsors The Green Life, who sat in the audience.

“To have the time and opportunity to contemplate the choices we make and our impact on the world feels like a luxury for most, but in prison, it’s a daily imposed reality. To propose a right way, or even an improved way of living on the Earth, through consuming resources, or being a good steward, is a means of restoring a relationship, contributing to a solution and being of good use,” Jones said. “This is vital for a man who has been paying the price of past mistakes for decades and lost all ability to make choices, have free will, or participate in society.”

Graduates are experiencing not just reconciliation with their environment — there, too, is another powerful kind of reconciliation: with oneself. Sustainability, zero waste and conservation are ideas that powerfully enhance a prisoner’s rehabilitative journey: to build community with others and with their planet.

Luis Muñiz, luismuniz03.tumblr.com

Inner City Advisors. Participants can get permaculture-design training and certification, are offered job referrals and various opportunities to work with a case manager. They can even work

ew CDCR regulations that implement Proposition 57 shift the focus of incarceration more toward rehabilitation, though not as much as many had hoped. Still, the rules are expected to allow the early release of about 2,000 prisoners within the first year — and up to 10,000 by 2021.

That’s far fewer than the 30,000 estimated by the Legislative Analyst’s Office before the ballot measure passed in November 2016. The huge difference is mainly because the CDCR’s regulations now classify all third-strikers as if they are violent felons. Efforts are afoot in Sacramento to further narrow the list of crimes considered non-violent. That would further limit access to Proposition 57 programs.

Proposition 57 was based on the idea that inmates are entitled to use prison time to improve their prospects for successful return to the community. Inmates who participate in rehabilitation or education programs and exhibit good behavior can shave months off their sentences or earn earlier opportunities for parole board hearings.

Under the new regulations, inmates earn milestone credits when they complete training programs with attendance and performance requirements. These are one-time credit earnings — up to 12 weeks a year for completing 208 hours of an approved rehabilitation program, and up to six months for earning a graduate equivalency diploma (GED), associate (AA) or bachelor’s (BA) degree.

The regulations boost good conduct credits for inmates who remain discipline-

free, ranging from one day of credit for four days of incarceration up to two days of credit for each day of incarceration, based on an inmate’s xoriginal sentence and current security status.

Altogether, this could speed up the last years of especially long, determinate sentences for prisoners who have worked their security level down sufficiently to work in fire camps. Theoretically, an

incarcerated person eligible for all of the new options could have their sentence reduced by as much as 16 weeks if they participate in both milestone and rehabilitation programs and earn the maximum good-conduct credit.

By restoring major incentives for prison programming, Proposition 57 could have a significant impact on California prison culture. One of the main unanswered questions is how relationships among prisoners and between prisoners and staff will affect implementation. One possibility is a return to the time when inmates were highly motivated to write books or create other works, which was one of the ways to earn parole consideration under the indeterminate sentence system of the 1950s and 1960s.

However, due to overcrowding, inmate control of key prison space, and securityheavy design of most California prisons, delivering rehabilitation programs won’t be easy.

Potentially, programs implemented under Proposition 57 could benefit all incarcerated persons, not just those eligible for the new credits. Perhaps life without parole inmates and other inmates ineligible for Proposition 57 could be rewarded with security level reductions.

The governor’s office appears to see Proposition 57 as a way to persuade the federal courts to lift its ongoing oversight of California prisons. That oversight has forced the state to address prison conditions, including overcrowding.

Ultimately, the state must be able to manage its prison system on its own, within all legal boundaries and with dignity for all persons.

Pushing against Proposition 57’s success are anti-crime advocates and district attorneys who say the early release of more inmates increases the risk of crime in their communities. At least six bills have been proposed in Sacramento to limit Proposition 57 by adding to the list of crimes classified as violent, and therefore ineligible for the new early release options.

Adapted from an article written for Wall City by Jonathan Simon, the Adrian A. Kragen Professor of Law and the Faculty Director of the Center for the Study of Law & Society at U.C. Berkeley.

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By Jonathan Chiu and Jan Perry Across 1. Winter accessory 6. Man’s struggle with dog 10. An exclamation when you’re upset 14. Toni Braxton’s sister 15. Director Ephron and Roosevelt’s wife 17. Expel 18. Medical procedure that you never want 19. A king can do this to someone 20. An explosive cable network 21. Enzyme that curdles milk 22. Danny of The Professional 23. Jerk 24. Vehicle’s advertisement 26. Logan of Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief 28. Fisher of The Wedding Crashers 30. Prisoner medical area (Abbrev) 31. Military higher-up 32. Mosquito disease 38. Johnny Cash biopic Walk the ____ 39. Movie director’s prerogatives 42. Starbucks drink 45. Prayer ender 46. Baggy overalls 48. Reid of American Pie 49. Ultimate purpose 51. The reckless years 53. Goddess of the rainbow 54. One of the Great Lakes 56. Name of this magazine 58. Dentist title 60. A ’90s Lisa Loeb song 61. Rifleman in the Austrian

and German armies 64. Person who is critical of president 67. Precedes son, in or up 69. Worst German name ever to name your son 72. Pepsi, Coke and RC 75. Do this before a test 76. Prayer accessory 77. Make into law 78. NASCAR’s Edwards 79. Bird trap 80. Supermarket divider 81. Projection of a building at the east end of a church 82. Helper (Abbr.)

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Illustration by Fred Tinsley Concept by Jonathan Chiu

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Prisoner Re-entry Network, an Oakland non-profit, interviews lifers after their release. This article is based on conversations between PRN Executive Director Jared Rudolph and Glen Holden, who left Valley State Prison in January 2015 after serving 45 years. Holden was interviewed about six weeks after his release and again 14 months later.

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went to prison when I was 19 and never thought I would get out.

I was denied parole maybe 20 times. Finally, I decided to put everything on the table, to tell the truth about my whole life, and three hours later, I was told I was eligible for release. I still get emotional thinking about that. A lot of us behind those walls think we’ll never get out. I was one of those. Never give up hope. My father always told me that.

Adjusting to being out has required making a positive commitment.

That’s what I decided to do. I internalized that I need to be true to myself before I can be truthful with everyone else. And especially when I deal with my family, my friends, my peers, the guys helping me at the transitional housing, my case workers, even the parole agent. It’s all a matter of staying positive and focused.

I didn’t have a plan. My plan was to play it by ear — to take what I knew from inside the institution and just take it with me. My character, my adjustments in

prison, how I handled things — and just assume that role when I got out. If you bring some skills with you, you can handle it. We are going to run into a lot of situations. I tend to take everything with a positive attitude.

The biggest thing about ad­ justing is the way you have to get your benefits or your driver’s license, how to work your

ATM cards or driving. Those are hurdles. But I enjoy what I do. Every morning, it’s good to be out. It’s good to go to a meeting, to go to an appointment, to keep your appointments. Technology has really changed, but the neighborhoods are still pretty much the same. The city’s growing.

They’ve cleaned up a lot of stuff, but the changes are great.

There’s a lot of love in the community.

I started volunteering with kids in an after-school program. For someone who wasn’t around children for 45 years, this was like medicine for me. Your friends die, your mother passes away, and your brothers and sisters die. You have to get right back on the yard the next day — hit the iron pile, play handball, basketball, talk sh*t, get busy. And you put the emotions away on the shelf. So, in a way, the children brought that back for me, so I’m emotional now. It was a great help for my own development after coming back.

I see a lot of cats who get out of prison suppress things and hold it until it’s too late. It’s a little bit selfish to hold it that way. You think of yourself, to stay hard and put on a façade. You don’t grasp it until someone checks you on it — your sister, your mom, your homeboy. Somebody is going to check you. All that you are doing — what have you done for them?

When you step out, you’ve come to create a better character and a better person, even if you don’t always show it. After serving long periods of time, you’re adept at hanging in there and hanging tough. The prayers from our mothers and fathers will be answered.

It’s good to be out. It’s great out here.

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San Quentin News 1 Main Street San Quentin, CA 94964

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Wall City is written and produced by the inmates at San Quentin News. The Friends of San Quentin News is the affiliated non-profit that raises funds to facilitate publication and distribution. To make a donation, visit http://www.sanquentinnews.com or send checks payable to Social Good Fund, write “Friends of San Quentin News” in the memo line, and mail to P.O. Box 494, San Quentin, CA 94964. Social Good Fund, Inc., is a 501(c)3 non-profit. Contributions may be tax-deductible. Our tax identification number is 46-1323531.