Below is a collection of poetry and prose sent by student Timothy Young from San Quentin during the COVID-19 crisis.
Open Line
The College Program at San Quentin
Inside San Quentin Prison, You Sit and Wait Until COVID-19 Comes for You
As a working prison journalist, I wanted to keep my eyes and ears wide-open. I wanted to detail everything going on around me as COVID-19 raged out of control here. But a fog crept through me. Was it just a cold, a sinus infection, influenza—all things I’ve battled before? I woke to strange chills in the night; there was an acrid aftertaste along the back of my tongue. Maybe I just needed to pull out a blanket.
Is this what COVID-19 feels like? My temperature had been normal every day. My breathing remained strong and clear. I wanted to believe that meant I was fine.
Even though I knew I wasn’t.
On June 22 and 23, everyone in my building, San Quentin’s North Block, lined up for COVID-19 testing. I had just begun to feel weirdly awful. I overheard other guys describing the same things I was feeling. None of us wanted to alert the medical staff. So, you admit you’re sick? Well, let’s remove you from the few familiar comforts you have and throw you in an empty cell for a 14-day quarantine. That’s the protocol we all feared worse than COVID-19.
The guards called names throughout the day. “Pack all your property, you’re moving.” We assumed these guys had tested positive, but that wasn’t made clear. My cellie and I listened intently whenever a fresh set of names got called, holding our breath. When we weren’t on the list, we went back about our days, locked in the cell. So far, so good.
All I wanted to do the night of June 25 was watch some television before, hopefully, passing out. I hadn’t slept well all week.
Then the guards called my cellie’s name, with another group of housing moves, just after 8 p.m. “Damn,” he said as he jumped off his bunk.
For the next hour and a half, I lay on my bunk, staying out of the way as he packed up. As usual, the tier officer came by around 9 p.m. and double-locked all the cell doors. The building went quiet. Around 9:30 p.m., they repeated the list of names from earlier. “Get ready to move.”
Then they added one more. “Garcia, 409, you’re moving, too. Pack your stuff.”
Now it was my turn to say “Damn.”
San Quentin’s South Block, where quarantined inmates are housed, is separated into four alphabetized units — Alpine, Badger, Carson and Donner. Sometime after 11 p.m., one of the North Block’s Inmate Disability Assistance Program workers, my buddy Ron Ehde, stopped by. “You’re getting housed over in Donner,” Ehde told my cellie, sharing information he had gleaned from events of the day. By no means was it official, but it was more than anyone else would provide for several days. “It looks like that’s where guys who tested positive are being put right now.”
“And you, your test probably came back negative,” Ehde explained to me. “But you’ve been celled up with a positive. So they have to quarantine you somewhere else, over in Carson.”
Six of us made our way across the prison around midnight, pushing rickety carts overflowing with boxes, bags, odds and ends. Four men, including my cellie, disappeared into Donner. I was left at the edge of Carson with another prisoner. An officer there gave us our cell numbers on the third tier.
After a couple of trips lugging boxes up and down, I began to wonder if I was experiencing the COVID shortness of breath. I was woozy and sweating. Strange faces stared silently out at me from the cells I passed. This was an administrative segregation (ADSEG) housing unit—each man housed alone, left to stew in his own thoughts.
I peered into the open door of a depressingly dirty cell. “Has this cell been properly disinfected?” I asked.
“This cell’s been empty for a long time, since way before there was any COVID,” the officer said. “You don’t gotta worry about any of that.”
I knew the deal—just get all my stuff into the cell and let him close the door. I’d have to clean the entire cell before I could begin to feel comfortable—8 p.m. in bed watching TV seemed a lifetime ago.
There’s a demented cacophony of human voices universal to any ADSEG unit. Listening to my new neighbors in Carson, I could hear anger, pain, frustration. Some of these guys had been stuck here for months.
Eventually, I did receive a notice informing me that I’d tested positive for COVID-19—one more number in a group that has now passed 2,000. Fifteen San Quentin inmates have died.
During a routine temperature and breathing check, I told a nurse about my bouts of nausea, my night sweats, my constant weakness.
“You have no shortness of breath. You don’t need any hospitalization,” the nurse told me. “Your body is just fighting off the virus. Keep taking your Tylenol and drinking lots of water.
“You’re one of the lucky ones, sir.”
I don’t feel lucky.
Attribution: This article originally appeared in the Washington Post on July 23, 2020. Read Story
Commencement Address
We had to cancel commencement last month due to COVID-19, so we invited our graduates to draft their own commencement addresses. Below is Steve Brooks’s speech on the importance of education.
Right Side of History
When future generations look back on the devastation caused by this coronavirus pandemic, they are likely going to say that what happened to incarcerated populations in America’s prisons is tantamount to crimes against humanity.
When future generations look at what politicians and prison officials did to protect those in their custody, they are likely going to say that they acted with complicity in allowing the deaths of those who have succumb to corona’s disease.
They will also likely say that those politicians and other officials, who could have acted, but stood by silently and did nothing, acted just as violently as the white police officer who put his knee on George Floyd’s neck.
This system has no heart, no emotion, and no soul. Like that look in Derek Chauvin’s eyes, this system is cold.
What we are witnessing through the lens of this coronavirus pandemic is a deliberate and catastrophic failure of leadership. Racism that is systemic. Judges, politicians, and corrections officials failing to take actions that are decisive.
It’s not enough to see a federal judge reduced to tears. It’s not enough for Governor Newsom to say I lived in Marin and I care about the incarcerated population at San Quentin. No. Not with coronavirus being brought into this once pristine environment.
How did we all of a sudden forget about the 1918 epidemic? Is this déjà vu or déjà flu we are witnessing all over again or a capitalist attempt to get money because of threats of defunding?
We went from sixteen to hundreds of infections in just two weeks. Yeah, Newsom’s right. It’s not black people’s fault what’s happening. But it’s not enough for Nancy Skinner to call for a hearing and it’s not enough for Marc Levine to point the finger at a series of gaffes. No. Someone has to take off their mask. Stand up and take action. Take away the mystery, and be on the right side of history.
Set the captive free. Reduce prison capacity. Let them all breathe. Send them home to their families. If you want to be on the right side of history.
One must be willing to shatter that glass ceiling. Condemn the killing of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and others. Admit that Black lives matter. Remove all monuments celebrating white slave masters.
If you want to be on the right side of history.
It’s a shame that the voice of reason is often powerless. It’s often oppressed. But it silently manifests in cities in states of unrest. Rising out of the ashes like the Phoenix, unscripted.
Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated voices are screaming, “We are human! And we want justice!”
Nostradamus could not have predicted this cruel twist of fate. How people wound up marching in the streets after sheltering in place.
How did we go from riots to looting and threats of shooting? From being aghast to being hit by tear gas? Are we no longer asleep?
Military generals are defying their commander-in-chief? Mayors are considering defunding the police? Black Lives Matter signs are in white folks’ yards? Thomas Jefferson is being protected by the National Guard.
This isn’t the land of liberty but of police brutality. Black bodies are being slaughtered in the name of law and order.
In these unprecedented times in American history we are witnessing the rapid unfolding of centuries of trauma, from Washington to Obama, and now the Donald is spreading chaos and confusion, ignoring the Constitution, and calling American citizens terrorists for engaging in peaceful protests.
We must never forget, before the sun sets, when we are nothing more than ink pressed against paper, that future generations will judge how each of us stood in the face of adversity, and they will say who acted compassionately — who acted courageously-and which of us were on the right side of history.
Attribution: This article originally appeared on the Prison Journalism Project website on July 3, 2020.
Read Story
‘I Spent 11 Years In Prison—And Produced a Rap Album at San Quentin’
I was born and raised in Stockholm and grew up in a loving home. My dad is a doctor from the Gambia in West Africa, and my mom was a scientist, originally from Estonia, but emigrated to Sweden.
At around 8 years old I started learning about hip-hop culture in New York and by 11, I had started rapping. I then started going into studios—at the time in Sweden there were a lot of youth centres that put a lot of effort in having the kids involved in music programmes.
Then on the way home from my sister’s wedding in Italy when I was 17, we were in a car accident and we lost my mom. My dad had moved back to Africa at that time, so it was rough for me as I was living with my grandparents. Yet shortly after, I was offered my first record deal, aged 17, and signed at 18.
I signed another deal aged 23 with my Swedish group, The Navigators, and when we went our separate ways, I started to work with American artists and I was asked if I wanted to put eight bars on an Ashley Tisdale record. I was soon invited by a producer called Bloodshy to work on a Britney Spears record. I then worked more with Ashley Tisdale, I was having meetings with huge agents and I had a really good set up in L.A.
That’s when this incident took place, where in 2008 I made a bad decision and had an altercation that led to the death of a man called Mr Osnes. The following day I was arrested, but I didn’t know he had died—when I was told, I broke down and cried.
Eventually I was sentenced to 15 years-to-life in jail for second degree murder. I take full responsibility and I have extreme remorse for what I did, I took a man’s life. Even though it wasn’t on purpose, I live with that every day.
But it was shocking because I had dreamt about being in LA and I had worked really hard for 20 years in the music industry. That was the hardest time of my life next to losing my mom.
I caught on to the codes of jail pretty quickly. Me being from another country made me vulnerable in one way but also protected me in another, because I’m not affiliated with a gang. “Where you from?” in LA county jails is kind of how they invite you to fight.
I transferred to Solano County Jail and I fit in pretty quickly because I avoided trouble—like gambling or borrowing money. I went to the law library a lot, to church, read the bible and worked as an English and Math tutor. About six months into my sentence I bought a guitar and started playing and writing songs, that was pretty much my life for about three and a half years.
But what happens in an environment like that is that you can’t be soft, because you’re going to become a victim very quickly. You spend your hours in the yard working out to make sure no one messes with you, and walk around like you’re super tough. But you never really deal with all these different emotions you have inside.
The majority of people in prison will eventually get out. So who do you want as your neighbour? Somebody that’s been put in a really violent yard, with no resources to deal with their anger issues. Or do you want somebody who has access to programs like prison yoga or mindfulness meditation, non-violence self help groups and education?
One thing I always did was write music. Then the Swedish Consulate said they could visit me more often if I moved to San Quentin State Prison. Transferring to a different prison is iffy because you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, but it was approved in 2013.
Within a week I performed in church, I rapped a long verse and the whole church stood up and gave me a standing ovation. The day after a guy came up to me and asked me to come down to the media center. I started working there, editing different radio stories and learning a lot about journalism. I had an iMac computer but there was no music software, so I really wanted to get a keyboard in.
I asked a friend in Sweden to order a keyboard for me. I knew it wasn’t allowed in, but i prayed about it. Gator, my cellmate, happened to be there when the keyboard came. They were going to send it back, and Gator—who knew everyone because he’d been down for more than 40 years—told them it was mine and that I was going to teach him piano. I got the keyboard, and started producing beats in the cell. Half San Quentin Mixtape Vol. 1 is actually made on that keyboard.
People knew me because I used to perform as a rapper in San Quentin—a lot of the youngsters used to come by the media center and listen. But I’d hear them rapping things like, “shoot him in the head!”—crazy type talk that was glorifying violence.
I offered incarcerated men the chance to be on the mixtape and I said I would produce it on one condition; that they use no profanity and no derogatory language at all. Instead, I told them to talk about their struggle, their authentic feelings or how they miss their mom or daughter.
They were not used to doing that in such a vulnerable way. And they definitely weren’t used to rapping without curse words. But I knew that if you take out the curse words, you have to dig deeper, you have to find other words to explain. I showed them some of my songs where I don’t cuss. It was still hardcore beats, but what they were saying was more authentic.
When they rapped, a lot of them broke down in tears because everything became so real. But I think because they were being authentic, everyone else in prison could relate to what they were saying because they felt the same pain.
That’s what is so beautiful about truth.
I recorded hundreds of songs in different volumes—San Quentin Mixtape, Vol. 1 is just the first. It took more than four years, and probably worked with 50 to 60 guys during that time. San Quentin has volunteers come in and they would see me with these youngsters in the San Quentin Music Program, and people started talking about it.
I started working with Dream Corps’ #cut50, founded by Jessica Jackson, Matt Haney and Van Jones. Then I met J. Cole when he came in with Scott Budnick, producer of The Hangover, and eventually Common wanted to come in as well, and we had a meeting and talked. He sat and listened to all the songs.
Word kind of spread around. Kim Kardashian heard about it and came in and talked to me. What surprised me about her was how dedicated she really is to prison reform, and how much she really knows about the issue, and how well her questions were formed. That was something that I was very inspired by.
Before I was released from San Quentin in March, I made sure that I had taught the skills needed to my team. I really wanted it to continue like a professional studio environment. The team at San Quentin are continuing the legacy of it all and I’m still producing the beats from Sweden.
Right now I’m back living in Stockholm. I’m promoting the mixtape and building back my career. But there is still a problem with structural racism, and there are so many different entities within society that contribute to the problem. I went to the Black Lives Matter protest here and what I really hope is that people get away from this “All Lives Matter” thing.
Black Lives Matter is not saying that other lives don’t matter. And it’s so frustrating to keep hearing that. You have to be blind not to see the oppression that’s been going on for Black people for more than 400 years.
There’s a fire going on and it needs to be fixed. It’s a worldwide issue.
I could never just go back to just working and making money and forget about where I’ve been. To me the San Quentin guys are like family.
One thing that was important to me was not only record these mixtapes, but invite people from the music industry to talk to the inmates. So that when these guys eventually parole, they have this connection to the industry.
I love being able to still be part of the project. It’s beautiful to be home, but there are plenty of good men still in prison, and some of those guys I may not ever see again. I get emotional about it—it’s bittersweet.
Attribution: This article originally appeared in Newsweek on June 25, 2020.
Read Story
Why Should I Have to Forgive You?
Cultivating the Mind
America is Isolated. I’ve Been There Before. Lessons I’ve Learned from San Quentin
When I walked out of San Quentin prison in 2013, I left behind the despair, violence and uncertainty rampant within its walls. Like a suit of armor I had to wear for decades, I gladly shed the protective gear of survival skills that were no longer applicable on this side of the wall. I never imagined that any of those skills would prove useful to my life today.
However, when the coronavirus hit the United States, and shelter-in-place orders were put into effect, it reaffirmed the fact that everything we experience in life is meant to teach us something useful. And my incarceration is no exception.
I spent more than 20 years in the California prison system in one of two ways: in “normal program” or some form of “lockdown.” During normal program, I had privileges: I could exercise in the yard, work on school assignments and have visitors. During lockdown, I was confined to a 6-foot-by-9-foot cell 24/7. Lockdowns are an inevitable part of the prison environment and so is the stress associated with the uncertainty of how long it will last.
Today, on the outside, there’s a familiar anxiety in the air. People are unsure and nervous. People are confined to their homes without an idea of when life will return to normal.
While incarcerated, I survived those periods of uncertainty with a particular mindset and practices. Both helped me endure long periods of isolation.
Below is a guide to some of what I’ve learned:
Develop a practical daily routine. A daily routine that works for you will keep you productive, feeling accomplished and focused on the moment rather than the overwhelming amount of stress in the unknown.
Exercise. Most of us aren’t moving as much as we normally would. Over a long period of time, this could have detrimental effects on our muscle tone and cardiovascular health. Furthermore, exercise has a positive, calming effect on our mind. It can help improve sleep, which is often impacted by stress.
If you think that you can’t exercise while staying inside your home, you’re wrong. I exercised in a tiny cell that I shared with another person for months at a time. There is always a way. Today, we have access to online exercise programs. We can also go outside and take a walk or a jog or a bike ride, as long as we practice social distancing. Find something that works for you, and do it regularly.
Read. Nothing like a good book to stimulate ideas and open one’s mind to possibilities beyond a given set of circumstances.
Cleanliness. Keeping your space clean and organized helps to improve your mental health and, in this case, reduces your likelihood of exposure to the virus. Make your bed every day, clean the dishes right after you use them, put your clothes away. Maintain the order of your house. It will make a big difference.
Create some privacy. Being limited to a confined space for an extended period of time can be stressful. So if you’re sharing a space be sure to define places where you can have a bit of privacy, no matter how small. This alone space can be in the bathroom, on a walk, in the garage. Take some time for yourself every day, no matter how short.
Make the most of what you have. In difficult times, how you think about your circumstances directly impacts your experience. We can always think of what we don’t have and what we can’t do. This can lead us into despair. Instead, think of what you do have, and what you can do. If you have a home base that is safe and comfortable, be thankful. If you have access to food, supplies and the internet, rejoice in how these resources are keeping you and your family safe. Having a perspective of gratitude can change your mental well being and ability to function.
Focus on what you have control over. Lack of control is extremely stressful. If you only think about the uncertainty of your current circumstances and what you don’t know, your anxiety will increase, potentially affecting your physical and mental health. Instead focus your mind on what you do have control over. This approach will keep you focused on the moment and reduce your stress and anxiety.
Stay connected. Communicate with family and friends. During prison lockdowns the only way to stay connected to family and friends was through good old fashioned snail mail. Now, we can leverage technology like Skype and Zoom.
Maintain a positive attitude. Your attitude is the only thing that can change an obstacle into an opportunity. Even though you may be facing the same tough circumstances as someone else, your response to it can change your results.
Embrace that your survival is up to you. Remember that you can choose to follow the rules about social distancing, wearing some sort of mask and self-isolating for the recommended time. People who are incarcerated don’t have the luxury of social distancing. It is very difficult for them to avoid such a highly contagious virus. Prisons are extremely vulnerable, not just for the people who live there, but for the staff, the guards, the nurses and the prison administrators. I think about my friends who are incarcerated today and worry for their safety.
Make a commitment to personal growth. Every time I went into lockdown, I made a goal to be a better, stronger person by the time I got out. This virus affects us all. But we have a choice: We can continue business as usual, or we can change. We can come out of this stronger than before.
We humans have an incredible ability to endure the most difficult of circumstances.
The Opportunity to Be a Living Example: On Becoming a Teaching Assistant
Published in the November 2019 newsletter, which you can read in its entirety here.
In 2017 I graduated from the College Program with a GPA of 3.22. Thereafter, I found myself involved with the teaching assistant program because I desired to give back to a community that has given me, and others like me, so much. My pursuit of higher education has given me insight into the illiteracy and learning disabilities that once arrested my mental and educational development, which resulted in me succumbing to the psyche of the streets, crime, and gang subcultures of society.
During my 25 years of incarceration, I’ve witnessed thousands of juvenile men of color who entered the prison system, as I did at 16, and came from a subculture that gave them the same thing it gave me: the generational inheritance of being psychologically enslaved to a mindset of the sociopath and psychopath.
This antisocial behavior that clouds over the subcultures of our society ignites within me a passion to strive for positive change—not just for myself, but for all who are affected by a system that dishonors and devalues human life and its right to thrive healthy and happy.
Becoming a teaching assistant and tutor has allowed me the opportunity not only to assist new students in their education, but also to have a platform to create positive dialogue to challenge the mindset of men who hold dear to antisocial behavior. It is through higher education endeavors and my passion for positive change that I seek to obtain my BA and master’s in juvenile justice and counseling.
My experience and observations as a student and teaching assistant have given me the ability to recognize new students’ strong and weak points in their learning skills, and have given me the opportunity to be a living example for new students to see what higher education can achieve. It is important that incarcerated students witness men, like them, incarcerated, who have achieved their college degrees, and are now displaying their educational transformation in the form of a civil servant, with a genuine heart to give back to the community.
Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.