Dear Friends,
I took a break. It's been months since I've really written. I had to untangle myself from a failed relationship yet again, and I honestly haven't figured out how to manage the logistics of this project in the wake of all that. These posts feel like a nonessential activity to the people who could help me get them up. Lately, they feel that way to me as well.
I really did take a break. I haven't made art in months. I stopped writing back to the girls that hit me up from my ads on write-a-prisoner or wire-of-hope. I put my head down for the month of August. Wake up. Attend state mandated indoctrination (rehabilitation). Punish myself with soul crushing exercise. Wash up. And lay on my rack... quietly waiting to die. I burned through over a dozen books. My spree covered everything from negotiation, to pick up, to psychology, to geo-arbitrage.
The temporal stress is real. Days blur together. It is a continuous stream of unfulfillment... punctuated by a stabbing here, three fatal overdoses there, another Covid lockdown. The people in your life who are supposed to be your backbone slowly drift away. You are left to the challenge of forming your only meaningful connections with complete strangers.
You watch. You watch as the prime of your life is pissed away, giving you less and less in common with your peers in society. They feel like they wasted their twenties. At least they had the choice to. They were bonding, learning, socializing. I've been in a fucking cement box for six years. How do you reintegrate after that?
The part of your brain where hope lives becomes a dark room. A room that is always either occupied by fatalistic despondency or masochistic determination.
Then, occasionally, a little light flickers on. You find yourself laughing with others. You see different options for life after this hell. You start to wonder what is possible...
After eighteen months at this facility, they've finally let me back into college. I took it with a grain of salt at first. Prison teaches me to not get excited, that way they can never take anything from me that I actually care about. So I showed up to classes with no expectations... and I actually walked away stunned at the end of my first day.
This facility offers in-person classes, instead of mail out courses, and my first class is criminology. Topic should be cake, right? I live this shit. My professor is a sociable older blonde with turquoise streaks. Her clothing and arm tattoo really gives a grateful dead vibe, but she seems a generation younger than that crowd.
She shocks the room, earning instant respect, when she says, "Look, today we aren't gonna get anything done. I'm a little distracted. My former cellmate paroled today, and I'm just so happy for her." She goes on to explain that she used to be an LWOP (life without opportunity for parole), serving time for homicide at a local prison across the street from this one. She paroled fourteen years ago and pursued higher education, becoming a college professor and offering classes at both a local state college and within the prison system that used to incarcerate her. In addition to this she became a major promoter of Project Rebound, a nonprofit that helps formerly incarcerated students earn four-year degrees.
We could tell that she and her cellmate were very close. But when she chose to educate within prison, the CDCR regulations meant she had to break all contact with any prisoners outside of her classroom. This morning was the first time they were able to speak in six years. She kept it professional as she told this story, but you could see deep emotions swelling under the surface as she described taking her friend out for her first meal on the other side of the fence. It was beautiful to see.
A couple hours later, I find myself in a political science class on American government. I am prepared to be bored. But then I notice the professor flashing bright eyes around the room, cracking his sharp sense of humor like a whip to keep the people in the back row (like me) engaged. He's dressed in a black tee and faded black jeans, the minimalist tattoos on his arm clearly hold meaning. His stylish clear frame glasses are a little incongruent with the thick blonde trash-stash wrapped over his upper lip. I get the vibe though that it doesn't much matter what the fuck this guy wears. He works the room with the gravity of a practiced social confidence and deep stores of experience.
He lobs jokes around the room like hand grenades of rapport, getting to know each of his students before jumping into anything. He pitches a Step Brothers reference at me and I'm caught off guard, but I swing and connect anyways. After that, I'm on my toes and this class has my full attention. Somewhere amidst the class I realize that I haven't been this engaged in months. Then the professor discloses that he's an anarchist, and I know this amgov class is gonna be fun.
Another month rolls by and I haven't lost that enthusiasm. I hunt extra credit in one class, I turn in work weeks in advance in the other. I catch myself thinking about high school before I dropped out, how I used to get kinda good grades. And then I catch myself looking forward.
Maybe there's a little more out there for me after all this. More than bartending a dead end dive in a dying town. More than trying to make fire from the wet sticks of burnt out social circles. More than the constant tug of war to avoid getting sucked back into the local drug industry that supports my hometown's local economy.
I flipped through a pamphlet for Project Rebound, considering what it would look like to parole to a city like Sacramento or San Diego - just to try to get a four-year degree in business. Big city, no cash, no job, no home, no network. What could possibly go wrong, right?
The deck feels so stacked against me. But in that dark part of my head where hope is supposed to live, I can feel my internal dialogue issue that challenge, "Do it anyways." It's the same mantra it's been saying for years, the one that makes me force myself to make sure these lost years aren't wasted.
I gotta be better than going backward. Even if it's hard, even if it scares me, even if I have to do it alone sometimes.
Last night I sat in a classroom, after class hours as part of a randomly selected group of incarcerated students. A panel of analysts sent by the state government were interviewing us to help them inform policy decisions that will directly affect the funding of educational programs like the one I am currently in.
Shortly into the exchanges, the lead analyst asks a question.
"Do you think this type of in-person college experience could work for other prisoners, at other prisons? We all know that it wouldn't fly in a place like Old Corcoran. But perhaps other level two facilities?"
I saw an important window and pushed my way into this topic.
"Sir, I started at Old Corcoran on a level four yard. I spent two years there. And having worked down through the security levels, I feel I can say with confidence, that with the proper on-boarding, ninety percent of the California prisoner population would be receptive to this type of educational experience. But that on-boarding process is critical.
"We need more funding for programs that facilitate the level of literacy needed to cognitively access a college-level course. Beyond that, we need effective incentives. Not only external incentives, but internal incentives as well. We need programs that help prisoners to see education as an intrinsically rewarding activity – that is a concept that is foreign to a lot of these men. They need to see how it is useful.
"There is one more incentive that is needed, and it isn't for the incarcerated students. There must be an incentive for the correctional staff, sir. There are three control points between me and my educator. And if any one of those officers is unreceptive, then it doesn't matter how many thousands of dollars Sacramento throws at my education – that officer has the discretion to prevent me from accessing it.
"The stats don't lie. Higher education for prisoners directly correlates to lower recidivism rates. That means that this fancy college program directly harms these correctional staff's job security. We need an incentive for them to support it. Otherwise you are right, places like Corcoran State Prison will never change."
For a moment, you could have heard a pin drop. It's clear that the analysts aren't used to being spoken to passionately or forcefully. It was also probably much more than what they were looking for. But I didn't give a damn, it needed to be said. I read an impressed expression on two of their faces, but the lead analyst pivoted somewhat uncomfortably to smaller topics.
After a while he asks the professors that are in the room with us, as educators, what made you choose to work in a prison?" The teachers answered in series.
"I came here thinking of it as just an available job for an educator in this area. But then, thirty seconds into my first day I realized that this is a teacher's dream job. I've never looked back."
"I completely agree. These are hands down the best students I have ever seen in any institution of education. I have a one hundred percent turn in rate for assignments, and near one hundred percent engagement during classes. Besides that, they are just genuinely amazing people. They inspire me daily to be more introspective, to be kinder.
"I'll go out to dinner parties of thirty people in our free society and struggle to find a higher quality of person than some of our incarcerated students."
"This is the most fulfilling work I've ever done."
It was a special moment to see how mutually fulfilling this experience is for both the educators and the students. Then the analyst shifts his focus back to the prisoners.
"Where do you see yourself taking this education you're gaining?"
A prisoner I met a year ago is one of those who responds.
"Honestly, whatever I do after this, this education has made me confident that I can give something back to my community. I really can't wait to get out so I can assist the youth in my area and hopefully help to affect a generational change."
"Wait, hold up." I interrupt him. "Man, what are you talking about? I came into prison at twenty, watching men get stabbed and cut. These twenty year-olds now, they're watching men like you get college degrees. You've shown them doors that weren't there before. That is a generational change."
Keep it real,
Ren