Speaker 1: Dear Governor is a production of I Heart Media and
Speaker 1: three Months Media. If you are moved by Jarvis Masters
Speaker 1: and his thirty years struggle on san Quentin's death row,
Speaker 1: and you'd like to support his cause, please consider signing
Speaker 1: a petition on his behalf. Visit free Jarvis dot org
Speaker 1: slash podcast to sign your name to an open letter
Speaker 1: to California Governor Gavin Newsom, Dear Governor Newsom, Dear Mr
Speaker 1: Governor Newsom. This is an open letter to Governor Gavin Newsom.
Speaker 1: Dear Governor Newsom. Public san Quentin calls it the Adjustment Center.
Speaker 1: Orange County, California jails call it disciplinary housing. Pelican Bay
Speaker 1: calls it the shoe or security housing unit. The practice
Speaker 1: of solitary confinement goes by many names, including disciplinary confinement,
Speaker 1: security housing, and restricted housing, all our euphemisms to soften
Speaker 1: the harsh and tortuous reality of solitary confinement. A state
Speaker 1: sanctioned system that forces citizens into cramped, windowless cells for
Speaker 1: twenty three to twenty four hours a day, sometimes for
Speaker 1: weeks at a time, months at a time, or, in
Speaker 1: Jarvis Master's case, decades at a time. It's real small,
Speaker 1: it's real small, and if you stand up, if you
Speaker 1: five eleven or taller, you know, m can reach the ceiling.
Speaker 1: You stand up in the middle of you sell both
Speaker 1: sides the arms. You probably only need one arm to
Speaker 1: test the other side. It's very small. There's a stink
Speaker 1: of the toy in look back, and there's a little
Speaker 1: vent like under the sink that host to suck in
Speaker 1: the air with the son it does. They have lights.
Speaker 1: They have sockets, two sockets for a TV. In the radio,
Speaker 1: they have shells. Did you have a TV or radio
Speaker 1: down down there? Yeah? Yeah, it. They were giving them
Speaker 1: out black and white televison. Remember black and white television?
Speaker 1: Do you remember those? I do? Do I remember my
Speaker 1: first one? Okay, remedies had a little screwing up in
Speaker 1: the middle of it. Yep. So yeah, I had. I
Speaker 1: had a TV and I had a radio, and so
Speaker 1: did everyone else. They basically didn't want you to study.
Speaker 1: They didn't want you to think. They gave you a
Speaker 1: TV and hope you watched it day in and down.
Speaker 1: So you're more dangerous if you're educated. You know, they
Speaker 1: didn't want you studying. There were times when I first
Speaker 1: got here, there's there was a lot of books. If
Speaker 1: they caught it in and they saw those books in yourself.
Speaker 1: You go straight to the whole. So you couldn't even
Speaker 1: have a book in yourself. There were certain books that
Speaker 1: you couldn't have. Revolutionaries, whether you're talking about George Jacks
Speaker 1: and a Phenan or cast Row or anything that was
Speaker 1: with a socialist conscious, you couldn't have those books. Say so,
Speaker 1: more often than not, those who are sentenced to solitary
Speaker 1: are denied not only certain books, but phone calls, contact visits,
Speaker 1: and recreational or educational training other than the exercise yard,
Speaker 1: where other programs or classes or anything that you guys
Speaker 1: were entitled to participate in. No classes, no anything. The
Speaker 1: only thing you can probably do is sign up to
Speaker 1: go to the law libry. The only let you go
Speaker 1: to the law librries, because you had a constitutional life.
Speaker 1: To go to the law librarian. You shall at three
Speaker 1: times a week. You may order some books. People can
Speaker 1: order books for you. You have Kelly's, you have radios.
Speaker 1: You allow one package care pactage from from now side
Speaker 1: every years. You know, the debate around it is how
Speaker 1: do you define torture? But if if you define it
Speaker 1: as the needless infliction of pain, then it is certainly
Speaker 1: that Craig Haney, who was on the last episode, as
Speaker 1: a social psychologist and a professor at the University of California,
Speaker 1: Santa Cruz, who has done groundbreaking research on the psychological
Speaker 1: impact of solitary confinement. Is pain which is often long lasting, irreversible,
Speaker 1: and it is pain which sometimes can be fatal and
Speaker 1: for most people, that's where torture is. The a c
Speaker 1: l U has had its sites on the unjust nature
Speaker 1: of solitary confinement for years. Long term isolation their website says,
Speaker 1: costs too much, does nothing to rehabilitate prisoners, and exacerbates
Speaker 1: mental illness or even causes it in prisoner is who
Speaker 1: were healthy when they entered solitary Why do you think
Speaker 1: the US still uses that practice? Is it just to
Speaker 1: break spirits? Is just a punitive thing that the proponents
Speaker 1: of solitary confinement? Why do they continue this practice? I
Speaker 1: think I think there there are mixed motivations. I think
Speaker 1: there are some people who do it out of a
Speaker 1: failure of imagination. They can't think of any better way
Speaker 1: to control prisoners who they think need to be controlled.
Speaker 1: And this is you know the old saying, if if
Speaker 1: all you have is a hammer, and everything looks like
Speaker 1: a nail. It's the only way you can think of
Speaker 1: trying to shape prisoners behavior is to threats and intimidation
Speaker 1: and ultimately punishment, And if that still doesn't work, then
Speaker 1: you continue to escalate the punishment and do it more
Speaker 1: and more, even though it would appear that it's counterproductive,
Speaker 1: you can't think of anything else to do. Thankly, I
Speaker 1: think in some instances it has been used, as you
Speaker 1: described the moment ago, to break people's spirits. I think
Speaker 1: for some correctional officials, the fact that it's painful and
Speaker 1: perhaps for many prisoners, even damaging, perhaps even irreversibly damaging,
Speaker 1: is an unintended consequence. Some of them, I think, wish
Speaker 1: you didn't do that, But they use in any way
Speaker 1: because they don't know what else to do. But then
Speaker 1: I also think there are a category of officials who
Speaker 1: do it because it's destructive. I don't think that characterizes
Speaker 1: all of them, but I've encountered people who have put
Speaker 1: people in solitary confinement because they wanted to break them
Speaker 1: and won't let them out because they're not yet broken enough.
Speaker 1: And yes, that's happened, you know. I've seen that happen.
Speaker 1: I think there are mixed motivations for its continued use. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are some of the physical traumas the people endure
Speaker 1: as a result of solitary confinement without the light, without
Speaker 1: the human touch. Is there a physical destruction that happens?
Speaker 1: You know what, we're beginning to understand that that it
Speaker 1: is not just psychological and anything is profoundly psychologically damaging people.
Speaker 1: But there's also a lot of research which has now
Speaker 1: been done outside of prisons in jails. You know, it's
Speaker 1: hard to do research in prisons and jail a hard
Speaker 1: to get access to them, hard to get hard to
Speaker 1: get even into the places, let alone to actually have
Speaker 1: access to the people who are confined there. But we
Speaker 1: know that isolation in the world at large as physical
Speaker 1: as well as psychologically negative consequences on people. And so
Speaker 1: there's been research that suggests that people who are exposed
Speaker 1: to social isolation and loneliness are at medical risk in
Speaker 1: a way that is equivalent to other kinds of medical
Speaker 1: risks like smoking. That is to say, they get sick
Speaker 1: at higher rates and their mortality is affected negatively. That's
Speaker 1: how dangerous it is to people's physical well being. And
Speaker 1: then The psychological dangers are many and varied, and they
Speaker 1: run the gamut. They run the gamut from depression, which
Speaker 1: is perhaps the most common reaction that people have to
Speaker 1: it to a kind of anxiety which people can't control.
Speaker 1: They find themselves nervous and anxious and unable to sleep,
Speaker 1: to psychosis, I mean where people lose their really lose
Speaker 1: their bearings, They lose the sense of who they are
Speaker 1: so much of who we are. It's interesting this has
Speaker 1: become much more of an issue for the population at
Speaker 1: large now that we're all in isolation essentially. You know,
Speaker 1: you hear people talking about not knowing who they are,
Speaker 1: being disoriented, losing touch with themselves, losing touch not just
Speaker 1: with their families that they can't see, but losing touch
Speaker 1: with themselves, not being able to do the things that
Speaker 1: they ordinarily do or get joy from. Much has been
Speaker 1: written about how social distancing and isolation has been hard
Speaker 1: on the psyche of Americans. The CDC reported at the
Speaker 1: end of last year that the prevalence of anxiety tripled
Speaker 1: from March to June, and depression has risen four times
Speaker 1: in that time period. Multiply that times a thousand, and
Speaker 1: that's what solitary confinement as to people, because people in
Speaker 1: solitary confinement don't have the options we have to distract ourselves.
Speaker 1: They don't have access to to various kinds of things
Speaker 1: that are still interesting even though they don't involve people
Speaker 1: solitary confinement of deprived prisoners of most of those things
Speaker 1: as well. And we all know that our own isolation
Speaker 1: is being done for a medical purpose. It's medically necessary
Speaker 1: and it won't last forever, even though it's certainly gone
Speaker 1: on most as it would. But you know, prisoners in
Speaker 1: solitary confinement on an indefinite basis, they're not there for
Speaker 1: anything good. From their perspective, it's not as though it's
Speaker 1: a that the pain that they're experiencing is for so noble,
Speaker 1: ultimately good end. And they also many times don't know
Speaker 1: when it's going to end. They don't have any any
Speaker 1: end date that they can look forward to or any
Speaker 1: progress that they can see. So the Unlock the Box
Speaker 1: campaign they are a group they're about abolishing solitary and
Speaker 1: they said that there's been a five increase in the
Speaker 1: use of solitary during the days of COVID. Does this
Speaker 1: resonate truth to you? And well, I know it's true.
Speaker 1: I know it's true because I've been I mean, they've
Speaker 1: been involved in in um lighting declarations. Trying to reverse
Speaker 1: that trend, prison systems have resorted to imposing forms of
Speaker 1: solitary confinement, but labeling and medical quarantine or medical isolation
Speaker 1: or lockdowns that are designed to impose social distancing by
Speaker 1: simply keeping people separating their cells um And you know,
Speaker 1: while on the one man, I understand the motivation to
Speaker 1: keep people medically healthy, what they're not taking into account
Speaker 1: is how psychologically unhealthy environment they're creating, which, you know,
Speaker 1: if you harken back to what we were talking about
Speaker 1: earlier about isolation actually having medical physical consequences on people
Speaker 1: in the long run, we actually may be making people
Speaker 1: less resilient in the face of COVID nineteen. I mean,
Speaker 1: because people deteriorate physically as well as mentally when they're
Speaker 1: kept in isolation. So the notion that you can make
Speaker 1: everything great just by locking everybody in their cell first
Speaker 1: of all, is probably medically naive. That's not going to
Speaker 1: work because clearly people have contact with staff members who
Speaker 1: are coming in and going every day, so that's not
Speaker 1: an impermeable safeguard against them closure to COVID nineteen, And
Speaker 1: it also doesn't take into account the negative psychological consequences
Speaker 1: are keeping form isolation and none of which is being
Speaker 1: taken into account in many correctional facilities prior to COVID.
Speaker 1: As late as the summer of twenty nineteen, approximately sixty
Speaker 1: thou imprisoned men and women in the US were held
Speaker 1: in isolation for an average of twenty two hours a
Speaker 1: day for fifteen days, and a significant percentage of those
Speaker 1: restricted to solitary confinement had serious mental illness. My name
Speaker 1: is Dolores Canalis. I am co founder of California Families
Speaker 1: Against Solitary Confinement. We organize with family members to expose
Speaker 1: the use of solitary confinement and to eventually hopefully end
Speaker 1: the use of solitary confinement and the draconian conditions. Now,
Speaker 1: you have an interesting personal story, and that's really kind
Speaker 1: of what drew you to this work. Well, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I began getting incarcerated at eighteen years old. And when
Speaker 1: I first got incarcerated, I did have a drug addiction
Speaker 1: and then I kept going back. It was through recidivism.
Speaker 1: So I do have an extensive arrest history. But It
Speaker 1: was all behind a drug addiction. You know. Now I
Speaker 1: do have nineteen years sobriety. The very first time I
Speaker 1: ever did get arrested, there was a juvenile, as is
Speaker 1: a juvenile, but I was let out immediately. I only
Speaker 1: stayed twenty four hours. But the first thing, you know,
Speaker 1: I noticed, of course, besides being stripped naked, was being
Speaker 1: thrown in a cell all by myself. So that was
Speaker 1: actually my first experience with solitary confinement. They won't refer
Speaker 1: to it as solitary confinement, but at that time, it
Speaker 1: was just these individual single cells. What did they call it,
Speaker 1: adjustment center or they just called it like the housing unit.
Speaker 1: And and this is one thing that I always attempt
Speaker 1: to convey to people, is we know about the solitary
Speaker 1: confinement that we refer to as the shoe, the security
Speaker 1: housing unit. We know about admit strait of segregation which
Speaker 1: is also solitary confinement, and different types of units that
Speaker 1: they referred to, but oftentimes these cells are built so
Speaker 1: that you are in a form of isolation, and this
Speaker 1: is throughout incarceration. I just remember the absolute feeling of
Speaker 1: despair and hopelessness when I was put in there as
Speaker 1: a youth. There was absolutely nothing in that room. There
Speaker 1: wasn't a book or a TV or anything to occupy
Speaker 1: my thoughts in my mind. Jarvis, So he was in
Speaker 1: the adjustment center or solitary for twenty two years straight.
Speaker 1: And he said, and I believe this to be true.
Speaker 1: The only thing that really kept him saying, because he
Speaker 1: is a genuinely joyful individual, and the only thing that
Speaker 1: had really kept him saying was his meditation practice. So
Speaker 1: when you were in for prolonged periods of time, what
Speaker 1: did you think, what did you do? Where did you
Speaker 1: go in your mind? How did you survive? It is
Speaker 1: definitely having the support of people on the outside and
Speaker 1: that communication. And then I would get weekly visits, even
Speaker 1: though my visits were only fourty minutes behind glass. My
Speaker 1: mom used to drive out there, and then you know,
Speaker 1: also several of my friends. I used to drive out
Speaker 1: there just to get me out of myself, because you
Speaker 1: would get out of your son and then you had
Speaker 1: to be put in a van and driven to where
Speaker 1: the visiting room was. So it was like a little
Speaker 1: out here, you know. So so that was one of
Speaker 1: I think one of the main things that connection with
Speaker 1: family and then reading and then the other women in
Speaker 1: solitary along with me. You know, we used to yell
Speaker 1: at our doors or when we go to yard time,
Speaker 1: and we'd be able to talk through the chain link fence.
Speaker 1: We'd have those few moments of being able to talk
Speaker 1: to the chain link fence. And I think definitely, you know,
Speaker 1: the meditation, the books that I read at the time,
Speaker 1: I would read a lot on recovery, on you know, meditation.
Speaker 1: I read Sermon on the Mountain. They're you know, the
Speaker 1: big book of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, you know,
Speaker 1: just trying to read a lot of things like that.
Speaker 1: So a typical day was I always used to get
Speaker 1: up in the morning. You know, we get our breakfast trays,
Speaker 1: get up in the morning, take a bird bath. You
Speaker 1: have to use your sink right there, you know, comb
Speaker 1: my hair, get dressed, get ready. Did you have a
Speaker 1: mirror to see yourself. Yeah, it's one of those mirrors
Speaker 1: that it's not a real mirror metal. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you look real blurry. It's one of those, you know,
Speaker 1: so it kind of gives you the illusion of you're
Speaker 1: looking in a mirror. And uh so, you know, I'd
Speaker 1: get up, get dressed, get ready, Uh, there were times
Speaker 1: and we'd have conversations in the event. We'd be able
Speaker 1: to talk through the events and y'all through the vents
Speaker 1: and have conversations in our events, maybe share about letters
Speaker 1: that we got, things like that. Even for dinner sometimes
Speaker 1: I used to literally like just get ready for dinner.
Speaker 1: One time, I even, like, you know, put a sheet
Speaker 1: around me like it was a dress, and you know,
Speaker 1: just getting ready and pretending like I'm have like make Alaska's.
Speaker 1: And then while many are irreversibly broken by the prolonged
Speaker 1: isolation of solitary, some like Jarvis, have been successful. It's
Speaker 1: staving off those effects. I asked Professor Haney, what qualities
Speaker 1: and practices help these individuals to cope and come out
Speaker 1: on the other side undamaged. The prisoners that I see
Speaker 1: who were most successful at warding off the worst of
Speaker 1: these experiences, the worst consequences of these experiences. And it's
Speaker 1: a it's a three part it's a three part program.
Speaker 1: The forest is to take it seriously. I mean, the
Speaker 1: people who worry me are the people who say, this
Speaker 1: isn't bothering me, it's it's nothing, it's and the people
Speaker 1: vary in terms of the degree in which they are
Speaker 1: harmed by it. That's certainly true. But people who don't
Speaker 1: take it seriously are at risk of being affected by
Speaker 1: it in ways that they don't recognize or notice. So
Speaker 1: people who are successful at we're standing or resisting it,
Speaker 1: take it seriously, understand that they are there's surviving in
Speaker 1: the face of what is a psychological assault on who
Speaker 1: they are, and that they have to figure out ways
Speaker 1: to resist it psychologically. So it's it's acknowledge it. Then
Speaker 1: impose a structure on what is otherwise the emptiness of
Speaker 1: the time that you're serving. I mean, one of the
Speaker 1: things that prisoners tell you in these places is there's
Speaker 1: no day or night. I mean, even though you can technically,
Speaker 1: you know, you might be able to see the sunlight
Speaker 1: or whatever, in some places you can't even do that,
Speaker 1: but there's no real routine. There's no Every day is
Speaker 1: like the day before and the day after, and you
Speaker 1: have there's very little that you can do that you
Speaker 1: have to do, and so you have to create a
Speaker 1: structure for yourself. And some, you know, very successful prisoners,
Speaker 1: successful in surviving this environment, create a very rigid structure
Speaker 1: for themselves that they insist on imposing on themselves. You
Speaker 1: get up at a certain time, you clean yourself at
Speaker 1: a certain time, you read for a certain number of hours,
Speaker 1: you you write letters at a certain period of time,
Speaker 1: You exercise a certain you know, you have an exercise
Speaker 1: routine that you scrupulously follow, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. To impose
Speaker 1: order on disorder, to impose structure and otherwise a kind
Speaker 1: of empty, chaotic experience that you can get lost in.
Speaker 1: And then the third thing that successful people do, again
Speaker 1: successful in surviving this environment reasonably intact, is to overcome
Speaker 1: the acep reality of it in whatever way they can
Speaker 1: write letters, have visits, reach out, create as much of
Speaker 1: a social world as you can, despite the prison systems
Speaker 1: imposing on you as much of an a social world
Speaker 1: as as it can, so you circumvent that and in
Speaker 1: whatever way you can. You know, I know with clients
Speaker 1: of mine who who were in isolation, when they're reaching
Speaker 1: a crisis stage is when they cut off visits, when
Speaker 1: they when they want to see people anymore. That's a
Speaker 1: sign to me that this their their ability to relate
Speaker 1: to other people's atrophy. And people are now becoming they're
Speaker 1: now coming to represent and a versus stimulus if you will, uh,
Speaker 1: And that's problematic and you have to do what you
Speaker 1: can to to reverse that. We talked to Dolores Kenalis.
Speaker 1: She's the co founder of the California Families Against Solitary Confinement.
Speaker 1: She says that she knows of you and your work
Speaker 1: and and obviously they are a big advocate for abolishing
Speaker 1: solitary Do you think that's something that's going to happen
Speaker 1: nationally in our lifetime? I do, you know, And I
Speaker 1: have friends who think on naive for saying that I do,
Speaker 1: because I think there has been in the last ten
Speaker 1: to fifteen years enough science around not just the harmfulness
Speaker 1: of solitary confinement per se, but the harmfulness of social
Speaker 1: isolation and loneliness in the world at large. It's regarded
Speaker 1: internationally as a public health crisis, and whatever form it
Speaker 1: takes in the world at large, it is much much
Speaker 1: worse than solitary confinement. So I think the as as
Speaker 1: we become increasingly aware as as a population that this
Speaker 1: is harmful for anybody. And now you know, as we've
Speaker 1: had an opportunity to experience ourselves, it doesn't feel good
Speaker 1: and it's destabilizing for all of us, and it's noticeable.
Speaker 1: You can it's tangible for us now. I think the
Speaker 1: notion that we would subject people to this imprisonment in
Speaker 1: addition to all the other deprivations which they're experiencing in prison,
Speaker 1: is something that is increasingly questioned by much, much large
Speaker 1: your numbers of people who have had just a little
Speaker 1: bit a glimmer of insight into what's this like in
Speaker 1: their own day to day lives, we can only imagine
Speaker 1: what it would be like for somebody like Jarvis enduring
Speaker 1: this for not just months or years, but decades. Up next,
Speaker 1: a recent shift in the way prisons are contending with
Speaker 1: solitary confinement and why it gives Professor Hainey hope for
Speaker 1: a more humane future in our prison systems. The other
Speaker 1: reason I'm optimistic about this is that I think in
Speaker 1: many parts around the country, prison systems have gun to
Speaker 1: think of alternatives. I think, what what we We've used
Speaker 1: solitary confinement largely because there was no pressure on systems
Speaker 1: to do anything differently, and correctional systems were not a
Speaker 1: creative about figuring out responses to disciplinary problems and prison
Speaker 1: violence that did not involve throwing people in an isolation cell,
Speaker 1: and I think increasingly, over the years and different parts
Speaker 1: of the country, systems have become much more innovative and
Speaker 1: creative and humane in terms of how they deal with
Speaker 1: those problems. It's not as widespread as it should be,
Speaker 1: and most places have not going remotely as far as
Speaker 1: they should, but they're at least grappling with the issue.
Speaker 1: They're trying to figure out better ways. The whole issue
Speaker 1: of I mean this doesn't apply to drivers, but the
Speaker 1: whole issue of who's in solitary confinement and the fact
Speaker 1: that in most prison systems a disproportionate number of the
Speaker 1: people who are there are mentally ill, and of any
Speaker 1: grip that should not be placed in solitary confinement, the
Speaker 1: mentally ill or at the top of the list, yet
Speaker 1: disproportionate numbers of them are there. They're there for various reasons,
Speaker 1: but largely because they're Their mental illness makes difficult, if
Speaker 1: not impossible, for them to follow the myriad rules and
Speaker 1: regulations of a prison environment. They're easily provoked, so they
Speaker 1: easily get in trouble, and prison systems throw up their
Speaker 1: hands and instead of dealing with the mental health problem,
Speaker 1: discipline them as though they're willfully violating the prison rules
Speaker 1: and regulations, and that needs to be I think addressed
Speaker 1: head on, and many systems are beginning to do that,
Speaker 1: so that what I just said is something that I
Speaker 1: think many prison officials now understand in a much more
Speaker 1: serious way than you know, even a few years ago,
Speaker 1: and they're taking steps to deal with mental illness in
Speaker 1: prison systems in a way that they didn't before. That
Speaker 1: does not involve putting people in solitary confinement where they're
Speaker 1: likely to deteriorating to compensate even more. Do you have
Speaker 1: any PTSD from solitary Nothing that has been diagnosed by
Speaker 1: medical but definitely things that I see in myself. I
Speaker 1: start to get real anxious at times, and I'll feel
Speaker 1: like I have to you know, when with a big crowd.
Speaker 1: That will start to make me nervous, and I'll go
Speaker 1: off by myself. And you know what is interesting, there
Speaker 1: was a convening of sorts with Craig Haney. He's done
Speaker 1: a lot of work around the issues of solitary He's
Speaker 1: from the northern California area. He actually worked on Jarvis's
Speaker 1: initial trial back in the late eighties. Okay, great, so yeah,
Speaker 1: so that that's amazing and and he has done so
Speaker 1: much work. But we were at his home for a
Speaker 1: convening that we were going to be at, you know
Speaker 1: the next day, and it was a full house, you know,
Speaker 1: amazing people, and I started to feel just like I
Speaker 1: had to get away. So I went into his living room.
Speaker 1: And when I went there, Albert wood Fox, who was
Speaker 1: also a solitary survivor from Louisiana, was there, and he's
Speaker 1: and I thought I made the immediate connection of you
Speaker 1: felt like he just had to get out of the
Speaker 1: crowd at a room. You know, it wasn't the people.
Speaker 1: We admired all the people that were there, and it
Speaker 1: was an honor to be in that presence and talking
Speaker 1: to everybody. But then so that's how I often get
Speaker 1: when I first came home and I was working at
Speaker 1: an office at Pacific Interpreting Services, you know, I used
Speaker 1: to have to call and I was dealing doing billing
Speaker 1: and collections with insurance agencies and we were we were
Speaker 1: in a big room and there was like four of
Speaker 1: us at our desks, and my boss gave me my
Speaker 1: own office, and I'll never forget the feeling of being
Speaker 1: in my own office. I went to him in person,
Speaker 1: and I said, did I do something wrong? I went,
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't. I loved my job, but
Speaker 1: at that moment, I didn't even want to go back
Speaker 1: to work. And I went into his office. I said,
Speaker 1: can I speak to you? And I think I felt
Speaker 1: like crying, you know, and I said, why am I
Speaker 1: getting put in my own office? What did I do wrong?
Speaker 1: You know? Did I get you mad? And he looked
Speaker 1: at me kind of you know, He's like, that's a
Speaker 1: promotion and the compliment, how good you are? And then
Speaker 1: I I went in my office and I closed the
Speaker 1: door because I just I was feeling too overwhelmed. And
Speaker 1: I called an insurance adjuster. They owed us so many
Speaker 1: and I remember he was like, it's only thirty dollars,
Speaker 1: you know, and and and I started telling him, you
Speaker 1: know what, I could care less about the thirty dollars.
Speaker 1: Do you want to know what just happened to me?
Speaker 1: I was just placed in my own office. I'm all
Speaker 1: alone in here. I started telling an insurance and just
Speaker 1: working at Pacific Intermity Services, right, I mean, that's how
Speaker 1: devastated I was. I think when you've had that experience,
Speaker 1: you know you your life goes on and things, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't leave you. I don't know how to explain it,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't leave you. And and it will creep
Speaker 1: in at times where the next thing you know, you're
Speaker 1: just back in isolation, you know. So it's a constant processing,
Speaker 1: it's a constant um. I don't think you're ever really
Speaker 1: healed from it. Yeah, I can't imagine it's torture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: soolutely I would define it as torture, you know. And
Speaker 1: what's interesting is Kathleen Connolly. She I don't know she
Speaker 1: still is, but a few years ago she was the
Speaker 1: vice president for the Humane Society of the United States
Speaker 1: of America, and she's literally quoted that research chimpanzees they
Speaker 1: need to see and hear and touch and feel one
Speaker 1: another because solitary confinement is detrimental to their physical well being,
Speaker 1: you know. And and under federal government law, research chimpanzees
Speaker 1: cannot be held in solitary confinement, you know. And then
Speaker 1: in California, and this is what I would say, you know, California,
Speaker 1: we're always getting saying saying that California is the outlier.
Speaker 1: In California is progressive. But in California, in the November
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight ballot, we had proposition to cage
Speaker 1: free chickens. It passed unanimously. California should be voting on
Speaker 1: cage free humans. And do you know the humane standards
Speaker 1: for chickens. Proper and nutritious diet. That was actually one
Speaker 1: of the demands of the hunger strikes. Proper nutricious diet,
Speaker 1: adequate resting places, and the ability to engage in natural
Speaker 1: behavior chickens. So separating a mother from her child, separating
Speaker 1: a grandmother from her grandson or her great grandson, where
Speaker 1: is the natural behavior in the way we keep humans confined?
Speaker 1: But yet we have proposition to cage free chickens. We
Speaker 1: need that same activism, we need that same looking people
Speaker 1: as people. Well, Laura, thank you, you are delightful, Thank you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate everything. All right, great, thank you, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Special thanks to Dolores Canalis and the work
Speaker 1: she does as co founder of the California Families Against
Speaker 1: Solitary Confinement. Next week, Laurie Shama, a staff writer the
Speaker 1: Marshall Project, shares the good news of his latest book,
Speaker 1: let The Lord Sort Them, The Rise and Fall of
Speaker 1: the Death Penalty. This episode was written and produced by
Speaker 1: Donni Fazzari and myself Corny Cole. Our theme song sentenced
Speaker 1: is compliments of the band Stick Figure from their album
Speaker 1: Set in Stone. Stu Sternbach composed the original music. Nate
Speaker 1: Dufort did the sound design. For more information on Jarvis
Speaker 1: and to find out how you can follow his case
Speaker 1: and support his cause, please visit free Jarvis dot org.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
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