THANK YOU: Honored to be here. Speak about father as prisoner
AS I give this talk, I want to invite you to imagine the many prisoners we’ve worked with through the years. Imagine the men standing behind me, as I speak to you. I amplify the voices of the many incarcerated men I have met; We’ll flow some images to assist with that idea 14 years ago, when I started in SQ, it was as hard to get in, as I was to get out.
Violence statistics (here): Prison statistics and violence statistics (fill in below) Overcrowding, Recidivism, The Cost 12-14 year olds, Sentencing Enhancements,Percentage of increase in prisons Racial injustice Death Penalty, 700+ waiting for execution at San Quentin.
Add notes on how US system eats its young:
THE WORK 18 classes to 300 men 4 core programs, integral approach: transformation is rock hard, solid. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY – applicable as training in many other settings (schools, corporations, etc) The “Insight Job”: 3 didactics: Instruction, Process and Practice 4 Elements: EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE RESTORATIVE JUSTICE TRANSFORMING VIOLENCE MIND BODY AWARENESS (Mandala graphic) Programs promote deep healing. All classes have waiting lists. emotional intelligence Understanding overwhelming emotions Healing Disassociation, returning to body From blind reaction to cultivating response Critical Thinking and effective self Inquiry restorative justice understand how did they get to commit crime. crime statement. Life-line to see patterns write a practice letter to victim Ends with dialogue sessions with victims of similar crimes transforming violence guiding rage into power disentangling fear from respect in honor culture understanding vulnerability for what it is. dealing with unfinished business understand triggers racial and gender conditioning and how it drives violence mind body awareness Practice element yoga, mindfulness meditation, somatic wisdom Functions to make insight operational: turns insight into a behavior to create a second nature – natural response to stressors these daily practices the ‘understanding’ gained.
ASPECT OF METHODOLOGY: NORMATIVE CULTURE Normative Culture: It is “for us, by us and about us”: The current paradigm in prison: “Ok, you messed up, so now you’re going to do what we tell you. You’re going to do your time and when you’re done we’ll give you $200 gate money, and we’ll see you when you get back”. Normative culture says, Why don’t you help us set the norms around your development during your time here and we’ll sit back and watch you enforce those standards. It is one thing to take over about the cause and effect of someone else’s behavior. We are saying, help us make these programs, we’ll train you to teach them and rather than punishing you, let’s rediscover together what our true values are. SQ was famous the world over for being a notoriously violent prison. Now it has become known as the #1 prison a prisoner wants to be housed at because of the radical culture change and the transformational programming going on. We had one murder there in 10 years - that is if you don’t include the executions. We train the prisoners to become facilitators; there is a lot of peer education and job certification In collaboration with other organizations you can be an inmate in SQ and become certfied as a domestic violence facilitator, a certified rape trauma counselor, as well as a certified drug and alcohol counselor. They practice these skills by working as mentors with younger men inside the prison. These mentors are called “Uncles” and “OG’s” The Insight Job is shifting the model from punishment to healing, from shaming to learning, and has reframed problems (the prisoners) into resources which has brought a new sense of dignity and hope in a place where there was none. For Example our:’Brother’s Keepers Program’. After a suicide the men trained on how to be a “response team” to recognize the early warning signals.
THE IDEA: Curriculum Transformation techniques, psychological intervention, cultural inerhitance Men learn, freedom is not just a geographical fact, like being on et other side of the gate. It is not where you are, but who you are. You’ve forgotten who you are when you did what you did that got you here Here, we come together as groups to re-mind each other who we are and to inquire into ‘who am I?’. Men lean how to sit in the fire, together (you don’t do this kind of work alone). They learn that the origin and cause of ‘this’ feeling (fear for example) lies within me . How can I contact it? By using mindfulness, transparency, radical accountability and deeply embodied practices To undergo a change of heart, come clean and begin again and be free from how circumstance runs you. .VIKTOR FRANKL oftent quoted In SQ: The last of the human freedoms - They can take it all away from you except one thing; the last of the human freedoms: The ability to chose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances, no matter what. It’s not circumstance, but my stance that rules the day. On that level we’re all doing time….(give personal example) The content of our drama changes - but out ability to sit in the fire and learn how to burn clean and serve others is something that all of us are perhaps designed to learn, kicking and screaming – or not.
CURRICULUM STUFF examples of curriculum – with anecdotes: ORIGINAL PAIN, SECONDARY PAIN RUN, HIDE OR FACE MOMENT OF IMMINENT DANGER SITTING IN THE FIRE Leaving prison before you get out. ‘ Hurt people, hurt people, healed people heal people’ - anecdote SITTING IN THE FIRE The cause and origin of this feeling, lies within me. You take responsibility, not just because you’ve figured out what is right and wrong, but because you have an “ability” to look inside of yourself and take care of business there. To take responsibility this way is not about who is right, it’s about who chooses to do so ….. Learning how to tolerate difficult sensations while applyimg an attitude.of kindness and self-soothing This way you go in through and out of facing a serious challenge. You sit in the fire, you burn clean and leave ashes. And you don’t do it alone. You either learn how to process your feelings or you end up medicating them other alternative forget it. i’m out of here; I can’t take this anymore (won’t or don’t know how); cause more suffering by what you do in attempting to avoid suffering Give example (story to illustrate this) circles of men. safety and love between men. Where the unspoken is whispered, where demons are stared down. bonding and affection emerges in unlikely places. tender moments (anecdote)
RADHA STERN : work with victims Lifers group has evolved and sometimes functions like a community clinic for victims: draws victims to come in and draw out their stories restorative justice, run by Rochelle, does specific VOEG Program. (shorten this story – a lot) The first victim we worked with: Radha ; met her at a dinner party. she lost son through murder. over 2 months, met 5 to 6 times. she showed me the side of the story of what it was like as a mother to lose son through murder. (a roommate shot him) I became informed and learned about the other side. I learned about the knock on the door when the sheriff comes with the bad news not only do you loose the living son but also the dead sons’ body because the coroner takes control of it We read the newspaper clippings, what to do with the ashes (it makes you want to go home and hug your children). she then asked to see my work in san quentin i invited her in with the life-sentenced men The men were moved by her courage to come in, share her pain, and listen to theirs one of the men, asked permission to apologize to her because he never had the chance to sit with his victim to do so she brought a quilt, made of every year of her sons life. Radha said the quilts were for touching and so now this quilt was passed around and touched by the very hands that had taken lives A year later, one of the men remembered the anniversary of her sons death and that is when the men decided to make a quit to honor the son on the 10 th anniversary of his death. Imagine a bunch of burly guys working together doing, needle work and embroidery with only materials from the prison that they had access to: Pillowcases, pieces of mattress, a piece of jeans, the pocket of someone’s best ‘visiting shirt. They used only prison materials. When we gave it to her, she wept. It now hangs in her house. Radha, as a Jewish mom would, adopted the group of 17 men That Thanksgiving, we were granted the rare permission by the warden for Radha and a group of other victims to make a home cooked thanksgiving meal for the men. SQ is not a pretty place, so we were in a basement passed two rows of urinals and on make-shift tables, this feast was served. I had asked everyone to come dressed because no one has ever done that for these men. To come to their house and dress up nicely. By the time the food made it through security clearance, it was cold. Radha had counted on this possibility and put hot gravy in a thermos bottle. Now that is love: Hot gravy…… Everyone spoke what they were grateful for and everyone wept. It was the most amazing thing because these men, in 20-30 years had never had a home cooked meal. Radha became victim offender mediator, met with her own offender; her husband and daughter met the men. Now she is counseling other families who have experienced a loss like hers.
COURTS: JUST THE FACTS, MA’AM Courts handle the facts and do a bad job of it (victimizing victims, unequal access, racial disparity, etc.. They do not address the wounds; no healing takes place – and no learning as a society that these crimes are individual expressions of a larger social breakdown; If we just pathologize and individualize these crimes without making that link, we do not learn the remedies, we do not get to the medicine either…. Talk about the bond between victim and offender .
If this is true then we need to perfect the technology that simply offers this help. Of all places, in San Quentin State Prison comes this technology.
INSIGHT OUT images change agents and youth, tender In my step down as director to manage a new program called Insight Out, wherein, we have hired life sentence men - that I worked with on the inside and have since been released- to work with challenged youth. Imagine, a group of people that have been stigmitized, dismissed, discarded, thrown-away-the-key, the “unforgiven” (31,000 lifers in the state of CA), is emerging as one of the most skillful interventions to work with challenged youth that you can imagine. These guys are change agents, charged with securing their communities and what was once their stigma has now become a badge. They are taking what was learned on their side fof the pipeline and implementing it on the other side – schools, youth centers, inner city life – to prevent the pipeline to flow. Reversing the “career path” of going to prison In places where it is the most frequented career path than anything else. From the stigmatized, dismissed, forgotten and unforgiven people there has emerged a group of men and woman have become ambassadors. change agents; full blown professionals working within the prison system and now outside the prison system. not only incredibly well trained and effective, they’ve become beautiful human beings, they have made a light of themselves and now hold up a lamp in the dark places of our communities They are givong back to the communities they once took from; their stigma has become a badge. They now save lives by taking of what they’ve learned on their side of the pipeline and implementing on the other side of the pipeline in schools and resource centers our work is not just about doing a spiritual bypass its about personal transformation that serves the cause of reforming the prison industrial complex produces suffering, profitting on punishing people Skillful, certified, professional and giving back to the communities that they once took from.
(maybe change this quote for another) A leksandr Solzhenitsyn If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? Thank you
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