Set the Prisoners Free

The last 6 weeks while being forced into quarantine by California Governor Newsom, I have been reading a lot about the coronavirus (COVID-19) and its effect on our world. Having an uncle who is a doctor helped, and having studied medicine for awhile did also. Sometimes I wish I had become a doctor instead of a writer and English teacher, but then I remember the trauma doctors can face daily, and I pause.

The week before Governor Newsom ordered California to stay home, my fiancé Jose had his birthday (again) in prison. He called me that day, sounding upset, to tell me that CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) had stopped all prison visitation because of coronavirus.

I hadn’t realized how precious our 6-hour Saturday visits had been to us, as we sat on “our” table in the prison courtyard and held hands. We gazed into each other’s eyes and saw our reflections mirrored there. We hugged. We kissed. We sometimes had photos taken. We shared our dreams of walking on a sunset beach, the edge of waves lapping around our bare feet as salt air filled our lungs, and wind blew hair into our faces. We shared nuts and chocolate from the inside Visitors’ Room vending machines. We held hands as we walked around the courtyard perimeter, an opaque green canvass above us letting filtered sunlight through. We glimpsed blue sky and sometimes saw a bird fly into the prison and fly away again.

Jose has been in prison for over a decade, and in jail before that, for a crime he committed as a teenager (not rape or murder, but activities related to a gang he ran with before opted out of it). He admits his guilt. He is patient. The first time we ever met was in a prison where I taught English, and he said to me,

“God speaks to me in here. He has to because of this place.”

Jose let God change the hard heart he once had. Jose let Jesus love him and give him hope. I call him my Prophet inside Prison. He reads the Bible and acts on words that Jesus said, like “love your enemy,” “follow me,” and “forgive.”

We speak on the phone at least twice a day, and lately CDCR has been giving all California inmates free (almost unlimited) phone calls 3 days a week. On those days, Jose’s voice is the first one I hear in the morning and the last one I hear before I go to sleep.

Now I am asking Governor Newsom (again) to, please, set the prisoners free–especially those who have served most of their sentences and taken education classes and passed milestones and reflected on their lives–and changed from law breakers to law upholders.

My friend Katey Williams (no relation to me) is a teacher like I am, only she teaches kindergarten, and I teach college. Her boyfriend David, father of their beautiful little boy, got baptized in prison with Jose. He, also, should be set free. America has more people in prison than any other country in the world (including communist China where I taught English for 2 years). China is prone to kill offenders rather than imprison them.

Katey and I feel like were are prisoners too, as we struggle outside those walls while the men we love languish in them, unable to help us like they desperately want to do. How long does it take a man to realize his mistake and change? Twenty years–or two? I think the moment their arms are handcuffed behind them, many offenders begin to sorrow for their actions, bad choices made in seconds that affect the rest of their lives. “Rehabilitation” means that change is possible, especially if a loving family waits outside those sharp, barbed-wire walls.

Firestorm-2

If coronavirus got inside Jose’s prison, where 800 inmates are cramped together in top and bottom bunks in crowded dormitories, it would sweep through like wildfire. I survived a mountain wildfire once, and I know the ashes that it leaves.