Guest Commentary written by
Jesse Vasquez
Jesse Vasquez is the executive director of Pollen Initiative, a California-based nonprofit organization dedicated to cultivating media centers inside prisons.
When I entered the adult prison system in the early 2000s, there were a little more than 163,000 people incarcerated in California. I was just another one that had taken on a prison number — a letter with five digits — so the system could track me. Something happens when you start identifying as a number instead of your name. You take on an abstract identity, a flattened one.
I remember the day I had to think deeply about this identity. As editor-in-chief of the prisoner-run San Quentin News, I responded to the mail the paper received from all over the state prison system. I filtered through complaints about our publication, grievances against the state and many good prison stories. There were writers of persuasion and eloquence.
But the letters that took my breath — and sleep — away were the letters from incarcerated women. One that haunted me ended with, “I know it doesn’t matter because I’m just another number.”
Before I joined the newspaper, I had lived in silence. It’s hard to imagine you aren’t just a data point when every study about prison populations presents you as a statistical outcome of a few societal ills. But for the women, it was even easier for them to think they didn’t matter. Back then, in 2017, women made up barely 4% of the state’s prison population.
It’s easy to lose 4% out of 163,000 people. They were overshadowed by what the majority of the prison population — men — needed. They got the remnants. It weighed heavily on me that we so easily lumped their issues in with ours and thought that we had done them justice.
There’s no training to help you confront the disparities that you’re exposed to as a prison newspaper editor. Until reading those letters, I hadn’t understood why women said “you’re privileged to be a man and can’t understand what it’s like to be a woman in the world.” I grew up as a Mexican machista. I was prideful. My father always told me, “Los hombres no lloran, mijo.” So I never cried. I didn’t want to, either.
But something happened when I read the women’s stories. Every time I opened an envelope with wrinkled up paper and smudgy faded blue lines, I’d fold it up and put it away to read later in my cell. I felt like I owed them privacy while I read their heartache.
“Dear San Quentin News, you write about all the good stuff you have but we don’t have nothing. I don’t know how to say it but life is hard in here and I can’t do nothing about it.”
“Dear editor, we don’t get visits here. Can you help us get the word out?”
There’s only so much I could do as a newspaper editor. After all, we weren’t a pen pal service or a resource hub.
What do you do when you come across, “San Quentin News, we need you to say something about the shit they doing to us. A lot of girls are depressed and committing suicide.”
I did what any normal man with multiple life sentences would do to cope: I made a promise that if I ever had the chance to make a difference for them I would. They would have a voice. They would have their own media.
Always waiting for something
After Gov. Jerry Brown commuted my sentence, I felt the weight of my promise and the energy that comes from infinite possibilities. The fantasy of a media center inside the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla felt within reach.
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It started with cold calls in 2022, but started taking shape a year later when Lt. Monique Williams, the new CCWF public information officer, responded and we talked about starting a journalism guild. She said they’d love to have a meeting to discuss what I was proposing. The CCWF administration was excited. They figured it would be great for the population to have a platform to share their stories and news they could use.
After a site visit to gauge interest and meet with the Inmate Advisory Council, which included Amber Bray, Kristin Rossum, Simaima Oufai and Nora Igova, an inquisitive group I thought would make great journalists, the next eight months presented new challenges. I spent hours ironing out logistics, convincing people that this was a great idea even if it was hours away from our homebase in the Bay Area, getting advice from our donors and board of directors about expanding our projects, and communicating with CCWF administration about next steps.
The hardest part about implementing a media center inside of an institution is waiting. We’re always waiting for something: equipment to get approved, lists to get updated, clearance memos to get printed and the thumbs up from upstairs to move forward.
In the early days of spring this year, I got a call from the women’s facility PIO. She was excited to share that we were clear to move ahead, immediately.
‘We’re going to finally have a voice’
On March 25, what had taken months of planning and meetings came into physical fruition in a matter of three hours. I felt like an interior designer when our team went in to set up the classroom, computers, workstations and decorations. We transformed an empty, gray-colored classroom into the CCWF Media Center.
We participated that same day in a grand opening ceremony with our volunteers, the participants and the administration. Everyone was eager to get inside.
I walked around eavesdropping and smiling. We had 24 participants and another 20 incarcerated guests attending the reveal, and they were ecstatic.
Too many times I overheard, “We’re finally gonna have a voice.” I was emotionally overwhelmed.
Bray, Igova, Rossum and some of the other participants had been incarcerated for decades. I watched as they brought their stories and the historical context of their institution into the discussion about the paper’s name. They bantered, discussed, proposed and rejected many good ideas until they settled on the need to leave a paper trail, so that posterity would remember them. And they wanted to encourage their community.
I couldn’t have been more proud when they said CCWF Paper Trail would amplify voices to empower choices. The tagline was born.
Their desire to chronicle the stories of their community and share vital information is exactly what local journalism is about. The advisory council already believed in civic engagement. Their jobs involved informing their peers about laws, policies and administrative changes that were coming and how they would impact them, so they’ve been able to make a smooth transition into building out their broader platform. When the group nominated their editorial team, they chose the council chairperson, Bray, to be their first editor-in-chief.
From her long history of documenting advisory council meeting minutes about the community’s affairs, Bray knows the importance of having a publication that would not just chronicle issues but preserve them.
During the facility’s first graduation, she mentioned that there was a second-class citizen sentiment shared throughout the prison community because historically they had not been afforded the same programs or privileges as the men. But now, she said, “We are making history. We get to show the world who we are and what we are doing inside of CCWF. Our goal is to leave some very big shoes to fill by others that come after us.”
The Paper Trail is defining their identity as they build a legacy by empowering their community and recording their stories. With the start of the media center, California gets to see in real time the ripple effect that happens when people believe in you and give you a chance to remake yourself.