c over ar t
screen print by bruce fowler (san quentin artist) & vince pane (stanford artist)
“Bruce drew inspiration for the cover art from the biblical quote Isaiah 56:11 and the ancient Roman symbol, Lady Justice. The California state prison system’s actions around the COVID-19 crisis scandalizes the message and symbolism of Lady Justice. With overcrowded prison populations and the swift spread of illness, one can’t help but wonder if the Scales of Justice tip in favor of the virus. Next to Lady Justice’s right arm reads ‘Prov. 17:23’, referencing the biblical quote: ‘The wicked accepts a bribe in secret to pervert the ways of justice.’ We must act now before the pandemic of incarceration further mutates prison into an unjust infirmary.” -Vince Pane, cover co-artist
i n car c er atedl y yo ur s , prison renaissance zine covid-19 issue summer 2020
image descriptions for all photos in this zine are available at b i t . l y / Z i n eTo o l k i t
DEAR READER, Our hearts are heavy with the spread of COVID-19 in prisons across the country, and especially in San Quentin State Prison, where currently over 1/3 of incarcerated folks (1200+ people as of 7/2) have tested positive for COVID—and these numbers only reflect those who have been tested so far. Cases can be traced back to just a few weeks ago, when the CDCR negligently transferred 121 incarcerated folks from a known COVID hotspot to San Quentin. Let it be known that this outbreak is state-sanctioned. The following is a collection of written and visual artwork created by a few of our friends and loved ones incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison during this 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. It is compiled by the Prison Renaissance Zine Project. As Angela Davis, Octavia Butler, and Afrofuturism have shown us, art has the power to imagine worlds that we cannot yet see. The artists in this zine have prophetic voices that speak truth and move worlds, with many of them expressing how important they felt it was to continue making and creating even during the pandemic. The vision of this zine is to use art as another entrypoint to frame and engage with #StoptheSanQuentinOutbreak. At the end of this zine is a guide with resources and action items to demand mass releases and save lives. We invite you to not simply consume this art, but to take action in this incredibly timely and historical moment and join us in a community response to this outbreak.
IN SOLIDARIT Y, Prison Renaissance Zine Project
ARTIST BIOS br uce f ow ler
(San Quentin artist)
mesr o coles-el
(San Quentin artist & organizer)
lar r y white
(San Quentin artist)
Bruce never know art before he came to prison. If he had, he believes he would have made better decisions. Because of art, he feels that he is free, even behind these cold walls and locked doors. Art is his key. You can support his work at the Facebook page, “Art by Bruce Fowler.” Artist’s Statement: Art is my life preserver in a melancholy sea. Mesro is a poet, emcee, and grafitti artist incarcerated in California. As the glue holding this project together, he has been the main organizer coordinating among the artists in San Quentin. He loves playing Dungeons and Dragons, and he is on a crusade to end the school-to-prison pipeline through mentoring kids. Artist’s Statement: We remember when art was outlawed. As a young child Larry always had a passion for drawing and using Art as an positive outlet to express his artistic creativity. While being incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison in California, Larry continues to express himself through his artwork. Artist’s Statement: Prison is a crime against humanity, it is a crime against the mind, body, and spirit of prisoners, their family and friends, and the world at large.
adamu chan
(San Quentin
Adamu is a writer and Bay Area native incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison. He uses his perspective and experience as an incarcerated person as a lens to focus the reader’s gaze on issues related to social justice. Adamu draws inspiration and energy from the work of James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, John Coltrane, and the arts movement artist) of his time—hip hop. Artist’s Statement: Art brings us closer to our creator because in that moment, we are the creator.
jimmy medel
(San Quentin artist)
Jimmy is a self-taught artist from Round Valley Reservation in California. His creativity is inspired by his indigenous cultural beliefs and identity. He works with canvas and acrylic paints, paper and ink pens, printmaking, carving, and beadwork. He started drawing when he was 13 or 14 years old. When he arrived at San Quentin and enrolled in the Arts in Correction class, Jimmy was inspired by all the other artists in the class working with different mediums. He started used acrylic paints to share his cultural and spiritual beings. Artist’s Statement: I tell stories with all my drawings and paintings, and I hope people will feel inspired from seeing my artwork.
or lando smith
(San Quentin artist)
Orlando is a self-taught illustrator, comic book creator, artist, writer, colorist, storyboard artist, illustrative journal political cartoonist, prison reformist, social activist, and comic book historian. A tattoo artist turned criminalized drug abuser, he is serving 8 life sentences under California’s draconian Three Strikes Law. You can support his change.org petition “Grant Commutation for Illustrative Journalist and Comic Book Creator Orlando Smith”. Artist’s Statement: Art is meditative, and it has no limits to the worlds that can be built. My art takes a critical view of social, political, and cultural issues. Over the long years of incarceration, I’ve witnessed injustice on an unparalleled scale in the devastating and deeply felt impact of the continuation of slavery. As an incarcerated person, I speak through art. We share the same planet and eat out of the same oceans.
distanced socially mesr o dhu r a’af a COVID-19 ushered in social distancing, the news reports, but we’ve been separated before the pandemic. If ghetto denizens aren’t slaving, entertaining, or playing sports, prison time gets passed down like laws in the Senate. Neighborhoods built with fences and hedgerows attract people who cross the street when they see me, and, peering through, the residents all turn their backs to apartment buildings and bumps to monitor speed. Oil refineries and landfills next to the projects. Fracking wells dug into our farming acres. Colonial houses and Victorian homes reject plants full of lower-class builders and makers. The rich call themselves movers and shakers of the world, and prison plantations are not near their homes. They claim credit to send their little boys and girls to private schools while working us to the bone. Corporations gather when CEOs come through to count the barrels they slide down their dump chutes that ends up on the caged playgrounds of public schools to be moved on the backs of prison jumpsuits. Planned Parenthood is population control in the hood to monitor outbreaks of unwanted children, so medical attention has never been good unless we’re treating STDs in condemned buildings.
Videos abound of families arrested in neighborhoods with cast iron gates, security guards, and manicured lawns without the slightest consideration whether they could afford to move on up like that Jeffersons theme song. People speak about progress being made: we had a Black president for two terms, but no one speaks about the living trade of offenders so public defenders get a turn. Where is the social distancing with two people in a restroom? Criminals are condemned as being heartless, yet human beings are stored for financial boons. If we were dogs, there would be animal cruelty charges. How many people use communal showers where nozzles are a mere two feet apart, and 180 people are given a single hour to lather, rinse, repeat hair and body parts? What about days on the job hunt to seek employment to support yourself and your family, only to be told you’re overqualified to be a busboy at restaurants where you can’t afford to eat? Low income neighborhoods are heaped with trash and police roam the streets during unspoken curfew, so don’t come across the railroad tracks if your skin tone or worldview is darker than ecru. When I hear that this pandemic is the reason we stay six feet apart and don’t touch, I say that it has always been the season because socioeconomics and racism separate us…
the new normal
08
m es r o dh u r a’af a
Prison is a crime against humanity, it is a crime against the mind, body, and spirit of prisoners, their family and friends, and the world at large. Prison perpetuates victimization and creates an “endless” cycle of victim-victimizer-victim, which is and has passed from generation to generation, enslaving us all to a false ideal that “prison is a solution to crime.” No, if anything, history has proven that prison is a cause for crime and not a solution. Now in the days of COVID-19, men, women and children are dying stuffed inside overpopulated prisons (as well as jails and detention centers,) and the greed of the “slavers” can be seen as they would rather sentence us all to die rather than to free the “enslaved.” Outside of COVID-19, I’ve seen too many good people die of old age and unhealthy living conditions inside prison for it to ever be justified... prison is a crime.
lar r y w h i te
Prisoners are taught to identify the values of humanity and gain new levels of insight into their own self-worth and those around them. Men, women, (and children) rehabilitate to a level of consciousness that make it plainly obvious that prison itself is a crime against humanity which perpetuates trauma and creates cycles of crime. Hypocritically the prison “system” promotes itself as a “solution” for crime, or as an “answer to crime, of which it hasn’t solved since its creation. Prison is the problem, prison is a crime, that has only “answered” how to gain profits from the enslavement and death of its people.
lar r y w h i te
br uce f ow ler
r
secret ocean adamu chan
Somewhere there’s an ocean that I desperately need to see to stand on its foamy shores and contemplate the vastness of existence to yell my name into the oblivion and feel the kiss of salty mist on my face somewhere beyond deserts of concrete and steel out past morality and right and wrong I see your footprints in the sand and anticipate our union.
This piece invites the viewer to look deeper into the pandemic. I used 5 black ink pens, one red ink pen, and acrylic paint to create this piece. I put 120 hours into the drawing. I am honored to share my COVID-19 drawing with others.
jim my medel
or lando sm i t h
20
o r l an do s mi t h
22
o r l an do s mi t h
24
25
o r l an do s mi t h
demands from incarcerated folks at san quentin
This is the list of demands from folks in the incarcerated community compiled by the Ella Baker Center & Re:Store Justice. To elevate these demands, we encourage you to voice them as you call and email representatives.
bit.ly/StopSQOutbreakDemands
1
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and Governor Gavin Newsom must grant releases now to reduce the CA prison population and protect incarcerated people.
2
Stop transferring incarcerated individuals between prisons.
3 4
Stop transferring immigrants who’ve completed their time between CDCR and ICE. Provide ongoing COVID-19 testing to 100% of the population.
5
Prison staff and Correctional Officers must be regulated to working in one part of the prison, to avoid actively spreading the virus across the prison.
6
Expand credit-earning opportunities for incarcerated people.
7
Provide free essential goods (personal protective equipment, sanitizer, hygiene supplies, stamps, food, etc.).
9 10
Provide free tele-visiting privileges. Expand free phone calls through the pandemic.
who to call & email
how to call & what to say:
bit.ly/StopSQOutbreakToolkit Governor Gavin Newsom, govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov40mail/, (916) 445-2841 Ralph Diaz, Secretary of CDCR, ralph.diaz@cdcr.ca.gov, (916) 324-7308 Clark Kelso, Federal Medical Receiver, clark.kelso@cdcr.ca.gov Dana Simas, CDCR, Press Secretary, dana.simas@cdcr.ca.gov, (916) 445-4950, Sarah Smith, State Ombudsman, sara.smith@cdcr.ca.gov, (916) 324-5458 Office of the Inspector General (OIG), (800) 700-5952
demand for gov. newsom In your calls and emails, please include a demand for Governor Newsom to personally visit San Quentin State Prison. Despite living just a few miles away from SQSP, Gov. Newsom has still not visited the institution as he continues his inadequate handling of the current outbreak. If he personally visited SQSP, he would see for himself how dire the situation is and take action. This is a failure in governance.
where to donate The COVID-19 outbreak threatens the health and lives of so many inside San Quentin. While this threat continues to grow, folks must still pay for basic necessities such as toothpaste and food, but they have not been able to work their usual jobs during quarantine. Our donations become exceedingly important for their physical and mental well-being. Re:Store Justice is accepting donations to directly pay for supplies that will be sent to folks incarcerated in San Quentin.
https://restorecal.org/donatefor-covid-19/