Part II. My first visit to San Quentin State Prison

Part II of Part II

There are so many constraints to saying what I want to say in writing. I have been blogging this post for forever without ever getting to the part of how it changed my life, again, to meet brothers in prison.

How do I write about sitting by a Samoan prisoner, with soft eyes and a soft smile, I don't even know his name, for about 30 minutes, mostly in silence. The only thing he reveals to me is that he would like to get a college degree at San Francisco State because they have a re-entry program with former prisoners. Then he shook his head and said that he probably couldn't do it because he heard it's too hard. He is serving 2 four year terms.

I see N, a Samoan reading a newspaper. I go up to him and tell him I'm Tongan. We talk and talk and laugh loudly and happily. The other prisoners smile at us and laugh along. I tell N that I want to be a lawyer. He tells me, "Fuck that, become a judge, that's what matters." "OK," I say, "I'll do that." As I am about to leave, I thank him for the good time we had talking, and he gives me a blessing. "I see you have a good heart Loa and you care about people. You can get what you want because you're kind." I thank him and give him an orange (then I remember that we were instructed not to give things to prisoners or take things) and he takes it thankfully. N likes to call me "Loa." I like being in a new place where people call me by my name. I feel very comfortable here.

S., the Cambodian prisoner, meets me for the first time and tells me about these people called Tongans who can be deported back to Tonga so they don't have to live in this hell hole of San Quentin. He tells me that he wishes he were Tongan so he can take off instead of staying in prison. I think to myself, everyone would like a choice.

I enjoyed spending time with S too. I think, "Cambodians are like Pacific Islanders." When I talk to S, men walk by say that S is a faggot and because this is a health fair, he should check out the HIV/AIDS table. S just smiles and continues talking about hoping to get deported back to Cambodia, a place he left more than twenty years ago.

I felt comfortable in San Quentin, particularly surrounded by colored people. I live in neighborhoods like this and choose to live in neighborhoods of color, poor places, with immigrants, like myself, and queers for the rest of my life.

The prisoners were very courteous and respectful towards us.

The Samoans told me that some Tongans, new arrivals, were held in H Block, which was being searched. H Block is a part of San Quentin for prisoners only staying a couple of months. We were in the lifers section, men serving sentences that required years to life.

San Quentin is a microcosm of a working class, poor neighborhood. There are men of color everywhere and poor whites. There are immigrants. There are groups of men organizing for prisoner rights and men joining programs to improve themselves and to increase their chances of getting out.

H. is leaving San Quentin in one month. He is being released to a half way house in Oakland. Every prisoner I talk to wants to be free but they are also afraid that the outside world may not be welcoming of them and will not offer assistance to a brother getting out of lockdown. Re-entry is constantly on the prisoners' minds.

We hope H will get out in time for Eddy's 40th birthday party which is a celebration of the struggle to live a dignified life for former prisoners.

In Tongatapu, the main island of Tonga, there is one prison, Huatolitoli. In Tonga there wasn't a prisoner problem because there weren't prisons built to be filled. We didn't have to manufacture criminals to fill up the prisons we built and expected to make profits from them, for generations to come. But Tonga has changed today.

The Tongan government is currently manufacturing criminals by being a puppet of the colonial governments and by privatizing public works. A perfect example of the Tongan government manufacturing criminals was its choice to ignore the people's call to institutionalize an elected government. In 2005, beginning with the demonstration in May to stop the privatization of electricity, there was mass mobilization for the government to change their system of mis-representation. This led to the Public Servant Strike. Despite Tongan people mobilizing across traditional lines that had not been crossed before, like Nobles and tu'a coming together, elite Tongans and Tongans surviving on a subsistence livelihood coming together, the Tongan government refused to give full government representation to the people.

This refusal of the Tongan government to dialogue and to implement what the people are begging for to better their lives, creates a perfect division. A dichotomy that is separate as night and day. So instead of creating a partnership with the people and blurring divisions, like the Public Servant Strike did, the government's policies and the media they are embedded with, call people who do not question government policies "good and outstanding citizens" and the people who question the government are called "criminals."

In the Nov. 16, 2006 Riot, everyone who questioned the government, even long time advocates for peace, were criminalized and were ushered to court by the government who accused them of being criminals. All the media that questioned the government was criminalized and shut down or heavily fined.

At this time, the Tongan government had manufactured too many criminals for their own military and police to handle. The government was all of a sudden alive to the possibility that the Tongan people were angry and that they were serious when they demonstrated and sent petitions to the Palace and Parliament.

The Tongan government immediately gave full power to Australian and New Zealand forces, with the aid of U.S. weapons, to come and declare Marshall Law in Tonga and to take care of the criminals. Our own Tongan soldiers and policemen beat and mutilated their own brothers and threatened their own sisters under the command of colonial military.

The criminals being our young Tongan boys, our Tongan men and our Tongan sisters.

'Oiaue Tonga e.

The issue of incarceration does not begin only when you're in lockdown or, as the brothers at San Quentin know so well, it doesn't end after you're let out.

Where do our prisons begin, what leads to the making of a prison, how am I contributing to

a creation of a prison and the criminalization of people, both women, men and children.

We each have to stop contributing to the building of prisons, the making of something to be so different and separate from something else that one can be said to be good and the other bad.

I am grateful that I wrote this blog because I learned that my commitment to question and to challenge the way we criminalize each other started long before I joined EPOCA and worked with former prisoners in Massachusetts.

In finding myself writing about Tonga, my homeland, the place of my birth and my childhood, I realized that i learned about fighting against systems of imprisonment since I was a girl child in a Tongan family, going to Tongan churches, obeying the laws of the Tongan government, listening to Tongan teachers.

I realize that it is in Tonga that I experienced my first prison and I have been fighting ever since to be free. This brings home the truth, that, like it or not, because we all know how fcking hard this is, it is also in Tonga that I must do a lot of the work to free myself and I must work with Tongan brothers and sisters.

I left some of my heart and soul in San Quentin Prison. I left it there for my homies under lockdown, and for some who, perhaps are custodians, cooks, wardens, teachers.

But I also left a little of myself there to get acquainted with the place, because with the commitment I have to working with others to change the systems that imprison us, I most surely will be spending time in prison myself. This is a knowing I have come to understand and accept.

Eddy Zheng signs off his emails with the salutation "Breathin." After going to San Quentin and feeling the neighborhood and talking to the brothers there, I get what he means now.

Living is a breath at a time, sometimes the breathing is so hard to come by, but steadily, it gets easier, to breathe.

I look at life a lot different now after leaving San Quentin. I only say good things about the lsat now and look forward to the opportunity to take the test.

Breathin,

Loa

Part I of Part II

I've been sick since Sunday. I'm always tired and I have a runny nose. I know it's from not having a coat or an umbrella during the San Quentin visit. We were outside in the yard talking to the men for many hours and when we were inside, my clothes were soaking wet from the rain.

I'm missing my lsat practice test 3 tonight but I will take it at the library tomorrow morning. I'm staying home to finish up my blog and sleep early.

Sun picked Ben, Kasi and I up at the Mcarthur Bart Station. We drove up to San Rafael, the town where San Quentin sits by the sea. The literature calls San Quentin Prison's location a "coveted real estate seaside property."

I asked S, a Cambodian prisoner, where his cell was located in this huge lockdowned city. He said, pointing, that his cell overlooked the water. He would easily trade his coveted seaside view for the streets of his hometown any day.

San Quentin Prison is a city on a hill. Like any city, there are thousands of workers. Right now, there is a hospital being built. That will bring a thousand more employees.

In our way in and out of San Quentin, I observed that there are many people of color who are employed in the prison. There were many Asian employees who carried large lunch boxes. Many of the guards inside the prison were Latinos, Blacks and Whites.

When you walk through the front gates up to the prison itself, you see the Pacific Ocean to your left side, dotted with guard towers. It is a startling scene of the strength of nature and the authority of men, laying bare, uneasily together.

As we entered the prison, after three check-ins, we walked into a gigantic neighborhood encased in high walls. We walked through a courtyard of small offices, one with a sign that read, "Native American Friends House" and class rooms with signs that read, "Chapel."

We walked into an open area that reminded me of the fields that Niko played baseball at. This was the yard the fair was going to take place at; there were other yards in the prison. There were white men playing tennis. An elder black man, sitting on a bench, filled the yard with a blues song from his trumpet. We passed two young Latino brothers benching weights. A black man was standing at the edge of the grass, mumbling words to the wind. There were many elderly men. The majority of the men in the prison were in their thirties and forties. There was a very young Latino brother who spiced up his prison garb with a gorgeous light green stone hanging from a chain around his neck.

It was 10:00 am on Friday and it was raining on and off. We were told that the amount of prisoners attending the health fair was small compared to the huge crowds out in the yard on Saturdays. A lot of the prisoners were at their 9-5 jobs, at programs and many wanted to avoid the cold weather and the rain.

There were tables lined up in the yard for each group to use. Behind us was a chain linked fence where we posted our sign, "Asian Prisoner Support Group."

Our table was across from the most popular attraction, the chiropractors. This meant that every participant had to walk by our table. That's how we talked or said hi to mostly everyone in the yard that day. That's how we met up with Asian and Pacific Island prisoners. That's how black brothas engaged Sun in a discussion about Korean history and Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. And as they were talking,

something happened that made all the prisoners crouch down. It was a drill to count the prisoners in the yard and to differentiate them from the volunteers. This happened every 30 minutes out on the yard. If you were walking, you would stop and squat. If you're talking to a friend, you both would squat and continue your conversation. If you are a prisoner who refuses to squat down, you are shot standing.

Part I. My first visit to San Quentin State Prison

May 1st! I was hella excited for this day! Yes, it was International Workers Day, which has also become Immigrant Rights Day! And, it was the day that I was going to visit San Quentin State Prison with APSC, Asian Prisoner Support Committee, for a big health fair. We didn't go as health workers but as prisoner support advocates.

We were part of a larger group of volunteers that also included the Black Nurses Association, chiropractors, yoga instructors, health practitioners from various hospitals, state health department representatives from Alameda County, and med. students from UCSF. Folks from a Latino Oakland based HIV/Aids education and prevention organization were sporting Super Hero Condom t-shirts, that I mistook for the Ghostbuster movie icon. Alfredo, an adorable member of their crew corrected me, "No, no, this is not Casper." "It's been a really long time," I admitted, "I forgot what those were."

I wish I had some photos to post of our visit but we couldn't take cameras into this maximum security neighborhood.

The group I went with, APSC, is a prisoner advocacy grassroots group that meets in Oakland. The group developed out of Asian activists organizing support to release Eddy Zheng, a Chinese American man who spent 21 years in prison, including almost two decades in San Quentin.

Eddy went to prison when he was 16 years old for kidnapping with intent to rob an immigrant Chinese family who owned a prosperous store in Oakland's Chinatown, and was released when he was 35. In prison, Eddy received his GED and an associates degree. He became a poet and organized a poetry slam. He was put in "the hole," solitary confinement, for rallying prisoners to petition for an Asian studies course to be included in the college curriculum. He self-published his own writings in a zine that he circulated in and outside of prison. Under lockdown, Eddy became engaged with the world around him, beyond his maximum security neighborhood. He sent writings to be published in newspapers, kept a blog (www.eddyzheng.blogspot.com), joined several self-improvement classes in San Quentin, conducted radio interviews, conducted workshops for youth, wrote curriculum for youth education and built allies by corresponding with poets, politicians, lawyers, students, scholars and activists. While serving his time for the atrocious crime he committed, he felt that the biggest step towards retribution to the people he hurt was to change his own life.

After serving a decade in San Quentin, Eddy applied for parole. He was denied over and over. The Bay Area community, led by the Asian community, mobilized to support him and that's how APSC was born.

Eddy was finally released from prison only to be transferred to Yuba County Jail as an immigrant detainee. As a green card holder who was convicted of a felony, Eddy was held for deportation to China, a country that he had not visited since he was a child. He was released in 2007 while the U.S. government continues to process his deportation order.

Eddy is now working with a non-profit for youth in San Francisco and actively shares the story about his transformation with youth groups across the East Bay. Whenever China and the U.S. processes Eddy's deportation order, Eddy will be removed from the Bay Area and taken to China.

In February, my sister Fui forwarded me a Cal Berkeley email about an upcoming lecture at Boalt Hall Law School. The title was "Deporting our Souls: Values, Morality and Immigration Policy." The email explained that the lecture would feature legal scholar Bill Hing, talking about the U.S. government's practice of deporting permanent residents who were convicted of felonies, back to countries where they don't have family or community support.

I thought of Tongan American brothers who are deported to Tonga after they served their time in U.S. prisons. For the majority of these Tongan American men, being forced to return to Tonga and to leave their families and systems of support in the U.S. is devastating, and many men commit suicide in Tonga. It has to be understood that these men already served their sentences in U.S. prisons for the crimes they committed. They are only sent to Tonga because the current U.S. immigration laws, in compliance with the Tongan government, require that they be sent there.

Under Bill Hing's biography in the email, was the second speaker's bio. This man's name was Eddy Zheng. I read about Eddy's pending deportation to China and his 20 years in incarceration. I recognized that Eddy and I are around the same age. I thought, "Wow, what does a Chinese American prisoner look like?" I had never met one before.

My brother-in-law Mo, who is also interested in attending law school, and I attended the lecture together.

It was a very compelling talk. Bill Hing was a very knowledgeable and caring professor who started by telling Boalt Hall law students and the larger Cal student body that they're really missing out by not protesting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan like he and his colleagues did when he was a young Boalt law student protesting the Vietnam War. "We shut this place down," he told us passionately, "You all are missing out on a really great time." And then Eddy spoke.

Eddy was amazing! He was well versed in laws pertaining to prisoners, immigration policies, the economic effects of globalization and gave thoughtful responses to questions from the audience. I saw that Eddie, having spent 20 years in prison, took on the persona of his maximum security neighborhood. He had a particular swagger that a Chinese man can only adopt from living day to day among black men. When he spoke there were detectable cadences of ebonics, street Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, etc. What does a Chinese American prisoner look like? A Chinese American prisoner looks a bit like everyone else he is in prison with.

We weren't able to talk to Eddy after his lecture because we had to be home when Niko came back from school.

I returned home from seeing Eddy inspired to begin a Prisoner Support group for Tongan and other Pacific Islanders in the Bay Area.

Two weeks after this lecture, I volunteered at a workshop that Youth Court in Oakland was hosting. At the lunch line, I recognized Eddy Zheng standing next to me. He's an extremely accessible guy. We talked over our sandwiches and I expressed to Eddy my desire to join and learn from prisoner support groups in the Bay Area. Eddy invited me to the next prisoner support meeting and that's how I became part of an Asian prisoner support group.

It hasn't been easy being a member of an Asian organization. This Asian prisoner support group does not use "Pacific Islander" in its name and explicitly states that it is an Asian prisoner support group. They provide support for Asian prisoners, but they also provide support for non Asian prisoners, including Latinos, Whites, African Americans and Pacific Islanders.

As many Pacific Islanders have confronted and experienced in working under the U.S. government rubric of API, Asian Pacific Islander, that the "Pacific Islander" part is not taken seriously and not given full representation. API organizations serve Asian communities and do not address the particularities and complexities of Pacific Island communities. The API rubric can never adequately represent Pacific Islanders. It is important to have organizations and government and private funding for Asian people. It is just as important to have organizations and funding for Pacific Island people. There are movements led by Pacific Island activists that call to stop the

use of the API label because Pacific Islanders are silenced and invisible under it. These movements have fought for the inclusion of the "Hawaiian Native or other Pacific Islander" category in the race sections of public applications. I feel much more comfortable checking this box. There are no limits to the possibilities of challenging census makers and race cartographers about who we are and what we need for the survival of our people.

The members of this Asian prisoner support group are Asian folks who are incredibly committed, intelligent, experienced, educated and enthusiastic. Although I had a great time at the first meeting I attended, I went home deciding that I would stop going and spend my energies on working with Pacific Islanders instead. I felt resentful that I was the only Tongan in a room of Asians who were always talking about API, Asian Pacific Island work, yet they weren't working with Tongans, Samoans, Hawaiians, Fijians, Maoris, Chammoru, etc. I thought, "Hell, I'll do "real" PI work by soliciting Pacific Islanders to begin a PI prisoner support group."

However, I was still on the group's listserv and I read how these Asian folks were trying hard to help Asian prisoners, and non-Asians, including Pacific Islanders in prisons. I started to cool my anger and to view these Asian activists, like the prisoners and ex-prisoners at EPOCA in Worcester, Massachusetts, as potential teachers and essential allies.

And, Fui reminded me, "Loa, go and have that conversation (about APIs and real representation for PIs). It's important that those Asian activists, who sound like great people, understand the issue from your point of view."

So when the April monthly meeting arrived, I caught the bus at San Pablo to Oaktown.

This Asian support group gave me access to visit San Quentin.

There were four of us who went to San Quentin. May 1st was a cold and rainy day. I didn't realize that when I rushed out of the house without a jacket or an umbrella. I was running late and wrongly predicted that the sun would eventually show up for the rest of the May Day celebrations later that day.