“That’s where the bad guys are,” Diane Kahn would tell her children as they drove past San Quentin State Prison in Marin County. “I thought they were monsters,” she explained, speaking of the prisoners.
But today, the founder and executive director of Humans of San Quentin (humansofsanquentin.org) has changed her view and the view of countless others who have visited the website.
There, you will read the open-hearted stories of the “hardened criminals” who became softies, spilling their accounts of poverty, fear and abuse.
When the 56-year-old resident of Belvedere was on the University of San Francisco Board of Education, she learned of the opportunity to teach inmates in San Quentin who were working toward their GED certificates.
Once there, she quickly made friends with an incarcerated man named Duane. Kahn encouraged him to write his story.
“I was floored by his story’s honest vulnerability and emotional intelligence,” she said.
The more she became acquainted with her students, the more she “found these qualities again as I met more men inside. I was shocked at how forthcoming they were. Their ability emotionally to learn and connect.”
Today, humansofsanquentin.org displays their work in telling their personal histories in blogs, poetry, artwork, photography and recipes.
She enlisted the support of Juan, the then-senior editor of the San Quentin News, and together they pitched the idea of a website to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in Sacramento. It took four months for the OK to come down. But today, the site is replete with stories of redemption.
Kahn will not use the surnames of these men to protect their anonymity. She also dislikes the terms prisoner, convict or inmate because she feels these label them for life. “They obscure their intrinsic humanity.” Whereas, in her view, “incarcerated” merely describes them at a phase in their lives.
Another incarcerated man, Eddie, unfamiliar with photography, was inspired by the project and has taken over 17,000 shots of San Quentin’s cellmates. Kahn mused about the thousands of people worldwide who have no pictures of themselves in prison.
Over three dozen interns keep the nonprofit viable, fundraising and collecting the stories of the inmates to post them online.
A prisoner who contributes to the website receives a “certificate of vulnerability” to present to his parole board when that time comes.
“It’s a recognition of what they have done, that they have chosen to be vulnerable,” she said.
It’s a nice story, but have the website and the prisoners’ contributions changed life inside the state prison?
Kahn says its impact has astounded her.
“Every day in our post office box, we see evidence of changes of life, their feelings from loneliness and suicidality. But now they feel heard, and it has changed the climate inside San Quentin,” she said.
She gave the example of Jose, who was head-to-toe covered in tattoos. His damaged face couldn’t gain respect even within the prison community. When he started writing about himself, he said, according to Khan, “I didn’t realize the amount of anger and pain I was holding until I actually sat down and began to write.”
She talks about Alex, for whom writing was difficult. “Now he’s a poet. Alex can sing like a bird,” she said. Several incarcerated writers have published books, and the website offers a link for people to buy them.
Besides encouraging inmates to write their narratives, the prison residents draw and paint 6-inch by 6-inch canvases. Those who explore cuisine publish their recipes on the site.
Telling these stories, the founder tears up frequently. She harkens back to the years of President Bill Clinton when the automatic sentence was “three strikes and you are out.” She argues we are imprisoning drug addicts and people with special needs and mental health problems.
Asked, but aren’t prisons also harboring murderers and rapists? The founder argues these are the product of poverty and lack of education. “We need to change the infrastructure.”
When Dwayne pulled a gun on someone the first time and saw the bullet exit, he realized that at last he would be seen. He grew up in a house without heat or food.
Though Kahn was concerned that victims of these perpetrators would object to their stories being publicized online, to date, none have come forward or reported adverse effects, she said.
Humans of San Quentin has gone international by posting the stories of the incarcerated in other countries, particularly Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Norway and Ireland. Also, HoSQ is collaborating with another nonprofit called The Ahimsa Collective, which prepares victims and offenders to share a dialogue face-to-face in a movement toward restorative justice.
Kahn foresees these dialogues will be posted on HoSQ website’s podcast in the new year.
Contact Francine Brevetti at francine@francinebrevetti.com.