I survived a COVID-19 outbreak at San Quentin. Gov. Newsom must see me as a human being

A year ago, not long after the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation transferred over 100 incarcerated people from a COVID-19 stricken prison, medical alarms began blaring day and night throughout San Quentin as people became deathly ill. San Quentin was and still is so overcrowded that it’s impossible to stop the spread of any disease.

For over a year, we were forced to engage in practices that went against recommendations from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. We waited in long lines to receive meals and shared a communal shower with 40 to 50 people at a time. No matter what precautions I took, I knew it was impossible to socially distance inside an overcrowded prison, and it wouldn’t be long before I got sick too.

It began with mild headaches, but within two days I was bedridden. After days of being curled in a fetal position, I began to ask nurses for medicine as they passed through the building to do temperature checks. They were always followed by the sound of correctional officers’ keys jangling. Every time I heard the keys, I crawled off my prison bunk to ask for help. Time after time they responded, “I only do temperature checks, put in a sick call form.” Or the worst reply, “I’ll be right back.”

It took two days before I finally received medical attention. That day, I could tell the nurse was different; I could see the care and concern on her face as I pleaded. When I finally received the medicine, I cried. Because after days of pleading, someone had finally seen me as a human being behind these cell bars.

This dehumanization in amid a public health crisis is a small example of how CDCR responded to the outbreak at San Quentin that began a year ago today. We know now that there was no proper screening before the mass transfer of over 100 people to our prison. The toll it has taken on all of us trapped in these open cells has been staggering — 28 people died in a span of months.

People continue to suffer from the long-term health effects of COVID-19; I know people who have had strokes and others who died from heart attacks months after being infected. The impact this pandemic has had on all of us, in San Quentin and in all prisons across California, cannot be understated — the impact of this trauma will stay with us forever.

This could have been prevented. From the start of the pandemic, activists demanded that CDCR prioritize the health and safety of those in their care. Legislators held oversight hearings on the San Quentin outbreak and mismanagement of CDCR’s COVID response. San Quentin was fined thousands of dollars for violating health standards. The First District Court of Appeal stated that CDCR showed “deliberate indifference” to incarcerated people and violated our Eighth Amendment rights through cruel and unusual punishment.

Yet here we are, a year later, and nothing has changed. Until a few weeks ago, I was confined to a closet-sized cell for 23 to 24 hours a day for over a year. I was at the mercy of correctional officers whose moods dictate how much time I get outside of this small cell. Despite recommendations from multiple health organizations, the San Quentin population has not been reduced to 50% capacity.

On May 10, San Quentin began to experience an outbreak of Norovirus, proving we are still vulnerable to contagion and showing that the steps they have taken are not enough. We need our elected officials to hold CDCR accountable for their human rights abuses.

Injustice thrives in silence, so the first step to ending this injustice is to no longer be silent about what we’ve experienced. The next step is to decarcerate: Our prisons are overpopulated and there is no justifying human rights violations at taxpayers’ expense. As of this writing, 222 people have died in California prisons due to COVID. We must remove the state’s draconian sentencing laws and hold off on new sentencing enhancements until we examine the long-term impacts.

Our legislators must act to reform our prison system. And while I praise Gov. Gavin Newsom for granting commutations, there are still hundreds if not thousands of people who are ready to come home. I implore the governor to grant more commutations to mitigate decades of regressive and racist sentencing laws. Sunday is the one year mark of the San Quentin outbreak — we call on all of you to help us advocate for better treatment of those in the state’s care.