Thanksgiving in Jail: Blues, Blessings

'Choices' helps inmates make change, and supplies the tools for a life that works.

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

Redwood City Patch

November 25, 2011

The pain of incarceration digs deeper on a holiday.

Men on the sixth floor of the Maguire Correctional Facility in Redwood City speak bluntly of the personal costs of lockup on a day like today. Or a parent’s birthday. Or a loved one’s passing.

But if holidays can pack an emotional wallop, these men say they also have plenty to be thankful for: Companionship. Sobriety. Hope.

They are participants in “Choices,” a program of the Delancey Street Foundation.

If he didn't always believe it, today “It’s a blessing to be alive,” said inmate Thomas Blue.

Wednesday, the men sat down to a Thanksgiving dinner of turkey (Bocca burgers for the occasional vegetarian), mashed potatoes, vegetables, cranberries and cake roll.

Each table included a mix of ethnicities; the men chat amiably. And “that’s not something you see in most (jail) pods,” said veteran sheriff’s deputy Robert Brennan.

Choices seeks to rebuild inmates hammered by their own bad choices. In it, inmates learn the most basic of skills -- communication, for starters, and parenting. They take math classes. They make cards and T-shirts.  They can finish high school. They can help one another.

The program motto is “each one, teach one,” and it forges bonds. Everyone is a mentor.

Many never knew a childhood free from desperation and dysfunction; for the first time they are doing the things others did as children, like drawing and painting. Their efforts decorate the walls.

Nearly all the crimes that landed these men here had their roots in addiction, leading not just to petty crimes but sometimes to desperate and savage acts, Brennan said.

“This place transformed me,” said Nick Barbanica. “I’ve seen so many people change. When they first get here, they’re like immigrants coming to a new country.”

No one is assigned; all must choose the program, and meet certain criteria to get in. Primarily, they must eschew violence, including violent language and threatening behavior. They must be clean and sober. And they must commit to shedding the hard shell that comes with street life.

“People here want to change their lives around,” said Cardell Ashley.

They won’t find it an easy ride, said Brennan. Program director Shirley Lamarr, herself an alumna of the streets and the jails, doesn’t fall for bluff and doesn’t settle for halfhearted.

“She doesn’t baby these guys,” he chuckled. “She’s tough.”

For some, this is their second or even third try – like Ashley, who calls himself “a retread.”

“I’m listening this time,” said Daniel Koval. “This time I know I need it.”

The program came about when Mimi Silbert, the president and CEO of Delancey Street, and board member Teri DeLane connected with then-Sheriff Don Horsley. Horsley, now a county supervisor, wanted to provide inmates with an avenue for change, and the tools of a life that works.

Today, the program encompasses nearly 200 inmates in two pods -- one in the men's facility, one in the women's.

Inmates who graduate from this program are three times less likely to be arrested, convicted or incarcerated, according to a study by the San Mateo County Health Department.

“It’s called giving back,” said Blue.

Legislator to investigate prison inmate's death

Contra Costa Times

By Rebecca Rosen Lum

Posted on Sat, Jul. 03, 2004

An aide for Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, said Friday her office intends to investigate the death of a prison inmate from Richmond who had a dental infection so severe that he could not swallow for days before officials sent him to an outside hospital.

A report from the ambulance that took 41-year-old Anthony Shumake from California State Prison Solano in Vacaville to a Manteca hospital on Monday says his neck "was swollen and red in color down to his clavicle ... patient was also spitting up gray sputum." Shumake died hours later at the hospital.

"The way it was handled raises some serious questions," said Hans Hemann, Hancock's chief of staff. "We'll be looking into it very thoroughly. It raises questions about the entire system as well as for this one family, who must be going through unbelievable anguish."

Prison officials said Friday state law forbade them from commenting about a prisoner's medical issues, adding that the facility's medical staff followed procedure after finding they could not properly care for Shumake.

But the death prompted mistrust and criticism from parts of Richmond's political establishment, led by the Rev. Andre Shumake, a prominent Iron Triangle activist and the prisoner's uncle.

Family members said prison officials have told them next to nothing since sending a telegram Tuesday morning informing them that Anthony Shumake had died and that the body would be cremated if they did not retrieve it.

"There has been tremendous negligence. Now it seems like they're trying to cover everything up," the Rev. Shumake said. "They didn't even have the decency to knock on the door."

Prison officials and the San Joaquin Coroner's Office said Friday they would not release the cause of death for several weeks. Several inmates who knew Shumake told the family he died of heart failure.

Prison doctors did not find that Anthony Shumake needed emergency medical care, but did need care the facility could not provide, Department of Corrections Lt. Mary Neade said. So they called for a basic life-support ambulance to take Shumake on a two-hour ride to Doctors Hospital in Manteca, a facility with which the prison contracts.

"When an inmate is sick we try to treat him here. If the ... medical department feels he can't be treated here, we send them out to the hospital," Neade said. "If staff determines he needs immediate attention, they call 911 and he's treated at the nearest hospital."

The ambulance company did not return calls Friday. A hospital spokesman said the cause of death remained officially "undetermined" pending results of the coroner's autopsy and toxicology tests.

Shumake told the ambulance crew that he'd had a tooth pulled six days earlier and that his wound had become infected, according to the report. The swelling in his neck made it impossible for him to eat and difficult for him to breathe.

The private ambulance crew checked Shumake's vital signs three times during the trip and found no significant changes, the ambulance report shows.

It was the second prisoner death of the year at Solano, a medium-security prison housing about 6,000 prisoners, Neade said. In January a terminally ill prisoner died of natural causes at an area hospital.

Records show Shumake was serving a 12-year, eight-month sentence for convictions in 2000 of corporal injury to a spouse, stalking and drug possession, as well as a parole violation from a 1994 attempted robbery conviction.

Reach Rebecca Rosen Lum at 510-262-2713 or rrosenlum@cctimes.com .

Interfaith group works to help incarcerated juveniles

Members say most jailed youths not violent, many suffer from mental illness

By Rebecca Rosen Lum.

McClatchy - Tribune Business News [Washington]

28 Feb 2008

Most incarcerated youths have never committed a violent act, and many suffer from mental illnesses and learning disabilities, says an interfaith group calling for greater awareness of what its members are calling a crisis in juvenile justice.

Christian, Jewish and Muslim congregations drew attention to the problem as part of Juvenile Justice Sabbath over the weekend. Participants prayed, preached, distributed educational materials, hosted outside speakers, and reached out directly to incarcerated youths in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and New York.

"In my own work, I have too many stories to count," said Brian Blalock, youth attorney with Bay Legal Interfaith Project, a co-sponsor of the event.

In 2005, some 223,000 juveniles were arrested in California -- 75 percent for minor offenses such as truancy, curfew violations, and petty theft.

Three-quarters of all incarcerated youth suffer from learning disabilities, but few receive services, Blalock said. Confined youths have higher rates of untreated mental illness and are more likely to have been subjected to sexual abuse and domestic violence than their peers, Blalock said.

"Those are the issues of the parents and grandparents as well,” said the Rev. Charles Tinsley, chaplain at the Contra Costa County Juvenile Hall. “You have folks with mental health issues, folks who are illiterate, folks who have learning problems."

But what does faith have to do with it? And what can faith groups do to turn the tide?

Firstly, faith engenders comfort and concern, said Tinsley. In addition, it provides a lens through which people see public policy and cast votes.

"For a lot of people, the kids are out of sight and mind, and people vote out of fear,” he said. "Given certain interventions -- love, support, education -- we can look and see the themes of all the major religions: forgiveness, restoration."

The group is hoping the event spurs discussion and motivates congregants to reach out to young people in the detention system, said a youth minister and theological student who preached about the subject Sunday.

"That in California we can have a 14-year-old sentenced to life, it's sickening," said Corbin Davis of Sycamore Congregational Church UCC in El Cerrito. "If you've ever been to one of these hearings, they are like a cattle call. It's so hard to believe we continue to use this outdated system. We tell them implicitly and explicitly that they have no value."

Davis worked with inner-city youths in Colorado in a “restorative justice” program that helped young offenders take responsibility for offenses and make restitution. For a petty theft at a store, the offender might help stock or clean up on his own time, Davis said.

"Our church has a long-standing tradition as seeing the Christian faith as a call to action," he said. "For us, faith is a verb, something that calls us forward. I've always felt a deep connection with a Christianity that speaks for the voiceless."

Synagogues and mosques are participating. The Council on American-Islamic Relations talked about the plight of confined youths in its newsletter. Representatives also e-mailed, called and visited mosques in the Bay Area, said Mahruk Hasan, a civil rights coordinator. Many religious leaders agreed to make the juvenile justice system the theme of the Friday night "khutbah," or sermon.

Bay Legal Interfaith project began charting plans for the Sabbath last year in connection with the national Youth Law Center and Faith Communities for Families and Children.

In particular, the Sabbath focused on the rising number of people as young as 14 being tried and sentenced as adults, often for a first offense.

"You've got a system that's not about putting itself out of business," Tinsley said.

When a boy named Jeremiah came into Tinsley's life, "he was a little 13-year-old with next to nothing in his life. There was no home at home. He came with an awful lot of baggage."

His older brothers stumbled into lives of crime and landed in prison. But the Contra Costa Juvenile Court appointed Tinsley and his wife guardians, and the couple cared for Jeremiah for six years. Today, he is a working, married man and a testament to the value of intervention.

But the faithful need not adopt children to make a difference: "There are all kinds of programs out there that are minimally funded," Tinsley said. "There are all kinds of programs out there in need of volunteers."

Rebecca Rosen Lum covers religion. Reach her at 925-977-8506 or rrosenlum@bayareanewsgroup.com.

Credit: The Argus, Fremont, Calif.

'Windward' and wayward justice: Author's account of torture at Guantanamo Bay is a sobering read

Contra Costa Times
By Rebecca Rosen Lum
Times staff writer

Nov. 25--In his important new book "Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side," Clive Stafford Smith tracks the perfect storm of haste, incompetence and cruelty that conspired to imprison and methodically brutalize hundreds of hapless detainees of Guantanamo Bay -- in some cases for years.

President George W. Bush has maintained that the men housed at Guantanamo Bay were the most violent in the world, "picked from the battlefield in Afghanistan."

But like the interrogators he quotes, lawyer Stafford Smith concludes that a slim minority of the detainees had any link to violence, al-Qaeda or radical Islam. "I never believed the military would get it as wrong as they have," Stafford Smith writes.

A page-turner named for the transport that takes Stafford Smith to his clients, "Eight O'Clock Ferry" has the momentum of a political thriller. In fact, John le Carre praises "Eight O'Clock Ferry" on the book jacket.

We meet Binyam Mohamed as he vomits from a beating administered by three men in black masks. A so-so student who joined a mosque near his home in England in hopes that it could help him stay clean and sober, Mohamed was passing through Pakistan when he was arrested.

Sami al-Laithi was a journalist nabbed for crossing the border into Afghanistan while on assignment. Certain that he was an "enemy combatant," soldiers would fracture his vertebrae during a "forcible cell extraction" at Guantanamo.

Aftershock

Stafford Smith, an Englishman who has devoted much of his career to defending death-row inmates in the American South, is not the first to chastise Bush for squandering the enormous good will he enjoyed after the 9/11 terror attacks.

That evaporated shortly after ill-considered sweeps of suspected enemy combatants dispensed with the due process that characterizes the West, he writes.

He said the rush to incarcerate had much to do with the nation's shock at being invaded for the first time since 1812. That haste ensured students, business owners, academics and youths as young as 11 would fill the cells.

Reward monies of $5,000 per head guaranteed that in Pakistan, where the average income is $720 a year, young men with Arabic names and faces would be eagerly handed over to American authorities, he argues.

"Many of my clients in Cuba had insisted that, far from being captured on the battlefield of Afghanistan, they had been seized in Pakistan and (sold) to the Americans like slaves at auction," Stafford Smith writes.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf wrote in his own memoir that his country "earned bounties totaling millions of dollars."

Stafford Smith also quotes CIA operatives, aghast at how little the "enemy combatants" knew.

"Only like 10 percent of the people at Guantanamo are really dangerous (and) should be there, and the rest are people that don't have anything to do with it," says one. "They don't even understand what they're doing here."

Growing skepticism

Stafford Smith enlivens clean prose with a dark wit. His descriptions of life at Guantanamo, where driving over an iguana triggers a $10,000 fine, are drolly comic. And the violent passages sting with merciless detail -- such as when soldiers take a blade to the genitals of his client, Binyam Mohamed.

"Westerners think that they are inured to violence," Stafford Smith writes. "They think they see it all in the movies, but most have never come close to a rib-fracturing, concussion-inducing physical beating."

Undoubtedly, many will ask whether torture does deter an imminent attack. Stafford Smith put this question to those who claim to know. What he finds is that while academics are more likely to argue for the value of torture, interrogators harbor considerable skepticism.

"Within 48 hours the enemy will know that the prisoner has been taken and will already have taken steps to minimize the predicted dissemination of intelligence," veteran intelligence interrogator "Big Bill" Cowan says.

The nation is already exporting the horrors of Guantanamo to clandestine locations through rendition -- 500 in Afghanistan, 200 in Kandahar, more than 12,000 in Iraq, an unknown number elsewhere in secret prisons, Stafford Smith writes.

He quotes a State Department lawyer who said a colleague admitted that the administration was on the lookout for "the legal equivalent of outer space."

For the United States, the only nation to insist on trials for the architects of Nazism -- Winston Churchill voted for summary executions -- Guantanamo represents a sharp and heartbreaking reversal of course.

False admissions

Even while the administration voiced its support for Akbar Ganji, an imprisoned Iranian journalist on a hunger strike, soldiers were strapping down detainees at Guantanamo, inserting 43-inch feeding tubes through their noses, then forcefully pulling them out.

Those who resigned themselves to compromises in human rights after 9/11 might pay special heed to the case of Binyam Mohamed, who was beaten so badly, so often, that he blurted out whatever he thought his captors wanted to hear. They wanted to hear that he had been in on a meeting with Jose Padilla, a Chicago man the government alleged was nursing plans to detonate a "dirty bomb."

"When a criminal suspect is coerced into falsely confessing it is an enormous tragedy," Stafford Smith writes. "But when someone like Binyam is coerced into confessing about a radioactive bomb plot, the resulting panic filters into the lives of millions of people around the planet. It does not only result in the conviction of a potentially innocent man, but can change government policy, too."

A history of Russian Jewry with memory at its core

by REBECCA ROSEN LUM, Bulletin Staff

In “Imagining Russian Jewry: Memory, History, Identity,” Steven Zipperstein has embraced a history beyond events, exploring how those who left have mentally revisited the land of their origins.

In this deceptively slim volume, Zipperstein examines the psyche of history and historians. He gives history an added dimension by looking at the feelings and perceptions of those who have lived it or written about it.

“There is meaning in perception and imagination,” said Zipperstein, professor of Jewish culture and history, and director of Jewish studies, at Stanford University. “These are people’s dreams and need to be taken seriously -- very profound things: hard to get at, yet important to get at.”

He begins by exploring novels, from the early decades of this century when works were characterized by an utter rejection of the old country to the mid-1950s, when a “warm subversion of the facts” suffused literature, creating a rich, lacy memory of shtetl life.

“My interest here is in what American Jewish writers saw, or thought they saw, across the waters from their rooftops,” he said.

It will strike a powerful chord for those whose parents were eager to extricate themselves from their past, excising all vestiges of the newly embarrassing manners, language and culture.

“A lot of what I really wanted to explore was the silences, explicit silences,” Zipperstein said. “The move was so wrenching, people were so often left behind, and there was consequently so much guilt. You made a choice to leave. And we all know how easy it is to feel guilty even if there’s no real reason to. So, they pictured (Russia) as completely stark to justify why they left. And that need became more acute after the Holocaust.”

The book began to take shape in his mind during a 1993 visit to Russia and while teaching in Poland in 1995-1996.

While in Russia, Zipperstein unearthed the massive and unindexed archival files of Piotr Marek, a Russian Jewish historial who died in 1920. Town maps, diaries and volumes of letters had been stuffed into unmarked envelopes in no order.

Put together, the papers provided an intimate picture of childhood and community life, schooling and gender issues, including the lives and education of young girls, previously unavailable to historians. That picture provided a rich and telling counterpoint to the transmogrifying memories of transplanted Jews and their chroniclers.

The novels of Anna Yezierska provide the foreground for this discussion. In “Bread Givers,” she proves the relationship between a young Jewish woman and her father – a brutal, scholarly patriarch who is unwilling (no doubt, unable) to adapt himself to America and who expects his wife and daughters to satisfy his needs. In “Red Ribbon on a White Horse,” the culture’s treatment of women – shabby, by Yezierska’s earlier accounts -- is barely noted.

In a much more academic second chapter, “Reinventing the Cheder,” Zipperstein describes the usually dim, airless and frigid schoolhouses in which a captive audience of young boys spent as much as nine hours a day.

The melameds responsible for schooling the children were wretchedly inadequate teachers. Illness and untimely death were common. Yet, the most vehement critics became ardent defenders during a period of reform after the turn of the century.

“It was widely believed that a dangerous cultural slippage was taking place,” he writes.

In Odessa, where by the late 1870s most Jewish-owned business were open on the Sabbath, with observance shriveling to perfunctory ritual. In the family of a successful exporter, “the only moment of true passion he recalled was the terror that gripped his family at the prospect of economic catastrophe during the Turko-Prussian War of 1877-1878, when the outlet from the Black Sea was closed and grain shipments were disrupted.”

Rich in historical detail, the book is also enormously personal.

“This book was built around three main concerns,” he said. “To give readers a fairly intimate glimpse of what it is to write Jewish history, to suggest a clear sense of how Russian Jewry has been seen by historians and others, and the way historians have influenced perceptions beyond their desks.”

“Imagining Russian Jewry: Memory, History, Identity,” by Steven Zipperstein (139 pages, University of Washington Press, $14.95).