What Green Looks Like Behind Prison Walls

Inmates plan sustainable living projects based on land, water and energy usage within San Quentin

Walking into San Quentin State Prison’s imposing East Gate entrance feels a bit like entering a medieval fortress with clanging ironwork doors and dark passageways. Inside California’s oldest and most famous prison, however, is a light-filled courtyard with tended gardens and a bustle of activity. In October, I found myself inside this surprisingly cheery prison courtyard to attend the graduation of inmates from the Green Life project, a permaculture-based self-sufficiency, and eco-literacy program, peer-led by former Green Life graduates and facilitated by Green Life director Angela Sevin.

Angela Sevin and the Green Life graduatesPhoto by Nate MerillGreen Life graduates and project director Angela Sevin. The creative, practical, and inspired projects the graduates chose, embody what one graduate called “ecological reconciliation” with their environment.

The smiling faces which met us at the prison chapel, where the graduation ceremony was held, included inmates graduating the program who presented their sustainable living project proposals, the culmination of 18 months of meeting together as a cohort. The Green Life program challenges the men to look at the interrelationships between natural and social systems and apply that lens to their own world and sphere of influence. Not an easy task inside a prison where your daily routine, including what and when you eat, drink, and sleep is decided for you.

The creative, practical, and inspired projects the graduates chose, embody what one graduate called “ecological reconciliation” with their environment. They made me sense that there was another type of reconciliation being sought as well. To have the time and opportunity to contemplate the choices we make and our impact on the world feels like a luxury for most, but in prison, it’s a daily imposed reality. To propose a right way, or even an improved way, of living on the earth through our personal choices is a means of restoring relationship, contributing to a solution and being of good use. This is vital for a person who has been paying the price of past mistakes for decades and has lost the right to participate in society.

Not quite knowing what to expect, the first presentation by Wesley Eisiminger and Lynn Beyett on their water catchment proposal for harvesting rain off the San Quentin facility roofs, surprised me by its simplicity and elegance. The prison yard dries out as does the gardens tended by inmates in the dry summer months. These men saw a practical need around them and its impact on their friends which inspired their proposal. They estimated that, with the administration’s permission and some outside help, they could install five, 2,000-gallon storage tanks, alleviating summer water usage for gardens, the baseball field, and laundry needs.

Other presentations followed outlining an aquaponics system on the prison grounds that would combine fish farming with plant cultivation, a compost collection program that would use wheeled trash cans, and a referral website for providing the public with fact-based information on the actual green claims of commercial products. Some of the projects were not so straightforward but most of them were close-to-home — based on land, water, energy usages and life within San Quentin.

Some proposals, were a bit more creatively personal Graduate Seth Harding, for instance, demonstrated the right way of walking — bent knees and toes turned out, the way we did for 2.3 million years, before we had shoes that separated us from the ground beneath us. Harding referred to it as “theatrical stage walking,” being light on your feet and floating from above the hips. He reminded us that our feet liberated our hands for better things, and not to take walking upright for granted.

Graduate Samuel Hearnes spoke about “our greatest form of renewable energy, our relationships with each other”, highlighting that as long as we tear each other down through backbiting and gossip, we will never care enough to save our planet. Hearnes urged a renewal of our commitment to each other and a reinvestment in our relationships, which he modeled right then and there through his reconciliation and forgiveness with some of the men in the group. His words had me in tears as I realized I too, was guilty of judging others and inadvertently adding to their psychological burden in an already turbulent world.

Looking at these men, some of whom like Hearnes, are close to my own age and have spent more of their life inside jail than out, I was convinced that we waste too much time worrying about discovering our purpose, or how can we do something worthy and greater than ourselves, when there’s 10,000 opportunities to take action all around us.

As the graduates presented their ideas and what they learned in the program, along with their desire to apply ecological principles to improve the environment around them, their pride, resolution, and eagerness was obvious and contagious. When I spoke with the men after the ceremony, each one talked of their plans for post-release, of how they want to start giving back to their families and communities. All of them had plans to find a job, or start a business, and apply what they had learned inside. Listening to each of them elaborate on their proposal to improve some aspect of prison life or their personal life, I came away inspired to make changes in how I live my life as well.

To learn more about Earth Island Institute’s Green Life project or if you would like to support any of these viable ideas for sustainable projects inside San Quentin, contact Green Life Project Director Angela Sevin at angela4change@gmail.com . Donations can be made here.

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