This story was told by a person incarcerated at Donovan.
UCI: And how have you been coping with the crisis?
Caller: Well staying, well staying positive, I guess. Myself, I’m a Christian so I pray a lot of course. I pray, exercise, exercise will be probably the biggest thing. Oh and the other thing is that the college classes that I-
The class, the classes, the class assignments are pretty good, they’re keeping me busy.
UCI: Yeah, that’s good.
Caller: Yeah that was good thing. And I, everybody have to, kind of, do your own thing you got to know how to cope with it I believe. And I myself, I’m serving life without, I’ve been incarcerated over 20 years, I’ve been in worse situation. I’ve been under lockdown, two man cell, for nine months so, I think I’m coping okay. Yeah, I build a tolerance.
UCI: Yeah definitely. What else do you want people to know about your experience?
Caller: I want people to understand that, we are very, we are in a very vulnerable situation and I- I know people out there are suffering from many social interaction restriction and other normal things that you cannot do. I want people to take encouragement from what we going through here. Such as lockdown situation right now we facing in California. This is something we go through everyday myself been through past 20 some years.
And there’s always light at the end of the tunnel. And always have to just stay positive and think positive.Things change and we are, we are, we are resilient, I mean we adapt to new environment situations so if I have any, if this recording to reach to people out there, I want to encourage people out there I don’t have much complaining, what it is right now. Yeah, we just got to learn to accept the new things and adapt to the new norms.
UCI: Okay well thank you so much for participating in PrisonPandemic. We are out here thinking about you. We hope the situation gets better. And I’m not sure if you know we have a P.O. box?
Caller: Oh, okay. I think I’m not sure, asked me to mention him, anyway he has, he has, give me the P.O. box address so I do have it.
UCI: OK yeah. Feel free to, you can send us anything and I’m not sure if we’re going to be sending out a newsletter but that might be a thing, but feel free to use the P.O. box and send us anything.
Caller: Okay, I will do that.
UCI: Okay, thank you so much. We’re thinking about you and we hope it gets better.
Caller: Thank you. Oh, one more thing.
UCI: Sure.
Caller: My friend asked me to mention this. As I mentioned earlier, I’m serving life without possibility of parole. And I been programming and I was up for governor’s commutation of 2018. And my, my application was before to California Supreme Court by, Jerry Brown and it was, it was denied by court because I, I’m not really sure, but people was saying it’s, it’s a political move. However, I, my supporters just created an online petition and I wanted to ask you guys if you guys could support my online petition and it’s under change.org. Free, free-
UCI: How do you spell your name?
Caller: [redacted] yes, so you guys can learn more about me online and about the petition. And that’s it.
UCI: Okay sure, I’ll be, I’ll be sure to let them know.
Caller: Thank you, thank you for you guys doing this. A lot of people wanted to be heard.
UCI: Yeah.
Caller: And I will post a poster by the phone with your phone numbers.
UCI: Thank you so much.
Caller: A lot of peoples doesn’t know about this phone number. No problem and keep up the good work.
UCI: Thank you so much.
Caller: Thank you for your time.
UCI: Take care.
Caller: You too. Bye-bye.
