This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Fire Camps.
March 2021
Sunday
Dear PrisonPandemic,
It’s currently hot in this dorm I’m in. It’s hot, not only because maintenance has more than likely turned the heat up, but it’s also because there’s 32 bodies in the dorm I’m in.
What I’m saying is that there’s no such thing as social distancing, and it never really was since the epidemic started! All that was done at this institution I’m currently in, was just the moving around of some lockers and some bunks.
Let me interject and say to you that the first letter I wrote to you, I stated that I would write down my experience regarding this pandemic in pieces. The idea was to attempt to brainstorm, organize the items of my brainstorming, and to attempt to fashion my letter to you as a report.
I’m doing that, there would be too much of a gap in the divulgence of my story so I’ll just go off the top of my head. With the hopes that you could make some sense of what I’m attempting to articulate to you.
What occurred to me, while mentioning to you how hot it is in this dorm, and how many bodies that are in my dorm, that my current environment has components to be an incubator for the COVID-19. Wouldn’t you think?
In the dorms, we are rarely ever at any time, three feet apart from each other in the sleep area of the dorm. What is concerning me is that those who have taken the Moderna vaccine get sick from the vaccine. And the potential of the reaction to the vaccine can possibly be passed to someone else.
Luckily or through divine intervention, I haven’t contracted the virus, nor have I allowed myself to be inoculated with the vaccine. Which the vaccine that is being offered is the Moderna vaccine.
I’m mentioning my refusal of taking the vaccine is because after watching the news and them reporting on Moderna’s side effects, and the death that occurred behind it, I’m just not so quick to want to willfully inoculate myself. Especially after being around and living with inmates who have already been infected by COVID-19 and survived.
Currently, I’ve talked to two inmates in my dorm who have told me that they’ve been infected with the virus, it ran its course, and then took the two runs of shots of the Moderna vaccine? If I were infected once, why would I want to inoculate myself again? Baffling!
Since this epidemic hit in March of last year, I’ve probably taken more than 15 tests; testing me for COVID-19. Each time I receive a piece of paper with negative results. And the paper is just becoming more clutter with all the rest of the paper being swapped around here by this institution.
My job assigned is being a kitchen worker. My job assignment is considered as a critical work as well as those who work along with me in the kitchen.
At the Sierra Conservation Center, which is what we all refer to as Jamestown, has three yards: I’m on the A side, also called Calervaras. On this side, it’s mostly level one inmates who will soon be, if not already, eligible to go to camp.
There are a few lifers who will soon be suitable to be released into society, who are on this yard, but not so many. On the B side, which is where most inmates are level two is also called Mariposa.
There are more lifers there because most of them have received many years. The last yard is the C yard, called Tuolome. This yard is where the segregated housing unit is held and the SNY (Sensitive Need Yard) is.
To make a long story short, damn near all of Mariposa B side was infected with the virus. Those that were older and at risk were moved to the segregation unit that is on the Tuolome C side.
Individual who work in the kitchen such as myself, were working up to 16 hours a day. And getting threatened with disciplinary actions if they took any days off meaning: they- we worked seven days a week.
For the sake of time, I’ll end this letter to be continued.
Signed.
