This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Chino.
And within two weeks I tested positive for COVID-19, had a fever, lost my voice, sore throat, but I didn’t really get very sick. And I was put down as high risk to die because of my underlying conditions.
They acted like they moved us to protect us, but really it was just shuffling people around, with no real plan, or way to stop the virus. The guys that were sent here to San Quentin, in the name of protecting them, were the reason 29 guys at San Quentin ended up dying. 28 here died, two-thirds of us have gotten it. I’ve been moved from yard to yard to yard, back to yard, from cell to cell to cell, three months like that, tested positive twice, shut away in a cell with no yard, at times not even showers, for weeks. And it got hard, mentally, to keep positive.
April 30th, a three-month nightmare began. And when we came back to this yard in late July, like July 28th, we were put in tents on the yard. Four months of living in tents. We had to be evacuated due to a really high winds at one point. It was crazy. The winds blew our tent walls in and we had to leave all our stuff and be evacuated, back to cells with no power. And wow. It was hectic, surreal.
And during all of this, we’re still in prison so at times the guard turn a natural disaster into punishment, at the slightest hint of us not obeying them or whatever, or questioning the unjust treatment. I’ve done a lot of hard time. And I’m not a whiner, but when I got moved back to the unit I left from April, I was so relieved.
Out of the tents, back to somewhere normal, I’m praying that I don’t got it again. They test us every week.
