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Washington Post Amplifies the Voices of Journalists at San Quentin: Joe Garcia on Covid in Prison

"A correctional officer closes the main gate at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, California, on July 9th." 
(Eric Risberg/AP) The Washington Post

San Quentin State Prison recently suffered a deadly outbreak of Covid-19 after a mass transfer of inmates from an infected prison in Southern California. As of July 27, 2,000 San Quentin inmates and prison workers have been infected and 15 people have died. 

In 2017, I interviewed Yukari Iwatani Kane, co-founder of the Prison Journalism Project who was teaching journalism at San Quentin State Prison at the time. I also shared an essay about racism in prisons written by one of her students, Jesse Vasquez. This week, the Washington Post published an account by inmate Joe Garcia, who is a staff member of the San Quentin News and editorial liaison for the Prison Journalism Project, in which he describes what it's like to be living in San Quentin during the Covid outbreak. 

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