Elena Blogs for a Change

"A correctional officer closes the main gate at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, California, on July 9th."  (Eric Risberg/AP) The Washington Pos t 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.  Read it here:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/op

Andrea Dew Steele is the founder of Emerge, an organization that arms aspiring women leaders with the tools and training they need to win elections. Since its founding in 2002, Emerge has trained more than 4,000 Democratic women to run for office. Earlier in her career, Andrea worked on Capitol Hill as a policy analyst and also helped raise money for Democratic candidates. How did you first get involved in politics? I started volunteering for a campaign while I was in high school and was bit by the political bug.  I decided that if I wanted to impact the world, working in politics would enable me to have the biggest impact.  I loved being involved in campaigns right from the beginning.  Making calls and knocking on doors may seem like low level work, but I enjoyed feeling like I was part of a team that was working to elect someone who could dramatically impact peoples lives. What inspired you to create Emerge? Why should gender matter when it comes to politics? A friend of mi