• Issue #11
• "Message In a Bottle"
• April 2023

Update:

Hey everyone. Wow this has been an amazing month! Lots to report on.

Several weeks ago Juan, Tomas and I were asked to participate on a reentry work group. The DOC appointed a new reentry specialist who seems really motivated and he asked a bunch of longer term guys to help him build a series of workshops on reentry. We spent some time working on it and actually had a couple. Unfortunately, internal politics reared their ugly head and the project got shut down. But we learned a ton. First of all the state of reentry in DOC is a mess. The guys we worked with who are getting out soon (DOC limits services to those who have 6 months or less to go) were just lost. There is no consolidated resource guide for them. In the era where every prisoner is given a tablet that had hundreds of video games, a phone and email capacity, reentry is still using outdated, poorly photocopied packets that list available resources for a county. They have one for about 6 of the 39 counties in WA. But the guys were so hungry for help and our hearts really went out to them. We came away from the experience more dedicated than ever to build EARN. Once the politics get worked out we are slated to provide several workshops including ones on business planning, communication, and finance.

In other news, we are two weeks into processing the food waste here at WCC! We had to basically take a do it all approach to make it happen so our days start at 3:45 am when we head to the kitchen and process food until 7:30. Then we head to the SPL where we work until 2:30 pm. Then we take a short break and head back to the kitchen at 3:15 until 6:30 pm! We made a bunch of posters and plastered them around the chow hall explaining the importance of food waste diversion and we have been standing at the sorting bins we made and helping guys seperate as we share with them why we are doing this project. The response has been amazing. There are always a few negatives but for the most part, guys are getting it and a lot of them thank us. We stressed that we wanted to make it a positive experience and not a directive and its working! It is amazing how effective extending kindness and encouragement is in this place and how rarely it is used. We are just getting started but we diverted over 10,000 pounds in our first two weeks and despite being a bit exhausted it is going great.

But the really big news is that we got a visit from Chuck Henry and Sally Brown! Kelli Bush from SPP brought them in for a tour and meeting on our project. It would be hard to express in words how phenomenal it was to see them. After nearly three years of Covid seperation and isolation it was so great to be around a part of our community and to be with people we know love us. When we got back to our cells we had full hearts and spent the evening talking about all the cool stuff we want to do when we get out.