COVID-19: What's happening in US prisons? | Shaka Senghor | Big Think Edge

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Welcome everyone to the Big Think live webinar. Today's topic is COVID-19 in prison: the crisis behind bars. I am Peter Hopkins, the president and co-founder of Big Think, and I will be moderating today's discussion. I just want to say we were having a couple of technical difficulties which delayed the start of today's webinar, so bear with us. If anyone has recommendations for a good livestream broadcasting platform, just put them in the comments of whatever platform you're joining us through: YouTube, Facebook. We could use it anyway.

Without further ado, our guest today is Jacques Ed. Shaka is the president of Shaka Senghor Inc. and the New York Times bestselling author of "Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in American Prison." He is a content creator and consultant focused on shifting societal narratives through storytelling and developing workshops with high entertainment value and deep social impact. He is the founder of the soon-to-be-launched Redeemed Soul initiative, which we will discuss a bit later in the conversation.

And without further ado, I'd like to welcome Shaka. Shaka, thank you so much for joining us.

Now, just a couple of housekeeping notes for the audience: if you are new to Big Think Live, we are going to spend about four to five minutes with Shaka today. Then there will be an exclusive segment at the end just for our subscribers to our Edge learning platform, where Jacques will walk us through a lesson drawn from his experience in solitary confinement and how he dealt with that for four years.

Wherever you're joining us: YouTube, Facebook, the Big Think platforms, please feel free to add your questions to the comment section. We've got editors who are watching all the platforms and will be feeding questions in. Around halfway through the session, we'll segue over to audience questions exclusively. We've got a lot to cover today, so let's dive right in.

Shaka, in preparing for this discussion, I stumbled on some really shocking statistics. The most bold-faced of which is that as of yesterday, eight of the ten largest and fastest growing hotspots for COVID-19 are our prisons. The other two are one in a meatpacking plant in South Dakota that has received so much attention and the other is the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which we've also seen. But the other eight are all prisons in different states.

Can you give us a sense of what is going on right now in America's prisons as it relates to this pandemic?

I think we're just sitting on a humanitarian crisis powder keg right now. It's gonna really blow up in our face if we don't really step back and say, "Okay, how do we help get as many people out of it as possible, and how do we make sure that the people who are there get the resources that they need to be able to take care of themselves?" One of those prisons on the list, Lakeland Correctional Facility in Michigan, is a prison that I would actually add. Kind of three of the men I grew up with are in prison.

So I'm taking calls for them every day. They're talking about what they're experiencing. In fact, I just got a letter today from one of my guys on the inside just expressing what he's feeling right now. You know, it's very scary times. I think this is an opportunity for us to either be courageous or cowardly, and it's really up to us to choose. But if we sit back and we just allow this virus to continue to spread in that environment, we're gonna have thousands upon thousands of deaths on our hands. At some point, you're gonna have to step back, look at ourselves, and see it and say, "Why did we allow this to happen?"

We actually have audio from a couple of conversations you've had with friends who are currently incarcerated. Let's tee up one of them. The first one, and we'll listen to it, and afterwards I want you to give context as to what their concerns are.

Absolutely. Going out—well, he pretty much sums it all up. Tell us about him, tell us about what you've been hearing.

Yeah, so that's a friend of mine I've known since 1991 when I first entered prison. At that point, he had already had about three or four years, and his name is—we call him Junior. He's been in prison since he was 15. He actually worked on overturning the juvenile lifer law with Governor Synthesis in Michigan. Unfortunately, retroactively, he didn't benefit from the law; you know, he should have been out of prison some years ago.

So he has over 30 years in prison now. He’s a very brilliant, very thoughtful writer and speaker. That was a call from a couple of weeks ago. The circumstances have even gotten worse since that time. They have, you know, stopped running the chow line and they're bringing the food to the units. The numbers there, I mean, Lakeland Correctional Facility is on that list of top ten hotspots, and so the numbers there are unbelievable.

And, you know, that's the current environment that they are in, and many of my other friends as well.

Help paint a picture for people. I mean, obviously everyone has an image of what life in prison is like, but as it relates to the things that we have to be doing—wearing masks, washing our hands, social distancing—paint a picture for us.

It's very tough. You know, the reality is that most people in our society really don't understand how our systems are structured. So imagine if you will, every state has its own prison system, and then within that prison system, there are security levels. No prison looks exactly alike, so at the lower levels, which is where Lakeland is—it's just like medium security—there are cubicles.

There's not even, you know, cells. There are six to eight men, in some cases up to 30 men in a cubicle setting, which means that there are bunk beds in an open-air environment and they're less than, you know, four feet apart. You can basically reach out of your bed and touch the next person's bed. And all of them are bunk beds, so that means there's somebody beneath you and then somebody typically on each side of you, with maybe a locker in between.

And then you're talking about, you know, all the things that we're not considering, like showers. You know, you go to the showers, you know, one of the prisons that I got a call from, it’s ninety-six guys to the tier that’s on each wing, and then there are four showers. And the four showers are in two shower stalls, so there are two showers side-by-side on one floor, two shower stalls set aside on the bottom floor, and then it's a communal bathroom. So they're all sharing the same sinks, which is typically in most units, is four sinks for like almost every hundred guys.

So it’s 25 guys to a sink basically, and the same thing with toilets. So it's almost impossible to keep those environments sanitized, and, you know, turn and bacteria-free.

I couldn't hear anything you said, but I'll just keep talking until we get the voice back.

Oh my, I'm sorry, sorry, I—no one could hear me. Apologies, apologies. I was just saying we were going to queue up another audio clip in conversation with a friend.

What we're hearing near what the response is may be worse than the problem that's exacerbating what's going on. What sense do you have of the interventions being taken and what's working, and what, you know, maybe is totally counterproductive?

Well, the reality is that what's happening in prison reflects the reality of the world that we were just not prepared for a pandemic at any rate. And so with that being the reality, you can imagine that the prisons are grossly under-resourced. My heart really goes out to the healthcare workers in that environment. You know, in one prison, there's ten nurses to 1,200 men.

So, you know, the reality is there's just not a lot of resources inside, and so we've been kind of offsetting that by doing what we can out here to raise, you know, funds to actually get the resources on the inside. And so that's the reality of what's going on: we just don't have the structure in place to, you know, prepare anyone for something of this magnitude that we're seeing play out in real time on, you know, prison yards throughout the country.

And, you know, when you look at the way that the country, you know, in general handles a pandemic where everything was kind of delayed, you're trying to figure out what's happening, so that puts everything in prison even further behind because that wasn't a priority. Now we have all these hotspots on our hands, and you know, it's just a really tragic situation that's happening right now.

What is the atmosphere like on the inside? What are people thinking, who you know, like your friend who you said, you know, should have been released by now and has, you know, worked to change some of the laws involved in his own very conviction? What's the psychology like if you're sitting in there looking at this and feeling like you're the lowest priority in a, you know, high-stakes situation?

I mean, the most difficult thing for me recently was just, you know, I take calls mostly on Sundays because I'm usually not doing any work. And, you know, just hearing these men that I grew up with in fear for their life and feeling like they’re just trapped in an environment where they're basically just waiting on their turn to contract the virus, and eventually die.

And you know, it's frightening to think that these men have been in prison since they've been kids, and they’re still being hero in this conveyerment when, you know, they're not even a threat to society.

We're hoping that some governors can really start thinking outside of, you know, what's politically comfortable and just do the thing that's right in terms of what it means to be human.

And what specifically does that look like? What would you like the governors to do?

So, compassionate releases I think we should be thinking about, you know, how can we better support people actually staying alive? And, you know, it's an aging population. You know, a lot of these guys went in when they were kids; they're middle-aged men and women now. And, you know, we can set up some structures to get them home and, you know, empower some of these nonprofit organizations that do really work to help support them and coming back to the community in a way that honors their humanity and doesn’t just position them to just die.

You know, like the idea that these men and women are sitting in here basically waiting on this virus to impact their life, you know, it’s devastating. So I think the governors need to act with haste to, you know, mitigate some of these realities.

You've actually spoken a lot about the identity that one is bestowed upon somebody who’s been incarcerated. How does a situation like this play into that? And maybe just talk to us a little bit about that branding and what it means to somebody who's on the inside and then ultimately gets out.

Yeah, I mean for years, you know, we’ve had this long-running campaign utilized by politicians to ensure that they went over to vote. And so basically what they did is they just scared people into not utilizing their critical thinking to really figure out what’s the real furthest system of a very clandestine, you know, it’s a great tragedy to know that at any given time, there are over two and a half million people incarcerated.

Yeah, society doesn't know much about the people—the actual people. They know about some of the crimes and they know about the crimes that get, you know, splashed across the news segments, but those things don't represent the reality of the majority of men and women in those environments.

And the staff was to really, you know, call that curtain back and demand that governors be transparent about what is actually happening to men and women who are coming back to society. Like, over 90% of men and women who were incarcerated will return to society.

What sort of statement do you think it will send if we start seeing mass deaths in prison and people who have gone and been convicted of nonviolent crimes, drug crimes, even some violent crimes suddenly are dying, and improbably are as we speak dying en masse—almost sentenced to death for crimes that are, you know, not ones you normally issue a death sentence for?

Do you think that that's going to be a reckoning for American society?

Absolutely. I mean, I, you know, again, I said this, this is, you know, as my good friend Angela said, this is a humanitarian crisis. I personally see this humanitarian crisis as a powder keg because it’s going to blow up in our face. Like, we have to confront this reality. And what it's going to do, it's really going to tell us who we are as a country.

And you know, it's really sad to think that for decades and actually centuries, we’ve taught ourselves as a superpower, as a leader of the free world, and yet we have this opportunity to exercise a high level of leadership. And if we fail to do that, it's going to be one of those moments in history when we look back with a sense of shame.

And sometimes I don’t even know if we look the same. I mean, you think about the enslavement of people of African descent and, you know, living in a government that just has yet to apologize for all the atrocities. You think about the annihilation of, you know, Indigenous people on this continent and to know that, you know, that happened in real life. Like, that really happened where genocide was basically, you know, a reality for Indigenous people.

And the country has gone on and still, you know, doesn't have the sensitivity to—you know, not even mock, you know, those people. And, you know, by here, a decayed me uses of, you know, team logos and mascots that are offensive.

So, I mean, we lack a level of sensitivity in terms of our humanity, you know, and what it means to treat people of color, marginalized people, poor people. We’re not even for people—people who are living in poverty and people who have been marginalized. The way that we treat them in this country, like, it wouldn't be shocking if we ignore this thing and, you know, Fowler would people die on our lives.

What do you say to those people who say prisons should be our lowest priority, especially during a crisis? That, you know, it’s people who have committed crimes, and you know that just should— you know the resources and the attention should go to, you know, those who have not committed offenses against society.

Well, the reality is there are people in prison who haven’t committed a crime. They’ve been accused of crimes. There's also people in prison who have been convicted of crimes that in the next couple of years may not even be considered a crime.

If you just think about marijuana legislation, where at one point there are tons of people in prison for growing, selling, using marijuana, and now it's a big market primarily that benefits men in America. And that’s just, that’s some facts, right? And, you know, five years ago those things were illegal, and now they're legal, and some people are getting out, and some people are still languishing away, even though it's legal now.

So, you know, you have to think about how prisons are made up of all kinds of people. I don’t make the designation between Biden and AH; by the people, they're people. And, you know, the reality is if you didn’t pay child support, you could be in prison for that. Or if you had a night on the town when you’d had so many drinks and decided to drive, you could be in prison for that.

You can have a printed citizen get released on parole or probation and have an encounter with an officer that isn’t even a crime, but just that encounter can send you back to prison. So people, first of all, need to really understand that our prison systems are made up of a lot of people. But ultimately it's a responsibility issue. If you're going to incarcerate people, then you take on the responsibility of managing their health, well-being, and life.

And when you fail to do that, then you yourself become criminal because you have failed your responsibility to protect not only the people inside that community but in a larger community when people are getting out.

So, you know, though it's our responsibility, you know, you’re all here in society, you can socially distance; you have that freedom, and unfortunately, men and women inside don’t.

And I imagine that extends to the communities that these facilities are in too because the people who work at the prison are going home every night, and they're in there. I imagine there's not much more protection for a warden or, you know, officer in the facility than there are for the inmates.

Well, there’s more protection for the warden because they don’t have to go on the cell block. But for the officers that are working in that environment, I mean, they’re putting their lives at risk.

And even though I was probably incarcerated, my sense of what it means to be human is inclusive of people who work in that environment; like their health is being compromised, their safety is being compromised. It's not just their health.

And it’s a frightening thing to know that these people are on the frontlines in this environment, whether it's the nurses that work inside, correctional officers, or counselors. And people are moving with the level of urgency as required because the other part about it—you know when I keep going back to this powder keg—so there are two things that's gonna happen. One is a lot of people are just going to die because they got, you know, COVID-19.

The other part is as anxiety increases, and, you know, hostilities increase, then the likelihood of these environments erupting into rebellion is real, you know? And that means that you're putting the lives of officers and nurses as well as the men and women on the inside at risk in a way that really isn’t necessary.

Do you have a sense—again, you gauge the temperature of that at least among the institutions that you're still involved with—if we're talking to people? Are we getting close to that in any place?

Well, the men that I've been speaking with, you know, they've been in prison for a very long time, you know, upwards of 30 years. And, you know, the prison that they're at has a lot of aging population, so it tends to be a lot calmer in those environments.

So my biggest concern is an environment where, you know, young men and young women are younger, and, you know, that’s a whole different beast. But even young men where they’re at, you know, that tension is there. You know, some of them have been taken in solitary for refusing to take the basic test. They didn't want to compromise their health.

So the defenses are definitely starting to rise in there.

Talk to us a little bit about the experience of families. What is it like? Meaning obviously you’ve got your inmate population, but each of those people has a network around them. What is it like to be in their shoes where they have a loved one who's in this dangerous environment?

They're now, you know, dealing with this in their own lives as well. They're quarantined, and presumably there’s got to be a major impact that these families are probably disproportionately subject to. Paint the picture there.

Yeah, I mean the families are—you know, they're really struggling. And it’s devastating because they can't go visit; the COGs are limited now. And their ability to support their loved ones is really hard. And then, of course, you know, a lot of the time they don’t have anybody to turn to when things are really difficult.

So I’ve been getting a lot of letters, you know, into my direct messages or my inbox on my social media accounts from family members who are really afraid that their loved one may die. Some people haven't heard from loved ones, and you know, there are some levels to it—that actually died already.

And then they can’t go, you know, get the body and do an accurate burial. So, you know, they’re impacted in ways that, you know, it's just so upsetting to the core of what it means to being, you know, a human being with compassion and empathy.

And when you think about the fright and fear, and then I don’t want to be the victims or, you know, because this is very complex sounds of people who have been victimized in a sense that now something that they may have wished they didn’t have to deal with is now right back at the forefront of their thinking.

So, you know, this impacts all of us in a real way.

And you're a dad. What are your reflections on being a parent at this time? You know, obviously you're not still, you know, incarcerated; you're out. But you know, clearly you have been affected by that experience.

How is that informing how you were helping your son deal with this and how you look at this from the eyes of being a dad?

Yeah, I’m actually happy you asked that because being a dad it’s my favorite thing in the world, you know? And I've, I have three children; two are adults and then I have an eight-year-old son who lives here with me in LA. And now he’s like, you know, he’s my life.

You know, one of the things that we did earlier on is mom and I, even though her and I—we're not together, we still cope in a way that honors our son. So we're constantly talking about the best ways to support him right now. He’s doing his classes virtually with school; he’s kind of self-regulated.

And you know, I’ve been intentional about not forcing some weird structure on him because children are going through it as well. They have anxiety; they're missing their friends, they're missing the ability to move freely. And I'm very thoughtful about that.

So we just get creative, you know? Spending a lot of time outside in the backyard, we've been, you know, playing music and dancing and, you know, creating art, and just doing whatever we can to just stay connected. We’ve been watching sitcoms, which I haven’t had the luxury to do in forever.

So it’s been great to just spend this time with my son. But also to not stress my life. I kind of like his days have to be super structured, and I encourage all parents to give themselves some grace to impermissibly just be—to just be.

Yeah, does that mean you, from your vantage point, you wouldn't—you know, a lot of parents are feeling this stress right now. You have a unique experience as it relates to having to maintain your stress and the stress of your experiences in relationship to your son, a lot?

Right, a little bit more on this idea of embracing the grace. You know, I think that that—at least the parents I know, you know, they're having a hard time doing that. And maybe, you know, getting some sense of how you go about it, given all that you've gone through, that might be helpful.

Yeah, I mean, I start with just thinking about my son’s emotional well-being, you know? And I, you know, realized that the more informed he is, the better his adaptation has been. And, you know, the other part of it is just you know, we live in a world where, you know, if you're an entrepreneur or you work, you know, in the workforce, everything is so structured and regulated in time. It's like eight hours, 40-hour weeks, you know, punch in, punch out.

And, you know, that’s its own stresses. And so now we’re in a space where there isn’t much structure, you know? And the thing is like we’re kind of—it doesn’t have to be. And so I highly encourage parents to intentionally disrupt the structure just to give themselves some permission to breathe.

I mean, we’re only—we're already doing it in some ways, you know? We're hopping on Zoom meetings in t-shirts and dog pants, and we're not dressing up for the office. So, it's just like extending that grace to other areas of life.

You know, some nights I’m just like, you know what? I don’t feel like cooking, you know? I can just eat a bowl of cereal; it’s more than time somewhere in the world.

So taking this super casual approach and just not overthinking everything, you know? And it’s fine. You know, there’s all sorts of social media pressure before—to, you know, you've got to come out of this as a top entrepreneur and then top-suited.

And the reality is, you know, have to do none of those things, you know, because we don’t know when it’s gonna end. So control what you can control in a moment, allow your children to be disruptive, to make noise, to break things, and understand that though—that this thing—we only get one shot at this thing called life.

And, you know, I would rather spend it in joy and bliss with my son, making noise and being a kid, than to be stressed out and trying to over-regulate his anxiety.

You just need to utilize his energy. So, you know, going out for walks.

You know, unfortunately, backyards, we walk around the backyard. Sometimes I do stuff to tire him out, though, at times, you know? We work out and, you know, sometimes we just lie on the couch and just watch marathons of random stuff, you know, animal shows and television.

So I decided to encourage people to get themselves that grace.

Now we're going to move on to some audience questions, of which we have a bunch. But I want to do a little housekeeping first because there are a number of very effective organizations right now doing some valuable work.

For those who are listening, as far as you know, what's going on in the pandemic and prisons, talk a little bit for those who want to help out—who those who want to engage in some way, contribute to this. Can you tell us about a couple of organizations that stand out to you as doing good work and sort of what specifically they're focusing on as far as alleviating some of the pressures of the current situation?

Yeah, I'm really fortunate to be able to work with some incredible organizations both here in LA and California and nationally. Anti-Recidivism Corps, which I used to be the executive director of, are some of the most incredible human beings to go inside prisons. They’re helping men when they come home, healthy and whole.

So a lot of people don’t have transportation, so they're doing, you know, a right-at-home program where they go, pick them up, bring them gloves and masks and, you know, hygiene kits and things they need to just establish themselves in society.

They also just raised money to get, I think it was like 30 or 40 thousand bars of soap distributed in some prisons in California to make sure people could take care of their just their basic hygiene. I also worked in partnership with Reform Alliance, where we were able to get a hundred thousand masks distributed to Rikers Island, prisons in Mississippi, and a couple of county jails in Tennessee.

I'm in the process of building out a platform called Reading, so that's really kind of like a communal space of all these organizations that are doing incredible work around criminal justice and reentry. Ultimately, what it is, it’s kind of like a one-stop shop for donors to come in and basically support whatever organizations awareness here from those organizations that they care about and that they're interested in.

Terrific. Well, our first audience question dev tails perfectly with this because the audience member wants to know for those who cannot donate, who don't have extra dollars to give, what can they do?

One of the things that I think is important is sharing the content we're producing. There's another org that I work with called #Cut50, a brilliant organization that does a lot of national policy, and they're, you know, utilizing the stories to help people think about how do we support people in prison?

So I would say share our social media content, inbox me at any of my social media accounts, send me your email so I can add you to our mailing list. And then we always need resources and just kind of hands-on people that are willing to support some of these programs.

And you know, send me an email, and, you know, we’ll get connected with whatever, you know, ways to plug you in.

Another audience member asks a sort of related question to this, which is the social media point, which is on social media—this person is observing a lot of negativity as you know, relating to stories of COVID in prison, vitriolic statements, people who were, you know, expressing glee at the misfortunate outcomes.

They want to know—this person wants to know how do you make sense of this sort of inhumane outlook on the prison population and almost the sort of sadistic way that certain people in hatred—this person uses the word ‘hatred’—that is projected at that group of people?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I get it all the time. I get like mean inbox messages, and, you know, things of that nature. And I've learned to recognize that hurt people hurt people. And oftentimes when people are showing up, you know, publicly in that way, you know, there's some type of deep hurt that’s happened in their life that makes them feel the things that they feel.

Sometimes they've been a victim of crime, or you know, they have a loved one. And so, you know, the reality is not everybody's gonna agree with my position. And I’ve learned to just ignore those people whenever possible and to not give them a front row in my life, you know?

So, you know, to be honest, we're always going to have people who are racist, bigoted, sexist, misogynistic, you know, mean-spirited, you know, and that's what makes the world go round. It’s just, you know, a fact of life, and I've learned to ignore those people when possible.

Some times I’ll engage publicly because I think it's important for people to see why I have the views that I have. And so dismantling some of those ignorant views through facts and statistics and data is really important.

So, you know, those people are going to show up, and we just got to keep showing up. I think there are way more good people in the world, and unfortunately the bad tends to get a lot more attention.

So I would just say continue to support people who are doing the work and continue to just tell these positive stories.

You're about to celebrate your 10th anniversary of getting out in June, if I'm not mistaken. How has the last 10 years been for you? How would you characterize the last 10 years as far as the crusade to realize some meaningful criminal justice reform in this country? Where are we between the time you walked out and today?

Well, I walked out of prison, the narrative was punished, punished, punished. Tough on crime. And you know I've been able to work in with a lot of people. You know, I’ve worked with the MIT Media Lab as a directors fellow to raise awareness about criminal justice. I’ve spoken at TED during that 30th year anniversary and introduced my story to the world in that way. I'm a writer; you know, I wrote a book to help people understand how so many people end up in prison.

But the most success has come in collaboration with other people, and I'm a big advocate of that. Like, none of us can do this alone. You know, we've all contributed in different ways—worked with Ben Jealous through the various organizations that he's co-founded with Jessica Jackson; I worked at 50 for some years on, you know, changing policies and just being kind of like the humanizing voice of all the legislative brilliance that they were able to execute.

You know, they got the First Step Act passed. They got, you know, dignity for women, you know, it become a national campaign. And the Day of Empathy and other—this stuff wouldn’t have happened without people like that.

You know, I've been able to work with Anti-Recidivism Corps and helping people come home to an environment that nurtures the best of them and that sees their assets as opposed to their liabilities. And so it’s been tremendous, you know? I've been in a really reflective mode lately thinking about my contributions.

I mean, I got Oprah Winfrey discussing prison and giving voice to people who come from, you know, the background that I come from. And you know, I’ve been able to, you know, open up that President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper even and just talk about criminal justice in general.

And I mean, like, it’s so many people who have contributed to where we’re at today. My personal life reflections is, like, wow, you know? It’s been some years; I went by really quickly. You know, I have way more gray in my beard than I had when I walked out.

But, you know, I'm happy to be home, you know? I'm happy to reflect on these ten years. I was working on a big ten-year celebration; I don’t know what that’s going to look like now. It'll probably be some type of online format, and you know I’ll likely raise some money to support some of the organizations that I care about.

But, you know, it’s one of those things where, you know, I remember not thinking I was ever getting out of prison, so to be sitting here in my home, you know, ten years later is, you know, just incredibly—I mean, from my perspective, seeing all that you’ve achieved in the last ten years is testament in and of itself to reevaluating our approach to justice.

Because if there are people like you sitting behind bars, we’ve done something wrong. But, another question from audience members which sort of gets to the idea in your communication, in your storytelling, and all of these activities and projects you've undertaken to help get the word out. What has it been—where have you found the most success—one of the strategies that have changed people's minds, where you’ve seen, “Okay, this approach, this angle helps to open up people who might have been kind of entrenched against you or not open-minded before?”

Yeah, I mean it’s always complex to shift somebody’s way of thinking about a thing, but I think I have a pretty high skill set and ability to tell, you know, authentic stories. You know, I could have been, you know, anything in the world; I just grew up with some circumstances that didn't allow, you know— you know, I had dreams of being a doctor, and, you know, I was an honor roll student, and my life got disrupted by things that I wasn’t responsible for.

And eventually, I started to make poor decisions, and I was responsible for, and you know, proximity—bringing people in proximity to the stories—bringing them into prisons like I used to do, or as well bring people inside prisons. They would meet these incredible women and men and realize that we're defining people's whole life by one moment of their life, which is really unfair and it's really unfortunate.

And so I really want to shift that so that we can see the whole person, that we can recognize that any of us can go off the rails and make a poor decision, or be falsely accused and don't have the resources to fight that accusation and end up in prison. So proximity is a real game-changer.

As the great Bryan Stevenson has said, you know, you have to bring people proximate to these stories. And once they are, you know, that close to it, it's highly unlikely that you’ll walk out, you know, with a negative perception of the men and women behind walls.

It’s so appropriate that you're calling a new initiative Redeemed Soul because redemption—really, and our idea of redemption and being the potential to be redeemed, I think, needs to be revisited in our society.

Because we, you know, we forget that that’s what Christianity is at its very core—about sort of people all making mistakes, all sinning, all erring, and you know that we should all be given an opportunity to redeem ourselves.

It's like, what are you? A couple more questions from the audience, and then I will get to our last question before we do our special segment with you on your lessons from solitary confinement.

But a couple of people are asking specific questions about what interventions are being taken in prison right now. One person has asked, "Are masks being provided? How many people are getting masks? Is that the standard practice?" Another person asks what you know about how sick patients within the prisons are being dealt with.

Can you just elaborate a little bit about what, if any, medical interventions are being taken as far as you know?

Yeah, so in some cases, masks have been getting inside. I know we— we got a hundred thousand masks inside, partnered with Reform Alliance on that, Madonna just stepped up and partnered with that same organization. There’s another organization called Forward Impact who just got fifty thousand masks inside.

So people are starting to support and help and get soap inside. I’m currently in the process of beginning a partnership with Stanford through the Horowitz Foundation. Great friend of mine, Felicia Horowitz, invited me to support that initiative with my wisdom and experience, and they're going to be doing testing, and make sure people are getting access to testing and hygiene kids, possibly.

We’re just trying to still figure that out. But there’s a ton of effort on the, you know, for people out here who are trying to support in there, but we need so much more. We need so many other people to step up, we need people to call, to ask governors, and just, you know, speak about capacity to release. We need people to fund these organizations. This work is really hard, and it’s not a lot of resources that’s, you know, to be distributed, so we need more support in that way. And you know, that's kind of what’s up.

Now for our final audience question, Shaka, this person is looking for you to speak to how you dealt—once you were incarcerated and also in the time that you spent in solitary confinement. How did you adjust to the lack of control and the feelings of uncertainty? This person is really equating the sense of lack of control and uncertainty to things that people in quarantine are feeling. Obviously a little different, but there are probably, you know, real similarities.

Talk about that process and talk about how you sort of began to adjust your relationship with, you know, kind of the control and certainty that you felt you knew before you got in.

This is a great question. You know, I wrote a piece a few weeks ago on Medium and it’s basically just kind of like what I learned in solitary that you can apply to what this current experience is in quarantine. And I’m, you know, I’m not one of those people that’s like, you know, “Oh, this is a walk in the park.” Like this is the first time in our country that people’s lives have been completely disrupted in a way that they have absolutely no control over as a collective, you know?

I mean, obviously we all go through our things, but collectively it’s the first time that the world has been disrupted in this way. And so what I figured out, the similarities, because it was the uncertainty. So when I was in solitary, the hardest part was they would never tell me when I was getting out, and that lack of certainty made it very difficult for me to ground myself and for me to feel very, you know, really president in the moment.

So it was always a—but I identified that that’s what was happening. It made it easier for me to manage. So a few of the things that I recommend or suggest is, you know, meditation. And you don’t have to come, you know, turn into a yogi or, you know, a Buddhist philosopher in order to meditate. What works for you? You can Google meditative practices.

For me, it was really being told my breathing and just allowing old thoughts to dissipate. Writing letters: this is a great time to write letters! We have an aging population who isn’t necessarily as tech-savvy as other people, so I want to make sure that we’re not forgetting them.

So I highly recommend writing letters. I did a lot of journaling, you know, exercise. You know, now I’m sitting looking up new recipes and learning new skills. I’m learning how to play, you know, instruments right now.

And so the thing is, like, there are so many things right at our fingertips that we can do; it’s just having a while.

It's doing great advice.

Well, I am going to thank all of our viewers for the public portion of today's webinar. I want to thank Shaka; this wraps up our public webinar for our Facebook and YouTube viewers, and viewers on BigThink.com. If you enjoyed this webinar, please join us next Tuesday at 1 p.m. Eastern for a conversation with Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill.

And for our Big Think Edge subscribers, stick around for a few more minutes. We're going to dive a little deeper into Shaka's recommendations and get a little more insight into the various practices of self-care and self-attention that he undertook to help him get through the darkest, loneliest moments of his time on the inside.

Thank you all again, and I look forward to seeing you at the next webinar.