J267 Race, Resistance, and Incarceration

Tuesdays 2–3:30p.m. Fridays 2-4:30 pm

“The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer
primarily concerned with the prevention and punishment of crime, but
rather with the management and control of the dispossessed.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Description
Here’s a little background on how this course has evolved. Journalism School students have been visiting San Quentin State Prison since 2012 to help the writers and editors produce the award-winning San Quentin News. For more than ten years, the SQ News editing class not only sharpened the editing and writing skills of many Berkeley students, it also made a difference in the lives of the Berkeley students, because they came face to face with the phenomenon of mass incarceration. They learned the meaning of social justice, not in the classroom, but from the vantage point of the prison yard.

The class was a great success. San Quentin News won awards and became the leader in the prison journalism movement.

Moreover, San Quentin News has evolved beyond the Marin County printed newspaper. It has become an agent for change within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. It paved the way for other media projects, including Ear Hustle, the Peabody Award-winning podcast. With the help of UC students, prisoners have produced radio broadcasts, a print magazine and TV reports. In addition, the paper maintains its own web site (sanquentinnews.com), an Instagram page and Facebook page. The Prison Journalism Project, published at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, is a spinoff from San Quentin News.

In addition, the California Local News Project named San Quentin resident Steve Brooks as a Local News Fellow two years ago, and he has been regularly writing for localnewsmatters.org. Steve is a former editor-in-chief of the San Quentin News.

In short, there is an abundance of journalism produced by incarcerated people in the public arena.

All this success has required changing the format of the course. San Quentin is now officially the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. And the state is about to open a $260-million media/education complex inside the prison.

San Quentin News has a non-profit patron, the Pollen Initiative, which pays for the printing and distribution of the newspaper. The Pollen Initiative is also publishing papers in two other CDCR institutions, Mule Creek Prison in Ione, CA, and at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla.

In the past, the SQ class would visit the Media Center weekly at San Quentin and help the writers with research and editing on their stories. Nowadays there are many fewer writers in the Media Center, because the paper publishes fewer pages than it used to.

The new Education/Media complex is schedule to open sometime next year. And the move to the new location from the present Media Center will occasion some disruptions. In addition, since last year, San Quention has tightened up the clearance procedures. Weekly visits are no longer practical. Last year I had to hire a reader who did nothing but handle renewing clearances. That is no longer feasible.

In view of these factors, the 2026 version of Race, Resistance and Incarceration will have a new look and feel. The class will meet twice weekly at North Gate Hall.

The goal of the class will be to produce six podcasts on the topics Race, Resistance and Incarceration for broadcast and steaming on the campus station KALX-FM. A number of topics that would provide a rich trove of reporting, include the following:

+ UC Berkeley’s Underground Scholars movement
+ Putting lives back together after incarceration
+ Trans-lives on the outside
+ Homelessness after prison
+ Incarceration as portrayed on social media
+ Romantic relationships on the outside
+ Putting the family back together
+ California’s Racial justice for All act
+ Eating prison food
+ Pursuing education goals in prison

Here’s a discussion of how the Race, Resistance and Incarceration class has evolved. From a November 2025 talk I gave at the Hillside Club in Berkeley.