Thanksgiving in San Quentin

It’s a sobering experience to walk into fortress-like San Quentin State Prison. ID’s get checked and double-checked. Phones and purses get left behind. You sign a visitor’s log. A guard stamps your wrist to identify you as a guest.

All of this happens under the watchful eyes of Lt. Sam Robinson, the public information officer at the prison. Heavy metal gates clank solidly behind you. And you walk out into a courtyard with carefully-tended rose bushes, the health services building, cell blocks, even California’s death row.

We went to San Quentin to talk with two inmates about what Thanksgiving is like there: Antwan Williams and Earlonne Woods.

Williams is serving 15 years for an armed robbery with a gun enhancement. Woods is serving 31 years-to-life for attempted second degree robbery.

A few years back, they started working with Nigel Poor, an artist who volunteered her time to teach a class in San Quentin. Sharing life stories led to the now-famous podcast, Ear Hustle, distributed by Radiotopia from PRX. Ear Hustle is prison speak for “eavesdropping.”

We could tell you about the food the chow hall serves on Thanksgiving. Or how inmates trade one dish for another they like more. Or what Woods and Williams miss about Thanksgiving at home with their families. But, it’s best to let them tell you. Take a listen.

Woods, Williams and Poor are working hard on Season 2 of Ear Hustle. We asked what they’re trying to tell people with their work. “If some of these stories can deter people from coming to prison, that’s a good thing,” says Woods. “It’s a lot of regular people in prison, you know? People that did something in their life a year to thirty to forty years ago. And they’re just living life every day. We are still human.”