Prison Radio Audio Feed

I'm Sergio Hyland. And this is "In Solidarity With The San Quentin Prisoners." On May 9th, 2020, State Correctional Institution at Chester, Pennsylvania went into a full lockdown due to one confirmed positive case of the COVID-19 Coronavirus. For nearly two weeks straight, we languished in our cells, worried, not knowing what was happening. There was no communication from the staff, and to make matters worse our emailing system had been purposely disabled in what we believe was an attempt to limit communications between us and our families. It was extremely stressful. And I witnessed first hand the decay of morale amongst the prisoners whom I've lived with for the past 20 years. As a Pennsylvania board-certified peer specialist, I'm trained to recognize when others are in the midst of a mental crisis. Those two weeks pushed many to the brink. I spent five years in solitary confinement, and it's still getting compared to what we were forced to endure for that brief period of time in May. With that said, I want