Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
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Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
The Transformative Justice Revolution: How Empathy Changes Prison with Megan McDrew
The transformative power of human connection can reach even the darkest corners of our society – including prison walls. In this deeply moving conversation, host Joe Grumbine welcomes Megan McDrew, founder and executive director of the Transformative Justice Center, who shares her remarkable journey bringing volunteers into prisons to create spaces of healing and dignity.
Megan's story begins with her first nervous visit to San Quentin in 2013, where she discovered an unexpected truth: behind the forbidding walls and harsh conditions, incarcerated individuals were actively striving for transformation. This revelation sparked a mission that has brought over 1,000 volunteers – students, professionals, and everyday citizens – into prison environments through her Empathy in Action program.
The conversation explores how our criminal justice system often fails to provide genuine rehabilitation, focusing instead on punishment that further dehumanizes people who have typically experienced severe trauma before incarceration. As Megan explains, "What they need is treatment, not punishment. They need help." Her program creates sacred spaces where incarcerated individuals can reconnect with their worth and humanity through authentic connections with people from outside.
The results speak volumes – Megan maintains a "Wall of Fame" featuring approximately 30 program graduates who are now successfully reintegrated into society with a 0% recidivism rate. One particularly moving story involves a man who spent 28 years in prison, reconnected with his daughter after release, earned his bachelor's degree, and now helps other formerly incarcerated individuals access education.
Whether you're interested in criminal justice reform, the healing power of human connection, or simply seeking a deeper understanding of compassion in action, this episode offers profound insights into how we might reimagine justice as a pathway to healing rather than merely punishment. As Megan powerfully states, "I don't think most people in society are beyond savable."
Ready to learn more or get involved? Visit empathyprisonprogram.org to discover how you can support this transformative work.
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Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and today we're going to open up a new chapter into our conversation, and this Healthy Living Podcast has focused a lot on, you know, physiological health and mental health and even spiritual health, and today we're going to be talking with Megan McDrew, who is the founder and executive director of the Transformative Justice Center, and they house an inside-out prison educational exchange program, empathy in Action and Bridge to Redemption, and we're going to get into a different aspect of health. I don't know if any of you guys know about my background with human rights and civil rights, but I ran the Human Solution International for almost 20 years and we worked with primarily cannabis defendants and prisoners that were basically locked up for growing and selling and using a plant, which we said that's just ridiculous. That shouldn't be a crime.
Speaker 1:There's no victim, there's no reason, and you know it happened to me as well, and so I've spent time behind bars, I've gone through the justice system, been accused of being a criminal, and all I ever did was help people, and I've used this as medicine to help people myself and many, many others, and so what we learn is that the criminal justice system is not much of that. It's really a prison system. It's a dehumanization system. It's a dehumanization system. It's a machine and there's not a lot of justice in it. And if you don't fit in a certain kind of category, there's a good chance you're going to get chewed up and spit out by this thing and most people that that happens to don't survive or don't come out better than they left, and our organization, and there's many, many organizations out there trying to make a difference. And so when I heard about Megan and this transformation, transformative Justice Center, I says wow, we're, we're, we're looking down the same line. Megan, welcome to the show. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:Thank you, joe. I'm doing well Talking to you from Monterey, california, beautiful place, nice, yeah, doing fulfilling work.
Speaker 1:Well, I am really excited to have this conversation. You know we talk about spiritual work and usually it's you knowcare and working on you know, helping you to help yourself. But this is another level. You're helping people that are disadvantaged in a dramatic way. You know they're not on the outside with a the wrong color skin or born in the wrong family. They're. They're. They're behind bars, they're compromised, their humanity's been stripped from them and they have very few, if any, rights and very few, if any, resources. So when a program like yours comes to town, it offers a hope that is instrumental in health. That is instrumental in health, like what my experience is. When I was locked up, I had a strong support team, so I always I didn't worry about my hope, but I watched people in there that were just lost. They didn't have anybody and they tell me their story, how everybody walked away from them over time, and it's really hard to even care about finding forward progress if you don't have that. So tell us a little bit about you and your program.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for the introduction and for having me on your show. As you said, my name is Megan and I went into prison for my first time as a visitor back in 2013. And I remember because my daughter was just born and she turned 12 yesterday. So she was about six months old and I signed up for a workshop through a rehabilitation program called GRIP, which quite a few people are familiar with. It stands for Guiding Rage Into Power, and they teach emotional literacy and they do a lot of meditation as really the crux of their teaching.
Speaker 2:So I went into St Quentin my first time. I was just as nervous as all the volunteers I bring in now for their first time, sure, but what happened to me is what I see in prison every week is just this shedding of nerves and this incredible feeling of comfort in a very dark, cold, seemingly uncomfortable place, really striving for betterment, for transformation to become fully present and human and intentional, and I was just beyond impressed with their commitment to change. So, from there, I just started going to prison every week. I joined another volunteer program called TRUST, which stood for Teaching Responsibility Utilizing Sociological Theory. I had come from a master's degree in sociology, from Humboldt State, actually Emerald Triangle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we know it well, yes, I loved it up there. Arcata became really the home of my heart. But I got involved with some pen piling, some book writing campaigns to folks up at Pelican Bay and my world in incarceration started to grow. And just coming from the background of sociology, I began to connect the dots, as you already alluded to in your introduction, about the social inequities that people face in society and how that predisposes them to incarceration. So understanding the conditions that lead people to eventual imprisonment allowed me to connect the dots, yes, and understand the context and to not see everybody in society as bad or as dangerous. Because when you really understand that people who commit crimes and who harm others in various levels of violence, more often than not I'd say 99% of the time come from a background of familial abuse, neglect, trauma, poverty, it's a lot more complicated than just somebody being a bad person doing bad things.
Speaker 2:It's a lot more complicated. It's actually quite complex, and when you start to hear their stories and you understand the reasoning behind what led to their behavior, it just opens up a lot more compassion and a lot more understanding and a lot more of a commitment to not only spending time with them but also trying to alleviate some of those issues that led them to prison from the outside outside. So so that began my my career volunteering in prison, and then I was hired by a community college down in Monterey County called Hartnell. It's in Salinas. Hartnell College, back in 2016, started an AA program, an associates program, inside CTF Soledad, the correctional training facility, as well as Salinas Valley.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:So as far as I know, I was their first instructor ever to go in to teach a college course. Wow, and I did that for the following six years or so at the two of the prisons. I was also teaching at UC Santa Cruz at the time, so I began to bring in. I thought I was so impressed by my incarcerated college students that I thought what an interesting learning experience it would be to bring in some Santa Cruz students down to prison to learn with my incarcerated students.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I started doing that about once every three or four months. I would choose a book for both populations to read and then we'd come together for three to four months. I would choose a book for both populations to read and then we'd come together for three to four hours one time every few months to discuss the book in relation to our own experiences.
Speaker 1:And that experience, oh, that's a great juxtaposition that you can really judge not only your own program but just the you know the spectrum that it applies to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the students left the prison deeply impacted. Life's changed for the better More often than not, sometimes changing their major, changing their career choice, nothing else, just changing their minds and the narrative that they've been taught about what people in prison are like. Yeah, and over over time that segued into bringing in more people more regularly. So, long story short, I started what's called the Transformative Justice Center, and this is a space for incarcerated voices where we work to highlight and honor the voices of people that are in prison. We share that people in prison have been for them, for almost the majority have been victims to at some point in their life.
Speaker 2:Sure, and we like to see them as survivors, surviving a really inhumane, dehumanizing system of punishment when they're coming in with the most immense, insurmountable trauma that most people can even understand and don't even like to think about the sort of heinous things that have happened to people that are in prison. That what they need is treatment, not punishment, they need help. That what they need is treatment, not punishment, they need help. And so what we've done with the program under the transformative justice is called empathy in action, and empathy in action is an eight week program that I offer year round, bringing volunteers from the public, as well as college and university students, into prison with me every Monday, nice. So I've been doing that for about five years now. Two years I was under another organization, fiscally Sponsored, if you know what that means.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, absolutely. I run a 501c3 as well, I know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Somebody's got to pay for all this stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I was Fiscally Sponsored for two years running the show Empathy in Action and then about three years ago we got our own 501c3, operating as a nonprofit under the transformative justice and continuing to run Empathy in Action. So Empathy in Action right now is just offered at CTF Soledad prison. It's about 25 minutes south of Salinas on highway 101 in California.
Speaker 1:And that's a state prison.
Speaker 2:It's a state prison, it's a level two. We have been approved to offer the program inside the second largest women's prison in the nation called the California Women's Facility, ccwf, and we're starting that in March.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, that's exciting.
Speaker 2:We're excited to expand. It's our first time growing, so I'm curious just as a 501c3 director as well, and founder.
Speaker 1:You know it's a crazy world.
Speaker 2:How I would imagine. There's a lot of opportunity for funding, but how did who? Who pays for your programs? We've been really fortunate working with the department of rehabilitation through the state Nice. I don't know if your, your listeners know, but I believe it was around 2020, the CDC, the California department of corrections, was just called that CDC and then I don't. I you know, 2020 actually might be a little too recent. I think it was back in. Maybe the early two thousands is when they tacked on the R.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:You know it's CDCR now, which is California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Speaker 1:Got it.
Speaker 2:In my opinion, it should be California Department of Rehabilitation and.
Speaker 1:So many facilities. If you actually look at their name or maybe what they were, they used to include rehabilitation in the name Mm, hmm, you know, and then I think over time they dropped the rehabilitation and just kept the correction. They did yeah Really doesn't do either of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not really, but they're, they're working on it yeah, and I know because the prisons have been. The ctf specifically has been so supportive of this program and you know bringing 30 to 40 people from the public into prison every week is is a lot of extra work for them yeah uh, when it comes to safety types of concerns and clearing all these volunteers and historically I was just bringing in UC Santa Cruz students, which was a whole nother level of like radicalness, right- exactly.
Speaker 2:They were pushing the buttons of the staff and asking really challenging questions and you know we were skating on thin ice a couple of times. I don't, don't you know they they don't like their jobs questioned or their authority questioned, I get it. But I appreciate the voices of students, you know, not willing to sit down and to stand up for what they believe is right. But it's a little bit of a dance. But, with that said, we have received the last five years. We received funding through the Department of Reh department of rehabilitation, which is now a branch under cdcr. Okay, they offered a grant, um, through a couple different programs, but the primary one's called the care grant. It's uh, uh for in custody programs offering, uh, offering tools and empathy and transformation, which my program fit that perfectly.
Speaker 1:It's just perfect. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2:Sadly, we didn't get the grant renewed. It ended in June, ended on June 30th, 2025. So right now we are we are really scraping by and trying to find organizations or companies, corporations or other grants or individuals that might want to fund this type of programming that happens inside prison. There, there, there are a lot of um. There seems to be more, more, more funds, more opportunities for programs that offer um, the re-entry piece. Uh, so we are working. If we were to look at the website, we have started a program called transition with purpose and we're going to start focusing on employment assistance and all of the skills that come with holding a job and maintaining stability in one's life. But my passion is really going inside prison and working with the individuals.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of re-entry programs out there too.
Speaker 2:And there are. And this program, empathy in Action, has been said over and over again to be the most powerful rehabilitation program offered in prison. Wow, and it really is because of the influx of volunteers that come in.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it.
Speaker 2:It wouldn't be the same if it was just me. No, I get it. It was just me. No, I get it.
Speaker 1:I work with a lot of volunteers and to find a project that draws volunteers, but not only volunteers, but ones that show up and ones that produce. You know, a lot of volunteers are just a bunch of broken people, not just, but a bunch of broken people that care but don't really have a whole lot to contribute, and they, you know they're hard to work with. They have a whole lot to contribute and they, you know they're hard to work with. But when you find a group of people that shows up and is willing to engage and participate, you got something really good going on?
Speaker 2:We do. I am so humbled and in awe and inspired by the volunteers because, like you said, they don't just show up and sit there. They show up and shake their hands and do the hard work and sit next to them and close their eyes and meditate and then they get into this really deep material and a lot of them feel kind of imposters, Like hey, I didn't come from a lifetime of trauma. You know when we're talking about, like some of our.
Speaker 1:I don't know what I'm doing, yeah.
Speaker 2:They're like you know, the worst thing that ever happened to me is my pet died right and they're like what do I? They don't feel like that, like they have enough. But I say you, we all have loss in our life, we all have discipline. I have pain and and the men actually gained so much from hearing about lives in society that came from two parent families or that went on vacation.
Speaker 1:Some of them.
Speaker 2:They never even heard of that.
Speaker 1:Exactly. People don't realize that when you're in prison you're deprived of that connection to the outside world. And to connect to something real, I mean, you know you get media and you get whatever they filter into there, but to actually be able to connect with real people that are sharing real experiences, that's gold, that's medicine.
Speaker 2:It's medicine. Yeah, and I actually say that as we're closing, we close our eyes and we drop in and do about five minutes of breath work before each session eyes and we drop in and do about five minutes of breath work before each session. I say let's close our eyes and come into this space so we can fully receive the medicine that this program brings, that you bring to each other Nice.
Speaker 2:It's a real remedy for healing and transformation, because I do believe. A lot of the, the, the uh, the sadness of our times, the uh, the difficulties and the challenges that we face often comes from this this feeling of disconnection, oh yeah, and this feeling of, of unworthiness and of not feeling valued.
Speaker 1:Um and prisons. Just reinforce that on a minute to minute basis they do.
Speaker 2:So we, you know, we enforce, like let's go by first names let's look each other in their eyes. Let's we shake hands at the end of each session. It's a long line, you know, 30 to 35 volunteers shaking hands of around and takes around 10 minutes. I love it. Guys just have tears pouring out of their eyes, just so grateful, like finally. You know some of them hadn't been had visitors in 30, 35 years. They haven't seen from the public.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And they're so special, they're so there, you know, and I think some of the volunteers are surprised, like they're. They're so normal, they're just people.
Speaker 1:These are people. We're all people. We just just stripped down. Whatever the little things that we hang on to, we're all the same stuff.
Speaker 2:You know, one woman said she does a lot of prison work all around California and she said she just came with me to Soledad, she mainly goes to prisons in San Diego. But she said, man, they're not different in any prison. She said, once you take them away from their homies and you take them away from their you know the guys that they're maybe trying to impress or they have to put on a mask, for they're just. You know, they're just people. They're sweet and they're interesting. And and you know, I know it's not, it's not the norm in our society for men to be really communicative and emotionally available and to share their pain and to cry, and I might. My program itself is probably 90% female.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:You know it attracts the because we're we're doing emotional work. It's, you know, it's a rooted in emotional transformation and uh and spiritual connection. And the men that do join, they end up joining again and again and again. The few that are brave enough because they see the real benefit. But I don't think men in prison would join the program as much as they do. One if I wasn't bringing in all the volunteers and two, it's just, it's available, it's there, yeah. But I do have to say the men. I'm so impressed, you know, I'm more impressed by the men in prison than I am most men that I meet in society.
Speaker 1:That's wild.
Speaker 2:And I'm saying a lot. You know, yeah, it is, and a lot of them we work on a sex offender yard. They've done some things. You, you know they. That turns your stomach, yeah, uh. But but we don't look at people from. You know, I don't even consider what they did okay you know, I try to really consider what are you doing now yeah, that's hard to get over for a lot of people.
Speaker 1:you know it is something like that, with the victim behind it and people go well, they can't change, and you know somebody who would do something like that, but the truth is we don't know what really happened and we don't know the details. And yeah, there's probably some people in there that would fit your bucket, but there's probably a lot that don't.
Speaker 2:Well, the fact is is that most of them are extremely capable of change and positive transformation, and they just need the tools in which to get there. And if it's not being provided by the prison, then the onus falls on us in society, because I believe at some point they've fallen through the cracks, they've fallen through the holes of care of some sort of institution that was supposed to be looking after them, whether it be the family or the school system, or the juvenile justice or CPS or the foster care system. I mean, I've seen, I've, you know, working, working on this type of yard for the last five years. Um, I don't think I've met one man that committed a sex offense that him himself hasn't been either raped or molested.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And it's just, and nobody ever took it seriously or tried to help.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:They never got justice. The offender that hurt them never got any kind of justice, and then they went on to do it to other people because in their world that's normal.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And so it just takes a lot of critical thinking and a lot of expansive understanding and it doesn't excuse their behavior at all to understand the conditions in which they came from. They still need accountability, and I firmly believe they need to be removed from society so they don't continue to hurt people. I'm not a prison abolitionist. I do believe in removal.
Speaker 1:There's a purpose for it. Yeah, prison has a purpose in society. It just doesn't need to be an industry.
Speaker 2:It doesn't need to be a profit motive industry and it doesn't need to be a punishment industry, because, I already said at the beginning, what most of these guys need is help. They need treatment. They need some really intense counseling and trauma therapy and connection to the outside world so kind of normalizes the experience of then going back out and their, their sense of self is so defeated. So so to so to remind them that at some point in your life you really were a good person.
Speaker 1:Not only that, but you as a human being. Every day, you have an opportunity to do something new.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know whether you decide to put a huge effort in making it or just let another day go by, ultimately that's your choice and that gets forgotten pretty quick when you're in there and you're fighting for your survival and you're just living and just passing the time and all the things that happen in prison. But the truth is, if you can bring back that purpose or that awareness that you actually have a choice, you have a choice.
Speaker 2:You can change. Yeah, you can change and you can make you know once they get out of that impulsive mindset or that criminal mindset or that mindset of that kind of taking, wanting to hurt and wanting to take and wanting to inflict pain for whatever reason right to hurt and wanting to take and wanting to inflict pain for whatever reason right, whatever it's coming from a gang influence or from their own front.
Speaker 2:That's a better way, yeah, yeah, but then they can rise above that. But again, that just takes time. A lot of them. You know we like to work in prisons because they have spent the time working on themselves a little bit more than I think people in jail have, or people at the beginning of their sentences. So you know it's it's. It's really inspiring to work with men that are committed to what they call programming. I'm sure you're familiar, you know it's like do you program? They program right. This is they program hard.
Speaker 2:And if they really program, they take all the classes they, they, they commit to, they take all the classes they commit to the work of change and of committing to a life of nonviolence as much as possible. Sure, I believe in them. I believe, I trust in them enough to say, yeah, you could be my neighbor. Yeah, I will hang out with you on the outside, you're welcome to come by my center, and that's a big thing. You know, I have young children too and I don't want anything to happen to my kids as much as anybody else. But the fact is, if we don't go into prison as people in society and try to help these guys, they're not really getting it any other way except through the groups that they form.
Speaker 2:And you know they said that you can only hear from other inmates that you have value or that you have worth or that. You know, yeah, you're an interesting. It doesn't happen too well, it does, you know. It only lifts them so much, and you know.
Speaker 1:There's only so much value to that even anyways.
Speaker 2:And they said when? But when people come in from the outside, you know, I bring in lawyers, teachers, therapists, university students, you know, retired professors, librarians. I brought in a TV host, all sorts of all sorts of people. I mean, this years, I brought in probably over a thousand people. All sorts of people, I mean in this years I brought in probably over a thousand people. Nice, when they come in and remind them of their worth and that they, you know, at some point had their innocence shattered and just to return to that inner child that's hurting and to work through all that pain and to come out, you know, with, with that innate goodness and remembrance of the self that that does so much. So. So, as I said, I'm just, I'm really humbled and inspired by the volunteers that that are brave enough and and conscious enough and and rooted in the belief that people can, can and will change. I don't think most people in society are beyond savable. I just don't.
Speaker 1:I agree, I agree. Well, I know we're going to be running a little short on time and there's a lot of things I want to get to, and so before we get to that sort of critical line, plus, just know we have a lot to talk about. I welcome you to come back anytime you have time and I'm able and I would love to go deep on any of these little facets. But one of the things I really like to examine with any guest is an example, something that was remarkable. I know you've dealt with so many people and I didn't realize the nature of the specific people you were working with. So maybe share a story or two about a person that you worked with that there was just some remarkable, and it could be a volunteer, could be a prisoner, or it could be you just something remarkable that you've seen come out of this program.
Speaker 2:Gosh, you know in my office. So we opened up. Once we became a 501c3, I opened up a physical center downtown Monterey. It's on 439 Tyler Street. It's one block off the main street. We built a prison cell in there so people can come in and experience the cell All right, see artwork and read literature by the men. As I said, it's a space that honors prisoner voices and tries to get the public more involved in, in knowing about what you know incarcerated people are like.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I have video testimonials that I play all day and then I have a wall of fame. Nice Wall of fame is pictures of all the men that have been in the empathy and action program, that are now in society doing great things. Wow, and all of them. You know I probably have 30 pictures up there right now. They've all stayed out 100% recidivist, you know. No going back Nice. Good job, yeah. So we support, you know. We support them emotionally, mentally, you know, spiritually. We're trying to start the workforce program.
Speaker 1:How many of those that have gotten out that were in your program? Stay in touch.
Speaker 2:All of them Nice.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm very busy on my phone.
Speaker 2:I mean they call me, they'll text, we're on Facebook.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:One of them's on my board.
Speaker 1:Amazing.
Speaker 2:One man was incarcerated for 28 years in a level four prison. Level four is pretty hard to get out of. There's so much violence, there's all the lockdowns and it's just. People don't have a lot of hope in those institutions because of seeing the low parole rate. But he got out. He enrolled in my classes at UC Santa Cruz. He's in his fifties. He got his bachelor's in sociology and then I actually hired him to join my board. He's now my secretary. Nice he had been. He had lost all communication with his children during his incarceration that happens a lot and he reunited with his daughter.
Speaker 1:After seven years pretty much everybody goes away.
Speaker 2:They go away. Yeah, so after 30 years he reunited with his daughter. Now I teach a course called Marriage and Family. When I talk about incarceration and the impact of incarceration on families, they're usually my guest speakers.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And the daughter will be crying and talking about the impact of having her dad gone when she was about three years old and now she's in her 30s and they're best friends. Wow, and it's just such a cool story of forgiveness.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And hanging on.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And he's now the director of Rising Scholars at Cabrillo College, helping formerly incarcerated people enroll in school.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:He's got a TED Talk, so it was exciting to see him go from being my college student. He joined Empathy in Action. He came back into the prison program and told the guys hey, I was in prison for 30 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Now I'm out. I just got a bachelor's. I'm about to get a master's. I'm a director of a program at a community college. I've reunited with my family, so he gives these guys the hope they need.
Speaker 1:That's huge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've seen all sorts of men. I'm just so impressed by their, their determination to succeed and to change the way people see them, not just as you know, prior convicts as, but as people that can, can truly contribute to society.
Speaker 1:You've been working exclusively with men. You look like you're right on the edge of walking into the world of women.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Think are going to be the difference with that.
Speaker 2:I've been told by people. I've gone into the woman's prison a couple of times, so I've gotten to know the ladies with that. I've been told by people I've gone into the woman's prison a couple of times, so I've gotten to know the ladies. As an individual, you know, as just as a sole individual. I haven't brought in the masses of volunteers I plan to bring in, but I've heard from CCWF that the women are very different from the men there. They said they they have a lot more walls up and they're a lot, a lot, maybe a lot more defensive.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Um and a little bit slower to um, to open up um because of all the challenges they've faced prior to imprisonment.
Speaker 1:And generally tougher than men to begin with.
Speaker 2:I think they're just. Women are tougher than men and they're not as quick to trust.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, For good reason. I mean if you've read about what happens inside women's prisons.
Speaker 1:Oh brutal.
Speaker 2:They're often way more rural than male prisons. About 80% are mothers in the way they don't get contact with their children and having to deal with all the pain in the morning that goes with losing a connection to your child. The abuse that happens inside women's prisons Uh, you know the one we're going into as a level four. It's the only death row female women's prison with a death row in California. So I think we'll. I think it's going to take a little bit more time to break, to break the ice and gain their trust. But, um but I have a very seasoned group of volunteers that have signed up.
Speaker 2:We've already set the roster for our spring program nice the volunteers I'm bringing in have come in with me, at least for at least the last two years, so they know, I trust that they'll nice, they've done the work, they're not um, they're not, they're not new to this and I think that's what it's going to take. So we want to connect with them and let them know that we're here on the outside supporting them and wanting to bridge that gap. So our motto is to build bridges of empathy, healing and insight between the incarcerated and the public. I don't understand why prisons have to be these fortresses of invisibility when they really should be places of healing and transparency and and connection. You know, as long as long as the people inside are deemed as as safe, so to speak exactly agree.
Speaker 1:there's a balance of protection and rehabilitation. You know, part of a prison's role is to protect society from people that would cause it harm. The other part of it is to try to fix the people that were causing people harm, and you got to do both for it to be effective. Otherwise it's just barbaric.
Speaker 2:And they do have systems in place. I mean, everybody gets cleared that I'm bringing in, so we're not bringing in people that are a threat. And then on the inside we have rules around sharing of information, personal privacy, everything according to the prison policies. That's meant to keep both sides on the wall safe, and in the five years I've been bringing people into prison, we've never had an incident at all.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:We treat the space as a sacred space really of connection and of healing, and everybody really honors and respects that. So so far so good. I would love to see this program across prisons and across the nation. It just takes a lot of commitment from the public to show up and do the work.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm very impressed and I've worked with a lot of different organizations and I know how much commitment it takes from a founder to raise something up to this level. So I deeply respect your commitment and your effort that you put forth and I wish you the greatest of success as you move forward. As I suspected, we'd run out of time before we had time to finish talking about everything I wanted to, but I want to invite you back anytime you're able. I did want to bring up a thing that I'm just introducing now. We have a common denominator and her name is Adonai Flores, and she's working with a number of different programs.
Speaker 1:She has a group called Trauma Music Therapy and she's working with a guy that's an inmate named Jay Wells that I'm working with as well, and she has put together a program called the 30 Days of Self-Compassion Movement. That is a precursor to a program called 30 Days of Compassion. So I just want to introduce the idea. I don't have all the details to bring to it, but my company, willow Creek Springs, has participated in a program of bringing natural self-care products to be made available where people can make a donation and participate in this. Be made available where people can make a donation and participate in this. So I'll have a lot more to to share, as I have the details in front of me in a clearer way, but I believe you're participating in this in some way as well.
Speaker 2:Yes, I've talked to Adonai and Jay Juan, or Jay Wells he's. He was in my empathy program a number of times, nice, and has been a facilitator, and then he just created a rap for us. That's in our documentary Nice, nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do have a film coming out about the program. It's called going inside Nice. We're in nine different film festivals Wow. We also have a YouTube station that plays some testimonials from the documentary under the Transformative Justice Center of Monterey County, and you can hear Juan or J Wells rap in a bunch of those.
Speaker 1:That is cool.
Speaker 2:I love it I see him in prison almost every week. I'll tell him. He said hi.
Speaker 1:No kidding, yeah, absolutely. I talk to him generally weekly as we're organizing this program and working together. I've been working with him for a good year. He he works with my aunt, nancy, and I have a cousin that's locked up there as well nicholas smith and um. So he's in, probably in a different unit or something, but I know he works with jay and um.
Speaker 2:I or ask.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Jay was our boom operator for the documentary, so you can see him filming actually in the film.
Speaker 1:Excellent, excellent.
Speaker 2:Great guy. He's very talented.
Speaker 1:Well, megan um, is there any other uh contact information or anything you want to share before we uh wrap this one up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, joe, thank you. So if people want to get in touch, the website easiest one to remember is empathyprisonprogramorg. It's just empathyprisonprogramorg. My name's Megan McDrew. People can go on the website. If you hit contact us, just fill in the bubbles there and I'll be the one to respond. You can follow us on Facebook or Instagram. We're under Empathy in Action. And then, as I said, the YouTube station is the Transformative Justice Center of Monterey County and we have around 12 videos up there of incarcerated people talking about their lives and it's just such a beautiful way to show what they're actually really like, and not just these savages beating each other up and these violent films that we see through shows like lockdown right right um.
Speaker 2:So I've worked really hard and raised the funds to um to be able to bring in filmmakers as much as we did nice um, in order, order to share these testimonials and to show that people in prison are so capable of all sorts of wonderful things and deserve to have a voice, even though they've had some history of wrongdoing, that's in the past. We want to focus on what they're doing in the present and what they can do in the future so we create a society that's rooted in forgiveness and understanding and transformation and growth, because a lot of people in prison are just wasting away when they could be doing so much good out in the world, just like you are.
Speaker 1:Exactly Well, I'm excited. I, you know, working with Jay, I'm dealing with my health issues right now, so I've had to put this a little bit on hold, but we're working on bringing a garden program into the prison as well, so through my nonprofit Gardens of Hope. So we're we got some things in the works. I just got my resources together and you know it just takes a lot of effort and stick-to-itiveness, and so I deeply respect all that you've done and I look forward to bringing you back here to talk more about it.
Speaker 2:All right, Joe, I look forward to it. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks to all the listeners and please check us out on EmpathyPrisonProgramorg.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. This has been another episode of A Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and thank you for all.
