Emily Steinmetz

Mary Evans: Hi how have you been?

Emily Steinmetz: So nice to see you!

Mary Evans: How are you doing?

Emily Steinmetz: Great really good!

Mary Evans: Thank you!

Emily Steinmetz: Hi

Mary Evans: So this is for my oral history project and i've got just like about four or five questions um to ask you about you know the importance of why you made choices to start a career in um you know doing inside out programs or bringing education into um incarcerated into inside to incarcerated individuals um i'll just kind of go from there so would you please introduce yourself?

Emily Steinmetz: Sure my name is Emily steinmetz I am an anthropology professor I taught for four years at antioch college in yellow springs ohio and I now teach at washington college which is on the eastern shore of maryland in a town called chestertown. It's cool.

Mary Evans: What really started your passion for um prison justice work and you know educational programs in prison and stuff like that?

Emily Steinmetz: Sure um well a long time ago in 2002 I um I had been working at a, an organization in Washington DC that provided legal it was a civil rights organization that provided legal support to communities that were organizing around certain racial justice issues one of the issues they were focusing on was the school to prison pipeline which a lot of people have heard about now but then was kind of a newer idea which is basically the idea that black children more often are put on a trajectory when they get in trouble in school to land in juvenile justice institutions rather than having alternative ways of dealing with normal childhood issues in schools but that there's a major racial 00:02:00disparity in how that plays out another issue that they focused on was voting rights reinstatement for people who had felony convictions and one thing that I was helping them with was a state by state look because every state has different laws at what um you know what the laws were how people got their rights reinstated and many in most states it was just automatic once you left prison in two states you can actually vote while you're in prison in some states you can't vote while you're on probation or parole and in some you can and in some you're banned for life from voting again unless you do something like petition the governor some of those laws have changed since 2002 which is good making it easier for people to vote but as you know we're still going through voting rights restrictions now again so this is an ongoing fight anyway to bring this back around to prisons when I was working there I was also getting my 00:03:00master's degree in anthropology from American University in Washington DC and so I kind of blended my work at this organization with my master's thesis and I interviewed women who were imprisoned at a pre-release facility in baltimore city and a pre-release is where people went when they had two years or less left on their sentence and it was the first time I was 24 years old I think it was the first time I'd ever been inside of a prison and while I went to interview people about voting rights what did they know about their voting rights did they you know there's a lot of rumors and misinformation so I was trying to kind of understand how important this was to them what they already knew what information would be helpful but what I ended up learning when I did these open-ended interviews was all kinds of stuff about people's life stories how they ended up in prison in the first place a lot of the injustices that had kind 00:04:00of plagued them a really common thread through the women's stories were histories of abuse and domestic violence and so suddenly and they were using terms that were new they were introducing me to kind of an analysis that was new um they use terms like warehousing "they're just warehousing us here" um and that was like a the first time I'd heard that idea and so that project really opened my eyes to a lot of what was actually happening with imprisonment and incarceration and things have changed since 2002 in many ways and things have changed the same in many ways also um but that really kind of initiated my interest in prisons and understanding you know uh what processes in U.S political and social and economic life were making this prison juggernaut 00:05:00possible and so I kind of dedicated some of my research to that but in the process I you know having these kind of intimate interviews with people really stayed with me um and when I learned about the inside out program I was very excited to attend the training and start teaching those kinds of classes and that was also you know when I became a faculty member at a college and so I would then have opportunities to teach in a prison by extension.

Mary Evans: So is building a curriculum for incarcerated individuals a little bit different than you know students that you would actually have on campus and so like what's the difference in contrast like that you have came to notice and like what are some of the techniques that you use to get the point across?

Emily Steinmetz: Yeah um I would say not necessarily different I think there are um you know I've taught at lots of different kinds of colleges I spent five years as an adjunct professor at a community college in Albuquerque New Mexico 00:06:00and that's a really different kind of school than Antioch or American University where I also taught and those are different than where I teach now and so I would say like campus based institutions aren't all the same and incarcerated people aren't all the same like the thing i've learned is really what they have in common is that they're incarcerated but their interests and their educational backgrounds and their kind of enthusiasm for academics they're variable from person to person and so I think that idea um that we need to kind of treat our students as individual people rather than as like some mass group is important whether you're teaching in a prison or not I think there are some structural differences I would say on average students who come to the school like where I teach now have on average and not every student more privileges in their past so you know many more of them attended you know schools that had robust academic support and I would say on average that's not the experience of most imprisoned 00:07:00people and so kind of thinking about about that but I don't think that anyone's potential for learning is different so that's kind of the philosophy I enter the program with the one thing I would say that is different and that matters a lot is that students in prison don't have access to resource materials and so when I assign research projects it's hard for them to be able to kind of take those projects it's hard for me to teach them research skills how to use library databases you know some of those basic things that I teach my campus students because I think they're important just life skills how to find information and that's something I can't teach in a prison so when students have topics that they want to learn more about either me or my campus-based students will try to find the materials that might help them answer their question that they're 00:08:00excited about and bring them in for them to read and look at so that's one thing that is really different I would say.

Mary Evans: Yeah it was um amazing experience in 2015 being introduced to Antioch college while I was incarcerated at dayton correctional institution um for me I always tell people um in order for me to kind of find um some kind of like solid ground or something that gave me a little bit of hope and focus was I thought about things that were you know my that I had really great advantages in and I was pretty good in before I started making the wrong decisions and I was always excited and interesting and learning and I loved school and I always did well so I used um education as the facet to kind of help me prepare myself for reintegrating and you know I mean preparing myself for um you know returning to society and like trying to find adequate housing and employment and all these different things um for me taking your class on the inside i'd never taken an 00:09:00anthropology class before and I tell everybody this and I say it to this day and they understand after explaining I was like I came from a rural area you know I wasn't taught about um bell hooks I wasn't really taught much about um some of the other authors that you had interest um introduced me to audre lorde you know I never really had been introduced to any of this any of these kinds of things and so I was always grateful and thankful for the class that you brought in because it helped me to understand how to be a better African-American woman and how to you know represent my heritage my culture and and that community a little bit better and also let me know that i'm also part of another community too which is return citizen community and that's and that's a great community because I think a lot of times um people get misinformation and um you know they think that we're not deserving of education while we're on the inside or you know um all these things I mean when I got my full ride while I was inside at 00:10:00dayton correctional I mean I had to walk on eggshells to keep it because it was like you know dwindled in front of my face like a carrot like you know like or the bunny up the racetrack or the dog track it was just something that I kept chasing but it was kind of like scary because you never knew when an administrator might try to take it away from you um but i'm thankful for the material and stuff that you chose in your curriculum so my question is like what made you decide to like bring those kinds of things to dayton correctional when you came and um like how do you go about choosing the curriculum for the institutions that you go inside?

Emily Steinmetz: Yeah um well I guess you know for inside out which is a very special kind of class and I teach other kinds of classes now and um well I did at dayton correctional too or facilitated I wasn't so much a teacher in other classes at dayton but um i've helped kind of coordinate or facilitate programs that were more collaborative um and now I teach at a women's prison in delaware 00:11:00where I teach the inside out class and I also teach another class inside out is special because it brings two groups together and one of the goals is to have a lot of dialogue between the incarcerated students and the students who come in who are campus based and so really finding what I wanted to do was to find materials that everybody could maybe relate to in their own way um so materials that lent themselves to um people uh kind of being able to be in dialogue with the readings in such a way that it helped us be in dialogue with each other and so a lot of the readings were selected for that reason I was also you know I could have taught a class about anything and so when I chose the topic race gender and citizenship I just thought the idea of citizenship not in a formal legal sense but more as a concept of belonging um was a really powerful idea and 00:12:00we could look at race and gender but also things like sexual or you know sexuality and disability and class and religion you know there's a lot of ways to kind of think about belonging we put race and gender at the center but not at the exclusion of these other things because those really shape a lot of exclusion and inclusion in U.S. life and so we were very much focused on U.S. kind of history to the present and how ideas about belonging are shaped and so those were things that I thought everyone could relate to somehow um everyone has race and gender everyone has some relationship with belonging and exclusion and so it gave us opportunities to kind of think about those at a personal level all the way up to a societal level.

Mary Evans: Yeah I know that um for me I was speaking to a couple other um women 00:13:00that was inside Amy Lisman and um Kamisha Thomas we were talking about um you know the reading and writing groups and just all the different things and all the different materials um and just how grateful and thankful and refreshing it was and how we like we, we loved the Fridays because that was like the one time that we actually felt like human beings you know um when we had the interaction with you guys because you know dealing with people who are you know workers at the prison all the time some are very very supportive of programming but there's a lot that really wasn't supportive so it was kind of hard to you know sometimes have the class and have things um happen I tell people stories all the time like our class would start at one o'clock and sometimes you know professors I met some students wouldn't get to walk down to almost two then by the time we get in and settle up it's almost you know it's like it's just like they were trying to disrupt you know the educational process and I wish I just wish that you know for once like even at just that dayton correctional that there's a way for them 00:14:00to have some kind of consistency and things don't get taken away from them because that's not taken lightly when people have things to prove to the parole board and you know they need you know different certifications or just anything just some kind of proof that they've done something and I think that um you know the goal for me is to somehow someway figure out how I can figure I need to figure out some way that I can offer some kind of course all the time to these women who are incarcerated in these institutions in Ohio and it not be such a fight to try to do it like I, I don't understand why things like that would happen while I was incarcerated like the lateness for class or just the way that they would try to disrupt whatever was going on on that friday I didn't understand it and I still don't because it's like we're supposed to be reforming and rehabilitating ourselves one of my fondest moments of the inside out class was doing the the letter writing campaign and actually you know getting involved 00:15:00in politics which has led me to you know continue that outside of here outside of there and actually work on some campaigns out here and actually get a grasp of what politics are and like really know what my human rights are and you know find those things out i'm going to be forever indebted and thankful and grateful for those kinds of programs and i'm hoping that you know some of the institutions in ohio that have harder times of getting programs in or you know less success rates because of some kind of you know animosity between administration and the people coming in volunteers coming in I just think that if they could see that the opportunity to be able to take that class and to have further education courses in there they'd have an opportunity like me I mean I went to prison with a seven year sentence wrote I wrote to colleges telling them my story applied and got a full ride you know and I owe it all to not only the inside out class Amelia Gonzalez for all the time and blood sweat and tears and 00:16:00efforts she put into building that initiative with you and just you know all the all the good things I could sit here forever and talk about you know all the books we read and all the conversations we had and all the poems that miss Samuels wrote and you know all the short stories that pandora wrote you know what I mean and all the all the knowledge that miss pat gave me you know someone who's been incarcerated for longer than i've walked the earth and um it's just it makes me feel good to know that there's people like you out there who take their time to make sure that people like myself and people like the community that I represent got to get an adequate education or get a chance to have

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Emily Steinmetz: I mean I think something you are saying you know those programs like the reading and writing program I mean I think mostly what we did from the outside was like help hold a space and then I think the other thing we did was try to bring materials in but I think the magic of that group was that it wasn't 00:17:00a formal class that it was much more of a you know it changed shape over its life and it's still going Laurie Askaland is facilitating it now or you know pre-pandemic and post-pandemic um but I think the magic of that was really that it was a collaborative endeavor and that um so much of what we did wasn't like me being a teacher but us kind of building something together um that I think kind of was responding to the needs that people were expressing in the in that space and so I think just trying to kind of you know some weeks were more fun than others but I think just trying to be there and show up every single week was like one of our priorities and then trying to hold a space where we were interacting maybe in a more um like collaborative and horizontal way like I wasn't grading people we weren't you know we weren't um like marking up people's 00:18:00writing you know it was much more of just like a sharing community space and so I think that one was kind of special for that reason and so I think we can think about different kinds of education there's formal education like a college class which doesn't have to be super hierarchical but it comes with grades and accreditation stuff and other things but there's also more community education which is much more relaxed much more follows the rather than a set curriculum it follows the interests of the group and so I think that we can think about education very expansively too and think about what the reading and writing group could offer what some of the arts programs that other people facilitate can offer and then what formal college courses can offer and I think all of those should be present in a prison not everyone wants to take a college class right um but people might, might want to make a newspaper or um write poetry.

Mary Evans: I was just getting ready to mention I was like we got so many things done in that right like you said it wasn't just you know any kind of specific class I mean we started the symbolic interruption newspaper and that and that's what led from my passionate journalism which led to my career in radio i'm just interviewing people and being able to ask questions and you know I always said I wanted to be able to you know provide space hold space for people to tell their story and when I got to a place where I could share that that's what I would do um it's been one heck of a ride since leaving there and you know I'm, I'm thankful and people look at me like I'm realizing I'm thankful that I went from prison straight to Antioch because it was like I went from an institution to an institution I still had rules I still had structure um and i'm just thankful for the way that everything played out even though there was battles and I was like financially struggling and you know all these things struggling with time struggling with uh trying to reunify with my children I mean because when you get out of prison you have everything you have to deal with you know I had a mother who was fighting addiction at the time, I had an aunt who was battling 00:20:00health who ended up succumbing you know last year but battling health trying to you know come out and try to be a parent you haven't been one for real and you've been gone for seven years and you come home to teenagers and it was a lot and it's a lot and I don't think that um people understand what it what all it takes to you know really reintegrate and a lot of the sentencing guidelines stop people from even being able to participate in classes whether it's you know legit accredited um educational classes from Community and Colleges or Universities or just participating in classes like the women empowering women group or you know anything like that a lot of times behavioral infractions can you know sometimes interfere with with you getting in class or you know the sentence length that you have and that's the thing that like really bothers me and I don't think that people get it because there's no way that I could have 25 year sentence and I have to do 20 years of not being able to further my 00:21:00education and then prepare myself de-institutionalize my mind in five years and be ready for release then I just think that it's backwards I feel like they should be able to get the education and everything first and then I think that would lead to less volatile infractions they would know how to talk to people better they were educated and I think would be a more civil environment if they could follow that kind of platform instead of just it's like they almost write someone off for 20 years until they're ready to you know meet that time to where they're eligible to be able to participate and I just it's like what about what are they supposed to do for those 20 years what kind of programs are you going to guarantee and ensure that they get besides victims awareness you know what I mean like what else is going to help them and you know prepare for this journey because you have to think about it 20 year 20-20 to 25 years inside an institution is maddening anyway in that sense whether the nature of the crime 00:22:00whatever you know what I mean it's like how do people decide these things you've already decided what my life was worth when you sentenced me to this and now you're going to say because i'm sentenced i'm not worth getting myself better you know what I mean so it's just kind of like proving these facts that education is vital you know and allowing everyone to participate is key like that's what needs to happen i'm so thankful you know for some of the administrators at dayton correctional that allowed some of my sisters and comrades to actually participate because a lot of them will never get to see freedom you know and and that's something that I can't even wrap my mind around because I feel like i'm not going to be whole until they're all with me.

Mary Evans:Yeah well I think this is a critical role for educators too because as I kind of learned you know as I came in I learned this problem of life sentenced people not having access to programs and then I ran one inside out 00:23:00class that was only for lifers um and then we always like I said it as a condition like my programs are always open to people with life sentences like we're not using sentence length as an exclusion um you know people without a a high school diploma can participate in women empowering women and so I think educators as they learn about these things that they can kind of use some leverage I mean some prisons are every prison is different I would say that too and so some prisons will say no to that but I think also educators can use their leverage like this is i'm volunteering my time I'm bringing this program in what I want is for this to be open to people regardless of their sentence length and I think when we think about educational equity you know there's um to kind of bring back something you were talking about earlier about the um the 00:24:00difficulties of transitioning out of prison I mean I think this is another area that needs really careful attention so I think equity means we have um you know it's not I mean it can be that education is rehabilitative but I also think just at its core everyone deserves to have access to educational opportunities whatever those are and so that means we need to if we care about equity we need to bring education to a prison but I also think if we care about equity we need to create bridges and supports for people when they leave prison so that they can succeed in um in college if that's what they want to pursue when they leave and and it's not just about admitting them right it's about providing as you are saying like maybe a flexible schedule maybe special certain financial supports because you leave prison and it's just hard financially for people to get an apartment make ends meet reconnect with their children all these Things um take time and money and so I think you know really thinking about and, and social 00:25:00support networks so people don't feel isolated and they have the emotional supports that they need because that transition is hard in many Ways and so like really thinking about education not happening in a vacuum but we need like certain kinds of supports to succeed and to be able to thrive when we are students and so I think like really thinking about educational equity um you know and this also means before people end up in prison too of course you know we could talk about educational equity as this big issue um all day but as we know not everybody has opportunities to have the educational supports that they need even in k-12 and so so there's like these kind of continuities but I think if we're just focusing on equity for people who are in prison and post-prison these are really important issues.

Yeah because it's um it's definitely something that I mean they have different classes in there that kind of like prepare you and there's different housing 00:26:00units you know um housing units being where you would you know be assigned your bed or whatever a lot of different ones like the one down in T unit where um I stayed with the dog program you know it was kind of like an honor dorm next door and um they had like dibs on you know they got to like pick get picked first for programs and I get it because like they're transitioning and they're getting ready leaving all that stuff but still it wasn't fair for people who had a passion like me who was trying to just better myself all the way around and wanted to just eat up everything you know what I mean a lot of women that I hung up hung out with in there that's what they were you know we we just wanted better for ourselves and it felt like you know that was one of the times when I felt like man you know no matter what I do I don't know if i'm going to ever be able to have access or whatever and then talking about some of the challenges that you come home to I've been home for gosh what little over four years now never violated never got into trouble anything um got really great jobs I went to apply for a really good job actually get it uh drug test comes back negative 00:27:00everything comes back when that background check came back though there was one kind of like one charge that stopped me from getting a really I mean and I would be I would be okay if I would have gotten that job and it sucks and so now I'm getting ready to start the process of um with the Ohio prison justice center like trying to get some of the stuff off my record and things like that but you know um that's why I try to tell people educate it like as long as you have that me getting my degree at antioch college really is what helped me be an asset to the company and they really wanted me however my background still you know and that that right there was an eye opener for me and it let me know like I can't forget where I came from but it's like important for me to make sure that people after me don't have to go through those types of things so like I'm working with someone now who's trying to enforce Ohio politicians and legislators to take the felony question off the application completely um it shouldn't even be asked in 00:28:00an interview it shouldn't be something that's even you know considered because you're not I think when you do a background that's looking backwards and that's in the past and I think when anyone's starting something new they should have a new beginning and a clean slate um and that shouldn't hold water against them you know what I mean like I could I could have potentially been well on my way to do the things that I really want to do which is go back and get my masters and teach um and so I can go in and offer um programs to you know incarcerated individuals that's why I do what I do and that's why it's important for me to like show um people that are going to listen to these interviews that you know education isn't a privilege it's a human right and I don't think that people understand that and I think um they get it misconstrued about what rights individuals who are incarcerated are allowed to have and are supposed to have and like we're allowed to have we have we didn't lose anything you know um they try to make it look like we lost everything but we, we still have all of our 00:29:00rights and we shouldn't be denied uh food we shouldn't be uh denied water and we definitely shouldn't be denied an education and um it's sad that there's still women and men that are inside fighting to just get that yeah.

Mary Evans: Absolutely.

I'll never understand it like it's just I don't I don't know why everyone can't just get on one page and like make stronger individuals ready to return you know what I mean because if you don't know then you don't know you know what I mean and that's why it was always so important for me to eat up everything I mean I thought I was smart and then here you guys come with all these different ideas of how to think about you know the sense that I belong in like what I can do as a human being to make my community better because if my community is better then that means we have time to help other communities get better and um I never 00:30:00really looked at things like that growing up in the school system that I had went to because it was just all about you know grades who can do better who can get you know I mean it wasn't really about applying the information it was just about going through the information the best way you could getting it you know understood the best writing the best paper and just trying to get the best grades I wasn't really you know I wasn't really holding on or taking in the information and then when I got a chance to you know go to sinclair community college and kind of like get my thinking you know started taking some you know liberal approaches to education and then Antioch comes in which is liberal arts and it was just more understanding um for me and it made me kind of sad because I felt like I had missed out on so much in my you know childhood and just you know school years when you guys came in with the the information that you guys had it was just like wow blew my mind blew my mind and then like the new jim 00:31:00crow reading that book inside there just ta hasi coates like just I could name and name a name and just keep going and I want people that are incarcerated to be able to have those same chances no matter what.

Mary Evans: Yeah me too I think um you know just um giving people uh choices and opportunities to like pursue the things that they're excited about or to learn things they don't know much about you know like I feel like I'm always learning you know I'm always trying to learn new things or think about things in new ways but part of my ability to do that is that I have access to a lot of resources I have a big library I have the internet you know I have access to a campus with lots of other you know learners and so I think giving people in prison also lots of choices for um you know sometimes I feel frustrated that we put people on 00:32:00these like narrow tracks oh if you're in prison then like this is the thing you know like oh there you're a woman in prison then you should become a beautician you know like I think that not that that's not a good option but I, I think that we only give people like very narrow options when they're in prison and we don't give them a range of choices because we have assumptions or stereotypes about who they are and therefore what they would be capable of what they would be interested in and I think what we see again and again is like you know when we ran the books program people would write us letters and say I want to learn japanese do you have any resources I want to learn about gardening I want to learn about bodybuilding I want to learn about you know philosophy and feminism like people would write us wanting to learn about all kinds of different things and so I guess the point is you know rather than approaching um you know 00:33:00prison-based education in these very narrow contexts that are often vocational and not that that's bad right I think that those are important um but also um recognizing that people may have a whole range of other interests and so giving people choices so that they can choose I mean even with the inside out class it's not like people could choose it was often it was like the only thing going right so they took the class because they didn't have any choices it was either take the class or not.

Mary Evans: But you guys offered so much more especially to them especially the women doing life I mean they had an opportunity to work in a garden and you know what I mean and actually you know become one with the earth and that's important too I didn't realize that the connection that your body really does have with the earth and how important that is to have and it's so limited when you're just around a bunch of barbed wire and steel and concrete you don't really think about it until you know you're out seven years later and you're walking barefoot on the grass and there's like it's you know a feeling that you've been longing for but was not able to do it's just really strange you know what I mean like 00:34:00how that feels but I, I hope um yo know that after everything is you know said and done and we move forward more vaccines are given out and things like that we can get back to normal and going back inside I hope that um I can still you know go back in I was going in with uh professor Ascalon and we were having a ball and then the pandemic happened and it was just it was crappy you know yeah crappy then I worried about you know all the incarcerated individuals mental health because being locked down like that you know what I mean? That that takes a lot from you too and so it I got on board with um Amy and started finding like calls for submissions and stuff so that they when they put those packets together and send them in that you know I was helping out doing my part there and helping people who were in interested in arts or writing or whatever helping them get calls of submission so that they had something to do because I mean sitting still inside there is not ever a great thing to do and it's not really 00:35:00it wasn't ever really an option for me so I wanted to make sure that you know people mental health was great because my mental health during the pandemic was like not good you know what I mean? It was scary it was that was the first time that I was really scared um to just even walk around you know what I mean and now I get like what some third world countries go through and you know what some kind of sometimes what the radical countries go through when they have you know things like that happening to them and their. I didn't never understand it until we went through it with the coronavirus um and it's just very very strange very weird um and I've been trying to educate and um use use different practices about the misinformation of the vaccine because it seems like they've been attacking um the African-American um community a lot with misinformation um and I don't want my incarcerated brothers and sisters to be misinformed about it 00:36:00either or to feel like they're getting bad doses because they're in prison or whatever else you know I mean I got the Johnson and Johnson one done just so other people would know like I'm not scared to do it so don't be scared you know trying to help in that process too um what do you think's to come after everything um you know dies down are you going to ever come back to Ohio and finish up projects that you have?

Emily Steinmetz: So um I have a trip scheduled actually for August finally you know trying to come back I had um I had trips scheduled so I had a trip scheduled I think I think in March or April when the pandemic hit and then I had plans to come out that summer and fall um and all of that just got cancelled and so I think um I'll be out hopefully you know i'm trying I heard that it's opening back up to volunteers soon um and so I'm trying to get a confirmation but I have a trip scheduled for early August late July early August with the 00:37:00hopes that I'll be able to come in and meet with the lifers group specifically um that we've been working Forrest Bright who's the artist and I have been been working with um and so that you know that project um you know that also started as just with the states of incarceration we started working with lifers and um putting together this chapter of a museum exhibition about life sentencing in Ohio and then that group that we were meeting with you know we wanted to keep meeting because we felt like we were just getting started really when the museum exhibit uh finished um and then I moved and that posed some complications but I've still been trying to meet with them I did interviews with 20 women serving life sentences and those interviews were also cut short by the pandemic so I couldn't finish those but um but I've been working with the interview data 00:38:00during the pandemic and I'm writing a report to the Ohio department of rehabilitation and corrections based on um you know kind of like with here's what you know here's what the challenges are for people serving life sentences here are some recommendations for things the ODRC could do you know one of which is opening programs up educational programs and other programs up before people are within five years of a possible release date among many many other things that came up from through these interviews so kind of using the interview data not identifying individual people but using the data to kind of talk about some of the yeah some of the issues.

Mary Evans: That's amazing thank you so much for your work and everything you do and I appreciate Forrest so much too I mean I think he's great I think everybody worried about me when you left and it was so funny because I was like listen I said she used to leave me every day in prison I was like I'm fine I was like I'm gonna always have you know professor steinmetz in my life and i'm gonna always 00:39:00be indebted and thankful for you um I hope to you know be more involved with the prison justice initiative um sometimes you know gods love Antioch but sometimes they can just suck the life right out of you yeah and..

Emily Steinmetz: Hard place.

Mary Evans: Yeah I tell people it's easier you know I was like it was way easier I told april for that she was like was it hard for you here I said no I was like well yeah I was like prison was easier at times but um you know I, I got to stay true to that I want to make sure that the library you know what I mean like since things are going to be getting back to normal they can get the library back open and you know just when we were starting to get that backlog down to a manageable situation it's probably backlogged even more I don't even know if um they're even accepting the letters anymore if they're returning them and saying it's no I don't even know the situation that even stands with the prison justice library but I know that was an important thing for incarcerated uh incarcerated 00:40:00individuals to be able to get free reading material you know a lot of people don't have support or have people that can order books on amazon or different things like I go to goodreads and give'em books and things so it's like you know trying to figure out ways to um maybe make that happen again we've been talking to a couple people about some grants and stuff so hopefully that comes through yeah you know everything just go back to normal and all my incarcerated family can you know start being educated and start participating classes more and prepare themselves to you know come out here and join me because it's been insane for me to not be able to meet with them and work on what we were working on and just having that connection still and just letting them see me out here doing good and still doing the work that I told them I was going to do because it's so refreshing when someone does not lie to you while you're inside there you know what I mean and so like that's why you know it was always so important for me to get back in there and show the women I'm doing good tell them about you know the things that i'm doing out here because I do it all for them really 00:41:00I mean I did it for myself but I keep going for them so yeah I think there's something really important to like for just showing up I-I think you know just that to me was like a real lesson is like you know I mean once in a while something would happen like my kid would get sick and I couldn't go or whatever but like to the degree possible just showing up every week just felt really important like um that consistency and that fulfilling of an obligation that you made to people um that you know I think that matters in life outside of prison too but it matters so much more I think for people who are in prison so like you're saying like just showing up and being there and trying to be honest about whatever whatever the thing is right that we're talking about but those I think are things that are really key and important.

Mary Evans: Um what are you working on? Any new curriculum or what classes are 00:42:00you teaching now what's the topics that you're teaching?

Emily Steinmetz: Yeah well my favorite new class that I started I only got to teach it really once um in 20 fall of 2019 so I got a um like a course development grant to put this together and then I taught it once and then the pandemic hit and I couldn't teach it but i'm going to be teaching it hopefully again fingers crossed this fall and it's called liberation um and I teach a section at the prison it's on my campus it's it's a first year seminar so our freshmen students who are just coming in can you know they have a choice of topics and they take a first year seminar class and this is designed really to teach people who are freshmen to college kind of basic things about inquiry how to read how to find information how to ask questions but around a particular theme and so this liberation theme we look at a couple of different topics we 00:43:00look at animal liberation we look at uh issues relating to technology so we kind of ask who's entitled to liberation is it limited to humans or do we expand it out to non-human animals to artificial consciousness like what is the parameter for liberation um we look at uh buddhist conceptions of liberation um and then we also look at um uh like the history of black liberation movements and third world liberation movements um as a unit as well and we kind of contextualize all all of these different units so we have kind of I don't know about four short units but part of what I do is I have dialogue what I call structured dialogue assignments where students engage in a kind of a self-reflective activity so for animal liberation unit for example they have to observe a non-human animal and I 00:44:00give them requirements for how to do it and then they have to write something as if they are that animal so from the animals perspective and then they have to do a short reflection um but then what they do is they exchange them and so I have the campus-based students and the prison-based students exchanging these dialogue things that they've written and then they respond to each other so they're kind of writing back and forth to each other across so the students on campus aren't regularly coming to the prison i'm teaching these as separate sections um but they're engaging with each other through writing and when I taught it the first time I was able to arrange at the very end like a meeting where we all came together and um it was really interesting to kind of see how I think because they'd been writing to each other they had such a different sense of each other when they met for the first time they felt like they were old friends because I had kind of assigned them partners but they were groups so this group of three people was writing with this group of three people and so 00:45:00everybody had a chance to kind of know other people more intimately through these four writing exchanges um and it was really cool because they just unlike inside out where the first day's kind of awkward I brought everyone together and they were like oh my god here whoever you know i'm so happy to meet you finally um I loved that thing you wrote about the praying mantis or whatever you know and so it was a really different way of engaging um so I like the class because the content is really interesting to me and fun to teach and gives people a chance to really be imaginative I think um but then you know this this way of coming together is really different than the inside out class where it's physically coming together every week um this kind of writing back and forth was a different it kind of facilitated a different kind of intimacy I guess um with the students in both groups and so so that's a class I got to teach once i'm 00:46:00looking forward to trying to teach it again um this fall.

Mary Evans: That sounds amazing you always build like the best stuff though like every class I've ever taken with you even on campus was like worth it and I learned so much and I took a lot away it made me stronger too and I, I your classes I think also too helped me to be a stronger writer and just all the other like little workshops that we would do and stuff too and all writing was always the focus I, I think that that helped me you know that helped shape me to be able to write the way that I right now um so with that so that's that one class um is there any other classes you're going to be teaching besides the liberation one that you want to talk about?

Emily Steinmetz: Yeah well I still teach inside out so I'll be teaching race gender and citizenship again this fall and I've been teaching that you know several since I got here um and I've changed the curriculum a little bit I tinker with it every time you know I respond to new things that have been written or things that I feel like I should have included and hadn't before you 00:47:00know how many there's always like so much more that you want to squeeze in that you don't have time for so how many participants from campus are going in now uh well you know how many was it more than you had at Antioch or was it less I try to keep it still about the same so it's usually 10 or 12 from each group um I think if it's too big you know it it's harder to let everyone get a chance to know everyone else because it's just once a week um so I try to keep it still at 10 or 12 students.

Mary Evans: What's the maximum capacity at the um the prison institution that you the correctional institution that you're going into now how many individuals does it hold?

Emily Steinmetz: Oh the um the facility itself has, it's small. So Delaware is um the part of Maryland I live in is much closer to Delaware than it is to um like Baltimore for example um because i'm on the eastern side of the chesapeake 00:48:00bay um and so I teach at a and Delaware only has so Delaware is weird it doesn't have any jails the jails and prisons are all one institution so there's one women's facility in the whole state and it's the jail and the prison and that facility I think when I was teaching there before they were around it's small so Delaware is also a little state there were about 300 people there um and then I think with the pandemic they were trying to like let some people out not bring people into jail for some things that they would have before the pandemic so the population dropped a little bit but um you know so it's 200 and something.

Mary Evans: That's insane I said that I think about yeah you know the overcrowding and everything like I-I remember when they um was changing Dayton correctional institution into the female institution was moving them in and like they closed down franklin previously so we had women like out in the rec room 00:49:00like we had no room no space they were bringing in bunk beds and stuff and there was um a time when Dayton correctional was almost overpopulated a little bit too you know what I mean it's just like how do prisons get over populated like like I-I have no understanding you know what I mean it's like is there no communication along the law like the lost the level of the law systems does like the county jails not check to see if there's any room before they drive up and just drop individuals off like I don't, I don't understand that and it, and also too that affects like you're learning when you're in there you know what I mean like at or at a higher reformatory for women you're in an open dorm so it's just a row of bunk beds you don't really have that that way to have a moment to have peace and quiet or you know what I mean and move it to yourself Dayton Correctional it was you know cell based so you had like your own like space in a way that you shared with another individual that lord those two people should not be sharing because it's only made for one but yeah yeah they put two in there yeah so that that for me um I was always thankful that I got to start 00:50:00because I started inside out programs with Dr.Chaney from Ohio State University at um orw and that was. I mean it was challenging because the noise and just you know then when I got to Dayton I could really apply myself because I had that that room and it was different and it wasn't so crowded and overpopulated like that affects um people and they don't even like, I don't think people even realize it but that will affect you know absolutely to go back what you said about relationships and the people writing and all that you know I still talk to uh Rebecca and Perry to this day like Perry reaches out to me often and I always keep up with her and I ask her a lot of questions you know because she's a politician and she runs for office and all these different things and she's opened my eyes just so much and why it was so important for me to actually you know with the election and the things that we was going through I was like I don't even know if my vote's even gonna do anything I felt defeated yeah you 00:51:00know for this election but thank god you know things changed and I mean not everything changed but some things did and it's a lot quieter I don't feel like I gotta wake up every morning and wonder if someone's gonna drop a bomb on us because he had a twitter rant in the middle of the night yeah those relationships will be monumental and it'll be something that people will remember for the rest of their lives and I'll always take with me some-something that I learned from your from your classes while I was inside with me I think I've taken it with me the whole time that I've been there and that is that you know education is not a privilege it's a right.

Emily Steinmetz: Yeah you know well those classes too I mean I think the important thing too is you know I kind of like set it up but it's really the students who make it work like I can't I can't make the class functional and fun and engaging by myself right it really requires students to make themselves 00:52:00vulnerable to come to class ready to engage you know reading the things that we've assigned thinking about it um yeah so I think just from I think for me a really important thing is that students get so much credit for a successful class you know that um that it's really a testament to everyone who participated like you're saying you know Rebecca and Perry and all the other students who were in your cohort both inside and outside um and so uh yeah that was such a great group they were all great groups but that first one was just that was the first time I ever taught an inside out class and they were just such amazing students in there and it was so much fun.

Mary Evans: Yeah I still admire you know Emilia Senaty um she told me she was like I want to be a i'm going to be a lawyer so I can help get you know whatever family am I going to put all that you know all that and I was just like man I 00:53:00would have never thought of that I would have never been like you know what I'm gonna go to law school so that way my family we're poor I'm gonna go to school and I'm gonna, I'm gonna help get this and you know what I mean I was like man you know what this girl's never even been in trouble you know if I if she can think like that then I can too and so like just watching how you know changing my thought process and stuff too it helped me to adapt and help me to like soak in the information a lot better it's definitely made me have some connections that i'll always have for the rest of my life and a new level of respect for researchers like like you said you know trying to get the information I mean we had that library but you knew what that like that that library was terrible we didn't really have resources and access but when you would bring us the material back in and we got a chance to do our research and stuff like you it was insane I-I bet we probably look like how they did on campus you know we don't get people together like just writing and you know picking up each other's notes and reading what you just wrote and just like trying to you know figure it out I-it 00:54:00made my time go by a lot better and faster too because I knew that I had something I had something to look forward to or something that I had to get done some kind of assignment some kind of a Project something and it just keeps you out of the way and it keeps the it keeps violence it keeps infractions off your records everything like education is just key.

Emily Steinmetz: Yeah it just is so well I know some of the older lifers who got to take an inside out class were saying like "I haven't really had a chance to use my intellect like in a long time and it was challenging" but it was also something they were enjoying and I think that to me was also like um not a testament to the class so much as like a check in with how little opportunity there is to engage intellect you know like you were saying the library isn't great I remember there's like a whole shelf of gone with the wind I was like why is this taking up one whole shelf of the library? Why do we need so many copies 00:55:00of gone with the wind like can't we bring in some different texts here? um you know but just thinking about that as a you know I mean some people read and they read all the time and some people want to have a reading group and people to talk about readings with or you know people to engage with and so I think um you know that idea of opportunities to engage the intellect uh is something that's really important.

Mary Evans: Yeah for sure! I just wonder you know like going, like going back in how many people are going to actually like be willing to be vulnerable because you have to be vulnerable to kind of come in those kind of classes you know what I mean and i'm hoping that you know some i'm hoping that for miss Ascalon going back in you know that her class is huge there's a big waiting list like you know I mean she's got to tell people you gotta wait till next time like I want that for her so bad but I think sometimes too you know um people get discouraged and 00:56:00this is that tenacity and they don't think about it anymore you know I think that was a lot that was going on with them miss Anita Sanita you know Shetanka had left and they were like best friends and you know then you know Andrea left a lot of people was leaving her and you know she was still there I just worry about you know I just worry about my family's mental health on the inside and there because like I know what it's like to be in there to feel like no one cares about you and you know I was torn like do I write do I not some volunteer you know what I mean like I was just like at this point I don't care i'm gonna talk to him until they tell me I can't because it's not like i'm going in there anyway that was important for me too, just like you said, to check in. Just general like "hey how are you?" send them a stamp so they can be able to write back not know you know what I mean? so just having that little outlet being that outlet that I think that that helped me get through the pandemic too because I worried about them because I was like I knew. I know how people get treated in 00:57:00prison and especially when it comes to like medical treatment and stuff like that and so I knew like if anybody tested positive they were going to probably put them in the infirmary or lock them down you know what I mean put them they did exactly that it was just a lot so I couldn't really even you know think about the educational program or anything of course a little bit I during um you know the pandemic and stuff I was too worried about you know miss pat is she gonna make it out of there you know what I mean like things like that absolutely I mean we tried to put together it's hard because we tried to put together little care packages but it's you know the staff like the staffing at the prison during the pandemic was also different and so like it was hard sometimes to like get care you know the care packages meaning like um you know packets of things to read some journaling prompts some coloring pages like anything that might give people something to do or something to look forward to um and you know notebooks and pens and pencils like basic supplies so that people had tools to 00:58:00like actually do things and it was hard it was hard to coordinate it was like you know and you can't do it for everybody so we were just targeting like this group of people that we'd been working with or whatever but um every I wish you know that it falls to people on the outside to kind of put these things together I think is the real dilemma because you know. I know, I know there were big also like Kathy Roma and others were involved in like supply drives like hand sanitizers and things like that trying to get materials inside but yeah Dr.Roma is definitely she's definitely been someone who's been very you know pivotal and making sure that people have work you know had preparations and and different items for um the coveted 19 pandemic so yeah big shout out to her and her partner dorothy for all the work they did because I feel like I feel like I was meeting them and taking them something every week and they were going up there like every other week and dropping off big boxes of just all kinds of stuff and so like very very thankful and grateful for you know individuals like that that 00:59:00take their personal time out to think about the incarcerated because I mean we do matter you know what I mean we do deserve to you know keep our human rights and we do deserve to be educated I just want to thank you so much for like all the work that you, you've done and you're still doing and I hope that you live 100 more years to go inside hopefully accomplished by then and they're no longer any like that's the real goal but until then you know I hope that um you know that there's no resistance for you anymore and that people are just more accepted and more eye-opening to the fact that education is important to incarcerated individuals you know and I think it's important too for people that really have never been in that situation like the students to see how it is to be inside a prison I think that's a way to to kind of like um deter them from 01:00:00making bad decisions you know what I mean? and it gives us a chance to kind of like um work together on that note you know what I mean? like I used to tell them like guys whatever you do like if you know that it's not right don't do it because I was like as I don't I-I couldn't imagine you know Millie or any of the people in prison you know I think a lot of times too that that helped them to like work with us to like make better decisions for themselves that they didn't ultimately end up you know where we were at so yeah it was like it inspired some to add to activism too I think like actually being in there yeah I think it changed a lot of people's perspectives too about what incarcerated people are like and what the things that we want I think that they think we want uh hooch toilet wine and just different things like that. They see this stuff in movies they don't understand that like hey I want books you know what I mean I need books I want poetry I want this I want that I-I want to be this I want to be a journalist I want to you know I want to learn about radio or you know just 01:01:00reading some of miss Anita's writing I mean she should be a new york times bestsellers list author by now you know what I mean? Like so much talent and stuff inside there too.

Emily Steinmetz: So absolutely yeah it's been you know um a privilege really to get to teach and to get to meet so many amazing people um yeah well I hope to see you in August and I hope, I hope that I'm back at it with professor Askalon and we're going back in there she's so much fun and so awesome and I'm so thankful for her because she didn't even have to step up and step in like that you know um professor Grubbs she did her thing too.

Mary Evans: Yeah she's such an amazing woman and she's given me so much wonderful advice about grants and how to go about that and you know I've been passing my little bit information along to other incarcerated um return well returned citizens formerly incarcerated individuals and you know I'm just in a really good space and I think that this year is going to be like the year for 01:02:00change and I think next year I tell everybody I said this year is the year to like give back because next year is going to be the year of fruition you know what I mean like so we have to work really hard this year the rest of this year to like get everything that we were supposed to get done last year we got to get it done it's like double up time then I think next year is just going to be nothing but like fruition it's going to be nothing but a bunch of different gyms being buried I-I just feel it you know what I mean I mean I feel like so much was taken from us from the pandemic that we deserve that so I'm claiming that I'm claiming good that we're just working really hard this year and then next year we'll get to put our feet up just a little bit I hope so we'll get like one day off we're still not work days a week you know but we're going to probably get that one day next year I think you know yeah and that's what I'm hoping for

Emily Steinmetz: We do deserve everybody deserves it time to relax time to laugh and enjoy 01:03:00ourselves create some new content maybe start a new paper up you know what I mean they got the record up at Antioch so maybe try to you know do a gofundme one time for the one time so those women can you know have access to doing the newspaper like just something I don't know what i'm going to do I've been I've got so many different things that I could teach and and i've like been building the workshop with the these three gentlemen that I work with about audio journalism and the importance of like community reporting you know what I mean in all the communities so that's what I'm working on right now we're getting ready to start working with catholic social services and work with refugees from the Congo and um some of them already have journalism experience so i'm excited um to work with them and to like learn more about their culture and like learn more about topics that are privy to them and like um things they want to shed light on and just being able to you know provide space to help them get that 01:04:00done is just amazing and it's about showing up you know what I mean like I don't mean there I'm usually there before the guys get there and i'm like the last one to leave just because I knew how important it was when I was sitting in there waiting walking down the hill you know what I mean so well I can't wait I can't wait to check in here more see what happens yes will you take care thank you so much for you know telling us why it was important for you to get involved and and you really did shed some you gave me a lot of information and a lot of good nuggets on this one because I didn't know you know what all it takes to really like build a to build a course for that so it's great that you get funding for that to like do course development stuff like that because I know that's time consuming and you know what I mean and just thinking about preparing a whole semester of classes is just crazy but you make it happen it's always so wonderful every time and um I just want to say thank you.

Emily Steinmetz: Yeah well thank you for, it's so nice to see, you thanks for 01:05:00having me! and you know it's everything's a community effort so when you put classes together you know people are very generous and share all their ideas and materials so you know everything think about it that way too you know? I've had lots of people share stuff with me um that I now use and so always, always draw on the collective wisdom of the group.

Mary Evans:Absolutely, absolutely all right well thank you so much Emily!

Emily Steinmetz: Yeah take care.