From Left—Ángel Castillo, D. Babb, Bob Gay, Greenwald, F. Lee, Al Rice, Mitchell.
By D. Razor Babb
Mule Creek State Prison, Ione, CA. -Following random COVID testing, during the first week of January Mule Creek State Prison was placed on quarantine. Several inmates from building 19, E Facility tested positive and were moved to segregated quarantine on another yard. The entire prison system statewide has been placed on Phase One quarantine.
Several prisons had already been quarantined out of an abundance of caution, in the shadow of last year’s disastrous outbreak throughout the California Department of Corrections. Lawsuits surrounding prisoner COVID deaths and the CDCR handling of the pandemic are still pending.
The Mule Creek Post prison newspaper is located in E Facility, in building 19. The news crew was in the 
process of finalizing the February Black History Month edition when the shutdown was announced. And they were awaiting the release of the January “Year of Giving Back” edition—an optimistic take on the year ahead, coming out of a year of stress, anxiety, difficulty, and death.
The Omicron variant outbreak throws a blanket of uncertainty over what lies ahead—for the newspaper, the prison system, the state and nation.
The January edition of the Post announces the new partnership of the paper and Davis Vanguard as a fiscal sponsor. This is an important development for the Post. The newspaper has been operating for four years due to the benevolence of Amador County Ledger-Dispatch publisher Jack Mitchell. When Ledger financing of the Post was disrupted, David Greenwald, CEO of Davis Vanguard, stepped in to help.
The Post is designed to follow the San Quentin News blueprint, with a 501(c)(3) nonprofit established to support business operations. Development of the Incarcerated Allied Media (IAM) nonprofit, in concert with Davis Vanguard, is in the planning stages, with an anticipated fundraising drive to begin this year. The Mule Creek Post, Davis Vanguard, IAM, and other Post affiliates such as LWL Enterprises Inc., plan to offer a selection of prisoner-written books to readers and supporters for donations to fund the paper and to donate to local charities.
Many of the selections, such as the “American Prisoner” series (LWL Publishing) focus on the benefits of rehabilitative programming. In the rehab groups available at Mule Creek, and other prisons, inmates learn about the complex nature of cause and effect and the relation to crime and criminality, abuse and trauma, addiction, victims’ awareness, anger management, criminal thinking and distorted thinking.
The hope is to be able to share this knowledge with others through their writing in order to become a part of the solution, rather than creating more crime and more victims. Through educational development, personal insight, and a purpose to do good, these prisoners are contributing to the cause of creating a better world, now, and when they are released back into their communities.
This is the type of inspiring work Davis Vanguard supports and promotes. This is the reason David Greenwald and the Mule Creek Post believe this partnership will be a beneficial one.
No one knows how long this current quarantine will continue, but everyone is anxious to get the ball rolling on a Vanguard-Post future.
D. Razor Babb is Editor in Chief of the Mule Creek Post
Isn’t announcing the disruption of the announcement of the partnership, itself an announcement of the partnership?
10 of 10! you ‘pegged it!’