KnowledgeBorn GodAllah: This is KnowledgeBorn GodAllah calling from Solano State Prison, you know the two of us at Universal God-like[?] radio, I’m with the brothers. As I promised, I will do an interview with the brothers on the LWOP programs. Where we’re talking about the programs that are listed on Solano State Prison’s list and being funded but, the programs are not being generated in the general population. They consistently go to Delancey Street and bypass and overlook all the people in the general population. And I’m talking to a brother that was working Delancey Street—is no longer Delancey Street watching his opinion[?]. And he’s been here a while he knows about the program. So my brother, what is your name?
Ricky Gary: Ricky Lee Gary, I’m 54 years old. I’ve been incarcerated 35 years. And I’m here at Solano program. I’ve been here since 2018. I’ve been over 30 years on Level IV 180. And I came up here to get the programs. But since I’ve been here, they haven’t let me have any good programs, you know, dealing with the rehabilitation. And so this is a major problem that we need to address. And I happen to be a “life without,” a “life without parole.” And everywhere I turn, they giving me notice that I can’t be in a program because of my custody level, or because of my sentence. So um I’m really trying to understand what are they doing up here to make the program work. And it’s constantly only talking about PIA, Delancey Street, Delancey Street Restaurant, and there’s a few other programs here too. OMCP for the youth offender, and they only talk about those programs, if you’re not in those programs, then uh you’re not doing nothing beneficial to moving far as rehabilitation.
KnowledgeBorn GodAllah: Right, now, these programs, brother, these programs that exist, that they got on paper, people with “life without” such as myself and such as yourself, we need the certificates in order to be even considered by the parole board to be up for parole. And so and these certificates we have to go to these classes. And these classes have to be orchestrated and officiated by an outside entity, as far as the outside organization that was the representative of those outside organizations, since you’ve been here, have you seen any of those organizations bring in uh outside representatives to project these courses and classes toward people achieving those certificates?
Ricky Gary: No, I have not. In the beginning, everything was ran without a sponsor from the streets, and then they shut the program down. And so now we’re trying to get it back up and running. And a few uh people that work here, staff members, freestyles, have volunteered to be our sponsor, but still we having issues with the program itself and getting it off of the floor.
KnowledgeBorn GodAllah: So it will be safe to say that these programs that is listed on Solano State Prison’s list as far as inmate help, self-help programs and programs that we need as individuals to, uh, us to obtain these certificates so that we could go to board and be considered for parole, these programs are just listed, they’re not programs and—
Ricky Gary: Right, they’re just listed and they’re not letting us participate as promised of, transferring here in Solano State Prison.
KnowledgeBorn GodAllah: These programs are being funded yet we are not receiving the program amenity, an amenity to ascertain these things in order for us to get to board, even better ourselves, to even rehabilitate ourselves, to even give credit, credence to the fact that we are programming and progressive program facilities where we can even entertain the idea of going to board. So we need the people to um look into these things as soon as possible if not as soon as possible, immediately because this is false advertising and it is misleading the public. I appreciate you brother Gary.
Ricky Gary: Appreciate it.
KnowledgeBorn GodAllah: We got to wrap this up and we’re gonna continue this maybe we have a segment two, a segment three later on.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
