[00:28:44] Tore: So, so, so, so it was the flu.
[00:28:46] Everybody had the flu. And the only people that were wearing masks were the people. Who were positive flu, who just showed symptoms. So some, they, they had ’em wear the, the, the, the, the masks. And mind
[00:28:59] Jay: you, they’ve never locked us down for flu ever, ever in history.
[00:29:02] Tore: So we had the flu, the lockdown, March
[00:29:05] Jay: 4th, we knew something.
[00:29:06] They
[00:29:06] Tore: blew that emergency count. Yeah. Mar March 4th. And this happened, we went on lockdown.
[00:29:11] Anna: And
[00:29:13] Tore: not for flu. Not for flu. I mean, we were locked down for the, we were, the facility was on lockdown. There was no movement to anywhere. We were eating in our, our cells for the flu. Okay. And then something changed.
[00:29:31] Something, something, and I, and I don’t, I’m trying to remember the event that happened, but I don’t know if it was the governor came on and said, COVID, we’re, Michigan’s on a lockdown. So it’s like March 17th or something like that. Then all of a sudden it went from flu to COVID. Now if your temperature, if you have a, everyone’s on lockdown except those who go to, who work in the kitchen.
[00:29:52] If you had a certain temperature, you would go into the kitchen. If your temperature was 140 degrees. A hundred 0.4 or higher. They would test you for Covid. There was a very small amount of tests. Yeah. So only certain people got tested, so you had to be a hundred or 0.4 or higher. So if you’re a hundred 0.4 or higher, you get tested.
[00:30:15] I had a bunkie who worked in the kitchen. He went to work, they tested him. He was over 100.4. They let him go to work. So why he is at work, he’s coughing. So someone said, Hey, you need to send him back to his room. He comes back to the room. They didn’t say nothing to me. They say anything to me and they let him stay in the room.
[00:30:39] Then he goes back to work. Okay. And then finally they said, you know what? We’re going to test you. No, they didn’t. I’m sorry. Let me take that back. They said, nope, you’re go back to your room. Your room is on lockdown. You the two of you have to stay in the room. We have not been tested at this point. This is a, this is the end of March.
[00:31:00] This is like a week into the governor saying that we’re on this COVID, like this it’s COVID now. And I mean, I got the dates. I actually sent, sent a, sent in a letter. To, um, the Michigan Carceral Project at U of M Ann Arbor. That’s probably, I sent the letter in. Just explaining what happened. The dates and everything, I have it all.
[00:31:23] Um, so, they locked us into a room and said, You guys cannot come out of your room, even though the bathroom is down the hall. We, everyone else has to be in their rooms before the two of you can come out because you’re contaminated.
[00:31:38] Jay: Yeah, they would lock down that wing or not allow anyone on the wing.
[00:31:41] Right, and this is the
[00:31:42] Tore: beginning. So, We would say, Hey, we got to go to the bathroom. So everyone would go in their rooms. We would go down to the bathroom, use the bathroom and then clean, come in, clean the bathroom and then everyone else could come up out of their rooms. Now, this was a Thursday. That next morning we packed our stuff and went to, um, quarantine unit, quarantine unit, five block, that
[00:34:00] Yep. You’re eating. So your food was delivered to you. So I was in quarantine for 18 days for closed contact, and the sad part about it, I didn’t shower three days. So, so they, so they said this is not, you’re not on punishment. That’s what they told me. We’re not punishing you. I didn’t get to use the phone.
[00:34:19] I didn’t get to use JPay to contact my family. So my family had no idea what happened to me. I didn’t get a shower for three days. I can’t use anything, right, because I’m in a cell that’s, I’m on lockdown. They locked me in and said, you can’t do anything, but I’m not being punished. It’s for your protection.
[00:34:40] But, you know, so, you know, my family had no idea what was going on.
[00:34:47] Anna: Was
[00:34:47] Natalie: there, like, a lot of trouble with the communication aspect of reaching the outside?
[00:34:52] Jay: Especially in the beginning, the beginning was the worst, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there was people, there were people who were, like, it was like a resistance was starting to form.
[00:35:03] Because they weren’t letting us communicate with anybody outside about anything. They were shutting the phones down, nobody can get in the J Pays. So guys are like, you know, like, I’m not going to Maryland, I’m not locking down, make us lock down. Eventually though, you know, like they started, all right, we’re gonna, we’re gonna do a certain block of cells at a time to go do this and do that.
[00:35:25] I mean, but that took a while to happen, like that didn’t happen for a couple months. But if
[00:35:30] Tore: you were positive, but early on, if you were positive or close contact, you didn’t get it. They finally, what they started to do was let the phone, let you, three, three days in, they started doing the phones, but you may not get on the phone for two days because they would only allow two people out of their, out of their rooms at a time.
[00:35:49] So you had a whole block, so you had 48, in, in the front level five, there’s like 48 guys per, uh, wing. So. They let two people out to use the phone for 15 minutes and take a shower for 15 minutes. So you would get all the way, maybe halfway through and they’re like, Oh, we’re done for the day. And then you hope they start back up the next day.
[00:36:14] Where they left off, but not, but they don’t always happen that way. They may stay, they may go back.
[00:36:21] Jay: Yeah, they’ll lose, they’ll lose the sheet that they were using to keep track. Oh, so some
[00:36:25] Natalie: people are like, able to do it a
[00:36:27] Anna: couple times. Yeah,
[00:36:28] Tore: so, so if you were like, okay, let’s say I’m in cell one. So it’s cell one through, um, I think it’s like 30, it’s not 30, it’s like 25, 25 rooms in level.
[00:36:39] So it’s like, so if you’re in cell one, And they start at you, so you start, you use the phone, take a shower, right? So you got, you got like 30 minutes to do both. Come back in, they get down at 15. The next day, the officers didn’t write down what they were supposed to, they’ll start back again at 1. Now, if the guy’s honest, he’ll say, Hey man, I had my, they stopped at 15 yesterday.
[00:37:01] Anna: But not everybody’s honest.
[00:37:03] Natalie: They’re like, I want my 15 minutes
[00:37:05] Tore: on the floor. Right, because they did not, because they did not document properly who, I mean, so you could, Or
[00:37:10] Jay: the sheet got lost, or they’re like, Well, I’m doing this my way. You know, that was that shift. I’m, I, I run this shift. How is,
[00:37:19] Natalie: um, like the staff responses to the COVID?
[00:37:23] Oh, they
[00:37:23] Jay: blamed us for it. It says it’s like they treated us like it was our fault. Like we’re the
[00:37:28] Anna: ones that Oh no, we brought them in.
[00:37:29] Natalie: They were the ones coming
[00:37:30] Anna: in.
[00:37:30] Jay: We’re spreading it. We’re doing it. It’s like, no, you.
[00:37:35] Tore: Yeah. Oh, the reason why you guys don’t have visits because you guys are the ones who brought in COVID.
[00:37:40] Anna: Yeah,
[00:37:43] yeah, yeah, no, they,
[00:37:44] Tore: they, they, no, this is what they, this is what some officers said is that it is our fault. And of course, when they locked down visits, I was like, okay, who’s bringing it in now? Who’s got
[00:37:54] Jay: COVID now? Which by the way, and I know this isn’t related to what you’re doing, but no, no visitors. No volunteers, nobody connected to an inmate, was allowed to enter the facility, and not even come on the grounds, and drugs were more prevalent than ever during the pandemic.
[00:38:14] And, but they swept it all under the rug, because there was no way we were
[00:38:18] Natalie: bringing it in. There was a lot of drugs, alcohol, and those deteriorated. Yeah, uh, K2.
[00:38:25] Jay: Also known as 2G. Uh, what’s the other stuff?
[00:38:29] Tore: Fentanyl? Fentanyl. Oh, we had plenty of fentanyl. What’s the
[00:38:32] Jay: third one? Fentanyl, Heroin, K2,
[00:38:38] Tore: Suboxone.
[00:38:38] Suboxone. No, listen. If there was a drug, it was there. Okay? In my whole time, I’ve never seen cocaine. Powder cocaine, and it was there. In my whole time, I’ve never… What is the other one? The little brother of cocaine. Um, so it, it was
[00:39:03] COVID, COVID came in, drugs went up, you know, you get some stimulus money.
[00:39:09] Jay: The stimulus money was nice. Yeah, stimulus money. I’m not talking about that. I don’t want to ruin them. I want to ruin it for the guys. Future stimulus. Oh man, hey dude, hey, me and Mario started partying up in that thing. We were one of the first ones to get it.
[00:39:23] We didn’t think we were going to get it. Like we
[00:39:25] Anna: Yeah. I didn’t realize that. Listen, I was sitting. Oh, you didn’t know.
[00:39:27] Jay: We got Mario and Mario. Listen, me and Mario are one of the first ones to get it. We didn’t say nothing for weeks until other people started talking about it, but I’m just, I was sitting in my chair.
[00:39:35] The door’s here, Mario’s talking about the first 600, the the 2000, oh no, the
[00:39:40] Tore: 1200. The 1200 that came in like November. Yes. The very
[00:39:44] Jay: first, the very first, very first one. I’m sitting in that chair and then the little sheets got slid down.
[00:39:52] Anna: I
[00:39:52] Jay: was like, what the fuck? What like, I’m like, I got, I don’t see money like that. So yeah, I got mine
[00:39:59] Tore: on. I didn’t, I didn’t have because, because if they, if money, if money came in for me, they would’ve, uh, charged me. It would’ve taken all my money.
[00:40:06] Jay: Yeah. That’s why I had to spend mine. ’cause they, they take money from you after you get, if you have over so much because you have over so much money, they start charging you rent.
[00:40:16] It’s a lot. Yeah. But anyway, uh oh, that’s But back on, back on point. So the, so the health service, they became tyrannical. And although it’s MDOC policies, they were also enforcing it and they weren’t doing anything to combat it, so they were part of the tyranny of it. They didn’t like a lot of it because it was extra work for them, but they went right along with it.
[00:40:41] Um, they did not provide you with anything to help you if you have anything, like Tamiflu doesn’t do anything for COVID. Uh, we got the boosters, the vaccines and the boosters. How soon
[00:40:57] Natalie: were stuff like masks and vaccines available?
[00:41:01] Jay: It took a minute for the masks, but once they came in, it was just like non stop, man.
[00:41:06] It took forever, forever. People stopped wanting, like, we don’t want these anymore.
[00:41:10] Tore: Masks started probably three, three to four weeks in, we started getting the masks that were made out of uniforms. Yeah. Yeah. So, so it was, it was, it was the blues. It was the masks made out of our blues. They started making the masks.
[00:41:23] Couldn’t breathe. They were garbage. Through that material, you could not… It’s like a staple. And
[00:41:27] Jay: the straps were… Yes. It had these weird cross hatched straps that didn’t fit on your head well, so it was like, you’d crush your nose. Very… Against your mouth. And you had to wear it? We all kept our shit below our face.
[00:41:42] You had to wear
[00:41:43] Tore: them outside, too. Everywhere. You could not breathe outside. it.
[00:41:47] Jay: If you’re not in the shower… You had to take it outside, too. If you’re not in the shower, actually eating, or brushing your teeth, or in your room, you gotta wear it.
[00:41:56] Anna: Okay, but…
[00:41:58] Natalie: Fair, like everybody was closed April, like the entire world, nobody want him, they done, actual surgical.
[00:42:08] Anna: Well, well, not mass, but
[00:42:10] Tore: okay, well, well in general what they could have done.
[00:42:19] I, I, so, so, so I’ll say, I’ll say, I’ll give him the pass at it, but here’s my problem, my, my roommate. My roommate had a temperature of 100. 4. He was sent back with me. So, So, so that is that, I mean, yeah. Okay. Not don’t know what to do if that is the threshold. So if we made a threshold, which was a very high threshold to begin with, because their testing was so bad, so low.
[00:42:51] Here’s a,
[00:42:52] Jay: here’s, here’s a huge, huge blunder on their part that I think was actually willful. Uh, when, when they have, when they did mass testing on the, on the whole facility and you have whatever percentage it might be that test positive, they start shuffling people around the units. Positive people and non positive people.
[00:43:16] And they tell, if you two tested positive, you get moved to this other unit and they need our room for some other positives. So they put us in your room where you were just at and didn’t clean it and didn’t clean it. And then, you know, it says this, and they really just. It’s like shuffling cards with the inmates and then it just keeps it like perpetuates it for however long it takes.
[00:43:39] I think they wanted it before, okay, when the pandemic started that gave the administration, now the, the, the, the, the people on the ground not necessarily wanted this because it made a lot more work for them, but the administration obtained so much control over the population that they weren’t allowed to do because it wasn’t necessary like.
[00:44:03] So they can control who, uh, associates with who on the yard, they can, they can, they can do it by wing, they can do it by unit, they can monitor and control movement, who’s going where, uh, they can lock people down, they can control property. They had so much, you know, minute control that they didn’t have before.
[00:44:27] And that is, and plus they get funds, they get funds for, if you had so many, if you, they obtain like outbreak status.
[00:44:34] Tore: So, I mean, so I think the thing is, is that the neglect was there purposely because if we neglect it… And we still have these high numbers, we’re still able to have the control. And I was told I was a block rep at during COVID.
[00:44:47] And I was told by a deputy warden, I was a blocker. So blocker just voted in. You’re the representative for your unit to go and talk to administration about problems.
[00:45:03] Yes. So the people, so the people in the unit vote you in. So you, so you have a, um, uh, a person of color and someone in person who. It represents each
[00:45:15] Anna: white person,
[00:45:16] Tore: right? That, that, that represents that represents each unit. So I was asking questions and I was pulled to the side by deputy warden and said, deputy warden seats, deputy warden seats pulled me aside and said, listen, price,
[00:45:35] Anna: we like it like this.
[00:45:37] Tore: We have more control over you than we ever have. So the fact that your unit doesn’t get to intermingle with this unit or this unit or this unit. So if you’re telling me you like us being quarantined, then why wouldn’t it be, why wouldn’t you be the one who is, uh, controlling numbers and moving these people around?
[00:46:04] I mean, if people are positive, you know, people are positive, everyone should be stable. Stay put. And then once you know who’s positive, pull them out and put them
[00:46:13] Anna: into a circle. Call prayer.
[00:46:17] Jay: Yeah, I get church bells, calls for prayer. Oh yeah, but call to prayer.
[00:46:22] Anna: It’s like a trauma. Yeah.
[00:46:28] Tore: So, so it’s, you know, so was it, you know, the conspiracies are there, you know, but you ask, you know, people say, well, why would they do, why would they do this? Well, they would, they would do it because for me, in my eyes, from what I heard, they’re in
[00:46:42] Jay: control. Now the COs, most of them don’t like it. Because they’re constantly.
[00:46:49] constantly having to enforce a thousand new rules and they’re being watched on camera just like us. There’s cameras everywhere. And so like, you know, quit walking the halls, you know, four to a table, quit standing up, you know, put your mask up, you know, all day long they’re yelling. They don’t want to do that.
[00:47:08] They want to go in there, sit in a chair like this and collect that fat check.
[00:47:14] Anna: But they’re
[00:47:15] Jay: not, with these new rules, they can’t.
[00:47:19] Tore: No, nobody. They play games on the computer. . Oh yeah. They, they, they, they get to go in, in the, oh, yeah. In the, in the, uh, office. And they’re on the computer all day.
[00:47:28] Anna: I saw them playing
[00:47:28] Jay: Solitaire.
[00:47:29] Well, they can’t do that with the pandemic, solitary, were they Now, it’s, now it’s, uh, constant. You know, they, they just have, they have to work and it’s not productive work. It’s just busy
[00:47:42] Anna: work.
[00:47:44] Natalie: Were they still transferring people from They
[00:47:47] Anna: stopped for a while. They stopped for a while. They stopped for
[00:47:49] Tore: a while.
[00:47:49] Okay. Yeah, that’s, that’s going on now. Unless, so, so, unless you were designated as a COVID spy. Yeah. So, so, early on, or early on, they designated certain prisons as a COVID prison. So they would transfer people. And step down prisons. Yeah. From outside to the COVID spot. Right. So from our facility, a bunch of guys who tested positive initially went to like Adrian, they went to other one of them.
[00:48:17] Jay: I think some of them
[00:48:21] Tore: came back, but initially they’re just trying to get people out because they were trying to figure out what What to do, but normal transfers. If it wasn’t medical covid transfer? No. No you weren’t. No.
[00:48:35] They stopped transfers, man. Maybe a year and a
[00:48:37] Anna: half. There was also a VIN when they were,
[00:48:42] Jay: no, there was a lot of talk to do that, but
[00:48:45] Tore: nobody got released.
[00:48:46] Anna: There was like a on the new.
[00:48:47] Jay: It was a lot of talk to do it. No. No.
[00:48:51] Tore: That was talk. In fact, they stopped people from being released. So if you were, so if you were, um, if you got a parole and you’re, so it’s Friday and you’re supposed to get parole run too, they would test you.
[00:49:03] And early on, if you got, if you tested positive for COVID, they would quarantine you and you could not go home on your
[00:49:09] Jay: update. Yeah. They’d wait 14
[00:49:11] Tore: 14 days before you could
[00:49:13] Jay: go. And you better test negative. So what
[00:49:16] Tore: happened is. So we had a guy, I had a guy I know a guy. He’s out now. Father Tim. Tim Kane. Yeah.
[00:49:22] So Tim, um, tested negative. He didn’t tell anybody. He got out and was hospitalized at Henry’s bad, be afraid that if he said something right then he was, he would, he would not have, he would, they would not have released him. So right after he had tested negative, two days later he started having symptoms and then he, but he went home that Tuesday.
[00:49:49] So he is like I said that no chance. Yeah. You know, so, so he was really sick for like a week in the hospital
[00:49:57] Anna: after he was released. Oh, after he was released? Right, yes. Okay, so after he was released and then… He,
[00:50:02] Tore: he went to the hospital because he knew he was, he knew, he knew he was sick. Yeah. But you know that the test didn’t, it didn’t, it didn’t show up that he, that he was…
[00:50:15] Anna: And I’m sorry I have got to… No. Try the meat ones. Here, I’ll,
[00:50:19] Jay: I’ll call, I’ll call Cooper and tell him you’re not making it. What’s his number?
[00:50:24] Anna: Cooper’s gonna get mad. He must be so happy to have you around so much. Oh, this is better. Better?
[00:50:33] Jay: That is better, yeah. It’s better, but it’s not like… The other one was just different.
[00:50:37] Okay. I’ve had
[00:50:37] Tore: some pierogies from a restaurant. One,
[00:50:39] Anna: one time
[00:50:40] Natalie: you
[00:50:41] Anna: pierogi. I’ve had some, some good…
[00:50:48] Tore: These aren’t like the ones I’ve had. Jay can make these
[00:50:50] Jay: from scratch. Well, these are the only ones I’ve ever had, so they’re the best I’ve ever had.
[00:50:55] Tore: Well, that’s good. Um,
[00:50:58] Jay: but Cooper is, uh… Before
[00:51:01] Natalie: you go, uh, because we need help to find more stories, more voices, more people. Jamal? Yeah, Jamal left,
[00:51:14] Jay: uh… That was pre pandemic, wasn’t it?
[00:51:16] Jamal? Jamal,
[00:51:17] Tore: Jamal left door independent.
[00:51:19] Anna: During the pandemic.
[00:51:19] Natalie: But anyway, because you know, these stories can live on it. I mean, like not necessarily the whole recording, right.
[00:51:25] But you know, um, pieces of it or what she writes about this can live on the web because we need to start documenting this, right. So if you have anything shared with Natalie, if you can. Get info from the guys who are still, like, we ask you to maybe record ’em if you call them, because we cannot talk to them on the phone.
[00:51:43] We cannot do this.
[00:51:44] Anna: I don’t know where you
[00:51:45] Tore: can right now. I can’t. They, they, they told me we didn’t get an I R B, so, so I, but I could’ve done it. Oh,
[00:51:51] Anna: we are doing rrb B for this. Oh, okay. So you are so, so you can
[00:51:54] Tore: say you, you can go in with a focus group about it, but I, but this is our focus group. Yeah. I can’t, I can’t go.
[00:52:00] I, we, so we decided, The inside guys that we’re going to do are guys who…
[00:52:07] Anna: Okay, but for
[00:52:09] Natalie: this, for COVID. Yeah. But, you know, even if you talk to them, even if they, you cannot interview them, ask them to write something and send it, you know, to
[00:52:19] Anna: you.
[00:52:21] Tore: But I’ve got one, I’ve got one last story before that. So it’s COVID, it’s May of 2020.
[00:52:27] And they’re coming in to do a mass test for, um… It was a blood test. It was, it was a deceitful answer about the antibodies. Okay. The national guard is coming in to do these tests. Everybody on the facility has to get this. So you’re getting tested for COVID. I think, and then the antibody.
[00:52:47] Jay: They want to know if, if you don’t have it now, did you ever have it?
[00:52:50] Right.
[00:52:51] Tore: This was May 23rd.
[00:52:54] Anna: Food
[00:52:54] Tore: tech. Now they take us out and we cooked for the National Guard, okay,
[00:53:03] Anna: while
[00:53:04] Tore: we’re being so, so we, so we get tested and these are the tests that go in. These weren’t instant tests. These are tests they get. So as long as we get tested, we’re fine. Go cook for them. Even without, without
[00:53:15] Natalie: knowing.
[00:53:15] Tore: Before, before, before any, before any results, but it just, it just. What it shows for me is, is that, is that whatever you want to do or choose to do, did. So whatever would benefit you, you would make any kind of difference. We hadn’t been out of our rooms for, for, for food tech since March 4th. And then they called us.
[00:53:41] And of course we’re running, and guess what? We get to eat too, but, but it’s, it, it is just, just that, that like, Oh, we get to get out of our rooms. You know? So that’s, uh. It’s whatever they want it to,
[00:53:57] Anna: it’s whatever they
[00:53:57] Tore: want it to, but I, you know, you can call me, if you need more information, just, just give me a call, Zoom, whatever, whatever you need to do.
[00:54:07] Alright. I’m, I’m available.
[00:54:09] Anna: Uh, and
[00:54:10] Natalie: if you need any help, with like secondary, just abstracts, you know, let us know. Okay. Paul will be in town in, I will be in town. I’m back in the uses Abilify.
[00:02:34] Natalie: She has been going through a lot of different kind of meds, trying to figure out what, what works best for her. And there’s like a very drastic change depending on what med it is. And she can tell like as soon as, oh yeah. Like whether it’s working for her or not. And it can have pretty bad effects if it’s not the right one.
[00:02:51] Natalie: Yeah. Um, so let’s just. So starting off, basic introductory question. Um, you told me a little bit about this, but I just wanted to get it, um, down more concretely. So how long were you incarcerated for and when were you released?
[00:03:08] Ursula: About three and a half years, and I was just released December 13th.
[00:03:14] Natalie: Okay. And then can you tell me a little bit about, um, prison life and healthcare prior to Covid?
[00:03:21] Ursula: Um, well, prior to Covid, they put a lot of measures in place. I was, I had only been there about seven or eight months when Covid hit. Um, so I mean, I, I can tell you that, um, you wanted to know, oh my gosh, I just had a brain freeze. I’m, I’m having, I’ve been going through this memory thing. If I stop I might do that.
[00:03:46] Ursula: I should have probably told you that at the beginning. My memory and my doctor wants me to see a neurologist. It’s that serious. So, ok. So sometimes I can be saying something and then it just disappears. Mm-hmm. So, will you repeat the question, please?
[00:03:59] Natalie: Yeah, of course. Yeah, no worries. So, I just asked a little bit about how, um, life was in prison and the healthcare before Covid
[00:04:10] Ursula: Yeah, I couldn’t really speak too much of the healthcare. They did a full exam when I came in. Mm-hmm. Um, that was pretty much my dealings with them. Um, before Covid, um, after Covid, it was, it was every, we, we were in, in quarantine. If somebody. There was a lot of things going on from the beginning of the, um, COVID, you know, everybody started talking about it, I think in February of 21.
[00:04:39] Ursula: Was it? [Mm-hmm.] Or, yeah, February. I actually, they started taking measures at the prison, um, that March. They stopped, they shut down visiting and we could not eat with, or, you know, like we’re housed in these different buildings. We could not eat with somebody else in, in another building that was like, or another, I forget what they called it, but, um, the building that I was in, um, I had to go to all the meals.
[00:05:12] Ursula: When somebody tested positive in our unit, we would be quarantined for, I wanna say 10 days. The whole unit would be, yes, we’ll be quarantined for 10 days. We can’t go to the chow hall. Some of the time, well, we can, but we don’t get to go mingle usually, you know, they call different groups together so you don’t get to see, uh, everybody in the prison because they had a north side and a south side, or, or is it, or maybe it’s east or west, whatever.
[00:05:44] Ursula: Um, That’s how the prison was kind of classified. The one side was, one side was all of the, they only had one unit that was a level one and I was a level one. And, um, I didn’t get moved to that unit. I got moved to that unit up over in the, um, other side of the prison as a retaliatory action against the prison counselor that, uh, against me.
[00:06:11] Ursula: Um, I got moved for no reason at all. Um, but the part about it is that really sucks is that I got used to living, it was on the east side now. I got used to, and it’s like the prisoners are different, like on each side, and I think it on the other side of campus. Um, it’s mostly, you know, only one level, one unit.
[00:06:33] Ursula: So they have all these two threes and fours, um, all housed over in that area. And, and if they were like in solitary confinement, obviously they got their meals brought to them. I’m thanking God that I never had to go there.
[00:06:50] Natalie: Yeah. I hear some very scary stories about people in solitary, especially from like people who are, um, taking watch over people with like kind of more severe mental health issues and.
[00:07:04] Natalie: Uh, yeah, that, that stuff always makes me really sad. So it’s like they just need some help and stuff.
[00:07:11] Ursula: Oh, yeah. Locked up. I went through a really bad period in there, um, really depressed and it was, I don’t know, maybe have something to do with my surroundings. You know, but I wasn’t, I, when they started giving me, I basically Wellbutrin and Abilify, that’s my cocktail.
[00:07:29] Ursula: Um, when they started giving me that, um, I just, it changed for me. I was j just my prison sentence was much easier because I had dealt with, I dealt with so much stuff in there because I, I think because of the medication, um, that they wouldn’t give me my medication. I was very, um, my anxiety level was high.
[00:07:56] Ursula: I seemed stressed out all the time. I was obsessed with finding out my legal rights. Um, I went to the law library like three times a week for an hour. Um, and I had one of the things that, you know, we have to cl we have to have our room cleaned every morning by eight o’clock. And then, um, In the evening, lights go out.
[00:08:18] Ursula: I think at 11, yeah, it was 11. But, um, I ended up accumulating a lot of paperwork, um, legal stuff and that was kind of a problem for me having, cuz I didn’t have enough room to put it anywhere. Um, and so I, I would have it out and then I would stack it up and put it back in my locker almost every day. But I think that was part of my mental illness because I literally would have stacks of paper going through them and I would get frustrated like, I don’t know what I’m doing.
[00:08:50] Ursula: And this would go on for weeks where I would have all these stacks of paper. I don’t know what to put with what. And I really think that was part of my mental illness too.
[00:09:00] Natalie: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s already a very. Stressful environment from what I can imagine. And then it just seems like it’s com like compounded by probably the pandemic and then you not having your proper medication.
[00:09:14] Ursula: Yeah, it was bad for me. And the other part of this, I’ll tell you, I was not typical prisoner. I was, I, I mean as far as my education and my work history and all of that, um, I mean, I was a C E O before I went to prison. Um, so I was different. I didn’t fit in really, and I spoke up when I thought that something was wrong, even to the staff and um, or when I spoke my mind to any of them, they retaliated like crazy.
[00:09:47] I mean, and you mentioned
[00:09:48] Natalie: that they moved you at one point. Were they retaliating in other ways as well?
[00:09:52] Ursula: Well, yeah. It was this lady, the prison counselor just didn’t like me and she just, Exchanged me to the west side, which the west side is the worst, is the bad, the bad side, because they’re the higher levels also, all those units don’t have air conditioning.
[00:10:09] Ursula: Oh, that wasn’t, yeah. So that was a big deal for me switching from the east side to the west side. Um, the other thing that, you know, I really should have been on the west side the whole time I was there because of I’m, I have a chronic bladder condition and there was toilets in the cells. On the west side in the one level, one unit that I was in.
[00:10:30] Ursula: And that just kind of pissed me off because of what I went through. I mean, they obviously, they weren’t treating my bladder condition. I have interstitial cystitis and I have to go to the bathroom a lot, and I had to like urinate in a towel in my garbage can. Um, because you, when you’re locked down in your room, if it’s count time, they have all these rules and I did not have a detail.
[00:10:54] Ursula: The detail is something that. Healthcare sends them that says like I’m in a wheelchair, or I have, I, I could have unlimited access to the bathroom. They would not give it to me. Yeah. So, um, I, it was very kind of, it was gross and it was embarrassing. Yeah. You know, to have to do that sometimes, but. The medicine that they, they finally did give me for, it was something that I had graduated from.
[00:11:23] Ursula: I mean, I, I went, they even took me to a urologist and she recommended that they give the whole same regimen that I had already had from my urologist. And they didn’t, they didn’t do any of it. Yeah. So I just, that was something that I dealt with.
[00:11:42] Natalie: Yeah. And so you were like, You were speaking up and you were looking into things, is there anything you could do to like force ’em to give you the right medications and, you know, provide those details
[00:11:55] Ursula: for you?
[00:11:55] Ursula: Um, I didn’t, uh, yeah, they have a grievance process. Okay. It’s a very lengthy process, and if you are not. Uh, compliant with the way that it’s supposed to happen. Like you have to file a grievance within five days, but within two days you have to try to work it out with that department or whatever. Is, that’s part of the grievance form is to, um, what attempt have you made to, to resolve this and when, and that has to occur within two days of the incident, and then on the fifth day, Um, you have by the fifth day after it happened, the grievance has to be sent to the grievance office.
[00:12:40] Ursula: So if you miss any of the, you know, those two deadlines, they send it back to you. They reject it untimely. So, um, I had a lot, it took me a while to really get that, so I had a lot of grievances that were denied for. A few days towards
[00:19:49] Natalie: horrifying. Mm-hmm. Um, how soon were things like masks and vaccines available to you guys? Um,
[00:20:02] Ursula: masks. They started us with the masks, I think in May or no, April.
[00:20:08] Ursula: I may, they started wearing it because when I, I was in the hospital for the whole month of April pretty much. So I’m thinking that when I came back, we had masks when I went back to the regular, uh, unit that I was in. Um, There was some units where the officers were making the inmates do some extra cleaning, which was fine, you know, disinfecting stuff as much as possible.
[00:20:40] Ursula: Um, that was a big thing. Um, during, um, Yeah, I just, visits were cut off, all classes were cut off. And that’s what, that, that delayed a lot of people’s release, including mine. Mm. Because when you go to prison, you, they sit you down and they do this, um, this report with you and they figure out what level you need to be and what classes that you’re gonna need to take for the parole board.
[00:21:11] Ursula: So when Covid happened and they stopped having the people come in to teach the classes, Um, everybody that was waiting for this, the classes, their prison stay was extended because they did not, had not taken the classes at no fault of their own, you know, so my, at my release date, I was in class, so I, it still took them like four months to release me after that, just going through the whole process.
[00:21:44] So how soon
[00:21:45] Natalie: did all of these classes start back up for you guys?
[00:21:49] Ursula: Um, I wanna say last summer. Last summer? Yeah.
[00:21:54] Natalie: Yeah.
[00:21:58] Natalie: So I’m guessing it affected a lot of people’s releases is so, did you say that your release was delayed by four
[00:22:04] Ursula: months?] Yeah. Oh, well, I’m, I was, I got out December, I was supposed to get out July 6th and I got out December 13th. So it’d be like five months. Yeah, five months. Yeah.
[00:22:18] Natalie: Um, and when the pandemic was kind of at its worst, was anyone, you know, getting released on time? Because I can’t imagine wanting to keep anything in prison. No,
[00:22:32] Ursula: they would not. Um, There was even classes that they wanted that they could have taken in the community, and they wouldn’t let them do it. They wouldn’t let me do it.
[00:22:41] Ursula: I, I tried, and I know a lot of other people that tried,[ did they start
[00:22:46] Natalie: offering any Zoom options for these classes?
[00:22:50] Ursula: No. Nothing like that. So everything was kind of just shut down completely. Yes. Everything, nobody was coming into the prison that didn’t work there. And that was it, you know.
[00:23:05] Ursula: So
[00:23:06] Natalie: you had a very like bad case of covid. Did you catch it like more than once or was it just that one time?
[00:23:13] Ursula: Um, I got it another time last summer. Um, Okay. It was pretty, very mild. Nothing like, you know, I, I was tested. I just know my roommate had it and I test, I tested positive after she had it. What happened before?
[00:23:29] Ursula: We knew that cuz they were testing us once a week. That’s, that’s kind of important that I should tell you. They were giving us tests once a week. Okay.
[00:23:45] Ursula: Anything
[00:23:45] Natalie: else? I was wondering how prison staff responded to pandemic protocols? Did they wear masks or get vaccinated?
[00:23:54] Ursula: Yeah. Um, most of them wear their masks, but [Okay.] Many of them did not. Even when they’re, that everybody was mandatory for everybody, they, they did not, or they have ’em hanging off their face.
[00:24:07] Ursula: And the problem with that was that if we forgot our mask or our mouth and nose wasn’t covered, we’d get a ticket. Hmm. You know, um, that was, some of the officers would give you a warning, but pretty much it’s something, it’s like a class three ticket, which is, which is the, the least, uh, punishable I should, whatever the word is.
[00:24:30] Ursula: Um, yeah, it was the, A class that goes, class one is really bad, class two is somewhat bad. Class three is a slap on the wrist. So,
[00:24:43] Natalie: Can you kind of explain more about how like tickets work? Is it like if you get a certain, like if you explain the severity, but if you got like a certain number of tickets, how would that affect
[00:24:53] Ursula: you?
[00:24:54] Ursula: Well, it did affect me, so I’ll tell you how it affected me. Um, so an officer writes a ticket. They have 24 hours to read you on this ticket, and it can’t be the same officer that wrote the ticket. So they, um, you can plead guilty or not guilty on these tickets if you plead guilty. Usually if you plead guilty, they’ll say you’re gonna get, this is gonna be your punishment, and it might be three days lockdown, or you know, where they, you can’t come out of your room except for, um, events and showers and, you know, and food.
[00:25:31] Ursula: Um, they would, they, that was like, uh, Most, most, most people got that, you know, even, even with the class three, they would get like three days. Okay. Um, yeah. And so my, um, when I, I was in a unit, um, the vocational village unit, um, that is a, it’s a, like a trade. They, they teach trades to us. They had C D L.
[00:26:01] Ursula: Cosmetology, um, robotics and um, uh, the food people, I forgot what they called it, food services or people that were learning how to cook gourmet meals and all that stuff. And so all of the people in vocational village stayed at the Dickinson unit. So we were, you know, just there, there were just two housing units that were.
[00:26:31] Ursula: Committed to having those people being trained. So we actually got up and went to class at six 30 and we didn’t get back to our building until two 30. Doing one of those traits. So I was in that and there was a prison counselor that was over the program that just didn’t like me. She, because I spoke up, I, I’m not quiet.
[00:26:52] Ursula: If there’s something going wrong, if I know it’s wrong, I’m gonna tell them that it’s wrong. But this lady, she just had it out for me. She, when I was on, um, she had, first of all, they wrote me, she targeted me after I filed a grievance on her. And she was kind of, Over the staff that worked in the housing unit.
[00:27:14] Ursula: So they were told, I believe my, somebody else told me my name was up on the board, like on the scratch paper in the office, on the cabinet. They just saw my na last name on there. And I wonder if that was to let everybody know to not let me get away with anything or, you know, not that I was really doing anything, but, um, there was one.
[00:27:39] Ursula: Um, Incident where the lady wrote me. I was, I was on, um, I was paying for a ticket. What do you, what am I calling? I was doing my, doing my days, and I had to come out and ask for permission to go get water, for example. Um, and if I was using the bathroom, I better not turn the corner or go anywhere else than what I’m instructed or what I, you know what I mean?
[00:28:09] Ursula: But we had eight 30 to 10 30, no, eight 30 to nine 30 window when we could get out and shower and all that. And that’s it for, for, you know. Um, let’s see. Oh, I was telling you about the, the, this, this PC prison counselor. If I say pc, that’s what that means. Okay. Um. She wanted to listen to my legal phone call.
[00:28:41] Ursula: So when you’re on, when you’re on punishment and you’re in, you’re, I forgot what they called it, you’re, um, you can’t use the phone except for that hour that you have in the morning, but if it’s a legal call, you can call, and that includes the legislative ament. You’re supposed to be able to call. That’s who you contact after you’ve tried grievances, blah, blah, blah.
[00:29:08] Ursula: Somebody in Lansing. Um, and she’s, because I was, I, she had to give me that call. She had to unlock my pen, so she said she was gonna be listening to it. So I said to her, like, not right away, but I said like, when we were getting in the elevator to go to lunch, and she was leaving, I said, you know, I’m not really comfortable, um, with you being on my phone call.
[00:29:32] Ursula: I didn’t say, the policy says this. I said, I’m not really comfortable with you being, well, that’s my job. I’m gonna, she just, yeah. And I’m like, you can’t. So I filed a grievance against her and it says clearly in the policy that they will not listen, monitor legal calls. And that was the only kind of call that I could make.
[00:29:53] Ursula: And I’m like, I’m not gonna, first of all, when you, you’re on the phone, you only get a 15 minute limit and it cuts you off. So I can’t talk very long anyways. Um, so I guess she thought like that gave me an opportunity. If she wasn’t listening to make other calls, I don’t know what her thinking was. You couldn’t get after your 15 minute call.
[00:30:18] Ursula: You can’t redial a number until another 15 minutes passes. That’s how the phone goes. Yeah. So if you are in, you know, you, you can every, I think it’s every, well, no, it wasn’t by time. It was just a 15 minute call cut off and then you couldn’t get back on until after you waited 15 minutes.
[00:30:42] Natalie: Yeah.
[00:30:46] Natalie: Did. Your, like, access to phones or other ways of communicating with outside be, were they impacted by the pandemic or did everything remain rather consistent?
[00:30:58] Ursula: Well, they were, they were impacted because of retaliation. Yeah. Um, at some point I stopped getting mail, like, except for if it was from in the prison.
[00:31:09] Ursula: And yeah, it’s possible that nobody wrote me, but for a long time. Um, I, I’m surprised they let my birthday card come through from my aunt, but I know, um, that I was missing some mail and I had an issue with the mail room because they, at the beginning of my sentence, my sister sent me some of my medical records.
[00:31:35] Ursula: And when I told sh I waited a week, and I, I, so I sent a kite to the mail room and I said, if you. These, these medical records were supposed to come, blah, blah, blah. So they write me back and they say, well, if it was medical, we gave it to healthcare. You have to order it from them. Oh, hell no. I’m not paying 25 cents a page.
[00:31:56] Ursula: Oh my gosh. Or 60 pages. Yeah. They wanted me to pay for my own copies. And then after, after I filed the grievance and all was said and done, they never got ’em, was what they said. So that’s how that went.
[00:32:15] Natalie: So you were getting mail pretty consistently and then all of a sudden it kind of stopped?
[00:32:21] Ursula: Yeah. Yeah. I would get a couple pieces of mail every week. I mean, I, I have a big family I was doing, we know we have JPay, which is like our, our own email. System, but you, you know, people have to communicate with you through the JPay website by time we’re buy stamps for you. Mm-hmm. You know, it was like an email system where you use, you use stamps, but it wasn’t expensive.
[00:32:48] Ursula: It was like 20 stamps for $5 or something like that. Okay. Yeah. So, and I can’t think of anything else I should say. Um,
[00:33:01] Natalie: No. Um, okay. I have a few more questions. Um, I wanted to hear a little bit about how people in prison interacted with each other as the pandemic happened, because talking to other people, it sounds like there was a lot of tension that started building because of the stressful situation.
[00:33:22] Natalie: But there’s also a sense of kind of like dependency because. You know, people had to take care of each other in this kind of time. Did you notice anything like that?
[00:33:31] Ursula: No. I think, like, I don’t, everybody, um, some of the prisoners would get like offended if, if you weren’t wearing your mask. Mm-hmm. And, and your, in somebody’s face or whatever.
[00:33:45] Ursula: But I don’t, um, I don’t, I can’t, I can’t, I don’t think I can put that into words. Like what I’m trying to, can you repeat the question?
[00:33:55] Natalie: So how did. People in the prison, like how did incarcerated people interact with each other as the pandemic took hold and what were their negative and positive responses to the situation?
[00:34:06] Natalie: Um,
[00:34:06] Ursula: well we were, we, we were cohorted with, you know, only certain groups. And to be honest, there were the, everybody was mad because they didn’t get to see other people in the prison. And a lot of them had their boot thing on the other side of the. You know, and that would be the only time, you know, cause they, they did have relationships going on in there.
[00:34:25] Ursula: Mm-hmm. So a lot of people were mad about that, that that was a, the negative thing. They couldn’t see who they wanted to see by getting out of the building and going to lunch or running into somebody. It’s because they had a STA cohort. But other than that, I think everybody was just super clean. Like everybody, we were, we had, we did extra cleaning.
[00:34:48] Ursula: Okay.
[00:34:51] Ursula: Um,
[00:34:52] Natalie: another thing I wanted to ask about, was there a kind of general mental health decline in the facility, or what kind of like ways do people use to cope with all these changes happening cuz of the pandemic?
[00:35:05] Ursula: Um, I don’t, I can’t really speak to that with the, the mental health side of things just because, um,
[00:35:16] Ursula: I was going, like I said, for until I was nine months away from going home, they gave me my, you know, so my mental health just wasn’t, it was not because of my medication and then what was going on. Um, but I don’t, I don’t know that I noticed anybody else. I do know that there were, while, while I was there, there were a couple of suicides.
[00:35:37] Ursula: Um, and I don’t know, I think one girl, she did it in the, in the shower with a sheet and um, I’m not sure what happened to the other person that died. They kept hush hush pretty much about it, but I was able to talk to somebody that was in her housing unit that died. Um, yeah, so I think. I think if I had to go back there for a number, number of years, I would wanna die first.
[00:36:07] Ursula: Really, it’s, it’s that bad. It was that bad for me. Maybe not other people, but the fact that they got away with breaking so many rules, breaking the law, and my thing was how can we be held accountable for a crime while we’re with people that are committing crimes against us? Because that’s pretty much what it was.
[00:36:29] Ursula: They were violating the law. We have, you know, the First Amendment deals with the mail and, and freedom of speech and all that. They weren’t sending my mail out and I know I only confirmed it from a couple people. Um, but we, and, but it was legal mail. And that’s the only proof that I have of anything that I sent out.
[00:36:49] Ursula: Because if we had legal mail and we wanted it to be expedited, we had to fill out a form to pay for the postage and process it as such. Um, they didn’t, I, I talked to a lawyer that didn’t receive my letter and it was happened to be a friend of mine that I kinda lost touch with, but I was reading a law journal.
[00:37:12] Ursula: In the law library. I hadn’t seen this person for years and years. Um, well not that long. He, he was, he was a, I think his first year, um, when I met him in, under his first undergrad. Yeah. So I think it had been at least like 10 years. So I, I think they. Considered it because I didn’t have his bar number and I just had his address.
[00:37:41] Ursula: Um, they rejected it at first and I went back to the law library and looked him up and there was a bar number there. And so that letter supposedly went out. But when I came home, he told me he did not get an email from me, and he, he’s an attorney and he would’ve been able to help me with some of the things that I, he was going through.
[00:38:04] Ursula: So, and then, um, my aunt didn’t get a letter from me before. Um, one, the, there was one letter that I know of that wasn’t delivered. I can’t think of anybody else, but I just felt that it was awfully strange that I stopped getting mail, you know, and I, I mean, and I really don’t have any proof cuz maybe people stop writing.
[00:38:26] Ursula: I, I just don’t believe that. Talking to people and then the people that I don’t to that talk to who prefer to email me or write in letters and write letters. I mean, yeah. So,
[00:38:42] Natalie: so you do have proofs that people didn’t get mail that you sent out? Yes. Yes. So, and there’s like kind of two big of coincidence there to entirely ignore the fact, right?
[00:38:53] Natalie: Yeah. So, The pe So you say like the prison staff kind of disregarded their own rules because, and did kind of whatever they wanted to to you guys? That part.
[00:39:07] Ursula: Yeah. I mean they, they will find a reason to do, you know, give you a ticket or if they really want to, you know, cause that’s what they did with me. I got seven tickets one morning from.
[00:39:20] Ursula: Eight 30 to 10 30 when I had to be outta my room. This lady wrote me seven tickets and wouldn’t, and she made it obvious that they were targeting me because I came out in the morning of my cell, walked straight to the officer’s station, and I said, can I, and before I finish, are you bolting? You can’t be outta your room.
[00:39:42] Ursula: I said, I know, that’s why I’m asking for. She just made it really obvious that they were, no, you need to go to your room. And that same morning she wrote me seven tickets for just stupid shit. All of them got thrown out, but one, it was, yeah. Because that’s, if you plead not guilty on something, you have to see somebody else that’s like the lieutenant or something like that would read the ticket and then they would decide.
[00:40:08] Ursula: And usually if you do plead not guilty and, and they, um, you have to go see that other person. The punishment is usually worse, like more days. Mm. Okay. Yeah.
[00:40:24] Natalie: Um,
[00:40:28] Natalie: I think that’s about all of the questions I had. Is there anything
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