Incarcerated Women Firefighters Spotlighted in “Fire Escape” Podcast
57:46 Share

Hi, I'm Bianca Taylor. I'm the host of KQED's daily news podcast, The Latest.

Powered by our award-winning newsroom, the latest keeps you in the know because it updates all day long. It's trusted local news in real time on your schedule. Look for the latest from KQED wherever you get your podcasts and stay connected to all things Bay Area in 20 minutes or less. From KQED.

From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. We have a bit of a different kind of show for you. Today, you'll meet Amika Mota, who, while serving a nine-year prison sentence, joined an inmate firefighting crew that served as the remote community's emergency response team. And as documented in a new podcast from Snap Studios and KQED, we'll hear how the work offered Mota a path towards redemption.

but also that there's no way to escape the issues that suffuse our state's use of prison labor. That's all coming up next, right after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.

Fire Escape is a rich, fascinating, crushing podcast from Wondery, Snap Studios, that's the podcast wing of Snap Judgment, and KQED. The series follows the path of Amika Mota, who became a firefighter on the inside. The series is hosted by Anna Sussman, and both of them join us here in the studio. Welcome, Amika. Morning, Alexis. Thanks for having us. And welcome, Anna. Thanks for having me, Alexis. Yeah.

Amika, you were incarcerated at the state women's prison in Chowchilla. Can you just bring us there? Tell us what the prison was like and sort of where it's located in the state.

Yeah, so Chowchilla is in Madeira County. It is in the middle of the state in the Central Valley in a region that is mostly like a travel through. You know, there's some highways that pass through truck stops, but it is in the middle of a whole lot of farmland, almond orchards. Mm hmm.

and is really pretty removed from any of our kind of large urban areas. Chochula is hot and dusty and, yeah, situated in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. You know, many people, I think, have become familiar with the idea that the state of California uses incarcerated firefighters, you know, in part to work wildfires. People saw incarcerated firefighters used to fight the L.A. fires recently. Yeah.

What were you trained to do? Your particular firehouse wasn't really a wildfire fighting crew.

Yeah, it was actually, it was pretty different. Like you said, about 30% of incarcerated firefighters make up the ground crews for wildland fire response. But I was at Station 5 in Chowchilla and it was unique. What was unique about it was that we were institutional firefighters. So we responded to incidents that were happening inside the prison, but we also had a mutual aid agreement with Madeira County and we responded in the environment

in around a 30 mile radius of the areas surrounding the prison. And so it was much more than wildland fires. We were trained to do structure fires, vehicle fires, motor vehicle accidents, medical calls in people's homes. We were also trained on hazmat responses. So our training looks really different than most of the folks that you're hearing about or seeing on the news that have been responding in the LA fires.

So, yeah, we just have a little bit more extensive training when it comes to more type of urban response and different tools we use. Do you want to just lead us through, you know, maybe just one call that you remember or something? So we kind of understand how this worked to have a firehouse in this women's prison that would then go out and respond.

Yeah, I mean, we were basically just, you know, situated right outside of the prison gates. Our view was the entrance into the prison. But we were on call 24-7. So any radio call that came in, we had to listen for that call. And if it was us that was being dispatched, we'd have to be, like, ready to jump in our gear and go at the drop of a hat. But, you know, we were often called to...

you know, calls in the surrounding area, a lot of car accidents, Highway 99 and Highway 152, which are two major freeways, sat on either side of us. So it was really common that we would get called to motor vehicle accidents. Yeah. I mean, as I understand it, the reason that you were in prison was a vehicle accident, a vehicular manslaughter. And

Did that make responding to these kinds of calls, I mean, what was that like? Yeah, I mean, it was intense. You know, I would say that the first few calls I went on in particular felt like a bit of a reckoning, right? I would pull up on scene and, you know, we're facing a type of trauma that I

It's not even explainable kind of what we're responding to, but it was an interesting thing. It was, I think, actually really part of my healing process in beginning to understand what I had done, the impact of what I had done on the family that I had harmed. And I was in a position of now helping and supporting people that were in these horrific situations. Yeah.

I mean, how different was life in the firehouse from, you know, life on the inside inside where you would have been staying in kind of different conditions? Yeah, it was very different. You know, we in Chowchilla, we are housed in what we call eight man cells. So there's eight people to a room to one toilet, one shower, one.

The conditions inside are really intense, rough. And so going to the firehouse was night and day. I mean, we had very different living situation, very different kind of level of surveillance from the correctional officers.

um different access to food and um clothing and things that we had on the inside but also i don't want to paint a picture that this was not prison because it was certainly prison um we still did not have access to our families just like everybody on the inside we still used to pay phone to call home um you know we were still very much incarcerated it's just that our environment our immediate environment

It was a bit more pleasant than the extreme conditions of being inside a prison. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of heartbreaking that one of the things in the podcast that you really celebrate about when you move into the firehouse is you have a refrigerator. Yeah, a refrigerator that we could open the door on, you know, because sometimes you'll see a fridge on the inside, but it's got a big deadbolt on it. Like, it's very clear that you have no access as a human being to anything.

Something out here that is very normal to us. Yeah. So that fridge was real exciting. An assessment. I mean, you reported on this firefighting program for years. I mean, what drew you to this particular place? So I first went to Station 5 about two

Fifteen years ago, if you picture a prison with a big stone wall around it and then a series of fences around it, it's kind of situated outside of the wall but inside the fences. And when I first arrived there to just report a news story for KQED, I realized that

As a reporter, it was just teeming with stories, right? Like everyone was a story. Everything was a story because first responding is full of stories. But there were labor issues and women's issues and criminal justice issues, right? There was just so much going on in this one little brick building.

house essentially and then when I realized that because of the nature of prison towns that these women were put in this position of becoming the rescuers of their jailers right they were the ones being the helpers and their jailers were in the position of being a victim so they were rescuing them that was just a world I wanted to get stories from and talk to people about

I mean, Amika, that seems like a very complicated relationship to try to parse in the middle of, you know, a great disaster. Yeah. I mean, it is complicated. But what I can say is that when we were responding to a call yesterday,

we were doing just that. We were responding to a call. We were prepared for anything and anybody. So, I mean, the first few times we realized we were, you know, on the scene of a car accident that involved a correctional officer or at a correctional officer's home responding to a fire, it feels a bit shocking. And, you know, we have to kind of reposition ourselves, but also, you

We are we're executing our jobs, right? Like we were ready at all times to serve. And that includes serving our jailers. I mean, in the Disney movie version of this, that action that you take, you know, saving the jailers or helping them or in these ways kind of makes them see your humanity. And then you guys come together and you're like, oh, actually, we should reform the criminal justice system or something like that. But that's not really what happens.

No, that's not what happened. I mean, work closest to us. And those would be our captains, the people that worked on the fire ground with us. You know, those were the people that were so up close and personal with our work that it was very clear to them that like it was devastating to them that what we were paid, it was devastating to them that we didn't have more access to our families.

People that knew us as human beings felt that way, but we can't quite translate that to CDCR administration or to the larger public who may not understand who's actually, you know, making up these kind of incarcerated firefighters. It's a lot to translate. Yeah. Your assessment is you talked to the people who worked with Amika and the other women in the firehouse. How did they talk about

the work that these women were doing and the fact that they're incarcerated and the system itself? So the captains at the fire station are corrections officers. And when I talked with them, it was clear that they were walking a very careful line and a pretty complicated line. You know, they spoke to me

Pretty formally, you know, knowing that they were still corrections officers, but it was clear that they had a deeper relationship with these folks than your typical corrections officer and incarcerated person relationship. I remember one time one of the captains said to me, you know,

We get to watch TV together, right? The captains and the incarcerated women at Station 5, which, you know, as Americans or perhaps the world, that's a kind of universal bonding experience, right? We get to watch TV together. He said, but he was careful to tell me, but I don't sit on the couch with them. I stand in the doorway behind them. Wow.

So he was clear about the remove that he needed to have and wanted to have and perhaps should have for all of the reasons. But it just spoke to me about how complicated it is and the needle that they're threading. The captains live in the firehouse, but their door is locked from the inside. Right.

We're talking about the new podcast Fire Escape from Snap Studios and KQND and Wondery. It tells the story of incarcerated female firefighters. We're joined by senior producer and managing editor of Snap Judgment, also creator of Fire Escape, Anna Sussman, and also the focus of the podcast, Amika Mota, who's now founder and executive director of the Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition.

And of course, we're going to get to more about her work later in the show. We would love to hear from you. I mean, how do you receive the story of firefighters doing this kind of work from the inside out?

Should inmate firefighters be deployed across the state to fight wildfires? You can give us a call. The number is 866-733-6786. That's 866-733-6786. You can email your comments and questions to forum at kqed.org. You can find us on social media, Blue Sky, Instagram, or KQED Forum. Of course, you can also go on the Discord. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for more right after the break.

Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about the new podcast Fire Escape from Snap Studios, KQED, and Wondery. It tells the story of a group of incarcerated female firefighters. We've got one of them, the focus of the podcast, Amika Mota with us, founder and executive director now of Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition. We've also got the senior producer and managing editor of Snap Judgment and the creator of the show,

and assessment. And of course, we'll be taking your calls and comments through the hour as well. 866-733-6786 and forum at kqed.org. You know, Amika, you're the one who has, you know, the up close and personal experience of, you know, people who are incarcerated fighting fires. Where do you kind of land on how the state uses incarcerated people's labor in this way? Oh, yeah.

Well, it's complicated. You know, when I was inside, I was like most of us, right? We are thinking about our conditions. We're thinking about how we get home. We're thinking about our families. We're not necessarily thinking about the statistics of our labor and the way that California utilizes us. You know, but when I came home,

I began to learn a lot around the kind of infrastructure of CDCR and the way that the state has utilized prison labor. And it's complicated. You know, I think that the fact that California relies so heavily on an incarcerated population to make up such, you know, 30 percent of the firefighting force is

Yet doesn't provide really clear pathways to employment or decent wages. It's complicated. I think the stat is they save around $100 million a year by utilizing our labor. And so, you know, it makes it clear to me and to many others that we are a commodity company.

Yeah. I mean, what are the pathways? Like, I know that in recent years in particular, there has been some at least talk about making it easier for people who've built firefighting skills to be able to go to work. But when I look back, you know, on the on the reporting around this, it seems like there were a lot of roadblocks.

Oh, yeah, there is. You know, every time we have a piece of new legislation that creates some sort of a fix, people think it's fixed, but it's not. We're far from that. So, you know, in 2020, there was a piece of legislation that was introduced that would allow folks to expunge their

record and then could therefore potentially apply for an EMT license, which was one of the big barriers for anybody that wanted to go into career firefighting in a municipal fire department. The problem with that is that it's not automatic expungement. It's a process that people have to go through and we have to lean on legal advocates to support us through that process.

I know that most folks returning home are worried about housing, reuniting with their families, finding a job. And an expungement process is a lengthy legal process. So it's not at the forefront. I really think that if we could get this to an automatic expungement, it would shift how many people are actually impacted by this.

And there are some programs that are phenomenal that have really kind of grown in the last few years, pathways to real cow fire careers for incarcerated people, but not nearly enough of those pathways for women and not enough period. It's still a small amount of people that are making their way into these programs. I mean, did any of the women that you fought fires with and did emergency response with, have any of them made it to becoming firefighters? Yeah.

Yes, actually two that I know of one who was a, um, a smoke jumper before she came to, right. She had this experience, um, previously she was a firefighter. She has made her way back, um, to fire, which is amazing. We all love to see her out there. Um, and another person that I know that was doing seasonal work with Cal fire, but very low pay, um, you

you know, seasonal work. So it was not a career wage firefighting job. Let's bring on another former member of the Station 5 Firehouse, LaQuisha Johnson, who, of course, also was incarcerated at Chowchilla. Welcome, Qui. Hi. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So what drew you to the program? Like, why did you want to become a firefighter there?

Well, my experience, I've heard about the program through people inside and that's what brought me to it. But I was told that my chances were super slim. How come?

Well, it was because they called it the White House. So my chances of being a black female was very slim and getting to the firehouse. So what was the kind of path that got you in or how did you decide to try and make a run at it anyway? Well, I still applied. You know, I still just gave it a chance and still went for it. And I ended up getting in, which was surprising. But, you know, I guess my interview was good. Yeah.

I mean, you know, we've done shows in the past on the kind of racial segregation of men's prisons and the way that gangs are involved in these different ways. Is it the same way at Chowchilla and in women's prisons, too? Not so much. I think with women, we're really focused on, like, families and kids. And we're just from a more emotional standpoint. Yeah, yeah.

Did you, um, Amika, did you, were you able to see your kids more if you were a firefighter or was it just that all those rules were still the same?

Yeah, all the rules were still the same. And, you know, the location of the prison was the same. And that's the issue of being placed in the middle of nowhere is it's very intentional that it's unless you live in the Central Valley, that it is quite a mission for our families to get there. So, you know, I did see my family, but it was usually just a few couple times to maybe three times a year where I was able to see my kids. They were still about a two and a half hour drive away from where I was and all

So, you know, it's expensive. It's a hotel. It's gas. It's having the adults that could bring them to me. Right. So it was still an issue. You know, it must be really intense to be on the inside incarcerated and then you go out and respond to these calls and you're in the role of the hero in that case.

Yes. You are kind of the hero. It's just like you just focus on the work. Right. But at the end of the day, you still have to go back inside and be an inmate. Yeah. And you're reminded of that when you cross the gates coming back inside. Yeah.

Do you feel like, I mean, given that you all were seeing these really difficult situations, people who've been injured or even killed in car accidents and other things, did you have the kind of resources that you needed to process those experiences when you got back inside? You know what? No. I think maybe once there was like this really bad accident and it was so bad that I felt like the...

Yeah.

Amika, how about you? I mean, you said that responding to some of these calls was part of your healing, but you had to do that work on your own, I guess. Yeah, 100%. You know, the call that Kwee is talking about, I remember it was actually one of my first motor vehicle accidents, which was a triple fatality. And it was so bad that, you know, these kind of experienced firefighters, you could clearly read the trauma that they were going through. I mean, they were ill, you know, they were not well during this call. And so it's

Yeah, we were circled up, but, you know, that was not where the processing happened. You know, it was the processing happened over the weeks and months after that, where the people that were on that call were.

could come together and, and talk about it in our ways and process it slowly. You know, it was a lot. I mean, we would all have dreams and flashbacks and it was like so much, but we did lean on each other more so than any prison provided, you know, that there wasn't much that they gave us. And, but we, we definitely relied on each other. Let's bring in a caller here. Let's bring in Damien and Santa Rosa. Welcome Damien.

Thanks so much for taking my call, and I really appreciate this conversation. I'm a formerly incarcerated firefighter, did a few years here in California at a bunch of different locations, and then recently, just last November, got pardoned by the governor, which was great.

I have a lot of feelings about all this, but I'd just like to say that I really hope that the public doesn't see the perfect as the enemy of the good. These firefighting programs are incredible, and regardless of whether we get employment in firefighting jobs when we get out, we're usually doing halftime if you're a nonviolent offender in California, and when you go to these camps, you do third time, which is incredible. And by that, you just mean that you're getting time off your sentence faster, right? You're doing, like,

Three days for every day. You're doing one-third of your sentence instead of one-half for good behavior. That's an incredible, incredible reduction in time. And it got me home, you know, eight months earlier than I would have otherwise to get back to my life, regardless of what my employment looked like when I got out. And on top of that, I was a food rations clerk. It's 99 cents per man per day for food in a prison. And at the camps, you're closer to two bucks. You're almost 100% more money on food allocation. You live better. You get better.

you get visits with your family in person where you can sit and touch them. You know, I mean, it's just that you can't express how much better that is, how much better the conditions are to be around Cal fire staff. And then on top of that, you, you know, you get the freedom to interact with the public, which, which is great. It makes you feel better, but,

But for male populations, you know, which is obviously what I was in, it's 100 percent gang population in California. And I'll take the trauma of dealing with fire calls and going out and helping the public instead of watching people get stabbed in the yard to death for a cell phone any day of the week. I mean, anybody that thinks that the work that's going on in in Cal Fire is more distressing than being in pop.

in general population i mean it's i think people are forgetting that that were inmates you know we're having a hard time and cal fire is a much better place to be stationed much better place to work about much much more rehabilitative you get more freedom you get more access everybody i thought people almost lose a hand and they're trying to take that thing back on because they'd rather that then go back

to general population with an injury. This is the best place that you can be in in the system and we can work on improving it, but I don't wanna hear anybody talking about getting rid of it, all right? This is the best place that you can be when you're in the worst place in the world. - Hey Damien, really appreciate you sharing your perspectives. Congratulations on the pardon.

Um, you know, I guess, Amika, let's just take take that straight to you. I mean, do you more or less agree with that, that, you know, don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good in this case?

Yeah, I mean, what I can say is I 100% agree with you, Damian. Also, congratulations on your pardon. That's huge. 100%, we don't want these fire programs to go away either. But there are a couple of things that were clear. Like, I did not get good time credit. We did not get good time credit. About half of our crew did not get good time credit. So it is absolutely... Why is that?

Because we had what was considered a serious or violent crime. So it depends on what the category of your crime is, whether or not you have the ability to earn good time, right? So it is very much an incentive for a lot of people that go to fire camp. And I say, and absolutely, we don't want that removed. But what I would also say is that these are very personal experiences, right, of the improvement of conditions, right?

But the fact that so many people are out on these fire lines responding in these types of situations, we've already been deemed safe to be in the public. So what I'm grappling with is how it is that we are safe enough to be responding to medical calls and fires, yet we're not safe enough to be considered to be home with our families. So our incarceration is designed to tear us apart from our families.

If our conditions are better, that's great. And we are still incarcerated, right? So in that oppressive situation, are we choosing one thing over the next that is a better option? Absolutely, right? Absolutely. And we absolutely don't want this to go away. We know that there's many kind of like transformative experiences that happen for people on the inside. But if you zoom out and look at the way that this is structured, right?

I mean, that's where it gets really scary. It gets really scary that the prisons are basically producing a product that is off of the backs of incarcerated people. Kui, what do you think about all this?

I definitely don't want to take away from anything that he said. And I totally agree. I also just wanted to preface like with the firehouse where we were at, there's only 10 girls at a time. And we do get visits, but we're still treated as girls.

If we were still on the inside, the only thing is that we have this job that we have to do. Right. And I don't want them to take away the fire program either, because, you know, I still, you know, still want to be a firefighter. You know, it's just that there's this process that us trying to get through to be able to do that and be able to get paid. Right. Because we got paid a certain amount and that was only enough for just phone calls.

You know, and so, yeah. I mean, I guess the other thing, Quee, that I was a little worried about, you know, as I kind of came to understand the structure of this program, is that it is substantially better in the firehouse than in the general population, which kind of sets up a situation of at least possible exploitation, right? That you kind of don't want to go back inside. Did you worry about that with the, you know, the people who were your jailers?

Of course, all the time. I was reminded of that every day. Like I was 22 at the time. So, you know, me, I'm like, OK, I could look into this as a career, but I'm being reminded with anything that I do, you're going to go back inside. Like this is a privilege to be here, you know, rather than looking at it like, hey, we can help you when you get out to be able to retain a job. It's just like, hey, you're just here. We got you here. This is your privilege. And that's that. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, Mika, on another kind of more incremental improvement, there have been different programs in different prisons that I've heard about where the wages are much better than the ones that we're kind of talking about here. Has there been any movement on trying to have the wages improve just so that when people get out, they at least have more of a material base to work from?

Yeah, I mean, there, you know, I'd say again that our position as institutional firefighters is very different than fire campers. We're actually paid really different. We don't have a dollar an hour when we're on the fire ground. We are still paid in the 30 cents range. So, you know, there's that. But there is a bill that has been introduced this year by Assemblymember Bryant, which

that is floating the idea of getting all incarcerated firefighters to minimum wage. It is, to me, the least we can do in this moment of it being really clear how much we rely on this force and wildfire conditions are just getting worse in California.

So that is a step in the right direction. It is not all we need to do. But if we could get our folks to minimum wage this year, I think it would make a really big difference on how people are able to parole and the transition they make back into the world when they go home.

You know, Mika, one listener writes in to say, you know, I appreciate humanizing inmates. I do not think inmates should be exploited. But I wonder how your guests think about the balance of prison as a place of punishment. I'm sure there are listeners out there who think that inmates deserve no privileges at all.

Yeah, I know. I think that they're, that's absolutely right. I think that was very clear in the, the, the ability, you know, the, the failure of Prop 6, which was, you know, an effort to end. Which was supposed to end, yeah, involuntary servitude. Right.

Right. But I think that, you know, we are very much still live within a punishment culture. Rehabilitation is not the first thing that people think about when they think about people that have harmed others. They think about punishment. Right. Which is understandable. But what I can say is that every single one of us that's in there, we're coming home at some time, you know, and.

If we don't have the ability to come home healed, it's no good for anybody. Like we are going to be somebody's neighbor. And if we cannot focus on the time inside also being a time of rehabilitation and healing, then we're not coming out any better than we went in. Yeah.

We're talking about the new podcast, Fire Escape, from Snap Studios, KQED, and Wondery. It tells the story of a firehouse of incarcerated female firefighters. We're joined by Amika Mota, who's founder and executive director of Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition, Cui Johnson, who's a former member of the Station 5 Firehouse, and Anna Sussman, who's the creator of Fire Escape. We're going to get to more of your calls right after the break. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about incarcerated firefighters. We're also talking about the new podcast, Fire Escape, from Snap Studios, KQED, and Wondery. We've got Anne Assessment, who's the creator of Fire Escape, and now actually

actually editor at large, not managing editor of Snap Judgment. We also have Amika Mota, who's founder and executive director of Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition, focus of the podcast Fire Escape, and Kwee Johnson, who's former member of the Station 5 firehouse at the Chowchilla Women's Prison. I want to bring in Andy in Concord. Welcome, Andy.

Hey, thanks for having me on. It's an honor. And I just want to start off by saying I really empathize with what you're going through in terms of trying to secure full-time employment. I want to speak to the value of incarcerated firefighters. When I've been on for 27 years, I've

Um, you know, I work in an area where we do a significant amount of wild land and we work, you know, really closely with Cal fire. And I started my career in Cal fire. Um, you know, we would always breathe sort of a collective sigh of relief when the crews showed up, um, the, you know, we called them con crews or whatever, but what was, you know, just, um,

What impressed upon us as young firefighters is you will respect the incarcerated firefighter. You have things to learn from them with regard to tool maintenance, and you will never see a work ethic. They work. They pound the ground. They work really hard. And

when COVID hit, the prison crews went away for a significant amount of time. And that also happened to coincide with some, you know, years of some heavy fire activity. And the absence was noticed in a significant way. And I would just say that

The service that they provide with regard to, you know, securing fire line, establishing fire line, enabling other crews from other departments to get free to go to other fires, because often we're running from fire to fire to fire to fire and knowing that we can, you know, leave it in the hands of some of these camp crews that show up and work and

work and work without stop. You know, I've just, I've worked alongside these crews. They just provide an invaluable service. And so, you know, the transition into bringing that work ethic into the real world, I don't think there should be as many barriers. But I, you know, I certainly empathize with that. I'm not, I can't really comment on this proposition or that, but I wish them lots of luck. Hey, thank you, Andy. Yeah, that's

That's something that I heard over and over again when I would interview the volunteer firefighters in the town of Chachula, that exact sentiment that when they called in the fire girls, when the fire girls from Station 5 would show up at the scene, everybody would be relieved. Because if you think about it, particularly in rural areas, most fire departments are staffed by volunteers who are working their jobs for eight hours a day. And these women are training all day. So all day.

All day, every day, they're learning and working and training and working out and learning new skills, which folks who are volunteer firefighters are working their nine to five jobs. So everybody knew that these women were so highly skilled and so prepared that they would step back and let these women take over time and again. Yeah.

You know, I wonder, I want to turn this, Amika, back to sort of the personal a little bit, which is that when you came home, do you think that the work that you did and the skills that you gained, even if they didn't translate into a job necessarily, were sort of part of reestablishing yourself with your family as sort of a person who was more than your crime? Oh, absolutely. You know, it...

You know, my daughter, I believe she says this on the podcast, right? But she said, you know, she used to tell everybody that I lived out of state. She just didn't want to explain that her mom was incarcerated.

And when I became a firefighter, you know, the story to all of her friends changed. It was my mom is in a firefight and my mom's a firefighter. She's a firefighter in Chautilla. So she was able to kind of transform this into something that felt like something she could be proud of when she talked about her mom.

You know, it was something that they were really kind of blown away by. They wanted to hear all the stories. And it definitely transformed the way that my kids looked at me. And it helped me ease back into their lives to be able to talk to them more, to be able to talk to them about the calls I was responding on.

You know, and it also in many ways, I say that this is like a step down from prison. It did get us out there talking to community and other firefighters and other people. And in some ways was getting us ready to come home. A lot of us have been in there for quite a while. And so there's a lot of things about being there that that really helps get me ready for what was next. Yeah. Let's bring in Anthony in San Jose. Welcome, Anthony.

Well, I'd like to talk about the issue of prison labor and prison wages in general. We have about 100,000 people in California's vast gulag of 32 prisons.

And many of them are in there for an extended period of time because we've been addicted to extreme sentences. So you've got people working for the state for 10, 20, 30, or even 40 years at about 16 to 32 cents an hour. That's not even enough to...

pay for their own needs, it takes about a week and a half to earn enough money to buy a bottle of Advil or ibuprofen. So the families of the incarcerated are compelled to contribute to their prison fund just so that the prison... Ah, shoot. Anthony, I think we're losing you here. You know, Anne Sussman, I wanted to take this one to you.

I take Anthony's point about just sort of the wages in prison is something that a lot of people in the criminal justice reform movement have been working on for for a long time, both to increase wages, to, you know, end, you know, involuntary servitude inside, as Amika mentioned earlier around Prop 6. And then Prop 6 lost in the last elections.

And I think a lot of people began to think maybe criminal justice reform efforts were beginning to kind of roll back or encounter some reaction. Maybe I'll send this to Amika, actually. Amika, do you think that the loss of Prop 6 was about criminal justice reform kind of losing steam? Or do you think something else was going on?

No, I think that we are absolutely in a moment that we are, you know, we're all recentering on to kind of interpret this moment that we're in. But as you know, some of the callers

We are very much in a punishment culture. Prop 6, unfortunately, in many ways, I think was tied to Prop 36, which was a ballot measure that would increase sentencing for drug possession and theft, right? And so there was such a sense throughout the state of folks concerned about their own safety and anything that is going to introduce

the word prison on a ballot measure, it's hard to not tie that with this movement in the other direction with criminal justice reform. But I believe it's a moment. We've made advances that we are holding strong to.

And that's what we're focused on is remembering that this is a long game of shifting narrative. You know, people need to understand who it is that is inside. It's not just these video clips that you see on the news of smashing grabs and, you know, there's like,

There was a lot of fear that California voters were feeling, rightfully so, you know, when we were in when we came to election time. And I think we have a lot of work ahead of us around the narrative of who it is in prison and what they are worthy of as human beings. Let's bring in John in Danville. Welcome, John.

Yeah, hi. You know, I think this conversation is typical of when we hear a lot in the Bay Area of this kind of someone who violates the law and then all of a sudden they turn into a victim. You know, I would be willing to bet you if we looked at 50 states,

Prisoners probably have to pay for their housing, right, and their food. Look, the mental structure and discipline that you get from this program is obviously worth much, much, much more than anything we could pay you, right? You have more freedom. You have the structure. You have the pride. That alone is worth it. So, yeah.

You know, it's hard to feel sorry for you. Well, Amika, how would you respond to John? I don't know that you're necessarily asking people to feel sorry for you, but to understand kind of how it actually worked.

Yeah, no, I absolutely, I don't want anybody to feel sorry for me or anybody else that's in prison. I think that's actually, I would say the last thing we're trying to do is place ourselves in a situation of being considered victims. That's far from the truth. I think what we are asking of people is,

is to understand that we're human beings. We're not victims. We are not just what our crime is, right? We are whole complex human beings. And like I said, we're all coming home. And John, one day we will be your neighbor. That is one of the things that, you know, we have to understand. People are coming home to reintegrate into society. And I don't think it's around painting a picture of us as vulnerable and victims.

It is very much about us. We are human beings and we are worthy of some of the same things that people that are not incarcerated are. Yes, we know we are doing our time and paying for the crime that we have committed. That does not mean that we should be subject to a particular type of treatment or, you know, what some could be considered abuses because we, you know, the CDCR's job is to protect people that are incarcerated.

And so, you know, that's what we're calling for is protections, really basic human rights and wages. And absolutely, please don't feel sorry for us, please. That's not what we're asking. Let's bring in another caller. Let's bring in Barbara in San Francisco. Welcome, Barbara.

Thank you. I worked with California Conservation Corps youth in running, you might call them workshops, on efforts to seek work. And I became aware they were doing wildfire fighting, how dangerous the work is. They were using their McLeod tool to do this. And these youths,

Obviously, we're into dangerous situations. Some of them had burn scars. One of them was so tired from the work that he had completed that he fell asleep at my feet, literally. We need to take care of people who go out and perform this extremely dangerous work. And we have to pay them more so that when they are freed of their sentence...

they can reestablish their lives on the outside, in the outside world. So this is... And they're paid so little it almost looks like slavery. Mm-hmm.

So we have to help them and maybe even when it's appropriate, allow them to expunge their records so they get a better bridge to employment. Hey, Barbara, really appreciate that call as well. Thank you. Thank you so much. I want to I do want to give people a sense of the rest of the arc of.

of your stories, Kwee and Amika. Kwee, so you were released 10 years ago. What path has your life taken? Were you able to go into firefighting or did you end up in a different place?

I ended up in a different place. I did try to get a job in firefighting, but because of my background, they said no. But although they did tell me no, I still went to school. I got my associates. I got my bachelor's in psychology. I still was able to find jobs, you know, and I was the best at it. Never been incarcerated again after that.

And so the whole time I'm just trying to be me. I'm just trying to live my life, you know, and just be the best that I can be and follow my dreams. Yeah. And do you think that the firefighting played a role in the kind of success you've had after you got out? Yes, it did. You know, I've gained a level of empathy, you know, discipline, you

So I will say that Firehouse did kind of help me. And still to this day, like I want to do firefighting. Yeah. Well, best of luck. Best of luck. Virginia, Firehouse is hiring, listening. And how about you, Amika? Like how did you end up landing when you got out?

Well, I ended up landing in an amazing organization, the Young Women's Freedom Center, and now the organization that I'm part of, Sister Warriors. You know, I basically get to be with the people that I left behind on the inside, that we left behind on the inside. You know, we have the privilege today of working with currently and formerly incarcerated women and girls across the state, working on improving conditions.

and shifting the narrative about incarcerated women. So it's an honor. I get to work alongside people I love and care for and advocate for better conditions. I'd like to say that the seven years I was inside, I was taking notes and we are, you know, we're coming back to make some changes and it's an honor.

A couple last comments here. Kristen writes in to say, I've been listening to the podcast and first was introduced to it on Snap Judgment. As a fellow mom, I just want to tell these women firefighters that you were strong and brave. I hope you can forgive yourself for what originally got you in prison. So much more than that. So much more than that moment in time. We've all made mistakes and please know that.

We support you. Rebecca writes in to say,

Firefighters risk so much and are entrusted with so much, but it still seems hard to get a pathway to be fully redeemed. I know there's no answer, but I wonder if you could address why redemption feels so difficult. Amika, I'm going to give you this one, and then Anna, I'm going to bring it to you too. I mean, I think that, you know, there's often like so much of our life that has led up to our incarceration and let us in the doors of

of prison in the first place. And then, you know, we are told during our time in prison, we are reduced to a number, right? X32168 was mine. We are a number. We are not human beings. We are very much reminded on a daily about the harms that we've committed. And so there is this element of prison that is very dehumanizing. And so

Why does redemption matter? It matters because we are in the process of restoration when we are in there. And I'd say that's this internal process, right? A lot of us are trying to get back to the people we were before the path we were on that sent us in the doors of prisons. So it matters. It's part of our healing. It's part of us being able to give back when we get out into the real world. Yeah. Thank you so much. And did you want to add anything to that?

Well, just to say that I think shame is very heavy. And in all of the women that I interviewed for this series, they all referenced shame both kind of overtly and in insidious ways. They let me know that they believed they were no longer worthy members of society. And if you believe that about yourself, I think this thing called redemption is really hard to believe you're worthy of. Yeah.

Man, so much more in this podcast. Fire Escape from Snap Studios, Kate Kuedian, Wondery, of course. Thank you so much. And Assessment Editor-at-Large at Snap Judgment, creator of Fire Escape. Thank you. Amika Mota, the focus of the podcast, now founder and executive director of Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having us. And Kwee Johnson, also former member of the Station 5 Firehouse. Thank you, Kwee.

Thank you. The 9 o'clock hour forum is produced by Grace Wan, Blanca Torres, and Dan Zoll. Our interns are Brian Vo and Jesse Fisher. Jennifer Ng is our engagement producer. Francesca Fenzi is our digital community producer. Judy Campbell is lead producer. Danny Bringer is our engineer. Katie Springer is operations manager of KQED Podcast. VP of News is Ethan Tovan-Lindsey. And our chief content officer is Holly Kernan. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another hour of Forum Ahead.

Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.