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Arizona Civics Podcast
Welcome to the Arizona Civics Podcast. This podcast aims to share our journey of sustaining Arizona’s interests in reforms to civic education by working with civic educators in our state. This work is being done by the Center for American Civics at Arizona State University. I am your host, Liz Evans, Civic Education and Outreach Program Director at ASU, and I will interview Arizona teachers, content experts, and leaders in civic education. We hope you enjoy our journey to make Arizona a national civics model!
Arizona Civics Podcast
The First Penitentiary: Eastern State's Legacy and Modern Impact
What can America's first prison teach us about criminal justice today? Journey inside the imposing stone walls of Eastern State Penitentiary with President and CEO Kerry Sautner as she unveils the fascinating and troubling history of this revolutionary institution.
Built in 1829 as a castle-like structure visible from all directions, Eastern State wasn't just designed to punish – it represented a radical new approach to justice. Founded on Quaker beliefs that every person possesses an "inner light," the penitentiary introduced long-term solitary confinement as a path to reflection and redemption. The tragic irony? This well-intentioned experiment quickly revealed the devastating psychological effects of isolation, with mental health deterioration evident within just 15 days. Yet solitary confinement persists in most American prisons today.
The statistics Sautner shares are staggering: one in four American children has an incarcerated parent, and 77% of formerly incarcerated individuals return to prison within five years. "Imagine if that was a score on a test," she challenges. "You wouldn't pass at 33%." Through innovative programs like reentry simulations and educational initiatives for teachers nationwide, Eastern State now works to transform understanding of these systemic issues.
This conversation transcends typical prison discourse by examining fundamental questions at the heart of our democracy: What is the purpose of incarceration? What outcomes should we expect? And critically – is this how we as a society want to address crime and justice? Whether you're a teacher looking for classroom resources, a concerned citizen, or simply curious about this architectural marvel, you'll find Eastern State's approach both enlightening and deeply thought-provoking. Visit easternstate.org to explore their virtual resources and join this essential conversation about creating a more just future.
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You want to go, I'll go, okay.
Liz Evans:I this. This feels very timely and I hate to say that about this conversation, but today on the podcast, we have my friend, uh, Kerry Sautner, who is the president and CEO of the Eastern State Penitentiary and I'm going to be honest, until you started working there, I had no idea this existed. So, Kerry, can you introduce yourself and then tell us what is Eastern State Penitentiary?
Kerry Saunter:Sure. So hi everybody, I'm Kerry, I was just introduced, I've been at Eastern State for about two years and this is a historic site in Philadelphia. It is the country's first penitentiary. It's actually the world's first penitentiary, just to clarify for everybody. You can think of a penitentiary as a prison, but it's a little bit different and we'll get into that. But it is not active. It is a historic site and it is a museum. So we are in.
Kerry Saunter:If people know Philadelphia, they know the Fairmount section.
Kerry Saunter:It's over by the art museum.
Kerry Saunter:We're in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia because the Fairmount section was literally a fair mount and they, in the early 1800s they build a penitentiary that looks, as my children say, like a straight up castle and it was a castle on the hill and it was a place where people were sent to have penance and to think about what they did wrong and it was also a view line in the early 1800s from every different direction so people could see it, which is why they placed it up there.
Kerry Saunter:Now the history of Eastern State comes around before the Constitution in 1787. And it's really framing in this time period of colonial America and the new United States on. How do we define freedom, how do we define liberty and how do we engage in a social contract for a society that keeps people both free and safe? And this was this moment of experimentation and enlightenment and change that happened in America around the Declaration, the Constitution and Eastern State Penitentiary which is a really fun story and I know we'll get into all these questions State Penitentiary which is a really fun story and I know we'll get into all these questions.
Liz Evans:I it's just such a cool thing because I mean, I've been to Philadelphia, I absolutely adore Philly and you and I actually met when you were the chief learning officer, correct at the National Constitution Center. The whole story of Eastern State Because again, now that you work there like I get all this stuff with webinars and what what is kind of this vision and mission of Eastern State Penitentiary as a museum, as a historical site?
Kerry Saunter:It is. It's such a good question and right now we have been going through a kind of a finding our roots in a weird sense of who we are as an institution and what we want to be, as we jokingly all say when we grow up Like what is the work that we want to do and how do we want to do that work? And being the new person on the site do that work and being the new person on the site. So the site has been a nonprofit museum for 30 years. So it was an active penitentiary and prison until 1971. 1970, it was state-owned. 1971, it was city-owned. So all the way from 1829, when its first incarcerated person was brought here, all the way to 1971. It went through kind of a phase of abandonment until the early 90s and then it was saved. They were going to tear it down and basically make a target, just so we're clear. And here's the thing it's 11 and a half acres of amazingly beautiful architecture and the mass invention of solitary confinement.
Kerry Saunter:Solitary confinement didn't really exist before Eastern State. It did in small experimentation around penance, but you're alone in your cell in long-term solitary confinement. Nothing had existed like this before and it has this really brilliant intention of why, but with a really tragic outcome. So really good intention of why is people believed and we still do today that everybody has human dignity, everybody has good in them and at the time, quakers. The Quaker belief was extremely strong in Philadelphia. It still is today, strong across the New England states as well. And the Quaker belief is that every single person has God in them or an inner light. And when you dive deep into the archives of the religious tenets of the Quaker belief is that every single person has God in them or an inner life. And when you dive deep into the archives of the religious tenets of the Quaker belief, what you'll read in this time period, in the early 1800s, late 1700s, is if you really truly want to hear God, you need to sit in quiet contemplation alone. So you I know this is the fun part about being in Philadelphia we have all these Quaker archives and you can dig into the Quaker archives and you see it, you see where the ideas came from. And then you say, okay, there's a group of people that are citizens and they say we need to do better. And Junta is a part of Philadelphia with Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin's a part of the Eastern State story, benjamin Rush, all these amazing players in this colonial period, this new American period and they come together and they say every single person has human dignity. All we have to do is help people find that and then that will be able to help our citizens and our society be stronger and be better.
Kerry Saunter:Brilliant idea, bad idea it's come together by saying let's put them in long-term solitary confinement, alone in a room where you're basically what feels like you're vaulted in, and that will help you find God in that quiet contemplation. We know today and they knew pretty quickly that it very quickly broke people's minds. It was an instant mental health crisis. Within 15 days they could see people having long-term mental health damage and that damage. People are social creatures and they saw it.
Kerry Saunter:And so, when we think about, your original question was like what is our mission, what are our values, what are these ideas? We've spent the last year trying to really examine how do we define what our mission is for, who we want to be and the impact we want to have in our society today, but also where's the weight and the power of the history of this site and how does it give us legitimacy. So I'm going to read for you our brand new mission. So Eastern State preserves America's first penitentiary, advancing public understanding of the criminal justice system and its impact on the lives of those affected by it, to inspire a more just future.
Kerry Saunter:So when we think about the intent of this place in 1787, when the first groups were coming together to define having a place of penance to do criminal incarceration differently than the extremely violent way that they were doing it in Philadelphia and across the world at this time, they were thinking these conversations and they were saying we can do it differently because we believe in human dignity, we believe that everybody can get back to that inner light.
Kerry Saunter:And they also believed that if you could give people a trade, a skill, that people could be able to have a job when they came home they would be highly functional members of the society. So those things are still legitimate today. We believe in human dignity. Our Constitution is founded on both human dignity and the fear of humans to come up with really bad ideas and not objects and balances. Yes, both, madison got it. We want the best and we want to check everybody. Madison got it on and you have these amazing stories of these great minds coming to Philadelphia, not just to talk about the Constitution and talk about the Declaration, but to come see Eastern State as well, and that is kind of mind-blowing in itself.
Liz Evans:That like there's so much in there. The first thing, solitary confinement, like again, here's this great idea that in practice did not work right and it's interesting that it's still utilized today in prisons across the nation, across the world. So you're talking about like liberty and freedom and criminal justice, so how can we engage in restoration and healing, and you know what does that kind of look like?
Kerry Saunter:Yeah, and again, why this mission of this historic site is so powerful today. So in you know 1787, they're talking about liberty and freedom. And how do we ensure that when we remove somebody's liberty and freedom, that there's opportunities and pathways to regain it? Also, that they want to do it in a way that there's no badge or incidents on them for life, there's no scarlet letter? So that was also not having a name and nobody knowing that you went to Eastern state was a part of its functionality. But learn, yeah, no names and hidden because they didn't want you to go back into society and everybody labeled you because so much of prisons at that time and jails they really were jails at that time. They were public punishment in front of everybody and it was violent and it was branding and whipping and saccades like all of the things public works, but very rough hard labor and everybody would know that you had this and you did this thing and so you couldn't reenter society. So this was this idea that you take it into isolation.
Kerry Saunter:But we know very quickly that solitary confinement is terrible and yet we're still using it. Only 25 states in the United States ban long-term solitary confinement Only 25. Solitary confinement it's pretty loose. Most of the time they're looking around a couple weeks. But that doesn't mean you can be pulled off of solitary confinement for 15 minutes and put back into solitary confinement. And we know from cases that come out of the courts and cases that hit our news that people in long-term solitary confinement for years and the destruction that we know. So this is why some of these original concepts and ideas are still echoing in our systems today.
Kerry Saunter:We need to be aware of it. We need to have this conversation and say are we doing it right? And at the end of the day it's not just are we doing it right? Is we the people? But have we given our power to the government and is the government doing it right? So so much of the conversation says should the government do that, do we want the government to do that? Like that's really the conversation.
Kerry Saunter:And it's hard because we're not dealing with simple issues. We're dealing with, you know, somebody who's committed a crime, somebody who's also been victimized. And we need to be really honest about those conversations because most of the time those two people are one in the same. And so when we look at women in incarceration, for example, 85% of women who are incarcerated have been sexually assaulted by a close family member or a community member. So people who are both a person that's committed a crime are also a victim. So when we look we tend to binary things in our brains like this and that black and white, it's a lot of gray, and so these are complex conversations and they're hard too. So we think of that solitary confinement. We think of justice. It is our constitutional goal to say have we established justice? Can we create a more perfect union, with the call to action to all of us to constantly be examining it and say can we do better and do we want the government to do this?
Liz Evans:I don't know if I answered your question there, yes, and I know that listeners cannot see my face, but 85% is a staggering, staggering statistic. And you're right, I think that human nature wants us to be right and wrong and this is not actually how things work. So how do we have these conversations about how criminal justice at its best can work, knowing statistics like this, 85%, understanding that solitary confinement is actually worse for the person than better for anything, person then better for anything. How do we have these conversations? Because when we talk about the right and wrong, I think that people try to simplify like well, you committed a crime, you need to go to prison. What does that conversation in reality look like?
Kerry Saunter:And that. So I love that question because it's going to. It's going to be different for everybody, and we have to remember that so many people it's like one in every two adults has a close family relative that's been incarcerated. One in every four kids has a parent that's been incarcerated. It in the system, um. It in the system, um.
Kerry Saunter:So when we have these conversations, it's not it's not like a theorist which I always love to do, which is why my brain goes there it's like I like to look at the data, like I want to nerd out on the data and I want to think about this like almost like a science experiment, and people will come at this any way they choose, and that is your prerogative, and so I think it is about how do we come at this? What is your lens, that you like to go into this conversation and then being really mindful that somebody else in that conversation might be coming at it in a completely different way, with direct experience on them, and this is just people who are incarcerated. When we dive into the numbers around people who have family members who have been a victim and again can be both of those things at the same time it's really hard for people. So we have to give a lot of grace. But we have to look at this and go to our founding ideas and again, being at the Constitution Center for so long and a lot of my research has been around how do we create just and fair systems? It's not about saying does somebody deserve this or not. It's saying is this the way we want to do this as a country? Is this a just and fair system?
Kerry Saunter:And what I really think is a framing question we should ask us. We start with what's the purpose of incarceration? Let's just start to unpack it there and then what do we expect the outcome to be? Because that is like to me the bookends are easier to start walking your way to center, which is a really hard spot to be in. But something that I have to be honest with you our kids in our classrooms are really good at this. You know they're hardwired for conversations around justice and fairness, especially third to fifth graders. We tend to think like this is high school level. Third to fifth graders are neurologically hardwired to talk about justice and fairness, literally. Watch any group of third to fifth graders on the playground and you hear them going that's not fair.
Kerry Saunter:You broke the rules and you're like, oh wow, they really are. Like this is. I love teaching that bracket for the constitution, but I think it also allows people to do the to look at these big pictures and then build trusted discussions where people can share. So one of the ways we do that here and that we're working with a group of teachers around the country to create toolkits that go into classrooms and they've been game changing for us is a re-entry simulation. So when people come home, they have a certain amount of things that they have to do within a short period of time when they come home from being incarcerated. It's a lot and it's really hard and when you look at it you're like how does anybody do this? So what?
Kerry Saunter:Our team has worked with the United States court system and the reentry system and they created a simulation. So it's basically like a living monopoly game board and you have a short period of time to get everything done and you have to follow a certain order and you have to do certain things and it's like one door doesn't open unless you do the other thing first. So it's really tricky. It's like the worst game of chutes and ladders you can ever imagine. It's the easiest way for me to explain it, but what we did was we worked with student groups to run the re-entry court, so they were the jobs of the court system. So one was, you know, getting your IDs, and another one was the court system. So there's basically like a simulation where you're going to eight different stations. The students are running the stations, so they're the justice system on that side. And then our community members and this was groups that we've done it with are all ages, some of them being teachers. They're the participants, and so it is fascinating to watch how quickly people get frustrated, how quickly people quit, how quickly people break the rules and do things that are technically illegal for somebody on probation and coming home.
Kerry Saunter:This is where I found it really really powerful, because this is where storytelling and each individual has their own lens they bring to it, and this this really kind of chaotic, fun and also frustrating experience opens up the door to have difficult conversations, but in a way, that's fun, which I know sounds weird, but what happened was we do a talk back afterwards and people with lived experience run it. So people have actually been through this on both sides and they have a dialogue and a talk back, and what we saw in the last time we did this was with 150 people. What we saw was these aha moments where people in the room when you ask them before you start, it are you or somebody you know systems impacted by the criminal justice system. Hands went up. At the end of the program you saw more hands go up and it's because people didn't realize it.
Kerry Saunter:So many people are affected by the criminal justice system but we're not talking about it ever, which is kind of odd. That this is like. If this was cancer or this was a disease, we'd be talking about it and saying how do we prevent this? So many Americans are impacted and we're not talking about it. So when you run the simulation, then you have people realizing wait a minute, I am impacted, it was my uncle that was incarcerated and I didn't realize it till this experience and so they can bring a different perspective.
Kerry Saunter:But for us, what's so important and one of our values at Eastern State is to be civically engaged and to support people with being civically engaged in their community, in their state, in their nation. Now you get to go home and if you know somebody that's coming home, you might treat them differently because you know how hard it was. So 77% of people are reincarcerated after coming home within less than five years. 77% that means 33% of people make it past the five-year mark. Imagine if that was a rate for curing childhood cancer. Imagine if that was a score you got on a test in class. You would not pass a 33%. But we're allowing our government to pass this test and we're not looking at it.
Kerry Saunter:But what they found out and what the research tells us is, if you have a loved one or a friend that is supporting you through the process, that's your best likelihood, that's how you win and that's how you get through it. And for us, we know so many kids have family members that are system impacted. So we know so many kids family members that are system impacted. So we have to help kids process that too. We have to help teachers help kids process that, and adults help each other. So that is really how we take this mission of an institution that was designed to respect human dignity and to help people and support people, and do that today, in 2025 and the future, and live up to that system of coming back to our constitution and saying it is our job, as we, the people, to make a more just society.
Liz Evans:I again, I'm just like sitting here. So you're right, if a 33% is a failing grade and I think part of it's like close, that is that's my ad. It is like statistics like these, if people I think that that's part of the conversation right, it's just knowing these things and knowing, I mean, again, all these stats are just they're baffling me. I'm sitting here with my mouth open because it I mean it is so many kids are impacted, so many people are impacted, and I want to kind of bring that a little further. So how do we look at the entirety of the system? So not just the people who are incarcerated, but guards, right, because you know a lot of research has talked about secondary trauma and also firsthand trauma. You know they bring that home and it affects community. So how can we look at, kind of this entirety of the system and not just focus on one piece of it? Because if we're really looking at, you know, healing and really human dignity, we have to take every person into account.
Kerry Saunter:I love that and it's a systems approach. So you can't you know you can't fix one piece and the rest of the house is falling down. But you're like, but it's okay, I have a really nice mud room but the plumbing is not working, like and don't like. All of us have been through some kind of like home renovations, get that, but like, sometimes you just live with a really nice mud room and you're like, I'll get there. But I think that's really important because people are affected on every angle of this, and this is so.
Kerry Saunter:Much of my work in the past has been around training police officers. So some of the work that I did from I'm trying to remember 2015 to 2023, our team at the Constitution Center trained every Philadelphia police officer, every new recruit and every Camden County, new Jersey in-service and recruit police officer, and that was if we want to have a more just society, we need to make sure we're looking at all the systems, and we think that's so important here too. So I'm so glad that you brought up the mental health crisis. That is, not just the people who are incarcerated, but the people that work in an incarcerated system, and how does that affect people? And it affects people at every level. We had a program two weeks ago on the economy of incarceration and so often we think about private prisons. There's only 8% of the prisons in the United States are private prisons, but that doesn't mean that every single state-based prison doesn't have an interconnection between private for-profit agencies and our government. So we have to look at the entire system because there's a lot of questionable behaviors, but that cannot get fixed if we're not looking at the entire system and they affect the guards, and so our really fascinating group called Worth Rises. I suggest everybody take a look at their new piece, their new book that is out and we have it on our YouTube channel. You can go to easternstateorg and check out our YouTube channel on our pages on this.
Kerry Saunter:But really enlightening that some of the research-based organization that looks out all this data. But they also get basically calls to action from people who are incarcerated, but also people that work in the system. So so many of the calls that they get are from people that are the law enforcement within the prison and they're seeing this. They're seeing people being starved in prison because of the dollar being associated with the food service industry. That's who's calling and this is impacting them. They're watching this pain, they're watching this trauma, they're watching this and we need to stop again binary people like good people, bad people and say we are all humans that, at the end of the day, want to do good.
Kerry Saunter:How do we work in a full system to support each other? So some of the work that we're looking at here at Eastern State is to bring people into that dialogue that are working in the incarcerated system to say how can we do things differently? We work with some of the experimental prisons in Pennsylvania and our universities. So Little Scandinavia is an experimental prison system in Pennsylvania that looks at the Scandinavian prisons and tries to move that into prison systems in America. One of our board members, jordan Hyatt, is an expert in this and it's an international view of it, but he's doing that work as well.
Kerry Saunter:So we're really thinking about how do we make sure people are aware, understand and then, when they're going to vote or picking a judge or saying what is the action that they take they want to look closer at. How are these judges sentencing people? Are there plea bargains? What are the issues with plea bargains? Where are these systems not working for the people that work there and the people that are incarcerated there and it is a systems approach that we need to look at.
Kerry Saunter:It does get overwhelming, but our goal is to really work with these amazing organizations that are out there. Like the Avira Institute FAM is another amazing organization EJI, equal Justice Initiative, bryan Stevenson's groups these are great organizations that are looking at this work and for Eastern State being this site of it was the first site in America for criminal justice reform. It started here. We are the convener of these dialogues and bringing and amplifying these amazing voices to what we believe should be a general public audience. It should be a student audience, it should be a teacher audience and should be a general public audience and it isn't just in the policy wonk field, it should be in every dialogue.
Liz Evans:So if I'm a new teacher or a veteran teacher who's listening to this and I'm like this all sounds really great. How do I utilize this in my classroom? Because you brought up teachers, and I mean you and I speak the same language. We are teacher. We are teacher and student centered. You know, if we want to do something, we call in the experts, and those experts are teachers. So if I'm new to this entire thing, what do you, at Eastern State Penitentiary, have for somebody in Arizona or somebody in California or South Dakota? Because I'll be honest, when I first heard of Eastern State Penitentiary, I'm like, well, that's in Philadelphia, like I don't think that really has anything to do with me here in Arizona. And I was wrong, happily wrong. So what kind of stuff do you have for teachers?
Kerry Saunter:And I love the way that you frame that because we go to the experts. So we just launched last year our new justice education collaboratory, because there's more people need to do this. We need to have humility when we're talking about education and say just because I mean, some of us have degrees in it and have taught, but still, just because you went through fifth grade doesn't mean you can teach.
Liz Evans:A thousand percent. It is when I taught fifth grade it's not easy people.
Kerry Saunter:I barely survived. It is hard. So what? We started a year ago and the team here has been doing this for years. We started experimenting. What are ways that teachers can use this material and what are the right formats. So just this weekend, our teachers from around the country are coming to Eastern State in Philadelphia and we're spending all day, friday and Saturday, looking at how do we teach this? How do we teach this if you're teaching a criminal justice course? How do we teach this if you're teaching a social justice course? Or how do we teach this if you're teaching any American history course and want to weave this in? How do we build reentry simulations so a teacher can do it anywhere? Because, guess what? There's a court system anywhere in the country and you can work with your local court system on this, and they're fantastic at this. So these are all the ways that we're experimenting.
Kerry Saunter:If you are in Philadelphia ever, please come visit us. We'd love to see you in person. We have a lot of online programs. We have for years, our team has been doing live teacher and student programs where you get to tour the site. We have topics. On the 13th Amendment and the 14th Amendment. On the 8th Amendment, the 1st Amendment, all of these pieces, amendment, the First Amendment, all of these pieces.
Kerry Saunter:We are the first prison system in the United States and the only to have a synagogue on site, so we teach religious freedom courses as well, because we have a chapel, a chaplain's office and a synagogue on site. It's a really fascinating, unique place, eastern State. So it has this preservation and beauty. It looks like a chapel but at the same time, this pain and tragedy around criminal justice and around solitary confinement and weaves through the entire storyline of American history, because this has been a part of the American experience from 1787 to today and that's what's so fascinating. It closes for incarceration at the beginning of the boom of mass incarceration and it's because it couldn't house so many people.
Kerry Saunter:So so much of our work looks at the boom of mass incarceration and all of the policy and legal choices we made as a country that created us to be one of the top three countries in the world who incarcerate our own citizens. So it is a fascinating dialogue. We have an Unlocking History series that is perfect for classrooms, perfect for every age. It's online. We have live Justice 101 programs online. We're doing one in May on the history of solitary confinement. It'll be the first time we get to teach a lesson on the history of solitary confinement at Eastern State and the world, but it's a very fascinating history and modern conversation. And just to be really clear with classrooms, because I know there's a lot of tension going on about how do we teach American history, we are a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, so our goal is to teach about our Constitution and multi-partisan conversation that we're having and we bring those people to the table as our experts as well.
Liz Evans:I love that Last question to kind of close it out, because you're in Philadelphia and we talked about this the last time Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl and we were talking about the parade and just kind of sports in general. Did you open the museum for the parade? Tell me about that, because I'm an Arizonan. The Cardinals we haven't got there yet, right, we've been to Super Bowl, haven't won, and I do feel like Philadelphia in itself is its own very unique and fun brand of sports fan and so winning I mean I was cheering for the Eagles. I'll be very honest. So what was that like? As you know, president ando of this incredible museum, and then you have this parade coming by. Tell me what that was like.
Kerry Saunter:So it so, yes, frame it. I love the way you framed it. Philadelphia is unique to our sport. Um, and if they're the, everybody will say you know Philadelphia has a unique fan base. Um, it is a hysterical fan base too and it is funny and entertaining. Um, and really just wonderful. It brings out like a like, a true Philadelphian gene, like, even if you're not from here, you get it pretty quickly and then you turn into a Philly fan like pretty fast.
Kerry Saunter:So the parade is in front of the Art Museum of Philadelphia. It's a big, beautiful art museum. It's the Art Museum Parkway that it's on is modeled after the Paris Parkways. So it is absolutely gorgeous and meant for that. So it's this long, beautiful architecture. It's like the idea and design behind it, the parkway. We're two blocks away.
Kerry Saunter:So most area people, they didn't know what to do. You know, places stayed open but people closed Eastern State we opened because there is not a place in this area. That's really like a welcoming center. So many groups were closed. We want it to be a welcoming center and it's because we have such rich history with sports at Eastern State.
Kerry Saunter:So Eastern State, early 1900s, solitary confinement, is completely given up upon. They tried to keep it. In certain ways it fell apart pretty quickly after the 1850s, but it's completely let go of in early 1900s. Then sports became a huge part of Eastern state Because, if you think about it, when people play together and when they play sports together, they learn boundaries, they learn rules, they learn social engagement. Again back to those third to fifth graders. This is how we learn how to live with each other in society and follow rules and work together and also like heal. It gives you a chance to heal.
Kerry Saunter:We have to be really cognizant that a lot of people that have been incarcerated at Eastern State were incarcerated for reasons because they were poor, because they were not the norm of society. There were so many women incarcerated originally at Eastern State because they stood up for their own rights and they were poor and they were put away because they weren't the norm of society at the time. So I just want to be really transparent and honest. It's not always about people committing crimes, but people not being the right people and put away, locked away from the norm of society. But sports were a big thing. So we had every sport and the sports in the Eastern State were integrated among the races far before any sport in America was Far before the Eagles were as well.
Kerry Saunter:When we talk about integrating sports, eagles does not have a great history of that and has reckoned with that over the years, so we thought it was really important to really be a part of the community. We are a place of trauma, but we're also a place where our community, people that are impacted by incarceration, people that live in the neighborhood, come back and reclaim this trauma to do good and to make good things happen in our country. So we really are intentional about claiming sites of trauma to do good, and so we opened it up to everybody. Our team did a great map so you could go around and look at the baseball field here and the track, and we had a bocce tournaments here as well, so we were really like a wide range of sports. Basketball that's amazing. You can learn about all these things. We have an amazing baseball activity that we do in summer programs too, and you can play baseball at the same baseball court and try to whack it over the wall, just like everybody did for hundreds of years here in Eastern state.
Kerry Saunter:But we also wanted people to go to the Eagles parade, so we made sure that people knew where to park and had a map to go there. But the funniest thing ever is the Eagles parade, and we're all green when the Eagles win or even when they're close to winning. Even when we lose, everybody wears green. It was right around Valentine's day. Um, it was actually. I think on Valentine's day there wasn't a drop of red in this city. I have never seen a wave of green like this in my entire life in Philadelphia and I was like, wow, there is so much green, and even the storefronts nobody was selling anything for Valentine's day with green, green, green. We reclaimed Valentine's day as a green holiday and not a red one. It was fantastic. It's also the chiefs day is a green holiday and not a red one.
Kerry Saunter:It was fantastic. It's also the chiefs, you know, like no red was allowed.
Kerry Saunter:It was amazing. I will tell you, I have never experienced a complete internet outage like that, because everybody was there and you, I had a zoom, cause I was at work, Um, and I was going down to the parade and I couldn't actually zoom because so many people were pulling the internet. So it was great. The whole city kind of had to go have fun and everybody was super positive. So sometimes we get a bad rap in Philadelphia for our sports. It was unbelievably positive, it was wonderful. It was great to be a part of it, having Eastern State a part of that. And there was an eagle, an actual eagle, that flew through the parade, not a trained eagle.
Kerry Saunter:I know people lost their mind. It was a wild eagle flew through the parade and the entire, the entire. It was millions of people just stopped and saw this, and so it was a great day for Philadelphia. It was a great day to see our country come together and people that may not politically not, you know always agree on things, saying let's just have some fun together, all wear the same color and let's collaborate and do something together, and I feel like that is a great representation of what our country needs to be doing when leading in the 250. We may come at this from lots of different angles, from lots of different lenses, from lots of different lenses and have lots of different questions, but at the end of the day, we're all people and citizens together and we believe in each other, and so we can do it together if we do that well for sports and for history.
Liz Evans:That was just like the perfect for this hurry. I I am inspired, I am baffled by statistics and, as with every conversation I have with you, I am a better person afterwards. Thank you so much for the work you're doing in philadelphia, mean nationwide, and for giving us all of this information today. I cannot wait to get back to Philly and to come and experience this after learning so much with you. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
Kerry Saunter:Well, thank you guys for the work that you are doing, because it's an amazing program at ASU, and I'm so glad that you're leading the charge, because you are one of those people that we always want to make sure you help us and build a better system, because you are a brilliant teacher and a fantastic citizen. So thank you.
