The Feast - Snap Classic

When men living in Muskegon prison watch the breaking news of George Floyd’s murder on TV, they decide to host a one-of-a-kind celebration of life. And when Cindy adopted a four year old girl from China, there was a lot the two didn’t understand about each other. STORIES The Feast When men living in Muskegon prison watch the breaking news of George Floyd’s murder on TV, they decide to host a one-of-a-kind celebration of life. This story is a tribute to Robert “Silk” Cannon Junior. This episode contains strong language and references to police violence. Sensitive listeners, please be advised. Special thanks to William Welch and Dee Dee Kirkwood who helped make the bagel sandwich a reality for the men in Muskegon. Additional shout-outs to Catherine Nouhan, Stephen Carmody, and Delores Ingram. And major thanks to Tana Ganeva https://twitter.com/TanaGaneva, a criminal justice reporter who has written extensively about Michael Thompson’s incarceration and petitions for clemency. You can read more about the George Floyd celebration of life in her article https://thecounter.org/george-floyd-michael-thompson-michigan-prison-black-lives-matter/ in The Counter https://thecounter.org/. Tana is currently working on a book about Cold War escapees. Produced by Shaina Shealy, original score by Renzo Gorrio, artwork by Teo Ducot. Xiao Xiao When Cindy adopted a four year old girl from China, there was a lot the two didn’t understand about each other. Find out about Cindy’s story (and her books) at CindyChampnella.com http://www.cindychampnella.com/. Sound Design by Pat Mesiti-Miller, produced by Anna Sussman. Happy New Year Snap Nation! Snap Classic - Season 15 – Episode 58 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Glynn Washington?

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• 0:53Glynn Washington?

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• 1:32Glynn Washington?

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• 2:16Glynn Washington?

  When I was a kid, five years old, we lived in what they called a transitional neighborhood. And in our transitional neighborhood, people kept getting their batteries transitioned right out of their cars. And my father says, "It ain't about to be no mark." So every evening, he starts carrying a battery out of our Chevy Nova and inside the house. And one evening, my mama's making my favorite, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and red bean gravy. My mama makes the best mashed potatoes and red bean gravy. Pops grins over at me. "You ready to tuck in, boy?" "Yes, sir." Pops walks out of the front door, says he'll be right back. He's gotta get the battery first. "Okay."

• 3:01Glynn Washington?

  Mama sets the plate down. I can see the heat wafting off the crispy chicken, and I'm waiting, waiting, waiting. Everybody knows mashed potatoes only taste good when they're hot. But I don't say nothing. Still, he doesn't come back from outside. I'm staring at the food, stomach rumbling. My mama tells me to go ahead and eat, baby. But I don't want to go ahead and eat. Through the window, I see our car hood popped open. My mother opens our front door. "Bill?

• 3:36Glynn Washington?

  Bill?" She sits back down, gets up, sits down again, then slightly higher pitch. "Bill? Bill?"

• 3:50Glynn Washington?

  We wait. Wait a half an hour, an hour.

• 3:56Glynn Washington?

  Two hours later, she calls my uncles, the neighbors, the church folk. People start filling the house and telling me it's gonna be all right. My auntie wraps our untouched dinner plates in Saran Wrap. We'll save this for later, baby.

• 4:12Glynn Washington?

  In the morning, the hood of our car is still popped open. My mother sits next to my auntie, red-faced from the crying. My uncles have taken to knocking on doors. Church ladies moan in the living room, gathered in a prayer circle. Pops doesn't show up that afternoon. Doesn't show up later that evening. Finally, wailing, my mother picks up the phone to actually call the police. My father walks into the house. "Bill!" He looks angry and dirty, even as we hug him, me crying, my mama praising Jesus. "Lord, Lord, Lord!" A scowl stays etched on his face.

• 4:57Glynn Washington?

  "Where you been?" When my uncles ask, "What happened? What happened?" "5-0 locked me up, said I stole my own damn battery out my own damn car, that's what happened." A heavy, quiet freezes everyone in place, as my uncles take several moments to digest the words. The silence stretches, twists, expands, and finally, looking first to each other, then back at my father. My uncles howl, sighs, spitting guffaws, tears streaming down eyes, slapping each other on the back, laughing, laughing, laughing, laughing, then growing still, only to erupt laughing again at full strength.

• 5:42Glynn Washington?

  "Danny!" Says Uncle Elders. "How you gonna be arrested for stealing your own battery? Get out!" They can't stop laughing. "Get out!" My uncles shuffle away, cackling, leaning on each other for support. House, empty. Me still clinging to my father's leg. My mother retrieves the plates of dinner, first places them in the oven, then sets the reheated food on the table. Then as a family, we sit down to eat. My favorite, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and red bean gravy.

• 6:30Glynn Washington?

  Today on Snap Judgment, we proudly present The Feast. My name is from Washington, D.C. and because you're listening to Snap Judgment. Now, we begin behind the walls of a Level 2 prison in western Michigan, and since of listeners' shit note, this story does reference police violence and contains strong language.

• 7:11Glynn Washington?

  We'll hear first from Michael Thompson, who was recently released from incarceration, and he spoke to us from his home near Flynn. Snap Judgment.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Within the prison system, as soon as something hit the TV, they run out their rooms. They run out their room and get to talking to each other.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Michael Thompson was alone in his cell at Muskegon Correctional Facility when he heard men shouting.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  They was talking in anger, said them been killing us for years. I knew what they was talking about because I seen it myself. It's like everybody else witnessed a murder on TV.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  The men were watching the breaking news of George Floyd's murder.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  They played it all day. They played it every 15 minutes. I just got silent. I mean, what is it for a person to say after you witnessing something like that?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Michael needed company and went to find his closest friend at Muskegon, Robert Cannon Jr.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  Hello, this is a prepaid debit call from Robert.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  This call is from a correction facility and is subject to monitoring and recording.

• 8:40Speaker 04

  Me and, me and Michael, you know, we used to always sit together in the dayroom, you know, we'd sit together and we called it our roundtable. We'd sit together and brainstorm.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Robert and Michael ran workshops together in the dayroom for the other men. Robert's a writer. Everyone calls him Silk because he's good with words. He's written books and books of poetry, screenplays. At the roundtable, Silk taught creative writing. Michael also led a breathing class and the two ran a workshop about forgiveness.

• 9:13Speaker 04

  We'd sit together and brainstorm about ideas, you know, about the future.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  But the day Silk saw George Floyd's murder on TV, he avoided the roundtable. He needed to be alone in his feelings.

• 9:27Speaker 04

  Anger at the system, anger about being helpless or not being able to voice what I was feeling, rage at, at, at feeling that, that we was getting a, the black men in this country was getting a bad, a bad deal, so to speak.

• 9:49Speaker 04

  The poem that I, I tried to write, it was, I think it was too militant, you know what I'm saying? Because I was expressing all my anger and stuff. And so I tore it up a couple of times, you know, I wrote it twice and I tore it up twice because I didn't like the way it was flowing. I felt that I was just too close to it. And the reason why I couldn't generate my thoughts the way they normally come so easily. Emotionally, I was too close to the situation.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  On the day of George Floyd's funeral, the two men watched together at the roundtable.

• 10:22Glynn Washington?

  But we couldn't get your knee off our necks. What happened to Floyd happens every day in this country, in education, in health services, and in every area of American life. It's time for us to stand up in George's name and say, get your knee off our necks.

• 10:46Speaker 04

  I said, "Man, now people are finally saying enough is enough and are standing up and they tired, you know." I say, "Well, this may be the spark, that light, the catalyst, you know, make people become more aware of what's really going on." I say, "Man, we need to do something."

• 11:03Speaker 01

  I wanted to do a celebration. I wanted to do a celebration because I felt that was my duty to do that.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  A celebration of life inside the prison to grieve George Floyd's death together, but not actually together.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  You gotta be careful doing a celebration inside the prison because what they can do, they can say that you're trying to form some kind of organization and that's where you can't congregate.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  It's forbidden for men at Meskeken to congregate in groups of more than five, but Silk and Michael had a workaround. The idea, a feast that men would take back to their cells and eat on their own.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  You know, we can all come together with food. We're not getting grade A food, you know what I'm saying?

• 11:51Speaker 02

  The prison chow hall is known to be pretty rough, so for this celebration, they decided to cook up their own feast with their own food.

• 12:00Speaker 04

  And so, when you come together and you buying food, they want to be a part of something that's bigger than themselves.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  I kind of figured that nobody, no other prison within the United States is gonna celebrate George Floyd like the way I wanted to do it.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Michael and Silk put their own money in, and Michael got a friend on the outside to donate enough to cover chips and soda. They invited about 60 people to the feast, the feast they'd be eating individually in their own cells.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Everybody wanted to be on the list.

• 12:43Speaker 04

  He picked some guys, I picked some guys, and I put the list together.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Silk took on the role of logistics guy. His first task: enlist kitchen help.

• 12:55Speaker 04

  I'm, uh, real funny about who I let cook my food or, or even, you know what I'm saying? I'm a stickler for cleanliness and stuff like that.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  The microwave kitchen at Meskegan is a 12 by 8 foot room with three microwaves and a sink. When Silk was in there, he had this thing where he watched people closely.

• 13:18Speaker 04

  How they cleaning their, their, their hands and dishes and stuff like that.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Earlier that year, he noticed this one guy making nachos, carefully layering cheese and meat in between stacks of chips.

• 13:32Speaker 04

  When you take pride and put love into your cooking, it, it tastes a whole lot different than you just putting something together, throwing it in the microwave. So that's when I picked, uh, PE.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Silk realized this guy, PE, was kind of a microwave wizard. He tapped PE to be the lead chef for the feast. PE learned to cook from his grandma.

• 13:52Speaker 04

  My grandmother's, it's the macaroni and cheese. I ain't never tasted nothing like it in my life. So, I was a little fat kid, so you know, me, I wanna hang around the kitchen while they're cooking.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  PE is a meticulous chef and a clean freak.

• 14:09Speaker 04

  When I see a piece of hair in my food, I throw the whole bowl away. I just, it's just certain things, just, just, you don't supposed to do around food. You're supposed to be clean, you know? And take your time. If you don't take your time, then how can you enjoy it?

• 14:25Speaker 02

  He makes his own food with ingredients from commissary. Basically, an overpriced convenience store where people living in prison can buy poached meat soaking in preservatives, an 88 cent bar of soap, deodorant for $3.75, shelf-stable crackers.

• 14:45Speaker 04

  You got, you got tub cheese with the spread cheese, you got jalapeno, and you got a mao that come in a tub. Then you got cheddar cheese, and we got mozzarella cheese. That's like the sprinkles, but then you got a provolone cheese, which is like the bar you cut, and you got a hot provolone bar.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Beyond PE's compulsive cleanliness and knowledge of edible commissary items, he's like the superstar of the Meskegan kitchen.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  He has a sort of famous pizza recipe with a crust he made from saltine crackers.

• 15:14Speaker 04

  You just crush them up and slowly add cold water, turn it into a ball, and you shape it out.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  He makes lasagna with a cup of noodles and cream cheese. Pecan pie with a cookie crust. Cheesecake with mozzarella cheese and a lemon mousse.

• 15:30Speaker 04

  Lemonade, lemonade, Kool-Aid, a pile of milk with a little bit of regular milk. And you get to whip it, and it's gonna fluff up. And it tastes just, I swear to you, just like cheesecake in the street.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  This guy thought he was a real five-star chef, you know what I'm saying, with that cheap meat.

• 15:47Speaker 04

  You got pepperonis, you got salami, meatballs, turkey, something. A lot of guys who've been around me for years know that I can cook. So when they hear that I'm cooking something, they're like, oh, hell, yeah. We with that because we know he can cook.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  So Silk, the writer who wanted to bring everyone together, summoned P.E., Kitchen Superstar, into the dayroom to discuss his plans for the George Floyd celebration of life.

• 16:13Speaker 05

  I showed him what I had, and then I asked him, I said, well, listen, this is what I got.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  $300.

• 16:19Speaker 05

  What do you think? Do you think this is enough for 58 guys?

• 16:22Speaker 04

  When he told me, when he told me the number, I thought, I asked him, was he serious? Because it was a whole bunch of people. And that list wasn't even complete. First, I was in shock, truthfully.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  After I got out of shock, I was like, what's the menu? That all, it all depends on what the menu is.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  The menu.

• 16:41Speaker 05

  So we, we limited by some of the stuff we can do.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  Silk knew the options. DIY meals in prison typically take shape as a wrap, a bowl, or nachos.

• 16:54Speaker 05

  So I said, listen, man, I don't want to do wraps this time. I don't want to do bowls because everybody's always doing bowls. But I wanted to be something a little bit special that nobody normally does. Let's, let's get him a bagel.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  A bagel sandwich loaded.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Once Michael and Silk decided on bagel sandwiches, P E, the Wizard of Prison Food, got to work, plotting a celebratory feast on a bagel.

• 17:21Speaker 04

  It's prison food, so how can you make it taste like this? So you go through, you've tried a few times with different things, you've seen how it tastes. So this is what I do, I experiment to see if I like it. And if I like it, I figure like, hey, everybody else will like it as well.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  P E put his headphones on and got a notebook out, and listed every type of meat, sauce, and cheese available from the commissary.

• 17:42Speaker 04

  And I start making combinations about what I think that goes together. Like, maybe salami meat doesn't go good with ranch dressing or something like that.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  But onions and peppers...

• 17:52Speaker 04

  To me, that brings out a lot of flavor and a lot of type of meats like salami and...

• 17:55Speaker 02

  P E chose his favorite combinations on paper, and then went to the microwave kitchen to start testing them out.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  Cheese with meat sticks, mackerel and garlic pickles, rice cooked with jelly.

• 18:12Speaker 04

  I did a lot of spear mitten with bagels and stuff before I decided on which ones I was gonna use.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  He got his hands on every kind of bagel in the store.

• 18:20Speaker 04

  We had a bagel called Everything, and we had a plain bagel. But those, to me, those don't got the type of flavors I was looking for.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  He went with cinnamon raisin.

• 18:28Speaker 04

  Why cinnamon raisin? It all, it all got just like this, uh, let me try to describe it to you. It had like a, like a cereal taste to it.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  The final dish P E came up with was a groundbreaking fried rice bagel sandwich, layered with meat, cheesy noodles, fried rice, chili, sweet onions and bell peppers, all layered on two halves of a cinnamon raisin bagel, topped with a pickle.

• 18:58Speaker 04

  Dill pickle. You get that plain old vinegar, vinegary taste. So you add that to something sweet, and a little bit of spice, and a little bit of bread, and cheese, and meat, that's all your flavors marrying in together. You know what you get already, an explosion.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  An explosion.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  P E wrote the recipe down in his notebook. And then he started to worry.

• 19:21Speaker 04

  Everybody don't have the same taste buds. So when I come up with these different recipes and stuff like that, I do worry and have concerns that people might not like it.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  So the next day, he went around to every participant.

• 19:33Speaker 04

  With a pad of paper rather, and pen. And I go around and ask those guys, anything that you don't like? Do you eat onions, salt peppers, um, fish? For those who don't eat red meat, we use turkey's meat sticks for it.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  And are there a lot of guys who don't eat red meat?

• 19:48Speaker 04

  Yes. They offer different types of diets in here, like gluten free, where no tomatoes and no onions, kosher diet, uh, vegan diet, um, vegan like.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  P E chased down around 60 different men about their dietary preferences and kept tabs in his notebook.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  But he had another, kind of bigger concern.

• 20:08Speaker 04

  My many worries and concerns were about the officers, because a lot of officers don't like to see us grouped up doing something positive. They'd rather see us going at each other's throats and eating or going to war with some from garbage. They don't want to see us unified. They believe that once we start to unify, we'll start tackling issues that really is our concern. So that was my concern and my worries, that the officers in the unity would take offense to what we was doing and tell us to stop or go so far as write us tickets.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  P E had gotten a write-up for congregating before. It was called Failure to Disperse, and he was sent into solitary confinement.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  He didn't think the George Floyd celebration would get that tense. But if it did?

• 20:52Speaker 04

  Hey, it's a consequence of us being in prison, so we just accept whatever came with it. But I know we was doing this for George Floyd.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  A week and a half before the celebration, Silk and Michael started buying ingredients from commissary. Noodles, rice, meat. Where'd you keep all the food, you know, as you're buying it up? Did you have, did you keep it in your cell?

• 21:16Speaker 05

  Yes. I was putting stuff up under the bed, on top of the locker, you know, hanging from hooks up under the, you know, uh, you know, you have a hook, you have a few hooks hanging along the walls.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Silk bought over 60 cans of soda from the soda machine.

• 21:32Speaker 05

  I bought all the pops and took all of them to my cell.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  And was it crowded? Like, how much space did that food take up in your cell?

• 21:39Speaker 05

  Well, yes, it was. It was crowded. Them cells, it was about, about a 10 by 12.

• 21:44Speaker 04

  I had stuff, believe it. I had stuff everywhere.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, PE was in charge of getting onions and bell peppers.

• 21:53Speaker 04

  Festivals, we gotta get those in the kitchen.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  And how do you get those from the kitchen? You'd...

• 21:57Speaker 04

  That's illegal.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Really?

• 22:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's illegal. I don't see no problem with onions and bell peppers and tomatoes and squash and celery and stuff like that, but for some reason, they don't allow us to purchase it. And so, one way we can get it is through the legal contravention way.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Do you feel comfortable talking about it, even though it's illegal?

• 22:18Speaker 04

  What they gonna do? They can't... As long as I ain't got none right now, they can't do nothing about it.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  Plus, PE says most officers don't really care if they see you with a bell pepper.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  Like, officers that walk down a rock and see you with bell peppers, they really don't care. But other officers be really mean about it, try to write you misconduct, like, "F" tickets or so they say, "Oh, you can't get it no other way." So you had to steal it. And that's bummer.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Over the course of a week, men smuggled onions and bell peppers out of the chow hall kitchen. They got a dollar per vegetable for their hustle.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  In the end, PE had about a dozen onions and a dozen bell peppers.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  I let other people hold them for me.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  The night before the celebration, PE gathered up the vegetables, silk, unhooked bags of meat sticks from his wall, and slid packets of seasonings out from under his bed and brought them to the microwave kitchen.

• 23:28Glynn Washington?

  The men head to the microwave kitchen with vegetables and meat for a groundbreaking bagel sandwich, but will they have enough time to chop and marinate it all? Stay tuned.

• 23:47Speaker 06

  At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science. Neuroscience, chemistry.

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  Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know.

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  Wherever you get your podcasts.

• 24:17Glynn Washington?

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• 26:27Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the feast episode. This is a listener's should note. This piece does contain references to police violence. We rejoin the story even as bagel sandwiches are being prepared. Snap Judgment.

• 26:43Speaker 05

  We was on a time constraint. They take county at 6 o'clock in the morning, 4 o'clock in the afternoon, 9 o'clock at night, then they take it again at 12 o'clock at night.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Three hours between 9:00 PM and midnight to dice onions, chop and marinate meat sticks, cut up bell peppers.

• 27:08Speaker 04

  I cut the meat sticks in like wheelbarrows, like circles. That take a long time, but you get tired, your hands start cramping because it's just a lot of meat sticks.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  Silk used plastic knives to cut the onions.

• 27:24Speaker 05

  I broke about seven knives.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  But P E, he had his own method.

• 27:29Speaker 04

  I use a pop card. It's like a credit card, but we call them pop cards because you put them into the pop machine, you get popped. They hard like a credit card. You gotta wash it off first though, but it cuts a lot of stuff.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  But you can't cut onions with a card, can you?

• 27:44Speaker 04

  It's actually better.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Really?

• 27:47Speaker 04

  Because it's straight. You can take your credit card right now and take an onion and they cut right down the center of it. You might gotta push on it a little bit, but it will cut right down the center. You peel off your outer bad onion that you don't want.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  After chopping, P E and Silk mix the peppers and the onions with brown sugar and butter in a foot tub.

• 28:07Speaker 04

  Please don't judge us, but they're actually foot tubs that you get in the doctor, like the big pink bowl. And we get them brand new and we use them to like cook and mix food in. So I have one of those been there for.

• 28:23Speaker 02

  After three hours in the kitchen, once everything was chopped and diced and soaking in oils and seasonings, P E scrubbed the countertops while Silk wrapped up the food in plastic bags.

• 28:37Speaker 05

  Let me reiterate, I said plastic bags, but what I did was, you know, they sell the tortilla shells, a bag of tortilla shells. I had four of them and I secured all of them.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  Silk wrapped the food in those little cellophane wraps that come around taco shells.

• 28:50Speaker 05

  We double wrapped them to keep the smell down.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  Silk brought the meat and peppers and onions back to his cell, set his alarm for 4:00 a.m. the next morning, and drifted off to sleep, surrounded by bags of food.

• 29:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, we didn't have no real smells.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Silk got to the kitchen a bit before 5:00 a.m. the next day.

• 29:11Speaker 05

  Before guys got up to come down to get their cups of coffee and all that stuff.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  P E was already there, assembling popcorn bags that he had cleaned with toilet paper pieces and saved to use as part of his microwave magic. He filled each bag with rice and butter and seasonings and put them in the microwave.

• 29:31Speaker 05

  And next thing you know, they start browning and frying inside the popcorn bag.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  He blasted the rice until it was brown and crispy, and then he added water to the bag, a few teaspoons at a time.

• 29:43Speaker 05

  The steam from the water would start blowing the rice over it and start making the rice real soft.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  P E then seasoned cans of chili in foot tubs with the juice of jalapeno peppers, barbecue sauce, and a few packets of mustard. He steamed the noodles with seasonings and cheese. Finally, around 9:00 a.m., P E and Silk started to assemble the 60-something bagel sandwiches.

• 30:07Speaker 05

  We got these little tags with everybody's name down, so it'd never get mixed up.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  They had eight guys who didn't eat meat.

• 30:14Speaker 05

  So we made tuna for them.

• 30:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, one guy, we used bread. He said, uh, because we had all cinnamon raisin bakes. And he said he was allergic to raisins.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  But most guys got a bagel with meat sticks, fried rice, steamed cheesy noodles, and vegetables in a brown sugar butter sauce.

• 30:31Speaker 04

  And so when I make your sandwich, before I put just another piece of bread on there, I put three or four spoons of chili on top of it. So the inside of your bagel will be wet. So that's what we call wet bagels. If I had a choice, I wouldn't eat wet bagels all the time like that. But people like it. It's, it's, it's a great sandwich.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  It's not just a great sandwich. It's a gigantic sandwich.

• 30:52Speaker 04

  I'm trying to think of a good way to describe it. Maybe, uh, I'm gonna use my hand. How tall, how tall is my hand? What'd you think? How big is it? Like inches wide, right here. Seven, eight, eight and a half inches. Okay, the bagel sandwich is probably about seven inches tall. Uh, my homeboy next to me just said, "My hand is about eight and a half, nine." What's it, "My hand about eight and a half, nine and a half?" Alright, so I think the bagel was about seven inches.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  When they were all done, the bagel was seven inches tall.

• 31:20Speaker 04

  You got it held with both hands. You got it held with both hands.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  You have one minute remaining.

• 31:29Speaker 04

  I'm gonna take you, I'm gonna send you, I'm gonna send it to you step by step how to do it. And you try. Yeah, I would love, I would love to have the recipe.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  At 11:00 a.m., over 60 men lined up near the dayroom for their bagel sandwiches. One of them, who the guys call Picasso, had drawn a portrait of George Floyd with colored pencils on a piece of butcher paper and hung it in the dayroom. As soon as P.E., Silk, and Michael started passing out the bagels, an officer approached them.

• 32:03Speaker 04

  Now, when he first came, when he first came into the dayroom, he was very aggressive. Like, "What the hell is this? And what the hell y'all think y'all doing?" We had like four tables together packed with pops and chips and bagels and cookies, all types. So we gave out like a whole meal. He was upset, there was so much.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  The officer turned to Silk.

• 32:21Speaker 05

  He asked me the question, "Well, who paid for all this food?" I said, "Uh, I said, 'I did.'" So he said, "Well, you can't just pay for food and give it away." I said, "I can, I can." I said, "If I wanna get, if I wanna go to the store and spend a hundred and fifty dollars and turn around and give it away, I can do that."

• 32:36Speaker 02

  PE tried talking the officer down.

• 32:39Speaker 04

  See, I was one of the more frustrated ones, but I was trying to control it because I know we was doing this for George Floyd. So I kind of, as I'm talking to this officer and talking to the other inmates, I'm trying to keep that out in front of my mind, like, we doing this for a very positive purpose. But what I was thinking was, please just don't escalate the situation, thinking about the officer or other inmates. I just didn't want them to escalate the situation.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Then they want to know who giving all these sandwiches away. Where y'all getting these sandwiches from? We just celebrating George Floyd. And then when he said that, it sounded like something triggered off inside him. And so he said, "Do the warden know anything about this? Did the warden authorize this?" And then they went, then that got louder, and they got in his face. They got extremely mad.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  After about seven minutes of commotion, the officer left, went to the warden's office.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  I don't know what he said to him, but he never came back.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  The officer causing the commotion was white, and Silk says when that officer went back to the warden's office, there was a black officer there.

• 33:41Speaker 05

  The other officer told him, "Then I'd violate, now leave him alone."

• 33:45Speaker 02

  And he did. With the officer gone, the feast was underway.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  We get each of everyone a bagel sandwich. They got more than enough meat in there. It was loaded. And then they said things to me like, "Man, this is beautiful, man. This is beautiful, man." And then they, then they started talking, "Love. Love you, man." And that's something, that's unusual in prison. But they were hugging and embracing me, said, "Man, I really appreciate this, man. Thanks, man."

• 34:19Speaker 02

  Before the men went back to their cells, Silk made an announcement.

• 34:24Speaker 05

  I told each guy to go back to their cell. And all I asked is you go back to your cell for eight minutes and 46 seconds and give him a moment of silence, because I want the reality of how long that is to set in. And every one of them came back and told me, say, "Rob, man, you know, you know, eight minutes, man, that's a long time, man." He said it felt like I was standing, he said it felt like I was standing in my cell for over an hour.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  When Silk went back to his cell, he couldn't eat his bagel. He was too emotional.

• 35:01Speaker 05

  My emotions are across the gamut, you know, as far as up and down. When you look at, when you look at the justice system, you know, and you say equality is, it should be all for one, it's not like that. That, that hasn't been my experience, you know? I mean, how many more people have to die? It's sad.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  Michael also went back to his cell after passing out the bagels.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Well, I was thinking about the incident. You know, it's like a video camera in my head. And how could I go back to my cell wagging my tail? That, that wasn't gonna happen. Everything feels sad when it comes down to unnecessary death. So everything started piling up on me, you know, all the, all the thoughts and, and justice I received. I was in prison for some dumb stuff. That's what I was mad about. You know what I'm saying? You talk about anger, that's what I was angry about.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  But the George Floyd thing, I was sad. But the only difference, I'm still alive and George, George, George, George is, uh, is dead. So that was a, that was a horrible thing that happened to that man. And that, that ain't the first time that, that didn't happen. It didn't happen all across the United States. And it's been happening for years. And I know friends of mine that then disappeared through the years, are the same brutality that George Floyd, uh, experienced.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  So that's the reason why I want to do something because it

• 37:07Speaker 01

  it become personal to me.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Silk ate his bagel sandwich later that evening. It was so good. He wanted to get the recipe copyrighted and sell it in restaurants across the country. He really wanted me to make the bagel sandwich.

• 37:27Speaker 05

  I was gonna ask you about this. What's the holdup now?

• 37:30Speaker 02

  I just, I haven't really gotten the chance to get all the ingredients. But I was thinking it could be cool to have you on the phone while I make it, just in case I mess up, you know?

• 37:41Speaker 05

  Just give me, just give me, give me a day that you're getting ready to do it and I definitely, I'll guide you through it.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 37:47Speaker 05

  You know, I definitely, I definitely would do that.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Awesome. It was good talking with you and hopefully we'll talk again soon.

• 37:54Speaker 05

  You enjoy the rest of your day and give my regards to Mr. Parker. Tell him, uh.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  Thank you for using GTL.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  I never heard from Silk again. And the next time I spoke to PE, I had to tell him what happened. He didn't know because of COVID restrictions at the prison. Michael, Silk and PE were separated from one another weeks after the bagel feast.

• 38:23Speaker 03

  Thank you for using GTL.

• 38:25Speaker 04

  Oh, you get my email?

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:27Speaker 04

  I think today, from the last one, that's how I found out you was gonna be home right now, cuz.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  Oh, great.

• 38:32Speaker 04

  I just read your email. But sometimes it take up to two days for us to get him.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't know if you heard this news, and I hate to be the one to deliver it to you, but I got off the phone with Michael Thompson last week, and he told me that Robert Cannon actually passed away.

• 38:55Speaker 04

  No way.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  Silk died suddenly.

• 39:00Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:02Speaker 04

  Was he still in prison?

• 39:03Speaker 02

  He was still in prison.

• 39:07Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  And they, they're doing an autopsy, so yeah, I think we're just waiting to find out.

• 39:17Speaker 04

  That's hard to hear.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:21Speaker 04

  Can't you put him in our story, in the story?

• 39:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, he, he'll be in the story.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  Well, what can I say? That would ease the pain.

• 39:31Speaker 04

  Absolutely nothing because I understand the pain of.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  We did eventually get a copy of the county's autopsy report for Silk. The report lists the cause of death as acute fentanyl toxicity. PE believes the cause of death was the failure of the prison healthcare system. When Silk died, he had emphysema, renal cysts, heart disease.

• 39:54Speaker 04

  You can walk to the officer's desk right now and tell them that you got a headache, splitting migraine, you can't even open your eyes. They gonna tell you to drink some water. For real, that's what they gonna tell you to do. And in George Floyd's case, they didn't believe him when he was saying he couldn't breathe and stuff. And it's, it's like a cry for help, not maybe literally, but sometimes people just think like, it's a cry for help, like, I can't breathe, look at me, help me. But people don't see it that way, though. People think we all try wolf. And it don't become serious until somebody did, like in the case of George Floyd.

• 40:31Speaker 03

  You have one minute remaining.

• 40:34Speaker 04

  He asked for help and it was, his that was completely disregarded.

• 40:39Speaker 04

  So how can we ever take, how can, they ever take us serious?

• 40:43Speaker 03

  Thank you for using GTL.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Robert Silk, Cannon Jr.'s funeral was in Detroit on a Thursday morning, early in September.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Michael was at the funeral and he got up to talk.

• 41:25Speaker 04

  He had love for writing the truth. He was a writer. He has a love for telling stories. He's a storyteller. And, and he, he was talented, very smart.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  He was super smart. And, and he loved learning. That's really why he hung up on me every day. Every day he was with me. And I've spent 26 years.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  As Michael spoke in front of Silk's friends and family, he started to get so upset that he could barely get his words out.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Me and Silk fought close.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  He's saying he and Silk fought for prison reform from inside. They did a celebration for George Floyd like nowhere in America.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  We fed eighty summer pants.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  Some of them never had a pop.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  George Floyd's death was because a man hit, a police hit, the law enforcement. He had a foot on his neck.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  But Silk's death was because of the lack of treatment he was getting from healthcare.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Healthcare.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  And they both died.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  They both died.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  In just.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  Thank you, Michael, for those words. It was.

• 42:56Speaker 07

  Robert was awarded to the state and the state did not take care of him. And George Floyd depended upon law enforcement and law enforcement failed him. It's all a joke. It's all, it's all a game. It's proof. Proof, proof with me and proof with Silk right now in the casket. George Floyd's death, the only difference I see is one had a foot on his neck and the other one had an invisible foot on their neck.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Silk's memory lives on with his girlfriend and soulmate Dolores, his sister and brother, cousins, nieces and nephews, and all the men who gathered together to grieve George Floyd's death over a seven-inch fried rice bagel sandwich.

• 44:10Glynn Washington?

  This story is a tribute to Silk, Robert Cannon Jr. Robert was 62 years old when he died. May he rest in power. A study by venerable professor Evelyn Patterson shows that time served in US prisons has a direct correlation to years of lost life. For each year lived behind bars, a person can expect to lose two years off their life expectancy. After spending 25 years in prison on charges of possession of three pounds of marijuana, Michael Thompson was released in January. Since then, he has spoken about prison reform on the Montel Williams Show and with Snoop Dog. Marijuana has been legal in Michigan since 2018.

• 44:53Glynn Washington?

  P.E. is serving the 24th year of his life sentence for a crime he committed two weeks after his 18th birthday. He loves getting email via his J-Pay account, specifically pictures of nature. Special thanks to William Welch and Didi Kirkwood, who helped make the bagel sandwich a reality for the men in Muskegon. Additional shout-outs to Catherine Nouhan, Stephen Carmody, and Delores Ingram. And to Tana Ganeva, a criminal justice reporter who has written extensively about Michael Thompson's incarceration and petitions for clemency. You can read more about the men's celebration of life for George Floyd in her article in the counter, or the link at snapjudgment.org.

• 45:35Glynn Washington?

  The original score for this story was by Enzo Gorio. It was produced by Shaina Shealy. Now, when we return, a covert operation goes horribly wrong when Snap Judgment: The Feast returns. Stay tuned.

• 46:13Glynn Washington?

  Yes, it's that time of the year where everywhere you turn, everybody's got goodies to share. Cookies, cakes, dinners, second helpings, cuz it'd be wrong to say no, right? And the other morning, I thought, wait. In addition to the holiday cheer, let's do something good. So I reached for two screws of my Kachava 3-in-1 Digestive Boost. Give my belly the protein, the greens it needs, and so much more like prebiotic fiber to feed the good bacteria, probiotics to add more of that beneficial bacteria, and clinically studied postbiotics. Feel good about your mornings because man cannot live on eggnog alone.

• 46:57Glynn Washington?

  Did I mention that Kachava's got flavors, including chocolate mint, vanilla, chai, matcha, strawberry, coffee, and my favorite, cinnamon French toast? Try Kachava's new 3-in-1 Digestive Boost at kachava.com and use code JUDGMENT for 15% off your first order. That's kachava, K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com, code JUDGMENT. Today's episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Americans United has spent the last 80 years defending your right to live as yourself and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others.

• 47:41Glynn Washington?

  Through film screenings, speaking engagements, and valuable resources like the Know Your Rights and Public School Guides, AU empowers people nationwide to recommit to the separation of church and state, protecting individual freedoms and strengthening our democracy for all. Freedom without favor and equality without exception. Learn more at au.org/ t e n c.

• 48:13Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment. You're listening to the Feast episode. My name is Glynn Washington and we've been featuring amazing stories of grit and determination, but nothing like this. Snap Judgment's Anna Sussman takes us to China, to an orphanage where a young child is just about to meet her new American mother for the very first time. Snap Judgment.

• 48:50Speaker 07

  When we got there, it was a cold day in January and all the older children came rushing out to see us. They knew that we were there to do an adoption and very few children are ever adopted and they had practiced saying hello.

• 49:06Speaker 07

  They brought my child to me, my daughter Jaclyn, and she, of course, was absolutely terrified. She was four years old and then she basically was told, "These are your new parents," and get in the car with them. She was not about to do that. She planted her feet and she began to cry and make a sound not even like a human cry. It was like listening to an animal. And all the cajoling and all the encouragement couldn't get her into the car, so we literally almost kidnapped her. We had to pick her up. My husband picked her up and kind of put her in the backseat of the car where she just laid there stiffly across my lap. And she screamed, and she screamed, and she screamed. Shout, shout. Shout, shout. Shout, shout.

• 49:50Speaker 07

  And I kept believing, well, this will be, once she gets home, once she gets to the United States, this will end. What I didn't know was that it was, this shadow would live with us every day.

• 50:02Speaker 07

  There was an interpreter there that was a guide for us. And she told the interpreter to explain to us that she had a baby and she wasn't going to leave China without her baby. She called him Xiaoxiao, which is a Chinese nickname for very little. Xiaoxiao. She explained that if the kids were older than three, they were given jobs. So her job, her responsibility, was to care for these two little toddlers that were basically a head shorter than she was. She had potty trained them and she would help them eat. But what she was the most proud of, really, was that she had protected them from bigger kids. She said she gave all her love to this little boy she had nicknamed Xiaoxiao and that she was not going to leave China without her baby.

• 50:47Speaker 07

  We were there for about two weeks total. And then when we came back here, within six weeks, she could speak and she could actually convey some pretty complex thoughts in full sentences.

• 51:00Speaker 07

  She talked about him constantly. The only way I can describe it was it was like living with a very short mother who had had a baby ripped from her arms. She never stopped talking about him.

• 51:12Speaker 07

  We just said to her, "We can't bring him here." And of course, she couldn't understand the sophisticated system of how all the paperwork that's required and the red tape and you can't just take a child out of there. To be honest, I never even thought about trying to bring him here. I just kept thinking that she would get over it. One of the things I can remember most vividly was the first time I took her to McDonald's.

• 51:36Speaker 07

  She couldn't believe that not only did you get this cool meal, but that you also got this little toy in the Happy Meal. But then I noticed every time we went there after that, she wouldn't open her Happy Meal packet. She'd hold the toy up to the light to see what it was. And then when she got home, she stuffed him in a little box. And finally, I asked her what she was doing. And she said Xiaoxiao never had a little toy. There was no logic that you could give her in terms of trying to explain why he couldn't come here. She had noticed that we only had five chairs around our dining room table and that they were already full. So she said one night, "Well, you know, he could just sit on my lap while we ate." And then one day, she took me up and she showed me her bed. And she said, "You know, we wouldn't even need to get him his own bed. He could just slip right here in the other end of the bed from her."

• 52:23Speaker 07

  I started writing an email to a small group of friends and telling them about Jaclyn and her baby. Unbeknownst to me, and sometimes with my permission, these emails started to get forwarded to people who knew people who knew people. And then the responses started to come. I got emails from people, literally all over the world, saying, "My prayer group in New York is praying for Jaclyn's baby. Our Indian reservation is praying to our ancestors for Jaclyn's baby. Our synagogue has taken up this cause. Is there any news?" A lady I've never met, I wouldn't recognize her if she walked into the room from Minnesota, put up all the adoption fees and said, "I'll pay the fees if we can bring him here."

• 53:05Speaker 07

  A lady in Tennessee said, "I'll buy him clothes until he's 18 years old." Someone sent a bike from Florida. And then her story got told to some powerful folks. It ended up with a United States senator who ended up cutting through red tape on the INS side of things. And then the story was taken to the Chinese officials. And they worked together with the United States authorities. Fifteen months after she was adopted, Jaclyn walked back into that orphanage and grabbed the hand of her baby. Today, he's her cousin. He lives 20 minutes away from us. He was adopted by my sister, and he's part of our family. The way I think about it is this, if you think about love being a state where you

• 53:49Speaker 07

  can't be happy if the person that you love isn't happy, this is the way she loved that little boy. She never could rest knowing that he was still there.

• 54:05Glynn Washington?

  Go ahead. Go ahead, grab a tissue, wipe your eyes. Don't be embarrassed, Navas. It just means you're a human being. Shasha's gonna be all right. Many thanks to Cindy Chapanella for sharing her story with the Snap. She's written some remarkable books, and we're gonna have a link to her work at snapjudgment.org. The sound design for that piece was by Renzo Goryo. And it was produced, like every other story on this show, was produced by Anna Sussman.

• 54:42Glynn Washington?

  Yes, that was but one episode from the Snap Judgment Kitchen. Please understand, there is so much deliciousness waiting for you to devour. Subscribe to the Snap Judgment Podcast, instantly become the tastiest person you know. That is right, subscribe to Snap Judgment on your phone, device, thing to Snap wherever you go. Isn't technology wonderful?

• 55:07Glynn Washington?

  Snap is brought to you by the team that eats everything under plate, especially the Uber producer, Mark Ristich. Yes, he will have seconds and thirds. There's Anna Sussman, Nancy Lopez, Pat Lassini Miller, Renzo Gorio, Shayna Shealy, Taylor Cot, Flo Wiley, John Facile, Marissa Dodge, Regina Barriaco, David Exame, Bo Walsh, and Amy Nguyen. And this is not the news, no way is this the news. In fact, you could create your very own cookbook of recipes made exclusively of stuff that rhymes the steak and cake shake and bake anybody. Gobble up each and every bite and you would still not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is PRX.