Audio Interview: Damon Anderson on the Disgusting Kitchen Conditions and Gross Food Inside Mule Creek State Prison
The following audio comes from a recorded phone conversation with Damon Anderson, an activist and scholar incarcerated at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California. After his transfer to Mule Creek from the Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison, Corcoran (SATF-CSP, Corcoran), in late June, Damon started work in the kitchen. The unsanitary conditions there repulsed him.
Damon called on Sunday, September 18, and shared details about the disgusting food and scandalous environment for food preparation inside the prison. He talked about the gag-worthy state of food storage and preparation there, why he no longer eats the main meals served at Mule Creek, how he tries to get his nutrition elsewhere, what other imprisoned persons can do to retain some semblance of health while incarcerated, as well as what fellow prisoners and folks on the outside can do to help address the problem of unsalutary food in prisons.
If after listening you’d like to contact Damon or otherwise support his organizing and legal work against the penal system, I’ve included information on how to do that below.
NOTE: I’ve lightly edited this embedded audio file to reduce static, to eliminate long lags between talking and to delete disfluencies in the dialogue.
If you would like to contact the man who called in, you can send him postal mail at this address: Damon Anderson, #BM0221, Mule Creek State Prison, P.O. Box 409099, Ione, CA 95640.
Alternatively, you can sign up for a GTL GettingOut account to communicate with Damon and other incarcerated individuals. Once you’re logged into GettingOut, you can click the CONTACTS tab toward the top of the window. From there, under FIND A FRIEND, you can search for and select the appropriate institution — CDCR_Mule Creek State Prison (MCSP) — and then to the right type in Damon’s name or his booking number (BM0221). Once his name and number shows on a tab under CONTACTS, you can click that tab and select Send Message to write him on the platform. You can send him money from that screen as well.
In addition, Damon continues to accept donations to the fundraiser he started to help cover the costs of his pro se legal work in prison.
Damon engaged in hunger strikes and spent time pursuing legal work within and against the jails here in Riverside County prior to being transferred to prison, and you can read about some of what he accomplished in an investigative piece I wrote about RivCo jails, published back in February.