Bryan Dewsbury: 00:14

Welcome everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Knowledge Unbound. As a reminder, we are brought to you by the RIOS Institute for Racially Just Inclusive Open STEM Education. I have a packed studio today. I have my website content manager.

Bryan Dewsbury: 00:30

You can wave. It's alright. I got you. Adrian Lozano, wonderful undergraduate biology major class of 2026. My always loyal and three language speaking producer, mister Segeb, I must say

Segev Amasay: 00:43

Actually, Brian, it's like four or five.

Bryan Dewsbury: 00:45

No. No. See, it can't be 4 or 5. Either you speak 4 or you speak 5. That's not how we're speaking I like the

Segev Amasay: 00:51

six four and a half because I have a little bit of Portuguese in there, but it is what it is.

Bryan Dewsbury: 00:55

Have it in there is different to speaking it. Alright? Anyway, you know I love you, and I'm jealous that you can speak so many languages. We're also joined by our guest for intro, Kathy Klarich, executive director of Exchange for Change, a wonderful nonprofit here in Miami, Florida that does several things in prison education. We'll get into that later.

Bryan Dewsbury: 01:17

Kathy, welcome.

Kathie Klarreich: 01:18

I'm so excited to be here. Thank you.

Bryan Dewsbury: 01:21

Yeah. No. Thanks for coming out, and thanks for to doing this podcast live. Normally, we record these intros separate. And so what I would do is I would kind of give you a little bit of a sneak peek preview of what we're going to talk about.

Bryan Dewsbury: 01:36

But in this case, we are actually recording the intro live before we actually have the conversation. So I'm just gonna get right to it. Welcome to Knowledge Unbound. So so, Kathy, and listeners will notice, right? This is episode eight.

Bryan Dewsbury: 01:55

I I generally don't like to introduce people, not because you're not worth introducing. It's just because you tell your own story. And your story is a long one. But I want you to start maybe from just tell us what you do right now with Exchange for Change, what it's about, who you've worked with and what that journey has been like.

Kathie Klarreich: 02:16

All right. So I'm not going to take up the entire podcast by the introduction, but that was kind of a mouthful. So I founded Exchange for Change just about ten years ago with the idea of the incarcerated population telling their own story instead of the community, the media, film, social media telling stories about them. And the idea is that everybody is better than the worst thing that they've ever done, regardless of whether or not you were caught and convicted and sentenced. And all of our programs inside correctional facilities have a writing component so that people increase their ability to be able to communicate better.

Kathie Klarreich: 02:59

But we have a two part mission. And the second part of this mission you're helping me fulfill, which is to bring the voice of the incarcerated out to the community. Because it's no longer an Us versus them, or you versus me, right? It's an Us situation. And so all of the components of the program are really to educate ourselves and our community about criminal justice and criminal justice reform.

Bryan Dewsbury: 03:24

So you say that all of your programs have a writing component. What are the other components of the program?

Kathie Klarreich: 03:31

Self esteem, self advocacy, communication, creation of community inside. I think it's important to say that about, I think ninety percent of the incarcerated population actually comes back outside, but probably close to half of our students have life sentences. So people will say, well, why are you wasting your resources on people who will never come out? Because education is a human right, they have just as much right as anyone else to improve their lives.

Bryan Dewsbury: 04:04

Nice. So tell us a little bit more about the writing component. So I know are college faculty members who go into the prisons and they lead classes. I know that over time or maybe even still now, I think you have writing exchange programs with college students. So for people who may have never heard of Prison Education, or maybe heard of it and don't know what it entails, I think some detail around that could be helpful.

Kathie Klarreich: 04:29

So I'll sort of explain the way our program is set up. So currently, we are in five state correctional facilities, one juvenile residential center, and the county jail. Maybe four correctional centers. Yeah. And we have no restrictions.

Kathie Klarreich: 04:48

If you want to take our class, you sign up kind of like college, like here's our smorgasbord of courses. We go by semester, they're generally once a week for two hours, fall and spring are about twelve to fourteen weeks, summer is shorter. And the range of classes is as diverse as the range of interests of the population because in general, the incarcerated population is a microcosm of the world outside. So in addition to the more stereotypic, well known genres of fiction, non fiction, and poetry, we teach from one of your FIU professors Writing as an Exile Experience memoir, the trauma toolbox, which helps people identify what it is that triggers them and how to avert that trigger, which might have gotten them in in the first place, speech writing, commencement speeches, short stories, Shakespeare, science fiction, the whole gamut.

Bryan Dewsbury: 05:48

Yeah. How do the students that I'm calling the prison population here students in this case, how they do they respond to the instruction? I'm trying to make that question broad, not just, okay, they come to the class, take it and they're right. But the way you just described those classes, you're not just asking them to come and write, you're asking them to to look inside and dig stuff out and and work through emotions and psychologies that they may never have. And so I'm curious about that process and what it was what it's like witnessing that that process, witnessing them go through that process?

Kathie Klarreich: 06:24

You know, I think I go back to the very beginning of when we first started this. So we started with one class at Dade Correctional Institution and this because it was a new program and the Department of Corrections was really skeptical about it, they handpicked the students. So inside prison, everybody has a job. So they picked the orderlies and an orderly is a coveted position because it means you get out of the dorm and let's say you're an orderly for education or for the chaplain. So you have a little bit of education.

Kathie Klarreich: 06:56

When we got those students to buy into the program, they then went out and talked to other students about the program. And if you appeal to, the idea that you can go into the education building where it's air conditioned, okay, which I want to make this point. Florida prisons are not air conditioned. So just as a sidebar, imagine what it's like the summer in an open bay dorm with 64 other people and a big fan. So, we use whatever we can to get them to the classroom.

Kathie Klarreich: 07:32

But then that's where the magic happens, is that one person starts to reveal something personal, and suddenly a bond is formed between that person and someone else. And then it takes on a life of its own. So we opened the door, and they just kept coming through. And what we saw happening is that there was this exchange among opposing gang members, for example, who talked about peare, and then they went out onto the compound and they continued the conversation. And then other gang members are like, hey, you know, what's going on between the Bloods and the Crips, right?

Kathie Klarreich: 08:10

And between the transgender community and people who had a reputation of being homophobic. So communities were starting to build and it became popular to be cool in education. And that all has to do with trust inside the classroom.

Bryan Dewsbury: 08:25

How did the Department of Corrections respond over time?

Kathie Klarreich: 08:31

Over time, I'd say by hell or high water, they've accepted it. Listen, we in some ways provide a service. Well, not in some ways. We provide a service that the Department of Corrections does not. I won't say cannot but does not because up until about a year ago, almost nothing was required other than general education degree.

Kathie Klarreich: 08:56

So, and only the GED was was available to people who had a certain length of sentence. You had a life sentence. You couldn't take any classes. They've since added more resources. So within the last year, we've seen more opportunities.

Kathie Klarreich: 09:10

But we've also grown. So this semester, Brian, we have about three fifty students. We've trained over 100 facilitators, including many, many FIU professors and grad students. We've been able to bring inside elected officials and judges and state reps and so I think the Department of Corrections recognizes the value. Even if they fundamentally don't want eyes and ears inside to see what some of the things are that are going on.

Kathie Klarreich: 09:46

I think that in the best case scenario, they've accepted us.

Bryan Dewsbury: 09:50

Right. So I'm curious and I know this is a question I'm sure you have had you have gotten this question in the past, right? There are certainly some people out there who have a different view of how we should be responding to incarcerated peoples. To the extent where they question, you know, why should we invest the resources that you're investing in in literacy and writing and things like that. And I just wonder how you respond to them because I'm sure people have asked you directly.

Bryan Dewsbury: 10:27

I wonder what is your response to them? Not just respond to them as to why, but in ways that maybe gets them to see this process a little differently than they had before they asked you the question.

Kathie Klarreich: 10:39

So I probably have several different ways to answer it. The easiest one and the one that seems most rote but not everybody's going to agree with is that education is human right. Justice health is a human right. So, the punishment for committing a crime is that you're removed from society. But that's where the punishment should end.

Kathie Klarreich: 11:02

It shouldn't continue in the way that you're treated, and your inaccess what's the word inaccessibility to some of the human rights. But on a more fundamental level, since the vast majority of people who are incarcerated are returning to our community, how would you like them to return? Would you like them to return after twenty five years of being warehoused or after twenty five years of having access to education, new ways of thinking, the ability to develop skills that you would not have had an opportunity to otherwise. And it's so easy for us to look at people and think that they stay static. But we don't.

Kathie Klarreich: 11:47

And they are, for the vast majority, not the same people, especially those who've been in for decades. I mean, we have a lot of students who committed crimes in their early 20s. I don't want to defend anything that they've done, but they made terrible decisions. They left victims in their wake. They damaged a lot of families and a lot of communities.

Kathie Klarreich: 12:08

But twenty five years later, they are not that same person. They have learned so much. And they are because we've seen it now we've been around for ten years, they come back out into society, and they want to give back and they're doing amazing things with the experience that they had.

Bryan Dewsbury: 12:24

Can you tell me a bit more about that? So I know you said earlier that 50% of people 50% of the prisoners are in for life. But there's another 50%, right, who, like you said, may come out. Have you been able to keep in contact with some of the alumni of your program who've, you know, reentered society and done different things? Right?

Bryan Dewsbury: 12:46

What has what has seen that process?

Kathie Klarreich: 12:48

Yeah, I want to say fifty percent of our students have a life sentence, but ninety percent of incarcerated people will return. We just happen to have a higher percentage of people because they can't get into any other program. So I mean, I have a great example. And I'm, you know, very happy to say Ryan Moser, is currently on our board, was formerly incarcerated, learned to develop his writing skills, became a journalist, has been published a lot, is making a career now as a writer, and would not have been able to do that had he not had the opportunity to take writing classes. Oh, God, we have so many examples of people who have come out.

Kathie Klarreich: 13:32

And a lot of them say they're going to get in touch, and then they end up not getting in touch only because their lives take off. We have an FIU student who just opened up her own store. She became an entrepreneur, right? She studied psychology. She was a Spanish speaker.

Kathie Klarreich: 13:49

Her English wasn't that great. We've taught classes in Spanish. She graduated with, you know, from FIU with a degree and now she's got her own store up and running. So, there are lots of really wonderful success stories. We don't have accurate statistics about who recidivates, who goes back inside But our anecdotal is I think we have maybe five percent of people who've graduated.

Kathie Klarreich: 14:14

I'm not saying it's all our program, right? But they don't go back in versus the 50 to 60 after five or eight years who end up going back inside.

Bryan Dewsbury: 14:23

Right. So I wanna talk a little bit about the students and and even the professors who do this because I think sometimes these conversations can get locked into, you know, we go to help them, like we go to give them stuff and they're the ones who need all the help. But in reading the writing of these these students in, and actually maybe what we want to do before that is talk to us a little bit about when you work with college students and they do a writing exchange. Tell us about that first.

Kathie Klarreich: 14:53

Yeah, so that actually fills two parts of our mission. So let's say, what's a course you're teaching this semester?

Bryan Dewsbury: 14:59

Introductory biology.

Kathie Klarreich: 15:01

Okay, so a little bit more difficult. Let's just say

Bryan Dewsbury: 15:04

We write a lot though.

Kathie Klarreich: 15:05

All right, so your students and my students read the same thing on biology. They take on pseudonyms so that their identity is protected. They write a response to what it is that they read and then through us, they exchange papers. And then it becomes this semester long conversation about an exchange of ideas about whatever the subject is with some personal feelings and history mixed in, But it's not a pen pal exchange. It's not an idea of, Oh, you know, this weekend I

Bryan Dewsbury: 15:36

went to You're responding to the readings.

Kathie Klarreich: 15:38

To the readings, And with all due respect for college students, most of them don't write for pleasure, right? They write for a grade or they write an email, right? So when we ask them to write a letter, right, this is something kind of brand new. And a lot of the students come in thinking that they're going to quote educate their incarcerated partner, whereas sorry, but the incarcerated partner is a master at letter writing because it's their main form of communication. So what ends up happening is that they educate each other.

Kathie Klarreich: 16:14

So if the outside student sees something, confronts their own bias or prejudice that they didn't know they had, and our incarcerated students feel heard and seen and respected and valued. So it's a win win on both sides.

Bryan Dewsbury: 16:31

Can you tell me a bit more about that process? Because I can see and again, don't want to be judgy of college students here, but I can see a college student initially thinking somebody in prison and thinking of all the things that got that person to prison. Are we going to do this process? And there is perhaps an automatic dehumanization of that individual. Maybe it's not explicit.

Bryan Dewsbury: 16:58

When you've witnessed that college student change their framing of who they're communicating with, what what what have you seen in that process? And and Wow. And I have I have a selfish reason for asking this. Right? Like, hidden agenda of higher ed is is for higher ed to do more than just teach content and subjects.

Bryan Dewsbury: 17:18

Is it right? For people to to to get into what the joy of being human is and to live beyond ourselves and and to the extent that what you're doing there can help with that. Tell tell me what you've witnessed.

Kathie Klarreich: 17:28

Oh my god I have so many examples some that some are more obvious so for example we had an FAU student whose father was a correctional officer and despite being so clear about the guidelines of writing your partner she continued to write about her in the third person. Like it was just she couldn't address the you voice. Right. And her partner on the inside instead of being upset was incredibly gracious. Mhmm.

Kathie Klarreich: 17:58

And there were so many teaching moments in there that by the end she was able to write but it took almost the entire semester for her to get it. So that's one of key.

Bryan Dewsbury: 18:08

Were you able to connect with that student as to why they stuck with third and then eventually changed from third to second.

Kathie Klarreich: 18:16

She just kept going back to the way that she viewed them from her father's perspective. Right. Right. Which unfortunately is probably more the norm than the exception of officers seeing people inside human beings who committed a mistake. I can think of another example.

Kathie Klarreich: 18:36

This is also in the women's prison where student. It was not even a college student. And the high school student wanted to drop out because she had a very particular condition where she would pluck out her hair and her eyelashes and her eyebrows. Okay, you can't make this stuff up. I'd never heard of this before.

Bryan Dewsbury: 18:58

I have. I've forgotten the name but I have heard of it. It's very rare.

Kathie Klarreich: 19:01

It's very rare. The woman inside who she was partnered with suffered from it. And the connection that those two women and you wouldn't have known it because the woman inside had a gorgeous, luscious, like long brown hair and very thick eyelashes. And she shared her experience of how she came through it. So that was another example.

Kathie Klarreich: 19:21

And then, we had in the men's prison, a man who used to be a principal, right? He he committed he committed a crime, a very bad crime, and and had a life sentence. When I met him, he was a little overweight, not, you know, one way or the other. And he was coming out of a very long depression. He used to weigh five hundred some pounds.

Kathie Klarreich: 19:47

His partner, a student, wanted to drop out of school because he said he was depressed and it had to do with his relationship with his father. So, my student explained his own process of how he got to be where he was, better about himself, losing the weight. He did drop out of school because of his father and he said I took the wrong path and it's taken me a lifetime to get on the right path and so that student stayed in school and ended up graduating.

Bryan Dewsbury: 20:16

Nice, Nice. You know, I know when you mentioned this about anonymity and so I know that the program free to work, you have these I hate to call them ground rules, but these structures in place. Right? Anonymity is one of them. I think you said another one of them is they don't share the prisoners don't share what they're in for.

Bryan Dewsbury: 20:39

Were there cases of the students one way or the other, especially I think you had a case where they would eventually met each other? Were there cases where anybody just couldn't resist the urge to look something up and then had to kind of navigate that knowledge?

Kathie Klarreich: 20:58

Yeah. So the reason we have the anonymity is so that everybody comes in on an equal playing field. Right. But the particular case was an exception when we were allowed to bring in the partners. And so they met for the first time.

Kathie Klarreich: 21:14

And this had to do with a student who was in a same sex relationship and his partner was killed in a drunk driving accident. He had an incredibly tight relationship with his writing partner who was at the women's prison. And so they got to meet at the graduation this one time. And he saw her name and he went home and he looked her up. And she was in for having killed someone in a drunk driving accident.

Kathie Klarreich: 21:45

And he had to reconcile his feelings about the person who killed his partner and this woman who he knew as someone who was paying dearly for her crime and rethink his own relationship to what criminality is.

Bryan Dewsbury: 22:01

Right. Well, you know, what's interesting about that example is it seems to me this is me without knowing the individual but it seems to me that he may not have even realized he was still carrying that. Like, he may have sort of kind of known it because, obviously, if your partner is killed in a situation like that, you you understand you're gonna grieve for a while. But maybe you don't understand the the particularities of your grief until you're put in a situation where you have to re confront it. And I just I would it'd just be interesting to hear how he worked through that, how that experience gave me an opportunity to re engage that emotion in a slightly different way.

Kathie Klarreich: 22:46

And I don't think it's a one off.

Bryan Dewsbury: 22:48

Right.

Kathie Klarreich: 22:49

Right. I, you know, we don't follow or I don't follow because I'm not a professor. So it's not my outside students. I follow my inside students. I think it happens a lot.

Kathie Klarreich: 22:59

We have two other opportunities to bring people inside. So one is we have prison visits and for any of your listeners, you can go to our website and you can sign up. It's not

Bryan Dewsbury: 23:10

be on our website.

Kathie Klarreich: 23:11

It's an opportunity to go inside and sit and have a one on one conversation. And I can tell you without fail, every time the time is up when I have to tell the community members we have to go, there's this collective groan because the opportunity is, first of all, just to sit with no devices and have a one on one conversation. There's a Alright, I'll give you an example. Last semester, we had 41 Swedish high school students who were here on a visit go inside for a graduation. I talked to them when they were sitting outside, tall, blonde, you know, college or high school kids.

Kathie Klarreich: 23:53

No one asked a question. They were totally quiet before we went in. I could not get them to leave. The connections that they made after the graduation, so that's the second way to go in is to go to one of our graduations. It defied every stereotype.

Kathie Klarreich: 24:09

And when I asked them what surprised the most about being in The States, this is hilarious, but they said they couldn't believe what bad conditions our buses were in.

Bryan Dewsbury: 24:20

They're not wrong. I've been to European buses. So just just for our listeners, and I do want you to talk about this for a little bit. Every year, some of the prison writing classes produce pieces that end up in a journal, an annual journal called Don't Shake the Spoon. We are now on volume four.

Bryan Dewsbury: 24:41

It's called Don't Shake the Spoon, a journal of prison writing. You can get it on Amazon, right? But hopefully also your local bookstore as well. Directly from the website by chance?

Kathie Klarreich: 24:52

Yeah. It'll go through Amazon because it's print on demand. But Books and Books has it in store.

Bryan Dewsbury: 24:57

Books and Books in Coral Gables and, well, wherever Books and Books is located, which is now everywhere. But it's a beautiful book. I think, like said earlier, it's different kinds of writing. There are short stories, there's poetry, there's spoken word, there's kind of more oral styles. What about the professors who teach in this program?

Bryan Dewsbury: 25:20

And I'm a professor myself, as you know. Professors are an interesting breed sometimes in how we train to see the world. But you have several of them who volunteer and who are part of this. And I'm interesting about the change process on them.

Kathie Klarreich: 25:38

You know, Brian, I would be so remiss if I didn't give a huge shout out to the FIU professors. I mean, the professors from other universities too, but the professors at FIU have been stellar for the last eight years in showing up. And I think you can ask anyone, and in fact, you, Michael Gillespie, has put together a very short video of professors talking about their experience, which we'll also put up on your website. I think to the person, they would say it is the most rewarding teaching experience. No stigma about FIU students, but every student who comes to our class has to go through so much to get there.

Kathie Klarreich: 26:24

Right? They have to get out of their dorm. They have to go through what's called the center gate. They have to get into the Education Building. And all of that may sound like just a simple walk, but trust me, it's not.

Kathie Klarreich: 26:34

And then they have to show up, and they have to dig deep, which is what you referred to earlier. So for the professor to have that kind of energy in a room, close reading on everything, deep conversations, the professors, I think, know, if they could make a living in it, sorry, FIU, but they might walk away and teach full time for us. If only we had the same budget.

Bryan Dewsbury: 26:56

Yeah, we just don't, you know, we don't talk enough in general about the ways in which teaching is enriching to the teacher as well.

Kathie Klarreich: 27:03

This kind of experience has changed my life and my life was fine before, but it's just gotten a whole lot better.

Bryan Dewsbury: 27:09

That's a good segue. So I to hear about your life because, okay, Exchange for Change is ten years old. Let's start with what led to Exchange for Change.

Kathie Klarreich: 27:20

So we have to go back a little bit. My career was as a journalist. I I'd say I was a journalist for about thirty years, I would say I spent about thirteen of those in Haiti. The first time I was there was ten years.

Bryan Dewsbury: 27:38

As in you lived you lived there?

Kathie Klarreich: 27:40

I lived there. Yeah.

Bryan Dewsbury: 27:42

Where in Haiti?

Kathie Klarreich: 27:43

In Port Au Prince in the capital, and I was a journalist. So I was pretty lucky, you know, I got to travel all around the country and hear people's stories and report on really interesting, exciting, dangerous, confusing times.

Bryan Dewsbury: 27:58

So when did you first set up your home in Haiti? When

Kathie Klarreich: 28:04

I first started living there full time was 1988.

Bryan Dewsbury: 28:07

Okay.

Kathie Klarreich: 28:07

So yeah, I'm old. So I lived there from '88 to '98.

Bryan Dewsbury: 28:12

Uh-huh.

Kathie Klarreich: 28:13

I left suddenly because I had two kids at the time. I was held up at gunpoint for the third time. It seemed irresponsible to stay because of my reaction to the third time. So we came to Miami, and I continued to work as a journalist.

Bryan Dewsbury: 28:29

Did you still go back and forth?

Kathie Klarreich: 28:31

You know, I said I never would. And within a year, I was going back often. Yeah, up until well, yes, I was going back often. And in some time in the beginning of the 2000s, I can't say exactly when, I was invited inside the women's prison to see a dance performance.

Bryan Dewsbury: 28:53

In Miami?

Kathie Klarreich: 28:54

In Miami, at the women's prison in Homestead. And it really impacted me because I kind of looked around and I'm like, Oh, you know, that could be me. I mean, not really, but you know, they looked so not like what you see on TV, right? But it took me about another seven or eight years to get back there. And I got back there because I was tired of working as a journalist.

Bryan Dewsbury: 29:15

Got back to the prison.

Kathie Klarreich: 29:17

Going back to the prison, yeah. I was working at the time for Time Magazine, doing stories that were particularly interesting. So I went to the prison, through this organization that had done the performance and I said, Hey, you know I have this love of Haiti. I have this skill in the language and the culture. I know how to write.

Kathie Klarreich: 29:39

Can I teach a writing course for the Haitian women who are incarcerated here? So we offered the course and not enough Haitian women showed up, so I started to teach writing. So it's a long segue, but then I started in 02/2009, the earthquake, the first major earthquake happened in 2010, so I left. I went back to Haiti for another three years.

Bryan Dewsbury: 29:59

Okay. Like you lived there?

Kathie Klarreich: 30:01

I lived there again. Yeah. What informed Exchange for Change happened during those three years. I had an a night international journalism fellowship.

Bryan Dewsbury: 30:14

Uh-huh.

Kathie Klarreich: 30:15

Where I was training Haitian journalists in investigative reporting. But the truth is the Haitian journalists were not interested in investigative reporting. They were interested in survival. The foreign community was interested because it was their dollars. But the Haitian journalists and the Haitian media owners weren't that interested because it was still really dangerous.

Kathie Klarreich: 30:38

So when I came back and went back into the prisons, and I did that almost immediately, I realized that while my life had been turned totally upside down by everything that I'd experienced during the earthquake, I walk into this setting that seems really routine. I thought, okay, there is something that is different. It may not be on the surface, but if we start to dig, let's find out what that is and how can they tell their own story about the changes. And that really was the genesis of what eventually became Exchange for Change.

Bryan Dewsbury: 31:14

So let me go back to the initial Haiti years because if you said it's thirty, you would have spanned Baby Duck and Aristide.

Kathie Klarreich: 31:25

I first went in '86 right after Aristide left.

Bryan Dewsbury: 31:29

Okay. When he left and went to South Africa?

Kathie Klarreich: 31:35

No. Sorry, when Duvalier, right after Duvalier left in '18 '80 That's when I went for the first time. But I've been working.

Bryan Dewsbury: 31:43

And so you came in and so Aristide came into power when you okay. Yeah. I'm just trying to get the

Kathie Klarreich: 31:49

Well, actually, Aristide when I it's not like a linear story.

Bryan Dewsbury: 31:54

I know.

Kathie Klarreich: 31:56

So I was living in California, I was running a handicraft store. We were buying from third world countries. The one thing that Haiti had in abundance was handicrafts. So I thought, I'm going to take three months, leave my store with somebody else, go buy handicrafts in Haiti for my store. It was 1988.

Kathie Klarreich: 32:17

And it was within a day or two, one of the many coups that then followed. So I stopped buying handicrafts. I became a reporter. The three months turned into ten years. That's how I ended up staying there for

Bryan Dewsbury: 32:30

so long. So was there and and just me, you me never obviously having been a journalist or a reporter, but as a news follower, as a reader, as as especially you talk about investigative journalism and the ways in which you really have to get into the hearts and minds of people's stories and the experience. I just wonder if there's anything about that time in Haiti. I know the last three years is what really informed the exchange for change. But the initial twenty seven years or however long it was, was there anything about about living there, you know, seeing the Haiti Haitian society deal with the international community, all of the struggles, all of the political issues?

Bryan Dewsbury: 33:13

Did any of that kind of teach you about sort of humanity in general? Right? I mean Almost like a 30,000 foot kind of view of it, that then came to inform your curriculum and how you think about the prison population.

Kathie Klarreich: 33:25

A %. It is not the kind of thing where you can sort of point to one episode. Right? Right. But I do remember when we left Haiti, in god.

Kathie Klarreich: 33:36

The first time I left Haiti with my kids. I said to them, If you ever forget what it's like to turn on a light and be grateful, I'm shipping you back to Port Au Prince, right? Because we take so much for granted. And I think when you live in a country that is almost always referred to as the poorest country in the West.

Bryan Dewsbury: 33:56

It's the first sentence of Harry it always crushes me like, Why? What's the truth?

Kathie Klarreich: 34:01

And the editors always want you to put it in, right?

Bryan Dewsbury: 34:03

Oh, really?

Kathie Klarreich: 34:04

It just feels so demeaning because it's a full country people get up in the morning and they get dressed and they go to work or they go to school or they figure out how to eat, right? That it's these individual stories that make up a country. And it's so easy for us to do this broad sweep.

Bryan Dewsbury: 34:22

Right.

Kathie Klarreich: 34:22

Which is the same in the prison, right? They're all criminals. They all committed a crime. No. It is a school of individuals all trying to educate themselves in whatever capacity they can.

Kathie Klarreich: 34:36

And that's the humanity that over the years, as I said, I don't think it's one thing, but I think it's years and years and years of it that these are individual stories. Yeah. And they deserve to be told by the people who are affected by them, not not by us.

Bryan Dewsbury: 34:53

Yeah. I mean, I I try to think about it like so I think the audience knows by now because I keep saying Seguera Masai, our producer, is is Haitian. Grew up in Haiti, born in Haiti. His mom still lives there. My brother-in-law is Haitian.

Bryan Dewsbury: 35:10

He actually came to The US, I think, as a college student. And I just find it interesting. And I'm immigrant as well. I'm from Trinidad. We're not in the news as much as other countries.

Bryan Dewsbury: 35:20

But as somebody myself who's never been to Haiti, if all I have is these articles that are printed, you would sort of think the whole island is just on fire. Right? And and I know I think I kinda read enough and I have people who'd still go back and forth and and they know a lot of the the the danger right now might be concentrated around Port Au Prince. But but, again, if that's the only picture that's being told, like, it's hard for your brain to then think about, well, what's happening in the countryside? What's happening on the other coast?

Bryan Dewsbury: 35:52

Like, what about people who are not in gangs, who are not, you know, in in in government or in the police force, who are just, like you said, trying to eat and live a life, take care his mother still lives there. Right? So it's, it's interesting how the narration of things can impact your perception of it, right? And I guess this is sort of your point about a prison population.

Kathie Klarreich: 36:13

Yeah, it's very hard for me to talk about Haiti even now because I thought it was at its lowest point so many times in the period that I lived there and covered it. And I think that was a walk in the park compared to where it is now. And decades later, just the it's like a magnet, Part of it is self created, but part of it is just such bad luck where it is geographically, right? Between the hurricanes and the devastation and then cholera coming

Bryan Dewsbury: 36:49

and even the historic What are you in peacekeeping?

Kathie Klarreich: 36:54

Mean, you can't make this stuff right.

Bryan Dewsbury: 36:55

I know,

Kathie Klarreich: 36:55

right. So, yeah, I think in the global picture, the opportunity to allow our students to have their own voice is something that I feel I sort of failed in Haiti that I was not able to do it. I think that probably also informed the structure of exchange for change. For example, in each prison where we work, we have an elected student leadership council body from their peers. I meet with them once a week.

Kathie Klarreich: 37:30

They work with the outside facilitator to make sure that everything is communicated in the way that it should be. They're kind of the eyes and ears. They help the students out. They help the outside facilitator with any logistics. They run our graduations.

Kathie Klarreich: 37:47

They take ownership. And if there's an issue that comes up, I ask them before I make any decision. And so I think had I not had that experience with the fellowship with the investigative journalism, I might not have seen the importance of that.

Bryan Dewsbury: 38:05

Why do you think you weren't able to do that in Haiti?

Kathie Klarreich: 38:09

To tell their own voices? Yeah. Oh, God. I think maybe I wasn't in terms of self knowledge understanding enough about my ability to do that as a journalist. I was always freelance, so I had to pitch stories.

Kathie Klarreich: 38:34

I had to sometimes swallow what I thought was the lead in order to get the story in the paper. I mean, I remember I worked mostly for the Christian Science Monitor when I was just principally writing. And I had a fabulous, fabulous editor. And she granted me almost everything. But I remember one really heated discussion we had.

Kathie Klarreich: 38:58

And she just said, Kathy, I can't go against what every other newspaper is saying. And I'm like, but I'm here. I can tell you what's happening. And I lost that one.

Bryan Dewsbury: 39:07

So

Kathie Klarreich: 39:10

there's some conventions that I just

Bryan Dewsbury: 39:13

couldn't circumscribe. Tell me a little bit about this essay you wrote. And it was I read it a couple of times. You called it a long walk. And it was I I know I'm I know I'm turning the clock here.

Bryan Dewsbury: 39:34

And but it it it was a moving essay because and just for viewers' knowledge, it's it's in an anthology, a book of short stories written by mostly Haitian writers and people of Haitian descent. See, Edwidge Danticat had an essay in that as well. And in that short story, to the extent you remember all the details that you you kind of compared a journey that you took when you lived there and walking that same path. I think you had gone back right after the either the hurricane or the earthquake. Can't remember which but you had a friend, I think his name was Segi?

Bryan Dewsbury: 40:09

Sergio. Sergio. Unfortunately, Sergio was alive, I believe, right? But the essay was like a kind of a comparison of two time periods. And I have to say there were times it felt like it felt like you checked just like you there was a lot of reflection going on in the second walk, and you chose to share part of that reflection with your audience who read the book, but I felt there was more that you may have kept for yourself.

Bryan Dewsbury: 40:39

And maybe I was just imagining what I was like to have done that same distance over a twenty year span or whatever it was. Can you talk to us a little bit about that essay and what it was like going back to find find your friend and go back after the the earthquake?

Kathie Klarreich: 40:54

It's like I'm gonna get teary because I've totally forgotten this. I mean, there's a lot there's a lot of history with Haiti that's still really painful. Uh-huh. But I'm going to send this podcast to Sergio who's now in The States gainfully employed. Okay.

Kathie Klarreich: 41:09

Okay. I'm you know, he's able to support his family with the money that he's earning here.

Bryan Dewsbury: 41:14

Nice. Nice.

Kathie Klarreich: 41:15

A victim of the current situation. You know, his son got shot by a random bullet. His wife has not been able to stay in the neighborhood. He's come to the state. So, there's that's a success story but yeah.

Kathie Klarreich: 41:29

I don't think it's easy for someone who lives in this country that can put food on the table every day, even if it's not much, can really put themselves in a situation where everything is upside down and there is absolutely no certainty that tomorrow is going to be any better. Mhmm. And walking that one so I landed in Port Au Prince the day after the earthquake was on a Tuesday, and I landed on Wednesday, with a television crew. There was no lights on the runway. We weren't sure we were able to to land.

Kathie Klarreich: 42:08

I didn't know if my ex husband was still alive or not. I'd left my son and my daughter back in The States and I said, I'll let you know when I find out. But I had gotten a message to Sergeo, my my friend and my driver and my fixer. And I was fairly certain that in his neighborhood, he would have been okay. And trying to find him that night, walking through the ruins and the dead bodies on the street and the destruction.

Kathie Klarreich: 42:40

You know, I could say honestly for probably a week or so after that, I never wanted to go to sleep, Ryan, because I didn't want to close my eyes. I didn't want to see

Bryan Dewsbury: 42:50

that things Because you slept on the tarmac, I think, right?

Kathie Klarreich: 42:52

Oh, yeah. Yeah, we slept on the tarmac. But, you know, we'd walk by and people would be holding hands and singing. And the sense of community for those who were still standing upright and not wounded and not quite aware yet of everything that was about to unfold, that's Haiti. Right?

Kathie Klarreich: 43:17

It's still there, maybe worse than ever before, but it's still there. There's 12,000,000 people that are trying to live and we have to recognize the humanity in each and every one of them. Yeah.

Bryan Dewsbury: 43:31

So I remember you started in the women's prison where you saw the dance performance and you you asked to to work with the Haitian prisoners. What was the what's that like? I mean, I know then you went back to Haiti for three years, but what was that kind of initial?

Kathie Klarreich: 43:48

The first one? Oh my god. Everything that I say that a college student is gonna experience, you know, I experienced it in, like in three d on two twenty volts. Because I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, right? Never been to a prison.

Kathie Klarreich: 44:04

First of all, didn't know where Haiti was. Like, all of these things were a series, know, it was a process. But I remember I had one student who was incredibly brave and responded to a prompt, and I don't remember what the prompt is, but I remember her story about her first gynecological exam and what she had to go through. And everyone in the class was dead silent, like they were completely hooked on her story. And I thought you don't get honesty like this in any other classroom.

Kathie Klarreich: 44:41

And that turned the table. It's kind of what I was saying earlier about the trust. Like once the trust is developed, and all of my own stereotypes were being confronted right and left. And to be honest, they still are. I am, you know, I think I'm a little bit more seasoned.

Kathie Klarreich: 44:58

I hope I am after ten years. But still the humanity that I see inside just absolutely blows me away. And I'm going to give you an example. So I ended up going over to the men's prison shortly after Exchange for Change was formed because of a separation with the original group that was doing the dance performance. And I had a you sign an agreement with the Department of Corrections that says, if someone is if you hear that someone is going to do harm to themselves or others, you have to report it.

Bryan Dewsbury: 45:33

Right.

Kathie Klarreich: 45:34

That's kind Yeah. So we had a student that didn't come to class. He clearly had some learning challenges, and I asked where he was, and somebody said, I think something might have happened to him. I said, If you can get to him, could you please ask him to come to class? So he came the next week, and he didn't want to talk about it, but it was clear that something had happened.

Kathie Klarreich: 45:57

So I called up a warden at another institution and I said, you know, I don't want to report this. And that warden said, You have to because you don't want something else to happen to this person. So I called the institution, I reported it. The officers went to talk to him. He denied it.

Kathie Klarreich: 46:15

He didn't want to

Bryan Dewsbury: 46:16

go to the fund it. So he did tell you what happened?

Kathie Klarreich: 46:18

He didn't tell me, but he did not. I knew from others that it had happened. Okay. But he denied it to the officers because he didn't want to go to confinement. And they would have put him in confinement for his safety, he didn't want to do it.

Kathie Klarreich: 46:30

So when he came back the next week, some of the better writers in our class said, Hey, we want to work with you on telling your story. And he ended up writing it. And he read it to the class the last day. And it was gut wrenching. And then he just sat back and he smiled.

Kathie Klarreich: 46:49

Like this smile that went from ear to ear, because he was so proud that he had the support and the strength, the inner strength to tell his story. And to me, that's what exchange for change is all about.

Bryan Dewsbury: 47:08

Yeah, I feel like I had to sit with that one for a while. I mean, maybe that's a good opportunity to remind people to to look out look out for Don't Shake the Spoon volume four. There's four volumes out. And they're all people who had that kind of bravery to write that kind of story out. I wanna ask one last question, which is, as you can tell the theme here, a bunch of questions folded into one.

Bryan Dewsbury: 47:34

I am I am moved by the fact that you have college students, the the writing exchange program, right? You have colored students who are getting to see and experience humanity in this different way. Right? But there is another part of my brain that is saying, but those things that those colored students students are experiencing during this process, I don't necessarily want them to just need a program like yours to experience what that is. And I and I I'm saying that knowing that some of this stuff is kinda experiential, like, there's no substitute, right, for talking to to a prisoner, I think.

Bryan Dewsbury: 48:10

Right? But at the same time, I do wonder if, quote, unquote, traditional college classrooms can do more to bring out some of some of the things that this writing program brings out. So is there something generative about your programme that people who teach and whatever it is, whether it's biology or writing or law, whatever it is that taps into something from their students beyond just their ability to to answer questions in a discipline. Is my question making sense?

Kathie Klarreich: 48:42

Yeah. It's such a it's so deep, right? Because it goes on so many different levels because just like talking about Haiti, there's nothing like going to experience the poverty with the sights and the sounds and the smells. The same is true of walking into a prison system. But short of that, there's no lack of material, decent material, right?

Kathie Klarreich: 49:06

Not Hollywood material, but decent material that people can generate really interesting discussions. I mean, you can do the more traditional taking a racial bias test or the Harvard, you know, whatever all of those are and talk about your responses. But there's lots of returning citizens in our community, and an opportunity to hear firsthand what their experience has been like and why having contact with the quote outside world, the free world is so important in their own personal development, so that they know that they can succeed. So if you, for example, have a business, the woman I told you who opened up her own store, she changed the policy at Dunkin' Donuts to look for formerly incarcerated people to hire, Right? For us to start to understand that having a record doesn't have to work against you.

Kathie Klarreich: 50:02

It can work for you.

Bryan Dewsbury: 50:04

Yeah. There was a there's a place I went to in I wanna say it was Lexington Lexington, Kentucky. I think that's where it was. It's called Deviate. And the entire staff are formerly incarcerated people.

Bryan Dewsbury: 50:17

And I think they had about two or three branches across. It was a beautiful thing, It's, I'm sure there are probably more of that around the country. I don't know how many, but it was it was nice to go there and see that and

Kathie Klarreich: 50:29

The Delancey Street started it I think out in California. I mean I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. We now have a restaurant called Irwin's that is entirely staffed by formerly incarcerated people.

Bryan Dewsbury: 50:39

Yeah. Mean, it's good to hear, right? Because in these dark times, sometimes it's nice to know that they are still good people, good systems, people trying to change perceptions out there.

Kathie Klarreich: 50:47

And can I also say, find out who the FIU professors are who teach these classes and go talk to them? There are clubs that you can join. It's not the same thing. But if you're interested, there's so many opportunities out there to make an impact. And, you know, it's just one person sometimes you just make some individual's life better.

Kathie Klarreich: 51:08

Sometimes, you know, that's more than we can ask for.

Bryan Dewsbury: 51:13

Right. So when next you're going back to Haiti?

Kathie Klarreich: 51:15

Oh, goodness.

Bryan Dewsbury: 51:17

I know it's rough right now.

Kathie Klarreich: 51:19

To be honest, Brian, the work that I'm doing inside takes up all of my extra, if I have any at this age, bandwidth. I don't know if I have the stomach right now to see the conditions in Haiti, although I still have lots of friends there.

Bryan Dewsbury: 51:35

Yeah, yeah. Well, Kathy, thanks for joining us.

Kathie Klarreich: 51:38

Thank you so much for having me.

Bryan Dewsbury: 51:40

Really appreciate it. Knowledge Unbound is brought to you by the RIOS Institute for Racially Just Inclusive Open STEM Education. We are generously funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Knowledge Unbound is produced by a computer engineering major class of 2,005. That's a saying of MSI.

Segev Amasay: 52:09

I've twenty years to that. You just said 02/2005.

Bryan Dewsbury: 52:12

Did I say that? Yeah. You did. We're doing we're doing it. No.

Bryan Dewsbury: 52:15

I don't we're doing that. We're we're keeping that. 2025. I just this is just my wish for you that, you know, you have twenty years computer engineering. That's that's all that is.

Segev Amasay: 52:24

You know what? I'll take it. I'll take it as is.

Bryan Dewsbury: 52:26

Segev, what do you thought of that episode?

Segev Amasay: 52:28

You know, from someone, and I'd like to make

Bryan Dewsbury: 52:31

a slight

Segev Amasay: 52:31

correction throughout the episode, I was born in New York, but never really lived there. I moved back to Haiti in 02/2005. Growing up there, I think, really shaped me as a person. I wouldn't really consider myself privileged by any means, but I felt, looking back, I definitely did feel how most people generally lived their lives and how grateful they could be for whatever they had. Looking back, especially with what happened in 2010 with the earthquake and several other instances of political and economic turmoil that started piling up like around I want to say like 2017, '18, '19 around that time period.

Segev Amasay: 53:29

And I remember just, you know, wanting a wanting some change in my life. I was working I was working retail at one of the biggest In

Bryan Dewsbury: 53:39

Port Au Prince?

Segev Amasay: 53:40

Yes. In Port Au Prince. You know, before coming to FIU. And, you know, especially with how things are going on right now, like, people will say all kinds of things about Haiti. It's like, oh, like, I don't know.

Segev Amasay: 53:51

It's so over for Haiti as as people usually tend to say, but it kind of, I wanna say it really does, like, break my heart to see Haiti in such a state because I know, like, firsthand, there's, like it's a very, like, core culturally rich country. Yeah. And not only that, but, you know, I know Kathy said that she still has, like, friends and family in Haiti. Well, my mom is still in Haiti. Yeah.

Segev Amasay: 54:16

And, you know, we do keep in touch.

Bryan Dewsbury: 54:19

And your mom and your mom's in Port Au Prince specifically.

Segev Amasay: 54:21

She's also in Port Au Yeah. She's also in Port Au Prince.

Bryan Dewsbury: 54:24

And Well, hey, man. Well, you know we love you, and you know you. You're part of a family here in the CEAS program. Gahees, thanks so much for sharing your story with us. And I guess it kind of meant a lot to hear that story and knowing SIGCHF's history.

Bryan Dewsbury: 54:40

Of course, you know we will always be supporters of the Exchange for change program. Any final words?

Kathie Klarreich: 54:46

No, just am really grateful for the opportunity to share. And I'm so grateful to FIU on so many levels and that you extended the invitation to me, Brian. So thank you.

Bryan Dewsbury: 54:56

Thank you so much. And thanks for sticking with us for this episode and I hope you learnt a lot. I am always amazed at the different ways in which education can transform, it can heal. It is not limited to a classroom credit, it's not limited to a subject. It's about interrogating who we are as humans and how much better we can always be.

Bryan Dewsbury: 55:20

Thanks as always for listening. We'll see you next week and don't forget, please be excellent to each other.

Kathie Klarreich: 55:35

You know, we'd walk by and people would be holding hands and singing. And the sense of community for those who were still standing upright and not wounded and not quite aware yet of everything that was about to unfold, that's Haiti. Right? It's still there, maybe worse than ever before, but it's still there. There's 12,000,000 people that are trying to live, and we have to recognize the humanity in each and every one of them.