SFMOMA's First Solo Show by an Incarcerated Artist, The Fight to Remove Dams on the Eel River

from KQED. Support for KQED podcast comes from San Francisco Opera. This fall, dive into a world of political intrigue with Simone Bocanegra and Mary Queen of Scots. Discover a life of Parisian luxury in Monon and laugh along with the marriage of Figaro. Learn more at sphopra.com. Minions don't wait, especially for Wi-Fi. Summends Same-Day Wi-Fi from Xfinity and get the same price for five years and seen minions and monsters only in theaters. Exfinity. Imagine that. Restrictions apply not available in all areas. Learn more at Xfinity.com slash same-day Wi-Fi. Good evening. From KQED, this is the latest, a podcast that updates throughout the day, bringing you local news when you want it. I'm Dana Cronin. It's Friday, August 14th. We start with the top stories from the KQEED Newsroom.

Live from KQED News, I'm Lakshmi Sarah. Several Bay Area groups are protesting today kicking off the first ever national week of action against automated license plate readers. The goal is to raise awareness about mass surveillance systems that organizers say put privacy and civil liberties at risk and are used to target immigrant communities. Luke Bouchard is a campaign lead with the Sunrise Bay Area movement. He says the public should reject city contracts with surveillance companies. We've seen it used to track protesters and people seeking reproductive care. This technology also often incorrectly reads people's license plates. He says errors have led to arrests and police officer abuse. Protests are planned in Berkeley, Vallejo, Santa Cruz, and Gilroy this week. Marin County is ramping up preparedness efforts for wetter and more extreme weather this fall and winter. Public safety officials will present to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday in advance of what forecasters say could be a historic El Nino. They plan to strategize about countywide responses to extreme weather, especially flooding, in coastal and Bayshore areas. Emergency management director Stephen Torrance says, quote, preparedness is a shared and essential responsibility. Residents are encouraged to sign up for alerts, review family emergency plans, and refresh their emergency kits. The August 18th board meeting begins at 9 a.m. at the Marin Civic Center and will be broadcast on the county's website. I'm Lakshmi Sarah, KQED News.

Orlando Smith calls himself an artivist. Throughout his 25 years incarcerated at San Quentin, he's worked to provide firsthand dispatches through his graphic art. His richly detailed drawings illustrate life inside prison, including throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, when social distancing was not an option, and 75% of his fellow San Quentin residents became infected with the virus. Now Smith's illustrations are on view at SFMOMA. KQED's Nastia Voinovska recently checked it out and also spoke with Smith. She's here to give us the scoop. Hey, Nastia. Hey, Dana. Thanks for having me. So for those who haven't seen Smith's work before, can you just describe it for us? Because it's so distinct and interesting. Yeah, absolutely. Orlando Smith has been an artist for over 40 years, and he's heavily inspired by Marvel and graphic novels and sci-fi. So for a long time, he was putting out his own graphic novel series. And then around the start of the pandemic, he really discovered his calling as a visual journalist. So he wanted to use his art to illustrate what prisoners were going through. during a massive COVID outbreak inside San Quentin. He started illustrating comics about it that then got published in the Columbia Journalism Review and dozens of other publications. And that caught the attention of the art world. So his work was featured in galleries and an exhibit at the Oakland Museum, which then put him on SFMomo's radar. Now his solo show, O. Smith Artivist, is SFMomo's first solo show by a currently incarcerated artist. Oh, wow. So this isn't his first museum exhibition, as you just noted, but still SFMOMA's like a pretty big deal, right? You talked with him about his new exhibit. What did he tell you? How is he feeling about all of this? I got to talk to O. Smith while I was on a Zoom call with Christine LaShaw, who is an advocate from Empowerment Avenue, a nonprofit that helped put on this exhibit. And he called in directly from San Quentin. And he was just so overjoyed and so grateful to have his work featured on such a large platform where all kinds of people, you know, international tourists, San Francisco residents, people that may not have an incarcerated person in their lives that they can talk to and hear about what it's really like. They get to learn this perspective through his art. And here's what Smith said when I talked to him. But man, when it's an S.F. MoMA and a solo exhibit, man, it was like mind-blowing. It was like just one of those achievements to where, you know, especially in my position, right? I live in concrete box. It brought to mind that, you know, whatever you work for and you work hard, you can't achieve. And I want to ask you about his piece called re-traumatized, which is featured in the exhibit. It's an illustrated report of life inside San Quentin during COVID. Can you tell me more about that? Absolutely. So this is one of many pieces that give a firsthand account of what it was like during a massive COVID outbreak that happened in 2020 in San Quentin. It was one of the largest in the country at the time.

And he illustrates himself in a mask talking on the phone, but it's very text-heavy, and he details what was going on on the inside. So people were on lockdown at the time for months, two men to a tiny cell, the size of a closet, 24 hours with no daylight. He writes about... officers pitting inmates against each other, depriving them of phone time in order to control them, subpar medical care where they felt like they were being treated like animals. Here's what Smith told me about that time. Whatever was hard for people out there, it was even crazier inside of a prison environment. So there was no way to really get down to the phones. We didn't have tablets then. So what I would do, I would just frustrate different stories. Starting off with the routine of being locked down, you know, housed in the next double field at that time. It was really scary for people on the inside that had no connection to their friends and family. And 29 people died and over 2,000 people got infected. And a lot of San Quentin's population is older. Many have underlying medical conditions. So it was just a very, very tough time to say the least. In a lawsuit related to that outbreak, a judge ruled that California prison officials inflicted cruel and unusual punishment. Wow. So what has he been working on more recently? Yeah, so Orlando Smith is almost 60 years old himself. He was sentenced to multiple life sentences for robberies he committed as a young man under the three strikes law. And like him, much of San Quentin's population is aging. About 20% of the inmates there are over 55 years old. A lot of them have health conditions. And so he's devoted a lot of his recent art talking about that. And he is bringing attention. to the fact that older people have much lower recidivism rates. He says that they don't pose a threat to society. And he and other prison reform advocates are shining a light on this to say, you know, older people could be released and that could actually help California prisons notorious overcrowding problem. And there's been a petition calling for his commutation too, right? Yes, there has been. And that's because he has so many supporters out in the community. He's worked with social justice organizations like the Ella Baker Center to design protest posters. He has used his art to benefit good causes like breast cancer research. And he has a community of artists and journalists on the outside that are really advocating for him and say that they would get him a job where he released. So his supporters are still pushing for that.

And so just briefly, Nostia, how can people see this exhibit? The exhibit O. Smith Artivist is on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through June 2027. And viewers can actually visit it for free because it's in a gallery that is just before the paid part of the museum on the second floor. So I highly recommend everyone go check it out. I definitely will. Thank you so much, Nostia. Thanks, Dana. Nostia Voinovskia is an editor on KQED's Arts and Culture Desk. You can read more of her work at kQED.org slash arts. The latest will be back after this quick break. Support for KQED podcast comes from San Francisco Opera. This fall, dive into a world of political intrigue with Simone Bocanegra and Mary Queen of Scots. Discover a life of Parisian luxury in Monon and laugh along with the marriage of Figaro. Learn more at sphopra.com. Minions don't wait, especially for Wi-Fi. Summends Same-Day Wi-Fi from Xfinity and get the same price for five years and seen minions and monsters only in theaters. Exfinity. Imagine that. Restrictions apply not available in all areas. Learn more at Xfinity.com slash same-day Wi-Fi. We're back with the latest. Let's get a closer look at the people and places that make our state unique with the California Report magazine. California's Eel River is a remote waterway that snakes through some of the tallest redwoods on earth. It stretches nearly 200 miles from Mendocino National Forest to Humboldt Bay, where it finally connects to the Pacific Ocean. For thousands of years, the river ran free. It was a breeding ground for salmon and trout and integral to the native Californians who lived alongside it. But in the early 1900s, two dams were built on the Eel River to generate power for a growing California. They've turned water for more than a hundred years, but their existence has come at the expense of native fish and people. All of that might soon change, though. There's a plan in motion to remove these two dams from the Eel River. And this change would affect not just tribes and fish, but farmers and local residents too. Here to tell us more is reporter Sam Anderson. Welcome. Thanks so much for having me. Well, like the river, this is a story that has a lot of twists and turns. Sam, you spent quite a bit of time covering Northern California and the tribes who live there. Can you tell us about the significance of the Eel River to native people? Absolutely. This river is central to native culture, especially in the Round Valley area in northern Mendocino. Here's Nicole Whipple talking about that. She's a member of the Round Valley Indian tribes. Her ancestors, the Yuki people, inhabited the entire length of the Eel River. I have grown up on and off the reservation and have always been connected to the river since I was a child. We have salmon and we had freshwater clams.

Steelhead, there is also trout. Definitely the, like, riparian vegetation, like the elder berries, the acorns, the tuli, all of the berries, the manzanitas, all those things that are around. those were our food sources as well. There's a great significance in most of the native species that are in the area. Like the indigenous people in the Eil River were very wealthy in their food and resources. Nicole says that for her ancestors, the Yuki people, this river was a source of not only food and housing materials, but also cultural identity. And all of that changed when settlers came to California. taking away our lands, taking away our water, taking away our access to our food sustenance and our food sovereignty, we're all intentional to kill us off, basically. You know, we had to assimilate or... or die. So for Nicole of the Round Valley native people, the dams are a reminder of a painful colonial past. That's exactly right. So the potential for the dams to come down is a pretty big deal for native people. What has changed and put dam removal on the table now? So it's pretty interesting. This discussion kicked off for very mundane reasons. PG&E, who owns and operates the dams, was doing a routine inspection. And they found some problems with a piece of equipment in the power station. And PG&E determined that to fix it would cost up to $15 million. And as it turns out, these dams, which combined with the power station, are referred to as the Potter Valley Project, they don't actually generate a whole lot of power to begin with. At best, only enough electricity for like 750 homes, according to PG&E. Yeah, not a lot. In other parts of the state... dams are a big chunk of PG&E's business, right? But in this case, the Potter Valley project was expensive and not efficient. So when their license was up for renewal, they jumped at the chance to offload this particular project. Here's PG&E's Janet Walther. PG&E likes dams, right? I mean, we are a hydrogenerating company. We believe that dams provide value to the communities to meet our renewable goals in the state of California. We also believe they provide great benefits to the communities around recreation resources. However, there are times, as Potter Valley is one of those, where a dam may no longer make sense. For Potter Valley, for various reasons, you know, it became a project that we no longer wanted to own and operate. But dam removal is not something that we overall support in general. So for PG&E, this really is a practical economic decision, right? Yeah, it is. And in around 2019, they put the dams up for sale. But no buyers came forward. A few years later, the federal regulators told PG&E, okay, submit your plans to dismantle these dams.

But that decision opened up a huge can of bureaucratic worms as to what comes next. So without fully opening whatever that can of worms is, what's the next step in the process? So PG&E has to figure out exactly how to remove these dams in compliance with California's strict environmental rules. And there's federal laws too. But there are also some serious ripple effects for surrounding communities. Like what? As long as these dams have existed, there's been this tunnel that diverts water from the Eel River to the Russian River. farther south in Sonoma County. Yeah, I'm like picturing one of these big tunnels that you go down in a water park. It's like that. Yeah, you're actually not too far off. The tunnel uses gravity to move water through a mountain. And there are a lot of farmers and winemakers further downstream who rely on that water for their crops. So the wineries in Sonoma, for example, are relying on Eel River water? Well, maybe not all of them, but yeah, there's a lot of thirsty grapes out there that are actually drinking Eel River water. And those agricultural folks are often at odds with the environmentalists, for instance, who want the rivers to run free. So those are two of the biggest stakeholders involved. And then, of course, you have the native people, including the Round Valley Indian tribes, a member of which we heard from at the top, who have this cultural history tied to the river dating back millennia. But for the last 100 years, they've basically not been in control of their own river, right? So now there's this opportunity for them to regain control of the eel river for the first time in a century. Being able to play a lead role in decisions around the eel river again sounds amazing for tribal people. Like, that will be huge. Sam, this process has been going on for a long time now. What's the latest development? So after more than five years of debate and discussion, the tribes, PG&E, water agencies, other interest groups, all came up with compromise to retire the dams. And it's called the Two Basin Solution. Okay. The Two Basin Solution. Tell us about it. Yeah, so first and foremost, the dams, they're coming down. And I can't overstate how big of a victory that is for environmentalists. Like, in terms of fish restoration, the eel is home to native salmon and trout and other species. And for the first time, in over 100 years, these fish would be able to run free into the headwaters of the eel river. And that is where they need to go to spawn the next generation, right? Yeah, exactly. And all of those mountain streams and creeks that form their ancestral breeding grounds have been essentially blocked off. But when those dams come down, native Chinook salmon are going to gain 80 miles of new habitat. And the steelhead, who are one of my favorite fish, they're these incredible athletes who can basically swim up waterfalls and over boulders. They're going to gain 280 miles of habitat, which is a really big deal. Not to mention there are these rainbows. trout that are locked into the reservoir formed by the dams. So it's not just fish going up the river, but there's also fish that will be able to come down the river. And when they come down, these rainbow trout could potentially transform into ocean-going trout, otherwise known as steelhead. So for the fish nerds out there like myself, this is very exciting stuff. That does sound extremely exciting.

As we've seen on the dam removal on the Klamath River in Oregon, once the dams came down on the Klamath, the native fish made this incredible rebound. Yes. So folks are pretty optimistic that we could see something similar on the eel. So it's a big win for fish if and when this happens. And I'm sure that has a ripple effect for all the animals that would eat them like bears and eagles. But what about the farmers and the wineries who use this water for their crops? What happens to them? So under this plan, they will actually continue to get Eel River water. But they'll need to build out some new infrastructure. And they've created a whole new government agency to be in charge of this. And one of the reasons I find this story so compelling is the fact that so many diverse groups, farmers, environmentalists, tribes, PG&E came together to create this plant. Here's Alicia Heyman of Friends of the Eel River, one of the stakeholders involved in the compromise. Folks haven't really, I think, appropriately expanded on just how remarkable this is. You know, these are entities that in the Eel and the Russian, like. We have been fighting about this project for probably like 100 years. And so the fact that now the water agencies representing farmers and irrigators and the fisheries entities and the tribes on the Eel River side have come to an agreement is a really, really big deal. So what's next with all of this? When could we actually begin to see the Eel River dams come down? Not until the 2030s, and that's at the absolute earliest if everything goes according to plan. Federal regulators still need to approve PG&E's plans to take down the dams, and that's going to take a couple of years. Okay. And then not to throw a wrench into this whole conversation, but I saw earlier this spring that the Secretary of Agriculture had stepped in at some point to try and halt this plan. What happened with that? Yeah, so this is kind of a wild card, but the Secretary of Agriculture for the Trump administration, Brooke Rollins, she posted on social media that she had found a new potential buyer for the Potter Valley Project who wants to keep the dams in place, basically to secure water for this Southern California Water District and their residential customers, who are, by the way, 600 miles away. Okay. And over the last few months, this was really stirring things up politically. But the federal agency that regulates the dams. denied that water district's bid. So the effort seems kind of dead in the water at this point. It seems like there have been a lot of fits and starts with these plans, and the compromise to take down the dams is vulnerable to political whims. Yeah, I mean, it's been playing out like a modern day chapter of California Water Wars that we've heard about for 100 years. And I can only imagine how that feels for native tribes who are really excited to finally get some control over the water. Yeah, totally. And I really can't understate how much the Eel River means to the native people in this area. Here's Round Valley tribal member Nicole Whipple again. It means that we restore our culture and our lifelays and our livelihood and our connection to our lands. It restores justice. It does represent land return, land back, and upholding your own loss, you know.

And our goal is to restore our fisheries and our waters for longevity and for everybody in the water basin, the watershed. For us to be well, we need our culture back. We need our free-flowing water. This is definitely a story I'm going to be following for the next couple of years to see how it all shakes out. Because, Laura, if these dams come down, the Eel River is going to become the longest free-flowing river in California. Reporter Sam Anderson, thank you for talking to us about the possibility of dam removal on the Eel River. Thanks so much for having me. That's the latest from KQED, but remember we're updating throughout the day, so come back anytime. The latest is powered by the newsroom at member-supported KQED in San Francisco and is made by me, Dana Kronin, Swish D Prabha and Bianca Taylor. with support from Jen Chien, Ted Goldberg, Keith Miziguchi, and Katie Springer. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. Thanks for listening. Support for KQED podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union. Give your savings account the love it deserves. When you keep your money with Star 1, you keep more of your money. Star 1 credit union in your best interest. Minions don't wait, especially for Wi-Fi. Summon's Same Day Wi-Fi from Xfinity and get the same price for five years. And seen minions and monsters only in theaters. Xfinity. Imagine that. Restrictions apply not available in all areas. Learn more at Xfinity.com slash same-day Wi-Fi.