On August 27, 2025, the San Francisco Chronicle ran an "Open Forum" column by Greg Eskridge (pictured above), who spent thirty years in San Quentin prison. While he was in prison, Eskridge helped co-found “Uncuffed,” a radio and podcasting program created by people in prison. He and others involved were trained by the staff of KALW Public Media to be journalists, and were trusted to tell their own stories. As Eskridge put it, "We shared our heartaches, our growth, our humor and our hope. We never ran away from the truth, and our stories were heard around the world."
What Eskridge didn't say, at least directly, is that the opportunity provided to him, to tell his stories to the public, ultimately helped return him to civil society. In his article, Eskridge noted the following:
Congress recently stripped all $1.1 billion in federal funding from public media, a decision that will deal a death blow to small TV and radio stations across the country. Unlike commercial media, public media has a mission to serve and represent the most marginalized communities, and to bring us all together in conversation. What’s at stake is the ability for vulnerable people to be heard and to share how shifting policy affects us directly.
Native American stations, already underresourced, are lifelines for language preservation, cultural storytelling and vital local news in tribal communities. Of the 59 tribal radio stations supported by Native Public Media, roughly 90% could be forced off the air. Rural public radio stations that serve low-income communities are also on the chopping block. Over 500 public media outlets, especially small rural and tribal stations, will face closures, staff layoffs and drastic reductions in local services. These stations don’t just play music or share national headlines. They tell the stories of farmers, factory workers, elders and young people who are otherwise invisible in mainstream media. They offer emergency updates, local civic engagement and a shared sense of belonging.
KALW, the station that gave me a platform through “Uncuffed,” will lose about $450,000 a year. That’s not just a number — it’s a direct hit to the stories we can tell and the voices we can uplift.
If we don’t fight for storytelling, we lose far more than jobs; we lose our truth. And when that silencing reaches into our prisons, where storytelling has become a lifeline, all of us, inside and out, lose something. Losing that truth is censorship, and it’s also outright cruelty to people like me who can heal by telling our stories (emphasis added).
I absolutely agree with the importance of maintaining public funding for the kind of journalism for which Eskridge is arguing. Let me go just a bit further, though.
I think we all ought to understand how vital it is that all of us engage in "storytelling" about our lives and our thoughts, our hopes and our dreams.
We are, truly, "in this life together," as I frequently say, and we come to understand our common humanity, and our common situation, when we tell our stories to those whom we know, and to those whom we don't know, and when we listen to the stories of others - friends and strangers, both.
Those "small groups" of people who Margaret Mead tells us will change the world are bound together, ultimately, by the fact that they have shared their stories among themselves - their failures, their triumphs, their hopes and their fears.
When we "find some friends," which I think is essential as a foundation for common action, sharing our stories is how we know we have found them. Our friendships are built upon the shared stories that we tell each other, that we tell those whom we trust, those whom, like the "Three Musketeers," are prepared to live, with us, by the rule of "all for one, and one for all."
To "Fight For Storytelling" we must be willing to tell our own stories. Can I tell you some of my favorites?
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