The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog |  |
December 30, 2011
YEARLY REQUEST FOR YOUR SUPPORT! Please read and donate!
“A world of thanks for your advocacy efforts on behalf of us who have scant access to the media and outside groups.”---Dirceu, Massachusetts.
Dear Friend and Supporter of the Real Cost of Prisons Project,
Once a year we ask for your support for the Real Cost of Prisons Project. Our goal this year is to raise $20,000. We are a third of the way there. Your tax-deductible donation helps to support the RCPP and our commitment to broadening and deepening the organizing capacity of prison/justice activists, both in and out of prison, working to end mass incarceration.
Our work:
Advocacy and organizing with, and on behalf of prisoners challenging inhumane conditions of confinement such as solitary confinement; the daily degradation of prisoners by guards and those in authority; exposing the inadequate health care and food prisoners receive; working to end the barbaric shackling of women prisoners in labor and delivery; and contesting restrictions on reading material and mail. Additional organizing focuses include ending Life Without the Possibility of Parole, Juvenile Life Without the Possibility of Parole, Three Strikes, and stopping the expansion of other extremely punitive sentences.
(Your donation can be made through Community Futures Collective (link) http://www.realcostofprisons.org/donate.html. Or if you prefer, you can send a check to the CFC, 221 Idora Avenue, Vallejo, CA 94591. Please make your check payable to Community Futures Collective/RCPP.)
Creating and providing materials to strengthen the organizing capacity of activists:
*Sending more than 125,000 copies of our three free comic books (Prison Town - Paying the Price, Prisoners of the War on Drugs, and Prisoners of a Hard Life - Women and Their Children) to prisoners, literacy groups, schools, "books through bars" organizations, and organizations working against mass incarceration. We send comic books everyday: to prisoners; high schools in Boston, San Francisco, Oakland and East Palo Alto CA; Books Through Bars Projects in Fort Collins, CO and St. Louis; a peer education program in a Texas prison; Occupy in Phoenix; and an End the New Jim Crow Conference in NY, to name a few examples.
From a prisoner in New Mexico: “I read your name in a resource guide and would really love to receive your comic books that focus on drugs, prison and hard life. I too am very concerned with this paragon of bureaucratic dysfunction we call the prison system.”
*Providing information and materials to prisoner activists to strengthen their organizing. Recently we have provided materials about juvenile life without parole to a prisoner working on a Youth-At-Risk newsletter, assisting another prisoner doing research and writing about expanding education in prison and locating expert witnesses to testify in a case in Federal Court in a suit against a prison mailroom preventing a prisoner’s comix from leaving the prison.
“Thank you so much for your letter. I have to say, this is the most informational letter which I have received in quite some time. Thanks for that. All too often those outside of prison simply disregard those in prison and what they have to say.” Chris, Virginia
*Website sections, Writing from Prison” and “Comix from Inside” create a strong, unique platform for the ideas and analysis of prisoners through our ever-expanding group of authors and cartoonists.
*Networking prisoner activists with other activist/organizers inside and outside of prison to expand connections nationwide. A few examples include two RCPP prisoner writers in California who have found themselves in the same cellblock who are exchanging work and ideas; one prisoner in Pennsylvania recommending to another in California that the RCPP website would be a good way to get his work out and discovering the prisoner in California is a regular contributor to the RCPP website; an organizer of a NY art show and auction in support of the CA hunger strikers seeking and receiving artwork from RCPP cartoonists; and RCPP writers and cartoonist’s work being published, reprinted in newsletters, used in classes, and incorporated into other websites.
From James Anderson in Oregon: “Four years ago you posted 2 of my pieces of work on your website. I was recently contacted by a professor from San Jose Univ. about giving my permission to use my poetry as part of his class, which was awesome and definitely an honor for me.”
*The Real Cost of Prisons website and newsblog receives more than 2,000 unique visits daily. The website includes links to our daily news blog, new research, and links to organizations, books, and videos and writing and comix from prisoners.
*Providing more than 100 Real Cost of Prisons email listserv members with daily news and useful information.
*Working in coalition with Massachusetts-based organizations focused on expanding parole, stopping "three strikes" in Massachusetts, preventing fees to prisoners in jails, ending juvenile life without the possibility of parole, and banning the shackling of women prisoners during labor and child birth.
Your tax deductible donation makes it possible for us to continue and expand our work.
Please consider making a monthly donation of $10, $20, $50 or more. Or please make a onetime donation from $5 to $5,000. Every dollar we receive will be put to careful and effective use.
Your donation can be made through Community Futures Collective (link) http://www.realcostofprisons.org/donate.html. Or if you prefer, you can send a check to the CFC, 221 Idora Avenue, Vallejo, CA 94591. Please make your check payable to Community Futures Collective/RCPP.
Please help us get the word out by forwarding this to your friends and family.
Thank you very much for your support of the work we do.
Lois Ahrens
P.S. We have established an Advisory Board that includes individuals and organizations with whom we share common beliefs and goals. We are grateful to them for joining us in support of our mission. http://www.realcostofprisons.org/board.html
*Sending more than 125,000 copies of our three free comic books (Prison Town - Paying the Price, Prisoners of the War on Drugs, and Prisoners of a Hard Life - Women and Their Children) to prisoners, literacy groups, schools, "books through bars" organizations, and organizations working against mass incarceration. We send comic books everyday: to prisoners; high schools in Boston, San Francisco, Oakland and East Palo Alto CA; Books Through Bars Projects in Fort Collins, CO and St. Louis; a peer education program in a Texas prison; Occupy in Phoenix; and an End the New Jim Crow Conference in NY, to name a few examples.
From a prisoner in New Mexico: “I read your name in a resource guide and would really love to receive your comic books that focus on drugs, prison and hard life. I too am very concerned with this paragon of bureaucratic dysfunction we call the prison system.”
*Providing information and materials to prisoner activists to strengthen their organizing. Recently we have provided materials about juvenile life without parole to a prisoner working on a Youth-At-Risk newsletter, assisting another prisoner doing research and writing about expanding education in prison and locating expert witnesses to testify in a case in Federal Court in a suit against a prison mailroom preventing a prisoner’s comix from leaving the prison.
“Thank you so much for your letter. I have to say, this is the most informational letter which I have received in quite some time. Thanks for that. All too often those outside of prison simply disregard those in prison and what they have to say.” Chris, Virginia
*Website sections, Writing from Prison” and “Comix from Inside” create a strong, unique platform for the ideas and analysis of prisoners through our ever-expanding group of authors and cartoonists.
*Networking prisoner activists with other activist/organizers inside and outside of prison to expand connections nationwide. A few examples include two RCPP prisoner writers in California who have found themselves in the same cellblock who are exchanging work and ideas; one prisoner in Pennsylvania recommending to another in California that the RCPP website would be a good way to get his work out and discovering the prisoner in California is a regular contributor to the RCPP website; an organizer of a NY art show and auction in support of the CA hunger strikers seeking and receiving artwork from RCPP cartoonists; and RCPP writers and cartoonist’s work being published, reprinted in newsletters, used in classes, and incorporated into other websites.
From James Anderson in Oregon: “Four years ago you posted 2 of my pieces of work on your website. I was recently contacted by a professor from San Jose Univ. about giving my permission to use my poetry as part of his class, which was awesome and definitely an honor for me.”
*The Real Cost of Prisons website and newsblog receives more than 2,000 unique visits daily. The website includes links to our daily news blog, new research, and links to organizations, books, and videos and writing and comix from prisoners.
*Providing more than 100 Real Cost of Prisons email listserv members with daily news and useful information.
*Working in coalition with Massachusetts-based organizations focused on expanding parole, stopping "three strikes" in Massachusetts, preventing fees to prisoners in jails, ending juvenile life without the possibility of parole, and banning the shackling of women prisoners during labor and child birth.
Your tax deductible donation makes it possible for us to continue and expand our work.
Please consider making a monthly donation of $10, $20, $50 or more. Or please make a onetime donation from $5 to $5,000. Every dollar we receive will be put to careful and effective use.
Your donation can be made through Community Futures Collective (link) http://www.realcostofprisons.org/donate.html. Or if you prefer, you can send a check to the CFC, 221 Idora Avenue, Vallejo, CA 94591. Please make your check payable to Community Futures Collective/RCPP.
Please help us get the word out by forwarding this to your friends and family.
Thank you very much for your support of the work we do.
Lois Ahrens
P.S. We have established an Advisory Board that includes individuals and organizations with whom we share common beliefs and goals. We are grateful to them for joining us in support of our mission. http://www.realcostofprisons.org/board.html
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