This is a brief instructional video, outlining how to write U.S. political prisoners, including a brief history of the Anarchist Black Cross. It’s intended as a resource to be shown at local political prisoner letter writing events, or watched by individuals looking to learn some basics about writing political prisoners. It was produced by a collaboration between Page One and Burning Books.
Much of the model presented here was developed over several years of practice by the New York City Anarchist Black Cross. Special thanks to the Buffalo Committee Against State Repression, the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, the Friends of Jeff Luers, and the Family and Friends of Daniel McGowan.
“Davon-Marie Grimmer has been struggling to get help for more than year for her cousin, Kent Clark. Sometimes, when he calls from prison, he asks to speak with relatives who are no longer alive. Sometimes, he forgets the name of his cell mate.
“As far as I know, he hasn’t received any medical attention for the dementia, and he’s just so vulnerable in there,” Grimmer said. “He’s 66 years old. He can’t take care of himself.”
Clark is one of about 150 people in federal prison who time mostly forgot. This group of “old law” prisoners committed crimes before November 1987, when the law changed to remove the possibility of parole. But even with the grandfathered-in chance for parole — and despite a push to reduce prison populations — dozens of men in their 60s, 70s and 80s still have little hope of release.”
While the Panthers have become a staple of pop culture, veteran members of the group remain invisible.
On October 7, 2020, Jalil Muntaqim exited the Sullivan Correctional Facility in upstate New York a free man. A member of the Black Panther Party and its more militant, clandestine offshoot, the Black Liberation Army, Muntaqim was 19 years old at the time of his 1971 arrest, which was followed by his conviction three years later for the murder of two NYPD police officers, Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini. After nearly a half-century behind bars and over a dozen parole requests, Muntaqim’s parole was approved last September, one month before his sixty-ninth birthday.
Read the rest here. Write political prisoners here and here.
Download this zine by the Page One collective that highlights the 13 elders currently incarcerated for their participation in Black liberation movements. Write them, support them, bring up their names. Hand this information out at a protest, at a family dinner, or in your neighborhood. Let’s keep these names in our minds and hearts.
NYC ABC, along with several other individuals and prisoner support crews, now send hard copies to all political prisoners and prisoners of war we support.
If you consistently mail the latest updates to a specific prisoner, please let us know so we can insure there’s no overlap. The goal is to have copies sent to all of the prisoners we list.
We’ve also been told that some prisoners are not receiving the copies sent in, yet we aren’t getting rejection notices. If you are in steady contact with a prisoner, please ask them whether or not they are receiving the updates and let us know.
Free ’em all, NYC ABC — NYC ABC Post Office Box 110034 Brooklyn, New York 11211
NYC Books Through Bars and Freebird Books Monthly Bundle for May 2021. May’s picks focus on political iconoclasts and great thinkers like Assata Shakur and James Baldwin
Many thanks to all of you who have participated in our ongoing drive to benefit NYC Books Through Bars! We truly appreciate your generosity at this time (over 8,000 books purchased on their behalf since June 2020!), when those incarcerated face ever greater obstacles getting access to written material.
May 2021’s pick: Assata: An Autobiography, Giovanni’s Room, and a selection from the Penguin Great Ideas Series–three books for $30
Following April’s drive (almost 700 books collected!) is a bundle focusing on great thinkers and political iconoclasts. Assata Shakur and James Baldwin were firebrands in the 1960s and 70s who challenged mainstream culture and racial assumptions through their words and activism.
Shakur’s 1987 autobiography has become an important document of Black resistance movements that reveals the incredible lengths the U.S. government went to stifle revolutionary thought at the height of the Civil Rights era.
Though James Baldwin’s own nonfiction (essays, criticism, polemics) is substantial, we decided to focus on his fiction this month, and the novel Giovanni’s Room. Set in 1950’s Paris and amongst a community of American expatriates, Baldwin tackles social isolation, gender and sexual identity crisis, as well as conflicts of masculinity within this story of a young bisexual man navigating the public sphere in a society that rejects a core aspect of his sexuality.
Rounding out the bundle are classic works from the Penguin Great Ideas Series, which your purchase will allow us to provide incarcerated readers with a variety of, like works on evolution, political theory, the ethics of the Samurai, and women’s rights.
To learn more about the important work NYC Books Through Bars does, go here.
It’s May 1st: Mayday and that means our column on It’s Going Down: *Prison Break* is out for May! Check it out at the link and read all about political prisoner birthdays, releases, acquittals & dropped charges, ongoing cases and our new Call for Submissions for our 2022 calendar!!! Be sure to check out the amazing art by indigenous PP Oso Blanco featured as well!
Children’s Art Project (CAP) was first conceived by Indigenous political prisoner Oso Blanco several years ago.
Imprisoned by the US government for expropriating from banks to fund the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), Oso Blanco has been using art to continue his mission. These first four designs were all painted by Oso Blanco after he had been captured in 1999. Proceeds from the sale of these greeting cards will benefit children in the autonomous Zapatista zone of Chiapas, Mexico, and on reservations here on Turtle Island.
“I did all this art under extreme duress. For years I was trying to make this happen, I was living in a literal hell on Earth where I did these pieces (SMU Lewisberg). Sometimes I couldn’t get paper, other times no pencils. Every day was violence, every day was conflict with staff and prisoners. Sometimes I had crazy cellies. I was living in an absolute horror. Often times we got pepper sprayed, we got shook down. My pieces got ripped or damaged or stolen by staff. I would have to struggle, REAL struggle, that most people on the streets couldn’t survive, let alone imagine. But I never gave up!
I continue to believe in Children’s Art Project (CAP). This art was done by hand, not by some computer. The toil and the suffering and the high cost of sending out my art via certified Mail is seriously no joke. I’m not sitting at some resort in Washington state, relaxing, doing this art with all the best art supplies and resources. I’m literally doing this with extreme difficulty and the bare minimum. I think people must respect the fact that they could probably not even survive in the environments where I completed this art.
So, please, honor the Children’s Art Project, so that we may help the children in Chiapas, where I’ve risked my life many times in Mexico sending old army surplus, bullets, medicine, horseshoes, vitamins for pregnant women (folic acid), veterinary medicine for horses, you name it. I didn’t just fall off the potato wagon and become a Political Prisoner, I earned this through my great sacrifice, through life and death, through turmoil. Being shot by the police and the FBI and having police dogs sicced on me during this case, ripping me apart, all for the humor of the FBI and Albuquerque police.
Love, Oso Blanco Zapatista Supply Warrior & Native Anarchist”
You can print a trifold about Oso Blanco here, and write him at this address:
Byron Chubbuck, #07909-051 USP Victorville PO Box 3900 Adelanto, CA 92301
Creating a New World in the Shell of the Old – the 21st edition of the Certain Days calendar
The Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar collective (certaindays.org) will be releasing our 21st calendar this coming autumn. The 2022 theme is “Creating a New World in the Shell of the Old,” looking at collective approaches at creating a more inclusive and fulfilling world through mutual effort.
We are looking for 12 pieces of art and 12 short essays to feature in the calendar, which hangs in more than 6,000 homes, workplaces, prison cells, and community spaces around the world. We encourage contributors to submit both new and existing work. We especially seek submissions from people in prison or jail, so please forward to any prison-based artists and writers.
Deadline: June 14, 2021
THEME GUIDELINES
The Certain Days project has been intergenerational from the beginning. The inside members and many of the prisoners featured were involved in the freedom struggles of the 1960s and 70s. Most of us in the outside collective were in our twenties when the project began, eager to learn from our elders and to provide concrete solidarity across prison walls. Now, more than two decades later, the world has changed but the need for that connection and support remains as strong as ever. As new movements have risen up to confront forces of repression, we have seen an increase in political prisoners from Indigenous struggles and Earth and Animal liberation movements, to anarchists, anti-fascists, Grand Jury resistors, and hacktivists.
With COVID-19 and a growing and dangerous fascism vying to destroy the world as we know it, this year we were inspired to focus our attention on mutual aid to build new and stronger communities, and collective efforts to assist and free those freedom fighters locked behind the bars.
*Topics may include, but are not limited to the following:
From defense campaigns to prison book programs community bail funds to phone lines, mutual aid has been at the heart of prison support throughout the history of our movements. In what ways has mutual aid benefitted us? In what ways have we failed to engage it effectively?
What does mutual aid look like behind the bars? For those incarcerated, power dynamics and violent hierarchies are the norm, and actively confronting them risks very real and harmful repercussions. However, mutual aid has in fact blossomed in such conditions—peer support during pandemics; inside-outside projects like Victory Gardens and Certain Days. What are other ways in which mutual aid is utilized by those locked away?
In what ways can mutual aid help us in creating transformative and healing spaces for those returning from prison? What about for those about to go to prison for the first time?
What is the future of mutual aid in the ongoing abolitionist struggle against the prison industrial complex?
FORMAT GUIDELINES
ARTICLES:
• 400-500 words max. If you submit a longer piece, we will have to edit for length.
• Poetry is also welcome but needs to be significantly shorter than 400 words to accommodate layout.
• Please include a suggested title.
Due to time and space limitations, submissions may be lightly edited for clarity, with no change to the original intent.
ART:
1. The calendar is 11” tall by 8.5” wide, so art with a ‘portrait’ orientation is preferred. Some pieces may be printed with a border, so it need not fit those dimensions exactly.
2. We are interested in a diversity of media (paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, computer-designed graphics, collage, etc).
3. The calendar is printed in colour and we prefer colour images.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
1. Send your submissions by June 14, 2021 to info @ certaindays.org.
2. ARTISTS: You can send a low-res file as a submission, but if your piece is chosen, we will need a high-res version of it for print (600 dpi).
3. You may send as many submissions as you like. Chosen artists and authors will receive a free copy of the calendar and promotional postcards. Because the calendar is a fundraiser, we cannot offer money to contributors.
Prisoner submissions are due July 1, 2021 and can be mailed to:
Certain Days c/o Burning Books 420 Connecticut Street Buffalo, NY 14213 USA
OR
Certain Days c/o QPIRG Concordia 1455 de Maisonneuve Ouest Montreal, QC H3G 1M8 Canada
ABOUT THE CALENDAR
The Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar is a joint fundraising and educational project between outside organizers in Montreal, Hamilton, New York, and Baltimore, with two political prisoners being held in maximum-security prisons: David Gilbert in New York and Xinachtli (s/n Alvaro Luna Hernandez) in Texas. We were happy to welcome founding members Herman Bell and Robert Seth Hayes (Rest in Power) home from prison in 2018, after serving over forty years each. All of the current members of the outside collective are grounded in day-to-day organizing work other than the calendar, on issues ranging from migrant justice to community media to prisoner solidarity. We work from an anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, feminist, queer- and trans-liberationist position. All proceeds from the calendar go to abolitionist organizations working for a better world.
