Note: for unknown reasons, our computer is not allowing us to include apostrophes in text on the website, so we have replaced all apostrophes with a *. Sorry for the inconvenience:
The Internationalist Prison Books Collective (IPBC) puts together a poster every month with information about political prisoners (PPs) and prisoners of war (POWs) incarcerated in the United States, along with their addresses whose birthdays are that month.
In April last year I was able to participate in a PP*s birthday party at the Dry River Radical Resource Center, an Infoshop located in the Dunbar Spring neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona where we made cards for all the prisoners on the IPBC poster, snacked, took pictures to send along and smashed a piñata. It was a great deal of fun!
Without a doubt, I think the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is one of the flashpoints of class struggle and internal colonialism in the States, and that sending birthday cards to PPs and POWS is the least people who can should be doing.
After leaving Tucson to work on a farm in Iowa I made a point of continuing to write PPs and POWs using the IPBC poster as both a resource for current contact information and for news on the contemporary struggle against the PIC. My correspondence with prisoners has been both very informative and inspiring!
This year, using the Political Prisoner Birthday Party model I picked up in Tucson, I helped start the Riverside Anarchist Birthday Brigade (In Defiance-RABBID) at the Blood Orange Infoshop in Riverside, California. On the first Saturdays of January and February we converged at the Infoshop to make cards, write letters and talk politics. The first party was hastily thrown together as I had just arrived in town, but the second one had a theme where we all wore red and black, decked out the space, had plenty of snacks and took pictures to send along with the cards.
We also had plenty of relevant reading materials courtesy of South Chicago Anarchist Black Cross (S Chi ABC) who donated *zines to help us get started. Now we*re discussing fundraisers to pay for materials and send money to prisoners, as well as doing on going support work for specific prisoners.
Find the IPBC poster at prisonbooks.info. Prisonactivist.org and zinelibrary.info are two other great resources for writing to PPs and POWs. If you haven*t written prisoners before, you may want to check out the great article Tips On Writing To A Prisoner at prisonerlife.com/tips.cfm. Here are the very basics:
• You have to put a prisoner*s number on the first line so your letter gets to them.
• Include a return address on you letter, but if you don*t know the prisoner it may be best to use a PO Box or other neutral address.
• Guards may read your letter. Avoid discussing sensitive topics or details of a court case if a prisoner is awaiting trial / sentencing.
• Don*t make promises you can*t keep: being in prison is isolating and getting let down can be devastating. If you*re not looking for a romantic relationship, be clear about your intentions right from the start.
• Prisoners are no better or worse than anyone else. Some are flawed so exercise the same caution you would writing to anyone else you don*t know.
• Be careful about accepting collect calls from prison — they are absurdly expensive.