Some Black and Pink Updates

by Black and Pink January 24, 2011


Hello family!
On January 15th core “free world” members of Black and Pink got together to discuss
our vision, mission, purpose, and programs. We finally came up with a working
statement of purpose:
Black and Pink is an open family of LGBTQ* prisoners and “free world” allies who
support each other. Our work towards the abolition of the prion industrial complex
is rooted in the experience of currently and formerly incarcerated people. We are
outraged by the specific violence of the prison industrial complex against LGBTQ
people and respond through advocacy, direct service, education and organizing.
*We know that “LGBTQ” does not reflect all of the diverse identities of our family;
we are struggling to find a better term and consider “LGBTQ” a placeholder.
Our current projects include -
1. an online pen-pal program on which GLBTQ prisoners can have their name,
addresses, and 25-word (non-sexual) ad describing what they want from a pen-pal.
2. a monthly newsletter made up of stories, poetry, art, and essays by currently and
formerly incarcerated GLBTQ people. Currently incarcerated folks are encouraged to
share their stories with Black and Pink so we can put them in the newsletter and
nurture a sense of connection between GLBTQ people incarcerated around the
country.**
3. our art project sells GLBTQ prisoner artwork that they send to us and we put all
of the money we get for the artwork back into the commissary accounts of the artist.
4. we are able to do direct advocacy and support for individuals who are
experiencing harassment, sexual violence, lack of access to health care,
mistreatment, etc. We are not able to do advocacy work for everyone at this time
because of capacity, but we do the best we can.
**Please note that our online version of the newsletter will hopefully be back up
and running very soon, it is a problem with the server at scribd.com. Thank you for
being patient with us.
We are excited to continue working with everyone and building relationships both
locally in the Greater Boston area as well as nationally and internationally! The
struggle continues!
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