Last call for spring cleaning… If you live in San Francisco or are willing to travel there, you can donate any kind of good quality unwanted stuff to the Community Thrift Store in person, saying they are for the benefit of Prisoners Literature Project. We’ll get the proceeds after they are sold! This has been a great source for postage money for PLP over the years. Reuse, reduce, recycle!
Please consider shopping off these wish lists (#PrisonBooksWishlists) or stopping by the stores if you live in the Bay Area:
Books Inc. (Berkeley)
East Bay Booksellers (Oakland)
Green Apple Books (San Francisco)
Pegasus Books (Berkeley)
Cape & Cowl Comics (Oakland, in-store sales only)
These donated books will allow PLP to fulfill a range of requests from incarcerated letter writers including these recent ones:
For Black History Month, we’ve curated a special list of high-demand books and topics. We’d love any and all help getting them into our library for distribution to folks behind bars. Thanks!
Here’s the local Pegasus Books wishlist, if you’d like to buy: https://www.pegasusbookstore.com/wishlist/571
And here’s the Amazon.com version of the list: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/OZTZRXXUXKNI
As always, we really appreciate your help!
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| Now that Giving Tuesday is nearly upon us, we wanted to update you all on the Prisoners Literature Project‘s efforts to send books to incarcerated people throughout the U.S., and explain how we need your help. Since COVID restrictions have partially lifted, we’ve gathered volunteer groups in our Berkeley, CA headquarters to pack much-needed books for incarcerated folks. We’ve been sending out as many as 350 book packages per week, as we catch up on our backlog. But what we hadn’t bargained on was the USPS raising its Media Mail rates by more than 10% at the end of August. This – combined with the extra packages – has meant that we’ve been spending up to $7,000 per month (!) on postage in recent months. So we’d deeply appreciate your help for Giving Tuesday by donating to help pay our postage costs. Both one-off and recurring donations are needed. And feel free to contact us if you need to donate via an alternative platform (donor advised fund, check, crypto, etc.)  This Thanksgiving, we’d like to thank you for your help in making PLP a success. We’re a grassroots, all-volunteer organization where 100% of donations go directly towards our core goal. And we couldn’t do it without you. Thanks so much, Prisoners Literature Project co-ordinators and volunteers. PS – while we’re keeping Grassroots House as our HQ, we’re running out of space! We’re looking for an extra inexpensive 1,000+ sq. ft space in – or close to – Berkeley, CA where we can run group volunteer sessions, store books, etc. If you can help, please contact us. |
Great news – this awesome ‘save the USPS’ T-shirt from IWantMyHoneyTV is available for a limited time only here: https://iwantmyhoney.tv.
All proceeds will go to buying U.S. Postal Service stamps to send books to prisoners via the PLP!
(Thanks so much to the IWantHoney.TV crew for getting us involved. We’re a massive fan of the USPS, since we rely on them so much to get books to prisoners!)
This article from Curbed SF mentions Prisoners Literature Project as a good place to donate your unwanted books!
https://sf.curbed.com/2019/1/24/18182230/donate-books-clothes-furniture-cleaning-marie-kondo-where
(We dig this a lot, but reminder: please try to taylor physical book donations to those on our donation list – https://www.prisonlit.org/donate/ – tho we’re also looking for sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks recently.)
The PLP gets notable donations of books from time to time, & will be trying to highlight & thank those involved more in the future. This first installment showcases two helpful donations. More info…
We just wanted to thank everybody for your amazing response to our GivingTuesday campaign – we met our matching goal, thanks to you all! More info…
You can now support an independent book dealer — and the Prisoners Literature Project, too! More info…
The Prisoners Literature Project is an inclusive, all-volunteer, grassroots nonprofit whose purpose is to encourage reading, the pursuit of knowledge, and self-determination among incarcerated people. By sending free reading materials to those behind bars, PLP aims to foster learning and critical thinking and help people prepare to lead successful lives after incarceration. We believe that all people have a right to read.
