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.
Volunteers have continued to send out many, many packages each month in response to letters received from incarcerated people. They often comment that their facility libraries are still closed due to COVID. So, our efforts here at the Prisoners Literature Project continue to be a lifeline for keen readers. Here are some thank you notes that we’ve received from happy book recipients. We LOVE these letters!
We wanted to update you all on the post-pandemic status of the Prisoners Literature Project (http://www.prisonlit.org), share the packed state of our library thanks to your donations (see above!), and tell you what we’d love your help with.
Firstly, we are back to doing in-person book packing sessions in our Berkeley, CA headquarters (Grassroots House), sending packages of books to incarcerated U.S. folks who request them. We’re using all vaccinated volunteers, masking at all times, and the doors/windows open. We’re doing solo sessions, or running with a limited number of group volunteers (up to 8 per session), so sessions are by invitation only.
If you live in the Bay Area and are interested in being given access to our online calendar so you can pick a session to attend, please visit our ‘volunteering’ page and fill out the Google Form linked there.
(We’re planning to run with this private session format for at least the medium-term. And apologies if we don’t get back to you straight away due to demand.)
Secondly, wanted to share (above) just one of many thank-you letters we’ve been receiving from incarcerated folks. Especially during these rough COVID times, the incarcerated genuinely appreciate getting high quality books for free from us. So thank you for making that possible!
On that front, we’ve been using some of your funds to get great ‘remainder’ books. But we’d love you to consider buying us some of the books on our wishlist. These are some of our most-requested books, but are very tricky for us to find remaindered.
Finally, we have even more plans for the future. We’ve added a storage unit relatively recently, to help with the overflow of high quality books, we’re working with many local Bay Area book stores to get high quality donations from their customers, and lots more besides.
Overall, we are ramping back up towards sending 250 packages of books per week – so 1,000 packages and 3-4,000 books per month – to the incarcerated across the entire U.S. And we appreciate your financial donations towards postage and other costs to keep doing this. We’ll send out another update later this year!
February is Black History Month, and the Prisoners Literature Project is honoring the month by updating our book wishlist with a host of titles themed around the month.
“Black people are disproportionately incarcerated and policed, with Black Americans being almost 5 times more likely to be incarcerated in state and federal prisons than their white counterparts. This consequence of systemic racism motivates PLP to send books to further empower incarcerated people and fight for social justice.”
Please consider buying us some of the books on our wishlist to help us – and the incarcerated people we serve – during Black History Month. And once again, thanks for your support for the PLP – we genuinely appreciate it.
We’re continuing to work through the pandemic here at Prisoners Literature Project, with individual co-ordinators answering letters solo for safety reasons. And we’re still getting lots of thank you letters from grateful prisoners.
So we thought we’d present three of them here – so we can pass along the sense of gratitude prisoners have when we’re able to get them books with your kind help.
So please keep supporting us, and we’ll keep getting books out to incarcerated people in these trying times.
The Belly Of The Beast documentary, “An exposé of human rights abuses in women’s prisons, highlighting modern-day eugenics & reproductive injustice”, has announced a holiday book drive in association with the Prisoners Literature Project.
Here’s the full information from the film’s Twitter feed:
In partnership with @prisonerlitproj, BELLY OF THE BEAST is hosting a holiday book drive for individuals who are incarcerated.
More information on the documentary itself and how to view it is available on the film’s official website. We’d like to thank them for their kind partnership.
Sadly, the U.S. Postal Service – which we find vital for sending books to prisoners – continues to be under attack.
So the Prisoners Literature Project would like to thank two different organizations who made kind donations to the PLP, so that we could use them on postage for ‘books to prisoners’ mail.
(Also, keep checking out the IWantMyHoney Instagram for regular T-shirt drops, a number of which are social justice related!)
Secondly, the F Mag & Kingsboro Press mail art auction on eBay – which auctioned off many pieces of art on envelopes that were sent through the mail – raised thousands of dollars for multiple recipients.
PLP was lucky enough to be pledged $800 from that auction – thanks to everyone involved in that – here’s some info about the art from the (now ended) auction.
Finally, many of you have donated money or sent stamps, so thanks again for this! (If you do want to send us stamps, you can do so to the 2022 Blake St. address, but please try to send $1 or $2 stamps if possible! Thanks.)
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!)
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.
Please consider donating to the PLP or volunteering your time (if you live in the Bay Area, CA!) to help us answer letters from prisoners who write us from all over the United States.
Mailing address for U.S. prisoner book requests:
Prisoner Literature Project
c/o Bound Together Books
1369 Haight St
San Francisco, CA 94117
There's more info here on what else prisoners need to include with their requests.
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