“Julie Blair is an artist and media enthusiast who loves the Internet! Tom Léger is a writer and publisher who loves buying out of print books online! With an every growing talented cast of friends, they are responsible for the blog Pretty Queer, and Topside Press, which focuses on trans narratives. With artist Kenny O, they created the artwork for, Life Chances: HIV Criminalization and Trans Politics, a conversation with Che Gossett, Dean Spade, Sean Strub, and guests.

Below Julie and Tom discuss together the process of making the artwork, invisibility, and the role creativity can play in making social change.

VISUAL AIDS: What was your inspiration making the art for the event?
Since October we’ve been working with Black and Pink to send copies of our book The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard to trans and queer prisoners, which means that we’ve been processing a lot of prison mail. One of the first things you notice when you’re going through hundreds of letters from prisoners is that a lot of them get stamped on their way out of the correctional institution with notes to warn the reader that the letter came from an inmate. The net effect of these warnings is really just stigmatizing the contents of the letter, and the author. They are a way of saying: don’t trust anything you read inside this envelope, and a way of making the inmate invisible.

Anyway, these stamps really stuck with us and when sitting down to plan out what a visual representation of this event would look like, we wanted to incorporate those stamps in some way because in the same way that HIV stigma works to invisibilize and invalidate the person whose body is carrying the virus, these stamps invisibilize and invalidate the person who wrote the letter.”

Read more at Visual Aids!

1. Fight against the proposed CPS School closures. Community members and local organizations are packing meetings citywide to express their opposition to closing more schools in already devastated neighborhoods. On March 8 from 6 to 8 p.m. testify at a Citywide People’s School Board Meeting. First Unitarian Church, 5650 S. Woodlawn Ave.

Join the Grassroots Education Movement on March 27 for a city wide rally to save public education. Contact organizing@ctulocal1.com or 312-329-6227 for more information about both opportunities.

2. Learn about and advocate for restorative and transformative justice. On March 16, there will be a Southside Restorative Justice Expo from 9 to 1:30 p.m. Details are here.

3. Join the Mental Health Movement which is fighting to save our existing mental health clinics from closure in Chicago.

4. Interrupt the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Support the Yes to Counselors, No to More Cops in Schools Campaign. Find out more here.

5. Interrupt the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Teach youth how to catalogue police harassment and overdiscipline at school. Encourage youth to join existing coalitions like Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE) to organize against harsh school discipline policies that lead to school pushout.

6. Support the young people from Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY) as they organize to bring a needed trauma center to the Southside that will serve EVERYONE. Sign their petition here and organize with them here.

7. Close Dwight Prison Now – Tell your legislators (more information is forthcoming).

8. Learn about the history of policing, violence, and resistance. Attend a series of events starting March 18th. Details here.

9. Support the efforts of several community organizations to close the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) and re-direct the funds to community-based alternatives to detention and to programming that will support youth. Read their position paper.

10. Support youth-led efforts like the Street Youth Rise Up Campaign (organized by the Young Women’s Empowerment Project) which are documenting and organizing against institutional violence. Share their Bad Encounter Line report with others.

11. Join the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign.

12. Invite youth members of the Know Your Rights Project to speak with their peers and adults about their rights in the criminal legal system (especially with law enforcement). Schedule a workshop here.

13. Join parents across Chicago who are organizing for quality education and against the school-to-prison pipeline through POWER-PAC and Community Organizing & Family Issues.

14. Get educated about the PIC. Attend upcoming FREE workshops. Details are here.

Gather a group of people together and invite members of the Chicago PIC Teaching Collective to your religious institution or community group to offer our 4 hour PIC 101 workshop. Details are here.

15. Host your own teach-in about the prison industrial complex with 5 friends in your self-defined community. Use the zine titled “The PIC Is” as a starting point for discussion.

16. Support organizations that are fighting against immigrant detention and deportations. These include groups like the Moratorium on Deportations Campaign.

17. Support and join the campaign to Raise the Minimum Wage in Illinois.

18. If you care about programs that affect the lives of children, become an advocate with Illinois Action For Children.

19. Support and join the Chicago Grassroots Curriculum Taskforce to create and disseminate RELEVANT curricula for young people in CPS and beyond.

20. Reach out to those currently locked up behind bars. Support Chicago Books for Women in Prison, TAMMS-YEAR 10, Write to Win, Transformative Justice Law Project.

21. Stop relying on and calling the police to solve any and all community problems. Consider alternatives to policing. If you would like to schedule a listening session about alternatives to policing in your community, contact projectnia@hotmail.com. You need to gather a group of at least 10 people.

22. Join the Illinois Campaign to End the New Jim Crow as they organize against police violence.

23. Start a Creative Resistance Project like the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials or use an existing toolkit from the Missing Project for ideas to implement in your community.

24. Refuse to serve on juries for drug cases or consider nullification if you do serve on drug cases as a juror.

25. Time is NOT money. Open your wallets and contribute needed funds to local organizations who are addressing issues of concern in your community and beyond. Also insist the public resources be spent on education, healthcare, youth programs, housing, etc… rather than police & prisons.

26. Finally, pay attention to the laws that are being proposed at the city, state, and federal level. Ask yourself if the proposed law is going to “extend or curtail the reach of the PIC.” If the answer is extend it, then mobilize to oppose these laws. Vote against TOUGH ON CRIME politicians at all levels of government. You can follow some of the juvenile justice related laws here.

“Prison’s latest move changes battleground

the transsexual hunger strike at the r.j. donovan prison in california that was the initiative of gender anarky has ended.  the two girls on strike, amazon and cat, are now eating.

the change in the battlefield came as the prison moved to transfer both girls.  at this, a tactical decision was made to end the strike and shift tactics.  it would have been futile to oppose the transfers, as prison rules and courts give great discretion to prisoncrats in matters of transfers.  it also gives them leeway to act tyrannically with transfer to disrupt and retaliation against in-prison activism.  the girls are known to be radicals who struggle for transsexual medicine and human rights.  they are also aware that cat and amazon are partnerss, lovers, and resent it.  so by transferring the girls out they got rid of radicalism and lesbianism in a single stroke.  the transfer hearings were a sham and a farce, typical kangaroo court, as prisons everywhere are notorious for.  but it will not deter the girls in their insurrection against prisons, government, and civilization.  the girls have accepted that they will be separated soon, for how long they are not sure.  it could be one or two or more years that they end up on the same yard together again.  amazon is a lifer with some years to go, cat will be getting out in about eight years.  but they also keep uppermost that the insurrection is not about individuals but about masses of people.  they will mourn when they are separated, while continuing to sharpen their weapons of resistance to the tyranny of government and prisons, they the civilization that spawned them, utterly degenerate and putrid to the core and deserving not an iota less of merciless destruction.  wherever they are sent, the girls will continue on the path of anarkist insurrection, spreading the word, and always recruiting.

amazon and cat send their affectionate love and admiration to all who resist civilization, and a special embrace to all those who sent letters and cards and zeens during the hunger strike and so much love and support, letting them know that they were not alone.  your concern for them is matched with theirs for you.

to be sure, the girls continue to conspire and hopefully can maneuver themselves back together.  the details of this cannot be revealed publicly lest the enemy know.  but for the purpose of this communique the hunger strike is hereby terminated.

messages about the developing situation with amazon and cat will be posted in future press releases.

**the prison has begun to harrass our mail from supporters.  a letter from [a comrade] in oakland was marked ‘return to sender’ by the pig in the housing block and sent back to the mailroom for no noted reason.  but the mailroom sent it back to the block again and it was only after a comment to cat by another pig that cat was able to track it down and get it.  if anyone gets mail you sent us marked ‘rts’ simply resend it.  these kinds of things are a typical fuck-with-them ploy on the part of the prison department’s counter-insurgency.  it will fail.

love and hugs to all,

amazon and cat
Help keep support for Gender Anarky going!

We’ve scammed and paid for a good amount of stuff in order to keep letters, funds to publish Gender Anarky’s zine on the regular and send them out to other trans women in prison, phone calls, money to send GA girls the books they wanna read, but we’re also broke as hell and can’t keep spending all our money   Just a couple dollars for a few people here and there would make a HUGE difference in terms of Gender Anarky and their consistent support network’s ability to survive in the long-term.  Thanks to everyone who responded to our calls with the utmost urgency during the strike, your actions have kept us ever more motivated to destroy this miserable world.

Donate here: Support Gender Anarky//”

• Once you choose pen-pal(s), take a moment to fill out our form so we can track who is being written to.
• Before you write, check out the Pen-Pal Guidelines.
• Grab a friend and be pen-pal buddies—schedule a regular time to meet at a cafe and write your pen-pals!  Boston has monthly pen-pal parties on the first Thursday at 7pm at Spontaneous Celebrations in Jamaica Plain! Contact dustin at blackandpink.org for more info.
• If you’re writing to a federal prisoner, offer them your email address in your first letter so that they can request to communicate with you more easily (and free for you) through the Corrlinks site.
• Many prisons and jails use Jpay.com .  You can buy virtual stamps to send emails, pictures, and videos.  Emails are printed out at the prison mail room within 2 days.  You’ll need to provide a return address to receive mail.

The Black & Pink family thanks you for being a pen-pal!

Please enjoy reading the notes and share with others. This is an ongoing collective process that needs so many voices.

Saturday, December 8, 2012; Doors open at 6pm; Program starts promptly at 7pm
Berklee Performance Center, 136 Massachusetts Ave., Boston, MA
Facebook event
Tickets

Brought to you by Critical Resistance, with the City School and Black and Pink, along with Alternatives for Community and Environment, Beantown Society, Boston Area Youth Organizing Project, Project Hip Hop, and Reflect and Strengthen.