Readers: Want to share this with you.

ABOUT THE COALITION FOR PRISONERS' RIGHTS
P O Box 1911 * Santa Fe NM 87504

UPDATE: September 2012

The Coalition began sending its Newsletter and Resource Lists to prisoners and others, who request them, in 1976. In mid-2009, we changed our eight-page bulk-mailed Newsletter format to one sheet, front and back. We began mailing out the most recent 11 issues as part of our response to every communication we received, along with our eight page national resource list and applicable state resource list. We supply copies of other of our over 100 resource lists on a variety of topics when they are asked for. We also mail every issue of the Newsletter to those who supply us with stamped, self-addressed envelopes. The amount of correspondence, overwhelmingly from prisoners all over the country, more than 300 letters a month, remains constant.

We are also working hard to maintain the accuracy of our mailing list. PLEASE CONTINUE TO SEND US YOUR CHANGES OF ADDRESS so you will automatically receive our year-end holiday card/new calendar.

STAMPS, AS WELL AS FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTIONS, CONTINUE TO BE MOST WELCOME AND NECESSARY.

We are an all volunteer group of approximately a dozen people at any one time. Some of us have been imprisoned, some are family members of those who are, all are deeply concerned about the shameful lack of human rights in our country. We have recently benefited enormously from expanding cooperative relationships with several area schools and the participation of short-term student volunteers. We have existed all this time -- since 1972 -- by the thinnest of financial threads and a great deal of focused determination and hard work. NONE OF US ARE LAWYERS OR LEGAL WORKERS. We believe our Newsletter readership exceeds the number of letters we receive by at least a factor of ten. We find that many prisoner correspondents keep our materials for years, and then write us for updates. We have supported our work with individuals' donations (both in-kind and cash), contributions from church groups, and a few grants from progressive foundations.

We continue to believe that the U.S. police, court, and penal systems make our communities less, rather than more, safe. We oppose punishment and torture as tools for positive social change. Prisons as presently constituted are dangerous not only to community safety, but also to community health, welfare, and development. Yet the U.S. with less than five percent of the world's population, has created and maintains a society of mass incarceration with almost 25% of the world's prisoners. We will continue to do all we can to change this tragic and unconscionable situation. Please join us!

Despite what everyone envisions as the Coalition, this is our humble home, Hopeland.

COALITION FOR PRISONERS' RIGHTS
PO Box 1911 * Santa Fe NM 87504 * 505-982-9520
since 1976

Read their newsletter at: www.realcostofprisonsproject.org/coalition.html

Mission Statement

We work with others, nationally, and locally, to gather and to disseminate information, analysis, and action alternatives for those imprisoned, formerly imprisoned, their family members and allies. We work to build unity and positive opportunities for all of us affected by the US mass incarceration system. We strive to shed light on the realities of incarceration, to improve jail and prison conditions, and to reduce sentence lengths. We believe that the police, court and penal system is dependent on continuing the institutionalization of poverty and racism. We oppose punishment as a tool for positive social change and believe prisons as presently constituted are dangerous to community health, safety, and development.

Readers: I respect these people's efforts to abolish the oppression of humans within prisons, so I'm sharing their info with you. However, I disagree with their position on racism fueling the oppressive system.

The topic deserves more words than can be wrote on this sheet, yet I must briefly point out these truths:

1) Many non-whites (best P.C. term I can think of) damn themselves to a deadly cycle of crime, drugs, prisons, H.I.V. + death (etc.) by the CULTURE they've adopted, raised their offspring in + tolerate. Despite guilt-ridden white people trying to help break this suicide culture, along with the likes of Oprah + Bill Cosby, the ghetto, gangsta culture lives, while killing them. I've only met 3 blacks during my 14 years in prison who've claimed to be innocent; most are proudly guilty. Yes, the white-trash subculture has its own variation of the same death culture.

2) Non-white prisoners mostly tolerate the extreme + violent anti-white racism (e.g. assaults, extortions, bullying, rapes + psych. warfare) of prisoners among them that they tolerate as their leaders, resulting non-white prisoners + staff becoming defensively racist or more racist - creating or worsening the very problem they claim to be opposed to.

True, I'm "racially conscious" + white. Judge my opinions accordingly. I respect my ethnicity + culture, despite some rotten wood in my family tree, which I might myself be fairly deemed.

The system feeds off of indifference, lack of empathy, which can't be created by labelling those who create or tolerate the system, UNFAIRLY, of being "racist". They're really "just" greedy, hypocritical hustlers.