Our Voice
Flying Over Walls Prisoner Solidarity Project SF Bay Area Black & Pink Welcome to the first-ever issue of Our Voice! Flying Over Walls, formerly a chapter of Black & Pink National (see Disaffiliation Statement on page 5), is a Queer/Trans Prisoner Solidarity Project in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are a volunteer-sustained prison abolition group that builds a family between LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, questioning.. and more) people inside and outside California prisons. You are receiving this very first issue of our newspaper because you were on the list of Black & Pink members in California when we officially disaffiliated from Black & Pink National and became our own organization. It’s our intention to stay in touch with our LGBTQ+ incarcerated family in California. If you do not want to remain a part of our Flying Over Walls list of inside members, just let us know and we will remove you. Our work toward the abolition of policing and prisons is rooted in the experience of currently and formerly incarcerated people. We respond to the violence and isolation of the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) through advocacy, education, direct action, and community building and by connecting queer and trans prisoners to community members outside of prison. As part of our work, we host letterwriting events, workshops, and make penpal connections. Penpals are important because they provide mutual support to people in and beyond prison. We recognize that many LGBTQ+ prisoners are particularly vulnerable to isolation, abuse, and mistreatment within the prison system: having the opportunity to build strong relationships across prison walls can be incredibly beneficial to our mental and material realities.
Some of you may have connected with a penpal through our program already, and some of you may be wondering why you’ve never heard from anyone since signing up. While we are working to increase the reach of our penpal program, at this time there are more inside members than outside members interested in penpal correspondence. As we work to increase the number of penpal connections through our program, we hope you enjoy receiving the occasional birthday or holiday card. You may fill out the enclosed form to either sign up for or update your information for the penpal program. This does not guarantee you will get a penpal, but it means your name and bio will be made available to our outside members who are looking to make a penpal connection. Most outside penpals are looking for friendship and platonic connections, so although there is nothing wrong with looking for romantic or sexual connections through our penpal program, you should be aware that bios that read like “personals” ads are less likely to get a response. We encourage you to share some information about yourself such as your interests, hobbies, background, or beliefs, as Continued on page 7
In This Issue: Inside the Walls…………………………………… Page 2 Legal Updates……………………………………… Page 4 Disaffiliation Statement…………………….. Page 5 Interested in Study Group ………………... Page 6 LGBTQ+ Word Search……………………..… Page 6 Palestine Statement………………………….… Page 7 Artwork by Casper Cendre (pg 1), Naomi Anurag Lahiri, Jessica Marie Hann (pg 2), Jeff Murphy (pg 3), and Danny Boy (pg 8)
Flying Over Walls Prisoner Solidarity Project. Issue 1 Jan. 2024
INSIDE THE WALLS
Page 2
No Me, Without You Hi FOW Family,
My name is Kelli Renae Blackwell and I'm a Transwoman that has been housed @ CCWF under SB132 since its inception of January 2021. I arrived here in April '21 and while I've been able to make positive adjustments with my transition from the men's prison to the women's, I feel its urgent to convey to all contemplating transferring that 'attitude' will be your best transitional companion. What I mean by this is an understanding that most of what you'll receive will be under your control as to how you handle it. Very little will be new other than a Gender-Affirming environment which comes with 'attitude'...(make no mistake about it.) For me, as with most trans women who've arrived, this climate has many highs and lows unbeknownst prior to. And expecting 'a fair shake' is setting yourself up for failure. It would be remiss of me to leave out that over half of the cis population are unwelcoming, which is their issues not yours, that's why my suggestion of having a traveling companion will serve you justice. Not to forget (r•e•s•p•e•c•t). After a while things will become your new normal as they have for those of us remaining.
Inside the walls is where we present letters, poems, artwork, and information from our inside leaders and advisors.
Artwork by Naomi Anurag Lahiri
I like it here. Many have wrapped their arms around me providing shelter and protection. Some have not...(again, their issues not mine.) At the end of the day, people will be people wherever we are in life. I accept what good and reject the rest. But lessons come with both. I welcome you. You have community. You have support. 90% of your journey will be in your control, the remaining 10% requires a healthy attitude of acceptance. Because you'll be tried and tested...(make no mistake.). Remaining Vertical -Kelli Renae
Flying Over Walls Prisoner Solidarity Project. Issue 1 Jan. 2024
INSIDE THE WALLS
Lesbian Corner
I have noticed a trend that while Black & Pink is for the whole LGBTQ community there are not many articles pertaining to lesbian women. I still find some things that I identify with, however, as a lesbian woman I decided I would like to bring a new contribution to this newsletter. I have been incarcerated since 2008 for killing my boyfriend. I know that means I was at one point into men. However the debate is often were you born gay or did you become that way? I believe I personally was born bisexual but due to life circumstances I have lost interest in men. One thing I have noticed over my past 15 years of incarceration is that many people here come to prison with the “gay for the stay” mentality. What that means is that they choose to come in here and get in relationships with people of the same gender because they don’t want to spend their time alone, so they form their surroundings, but only for as long as they are incarcerated. You have women in here who come to prison, shave their heads to look like “boys” knowing other women who miss having men in their lives will take care of the financially, they claim to be lesbians, then when they get out they are with men and not long after many of them are pregnant. I know some of this first hand because towards the beginning of my prison stay, I was one of them. I shaved my head, got with a feminine girl and she became my “meal ticket.” Now my problem is not that people want companionship while they are incarcerated, it is people pretending to be something they are not. I am in a good relationship with a partner who was legally married to a woman before she got arrested. However, their relationship ended when my partner got arrested. My partner has fallen in love with me and wants to get out of prison and be with me. I want to be with her too. However,
Page 3
considering how hurt she would be if we got out and I had the ability to be with men and left her for one, I would be breaking her heart. When people pretend to be what they are not, then get with someone who is actually gay/lesbian the potential for one person’s heart to get broken is huge. This is not okay. At the very least communication must be established. Anyway I know this is just one of the many issues lesbians in prison face, and there are many more. What I would like to do is create a safe place for us to share our hopes, dreams, fears, hurts, and whatever else may come to mind. My goal is not to leave the rest of my community out as I know others probably go through similar issues. I just have noticed there doesn’t seem to be much of anything in these newsletters devoted to lesbians and I would like to offer a space that has a tilt on this. I hope others will be inspired to add to this article, and if you don’t have anything personal to contribute let me know if I am the only one who sees the subject I mentioned as frustrating. Happy trails to my LGBTQ family. Love, Shadow D @ CCWF
Artwork by Jeff Murphy
Flying Over Walls Prisoner Solidarity Project. Issue 1 Jan. 2024
LEGAL UPDATES CA Assembly Bill AB 600 was signed into law last October by Gov. Newsome. This law is supposed to offer a new “second look: sentencing opportunity for thousands of imprisoned people in California prisons. AB 600 goes into effect on goes into effect January 1st 2024. This law allows judges to reevaluate old sentences that may seem unfair in light of changes in law and/or new individual circumstances. In fact, this law is very complicated and places a tremendous amount of flexibility and discretion in the hands of individual judges, a statewide implementation effort is being made through the Stanford Law Center, Three Strikes Project to work with judges, public defenders, incarcerated people, in-reach organizations, reentry organizations, and other stakeholders to help make sure the new law works as effectively, efficiently, and fairly as possible. That said, there are important limitations of this bill you should be aware of: First and most importantly: The new law leaves the re-sentencing decision entirely in the hands of trial court judges. There is no requirement that a judge change a sentence in any case. A judge can refuse a sentence change for any reason at all and can do so without explanation. A judge who wants to change an old sentence must believe a new, reduced sentence is in the “interest of justice.” Second, the law only applies to people who are serving a sentence under a law that has changed since the original sentence was imposed. In California, that covers a lot of people. Unfortunately, sentencing statutes can be complicated, and it may not be clear who is covered (and who is not). Currently Ella Baker Center and the Stanford Law Center are in the process of compiling a list of laws that have changed to help with the process.
Page 4
Third, the law does not provide any process for making a request for a new sentence. This means a judge can ignore any request for a new sentence. It is entirely up to the individual judge. Fourth, the new law does not provide a right to counsel and different public defender offices throughout the state will undoubtedly handle these cases differently. Again, Ella Baker Center and Stanford Law Center are already working with public defenders to make sure as many people as possible are assisted by attorneys in this process, and the Stanford Law Center is working to develop templates so incarcerated people, attorneys, and family and friends can have some guidance through the process. A bumpy road is expected ahead in some jurisdictions, especially in the beginning, and the process may seem unclear and perhaps unfair. Some people will be lucky, and others will be unlucky. Some cases will be handled quickly and others slowly and inefficiently. This isn’t how justice should be, but it’s the reality in a large state like California. However, Judges will have an opportunity to correct past mistakes, incorporate new laws, and account for changes in individual circumstances. Thanks to Ella Baker Center and Stanford Law Center Three Strikes Project for summarizing this bill. For more information, contact: Michael Romano Director, Three Strikes Project Stanford Law School 559 Nathan Abbott Way Stanford, CA 94305 The Three Strikes Project is an award-winning, independently funded program based at Stanford Law School, and staffed largely by law students who work under close supervision of senior practicing attorneys. To support their work or learn more about the program, please visit hreestrikesproject.org or email mromano@stanford.edu.
Flying Over Walls Prisoner Solidarity Project. Issue 1 Jan. 2024
OTHER UPDATES
Disaffiliation Statement
Page 5
Flying Over Walls Prisoner Solidarity Project, a.k.a. SF Bay Area Black & Pink, has disaffiliated from Black & Pink National as both a chapter and as a fiscal sponsee. We are charting a course again as an independent organization. Our leadership team struggled for a very long time with this decision, but in the end decided it would be in the best interests of both our organization and our inside members to take this step.
we recognize this shift as contributing to our growing misalignment of values. It is important to us that we continue to focus our resources on mutual aid and direct support and collaboration with currently incarcerated LGBTQ+ people. We also recognize that many of the shifts in goals and programming of Black & Pink National appear to be influenced by funding sources, and we wish to separate ourselves as much as possible from the non-profit industrial complex that seeks to control and pacify our movements through capitalist organizational structures.
Flying Over Walls Prisoner Solidarity Project began in 2011 and affiliated in 2014 as a chapter of Black and Pink. FoW affiliated as a chapter under a, then, shared understanding that Black & Pink was a grassroots, anti-capitalist, feminist, anti-racist, anti-Zionist organization with anarchist roots, deeply dedicated to abolishing the prison industrial complex and to liberating LGBTQIA2S+ people who are affected by the PIC, particularly through letter writing, organizing, and advocacy with our currently incarcerated queer and trans family.
It was also becoming increasingly challenging for us to feel we had agency in contributing to a large National Organization with the turnover that has been occurring over the past many years, at all levels of the organization. We have found mutual communication and transparency to be challenging. We have also been disturbed by the multiple reports from Black & Pink National staff of their experiences within the organization. We hope that the staffing issues, leadership transitions, and labor disputes move towards resolution and stability.
Since the establishment of Black & Pink National as a 501c3, FoW has recognized a shift and deviation from both our shared abolitionist goals and our shared focus on letter writing, organizing, and advocacy with currently incarcerated LGBTQIA2S+ people. This included the attempt Black & Pink National made in 2019 to remove the word “abolitionist” from its mission statement, the decreased investment in staffing and resources in support of our currently incarcerated members (relative to the investment in reentry and youth programming, etc), and most recently, the transition from being an explicitly prison abolitionist organization to identifying as a sex worker liberation project.
As well, we have come to see the value in having independence as a local organization to structure our finances, decision-making, and programming. We have, in many ways, already been functioning largely autonomously. And we have been connected/ing to a network of other chapters, many of whom have also disaffiliated or are in the process of disaffiliating.
While we wholeheartedly support sex worker liberation and the decriminalization of sex work,
Over the years that we have been a chapter, we have gained strength and knowledge from being connected to a national network of queer and trans abolitionists, and we look forward to working as a coalition partner with Black and Pink National, as well as with other current and Continued on Page 8
Flying Over Walls Prisoner Solidarity Project. Issue 1 Jan. 2024
Interested in a study group?
Page 6
We are planning to organize another inside-outside study group, hopefully getting started sometime this year. We haven’t chosen our reading material yet, but it will be related to prison abolition (the movement to build a world without cops or cages) through the lens of our experiences as queer and trans people. Our goals for this group, like our past study groups in 2016 and 2020, are to learn and grow together, to deepen our relationships across prison walls, and to create opportunities for our inside membership (you!) to become more involved in the leadership of Flying Over Walls. The group will probably be structured similarly to our previous study groups: participation would mean being matched 1-on-1 to a non-incarcerated study group member for the length of the study group (about 4-6 months), receiving a book or a set of readings in the mail, sending us your thoughts on the readings to share with the rest of the group and then receiving notes from the study group conversations. Please note that we do not have an exact timeline for this project yet—it could be up to a year before we get the study group started, but we want to gauge interest in advance. Also, although we would love to include everyone who is interested, we will probably only have space for about 10 inside members and 10 outside members. If you are interested, please write to us with a little info about yourself and why you want to participate, and of course let us know if you have any questions or feedback. We will keep track of everyone who is interested and will reach out again when we are closer to getting the group started.
LGBTQ+ Word Search
Word List ALLY ASEXUAL BISEXUAL DRAG EQUALITY GAY GENDERQUEER IDENTITY INTERSEX LESBIAN LOVE PANSEXUAL PRIDE QUEER QUESTIONING TRANSGENDER TWO SPIRIT Source by BrightSprout
Flying Over Walls Prisoner Solidarity Project. Issue 1 Jan. 2024
OTHER UPDATES Continued from Page 1 well as who you would like to write to (or if you are open to writing to anyone). You will also be added to our list to receive holiday and birthday cards and occasional updates from us. Please let us know if you do not wish to be added to any of these mailing lists. There is also a section on the form where you can request resources: we will mail you these upon receiving your form, but please note that you are not signing up for a subscription to receive the zines or resources on an ongoing basis. However, you are welcome to write to us anytime to request the listed resources or other resources, articles or information that we can look up online, print and send to you. We will always do our best to respond as quickly as possible, but we appreciate your patience as we are all volunteers and still building our capacity! In Solidarity, Flying Over Walls/SF Bay Area Black & Pink
Palestine Statement (abbreviated from Critical Resistance) We are including this statement, adapted from Critical Resistance and Queer Crescent: We join communities all over the world in condemning the horrific aggression of the apartheid state of Israel against the people of Gaza and across Palestine. As an organization working to abolish the prison industrial complex (PIC), we are in deep solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation, and with all struggles against colonialism, imperialism, and war. The apartheid state of Israel has declared an all-out war on the people of Gaza in response to Palestinian resistance that its own repression has
Page 7
bred, with its defense minister calling Palestinians “human animals.” The apartheid state of Israel is making it clear to the entire world that they are on a genocidal campaign in Gaza, subjecting its population to as much suffering and death as possible. A people who are subjected to decades of control and repression of actual prison buildings, open air prisons, military occupation, apartheid, the violence of policing – or the combination of all these, as is the case in Palestine – have the absolute and undeniable right and justification to defend themselves and resist their oppression. Whether it be prisoners held in the US organizing and resisting against their cages and captors, communities rising up as they did after George Floyd’s killing in 2020 against the US domestic war-making machine known as policing, or Palestinians fighting against apartheid and military occupation, we uplift people’s right to resistance and self-defense. We also reject Israel “pinkwashing” its occupation of Palestine by promoting itself as a haven for LGBTQ rights. This narrative reinforces racist stereotypes and assumes Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians are inherently homophobic. Pinkwashing propaganda – including an Israeli soldier's photo with a rainbow flag over destroyed homes and buildings in Gaza – is used to justify Israel’s continued repression and murder of Palestinians, including queer Palestinians, and must be firmly rejected for what it is by LGBTQ people. Even with all the historical and ongoing repression, we know that repression breeds resistance, and we uplift the connections of our movements, from Turtle Island to Palestine. We uplift for instance, the direct messages of solidarity sent in 2011 between Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike protesting Administrative Detention and the prisoners in California’s Pelican Bay maximum security prison simultaneously on hunger strike to protest solitary confinement. Continued on Page 8
Flying Over Walls Prisoner Solidarity Project. Issue 1 Jan. 2024
Page 8
Disaffiliation Continued from Page 5
Statement
former chapters. It is our hope and intention to develop a renewed and positive relationship with Black & Pink National leadership as an independent organization. We plan to stay connected to the broader and historical network of Black and Pink by continuing to reference our organization secondarily as San Francisco Bay Area Black & Pink, given our long presence and recognition in our local community by this name. What does this mean for you? This does not affect your inclusion on National penpal lists or newsletter subscriptions. However, if you would like to update your information with Black & Pink National moving forward (about the B&P newsletter or about your penpal listing in the National database), you will need to communicate directly with them at: Black & Pink National 6223 Maple St #4600 Omaha, NE 68104
Palestine Continued from Page 7
Statement
Our vision for a world free of cops and cages does not stop at the constructed borders of the US; PIC abolition is international, and that includes supporting the struggle for the freedom of all Palestinian political prisoners enduring apartheid Israel’s prisons and jails, and for the complete dismantling of its racist and militarized systems of control. We end by echoing the decades-long demands of the Palestinian people’s movement for liberation and self-determination: 1) End the apartheid-Israeli military occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands, and dismantle the apartheid walls 2) Recognize the basic and fundamental human and civil rights of all Palestinians across all of historic Palestine 3) Respect and allow the internationally recognized right for Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and indigenous lands, which includes restitution and reparations Long live people’s resistance toward liberation, and long live international solidarity!
To update your address or other information on our Flying Over Walls list, you can mail us at: Flying Over Walls PO Box 401014 San Francisco, CA 94140 We welcome your feedback on this transition. If you are interested in getting more involved as an inside leader or advisor, please reach out!
Our movement partner Critical Resistance is a national organization working to abolish the PIC. CR’s newspaper, The Abolitionist, is free to prisoners. Contact CR at: Critical Resistance PO Box 22780, Oakland, CA 94609-2301
Flying Over Walls Prisoner Solidarity Project. Issue 1 Jan. 2024