June Abolition Apostles Newsletter
June Newsletter
**tl;dr - we have our quarterly All Hands meeting this upcoming Monday, June 24, at 8pm ET here! At this meeting, we’ll be discussing the results of our name change process & vote and discussing next steps around it. Hope to see you there!**
Letter From a Collective Editor
It’s a bit ironic to me that I’m this month’s newsletter editor. The past month has been a whirlwind – I finished graduate school, moved cities, attended a friend’s wedding, visited family, and had an intense, week-long work trip. In so many ways, there’s a small but persistent part of me that feels like I’ve been an inadequate penpal and abolitionist these past few months, missing many meetings as I tend to my personal life. I hadn’t heard from my penpal in several weeks, so the other day I finally wrote him a letter from one of my plane rides reflecting on these past weeks, feeling both grateful to be able to share with him and also guilty at how full my life feels right now, knowing how many of those same delights and possibilities are structurally denied to him.
It's months like this that remind me that penpaling and abolition are life-long commitments that will necessarily be full of different phases and heartbreak. I recently was recently reading a book about Simone Weil, a French philosopher, mystic, and political activist from the World War II era, and as I was looking back through my notes, I saw one approximate quote of hers that said: “we’re not required to give everything always, but we should give everything sometimes.” Weil was a very exacting person who also said “always do what will cost you the most,” so I found comfort in her words, which reminded me that it’s OK to have seasons like this one that have been more inwardly focused – as long as I’m honest about it, and attentive to when it is my turn to give my everything again. When do we need moments of respite – not as a permanent retreat from the work, but as the necessary spaciousness where we rest, breathe, and dream, so that we might soon re-enter the dance? Our activist and movement spaces aren’t always adept at navigating this balance of urgency and rest. We can sometimes want to brute force our way to the worlds we dream of, rather than finding ways to dance our way there together. The urgency is real and sacred and necessary – and, we must move at paces that will allow us to stay in this work for a lifetime. We must, as Toni Cade Bambara taught, build revolutions that are irresistible. After all, resisting all the time is hard, tiring work. How might we build abolitionist worlds that are irresistible, alluring, pleasurable – that are ready to always welcome us back with open arms, and help pull up a chair for us when we need a moment’s pause?
How might you – and we, as a collective - build liberation practices for ourselves that are irresistible? What’s your pleasure penpaling practice? Do you have a favorite spot you love to sit and write to your penpal from? Do you have writing parties with your friends? Do you have a picture of your penpal, where you get to look at their face and take time to truly connect with them as you write? Penpaling is not always easy – I’ve had to learn so many hard, sometimes awkward lessons about boundaries, clarity, communication, shame, and the continuous work of unlearning white supremacy and white saviorism. To me, being part of collectives like this one is part of how we make this work irresistible. Knowing y’all keeps me showing up. Being able to share what’s hard and feel supported in community at monthly Support Squad meetings helps keep me going and feel less alone. Our book club is for me a sacred space of connection, deep learning, and imagination. Meeting some of you 1-1 and being able to reach out when things are tough has been life-giving. What practices are you experimenting with and putting into place to help make this work possible, irresistible, sustainable, and life-long? If you’re like me and sometimes take yourself too seriously, I hope that this month can be an invitation to experiment with these possibilities so that we might develop the practices we need to make penpaling & abolition a life-long commitment.
All of this – falling off of our routines an commitments, coming back to them, building practices that help make this work irresistible, connecting to and supporting one another through moments of joy and grief alike - is also the work of abolition, and I am so grateful to get to be doing it with you.
Your June editor,
Nathalie
Here’s What’s Up This Month
Meetings
Refer to the calendar website, Slack, and Instagram for any schedule adjustments.
Quarterly All Hands Meeting is an open space for anyone involved in the collective – whether you’re just getting ready to attend your first orientation or you’ve been around for years – to meet, discuss larger questions or issues the group is facing, and work through any group decisions. Join us on Monday, June 24, at 8pm ET/5pm PT for this quarter’s meeting, where we’ll be discussing our name change among other things. Link here: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/95381528767?pwd=uPqWibazOh0EH7Zknn9IenQyMHCN1D.1
Support Squad is for anyone who would like a space to share and support one another in processing how penpaling is going. This month’s meeting is CANCELLED because its normal time is at the same time as our All Hands meeting this month! You can always join us next month, and if you need any support before then, feel free to email us (abolitionapostles@gmail.com) or post in Slack (either in the #general or #care channel)!
Texas Prison Mail Organizing Group meets to organize against a recent change to Texas mail policy that negatively impacts our pen pals. They meet on the third Tuesday of each month at 8:30pm ET/5:30pm PT, and their next meeting is on Tuesday, July 16 (link here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85073405798?pwd=Z3dYLzRVN0N0cEJLWSt3bWVrWlVaZz09) If you want to learn more, check out the #tdcj-mail-organizing channel on Slack.
Orientation: Whether you’ve never been matched with a pen pal, want a refresher, or want to invite a friend to join the collective, you’re welcome at orientation meetings! These typically happen at least twice a month. There’s one orientation scheduled for Sunday, June 23 at 1pm ET (link here: https://meet.google.com/aqk-ojes-xwp) as well as ones on Monday July 22 at 7pm ET (link here: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/96084791322?pwd=mPRS6ijjeOjS8w1IQnYGWV6fbEKZQZ.1) and Monday August 5 at 7pm ET (link here: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/98499143837?pwd=xEuULl6x9wMIe9705GUuuuITbNrj25.1). Other future dates are TBA. If you can’t make these dates, please send us an email. We can often make small group meetings at different times happen. See our calendar (https://www.abolitionapostles.com/calendar/) for meeting links.
Penpals Backend Working Group meets to coordinate all the logistics related to supporting pen pals, including matching pen pals after orientations, responding to emails, maintaining the website and database, and more. All are welcome to join us on Tuesday, July 2nd at 7:30 PM Central Time (8:30 Eastern, 5:30 Pacific). Meeting link: https://tulane.zoom.us/j/96858816880.
Book Club meets to read and discuss fiction books through an abolitionist lens. They will be starting a new book in July, and it’s not too late to vote on the book they’ll be reading! Join the #bookclub channel on Slack for more information to be kept up to our start date
Volunteer Opportunities
Last month, we put out a call for volunteers to help us send acknowledgment letters to folks on the inside who write us letters to be added to our penpal waitlist, letting them know that we’ve received their letter but that it might take a while to be matched. We had numerous people reach out to help – THANK YOU so much!! Volunteers like you make this work possible, and we couldn’t be more grateful. We now have enough volunteers to officially commit to this project!
However, we still have one more related ask to make that work sustainable! Sending those acknowledgment letters requires postage, printing, and envelope costs. We need to raise $40/month more in recurring donations to cover these costs. That means we need just 8 people to give $5/month! (You can also make one-time donations if you prefer.) If you’d like to donate, you can go to our Open Collective page here, where you can also learn more about how our money is used.
We might also need some technical assistance related to our upcoming name change (which we’ll discuss at this month’s All Hands)! How should we go about changing our Substack name, email address, social media handles, website, and any other writings & publications that feature our old name? Figuring out both (a) how to best do this and then (b) getting support to physically go through this work will be important! If you’d be interested, please email us at abolitionapostles@gmail.com or post on the #general channel in Slack
Looking for other ways to get involved? We’re a completely volunteer-run collective, so there are always more opportunities! In particular, if you’re interested in being involved in orientations – sending reminder emails, hosting them, and/or sending follow up match emails – we’re always looking for more people. Send us an email (abolitionapostles@gmail.com) and/or post on our #pen-pals-backend channel on Slack to get connected.
Abolitionist News
So many anti-trans bills and book bans are being passed across the country, and recently I was reading this Truthout article called “Anti-LGBTQ Censorship is Endangering Trans People Behind Bars.” As you might have experienced with your penpals, it is so hard to get books to folks on the inside generally, and this article explores how that particularly and disproportionately impacts trans people on the inside. For example, 8 states explicitly ban “Trans Bodies, Trans Selves,” a book that offers basic trans health resources. And yet even this is hard to figure out, because most states don’t provide explicit information to the public on what books are banned.
Let’s Discuss!
Are you looking for a question to help spark conversation with your penpal? Here’s one to consider:
We’re halfway through 2024 already! Are you someone who sets intentions and/or resolutions at the beginning of years? If so, are there any you want to share with each other now? At the halfway point, how are they going? Is there anything you want to commit to during this second half of 2024?
Thank you all! Can’t wait to be in a community space with you soon.
All the gratitude,
Nathalie