Online registration is now open for the FREE Philadelphia Prisoner Advocacy Summit! Lunch provided to the first 150 participants to register here: https://philapas.wufoo.com/forms/philapas/

The event begins with a morning plenary featuring former political prisoner Laura Whitehorn and community activist Butch Cottman. Workshops include Strategy for Statewide Movement-Building, Beyond Re-entry, Developing Youth Leadership, Organizational Development & Sustainability and more! See facebook.com/philapas for more information.

Currently, BTB has a couple of volunteer bikers with bicycle trailers to deliver packages to the post office once a week, but those bicycle trailers can only carry so much AND the warm weather is coming! In an effort to cut the cyclists a break, BTB is compiling a list of volunteer drivers that would be willing to make a trip to the post office when called. The post office trip is about 20 minutes roundtrip (picking up the stamped packages from BTB and dropping them off at the post office). Occasionally we also need drivers to pick up large donations or go to the book traders. If you sign up to be on the volunteer driver list, you are not committing to a daily or weekly drive! We would simply put your name and phone number on a list in our office and call when needed.

If you would like to be added to our list of volunteer drivers, please email us at volunteer@booksthroughbars.org – If you have any time preferences/constraints (i.e., only call on the weekends or only available Monday afternoons), please let us know and we will document that as well. Check out the “Get Involved” tab above to learn about other ways to volunteer with BTB. Thank you!

The dictionary is the single most requested book by incarcerated people across the country and a fundamental tool for self-education and empowerment. Unfortunately, BTB rarely has enough dictionaries on hand to satisfy even a portion of the requests. To solve this problem, we have created the Dictionary Fund.On February 22, 2012, BTB held a fundraiser for the Dictionary Fund at Dock Street Brewery. A $10 donation at the door purchased a craft beer and a slice of pizza (for attendees) AND a dictionary (for us). – We raised enough money to purchase 275 dictionaries!

We all say “knowledge is power,” yet the budget for prisons is growing
at a higher rate than that for schools…increasing incarceration rates
reveal that something in our system is broken. We can find the
solutions in enlightening minds. Let’s do so.
- Kevin J. Marinelli, SCI Greene (Death Row)

We all know that our nation has a long way to go when it comes to
prioritizing education over incarceration. Books Through Bars lives in
that gap–the space between where we are now, and the future world we
envision. We occupy that gap by creating opportunities for education
both inside and outside prison walls.

As we move forward into a new year, ripe with the possibility for new
forms of justice to emerge, we thank you considering supporting Books
Through Bars this holiday season. Our vision: a world where we each
have access to the education that will give us power over our own
futures, is only possible with the help of people like you!

Please consider donating funds, or click the “get involved” link above for information on donating books or
volunteering.

Happy Holidays from all of us at Books Through Bars, and may 2012
bring positive changes for you, your community, and our global
community!

Over the past year, during which we sent more than 7,000 packages of reading materials to prisoners, we expanded our efforts to promote education beyond the exchange of books. Our innovative educational
initiatives included:

• A week-long film festival and speaking series, featuring 17 films dedicated to exploring important topics from the prison economy, to the history of prisoner resistance in the 1970s, to the racialized face of immigration detention;
• An expanded service-learning program, which engaged more than 100 local junior high and high school students in vital discussions around prison justice through hands-on, group volunteer sessions;
• Our second annual Read-a-Thon, featuring writings, films, speakers, and readings of our correspondence with prisoners, all around the theme “Instead of Prisons…”;
• A day of programming around the book Grace Before Dying, an exploration in text and photography of the prisoner-led hospice program at Angola Prison;
• The launch of a new correspondence project, Address This!, which will allow prisoners to enroll in courses through the mail, on topics ranging from Black Social Movements to Community Healing and
  Reproductive Justice.

Books Through Bars has created an interactive map showing prison book programs in the US and Canada, including contact information. Check it out, and get involved with a prison book program near you!