We are very excited to announce that we are partnering with Ibram X. Kendi, Random House, and Powell's bookstore to bring a set of the new book "HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST" inside Oregon prisons. We are excited to add Kendi's newest book to the Freedom Library because it focuses on many of the issues that are at the heart of Liberation Literacy's mission. This is not the first time we've had the privilege of working with Kendi. We read his first book "Stamped from the Beginning" in 2017, and had the opportunity to interview him on KBOO's Prison Pipeline program. Listen to the interview online here. Also, read C. Flie's reflection in our third newsletter, which draws on a quote from the book here. For more ways to support Liberation Literacy and donate, visit our donation page, or attend an outside meeting on the first Sunday of each month from 3-5pm at Yale Union in SE Portland.
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We are starting a backpack drive! Why? When people are released from prison, all they are given is a sweatsuit, a one-day bus pass, and their birth certificate or ID card.
When our Lib Lit family gets out, we want to make sure they get some of the basics they might need. Backpacks themselves are important because they're a great place to store and organize things. Inside the backpacks we want to put together some things to make the transition back outside easier. Here's what we're looking for and how you can help! What we need:
- Backpacks
Have an extra backpack lying around? Want to support our drive by ordering a new one? Backpacks are an important way for people to be able to store and organize their belongings.
- Cell Phones
We are looking for any new or used functioning cell phones to help formerly imprisoned adults re-connect with their family, community, and Liberation Literacy outside support.
- Socks and Underwear
- Scarves, Gloves, and Hats We're gathering new sets of socks and underwear (any size), or lightly used or new scarves and hats. Depending on the weather, we want to make sure our community has some basics beyond the grey sweatsuit to stay warm and dry.
Email us at [email protected] to coordinate drop-offs/pick-ups of donations or feel free to bring items to the next outside meeting (held the first Sunday of every month at 3pm at YU.)
Other ways to donate: NO VIETNAMESE EVER CALLED ME N***** 1968, 16mm, 86 min. Directed by David Loeb Weiss March 11 at 4:30pm Hollywood Theatre 4122 NE Sandy Blvd. $6 suggested donation Liberation Literacy is holding a screening event to raise funds to support its social justice reading program inside of the Columbia River Correctional Facility in Portland. The film documents a conversation between three Black Vietnam war veterans intercut with footage of the 1967 Spring Mobilization anti-war demonstration, a national action taking place just one week after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s delivery of “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence” at Riverside Church in New York City. The themes of King’s Riverside speech resonate throughout the film. As he spoke then: …it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. Thank you to the Hollywood Theatre and Cinema Project for making this fundraiser possible, and to the Black Film Center/Archive for information about the film.
Thank you for all of your support and effort to everyone who came out and celebrated us joining the fight of prison abolition. This event was a success! We could not make this happen with out our partners: BPI, Scottie's Pizza, 50 Licks Ice Cream, Catlin Gabel High School, RTC MercyCorps, Clinton Street Theater, Yale Union, Reed College, and Heather Lane. We would not be here without the courage and effort of the men and women who choose to stand up and be heard while being incarcerated. See you all next year! Peace and Prosperity
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