I love you guys. Day after day, through this weird winding project, I never cease to be amazed by the depth of warmth and compassion my readers radiate in the comments section. I was especially touched by some of the reactions to my experience sending birthday cards to inmates.
I was heartened by your thoughts on rehabilitation and the importance of reaching out to a demographic that is so routinely ignored or completely vilified by most of society. I was also distressed to see that so many of you — like me — had wanted to write to inmates but were stymied by the issue of giving out your personal information in order to write back. Honestly, it’s not a good idea to give out your home address to any stranger; right or wrong, it’s even scarier to disclose it within the prison milieu.
So, kittens, AN IDEA.
Many websites suggest renting a PO Box in order to correspond most safely within the prison system. However, if you don’t already have one (and who does, really?), it seems like a big annual expense to undertake for the soul purpose of doing a small, good thing. However.
I made a few calls and found that the fee for a small postbox in Boston is approximately $72/year. This is a significant expense for a dude who’s living paycheck to paycheck, but it occurs to me: split between five or six people, paying $5-6 more each for extra keys, a shared postbox would only cost a few lattes per person. And think of the good it could do.
So here’s what I’m proposing: a postbox rented at some convenient post office in Boston, for the purpose of letting anyone who wants to spend a few minutes a month reaching out to inmates. If you could help me subsidize it with a small donation strictly to the cause, that would be awesome; you could pick up a key and use it at your discretion.
And while it would be physically located here, there are many other things that just one postbox could do. Once I have access to the return address, I’ll post it here. Write or send birthday cards from Montana, from Maine, from Kathmandu, if you so choose.
If the only thing stopping you is fear of disclosing personal information, you’d now have a neutral and safe address block to fill out that upper left-hand corner of the envelope. (If you want to keep up an ongoing correspondence, I can forward you the mail. I’m a secretary, it’s what I do.)
Sites like Write A Prisoner make it incredibly easy to reach out to inmates who are searching for positive human contact to help them stay in touch with society during their period of incarceration. They list upcoming birthdays; they collect information in prisoners’ profiles.
They even let you write your letters via email, which are then printed out and mailed to the prisoners at no expense to you. You could spend just one lunch-break a month jotting short notes and, in that time, touch individual lives in a way that no charitable donation or hour or meditation could ever match.
The way I see it, if reaching out to prisoners is something you might be interested in, there is almost no reason not to do it. Almost no reason. And if lack of a safe return address is the one thing holding you back, then let’s pool together, damnit, and get rid of that one too.
What do you think, guys? You with me?
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
TKOG, I think this is a phenomenal idea! Unfortunately, I live in Ohio, but I’d be happy to send you a few dollars a month to help out with the cost, and I’d feel a lot better about using the PO Box as a return address to send a few cards/notes. When I told my (almost) husband about Write A Prisoner, he discouraged my making pen-pals by giving out my return address. I would be more than happy to contribute to this ‘safe’ box.
This is a great idea; is there a practicable way for a wayward Canadian to pitch in?
That sounds fantastic! I’ll be moving to NYC from near Boston this fall so I won’t be able to help there, but I wouldn’t mind contributing a few dollars to be able to send letters. It’s a good idea, we’re all people afterall.
I’m located in Indiana, but I’d be willing to kick in a few dollars if you’d be willing to forward the mail to me. We can work something out so that I can send you forwarding supplies or money to cover them. This is something that I’ve wanted to do several times, but the P.O. box thing was holding me back.
YES! I can absolutely forward mail! And I may or may not be stealing envelopes from work to do it… ;-) I’m so excited by the positive responses! I’m going to wait a day or two, then send out an email to dudes who have commented they’re interested so we can talk logistics!
I love, love, love this idea! I’m IN!! I’ll pitch in a few bucks!! :)
Count me in! I live 40 miles south of boston and probably won’t need to make it up there just to, by chance, see if i have any mail, but it would be great if you forward me any responses! :)
isn’t it weird what we choose to subsidize? Maybe we’ve talked about this before, but when I make money, I plan to give it to theaters because I’m a theatery dude and other people are saving children and stuff.
Aren’t prisoners fairly low on the list? What with Justice being in law school and all, I get that prisoners are often mistreated, but are they worse off than your Save the Children child? Would you be better off saving two children with those dollars?
Obviously I don’t claim to speak for anyone but myself, but I just wouldn’t put inmates on the top of my “giving list.” We do pay taxes for them already, after all…
Dude, Muscles, this is several days late and I don’t know if you (or anyone) will ever read it, but I’ve been thinking for a few days about your comment, and can say I definitely see where you’re coming from.
I think one of the mixed blessings about trying to do something a little bit good in our world is that there are so many awesome organizations and people who need help, that we could give all of our time and money to different recipients we deem worthy and still not overlap with each other all that much. There’s a lid for every pot?
I’ll admit, my interest in prisoners doesn’t relate so much to mistreatment in prisons so much as the intense alienation of prison life and how that might affect prisoners’ ability to reintegrate into society once (or if, depending on the prisoner) they’re ever released. I think prisoners are low on a lot of people’s lists. And, y’know, fair enough. We all have things we care about more than others. (Like, personally? Whales? Fuck ‘em.)
I’m not saying this is the most important thing in the world to do (for the record: literacy tutoring has my vote in that category), but it’s a very easy thing. Letter-writing is something you can do in a few minutes a week. It’s probably not going to save someone’s life, but it might change a few days for the better.
Like, just on a personal level, I know I’ve had some kind of dark times, and I think when people are going through that, we have a universal impulse to feel … reached out to? Not to sound like a huge douchebag, but literature has literally saved my life — like, more than once — because I’ve read a passage and known that, maybe he didn’t know it, but CS Lewis or Joseph Heller or, yes, PG Wodehouse was talking to me.
I think that words have the power to change the world. I mean, I kind of have to believe that, or I’d have no reason to keep living my life as I’ve been living it. And since you can’t going to know what’s going to strike someone or how or what’s the exact right time, all you can do is keep putting earnest words out there.
And it seems to me that writing for people who hunger for communication, and who are routinely ignored by an awful lot of the population, is a pretty good place to start.
(I also have lots of thoughts about donations to arts non-profits that I don’t want to get even more off-topic with here, but would love to discuss over a thimbleful of port next time I visit you guys.)
just point me to the paypal link and i’m in. what a righteous idea.
@Muscles
I agree, there are a lot of other things that can be done with our money. My uncle is in jail for doing terrible things, and I imagine that tons of other people in jail are also there for doing things that are equally bad or worse. But somehow, this still appeals to me. Not necessarily in a “my letter will change someone’s life” kind of way, but more in a “Maybe this will be interesting for both of us and it probably won’t make things worse” sort of way.
Hi there, I’m a recent discoverer of your cheering blog, and a resident of Amherst, MA. I have thought of doing this type of thing before, and I am grateful that you’ve taken the initiative to organize (not my strong suit!) So, if it’s not too late, I am definitely in, and willing to reimburse you for a share of the PO box!
Three cheers for Amherst! If you send some Antonio’s to the P.O. Box I’ll definitely pitch in.