 Okay, I am. We're live on YouTube. Going live. All right, we're live. Hello. Welcome tonight we're going to give it a few minutes for the room to fill up. Hello everyone. Give it just a moment. I'm going to put a link into the chat box for tonight's document. And I'm going to put a link to. A great map you can use to see what land you are staying on. Welcome everybody. We're going to give it just one more moment before we. Get started with library news and info. Welcome everyone. All right, we're going to jump in with some library news first before we jump into our presentation with the prisoners literature project. So we thank you all for being here tonight and joining us for this presentation. I've admired the prisoners literature project for a long time. So I'm super happy that this is part of our one city one book and I could bring them in to talk about the work that they are doing. So our one city one book, our 17th one city one book is this is your hustle. Unflinching stories of everyday prison life by Niger poor and Erlon Woods. And you should pick up this book right now if you have not already read it you can pick it up at one of our 28 locations or book mobile, or get it instantly on all of those resources that are available out there. So I just want to quickly tell you about some other upcoming events. So there is the link to the one city one book but first, let's acknowledge that we occupy the unseated an ancestral homeland of the raw nutrition lonely peoples for the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from working and living on their traditional homeland as uninvited guests we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the raw nutrition community. And a big shout out to our Oakland organization sagorate land trust, who is doing amazing work and all women run organization in the land back movement check them out. Donate pay your shooby tax, all those good things. And I just put a link into some other reading lists that you can find about first person culture and other great stuff. So as I mentioned this is part of our one city one book campaign. And I'm just going to highlight some upcoming events that I'd love for you to show up to. These are in person I know gathering is still kind of weird, but it is also still kind of great. So come join us this Saturday, where we will be hosting the amazing pindarvis harsha from KQAD, along with Brandon to seek, and they'll be in combo with Nigel and Erlon, and they're going to be talking about pindarvis and Brandon's project on fundraising life. And they did a photographic and essay project, where they featured eight folks who are experiencing reentry after a life sentence, and joining the conversation will be Lynn Acosta, one of the subjects I'm super excited to have her come these are the kind of programs that really I love make me love my job because we get to pay to have this person come out I'm just so excited, putting her up in a hotel, have a party after not party like a gathering after the event and everyone's welcome to come. It's going to be empanadas and we're going to check out the gallery so come check out this event this Saturday. Sunday we're going to be featuring a film called he had wings featuring the work of the amazing Ronnie Goodman, also formerly incarcerated, and then unhoused artist and unfortunately passed away not too long ago. He in 2020. He was a big library supporter and we loved him. And then there's so many more events. I'm just going to really breeze through these just so you know what we have coming up. Another in person event December 10 of film about the legacy of new college law school. But December 11 Sunday December 11 2pm main library. The amazing Sarah Cruz on and Corey Thomas in Convo about Sarah's book I cried to dream again. And this book is about it's her memoir, she spent over two decades inside for the murder of her abuser. And she is amazing. Her book is amazing. She also is featured in two episodes of your hustle. So scope is out one is called dirty water and dirty water actually comes up in the book to so there's a really great connection check out the book. Please come here Sarah she's just power. And last two events so please we got a lot going on. But now, let's hear about the prisoners literature project. The prisoners literature project is an all inclusive all volunteer grassroots nonprofit. This purpose is to encourage reading the pursuit of knowledge and self determination among incarcerated folks by sending free reading materials to those behind bars PLP aims to foster learning and critical thinking and help prepare people to lead a successful life after incarceration. We believe they believe that all people have a right to read what we have the same mission. And that's why I love them. So tonight from the PLP, we have Jamie, Brita and Ali, and I'm going to stop sharing and turn it over. Hi everyone. So, we'll do a couple intros and then we have a short presentation to share with y'all, and we'll have plenty of time for questions and answers at the end. My name is Jamie Schecter, I use she her pronoun, and I've been volunteering with the prisoners literature project for about eight years or so at this point. I do some of the behind the scenes work around event organizing bookstore partnerships and every now and again I still get to go in and answer letters directly. I'll pass it to Brita because she's next to my screen. Oh, you gotta unmute Brita. Thank you. Hi, Jamie. Hi everybody. I'm Brita. I do a variety of things at the PLP I help manage the volunteers help run in person book packing sessions sometimes. I help with our newsletter and fundraising and I help stock books and I just do a lot of cool awesome stuff. That was what I was what I needed to say I'll pass to Ali. And they pronouns and then. Yeah, I've been volunteering with PLP since gosh 2018 started off just kind of volunteering at sessions. And then shortly before the pandemic was like coordinating some sessions and then during the pandemic took on more responsibilities and like sorting our letters and I'll get into like, how we receive letters where they're coming from and kind of all things letters later in the presentation. But that's me. Cool. I'm gonna start sharing my screen. And thank you. Give me some thumbs up if folks can see it. Great. Thank you, Ali. And so, thank you to the San Francisco Public Library for inviting us here. We're with the prisoners literature project and I thought I don't have to remember our entire mission because it was just for that. But what is the PLP. We were founded over 35 years ago by left as organizers, and we originally gather that found together books in San Francisco. And they are still one of our best partners to this day, where they help us receive letters and donate books to us and fundraise for us. We're entirely volunteer operated. Everybody volunteering the PLP believes that people have the right to read. And we do this because in the US, most prisons, nearly all of them do not allow prisoners to receive books directly from individuals. So generally speaking, you can't just send a book to a friend or family member who's incarcerated, you have to go through a vendor. And as an approved vendor for most facilities, the PLP ships thousands of books to prisons across the country every single year. And access to books is important because it offers incarcerated people entertainment education and connection to the outside world. So kind of at a high level, what do we do. People who are incarcerated writers letters, they hear about us from resources they might be getting all inside from word of mouth from friends and family on the outside, however they hear about us and get our address they write us letters. So we have volunteers who read every letter and review every letter and pick books for them in from our library that we have in Berkeley, and we make sure to include resources and a little note on every package that we're allowed to. We then package them up and mail books, and about 60 weeks after you get you send us your letter you're getting books usually. And we spread that information we should we really encourage everybody who's receiving packages from us to let people know about us where we've been lucky to be able to grow with the rate of growth we've seen in letters. So we haven't slipped behind that 60 week mark in a quite a while. And so now I'm going to show a quick little video to give you all a little insight on what a volunteer session looks like for us. Prisoner's Literature Project is one of the oldest and largest books to prisons programs in the country. We answer book requests from incarcerated people costing entire United States, we've been operating for about 40 years, we're all volunteer, we respond to about 1000 requests a month. It's just great partnership with the independent bookstores who will actually have a display in the bookstore. Would you like to buy this book for a prisoner. You know, high quality, usually new books that we have a hard time getting hold of, and it's just been so incredibly successful we get hundreds, thousands of books. For us as volunteers, the letters come in and that's kind of where the process starts. So if I just picking up a letter. It's always really heartwarming to read the letters because they always seem very, very grateful, and it's kind of a humbling experience. There's this one guy that wrote and he talked about how he doesn't have any family outside of prison and the process of getting a book is nice but also just having someone write to you makes you feel good about getting to talk to people that don't have people outside of prison to talk to. Thank you so much for the literature project. Thank you so much for the origami books and the colony books who appreciate everything you do for us. I'm writing you because I have one more request and then that will be for a few months, and having a difficult time learning how to draw, but I'm not giving up. So I really need drawing book for beginners. So we have books on how to learn to draw here in the room and you would have the restrictions, we have information about all the restrictions for every facility of the United States, pick up the books from here in the book room. And then we write a little note, sometimes that's the only mail they're going to receive your viewers along. And then we, you know, attack it up and send it out. There's lots of other volunteer work happening to get the books here to solicit donations to source books from people and places all around the country to help us do the work that we do. And now we're going to pass it on to Ali and pick up the next part. Let me know when you want me to move slides. Great. Yeah, we'll start here. Yeah, like Jamie said, most prisons, like almost all prisons do not allow individuals to just like nobody in prison is allowed to just kind of receive books from individuals. And you might be thinking like that prisons have fully stocked libraries and that everything is ready to go. That is also not the case prison libraries have been defunded but also another huge issue is the fact that prisons, both on the individual and sometimes even like the county or state level are censoring what incarcerated people can read. And so there have been a lot of kind of just like moments where this comes up in the news or where it's touched upon, like kind of mass book bans and prisons across the US. Like this article on the left that we have a screenshot of is from 2020 and kind of talks about what was happening in Illinois and eventually censorship got passed to like a like a central committee so that no one prison could decide what books got banned. But overall, like a lot of the time you see disproportionately it's books that are talking about things like rates or things like class or incarceration or books that are touching on the issues that a lot of incarcerated people have experienced or like have lived with. And so it's really a huge issue and part of what makes a specialist that we're where we send as close as we can what people are asking for. And so when people write us those letters they go to bound together books our bookstore partner. And the reason it goes all those letters go to a bookstore and not directly to us is because most prisons again don't allow books from just like a random organization we have to go through a bookstore. And so yeah I could go the next slide Jamie. When we get those letters. One of the first things a volunteer does with the letter is look to see where the letter is from, and then checks in our giant binder like we have a binder I would say like this huge of restrictions. Most, if not all prisons have restrictions and they are not consistent across federal state or local prisons and jails. Even like if you might think like California State prisons for instance you see like vastly different standards between between prison summer like we will only let you send in two books at a time maximum. Or five max but they all have to be brand new they need to have like stickers or prices still attached to them somehow. In places. Ban things such as like nudity or ban, like Black Panthers for instance or ban talk of like Black Power. Some ban foreign languages some ban anything that refers to like a code or hidden message. We've had how to books get sent back to us with like letters saying this isn't an allowed material. Like, teaches someone how to do electrical work and that could be used like to disrupt to disrupt the life here in prison. And so there are a lot of reasons and it also, it's incredibly arbitrary. In that it might just be the person working in the middle of that day might be the correctional officer that's working in the middle of that day that makes the call on this. So it's not really standardized and a good example of this is recently with a county jail system. I know with the city, a city jail system. We like had correctional officers saying for months and months and months that we couldn't send any books and they're like no, you're not approved you're not allowed. We finally got in touch with the warden of that system and she was like, Oh, that's interesting no you're definitely allowed please let me know and like, will you're allowed to send books and so again it's incredibly arbitrary. And we run into issues like this a lot we're just one of us. Like one or two of us volunteers will just spend our time on hold for hours to call and kind of try to get in and see what we are allowed to send, because we always want to do as much as we can. But yeah, so we do track. Thanks, I see the well, we do track a lot of really arbitrary guidelines. And a huge way that we're getting word of these, these restrictions and guidelines is actually from the people who are asking for books from us. So some of them will send us the paperwork and be like my books got denied. This is what happened this is what they said and they'll just send the same form to us, which is incredibly helpful. And then we'll call and follow up. But yeah, some of the other examples of things have gotten banned. That kind of our wackiest one off case is a girl with a dragon tattoo one prison bandit and you think there's like an interesting story or something there but it's literally just that it talks about a tattoo. And the restrictions are like no tattoos. These are great questions. Do we get notified when restrictions change, not by institutions. No. Usually, if we are notified it's an incarcerated person sending us hey my books got rejected for this reason did you know you can't send this anymore. Or like we get a return package and one of our volunteers who works on returns calls and is like why did this get returned. Can you please let us know. The other question I saw was what happens to rejected books they get repackaged if they get back to us they get repackaged if they're held by the correctional facility they are there they're lost to us. But if they get returned in the mail or returned by the facility via mail that they get repackaged and recent out by us. All right, you can go the next one gene. So something else that has been really valuable tests and organizations the fact that we are not the only organization doing this work. When we talk about fighting censorship, we have like a large, I guess not coalition but there, there are a lot of us like books to prisoners groups on a list or together. And so there we have a lot of email friends of just like hey this got rejected anyone have experience with this to like, who's getting rejected from Wisconsin what's happening here. And so it's really nice to have that network. We as an organization like exchange letters with the prison book program in Quincy, Massachusetts like they can't get into California prisons so when they get requests for California they send them to us. And then should we have like a weird northeastern prison that we can send to we send them those letters. Similarly, we send the, all of our Texas letters we send to the inside books group in Texas and Austin, because they're able to access Texas prisons, and we at the moment are not. So we do have a lot of partner organizations and a lot of relationships with other books to prisoners programs. So if you know any, any people in any of these areas for instance, encourage them to get involved with our partner organizations. Let's go to the next slide. And then the last kind of big issue we're facing, like which is also I would say kind of a censorship issue is the fact that a lot of prisons are moving to tablets. And so what you'll see is like in Pennsylvania, for instance, and all of their state prisons. Now, like have to pay money for time on tablets to read things and to access things and they're like oh yeah well you have these books like there's a small library on there. It's not a very big library there's not a lot of like resources or things on there and like say for instance I know one issue that comes up is that people who are spiritual or religious and are looking for resources and things like Buddhism or like looking for Quran or for like readings on in Wicca like aren't able to access those things via the tablet system, and they're spending money on it. And so that's something that is happening slowly in a couple different states, Pennsylvania it's already happening in Wisconsin I think they're trying to move to that. So instead now all letters like that gets sent as correspondence have to go to one address, and that's just like letters like notes forms all those things, those get scanned. People in those prisons affected by this do not like get their loved ones letters for instance or do not get like the physical paper. They're only getting a scan of it. And so when we send our like invoices and write a little note on the back sometimes we're not sure if the note gets in like we're not sure if the invoice makes it to the person. So we get the note and we hope the best. And then the physical books we send go to a separate address. And so these states, like the way we do them we separate them out from the general pile so that there's no confusion and we're able to kind of offer the same quality of service in, like, for those states as well but making sure everything's getting to the right address everyone's really clear on like which of the two addresses they're sending to. And those really tie things up, especially because Wisconsin is trying to move to that system so for instance like we'll get, we'll get letters back, and they're like you wrote this to the wrong address. And we're like we're pretty sure it's the right one they're like no. And so it's, it sounds like a long and frustrating process and that's because it is and it's definitely worth it right and we want to be able to provide these resources. It's incredible when you think about the barriers and, you know, you wish you wish every prison had like the Shawshank Redemption Library and that's just not the case. I believe that's it for my slides so I'm going to pass it to Britta. Thanks Ali. My slide is about why we send books to incarcerated people and one thing that I'm going to focus on is how we know that we get books to folks because they write back. It's beautiful artwork and really evocative thank you letters. And, you know, there are a lot of us behind the scenes doing various things and we sort of mentioned this a little bit earlier but we all do this for the same reason even if we come from super different backgrounds or maybe have like slightly different politics like we just really think that everybody has the right to read. And that makes sense to a lot of people and that really, that brings a lot of really cool people together to do this. When we do this as we've been doing this for so long, we get this really great, get really great feedback from folks who get our books, we get our notes. You know, we hear from a lot of people that we send books to, you know, sometimes it's the only mail that they get that's handwritten. And I know that's mentioned in the video but I really think it's important to touch on it a lot because sometimes they'll send us sort of general thank yous and sometimes they'll write back to individual folks that have written to them and say, you know, you really nailed it, you picked out great books for me, thank you, like this is meaningful. And I didn't actually know that when I got in, first got involved so it was kind of a surprise the first time I got a letter back like I was, it was, it was shocking, it's still shocking, you know, someone takes the time to write me back and say like, thank you. And it's just, it's just really cool, you know, sometimes at our, in our book packing sessions that we have in person, we will, or at least I don't know if everybody does this but I do this we get like a really cool thank you letter during the session that comes up in the pile. And we'll just read it, you know, like just everybody just like hey, I got this really great feedback from somebody, we sent them something really good. You know, and it just kind of keeps everybody in the headspace of like this is this is why we're doing what we're doing. So, you can see some other artwork here there's more on our website, prisonlit.org should feel free to check it out we post new stuff all the time. There on social media. So, I will request the next slide Jamie. Thank you. So how can you get involved. Well, there are lots of ways. You can, if you know folks who are incarcerated. You can tell them about us. If we are not one of the organizations that consent to them we can still give them information about the other organizations. But there's a there's a little drop down menu on our website on prisonlit.org and it says request books I believe, and there's a handout you can mail full you can also hand copy down the directions from there it's pretty pretty well laid out in terms of like what has to write to specific address. There's a little bit of a time lag that Jamie mentioned, and then focus books. So it's pretty simple. You can come volunteer with us we are running in person bookpacking sessions. You know we still have good COVID protocols, and we keep our sessions kind of small, and it's a time to work together with other folks and often it's it's really cool because, again, like a lot of us come from really, really different backgrounds and we have different understanding was of books and literature and so you get a letter that maybe you're not super familiar with you know maybe you're not somebody who reads a lot of thrillers. And the person who's written it is like, I really want these types of crime books, somebody else in the room is going to know same you know with any other section so it's a collaborative thing it's it's very cool. At this point, a pretty long wait list. So if you'd like to come volunteer with us, you're going to have to wait a little bit, and we appreciate your patience. There's a form on our website you can fill it out you tell us a little bit about yourself about your availability. And we'll do our best to get back to you as soon as possible, we do get back to everybody in one way or another. You can another thing you can do to help us out you can donate. Obviously, we love your cash donations because our postage fees are extraordinarily high. I don't think we touched on this yet, but we, our main cost is is postage, you know every package. Let's say there's three to five books in there. Let's say it's you know around three pounds of about four bucks a package. We answer there about 1000 letters a month. I know that math is living somewhere I think Ali probably even knows it off the top of their head. It's a lot. So cash donations actually really go a long way because we're all volunteers nobody's getting a salary nobody can pay for this. We just we do it because we want to do it. If you're asked, you can also donate books, we should come back to that at the end I think that's a nice little side item to pick up at the end. But another way that you can donate books is that you can go to our online wish lists and you can buy them directly for us. Those are also on our linked on our website. A few of our bookstore partners also have in store displays and this is one way that folks sometimes come into volunteering with us is that they see a PLP display and this just clicks and they get it and they start packing books too. You can follow us on social media, which I know everybody says, in our case, that means that occasionally you can find out when some of us might show up in person somewhere at a book festival, maybe a talk like this. You can find out what books were sending out what's what's in demand you can see some of those thank you letters we try to post those. You know, just, even if you're just kind of like casually curious and you want to just like keep it on your radar. You can also keep learning about the US legal system. And I feel like the thing to say here is one way into that is to read the ear hustle book, which is great. And I know a lot of people have come, like it sort of into these things more through that I mean people at PLP. I've had that experience. And the books really great. So yeah, I'm ready yet. There's a lot of copies floating around right now it's pretty pretty good time to grab one. What else do we have Jamie do I have another slide. Some of the same stuff. Those are some of our bookstore partners that have the nice in store displays for us or run the online wish lists. There's some of our social media handles. And I think we went really quickly but now we have a lot of time for questions. And thanks. Thanks, Anissa for keeping us all dialed in behind the screen. I'm going to open this little chat and see what folks have been saying because I've just been talking. And I'll go ahead and start sharing so we can kind of see each other. I think Jean oh had a question about children's books. You know wants to take that one. Do we send children's books or books to people who are learning to read. Yeah, so we do have quite a good selection of easy reader books that are usually middle grade to YA for folks who are trying to basically get better literacy skills and learn to read a little bit more. And I think we've even started stacking a few specifically children's books so that incarcerated parents can, we've gotten a couple of requests from incarcerated parents who want to be able to read with their child, one way or another. So we do. And this one from Andre says I'm curious what dress you spend your time with this organization and how long have you been doing this. I'm happy to step in for this one. And when Brita, when Brita was like you know keep us in the back of your mind. I kind of want to share I first like ran into PLP at a book festival and like bought some books from them at a book sale and then like, you know didn't volunteer for until like a year and a half after that. They're here. And like I had an AmeriCorps job and like it volunteer hours counted as service and so I started volunteering but yeah one way or another I found my way in. But yeah, for me, I guess, like I like feeling like I am just objectively being like of service in a way. It's hard in like I guess our current kind of stated things I know some of us like regardless of where we are politically or just kind of in our lives like sometimes you feel that feeling of hopelessness and you want to connect with people and I'm like this objectively is like books from my hands into someone else's hands right. And so that that to me feels powerful and I know it feels powerful to me it probably feels really powerful to receive those books as well. So that that's it for me but I'll pass it to others who want to answer that. I kind of have an AmeriCorps connection with it too. Before I was living in the Bay I was in Seattle and I was doing volunteer coordination with AmeriCorps. And I checked out their books to prisoners group up there to see that could be an opportunity for us and when I moved back I was like, Oh, I know I'm pretty sure Berkeley has a group to and I just I showed up I'm a reader I love to read it's like book shopping but without costing me any money. So that was just the fun kind of way to get plugged in and then I kind of got hooked and I've been doing it for about eight years, really what brought you in. I was going to say I don't know if I need to touch on that or not. You know, I guess I'll say something general and I'll say something personal I think the thing I always say is that a lot of folks come to PLP from, I know I keep saying different backgrounds but what I mean is that some of our one one thing that I mean is that some of us are impacted by incarceration in our lives or, you know, our loved ones ourselves. Some of us work in the legal system. And so that impacts how we think about this sort of stuff. And then some of us are just book people, you know, and that's sort of what happens to. The book thing kind of overlaps with like this seeming like a good fit for like being useful and like a good fit for like the way that you think about like your role as like a civic participant right like so there's there's sort of all this stuff going on. For me, you know, I guess I can say one thing I will say is that, you know, I am basically able at any time to go get the books that I want to read, and I think about that a lot and I think about how. Normally do we live in the Bay Area where we have, you know, wild, incredible libraries and bookstores, but like I am a person that has the means to find them and get them and. And I think about how much that has impacted my entire life. And so that's so not being able to have in addition to having all kinds of other things, sort of limiting my ability to be in the world like I just sort of think about that as as one way that I do this one reason that I do this because I just don't take it for granted you know so. Yeah, I'm looking at these questions to. Yeah, are there any private foundations of support the work of PLP. Yeah. I can speak to that a little. So I write really nice thank you letters to some of our foundation partners, who we don't actively solicit. I guess that's the other thing to say about donations is that we don't go out. We don't like do grant proposals at all. So any money that comes in is because somebody found out about us the organization of the individual and they decided to support what we do. It's just pretty incredible. And it so far works really well. And there are a couple of foundations. It's on our. I think it's on the donate page at the, on our website, some of our bigger donors are on there individuals and organizations that help us out year over year we sort of change it every year so folks can see who's involved. I used to volunteer at 2022 Blake Street which is grassroots house which we used to share with other community organizations and we still run space at. And before that at the epicenter it's a shop nice. Could you talk about the move to the new space can people just drop in during meeting hours. I was probably the least involved with the move so if you all. Yeah, we moved. And so I'm going to be in the back of the house of street from grassroots house if you know where that is in Berkeley on Blake. At our new location which is 2025 Blake. It's like it's smaller than grassroots house but it's a bigger space for us and like the library and the place where we write letters are no longer like separate by a hallway. And it's all our space, like it's our own little, little place, which is really great we don't need like an extra storage unit anymore. We still keep space at grassroots house for some storage so it's nice and close. We're to like drop in during session hours. You could totally like walk by we've got some stuff up in the windows like come and say hi, as long as you are masked but in terms of like joining to volunteer. We don't do drop in any more it's sign up only with like a volunteer database and especially just with like how many people want to volunteer and still kind of try to maintain COVID safety for folks. We are doing sign ups online. Next question I assume you send books to women's and men's prisons yes. We also like sometimes. I guess, like we send to anything where people are incarcerated like even at like the smallest county level where sometimes we have like a deputy writing in and being like there are no books here and people are bored and we are all locked down like. Is there any way you could say like people are asking for these types of books. It's a great detention center as well right. Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. Like I think I could be wrong I think we said to like at Atlanta which was in the news a couple years ago. Yeah, thank you. He asks us if there are any book club or discussion groups guided by the volunteers, and I would like to say that there are not that that is an aspiration of some of us. We just are doing a lot of other stuff. And haven't really ever put that together. We have a couple of folks who volunteer in prison separately from the PLP, and we've got folks who are prison librarians, folks that teach classes and do things like book club so there's a lot of great overlap between librarians and our work and teachers and our work. I think there are some people who write in and in the request they're like hey we're forming a book club could we possibly like, and they ask for like a pretty easy to get a hold of book they're like hey can we get a copy of this or like can we get 10 copies of Frankenstein and like we usually like we elevated to like an email thread but then we call that like a special request and then whichever kind of coordinator wants to take it upon themselves to like order that we just kind of like build that into the budget to do some requests like that. Sometimes we also get like requests for very specific skills and we don't have those readily available I know back in the day we used to have like a lot less selection of languages but then if someone was like. I'm trying to learn like to go like or Arabic or something we like would make an effort to go like and get a book that would serve them if we didn't have it. Let's see. Can people in isolation be allowed books are the guidelines the same as for people who aren't isolated. Like with all guidelines that present it depends on some facilities allow people in isolation to receive books some facilities have different restrictions for people isolation some facilities do not. So it is really facility specific. I think somebody asked about donating used books which I'm happy to talk about because I spent a fair bit of my time on on our used books. The short answer is probably the longer answer is prisons as we've been talking about are really restrictive. And that means that we have to be really picky about what we take not because we don't like your books but because we want them to get to people. So sometimes we take use book donations and there's you can send us an email. That's one way to do it. Send us some photos of the spines of the book so that we know what the titles are. I don't know if Jamie Alley if you think I should go into the like minutiae of like what makes a good used book donation like condition like condition. Yeah, I think yeah some examples would be great. So something that we things that we have seen get rejected our books that have water damage for example, books that have writing inside. So a lot of us like over the years, maybe have at times written in our books underline things you written it's in the margins whatever. Put a book plate in the front, but also maybe has your, your own info on it book plates are really tricky. Sorry. Writing in books though is also really tough and if there's a lot of highlighting or underlining in a book we can't send it. We've had books rejected and sent back, because it's unauthorized communication. So when we when we say like yesterday used books they have to be in like really good condition and we have a lot of flexibility in terms of the genres that we accept but there are some things that we just don't send out like we don't send out Bibles for example, there are a lot of groups that do that. So we don't. And there are just other types of books that, for whatever reason we don't, we don't have it again I don't know how much we want to get into that but anyway, the shorter answer is probably send us an email. And someone you know sometimes will, if it's like a huge thing we can come and pick them up or whatever you know not always but I certainly done that we're all go, like, you know, pick up 300 books and put them in my car and work it out. I'll also say that with donated books sometimes we get really nice beautiful hardcover books that are perfect for scheme condition. Those aren't generally books we can send into facilities, because they're hard covers and they can be weaponized. So what we do is we sell books, we sell them on Amazon sometimes we go to book festivals like the area book festival, or the anarchist book there, and we set up tables and we sell really cheap paper or hardcover books or paperback books that are in areas that we might have way too much of. I'm so sorry to Jane Austin but we're not getting a lot of requests for those so we get a bunch of college kids dumping off their pride and prejudice copies will sell them at the book fairs. Because again our postage bill get pretty high throughout the years and it's a really great way to make sure those donations don't go to waste. So just be aware sometimes your books might not be available to send out but they can still benefit. This also reminds me of one auxiliary point to that which is you can also donate anything that they will accept at Community Thrift in San Francisco and if you pick prisoners literature project as your designated charity. We get a portion of the proceeds and we do I don't know if anybody knows this but it works and it means a lot and it is a great little side donation stream for us every year so yeah, you can do that too. If you have a bunch of hardcover and you don't want to bring them to us, take them there. Andrea asked what is the most often requested title and what are you reading at the moment. I'm going to say what I think it is and then Jamie and Brenda can correct me if they have another one. Dictionaries. A lot of people want dictionaries a lot of people want to like better their reading coverage skills dictionaries and the sore eye the sources. Just to kind of like I guess like as an educational kind of measure for a lot of people are just like to have so they can understand other things I also imagine like a lot of people don't say why they need the dictionary it's usually very brief note that's like please send me a dictionary. But I imagine for some people it's also understanding their own court case we also get asked for a lot of like legal primers and like can you send me a law dictionary which we don't get very many of and they're like expensive and hard to come by and paperback usually. That's big deal. People also ask for Alman X sometimes is another one of my favorite kind of types of requests. And what are you reading at the moment alley. Ah, I just finished kitchen by banana Yoshimoto, which was delightful. Very like happy hopeful, even though it talks about sad things and right now I'm reading. I just started the mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael shape on who is a Berkeley local. I think you're either definitely number one request and other popular books that we get business type books how to not necessarily how to get a job but how to you know run a business investments real estate those sorts of things. And because folks who come out of prison generally have a harder time getting a job so they're, we see a lot of interest in how to be your own boss how to get your own income stream without having to pass background check necessarily. And as tech, Native American indigenous histories those can be really popular choices and hard to find sometimes. Graphic novels are another one really popular really high demand and hard to hard to stuff through donations but we have a really great partnership with a comic shop in Oakland called keep and cowl they've been helping us really fill up our graphic novel section. I'm currently in the middle of an audio book of Sarah McLean's romance novel called bombshell and it is great for all those readers interested. What's on your nightstand right now. Oh wow. It's, it gets really intense and I also compartmentalize really hard so I forget once it's gone. I just finished a really beautiful novel by Andrew Holler and the older one but it's just a beautiful classic. Lovely, lovely, sad, gorgeous tail. Why did I wonder, I wonder if there's. I'm just looking through the questions and I want to make sure someone asked if, if folks, the wardens and prison administrators. Support what we do. All right. Ali you might want to say more about that not to put you on the spot but I know that you mentioned it earlier a little bit like sometimes you'll, you know, you've spent more time on the phone than like. Yeah, full disclosure I've done absolutely like zero of those phone calls I think it's mainly the people who are getting returns the only returns I get are the letter returns, which make me feel really sad because usually. So if we can't send to someone like we are not allowed into their institution, we will send a note saying sorry we can't send to you like if you think this is an error like send us some paper like send us proof that we can send to you and we'll like if it's a, you know, a prior approval form or something like an approval form that they need to get from a correctional officer or whoever's in charge to let us send them books like send that back. Sometimes those notes come back like we can't even get the note saying sorry we can't send to you in. I think some yes, like, some are like oh this is this is a service and it makes me wonder like what they think they're doing. It makes me wonder like what they, I guess like feel their purpose is and like being complicit in incarcerating someone I don't know. I think others are like, you know might have kind of a more punitive viewpoint, I would imagine. And think that we should not be sending books in or that it should be a privilege and not a right, which I think all of us as kind of as permission statement we fundamentally disagree with everyone should have access to information or reading and would lawmakers be able to do anything to help I think in terms of prison censorship I think in various states that has been challenged kind of on the local or state level at various points. And one of our, so the thing about us is because we're kind of a grassroots organization we are not like as good as we could be about like keeping our own history where we've kind of taken on like a mass effort in the last year or so to like, best practices and build out like just build out a lot of like our processes because they've been really refined over the years but a lot of it is word of mouth. But in one of our older notebooks there's like this really cryptic note for Pennsylvania that says like, here's the jailhouse lawyer if anything happens in Pennsylvania again contact him and I'm like I don't know what this means. I think yes, we currently are not like working with any lawmakers to try to do any big moves I think sometimes on the list serve other groups, like, start talking about doing something and you'll see groups kind of be like yeah we'll help elevate like we'll help like if there's a media campaign or something count us in. And we've shared similar stuff on like our social media pages as well. I think sometimes we interestingly find allies and chaplains and prison librarians, which has been kind of a hard thing for us because we aren't taking the place of the government by filling libraries and prison that's not our work. We send directly to prisoners so it's their books. But we feel for them because they are defunded they don't have books and that's that's the work that they want to be doing as well. And I guess maybe one thing I don't know that we've mentioned is that a lot of and some folks who are listening probably know this but since the beginning of the coven 19 pandemic. A lot of libraries that do exist in prisons have been closed and some have still not reopened and so that's also sort of been part of. It's just been different in the past few years. I guess is one thing to say about that maybe alley has more to say again not to put you on the spot but anything about this. Yeah, no I think especially even now we'll get letters that's like someone tested positive for coven we're on lockdown I haven't seen another part like I have at 20 minutes out of my cell this week to shower like. So it's it's devastating imagining people living in those conditions regardless of whatever brought them there right it's inhumane. And so, like, yeah us being able to send books directly to people that feels incredibly powerful. And yeah there there are many libraries that just haven't reopened and the proof of that is kind of in the letters we're getting better like, we have not a library since 2019. We haven't had a library since since XYZ. Sometimes, especially with all the like snowstorms and things and hurricanes and past few years, our library flooded it has not been reopened we're all now on the second and third floor of our institution like things like like just the weirdest and most terrible things is what I would add on to that. Oh Jean, excellent question have you heard anything about prisoners sharing your books with each other. Yeah anyone want to touch on that. I think we do hear that. And a lot of times when folks are writing their initial letter even they'll say you know when I'm done with this I'll share it with my cellmate or I'll share it on my block. And that's really, really, really great to hear. And for other, their books are their treasures so they keep them to and both are great. As long as they're sharing our information we're happy. Not very often but over the, over the over time I've seen a few specific requests from folks whose book who's lost their books somehow or they've been taken from them. And they're, they were in the middle of something right like, again this sort of goes back to what I said earlier it's like I can just read the book I want when I want right. And so, you know, somebody's cell got flipped or the stuff got corned they got moved this stuff got taken you know what the stuff happens, and it's really out of their control and they just wanted to finish the book. So sometimes we get very specific requests, we ask folks to write in and tell us sort of like genres and topics and things, because you know, our books are donated mostly. And we certainly can guarantee any titles but you know sometimes we'll get one where it's just like this was my book, and I need to finish it or I need to be able to refer to it again and again it's like, that's your stuff. One of the most satisfying feelings when you get a letter that has specific titles, and you find it in the library. It's amazing. Yes. Well the other things I like is like we've had kind of just some anecdotal, like fun stories about people who share information like I know. I forget where it was someone emailed about this but apparently one person wrote back and was like, I found your address for books etched into the wall of myself lock. Yeah, I'm writing you. And then someone else one time I was sorting letters and there was like a fat stack of letters from Neal Creek State Prison in Ioni, California. And one of those letters someone was like I put up your information on the bulletin board I hope you don't mind. So many requests for them. I was like cool everyone in your creek is getting books for us incredible. Best of luck in the mail room I suppose. Other publications or magazines besides the sun that offer free subscriptions to incarcerated individuals. I personally do not do either of you. So the jailhouse like lawyers handbook. I'm butchering the title. They, if you can request a copy if you're incarcerated and they'll send you one free park will prisoners advocacy resource, something with a C connection community park. They'll send you a resource guide for free and they've got tons of resources for other prisoners literature groups or legal help or letter writing, and those sorts of things. Prison Activist Resource Center I'm sorry I'll send I'll put it in the chat. Good to be go ahead if you want to read it. Yeah, the next question is what about that's on health and health conditions. We get those two specific health conditions I think less commonly but often focus on exercise or, you know, be overall wellness and sometimes diet or nutrition. Sometimes we get really specific ones of like I want to know about arthritis and occasionally we'll have books in there to fill. Yeah we everyone's only get requests from someone who's like they told me I have this medical condition or like I'm going through this and I might be having surgery for this do you have any reading on it. And sometimes we do have like medical dictionaries or things and I know other other folks have used like our resources to like advocate for their own health care from within. So it feels nice to be able to provide support in the in the most basic of ways I guess for that. You mentioned kind of the stack of mule creek letters remind me that people sending us letters is actually a really big investment on their on their end of their resources it can be really expensive for folks to send us a letter get the paper, get a stamp. And so sometimes we'll get one envelope where they pulled their letters and they've shoved them all in there and we'll get 10 requests in an envelope. That's why we really take it seriously when we hunt down packages and we try and rewrap them and all of that. And because we know how much of their resources it's actually taking to get a letter up to us. Yeah, some people share envelopes to where you're going to say that. Well, I was going to use a specific example of one that I was thinking of that I got it I got a thank you letter one time and someone. You know, we talk about it in the request to right where it's like, this is what I had to do to write to you, like, like folks will tell us and I think that's, it's really important that, like, you know, not because not ever we don't all see all the same stuff all the time right like some of us are not even in the library all that often it just totally depends on schedules and what we do and. But I had a, I had a, it came back because I had sent the book package out so it came to me but it came to everybody right. Probably the letter that I think about the most from a guy who explained like what he had to do because he didn't have anybody on the outside and he doesn't have any money and so he sells his food trays to other people so that he can earn enough money to like pay for a stamp and then that's, that's a risk right because like, if we don't write back, he's done a lot to just even it with us in the first place if we don't send him back books like that's. It's not just that we didn't react and we weren't able to provide for that request like it's also like a loss on his end. So I think about that it's just like one example a lot you know and that there's a lot more of that going on than anybody shares with us. But it's, it's real and a lot of us know about that so. Yeah, sometimes people gift us stamps to like incarcerated people will send us stamps as a thank you or as like a here like which is really powerful, especially knowing how much kind of money or work goes into acquiring stamps or having stamps on your commentary book, where you're going to say the same thing Jamie. I was absolutely going to say that we've all said folks who once they get out they come along here with us. And that's really incredible. We're definitely looking to keep those voices in the room and make sure that folks who have those experiences are are in there with us and not just people were doing a service for. That was amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all of that information and your resources and why you do this that was very thorough. And not only that but the audience was really thorough as well. I think you have some friends out there. Now I'm trying to read the comments as we're doing this but don't forget this one document has everything you need we you know I tried to catch everything. So there's that rose brought up, who's in the audience brought up. Dr genie Austin who is our own SFPL jail and reentry services librarian who has a new book out about serving incarcerated folks in a library setting. And they will be doing our last one city one book event about knowledge and curiosity while being incarcerated, and I put the link to that in the in the doc but it's happening Tuesday the 13th. Same place, same time. Thank you all so much and library community. Thank you for turning up plp. Thank you so much for your amazing work. Amazing and dedicated and keep doing it. Friends will see you again soon. Thank you everyone. Thanks. Thanks a lot. We got away more than 50%. Bye everybody.