 Okay. All right, welcome friends will get started in just a moment and let folks in the room. I'm going to put two links in the chat box right now. And it's helpful if someone in chat or someone from the audience could let me know they hear me and see my screen, always helpful to me. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, and here comes those links. And these links are for tonight's event links to our presenter and then links to library news and links to tonight's YouTube. So you can watch this again because I know there'll be some great resources and share it with your friends. All right, let's jump in and get started on all that library news that I'm talking about, because there is so much summer stride. Yay. It's summer stride and it's pride. So much happening in June. It's wonderful. So summer stride is not just for kids. It's for everybody. And you can participate by picking up your tracker one of your locations, or signing up on bean stack, or downloading the tracker and coloring in your reading hours, always fun. And then of course at the end of your 20 hours of reading, you can try iconic summer stride SFPL finishing tote bag, and it's super cute this year. Our artist is one Kailani Juanita, and she is a Bay Area native San Francisco native, and has created this beautiful art, as well as a book from Chronicle books called Tada. So I know it seems youthful and it is because we love youth, but it's for everybody. So summer stride for all. And tonight we are here to learn about ABL comics. And I'm super excited about this event, because I just admire the work they're doing. And I will tell you more about that after more library news. Welcome to the unceded land of the Eloni tribal people. And we want to acknowledge the many raw Mutush Eloni tribal groups and families as the rightful stewards in the lands in which we live and work here in our Bay Area. The library is committed to uplifting the names of these lands and community members from these nations with whom we live together. SFPL encourages you to learn more about first person culture and land rights, and are committed to hosting events and providing educational resources on these topics. And that link that I put in the chat box has a link with inside there to information about land rights and indigenous culture and a reading list, and a link to a map called native land where you can find out what native land you're occupying. So as I was mentioning, I'm really proud of the work that ABO does San Francisco Public Library also works with communities who are experiencing incarceration. We have a jail and reentry program so librarians do service our adult jails, as well as do reference by mail and provide reentry resources. And we've been serving the juvenile justice system, whatever you would like to call that's not not what we like to call it, but for over 20 years we've been serving our youth community, who is also experiencing incarceration. So I am so amazingly proud of the work they do and it's, I think that they are just the team is small and mighty and I can't just can't say enough about the work they do. But we have several programs this summer coming up about you can learn more about reentry and incarceration and the justice system. So, we have Dr Keisha middle mass and Ruben Miller, they will be in conversation together talking about their books. Middle mass is written a book about convicted and condemned the politics of policies prisoners and reentry. She is just brilliant. And then in conversation with Ruben Miller who has a book about also about reentry and halfway home and the politics behind the carceral state. So please come out for these books for that book talk we think is just so important, and share share these events with people you know, our amazing friend Troy Williams he's a Bay Area institution he is amazing does amazing work. And he is part of the new film the prison within, we're fortunate to be able to screen this film, along with Troy will be there and the film director and producer so come check that out to 2pm Saturday afternoon event come through. And yes pride so I'll breeze through some of these events we have coming up for pride, a mystery queer panel June 15. There are Shulman and combo with Matilda Bernstein Sycamore on June 17 going to be a great one. I hear the book is outstanding, and our own Tom on me on Oh, on May, June 22. And then if you miss Brontes in conversation with Alvin or Laff I encourage you to find that on our YouTube channel and I'll put that in the chat. It was so fun. Oh my gosh, so fun. I will be doing a book club Brontes will not be there, but we'll be discussing Brontes his book 100 boyfriends, and he is our on the same page author for June on the same page is where we encourage everyone in San Francisco to read the same book at the same time. So pick up 100 boyfriends from your favorite. Actually, worse, we're partnering with dog geared Castro so pick it up from there, or from your favorite library. Tomorrow, I'm excited about this one so Jenny Worley, also a city college educator, but also behind one of the main players behind the unionization of the Westie lady. So she'll be talking about her new book and all of that amazing San Francisco history. Today we partner with the Asian Art Museum, presenting the goddess images of the power. So these are always fun and so much info. Come by for that. And then Saturday, super I am super excited about this if you know Danny lion his photographs are iconic. We only know his photos if you don't know his name, but he was a photographer for the SNCC the student nine violent coordinating committee, who did a lot of civil activities, getting black folks to vote. He was close friends with john Lewis, and his photos are just amazing so will be still screening his film SNCC, and he'll be in conversation with Lewis Watts who was a photographer here in the Bay Area. And on the 21st will be speaking with Marlon Peterson, who's new book bird uncaged and abolitionist freedom song, and he'll be in conversation with the amazing author, Casey LeMond. And I encourage you again these two authors are outstanding. I can't say enough about Casey LeMond. Check out all of his books and moderating this panel is our own poet laureate Tom go ice and All right, here we go. So tonight we are here to see ABO comics voices of LGBTQ prisoners and ABO is a collective working towards compassionate accountability without relying on the state or sick offense. ABO believes interpersonal and social issues can be solved without locking people in cages. Their mission is to combat the culture that treats humans as disposable. Criminal is it criminals criminalizes the most marginalized among us through artistic activism, we hope to proliferate the idea that a better world means regarding redefining our concepts of justice and ABO. The money that they make goes back to the to people who need and prisoners in need. I definitely do a lot of work and I encourage you to follow their Instagram channel. And they're always doing good work on there. I love it. I'm going to stop sharing. And I'm going to turn it over now to Casper and Ali of ABO comics. Hi everyone. Hello. Hopefully you can all see and hear us okay. I'm going to write in the chat if we're speaking too quickly or you can't hear us for any reason. Yes, absolutely so I'm Casper. I am the director slash co founder of ABO comics. And I'm Ali, I am a volunteer for a little over a year now with ABO. Awesome. And so we've got a little bit of a presentation here for you. Hopefully you can maybe see our screen already if not. Oh, there we go. Okay boomer. All right. So yes, thank you so much for that awesome intro. We are some of the people who help out here at ABO comics pretty much on a daily basis. And a little bit about us. We are a publishing collective and small press that works in solidarity with queer transgender and HIV positive prisoners. We've been around since 2017 and a lot of our work surrounds helping people out with creating art channeling sort of that channeling, you know, what life is like in prison into an artistic process. We publish an annual comic anthology of queer prisoner artwork so we're in year five now our fifth anthology will be out in December. We're also working with individual artists to do their own solo publications now so we just had a couple other books come out. We do letter responses for all of our contributors so right now we're up to a couple hundred people that we write with relatively consistently we provide feedback for their artwork we provide feedback for their publishing. We do advocacy on their behalf whether it be filing grievances helping them out with navigating prison bureaucracy helping them out with getting medical care or fundraising on their behalf. We also do a ton of events so we'll tell you about those near the end. We just started up a newsletter that will be circulating to hundreds of people inside prisons nationwide. We just sent out our first edition this last month so our second one will be coming out pretty soon. I'm gonna be putting a bunch of stuff in there for pride for folks inside prison so that they can celebrate to. We are working on a podcast that'll be released within the next couple months we're super excited about that so we'll be featuring one on one interviews with a bunch of our contributors who are published in our anthologies and we've just got a lot of stuff on the horizon so we're really excited to share it with you. So a little bit about me. I came on to ABO in June of 2020. I had just lost my job due to the pandemic and I thought what should I do with my time and Catherine was right there with a bunch of stuff to do. So I came on as the co-manager of ABO social media channels and then my co-manager went on to law school to work in criminal justice. We wish her all the best. And I took over the social media channels. I started taking on more and more with the group. I Casper kept trusting me to take on more and more and I really appreciated it. So I have facilitated partnerships between ABO and other trans focused and prison abolitionist focused organizations nationwide. I have been managing a lot of online fundraising campaigns for individual contributors and then for our organization as a whole. I have tabled at events with Casper which has been really enjoyable especially since I've been deprived of our community connections you know since the pandemic descended on all of us. And I just finished today editing a manuscript from one of our contributors who was recently released from incarceration. I'm so happy to have found ABO. It's really given me a purpose in a direction in life and it's really complemented my own studies. I'm getting my master's in library and information science. So this partnership with San Francisco Public Library couldn't be more perfect for me. So my volunteer work with ABO and my personal vocation to combat the prison industrial complex in as many ways as possible, especially intersecting with libraries. It's kind of just a match made in heaven. Yes, hint hint, all he is looking for employment at libraries. And they're wonderful so just consider it. I'm going to talk a little bit about our history here. So we started up in 2017 with really no sort of game plan, no sort of long term goals, no real understanding of what we were doing. In 2017 it was myself and two of my friends named I and what and we were just kind of hanging out in a community garden one day talking about a lot of the advocacy work I was doing around prison life and working with queer prisoners. I had been doing prisoner advocacy stuff for about 10 years at that point, and I was just pen paling with a whole bunch of people in prisons all over the US and a lot of them were sending me a ton of really beautiful artwork. And I was just like acquiring mountains of it and at one point I was just like shoving it underneath my bed because I had nowhere else to really put it. And a lot of the people that I was writing with were like, hey, you know, you should start up an art gallery you should start up a project can you, you know, make an Etsy store and help us sell our artwork. And so I had tried a couple different things and none of them had really gone anywhere we maybe sold like two or three pieces of artwork over the course of a couple months and that was a little discouraging so when I was hanging out with two of my friends and we were talking about prisoner advocacy stuff and then it also the conversation just turned into comic stuff because my friends were really big and into comic making and had done a couple publications on their own and the idea just kind of popped into our heads about making a comic anthology by LGBT prisoners about what life what about what their life was like sharing that with the world and then also using it as a fundraiser for their commissary funds. And so here on the left you can see our very first call for submissions ad that we sent out in 2017. We put it in the black and pink newspaper which circulates to thousands of LGBT people. Oh, recording is in progress. Okay, let's do continue. And we just got in an amazing response for it. We opened up a PO box and you know within a couple weeks we were just flooded with with letters with artwork, comic submissions, people were really, really excited. So we put out our first edition. This one here in the middle. They're labeled you can see probably one, two, three and four here. So our first one came out in 2017 obviously successive next one over here on the right came out 2018 volume three was 2019 and volume four was 2020. And right now we are collecting submissions for our fifth edition which will come out in December. All of our profits are donated to people in prison directly to their commissary accounts or to their families, so that they're able to buy basic necessities like food, clothing, books, art supplies, medical co pays because a lot of prisoners have to pay for their own health care. And you know generally whatever else they might need to be able to purchase being a prisoner. Oftentimes many people don't realize how extremely expensive it is people accrue mass amounts of debt while in prison. And prisons generally take a whole bunch of money for a ton of different reasons whether it be like phone calls which are astronomically expensive. You know, again the health care, if people want to supplement their diets with any sort of like nutritious food they'll need to buy that at commissary. So that's where our profits go is is assisting people directly in prison with their financial needs. And with our specific population of queer, trans and HIV positive people who are incarcerated. A lot of the, at least a portion of the funds that go back go towards gender affirming items so that there can at least be a semblance of comfort while in prison surrounding one's gender identity. So a little bit about what we've done each year 2017 of course was our start we were sort of stumbling through things trying to figure it out. We put together our first anthology and then through this incredible queer prisoners ball. I think it was called the queer prison haters ball. It was incredible we had a couple live bands we had a couple hundred people show up raised a lot of money for donations, and all of our donations go out for the holidays as well so a lot of our folks don't really have friends or family on the outside to help you know look out for them. So, you know sending out donations around the holidays is really special for a lot of people they're able to get some goodies near the end of the year and really celebrate. And so in 2019, we had kind of gotten the ball rolling a little bit we're figuring out our footing. I'm sorry 2018. I don't know what year we're even in anymore. 2021 I can't believe it. Yikes, it's just what is flowing by so fast. But right in 2019, there we go. We put out our second anthology and in that year we actually won an award from Comic Con for best anthology. We were tabling and doing a ton of fundraisers. We were building up our connections with folks in prison so we, we started off writing with maybe like 20 people who had answered our initial call for submissions, and then over the years it's kind of snowballed so we've just, you've been running with more and more people every year. By the second year I think we had a couple hundred we had maybe a little over a hundred people we were writing with consistently doing advocacy work for by 2019 we were accruing grant funding. We were doing a bunch of like interviews with newspapers we were on podcasts. So we started up a partnership with Stanford University to develop a comic book making curriculum geared towards LGBT prisoners that will hopefully be implemented in California prisons, sometime in the near future. We were bringing in hundreds and hundreds of letters every single month that we were trying to stay on top of and do advocacy requests for. And then by 2020 I quit two of my other jobs and this became my full time life. So now this is my job 100% it's where I'm at every day we rented out an office space. We're hoping to get the grant funding in this year to actually hire on a staff to start hiring on people who were who are our contributors who are getting released from prison. We'll be releasing our fifth anthology. We are doing our newspaper now and we're on board to be starting up a part of the podcast which will be pitching to NPR as soon as we get our pilot episodes. And so I had the honor of coming in just at the point when Casper decided this is what I'm going to do with my life I'm not going to do any other jobs. And I'm going to throw myself into this so so I so I came on totally fresh face. This is one of the first in depth abolitionist work that I've ever done. And I have the joy of telling you about all the things that we've done in just the past few months. So we, a couple of days ago hit the $50,000 mark of donations directly back to our incarcerated contributors and their families, which is huge for us are the number of people that we're currently writing with is around 215 and that number increases every day. That's what it feels like at least. And our network of incarcerated contributors has grown so much in the past, in the past year. If you just look at the physical anthologies in physical space you'll see anthology number three is about this thick. And then anthology number four is right here we have so many artists who are eager to share their work with us and it's amazing. And we released two anthologies not one but two in 2020 we released a special anthology confined before COVID-19, which was an encapsulation of a lot of our contributors reactions to enduring the COVID-19 pandemic while incarcerated. It's a really good read and I suggest everyone pick up a copy. And we also got emergency fundraising out to get people hygiene supplies personal protective equipment to just weather the storm that was COVID. We grew our volunteer core, we have around 10 people who consistently are in our office and a couple of other people who volunteer virtually scattered across the nation. We're slowly returning to in person events where it seems like more and more volunteers come out of the woodwork saying hey I'd love to write letters, hey I'd love to file, hey I'd love to scan some things so we're hoping to see that expand even more as it gets safer together. So we're returning to in person events we tabled recently at an event where a bunch of organizations came together to raise money for work to send to organizations that are working towards combating API hate discrimination against the API community. It was really wonderful, it was really wonderful to meet so many people who are working at that intersection. And we have a clear prisoners art show up at Classic Cars West in Oakland, which is also the location of our office where we're zooming in from right now. We have several upcoming events that we'll talk about at the end of the presentation as well. We have some work on a podcast as Casper mentioned that is going to feature voices from many of our most prolific incarcerated contributors, and then more and more and more as well I think we have a list of like 50 contributors who want to speak with us so that will be great. I'm especially excited for the episode where my pen pal is going to be featured. I would say that our biggest development over the past year has been pivoting towards publishing works from solo incarcerated contributors. So we currently have five publications I believe that are out as solo works from individual incarcerated contributors and we have easily five more on the way. And so these works cover, they run the game, their omnibus collections of art pieces, full length stories, like the one I just finished editing this morning. The serialized comics, like the second from the left on the top row you can see that's the first edition of I think a 10 issue comic that we're going to 1111 issue comic fantastic okay yeah and 11 issue comics that will be publishing at periodically. That's just been amazing to get to amplify voices from our individual contributors in this way and really, really stand out as one of the few organizations in the entire nation that's working to publish individual works of artists who are incarcerated while they're incarcerated. A lot of the times publishers will get in contact with people who have been incarcerated but have been since released to talk to them about their stories about what they experienced while they were inside. We're with our contributors every step of the way we're talking them through the process and we're getting funds to them from proceeds from the sales of their books, while they're currently incarcerated and that that's a huge difference I think I think it makes a huge difference in our contributors lives. I've heard from my pen pal that it has for her. Yeah definitely and it's really exciting to see all these publications come to life because for the last, it's been four years now a lot of these folks have been writing with us from the very beginning. And at the very beginning they were like I'm interested in publishing my own solo comics or graphic novels or just books in general would you be willing to work with me on these projects. And at the time you know I had like almost no publishing experience and we had really no intention to become a small press or anything like that. And I was like yeah you know maybe maybe someday we'll see we'll see if that works out you know not really knowing if that would be the case in the future and then just you know for short years that flew by. Now we were able to put out all these new publications or people we've been working with for years and their stories are incredible and beautiful. I would really suggest taking the time to take a look at some of these publications because the amount of amazing incredible things these people have done with their lives and have overcome and have shared through beautiful artwork is just it's it's awesome to go through. Like for instance here on the bottom left hand corner corner Dark Matters and Prophecies a book we just put out by our friend Jefferson DeSueza, who was incarcerated for 25 years, but previously had done paranormal and extra terrestrial research with the United States government and this is the first book publishing some of his research on on on the Ouija board that he had done with both the US and Russian government, and it's it's extremely fascinating it took me a really long time to kind of like to be on board with this publication because you know when I first started writing with Jefferson it was really interesting because he was telling me all of these stories about all this research he had been doing. And I, you know, I kind of took it with a grain of salt and I was like I don't know how much to kind of put faith wise into this. And then I kept researching all the things he was telling me and over the years more and more of it checked out and I started researching all of all of his claims and I was like oh my goodness like this story is too incredible to even be true. But it's it's an absolutely awesome read if you're interested in any sort of paranormal stuff that was really fun. This one here second to the left on the top hope by Tyrese Swain is like always said will be the first of 11 additions featuring a trans woman superhero and this one's kind of more of a backstory this one is super fun. The next one over anthology of an artist by Krista is always pen pal, and she's been featured in every single one of our anthologies so far, and we'll be in the next one as well. This she she's really interested in manga and anime Japanese culture so this is a really fun, you know anthology collection if you're interested in that sort of stuff. Anyway, but straight which is the next one over is by Gabriella coca Wyatt who's also been with us from the very beginning. She's published in all of our anthologies as well and this beautiful series called shape gray, which is a semi auto back semi autobiographical comic that evolves over anthology, it progresses a little bit more. And this omnibus collection is just like the first anywhere between like five or 10 pages of dozens of comics she has been working on for years and years. She's an incredible comic book artist, and the art in there is just to die for. The middle one on the bottom protest art Broadway in Oakland is a series of photographs taken from, of course, Broadway here in Oakland of all of the wonderful art that popped up last year. And that one's really fun to it's not, you know, it's kind of a different publication we went a little different route on this one. Mostly it's photographs taken so that we could share in solidarity with our friends on the inside so that they could see some of the outside art that you know a lot of which is in support of people in prison, or people impacted by the prison complex. And then this one down here bottom right pod life will be up for presale very very soon Harold Lee has been with us from the very beginning to, and these are really fun kind of one panel comics that he's made hundreds of that are like really really silly one off jokes, kind of about like little practical jokes till play on people in prison just to kind of keep the moonlight, and to have some fun with people or just like funny things that have happened that he's experienced while in prison. And it's really silly and really cute. So something I love about a bio comics and the work that we choose to publish is that it says diverses our contributors themselves. We've got like Sunday bunnies from Harold Lee. We've got, well, I don't even know how to describe cocos work because it covers so many different artistic styles. If you were to pick up a copy of any way but straight and flipped through. You'd think that you know maybe seven different comic artists have contributed to it. She's just that versatile and her style and it's really fantastic. I think it's really enough about Krista morning stars book, because you know, she's my, she's my pen pal and I have so much background information to what real life experiences informed these comics. They're, they're heart wrenching and places and just bitterly darkly funny and others. The style is immaculate if you love, if you love manga if you love fairies if you love rainbows and colors. If you're Ali, and I feel like there's no like stronger more blunt just in your face voice than Tyrese Swain's voice I feel like I'm looking forward to every issue of hope as it comes out it's going to be rad. Jefferson is amazing because I've never known a human to write so much and right so in such depth and with such care. I got to look at the manuscript of dark matters and prophecy before it was published. And oh my gosh, it's it's so dense, but it's so gripping, you can't stop reading it. So I hope that that's your experience to if you ever get to read a copy. I've already plugged confined before COVID-19 but I have to put in one word for protest art. And that is that the thing that it does is immortalizes this kind of ephemeral art that was spray painted on this sides of boards that were stuck around buildings to protect them and to to call attention to the unrest that isn't happening in Oakland the righteous uprisings that are happening here now that they've been happening since last year and way before and they're going to happen for years to come. But now we have photos of all of all the beautiful art that's growing up that was that's been torn down in places that's not forever. Right. And what Casper was saying about making sure that our incarcerated contributors can see it as well it's just so profound. And I'm, I'm just so happy. I'm just so happy to know that my bookshelf can have all of these books on it and I can know the process that went into making each one. So, we're happy to share them with you. Yeah, and if you know if you I know this is a San Francisco Public Library but you ever make it across the bridge over here to Oakland and want to stop by and check out the office in person. You know, feel free to send us an email or check out our website send us a message through there and we're happy to talk about any of these books, any and always. We've got an art show up right now which we'll tell you about a little bit. See, so what's next on our agenda. Yeah, well if you are inspired by any of this if it calls your name and you want to come hang out with us and volunteer with us. That would be awesome we're always looking for new volunteers. We put together an incredible podcast team one of our volunteers is actually here right now hanging out quietly. And we have tons of tasks you know like prison never stops. Unfortunately, so there's always more work to be done. If you have any interest in corresponding with people in prison if you had any interest in helping curate artwork or working events or just learning more about prison life we are here and we would love to meet you so let us know if that interests you at all. Some of our specific volunteer duties are, you know, we get tons and tons of artwork and letters, and we do our best to immortalize every single piece that comes in. So we scan everything we digitize it it goes on to an online Google drive or cloud or something so all of our volunteers can access it. We have non stop scanning filing to do. We, you know we have a lot of website development stuff we want to revamp and make things easier more accessible. We want to start doing more events. So we can bring awareness to some of this work and some of the incredible artists on the inside. We have a lot of editing to do because we have a lot of incredible artists who want to do their own books. So, as far as like providing feedback or working with artists through the process of publishing. So, you know, editing my manuscripts, we want to branch out to actually doing books and poetry, and every other sort of creative outlet for people. We definitely need help with our podcast. Yeah, we try to make it like a really nice sort of community family volunteer experience for people, you know, generally we kind of just come out to the office I'll hang out we'll have a drink together because there's a bar downstairs bar and restaurant in our building which is awesome. Yeah, so that's pretty much it we're just trying to we're just trying to rope you in here. Yeah, if you can see there there is a lot of space for new faces to be added on to the ABO comics graphics so if you want one of those faces to be yours please get in contact with us we'd really love to have you. One thing I've learned in my year and change with ABO is that the door to this office is always open. Okay. So, I would be remiss if I didn't also plug the opportunities that exist at San Francisco Public Library. As Anissa said at the top, the jars that jail and reentry services are jars program offers reentry support they work in partnership with the juvenile justice system, they offer in person library service or at least they did before the pandemic inside prisons in jails across the state. And then they also provide reference letter reference service so incarcerated library patrons will write letter library reference questions in to librarians and volunteers will then respond to them. At least that's my understanding of the program. And if you search SFPL jars, it'll come up and I'm pretty sure that the link was already shared in the chat so if you have access to that I really recommend learning more about what they do. And especially since from what I'm aware of the state of library service to incarcerated patrons, even in the state of California is pretty dismal. The last statewide survey that I'm aware of, which I would be happy to link in the chat. And I will do so after I'm done speaking. I feel that only around a quarter of the public libraries in the state of California offer any sort of services to incarcerated patrons, and then only half of that number provide any services that actually involve routine interfacing with incarcerated patrons so it's going off with like here are some books in joy. And so, so San Francisco Public Library is actually really unique in terms of the, the really hands on and dedicated service that they provide incarcerated patrons. So I really encourage you to continue supporting voicing your support of San Francisco Public Library in whatever way you can, attending those events that Anissa mentioned about the prison industrial complex. We'll be starting later in the summer will be really great. And so because as a PL is so supportive of it being incarcerated population, any contribution that you can make to them, whether it's with your time with your voice with your dollars will go really far. So this is some of the events that we have coming up that we're really excited about this one here up on the top is actually not our event, but it is one we very highly suggest it is my good friend Sarah, who is just, I cannot talk highly enough about this incredible person. She survived isolation and a long prison sentence in Iran for being, I think it was Iran or was it. I think it was Iran. And she, she, she had a really brutal experience there as a journalist and was incarcerated and put in solitary confinement for a very long time and when she came back to the United States. She actually made a play about it. And the play is going on tour, and the tour launch is actually tomorrow. So if you and it's online so you don't have to travel anywhere. So if you have some time tomorrow evening, actually here in California it'll be the afternoon it'll be 1pm. Check that out. It is called the box it is play about solitary confinement and it is the coolest coolest thing ever she's got incredible cast. She's a wonderful human being and I think it would be an incredible experience for anyone who's so lucky enough to get to watch this play. Coming up very soon we have our event our pride celebration called June bloom and that will be here at Classic Cars West which is where we're at right now. There is of course a bar and grill. We will have tabling from local art vendors from 12 to five, and then we will have dinner and dancing five to 10pm music and drinks all day. And of course all proceeds will be donated to LGBT people in prison for pride month. So funnily enough, on the exact same day, I, instead of parting it down with my view comics friends, I will be tabling at so much second Saturdays. It's an event put on by Folsom Street. There is a link that I think is going into the chat otherwise I'll put it there. And with all the details where to meet where to see me hocking all of the leather goods made by one of our incarcerated contributors. Who is incredible there are belts there are small purses there are large purses there are key chains there are collars. Everything you can imagine I will be selling on on our contributors behalf. So if you would rather not try and make it out to Oakland this Saturday and want to stay in the city. I would love to see you mentioned that you were at this event and we can chat about it it'll be amazing. Maybe even get a discount we'll see. You asked me very nicely. And then the last thing that I want to plug just because I am the social media person and the fundraiser person it's my job to plug these things. The fundraiser going on for give out day which is an event that the horizons foundation puts on every year for prime month. So it's not so much a day as it is a month of giving, giving to your favorite organizations that support LGBTQ people. And that fundraiser is also going to be linked. And we love it if you would promote it if on your own social media but you know no no no big deal no no issue I won't be upset. I won't, I won't choose not to chat with you at Folsom if you decide that you don't want to share this fundraiser, but it's something that we do every year and our goals kind of lofty this year, because it is our fourth year plus as an organization and we're looking forward to expanding our reach in all the ways that we mentioned earlier, and probably many more. So, so thank you so much for listening to that little pitch, and also thank you for being here with us for this entire event. We just have one more thing to chat with you about and then we'd love to take your questions. Feel free to put them in the chat or I'm not sure what the protocol is for that, but I'd love to talk to you more. Okay, so we put together a little resource guide for folks. We try to keep it short and sweet. But if you are interested in finding a pen pal inside prison which is one of the things I try to advocate for the very most if you're getting interested in doing any sort of work with prison abolition or prisoner advocacy work, or if you're just trying to learn more about about the system about what life is like for people, then I really highly suggest actually getting in contact with the people who are affected by the prison system. And to do that is more simple than it has ever been there are incredible organizations who work to link up and pals. So if you go to our website which is just a vo comics.com and you click on our pen pal section, we've got a handy dandy guide for you about what to expect what to think about prior to writing how to get started. How to even address an envelope because we do live in a day and age where that's not so commonplace anymore. So there have been a few times I've had to walk people through how to properly address an envelope which is totally fine because we email everybody these days, but unfortunately most people in prison still don't have access to any sort of email system. Handwriting letters is where it's at, which is actually really fun and really therapeutic once you get into it. It's definitely chicken soup for the soul to actually hand write a letter and put it in envelope and send it off and then get something back in your mailbox you know so happy to help walk you through any of that at any point. You can also check out black and pink which is how, or is actually one of the organizations that I got started with when I first started doing prisoner advocacy work. Yeah, they're absolutely wonderful. It's just black and pink dot org. They, their main mission is to link up LGBT people in prison with free world pen pals, and they have lots of incredible stuff on their website for you to check out. And then there's also the survived and punished guidelines for writing to incarcerated survivors which is or that you linked. Yeah, I mean survived and punished works. It's a Bay Area based organization, they work specifically with survivors of domestic intimate partner violence so if that's a cause that resonates with you I would recommend checking out that link and seeing about their specific guidelines. And so the rest of the resources that we've linked are ways that you can donate your existing books to people inside prison, or contribute to people who are doing that work book stores books to prison organizations, and an organization that's based out of New York, called the Prison Library support network. And then we've spoken about this a lot of times, we'd love it if you came as a volunteer for us with a bio comics but if something like black and pink is more your jam then check them out. And so we're a support network, also great. I work as a volunteer for them and they are so fresh and so full of ideas. So if doing virtual volunteering is more your jam, go for that. Awesome. Alright, so that's kind of what we got for you. We're happy to take any questions if you have them. Not we could probably ramble on here for forever so we're happy to do that as well. But if you do have any questions link them down in the chat below and hopefully that's the best way to do this. So let's check out the chat ourselves because I can, I can understand that we haven't seen it. So there was one chat. How do you connect with folks who are inside or how do they find you. So we have done a ton of outreach at this point, although for the most part, people started kind of just connecting with us via word of mouth. So we have a PO box and we have, we have put ads in several newspapers that circulate nationwide a couple times, people just write to our PO box and then we send them a letter back. But yeah, for the most part, it's really like people replied to our initial call for submissions back in 2017. And then it's just kind of snowballed over the years where it's like one person tells their friend who tells their friend, who tells their friend which travels to a different prison when somebody gets moved, and then it just kind of goes on and on and on. We have done a little bit of outreach to people where we send out letters first, just being like hey we're on your side we heard you through this and this or we saw your article here. So we try and get in contact with as many people as we can we try to get the word out to as many prisons as we can. It's an ongoing effort so we're always in need of more volunteers to do more outreach. Thank you for that question. I was just going to tell folks they could also unmute or raise your hand if you want an unmute we're happy to take questions that way since it's a nice intimate crowd tonight. Yeah. Our YouTube family if you'd like to ask questions, you're definitely we can get those back to you to our family. Yeah. I can fill the void with my own questions. So, when like publishing, I mean when editing and like choosing who the artist is that must be like pretty intense and like hard to choose right so how do you go about that process and the editing. Do you have to edit a lot. And do you want to edit a lot and how do you go back to those with the with the people artists the creator. But choosing is not something I really like to do so we pretty much publish everybody we possibly can. We think everybody's stories are really important and with the exception of just like a few times we've had to unfortunately turn people down just because their works weren't completed or fully developed or just needed a little bit more of love, and some more and working through the process and stuff we try to pretty much publish everybody. So, as you can see if you pick up any of the anthologies like all he was saying our first edition was pretty thin it was like 100 pages or something. And then our fourth edition was how many pages like 300 something. I think it broke 400. So, yeah, our anthologies went from like pretty, pretty small to now it's like a dictionary. So we might end up start breaking things up and doing multiple year or just revamping a little bit doing themed anthologies in the future. So, yeah, we just we try to help amplify the voices of as many people as we possibly can and then work one on one with as many artists as we can but you know things are growing all the time we're still a pretty small team and there's always more people who are writing to us so we might have to unfortunately start being a little bit more selective in our publishing process just as we grow and his word of mouth gets out a little bit more but we're trying our best to publish as many people as we can. We'll cross that bridge and we get there for sure. And the editing process. It's pretty like, for me, I would say it's pretty simple. It's not as complicated as I think people would imagine. We take submissions, most of the year, and then we have a cut off date, which this year is August so submissions are still rolling in. August 15 will close our submission process and then we'll start going through all the submissions we've gotten this year. Most likely we'll take as many people as we can again. And then we send out notices to all of our contributors saying like congratulations you're getting published again. And then we compile all of the submissions together in InDesign. We upload them to IngramSpark for print, print our anthologies, start selling them and then all of the proceeds that we raise get put into a pot and then get split pretty evenly to everybody at the end of the year for holiday commissary donations. And then in terms of individual manuscript editing, I'm fresh off of this process. And I'm sure that it varies with the contributor, but for me the process was pretty intensive. And, and I really enjoyed it I got to know the story so intimately now that, and so now I just want everyone to read it. I just shut up about it actually. And, and that was a really wonderful and rewarding process. I had the great joy of having a contributor who was like do what you want with my manuscript. Just just go wild. And so I really enjoyed that privilege I'm sure every publishing relationship is going to be different but but that was the experience I had and it was awesome. Yeah, it's um in some ways kind of nice because we don't have that sort of gatekeeping part of like the typical publishing industry. It's really nice to just kind of be like some queer punk kids who can do whatever the hell we want. I don't have to answer to anybody. So we can take on as many people we want to work with as possible. And most people are just so excited to have the chance to be able to share their stories because for many people they've been given up on. In their lives they've heard the word no, over and over and over again from, you know, everyone in the prison system and probably for the most part a lot of their families and, you know, there's, there's a lot of heartbreak inside prison where no is just like the go to so it's really nice to be able to tell people yes, and to work with people to help develop their craft and really get their stories out there into the world. Great. So I'm seeing two questions coming in that are fairly similar. The first one reads, you mentioned earlier responding to advocacy advocacy requests from those on the inside. What kind of advocacy work have you been able to contribute toward. And the second question from our YouTube family says, other than publishing, would y'all talk about ways y'all do other ways y'all do help out prisoners. I've heard about paying for surgery, having people pulled out of solitary confinement, etc. Okay, I have a short story, and then I bet Casper has a longer. So recently we organized a social media campaign to get as many of our followers to write letters of support for transgender person in prison to have them moved to a safekeeping unit that those calls were ultimately unsuccessful at this stage. We are in conversation with the person to see what action they'd like us to take going forward, because there was a groundswell of support for this person, and we'd really like to keep that going. So just an example of the kind of work that we do writing writing because an official was saying, hey, you're doing sound okay. Please, let's take care, take care of our own and listen to what we're saying what we're saying matters. Yeah, so people tend to write us every sort of request that they might need help with in prison. And so there's a lot of range there. We tried to do this this last year. He's published in our anthologies under the alias scary movie. He was rapidly losing his vision inside prison and creating artwork was his pretty much his one and only outlet, and he was losing the ability to do so. And the prison was just kind of ignoring all of his requests to see an eye doctor. So we flooded the prison with mail. We really flooded it called every single day got hundreds of people to write and basically said like you need to see this person and provide him with proper medical care. And there was some pushback on the prison we got some letters back saying like oh you know he is being seen by a doctor blah blah blah, but he wasn't. And so then after a couple months of really just sort of bombarding the system. He really was able to see an eye doctor and get much needed eye surgery. And now his vision is 100% you know 2020 perfect and he's able to draw and create art again. And so we're, you know, we're really excited to be able to advocate on the behalf of a lot of our artists who just don't have a whole lot of other support, and to, you know, going the the typical grievance inside prison is just not working out, because unfortunately, you know, for so many different reasons I don't want to rag too much on like the employees and stuff who also, you know, typically have really difficult jobs that nobody wants to do. But in that instance, they are so overwhelmed with the amount that there is to do and a lot of times you know there's just not enough time in the day to see all the people who need help. And so when we're able to say like hey this is an issue. This is a really important one and please like take the time to actually investigate this or you know look into it or whatever. A lot of times it takes kind of months of really like pushing and being sort of the squeaky wheel. But you know it gets stuff done we've helped change prison policy in Texas prisons for transgender prisoners, where we made it so that trans prisoners no longer had to shower alongside cisgender prisoners. And they were able to have shower doors, so that you know they weren't in full view of other people. We helped change prison policy around strip searches of transgender prisoners and strip searches are everyday life for a lot of people which is really hard and hard to wrap your brain around but we make we helped make it so that strip searches would be done by guards of the that aligned with the gender the person. I think you understand what I'm trying to say. Yes, thank you. Which in essence is just like it's it blows my brain to be like okay yeah we we helped change it so people are getting strict search by somebody who thought is slightly better. It's baby steps right. So just you know pretty much any any help or assistance we might be able to offer people because it is unfortunately easier to get stuff done from this side than it is on their side. Not all grievances are taken seriously a lot of times they're just kind of thrown in the trash or they go missing. And you know navigating that bureaucracy from the inside is just almost impossible sometimes so we try to do what we can do what we can indeed. So I think that brings us close to a close if someone wants to get a final question and they can but it's been really fantastic talking to y'all and then you'll know about what we do. Thanks for holding space for us. Thank you to SPL for putting this on really excited to plug into the rest of your events. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Casper and Ollie what an amazing story and your work is just amazing and don't burn out. Stay doing take care of yourselves so you can continue doing this work that you do. Thank you for plugging our own jars who I, like I said I can't say enough about I'm just, I'm always proud of the work they do and they have gone back to serving inside just like in the last two weeks so it's very, very recent back to serving. And yeah, thank you so much. And friends, we will send out. Let me put that chat. I lost my chat box, which is what I was doing. I lost it. But, um, there it is and put this link in here one more time. And I'll send a follow up when Casper and Ollie send me the great resources I'll add that to the document and I'll email everybody these great resources. And let's go out and visit I'm down for so much Saturdays. So, I'll see you there. I'll see you. Thank you so much. Visit our other events for summer strength. I know. Thank you so much. We appreciate your work. All right.