Black & Pink News, Vol 9, Issue 3—April/May 2018

‘Love Deficiency Little Boy/Girl,’ by Deserea J. (GA)

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May 2018

by Jenna F. (TX)

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In This Issue News you can use Second Chances in the Era of the Jobless Future: A History of Probation pages 5-6, 8-9, 12-14 Inmate Wins $27K Settlement Over HIV Prison Segregation pages 4, 15 Book Review: Otter Lieffe’s Margins and Murmurations pages 4, 17 How the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act Puts Sex Workers in Peril pages 7, 10-11, 15-16

Black & Pink family Art page 1 Letters pages 18-37 Poetry pages 20, 22-24, 30, 32, 36-38 Submit to Black & Pink! page 39

Black & Pink News Black & Pink Hotline The hotline phone number is (531) 600-9089. The hotline will be available Sundays, 1-5 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time) for certain. You can call at other times, as well, and we will do our best to answer your calls as often as possible. We are sorry that we can only accept prepaid calls at this time. The purposes of the hotline are: Supportive listening: Being in prison is lonely, as we all know. The hotline is here for supportive listening so you can just talk to someone about what is going on in your life.

Organizing: If there are things going on at your prison—lockdowns, guard harassment, resistance, or anything else that should be shared with the public—we can help spread the word.

April/May 2018 work toward the abolition of the prison-industrial complex (PIC) is rooted in the experiences of currently and formerly incarcerated people. We are outraged by the specific violence of the PIC towards LGBTQ people, and we respond through advocacy, education, direct service, and organizing. Black & Pink is proudly a family of people of all races and ethnicities.

About Black & Pink News Since 2007, Black & Pink free world volunteers have pulled together a monthly newspaper, composed primarily of material written by our family’s incarcerated members. In response to letters we receive, we send the newspaper to more prisoners every month! Black & Pink News currently reaches more than 9,400 prisoners!

Give us a call! (531) 600-9089 Sundays, 1-5 p.m. EST

We look forward to hearing from you! This is our first attempt at this so please be patient with us as we work it all out. We will not be able to answer every call, but we will do our best. We apologize to anyone who has been trying to get through to the hotline with no success. We are still working out the system. Thank you for being understanding.

Restrictions: The hotline is not a number to call about getting on the penpal list or to get the newspaper.

The hotline is not a number to call for sexual or erotic chatting. The hotline is not a number for getting help with your current court case; we are not legal experts.

Statement of Purpose Black & Pink is an open family of LGBTQ prisoners and “free world” allies who support each other. Our

Disclaimer The ideas and opinions expressed in Black & Pink News are solely those of the authors and artists and do not necessarily reflect the views of Black & Pink. Black & Pink makes no representations as to the accuracy of any statements made in Black & Pink News, including but not limited to legal and medical information. Authors and artists bear sole responsibility for their work. Everything published in Black & Pink News is also on the internet—it can be seen by anyone with a computer. By sending art or written work to “Newspaper Submissions,” you are agreeing to have it published in Black & Pink News and on the internet. In order to respect our members’ privacy, we publish only first names and state locations. We may edit submissions to fit our anti-oppression values and/or based on our own editing guidelines.

Volume 9, Issue 3

blackandpink.org

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A message from Dominique...

Hello family,

and downs of love, friendship, and my relationship to myself. My time I’m writing this as I look over the started at 18 so I was a completely Boston skyline. I’m in Boston for different person at 27 when I walked the week working on the National out of the Nebraska Department of Office transition from Boston to Correctional Services fences. My Omaha, Nebraska. This week has ideas and understanding around been a whirlwind and it has made what Love looked like, what me think about the relationships I honesty was, and how I showed up cultivate and how they build me up for those I cared for had evolved as well. and how some tear me down.

Inside of® these institutions we I remember duringThe the5 eight Love Languages years I was incarcerated the ups have to be the version of ourselves What if you could say or do just the right thing guaranteed to make that special someone feel loved? The secret is learning the right love language! Millions of couples have learned the simple way to express their feelings and bring joy back into marriage: The 5 Love Languages, Dr. Gary Chapman’s New York Times bestseller.

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#1: Words of Affirmation Actions don’t always speak louder than words. If this is your love language, unsolicited compliments mean the world to you. Hearing the words, “I love you,” are important—hearing the reasons behind that love sends your spirits skyward. Insults can leave you shattered and are not easily forgotten.

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#2: Quality Time For those whose love language is spoken with Quality Time, nothing says, “I love you,” like full, undivided attention. Being there for this type of person is critical, but really being there—with the TV off, fork and knife down, and all chores and tasks on standby—makes your significant other feel truly special and loved. Distractions, postponed dates, or the failure to listen can be especially hurtful.

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#3: Receiving Gifts Don’t mistake this love language for materialism; the receiver of gifts thrives on the love, thoughtfulness, and effort behind the gift. If you speak this language, the perfect gift or gesture shows that you are known, you are cared for, and you are prized above whatever was sacrificed to bring the gift to you. A missed birthday, anniversary, or a hasty, thoughtless gift would be disastrous—so would the absence of everyday gestures.

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#4: Acts of Service Can vacuuming the floors really be an expression of love? Absolutely! Anything you do to ease the burden of responsibilities weighing on an “Acts of Service” person will speak volumes. The words he or she most want to hear: “Let me do that for you.” Laziness, broken commitments, and making more work for them tell speakers of this language their feelings don’t matter.

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#5: Physical Touch This language isn’t all about the bedroom. A person whose primary language is Physical Touch is, not surprisingly, very touchy. Hugs, pats on the back, holding hands, and thoughtful touches on the arm, shoulder, or face—they can all be ways to show excitement, concern, care, and love.

Physical presence and accessibility are crucial, while neglect or abuse can be unforgivable and destructive.

that put us in the best position to survive and be respected.

Sometimes it’s adding to who we are (white lies that we see as inconsequential but that can affect the authenticity of our relationships in the long term) and sometimes it’s holding much of who we are back. I usually erred on the side of holding back. The less folks knew about me the less opportunity they had to hurt me. Now you couldn’t tell me I didn’t have a harlequin romance or two in my number LOL—I just knew these men were going to be in my life forever. I gave and gave—trying to be the best partner I could be. But I wasn’t focusing on myself. What made me happy. Who made me happy.

On March 19th I’ll be 36 years old. Nearly a decade from my release and 20 years from my first experience with a relationship.

What I’ve learned is that Love is Love. Whether it’s for yourself or a partner. Your parents or you’re bestie on the yard who you’ve ate every meal with for the last five years. It’s about loving authentically and purely. *starts the intro to “Best of My Love” by The Emotions* Ask yourself how do you love YOU? How do you show up for YOU? Is it consistent? Is it real? Is it healthy?

Then look at your friendships and use the same set of questions.

Last but not least grade your romantic relationship as well.

If one is getting more than the other it better be YOU loving YOU in ways that are brave, limitless

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Black & Pink News

April/May 2018

Inmate Wins $27K Settlement Over HIV Prison Segregation

By Benjamin M. Adams Plus, March 27, 2018

Book Review: Margins and Murmurations

By Talia Jade B. (MD)

introduction by Otter Lieffe Sometimes life happens so fast I can barely keep up.

Exactly a year ago I released my first novel, a transfeminist speculative fiction called Margins and Murmurations.

The book has central characters who are working class, trans and sex workers (I am all of these things) and covers themes of state oppression and incarceration of queer folk.

A few months later I spoke with LGBT Books to Prisoners about getting some copies to incarcerated trans women in the USA. I live on a third of minimum wage and could barely afford to send more than a couple of books. We decided to crowdfund it instead.

The response was incredible.

Within two months we had enough money collected from donations during book read-

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Recently a complaint was filed on behalf of a detainee who was isolated in a segregated area of prison for the space of six months—simply for being HIV-positive. Jail employees allegedly deliberately revealed the prisoner’s HIV status to another detainee and posted his HIV status on his cell door for all to see, putting the detainee at risk for violence from other inmates. According to a March 22 press release from the U.S. Department of Justice, a judge

ally on HIV and nondiscrimination obligations, reports The News Star.

“This agreement ensures that Union Parish Detention Center will respect the right of individuals with HIV to equal treatment under the law,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General John Gore of the Civil Rights Division. “Segregation of detainees with HIV in jails or prisons is unlawful, subjects individuals to unwarranted stigma and harm, and will not be tolerated by this Justice Department.”

The settlement also paves the way for better treatment of HIV positive

“This agreement ensures that Union Parish Detention Center will respect the right of individuals with HIV to equal treatment under the law.”

John Gore, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Justice Department has reached a settlement involving Union Parish Detention Center (UPDC), a correctional facility located in Farmerville, Louisiana.

The judge ordered UPDC pay $27,500 in damages to the complainant for isolating the detainee for six months, based solely on his HIV status.

Per the agreement, UPDC will not segregate detainees moving forward on the basis of their HIV status. The agreement also requires the prison to adopt nondiscrimination policies, hire an ADA coordinator with the implementation of ADA-complaint procedures, and train its staff annu-

detainees. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) passed in 1990, prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities. And that can be applied to people living with HIV. “Persons with HIV disease, either symptomatic or asymptomatic, have physical impairments that substantially limit one or more major life activities and thus are protected by the ADA,” as explained on the ADA website.

According to reports, the UPDC has cooperated with the U.S. Department of Justice throughout the

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blackandpink.org May 2018 (United States)

Volume 9, Issue 3

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May 2018

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Day 13 Mother's Philadelphia police

bomb Black radical MOVE house (1985)

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Brown born 9 John (1800), abolitionist

who led armed insurrection against slavery

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Supreme Court bans school segregation (1954)

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Flood 29 Lydia Jackson

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starts first school for black children, Sacramento, CA (1854)

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founded by 1 NAACP W.E.B DuBois and others (1909)

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Second Chances in the Era of the Jobless Future

By Zhandarka Kurti

The Brooklyn Rail, March 5, 2018 “Stand With Meek Mill” greets me on a billboard as I drive along Philadelphia’s I-95 and the Vine Street Expressway. Downtown, a local city SEPTA bus passes by, advertising similar messages of support.

Even Drake took a moment to give Meek a shout-out on stage in Australia during his Boy Meets World Tour. Meek Mill is now inmate #ND8400 at a state prison in Camp Hill, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, after being sentenced for technical violation of his probation. In Philadelphia, where Meek Mill was born

and raised, 50% of the city’s jail populations are incarcerated for violating conditions of their probation.

Unluckily, he was sentenced just before Larry Krassner, a former criminal defense attorney, won the Philadelphia District Attorney race on a platform that called for ending mass incarceration. On a chilly Monday afternoon in mid-November right after the Judge’s verdict, celebrities like Rick Ross, TI, Philadelphia Eagles players, criminal justice advocates, and local teenagers gathered outside the courthouse to demand his release. Together, they chanted “The System is Rigged” and “Fuck the Judge.” Hashtags like #FreeMeekMill and #JUSTICE4MEEK gained

traction on social media. By the end of the week, The New York Times published an op-ed by Jay-Z, which criticized probation as a “trap” that entangles young black men in a vicious cycle.

Mill has spent over a decade on probation, first appearing before Judge Genece Brinkley in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas in 2008, at the age of 20, for gun possession charges. His case demonstrates what is politically at stake in the various current criminal justice reforms that seek to undo mass incarceration while keeping probation and parole intact—or

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Message from Dominique continued from page 3 and audacious! Because as you love yourself that way you’ll get in better practice of how to love others that way.

You’ll also recognize when love doesn’t look the way it should.

Someone recently asked me when I started to feel normal after I had been released.

Honestly, my feelings of being “normal” again were deeply connected to creating a network of people who saw me for who I was and the value in that.

Black & Pink sees your value. We see your strengths and we don’t judge you by your weaknesses. We understand that we are layered individuals who are working every day to be the best versions of ourselves.

Thank you for allowing us in your life. For giving us the opportunity to be your family.

I can’t say that Black & Pink will always look the same but I will say the foundation of who we are as an organization will never change.

I’m sending you all love and light. Strength and limitless endurance. Joy and hope.

With Love,

Dominique

Black & Pink News

April/May 2018

Meek Mill, Probation: 2nd Chances in the Jobless Future continued from page 5 worse, those seeking to expand these forms of community supervision as an alternative to incarceration. Unfortunately, Meek Mill’s situation is not unique. Millions of Americans find it difficult to escape the clutches of probation, an experience so banal that it often gets ignored by anti-prison activists. As recent empirical research by Michelle Phelps shows, probation rates have grown alongside mass incarceration, and in many states exceeded it. Between 1980 and 2017, probation grew fourfold, from one million to nearly 4.3 million people. Today, probationers outnumber parolees, jail inmates, and prisoners combined.

Probation has become a pervasive force in people’s daily lives, because, like incarceration, it is the outcome of state-level sentencing processes which have been modified greatly since the 1970s. Much to the chagrin of individual probation officers, judges and prosecutors play a major role. For example, the judge at the center of Meek Mill’s case decided to send Mill to prison—against the recommendations of his probation officer and prosecutor. In other instances, as with the passage of the Community Corrections Act, states are incentivized to use probation as a way to rely less on incarceration.

Probation also became popular with the boom in plea bargaining, which in some states resolves at least half of all criminal cases. Furthermore, probation helps to alleviate the problem of jail overcrowding and all its attendant problems, which are often a strain on city budgets.

Probation was initially embraced by early 20th century Progressive era reformers as part of the “rehabilitative” strategy, the pillar of the penal-welfare model of crime control, which included other innovations like juvenile court, parole, and indeterminate sentencing, as well as the redesign of asylums, prisons, and reformatories. These alternatives to incarceration were a response to the harrowing evils of workhouses and prisons and, most importantly, a solution to middle-class and elite fears of the growing numbers of urban poor, a potential source of “social dynamite” ready to explode.

Couched in the emergent social science of the day, probation provided a strategy to separate those who were viewed as capable of being reformed from the more “dangerous” criminal classes during the industrial era.

The concepts of the “deserving poor” and the potentially “productive citizen” continue to be important parts of disciplining the labor force.

Yet, today it is unclear how this can be achieved. For instance, economic recoveries since 1990 have been mostly in service sector jobs, where workers face low wages and precarious conditions. Also, criminal records affecting one in four adults add another burden to finding stable employment. These and other forms of legal exclusions like voting rights have created a “novel form of citizenship” for the largely black and Latino poor. As Miller and Alexander (2016) argue, due to the restrictions that criminal records pose for stable employment, many non-prof-

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Volume 9, Issue 3

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The Department of Justice seized and shut down the website Backpage, used by many sex workers to sell their services, on April 6.

How SESTA Is Putting Many Sex Workers in Peril

By Amy Zimmerman The Daily Beast, April 4, 2018 On March 21, the Senate passed SESTA, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017, with a vote of 97-2. And already the bill, an iteration of the FOSTA legislation that cleared the House in February, has had a destabilizing and demoralizing effect on individuals who trade sex.

While FOSTA-SESTA is anti-trafficking legislation, FOSTA in particular conflates sex trafficking and sex work by arguing that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects online intermediaries from being held liable for their users’ speech, “was never intended to provide legal protection to websites that unlawfully promote and facilitate prostitution.” The legislation, which was introduced by Republican rep-

resentative Ann Wagner, makes it a federal crime—punishable by up to 10 years in prison—to operate “an interactive computer service” with “the intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person.”

By contrast, the Senate bill would require proof that a website “knowingly participate[d] in the sex trafficking of children or sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion.” But, according to Splinter, “Advocates remain concerned that Congress will revert to the House’s original language when the two bills are reconciled and the final version likely ends up on the president’s desk.”

On top of its bipartisan support, SESTA was backed by a “seemingly disparate coalition,” which ranged from certain anti-trafficking services and religious right groups to anti-sex work groups, Ivanka Trump, Amy

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Schumer, and Seth Meyers. The first daughter tweeted in celebration of the bill passing on March 21, writing, “Thank you for your leadership in preventing these horrific crimes & ensuring justice for survivors.”

Ivanka’s narrative is complicated by the legislation’s vocal opposition.

The Daily Beast has previously explored this resistance, with Elizabeth Nolan Brown writing that, “Many sex-trafficking survivors and victims’ groups vocally opposed FOSTA, saying it fails to address the things they really need (like housing and job assistance) and will make saving future victims harder. Plus, even those being forced or coerced into prostitution benefit from things like screening out violent clients and not having to walk the streets.”

Cyndee Clay, the executive director of the D.C. harm reduction agency HIPS, fondly recalled the different groups and individuals who came together to push back against the legislation, including the Freedom Network, which is the largest network of anti-trafficking service providers and advocates in the United States (PDF). “I was really heartened by the number of national organizations and non sex work-specific organizations who could also see the damage that this law could do and spoke out,” Clay told The Daily Beast. “Even if working with sex workers or sex trade policy or even anti-trafficking policy wasn’t their main scope, they also saw that this was going to have damaging consequences.”

Arabelle Raphael, a Bay Area-based sex worker and activist, also emphasized the importance of communicating the many harmful aspects of this legislation, because “not everybody’s going to give a shit about sex workers.” Laughing,

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Black & Pink News

April/May 2018

Second Chances in the Era of the Jobless Future continued from page 6 its play a major role in negotiating housing, low-wage employment, and other social services for the “carceral citizen.” People on probation are required to report regularly to their probation officer (PO), avoid new arrests and contacts with police and known felons, pay fees and fines, find stable employment, participate in education programs, and pass random drug tests; they are prohibited from leaving the state without written permission from their probation officers and must report regularly for a number of years. Failure to meet any of these (or other) conditions can result in supervision violations, which can end up in revocation to jail.

In many U.S. counties, probationers on “intense supervision” are forced to wear ankle bracelets and are frequently visited at home by their POs, making family dynamics vulnerable to the whims of individual officers. In other states, people have to pay for probation services. For instance, in Massachusetts, where three out of four people on correctional supervision are on probation, service fees are estimated to cost probationers $20 million a year. If prison is hell, then probation is purgatory—a sort of “purification” process which involves being recycled in and out of behavioral programs to “unlearn” criminal thinking, working low-wage jobs, and avoiding contact with the police.

How did we get here?

Probation and the scientific management of the urban poor In the US and UK, probation arose as a form of social control

aimed at managing the “deserving” urban poor. Much like the birth of the prison, its development was enmeshed in the complex class relations of emerging industrial society. The roots of American probation practices are often traced back to the deeds of a 19th-century petit-bourgeois Boston cobbler, John Augustus, a Christian and member of the Washington Total Abstinence society who took it upon himself to bail out common drunkards and to supervise their rehabilitation. Not much is known about this “fidgety old fellow” besides a short book of 104 pages he left behind, published in 1852 as A Report of the Labors of John Augustus documenting his work in the Boston courts and including newspaper accounts of the day that mention him. His shop was a couple of blocks from Police Court, where officials tried very hard to dissuade him from bailing out the urban poor. Similarly to today’s police-citation quota system, police at that time received kickbacks for every person sent to the house of correction. Initially, Augustus bailed people out with his own money; later he was helped by other Boston philanthropists. To decide if someone was reformable, he carefully screened people’s backgrounds, searched their social histories, including family background and their associates. People from semi-respectable families or those expressing willingness to be rehabilitated were more likely to be bailed out. Once the person was convicted by a judge, Augustus paid their bail, made them sign a pledge not to drink, and took them under his care, often opening up his own home to house them. He initially chose men,

but later on added women arrested for vagrancy, drunkenness, or prostitution, and also juvenile delinquents.

He drew up a report on his rehabilitative attempts, which he presented to the judge; if the court believed the person was reformed, no sentence was imposed. Upon his death, the Boston Children’s Aid Society continued his work, and in 1878 Massachusetts became the first state to pass a probation statute.

The growth of probation was further stimulated by the creation of juvenile court in Chicago in 1899, an outcome of Progressive era reforms which sought to establish individualized treatment for youth. The impetus for this cannot be credited solely to humanitarian concerns, but was due also to class fears about the growing number of idle youth.

Industrialization, urbanization, and immigration created wealth and luxury for one group of people and immiseration for the rest. The workhouses and prisons of the 18th and 19th century no longer functioned as places of discipline; in fact, inmates themselves often ran these institutions. Various commissions brought together authorities to address these issues. In Cincinnati, Ohio, experts in the National Congress of Penitentiary and Reformatory Discipline drew up a declaration arguing that the penal system should make “upright and industrious free men, rather than orderly and obedient prisoners.” This vision encouraged the building of new reformatories across the U.S., mostly located in rural areas, far away from cities, reflecting reformers’ ideas about links between urban environments and crime.

In their attempt to humanize the justice system, Progressive reform-

Volume 9, Issue 3

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ers expanded the scope of state pow- form criminal sentencing. Today, at and trying to eke out a living among er. What began as a volunteer-led least 35 states, including New York, the surplus populations inhabiting innovation was incorporated into allow probation officers to carry the wasteland that is Los Angeles the criminal justice system, and by firearms. As numerous probation in 2154. The rich have all escaped the 1920s an estimated 33 states officer manuals underline, the job to Elysium, a circular space station had some form of adult probation is “to befriend those under his care, orbiting the Earth, a utopia free of in place. Probation reflected Pro- to win their confidence, and to study disease, war, and poverty. As part of gressive beliefs about the causes of their temperament, abilities and spe- his rehabilitation, Max risks radiation exposure every day, working in social problems like crime and crim- cial needs.”

In front of a judge, a person’s life a factory where he assembles police inality. They looked to the emerging social sciences, especially sociology and background could determine robots that brutally enforce “law and and psychology, to explain deviance whether he or she was worthy of a order” on Earth. One day, on his way and crime, and they argued that the second chance. While states his- to work, he is singled out by two roenvironment was the main culprit. torically differed on the rules that bot cops, beaten, and arrested for a By then, the settlement house move- probationers should abide by, work probation violation, while onlookers ment had already achieved some and stable employment were seen as stand around helpless. In my favorprominence. This was the beginning important markers of rehabilitation. ite scene, Max visits his parole offiof what would become modern-day John Augustus’s detailed reports be- cer, making his way through crowds social work, which sought to neu- came an integral part of probation of waiting people. The officer is a tralize potential robot, his elecworking-class tric box blaring struggles against If prison is hell, then probation is out Max’s most the existing so- purgatory—a sort of “purification” process... recent violation cial order by and extending providing social being recycled [through] behavioral programs his parole by aid, education, to “unlearn” criminal thinking, working lowanother eight months.

Max and work. The wage jobs, and avoiding the police. tries to explain, ecological views on crime and but to no avail. poverty co-existed with the belief officers’ casework. Those who came Noting a rise in Max’s heartbeat, that certain segments of the popu- from respectable or hard-working the robot officer asks him whether lation were “defective” and beyond families were more likely both to be he would like to take a pill. It also rehabilitation due to their heredi- rescued and bailed out by Augustus informs Max that the “personality tary makeup; many Progressive-era and to be placed on probation. Today, metrics” system suggests that Max reformers accordingly dabbled in the moral judgment of individual has a 78% chance of “regression to eugenics. The two beliefs hardened probation officers has been supple- old behavior habits.” To some, this the distinction between the “deserv- mented by various risk-assessment may seem far-fetched science ficing” and “degenerate” poor—which tools that distinguish “low” from tion, but to anyone with experience would drive penal policy for the “high” risk populations, with the of probation, it accurately captures next decades. latter receiving a higher level of su- the frustration of knowing the power Historically, and depending on pervision. In such evaluations, class, that a PO has over you. wider social, economic and political ethnic, and “racial” distinctions conToday the use of risk-assessment forces, the role of the probation offi- tinue to play an important role. tools by probation officers to detercer has been unclear: Is he a friend, mine the needed level of “communia social worker, or a police officer?

Modern probation and the ty supervision” can make them look Cast as a “friend” by Progressive remanagement of risk and feel robot-like. These “tools” formers, probation officers collected consist of a series of questions that data and facts about how poor and In the dystopian sci-fi film Elysi- result in a score which determines working people lived—which they um, Matt Damon plays Max, a conthen reported back to judges to in- victed car thief fresh out of prison continued on page 12

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Black & Pink News

April/May 2018

SESTA Is Putting Many Sex Workers in Peril continued from page 7 she continued, “Actually, most people don’t. But explaining to people, OK, this harms sex workers, it harms people who are actually trafficked as well as your own free speech and rights on the internet… giving a sense of the full scope might be really helpful for people to really understand.”

She added, “I see a lot of sex workers tweeting to clients like, hey, don’t want it to be out that you care about sex worker ads? You can be vocal about this bill under the guise of internet free speech too!”

Already, FOSTA-SESTA has had a chilling effect, with websites scrambling to self-censor. Craigslist shut down its popular personals section, replacing it with a brief explanation: “US Congress just passed HR 1865, ‘FOSTA’, seeking to subject websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties (users) misuse online personals unlawfully.” The statement continued, “Any tool or service can be misused. We can’t take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services, so we are regretfully taking craigslist personals offline. Hopefully we can bring them back some day.”

But while the death of Craigslist personals is being mourned with personal reminiscences and nostalgia, FOSTA-SESTA is having an immediate effect on the sex-worker community, many of whom are watching websites that they use to screen clients, make money, and stay safe disappear in real time. Under the #SurvivorsAgainstSESTA hashtag or on Survivorsagainstsesta. org, you can track reports of tech actions—a growing list of platform

shutdowns and modifications since SESTA’s March 21 passage. In addition to Craigslist shuttering personals, items include CityVibe shutting down, TER closing its U.S. advertising boards, Yourdominatrix.com shutting down its U.S.-based ads, and Yellow Pages shuttering escort services, among many others.

Lola, a community organizer with Survivors Against SESTA, told The Daily Beast, “We’ve been sounding the alarm, but this is happening even faster than we expected.” She referenced Craigslist personals and Reddit, which has banned several subreddits including r/Escorts, r/ MaleEscorts, and r/SugarDaddy, but emphasized, “The small corners of the internet are being hit the hardest, which means marginalized communities are being hit the hardest.”

“HungAngels removing forums, for example, because it did not have the resources to handle any potential liability, is impacting the trans community,” Lola continued. “I’m already hearing stories of trans sex workers getting ready to go back on the stroll, where they may face more violence, harassment, and, especially, abusive policing.”

As the executive director of HIPS, which works with “a lot of people who are doing street-based sex work,” Cyndee Clay described the immediate aftermath of SESTA as “disaster.”

“People are scared, and they’re definitely experiencing shutdowns of platforms already, of ways that they’ve been able to advertise in the past, but also farther-reaching things,” Clay told The Daily Beast.

“We’re seeing Reddit enforcing certain parts of their Terms of Service, and Skype is now no longer a way

that people feel like they can screen clients or do cam work or online appointments. Online advertising and the ability to use the internet to work more safely has now been taken out from under people. So people are having a lot of confusion and concern about what’s next.”

Clay said that the bill is already impacting people who have utilized online platforms to move off the street. “Those individuals now, because they can’t put up a Craigslist ad, and because they are concerned about their email being targeted or losing access to their emails entirely, they don’t know what to do. They think that moving back into street work is the only way that they’re going to survive.”

An oft-cited 2017 study illustrates the importance of sex workers being able to use online advertising to stay off the streets (PDF). The authors of the study attempted to identify the causal effect of Craigslist’s “erotic services” section on female safety.

They found an incredible 17.4 percent reduction in the female homicide rate following the introduction of “erotic services.” According to the authors (PDF), “Our analysis suggests that this reduction in female violence was the result of street prostitutes moving indoors and matching more efficiently with safer clients.”

In 2010, Craigslist announced that it was permanently closing its adult services section, in response to pressure from advocacy groups and attorneys general.

Arabelle Raphael explained that, in perpetuating a shuttering cycle that ultimately puts sex workers’ lives in danger, SESTA has already begun to affect some of the most marginalized members of the community. “All the

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things that have been taken down are all the low-priced or free advertisements,” she explained, meaning that people who can’t afford to pay for expensive advertising have been made even more vulnerable. “Some people, if they don’t have any other options, are going to be forced to do riskier things,” Raphael continued.

“Maybe take it outdoors, which just puts you at risk for more assault, murder, arrest, rape.”

In addition to a loss of free advertising forums—very real sources of income which, as many advocates pointed out, fell through just days before rent was due—SESTA has already begun to compromise ways in which sex workers communicate online: shared resources, communal bad date lists, and sex worker-only threads. Activists and sex workers are imagining a virtual world in which warning the community about a violent client or disseminating harm-reduction tools is criminalized.

This world is already a partial reality.

Verify Him, a bad date list that markets itself as “a verification tool… to avoid rapists, stalkers, and fake sugar daddies,” has closed its discussion board and mailing list, noting that it is now “working to change the direction of the site.”

Kate D’Adamo, a sex-worker rights advocate and partner with Reframe Health and Justice, told The Daily Beast that, “I don’t think that anyone anticipated the scope and the breadth of how this would impact folks trading sex.” She continued, “Every single day I feel like I’m getting not just one, but three to four reports of different platforms closing down or different pieces of platforms going down. Straight advertising platforms that are closing down, as well as different elements of websites where sex workers interact.

So it’s been everything from Reddit

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closing sex workers-only threads to pieces of other websites that interact with the sex industry.”

D’Adamo said that she’s begun to hear reports of people “losing things” on their Google Drive—informational content and presentations about sex work. “People are asking, is hosting this information going to put me in jeopardy? And we can’t really say no,” D’Adamo continued.

“So people all of a sudden need to make that liability decision of: Do I host this information? Do I facilitate this sharing of information? When relating to each other as sex workers is a potentially criminal experience, how do I stay safe, when everything I know about harm reduction relies on me and my peers?”

When asked about reports of sex workers’ files disappearing on Google Drive, a spokesperson for Google referred The Daily Beast to its Drive policy page: “Specifically the section around sexually explicit material— these are long-standing policies that apply to content shared using Google Drive.” D’Adamo agreed that, “Generally, we knew that Google Drive was maybe not the safest place to keep porn or nudity or that kind of thing.” However, her observations seriously call into question claims made by a Google spokesperson, who insisted last week that there has been no increase in the enforcement of Drive’s longstanding Terms of Service. Vice recently spoke with six users who said that “they suddenly can’t download adult content they keep on Google Drive.”

One Google Drive user who asked to remain anonymous told The Daily Beast that, while she had been hearing from other sex workers about issues with their files, she knew she wasn’t hosting anything pornographic on her Drive. “I help facilitate a group for sex workers with another mental

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health therapist, and we were hosting a community training. She had sent me slides to look over and reorganize for the advocacy panel.” She continued, “The next week my slides on community advocacy for sex workers were deleted from my drive. My partner, who works on a sex worker safety list (similar to a bad date list) had the files he was sharing with another sex worker disappear from both of their drives.” Emphasizing that “neither of these things should violate Google’s TOS,” she claimed that she had never had an issue like this before, despite having previously stored resource lists and other related information. She concluded, “I didn’t get an explanation of why they were deleted, they were just gone from my drive all of the sudden, and the person who sent them couldn’t access them anymore.”

D’Adamo said that, “We’re definitely going to be seeing and have been seeing a lot more policing of those terms of service, which, sure— those have always been the rules. But the enforcing of them? I have never seen anything like this… people are losing things left and right at a staggering, shocking rate.”

While sex workers, organizers, and advocates have come together under Twitter hashtags to share resources and voice their opposition to the legislation, they’re all too aware that this very online presence is also at risk. Citing the legislation’s “vague langue,” Raphael mused that, “It could potentially affect any social media, like Twitter could decide to shut down sex-worker handles even if they’re not necessarily ads. So it’s kind of like erasing us from all of public discourse.”

For HIPS, a direct service organization with a wide online plat-

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Second Chances in the Era of the Jobless Future continued from page 9 the level of supervision. Answers that can yield a high score include acknowledgement of a lack of housing and employment, of previous arrests, etc. High scores result in more intense supervision: weekly meetings with the PO, home visits, random drug tests, etc. Lower level supervisions are often less stringent and, if the probationer is lucky, can mean checking in at a kiosk, a computer system equipped with video screen, keypad, and infrared scanner. Similar to the robot officer in Elysium, after entering personal identifying information, the kiosk asks the probationer to report any re-arrests, employment, or counseling needs.

In recent years, risk-assessment tools have come under scrutiny as a new way to code race and class under the pretense of objectivity.

For example, a 2014 Urban Institute Study of four localities—Dallas County, Texas; Iowa’s Sixth Judicial District (SJD); Multnomah County, Oregon; and New York City— showed that black probations were revoked at higher rates than white counterparts. Differences in risk-assessment scores and supervision levels played a major role. Many probation officers complain about the use of risk-assessment tools, arguing that they take away from their own intuition about what their client needs. While probation officers have to use the risk-assessment tool, they can supplement it with their own recommendations, which probationers have to follow for fear of violating parole.

The requirements to find work and housing and to avoid contact

with the police are often basic conditions. The few people who meet these conditions are mostly funneled to low-wage work in the service industry. Probation officers are ill equipped to find people jobs; they can only recommend numerous job-training and workforce programs in the hopes that participating in these will dissuade young folks from a life of crime.

Today more than ever, the idea that work can transform “criminals” into “productive citizens” is dubious at best. Increased economic insecurity and low-wage jobs make “productive citizenship,” the penal-welfarist goal on which probation was founded, seem like a pipe dream.

Instead, the function of community supervision resembles more that of the prison: a way to manage poverty and growing surplus populations in deindustrialized urban cores. The success of second-chance programs that rely heavily on probation depends not only on how well rigid organizational bureaucracies embrace “change,” which is how many liberal reformers frame it, but the extent to which each state and county can absorb surplus populations.

Second chances in the era of the jobless future and the perils of reform Mass incarceration has entered a crisis of legitimacy. It is pushed to the edge not only by Black Lives Matter protests but also by the fiscal crisis of the state. In an otherwise divisive political climate, mass incarceration continues to draw Republicans and conservatives together around “smart decarceration,” narrowly defined as using the latest

“evidence-based” practices to cut down significantly the numbers of incarcerated people. In 1994, Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist drafted a “Contract with America,” which would become the GOP’s central manifesto, which included the “Take Back Our Streets Act” that sought to expand prison constructions and proposed tougher punishments like “three strikes, you’re out.” Today, they are both supporting the “Right on Crime” initiative and clamoring for a “smarter” approach to crime while relying on less incarceration.

In the state of Georgia, where 1 in 17 people are on probation, and where in 2015 two thirds of those imprisoned were incarcerated for probation and parole violations, Norquist and Gingrich are participating in private-public led partnerships to “fix” the state’s prison system, the fifth largest in the nation.

While criminal justice reforms at the state level are important because mass incarceration is mostly a local phenomenon, such reforms continue to be aimed at non-violent offenders, who make up a small portion of those incarcerated, thus making only a small dent in the behemoth that is the American carceral state. For example, the new Georgia probation reform bill passed recently will allow for early discharge of non-violent offenders while intensifying probation supervision for those deemed “high-risk,” a judgment usually determined by a risk-assessment-driven algorithm. We are not witnessing decarceration but instead a mutated form of what has been called “late mass incarceration”; new sentencing reforms follow a “bifurcation strategy” that determines which groups are worthy of a second chance and

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makes a harsher distinction between resources for formerly incarcerated are witnessing a similar transfer of people. In reality, it provided chump the power to punish and rehabilitate non-violent and violent offenses.

Movements against incarceration change for the 600,000 individuals away from the state and towards the today are in a bind: a small window released from jails and prisons each private and (increasingly) non-profit of opportunity presents itself to year. In other cases, local neighbor- sector. Yet we are told that our aberpush for reforms, yet most of these hood residents have been resistant to rant criminal justice system can be reforms will accomplish very little, absorbing those returning home. In a tamed through policy and reform to especially if they merely shift the in- working-class section of the Bronx, be transformed into a more humane carceration from the state to county for example, a group of homeown- and just system that will prioritize and local levels. In California, per- ers has recently blocked the opera- public safety and rely as little as poshaps the largest experiment in con- tion of a new transitional home for sible on incarceration. This “carceral temporary decarceration, the “re- incarcerated women, arguing that humanism” has led to an obsession alignment” initiative has temporarily it will ruin the neighborhood. The with alternatives to incarceration resolved overcrowding in prisons by dorm rooms sit empty. and various forms of communishifting incarceration from the state As Reuben Miller argues, reha- ty supervision, which are cheaper to local level, leading to an expan- bilitation (including probation) is than prisons and most often place sion of county jails. In New York an- utterly meaningless in the contem- the burden of rehabilitation and reother “success story”: the state has porary labor market. Instead of find- entry back into poor and working closed juvenile detention centers up- ing meaningful employment, people class communities and to a handful state and relocatof under-funded ed youth “closer non-profit orgato home,” in In their attempt to humanize the justice nizations. facilities run by system, Progressive reformers expanded As I have arnon-profit orgagued, programs nizations. Cur- the scope of state power... [B]y the 1920s an originally enrently, reformers estimated 33 states had some form of adult visioned as alare seeking to probation in place. ternatives to inreplace Rikers carceration over Island with a setime become inries of smaller neighborhood jails. are shuffled back and forth between tegral to the criminal justice system.

In Texas, efforts to reduce juvenile different (and often well-inten- Probation is today so enmeshed in incarceration in favor of communi- tioned) non-profit organizations to the carceral net that often for many ty-based corrections have expand- earn workforce certificates. If they people, as Meek Mill’s case shows, ed the role of probation and county are lucky, they find employment in it is a funnel into jail and prison. We detention. Demanding that more temporary low-wage jobs that guar- should also be weary of analyses people be released from the grasp antee very little security or stability. that emphasize the fiscal crisis of the of probation, jail, and prisons is not Current debates around expan- state as a motivator of criminal jusenough if they are being returned sion of alternatives to incarceration tice reform. As the 1970s showed, to neighborhoods that either cannot ignore important historical lessons fiscal crisis is not a good indicator absorb them for lack of material re- of reform. The deinstitutionalization of state policy—many, for instance, sources or fight against accepting and decarceration movements of the believed that decarceration would them. Federal funding for reentry 1970s led some critics to observe follow the logic of deinstitutionalhas been meager at best. Obama’s that these movements were “more ization of mental hospitals. Instead, Second Chance Act, continuing the mystical than real, and what is real we got mass incarceration and its work begun by George W. Bush, [was] the transfer of responsibility attendant forms of carceral state forannounced in 2008 in Newark, New for ‘social junk’ from state budgets mation. When push comes to shove, Jersey—America’s northern un- to various combined welfare-private states find creative ways to manage derbelly of deindustrialization and profit systems that cost the state less the crisis. urban misery—was seen as a step and provide numerous entrepreforward, because it provided federal neurial opportunities.” Today, we continued on page 14

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Second Chances in the Era of the Jobless Future continued from page 13 One thing we can surely count on is that the specter of black unemployed youth, shoved by liberals and conservatives alike into urban ghettos, workforce programs, juvenile detention centers, and prisons, will continue to haunt America. In a flash, the mix of black poverty and repressive policing tactics ignited two major riots in Baltimore and Ferguson, spreading protests across major American cities. While the term “underclass” is no longer in vogue to describe the swaths of “outsiders” created by deindustrialization, another concept is taking its place: “disconnected youth.” The term de-

We are not witnessing decarceration but instead a mutated form of what has been called “late mass incarceration”... [N]ew sentencing reforms follow a “bifurcation strategy” that determines which groups are worthy of a 2nd chance. scribes young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither employed nor in school. In the United States, it is estimated that 1 in 7 young people are “disconnected.”

In the aftermath of the Baltimore uprising, while Orlando Patterson penned a critique of the culture of inner city youth in the comfort of his Harvard armchair, Baltimore teenager Allen Bullock, a friend of Freddy Gray, languished in the city’s Juvenile Justice Center, facing nine years in prison and a half mil-

lion-dollar bail for allegedly smashing the windshield of a police car—a violation of his juvenile probation.

Orlando Patterson’s concern with shoring up a cultural explanation of the rise of “disconnected youth” across deindustrialized urban city cores reflects an older divide between the black elite and the working class that the uprisings in Baltimore and Ferguson made evident.

The city of Baltimore has one of the highest youth “disconnection” rates in the country. A year later, twenty foundations came together to figure out how to deal with this crisis. Thus far, a $26 million rehabilitation project is projected to bring in a café, a writers’ cooperative, and a shared office space for nearby Morgan State University classes. Yet it is unclear how this sort of redevelopment will spur the local economy, which has been overtaken by the drug trade as manufacturing and steel industries closed shop.

Since the 1970s, mass incarceration has been the main strategy for managing populations increasingly rendered superfluous by deindustrialization. This strategy includes casting a wide carceral net over entire neighborhoods of mostly poor and working-class communities of color, supplementing the threat of incarceration with a brutal police force, surveillance, and mass community supervision. The power of criminal justice institutions and state actors like prosecutors has proven very difficult to reform. Today, growing discontent is leading to piecemeal solutions and the expansion of alternatives to incarceration which, as history suggests, have the real potential of becoming new forms of social control. Furthemore, as

Marie Gottschalk reminds us, these contemporary criminal justice reforms are framed by a concern with recidivism and “evidence-based” practices, which ignore changing labor market conditions as well as the ways penal policy developments are most importantly the result of political decisions and struggles.

Reforms that would make a dent in the carceral state are those that can close prisons and jails without expanding community supervision, reduce sentencing, and limit the power of prosecutors and policing forces.

This requires galvanizing millions of people across different sectors of American society, which is challenging in itself but also, because of the power yielded by law enforcement, correctional unions and interests.

Nonetheless, they are still important and worthwhile to fight for.

Today, movements seeking to undo mass incarceration must also grapple with a difficult dynamic: even if the carceral state was rolled back to pre-1970s levels, structural problems remain. Jock Young, a British radical criminologist writing in the 1980s provided a prescription for crime reduction which sought to revive some basic social democratic demands such as ensuring that people have access to “meaningful work at fair wages,” housing, etc. to address growing relative deprivation or the poverty that creates crime.

These social democratic demands remain the horizon of contemporary social movements that seek to undo the egregious effects of mass incarceration. Growing surplus populations and the shifting character of work require a different mode of imagination, one that has yet to be realized.

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SESTA Is Putting Many Sex Workers in Peril continued from page 11 form, FOSTA-SESTA threatens to undermine crucial services. Clay emphasized that HIPS’ first priority is the direct impact the legislation is already having on clients—“Sex workers in D.C. being able to pay their rent and buy food”—but said, “We’re also a little concerned about what this is going to mean for our ability to give out safety information, and to help sex workers learn ways to better take care of themselves.”

She continued, “Being able to organize and advertise and work online has also created a lot of amazing communities where sex workers can help each other stay safe, because they don’t have access to things like going to law enforcement when they’re victims of violence, they don’t have access to a lot of the other communities that we take for granted. We’re definitely concerned about what this

law is going to mean for harm reduction in general. Being able to have honest conversations about safety and about wellness and about how you plan for the future and saving money, those are all things that could now potentially come under scrutiny because of this new legislation.”

Lola told The Daily Beast, “We basically found out like a week before the bill went to vote in the House that it was moving.” In the span of around 72 hours, she recalled, there was a Twitter campaign (Survivors Against FOSTA), a call your rep campaign, and a letter of opposition.

For SESTA, she continued, “we had a little bit more time”—an estimated three weeks of organizing, which included a letter of opposition signed by 57 organizations, including the ACLUand the National Center for Transgender Equality. “We had two different webinars for organizations and Hill staffers to hear about

the impact of the bills, and a lot of calls,” Lola added. “On the grassroots side, we had two more twitter campaigns, #LetUsSurvive and #SurvivorsAgainstSESTA, and there was also an academic letter opposing the bills.”

According to D’Adamo, “When we started, the message was really clear: this bill, the way it’s written, we know how it’s going to play out.

It’s going to shut down services, it’s going to shut down the communication tools that we use to stay safe, it’s going to make a lot of people very precarious who are already precarious. And there’s a lot of people that said no, that the standard was really high, that websites shouldn’t worry… and sex workers were right, because we’ve been saying this for a very long time.”

Raphael noted, “Since I’ve been

continued on page 16

Inmate Wins $27K HIV Segregation Settlement continued from page 4 investigation. Gary Copes, the warden of the jail, didn’t immediately respond when The Associated Press reached out to him.

The problem surrounding HIV stigma and Louisiana goes beyond UPDC’s failure to provide ethical treatment to HIV positive detainees.

Louisiana is one of three states that impose strict felony punishments for failure to disclose HIV status before sex. Those punishments can result in at least two years in prison. While in recent years some states have taken measures to reform HIV disclosure laws, Lou-

isiana remains one of the most unforgiving states, with strict laws in place.

Other prisons in parishes throughout Louisiana have been plagued with complaints about the treatment of HIV positive detainees.

A federal lawsuit was filed against The East Baton Rouge Parish Prison by a then-17-year-old who said he was raped and subsequently infected with HIV while imprisoned. It raised other concerns over how prison inmates are treated in Louisiana jails and prisons.

Meanwhile, Trump’s head of the CDC nominee Robert Redfield has proposed the segregation of people

living with HIV within the military.

The problem is bigger than UPDC and its not limited to Louisiana.

With the horrors of the worst periods of AIDS epidemics behind us, one of the first instincts to come to mind is to put infected individuals on quarantine, but the real risks of transmitting the virus aren’t solved through segregation in prisons, schools and the military.

Anti-discrimination laws that are in place can be applied to people living with HIV, even when they are incarcerated in prison. People who are interested in learning more about the settlement are encouraged to visit the ADA website.

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SESTA Is Putting Many Sex Workers in Peril continued from page 15 doing sex work, every law that uses the word ‘trafficking’ specifically always gets passed, no matter what the law actually is. So yeah, we knew it was going to pass.”

Meanwhile, two community debrief calls aimed to make this sort of resource-sharing and community-building even more widely accessible. Lola told The Daily Beast that there were somewhere between 250 and 300 dial-in numbers, but noted that, since many people were listening in groups, the actual number of participants was probably much larger. Moving forward, Lola said, “We are planning a national lobby day on June 1st and a national direct action day on June 2nd, which is International Whores Day, which has a long history of really radical, women of color-centered organizing that we want to honor in our movement.”

D’Adamo elaborated on the lobbying day, describing plans to reach out to and engage staffers and politicians: “To say, you were really committed to voting for this bill, now we want your same commitment to ending violence against sex workers, because that is the impact of this bill.”

“And that’s not only going to happen in D.C., because we know that there are state and local laws that really impact people—especially communities of color, especially trans folks, especially migrants, every day,” D’Adamo continued. “SESTA only built on the criminalization that they are subjected to constantly. And so it’s not just about D.C., it’s not just about our federal representatives. It’s about going to every single place that we can and saying sex workers are your constituents, and we are asking

you to value our lives.”

Many of the activists and sex workers who spoke to The Daily Beast described the legislation as a catalyst for an unprecedented groundswell of organizing, sharing, and action. Lola explained that, “I’ve been organizing for four or five years, I work with people on this stuff who have been in the movement for 10 or 20 years, and they say it is the largest groundswell of action and voice around a single issue in the sex-worker rights movement that they’ve seen in the U.S.” “This community is the most resilient that I’ve ever seen,” said D’Adamo. “It is brilliant, it is innovative, it’s really funny—and so, even though lawmakers let this community down, this has been a moment of coming together, and of reaching out, and of realizing the value of those connections.

Still, Lola warned that the pace of shutdowns and self-censoring would likely only increase, “Because critical to this piece of legislation is not whether or not trafficking is actually happening on that platform, it’s the conflation of sex work and trafficking, and if there’s even a trace of sex work on any [website]. And every corner of the internet has that! So I think we’re going to see tech companies announce a lot of different censorship and bans and shutdowns over the next couple of weeks.”

Clay voiced her frustration with the legislation in terms of her personal experience, as someone who’s “been doing this work with sex workers for over 20 years”: “I was there when Craigslist became an online platform that people could use to advertise, I was there watching people transition into online work away from streets.

“When I started in this business you often worked the streets, which meant in D.C. that you probably had to have a pimp, and oftentimes that was an abusive situation, so that totally fits within the definition of a sex-trafficking victim,” she continued. “Online work got people off the streets, and it got people working independently. And that allowed a bunch of people who were formerly our clients to not live hand to mouth, and to not have to deal with the violence and the various challenges of working the streets. We saw a significant decrease in street prostitution and community complaints around street prostitution. And this law could turn all of that back.

“The part that makes me the angriest about all of this is that they’ve put these new laws in place and they’ve shut everyone out of these online communities but they haven’t offered anything other,” she concluded. “There aren’t more resources to help sex workers find different forms of employment. We have done nothing nationally and, in fact, we’ve taken many steps backwards in terms of helping trans women who often are forced to do sex work because of employment discrimination. The anti-trafficking organizations certainly haven’t added more services or housing for people who are now potentially not going to be able to pay their rent because they can’t put up ads and work online. This is backwards. This is the worst possible way to try and help trafficking victims, and yet we passed it in the name of saving people. Saving people is not shutting down a website. Saving people is offering real resources, and real opportunities for people to save themselves.”

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Book Review: Margins and Murmurations continued from page 4 ing events that we could print over 80 copies. LGBT Books to Prisoners did their amazing work and the books began arriving.

Then two weeks ago I received a beautiful letter from one of the women who received the book. I never expected to hear back from people: I just hoped the books would arrive and maybe brighten a difficult day.

But her response brought me to tears (note: contains some spoilers from Margins and Murmurations): Dear Ms. Lieffe, I am Talia Jade, a trans-woman incarcerated in a mens prison in Maryland for a crime I was innocent of I am pre-op and have been on HRT since August 2016. Being a trans-woman is hard (as you know) but being a trans-woman in prison is even harder! I am constantly subjected to bigotry and misconceptions or attempts to “holla at me”and I am hyper aware of the constant danger from the men around me. Largely, staff here are respectful and even kind/accommodating. I get a shower alone every day, only women search or pat me down. I’m even referred to as Ms. Belcher by many staff members. Of course, I am lucky t h o u g h cuz some of my trans-sisters in Otter Lieffe

other Maryland prisons are treated poorly and when I was in my first prison I had the personal “hell” experiences. I am currently in the position to help a precedent to be set for the treatment of gender dysphoria in Maryland prisons and have recently tendered a letter to the psychiatric and medical providers who oversee “trans-people”. Requesting hair removal and a minimum of the referral for SRS while also outright requesting orchiectomy and SRS be provided. I was issued my bra’s and given permission to purchase panties and I hope to help tender a sort of precedent for how trans-people should be treated while incarcerated in Maryland.

At any rate, that is not my reason for contacting you. I am contacting you (through a friend) because I just finished your novel “Margins and Mormurations” and I must say I ADORED IT!!! It made me laugh at parts and cry in others. I was able to relate to Ash and Pinar and Kit and many of the “resistance” in a way that I have NEVER before been able to connect with in story’s characters.

It has officially won my “favorite novel” title. The concept was unique and refreshing and scarily possible! Your characters came to life for me anyway, in a way that made them “real” and I found myself unwilling to put the book down

while simultaneously trying to read slower so it wouldn’t end! *LOL* I cried happy tears when everyone stood up for and with Kit; I was crying when I read Mama Sylvia’s speech at the Christopher Street liberation day rally. I sobbed softly as Elias died where he wanted to instead of going back to the city. The list goes on and on.

Of course your dedication was what first moved me to tears because it was like you were saying “this is for you….” Directly to me!

It was an intense, incredible, beautiful story and I love you for writing it!!! Thank you so much!

As you can imagine being the only trans-woman in a facility is lonely and sometimes disheartening and so when LGBT books to prisoners sent me your book and I read the back cover, I was overjoyed to have a book with a character who I could relate to and it was a joyous cathartic experience to take that journey with you!

Thank you so so so much for sharing this story with us all! It has helped bring some light to me in this place of darkness and I applaud you! Thank you! and Thank You for your time!

With Love and Light Ms. Talia Jade B. (MD) Interested in reading Margins and Murmurations?

Write Otter to ask about receiving a copy: Otter Lieffe 272 41st Street Brooklyn, NY 11232

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Letters, Poetry from Our B&P Family I would like to say Love, Truth, Peace, Freedom and Justice or Justus to all my LGTB and Q’s in the nation and world. These principles should be adopted with the Pink Panther Party, and every other organization that our people create for the upliftment and equal rights of the oppressed.

We need to get over the hurdle of putting each other down in this prison system and thinking you better than the next struggling soul that face the same trials and tribulations you face because of your life style. It don’t matter if this person found him or herself in prison, and you was in this lifestyle before you came to prison, so whatever you was doing before or during your prison bit, we are here right now and all in this together whether you like it or not. The question we all need to ask ourself to get back in the reality of us being here is “what are we going to do to unify under them same principles I gave you all in the beginning of this message?” What have to happen to us as a whole to come to this conclusion that this thing is real?

Thank God that we brought another sister or brother to the light. That’s another soul we have won over to the home team. It is our job to become parents to the new breeds and show them the ropes so that they can have tools to fight against the PIC and to protect theirself

against the homophobics and the sexual abusers. If we don’t look out for each other- who will? (All love, all the time, if all we got, then all we need.) Let’s start by quoting that motto to each other everyday from the heart. When the seed is planted, be patient with yourself and it will grow. Until the next time and in between time, let’s look at each other love each other and be kind to one another. I am you and you are me. Our souls are one.

Love, Cocalena or Cocoa from Missouri Dear Black & Pink Family, My name is Charles and this is my first letter to our magazine. I am 28 years old and have been incarcerated since 2007. Being bisexual is hard in prison and trying to keep it hidden is devastating. There are risks that all LGBTQ people suffer and face, but there is no other way we want to be.

We want to be who we are and do not want to hide, and we shouldn’t. I am bisexual and proud of that.

Prison is not good for anyone, true; but it takes greater toll on us than many of those incarcerated choose to be aware of. An old saying is that “Who guards the guardians and who watches the watchers.” This came from an old Roman phrase that is translated from its Latin form. This

is a major problem with the prison concept and its application: There is nobody watching those who hold the lives of the prisoners in their hands; no system of checks and balances.

I am a young man with an old soul and often portray a wisdom and maturity that is far above that degree shown by many people my age. Sadly, this tends to leave me isolated and lonely. In prison this is worse.

On top of being bisexual and convicted of an SO offense, I suffer from a developmental social disability known as Asperger’s Syndrome. It is part of what is referred as the autistic spectrum, however, it is not the same as being autistic. The major difference is that autism is a disability that has a very isolative and anti-social desire; whereas Asperger’s is a disability which displays “normal” or “higher” degrees of intellectual adeptness and a desire for social interaction.

However, while Asperger’s patients crave social interaction, there are issues we face with interpretation of social cues. In my case, I have a “high function” Asperger’s diagnosis. I am highly intelligent, very inquisitive, and observationally astute. In prison the traits are dangerous to possess, because the staff really hate it when you maybe—or are—smarter

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Volume 9, Issue 3

than they are. Oops, can’t have that. Worse, however, is that I am also possessed of a tenacity and persistence that shames much else.

When I latch onto an issue, I won’t stop until I am satisfied with the result.

These traits do not make me very well-liked. Indeed, they are very difficult for those who choose to be my enemies to overcome and accept. They also make me rather abrasive and irreverent. I love a good argument, but I dislike violence strongly. I avoid it if it is at all possible. That is not good in prison as people tend to think that you are a pushover if you exhibit control—particularly other inmates.

Prison is unfortunate and is a massive place of suffering and those who run these human sweat shops would rather view us as animals than as humans. In 7 plus years, I have learned that well. Psychologically, it makes it easier for them to disregard their harmful actions to see prisoners as lesser beings. I am big on the concept of analogy as it is very effective. In this case, go back to World War II and consider the racist slurs used by American GIs for the enemy. Japanese people were “Japs” or “Nips”; Germans were “Krauts”. American troops did this as a subconscious psychological defense in order to kill the enemy without feeling the natural distress of a human killing another human.

The slur hid the fact that the enemy is just like you. Prison officials do the same: “Staff” and “Inmate”, “Prisoner”, “Convict”… sound familiar?

I have received the Black & Pink newsletter for about a year now and it is always a joy to read. It is

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comforting to know I am not alone in my suffering. I love all of you.

Your strength gives me courage and hope to continue my battle for justice and to defeat the P.I.C. Many letters I’ve read speak of torment, torture, harassment, and abuse at the hands of prison officials.

I am no stranger to that! The problem that I see as the biggest obstacle is a lack of unity in the prisoners.

Prisons exploit and encourage that.

Prison is a microcosm of the “Class warfare” we see in the outside world macrocosm. Without division of people into gangs, clicks, and such garbage, prisons cease to be justifiable because the conflict does not exist. Prison amplifies this by placing large numbers of people in spaces of insufficient size with too little of every resource.

This encourages competition for resources, which causes conflict and fighting. Such activity is how prison officials justify the abuses and deprevations they employ.

It is a self-perpetuating cycle and many prisoners blindly participate.

The march to the trough, never aware of the slaughter that awaits them. It is so stupid that I would love to just scream: “YOU IDIOT’S. DON’T YOU REALIZE WHAT IS GOING ON!?!”

The problem is that it isn’t just us, LGBTQ family, that need to unite and face the P.I.C. and its cronies.

We are strong, sure, but not THAT strong. We can’t fight this battle and win alone. We need allies. We need to unite not only the LGBTQ community, but all those who share the common ground of desire for change and dismantling the P. I. C. Common ground is what we need.

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I love you all for giving me hope and strength. When I read what each of you contributes, I know I am not alone and I take heart from that.

Brian, in Pennsylvania shot my heart out in the December 2014 paper. He stole the very words that I hold true. His letter is a light for me and proved to be the very support I need and still need now.

So, my family, keep your will strong. Never give up and never give in. Your hope is mine and my hope is yours. We are strong because of each of us, but we are stronger together. We don’t have a local “chapter” of Black and Pink in Wyoming, but I got a card from Sage in Boise, Idaho. I am grateful for that. It was a great gift and I am grateful for your care Sage.

Keep strong my family.

Charles, (WY) Dear Black+Pink family, This is my first letter to the family, I have been bi for many years, my name is Fish I’m in T.D.C.J, T.D.C. is very tough to endure, I get ridiculed every day, I have tried to take my life several times, depression sucks, but these scars tell a story and I know for a fact I will survive my 50 yr sentance, no I’m not a Christian, I’m satanic which means that I believe in self preservation, I don’t have everyone or any bull like that.

I used to be a heterosexual but I can tell you exactly how society looks at us, they have us, this is how they see it, a man and a man do not make life, ok a man and a woman make life so in their eyes it makes sense but you are you, if you want to have

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Black & Pink News

Untitled

Dear Reader,

My days they aren’t the same it’s hit and miss my heart’s in pain It feels so wrong that I’ve gone insane but still it’s just one day It used to be eyes to the soul our secret glances that we store a whisper here and handshake there still I longed for your beautiful stare Our lives are so mismatched I feel like a bandaid or an eye patch My heart sank that day you said hello That day my heart had been snatched Each day we miss each other Each day we compete for time Those days not long ago so sublime And when I think of you I sigh Still my days just aren’t the same it’s nobody’s fault nobody to blame our plans are still on I can’t deny your’re the joy in my life the apple of my eye

By Zachary (ID)

intercourse with a man then do it.

No one can tell you what to do, I love having intercourse with men and women I don’t care what people think this is my life I do what I want period. You do the same just be careful, people will play the role of your best friend next thing you know someone stabs you in the back. Life in the penitentiary is hell but as long as I get this newspaper I am good, bit shout out to the family on the outside they sent me cards when no one else did. Thank you, and to everyone’s story in the newspaper thats motivation for all of us please keep your head up chest out.

Love & Respect, FISH (TX) Hello my dear loved ones, My name is Tatina yet I go by Huneey. AHHH my poem made it in our newspaper I’m so happy and excited. I wish someone would try to tell me I’m not C.S. Lewis, Frederick Douglass or some damn body because my Black and Pink family said so! Okay I’m done.

I’ve been watching everyone of my beautiful Queens, my gay men and lez-be-honest my gorgeous women.

I want everyone to know regardless we don’t have to know one another personally to give support, love and to be cared about. None of us are alone especially with our Black and Pink family going out their way to bring us together (Thank you Black and Pink staff and volunteers). The transformation in our newspaper is marvelous. I just want everyone to know that everyone has my gratitude for being yourselves. No matter what we have done in our past God has our lives mapped out and what doors he open none shall close. I’m in a Texas Prison to worst

April/May 2018

one possible (if that’s possible) and recently my wife Boosie aka Renee was split up, we came from “society” together and still going strong 6 yrs into eternity, to everyone who has been split up if yalls love is as strong as your determination when there’s a will you make a way, feel me? I’m not implying to buck the system because it won’t budge, but failure is never final with love. I’m saying all this to say my wife and I caught our charge together, reunited and was split up again so I know every couples fear and struggle in here (prison) but like Tupac said “keep ya head up,” and if you don’t stand for something, you’ve already fell for any and everything. Just sayin.

And when you don’t fail (at times) it means you aren’t trying. Life is lived in the moments between success and failure. A little more might get us there, but a little less just means we keep trying again, and again, and again. And even when our success is called failure from the beginning, we never give up. After all, it just might be a mix-up in names. Those words brought me encouragement & I hope it does the same to yall especially to my wife. My love I’m in love w/you, need you & I’ll wait & stay pure & not drop my heart in the game TNT forever & eternity.

And if anyone in a Texas Prison know any information on getting us approved to write lace me up, also to everyone with a 3g (aggravated charge) in Texas know whats up w/ Rick Perry no good ass and us doing 60% of our time lace me up. Now to the family I love yall so much and when we submit things it might not make it when we want it to but it’s a waiting process and you’ll still be overjoyed.

Forever in love, love Huneey P. (TX)

Volume 9, Issue 3

Dear Black and Pink, My name is Jason and my nickname is Tornado, but most of my friends and peers around me call me “Tornanal”; go figure. I am a 37 year old bisexual male. I have been receiving your publication for the past two issues and I just wanted to say I really enjoy it. I especially enjoy reading the heart filled poetry because it always seems as if I can relate to each and everyone in some way or another. For those of you that submit poems, keep up the good work. It is very inspiring to most people in similar situations.

Chicken soup to the soul, as I like to say! Actually, that is what has inspired me to write. I have never taken it upon myself to write poetry but I was a little down and out this afternoon and decided to construct one also so that others could see they are not alone in their thoughts.

I hope you guys enjoy it.

Outside it’s a bright sunny day but I sit in my dark cell wasting away Outside my bars I see a beautiful blue jay - such freedom...

On my endless calendar I contemplate time as it approaches May - all of the boredom...

These walls are constantly choking my loving spirit. A voice is chanting my name and I always hear it.

These thoughts are consuming me as I strive for another hit - such sadness These cravings satisfy that can never quit - all the madness...

Being locked up I’m wasting away, day by day...

Always having a fit over that pipe I lit so here I sit...

Consumed in my thoughts and the battles I’ve fought...

Anyways, I hope you all enjoy

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my poem, I am pretty proud of my accomplishments. Please keep myself and others in your thoughts, for we are constantly faced with struggles on a daily basis.

With love and respect, Tornado (WA) PS keep up the good work and thank you for your support.

Hello Black and Pink family, It is so good reading your letters in each newspaper. You let me know I am among friends and not alone in this prison complex.

Ever been in a room full of people and felt alone? Happens all the time in prison, right? Well, friends, we are not alone! We have each other! Look around and reach out to your fellow Black and Pink family members. They are easy to spot. We stand out amongst the straight population. We are the most beautiful people you see in these hallways and dayrooms.

It is difficult enough to be in prison, but to be in prison and be “different” is very hard. Sure we are different, but being different is a great thing. So find friends like you and stick together! Give each other big smile when you see one another!

Keep your heads up and stay strong! We will get through this together!

For the struggle, Michael (TX)

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Dear Black and Pink Family: My name is Fatima Malika S. I am an African American Transwoman currently incarcerated in Corcoran CA. I have been receiving B&P for a long time, so firstly I really would like to thank B&P for all the work Jason and the family does with their activism always working for the cause of the GLBTQ community.

However, what I would really like to address is a bit different. I am a level One Inmate housed here on a level 2 yard, a couple of years ago this yard was designated a medical hub for transgender inmates, one of only two yards, so essentially I like many others trans woman are stuck here. This could actually be a good yard for transgender inmates but for the fact that we are in many ways bothered and harassed for simply being who are are. This facility is not very conductive to allowing us to really live expressing our chosen gender identity.

We have been fighting tooth and nail just to be able to wear a tank top t-shirt, because female staff (presumably) are bothered by a bra strap sticking out, yet we are not allowed to order more modest style tanks from the womans section of our approved vendor catalogs.

At one point there was even talk about the staff getting together and banning the wearing of these t-shirts by any inmate, which apparently has been done at another prison, this is obviously a spiteful and vindictive move as well as a clear statement that “we will never recognize you as a woman.”

According to elements and standards set by the World Professional Association for Transgender health,

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Black & Pink News

Loving a Convict

Loving a convict, is so hard they say, But loving him is the price you have to pay It’s loving him, with no one to hold It’s being young, and feeling so old It’s having him write his love to you You write back, you love him too.

Wanting to kiss, only a promise to wait Knowing the parole board holds his fate It’s extremely painful letting him go While dying inside and needing him so Knowing he’s scared, his eyes full of tears He’s all alone with his hopes, dreams, and fears Although you love him, you’re so far away But his love for you grows with each passing day Because loving a convict isn’t much fun But it’s worth the wait when his time is done Know he’s sad and lonely, from being away And he’ll think of you each and every single day So love him, and miss him, and please tell him so Because if you really love him He desperately needs to know

By Jericho (WY)

not allowing trans women and trans men to present in our chosen gender identity, could be harmful to us psychologically, yet we are not allowed to order or wear makeup of any kind, and when we create our own we are harassed for doing so.

Staff here speaks to trans women in any way they choose, and maintain an air of invincibility. I staunchly believe that this situation is exacerbated by the fact that no one here will take the time to put forth the effort to write the disrespectful and discriminatory offenders up for their treatment. The reason is because no one wants to be retaliated against. I however feel that whenever you do not stand up to these ignorant bullies, you are in effect disrespecting all of the people that came before all of us and put themselves on the front line for us to be able to have what we have coming, and live openly without fear. This is a fight that is still going on today, every day, and every night.

If you are willing to allow someone to walk over you, just for the benefit of a bed move, then your character is and should be questioned. At which point do you stand up for yourself, for your gender. When do you stop disrespecting the people who have been hurt and some even killed for our cause.

So my call now is not only to people in the free world, but also to every trans woman and trans man in every jail and prison across America, Stand Up, no one can ride your back if you stand up straight. STAND UP, be the women and men you are supposed to be, not the one they tell you you are but won’t even recognize. Use your voice, by way of your ink pen.

I know you’ve heard it before, you either stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.

April/May 2018

WHAT DO YOU STAND FOR. Fatima Malika S. (CA) Black and Pink family, My name is Matt and I am a 27 year old gay male inmate in the “wonderful” state of Texas. I am writing because the letter from Toy in the Oct/Nov issue inspired me to do so.

First and foremost, Toy, I want to say that I understand what you are going through and can empathize with you on a whole other level than others. I am also incarcerated for a sex offense and have lost all parental rights to my two children.

I will indeed keep you and your son in my prayers.

Now to my story. I have always been attracted to the male sex, but was always scared of coming out about it until I came to prison. This is the story of why I finally felt safe to do so. When I came to prison three years ago, I was terrified of what was going to happen to me because of my charge. As I entered this “new world” known as prison I lost all of my family and have not heard from or about my daughter or son. I miss them both so much.

Surprisingly, when I arrived on my assigned unit I was placed in a job where I met the most amazing individual. When I met him I had no idea of his being bi, but we hit it off as brothers and very close friends.

Me, him, and another individual that he introduced me to are now very close and can’t wait till we can be together in the “free-world.”

Volume 9, Issue 3

Amazingly, the only flak we get is not from officers, but from other inmates, such as “Christian brothers.” I don’t quite understand this, but I do know that the LGBTQ family is strong here on my unit, both in inmates and officers and I pray that it may stay that way.

The two individuals I spoke of earlier are the ones that finally got me to come out of my shell and show the world who I really am.

They encourage me daily in many different aspects of my life and I pray daily that I will never lose them.

With much love, Matt, TX Black and Pink, First and Foremost, I want to thank you for my first newspaper, and excepting me in your family.

My Black and Pink Family, I am new to the Black and Pink Family so allow me to tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Anthony, but people call me Heart Beat. I am a bisexual male from baltimore city. I am 23 years old, in will be 24 this year. I’m 5’11” 205 pounds, brown skin with a low hair cut. I knew I was bisexual when I was 13 when a suppose friend was touching me when I was sleep over his house. I never said anything to him or to anybody until now. At that time, I just laid there, enjoyed his hands on my private part, acting like I was sleep. To be truthful, I was scared to say anything, but I did like it. At the time I was a gang banger so I couldn’t show weakness in the streets. Then I started to get locked up as a juvenile, and had my first blow job done at the carter center on

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the eastern shore. But as I got older and got locked up as an adult in baltimore city jail, thats when I met a person I really like but he don’t know my feelings, but he was my first, and I think about yo everyday.

We was at Hagerstown together but I couldn’t said what I wanted to him because I was apart of something, plus his little butt had a boyfriend.

Now I’m in cumberland in a max 1 prison. I only got 17 years. With 3 years in on it. No one know who I really am, and to be truthful, I’m

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scare to come out. I believe if I even tell anyone in my family they going to disown me. It don’t feel like I even have a family because they don’t do anything for me anyway.

But anyway, Black and Pink thanks for letting be in your family because I really need one. I feel like no one care or love me and I’m a really nice looking okay strong guy. I want to say hello to my new brothers and sisters love you.

Heart Beat (MD)

See the Pretty Rainbows As with rainbows, our predestined role is to administer beauty, love and understanding into the lives of those, that, intentionally step on our toes while lingering in the extremeswe are super-naturally attracting complete attention, like an electro-magnet, or a huge magnificent prism, in our at-one-ment with “The Light,”and, inspiring joyous lifeinto the multitude of adultchildren that, are too afraid to live comfortably, under taboo curiosities, to the steady rhythm of our grander insights…

Star lights so bright, continuously blazing through this night

like brilliant sparklers on the land; “we like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony”-so take your stand, simply dazzling and amazing them -bright light, bright lightjust give them time to understand…

Keep your heads up my family, and, don’t let the haters trick you always let your love light shine and keep on smiling, because, eventually, you and me will color this world with usI can see it… Plain and simple…

By Vancina, (GA)

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Dear Black and Pink,

break, It’ll be impossible.

What up Fam! Heyyyy dis is Juicy, Ms Juicy aka, you can’t handle the truth.

“Unity” Much love to yal all.

I’m a Sexy Native Queen.

Well, I’ve been getting the newspaper for a few years now! and I pass it around to all the (LGBTQ) fam here in Ely. Alot of inmates try to hit me ip on the low to get me to live with them due to my sexy juicylicious body and swag. But I do not put myselft out there like that. I get with who I want, and any one who I feel is deservent of my company. I conduct myself very respectful and loyal to all my (LGBTQ). A lot of my homeboys don’t know about my juicy ways yet. But since I’ve come out 5 years ago I do tell all my closest bros.

So far they’ve all said we got your back and accept me as a two spirit.

I read about all out bros and sisters struggles and victories and that gives me a sense of comfort in here.

I lost contact of my girl Delicious, she’s a two spirit as well. She don’t know that once she left home I became a girl too. She taught me very well and really helped me find myself as a girl, and now I do my best to help and better any LGBTQ that I meet. I don’t care what others think of me b-cuz I am who I am, and creator made me the way I am, I’m hell of sexlicious with my long redish hair. I will not stop Rep’n our family to all my (LGBTQ) Be part of who god made you.

Pray and don’t be selfish. You must play your part in out struggles. If you give some one one arrow, he can break it with one motion over his knee. But give him 10 arrows to

April/May 2018

Black & Pink News

Your native girl, Ms. Juicy (NV)

I would like to bring to everyone’s attention, the life endangerment, abuse and torture, I as a senior prisoner, am receiving and enduring at this extremely corrupt and illegal family operated Alaska, Spring Creek Correction Facility. I have been sexually assaulted/abused, by inappropriate touching of my genitals, and an unauthorized, illegal cavity search of my opening my digital penetration, by a sexual pervert female, AK. D.O.C. employee, which of course has been corruptly and illegally justified.

I have had my legal filings and other legal documents stolen (4) four different times, and numerous pieces of artwork worth several thousand dollars stolen at the hands of the wife/spouse of the assistant superintendent, which of course is a fault of mine, however that can be.

She was removed from the hobby shop and placed in a higher paying position in probations, for lying, cheating and stealing. This is called progress, and is the norm at this corrupt and illegal family operated facility, and these actions justify putting me in a life endangerment position, where my life could be taken at any minute for no reason,

by AK. D.O.C., supervisor and socalled staff, and selected prisoners that will later be rewarded for their actions. I will not be the first to lose their life at this facility by the use of this manner and tactics. To all

of our Black and Pink Family, take care, stay strong, and don’t give up.

Because one battle is lost does not mean we or anyone has lost the war on prisoner abuse, harassment and torture.

Love to all, always, Earl (AK)

Untitled What in the world am I to do?; This feeling is something new; It burns, yet I want more; Chills that permeate my inner core; A love so powerful it freezes my brain; Joy so intense I’m driven insane; Every aspect of you I see; Is the true meaning of beauty; Substances I’ve used have gotten me high; But the level of affection I get from you makes me wonder why?; However we interact I feel complete; Nothing from you involves deceit; When we touch I feel the level of power; Sensations so strong they last over an hour; Don’t get me started on the love that’s made!; So much pleasure, it never seems to fade; Oh baby, it’s true through and through; I’m addicted to you.

By Luke A. (TX)

Volume 9, Issue 3

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More Words from Black & Pink Family Black & Pink, I remember as a youth, (a little TOO old to be exploring body parts) me & Phillip kissed. I do now anyway.

For a long time I really thought I knew myself. I was unconvinced, an addict & scared. Never imagined that the next few lines I write would be true: However, 16 yrs later with children I entered the male dominance of prison (2007).

I had no real friends and couldn’t fit in with any group and surely did not want to be in any family or organization. I questioned my fear as femininity & if I was or could be “not-straight.” A companion, an acquaintance who noticed my all-too-emotional side showed me respect & that love COULD exist between 2 men! I was transferred units numerous times after what I would say was my first male-onmale (as an adult) sexual bond.

Then I met HIM, the one who would show love without reserve! We ate together, laughed together and slept together (without dreaming - LOL), we gave to one another equally and I had to learn to admit to myself there is NOTHING wrong with me.

Through and through the cut-downs, the laughter, the pointing fingers, and foul language I begin to realize who the bigger MAN was. ME! I was happy with me regardless of anyone’s obvious dislike. I had no need to appease the many people who say “we need to do right.” Who are they to justify what is right?

Who are they to tell me who I can and cannot love? Though I still am a little hard to justify “me” due to selfesteem it is “you” who are confident and prideful, who motivate “us”

who are so very insecure with the “reality.” A lot of us who are in thought “well I was like this w/o the influence of prisons” are lucky.

It took an unfortunate situation to show me the truth of who I am.

(A proud member of the LGBT community.) I now read Patricia Nell Warren, Augusten Burroughs, & Black & Pink confidently with no care of who knows or sees. So I am thankful. I want to remind any of you who are insecure in yourself as they teach in Buddhism “a negative situation is where real happiness is found for it’s the struggle of making it positive that creates truth, & happiness for ourselves and as motivation for those who watch us.”

Today I am still with my partner “w/o reserves” going on our 4 year!

Daniel (TX) Dear Relations, Just go my first issue and was itching to respond, first specifically to McKayla in Illinois and then some general thoughts that I hope will be meaningful to those who read this.

McKayla, I was struck by your statement, “This is my choice,” quoting family members, then “This is a nightmare....” There is some deep conflict there, right? The truth is both of these statements are valid.

When you were abused by your father, you did not have a choice.

Thirty -- all the more years later, however, you have more of a choice than you did then in that you can choose and keep choosing what you want to be on the inside, even if the

prison won’t let you project it on the outside. I expect there are plenty of dark places in your interior -- all the more reason to counter them with pleasant spaces made of memories of good experiences. And thus the nightmare becomes a little less scary, bit by bit.

For instance, I call myself “Martha Stewart” in the joint, have for 10 yrs, not because she’s a woman doing what she does but rather because she enjoys doing what she does and so do I -- cooking, gardening, crafting.

I would just as soon call myself Martin Stewart if there was such a guy who filled his life with such beneficial activities. So the prison may say I can’t wear makeup, bra, etc., but they can’t stop me from perfecting my art skills as long as I have paper, adapting commissary items to make Martha-ish cuisine, and doing research in the library for a future garden. Others shore up their “resilient positivity” by writing songs, others do the fitness thing. They limit us, but we must unlimit ourselves.

Your words, “I know that I was the female, I have my role” probably troubled me the most because of the implication that it is the role of the female to be abused, when women (transgender or from birth) fight mightily every day for a world in which there are no victims of either gender. It is here though that genderqueer folks could be said to lead the way, in that what parts you have or don’t have really only matters for one particular act, at least the external ones. The internal ones matter for gestation of course

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but even that has been shown to be adaptable. Choose a gender, fine, but then go beyond it -- become the WHOLE YOU! So human culture has been persecuting gender-nonconformity or those who choose theikr gender for the mass of its history. It is not going to stop doing so over night, but folks like Caitlyn certainly help to move in the right direction. Of course it’s 3 forward, 2 back as if is with everything else, our own individual development included.

We just happen to be in a place that never misses an opportunity to promote 4 steps back if we let them.

Don’t let them!

A final note to those frustrated that the prison will not let you outwardly display your fabulous femininity: keep in mind by whom you are surrounded. Most of the dudes here have no concept how “to treat a lady.” That’s why many of them are locked up! So there’s a fine line between expressing yourself and inciting “Mr. Can’t Get Right” in the next cell to harm you or just mess with your time if your facility is like most where both parties go to the hole even when the aggressor in the situation is clear. I am amazed at the B&P letters which speak of places where makeup, curlers, etc. will be allowed and wish them the best of luck. But for most prisons, this means a whole lot more intervention into the diseased minds of the brutes that fill the cells around us while we the positive/respectful/ cultured/fabulous/whatever you want to call us do our time much differently. Such an “experiment” is fine as long as lives are protected in the process, because LGBTQ lives, as well as Black, as well as Latina,

April/May 2018

Black & Pink News

as well as all lives matter!

That in fact may be the loftiest goal we can reach for in our prison reform efforts: creating safe places for all, especially those who choose not to use violence to do their time, while the prevalent prison mentality is “fight or get f**ked.” If in the process of being ourselves, we make something like an institution a little better than we found it, then we have done a beautiful thing. And since we are Beautiful Things, is that not what we should be about?

it makes me feel I look outright hideous.

I feel so all alone in my struggle to just be me. All this hatred has me down on one knee. If I do find the will to rise, will I have the strength to continue my fight or will I crumble and flee? I am so scared and feel so very alone. Why must it be so painful to just be me!

But no matter how hard, no matter how painful, all I can be is who I truly was meant to be.

Mark B. (KY)

I am Rachel -- !!! A transgender woman and proud to be !!!

“Alone”

Rachel (CA)

I sit in the crowded room, but I am so very alone.

However this condition I created all on my own.

I sit and I bleed from all the cuts, caused by so many sharp and vicious tongs. I look for solace from those of my kind, but they are so much stronger than I. My armor is so new and weak, it cannot keep the hurtful words from penetrating through all the cracks. My heart is beaten and battered so black and blue, it is a wonder it still beats at all. My family has branded me a fake, and refuses to offer any help. All they would do is tell me to stop this game and be a man. If only they could see the pain their words inflict. I try to be strong, to hide the pain.

Hello everybody,

It is just too much, so now my tears fall like rain. So many people hate me simply for who I wish to be.

Blinded by labels give by society. I sit and I dream of looking so much prettier than I feel, but I am told by so many I am ugly as a sow. When you add the scars from all the cuts,

Not just of the B&P family but to all my brothers & sisters of the LGBTQ Community!! I got nothing but love for every single one of you.

Let me introduce myself, my name is DeDe and I am a beautiful African American Queen in a Pennsylvania prison. I’m 21 yrs old & am proud to be a part of not just B&P, but the LGBTQ Community as a whole.

This is also my first and definitely not my last time writing you guys.

I do want to say a couple of things.

First it grieves me & makes me sad to know that one of my sisters (Miss Ashley) from the March issue took her life. Although I did not know her personally she will never be forgotten. To her family & friends I send you my condolences & will keep you in my prayers. Being in prison & being a Queen I know what we go through in here. For some of us I feel your pain & you are not alone. Also for some of us we spend

Volume 9, Issue 3

our days fighting over something that’s nothing. Whether it be nonsense drama like fighting over a man or trying to fight or argue with a queen you think WANTS your MAN, etc. The point is we are all a family & we’re all in this together and at the end of the day we’re all we have. We’re so busy fighting each other or hating one another or we’re too wrapped up in ourselves that we forget what life’s all about.

We forget what we’re really fighting for... then we lose ourselves. Ashley died believing an important cause just like Diamond from Texas. They died believing this war can be won.

I believe it still can be.

Some of us feel as if we’re fighting alone & maybe some of us are (wherever you may be). But my thing is that one person can’t do this alone. We all have to pull together and create a voice so loud the creator of all things & everyone we know & loved that passed on to wherever the peaceful place may be will know who we are!!!! Also want to say to the newspaper team excellent job on the March issue, you guys really captured the spirit of my sister Ashley in that tribute to her. I am so pleased!! It really moved me.

In closing my brothers & sisters I want you to remember what President Lincoln said, “United We Stand, Divided We Fall!!!”

Let’s show them the power of the rainbow!!! Before I go I want to give a quick shoutout to my mother/ sister Mariah, I love you with all my heart & too my sistah Saguana, you know us sistahs got to stick together!!!

Much love to you all Your sister, DeDe (PA)

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Hello my fantastic B&P family, I have been receiving the Black and Pink newspaper for a long, long time, even before it was a newspaper. I love reading the inspirational letters from all of us around the country, who are trapped in this industrial prison complex.

This is the first time a letter has touched my heart so deeply that I just had to pick up pen and paper and respond. I feel so connected to Maximus E. of Ohio (March Black and Pink newspaper). You and I share a lot in common, Max. I was born in Indiana near the border of Kentucky. You are not alone my friend. I too was bullied and abused as a child. As a result of a loss of selfesteem and major insecurities, I too was a bed-wetter, up until the age of 14. I needed diapers or goodnights but my parents just ignored the problem. I was humiliated by classmates who said I smelled like pee. I couldn’t possibly have friends over to spend the night with my wet bed and stinky bedroom. I had to turn down invitations to spend the night at friends’ homes for fear I might wet THEIR beds. I couldn’t make close friends because they might discover my secret problem.

I was a shy and timid kid. Guys picked on me and threatened to beat me up after school daily. I was called “pussy” and “fag” from elementary through high school. I became very introverted. I kept to myself, spending my free time in my bedroom, alone with my record player. My parents were ashamed of me for wetting the bed and being a “wimp.” They beat me up regularly and laughed when I said I would call the police. I went to school with bruises and no one cared. I felt so alone and abandoned. To this day,

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I have problems establishing and maintaining meaningful friendships.

I have problems letting anyone get close to me.

I too was sexually assaulted while in prison, Max. These guys believed that since I was gay, I must want to have sex sith them. They wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

I know it’s tough, Max, but don’t give up hope. We need to talk to Psychology to get our abused minds straightened out. Tell them your hurts and struggles. They can get you the medical supplies you need. I wish I could write to you personally, or meet you in person to give you a BIG hug to let you know you are loved. You have a friend for life named Ricky. I will be praying for you to be happy and healthy all the days of your life.

Max is exactly why Black and Pink is such an important part of our lives. Thank you Black and Pink volunteers for your time, love and generosity you dedicate to us knuckleheads and the newspaper.

You bring us all together as a loving and caring family.

For the struggle, Ricky in Texas AKA: “Wiz Kid” Dear People of Black and Pink...

Thank you for your newsletters and countless acts of advocacy which promotes true freedom and diversity.

Please keep up the awesome work.

And may you expand beyond your greatest expectations.

I) My name is Joseph I. I’m looking to write a female (25 & up...) for friendship. Her sexual preference is not a concern.

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“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move towards, and we want to sit in their radius. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.” -Karl Menninger.

Okay, a little bio on me. I came to prison for armed bank robbery. I’m an Aquarius. I have five years left.

My parents have been married 46 yrs. I have five brothers. (Only two of us have come to prison, we beat the statistics!) I read almost anything I can get my hands on. I read a lot!

But I’m not a nerdy type :) I do a lot of cardio workout. I know my status. I’m healthy. I’m 6’1”, 200 lbs. Two of my favorite poets are: Robert Frost (“Nature’s First Gold”) and Nikki Giovanni (“Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day”). I’m musically all over the world. I truly LOVE music.

I like Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and many more. I like/LOVE the song “Sometimes it Snows in April” by Prince. I like Killah Priest and Led Zeppelin. I believe the family and friends are sacred. I’m loyal almost to a fault. I still believe in LOVE and Humanity. Oh, and I love “Whisper These Things You Shouldn’t Know...” by Maxwell. I have backup plans for my backup plans (upon release) and all of them realistic. I have no children (unclaimed or otherwise). I plan on initially releasing to Quantico/ Triangle Virginia. I’m an excellent cook, though I’m probably a bit rusty. The only thing that shocks me is when people “do right.” I love to laugh and joke, but I never play games.

I really believe in karma (action).

And life is too short and beautiful for unnecessary BS. I’m an all in or all out type of guy. Nothing halfway.

April/May 2018

Black & Pink News

And I DO believe in and trust God. Though I am not religious. LOVE to ALL Joseph I. (VA) Dear Black&Pink family, This is my first time writing, and I really hope this letter gets in the next issue. Recently I have been through a very traumatic experience that no one should have to go through.

I am the victim of prison rape. My cellmate decided that because I am gay, that it would be okay to take what was not his. The second I could safely do so, I reported it to prison officials. They had a rape kit done, and they called in a state trooper to take my statement. They did what they were supposed to do.

However, because I opened my mouth about what happened, the other inmates now look down on me. As a result of this, I lost almost every friend I had in here. The lowest point of this whole thing -- beside the rape itself -- was that I lost my best friend of 1 year. My life has literally been turned upside down and I had no one to turn to.

One evening out in the yard, I finally lost it. I cried like a baby. Several of the people I thought had turned their back on me, and some who I barely knew, surrounded me to make sure I was going to be okay, to let me know I was not alone. One of those people ended up being my guardian angel.

He put his arm around me and has been by my side since. He and I are now together and some of the hurt that was caused is being healed by his TLC. It will -- I’m sure - -be a very long road to walk to recovery, but I have someone beside me to

walk that road with me, someone who I love dearly and who loves me regardless of what has happened to me. I wear his ring and he wears mine. He is filling a void in my heart that my ex left empty. I do not have any ill-feelings toward him. I still care about him and wish him the best and all the happiness in the world.

The point of this letter is this: if you have been the victim of sexual assault, you are not along and you are not to blame. Contact prison officials and make sure the person who did it to you is punished and cannot do that to anyone ever again.

There are those who will lock down on you and call you a rat, but you are not wrong to report it.

I love all you in the LGBTQ Black&Pink family. Be proud of who and what you are. I know I am and that will never change!

Jaden (PA) My Dearest Sisters & Brothers, Hey, it’s Deirdre out in dusty old Lovelock Nevada.

Whew! Has it every been such a long time!

I haven’t written for a while for a dazzling array of reasons. Suffice to say that I’ve missed writing to you all very much.

I’ve got a few things on my mind that I want to share with you, especially my trans sisters out there. First: Girls: we MUST stop being so catty & bitchy with each other, and come together in loving support of one another. The truth is,

Volume 9, Issue 3

nobody but us knows what it is we go through, just living & being US. Sure, some guys & cisgender girls can sympathize with our situations.

But, unless you’re a transgender woman & incarcerated to boot, you will never understand the moment to moment struggle it is simply to BE, sometimes. Never, EVER is it ok to be mean to one of your sisters over some dumb-dumb stuff! I mean it.

Either we come together in order to FLOURISH or we all fail and fall together, proving all the haters right.

You choose...

Lastly: If you aren’t already fighting for your rights as a trans woman, you had better start. There are those of us who have been fighting; Ms. Kosilek, Ms. Norsworthy, Battista, Brugliera, Meriwether, Brooks, DeLonta, and so many others, including myself - we’ve been laying the groundwork. Now the rest of you need to help all of us. From everything like bras, hormones, and such, all the way to our GRS’s [gender reassignment surgeries], we need to all of us come together and get this done. Michelle Kosilek and Michelle Norsworthy... I love & admire you BOTH so incredibly much (and I truly hope you read my words & feel my life for you!)

You two women are an inspiration to me and I am doing all I can to follow you! I have been on my hard fought for hormones now for nearly 3 years (& it took 4 YEARS to get them). I have recently re-engaged NDOC [Nevada Department of Corrections], to break, once and for all, their “blanket policy” known as MD121. This, in order to obtain my much needed SRS (GRS). This time I’m not alone as I have a certain organization (that starts with the letter “A”) who will be representing me based on past successes against

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NDOC and their minions. Again, thank you both, Michelle & Michelle, for laying such incredibly powerful & important groundwork for us all. I hope to do you proud!

ALL OF US need to keep swinging at our “masters” and make them see that we are genuinely worthy of their respect, as women and as human beings! We can’t do it separately or alone - we must all of us cry out in one strong, beautiful voice and say, “Enough is enough!”

If you’re not fighting, START. If you’re not loving, START. Love YOURSELVES and love you you truly are.

Till next time.

In Love & Strength, Blessed Be, Lady Deirdre (NV) P.S. To the special person in my life, my White Rhino, who gives me so much strength & support to go on...

I love you!

D Dear Black + Pink First of all, I want to say think you for your newsletter. They have encouraged me to be proud of who I am. I was introduced to your newsletter from a guy in my dorm.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mickey. I’m a 22-yearold bisexual who is now accepting who I am. But sometimes I still feel confused. When I was 7 I was molested by a family friend. and I had like it by the time I was 14 I was attracted to both males and females. At 15 I had an affair with two different guys. Since I’ve been

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locked up I’ve tried to deny who I was and started lying to myself until I met this very cute guy who showed me I didn’t have to be ashamed of who I was. I currently told my parents but I’m scared to talk to them for I fear their rejection.

I wanted to share my story to let you know how much you’ve helped me.

And I look forward to reading future Black + Pink newsletters and I hope to be accepted in your hearts and family.

Mickey B. (GA) Dear Black & Pink Family I’ve just received my second Black & Pink newsletter (March 2015).

I’m encouraged with every letter that I read to know I’m not alone.

My name’s Joshua AKA Love Always, I’m 27 and have dealt with an enormous amount of struggles in the PA Department of Corrections. they want me to hid my true self.

I’ve been approached sexually by my unit manager, which has led to nothing but trouble and harassment from the security team since I brought it to IA’s attention. The PA Doc has denied me the opportunity to get married to my partner. It’s one thing after another. The prison I’m in has tossed me through three different blocks in the last 30 days. All in attempt to make life miserable.

I must laugh though. I’m in prison how miserable can it get? Only I can allow that to happen.

I want to say to Travis W. from North Dakota, I’ve been in your shoes. In February 2015 I myself was placed on “suicide watch.” Basically the

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Black & Pink News

treatment I was receiving sent me to the bottom of the pit. It was a horrible experience. I ask that next time you take time and breath, life is more precious to live then to give what this prison society wants. Also lean on us your family, we’re here for you.

crazy. K-9 unit in my cell and all.

I’ve frown and will continue to grow with every issue of Black & Pink.

Thanks to everyone for making me feel the love.

Everyone calls us “Kim & Kanye” lol. After I’m done this 3 year sentence I’m done. I hate jail! It’s not cute! And it’s crazy that I chill with the boys more than the other gurls. But I don’t let it faze me cuz I am a strong trans woman and I’ve been through worse in my life.

To Puddin from Pennsylvania.

Know that your always loved. You don’t have to lose part of yourself to have what you want. You’re loved for who you are. I’m positive that will never change.

Well my family I love you all. Keep your heads up and stay strong! I can’t wait to read more.

Love Always & Forever Joshua AKA love Always (PA) Dear Black & Pink family Hey it’s Ms. Aliyah from Pennsylvania. I love this paper.

Literally I am the only trans here.

There are a million queens. But they can’t take me. LOL (no shade). So I look forward to my Black & Pink.

I don’t really deal with too much discrimination from staff here. Cuz this Italian Princess gets real ratchet and North Philly on these people.

Zero to one hundred real quick!

I’m writin’ cuz I max out February 15th 2016. I would have been home, but me & my ex boo thing got booked and sent to the hole for hot urines. Yes. I relapsed. Shit got

I’ve been clean since Jan. 13th (for the record I left dude), I realized I can do bad all by myself. I know my worth today and I’m in a relationship with the most amazing man ever!

He loves me & I love him back.

But I do wanna say love one another.

Don’t judge people! I’m judged on a regular. Is her ass real? She’s this, she’s that. I wanna say to everyone who writes in, I love y’all. All y’all are my support. Let ya haters be ya

April/May 2018

motivators! Hatin’ is the only thing I hate about a hater.

Shout out to my hubby! I love you daddy. We’ll be home soon!

XOXO till next time Ya realest girl, A’liyah M. (PA) Love you Black & Pink

Black & Pink family My name is Charlotte-marie AKA Snickers I am a sexy transgender mama currently serving time in a California prison. I currently fighting the health care system to start my hormone treatment. I have been fighting for almost 8 months now but I wont give up til I achieve my goal which is to start my hormone treatment. I would like respond to

Flower

vision void of despair.

Hello little Flower, now has Blossom--do, come the hour of an event in multiple hues, that will thicken your roots. little flower, With so magnificent a maiden fair. mind, life’s mountains you That doesn’t harm will climb in wisdom’s well- another’s designed hiking boots.

Civil liberties See yourself in the That are all guaranteed continual ascension, Might as well relax Strive and thrust beyond On your baseless attacks the clouds Because in the end with your natural might and We will be the ones to win. grace-me and you... a rightful place such What if we stood tall, as is yours there-What if we refused to fall... maintained as the tunnel-

By J.E. F. (PA)

Volume 9, Issue 3

my sister Risa you are not alone girl I have been in your shoes. I have been treated by inmates as well as staff like I am some kind of disease.

But remember you are beautiful and don’t let anyone tell you different that goes for all my brothers and sisters, you have to have to stand up for yourself as well as those that are bullied and mistreated. I have been married to the same man for almost 7 yrs and he encourages me to help and be there for others. So remember we are in this together it is us against the world of haters.

Stay strong my brothers and sisters be there for one another love always, Mrs. Charlotte-marie AKA Snickers (CA) Him my names is Timothy and this is my first letter to the Black and Pink Newspaper but, after reading it on 7/8/2015, I plan to do more research on Asperger’s Syndrome because, I may very well have this Developmental Social Disability due to the fact that I’m a 28 yr old Bi-sexual & Divorced Man and I also am having to deal with an SO charge of Indecency w/ a Child under the age of 17 years old; and I have been dealing with it for the last 12 years of My Life and Have ten to Me being under the MeganN’s Law of Sexual (Predator) Offender Registry for a period of 10 yrs. but, I tend to be “out of compliance” with the conditions of My Registry Requirements, according to the 2 counties of Upshur & Smith TX and their Bull Shit Lies. This is Why I am iN the Texas Department of Criminal Injustice System for a period of 5 yrs, Failure To Comply with conditioN No. 7of My Sexual Offender Registry Based upon

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Megan’s Law for a total of 10 yrs ONLY. I’ve doNe 5yrs oN 5yrs of My sentence and Will be released ON either 10/01/2015 and/or 11/14/15. I also amd possessed of a teNacity and persistaNce that puts to shame, everything else because, like My Brother Charles of Wyoming, I too Will latch onto an issue, and I definitely woN’t stop uNtil I finish what I start and I am satisfied with the result. However, these traits that I have do NOT make Me a very well-liked Person because, they are very difficult for those who chose to be My eNemies’ to overcome and accept. In fact, my ex-celly Offender Hubert to take it upoN Himself to take a single razor blade began cutting the right side of My chest and side, which resulted of Me getting 26 stitches and scarred up physically for life and the reason I was cut by Him, is because, I was according to Him “Gay” but i told him I’m not gay I’m bisexual He then said theres no such thing and I have demons inside of me So i cut them out of you Let me tell you somethingt and it is the TRUTH that it if wasn’t for the TDCJ CO IV Lewis and the Nurse who was accomidated by Her on that date and time of (06 01 2015) 300 pm during the time of given my medication ) walking up to my cell door I would not be sitting down on my bunk and writing you this letter.

I truely believe i was touched by an angel at that particular date and time ( 6 1 15 ) 3 pm I love a good argument but I dislike any and every kind of violence strongly just like my brother Charles in Wyoming and I will avoid it at all cost if it be possible for me to do so. Just like my brother charles said in his letter of the may 2015 Black and Pink Newspaper, It’s NOT good

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in Prison to be the NON VIOLENT Type as people tend to think you are a pushover if you exhibit control particularly other Inmates such as the one that I’ve mentioned whose name is Mr Hubert a Non LGBTQ Family Member. To make things worst The Administrative Officers of The Bill Clementines Unit of Amarillo, TX Did NOT press charges against this offender that I proposed to Have applied to Offender Hubert such as aggravated Assault w a deadly weapon namely blade. Instead they only gave segregation time for 1 year.

I told them that He deserves more time in Prison for Attempting to Murder Me because I was a Bisexual Inmate and He did NOT want to Live with a Homosexual Offender which also made this a “Hate Crime” against another LGBTQ Family Member and they said, “That TDCJ offenders are NOT Permitted dto “Press” felony charges against other offenders; which this puts them in the seat of Accessory to Attempt of Murder of an LGBTQ Family Member. I plan to Push this issue as soon as I get out of TDCJ on either 10/01/2015 or 11/14/2015.

I would like to thank My Brother Charles of Wyoming for shedding light on everything I’ve been expressing to My fellow Brothers and Sisters in here at TDCJ in Texas. I also would like to thank My Brother Michael of OHIO for standing up against the PREA Policy. I too plan to standing up against the PREA Policy because, it’s being Abused by the Safe Prison’s Officers of TDCJ such as Sgt. Mayes, Sgt. Venefrough, Sgt. Owens, Sgt. Garcia, and Sgt. Kemph of the Bill Clements Unit

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of Amarillo, Tx They’re Thieves and Liars and They mess with My 19:13/USSM President C.J. and His Fiancee and 19:13/USSM Vice President Dustin and accuse them of organized crime which is a Free World charge if these fools push it that far and I for one will NOT stand for this SH*T as My first act as a Major of 19:13/USSM I Plan to attack this Bull Sh*t Joke of a Policy Created for only one purpose and one purpose only to Eliminate Prison Rape! NOT To be abused by these so-called Safe Prison’s Officers of the CRIMINAL INJUSTICE System and its’ Abuse Acts towards LGBTQ Family Members I too have been a VICTIM OF THE CRIMINAL INJUSTICE System PREA Abuse by these TDCJ COs more than once My entire 5 yr sentence of incarceration here at the Texas Department of Criminal Injustice Prison System and I plan to Stand up Strong and Tall against this policy due to the ABUSE of it after My release from TDCJ on either 10/01/2015 or 11/14/2015, By constructing a BILL call The Criminal Justice Reform Act 19:13 and put a stop to the ABUSE of the Criminal Justice System and it’s So-called PREA POLICY that it ABUSES and uses to Mess with Texas Inmates (who are LGBTQ Family Members) FREEDOM, this is a serious issue that needs to be addressed by the U.S. Government to ALL its’ PRISON SYSTEMS and their overseers.

I really enjoyed the May 2015 Black and Pink Newspaper. It’s nice to know that I’m NOT the only one who suffers from the Criminal Injustice System and Its’ ABUSE Mentally, Physically, Sexually (By Force), and Spiritually.

April/May 2018

Black & Pink News

I’m proud to be a Bi-Sexual Divorced/Single Man of 20 yrs. and I am also proud of who I am today July 8th, 2015. I wish each and everyone of My Brothers and Sisters of the LGBTQ Family a Special Prayer and a Happy Successful Life. I also plan to start a Chapter in Gilmer, Tx of 19:13/USSM (An LGBTQ FAMILY) Thanks to My B.F.F.L. who I met while I’ve been incarcerated in TDCJ these past 5 yrs. of My Life.

I pray and hope that I’m accepted into the LGBTQ Family with wide open arms as I do NOT have that many friends in My Life, due to the Indecency w/A child under the age of 17 years old that was placed on Me on July 4th, 2003, 12 years ago; I’m very much better about this Now than I was then because, I denied the fact that I did this at that time and date because, I myself destroyed My childhood dreams of Having a Multi-Million dollar Music Career

by My choice of actions at the age of 16 years old.

I plan to make a difference in my next 12 yrs of my life and for years after that I intend to change a lot of things about me that I don’t want to no longer do in my life because, I’ve learned in my cognitive intervention class from my cognitive intervention teacher who now is retired from TDCJ that if you change your choice, you can change the reaction in others around you and get a better outcome of your own life and I personally thank Mr. McCaw for changing my life forever and helping me make a difference in others that I encounter. I now have the leadership skills that I need to lead my own chapter of 19:13/USSM in my hometown o fGilmer, Tx and I am looking for new recruits. I also

plan to stand strong and tall for our LGBTQ equality rights and against the criminal injustice abuse. Shout out to Texas 19:13/USSM chapter, Keep pushing for us!

Love Always, Timothy (TX)

My Inner Gender

To myself I do surrender And give into my inner gender Become the person I am meant to be Even if I don’t reflect it physically Against the world I will endure Because to them I am peculiar Never will I become impaired By all of their insensitive stares To my community I will lend a service And help educate the curious On subjects society is not teaching Without coming off as preaching To our youth I will mentor Show them there is plenty to live for Give them a life line So they don’t feel left behind

By Dezzie (IL)

Volume 9, Issue 3

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Hey, hey, hey…

relationship with the beautiful queen like me. So it was new for him. He was also my first boyfriend here in prison and my fourth boyfriend in my whole life to tell y’all the solid, strong relationship hasn’t been so easy for us here in this place. We’ve been separated, harassed and also rich in bogus cases and also so many haters in here they just like to gossip more than women. Some guys are pathetic. They love making rumors about me that’s so fu!#@ ng ridiculous LOL!! :) I think if I was on a cover of the magazine I would have make so much money just like Kim K. But there’s been a few haters that have been trying to break my relationship. It won’t happen because it’s so strong and full of real love! Yes, we plan on getting married as soon as I get out.

Unfortunately, he’ll be going home this June on parole, but I have to be strong. Pretty soon all be going home to be next to my mother and my future husband. I also understand the rough pain y’all going through with ya’ll family accepting y’all for truly being y’all self. My husband is going down the same path that y’all going down. He told his family about our love relationship and his mother That he loves so much and thought that was his best friend gave him her back. It’s been almost 3 years that she hasn’t come to visit him, send him money or written him. But his aunt and father have still been there for him, also my lovely mother, he’s doing okay now.

He’s been so strong with still facing everything day to day, getting ready to go home and build a foundation for our future. I just want to tell y’all that no matter what situation you are into, never give up!!! If you ever think about suiciding or doing anything stupid is because you’re weak and you don’t know how to be

To all my Black and Pink fam. How are y’all doing? I hope on God that all of y’all are doing good and good health to you. As for me I am blessed, thanks to father God. Well first of all my name is Chanel. I’m 24 years old, born in Puerto Rico, but raised in Houston, Texas. I am a happy transgender Latin@ locked up here in Texas. I have a 12 year sentence, but in June I’ll have six years flat and I’ll see parole for the first time. Hopefully I’ll get to go home with my mother. Her name is Adelina. She’s my best friend. Also to be home with my fiancé, future husband Robert. He is 26 years old, also white and Mexican with some lovely sky-blue eyes and so handsome. :) I love him so much! ;) He’s everything that I have always asked for and God listened to my prayers. We’ve been together five years! Y’all might be asking if he’s here with me or in the world? Yes, I met him here at this unit three months after I got here. Pretty much we met like the Disney fairytale story of the Cinderella! :) One day I lost my watch in the rec yard and I was walking around like nuts looking for it and asking almost everybody if anyone had seen my watch. Finally he came up to me and he asked me if I had lost anything and I told him of course I did, my watch. So he pulled my watch out of his pocket and he handed it to me. So from there we started talking and flirting and also writing back and forward, but before all this had happened hadn’t seen him before and I had a crush on him. Anyways, guess what happened? Three months later we officially became boyfriend and girlfriend. Woo-hoo!

I was so happy :) ! Iit was so pretty and beautiful. This was his first

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strong and face the circumstances and the challenges that you have in your life that’s so sad!!!I I understand that love is very painful, but never stop being yourself. Never focus on other people’s happiness.

Make yourself happy:) and love and respect yourself and body too.

Always smile because you still alive. Soon or later one day we will be free like a butterfly and spread our wings and shine bright star.

We might not know each other, but we are family and I want for y’all to know that I’ll always be here for y’all and that I love and care for all of y’all, no matter what color are we, or what ever reason it may be that we are locked up. We still deserve to love someone and also be loved and be treated equal just like anybody else. Just because we are LGBT Q… Doesn’t mean we don’t have feelings and deserve to show our love with somebody and be so happy. We are NOT NO DAMN aliens WE ARE HUMANS!!! We need to stop being scared and fight for our rights like human beings that we are. Some of us have talents to.

We should respect one another and help each other. Remember your enemy, the one who don’t allow you to be happy and be yourself.

Love and respect one to another and mainly y’all south.

Don’t ever think nobody loves you, because there is always someone waiting for you. There’s times that you can find love in the weirdest places where you think you can’t find love and probably that person might be in front of or next to you ;P I also want for y’all to now that to the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be entire world :) before I close

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this letter, I want to thank you all.

Every single one of y’all for taking out time reading and writing to us and working so hard to build black and pink so big and strong. Pretty soon I’ll be out to help be stronger and show love to. I also want to thank God for everything he’s done for me and answering all my prayers. Thank my mother Adelina for always being there for me and my husband Robert, my Scrappy!! I love you so, but so much baby!!! and also say hi to my best friend Beckie.

Keep your head up girl! And well now God bless y’all and I love y’all with all my heart. I always pray for every single one of us. Y’all stay out of trouble and be good that way we all go home safe. Y’all have a good day and good night! Chao Chicos + Chicas los Amo. :) Always smile and love always, Sincerely Chanel (TX) Dear Black and Pink Family, Hello, my name is Thai. I’m a bisexual str8 acting and str8 looking dark skin Puerto Rican. I am a peer support specialist who graduated May 2010. I attempt to view all things from many angles. Being near sighted seems to cause more problems than it produces solutions.

I look for that smile or joy in most things. I notice it help pass my day by and lets me sustain strength for life’s difficult moments.

For instance, I’m bi-sexual and look and act as such too, but have no issue admitting my passion for both sexes. I am proud of my homosexuality. What I find humorous is when people locked

Black & Pink News

up with my find out, either by me or by the meaningless rumors about me, and ask me, they’re shocked at my up-front honesty. I don’t see my sexuality as an oddity, I’m not limited in my appeal for other people; whether male or female.

The joke I notice is that men in here, mainly the unattractive ones swear up and down you’re checking them out or have a lustful desire to view them in the showers. Ha! Ha! Ha! What I find attractive is a self confident individual, who is smart, not into games or deceitful drama.

Workout, train your mind and body and soul to unite. Understand none of us are perfect. With my faith in God, Family support, the new people I meet constantly, I’ll gain positive and I will receive positive in return.

Black and Pink family, please know, remember and understand this; a person who is attractive is not the loud ghetto one; the mystery of a person with obvious signs of want is a tease; honesty and great hygiene is what humans long for; just because you look and act like Barbie - it doesn’t mean every man will desire to be your Ken. Finally the wilder you act, while we are incarcerated, doesn’t make you tempting or the slightest bit attractive. Black and Pink family, we should be known for our education, swag, style, respect and our ability to look after each other. You’re all family to me, and will gain any and all support I can possibly glue to you. I love you all and I pray for us all daily. Be strong and smart. Stay out of positions that make it easy to fall victim to rape or being misused. Look up (PREA) and understand CDCR’s “zero tolerance policy.” I love you all family. Con mucho respecto o y amor...

Tyven (TX)

April/May 2018

Dear Black and Pink, I’m writing letters to our family. So I guess Hi is in order, so hi my name is Charles A.K.A. Charlene. Thank you oh so very much for including me into the family of the LGBTQ Brothers and Sisters.

I myself am going through a very devastating time. For one I am confined in this place in Wisconsin for sex offenders - yes, I am a sex offender. Anyway this place has kept me and my spiritual husband, my lover, soul mate, Anthony on a sanction of separation. He is on a different unit than I am on. He is across the hall from the unit I am on, he and I can’t go out to Rec together outside or anywhere together; this institution has had us on this separation sanction since the end of August or beginning of September 2013. We both were out at Rec outside; he and I had a foreplay digitally (he Anthony did to me) so this is what put him and I on this separation indefinitely, no date of ending. Well before we got that sanction, this place had put us on a sanction cause of another time he and I were caught sexually acting out--so this is what they called it, “sexually acting out,” when in actuality we were flirting and foreplay with each other. So they put a sanction on us so he, Anthony, my sweet love, couldn’t be on the same unit together. Then they went and put this other sanction on top of this one, which is the separation sanction!

Now I have sent this to the Federal Courts only to have it thrown out without prejudice, so which this means I can put it back into the federal courts. Now besides them at first keeping him and I from living

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on the same unit together, they had also had us on another separation of 6 months which he and I completed, but they still left the part where he and I couldn’t live on the same unit together, which is still that way, besides them putting him and I back on a separation except this time its indefinite. Well I had put it in the court and it got thrown out, partly because I hadn’t been able to get this publicized in the newspapers or in the media, now we have absolutely no access to the internet period, and I have sent this situation to Lambda Legal and to GLADD, and Prison Legal News -- none of these places even publicized it in their news letters or on the computer.

Now with this separation they prevent him and I to have any kind of contact, none whatsoever. He is a Black Guy and I am a white guy who is actually a female trapped in a male’s body. Well I know I’m not the only one being in a situation like this. I also have to be around a lot of haters and jealous types cause my love and I have been in this relationship for 18 years for a total.

There are ones who’ve been doing their damnedest to break Anthony and I up and this is and has been very hard on him as well as me. Our relationship has been going through so very much stress, so much so it’s almost caused our relationship to fall all apart. Now I know that there are others suffering like us who are also behind walls like we are. If we really love our loved ones who we are in love with, we all will them to keep fighting for justice, to be done on the inside.

There is one very good thing: Wisconsin now allows same sex marriages, which our governor Scott Walker has tried to appeal, but

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the appeal didn’t go his way; then it went to the United States Supreme Court which the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear it, so the ruling of the appellate court’s ruling. So now I and my partner as well as others who’ve been waiting to have our Relationship bonded by marriage, just as the heterosexual couples have been able to enjoy, now we all finally can! We can enjoy the rights of marriage as the heterosexual couples can. At times with the way our and my partner’s relationship is cause of this separation I worry about his and my relationship to fall apart and he and I break up over this. But I have enough trust in him that our relationship will be together even though this is tough for him and for me. Well sorry this is so long if this needs to be edited in order to fit the Black and Pink newspaper then please do it.

I hope that this helps out other relationships whether locked up or out in the Free world, take what you need and leave the rest for another time! You my whole Black and Pink Family, you are all in my prayers as I know that my Husband Anthony and I are also in all of your prayers too! So I send my whole family, all my Brothers and Sisters, all my love and best wishes. Keep giving Black and Pink all the support that we can possibly give!

From Charles (Charlene) and Anthony (WI) Dear Family, I would be of great service if this newspaper would print the ugly as well as the beautiful. Call be a asshole, but in California we know reality is built on “the struggle.”

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And you must be ready to accept degrading discrimination from all directions. At 46 years old Im still a baby to elders that our legal and civil rights are won upon. But because this newspaper reaches out to so many. And because a higher power has blessed me I’ll share “universal” legal guidance.

First: All states, county jails, prisons are subject to the inmate grievance process. You must exhaust it fully before entering the courts. Now if you can obtain a copy from the library at your jail or prison it is advisable. Even if they trash can it deny it or lose it. You can provide a date, time, and location that you submitted if. Written proof, and signature helps...

Second: Never sto pushing paperwork once you start. Why, cause you are already considered a troublemaker by your oppressors.

Remember “never let em” see you sweat.” Once you obtain completion to your local level appeal. File to go too the law library. Get a “Writ of Habeas Corpus.” At the state level, fill it out, make copies, and mail it to your county’s court clerk. You should be able to obtain address at your law library. Per federal law ALL state, federal, and county inmates have a right to “access to the courts,” supplies, and there are places that well help you navigate the legal world.

In closing I wrote this cause I hear, see, and am surrounded by fellow LGBTQ peers with physical, sexual, or discrimination complaints. But none to little want to do the “real work” to make a change! You gotta be willing to take a little verbal harassment, shakedowns, to obtain a bigger goal. Trust me, all captors

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fear exposure to the legal and media pressure one inmate can cause with a pen & paper. If you’re ever stuck and confused write for resources.

You use em constructively and you too can join Ashley Diamond, Ms. Farmer, Ms C. Manning.

Be strong, be proud and know you’re SOMEBODY SPECIAL! Ms. Penniwise (CA)

I am not an inmate I am a soul mate I am not a gay man I am a woman I am not transgender I am the female gender I am not a transsexual I am just sexual I am not white black or brown I am what rhymes with orange I am not in prison I am under the prison I am not America’s next civil rights movement I am not an unreasonable risk of danger to the public safety I am just at risk the public is an unreasonable danger to my safety I am not an abomination to God I am a Barack Obama Nation to God

By Alejandra (CA)

April/May 2018

Black & Pink News

Dear Black & Pink, What’s up Fam? Well once again its Ms. Jazzie writing again to drop a few words of wisdom and give hope and encouragement to my LGBTQ brother and sister. I was just reading your June issue. And I want to let you know that it’s very important that the world know what we have it hard in here. But this is for Ms. McKayla, IL. Listen girl I cried when I read your story. You have to stay strong. Don’t let the system win, don’t set a bad example. For the ones that’s coming in behind you. Trust me I been doing this by myself for a very long time my family left me for dead once I told them that I was transgender. Yes it hurt for a moment, but once I went back to my cell and though about it.

Shit why should I be sad? If you going to stop lovin’ me for wanted to be happy and be myself, then that’s fake love, and I’m going to be very very strong, and be the baddest b*tch that I can be L.O.L. I demand respect. I’m very strong I don’t feel sorry for myself, I don’t let the past dictate my future. These youngsters need us, YES YOU MCKAYLA!!

I had a very bad life I had things done to me too, but it is what it is.

We can’t let the system win we have to stay strong, and this goes out to all the LGBTQ family that’s feeling depress. Please find the strength to keep moving forward, but remember that you have a real responsibility, that is to stay strong for the youth that need your help. What about them? They need a shoulder to cry on or someone to talk to, and someone to them know what that they’re not alone. This is a serious issue, so once again I challenge the LGBTQ family that’s on the outside and behind these walls to

help your sister and brothers out be a pen-pal. Be a friend, whatever it takes to save lives, come on people I don’t want us to keep committing suicide because we feel no one care.

TRANS LIVES MATTER!! Join me on this campaign #Stop Suicide.

Let them know they are not alone and that they are loved. And they do have a family the LGBTQ family. I can’t do it by myself. So I’m calling on you to get behind this issue. Let’s bring awareness to the world, please I don’t want to pickup the paper and see another family member took their own life because they were depress. I love you all stay strong.

Ms. Jazzie F. (CA) #Stop Suicide!!!

Dear Black and Pink Family, First off I want to say thank you to Jason, and to his beautiful staff for making this newspaper possible for me and others to receive these newspapers every month, thank you.

Hi it’s me Tammy again, the warden at Riverbend CF had me transferred to another privately owned correctional facility. It took me a few months to cool down after reading that one submission of that one person trying to justify himself for what he did to a child. I know no one is perfect in this world, but it doesn’t give no one the right to mess a young child mind up like that. I know for my late deceased half brother r*pe me when I was a child and yes it mess me up.

Children only want to please the adults if the adults are happy the children are safe from punishment.

Let all the children grow up safe in

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this world.

Now to my reason for writing to you, Jason.

My whole life I craved to be a member of a real family to have brothers, and sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts, and so forth, to belong. Not looked upon as a mistake in life itself by my father side of the family, my mother was the only one who truly loved me. I was her only child from her second marriage even that she had two other children from her first marriage.

Those two gave to me nothing but mistreatment and abuse physical beating from my father to getting r*ped by her second oldest child.

The desire to belong to a physical family is what got me in prison serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole for the murder.

I AM fully responsible and truly remorseful for taking a innocent person life all in belief that I will become a real member of my father side of the family.

My co defendant is my father youngest brother a dam crack head junky. I am coming up for my fifth parole review and I’ll be working on my 29th year of incarceration.

I have only two types of families I’ll [illegible] my Wicca brothers and sisters, and then there is my LGBTQI family. May the Gods and Goddesses blessed you and your staff with good health and wealth, as above so below.

So mote it be.

Blessed it be With tons of love Tammy Faye P. (MI)

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For Nella Clouds have a way of invading your space.

And in each place you run There is still a ribbon of gray attached to the corpse you’ve become.

But it’s crazy Cause there is yet redemption amid the future’s breath which is only a lingering kiss between two parted lovers’ lips who in their desperation for each other have managed to push what might’ve saved their love away.

We must stab, shank deeply the self doubt that arises on the brain like a speed sore in the secrecy of our conscious hours cause our split and cracked fingers are still clutching the comforter of hope we slept beneath when last we dreamed at ease.

By s.d. (CA)

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It Could Be Worse Sitting in this 9x7 cell Not knowing what my future will tell.

- It could be worse Everyday being tol when and where I can eat. Man, these guards don’t miss a Beat!

- It COULD be worse.

Lights on, feet on the floor Once, twice, three times more.

You’re counted like Inventory, But to them, “Oh, it’s just a chore” - Hey, it could be worse.

No privacy, no time to be Alone, You even have to make Reservations to use the phone!

- I mean, it could be worse.

You know what? I awake every day, I open my eyes, I raise my hands, to thank God “I am alive” Because NO matter what, I’ve got to remember this, Coming to jail was an escape from death’s KISS So, for now on, as I go about my day, when shit goes wrong, I’ll open my mouth and say “It COULD BE WORSE, MUCH WORSE THAN THIS”

By Matthew M. (PA)

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RIP David JR We have all felt happy We have all felt sad Until one day we’re given the news that turns our lives around They told me the news I said how could this be They told me I had a virus called HIV I didn’t know what to do And I was depressed for a while I decided to say and do nothing And went into denial The virus isn’t prejudiced And what I speak is true Unsafe sex and using the same needles It could happen to you too I take my medication and I have no fear I have my whole life ahead of me You have no idea I thank you for your acceptance Cause I’m proud to be me Am only human with HIV RIP David JR

By Sketch GBB (TX)

Black & Pink News

Untitled

The noise is louder today or maybe it’s the group at play It’s too much I can’t get away But then again it is today I stay away keep to myself Cleaning and sorting all of my shelf My brain feels like it’s gonna melt I wish it wasn’t hopelessness I felt The thoughts they won’t leave me With the thoughts and the noise I wanna scream Yet today puts me closer to feeling crazy Maybe it’s just another day of being hazy With the spinning wheels and backwards thoughts I tell myself it’s okay, we’ll be fine, it will stop Can’t lose my mind can’t yell at the cop Man to scream would hit the spot

April/May 2018

What do we make of our childs play laughs and jokes the funny HaHa’s and pokes but then I look to you for my ego stroke We became friends through bars and bunks listened to stupidity from the normal punks late nights of childs play but then again wouldn’t miss those days You came back this time to stay You act different the child went away You’re still tempted by the needle and vein but with love in your heart you feel so much pain tears secretly fall and your heart aches you here, she in that stupid place you wanna make it right you wanna be true your ego, your heart, your soul so blue

Do I be good or do I stray it’s all too much for me today Get away no wait please just stay My mind isn’t healthy not at all today

open your heart and feel the embrace you may not like it but this is your place it may not be today but the time will come The Lord will embrace you don’t turn and run

Still the loud noises get louder each day Why can’t they shut up maybe go away It;s not my time I don’t want to play Go away, shut up, for just one day

Gods love is for you to hold and care Many times they will fall a single tear But remember His love in every time every place Rest assured you’re in the master’s embrace

The sun is setting on another day

By Zachary D. (ID)

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Volume 9, Issue 3

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Call for Submissions Seeking erotic short stories, poems, and art by Black & Pink incarcerated and free-world family members for a new zine. To be mailed, art cannot include full nudity. Please send submissions (and shout out to the authors from the first issue mailed in January!) addressed to Black & Pink — HOT PINK. This is a voluntary project, and no money will be offered for submissions, but you might get the chance to share your spicy story with many other readers! The zine will be sent one or two times per year.

To subscribe to upcoming issues of HOT PINK, write to our address, Black & Pink — HOT PINK.

Black & Pink Mailing Information Write to us at: Black & Pink — [see table below] 614 Columbia Rd. Dorchester, MA 02125 Please note that you can send multiple requests/ topics in one envelope! Due to concerns about consent and confidentiality, you cannot sign up other people for the newspaper. However, we can accept requests from multiple people in the same envelope. There’s no need to send separate requests in more than one envelope.

If you are being released and would still like to receive the Black & Pink News, please let us know where to send it!

Penpal program info: LGBTQ prisoners can list their information and a short non-sexual ad online where free-world people can see it and decide to write. There will be forms in upcoming issues.

Mail info: We are several months behind on our mail. There will be a delay, but please keep writing!

Email us: members@blackandpink.org

If you would like to request:

Address the envelope to:

Newspaper Subscriptions, Penpal Program, Address Change, or Volunteering

Black & Pink — General

Newspaper Submissions — Stories, Articles, Poems, Art

Black & Pink — Newspaper Submissions

Black & Pink Organization or Newspaper Feedback

Black & Pink — Feedback

Black & Pink Religious Zine

Black & Pink — The Spirit Inside

Advocacy Requests (include details about the situation and thoughts about how calls or letters might help)

Black & Pink — Advocacy

Submit to or request Erotica Zine

Black & Pink — HOT PINK

Stop Your Newspaper Subscription

Black & Pink — STOP Subscription

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By Thea Gahr