Inside/Outside

At Black & Pink, we coordinate a nationwide PenPal program in which we match incarcerated LGBTQIA2S+ people and people living with HIV/AIDS with PenPals who correspond, build relationships, and participate in harm reduction and affirmation. For an incarcerated LGBTQIA2S+ person, corresponding with someone on a regular basis is itself a harm reduction strategy, giving that person a support network outside of prison.

Those who want to build a long-term friendship with an incarcerated trans or queer person can utilize our entirely online and free penpal-matching and correspondence program. You and 1–3 friends sign up for a penpal together, then read and write all of your mail from home! For those new to writing incarcerated people or who cannot take on the responsibility of penpaling, birthday cards are another great way to show love and support! We print your message on unique templates to create custom cards our inside members deeply appreciate.

We are a volunteer-run, penpaling collective focused on sparking & supporting meaningful connections between people inside and outside of prison in a way that transforms us all, rooted in our abolitionist belief that no one is disposable.

Isolation is central to the persistence of domestic violence, sexual violence, and incarceration. Writing letters to criminalized survivors helps to dismantle this isolation, creating pathways for connection, collaboration, and coalition. Currently & formerly incarcerated survivors have stated again and again how important letters of support are to relationship building and their well-being.

One question that we often field is why we focus on LGBT prisoners. On one hand, LGBT prisoners face an intensification of many of the issues faced by all prisoners: exposure to violence and sexual violence, mailroom surveillance and censorship, medical neglect, lack of safer sex information or materials, and a profound isolation from friends, families, chosen families, and other networks of support. On the other hand, we view it as an opportunity to draw the wider LGBT community into prison justice organizing. We believe we can build on gay liberation legacies to work in solidarity with a larger prison justice movement. We are guided by a commitment to community support, a deep and historic suspicion of policing and surveillance, the belief that personal relationships are an integral part of consciousness building, and an unyielding dedication to sexual and gender self-determination.