[RAGG] Books to Prisoners Pack-a-thon!!

[Sarah Lazare]

Next Saturday, there will be a UC Books to Prisoners Project Pack-a-thon!!

When: Saturday, December 11, at 3pm
Where: the Champaign-Urbana Independent Media Center - 218 West Main St. in 
Urbana
What:  We open letters from prisoners, pick out one or two books for them 
that best meet their   needs, and write them back. We also encourage pen pal 
relations with prisoners.

The UC Books to Prisoners Project is an anti-authoritarian collective 
dedicated to providing support for, and working in solidarity with, those 
behind bars.  We oppose the racism and classism of the prison industrial 
complex, and we seek to find creative and positive ways to express this 
resistance.  In conjunction with Spineless Books, we also publish prisoner 
writings.  If you are interested, check them out at: 
www.spinelessbooks.com/prisoners/index.html

This will be a special/bittersweet event, because it will be Radym Davis's 
last UC Books to Prisoner's Pack-a-thon before he moves away *sob*.

On December 31, 2003, there were 2,085,331 people in U.S. prisons and jails. 
That's a rise of 2.6% during the 12 previous months.
U.S. incarceration rates by race, June 30, 2003:
Whites: 376 per 100,000
Latinos: 997 per 100,000
Blacks: 2,526 per 100,000
South Africa under apartheid (1993), Black males: 851 per 100,000
U.S. under George Bush (2003), Black males: 4,834 per 100,000
(from prisonsucks.com)