A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
Gabriel Wyatt is a gay cartoonist who is incredibly passionate about his craft and is an advocate for queer awareness and prison abolition. He is incredibly creative and has many stories to tell, and we’re looking forward to reading all that he has.
ABO Comix is an anthology of stories amplifying the voices of queer and trans prisoners. Their team consists of three angry queers who have been involved in prison abolition and other advocacy work for years.
KrystaMarie Morningstarr is an incarcerated trans woman in Texas and has written several letters to ABO Comix over the course of the last few months. She’s been studying manga art for four years, has diplomas in creative writing and paralegal, and is a strong advocate for the trans community. She aspires to be a published comic book artist.
ABO Comix is an anthology of stories amplifying the voices of queer and trans prisoners.
Dear Son,
Today is Father’s Day — but to be honest I don’t feel as if this day really applies to me — I mean how could it, when I’ve never been much of a father to you — I was loyal to all the wrong things and chose the streets over my family — and as a result of my choices I spent most of your life in prison.
Whenever I read or hear prison staff, politicians, and others supporting solitary confinement, especially long-term solitary confinement, speak about solitary confinement, they make it seem like being locked up in a cell for 23 or 24 hours a day is no “big deal” or problem physically or psychologically on a person. And, of course, they never speak about the malicious and sadistic things that prison staff do that causes and contributes to the negative physical and psychological effects of solitary confinement.
Early morning clanging of plastic trays, moving anxiously through metal food ports, signify breakfast time. Come and get it. The rusty, metal tray slots open, and a dusty, burnt orange tray slides into my isolation cell. As my stomach grumbles, awaiting relief, my eyes rest upon a single piece of stale, flat coffee cake, topped with a small mound of dark brown, fear inspiring peanut butter. Holding a sinister grin on his face, a young guard inquires,
Everyone has one, some are hidden some are not
Some don’t know when to take them off, some people just forgot
Some are temporary, some are forever
Some are too much, some change like the weather
A lot of people wear them without knowing
It’s a shame when a young mask stops growing
It’s a mask that appears, a mask that took years,
“It is fair to say that we have witnessed an evolution in the united states from a racial caste system based entirely on exploitation (slavery), to one based largely on subordination (Jim Crow), to one defined by marginalization (mass incarceration).” – Professor Michelle Alexander, ‘The New Jim Crow’
Let’s talk about this mass incarceration for a little bit. We from the inner city face all the hardships in this country, and by design we were meant to be destroyed,
What is a Political Prisoner and Prisoner of War?
Political Prisoner: A person incarcerated for actions carried out in support of legitimate struggles for self determination* or for opposing the illegal policies of the government and/or its political sub-divisions. (Special International Tribunal on the Violation of Human Rights of Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War in the United States Prisons and Jails, December, 1990)
Prisoner of War: Those combatants struggling against colonial and alien domination and racist regimes captured as prisoners are to be accorded the status of prisoner of war and their treatment should be in accordance with the provisions of the Geneva Conventions Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
October 15th to October 19th, 126 prisoners went on a hunger strike at the Glenn Dyer Detention Facility in downtown Oakland. Their primary grievance was indefinite solitary confinement, a practice that continues due to semantic loopholes.
The strike was organized under the umbrella of Prisoners United, a coalition of incarcerated individuals representing jails and prisons across the Bay Area.
On Thursday morning, a group of family and friends of Prisoners United gathered outside of the Alameda County Administrative Building,
The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing recently released its Five-Year Strategic Framework. Outlined in the 68-page document are ambitious goals, including reducing chronic homelessness by 50 percent and ending family homelessness—all by 2022. We take a deep dive into the strategic framework. Here’s our analysis.
Coordinated Care
The cornerstone of the strategic framework is coordinated entry. The direction towards streamlined care, through a federally mandated process defined as Coordinated Entry,
