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Our COVID-19 Response

COVID-19 is why we started Power Blossoms. All our work since last April has centered around it, as letter-writing has become more important than ever to bridging people over prison walls in the fight against State oppression. To that end, each of well over 500 birthday cards we mailed out in 2020 was accompanied by a small sheet of paper asking people to share with us what was going on at their prison related to it—and the responses poured in.

To share the answers to questions we received as widely as possible, we put together our “Guide to COVID-19 in Prison” last fall. We’ve just updated it in March 2021 with eight pages of content—for which we’d like to thank in particular NU Abolition and Northside Chicago Prisoner Letter Writing Committee—about the vaccines that we’re eager to share. (You can read and download both versions of the guide above and are welcome to reuse them however you’d like!)

It’s been a year of rage as the need for abolition has never been clearer. We’re glad, though, to have been able to organize with such incredible people inside and out in the face of it all. Here’s what else we’ve been up to on this front:

 

Letter-Writing

As incarcerated people have been cut off from the world and each other in so many brutal new ways over the past year—including being subjected to solitary confinement in lieu of proper medical quarantine practices—keeping in touch by mail has become more important than ever.

Our Letter-Writing project consists of a Birthday Card-Writing and Online Penpal Correspondence program, and both needed to be moved entirely online in 2020 to accommodate social/physical distancing restrictions. Feedback to check-in surveys attached to birthday cards helped us write the “Guide to COVID-19 in Prison” above, while penpals have been able to keep up with each other’s physical & mental health and even advocate for one another’s needs!

Care Packages

Our Care Packages project raised over $3,000 in 2020 with the aim of getting as many material goods as possible into the hands of our people inside who need them most. Basic hygiene supplies like soap as well as food in the face of shortages of edible meals (or when kept in solitary confinement for ‘quarantine’) have been lifelines to many who’ve received them.

After working with our inside members to determine the best ways to handle getting packages through their particular institution (as well as directing commissary funds to those requesting monetary support instead), we began fulfilling package orders last summer and have yet to stop!