Values
We share the long-standing values and analysis of Black & Pink:
We are feminist. We are anti-racist. We are anti-Zionist. We want queer liberation. We are against capitalism. And we want revolution. Prisons are part of the system that oppresses and divides us. By building a movement and taking action against this system of violence, we will create the world we dream of.
We also celebrate the beauty of what exists now: Our love for each other. The strength of our planet. Our incredible resiliency. All of the power we have to continue existing. While dreaming and struggling for a better world, we commit to living in the present.
Our work is based in the experience of people who are or were in prison. We also raise up the voices of formerly incarcerated people as members of our “free world” Leadership Circle. We know that those most hurt by the violence of the prison industrial complex have the knowledge of how to tear it down.
Black & Pink’s “free world” membership started in Boston and has spread across the country. We will support one another, share the work of our organizing efforts, and grow our family inside and outside the walls. We would like to increase our national and international membership, creating chapters in more cities, towns, prisons, schools, and neighborhoods.
We are feminist. We are anti-racist. We are anti-Zionist. We want queer liberation. We are against capitalism. And we want revolution. Prisons are part of the system that oppresses and divides us. By building a movement and taking action against this system of violence, we will create the world we dream of.
We also celebrate the beauty of what exists now: Our love for each other. The strength of our planet. Our incredible resiliency. All of the power we have to continue existing. While dreaming and struggling for a better world, we commit to living in the present.
Our work is based in the experience of people who are or were in prison. We also raise up the voices of formerly incarcerated people as members of our “free world” Leadership Circle. We know that those most hurt by the violence of the prison industrial complex have the knowledge of how to tear it down.
Black & Pink’s “free world” membership started in Boston and has spread across the country. We will support one another, share the work of our organizing efforts, and grow our family inside and outside the walls. We would like to increase our national and international membership, creating chapters in more cities, towns, prisons, schools, and neighborhoods.
History
Flying Over Walls formed at the end of 2011. We began as the Prison Abolition and Solidarity Workgroup of HAVOQ, and began our letterwriting focus after several members of the HAVOQ Migrant Justice workgroup met up with the Montreal Prisoner Correspondence Project on the Undoing Borders Tour and agreed to take over responding to some of their penpal requests from incarcerated folks in California.
When HAVOQ ceased organizational activities and entered into a mediation process at the beginning of 2013, we splintered off into our own independent group, calling ourselves Flying Over Walls. We continued to support and orient penpals, offer letterwriting nights and began the first round of our study group.
We then became a chapter of Black & Pink in 2014. We have since joined CURB and have worked all along in collaboration with a variety of other prison abolition organizations in the SF Bay Area, including CCWP, All of Us or None, Justice Now, Critical Resistance, and Initiate Justice. We continue to build our knowledge and refine our values through organizational collaboration, study groups, film screenings, and popular education workshops as a means to develop solidarity with and gain understanding of the lived experiences of folks on the inside while also continuing to invite our larger LGBTQ communities into conversations about the effects of these systems on all our lives.
When HAVOQ ceased organizational activities and entered into a mediation process at the beginning of 2013, we splintered off into our own independent group, calling ourselves Flying Over Walls. We continued to support and orient penpals, offer letterwriting nights and began the first round of our study group.
We then became a chapter of Black & Pink in 2014. We have since joined CURB and have worked all along in collaboration with a variety of other prison abolition organizations in the SF Bay Area, including CCWP, All of Us or None, Justice Now, Critical Resistance, and Initiate Justice. We continue to build our knowledge and refine our values through organizational collaboration, study groups, film screenings, and popular education workshops as a means to develop solidarity with and gain understanding of the lived experiences of folks on the inside while also continuing to invite our larger LGBTQ communities into conversations about the effects of these systems on all our lives.