Announcing the Launch of “After Prison” Zine & Website Project

11th June AfterPrisonZine.org “After Prison” is a zine and web­site project aimed at shar­ing the voic­es of for­mer earth and ani­mal defense pris­on­ers. This project hopes to help build an under­stand­ing of what life after prison can entail, so that indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties can help cre­ate health­i­er envi­ron­ments for pris­on­ers to return home to. It also pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty for for­mer and cur­rent pris­on­ers – whom often have restric­tions on who they can com­mu­ni­cate with – to con­nect with the expe­ri­ences of oth­ers.

“It’s been 20 years since I first entered a fed­er­al prison. For­tu­nate for me, only six of those years were lost to that trau­ma­tiz­ing expe­ri­ence, but the dam­age will last the rest of my life, and if I’m not care­ful, maybe the lives of my chil­dren too. When you’re in prison, it is dif­fi­cult to say the least, to stay con­nect­ed to your for­mer “out­side” world. How­ev­er strong your con­nec­tion might have been, those are not the type of peo­ple you are around now and it is not the world you are liv­ing in or that threat­ens your very own abil­i­ty to live. Just as soci­ety forces us to dis­con­nect from the vio­lence caused by our way of life, prison forced us to dis­con­nect from a lot of our deep­est sense of self and stay there for years.”
- Rod Coro­n­a­do, for­mer earth & ani­mal lib­er­a­tion pris­on­er, from his arti­cle, “What Your Heart Tells You Is Right.”

 

Many for­mer pris­on­ers face a raft of dif­fi­cul­ties upon com­ing out of prison, such as hous­ing & employ­ment dis­crim­i­na­tion, deal­ing with trau­ma, and the stig­ma of being a felon, to name just a few. It is cru­cial that our com­mu­ni­ties can sup­port our fel­low activists through these often chal­leng­ing times. But it is impor­tant to lis­ten to the voic­es of those who have had these expe­ri­ences, to learn what is appro­pri­ate sup­port, and sim­ply learn to lis­ten.

The zine, fea­tur­ing inter­views and writ­ings from for­mer earth & ani­mal defense pris­on­ers such as Rod Coro­n­a­do, Jor­dan Hal­l­i­day, Josh Harp­er & Jeff Luers, is being launched today on June 11, the Inter­na­tion­al Day of Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Marie Mason, Eric McDavid & all Eco-pris­on­ers. We hope that it con­tributes to fur­ther dis­cus­sion around sup­port­ing those cur­rent­ly in prison, as well as when they are released.

The zine can be read online, and down­loaded from the web­site: afterprisonzine.org.

All for­mer and cur­rent move­ment pris­on­ers can request a hard­copy of the zine for free. Please get in touch if you, or a pris­on­er you are sup­port­ing, would like a copy.

This is an ongo­ing project. In the long term, we are hop­ing that the web­site set up for this zine will become a place where oth­er for­mer pris­on­ers will be inter­est­ed in con­tribut­ing their sto­ries. As the web­site receives more con­tri­bu­tions, fur­ther updat­ed edi­tions of the zine will be pro­duced.

afterprisonzine@gmail.com