Support Our Holiday Project: “Lifelines to Solitary”

by | December 22, 2012

Many, many thanks to those of you who have generously given to our “Lifelines from Solitary” Project so far. We have already raised more than a thousand dollars to help us send cards, letters, and newsletters to nearly 500 people in prison–most of them in solitary confinement. With your help we’ve been able to send them holiday cards with a specially printed message: “Wishing you peace, strength, and hope this holiday season and throughout the coming year.” And we have begun to receive responses. Here’s just one example:

“I can’t tell you how touched I am for you giving me any attention. I am so grateful to you and cried tears reading your card because the torture, abuse and neglect I’m facing makes this cell and my world a lonely place, and many days I think of how to take my own life and end the misery and pain but you inspire me and I continue to fight on.’’ –Texas

In order to keep up our correspondence throughout the year, we hope to raise $2,500 by January 15. For people in conditions of isolation and sensory deprivation–conditions known to cause anguish, madness, and even suicide–these communications can be a crucial lifeline, a connection to the outside world, and a reminder that they are not forgotten. Even $10 enables us to keep in touch with one person in solitary for a full year. Please click on the link below or in the sidebar to support “Lifelines to Solitary.”

http://www.razoo.com/story/Lifelines-To-Solitary

Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

James Ridgeway (1936-2021) was the founder and co-director of Solitary Watch. An investigative journalist for over 60 years, he served as Washington Correspondent for the Village Voice and Mother Jones, reporting domestically on subjects ranging from electoral politics to corporate malfeasance to the rise of the racist far-right, and abroad from Central America, Northern Ireland, Eastern Europe, Haiti, and the former Yugoslavia. Earlier, he wrote for The New Republic and Ramparts, and his work appeared in dozens of other publications. He was the co-director of two films and author of 20 books, including a forthcoming posthumous edition of his groundbreaking 1991 work on the far right, Blood in the Face. Jean Casella is the director of Solitary Watch. She has also published work in The Guardian, The Nation, and Mother Jones, and is co-editor of the book Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement. She has received a Soros Justice Media Fellowship and an Alicia Patterson Fellowship. She tweets @solitarywatch.

Help Expose the Hidden World of Solitary Confinement

At Solitary Watch, we believe that accurate information and authentic storytelling can serve as powerful antidotes to ignorance and injustice. We have helped generate public awareness, mainstream media attention, and informed policymaking on what was once an invisible domestic human rights crisis.

Only with your support can we continue this groundbreaking work, shining light into the darkest corners of the U.S. criminal punishment system.

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