Kerry's Page: Black & Pink 2024

From Kerry

It's a big year for Black & Pink, as we continue to support our inside members, connect folks with reentry resources, and approach the full funding level for our capital campaign at the Opportunity Campus, which will provide housing and community for system-impacted youth in our hometown of Omaha. Visiting with the rest of the crew earlier this year, Opportunity Campus stands as a model of what it means to invest in youth and in communities, in people, not prisons. During that time together, we also saw a performance of 10 letters from inside members read aloud by actors as powerful portraits of strength and struggle, of humanity. And in February, the Vera Institute published a report alongside us, uplifting the needs of incarcerated LGBTQIA2S+ folks which you can find here: https://www.vera.org/advancing-transgender-justice

To reach my goal of $10,000, and our team's goal of $50,000, I'll personally match the first $100 of the first 10 donations that are $100 or over! But anything and everything helps.

Thank you so much for your support of me and of our work at Black & Pink!

In community,

Kerry
2024 Board Co-Chair

From Black & Pink

Your support means the world to us at Black and Pink National, where we stand alongside systems-impacted people, those living with HIV, and our queer and trans siblings, with a special focus on uplifting Black and Brown communities. Through your generosity, we can continue our vital work, advocating for justice and fostering a sense of belonging for all. 

We build our programming from a space of community need but also out of recognition that queer and trans people need and deserve alternative structures. We've watched over the last few months as states try to eradicate trans people. We will not stand for this and we fight by continuing to create our own spaces, both literally and figuratively.

Building systems outside the system brings us closer and closer to full abolition of the Prison Industrial Complex and all of its harms. Many corporate and foundation funders struggle to see the vision of our work. It can be hard to imagine hopeful work like ours when there is so little programming like it. 

Our Sex Worker Liberation Program recognizes the labor and talent required to do sex work and the lack of structural support for it. We build collaboratively with workers for safety and for success. Our support services programs meet people where they are to give them what they need most, establishing structural safety through housing, gender-affirming care and other essentials. Lydon House serves as a space of respite and healing for those who have recently left prisons.  We've continued to co-create groundbreaking research, including our recent collaboration, Protected and Served?

Black and Pink provides food to those who need it and safe spaces to sleep. We help our members complete their job search or find a gender affirming doctor. We bail people out of prisons and give them money when no one else will. We show up again and again because we believe that it is community care like this that builds a world without carceral harm. And we can only show up because of people like you, who care so very much. 

Please consider a donation. In the name of hope, of pride, of protest, of liberation. We can only build the world of our dreams with visionaries and supporters like you by our side.