about us
Abolitionist Mail Project was created in fall 2024 by a group of 8 friends and comrades on both sides of the wall. AMP's mission is to connect people incarcerated in Massachusetts and people on the outside. We believe all incarceration is wrong. And we believe until everyone is free, we must form genuine relationships between incarcerated and non-incarcerated people. These relationships help break down walls and build a new world.
As pen-pals, we reach across and beyond walls. We build mutual relationships, with incarcerated people offering a window into their lives under the PIC, and outside people offering friendship and support. Shared friendship and a healthy human relationship can be transformative.
In addition to these ongoing connections, people on the outside send dozens of birthday cards every month to incarcerated people, helping to show them that they are remembered. Around the winter holidays we coordinate the mailing of hundreds of winter cards. We run reading groups that pair an incarcerated reader with people on the outside to read and discuss short works in many genres.
Do you have ideas for how we can connect people across and beyond walls? Tell us!
In addition to these ongoing connections, people on the outside send dozens of birthday cards every month to incarcerated people, helping to show them that they are remembered. Around the winter holidays we coordinate the mailing of hundreds of winter cards. We run reading groups that pair an incarcerated reader with people on the outside to read and discuss short works in many genres.
Do you have ideas for how we can connect people across and beyond walls? Tell us!
How do you do this work?
AMP is not a nonprofit and never will be. We pull together people power and pocket change to do our small piece of abolition. We know abolition is not just ending prisons, police, borders, and punishment. It is building the world that we want to see. We need genuine, mutual, healthy friendships to do that. A pen-pal friendship is a great space to practice the necessary intentionality in relationships. Our Mission and Values explain how we approach this work.
A core group of 6 people on the outside and 2 on the inside make up the AMP Organizing Circle, but we are hopeful to expand. We are working on developing a mirror model, where each inside organizer is paired with an outside organizer.
A core group of 6 people on the outside and 2 on the inside make up the AMP Organizing Circle, but we are hopeful to expand. We are working on developing a mirror model, where each inside organizer is paired with an outside organizer.
Who is part of AMP?
There are more than 6,000 state-sentenced people in prisons in Massachusetts prisons. 6,300 people are in county jails and so-called houses of correction, with hundreds in federal detention at FMC Devens and still hundreds more incarcerated by ICE. In addition, thousands more do not live in a prison or jail setting but are involuntarily confined in locked psychiatric hospitals or on GPS ankle shackle in their homes. To paraphrase Fannie Lou Hamer, none of us are free until all in Massachusetts are free.
Connecting with us
You can sign an incarcerated person up for a pen-pal with their permission using the form here. You can sign up yourself, and contact us if you need to. Our contact info is here.
