Black and Pink Milwaukee is an organization with the mission of supporting incarcerated LGBTQ+ and HIV+ folks through mutual aid, pen pal matching and calls to action. Their horizontal structure and organizing approach is based on an abolitionist feminist praxis. Formed as a chapter of the national Black and Pink organization in 2015, the Milwaukee branch broke off from the national nonprofit organization last summer and now operates independently.
We spoke to organizers Kara Mannor and Kayla Kuo to learn more about their work.
“Before we were Black and Pink,” Mannor explained, “there was a group of people here in Milwaukee who were gathering to write to folks who were incarcerated in Texas. It was at these
small meetings where we learned how writing to folks on the inside was a harm reduction act. The whole experience was an exercise in pushing back against the ways the prison industrial complex tries to disappear people. That work would form the basis of what is now known as the Black and Pink Milwaukee organization today.”
Their goals involve educating communities about the roles that prisons and police play in folks’ everyday lives as well as mitigating the harms caused by the prison-industrial complex. Mannor points out, “Punishment, surveillance and policing are all interconnected.”
According to research conducted by the Prison Policy Initiative, LGBTQ+ folks are disproportionately affected by incarceration and prison violence even from a young age. Because 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ+, they are at higher risk of incarceration. Additionally,a report from Be In The Knowindicates that prisoners are five times more likely to have HIV/AIDS than others. Black and Pink Milwaukee center LGBTQ+ and HIV+ folks because they are such high-risk demographics.
Break the Isolation
“Our pen pal program is a key feature of our work because it so clearly represents the concepts that we want to put into practice,” Mannor said. “We’re able to break the isolation of the walls that prisons impose on people.”
Kuo adds, “These are ways of building community and letting prisoners know that they have people on the outside who are actively checking in on them and care about them.”
Black and Pink Milwaukee hold card writing sessions on the first Sunday of every month and they publish a bimonthly newsletter which exists to facilitate communication and provide
support to their inside members. They are fiscally sponsored byDiverse & Resilient, a local nonprofit that works towards LGBTQ+ health equity.
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“The holidays are a very special and important time for us,” Mannor said. “We were really fortunate this year because we got several other organizations involved in our writing parties. Diverse & Resilient, Sun-Seeker MKE Collective, Chippewa Valley LGBTQ+ Community Center, and folks from the Madison Public Library showed up.”
When one becomes a Black and Pink Milwaukee pen pal, they are expected to maintain consistent, long-term communication with whom they are matched with. Folks are encouraged to consider their commitments, capacity, and reasons for writing when they sign up. One thing to note is that Black and Pink Milwaukee do not screen their pen pals. “Essential to our work, we just want to be able to provide support and resources and connections for our inside members regardless of their record,” Kuo said. “If it comes up organically then our pen pals may have that conversation. It can be easy to let someone’s record become a barrier to actually getting to know them.”
“We understand that people might have a knee-jerk reaction to say that we need prisons for bad people,” Mannor added. “But we want to open up peoples’ analysis over if this system is really working for anybody. We’ve had a couple centuries of this prison experiment and we’re still one of the most violent countries in the world. We acknowledge that harm happens, and that people do bad things, but what we do directly engages people with asking why these cycles happen, and it opens the door to understanding how to prevent harm rather than perpetuate it.”
In 2022 the organization was able to fulfill over $800 worth of commissary requests, match more than 15 new pen pals, and mail over 450 cards for birthdays and holidays. They currently have about 400 pen pals matched with around 100 more pending.
Kuo commends African-American Roundtable for bringing awareness to the fact that Milwaukee Common Council just voted in favor of constructing a new youth prison and detention center. “We don’t need more children to be incarcerated,” she said. “There’s better ways to build access to resources, and African-American Roundtable has done a great job in creating a participatory budget that helps community members have more say in how these funds are being used. We also encourage people to get engaged with the Milwaukee Freedom Fund.”
Black and Pink Milwaukee plan to consolidate more reentry resources for when incarcerated folks get released, plus they will continue sharing mutual aid efforts on social media in addition to their regular programming. To get involved or learn more, visit Black and Pink Milwaukee’sLinktree.
