For Giving Tuesday join Libration Library in a FundARun to help us produce an issue of our reader-led magazine: Free the Dream$! Let's go FAR for Free the Dream$!
Why Your Support Matters
In 2020, Liberation Library started working closely with The Final 5 Campaign. Out of that collaboration came the Free The Dream$ magazine which aims to engage young people in their own visions and reflections, allow them to share their artwork, access current news, book recommendations, music lyrics, and connect with others in similar situations. Overall our magazine programming engages young people inside to disrupt isolation & censorship and encourage imagination, self-determination, and bridging connections with each other. The development of this program also includes ensuring that young people are paid directly for their contributions and their time. With your support, this $24,255 will make it possible for our team to produce and print a full run--500 copies--of the magazine. These donations not only allow Liberation Library to pay formerly incarcerated young people as content producers, but also to pay our magazine coordinator and provide an accessibility reader. We are also committed to paying an inside editorial board comprised of directly impacted young people as well as our programming leads who are both formerly incarcerated abolitionists. Some of the most important work we do with the magazine happens following the release of a new issue. Liberation Library is thrilled to be able to support in-person programming associated with the release of each Magazine issue at all five youth prisons & several county jails. During these inside visits, we see every young person, deliver copies of the magazine as well as books & book order forms, bring snacks & drinks to celebrate this shared achievement, and discuss & practice our abolitionist values together.
Your contribution makes it possible for us to honor incarcerated young people's vision and artistry to produce something they make with their peers and mentors and can hold in their hands when the magazine run is completed.
LibLib's Mission
Liberation Library supports impacted young people in developing their imagination, leadership skills, self-determination, and connections with each other & to outside worlds of their choosing so that they are supported because they are best positioned to make transformative demands on the systems that cage and police them.
About LibLib
Liberation Library (LibLib) is a Chicago-based and volunteer-led prison abolition organization that provides books & youth-led magazines to incarcerated young people in Illinois including all five state-run youth facilities and over six county juvenile detention centers. As an abolitionist group, we build towards a future without prisons and jails. Until then, we work with impacted young people to support them in developing their imagination, leadership skills, self-determination, and connections with each other and to outside worlds of their choosing. We were formed in 2015 in response to a call to action by Mariame Kaba of Project NIA who voiced that young people who are caged in IL prisons need access to education. Since 2015 we’ve sent over 6,200 books inside and produced eight magazine issues, distributed exclusively to young people inside.
LibLib's Model
We believe strongly that our readers should have a voice and a choice in the books that they receive. We believe access to books is a right not a privilege. We highlight the choice and autonomy of our readers and everyone involved with our project as a way to live out our beliefs that impacted people can and ought to be supported in making and seeing through meaningful differences in things that impact their lives. Through both our book program and newer reader-led magazine program, our work seeks to resource & support impacted young people, as they are best positioned to make transformative demands on the systems that cage & police them.
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