A college student who is working with Pages as part of one of their classes asked me what I thought the organization’s long term vision was.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a good question, and this is what I responded with, though I feel like it’s just a starting point<\/p>\n
\n> What is Pages long term vision?\r\n> What type of social impact would you like to see Pages make(prisoner\r\n> rights\/awareness\/literacy)?<\/pre>\nReally, these are two parts to the same question, so I'll answer it as\r\nsuch. I think Pages' long term vision is a world where everyone has the\r\nknowledge, perspective, and skills to live an interesting, dignified\r\nlife. Pages' focus is on making sure that incarcerated and formerly\r\nincarcerated people are included as part of everyone.\r\n\r\nLike any social movement, community project, or nonprofit, I think that\r\nour vision includes envisioning a day when our project doesn't need to\r\nexist. I will be the first to admit that the model of the prison book\r\nproject is not a particularly efficient way to get books to incarcerated\r\npeople. Sadly, for many, it is the only way that they can get access to\r\nthe knowledge and perspective that they want, which is why our project\r\ncontinues to do the work of sending free books to incarcerated people.\r\nThe aspect of the project that moves us toward a world where we are no\r\nlonger necessary is the volunteer experience of service and of reading\r\nthe letters from incarcerated people and, hopefully, complicating the\r\nvolunteer's perception of incarcerated people and incarceration. \r\n\r\nI want people who volunteer with us to be able to think and make decisions\r\nmore rationally when it comes to community safety, crime, incarceration and\r\nincarcerated people. I also do work with a local group called Decarcerate\r\nMonroe County which is resisting jail expansion in this county. In some\r\nways it addresses some of the same issues as Pages, but more fundamentally,\r\nbecause it aims to make one government entity spend money on empowering\r\npeople instead of incarcerating them and finding solutions to keep people\r\nout of jail. However, in doing this organizing, attending county meetings,\r\nand talking with people who have conflicting ideas, it makes me appreciate\r\nPages because I feel like people who volunteer here get a perspective that\r\nhelps them think beyond the cultural stereotypes about crime,\r\nincarceration, and the people affected by incarceration. At Pages, we're\r\nnot trying to portray every incarcerated person as an innocent victim of\r\nthe system. Instead, through their letters, we're letting incarcerated\r\npeople speak for themselves in the hopes that those reading the letters\r\nwill at least appreciate them as an individual. Ultimately, I hope the\r\nexperience of volunteering with Pages will make people realize that\r\nincarceration in this country, as it stands now, is not working very well\r\nfor anyone - whether it's the incarcerated or the community at large. \r\nHopefully people will keep this perspective in mind when they are voting,\r\nworking, and involved in their community.<\/pre>\n<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A college student who is working with Pages as part of one of their classes asked me what I thought the organization’s long term vision was.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a good question, and this is what I responded with, though I feel like it’s just a starting point > What is Pages long term vision? >… Continue reading Pages vision<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[57,660],"class_list":["post-1518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-pages","tag-vision","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wnIz-ou","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}