I just got this e-mail from Gloria Steinem:
Dear Ms. Friend,
Imagine being confined to a cell for 17 hours a day, and having little or no access to reading, writing, or learning — or talks with friends.
Imagine that the Bible is the only reading material you are given. When there is a copy of a magazine, imagine that you have to share it with 699* other women.
Now imagine receiving your own personal copy of Ms. magazine, and knowing that more will come.
You can make this happen with a tax deductible gift to the Ms. Magazine Prison and Domestic Violence Shelter Program, a fund dedicated to creating a link with women in prison and women who have reached the safety of a shelter but rarely have access to supportive books and magazines.
Whatever you celebrate in this season — Christmas or Kwanzaa, Diwali, Ramadan, Chanukah or the Winter Solstice — reach out in the spirit of giving that is universal. Just click here and you can extend the sisterhood, support, facts, creativity, humor and community that the women’s movement has brought to you:
https://feminist.org/donations/ms/prisons_121004.asp
In fact, Ms. has always done its best to provide free magazines to individual women in prisons and shelters who requested it, but only in the last few years have we been able to get the official permissions necessary to create an organized initiative.
Our current resources allow us to just skim the surface. Of the tens of thousands of women in prisons in the U.S., Ms. is reaching only 15,430. Of the more than 1,800 domestic violence shelters nationwide, Ms. is sent to 467. Please help us to empower and inspire more women in 2005 by making a tax-deductible donation today:
https://feminist.org/donations/ms/prisons_121004.asp
Let me tell you a story about the origin of this dream of sending Ms. behind bars and into shelters.
Years ago I met an elegant African American woman in her late thirties who told me that she had first read Ms. in prison. She had been convicted of prostitution, and after reading a few issues of Ms., she began to wonder why she was serving time, yet her pimp and customers were not. She went to the prison library to find law books, only to be told that in her state, men’s prisons had law libraries but women’s did not. She organized other women prisoners to protest.
When law books arrived, she began researching questions for herself and other prisoners; questions of unequal justice, child custody, and others. After her release, she found a clerical job at a women’s law firm, and went on to finish high school and attend college at night. “Now I’m a lawyer,” she said. “I thought you just might like to know.”
I will never forget that woman. She gave me the greatest gift of all: the feeling of making a difference. I want to share this gift with you by asking you to join me in sending Ms. as a portable friend to places where women have few friends and few resources.
https://feminist.org/donations/ms/prisons_121004.asp
We’ll be publishing letters of response from women who are reached by this program. Help make their voices heard. They will be a gift to you.
In sisterhood,
Gloria Steinem
*An actual number from the Virginia Correctional Center librarian.
ME: a) prisons? Not the first place I think of when I think of spreading the NRO/NR word. But, hey, if that’s your movement’s future, Gloria…
b) so can you actually imagine being stuck in a prison cell with only Ms. to read? Surely there are laws against such cruelty. I know there’s something in the Constitution along those lines.
c) “Christmas or Kwanzaa, Diwali, Ramadan, Chanukah or the Winter Solstice.” Come on, she had to leave something out.
d) I’m pretty sure Ms. Steinem would kick me off the “Dear Ms. Friend” direct mail list if she read The Corner.