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When

Sunday, August 4    
2:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Event Type

Join politically motivated locals who regularly use Indivisible’s guide in penning letters and signs. Write or make mail art to whomever you want – it feels good and is tangible action. We are always interested in new resources and addresses.

We’ll continue with our lists of asylum seeking detainees. It’s amazing to see all our check marks and even more satisfying to see the stacks of unique cards we are sending in batches.

I want to share a quick story that’s boosted me in this work. As many of you know we now have these lists of names and sometimes fragmented info on their language and/or country of origin. The people coming to the US and being held in these private detention centers are from all over the world. When the list says English or Spanish we are well equipped with scripts, but when that’s not the case we regularly need to make judgement calls about the language to use. One of our new writers asked me about what to do for Mekhrob, who was listed without a language. Looking further at the info we found that he’s from Tajikistan, so I suggested looking up a few phrases in google translate, or defaulting to English. I went about working on my cards and nearly an hour later this writer handed me a card he had painstakingly inscribed in Tajik while entering an English script into his phone. I had to stare at it for a bit and then showed Jill, who adorned the front for Mekhrob. Honestly, in this way it’s one of the most beautiful cards we have produced and I can only imagine how meaningful it will be to receive.

And there’s more! I was standing in front of the post office with a stack of 60 cards fanned out in one hand to take a picture with “Mekhrob” on top and I heard a voice say, “Oh, well this would be a perfect time to buy you stamps!” I turned to see a friend who’d offered in the past standing there with outgoing mail, so we walked in and she bought Pen Connection 40 Forever stamps. I used 14 on the priority package to Detainee Allies.

Every one of these cards represents a story from both the maker and the receiver. We send them off into a mystery, kind of like a concrete prayer made directly to and for someone.

Pen Connection:
• Meets most Sundays
• We have writing supplies to share but can always use more stamps, cool pens, collage materials, etc, if you’ve get em!
• Coming for the beginning and bringing snacks are highly encouraged, but not terribly important.
• We try to strike a balance between discussion with solo writing time. There’s plenty of room for composing thoughts, but you may want to bring headphones 😉
• Write or make mail art to whomever you want. It feels good and is tangible action.

Contact Ethan Turpin to confirm any meeting and for more information at ethanseye@gmail.com or (805) 570-9439.