Author: bporter6

Banned Books week (Sept. 18-24) is upon us once again. Book bans have received a lot of attention this year as the culture wars target our libraries, yet many are unaware (or don’t care) that book censorship in U.S. prisons represents the largest book ban in the country. These bans are often opaque– facilities will ban books and refuse to release that information to the public (or us). We deal with these book bans on a regular basis as we try to track restrictions at prisons throughout our service area and attempt to send in books that will make it through prison mailrooms. Some prisons, like Angola and Parchman Farm, have banned used books completely, and it is a struggle to source enough new books to fulfill requests from people who are locked up there.

In honor of Banned Books Week this year, a donor has offered to match up to $1,000 worth of new donated books from now until September 28. You can give the gift of reading to someone inside and double your gift of books via our book wishlist at Tubby and Coo’s.

Did you know that people write us incredibly nice letters all the time? I uploaded a few of them here: https://lab2p.org/thank-you-letters/

Thank you to all who donated for GiveNOLA Day! We received about $3000 which is a lot for us. Postage prices have gone up, so the money will help a lot. We may also purchase more books on job skills to send inside.

We’re still sending out books as fast as we can. We are not accepting any volunteers. Our book drop is closed, but you can use our wishlist or mail us books that fit our donation guidelines.

We hope the pandemic ends so we can go back to normal, but as long as we are in a pandemic, we will not be operating the way we used to. We miss you all and hope to see you as soon as it’s safe to meet.

It turns out the link was broken for this form. Here’s a working link! You can print this out and give it to your loved one inside, and they can fill it out, fold it up, and mail it to us. It’s optional– they don’t have to use this, but it’s just an easy way to share our information with people inside. They can also just write us a letter.