FedUp! Newsletter

Hi Everyone!

Here is our quartely newsletter from the FedUp! Chapter of the Human Rights
Coalition. Below is the table of contents... Below that is news from Resource Info and Help for the Disadvantaged. If you don't want to get these emails -Please let respond to this email.

Love and Happy New Year,
etta

Letta From the Etta-der--------------à 1

Letter From Lizzie ------------------à 1

2008 Reasons to be FedUp!----------à2

Discrimination Report from AFSC-à3

StopMax Conference------------------à4

Info from The Sentencing Project---à5

Crack Reform--------------------------à6

Gregory Moore's Story and Poem--à 7

Regarding Ambulatory Restraints---à8

Lakotah People Withdraw from treatiesà 8

Resource Information Help for the Disadvantaged (RIHD)

Resource Information Help for the Disadvantaged (RIHD) is a nonprofit, all volunteer, membership organization dedicated towards reducing crime and reducing incarceration and recidivism through activities that promote education for at-risk youth, self-rehabilitation for incarcerated persons, ex-offenders and their families/loved ones.

Transportation Assistance for Families/Children of Prisoners to Faraway Prisons

Resource Information Help for the Disadvantaged is a nonprofit public charity that seeks financial assistance from the Commonwealth of Virginia to assist low-income families with transportation expenses to visit with their incarcerated family member(s) in faraway state prisons. RIHD tries to provide at least one two-day trip per month. Two of the four prisons included in the program are super-max prisons Red Onion and Wallens Ridge, where inmates are on lock-down segregation for 23 hours a day with little to no educational or rehabilitation programs. Outside contact is imperative in maintaining good mental health under those conditions. Some family members, especially mothers and children, have not been able to visit their incarcerated loved one(s) for more than seven years until our services became available. As a community-based nonprofit organization, RIHD's mission is to continue to advocate for prisoner education, rehabilitation, and reducing the recidivism rate through family intervention and by re-uniting families through regular visitation.

Most often the families and loved ones cannot afford to visit on their own due to the high cost and the long distances to prisons (e.g. seven to 12 hours each way) within the Commonwealth of Virginia. For the past three years RIHD has struggled to provide at cost transportation to Keen Mountain Correctional Center, Red Onion and Wallens Ridge State Prisons, and most recently Pocahontas Correctional Center. The estimated cost for each monthly trip is approximately $993 round-trip which includes rental of a 12-passenger van, gas and the driver's fee. The cost for each family member adult or child is $75 per person (11 seats total). In addition to the $75, the family must pay for hotel accommodations that RIHD has fortunately been able to secure at a discounted rate of $77 per room (double occupancy), food, and spending money for the overpriced items in the prison vending machines. Additionally, we have responded to several prisoner/family emergencies resulting in RIHD board members having to subsidize the total cost of the trip(s).

RIHD urges the Commonwealth of Virginia to fully fund and support transportation assistance for prisoners' families and children in the 2008-9 budget. This is vital to keeping families connected under already difficult circumstances.

RIHD request letter of support from prisoners, families & community leaders and the positive affects of family visitation. For more information contact RIHD Representative

Lillie(Ms. "K") Branch-Kennedy at:

Telephone: (804) 562-2123

Mail: RIHD - PO Box 55 -Highland Springs - Virginia 23075

Email: InMateResource@aol.com

Peace and Blessings ~ Let's Make it Happen

Ms "K"

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Human Rights Coaltion - FedUp! Chapter
5125 Penn Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15224
412-802-8575 hrcfedup@gmail.com
www.thomasmertoncenter.org/fedup/