🇺🇸 Each day this Memorial Week, we’re sharing the words of a living veteran. Someone who served their country and is now incarcerated, waiting to be seen, heard, and remembered. These are real voices from our waiting list. Real people. Still here. Still hoping.
Richard was injured by an IED while serving in Iraq. He suffered a traumatic brain injury. Now, he’s in prison, looking for connection.
I want to find good friends. I am a disabled Veteran, while serving in Iraq I as hit by an IED. I suffered traumatic brain injury. The VA has rated me as permanently disabled. I have seen all the destruction and greed that the human race can create. I have come through struggles with addiction. I need to find friends who are gonna have my back. People who lift each other up, people like I had when I was in the Army.
This is what community sounds like. This is what loss feels like. And this is what hope still looks like.
Want to do something about it?
The veteran who shared these words is on our waiting list and could really use a friend. If you’d like to get connected, or even just send a note of encouragement, contact us and mention his name. We’ll take care of the rest.
John served in the Army’s Airborne Ranger division and fought in the Iraq War. When he returned home, he struggled, and made choices that changed his life forever.
I’ve been incarcerated for 13 years and still have some time to go before I’m eligible for parole. I’m a proud Army veteran from the Airborne Ranger division. Shortly after returning from the Iraq War, I made some really bad choices that resulted in my current incarceration. I have almost no support in the outside world and could really use a mentor, supporter, and friend.
He doesn’t ask for pity. He owns what he did.
But service, trauma, and pain don’t disappear when the uniform comes off. And accountability should not mean abandonment.
Today’s Fact:
Veterans are overrepresented in the U.S. prison population, especially those who served in combat. Many experience untreated PTSD, substance use, or homelessness before arrest. Despite this, access to mental health care and support inside prison is rare, and often punitive.
Want to do something about it?
The veteran who shared these words is on our waiting list and could really use a friend. If you’d like to get connected, or even just send a note of encouragement, contact us and mention his name. We’ll take care of the rest.
🇺🇸 Each day this Memorial Week, we’re sharing the words of a living veteran. Someone who served their country and is now incarcerated, waiting to be seen, heard, and remembered. These are real voices from our waiting list. Real people. Still here. Still hoping.
Some people assume that prison is where self-improvement begins. The truth? Prison often makes growth nearly impossible.
Joel served in the U.S. Navy and is now serving a 10-year sentence, hundreds of miles from his home in Missouri. His family can’t visit. And while he’s working hard to better himself, the system makes it a constant uphill battle.
I’ve participated in many of the self-help classes here, including Cognitive Intervention, Alcoholics Anonymous, faith-based studies, and veteran groups. But this is a challenging environment to live in and try to better yourself. Gang and drugs are rampant, creating a lot of unrest and violence.
He’s trying, really trying, to grow.
But the environment doesn’t nurture growth. And for too many incarcerated veterans, isolation is a second sentence.
Incarcerated veterans are more likely than non-veterans to be housed far from home, especially if they’re in a specialized unit or program.
This often leads to long stretches with no family visits or outside support, worsening mental health outcomes.
Want to do something about it?
The veteran who shared these words is on our waiting list and could really use a friend. If you’d like to get connected, or even just send a note of encouragement, contact us and mention his name. We’ll take care of the rest.
🇺🇸 Each day this Memorial Week, we’re sharing the words of a living veteran. Someone who served their country and is now incarcerated, waiting to be seen, heard, and remembered. These are real voices from our waiting list. Real people. Still here. Still hoping.
What happens to someone who serves his country, is sent overseas, and comes home to nothing?
“I am a 6-year Army vet and served overseas. I have no contacts in the outside world. I am currently fighting for my Veterans benefits.”
That’s it. That’s the whole letter.
Sometimes the silence says more than the words do.
He served. He returned. Now he’s in prison, with no support, no connections, and still fighting to receive the benefits he earned.
This is not what justice looks like. This is what abandonment looks like.
Incarcerated veterans often lose access to their VA benefits, and must fight to have them reinstated after release. The process is slow, complex, and poorly communicated. Many give up. Some never know they’re eligible at all.
Want to do something about it?
The veteran who shared these words (Michael) is on our waiting list and could really use a friend. If you’d like to get connected, or even just send a note of encouragement, contact us and mention his name. We’ll take care of the rest.
🇺🇸 Each day this Memorial Week, we’re sharing the words of a living veteran. Someone who served their country and is now incarcerated, waiting to be seen, heard, and remembered. These are real voices from our waiting list. Real people. Still here. Still hoping.
We hear it often: “He doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would end up in prison.”
But what does that even mean?
This Army veteran, Alex, is a writer, educator, lifelong learner, and lover of books, pugs, cinnamon, and Golden State basketball. He helps fellow incarcerated people learn to read and do math. He quotes Hermione Granger and Joel Osteen, adores coffee and books, believes wit and humor are essential, and is “not really getting the hype behind Russian literature. Or Twilight.”
From prison, he writes this:
To treat a person inhumanely is one of the most awful acts there is. To do so is violence; you reduce a person to a thing.
FACT: Incarcerated veterans are twice as likely as other prisoners to experience PTSD, and they’re often punished instead of supported, treated like liabilities instead of human beings with stories, skills, and scars. Access to trauma-informed care and therapy inside prison remains rare, and often, nonexistent.
Alex is doing everything he can to grow, give back, and stay human in a place built to erase him.
I am not cruel. I am not arbitrary. And I am rarely unfair. I am never afraid to apologize and am quick to laugh, even at myself. In fact, often at myself.
I am looking for friendships that are qualitative, not quantitative.
📬 Want to do something about it?
The veteran who shared these words is on our waiting list and could really use a friend. If you’d like to get connected, or even just send a note of encouragement, contact us and mention his name. We’ll take care of the rest.
In 2016, an estimated 107,400 veterans were incarcerated in the U.S. (Maruschak et al., 2021).
Something we hear pretty regularly is: “Why would anyone adopt a criminal? Adopt a veteran instead.” Our answer to that is: Please do. There are many veterans on our waiting list.
Memorial Day honors those who died in uniform, but not those who returned home broken. When mental health care, trauma recovery, housing, and employment are treated like luxuries, veterans end up in the one place America is still willing to invest in: a prison.
This week, we’re sharing letters sent to us from veterans who are still living. Behind bars. Not to erase what they’ve done, but to confront what this country has failed to do.
Today’s letter comes from Kenneth:
Before prison, I was a teacher, disabled veteran, author, and business owner. At present, I am not allowed to be any of those. I have been locked up and treated like an animal. I joined the Army at 17 and served 11 years. I was medically retired with service-connected disabilities. Now I spend my time hoping someone will remember I’m alive. I just need a human to know I’m not dead.*
What do you even say after that?
This Memorial Day, don’t just lay a wreath. Write a letter. Adopt a veteran. Be the connection our country forgot to keep.
*The veteran who shared these words is currently on our waiting list and could really use a friend. If you’d like to get connected, or just send a note of encouragement, reach out and mention his name. We’ll take it from there.
Every once in a while, a headline floats across the internet promising that Alcatraz might reopen. Most recently, it’s come from Trump, who proposed turning the shuttered island prison back into a functioning one. The idea is as theatrical as it is empty. It’s exactly the kind of distraction our carceral system thrives on.
Alcatraz has always lived more in the American imagination than in our reality. It operated for just 29 years, and closed in 1963. it’s been a tourist destination ever since. It’s famous not because it worked, but because it didn’t.
To take Alcatraz back and turn it into an operational penitentiary, using the building that is there now, would make as much sense as taking Fort Sumter, putting it back together and arming it with missile loading cannons. – Alcatraz historian John Martini
Reopening Alcatraz wouldn’t solve a single issue plaguing our criminal legal system. It wouldn’t fix the lack of mental health care. It wouldn’t provide jobs or housing or education. It wouldn’t decarcerate. It would just feed the myth that harsher punishment equals safety.
Meanwhile, roughly two million people are already incarcerated in this country, scattered across more than 1,000 prisons, jails, and detention centers – many crumbling, overcrowded, or operating in violation of human rights.
If politicians want to get serious about incarceration, they don’t need to dust off the keys to a rock in the San Francisco Bay. They need to fund public defenders. They need to end cash bail. They need to stop criminalizing poverty, and addiction, and mental illness.
They need to listen to the people inside.
And while we’re talking about reclaiming Alcatraz, here’s some interesting history about who already did.
In 1969, a group of Native American activists from Indians of All Tribes occupied Alcatraz Island. They lived there for 19 months in a peaceful protest, reclaiming the land in response to centuries of displacement, broken treaties, and erasure.
They didn’t come to punish. They came to remind this country of its promises, and its failures.
We don’t need more cages. We need more connection. More compassion. More change.
📬 Want to do something that actually helps?
Write a letter. Challenge the myth that punishment is the answer. Invest in people, not myths.
But that smug little rhyme only works if you believe the punishment always fits the crime — and that everyone inside actually did it.
🔎 FACT CHECK:
Neither is true.
🚨 What We’re Seeing:
Heavily armed, masked agents:
No identification
No warrants
No probable cause
No Miranda rights
Shooting rubber bullets and chemical agents at peaceful protesters and journalists
In America:
You have a RIGHT to protest.
You have a RIGHT to know who is detaining you.
Agents need a WARRANT or PROBABLE CAUSE.
Masked paramilitary forces dragging people into unmarked vehicles is ILLEGAL.
What we’re witnessing in cities like Los Angeles and Nashville isn’t “immigration enforcement” - it’s extrajudicial abduction. It's kidnapping and human trafficking.
🧨 Being undocumented is not a crime.
It’s a civil offense, not grounds for violent raids.
Yet workers - cooks, janitors, dishwashers, farmhands - are being hunted like fugitives, while real threats walk free in positions of power.
💬 Quote of the Week:
I’ve never in my life feared an immigrant or a trans person. I’ve feared the men in my church, the white men in office, and now the armed men hiding behind masks, badges, weapons, and lies.
[...] and i hope they remember the Nuremberg trials, because this fever is going to break, and you will be held accountable for your crimes. Monte Mader
🗣️ We Need to Say It Plain:
This is not about safety. It’s not about law and order. It’s about control and power, and using fear, and cruelty to get it. That's called fascism.
📣 Your Rights (Even Now):
✅ You do not have to open the door to ICE without a signed judicial warrant. ✅ You have the right to remain silent. ✅ You have the right to record in public. ✅ You have the right to protest. ✅ You have the right to legal representation.
Know them. Use them. Defend them.
❤️ Call to Action
🧵 Share this post. 📬 CALL AND WRITE your lawmakers. 🎤 Speak out. 💰 Support local immigrant aid organizations.
Because when they come for them, they’re coming for us all.
💬 The Good: What’s one positive thing you’ve seen or experienced in prison?
I would say one of the positive things I seen in prison is I had plenty of time to read! And can say this has directly impacted the changes I made!
💬 The Bad: What’s one negative thing you’ve seen or experienced in prison?
The continued excessive abuse, and no way to actually address the things that are occurring inside – like the grievance system is completely ineffective!
💬 The Change: If you could change one thing about prison, what would it be?
For it to be more restorative based than punitive!
Our friend Matt, who shared his answers above, recorded this video on February 25, 2025, during the NY DOCCS strike (now concluded). Matt speaks candidly about the injustices he witnessed and experienced while inside — and the deep need for accountability and change.
⏩Forward This Email – Someone needs to see this 📢 Add Your Voice – Submit your responses to our Good, Bad, Change poll ✍️Take the Quiz – How much do you know about U.S. prisons? 💌 Donate Stamps – Help us send more love inside ❤️ Give – Support dignity, connection, and second chances.
“You Can’t Vote, But You Still Count… Somewhere Else.”
When someone is incarcerated, they lose the right to vote. But during the census, they’re still counted, not where they’re from, but where they’re locked up.
And that simple detail is a political power grab.
Most incarcerated people come from urban areas. But prisons are usually built in rural districts, and that’s where they’re counted. Their bodies inflate the political power of the district that holds them, not the one that raised them.
It’s called prison gerrymandering, and it lets rural areas gain representation and resources by warehousing people from somewhere else.
The result?
A person in prison can’t vote.
Their hometown loses representation.
The rural district gets political power, without earning it.
That’s not democracy. That’s incarceration without participation.
What can be done?
A few states have ended the practice by counting people where they actually live, their home address, not their cell. But most haven’t. Because power is hard to give up, even when it was never yours to begin with.
📣 Share This Post Prison gerrymandering thrives on silence. Let people know what’s really going on.
✍️ Take the Quiz How much do you really know about mass incarceration?
🗣️ Tell Your Story Has redistricting or incarceration affected your voice or your vote?
❤️ Give Support our work to expose injustice and fight for fair representation.
