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Books Through Bars

@btb_philly

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Prison Book Program located in West Philly 📚❤️ Come volunteer with us!
📍4722 Baltimore Avenue

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What a great way to start off the week! Thank you to our awesome guests 🧁📚🎤

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The good folks at @midwestbooks2p put together this awesome lil poster to include inside of their monthly mailing, which goes to 530 recipients who are incarcerated in various prisons. The poster is a special act of love and solidarity, featuring poems and artwork by Des paired with poems by Champagne, along with information on the Prairieland defendants and their sadistic sentences.

This poster is just one good reason to support your local books-through-bars project—or join or start one—and highlights the beauty and importance of getting written materials to those behind bars.

Another good reason is summed up by Des himself, who emailed this message to pass along to @midwestbooks2p : “Please thank Midwest from me! I do plan on sending them some mail soon. They been super supportive, and we all really appreciated all the books we got from them as well [in the Texas federal prison].”

For those of you who want to make similar posters—or flyers, stickers, zines, buttons, etc.—for your books-thru-bars or other solidarity projects, you can find @desrevol’s art and words freely available on our website at freedes.net, and/or via the free graphics page for “Free Des” on @justseeds website.

#FreeDes #FreeThemAll

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📚 We Love Booksellers — Episode Seven

The series continues, this time with Sarah from Books Through Bars, a Philadelphia based organization getting books into the hands of incarcerated people.

In this episode, Sarah talks about the heart behind the work and the real need for access to books, especially as resources inside prisons fall short. With the help of a huge volunteer network, Books Through Bars sends out thousands of books each year, reaching people who have no other way to access them.

We’re so excited to share more about this incredible work and the people making it happen!

Stay tuned as we keep highlighting amazing booksellers all around! ☺️

#philadelphia #philly #bookseller #booksthroughbars #community

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𝙐𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙜𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙗𝙡𝙪𝙚 𝙢𝙤𝙩𝙩𝙡𝙚𝙙 𝙘𝙡𝙤𝙪𝙙𝙨 𝙙𝙧𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙣 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙣𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙩—our second issue!

It’s Publication Day. Sincerest thanks to everyone who had a hand in making Spring/Summer 2026 all that it is. The most gratitude goes to our contributors, without whom nothing is possible. We couldn’t be happier with how this collection turned out! Pick up a copy from our website or find us in one of the bookstores or libraries listed on the last slide.

Lots more exciting things happening this summer, including an Issue 02 party in NYC. More on this later. Happy May Day!

💘💘

#toughpoets

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Cover 📸: Herbert List (@herbert_list), 𝙆𝙞𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙣, 𝙄𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙮 (1936). Courtesy of @magnumphotos.

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Only a few days left in Independent Bookstore Match Week! Come by the center this evening 4-6 to purchase a book for @btb_philly or sit in our reading room and peruse our archives of working class history and Marxist Leninist theory. 📚

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We’re collecting book donations for @btb_philly for the rest of this week!📚❤️

Choose one of these three titles from their wishlist to purchase in the shop and donate. Books Through Bars has been sending free books to incarcerated people in six mid-Atlantic states (Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia) since 1987. Follow the link in bio to learn more about this Philly program!

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Earlier today, some of our members and @wcu_alphaphisigma members volunteered at Books Through Bars in Philly. They read letters from inmates, finding books for them and packaging them up. We were also able to donate 5 boxes of books for them!

@btb_philly
Learn more and help Support:
https://www.booksthroughbars.org

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M.A.C. Project Subscribers have nominated 4 non-profits so far in April, yayyyy!!!

**I am SO SORRY for being so late in posting this month. As some of you know, co-founders Jaime & Zachary are getting married end of month sooo, it's been a whirlwind. Thank you for your patience in this update.

Voting starts on the 21st.
Here are the summaries of those nominated so far:

-ORDINARIE HEROES:
@ordinarieheroes is a safe space for youth making accessible dignity, opportunity, community and basic needs.

-BLACK GIRLS WITH GREEN THUMBS
@blackgirlswithgreenthumbs is a community that gardens in their homes and within their neighborhoods to heal, nourish, and learn through immersive wellness experiences that reshape relationships with food and restores connections to land, nature, and self.

-SKYPE-A-SCIENTIST
@skypeascientist is a subscriber favorite, this being their 3rd time nominated! They do super awesome work connecting and proliferating arts and science and making it accessible to marginalized communities

-BOOKS THROUGH BARS
@btb_philly does terrific work raising awareness, coordinating volunteers and getting books into the hands of the incarcerated. The value of literature much less scholarly work is inestimable to those eager for edification while behind bars.

The M.oney A.cross C.ommunities Project funds Philly non-profits every month elected by the subscribers who fund the donation $5 at a time.

SO EVERY SUBSCRIBER MATTERS!
We start each month with $100
BUT THEN ADD $5 for every subscriber
- With 0- we donate $100
- With 10 - we donate $150
- With 100 - we donate $600
- With 1000 - we donate $5,100

SUBSCRIPTION:
$7.60 a month, tax deductible.
$5 goes into the monthly fund, the rest fuels our ability to provide free resources at LiveCarePhilly.Org (see our instagram wall for all sorts of examples : )

Subscribe to elect any Philly headquartered non-profit to receive this (and every) month's fund at:
www. LiveCarePhilly.Org/MAC

THAT'S RAD, RIGHT??
--> LiveCarePhilly.Org/MAC

All 4 of the above non-profits go above and beyond in sacrificing to make Philly a more beautiful and/or dignified place to be.

#themacproject #gobirds #livecarephilly

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Wake up babes. New book drive just dropped. 🫨📖 Books Through Bars has been sending free books to incarcerated people in the mid-atlantic since 1987. 💕✊📚 All month we’re going to be collecting book donations for our people in prison. 🫶✨🆒 Please take a look at your shelves and get involved. 👀🫡

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Join our Ethical Action Committee next Saturday, April 11th, to sort the books that were donated during our March book drive! Volunteers are welcome to drop in any time between 1 and 4:00pm and stay for as long as they’d like. We’ll be organizing books based on the needs and goals of a few book-focused charities, to make sure each one goes to the best place possible. This will also be your last chance to make any donations to the drive! See you there!

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I’m gonna meet with @aarronp4real and learn about money -then I’m gonna tell everyone what I learned so make sure you guys pull up #xcon2icon nightclub

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Yesterday, some of our members went and volunteered at Books Through Bars in Philly. They read letters from inmates and found books related to what they liked or asked for!

@btb_philly
Learn more and help Support:
https://www.booksthroughbars.org

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