Casper Cendre’s small apartment has stacks of letters, envelopes and artwork in every corner. On their monitor is a spreadsheet with hundreds of names, a chronological record of every letter received and the order in which to respond. A decorated frame holds a brightly colored depiction of David Bowie, who looks on with twinkling eyes.
This is the home of ABO Comix, a prisoner solidarity collective and small press based in Oakland, Calif., working to amplify the voices of LGBTQ+ prisoners throughout the country and to assist them with financial, legal, mental and emotional help and solidarity.
The project started in 2017 when a group of friends got together in a community garden to look through some comics, and the conversation moved toward prisoner solidarity work.
“I’ve been working with prisoners for about a decade, and (co-creators) Io and Woof had been working on comic projects for about as long,” Cendre said. “And we thought it would be cool to kinda just bridge the two things.”
They took out ads in papers that were distributed in prisons across the nation inviting submissions of comics and stories, not knowing if they would hear back from anyone. They received hundreds of letters in response from people who were really excited about it.
“We went from thinking maybe someone will submit a comic to us to having just like, so much mail and so much art and like, tons of new friends,” Cendre said.
Over the next year, they worked with a few dozen artists to refine their work and eventually raised enough money to publish their first LGBTQ+ comic anthology. Once the book was published, they paid all of the artists who had been part of the collection, sending money into the commissary accounts of more than 20 contributors. All the funds from book sales go to assisting queer people in prison.
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“Because our mail load is so overwhelming and the need is so overwhelming, we receive hundreds and hundreds of letters, and generally it’s just me writing back to people,” Cendre said. “I’ve thought about like, yeah I need to create some boundaries. But I haven’t, because you get really emotionally invested in people, and they generally don’t have anyone else on the outside. So when you get letters from people saying you’re the only person they’ve had contact with during their whole length of incarceration, it’s really hard to just say no.”
The need is very clear, as queer incarcerated folks have so little support and often face bigotry while in prison. Cendre said his friend Joseph Oguntodu, a queer man of color who has been writing to him since 2017, was recently killed by his cellmate in Texas. ABO Comix hosted a service for him April 7 at the Oakland LGBTQ Community Center.
GET INVOLVED
They need Volunteers are needed to help with letter writing, curating submissions, InDesign work and other duties. Send an email to ABOcomix@gmail.com. ABO also has fundraising campaigns on Patreon, GoFundMe, PayPal and Venmo to cover printing, stamps and other needs for prisoners.
Courtesy of Street Sheet, San Francisco. / INSP.ngo