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Because we believe in the possibilities afforded by narrative-inspired imagination, each month CPP publishes and distributes, free of charge, a 4-color, 8-page, humanities newspaper that remediates a lost cultural literacy. The paper features short, 300–500 word stories, written at a 6th grade level, specifically crafted and curated for those who have experienced incarceration. The articles feature narratives about paintings, sculpture, photography, landmarks, celebrities, political figures, literature, historical events and documents, monuments, multicultural folktales, finance, and science.
Story-based cultural literacy encourages those who experience incarceration to imagine an alternative future and become architects of their own destiny—both of which are empirically proven enablers of a self-efficacy that results in post-incarceration desistance and social flourishing.
Our work is to foster a lost or never acquired cultural literacy that empowers a cultural confidence and competency among society’s most often ignored. CPP not only fosters the necessary capacities for resisting a return to crime (desistance self-efficacy), but it also enacts personal growth and social flourishing. We facilitate the understanding and appreciation of the rich traditions and values of the diverse, globalized, multicultural society that those who have experienced incarceration seek to reenter
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The Carrier Pigeon Post begins with the individual and is a decided and focused attempt to address the disparity between those who possess a cultural literacy and those who do not. CPP is handcrafted to evade the systemic issues that perpetuate the disparity in cultural literacy.
CPP’s focus upon social equity does not mean it does not value social justice. It is just that CPP does not presume to address the larger systemic issues of incarceration. CPP instead seeks to address a small but powerfully important disparity.
Those suffering incarceration are excluded from the culture they desire to join because they suffer from cultural illiteracy. CPP rights this wrong of disparity one story at a time, one paper at a time.
CPP is easy to distribute, overcoming issues of accessibility
CPP is free, overcoming the politics of reluctance
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CPP’s architecture as print, small, portable, personal, private overcomes the limiting challenges of incarceration life
CPP is written to a 6th grade level, overcoming the lack of academic formation.
Traditional education programing inside of prisons is costly, underutilized, and principally seeks cognitive objectives.Reentry organizations focus upon practical behaviors and therapeutic issues. CPP complements these efforts, even sharing with them the goals of repair,remediation, and transformation. But CPP values empowerment. It does so because empowerment sparks the personal and social goods of self-esteem, self-respect, self-reliance,self-determination, productivity, resistance, pride, ownership.
CPP believes cultural literacy empowers social confidence as well as cultural competency.
CPP is a small thing. Little. Seemingly inconsequential. But great things almost always begin as small things. And CPP believes in how the small can work the impossible. It seems foolish to believe that a simple 8 pages of small narratives about paintings, sculpture, professional photography, global historic landmarks, language, celebrities, athletes, political figures, literature, historical events, multicultural folktales, even finance, economics, and science, can empower, inspire hope, and foster creativity.
But that is exactly what CPP does. Miracles are found in the strangest of places—or maybe not so strange, as this is what the arts have been doing all along.
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