For years beneficiaries and their families have raved about our Attica Prison Visit Program. They’ve described the importance for children of reconnecting with loved ones and the enormous joy the visits brought imprisoned parents and grandparents. Unfortunately, this success, which has led to increased demand for these grants, coupled with the continuing economic crisis, has put the Attica Program in jeopardy. So we ask you to make a special additional contribution to ensure these visits continue. (Please add "Attica Fund" in the dedication field of the online donation form to earmark your gifts.)
In late 1994 the RFC received a surprise donation of $10,000. This very generous gift allowed us to launch a one-year pilot Prison Visit Program, during which 11 grants totaling $7,868 enabled 14 children to visit incarcerated parents. The positive impact of the visits on the grantees led our Board to make the program permanent the following year and to expand it to trips for grandchildren as well.
The program’s popularity with beneficiaries presented an ongoing funding challenge. But again and again, RFC supporters recognized the incalculable value of reuniting children with their incarcerated family members, and made extra gifts to allow these grants to continue.
In 2001, a game-changing donation endowed the prison visit program (see sidebar). Robert Meeropol said then, “I know from my own experience how therapeutic these visits are for the children of political prisoners. And I’m relieved because we no longer need to siphon precious resources from our regular granting account to fund these vitally important visits.”
To date the RFC has awarded $184,647 to reunite over 100 children with their parents and grandparents. Attica grants for prison visits exploded from an average of $11,000 per year from 2002 to 2007, to over $16,000 per year in 2008, 2009, and 2010. Sadly, this growth has corresponded with the economic crash and resulting diminished returns on the Attica endowment. Simply put, we’ve awarded more money every year for these grants while receiving less money from the fund’s investments. This has compromised the sustainability of the program.
Prison visits are vital to maintain family ties. The parent of one recipient of these grants wrote to us, "It's difficult to put into words how much your foundation has meant to us. My daughter's mom was incarcerated two years ago and faces over 20 years in prison. My daughter was 16 at the time, was followed regularly by the FBI, and had guns pulled on her by federal officials twice in the course of her mother's arrest. As difficult as this has all been for my daughter, the RFC has been a huge comfort."
In the video below, a brother and sister talk about how essential prison visit grants have been to their emotional well-being and their sense of connection to their mother, and to each other. [Note: the video is a work-in-progress rough edit of footage shot at last month's Gathering, and still has some sound quality problems we're working to resolve.]
Other recent Attica grants have:
Sent the one, six and seven-year-old great-grandchildren of Leonard Peltier (see photo, right) to meet him for the first time.- Allowed the four and six-year-old grandchildren of a political prisoner serving a lengthy sentence to fly across the country to visit him in prison and sit on his lap while he read them a bedtime story.
- Reunited a 3-year-old son with his father who was sentenced to 15 months in the brig for fleeing to Canada after refusing to be deployed to Iraq. The visit was the first time the little boy had seen his daddy in over a year.
Given these circumstances, we ask you to make a special additional contribution to replenish this fund and allow visits like these to continue. We need $10,000 to shore up the Attica Fund this year, but we also require every penny of your normal support for our regular granting program. Just add "Attica Fund" to the dedication field of the online giving form or write “Attica Fund” on the memo line of any check intended for that use, so we can apply your donation to the proper account and continue this crucial program.