Build pu'uhonua with incarcerated people in and of Hawai'i.
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Getting Started
Review this guide before becoming a Pu’uhonua Penpal.
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Sign Up
Find your Pu’uhonua Penpal inside here.
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FAQs
Read some commonly asked questions here.
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Resources
Find helpful articles, videos, and art about penpal writing and abolitionist organizing in Hawai’i and across the world.
Pu'uhonua (puʻu-hŏ-nū'-a), n. [pu'u, a tower, and honua, flat land.]
A place of refuge for one pursued; a place of safety in time of war; a refuge. -- wehewehe.org
Who are we?
What binds us together is that we believe in a world without cages. We believe freedom is interwoven. We won’t be free until all of us are free. Everyone is worthy of love and care and compassion. Prisons are a recent invention and to quote Mariame Kaba, a prominent organizer and abolitionist, “Prisons are unnatural — somebody made them, and everything that's made can be unmade.”
We’re not a nonprofit or business. Just friends and comrades. We pay for the website, stamps and printing costs through our own wages, community-based grants, and donations.
We are abolitionists. Many of us are either formerly incarcerated, have a loved one inside, or have seen the damage the current oppressive system has done to Hawai'i. Some of us are Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian), born and raised in Hawai'i, others were displaced and came home or settled here. We’re old and young; queer and straight; cisgender and transgender; women, men, nonbinary and māhū; college educated and dropouts; Filipino, Samoan, Black, Latine/x, white, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and reflect the diversity of Oceania; able-bodied and disabled; religious and not; sober and not; we come from many different backgrounds.
Resources
“Genuine security means we build pu'uhonua within each other.”
Joy Enomoto
MAHALO
Design
Mahalo to Graphic Designer: Malia Osorio @maliaosorio. On the use of pewa: “The bowtie shape, that we use in traditional woodworking to “stitch” a running crack in a board or whatever. The pewa in the logo stregthens the cracked connection that we have been forced to have with our relatives that are in the system.”
Inspiration
Black and Pink. Black & Pink National is a prison abolitionist organization dedicated to abolishing the criminal punishment system and liberating LGBTQIA2S+ people and people living with HIV/AIDS who are affected by that system through advocacy, support, and organizing.
In the Fall of 2020, Kanaka abolitionists Leilani Maxera and Noelle Kakimoto convened friends across Hawai'i to participate in the Study and Struggle: Abolition, Intersectionality, and Care program. This effort is a continuation of our studies to find love, care, and community with the people most impacted by the carceral system in Hawai'i.
“Genuine security means we build pu'uhonua within each other.” — Joy Enomoto. Listen to Root Cause Remedies podcast including an interview and recording of her speech at a Hawai'i for Black Lives rally.
Kālā
Hawai'i Community Bail Fund for resources for our imaginations.
Hawai'i People’s Fund for distributing funds to the community thru urgent action grants.
Aid
Code for Hawai'i Team & Try Think - Hawai'i Council for the Humanities for website troubleshooting and being a sounding board for ideas and experiments.