Bob, if there is no listing for Amnesty International in your local phonebook, you may call AI in Washington, DC, (I don't have the number here) or New York City, 212 807 8400, and ask them for information about a group in your area. If you have any problems, let me know and I'll follow up for you.
Tuesday night my Amnesty Group went to our local Barnes and Noble with information and an assortment of holiday cards, and managed to get almost a hundred cards inscribed with messages of hope and addressed to Prisoners of Conscience, in hope of obtaining their release. If past experience is any indication, many of these individuals will see their families again soon. Groups like ours all over the world and writing for these POC's, too.
Half a dozen children, ages 9 to 14, came to the Holiday Card Action, and didn't like the cards that had been donated for the occasion -- next year we will have a homemade card-making party before the action, at the request of these children. (It reminded me that when my son was growing up, we would get the lists of imprisoned conscientious objectors from the Central Committee for Conscience Objectors and the War Resisters League, and of imprisoned writers from PEN American Center, and of POC's from Amnesty, and make dozens of homemade cards by carving potatoes and printing with them by dipping the designs into poster paint. We specialized in candles and holly leaves and very very irregular stars and doves that looked like like chickens or like nothing at all. It was lots of fun.)
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