45 years ago, on June 24, 1973, radical queer icon, trans activist, and sex worker Sylvia Rivera grabbed the mic at the Christopher Street Liberation Day — now known as Pride — to deliver her historic "Y'all Better Quiet Down" speech.

She started off by stressing, "Y'all better quiet down. I’ve been trying to get up here all day for your gay brothers and your gay sisters in jail that write me every motherfucking week and ask for your help and you all don’t do a goddamn thing for them."

Unfortunately, incarcerated queer and trans people, including immigrants detained in detention centers, still face traumatic conditions. They are vulnerable to physical and sexual violence by correctional officers as well as other incarcerated people; trans immigrants are 97 times more likely to be sexually assaulted under custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They also are more likely to be placed into solitary confinement for long periods, even over two years at a time, according to a 2015 report by Black and Pink, an LGBTQ prison abolition organization. Black, Latinx, mixed race, and indigenous people reported being twice as likely to be put into segregation. Additionally, trans women are often placed in men’s prisons, even after they’ve transitioned.

Those providing prison relief to our community today unfortunately express Rivera’s same frustrations. Pride events continue to center white cisgender gay men, accept sponsorships from corporations, and even include a police presence. (According to journalist Ernest Owens, for the second in a year row, a cop served as a marshal for Philadelphia’s Pride parade, and an unapologetic Trump supporter also served as senior advisor of the parade.) These events derive far from the holiday’s origin, the Stonewall Riots, which protested police brutality against the LGBTQ+ community.

These Pride “celebrations” typically fail those in our community who live behind bars, but it doesn’t have to be this way. One way to resist the co-option of Pride month is to correspond with a queer and/or trans person in prison. Here are a few steps to getting started.

Understand your intentions.

Before even looking up someone to write to, start by asking yourself what your true motivation behind wanting to write to someone in prison is. Writing to someone in prison is very different from writing a postcard back home while you’re on vacation, and your pen pal may likely give you the grim and brutal details about what it’s like to be incarcerated.

“The most important thing is to make sure that you are starting off with an authentic relationship with the person,” says Dominique Morgan, President and National Director of Black and Pink. “It shouldn’t come from a state of you just trying to do a good deed or wanting to, you know, feel good about reaching out to someone in a compromised situation. The bottom line is that these relationships — these connections — need to be authentic and come from a solid place. These relationships need to be basic equity, and I think as long as that’s a component, it will be successful.”

Jill McCracken, co-founder of Sex Worker Outreach Project (SWOP) Behind Bars, also emphasized that these relationships should not come from a place of voyeurism.

“I wouldn’t even recommend that people write letters that even ask questions [about their case],” she explained. “You can look them up and in some cases, it’s accessible, but that’s not the goal.”

Find a pen pal.

Black and Pink has an online database of incarcerated people looking for pen pals that you can sign up to correspond with. The database will include demographic details about the pen pal (such as their gender, interests, and what they are looking for) as well as an introduction letter. Additionally, SWOP Behind Bars has a Mentor By Mail program with incarcerated sex workers — who are not all LGBT — looking for pen pals.