Earlier this week, I was privileged to listen to Ms. Helen Jenkins, Marissa Alexander‘s mother, provide a short update on how her daughter is doing now that she is out of jail on bond awaiting her March 2014 retrial. Ms. Jenkins said that it had taken some adjustment and that Marissa was still settling back into the lives of her children and family but that she was doing well. This was wonderful to hear. Marissa’s older children were 10 years old when she was first jailed and they are both now 13 and a half. Her baby who was only 9 days old when she went to jail is now 3 and a half. That’s a long time to be separated from your children.

There are 2.7 million minor children who have an incarcerated parent. Each of them has a story and so do their parents. I was moved by the following two short videos about how incarceration impacted the relationships between formerly incarcerated mothers and their children. Each film is under 10 minutes and I highly recommend watching them.

val new re-entry compress from New America Media on Vimeo.

Steeda and Malaysia: Re-Entry To Motherhood from New America Media on Vimeo.

I found this ad and think that it conveys so much about the cruelty & horror of slavery. It also illustrates the intersections between slavery and incarceration.

Source: NYPL Digital Collection

Note: This post was written fast and while tired. It’s a work in process but I felt compelled to offer some thoughts because I have been growing increasingly pissed off over the past few days. Consider these preliminary notes. In addition, I mean the terms women & girls to include anyone who identifies with these categories. I want to take into account the ways that transgender women and girls experience violence (interpersonally and from the state).

Eve Ensler seems to have discovered state violence…in much the same way as Columbus ‘discovered’ America. She has announced herself ready to discuss and address the negative consequences of increased criminalization. Yet just a few months ago, One Billion Rising, Ensler’s global ‘anti-violence’ campaign, was primarily encouraging survivors of interpersonal violence to report their rapes & assaults to law enforcement. This, according to the campaign, was the way to hold perpetrators of violence ‘accountable’ for their actions.

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I’ve written about the Silent Protest Parade previously here.

I hope to write more about Nelson Mandela and his time in prison in a few weeks. But for today, here are a couple of photographs of his prison cell.

“For 18 of his 27 years behind bars, he was housed at Robben Island west of Cape Town in an 8-foot by 7-foot concrete cell with only a straw mat to sleep on. He was eventually released from prison on Feb. 2, 1990.”

Yesterday, a friend shared a petition with me. It’s by a man named Timothy Lee and opens:

We want RBS Citizens to call off the eviction and provide an opportunity for my family to stay in our home. Before Mrs. Lee passed we grew up in this house and we are not planning to leave any day soon. This means we will not let anyone evict us form our home. We want to continue with the mortgage before it went default so that we can stay in our home.

I have several friends here in Chicago who are very active in the anti-eviction movement and their actions have deep historical roots in this city. It’s no secret that I am fairly obsessed with the Black American Communists of the early to mid-20th century. I actively seek out information about their lives and work. Many years ago, I read an article written in 1931 by Horace Cayton that was published in the Nation Magazine. He was a well-respected sociologist who studied black life. In “The Black Bugs,” Cayton recounts a scene that he observed in Chicago while eating in a restaurant: “I chanced to look out the window and saw a number of Negroes walking by, three abreast, forming a long uninterrupted line. On going outside I was informed that they were the ‘black bugs’ — the Communists — the ‘black reds.”

Cayton decided to join the group and march alongside them, curious as to what he would find. He wrote:

Turning to my marching companion I asked where we were headed for, and what we would do when we got there. He looked surprised, and told me we were marching down to put in a family who had been evicted from a house for not paying their rent. Things were awfully tough down in the Black Belt now, he continued, and jobs were impossible to get. The Negro was the first to be discharged and the last to be hired. Now with unemployment they were hungry, and if they were put out in the street their situation would be a desperate one. The Negroes of the community had been exploited for years by the unscrupulous landlords who had taken advantage of prejudice compelling the Negroes to live only in that district, and had forced them to pay exorbitant rents. Now, continued my informer, hard times had hit them and they were being turned out into the street. Furthermore, as the Negroes did not know their legal rights, the landlords would simply pitch their few belongings out of the window with no legal procedure at all. They, the Communists, were going to see that the people were not treated in this fashion.

This passage reads like it could be written today and in fact, it probably has been and is being written dozens of times across the country. The episode that Cayton writes about in 1931 ends predictably with the police arriving and beating the crap out of the Communists who had stopped to hear a soap box speaker. Cayton describes the chaotic scene:

Then the riot squad turned into the street, four cars full of blue-coated officers and a patrol wagon. They jumped out before the cars came to stop and charged down upon the crowd. Night sticks and “billies” played a tattoo on black heads. Clubs came down in a sickening rain of blows on the woolly head of one of the boys who was holding her [the soap box speaker] up. Blood spurted from his mouth and nose. Finally she was pulled down. A tremor of nervousness ran through the crowd. Then someone turned and ran. In a minute the whole group was running like mad for cover. One of the officers shot twice at one of the boys who had been holding up the woman speaker. The boy stumbled, grabbed his thigh, but kept on running. The woman was struggling in the arms of two husky policemen. It was all over in a minute, and all that was left was the soap box and the struggling black woman. I turned and left.

It would be rare today for the police to use this level of violence against anti-eviction protesters. Still, putting one’s body on the line to prevent an eviction often comes with the risk and even the likelihood of an arrest. I have a ton of respect for my friends who take this chance regularly. The very least that I can do is to sign a petition supporting Mr. Lee’s right to stay in his home. I hope that you will too!

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing a letter in response to the Cook County Jail’s new visitation policy. This newly adopted policy, which can be found here, states that all visitors of inmates being held at the Cook County Department of Corrections are required to complete an application that involves a background check of the visiting person, which can take up to three days. The application that must be completed is only available online; there is no other way to apply.

A few issues arise with this policy: it implies that everyone has access to computers and the Internet; the application is only available in English, effectively shutting out everyone who isn’t fluent. The mandatory background check is also said to take 3 days for completion.

The individuals being held by Cook County Department of Corrections have families, friends, and loved ones who need and would appreciate their support systems in these strenuous times. Creating barriers such as this new visitation policy is heartless.

I have personally experienced this new policy implemented by the Cook County Department of Corrections. I am a working professional; I was able to access the application online for both my partner and myself. When we arrived to the Cook County Department of Corrections, and were turned away, I was grief –stricken. The corrections officers informed us that applications were taking nearly a week to complete the process and to call the social worker before attempting to visit again. We asked about the people who may not have access to computers or speak English “like my parents”, and an Officer’s aloof response was, “Well there is the library.” On our way out we noticed the waiting room was near empty, quite the contrast to our previous visits.

We walked away with feelings of sadness, that we were unable to visit our loved one and of anger, but with no outlet. Seeing the empty visiting room made us realize the injustice that was happening in our county. So we ask: Is this necessary protocol? If so, is the Cook County Department of Corrections upholding their end of the arrangement? Are applications being processed in a timely fashion? Is this set of rules conveniently omitting people who do not have access to a computer, the Internet and are not only English speaking? Are loved ones even aware of the new procedure for visitation? Are our inmates suffering another kind of punishment before proven blameworthy? What is the main intention of this policy, is it to isolate a person from any humane experience and deprive them from communicating with their external support systems? Why? This whole experience validated that our loved ones in the Cook County Jail are not treated as human beings but as property items. Is this justice?

I am challenging this protocol, asking if this procedure is being examined for need and accessibility; furthermore that the Cook County Department of Corrections be held accountable for invoking a punishment before culpability has been established.

Sincerely,

Dulce M Quintero

I’m happy to announce that SB 1342, Rahm Emanuel’s mandatory minimum gun bill, will not be brought up for a vote during this special December session of the General Assembly. After almost a year of consistent opposition from hundreds of individuals and dozens of organizations, SB 1342 will not become Illinois law in 2013.

Legislators are promising to discuss a comprehensive approach to address violence in the Spring session. Proponents of SB 1342 are sure to offer their bill again as a part of the ‘solution’ to violence. Those of us who oppose mandatory minimums should remain vigilant but for today we deserve to exhale and to embrace this development as a win against further criminalization of black & brown young people (in particular). There are and will be other bills and policies to resist but for now SB 1342 won’t be one of them.

It’s difficult for me to express my feelings today. As an organizer, too often, I dwell on the losses while skirting over the wins. Yet it is the wins that make it possible to keep moving forward. It is the wins (no matter how small or ephemeral) that provide the reserves for continued struggle.

I don’t spend most of time standing in the doorway saying ‘no.’ I prefer to work on building the world that I want to live in. But there are times, and SB 1342 was one of those times, when it’s important to stand up and push back against an injustice. Sometimes it’s important to just say ‘no.’

To all of the people who said NO TO HB 2265/SB 1342 over the past year, my profound appreciation. These words by Alice Walker express how I feel about the importance of taking action in the world. I offer them to all of you who acted against SB 1342 with gratitude.

“I have learned to accept the fact that we risk disappointment, disillusionment, even despair, every time we act. Every time we decide to believe the world can be better. Every time we decide to trust others to be as noble as we think they are. And that there might be years during which our grief is equal to, or even greater than, our hope. The alternative, however, not to act, and therefore to miss experiencing other people at their best, reaching toward their fullness, has never appealed to me.”

La lucha continua! But for today I’m just going to say…

and also DANCE!!

I finally crashed tonight. I got home & I was done. I knew that it would happen. For days, I’ve been operating at peak productivity. I haven’t slowed down. I’ve been consumed with opposing SB 1342, a mandatory minimum gun bill proposed by Rahm Emanuel and currently being considered by the Illinois legislature. Regular readers won’t be surprised at this. I’ve been ranting about this bill since January when it was first introduced as “HB2265.”

For the past few weeks, I’ve been told by various stakeholders that the bill was “a done deal.” “It’s definitely going to pass,” others have said. By this, they mean that the politicians have made deals with various interests and that public opposition is futile.

But I’ve learned something important in my many years of organizing: we must never give up. Why should we bother to advocate so consistently and comprehensively against a bill that is “a done deal?” It’s simple: SB 1342 hasn’t passed yet. It hasn’t come before the full House or Senate yet. And even if it does, it hasn’t been signed into law by the Governor yet. This is where things stand and so as long there isn’t a signed bill that has become law, we must resist. I would contend that our continued resistance will be needed even if the bill becomes law. Because, in the law, nothing is permanent. Everything can be changed.

Sheila Bedi wrote about the potentially destructive impact of SB 1342 in the Daily Beast over the weekend:

So by targeting neighborhoods for mass imprisonment, law enforcement officials have created a well-greased revolving door between prisons and our communities. And in so doing, they have destroyed the only things that have ever been proven to create safe neighborhoods. Emmanuel’s mandatory minimum proposal would only serve to fan the flames of Chicago’s failed prison and policing initiatives. Thousands of young, mostly African-American men would be funneled into already overcrowded prisons.

Once there, they will languish behind bars—denied access to even the most basic educational programs which have been defunded because of budget shortfalls. Many will endure the brutal violence and sexual assaults that are endemic in a prison environment. Most will spend their three years behind bars in forced idleness. This is the case not only in Chicago, but across the country.

Writing at the Black Youth Project, Aaron Talley offered his thoughts about how #SB 1342 would impact young black people like himself:

And so let’s be clear, like the “war on drugs,” this law will disproportionately criminalize Black and Brown bodies. Communities of color who are already targets of racial profiling and brutal policing will continue to be fed into prisons, rather than being met with compassionate and creative solutions to solving the interweaving problems of violence and poverty. If there is ample evidence that suggests that this mode of punishment does not work, why then would it continue to be employed?

The consequences of mass incarceration are not academic or abstract to me. They are all too real. I see its ravages every single day in my work with young people. It’s impossible then for me to sit idly by in the face of another structural assault on the lives of black and brown young people.

This evening, dozens of other people showed up to say that they too refuse to accept another law that will do further violence to our young people and to our communities. Bundled up in the Chicago cold, holding signs, flashlights, and lightboards, Chicagoans of all stripes said “NO TO MANDATORY MINIMUMS.” Together, we stood as testaments of the refusal of so many people in this city to give up even when we’re told that things are “done deals.”

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ILLINOISANS BELIEVE THAT GUN VIOLENCE IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM BUT OPPOSE MANDATORY MINIMUM PRISON SENTENCES FOR ILLEGAL GUN POSSESSION (SB 1342)

“This is not a problem we can legislate away. We have to change the way people live and are educated. I’m a CPS teacher and a DePaul Law student, so what I’m constantly bombarded with are the inequities in the legal system and public education. Fix those and we can greatly reduce gun violence!”

 – Anonymous survey respondent

Chicago –An online survey by Project NIA shows strong public opposition to SB 1342, a mandatory minimum gun bill proposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel & awaiting a vote by the Illinois General Assembly.

Download the full report of the survey HERE (PDF).

Nine out of 10 (93%) survey respondents oppose the passage of SB 1342. Moreover, Illinoisans don’t believe that mandatory minimum prison sentences reduce violence. In fact, 86% of Illinoisans disagree/strongly disagree with the statement: “Mandatory minimum prison sentences (that take away judicial discretion) for illegal gun possession will reduce violence in Illinois.”

94% of those surveyed said that Illinois should NOT spend an estimated additional $780 million in prison costs over the next 10 years to pay for SB 1342.

The findings indicate support for an approach to gun violence that runs contrary to the punitive policy currently under consideration by the General Assembly.

Nearly nine out of 10 (89%) people surveyed believe that “Gun violence is a serious problem in Illinois.” However data released today show that more than 90 percent of Illinois respondents disagree/strongly disagree that “Incarceration produces positive changes in young people (21 & under) or in adults.”

The survey also found that when given choices outside of prison, Illinoisans support the following types of interventions for adults who illegally carry a gun (whether loaded or unloaded): Vocation Training & Job Skills, Restorative Justice Program, and Employment. They favor Help getting a high school diploma or GED, Mentoring, and Restorative Justice Program for youth (21 & under) who illegally carry a gun (whether loaded or unloaded).

“Illinoisans understand that SB 1342 will not actually make our communities safer, is too expensive, and will serve to criminalize more people,” said Project NIA director Mariame Kaba. “Respondents favor community-based alternatives as opposed to incarceration to address gun violence in Illinois.”

• Only 37% of survey respondents strongly agree/agree/somewhat agree that:  “Adults who illegally carry a gun (whether unloaded or loaded) should be sentenced to prison.” Over 6 in 10 strongly disagree/disagree with that statement.
• 75% of respondents disagree/strongly disagree with the statement: “Young people (21 & under) who carry a gun illegally (whether unloaded or loaded) should be sentenced to prison.”
• Only 16% of survey respondents strongly agree/agree/somewhat agree that: “Adults who commit a FIRST-TIME offense of illegally possessing a gun (whether unloaded or loaded) should serve a MANDATORY one-year prison sentence.”
• Only 13% of survey respondents strongly agree/agree/somewhat agree with the statement: Young people (21 & under) who commit a FIRST-TIME offense of illegally possessing a gun (whether unloaded or loaded) should serve a MANDATORY one year prison sentence
• Most Illinoisans don’t know how much it costs to incarcerate youth and adults in the state.  Only 34% correctly identified that it costs about $40,000 per year to incarcerate an adult & 20% correctly identified the $90,000 annual incarceration costs for juveniles.

While the rest of the country is moving away from mandatory minimum prison sentences because research and experience suggest that they don’t work, Illinois has been moving towards them.  It appears that the public is ahead of the policymakers again and favors a focus on rehabilitation and community-based alternatives instead of more incarceration.

Legislators and policymakers should take heed.  There is no popular demand for the ‘tough on crime’ bills that politicians often offer as a solution to violence and harm. The desire is for less punishment and to focus instead on the root causes of violence.

**The survey was carried out online by Project NIA. It was administered from November 20 through November 29. 571responses were collected from across Illinois.

Join Project NIA and others TODAY at 6 p.m. at City Hall as they protest against SB 1342 and insist on an anti-violence strategy that addresses the root causes of gun violence.