UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST PRISON MINISTRY OF ILLINOIS
  • Home
  • Education
    • Prison Industrial Complex
    • Radical Hospitality
    • Self-led Learning >
      • In Prison - Learning
      • Justice Reform - Learning
      • Re-Entry - Learning
      • History - Learning
    • In the Media
  • Work we do
    • Advocacy >
      • COVID-19 Advocacy
      • Past-Advocacy
      • Pretrial Advocacy
      • Solitary - Learning
    • Congregations >
      • PenPals
      • Solidarity Circles
    • Prison Ministries >
      • Curricula
    • Calendar
  • Get involved
  • About Us
    • Who We Are
    • Why We Exist
    • Partners & Allies
  • Donate

Educating ourselves

Call In to Save Lives

11/17/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
Every year, Illinois incarcerates over 250,000 people who are awaiting trial. None of these people have been convicted of a crime, and most are jailed simply because they can’t afford to pay a money bond. Pretrial incarceration is hurting communities across our state.

​Please call in today and for release of folx in Cook County jail. A reminder that of the 250,000 people locked up in Illinois jails, 90% are there PRE-TRIAL because they can't afford bond. Those numbers are bad enough, but now with COVID-19 numbers rising, and seven people have died on COVD19 in Cook County jail, we can make calls to save lives.

Sheriff’s Office
Phone: (312) 603-6444
Email: CCSO@cookcountyil.gov
“Hi, my name is ______ and I live in _________. I’m calling to demand that the Cook County Sheriff’s Office take steps to dramatically lower the number of people in jail in response to COVID-19 and ensure that anyone in his custody is able to practice social distancing.”
Office of the Chief Judge
Phone: (312) 603-6000
Email: timothy.evans@cookcountyil.gov
“Hi, my name is ______ and I live in _________. I’m calling to demand that the Cook County Chief Judge take steps to dramatically lower the number of people in jail in response to COVID-19. This means facilitating bond review hearings for people currently in jail and instructing judges not to admit new people to the jail.”

Read more from our friends at the Chicago Community Bond Fund.
​
0 Comments

Abolition Study Guide Resource

10/15/2020

0 Comments

 
If you are new to abolition, check out this wonderful resource from Abolition Journal. With six sessions, you can go at your own pace.  Feel free to donate to this organization for their good work!
0 Comments

"My Dad Went to Prison When I Was 5. Now I Write About Families Like Mine"

6/21/2020

0 Comments

 
by Sylvia A. Harvey
The Marshall Project Life Inside series

"​As a child, I got used to the barbed wire gates and the officer holding a rifle in the gun tower. I knew prison guards would make me undo my hair in the hopes of finding heroin tucked in the folds of my braids. It was merely the price I had to pay the prison deities. In exchange for surrendering my freedom, I was allowed to see my father."
Read more...
0 Comments

"A Major Obstacle to Police Reform: The Whiteness of Their Union"

6/10/2020

0 Comments

 
by Eli Hager and Weihua Li

"The president of Minneapolis’s police union called George Floyd a “violent criminal” and those protesting his killing by a police officer a “terrorist movement.” A union chief in Baltimore once said Black Lives Matter activists were a “lynch mob”; one in Philadelphia referred to them as “a pack of rabid animals.” Another has labeled St. Louis’s democratically elected prosecutor, who is black and supports police reform, a “menace to society” who must be removed “by force” if necessary.All of these union leaders also have this in common: They are white."  Read more
0 Comments

"How To Hide a COVID-19 Hotspot? Pretend Prisoners Don’t Exist"

5/27/2020

0 Comments

 
by Abbie VanSickle
The Marshall Project
​

The coronavirus-stricken prisoners kept off the books. Officials in Santa Barbara County faced a dilemma weeks ago. They desperately wanted permission from California authorities to “reopen” their local economy as the coronavirus ebbed in the state. But a major outbreak of COVID-19 at FCI Lompoc, the federal prison there, had skewed the metrics. Santa Barbara resolved its problem by lobbying state officials to exclude prisoners from relevant public health analyses. “It’s a fiction,” says a justice reform advocate. It’s also a scenario likely to be repeated in other counties across the country where prisons are COVID-19 hotspots. Read more...
0 Comments

"While I Wasted Time in Prison, My Mom Died of a Broken Heart"

5/22/2020

0 Comments

 
My mom was by my side the first time I went away. The second time was just too much.
​by Daniel McCann, The Marshall Project Life Inside Series
May 21, 2020


"In silence, all I could think about was the time my mom had told me that a broken heart would be her demise. I knew that it would only be a matter of time now before the disappointment I had caused would also make me guilty of murder. My weapon? Heartache."
Read more...
0 Comments

"Virus Forces Judges Into Life-or-Death Calls on Inmate Releases"

5/18/2020

0 Comments

 
by Madison Alder

Judges are interpreting the law on the fly as they face an unprecedented spike in requests for “compassionate release” from prison, coming to different conclusions about what can be done in the context of a pandemic.  The swell of requests for what’s known as compassionate release come after the passage of a law, written before the Covid-19 outbreak, that made it easier for those requests to be filed with the courts.
Read more...
0 Comments

"Demonstrators denounce state’s handling of outbreak at Stateville prison"

5/3/2020

0 Comments

 
by Alex Ortiz
My Suburban Life

"Parole Illinois, a coalition of activists in and out of prison working “toward a more just and humane legal system” organized the demonstration. The group described Stateville as the “epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the Illinois carceral system.”
The Rev. Jason Lydon, a Unitarian Universalist minister at the Second Unitarian Church in Chicago, described the group of family members, advocates and faith leaders as “people of conscience coming together” to raise awareness of the situation in Illinois prisons and jails. He said the demonstration was an effort to “remind everybody that those inside the prison are not alone.”
“We are fighting hard to get them out,” Lydon said. “And to ensure that they have the care that they need.”
Read More...
0 Comments

8 of the Top 10 Biggest U.S. Coronavirus Hotspots Are Prisons and Jails

4/29/2020

0 Comments

 
Reason
by C.J. Ciaramella
"The numbers and dire news stories underscore what civil liberties groups and correctional officer unions have been trying to warn local, state, and federal agencies about since COVID-19 reached the country: that jails and prisons were woefully unprepared to handle an epidemic, and that those institutions would inevitably spread the virus into nearby communities unless drastic measures were taken."
Read more
0 Comments

Black female inmates and COVID-19:Medically compromised, vulnerable and neglected

4/27/2020

0 Comments

 
NBC News
by Nick Charles
​
"Coronavirus outbreaks have transformed prisons into hot spots of infection, and among the societal inequalities the pandemic is exposing along the fault lines of race, class, and gender are some of the lesser known realities of mass incarceration, particularly those facing black women.
The vast majority of female inmates come from 'marginalized communities where the health care was subpar at best, and it’s even worse whatever their fragilities are, and you layer on mental illness and autoimmune diseases among women,' Donna Hylton, a prison reform activist and author, who served 27 years in an upstate New York prison, told NBC News."
Read more...
0 Comments
<<Previous

    What this is about

    Learning asks us to change – so that the world might be a place for all are free to thrive

    Categories

    All
    COVID19
    IP: Death Row
    IP: Education
    IP: Exploitation
    IP: Health Care
    IP In Prison
    IP: LGTBQ
    IP: Mental Health
    IP: Religion
    IP: Solitary Confinement
    IP: Women
    JR: History
    JR Justice Reform
    JR - Justice Reform
    JR: Mental Health
    JR: PIC Today
    JR: Reform
    JR: Strike
    Police
    Re Entry: Parole
    Re-entry: Parole
    Re Entry: Realities
    Re-entry: Realities
    Re Entry: Rights
    Re-entry: Rights

    Archives

    November 2020
    October 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017

    RSS Feed

UUPMI

We equip UU's in Illinois to ​transform institutions and support people harmed by the prison industrial complex.
Advocacy
Education
Inside Ministries
Congregational Work
© COPYRIGHT 2018. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • Education
    • Prison Industrial Complex
    • Radical Hospitality
    • Self-led Learning >
      • In Prison - Learning
      • Justice Reform - Learning
      • Re-Entry - Learning
      • History - Learning
    • In the Media
  • Work we do
    • Advocacy >
      • COVID-19 Advocacy
      • Past-Advocacy
      • Pretrial Advocacy
      • Solitary - Learning
    • Congregations >
      • PenPals
      • Solidarity Circles
    • Prison Ministries >
      • Curricula
    • Calendar
  • Get involved
  • About Us
    • Who We Are
    • Why We Exist
    • Partners & Allies
  • Donate