The writing program in Cook County Jail was organized by ConTextos, a non-profit dedicated to using literary arts and education to heal individual trauma and interrupt community violence.
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Posted inLatest
Families Reflect on the End of Money Bond
The Weekly spoke to people in bond court before and after the Pretrial Fairness Act abolished money bond.
Posted inNotes
Gentrifying Latinx neighborhoods see staggering increase in property tax bills
The ‘Purge Law’ is rightwing propaganda The Weekly has extensively covered cash bond reform—it was the subject of the last cover story in 2020—but in recent months the topic gained traction after Republicans in Illinois and nationwide weaponized the issue ahead of the general elections in an attempt to push the criminalized narrative about Chicago. […]
Posted inHousing
Returning Citizens Still Face Barriers Despite Protective Policies
Advocates say policies that protect access to housing and employment for the formerly incarcerated must be enforced more consistently
Posted inBook review
Cycles of Imprisonment, Escape, and Healing
fter years of emotional and sexual abuse from family, religious trauma, fourteen years of prison, and a controlling marriage, Lisa Forbes realized she was “stuck in a loop.” This loop, Forbes later discovered, is common among those who have experienced trauma. Patterns of control imprisoned Forbes throughout her life. The memories of family that bullied […]
Posted inPolitics
An Abolitionist’s Midterm Conversation with Lightfoot
t’s May 19, the day before Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot’s midterm anniversary in office, and each one of her press rooms on the fifth floor of City Hall are filled with journalists of color. Two of the mayor’s staffers, Victor Owoeye and Kate Lefurgy, were impressed by my new Brandon Blackwood End Systemic Racism tote. […]
Posted inJustice
Sharone Mitchell Jr. on Coming ‘Home’
n March, the Cook County Board unanimously voted to confirm Sharone Mitchell Jr. as the county’s new public defender. Mitchell, the former director of the Illinois Justice Project, had previously worked for the public defender’s office for six years as a trial attorney handling misdemeanor, felony, and civil cases. A Chicago native, Mitchell attended Morgan […]
Posted inLatest
The Reinvestment Movement After Redlining
nly a writer with great confidence in her scholarly and narrative abilities would reserve a book’s most dramatic line for the acknowledgments. On the 237th page of After Redlining: The Urban Reinvestment Movement in the Era of Financial Deregulation (University of Chicago Press), author and historian Rebecca K. Marchiel writes, “This book began when I heard […]
Posted inHealth
What Went Wrong at Cook County Jail
few days before Easter, Karl Battiste called his daughter Karla with a headache. He wasn’t feeling well and was worried about the spread of COVID-19 in Chicago’s Cook County Jail, where he was incarcerated at the time. Battiste told his daughter that he was being held right across from two people who had tested positive […]
Posted inViolence
An End to Cash Bond in Illinois is Only the Beginning of Restorative Justice
ast month, state Senator Robert Peters and Representative Justin Slaughter announced a bill known as the Pretrial Fairness Act that, if passed, would make Illinois the second state to end the use of money bonds after New Jersey. In Cook County, where about a quarter of the county’s detainees are kept incarcerated because they cannot […]