An Ask to Sign and An Appeal
Among a few updates for readers of Sentences is an ask to sign a petition for free phone calls at the Champaign County jail. During a hunger strike at the jail earlier this year, we became aware that phone calls cost six dollars each. Some 20 years ago, we waged a campaign to eliminate the thousands of dollars in kickbacks the county was receiving from calls. Now, all the money goes to Securus, a major prison profiteer. We are waging a campaign to provide two free 30-minute phone calls a day for people at the jail. Sign the petition, it’s an easy way to help those incarcerated and their families stay connected!
Keep Families Connected: Support Free Phone Calls at the Champaign County Jail (google.com)
Sheriff Dustin Heuerman put out a request for proposals (RFP) for companies to bid on providing phone calls, video calls, and tablets at the jail. We have sat down with the sheriff and told him about the community’s desire for free phone calls, yet there was no mention in the original RFP of the need for free phone calls. As it is written, the RFP favors Securus which has a near monopoly on jail and prison phone calls in Illinois. We have been in conversation with a non-profit company, Ameelio, that can provide free phone calls at a cost that is less than what the county is currently paying. We hope that our petition will convince the sheriff and the county board to provide free calls.
If you want to know more about the campaign, you’re invited to attend a teach-in on Sunday, Sept. 10, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM at the Unitarian Universalist Church of U-C, 309 W. Green St. in Urbana.
I’m happy to share that the Summer 2023 issue of Stateville Speaks is now out! You can read it online here. See on page four my profile of Orion Meadows, a well-known poet around Chicago who did 24 years in prison and now works at the Institute for Non-Violence.
Lastly, I have an appeal to make for support of my writing. In April, I signed a contract with the online publication, The Appeal, to write an article on the wave of jail closures that signal a national shift to decarceration. It is a topic my editor reached out to me to write about. After I finished the article in July, I sent it to my editor. He wrote back saying that The Appeal had unexpectedly run out of grant funding and they could not run my article. He could only offer to pay me 30% of what was originally agreed to in the contract. I’m now shopping the article around to a new outlet. This is a sign of the diminishing resources for left-wing media and the topsy-turvy existence for a freelance journalist.
In the meantime, I was depending on the income to get me through the summer. Can you donate to my Substack to help sustain my journalism in the meantime?
I am excited about the article, which includes news about the SAFE-T Act which was recently ruled constitutional by the Illinois Supreme Court and goes into effect on September 18. It includes the story of Kendall County, a collar county of Chicago, which aims to close its jail and send people to the jail in nearby Kane County.
Those who donate to Sentences can get a sneak peek at an interview I did with Shannon Ross, who I interviewed for the article. He was bailed out of the Cook County jail by the Chicago Community Bond Fund, but not before having his life turned upside down. Make a contribution so that I can tell the stories of Shannon and others!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Sentences: Writings About Mass Incarceration to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.