Cards for Clemency

Event Date: 
Saturday, September 21, 2019 - 2:00pm

Location

Comfort Station
2579 N Milwaukee Ave.
60647 Chicago , IL

Join Chicago Books to Women in Prison, Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration, and Read/Write Library Chicago for card and letter writing to incarcerated survivors locked up at Cook County Jail (pre-trial), Logan and Decatur prisons, (many sentenced decades to life). We'll have plenty of writing materials and some snacks, but feel free to bring food or beverages to share. All ages welcome.

At the last letter writing, we wrote to Deb Jennings, an incarcerated survivor sentenced to 25 years, and diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. Deb came home, thanks to organized support for her clemency petition, and was with family when she passed. Nationally, clemency became a topic of discussion as Cyntoia Brown, sentenced to life when she was just 15, was finally released thanks to long-time local plus national support.

We'll preface letter writing with a mini teach-in on clemency, led by jailhouse lawyers working in support of friends they had to leave behind when they came home, and we'll learn a bit about the growing effort to bring survivors home through clemency.

This event is part of Information Wants to be Free & So Do We at The POWER Project, a Pop Up Library on Communication, Control and Mass Incarceration presented by Read/Write Library Chicago at The POWER Project thanks to an Envisioning Justice grant from Illinois Humanities.

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