Gail T. Smith

ICE Tells North Side Alderperson To Back Off As She Warns Neighbors About Immigration Agents Masked agents approached Ald. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez and her chief of staff in an alley, where they were told they were impeding ICE activities and being issued a warning.

So grateful for Alder Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez's courage & dedication to her constituents. If warning people about to be taken to a detention center with deadly conditions is "obstruction" - certainly not of justice - we are all at risk.
Help Dayanne Figueroa if you can.
blockclubchi.co/4ozWzin

During Thanksgiving and holidays, people want to do food drives where they collect canned goods etc... and I really would love to offer that food banks need MONEY so if you can collect and donate MONEY please do that. They can then use those funds to purchase what's needed AT DISCOUNTS.

Released from jail late at night Over the last five years, the number of people released from the Cook County jail late at night has steadily increased.

A fave of mine is jail support, offering snacks / phone calls / rides / etc to ppl post-release. I like that it’s tangible, lets you sit, & can be as social (or not) as you’d like. Connecting with @chicommunityjs.bsky.social is a great way to get started.

#NoKings #NoKingsChicago

The Activists Fighting for Dignity for Incarcerated Pregnant Women Prison doulas and legislative interventions can be a lifeline for incarcerated pregnant women. But the most important solution is to abolish prison births altogether.

Great article on the work being done to support pregnant people in custody, including a bill that would require deferred sentencing to keep moms and babies together. Congrats and gratitude to Pamela Winn of RestoreHER US.
www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Chicago-area friends, let's support the things that have helped support communities and prevent crime. In the face of federal defunding of proven strategies, Cook County needs to invest in health and prevention.

The one time I met Paul Vallas was at a conference and after a very brief conversation he showed me a plan for a "reform school" project he was pitching.

The man was carrying plans for a jail for children on his person and just...showing it to people.

That guy came really close to being mayor.

This is important.

Illinois' lawsuit against the deployment of the National Guard. Includes a downloadable PDF of the full complaint.

Qs journalists can pose to any official with exec power (gov, state police dir, AG, county state's atty, sheriff, mayor, city police chief):

-What have you done to investigate potential state law violations by the federal govt

-Whose job is it to follow up + when did you last discuss it w/ them

Trump Canceled 94 Million Pounds of Food Aid. Here’s What Never Arrived. ProPublica obtained records from the Department of Agriculture that detail the millions of pounds of food, down to the number of eggs, that never reached food banks because of the administration’s cut...

Huge proportion of food aid has been canceled, as we are seeing more need than we have since the Great Depression. Informative report with compelling illustration. Do you know what happens to people, especially kids, who don't get enough protein?
projects.propublica.org/trump-food-c...

Been thinking a lot about how things keep escalating, and rather quickly.

From the beginning, Trump has followed a pattern of doing something outlandish to test the response. If the response is sufficiently negative, he pulls back. If he sees he’s given an inch, he’ll take a mile. Repeat.

Cook County leads the nation in wrongful convictions. Eileen O'Neill Burke's Convictions Integrity Unit now has no lawyers with criminal defense expertise. She tightened rules to exclude more people from raising innocence claims. The unit has not exonerated anyone in a year.

My husband was detained by ICE today

Juan Muñoz, an American citizen, father of 2, and local government official, was peacefully protesting w. other elected officials. He was assaulted and taken away

I have had zero contact or updates since

#SOS
@duckworth.senate.gov @durbin.senate.gov

And before you come at me let me be crystal clear I say this not out of any desire to police shame or schoolmarm anyone or out of any faith whatsoever in “the law” or our “rights” but to try to help keep people I love (even if I don’t know you) on this side of the walls and bars to *keep* resisting

If you speak spontaneously before during or after they do or don’t read you your rights - whether in direct response to an LE question or, just in front of them, say to someone filming you, they can use what you say against you.

So, in short, once in police custody it is in your interests to STFU.

It’s your friendly neighborhood lawyer again with a Friday (fr this time) fun fact:

Law enforcement *don’t* have to read Miranda rights when they arrest you (that’s a law & order TV myth) - only *before* they question you *after* detaining you. Then you *have* to say you are asserting them & STFU

Congrats to Starling Thomas, a winner of the 2025 Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize. "We were mothers ripped from our children, daughters robbed of our dignity...And yet, even in the belly of the beast, we refused to be broken. We sang, we prayed, we dreamed of freedom."

Congrats to E.M.--This essay is a winner of Truthout’s 2025 Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize, awarded to formerly or currently incarcerated people for essays related to imprisonment or policing.

Did Trump End National Hunger Survey to Hide Growing Hunger Under His Policies? Over 47 million Americans are already food insecure, and that number is expected to increase thanks to Trump’s budget.

In late September the Trump administration abruptly announced that it was ending hunger surveys, after strong-arming Congress into passing a budget that eviscerates spending on food stamps by more than $180 billion — a cut which would put the food benefits of roughly 5 million people at risk.

bangs. "They was terrified. The kids was crying. People was screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other," Watson said. "That's all I kept asking. What is the morality? Where's the human? One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, 'f*** them kids.'" Watson said trucks and military-style vans were used to separate parents from their children. Other neighbors said agents destroyed property to get in the building. "They had a big, 15-inch chainsaw with round blade on it, cutting this fence down," said witness Darrell Ballard. "We're under siege. We're being invaded by our own military."

“Fuck them kids.”

That’s literally what an ICE agent said when ICE, the FBI et al. raided an apartment in Chicago, including with a Blackhawk helicopter, separated children from their parents, and zip-tied them to each other.

abc7chicago.com/post/ice-chi...

Really horrific. ICE waging war on our community and families.

If you could stop sounding more and more like Fox News, and providing a platform for far-right Republicans with almost no pushback or fact-checking, we might not think your mission is long dead.

"More than 72% of those who were subjected to force by a CPD officer since the consent decree took effect in 2019 were Black, according to the coalition’s court filing, citing CPD data. Black Chicagoans make up less than 30% of the city’s population, according to the 2020 census."

Reform Groups Say CPD’s Increasing Use of Force Against Black, Latino Chicagoans Violates Consent Decree “CPD has failed to rein in its culture of brutality and abuse,” according to the coalition of police reform groups that forced the city to agree to federal court oversight. “The department is moving i...

The number of times Chicago police officers used any kind of force against members of the public increased 75% between 2021 and 2024, as documented by the number of Tactical Response Reports filed by officers. The consent decree is failing. news.wttw.com/2025/09/24/r...

Trump Administration Threatens Housing for Millions in “War on the Poor” Proposed cuts to Section 8 put 3.3 million people at risk of eviction and homelessness.

This is a nightmare.
truthout.org/articles/tru...

Kate Caldwell: How our health information can be used to criminalize us Executive orders on health technology and crime are the first steps toward health data becoming a tool of surveillance.

Great commentary from Kate Caldwell. Important for all of us to take what action we can, as soon as we can, to prevent this.
www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/24/o...

"Women’s incarceration stubbornly remains at near-historic highs in the U.S., while the country’s overall incarceration rate has been falling." Illinois has a higher rate of incarcerating women than Chile, Venezuela, or Nicaragua.

We need to stop the flow of prison admissions by funding housing, education, job development, and services in the community. And stop criminalizing survivors of gender-based violence.

One correction to the below--They are almost ALWAYS further harmed by the carceral system itself, which mirrors the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse that led them to drug use to begin with, exercises coercive control, and separates them from their children.

Graph showing that the U.S. and California incarcerate women at a higher rate than the other founding NATO countries

This type of criminalization & overreliance on mass incarceration has helped make the U.S. stand out in a shameful way.

Importantly, this is not a partisan issue. Even a "progressive" state, like California, outpaces the rest of the world when it comes to incarcerating women: