Shoutout to Black and Pink newsletter!

In the March issues of Black & Pink Newspaper, there was a segment titled: “26 Concrete Things to Do to Abolish Prisons in Illinois,” which came from Project NIA. But I’m sure the list can be applied to any state, just applying those rules to your own state. They are:

1. Fight against the proposed Chicago Public School closures.

2. Learn about and advocate for restorative and transformative justice.

3. Join the Mental Health Movement which is fighting to save our existing mental health clinics from closure in Chicago.

4. Interrupt the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Support the Yes to Counselors, No to More Cops in Schools Campaign.

5. Interrupt the School-to-Prison Pipeline. Teach youth how to catalogue police harassment and overdiscipline at school.

6. Support the young people from Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY) as they organize to bring a needed trauma center to the Southside that will serve EVERYONE.

7. Close Dwight Prison Now – Tell your legislators.

8. Learn about the history of policing, violence, and resistance.

9. Support the efforts of several community organizations to close the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) and re-direct the funds to community-based alternatives to detention and to programming that will support youth.

10. Support youth-led efforts like the Street Youth Rise Up Campaign (organized by the Young Women’s Empowerment Project) which are documenting and organizing against institutional violence.

11. Join the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign.

12. Invite youth members of the Know Your Rights Project to speak with their peers and adults about their rights in the criminal legal system (especially with law enforcement).

13. Join parents across Chicago who are organizing for quality education and against the school-to-prison pipeline through POWER-PAC and Community Organizing & Family Issues.

14. Get educated about the PIC.

15. Host your own teach-in about the prison industrial complex.

16. Support organizations that are fighting against immigrant detention and deportations.

17. Support and join the campaign to Raise the Minimum Wage in Illinois (and everywhere else).

18. If you care about programs that affect the lives of children, become an advocate with Illinois Action For Children.

19. Support and join the Chicago Grassroots Curriculum Taskforce to create and disseminate RELEVANT curricula for young people.

20. Reach out to those currently locked up behind bars.

21. Stop relying on and calling the police to solve any and all community problems.

22. Join the Illinois Campaign to End the New Jim Crow as they organize against police violence.

23. Start a Creative Resistance Project like the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials.

24. Refuse to serve on juries for drug cases or consider nullification if you do serve on drug cases as a juror.

25. Open your wallets and contribute needed funds to local organizations.

26. Pay attention to the laws that are being proposed at the city, state, and federal level. Ask yourself if the proposed law is going to “extend or curtail the reach of the PIC.” If the answer is extend it, then mobilize to oppose these laws.

Another thing I really enjoyed [from the newsletter] was a piece about gender. It said:

Gender IS:

-A spectrum

-A range of expression

-How you relate to yourself

-A personal identity

Gender is NOT:

-Just male or female

-Defined by body parts

-Sexual orientation

-Defined by chromosomes

I really liked it, so I wanted to share that.