The Latino population in the Chicago area contributed more in tax revenue than the cost incurred by local governments to deliver public services, a newly released study found. Latinos contributed almost $1.2 billion more in tax revenues than the cost of public services such as education, health care and other services like public safety, according to “The State of Latino Chicago 2010: The New Equation” report released today.
Chicago Workers’ Collaborative is an Illinois non-profit organization that unites low-wage workers so we can receive the proper respect and treatment in exchange for our important labor. We educate about workplace rights, provide critical services to our members, and mobilize to gain full access to employment for all workers, especially immigrants and African Americans. The CWC presently is working on the following initiatives:
- Collaborating with the Illinois Department of Labor and the Illinois Attorney General’s office to improve enforcement of state labor laws.
- Growing the membership of our Chicago and Northwest Suburban Worker Service Centers by providing critical Assistance to our members.
- Aiding our worker members to locate the best legal assistance for employment-related issues.
- Working with law enforcement authorities in arresting the perpetrators and helping the victims of human traffiicking.
- Bringing together African-American and Latino workers to end the criminalization of our people, including Comprehensive Immigration Reform, so we may all work and participate in our community as equals.
My name is Mustafa Afrika. I am a prisoner at Tamms Supermax prison. I write to you on behalf of the men at Tamms to not only express a gesture of thankfulness…but also to inform your organization of a simultaneous event that will be occurring at the Tamms prison on April 28, the day hearings are scheduled with the Illinois House Prison Reform committee concerning Tamms.
As a symbol of unity and protracted support from us on the inside, it has been agreed that on the date of April 28 the prisoners of Tamms will embark on a course of non-activity–meaning none of us will take showers, yard or any other forms of non-essential activity. We also will observe a day of total silence as well as personal atonement in addition to many of us fasting. This is not so much an act of outward focus as it is one of inward introspection. We feel that with so many freedom fighters and progressive individuals making a significant effort on our behalf, the least we can do is raise a clenched fist salute of solidarity from within the belly of the beast so you all know that we are still alive and fighting, more invigorated than ever!…
For a long time it seemed as if the monotony of oppression and psychological warfare by the administration of the Tamms Supermax had begun to dull and enervate the spirits of many. Through the collective efforts of the people we are witnessing a revivication of encouragement and hope amongst ourselves…
Let the entire collective know that “we” are standing fully behind the people struggling for us. May the creator continue to sustain you in your efforts and may justice and righteousness light up the darkened abyss of oppression and denigration. All power to the people. Uhuru sasa! (”Freedom now” in Swahili.) Comrade, Mustafa Afrika
—Mustafa Afrika (in Tamms since 2005)
In Illinois, as in most states, people are not provided counsel until a judge appoints one. A person generally does not appear in front of a judge for 48 – 72 hours after arrest, which is typically after he has been formally charged. The first 48 hours a person is in custody is critical, as it is during this time that he is most susceptible to having his constitutional rights violated. It is also the time during which police officers employ a variety of tactics to obtain confessions, many of which have proven to result in false confessions. While the police have unlimited access to prosecution attorneys (some of whom play a role in the interrogations) during this time, a suspect does not have similar access to an attorney. FDLA helps level the playing field for anyone in custody while protecting his legal rights.
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First Defense Legal Aid, Chicago
I already gave Planned Parenthood way more than my budget for giving away money this month, and if you can afford it you should too. But I’ve got a list as long as my arm of organizations that also deserve it.
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Tamms is nothing less than hell, everything we know as human beings have been taken away. No contact with each other, and in our cell 23 hours a day. It’s like we don’t matter to anyone anymore. Our country is trying to stand on other country. But is mistreating their own. What happen to second chances? They place us in the living hell and tell us to better ourselves as human beings. And those who do change and better themselves like me is still being judge on the past. I can’t understand how society can set back and allowed the system to treat us less than animal. They make it seem like prisoner is out of control. But the reality is they create most of the problems. Because they feel they can mentally, verbally and physical abuse you and you shouldn’t have response. We have feeling and is still human being. I strongly believe Tamms should be closed down.
THE C-MAX UNIT WAS said to have been designed to house the IDOC’s ‘worst of the worst’ in an effort to help state authorities re-gain control of their prison system. This couldn’t be further from the truth because most of us have been sent here based merely on the fact that we have mental illnesses or in retaliation for filing lawsuits, grievances, or past disciplinary histories…This facility functions more as a mental institution than a prison of rehabilitation and it serves no penalogical purpose other than to warehouse prisoners. As the duration of our isolation drags on and the degree of our conditions of confinement deteriorate you begin to see the psychological effect that this place has on us. We know that we will spend all day in these cells with absolutely nothing constructive to do with our time and we do not know if we will ever leave here. This knowledge overwhelms many of us and it leads many of us to insanity, causing attempted suicide, suicide, body mutilation, hanging, eating and throwing feces, and other extreme acts.
Robert Foor, incarcerated for residential burglary, had lived at Tamms Correctional Center for ten years where his behavior worsened, marked by frequent acts of self-mutilation. According to a grievance written just three weeks before his death in June, Foor stated that Tamms staff had withheld medications and therapy since March as punishment for filing a grievance against the IDOC’s contracted psychiatrist. (The IDOC concedes that he was not on medication.) Foor was 33 years old and would have been paroled in 2012.
The subjection of human beings to long-term solitary confinement and sensory deprivation constitutes torture, according to many human rights groups, medical and psychological organizations, and independent doctors and scholars. The United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights recently condemned the “prolonged solitary confinement” of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba as “inhuman” (Paragraph 87 E/CN.4/2006/120, SR Torture, 2006), while the European Convention on Human Rights–to which the U.S. is signatory, in a landmark case from 1978, (Ireland v. United Kingdom) condemned “sensory deprivation” as “inhuman or degrading treatment.” Solitary confinement for any substantial length of time has serious effects. Indeed, numerous studies have documented the deleterious effects of solitary confinement on prisoners—visual and auditory hallucinations, hypersensitivity to noise and touch, insomnia, paranoia, uncontrollable feelings of rage and fear, distortions of time and space perception, increased risk of suicide and PTSD. (See for example, Craig Haney, “Mental Health Issues in Long-Term Solitary and ‘Supermax’ Confinement,” Crime and Delinquency vol. 49, no. 124, 2003.) At Tamms, prisoners are known to cut or mutilate themselves, scream uncontrollably, smear themselves with feces, and attempt suicide—all predictable consequences of the torture of sensory deprivation. The psychiatric treatment for men who attempt suicide often consists of stripping men of their possessions (including their clothes), putting them in four-point restraints, subjecting them to twenty-four hour lighting, and controlling them with pepper spray and psychotropic drugs.
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TAMMS YEAR TEN » About
Tamms Supermax is torture in Illinois. Tamms Year Ten was founded on the prison’s anniversary to end it.
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At Tamms supermax prison, every man is held in permanent solitary confinement. Prisoners never leave their cells except to shower or to exercise alone in a concrete pen. Food is pushed through a slot in the door. There are no communal activities, phone calls or contact visits. The expected consequences of long-term isolation are observed at Tamms: men scream uncontrollably, compulsively attempt suicide, mutilate themselves and do other unspeakable acts. One-third of the prisoners have been there over a decade. Many are mentally ill.in
