Illinois

Illinois Spent 2.4 Million Incarcerating People In One Chicago Block

July 28, 2015 Alex Nitkin, www.dnainfo.com Educate! Capitalism, Chicago, Illinois, Mass Incarceration, Prison Industrial Complex

By Alex Nitkin in DNAInfo - In just five years, the State of Illinois dedicated more than $2.4 million to the 4800 block of West Adams Street in Austin. But don't look for new developments or freshly paved roads on that stretch of street, because that's not where the money went. No, $2.4 million is the amount of money the state spent on incarcerating people for drug offenses from that block alone. Million Dollar Blocks looks at more than 300,000 criminal records, showing what developers called a "conservative estimate" of how much the Illinois Department of Corrections spent on people from each block and neighborhood. Cooper said he and his colleagues assumed the minimum sentence for each offense, when in reality the state likely spends much more. Developers at DataMade spent months putting together data based on offenders' home addresses, assuming that the state spends an average of $22,000 on each criminal every year.

Official Probe Calls On Illinois To Reconsider Salaita Firing

December 25, 2014 Ali Abunimah, www.electronicintifada.net Educate! Freedom of Speech, Illinois, Israel, Palestine

An official investigative committee at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is calling for the decision to fire Steven Salaita to be reconsidered. The report by the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure (CAFT) states that: “In light of the irregular circumstances leading up to the Board of Trustees’ disapproval of an appointment for Dr. Salaita, the Committee recommends that Dr. Salaita’s candidacy be remanded to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences for reconsideration by a committee of qualified academic experts.” Salaita was fired from a tenured position last August after pro-Israel donors, faculty and students mounted a campaign against him because of tweets he made excoriating Israel’s attack on Gaza.

In Secret Process Illinois Approves New Rules For Fracking

November 7, 2014 Kerry Lester, www.therepublic.com Educate! Energy, Environment, Fracking, Illinois

Illinois lawmakers signed off Thursday on long-awaited rules regulating high-volume oil and gas drilling, clearing the way for companies to get "fracking" permits and unleash what they hope will be an energy boom in the southern part of the state. But a number of key details were not disclosed including how the state plans to fund the hiring of new workers to oversee the practice, which uses high-pressure mixtures to crack open rocks and release trapped oil and gas. The delay in the fracking rules — which took more than a year for the state Department of Natural Resources to write and which were revised by a legislative committee — prompted complaints from industry that energy development would suffer. The final rules must be submitted to the Secretary of State to be published by Nov. 15.

Prisoners Send Notes to Demonstrators

March 16, 2014 Anonymous www.anarchistnews.org Organize! Illinois

All of these killings by the police was brought about by dirty and corrupt administration officials trying to control things their way. Which we all know it wasn’t to treat us right. I’ve been going back and forth with them for a long time. I finally realized who my enemy was. In 1996 my friend got killed in Pontiac by a police on the cat walk. It is during this time that they shut down the prison as we know it. …When they brought me [to Menard] they put me in a jumpsuit that was nothing but rags and into a cell that had no heat nor any hot water and mouse shit everywhere. No matter where I go to I have to check my A.D. Status to see what is up, and by them just closing Tamms and me being locked down for so long they should of check up on me. No one did. So I went on a hunger strike.

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