A summation of the struggle at CCJ – Nov 2024 to Dec 2025
Why Cook County Jail?
Cook County Jail (CCJ) is the largest single site jail in the country (96 acres spanning eight city blocks). Holding anywhere between 5,000-6,000 inmates on any given day (71.8% Black, 20.1% Latino, and 5.5% female1 inmates). In November of 2024, we decided to start social investigation at CCJ and assess the jail as a site of potential struggle. What we found reinforced our prior knowledge that CCJ is Hell on Earth.
Since 1974, CCJ has been under a federal consent decree, as conditions were so deplorable that the feds were deployed as a watch dog to clean things up. Although the consent decree was lifted in 2017, giving the jail a stamp of approval, inmates inside Cook County Jail continue to suffer from inhumane conditions and abuse imposed on them behind closed doors. Inmates are routinely subjected to rotten food, mold and mildew ridden showers, abuse by correctional officers (COs) and inmates alike, and even death due to medical neglect. Much of this neglect is a consequence of cross-watching: a cost-cutting measure where COs supervise multiple housing units at once, which has led to many preventable deaths inside CCJ. The majority of people surviving in these conditions are awaiting trial and haven’t been found guilty, while there families on the outside are extorted by commissary costs and subjected to mistreatment by COs. Recent news reflects these horrors with exposés highlighting numerous suspicious deaths of inmates (just google Alteriq Pleasant and Cory Ulmer), with 2023 being the deadliest year in recent memory with 18 deaths. While the families of the deceased cry for justice, many have been steered in the direction of settlements or class-action lawsuits with no prospects for actual change or accountability for the people responsible, be it individual COs or Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.
The head pig in charge of CCJ, Sheriff Tom Dart, has proclaimed himself as CCJ’s “Great Reformer,” boasting to the media and journalists about the puppy training and chess programs he’s brought to the jail and boldly claiming in a 2019 Washington op-ed that “since May 2016, [CCJ has] not housed any detainee in a solitary setting, not for even one hour.” Based on our conversations with the people inside and their loved ones on the outside, this is a lie. Solitary confinement continues under the new name “Special Management Unit.” While Dart claims to care about “changing the mindset of inmates” through chess (something inmates have done on their own for decades) and enriching them through programs like puppies, the reality on the inside is psychological torture, inhumane conditions, abusive COs, unhealthy food, and even death.
Drawing from Dart’s deceitful narrative and placing them alongside the realities on the inside, the fact that many inmates are “serving time” in jail without being convicted and subjected to brutal conditions shows that the function of Cook County Jail is less about “changing [inmates’] mindsets”2 and more about creating and maintaining a concentrated, idle, and brutalized mass of the most oppressed people within society. With many noting better conditions inside state prisons compared to the horrors of the jail — far from serving a rehabilitative function — CCJ draws a sharper contradiction between the words of officials like Dart and the real function of the jail: to keep oppressed people locked away, out of sight, out of mind, and violently controlled. In effect, the oppressed are left battered, traumatized, or at worst dead, preventing them from unleashing their revolutionary power to fight back and end their oppression.
Why Dare to Struggle?
Many (if not all) of the people incarcerated at CCJ want to get out and be free from its hellish conditions. As a result, many, including those who acknowledge the oppression they experience inside, are inclined to keep their heads down and focus on getting out. Of course, this is not what CCJ has in mind for them, and we’ve talked to many people who’ve spent years locked up, and are still trying to “get out” but with little luck. Stuck inside, and already conditioned to follow the rules, when inmates do speak up about the inhumane conditions they face, the main options left available to them by the jail is either to file a grievance, sue, or do both. However, neither of these pathways have proven effective to stop the hellish conditions and violence inside CCJ.
Grievances are a written complaint form inmates are told to submit to the jail if they have problems with the conditions inside. However, inmates have often reported that grievance forms are routinely withheld, ignored, and denied. When they are approved, in the case of one inmate who successfully got haircuts for himself and others on his deck (many inmates have talked to us about wanting haircuts prior to appearing before their judge), they do offer tangible relief inside and are seen as a win. Despite some wins, inmates we talked with see the process as largely ineffective and continue to express disgust at unchanging conditions. Aside from mold, bugs, mildew and rotten food inside the jail, being denied basic necessities like cleaning supplies while being held for years inside without conviction, it’s hard to imagine that a complaint would resolve all of these problems. If forms were effective, they would have changed things by now. Still, many continue to submit grievances. For some, to keep track of complaints for pending lawsuits, but many do it because grievance forms are presented as the only pathway available for them to get some relief from conditions inside. Under the gun of brutal COs and fighting for their freedom, inmates turn to the safer option since fighting in any other way could result in retaliation like solitary and could jeopardize their cases. In truth, grievances operate as a safety valve for inmates. They allow the jail to keep them under control by dangling the prospect of relief through a process it controls. However, inmates’ fears of retaliation are real and are an effective way to keep them in line.
When grievances don’t work and inmates get fed up with unchanging conditions, many also opt to sue the jail. In 2017, it was reported that Cook County settled about 230 suits, each amounting to $1,000 or less for inmates claiming distress, health complications, and violations of their rights due to poor living conditions. In total, these settlements added up to $101,890 in taxpayer money spent on settling complaints.3 By settling with inmates, the county admits no wrongdoing, while conditions remain largely the same. For more serious cases, like when an inmate dies inside the jail, the process isn’t much different.
In 2021, the family of 22-year old Aeron Marion received a settlement of $880,000 from Cook County. Marion killed himself inside CCJ after being left unwatched because a guard left him alone and did not call for back up to take over monitoring. Before he died, Marion was experiencing symptoms of psychosis and repeatedly expressed suicidal ideations. Despite jail policy stating that COs must perform safety checks on inmates every 30 min, Marion wound up alone and eventually took his own life in his cell.4 Through the following years, deaths at CCJ continued due to similar circumstances. In the case of Alteriq Pleasant and Raheem Hatter, both were left to die in their cells. Alteriq died after experiencing a medical emergency and Raheem was beaten to death by his cellmate. Both died in 2022. By settling with inmates, the county admits no wrongdoing and no one is held accountable for either the horrific conditions or the many lives stolen inside. For families looking for some kind of justice for their loved ones, it’s either take blood money from the county or grieve empty handed.
On the outside, a similar system of temporary relief is provided to recently released inmates by mutual aid. From our investigations, we encountered a local mutual aid group with mainly leftist and anarchist volunteers that provide snacks, water, bus passes, and even rides home for CCJ inmates upon their release (usually late into the night because CCJ likes to give released detainees a hellish send-off in the middle of the night, even in the dead of winter without warm clothes). While there are good intentions behind this approach, these volunteers ultimately run cover for jail officials’ lack of concern for inmates’ lives, choosing instead to carve out a caring alternative rather than working with the oppressed to confront these failures directly. By doing so, the group and its volunteers at the moment seem unwilling to engage the masses in a way that drives them towards to directly confront the jail and jail officials. Outside of the mutual aid group, there are non-profits and religious groups operating in and around the jail, but we haven’t observed any other established groups or organizations doing consistent work on the ground that have made confronting CCJ alongside the people most impacted by it a priority. As a result, we were primed to fill a void at a potentially significant site of struggle against the jail and provide families with the opportunity to take up the fight for real change. The jail not only negatively impacts thousands of inmates, but thousands more family members and loved ones of those inside. This large group of people frequently comes into direct conflict with the jail’s conditions and policies, from the spoiled food to the arbitrary cancellation of visits, generating a mass of people to organize in struggle.
Together, grievances, lawsuits, and mutual aid have failed to put an end to the day-to-day horrors of inmates inside CCJ and their families. Instead, they have left many disillusioned with the system, wondering if and how things will change, and leading to some giving up entirely. To intervene in this unfolding crisis, our objective was to seize the antagonistic sentiment many held towards the jail and sharpen it through exposure by developing and distributing a newsletter we titled Cracks at Hotel California.5 Since the visitation entrance was a readily accessible location which allowed us to meet people and distribute the newsletter, we focused our efforts on the outside. Our objective was to collectivize a set of advanced families we could work with to raise demands against the conditions their loved ones were experiencing inside and organize them in struggle to fight for those demands. In doing so, we could work to build up people ideologically and struggle against the jail on a higher level.
Organizing the Outside
Our work at the jail began by engaging the families of inmates on the outside. We landed on a home base in front of CCJ Division 10 on Sundays to meet families, since that was where families go visit their loved ones across divisions, and since parking is free on Sundays. We had signs that said “Complaint Table” and “Tell us about the conditions of the jail” while asking people what their loved ones were going through, asking for contact information, and handing out our newsletter. Issue #1 of Cracks featured an interview with Vicki Willis, the mother of Alteriq Pleasant who died in CCJ in 2022 due to medical neglect. Our agitation and ask was met positively, with quite a few family members, friends, and loved ones of inmates eager to share their horror stories of the jail. We were able to collect a few dozen contacts. We’d follow up with these contacts for longer conversations and also interviews (including some with a handful of inmates through three way call). In addition to this, we also set up a PO Box, which was used for inmates to correspond with us. We sent complaints forms to inmates whose families provided us with their information and encouraged them to write us back about the conditions. All of this provided source material for Cracks. With our efforts, we connected with three mothers whose sons were locked up and a woman whose partner was locked up. They were motivated to take action, and we set the path forward to work with them to start making organized moves against the jail. We created a WhatsApp group chat to consolidate our closest contacts and proposed a call at the end of November to present a list of demands based on the conditions families and inmates described, and asked for feedback. These demands were featured on issue #2 of Cracks, alongside an interview with a woman named Lucy about her son and some recorded and transcribed interviews with inmates.
We took up the case of a mother and her son Jakarrie, attending court dates and making posts for Jakarrie. These posts included phone zaps demanding he be removed from solitary confinement and demanding he receive a new, fair trial. Other posts included information on his case and asking people to pack the court. We also connected with a woman and her partner Cadarrow and similarly made posts for Cadarrow about his case and packing the court in support. Our early posts on Jakarrie led to our first action at the jail on December 10th, which was a rally outside the Cook County Criminal Courthouse (adjacent to CCJ). We agitated around exposing the torture of solitary, calling for Jakarrie’s release from this torture, and to pack the court that day. Along with DTS members and supporters leading chants and speaking, a mother with a son inside held a sign, and Jakarrie’s mom arrived late (due to child care) and opted to hold signs but not to speak. Working with some of our close contacts we also developed a “How to Guide,” designed to help families new to CCJ navigate the purposefully confusing jail system (e.g. setting up visitation appointments and commissary). The idea of a guide came about from observing exchanges between a person whose loved one just got locked up and others who already had loved ones on the inside. Though the guide would be a helpful aid, we worked with our contacts to ensure we framed the guide in such a way that informed family members that fighting back was the real way to resolve these issues, not the guide. For example, instructions and tips for setting up visitation would include agitation around the fact that prior to COVID, families didn’t need appointments to visit their loved ones, and that we should fight to bring that accessibility back. While we finished the guide, we never took it out to test its reception at one of our jail outings because it got pushed to the background of our other work, but we still plan to distribute it.
Despite the existing demands, a combination of subjective (our organizing efforts) and objective factors prevented us from winning over our close contacts to take up the fight against the jail and make substantial advancements towards our demands. In the objective column was the winter weather (frigid temperatures and snow) which at times prevented us from regular outings and made it difficult to do actions with outside supporters. Another objective factor was the geographic distribution of our contacts. Many had long commutes to CCJ with many across the state lines in Indiana making it difficult for some contacts to attend regular jail outings, meetings, and actions (made worse by winter weather). Many contacts were already stretched thin before their loved ones were locked up and had less time due to working more to cover commissary costs, or spending more time on childcare with their co-parent locked up. In the subjective column, after taking up individual cases, we had fallen into a somewhat clientelistic relationship with our close contacts (attending court dates) and failed to do enough ideological work to build contacts up to actualize the struggle against the jail (you can’t raise people’s political consciousness with just a group chat). While attending court dates allowed us to develop closer ties with our contacts, we didn’t provide them with the political edge that would bring them into confrontation with the system holding their loved ones hostage, and in turn, we failed to consolidate our contacts around the politics. After several months of outings, we accumulated a long and growing reservoir of looser family contacts that we’d text and try to pull to outings with little luck due to these shortcomings. We continued to gather stories from inmates and their families for good exposure work, including a special issue #3 of Cracks addressing the experiences of women inside and outside the jail, but our struggle stalled through the remaining winter months and into the spring for the reasons above.
By the end of April into the beginning of May, we took advantage of the warmer weather and decided to shift gears and start challenging families to act against the jail by doing a speakout and tribunal against Tom Dart. In the lead-up, we spent a couple of weeks flyering at the courthouse and at visitations, where we passed out issue #4 of Cracks which set the record straight about Tom Dart’s reforms and agitated families to speak out against him and the jail at our upcoming actions. We also phone banked our jail contacts to invite them to come and speak out. We were aided by a family member taking on a leading role named Dequisha, whose fiancé Vincent is locked up (and still is at the time of writing) in CCJ for a crime they are both adamant he did not commit. Dequisha has been working with us to demand his charges are dropped and to expose the intimidation by CPD that led to his incarceration. Since he got locked up, Dequisha has experienced bitter retaliation from the detective involved in her case, with them teaming up with child welfare to take her kids from her and keep them out of her custody.
On the day of the speakout, some sheriffs tried to tell us to move from the sidewalk, to which we replied: fuck off. They backed off and decided to watch the speakout nearby from their cars. Dequisha attended along with a husband whose wife is in CCJ enduring severe malnourishment and medical neglect. Also present was Charlotta Pritchett: the widow of Timothy Glaze, who was murdered by CPD on January 3rd, 2025, and a fierce leader in the fight against police brutality (who spent time in CCJ years ago). The husband spoke openly and critically of the conditions of the jail and spoke about his wife’s experiences of medical neglect and abuse/threats by COs. Dequisha spoke about her partner Vincent and the injustice done to him and her kids. Charlotta spoke of her stint in CCJ and that conditions have not changed and have actually worsened since she was in CCJ. We also had chalk, so the husband and his incarcerated wife’s children wrote things like “BOO Cook County!” (along with some other, unprompted profanities against the jail) while we listened and flyered passing cars. We drew a small audience of a few families who listened and talked with us, but did not get on the mic. From speaking with them, while they were moved by the words of some of the families we’d been in contact with, but the fear of retaliation against their loved ones held them back. Other families we’d spoken with during phone banking who said they were going to come didn’t show.
On June 1st, in front of Division 10 again, we held the first People’s Tribunal against Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and self-proclaimed “Great Reformer.” We spent time beforehand passing out issue #5 of Cracks, which addressed the tribunal, and trying to build up the event, messaging inmates to invite their families. We set up a life-size cutout of Dart as a set list of speakers gave testimony from inmates against the sheriff and the crimes the people are charging him for. Dequisha and the inmate’s husband from the speak out were present again, along with Vicki Willis (Alteriq Pleasant’s mother) and Grant Hatter (Raheem Hatter’s brother). Visitors coming in and out of Division 10 would stop and listen, joining in occasionally to speak or hold signs that read “Punish Abusive COs,” “Jail Tom Dart,” and “CCJ: No More Stolen Lives!” A fierce and outspoken Black woman hopped on the mic to speak about inmates walking “rats” likes dogs in Division 11 because of how dirty it was and they had nothing else to do. Kids got to doing chalk slogans again in front of the jail. The verdict at the end of the people’s trial for Tom Dart: GUILTY FOR CRIMES AGAINST THE PEOPLE! We still plan to deliver this verdict soon to the President of the Cook County Board, Toni Preckwinkle. While this was by far our most exciting and well-attended event, many people’s families who had confirmed being there (to DTS directly or through their loved one inside) didn’t show up.
What made the tribunal different was having inmates speak for themselves. Toward the end of May/beginning of June, we reconsidered our approach of only talking with families, and took a more strategic approach towards the inside, starting with a concerted outreach effort to send text messages to inmates on through the Global Tel Link (GTL) messaging app. We initially asked inmates to encourage their loved ones to come out to the tribunal and testify, but then also asked them to record statements against Tom Dart. We recorded these statements over the phone and played them live via speaker at the tribunal.
Some hesitations that came up from the outside was fear of retaliation, the contradiction of being fed up with CCJ and wanting to do something about it, but believing that speaking out and doing something would only make things worse. Our approach to addressing this contradiction was to make it clear that CCJ was “already Hell on Earth” and asking something “like how much worse can Hell get?” While retaliation was real, their loved ones would suffer in silence unless they spoke out and tried to fight back and change their situation, looping this into our mantra of “dare to struggle, dare to win.” We haven’t thoroughly called out this contradiction out (we’ve agitated around it at the speak out and tribunal) at the jail since after the speakout we shifted our focus to Dare to Struggle’s national conference in LA, but we must find a way to work through this with our CCJ families. We’ve had a similar contradiction come up on the inside as well of inmates not wanting to risk their cases by speaking out, even when they recognize they have been serving time already without being convicted.
Organizing the Inside
In the lead up to and after the June speak out, we sent messages to inmates over GTL telling them that we wanted to organize the inside (in conjunction with the outside) to fight back against the conditions of the jail and if they were interested to hit us up to talk more on the phone. We also sent in issue #6 of Cracks which consolidated our challenge to inmates to get organized against the conditions and provided examples of past prison movements for inspiration, namely the rebellion at Attica Prison in 1971.
Through these efforts, we connected with a handful of people inside who had a more advanced understanding of the function of jails and prisons, and that politicians, nonprofits, and the legal system are ineffective pathways to change conditions. Through correspondence and phone calls, we were able to sharpen the politics of some of these advanced contacts who could in turn struggle with others inside. However, as we broadened our outreach, we were soon overwhelmed by the large number of stories from people about their individual cases and asking us for help via courtroom pathways or other “proper” channels. We’ve highlighted people’s individual cases and fights inside the pages of Cracks and in other write ups we distribute to people, and we’ve spoken to individual inmates about our aim to organize for real, material change and not just do social work, but we hadn’t made this goal explicit in our newsletters.
Issue #7 of Cracks was our way of making this message clear. Not only did it call on inmates and their families to join us in action in honor of Black August (a month-long recognition of the Black liberation struggle and prison movement), but it clarified our political rather than social work orientation, and also expressed our desire to shift Cracks from an exposure tool to an organizing tool that could connect the inside and the outside. To demonstrate this, we shared our own report back to the inside about our outside organizing efforts, highlighting some of the objective and subjective difficulties we’ve had with pulling families and friends visiting into our sphere. For example, when inmates informed us a hike in the commissary prices for certain items, we decided to make that the focus of our July 13th speakout. We spoke out in front of Division 10 and distributed issue #6 of of Cracks, calling out the extortion of commissary meant to bleed families dry for the jail not providing inmates with edible food. However, only Dequisha attended, and there were no other masses in sight as we didn’t do great outreach for the event itself. This was due to our efforts (or lack thereof) to rethink our approach to the jail following our return from the national conference in June. Nevertheless, we spoke to families about the increases and the need to get organized to fight back.
Ahead of Black August, we worked closely with our politcally advanced contacts to push for a coordinated action on August 21st between the inside and outside in honor of the revolutionary George Jackson who was assassinated on August 21st, 1971 inside San Quentin State Prison. We sent them issue #7 of Cracks and made advances through ideologically struggling with them by distributing copies of Blood in My Eye (BIME) by George Jackson. For the discussion, we had two inmates join the call: A, who stood out as someone who was fed up with the conditions inside, fucked with our politics, and was willing to take action, and W, who was very academically sharp (has a background in philosophy), respected us and what we were trying to do, but at the time wasn’t really convinced about acting outside of “official channels” such as lawsuits (he was suing the jail for censorship). We also had a couple folks from different Dare to Struggle chapters join us via zoom to discuss BIME. Everyone, including inmates A and W, shared their general reactions to the book and main takeaways, but in hindsight we could have structured the conversation a bit more formally and come prepared with a set of questions to dig deeper into the politics. During the call, W expressed that he liked the book but started talking about legal pathways and reform which contrasted with A’s more “we need to fight” position. We didn’t push back on W’s comments in the moment (we should have), but one of us followed up with him after the call to talk more. Initially the conversations were over text (they should have been over the phone to start) but switched to a phone call, where he asked about what we thought it would take to stop the torment at CCJ. When we said revolution and tried to get into a deeper conversation about socialism-communism, he was unfortunately hostile to that position and referred to some postmodernist stuff he was reading, and said we’d get people killed. The conversations with W about getting organized on the inside have since ceased, but we still keep in touch and send newsletters to him. We think he’s still suing the jail, and since Cracks is getting censored (see more below), it may be worth seeing how his lawsuit is going and glean any lessons from him.
Our advanced contacts reacted positively to the idea of an August 21st action in honor of George Jackson’s assassination, but raised some concerns related to collective punishment. Since inmates are often punished collectively if one person steps out of line. One of our advanced contacts pointed out that if they did something like a speak out, other inmates not part of the action might respond negatively because they don’t want any problems. We are working on a shorter piece that directly addresses this contradiction.
Censorship
When we sent in issue #7 of Cracks, we began to receive an extremely high number of censorship notices. Previously, we would receive occasional censorship notices back in the mail, increasing in number from issue #5 and #6. We started to receive dozens of #7 newsletters back to our PO box in stuffed envelopes with censorship slips stating the newsletter had violated CCJ mail policy for inciting violence. The exact language used (marked on every slip we received) states:
“It [the newsletter] depicts, describes, advocates, or encourages violence, hatred, or group disruption or poses a risk of violence or disruption.”
The slips would never describe exactly what they were referring to specifically in Cracks, but this was a clear attempt to censor the publication in its entirety, seeing it as a more legitimate tool to get inmates organized against their conditions and mistreatment. Censorship at CCJ and Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) has been a major issue for many years, but has ramped up in the last few years under the guise of the “war on drugs.” For several years, drugs have been smuggled into CCJ through concentrated liquid dripped on paper. When people get it, they can simply smoke the paper inside and get high. This has been the main excuse for widespread mail censorship at CCJ, including in Ws case, even though there have been several accounts of the COs getting caught bringing in and selling these drugs themselves. Most of the stories we hear from inmates and their loved ones continue to point to the guards as the main suppliers of drugs at the jail. Censorship continues to be one of the most blatant violations of inmates’ rights inside the jails and prisons.
Issue #8 of Cracks was mailed in September and again we received a large amount back with censorship notices, though we would hear from some inmates that a couple of #7 and #8s would make it every once in a while. In order to test our thesis that Cracks was being censored as a publication rather than censored for specific things the newsletter contained, we decided to send in a “fake” newsletter in the same Cracks style but with an article from Injustice Watch (an investigative journal in Illinois highlighting struggles in the state’s prions and jails). We sent this newsletter along with some more legitimate issue #8s. In a few weeks, received both newsletters back with the same censorship notice. This confirmed to us that Cracks was facing a blanket censorship at the jail.
Our last issue of Cracks, #9, had been sent in throughout the month of November, and we are still waiting to see to what extent it has been censored (though we have heard from a number of inmates they have received it this time, about a month after we sent them in). On top of the censorship of Cracks, we have also had several books and pamphlets censored by the jail, returned to us with a notice or simply just never arriving to the inmates we sent them to. The struggle around censorship is extremely important for us in the coming year because it affects the main form of communication and organization among the inside. Censorship of mail has been widely accepted as fact inside the jail, and is typically not viewed as something that can be struggled against. We are tasked with how we can better raise this issue with both inmates and their loved ones on the outside in how to take this repression seriously in fighting around.
Outside + Inside
At this stage in our organizing efforts at CCJ, the inside has surpassed the outside. We have numerous readers and leaders in nearly every division. People inside are talking to each other, reading the newsletter together in groups, and writing to DTS about the process of coming together. The outside has remained fractured and unorganized for the most part, mostly due to our crew’s limited capacity and shift in focus on inmates.
In September 2025, an opportunity presented itself to bring the outside into confrontation with the enemy: Sheriff Tom Dart had a public speaking event at the elite Chicago City Club. We thought this would be the perfect opportunity to bring our outside contacts out and protest his appearance at the City Club, exposing the lies he’s propagated by the sharing of real stories of inmates and their loved ones. We did a few rounds of phone banking and had a handful of interested contacts, but on the day of, none showed besides Vicki Willis (Alteriq’s mother). While it was extremely powerful having Alteriq’s family there to speak bitterness against Dart, and we took an opportunity to bum rush the event where CPD kicked us out, the question about how we are mobilizing masses on the outside became more pressing.
As we started to prepare for October 22nd, The National Day of Protest Against Police Brutality (O22), we shifted a lot of our overall focus away from the jail. We continued to have conversations with leaders inside and issued a call for organizing O22 protests inside the jail in our issue #8 of Cracks. A few people took up this challenge inside the jail, with one protest in Division 8 being organized to demand justice for those killed by police and an end to police brutality. We had reached out to several outside contacts, inviting them to O22 and to speak about their loved one inside, but very few responded or came out to the protest.
The outside organization against the jail remains an important question we are wrestling with. There are a handful of families who we have been working with and have built good personal relationships, but they lack a collective identity and struggle against the jail. We have seen glimpses of the outside coming together, in speakouts and protests, but a sustained, organized outside group of families and loved ones is still a long way out.
The inside has a much stronger basis to become a mass organization, but lacks a collective identity and structure. There are several objective conditions we need to overcome with the inside: the infrequent communication due to lockdowns, leaders being thrown in solitary confinement, inmates being moved to new divisions and therefore isolated from the collectives they had formed, censorship of the newsletter, and the overall transitory nature of the jail with inmates being shipped off to prisons or released. All of these objective conditions pose serious problems for sustained organization of inmates. One benefit to the organizing efforts on the inside is the amount of time inmates have to read and discuss, while the outside has to deal with potentially more chaotic life circumstances (work, child rearing, elder care, etc).
Subjectively, our efforts have really focused and relied on the contacts we have built on the inside to the detriment of the outside organizing efforts. We have spent a lot more time speaking with inmates, discussing politics, building relationships, and helping them plan actions than we have with outside contacts. In order to build a true force to be reckoned with, we need to develop a strong outside organization, and to paraphrase Lenin, “bend the stick” in the other direction by paying special attention and devoting time to figuring out what it will take to form a fighting base on the outside in tandem with the inside.
Conclusion & Next Steps
Our year of work at CCJ has been filled with both inspiration and challenges in pursuit of building a movement against the jail, its conditions, and the oppression it subjects people to. As we continue to grow our organization and develop our methods of leadership, we hope to rectify missteps we’ve made as well as expand our scope of work. In the coming year, we intend to dedicate more time and attention to the outside and broaden our outreach in an effort to build it, while consolidating the inside into a formal organization of inmates. While the focus of work continues to center around conditions and mistreatment at the jail, we need to expand the scope to challenge mass incarceration as a whole, an institutionalized form of oppression which impacts millions across the US. The mass incarceration machine is one of the principle forms the system uses to capture, remove, and contain a potentially explosive section of society: the Black and oppressed masses. Our intention is to expand our work beyond CCJ and into the jails and prisons across the country, putting the challenge on the table for the incarcerated masses to band together, transform themselves into revolutionaries, and collectively struggle against the mass incarceration machine. Content-wise for Cracks, this would mean speaking to the oppression inside jails and prisons in a way that identifies the mass incarceration machine and how it affects specific groups (like how issue #9 and #10 deep-dives into how mass incarceration disproportionately affects Black and Latino people, by design). Cracks could go further to highlight other forms of oppression and interpersonal violence inside like rape and sexual assault, and how they affect specific populations like women, trans and non-binary inmates alongside other features of life inside (e.g. gang culture, drugs, young versus old).
In 2026, Tom Dart will be running for re-election as Cook County Sheriff. We will go hard against Dart this year and mobilize people on the inside and outside to expose Dart and raise the demand that he be jailed, no re-elected. To expose Dart, we’re thinking about running an inmate against Dart for Cook County Sheriff. The idea is that who’d be better to run CCJ than an inmate inside, while using the campaign to expose the conditions, speak out against Dart and the jail, and consolidate people around our fight on the inside and the outside with Dart as our prime target. While we can’t officially get an inmate on the ballot, we’re hoping to encourage inmates and families to write in the candidate. In addition to running an inmate, we’re also hoping to establish an inmate organization with an advanced inmate as a leader. An organization which inmates can identify with and rep in their struggle. We’ve tasked our more advanced contacts to think of a name and develop the group’s identity through a combination of discussions and actions, and hopefully this group will also take advantage of the Sheriff election to strategize and develop a campaign against Dart from the inside.
On the outside, we’ll continue to expose the recent string of deaths inside of CCJ. In November and December, three people died inside of CCJ: Martinez Duncan, who died of smoke inhalation as a result of a fire that was lit inside his cell, Shamire Jackson, who died in the hospital two days after being transferred over from CCJ in critical condition, and Lamont Johnson, who was found dead in his cell. The cause of Shamire and Lamont’s death remains unknown. In Martinez’s case, a handful of inmates have told us that his death could have been prevented if COs weren’t cross-watching. To get CCJ released from federal oversight in 2017, Tom Dart promised to end the practice. However, Martinez’s death and reports from inmates shows cross-watching is still alive and well at CCJ.
Shamire died on December 7th and we were able to connect with the family on the 9th. We learned from the family that they found out about his condition and hospital transfer on Facebook and have yet to receive any answers from the jail about what happened to him (just like Vicki with Alteriq and Grant with Raheem). When we spoke with them, they were clear about wanting whoever was responsible for Shamire’s death to be charged and also supported our call to jail Tom Dart since multiple inmate deaths have happened under his watch and he’s let them go unpunished. In terms of actions, we tried holding a press conference and march to Tom Dart’s office with Shamire’s family on December 19th that didn’t go well due mainly to poor planning on our part (i.e. Tom Dart’s office was locked and we were told by staff that he wasn’t actually there). We’ve since summed up our mistakes with the family and are working to bring them, Vicki and Grant into a collective that could focus on struggling against stolen lives inside CCJ.
1 It is not clear how Cook County Jail is accounting for gender.
2 Andry Koval. “‘Thinking differently’: Inside Cook County Jail’s chess program and the wizardry of ‘Coach K.” WGNTV. 2025.
3 Michael Puente. “Cook County Settles Hundreds of Lawsuits Over Jail Conditions.” Northern Public Radio. 2017.
4 Amanda Rober. “Illinois jail must pay $880K to family members of inmate who died by suicide, judge rules.” ABA Journal. 2024.
5Yes, it’s the name of an Eagles song, but for inmates and those formerly incarcerated at CCJ, it’s a nickname referencing the street CCJ lies on (26th and California) and the life threatening conditions inside: some check in to Hotel California and never make it back outside.
Dare to Struggle 