#tamms

[unteriors]

2nd Street, Tamms, Illinois.

[messingwithtexas]

His first book A Costly American Hatred (available at  both as paperback and e-book) is an in-depth look at how America´s hatred of “criminals” has led the nation down an expensive path that not only ostracizes and demonizes an overgrowing segment of the population, but is also now so pervasive that it is counterproductive to the goals of reducing crime and keeping society safe;  wastes enormous resources; and destroys human lives.  Anyone who is convicted of a crime is no longer considered human in the eyes of the rest of society. This allows them to be ostracized, abused, commoditized and disenfranchised.

http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.com/ 

Excerpt from the book “Control Units and Supermaxes: A National Security Threat”, Written by Joseph Dole, an incredibly talented  man and currently incarcerated inmate in Illinois, that “details how long-term isolation units not only pose grave threats to inmates, but also guards who work there and society as a whole.” 

[brooklynmuseum]

Laurie Jo Reynolds’s use of creative practices to reform the criminal justice system has been termed “legislative art.” In 2008 she started Tamms Year Ten, a coalition to shut down Illinois’s Tamms super-maximum security prison designed for permanent solitary confinement, which is defined as torture by the United Nations. Tactical media campaigns such as End Torture in Illinois used guerrilla street actions, amplified by invited journalists and photographers, to help close the prison in 2013.

In other recent efforts, Reynolds has encouraged local officials to resist “tough on crime” laws that demonize all sex offenders without distinction. These business card–like handouts make the point that sweeping legislation can often have counterproductive results.

Nominated for the 2nd wave by Coco Fusco.

Tamms Year Ten (founded 2008, United States). Tamms Year Ten mud stencil next to Lake Michigan looking north at the city of Chicago, 2009. Photo by Paul Kjelland

[demonprincex]

When I was working on the campaign to close the Tamms Supermaximum Security Prison (the one that practiced horrific long-term isolation), one of my duties, along with many other volunteers, was to curry favor with state politicians, that they might agree to shut the prison down. Shutting down a prison filled with supposedly dangerous, allegedly gang-affiliated criminals was a political non-starter, and nobody's pet issue.

But it was also an issue that most of Illinois' voters knew nothing and cared little about. 99 times out of a 100 I'd tell people about what was going on in Tamms, and they'd have no idea it was even legal. Few people even knew that Tamms existed. Despite costing millions of dollars per year, after all, it only housed 200 inmates, and it was located way downstate in a little one-horse town that nobody went to or lived in, unless they were there for Tamms. Tamms was nearly an invisible issue, except for the vociferous, defensive prison guard's union downstate.

Because of this, it was possible to win a few moderate liberal politicians over to the side of closing Tamms. It would free up money in the budget. It would buy the loyalty of a small but devoted cadre of activists. We had to prove we were worth supporting. And so, we bartered with our time: we stopped working on activism for Tamms, and started going door-to-door campaigning for the politicians who didn't even support us yet, but had suggested that maybe, if they got us enough votes, they might. 

We walked around in freezing rain for hours in neighborhoods all over Chicago, handing out pamphlets and chatting people up, all for the electoral sake of representatives we knew nothing about or who didn't even represent our districts. We attended fundraisers and phone banked. We supported moderates who would later go on to cut the school budget by a perilous amount, shuttering dozens of school buildings; people who'd sell out our publically-run Transit Authority to a corporate entity that was well known for defrauding its customers across multiple cities for decades. We helped people get elected who made our city a worse place, a place where kids had to walk through areas of high gang activity to get to their new schools, which were now overstuffed with students and desperately understaffed.

We got these people elected because they tossed us the tiny bone of possibly shuttering Tamms, or in some cases, of promising at least to not stop it. Eventually the governor shuttered Tamms on his own. Elections came and went, supportive phone calls were made to Governor Quinn's office, and the mediocre-at-best public servants we had served slunk into their offices. I quit volunteering for the group soon after. 

The whole time we were out there, freezing in the rain, smiling and shilling for people we didn't know and didn't support, the leader of the organization kept feeding us ends-justify-means bullshit. For her, closing Tamms was paramount -- and who can blame her? Men were dying in there, having heart attacks and killing themselves over how they were treated. For her there was no other choice but to dance with the devils we knew, smile and bow and ingratiate ourselves to them. She promised us that these moderate politicians were the ones to bet on, because they had our backs on this one issue -- and unlike the liberals, they had a chance of being elected. We had to side with them and win them over, because they were good-enough. Three years later, look at what we've got. 

Sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good, because the good just isn't good enough. Sometimes it's just not good at all. I'm glad those men are out of Tamms, but most of them have been stuffed into already-overcroweded maximum security prisons, where there's nearly no bed space, having no emotional resources for dealing with such close quarters and so many people, not after so many years of living in utter isolation. And thousands of future arrests are being made every day, through the neglect of the Chicago Public School system, which has worsened in safety and quality of education by at least twofold in the time since Tamms has closed. That's what happens when one idea or issue is positioned above all else, and all political avenues are considered equally acceptable. That's what happens when a singular goal is placed before the well-being of thousands of people. That's what pragmatic political deal-making does. The tradeoffs are too big, and too far-reaching. It is not worth it. 

[taushif]

Robert wanted his picture matched with an alternate background. He wrote, “If you can place my picture on another background, nothing too much please. Something simple like a blue sky with clouds or a sunset in the distance would be fine.” 

From "Photo Requests from Solitary", a collaborative project that pairs photographers with men in solitary confinement prisons. 

[shanefkndawson]

WHERE IS TAMMS IM HAVING FEELS AND IM STUCK AT DINNER

[akai-wolf]

"The One Photo a Prisoner Wants to See"

http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2013/05/06/tamms-prison-project-makes-prisoners-dreams-come-true-photos.html#endSlide

^ For the photo gallery

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/06/prisoners-at-tamms-supermax-prison-get-invited-to-request-a-photo-of-anything-in-the-world.html

^ For the article written 

"Artists invited the inmates at Illinois’s Tamms supermax prison to request one image of anything in the world, real or imagined—and then they photographed it. See the powerful results."

[jasonsegel]

nathanielspenis answered: :P

WOMAN WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN