Portside

Every year, I take joy in supporting the Holiday Solidarity Toy Drive organized by Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration (MUAVI). Launched in 2014, the drive began with a goal of collecting 400 toys for children of mothers incarcerated at Logan Correctional Center. The effort was an overwhelming success. MUAVI not only exceeded their goal but expanded their support to include families impacted by incarceration at Decatur Corrections Center, Fox Valley Adult Transition Center, Cook County Jail, and Haymarket Center, among others. Over the last decade, MUAVI has raised roughly 1,500 donations annually. The drive offers crucial relief for families grappling with the financial hardships of having a loved one incarcerated — from the loss of parental income or the costs of visitation, communication, and commissary support. Thanks to MUAVI’s work, this difficult time of year becomes a little brighter for families in need. In addition to the toy drive, MUAVI co-organizes Reunification Rides, which help children visit their incarcerated mothers — an especially vital act of solidarity during the holidays.

I recently spoke with MUAVI’s director of organizing, Holly Krig, about this year’s toy drive, the impact of incarceration on families, Reunification Rides, and how you can get involved.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Kelly Hayes: This is obviously a tough time of year for families who have been separated by the prison system. Can you tell us how MUAVI supports parents and children affected by incarceration during the holiday season?

Holly Krig: Thankfully, Moms United is part of a Chicago-based community that supports families suffering forcible separation by carceral systems, including Love & Protect, Liberation Library, and MAMAS-Mamas Activating for Movements and Solidarity. There are a number of groups like us who use mutual support drives to meet needs and also to invite important conversations, engaging a diversity of voices, including those who may not yet realize how we are all harmed by carceral systems. As we move toward our goals we also move more pointedly toward the question of how we, as Mariame Kaba put it, make prisons, and prosecution and policing obsolete. We talk about what the world might be like if we met needs within our communities, without systems adjudicating worthiness, predetermining who has the right to survive and thrive. 

Can you tell us about last weekend’s reunification ride? How were people's spirits? What did you hear from parents and children about the experience?

Reunification Ride, whose partner groups include Nehemiah Trinity Rising, Women’s Justice Institute and ourselves, is a community funded initiative that sends a bus each month to Logan, the largest designated women’s prison in IL. Our December bus is extra full and extra special. We pack it with gingerbread house kits and extra treats. We are often accompanied by talented guitarist and CPS restorative justice practitioner Jennifer Viets, who sings holiday songs with families. Our deepest desire is to bring survivors inside home to supportive communities, and to shut down every kind of prison forever. But in the meantime, we resist the razor wire gates by surrounding them with the community we are able to bring inside. 

We take photos during each visit, which are printed and shared with moms inside and their kids. During the December Reunification Ride visit, we invite a professional photographer to take photos of other survivors inside, including those who may not be receiving a visit from their kids, or whose kids may be grown or far away.  It’s just so important for people to be able to see themselves, literally, through the lens of those who support their freedom. It’s important to possess a record of their own making, a photo other than their prison issue ID card. 

Among those having photos taken were survivors seeking clemency, including a lovely woman who has been incarcerated 45 years on a “natural life” sentence. A transgender survivor had her hair freshly done for her photo, one that I hope will remind her that she is beautiful and that no one can take from her who she is and her will to be free. 

As we were leaving, sharing hugs and promises to return, a mother asked me about her photos. Moms are anxious to receive them, to hold tangible memories between visits. This lovely mama told me, “Those photos mark my time. My visits with my kids mark my time, and not this place.” It was profound and defiant, amidst the otherwise unspoken sadness of departure. Mamas inside hold back their tears for their kids, and kids learn to do the same. It’s a strength they should never have to learn. 

The mothers you initially set out to help with the toy drive were incarcerated at Logan Correctional Center, a prison notorious for its horrific conditions. While prison conditions are generally torturous, I was still appalled and heartbroken when I visited Logan and heard firsthand how the women were forced to live. Now, Logan is slated for closure, and there’s a growing effort to prevent it from being rebuilt. Can you talk a bit about what’s happening there?

Much of the discussion surrounding the visit this year is the scheduled closure of Logan, along with the plan to build a new prison. Corrections officers seemed conflicted about the timeline. While the latest announcement from the state is that Logan will close in 4-5 years, it is also apparent that a refusal to maintain the buildings may hasten that date, but not before people go without heat, fully functioning plumbing or reasonable access to mail and basic necessities. 

The current plan is to replace Logan, despite the fact that the population is actually well below capacity. 

It’s important to know these plans for the future have returned us squarely to the past and the circumstances that preceded the first prison replacement/expansion in Illinois. Back in 1930, a group of reformers raised $300,000 to build the first designated women’s reformatory in Illinois, with a capacity of 300. Oakdale Women’s Reformatory was built with cottage style housing, accompanied by mental health support and vocational skills training. By the 1960s Oakdale’s population was down to a third of its official capacity. Historians attribute that considerable reductions to community based drug treatment and childcare assistance, the increased use of probation over prison sentences, and a challenge to the criminalization of abortion and sex work. It may also be that Oakdale’s focus on mental health, education and vocational training contributed to decreased recidivism. 

Despite the effectiveness of community-based programs, the state allocated $1 million dollars to the building of what became Dwight, whose population was around 1,300 when it was forcibly closed by the state in 2013, due to deteriorating conditions. The prison population in Illinois swelled under “truth in sentencing” laws and the ending of parole. In Illinois and across the US, prison populations surged under laws exacerbating the criminalization of substance use and addiction, poverty and violence survivors. Tellingly, even before the allocation of funds that built Dwight, changes in the IDOC [Illinois Department of Corrections] code allowed for the imprisonment of people as young as 17, as well as people who were otherwise eligible for parole. Even now, there is re-sentencing legislation being held up, along with unrelenting attacks on the SAFE-T Act, which includes the historic elimination of cash bond in Illinois, which has resulted in a historic decrease in jail populations with no increase in the overall rate of violent crime. 

Dwight should never have been built. The lessons of Oakdale should have resulted in more funding for community based programs, more funding mental healthcare, for early education, childcare and housing. When Dwight was forced to close, Logan should never have been turned into an even larger designated women’s prison. But, we have arrived both right back in time, with yet another chance to bring about a different future. What will we do this time? 

Is there anything else you'd like to share about how incarceration impacts families and why it's so urgent to highlight these issues right now?

Our mutual support drives both meet important needs, but lay bare the deep entanglement of public divestment and prisons. When we ask moms about what they might like to give their kids for Christmas, we hear about their kids’ interests and talents and needs. Only, those needs include food, clothing, and housing. They include the need for fully funded schools and community based clinics. 2.7 million children in the US alone have an incarcerated parent. The average annual income of an incarcerated person was 41% less than their non-incarcerated peers prior to arrest. The majority are parents of minor children. According to the National Institute of Health, “Children with a parent in prison may experience low self-esteem, depression, disturbed sleeping patterns and symptoms of post-traumatic stress. In a North American study, separation from a parent through imprisonment was found to be more detrimental to a child’s well-being than divorce or the death of a parent.”

Additionally, we see the cost to caregivers, including the impact on health, of supporting an incarcerated child and for some, becoming the primary custodial parent to grandchildren, and sometimes great-grandchildren. Most of the kids who participate in Reunification Ride are being cared for by a family member, most often their maternal grandmother. However, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the incarceration of moms is five times more likely to result in their kids being taken into state foster case systems than the incarceration of fathers. Parental incarceration is not itself a predictor of incarceration for kids, however, 75% and 74% of incarcerated men and women respectively have spent at least one year in state foster care. 

A commitment to the well-being of whole generations, from children to grandparents demand that we stop this forcible separation of families, and as we work to abolish systems, that we support one another, meeting needs together, loudly and proudly. 

Is there anything that you would like to ask of our readers?

We ask that you join us in this crucial work of supporting families. One simple, generous and exponentially impactful thing you can do is donate to the 11th Annual Holiday Solidarity Drive, so that an incarcerated mom or dad can share presents with their kids, a joyful act of solidarity that defies the state’s forcible separation of families. 

You can donate toys and teen gifts via the registry. You can donate funds that we will direct to unmet needs and last minute requests. [Funds can be sent via Zelle to MomsUnitedChicago@gmail.com.]

We understand if you cannot support this or any other mutual aid campaign at this time–many of us are struggling to meet basic needs each day. Most of us are one prolonged illness, serious injury or lost wage away from a crisis. Too many of us are struggling against the violence of institutionalized poverty and normalized gender violence, then punished for doing what we need to do to survive.  

It’s that shared struggle that should bring us together, with compassion and understanding, while the ruling class aligns its own interests. More than that, we have the opportunity right now to come together around a shared commitment to a world where we can all thrive. Right now we have the opportunity to create joyful new traditions that celebrate equity and mutual care. We can dispose of those old traditions that promote surveillance, status quo, and a so-called meritocracy that somehow always rewards the already rich. Let’s really and truly make policing and prosecution and prisons obsolete. Down, down with North Pole politics. Up, up with the people. 

Kelly Hayes is a Menominee author, educator, organizer, and photographer. Kelly is the host of Truthout’s podcast “Movement Memos” and co-author of Let This Radicalize You, with Mariame Kaba.

Author's Note: The photo of Crystal Martinez and her family, featured in this piece, is shared with permission. It was taken during MUAVI's 2023 Reunification Ride holiday visit. Thankfully, this was Crystal's last Christmas in prison, thanks to advocates who fought for her release under Illinois' domestic violence re-sentencing law. You can learn more about Crystal's case here.

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