We have a lighter workload this month due to the fact that we’re moving apartments, but will facilitate a Gender, Sex & Sexuality 101 to our neighbors at Sullivan High School for their Global Issues course. We’ll also lead an Intro to Prison Abolition training for the loved ones of incarcerated people through the Coalition to Decarcerate Illinois and MAMAS (which you can still register for here!), as well as a daylong retreat for Organized Communities Against Deportations staff, with an emphasis on Pod Mapping & Transformative Justice and horizontal organizational evaluations. We’ll close out with a movement workshop for students in S. Simmons’ class Trans*forming Social Work at the University of Chicago.

We’re happy to share that we closed out our 3AP fundraiser for the Black Performance Exchange with a grand total of over $5.6K! We cannot thank those of you who signal boosted enough for helping us across the finish line. We are now in the process of organizing events for the summer between the months of July and August, bringing together artists and performers in both Chicago and San Juan. If you made a donation you’ll be hearing from us soon, so stay posted!

Despite May being a quieter month, we did want to highlight the upcoming publication of Stateville Speaks, a longtime newsletter for incarcerated readers in Illinois. With the support of Erica Meiners, Brian Herrera, and many more, we acted as a co-editor with Brian Dolinar for the Spring Issue of SS, and were honored to showcase the work of some incredible journalists, poets, and visual artists from both the inside and the outside for this edition. This issue will go out first to about 3,000 incarcerated folks, then be made available online shortly thereafter.

We’ll see you next month for the kickoff to a big summer!

BH