a year of news night!

In January, my partner, friends and I will be opening up a cultural club in an old bank in Bridgeport: the Mouse Arts and Letters Club. We'll host News Night, a citywide newsroom, screenings, translation + ecology events & more. We'd love you to join us. Sign up for updates: mouseartsandletters.org

a year of news nights! november 13!

NEW: I found 17 sheriffs in Illinois that have contracts to detain people for ICE through U.S. Marshals Service contracts. IL law explicitly prohibits these types of intergovernmental service agreements. news.wttw.com/2025/10/22/d...

I spoke with Maria Gaspar, who collected bars from demolished Cook County Jail cells and turned them into a xylophone. news.wttw.com/2025/07/24/h...

Each classification room in the prison was decorated with an astonishing density of Disney paraphernalia. Men with grief-lined faces sat in front of Mickey Mouse reliquaries, mini princess figurines arranged in rainbow tiers on top of metal cabinets.
www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...

The Median Time in Restrictive Housing in Illinois Prisons is 1 Week. But Some Assigned More Than 600 Days
news.wttw.com/2025/07/15/m...

I wrote a dispatch for @nplusonemag.com about attending a corrections conference in Orlando while violently ill. The prison I saw was filled with Disney paraphernalia.

I make heavy use of @blairpaddock.bsky.social 's previous reporting (www.thenation.com/article/soci...).

Come hear me talk about my job as an architecture critic and the role of politics in imagining a better future! (along with some really fantastic journos and writers working more deeply in city planning and local Chicago politics!

NEW: Illinois State Police keeps a gang database. ICE has access to it. This, despite the state's TRUST Act prohibiting data sharing agreements between the two. news.wttw.com/2025/06/02/i...

NEW: Post-conviction petitions are a vital resource for those incarcerated alleging injustice. But those filing don't have the right to an attorney and face "egregious" delays -- some cases taking a decade. news.wttw.com/2025/05/27/e...

Our world crisis of ecology, economics, and empire, has continued to metastasize. It is shaking confidence in established worldviews & ruling elites everywhere.

@iliasalami.bsky.social & @danieldenvir.bsky.social & I chatted about @thepolycrisis.bsky.social
thedigradio.com/podcast/glob...

Illinois is pitching to build two new prisons for $900M. But some aren’t sold as the state is seeing a declining prison pop + bed vacancies. Instead, they see an opportunity to decarcerate + consolidate.
news.wttw.com/2025/03/10/i...

extreme cruelty

News Night #3!

Lawmakers + COs have called for a ban on a paper mail in IL prisons, being seen as a source of drugs. But it's unclear if that's the predominant way they're entering facilities. John Howard says there needs to be conversations on who they say main source is: staff. news.wttw.com/2025/02/03/p...