"One of the biggest concerns we have as inmates is that our voices are being suppressed," prisoner Eugene Ross, 41, told a meeting at the Thompson Center in Chicago.
Ross, who was arrested as a juvenile and is serving life without parole, was speaking to a press conference organized to demand the return of the weekly debate club at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois. The conference was organized by the debate club's adviser, Katrina Burlet, and Bill Ryan, co-founder of the prison newsletter Stateville Speaks. Addressing reporters from prison via his sister's cell phone, Ross was protesting the prison administration's decision to suspend the club without official explanation after the club held a public debate on March 21st about the virtues of parole.
Soon after addressing the press conference, Ross inadvertently gave a live example of how prisoner's voices are suppressed: His phone call was cut off, and, as he tells it, 20 minutes later the assistant deputy director and a group of correctional officers "came to my cell door and extracted me from my cell and took me to solitary confinement." Ross says he remained in solitary overnight, and was released back into the general population the following day. It was only because people who had heard his press conference barraged Stateville with calls, Ross says, that he was released from solitary so quickly.
[For more on this story by NOAH BERLATSKY, go to https://psmag.com/social-justi...and-up-for-prisoners]
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