The Reclaim Campaign to reduce violence in our communities is celebrating two major victories! Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Sheriff Tom Dart publicly announced a plan to tear down three divisions of the Cook County Jail over the next two years. President Preckwinkle and the Cook County Board of Commissioners recently increased the funding for community-based violence prevention in the FY17 Cook County Budget from $3.2 to $6.2 million!

CRS member churches came together to affirm our priorities for the “Platform for Renewal 2016-17,” present our annual congregational and partner awards, celebrate campaign victories, celebrate board members whose terms have ended, elect new board members and dialogue about our strategic vision. Father Larry Dowling of St. Agatha Catholic Church and Jaquie Algee of Trinity UCC co-chaired the assembly.

On behalf of Community Renewal Society, I urge you to immediately close the Illinois Department of
Juvenile Justice’s Youth Center at Kewanee.

We can prevent violence in our communities by investing more in community-based Restorative Justice programs that literally save lives.

Our communities on the South Side of Chicago experience disproportionate rates of violence and police brutality and we need our elected officials to stand with us for real change. Our efforts to reduce violence and increase police accountability are at a critical moment and we need your voice.

The Reclaim Campaign will conduct an 8-week Court Watching Project from July 1 to August 25, 2015 to verify that reforms to bond court and pretrial services we won are being implemented.

We celebrate important victories as we continue to demand a moral budget that protects Illinois’ families and communities by choosing new revenue.

The Illinois General Assembly passed several bills to reform the Cook County Criminal Justice System. These victories build on our efforts to decrease the Cook County Jail population and divert the savings into community-based programs.

Nearly 1,500 people from CRS congregations and neighborhood organizations across the city filled Liberty Baptist Church on Chicago’s south side yesterday to take action in the spirit of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez continues her approach of deadly inaction, refusing to work with the Reclaim Campaign to reform our broken justice system and prevent violence in our communities.

Today, we are marching to State's Attorney Anita Alvarez's office, on behalf of the thousands of Cook County residents to deliver Deadly Inaction: A Proposal for State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez to Prevent Violence.

On Saturday October 4, the Reclaim Campaign held a public meeting where Cook County Commissioners commitment to actively seek a $1 million increase for the violence prevention, intervention, and reduction grants in the 2015 Cook County Budget.

This is good news, but we still have much more work to do. The current budget increases spending on the Cook County Jail by $27 million but makes no increase for preventing violence in our communities.

An important part of Community Renewal Society’s (CRS) work is to bring together congregations to fight for social justice. Every fall CRS holds an Annual Membership Assembly to set priorities for our organizing and policy work. On Saturday, October 4, CRS membership voted to initiate two new campaigns and renew three campaigns launched in 2013.

There is plenty of evidence that our current public safety strategy is not working. It's time for Cook County to invest in preventing violence instead of reacting to it. We cannot arrest ourselves out of this problem.

There were shouts of joy and celebration on Thursday, July 24, as 500 Reclaim Campaign leaders began a partnership with Cook County Chief Judge Evans to prevent violence by creating a new Restorative Justice diversion and reforming the court system.

The Cook County justice system is broken. Its policies perpetuate the cycle of violence plaguing our communities by draining our limited resources and devastating people’s lives. Instead of rehabilitating individuals who need support and treatment we impose costly punishments that often lead to isolation and despair. This is what the Cook County justice system did for Russell Cunningham, a CRS leader and member of the Reclaim Campaign from First Baptist Congregational Church. 

The money that we spend on keeping people in the Cook County Jail wastes taxpayer dollars, damages lives, and does nothing to stop the violence in our communities. That's why we have launched the Reclaim Campaign.

Russell Cunningham, a CRS leader and member of the Reclaim Campaign from First Baptist Congregational Church in Chicago, gave the following testimony at the Reclaim Campaign Launch on November 7, 2013.