By Robert Maury
Stateville’s Veterans Group secured its place in history when it kicked-off Remembrance and Rights, its Memorial Day program honoring our Nation’s fallen service members and observing the 157th year since the first commemoration in 1868—a few years after the end of the Civil War and slavery in the United States.
From the ‘Posting of Colors’, the presentations and placement of our nation’s flag at the beginning of public ceremonies, to the ‘retrieval of colors’, the removal of our nation’s flag at the end of the ceremony, the program was full of firsts. This was the first time in the history of Stateville Prison, if not the first time in the history of the state of Illinois, that incarcerated veterans were allowed to organize their own ceremony in a maximum security state prison.
This was also the first time that, while remembering our nation’s fallen, the Stateville Veterans Group spoke out for universal voting rights, and specifically the enfranchisement of incarcerated veterans and civilians alike. Pushing forward the battle for voting rights in State and Federal elections, the group spoke in support of the RACE ACT (The Reintegration and Civic Empowerment ACT), also known as Illinois Senate Bill 3482. Powerful proponents joined the veterans including the Civil Rights group – Chicago Votes while Doctor Christina Rivers of Depaul University gave a keynote address on the history of African-Americans’ fight for voting rights from the end of slavery through Black Reconstruction (1865-1877) and beyond.
This was a perfect realization of the aspirations of the program. We planned to draw a throughline between the history of Memorial Day, the historic fight against slavery, the struggle for voting rights, the ongoing movement for freedom, and the history-making performance of the Stateville Veterans Group during their Memorial Day program. It is through this confluence of American history that we remember our fallen and state our claim on the future.
[This was edited and updated for clarity by Aaron Hughes]
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Afterword
by Aaron Hughes
Prior to the Memorial Day program, on March 15, 2024, Illinois Gov. Pritzker announced the closure of Stateville Prison. This was not the first time the old prison was slated to be closed. Past efforts had been delayed by lawsuits and contract negotiations such that the Memorial Day program was planned with the hope of planting seeds, and establishing an outline, for future veteran initiated programs at the prison. However, after a number of incidents over the summer including the death of Michael Broadway, one of the people imprisoned at Stateville and who attended the Memorial Day program just weeks before his demise, authorities began moving quickly to transfer people and close the prison. As a result the Stateville Veterans Group has been dismantled. Likewise, the people that made up the abolitionist community in the prison were split up and sent to different prisons across the state. In Illinois and nationally, this community of scholars, artists and activists inside the prison was essential to promoting liberatory education, and also to many of the prison reforms and decarcerate efforts over the past decade. Although this group and many of us involved with them have advocated for the decrepit prison’s closure for years, Sarah Ross, the founder of the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project, asked the question, “Is it always abolitionist to close a prison?” Of course, with the hope that closing a prison means more people get to go home, the answer is yes. Yet, when the state utilizes the closing not to release people but to dismantle the community at the heart of the abolitionist movement in Illinois while planning to spend 900 million dollars to build a new prison, perhaps it is less clear. Let us hope, like seeds blowing in the wind, that the closing of Stateville and the disbanding of the community there only results in the sowing of new veterans groups working for universal rights and the sprouting of new radical abolitionists communities across the state. Let’s push the Governor to take actions, sign clemencies and pass decarceration reforms, that results in our friends and family members coming home.
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Robert Maury is a Navy veteran who served in the 7th Fleet from 1975 to 1977. He was the Stateville Veterans Group Sergeant in Arms till he was transferred in the lead up to the closing of prison this year.
Aaron Hughes is a Iraq War veteran and member of About Face: Veterans Against the War. He is an organizer for the Veteran Art Movement. For the past year he facilitated meetings for the Stateville Veterans Group. Since 2016, he has facilitated and taught classes with the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project at Stateville Prison.