Laurie Jo Reynolds is an artist, policy advocate, and organizer who has spent two decades countering the demonization, warehousing, and social exclusion of people in the criminal legal system. Reynolds currently collaborates with the Chicago 400, people who have been forced into homelessness due to housing banishment for people with past convictions.
Reynolds has received fellowships and grants from Open Society Foundations, Creative Capital, Opportunity Agenda, Blade of Grass, VanAbbe Museum (Netherlands), United States Artists, Illinois Humanities, Art for Justice; and she was awarded Creative Time’s Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the coordinator of the Chicago 400 Alliance.
The Chicago 400 are formerly incarcerated people who have been forced into homelessness due to housing banishment laws. They are leading an inspiring legislative and public education campaign—premised in unity and solidarity—to challenge all public conviction registries and banishment laws for formerly convicted people. The Chicago 400 Alliance organizational partners include victim advocates, housing advocates, police accountability activists, health and mental health service providers, recovery specialists, reentry organizations, and people of faith.
In this presentation, conference attendees will learn about the Chicago 400 Alliance and their challenges and strategies in community organizing, messaging and framing, and building a broad-based coalition to challenge registry laws and all forms of housing and public space banishment.
NARSOL is honored to welcome Laurie Jo Reynolds and the Chicago 400 to our annual conference in Houston, Texas.
You may register for the conference and reserve your hotel room here
Sandy, a NARSOL board member, is communications director for NARSOL, editor-in-chief of the Digest, and a writer for the Digest and the NARSOL website. Additionally, she participates in updating and managing the website and assisting with a variety of organizational tasks.
Sandy, not long ago I posted “You’re one of the first the beach.” The silicon beach.The soldiers are beginning to shuffle off the landing craft in mass. When the soldiers start showing up by their own volition; You’ve got something! There were plenty of folks complaining the European high courts long before the beaches of Algeria and Normandy came to matter. Those complaints fell on deaf ears, and war ensues.