Jail Coalition
Kevin Ballou:
“Police brutality and mass incarceration go hand and hand, and while the project may not be explicitly showing mass incarceration, I would like the carrell to be there and I think it needs to be heard. I have been working to end mass incarceration for the past two and a half years since I've been home, both with community organizing and artistic work to change the narrative and culture around incarceration. I would love to convey to the public that it takes healing, education, and connection to build up a community, not punishment, destruction, and divisiveness.
The Coalition to Stop the Inhumanity at the Cuyahoga County Jail was born in 2018 when the US Marshals filed a lawsuit against the county jail claiming it as “One of the worst in the country”. Since 2018 we have been working on targeting our elected officials to address the issues that face the community. For the Voices of CLE project we thought of the idea to amplify the voices from inside, and while we are still hashing out the specifics of the mural, we know we would like to have a project that is two-fold. The first part will be a mural of some of the people who passed away inside the Cuyahoga county jail (we are reaching out to the families for their blessing in this project). The second part will feature a select person (or persons) that have been incarcerated for 20+ years and their words to the world. We feel this project would humanize the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, and commemorate the lives lost in the county all while showing that our current system can change for the better.”
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