





Above are photos from an important event that took place at Mess Hall in Chicago on Feb. 1, 2009. The TAMMS YEAR TEN CAMPAIGN organized a show of posters, flyers, letters, poetry, postcards, banners, photos, videos, and ephemera from their multifaceted campaign. Included in the show was the Justseeds Portfolio Project: Voices from Outside - Artists Against the Prison Industrial Complex.
The event focused attention on the current campaign against TAMMS (a super max prison in southern Illinois) and urged more people in Illinois and beyond to get involved in speaking out and contacting legislators about the horrid conditions and the methods of psychological torture that take place at TAMMS.
If you are outraged by Guantánamo Bay and encouraged by the Obama Administration’s call to close it down, learn more about TAMMS and speak out against torture in Illinois prisons.
About TAMMS YEAR TEN CAMPAIGN:
In 1998, the first prisoners were transferred from prisons across the state to Tamms CMAX, in Southern Illinois. This new “supermax” prison, designed to keep men in permanent solitary confinement, was intended for short-term incarceration. The IDOC called it a one-year “shock treatment.” Now, ten years later, over one-third of the original prisoners have been there for a decade. They have lived in long-term isolation—no phone calls, no communal activity, no ocntact visits. They only leave the cell to exercise alone in a concrete box 2-5 times per week. They are fed through a slot in the door.
Year Ten is a coalition of prisoners, ex-prisoners, families, artists and other concerned citizens who have come together to protest the misguided and inhumane policies at Tamms C-MAX, and to call for an end to psychological torture. We have initiated a program of cultural, educational and political events to publicize Tamms after ten years of operation.


