On May 29th, the latest wave of Black Lives Matter protests reached Chicago. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets, sometimes at multiple actions spread across the city, to demand justice for the police murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade and so many others. Since May 28th, CCBF has received more than 250,000 individual donations totaling over $5 million dollars. We remain overwhelmed by your support and honored to have been entrusted with this resource to support the Black liberation movement. We remain committed to paying bond for as many people arrested in uprising-related cases in Illinois as possible. Our organizational leadership will be in conversation with our movement partners to determine how we can most effectively use these resources to advance the goals of the movement for Black lives, and we commit to ongoing transparency as money is spent and decisions are made. This is an update on bonds paid that builds on our more extensive June 5th update.

As of today, we have paid $380,088 in bond to free 115 people who were arrested in Black Lives Matter demonstrations across Illinois, engaged in uprising-related direct action, and/or caught in the dragnet created by the City of Chicago’s draconian curfew. The vast majority of these bonds were paid to free people from Cook County Jail. We have also paid bond for people incarcerated in the Champaign, Kane, Peoria, and Winnebago county jails, where the same amount of financial support CCBF received wasn’t immediately available to local organizers. Here is a breakdown of the money spent on bonds: 

• 92 people in Cook County ($266,200);
• 16 people in Champaign County ($51,866), in partnership with Champaign County Bailout Coalition and the Champaign-Urbana Independent Media Center;
• 4 people in Peoria County ($11,972), in partnership with Black Justice Project and Change Peoria; and
• 2 people in Winnebago County ($40,050), in partnership with 815 Mutual Aid Network and the Winnebago County Bond Project; and 
• 1 person in Kane County ($10,000), in partnership with local organizers.

While protest-related arrests have decreased dramatically and the curfew has been lifted, we remain available to pay bond when the need arises. We also continue to coordinate closely with organizers on the ground as well as the National Lawyers Guild of Chicago and the Cook County Public Defender’s Office.

Please continue to follow CCBF on our blog and our social media accounts for updates on how we are leveraging these resources to support individuals and communities harmed by police violence and pretrial incarceration. 

We also encourage you to contact Mayor Lightfoot and Cook County State’s Attorney Foxx to tell them to drop the charges against people arrested during the uprising! Contact information and talking points can be found here.