"Prisoners' rights advocates and environmental groups are taking their concerns to the federal government"

"Brian Harrington entered the Illinois Department of Corrections system in 2007 at age 14, sentenced to 25 years in prison. Three years later, he found himself at Menard Correctional Center, the largest maximum-security, state-run prison in Illinois, subjected to living conditions he now describes as unfair, degrading, and inhumane.

He remembers the toilet water being brown—and sometimes the drinking water, too. He recalls the tap water’s sewer smell and the black specks swirling, then settling, in his cup. After showering, his skin would feel gritty and his white towel would turn brown while drying off.

“For a kid that’s coming into this adult facility, I just thought this is the way it is, that’s what I have to endure,” said Harrington, a Chicago-based hip hop artist and activist who goes by King Moosa, or Moosa.

Moosa, who was released in 2020 via a clemency petition, now knows that’s not the case. And as a community organizer with the Coalition to Decarcerate Illinois, he’s been helping to call out the Department of Corrections for the dirty water that Menard and 29 of the state’s other facilities have, for decades, knowingly provided to incarcerated people—a crisis that is only worsening."

Nicole Greenfield reports for Sierra magazine August 2, 2024. [2]