WASHINGTON PARK — Willie Wilson wants to bring at least 100 people home for Thanksgiving who are stuck in Cook County Jail because they can’t post bond.
The former Chicago mayor and U.S. presidential candidate gathered about 40 city clergy members Wednesday evening at the Chicago Baptist Institute, 5120 S. King Drive, to raise $100,000 to help people charged with nonviolent crimes post bond for the holiday who otherwise couldn’t.
“We’re always talking about prison reform, and we won’t go in our own pocket to help,” Wilson said.
Sam Cholke shares details on Willie Wilson's bond efforts.
He said he would personally contribute $50,000 and was looking for others in the business and religious community to contribute the rest.
Organizers helping Wilson with his effort said they are starting to identify people jailed because they can’t afford a very modest bond while awaiting trial.
“We’ve had guys in there for two years because they couldn’t come up with $200,” said Gregory Livingston, who is heading the project.
Wilson said seeing how time in jail changed his own family members convinced him he needed to push for reforms.
“I had two sons in jail,” Wilson said. “When they came out, they came out hardened in their attitudes.”
He said one of his sons was later violently killed at the age of 20, and he doesn’t want other parents to see a similar transformation in their children.
Wilson established the Dr. Willie Wilson Foundation this week to fund his prison reform efforts and said he would reveal all donations and all recipients of money on the foundation’s website.
Wilson said as the bond money is returned to people for showing up at their court dates as ordered, his hope is it will cycle through the foundation again to help more people post their bond.
He said he met with Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart on Wednesday afternoon to make sure his office would cooperate and help identify people who were facing nonviolent misdemeanor charges and were being held in the jail only because they could not afford to post bond.
Cara Smith, chief policy officer in the Cook County Sheriff's Office, said yesterday there were 138 people in the jail eligible to be released on electronic monitoring if they could post bond and identify a place where they would be living.
She said Dart is cooperating with Wilson and thinks his goal is doable for the Sheriff's Office and there would be added resources to make sure anyone Wilson bonded out would show up to court.
Wilson tried a test run of the idea earlier in the month, but of the 15 people he attempted to post bond for, only six were released. He said some of them found other ways to post bond and others' trials came up and bond was no longer the issue.
Wilson’s idea was warmly received by the largely Baptist clergy at the meeting. Before the meeting ended, pastors from churches on the South and West sides had contributed $5,000.
Wilson said he was seeking contributions from churches as well as other forms of charity.
Wilson said Dart had concerns that people could not be released unless they could identify a family member, halfway house or other place where they would be staying while awaiting trial.
Wilson asked the churches to seek places for people to sleep and formed a committee of clergy to figure out other barriers keeping people in jail unnecessarily.
“I need to focus on raising money, that’s my job. Everyone else needs to spend two to four hours a month finding people a place to get a GED, a place to sleep or get a job,” Wilson said.
He said his long-term plans were much bigger, and he was interested in jumping into politics again, though as an advocate this time, to get prison-reform measures passed in Springfield.
Wilson said the immediate goal now is to raise enough money to get at least 100 people out of jail for Thanksgiving and figure out where they’re going to have their holiday meal.
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