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On Saturday October 4th, at their 132nd Annual Assembly, the Community Renewal Society honored Chicago Appleseed Staff Attorney, Ali Abid, with their Partner of the Year Award.

The Community Renewal Society is a progressive, faith-based organization that works to eliminate race and class barriers. CRS was founded in 1882; it is comprised of over 60 member church congregations, and organizes both communities and individuals to advocate for social and economic justice. Based in Chicago, CRS is one of the largest community organizing groups in the state of Illinois.

Every year CRS along with STOP (Southsiders Together Organizing for Power), Gamaliel Metro Chicago, and other organizing groups, put forth a platform of criminal justice issues to work on known as the Reclaim Campaign.

This past year Ali has worked with CRS as their principal consultant on all matters related to their criminal justice to inform the Reclaim Campaign. Ali has provided them technical assistance and education on matters related to the state of criminal justice policy in Cook County today and the scholarship on evidence-based practices.

One of the major achievements of this collaboration this past year has been the progress of HB 2897. Last year, Chicago Appleseed had developed a proposal to decrease the statutorily allowed time between arrest and preliminary hearings to reduce the wasteful amount of time nonviolent drug offenders were spending behind bars without probable cause (other crimes types—violent or sexual, e.g.—get to their preliminary hearings much faster). Chicago Appleseed then worked with the Community Renewal Society to advocate for this change in Springfield. The latest version of the bill, reducing the time it takes to test drugs and to get to preliminary hearing, was arrived at collaboratively with State Senator Don Harmon and the Cook County State’s Attorneys Office and passed the Senate unanimously in Spring of 2014 and is awaiting House action.