Myra Rivera, a young Chicago filmmaker, recently has been getting attention for her role in creating the animated graphics in this video showing us what the judicial system is doing to our youth. A new report by the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission, Burdened for Life: The Myth of Juvenile Record Confidentiality and Expungement in Illinois:
How to Fix a Broken System that Fails Youth and Harms the State, was powerful, but dense. The video helped to fuel advocacy efforts and simplify the data in the report. The video was shown at a press conference by Cook County President Tony Preckwinkle and helped to lead to the passage of a new Illinois Law.
Myra said “people don’t realize the perspective we’ve gathered as a generation from watching our parents and our grandparents struggle over the same thing. We’ve known that the law is f’ed up and I wanted to show in a simple way why, and one way we can change it.”
