Proposed facility closures in Gov. Pat Quinn's budget have drawn the wrath of public employee unions and social service workers. However, some activists cheered the governor's proposed closure of Tamms Correctional Center, a Supermax prison in downstate Illinois. Today demonstrators marched through downtown Chicago in support of the closing.

Protesters included human rights activists as well as some mothers of the prisoners. As we previously reported, Tamms was supposed to temporarily hold especially violent convicts, but it turned into a facility that permanently holds prisoners in arguably abusive conditions.