Driving around upstate New York, you see a lot of abandoned dairy farms and a lot of struggling towns with prisons nearby. They’re connected: As milk prices dropped and the state’s dairy industry started suffering, politicians brought prisons upstate as a job-creation programs.
Milk Not Jails aims to break that connection by creating economic opportunities in the dairy industry instead of the prison industrial complex, Treehugger reports. The grassroots groups partners with smaller dairy farms whose owners support criminal justice reform, and helps them sell their products in New York City. That’s a perfect target market for a combined dairy/prison reform project: It’s where many inmates come from, and where many fancy cheeses go.
The program’s been going on since 2010. Milk Not Jails delivers periodically to NYC, and if you want to get in on the next shipment, today’s the deadline for ordering. Milk’s $5.50 for a non-homogenized half gallon (mmm, cream), and yogurt, half-and-half, cheese, butter, and ice cream are also available. Who doesn’t want to eat ice cream and to end an unjust criminal system that ruins people’s lives every day?
