Request 016, 017, 018 — 1/16 to 1/18/2026

Banned books, rabies and snow plows

n.b.: This is going out quite late!

Friday and Saturday’s emails inadvertently had an extra 1 in the date line, which meant that there would have been a killer email publishing on November 16 and 17 of 2026, instead of Friday and Saturday as intended. Instead of bombarding your inbox with extra emails, I’m lumping the weekend together here!

xoxo Cam

Happy Sunday! Happy foiaday!

It’s Sunday, and we’re breezing through the month! I’m eagerly awaiting the Bears win against the Rams on Sunday. (That aged well. ☹️) I’ve been trudging through deadlines and drafts to make it to the end of the week in one piece.

We’ve gotten some records back, some other requests extended, and everything in between.

For Friday’s request, it’s a FOIA request about requests — ones for reading materials in prisons, that is. For Saturday, we’re requesting records on rabies. (Casual.) Today’s request? Not rabies nor reading materials, but snow plow nickname submissions.

Updates on requests will come on Monday with the weekly roundup! This email is pretty hefty because of how it’s lumped together, so it might be best viewed in your browser than in your email app or client.

If there's a coworker or friend you think would benefit from this newsletter, feel free to forward it to them! If they subscribe, they'll also get a link to a template for the tracker I like to use to keep tabs on requests I've filed.

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📚 Friday’s request

I can’t start this without shouting out the incredible work of the Marshall Project. For good further reading on this, check out Keri Blakinger’s story from 2023 on what materials are banned behind bars, with a searchable table state by state.

There’s also good technical documentation, which I always love.

In Illinois, the Illinois Department of Corrections has a list of banned, pending and reviewed materials; it dictates across all IDOC facilities what materials aren’t allowed for people to access or aren’t allowed in libraries.

(The specific document name is the “Statewide Publications Determinations List”, and here’s the policy for it.)

The list is a living document, according to the policy, and is continuously updated based on changes to reviewed, denied or approved books. The most recent version that IDOC has on its website is from 2023, and it runs the gamut of reading material types.

Each page of the document is broken out by the title of the reviewed material, the date reviewed, the volume number (if applicable — like for a magazine or periodical), I think an ISBN number, and the status or outcome of the review itself.

There’s technically specific guidelines for what should and shouldn’t be approved, and a lot of it comes down to pornography, safety and obscenity. That said, some of the decision-making seems a little opaque.

I had a bit of a quiet moment while reading through this list and imagining the people requesting these materials. While there are some out-there titles (so many copies and versions of the Kama Sutra), there are also some requests that have stuck with me.

For instance, there are requests (that were approved) for Ida B. Wells’s On Lynchings, and an approved request for the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Blood in the Water, a book about the 1971 Attica Prison riots in upstate New York.

Since I’ve seen it, I’ve especially kept in mind the person who requested a boatload of Food & Wine and other cooking magazines in 2022 and 2023. I’m glad they were able to get their hands on them.

And the person who requested a copy of Fangoria in 2021. Whoever you are, I’m rooting for you, because that rules.

So here’s what I’m sending over to the Illinois Department of Corrections:

Copies of the following documents:

- The most recent Statewide Publications Determinations List, including the name of the material reviewed, the date of review, the volume or issue number, the ISBN or publication number, the decision/outcome of the review, and any reasoning, notes or documentation related to that decision or outcome. 
If possible, please release the document in a machine-readable format like an Excel spreadsheet (.xlsx) or .csv/.tsv file; if that's not possible, a .pdf works great.

- The most recent records retention schedule for IDOC, which is a document outlining the different records that the agency keeps and files with the Illinois State Archives, and how long they are retained before being destroyed. Please provide this in a .pdf format.

- A current inventory of all books and media in circulation within IDOC facilities, including the name of the reading material and volume number if applicable. Please provide this in a .xlsx or .csv/.tsv format if at all possible. 

🐶 Saturday’s request

Taking a completely wild turn in the other direction: we’re gonna request some records about rabies.

Chicago recently had its first recorded rabies case in a dog since the 1950s, and it sent the dog owners of the North Side of Chicago into a tizzy. The dog was adopted from the same shelter that I got Louie from (but a good chunk of time apart) and did doggy daycare at the same facility as some of my friends’ dogs.

Press releases about the rabies incident, which happened in December, mention a few things: one, the Illinois and Chicago departments of public health are on the case, and so is Chicago Animal Care and Control, as well as the Cook County Department of Animal and Rabies Control.

But curiously, two: the CDC is on the case, also. The dog had been vaccinated against rabies, and a press release indicates that the CDC would be investigating whether or not the lot of vaccines was compromised.

So, of course, we have to request some records about it. All in, we have a handful of agencies to grab records from:

• Center for Disease Control and Prevention (federal)

• Cook County Department of Animal and Rabies Control (municipal)

• Chicago Department of Public Health (municipal)

• Illinois Department of Public Health (state)

• Chicago Animal Care and Control (municipal)

Here’s what I’m going to send over to the CDC:

— Copies of all electronic communication (email) regarding the December 2025 case of rabies in a Chicago dog (see here: https://www.cookcountyil.gov/news/cook-county-department-animal-and-rabies-control-confirms-rabies-positive-dog), from 12/1/2025 to present (1/18/2026). If more specific parameters are needed, please include the keywords "Chicago" AND "rabies", "Cook County" AND "rabies", or "Illinois" AND "rabies" during the timeframe of 12/1/2025 to 1/18/2026.

- Copies of all memos, field notes, lab notes or other materials related to the possible investigation of the rabies vaccine used to inoculate the dog against rabies in summer 2025.

- All emails between "cdc.gov" domains and "pawschicago.org" email domains between 12/1/2025 and present (1/18/2026). If there are more than five hundred responsive emails, please instead release a log of emails in order to best help me narrow the request. 

And what I’m going to send over to IDPH, CACC and CDPH:

— Copies of all electronic communication (email) regarding the December 2025 case of rabies in a Chicago dog (see here: https://www.cookcountyil.gov/news/cook-county-department-animal-and-rabies-control-confirms-rabies-positive-dog), from 12/1/2025 to present (1/18/2026). If more specific parameters are needed, please include the keywords "Chicago" AND "rabies", or simply "rabies" during the timeframe of 12/1/2025 to 1/18/2026.

— Copies of any memoranda, guidances, incident reports or documentation regarding the December 2025 case of rabies in a Chicago dog.

- All emails between "illinois.gov"/"cityofchicago.org" domains and "pawschicago.org" email domains between 12/1/2025 and present (1/18/2026). If there are more than five hundred responsive emails, please instead release a log of emails in order to best help me narrow the request. 

- The most recent records retention schedule, which is a document outlining the different records that the agency keeps and files with the Illinois State Archives, and how long they are retained before being destroyed. Please provide this in a .pdf format.

Okay, then also filing records requests with the Cook County Department of Animal and Rabies Control, which I have never ever heard of before! (I didn’t know it was called the ARC!)

— Copies of all electronic communication regarding the December 2025 case of rabies in a Chicago dog (see here: https://www.cookcountyil.gov/news/cook-county-department-animal-and-rabies-control-confirms-rabies-positive-dog), from 12/1/2025 to present (1/18/2026). If more specific parameters are needed, please include the keywords "Chicago" AND "rabies", or simply "rabies" during the timeframe of 12/1/2025 to 1/18/2026.

— Copies of any memoranda, guidances, incident reports or documentation regarding the December 2025 case of rabies in a Chicago dog.

- All emails between "cookcountyil.gov" domains and "pawschicago.org" email domains between 12/1/2025 and present (1/18/2026). If there are more than five hundred responsive emails, please instead release a log of emails in order to best help me narrow the request. 

- The most recent records retention schedule, which is a document outlining the different records that the agency keeps and files with the Illinois State Archives, and how long they are retained before being destroyed. Please provide this in a .pdf format.

- A log or list of FOIA requests to the ARC in the past two years (1/1/2024 to present, or 1/18/2026) including a description, outcome and date of the request. Please redact any PII about the requester if applicable.

I’m not sure if the more rabies-specific requests will really net anything, but I am so curious about how this is handled behind the scenes. From my understanding, the rabies concerns are largely contained, but this is the first time in a long, long time that this has happened, and it’s pretty notable!

Worst case, we’ll at least get some records back about what kinds of things each agency has in the archives, and that should at bare minimum also be illuminating.

❄️ Sunday’s request

One more! And it’s more fun than rabies, I promise.

Every year for the past few years, the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation (remember them?) has run a contest challenging Chicagoans to come up with the wittiest, pithiest, funniest names for a slice of the city’s fleet of snow plows.

Snow plows are a big deal here in Chicago. Mayors have been ousted because of it — the Blizzard of 1979 is a cautionary tale for mayoral hopefuls and there are many, many, many good stories written about how it infamously lost an incumbent his re-election bid.

So it’s good for morale to involve the people in the process. (If you want further public-snow-plow-related fun, they have a tracker where you can see exactly where they’re salting and shoveling around the city.)

Streets & San uses chicagoshovels.org to route entries for the plow-naming fest, and entries for this year’s competition closed on January 10th. Similarly to the lewd and raunchy vanity plate applications and the Un-American NPS sign complaints, we’re going to ask for all four years’ worth of submissions.

The agency only releases the top 25 finalists for public voting, and then only retains the top 7-ish to be immortalized on the website and the 19 total winning names on plows around the city. Last year, for example, the winners of the plow contest included:

• Bozo the Plown (🤡)

• Lollaplowlooza (🧑‍🎤)

• My Kind of Plow (🏙️)

• Snower Wacker (😈)

• Scoop, There It Is!

• Bean There, Plowed That (☁️)

I mean, those are good, don’t get me wrong, and I’ve included links for out-of-towners to provide context.

But I need the full list. I neeeeeeed it. I think we could stand to learn from the uncensored, unbridled creative potential that the city has to offer. Plows are in the public interest!!!

So:

Data or documents sufficient to show the full list of submissions to Streets & Sanitation's Chicago Shovels "You Name a Snowplow" contest for all years of the contest (2023, 2024, 2025, 2026). Please include the full name of the suggested snow plow and any additional data entered by respondents to the form at chicagoshovels.org; if possible, please include any associated metadata with the submission, like the time or date submitted, IP address, or related information. Please release the document in a .xlsx or .csv format; if that's not possible, a .pdf is also totally fine.

And guess what? No conflict of interest, baby. I missed the window to submit a name. I think I’ve voted in the past (my favorite, appropriately, is “Salter Payton”, which I just think is perfect), but I haven’t ever thrown my hat in the ring for a plow name.

Controversially to some, though, Mayor Brandon Johnson has already half-endorsed a name for a plow, should someone submit it: Abolish ICE.

Oooooookay! I have some updates on some of the things I’ve gotten back, but we’re going to hold onto them until Monday’s email, because this is long enough already. (Sorry!)

Until then, take care, happy filing, stay warm, and Bear Down 4ever!

Cam