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I met Mary Graham last Saturday at a meeting of Mothers Standing in the Gap, a group of women in Jacksonville who come together to support one another through their sons’ incarceration. Like mothers everywhere, they do everything they can for their sons, with little concern for themselves.

By Amy Fettig, ACLU National Prison Project & Tanya Greene, Advocacy and Policy Counsel "I developed techniques to survive. I've learned to play chess with other [kids] through a six-inch wall to keep myself occupied. But for others, it breaks them, makes them either violent or suicidal." These are the words of Lino Silva, who had been incarcerated in a juvenile facility for over seven years when she wrote them. The "it" she mentions is solitary confinement, a practice that juvenile facilities routinely use on the approximately 70,000 kids in this country who are in their care on any given day.

This week witnessed two steps forward in the movement for LGBT equality in Florida.