Celebrating!
6 years—Reparations Ordinance!
4 years—Chicago Torture Justice Center!
#EndPoliceTorture #DefundPolice
Where we’re going, we need each other
As May approaches we find ourselves facing the continued brutality and violence perpetrated on Black and Brown children, families, and communities still struggling to survive pandemics—of policing, of COVID—that have stolen so much.
While we grieve, rage, resist, and protest, we also make space to collectively and with our whole bodies honor and feel the satisfaction of what we have won, built and envisioned.
These death-making systems and structures cannot suppress our light!
As we mark the 6-year anniversary of the passage of the historic Reparations Ordinance led by survivors and Chicago Torture Justice Memorials and the 4-year anniversary of the opening of the first-ever center created to address the harms of police torture and violence—the Chicago Torture Justice Center—we know what it looks like to imagine and demand accountability with survivors and families. We know what it feels like to grow into our vision together.
Throughout May, we invite our community to feel the unstoppable force you (we) are and honor the satisfaction of it. We invite you to allow yourself joy and pleasure and all the feelings of warmth that are so easily taken away because we are never taught how to cherish them. We ask you to take that feeling into our continued struggle to end all forms of police violence.
Satisfaction does not mean we ignore injustice. It is an act of self-preservation, an act of celebration for all you encompass, for all that you have poured into yourself and into the world already.
And, there is so much more work to be done. After 6 years, the City is still dragging its feet on making any kind of public commitment to building the Memorial. Funding for the Center is up in the air year to year, even as increased demand and the COVID pandemic mean that we need to move to a new building we hadn’t budgeted for.
Satisfaction is also an act of collective care. It is drawing deep fulfillment in the journey, in the process, in the struggle — that “our work together should be good medicine.” The way we get there is just as important as where we are going.
“Everything worthwhile is done with other people.”
We are proud to be offering this month of celebrations and action in partnership with our family at Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, and to stand with them as we continue to demand the City fulfill its promise to survivors and families. We invite you to support their ongoing work this month!
To register: click the registration link(s) below for any events you wish to attend so we can share specific details with you. Registration for our month of events is donation-based and we warmly welcome all participants regardless of donation.
Online or in person, we can’t wait to see you!
Show your support with a tee or a print! Proceeds from these beautifully designed pieces will go to funding the construction of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial and continuing the work of the Center.
Missed a livestream? No problem! Check below for video of our events:
With thanks to our community partners and sponsors:
Experimental Black Dance in the garden
This event will be outdoors and in person at the Breathing Room Space & Su Casa garden, 5045 S Laflin.
Masks required—please practice care for community.
This workshop engages participants in trauma-informed dance education, which uses movement to investigate historical pain and somatic memory in order to heal and construct wellness-centered perspectives.
Workshop in the garden: Visualizing Breath
Art by Peregrine. From CTJC’s Illustrated Guide on Coping with Police Violence.
This event will be outdoors and in person at the Breathing Room Space & Su Casa garden, 5045 S Laflin.
Masks required—please practice care for community.
Workshop with Patricia Nguyen, artist, educator, and award-winning memorial designer for the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial, the first monument in the United States to honor survivors of police violence.
Performance with Special Musical Guest avery r. young
This is an online event.
Interdisciplinary artist avery r. young is also an award-winning teaching artist who has been an Arts and Public Life Artist-In-Residence at the University of Chicago. In the foreword of his most recent book neckbone: visual verses (Northwestern University Press), Theaster Gates called him “one of our greatest living street poets...one of the most important thinkers on the Black experience,” Black Grooves referred to his most recent album tubman. (FPE Records) as “brilliant” and “supremely funky.” Young’s poems and essays have been published in Cecil McDonald's In The Company of Black, The BreakBeat Poets, The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, AIMPrint, and other anthologies. His album booker t. soltreyne: a race rekkid engages matters of race, gender, and sexuality in America during the Obama Era. Avery’s work in performance, visual text, and sound design has been featured in several exhibitions and theatre festivals---notably The Hip Hop Theatre Festival, The Museum of Contemporary Art, and American Jazz Museum. He is the featured vocalist on flutist Nicole Mitchell’s Mandorla Awakening (FPE Records) and is 1 of 4 directors of The Floating Museum, co-mentoring Rebirth Youth Poetry Ensemble and performing with his band, de deacon board.
West African Drumming in the garden
This event will be outdoors and in person at the Breathing Room Space & Su Casa garden, 5045 S Laflin.
Masks required—please practice care for community.
Drawing upon the ancient technology and culture of Mali, Guinea, and Senegal, this program allows participants to deepen their understanding of West African drumming. Through rudimentary exercises, co-listening, and discussion, participants develop music performance skills and benefit from the healing properties of communal music making.
We are proud to offer this program in partnership with our friends at the Old Town School of Folk Music.
Politicized Healing with Mark-Anthony Clayton-Johnson and Prentis Hemphill
This is an online event.
Mark-Anthony Clayton-Johnson is a licensed acupuncturist and an experienced organizer. He served as the Director of Health and Wellness at Dignity and Power Now, a Los Angeles based grassroots organization building the leadership of formerly incarcerated people and their families to end sheriff violence. In this capacity he provided strategic leadership for DPN’s two member-led campaigns for a legally empowered and independent civilian oversight commission to the Sheriff's Department and to stop Los Angeles’ proposed $2.3 billion jail construction plan. He also led the Building Resilience project of DPN, a collaboration of formerly incarcerated people, organizers, health care providers and academics whose goal is to decarcerate the county jails via the diversion of incarcerated people into community based treatment and the creation of community based spaces to address the trauma of state violence.
Mark-Anthony is a teacher with both Generative Somatics and Black Organizers for Leadership and Dignity; an organization committed to building Black movement infrastructure and developing Black leaders with an emphasis on transformative organizing, political education, and embodied leadership. As a 2017 Soros Justice Fellow, Mark-Anthony has founded the Frontline Wellness Network, a California statewide network of health care providers working to end the public health crisis of incarceration through political education and bridging relationships between providers and grassroots organizations.
Prentis Hemphill is a Black, genderqueer, Texan born healer, movement facilitator, somatics teacher, and writer living and working at the convergence of healing, individual and collective transformation, and political organizing. Prentis spent many years developing, learning and contributing to powerful organizations such as generationFIVE and Communities United Against Violence (CUAV), and as the former Healing Justice Director at Black Lives Matter Global Network - grappling with questions of how we value and transform ourselves the harm we enact and experience, all while transforming conditions and institutions around us.
Prentis currently teaches with Generative Somatics and Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity and serves on the board of the National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network. In 2016, Prentis was awarded the Buddhist Peace Fellowship Soma Award for community work inspired by Buddhist thought. Uncovering ancestral wisdom, creating new healing interventions, and shifting the culture of organizing towards creativity, healing, and joy have been central to Prentis' commitment and work. You can find out more about Prentis’ writing and other healing work at www.prentishemphill.com.
Flash weekend fundraiser with Time Being tattoo artists
We are so excited to partner with Time Being Tattoo artists on a fundraiser again this year!
To manage foot traffic in the studio, participating artists will post the available designs beforehand and pre-book.
Maker Sessions with CTJM
Art: Iván Arenas
This is an online event.
Join CTJM members Anthony Holmes, Dorothy Burge and Alice Kim as they reflect on how art and culture played a central role in envisioning reparations. In this session we'll talk about far we've come, what it took to get here, and the importance of the memorial. Then spend time with artists, writers, and educators to spend time making and creating in a world where there is so much un-making and destruction.
Writing Workshop with educator Bill Ayers & CTJM member Alice Kim
Make a quilt patch for incarcerated survivors with artist and CTJM member Dorothy Burge
Breathe Deeply in a workshop with Patricia Nguyen, co-designer of the memorial "Breath, Form and Freedom"
Make a protest poster with artist Aaron Hughes
Learn about teaching the Reparations Won Curriculum via history and art with CPS educators Jen Johnson & Dave Stieber
Mothers of the Movement
Image: Sarah-Ji, Love and Struggle Photos
This is an online event.
Be with us for an evening honoring the mothers of survivors who continue to fight with and for their loved ones. Our guests will include:
Armanda Shackelford, mother of Gerald Reed, who was recently released after nearly 31 years incarcerated
Regina Russell, mother of Tamon Russell
Rosemary Cade, mother of Antonio Porter
Carolyn Johnson, mother of Marcus Wiggins, the youngest known survivor of police torture
Co-moderated by Mark Clements, Survivor and Organizer at the Chicago Torture Justice Center and Alice Kim, co-founder of Chicago Torture Justice Memorials and Director of Human Rights Practice at the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights.
Press Conference with CTJM at Daley Plaza
Image: Patricia Nguyen and John Lee
This event will be outdoors and in person at Daley Plaza, 50 W Washington Street.
Masks required—please practice care for community.
On the 6-year anniversary of the passage of the Reparations Ordinance, we continue to demand the City of Chicago keeps its promise to survivors and their family members. It’s way past time to #BuildTheMemorial!
How We Got Here, Where We’re Going
Image: Chicago Reader, 1990
This is an online event.
A conversation with:
Gregory Banks, torture survivor
Mark Clements, torture survivor
John Conroy, journalist and playwright, My Kind of Town
Joey Mogul, attorney and author of the Reparations Ordinance
Maurice Possley, journalist
Co-moderated by:
Trina Reynolds-Tyler, Invisible Institute
Damon Williams, CTJC, #LetUsBreathe Collective, AirGo Radio
This event comes the same week as World Press Freedom Day, and we will explore the impact of early reporting about police torture in Chicago and journalism's important role in the continuing movement for justice for survivors and families.