7th Anniversary of the Reparations Ordinance
Photo by Sarah-ji
Written by Carla Mayer, CTJC Board Member and Chicago Torture Justice Memorials member
This month, as we celebrate the seven-year anniversary of the historic Reparations Ordinance for Chicago police torture survivors, their families, and the community members who fought on their behalf, we lift up both the Chicago Torture Justice Center (a Center that addresses the complex trauma as a result of police violence) and Chicago Torture Justice Memorials (a collective that drafted and helped to pass the historic Reparations Ordinance and continues to fight for a public memorial). They each, in their own way, have helped create a city-wide ecosystem of care that stands as the embodiment of creative resistance and liberatory practice.
In 2013, when the most recent push for reparations began, an ordinance acknowledging harm and redress felt like a fantasy. Two years later, on May 6, 2015, that dream became real when the hard-fought Reparations Ordinance, after decades of persistent survivor- and family-led community organizing, passed unanimously through Chicago City Council. And now 7 years in, the beauty, ferocity, surprise, and love circulating around the CTJ project cannot be overstated. It is a home and a way of being for so many.
Reparations for survivors, however, were so much more than 7 years in coming. The first known Burge survivor was tortured in 1972, and there have been dozens more who have come forward since then. The fight for justice for these survivors started with their families, long before the Reparations Ordinance was even imagined. Today these survivors, now in their 50s, 60s and 70s, are the faces of reparations, but they were young men, women and children when they were tortured. One of the things we know about torture, as well as trauma, is that it stays perpetually in the present.
Another thing we know is that torture and other acts of wanton terror by state actors is not in the past. The push to achieve reparations in Chicago for police torture survivors is linked to the recent, as well as historically more distant, racialized murders of Black and Brown people at the hands of law enforcement. Through the rise of the Movement for Black Lives and the widespread demands to Defund the Police, we see the legacy and impact of the reparations movement.
The Chicago Torture Justice Center already is and the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial will be a testament, a heritage site, and a celebration. Like the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C., the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, the Stolpersteine in Berlin, and the Memorial for the Disappeared in Santiago, Chile, the future Chicago Torture Justice Memorial, in addition to being a space to reflect and learn, will shine, by virtue of its very existence, a light on the conditions and structures that perpetuate injustice. While, like no other organization in the U.S., the Chicago Torture Justice Center will continue offering the promise and practice of liberation.
