“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
–James Baldwin
In a climate of increasing hostility against Black civil rights initiatives, including attacks on DEI, unfair treatment of immigrants, and the Supreme Court decision on redistricting, Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson and a community of organizers, lawyers, the wrongfully convicted and police torture survivors took part in a ceremony at Washington Park on King Drive, Chicago on July 8, to break ground for the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial. According to Jen Asche, Executive Director of the foundation for CTJM, “this will be the first public memorial in the U.S. dedicated to the honest remembrance of state violence at the hands of the police.” It exposes one of Chicago’s longest and darkest hidden truths—that a pattern and practice of police torture occurred from 1971 to 1991. The detective’s techniques included racially motivated torture, including electroshock, mock executions, suffocation, and beatings against 124 Black men, women, and Latinae people. As I stood among torture survivors, lawyers, and organizers at the groundbreaking for the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial, I realized I was witnessing the culmination of a struggle that had shaped more than two decades of my own life.
One might expect the theme of the event to be trauma or even revenge, but the resounding theme at the park was truth. Ahra Baker’s powerful opening performance set the tone, giving voice to both trauma and resilience. Following her song, speakers acknowledged the Indigenous peoples who shed their blood on this land at the hands of British colonizers. That remembrance underscored a painful parallel: like Indigenous communities before them, the survivors of Chicago police torture were subjected to the unchecked power of those who saw them as less than fully human and showed them no mercy. For far too long, the truth of what happened to these men and women remained hidden.
The atmosphere was charged with the feeling that we were collectively embarking on something unprecedented. Joey Mogul, an attorney with many years involved in defending Burge torture survivors and co-founder and board president of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Foundation, stepped up to the mic and said, to exuberant applause, “Today we break ground!” These men tell what happened (motioning to police torture survivors Gregory Banks and Anthony Holmes). Burge and his crew tortured over 120 Black men at Area 2 and 3 Headquarters, forcing them to suffer under the most egregious conditions by being beaten with a blackjack, mock executions, tormented with racist epithets, and finally forced to confess. In court, no one would believe them, and the confessions stood as proof against them. Today, that’s all changed. Their dirty secret is now common knowledge.
Another theme that resonated with the crowd was that of resistance. The story of the memorial is one of struggle. When torture victim Gregory Banks, a member of CJTM who was forced to confess in 1982, took the stage, he announced that this is a historic day. For him, the memorial is a permanent reminder and a responsibility to shine the truth, and it is also a sign of resistance. He said, “When people come together with change, education, and hope, we will continue to seek justice. We must never let this happen again.” Gregory was followed by torture survivor Anthony Holmes, who was electroshocked in 1973. He reminded the audience that there was nothing to be sad about: “We’re winning,” he exclaimed.
The stage was set for Mayor Brandon Johnson, who, unlike his mayoral predecessors, supported the Memorial project and dug in, literally and figuratively! He said, “The memorial can’t undo the harm, but it can stop its being perpetuated.” Listening to Mayor Johnson, I was reminded of the youngest Burge victim, Marcus Wiggins, who was picked up and electroshocked at the age of 13. He said in a world where every young Black man was considered a terrorist, the monument meant “a true place of peace.” He continued,“ we can feel deep dark stuff that most people don’t understand.”
For torture survivor Stanley Howard who spent 16 years on death row for a crime he did not commit, the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial will stand as a “testament long after I’m gone that will endure.” He says, “it’s a simple message: you have to study the past in order not to repeat it in the future.” He noted that all three branches of government were involved in the torture conspiracy, so the monument is also a testament to the “struggle and fight” it took by the moms and activists to bring down Mayor Daley and State’s Attorney Dick Devine’s torture machine. Former National Organizer for the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Alice Kim, knows that well. She sees the monument as a “symbol of all the labor and all the struggle to get justice and survive and more than that it’s a call to action.” We need to keep fighting!
The resources that made this possible came from the Johnson Administration, the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Foundation (CTJMF), and the city. The memorial is the final piece of the holistic reparations legislation passage in 2015. The holistic reparations legislation didn’t come out of thin air. It was spearheaded by a multiracial, intergenerational campaign in 2014-2015. They chose reparations over lawsuits and decided they would have greater impact on communities if family members were included in the reparations instead of just receiving individual checks. It demanded and received
- A formal apology for the torture
- $5.5 million Reparations Fund for Burge Torture victims
- Free college at City College for the survivors and their families
- Creation of a history curriculum in the schools
- Creation of Chicago Torture Justice Center
- And mandated the construction of a memorial
According to Joey Mogul, “this memorial is part of the reparations package.” And while it will be made of bricks and cement, Mogul believes it will be more than just a lasting stru cture: “It confronts, paints a history” that is uncomfortable. Aislinn Pulley, Executive Director of the Chicago Torture Justice Center and co-founder of Chicago Black Lives Matter, believes it will have a positive impact by “setting a standard of what is acceptable behavior by declaring that torture is unacceptable.” Many would still soon bury it. But this isn’t what’s happening. The monument stands for every single person who ever held a flyer or poster board and marched through the streets on behalf of the police torture survivors.
Those that designed it also saw it as more than a building. Designed with input from the torture survivors’ family members and other CTJMF members, the structure is meant to reflect the survivors’ experience of torture and coerced confessions. The winning memorial design is titled “Breath, Form, and Freedom.” It was created by artists Patricia Nguyen and John Lee. In the words of its principal architect, John Gay, “we developed a concrete edifice with juxtaposed, swirling and undulating patterns to deliver a symbolic rhythmic ‘Vortex.’ The unapologetic expressions mirror the survivors’ experience.”
But the memorial stands not only as a reflection of past suffering; it is also the product of a long struggle to force the city to acknowledge that history. As the leader of the Death Row 10 campaign, the event held special significance for me. Over twenty years ago, the former Executive Director of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Marlene Martin asked me to leave the work I was doing against police brutality in New York and instead coordinate a campaign for a group of men calling themselves the Death Row 10. Burge and his detectives had tortured these men and railroaded them to death row on the basis of forced confessions. We modeled our campaign off the grassroots bottom-up campaign that preceded us and led to the forced retirement (with full pension) of Jon Burge. Flint Taylor of the People’s Law Office uncovered the conspiracy and supported the political campaign that led to Burge’s firing. I had the opportunity to speak with the producer and director, Peter Kuttner, of the documentary called The End of the Night Stick that documented that struggle and that became the blueprint for ours. Working with family members we helped create a movement that lead to the release of three of the Death Row 10 (the fourth had another case to serve)
Watching the shovels break the ground, I found myself thinking of those who had fought alongside us but were no longer here to witness this day. I remembered the mother of the wrongfully convicted Frank Bounds, Costella Cannon, whose speeches could move an audience like few others, and sweet champion Louva Bell, the mother of torture survivor Ronald Kitchen. I thought of Darby Tillis, the Black street preacher who spent 18 years on death row for a crime he did not commit and devoted his life to exposing the truth about police torture and wrongful convictions. I also remembered the many victims of Illinois’ racist and corrupt criminal legal system who did not live to see this moment, as well as the countless organizers whose labor too often goes unrecognized.
This memorial belongs to all of them. It is proof that ordinary people, through persistence and collective action, can change the historical record. Long after today’s speeches have faded from memory, this monument will continue telling a story that those in power once tried to erase. It stands as a testament to James Baldwin’s words: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
At a time when it is easy to feel overwhelmed by injustice, the groundbreaking of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial reminds us that history is not written by the powerful alone. It is also written by survivors who refused to be silenced, families who refused to give up, lawyers and organizers who refused to walk away, and communities that kept fighting until the truth could no longer be denied. Their victory reminds us that even the longest struggles can end in justice—and that when people organize, they can win.
Joan Parkin is the editor in chief of the Vanguard Incarcerated Press and a member of the Vanguard Board of Directors
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