August 2022 Newsletter

Newsletter AUGUST 2022

Sixteen exonerations in less than one month!

July and August mark historic months of celebration and reunion for 16 people that were exonerated in a span of 4 weeks. Since the exoneration of the Hernandez brothers Juan and Rosendo on July 11th, 14 more people have had their cases dismissed. These cases were tied to Reynaldo Guevara and Anthony Wocjik, cops who were known for fabricating reports and falsely framing individuals for murder. Guevara alone is tied to over 50 cases of misconduct, and Wocjik was part of the coverup in the police shooting of Laquan McDonald. This follows just months after the mass exoneration of 44 more people who were convicted on false charges at the hands of corrupt ex-CPD sergeant Ronald Watts.

Combined, these 16 people spent 426 years in prison.

We celebrate their return home, while also grieving the precious time that the carceral system stole from them and their families. These are not the first, last, or only survivors tied to Guevara and Wocjik to come home, and we hope that these cases only mark the beginning of more historic homecomings and wins.

We will continue to fight for and stand alongside all survivors that remain incarcerated.

CJTC's first reentry dinner On July 27th, the Peer Reentry program held its very first Reentry Dinner! The goal of the dinner was to invite survivors and formerly incarcerated folks to be together in community, share a meal, join in conversation, and have a good time. We want survivors to know that first and foremost the Center is theirs–it is yours. It’s a space where people can bring their whole selves.

We congratulate the Peer Reentry Program team, La Tanya Jenifor-Sublett and Curtis Ferdinand, for organizing a successful event that brought so many people together.

While reflecting on this event, La Tanya shared, “I wanted for survivors to know that they could be in that space without it being connected to other things, where a meal and conversation was enough.”

It’s an honor and a gift to have survivors together at the Center, and we look forward to more dinners in the future.

A photo from the reentry dinner, taken by Owen M. Lawson III

6337 S. WOODLAWN AVENUE CHICAGO IL 60637 CHICAGOTORTUREJUSTICE.ORG

Artwork by Molly Costello

CTJC unapologetically stands with all survivors

Survivors of police torture and violence are at the heart of everything we do at the Chicago Torture Justice Center, and we are unapologetic and uncompromising in our support for all survivors.

Healing from trauma–especially trauma that is facilitated and reinforced by the state over decades–is difficult and complex to navigate. All the survivors in our community are at different stages of their journeys, and at the Center it’s our mission to make sure that survivors know that they don’t have to walk alone.

We are intentional about operating through a lens of transformation and Politicized Healing at every step of the way. This means that we sit with survivors through times of difficulty, through navigating their past traumas, and collectively work through what it means to be accountable when harm occurs within our communities. We do not expect to have the answers. Solutions come from the connections and conversations we have with one another, and it takes time, trust, and deep commitment to our values to move towards them. Our values are rooted in the transformation and hope of a world free from police and state violence, a world in which we have the capacity to grow and learn from mistakes, and where accountability doesn’t mean punishment. We are committed to living this value as a community.

We all carry varying amounts of trauma. Survivors especially, often carry a substantial amount of trauma - which starts with societal and community violence resulting from centuries of racist oppression, to violent encounters with the police, to being subjected for decades to harsh prison conditions, to then reentering back into a society that continues to reject them. This trauma impacts a survivor’s daily life, their relationships, their outlook and their approach to healing. It manifests in ways that can cause hurt and misunderstanding.

Showing up for each other while navigating this complexity is challenging, but it’s why we’re here. We are here to challenge the systems that punish and incarcerate, and we do this by creating our own ways of addressing harm in our community by actively choosing not to replicate the punitive mentality of disposing people from our movement and our spaces. We move at the speed of trust, by taking our time and setting boundaries along the way that feel rooted in our values and love for each other.

The work of repair, of reparations, requires us to transform the ways we’ve internalized these systems in ourselves and in our practices.

Doing this work of reparations and transformation means being committed to undertaking the intricacies of trauma that follow in the wake of state violence. This work requires us to hold and understand the multitudes we all, and especially survivors, embody. This work also helps us understand that policing and punitive behavior is so deeply embedded in the foundation of our institutions, that it can manifest in a number of ways within our movement: performative allyship, opportunism, exploiting survivors’s stories, elitism, excluding survivors, etc.

The work of repair, of reparations, requires us to transform the ways we’ve internalized these systems in ourselves and in our practices. As Prentis Hemphill beautifully writes in their powerful piece Letting Go of Innocence: “What changes us are the processes of making amends, incorporating another’s reality into our own, of knowing ourselves, our motivations, of being in practice that interrupts our unconscious and violent flailing. What changes us is vulnerability, acknowledgement, and responsibility.”

We have to name and acknowledge harm where it occurs, and move forward not with ease, but with intention and care for each other and ourselves. There is no expectation of perfection in our work, in fact, we reject the notion of perfectionism by embracing our complexities. It’s the way we maneuver through our inevitable mistakes and shortcomings that brings us closer to our values of liberation and radical transformation.

6337 S. WOODLAWN AVENUE CHICAGO IL 60637 CHICAGOTORTUREJUSTICE.ORG

JUNE 2022 NEWSLETTER

Commemorating Black August Kumasi Speaks: What is Black August?

By Kumasi, originally published in The San Francisco Bay View on Aug. 1, 2019

Black August originated in the California penal system to honor fallen Freedom Fighters Jonathan Jackson, George Jackson, William Christmas, James McClain and Khatari Gaulden. Jonathan Jackson was gunned down outside the Marin County California courthouse on Aug. 7, 1970, as he attempted to liberate three imprisoned Black Liberation Fighters: James McClain, William Christmas and Ruchell Magee.

Ruchell Magee is the sole survivor of that armed liberation attempt. He is the former co-defendant of Angela Davis and has been locked down for 38 years [now 45 years], most of it in solitary confinement.

Photo of George Jackson, taken by Ruth-Marion Baruch in 1970

George Jackson was assassinated by prison guards during a Black prison rebellion at San Quentin on Aug. 21, 1971.

Three prison guards were also killed during that rebellion and prison officials charged six Black and Latino prisoners with the death of those guards. These six brothers became known as the San Quentin Six. Khatari Gaulden was a prominent leader of the Black Guerilla Family (BGF) after Comrade George was assassinated.

Khatari was a leading force in the formation of Black August, particularly its historical and ideological foundations.

Khatari, like many of the unnamed freedom fighters of the BGF and the revolutionary prison movement of the 1970s, was murdered at San Quentin Prison in 1978 to eliminate his leadership and destroy the resistance movement.

The brothers who participated in the collective founding of Black August wore black armbands on their left arm and studied revolutionary works, focusing on the works of George Jackson. The brothers did not listen to the radio or watch television in August. Additionally, they didn’t eat or drink anything from sun-up to sundown; and loud and boastful behavior was not allowed.

The brothers did not support the prison’s canteen. The use of drugs and alcoholic beverages was prohibited and the brothers held daily exercises, because during Black August, emphasis is placed on sacrifice, fortitude and discipline. Black August is a time to embrace the principles of unity, self-sacrifice, political education, physical training and resistance.

Do you have any reflections about Black August?

We'd love to hear from you!

JUNE 2022 NEWSLETTER

Your Contributions In May, we asked you what your dreams were for the CTJC community in the next 5 years. We've included some of your responses here.

Thank you so much to all of you that write to us.

We love hearing from you! Our incarcerated community is at the heart of our work, and we value what you have to share with us.

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Book Requests?

We're thinking about ways to connect with our community inside at the end of the year. We'd love to send you the gift of a book of your choosing. Would you be interested in receiving a book? If so and you haven't already, send us your request!

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