Newsletter MARCH 2023
Let’s have a more expansive conversation about the connection between state and intracommunal violence Written collaboratively by the Chicago Torture Justice Center team and published in The Triibe on February 16, 2023. Our team put together this article over the course of many months, coming together through a number of discussions and sharings about the collective lived experiences by those in our community. Introduction The Chicago Torture Justice Center (CTJC) is comprised of individuals who have survived unconscionable conditions. In both explicit and implicit metrics of violence, we have survived brutal assault at the hands of police, lengthy incarceration, sexual assault and intracommunal violence. We decided to take on the creation of this project collectively as a writing team. While we want to offer this piece within a context of existing research and statistical realities, we know academic knowledge does not outweigh the value of lived experience, so we are guided by this understanding. Sometimes described as “gun violence,” A photo of Carl Williams, a Learning Fellow at CTJC, in front of torture intracommunal violence — violence within our memorial banners at the Center. Taken by Jean Melasaine. communities — is something we have intimate knowledge of, both from direct impact and in the ripple effects we’ve experienced as family and community members. We have been in conversations with our community over the last year expressing our desire for more of a politicized analysis of the connections between state violence and intracommunal violence. These two types of violence tend to be characterized as distinct, but we know from our lived experience and researched evidence that this distinction is arbitrarily given and inaccurately stated. We offer this piece as both a glimpse into our thinking and with a genuine curiosity of what might be possible with a more expansive and politicized articulation of the connection between state violence and intracommunal violence. Chicago is frequently the center of national news highlighting the brutality and racism of its police department and criminal legal system (the John Burge tortures, Homan Square, being the wrongful conviction capital of the country, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) consent decree, to name a few of many). More often though, when Chicago is named, it is generally associated with discussions about high levels of community violence and shootings in specific parts of the city; such as Austin, North Lawndale and Englewood. Violence within the city is presented as distinct and unconnected from its contextual factors. Most of the attention and emphasis is placed on who is committing the violence and ignores the myriad of factors that lead up to and instigate it. The trope “Black-on-Black violence” is a frequent, yet faulty simplification of what actually unfolds within our communities. This simplification serves to veil overt state violence and its relationship to intracommunal violence. This practice of active framing and omission creates a false binary that illogically supposes that, “if you take a stand against state violence then you don’t care about intracommunal violence,” and vice versa. This narrative does not acknowledge how closely intertwined and pervasive systemic state violence and intracommunal violence are. This omission serves to compound trauma and perpetuate violence that continues to deeply impact our communities. cont'd on next page
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