Vol. 3 Issue 6
Announcing the Chicago Police Torture Archive
The Chicago Police Torture Archive is the product of a multi-year effort to curate and make public the documentary history of the legal campaign to achieve justice for survivors of Commander Jon Burge’s violence, photos by Amanda Rivkin, chicagopolicetorturearchive.com
A Letter from Jamie Kalven to a 12-Year-Old Friend
Dear Afam,
You’ve been on my mind in recent weeks. What, I wonder, has it been like for you, a 12-year-old Black American, to take in the flood of images from the January 6th storming of the U. S. Capitol?
Your mother described to me how upset and disoriented you were in the days following the attack. You’re not alone. We’ve experienced a collective trauma: a shock too large to absorb all at once. We’ll be struggling to make sense of what happened, to fully experience it, for a long time to come.
I also expect, as you grow to adulthood and beyond, that you’ll experience this time anew at various points in your life. That has certainly been true for me. In 1960, I was the age you are now. I grew up during an era when, for a brief shining moment, there was political will to address conditions of structural racism. Then, as at earlier moments in our history, modest steps toward equality provoked fierce, relentless reaction.
With talk of “revolution” in the air, the 1960s were an exciting but also a bewildering time to be a teenager. It’s not easy to find your place in the world—and in your times—when your society is in the midst of an identity crisis. In a sense, I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to make sense of those formative years.
In 1969, my father, a law professor at the University of Chicago, gave the commencement address at Brown University. Among those receiving an honorary degree that day was Henry Kissinger, national security advisor to President Richard Nixon. When the moment came for Kissinger to receive his degree, most of the students turned their backs to the podium in protest. After being honored, Kissinger returned to his seat. He leaned toward my father. “What they don’t realize,” he whispered, “is that if revolution comes to this country, it will come from the right.”
Over the past half century, there has indeed been something resembling a revolution. It has been directed against government as an instrument for achieving equality. And it has made us what we are today: a society deformed by grotesque income inequality, mass incarceration, a reactionary judiciary, and a stupefying political discourse unmoored from reality.
Everything came to a head on January 6th. The eruption of violence at the Capitol, like the bursting of a boil, revealed in the most dramatic way possible the ugly nature of the forces in our society prepared to subvert democracy in order to resist racial equality.
It’s critically important to see this for what it is and not to avert our eyes. At the same time, it’s equally important not to allow images of January 6th to block out other things we know to be true. That requires effort, for violence inevitably commands centerstage and eclipses the world of human solidarity and care. But we can call forth that world by remembering the protests during the summer of 2020 in response to the police killing of George Floyd, in which millions participated in thousands of cities and towns across the nation, making it the largest movement in U.S. history, a movement that was overwhelmingly nonviolent and unprecedented in its diversity. That too is part of our current reality.
We are thus at a pivotal juncture in history. The novelist Philip Roth writes:
...the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied as "History," harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.
The history that lies ahead is unwritten. Anything can happen. That is frightening, I know, but it’s also the source of our freedom to act. Among the possibilities is a rare opportunity to make fundamental changes in how we live together as neighbors.
At times like this, peril and possibility inhabit the same moment. The challenge is to remain alert to both. I don’t know if there is a name for the quality of poise required to do this, but it’s what I strive for and what I wish for you, my friend.
As ever,
Jamie
Last week, we published the Chicago Police Torture Archive, the first human rights archive documenting the violence and terror inflicted on more than 100 Black people by Commander Jon Burge and his “Midnight Crew” from the 1970s-1990s. The centerpiece of the site is profiles of police torture survivors, most of whom were represented by the People’s Law Office of Chicago, which donated its extensive legal archive to the Pozen Center for Human Rights at the University of Chicago in 2017. The Invisible Institute then digitized the archive -- more than 100,000 pages of case documents -- and worked to curate other historical records, essays from key figures, multimedia artifacts, and a detailed timeline, as well as a network analysis tool of officers associated with Burge.
On Monday, February 15th at 6:30pm, join us, Chicago Torture Justice Center, Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, and the Pozen Center for Human Rights to honor the history and struggle of survivors and their families, and commemorate the launch of the Chicago Police Torture Archive. Register here →
While organizing his files, Jamie recently came upon an unpublished article by his father, legal scholar Harry Kalven Jr., on whether Richard Nixon should stand trial. It was the last piece he wrote before his death in 1974. Read it now, 47 years after he wrote it, in The Atlantic. The article speaks to a central question of the moment: How should the legal system respond to crimes that a former president may have committed while in office?
Market Box, a mutual aid initiative coordinated by organizations in the Experimental Station, has rebooted for the winter. In partnership with Local Foods, participating neighbors deliver bags of fresh produce, eggs, bread, meat, and critical information to 400 households on the South Side. Join us the last two Saturdays of every month →
The International Documentary Association honored the Somebody podcast series with its award for Best Audio Documentary of 2020.
In the December 2020 issue of RadioDoc Review, writer Neroli Price analyzes how the podcast "moves towards a model of shared authority between producers and their sources." Listen to Somebody wherever you get your podcasts.
