All posts filed under: Chicago

Invisible Institute: Chicago Police Torture Archive

CHICAGO POLICE TORTURE ARCHIVE On Monday, February 15th at 6:30pm, join the Invisible Institute, 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. VISIT THE ARCHIVE JOIN THE LAUNCH EVENT “The Chicago Police Torture Archive is a human rights documentation of former Commander Jon Burge’s violence against more than 100 Black men, from the 1970s-1990s. The journalistic centerpiece of this site are the profiles of police torture survivors, most of whom were represented by the People’s Law Office of Chicago. “The People’s Law Office (PLO), which had worked alongside activists and in the courts to hold the City to account, donated its files to the Pozen Center for Human Rights at the University of Chicago in 2017. Pozen, in turn, asked the Invisible Institute to digitize, curate, and publish the legal archive. Our goal is to make these digitized records accessible to the public and to complement the …

Burge Victims Speak: Exhibit Discussion

Saturday January 19, 2019 at 1pm Harold Washington Library, 7th Floor Chicago Authors’ Room Hear photographer Amanda Rivkin, Chicago attorney Flint Taylor and survivor Darrell Cannon discuss the history, investigation, resolution and impact of torture by Chicago police commander Jon Burge and his “midnight crew.” This event is in conjunction with the Burge Victims Speak exhibit at Harold Washington Library Center. The talk will be accompanied by a presentation of Rivkin’s portraits.   More info.

TED x Mid Atlantic: Active Resistance

We are just beginning to understand the massive efforts by foreign governments to influence our elections and plant the seeds of chaos into the United States. Our reliance on digital platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and the speed at which misinformation can spread has left us vulnerable. So what can we do? Amanda Rivkin says we must be proactive and form an active resistance against these attacks. Amanda Rivkin is a photographer and writer focused on gender, security, political and military issues in Eastern Europe and the United States.   Currently she is at work on a long-term project documenting in portraits and oral histories the victims of Chicago municipal police torture under former Commander Jon Burge. For this work, she has received a grant from the International Women’s Media Foundation Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists and support from The Invisible Institute, a non- profit journalism outfit focusing on issues of policing in Chicago.   In February 2017, she founded Trumpistan Watch, a free weekday e-mail subscription and blog media monitoring Western and …

Access to Justice: Art Works Projects at the Chicago Public Library

“Less than one percent of those arrested and held in police custody in Chicago in 2013 had a lawyer present, according to Chicago Police Data (source: CNN, May 5, 2016). What challenges face the Chicago community in providing equal justice to all, and how are advocates addressing issues of equal treatment and rule of law globally?” Panelists: Sheila Bedi, Clinical Associate Professor of Law, Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center, Northwestern University School of Law Flint Taylor, civil rights attorney, People’s Law Office Amanda Rivkin, photographer, Howard Buffett Fund for Women Journalists, International Women’s Media Foundation Moderator: Leslie Thomas, outgoing Executive Director, Art Works Projects Broadcast: CAN-TV (local Chicago public access)

Columbia Journalism Review: A photojournalist tells the stories of Chicago police torture victims

Jackie Spinner, a professor at Columbia College who has invited me to speak to her international reporting classes several times and ex-Washington Post correspondent in Baghdad and elsewhere, wrote the first little bit of press about my current oral history and portrait project on victims of Chicago municipal police torture under former Commander Jon Burge. Burge was on active duty with the Chicago Police Department from 1973-1991 and subsequently fired in 1993 after an array of crimes involving the abuse of suspects in custody were exposed on his watch, including but not limited to beatings, burning and electro-torture. Graciously, Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) has ran a couple of the press photographs including one of Marvin Reeves, a man so gentle he was like an uncle when we spoke for nearly two hours in his sister’s Bronzeville apartment. He received a multi-million dollar settlement from the city of Chicago for the injustices done to him. From Jackie’s article: Now Rivkin, who grew up in the city, plans to spend the next year photographing these men and …

Burge Victims Speak (in progress)

“Torture can be an open secret in a democratic society. Apparently, successive Chicago police superintendents suppressed internal investigations that revealed torture, successive state’s attorneys knew of the torture but refused to investigate, and the state’s Felony Review Unit knowingly elicited and used tortured confessions. Approximately one-third of the current Cook County criminal court judges are former assistant state’s attorneys or Area 2 detectives who were involved in the torture cases. Courts and the public will also look the other way.” – Darius Rejali, Torture and Democracy

IWMF Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists Grant for “Burge Victims Speak”

Thrilled to announce for the first time in my life, I am being given a grant by the International Women’s Media Fund (IWMF) Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists to stay home and work. I’ll be spending the next year at least in Chicago interviewing and photographing survivors of municipal police torture under former Commander Jon Burge, who imported techniques such as electrotorture which he learned as a military police officer in Vietnam onto the streets of Chicago for nearly 20 years to force confessions from 1972 until he was suspended from the force in 1991 and fired in 1993. He later served four years for perjury but still receives a full city pension. Very special thanks to everyone who has lent time, expertise, knowledge, and patience to this project so far, there are many of you to thank and a few of you who would rather I didn’t but know you have helped tremendously and I am filled with gratitude.