Albert Woodfox – who has the dubious honor of being the United States’ longest serving prisoner in solitary confinement – is just one of an estimated 80,000 people held in solitary confinement on any given day in the United States.
Survivors of torture by Former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, along with their families, lawyers, advocacy groups and activists, worked to make an historic reparations ordinance a reality. In addition to $5.5 million fund for eligible victims, the reparations package includes free attendance at City Colleges, specialized trauma counseling, a formal apology, a permanent memorial, and history lessons about Burge torture in Chicago Public Schools.
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While ‘assigned’ to the US military base at Guantánamo Bay, detective Richard Zuley led one of the most brutal interrogations ever conducted at the prison. ‘I’ve never seen anyone stoop to these levels,’ a former Marine Corps prosecutor said. But Benita Johnson, Andre Griggs, Lathierial Boyd and Lee Harris describe Zuley using familiar techniques on them at Chicago police precincts.
In Chicago, many have used the energy and opening created by these ongoing protests to re-animate existing long-term anti-police violence campaigns. On Saturday afternoon, hundreds of people gathered at the Chicago Temple to show our love for police torture survivors on the day after Jon Burge was released from house arrest. The gathering was billed as a people’s hearing and rally in support of a reparations ordinance currently stalled in the Chicago City Council.
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Despite its rich fund of hard-won detail, the Senate report has, at best, produced a neutral outcome, a draw in this political contest over impunity. Unless we inscribe the lessons from this Senate report deeply into the country’s collective memory, then some future crisis might prompt another recourse to torture that will do even more damage to this country’s moral leadership.
The New York Times editorial - in the paper of record - demanded that those responsible for the vicious torture policies be brought to trial. Any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington; the former CIA director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos. There are many more names that could be considered.
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