Chicago Torture Justice Center

The Chicago Torture Justice Center seeks to address the traumas of police violence and institutionalized racism through access to healing and wellness services, trauma-informed resources, and community connection. The Center is a part of and supports a movement to end all forms of police violence.

One of the most documented movements against police violence and torture occurred in Chicago over the span of 30 years. On May 6, 2015, after decades of struggle, the Chicago City Council unanimously passed the Reparations Ordinance proposed by the community-based group Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, including a provision to set up a center for services for survivors and their immediate families or what is now known as the Chicago Torture Justice Center. With that act, Chicago became the first city in the U.S. to provide reparations for racially-motivated police violence. You can read about the history of the fight for recognition, reparations, and healing waged by survivors and their loved ones here.

CTJC focuses on the following services:

• The Survivor Repair Fund is a revolving resource and a means of practicing ongoing repair with survivors of police violence and torture. The fund provides survivors with emergency financial assistance for necessary costs like emergency housing, groceries, medical costs, transportation, rent, and utilities.
• Politicized Healing is a comprehensive therapeutic service for survivors that addresses the harm—felt by individuals and communities—caused by historic and evolving systems of oppression.
• The Peer Reentry Program seeks to address the harms that have been created, fostered, and maintained by the carceral system. CTJC addresses these experiences by providing support that is individualized, holistic, politicized, transformational, collaborative, and liberatory.
• Realizing and Implementing Strategies to End Police Violence (RISE) community meetings bring together those who have experienced police violence directly or indirectly with local allies who want to work for change. 
• Through CTJC’s Speakers Bureau, survivors are supported in sharing their stories with audiences across the city, with a particular emphasis on bringing to life the Chicago Public Schools Reparations Won curriculum. 
• The Breaking Down Walls Book Club, a reading group that physically meets at the Center, engages members incarcerated in prisons across Illinois through correspondence and reflections guided by a shared study guide.
• In partnership with facilitators from the Old Town School of Folk Music, the Center hosts a Healing Song Circle. Through weekly singing and writing exercises, participants share the history of protest anthems as a powerful tool in the struggle for justice and lifted their own voices in community.

Source: Chicago Torture Justice Center