{"id":15199,"date":"2017-03-21T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199///wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199//www.yesmagazine.org/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199//magazine-article/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199//how-chicago-became-the-first-city-to-make-reparations-to-victims-of-police-violence/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199//"},"modified":"2019-11-26T01:27:22","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T09:27:22","slug":"how-chicago-became-the-first-city-to-make-reparations-to-victims-of-police-violence","status":"publish","type":"magazine-article","link":"https:/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199///wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199//www.yesmagazine.org/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199//issue/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199//science/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199//2017/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199//03/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199//21/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199//how-chicago-became-the-first-city-to-make-reparations-to-victims-of-police-violence","title":{"rendered":"How Chicago Became the First City to Make Reparations to Victims of Police Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n

Somewhere between his 12th and 13th hour inside a Chicago Police Department interrogation room, Lindsey Smith decided to confess to a murder he didn’t commit. Multiple officers had pistol-whipped, stomped on, and beaten him, again and again. Convinced he would not otherwise live through the ordeal, Smith signed a false confession for the attempted murder of a 12-year-old White boy. At 17, Smith too was a boy. But with one major difference: He was Black./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n

Tried as an adult and convicted, Smith took a plea deal and served nearly five years in prison./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n

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He was among the first of at least 120 young, primarily Black men whom Chicago police officers would torture into false confessions. Yet while many who suffer at the hands of the police never get justice, Smith’s story ended differently. More than 40 years later, following the passage of historic reparations legislation, he became one of the first Black people in America to be granted reparations for racial violence./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n

After receiving parole, Smith moved out of the city and attempted to rebuild his life. But his struggles were far from over. Given the conviction on his record, Smith faced difficulty in everything from finding work to accessing his car insurance benefits. He remained haunted by his experiences as a teen inside the interrogation room and never felt at ease in Chicago again—until May 6, 2015./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n

On that date, the city of Chicago signed into law an ordinance granting cash payments, free college education, and a range of social services to 57 living survivors of police torture. Explicitly defined as reparations, the ordinance also includes a formal apology from Mayor Rahm Emanuel and a mandate to teach the broader public about the torture through a memorial and public schools curriculum. The hard-won legislation, envisioned by activists, made Chicago the first, and thus far only, municipality in the country to pay reparations for racist police violence./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n

Reparations have found a renewed life in American public discourse and at the heart of some social movements./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n

“I can sleep a whole lot better tonight,” Smith told local media upon the ordinance’s passage. A 61-year-old factory worker, he has since collected $100,000 in reparations./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n

“I’d take that night back before I took their money any day. I can never get back that time away from my family and the things I could have done,” Smith said. “But at least I can afford new shoes now.”/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n

As the national conversation around racial disparities in the United States has broadened to include criminalization, job discrimination, school segregation, and neglect of infrastructure, so has the need for a reckoning of the institutional wrongs done to African American communities. Reparations, the concept of offering monetary or social redress for historical injustices, has found a renewed life in American public discourse and at the heart of some social movements./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n

With the election of Donald Trump, it seems unlikely that reparations will move forward at a national scale anytime soon. But Chicago’s ordinance provides a model for creating reparations at the local level, even in the face of daunting circumstances./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n

The momentum has been building for years. Reparations sparked debate on the presidential campaign trail, and when more than 50 organizations collaborated to write the Movement for Black Lives policy platform earlier this year, they put reparations front and center./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n

“We wanted to put forth a set of policies that show what we really want and what would lead to a transformation of our conditions,” says Karl Kumodzi, a member of the coalition’s policy table who is active with the organizations BlackBird and Black Youth Project 100 in Brooklyn, New York. “Reparations had to be at the forefront of that.”/wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n

Since then, a Georgetown University committee has recognized that the school profited from the sale of slaves and said it would “reconcile” by naming two buildings after African Americans and by offering preferred admission status to any descendants of slaves who worked at the university./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n

Increasingly, the question appears not to be whether reparations are needed, but in what form and how to get them./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n

Most of the time, it’s still an abstract conversation. But Chicago’s $5.5 million reparations legislation is a concrete exception./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n

According to a city spokesperson, as of October, payments have been made to the majority of the 57 recognized survivors, nine individuals have begun the process of accessing free community college, and 11 requests for prioritized access to social services have been made. Meanwhile, a city-funded community center dedicated to survivors and their families is set to open later this year, when curriculum on the torture scandal will commence in Chicago Public Schools./wp-json/wp/v2/magazine-article/15199/n