Fighting the torture machine: On the past and present of Chicago police violence.
Attorney Flint Taylor reviews a half-century career fighting police violence in Chicago - from his work pursuing justice for assassinated Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and his role uncovering the crimes of torture ring-leader Jon Burge, to winning financial and institutional reparations for the victims (and victimized communities) under the CPD's forceful regime.
Flint is author of The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago from Haymarket Books.
Flint Taylor
As a law student, Flint Taylor was a founding member of the People’s Law Office and has been a partner of the PLO since 1972. As a student and lawyer, he has been dedicated to litigating against police violence and racism for more than fifty-four years. Among the landmark cases that Taylor has litigated are the Fred Hampton Black Panther case; the Greensboro, North Carolina case against the KKK, Nazis and Greensboro police; and a series of cases arising from a pattern and practice of police torture and cover-up by Chicago police Commander Jon Burge, former Cook County State’s Attorney and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, and numerous other law enforcement officials. He has represented, and continues to represent, many wrongfully convicted persons, including police torture victims who have spent decades in prison and on death row. He has chronicled his work and that of the People’s Law Office in an award-winning historical memoir titled The Torture Machine.
Remembering the assassination of Fred Hampton, and the threat to Black liberation today.
