Beyond the Usual Beating: The Jon Burge Police Torture Scandal and Social Movements for Police Accountability in Chicago.

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If you’re looking to learn more about the history of police brutality in Chicago, then I highly recommend Andrew S. Baer’s new book Beyond the Usual Beating: The Jon Burge Police Torture Scandal and Social Movements for Police Accountability in Chicago.

Baer, who is an assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, walks the reader through the rise, fall, and aftermath of the career of Jon Burge, a Chicago police officer who tortured people of color for confessions in the 1970s and 80s. Burge, and other officers working alongside him, hooked up suspects to electric wires and shocked them, wrapped plastic bags around their heads so that they couldn’t breathe, preformed mock executions—and more. Predictably, persons in Burge’s custody confessed to crimes they did not commit. When the story of the Chicago police torture scandal broke in the early 1990s, an already existing social movement for police accountability in Illinois gained momentum. Groups such as the People’s Law Office, Citizens Alert, Black People against Torture, and the journalism program at Northwestern University sustained the political pressure that eventually brought about the conviction of Jon Burge in 2010, an end to capital punishment in Illinois in 2011, and reparations for torture survivors in 2015. While Baer tells the story of a social movement against police oppression that achieved tangible results, he is quick to point out that the tale of Jon Burge is part and parcel of a larger narrative of “racist police violence” which started long before Burge’s career and is still ongoing.

The subject matter of Baer’s book doesn’t make for easy reading, emotionally. That said, his prose is engaging and accessible; the book is one of the most plainspoken academic monographs I’ve come across. Perhaps I’m a bit biased in favor of Baer’s work—I knew the guy in grad school, and we were in the same cohort. (Andy’s cool! Read his book!)

Today, at the funeral of George Floyd, Floyd’s niece asked “when has America ever been great?” It’s stories like that of Jon Burge that form part of the context of her question. Burge was a law enforcement officer who considered himself above the law. And according to Baer, the doings of Burge and his colleagues were an open secret among cops working on the South Side and among the higher-ups in City Hall downtown. When the Chicago PD finally fired Burge in the early 1990s, he still got a pension. Let’s be honest—in a truly great place, would stuff like this happen? Now don’t get me wrong: I think this country can change for the better. There are many people who want that change, and that is a good thing about the USA. It’s just that if American society is going to change, the national self-conception will have to become something to the effect of “it hasn’t been so great, but we’re working on it.” Books like Beyond the Usual Beating can help steer American identity toward more humility.

Read More Than the Headlines

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So while I’m still working on the review of Andrew Baer’s book, I had to take a moment to post about the front page of today’s Chicago Tribune (Sunday June 7, 2020). I’m kind of wondering if the Tribune meant to mislead people on purpose.

A large photo of a huge group of protestors dominates the top half of the Tribune’s front page. Underneath runs the headline “Thousands flood streets”. Underneath that headline are two smaller headlines: “Madison Street struggles to recover from unrest again” and “Police accountability focus of Union Park rally, march”.

When I first saw the sub-headline about Madison Street, I thought, “oh man. Looting again yesterday?” But no. The article was about the looting from the previous weekend. The “again” in the headline refers to the 1968 riots: Madison Street got hit then and this year too. The article about yesterday’s demonstration states that it was a peaceful march.

So I guess I’m just wondering why the Tribune staff put that sub-headline about Madison Street right where it did. Were they trying to stoke fear about unrest and in so doing prompt people to purchase a copy of the paper? Were they trying cast a shadow of doubt on the Union Park rally?

Just my thoughts as I saw the morning paper during this Fulcrum Year.

Make 2020 the Fulcrum Year

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So at this point, it sure does seem like 2020 is going to be a year that Americans are going to remember for a long time. The pandemic spring has transitioned into a summer of mass protests, or so it seems here on June 5.

Today is my son’s birthday—he turns five years old. What will this country be like when he, Lord willing, becomes an adult? He’ll turn eighteen in the year 2033. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but 2033 doesn’t seem too far from now.

What if, in 2033, the collective understanding of the recent past goes something like this: “oh yeah—2020, that was when things starting changing for the better. It had a rocky start, but after the tragedy of Floyd’s murder, the momentum of history started going in the right direction. It’s not perfect now, but let me tell you, there’s a lot less racial inequality and police brutality going around.”

I truly think that at this moment right now it is possible that 2020 could become that fulcrum year. But we all got to keep moving the energy forward.

So what can I do to move it forward?

You know, I once heard a folk singer say on the radio that social change is like a teeter-totter: there’s a giant weight of injustice on one end that weighs down the plank toward the bad. All ordinary people can ever do is to put their little spoonful of good on the other end. It seems like those spoonfuls aren’t going to do anything, but after enough spoonfuls, the whole thing switches in an instant.

I guess this blog is my little spoonful. I’m just one more voice on the huge, messy internet, but here I go.

Make 2020 the Fulcrum Year.

Coming soon: a review of Beyond the Usual Beating: The Jon Burge Police Torture Scandal and Social Movements for Police Accountability in Chicago by Andrew S. Baer.

Trains and the Technologies of Togetherness

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The recent Amtrak derailment tragedy in Philadelphia raised, for better or worse, the issue of America’s underfunded infrastructure. In covering that aspect of the story, journalists have been keen to point out that Amtrak is publicly funded and does not turn a profit. Journalists have flagged this fact in an effort, I imagine, to seem balanced: perhaps the accident ought to serve as a wake-up call for budget makers to spend more on infrastructure, but (so the story goes) since Amtrak is not technically profitable, why pour money into it?

In my mind, this begs the question: must profitability be the supreme criteria for a publicly administered technology? This is a question that we, as American citizens, ought to mull over. Transportation and communication networks connect individuals and communities to each other. By using them, people make real what otherwise might be simply imaginary–the civic community. Shouldn’t a technology’s ability to foster a flourishing community be of higher value to citizens than its ability to turn a profit?

I suspect that, at some level, American culture does not resonate with the reality of rail transportation–which is why Americans need more trains. Trains serve communities, not individuals. Individuals gather at their community’s local station and then join a host of people headed towards a destination according to an outsider’s schedule. Unlike the automobile, which enables drivers to start and stop their trips at will, trains demand of riders a degree of humility. It’s a technology of togetherness, not one of autonomy. Trains are the medicine for the self-focused bent of American society.