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We Are Witnesses: Chicago [themarshallproject.org]

 

By The Marshall Project, September 18, 2019

The stories in “We Are Witnesses: Chicago” are not meant to soothe, but rather to agitate, to poke and prod our assumptions, to force us to wrangle with the way justice looks in Chicago. With candor and directness, these men and women speak to who we are as a city and who we are as a nation. They speak of forgiveness and of second chances. They speak of anguish alongside joy. They speak of vengeance pitted against forbearance. In their stories, they each in their own way pose the question: What is justice? It is a question we all need to contemplate.

It seems only right that here in Chicago — home to Studs Terkel, who saw the poetry in the language of everyday people —people tell their own stories. In this collection of videos, we hear from them directly. A former warden and a former gang member. The parents grieving the loss of their daughter and a cop grieving the loss of fellow officers. A judge and a prosecutor alongside a man and a woman each involved in a violent crime. When we watch their stories, we can’t look away.

It’d be a mistake to think of these stories as just about Chicago — for here, in the country’s center, we find all the fissures present in the American landscape, and here we can take stock of how we’re doing. It’s a place where the violence has sapped the spirit of individuals and of community, where the laws are uneven and where the relationship between the police and communities of color is permeated by mistrust. Chicago, for better or for worse, is America’s city.

[Please click here to watch the witnesses.]

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