About CTJMF
Formed by torture survivors and organizers from the #ReparationsWon campaign, Chicago Torture Justice Memorials Foundation (CTJMF) is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to create and maintain the memorial promised as part of the reparations legislation for Chicago Police torture survivors.
The Memorial for the Burge torture survivors is an essential part of creating an enduring dominant narrative that documents racist state violence in the United States. It explains how the torture under former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge’s command was allowed to manifest and fester during the rise of mass incarceration nationwide. The Memorial is also essential for telling the unique and exceptional story of survivors, organizers, lawyers, and independent journalists who worked collectively for decades to expose the truth and secure reparations for the Chicago Police (Burge) torture survivors, making history. The Memorial tells a story that we hope inspires and emboldens others to continue to fight, resist, and work towards a better world.
Our People
CTJM Foundation Board Members and Staff
Our Board
Anthony Holmes
Board Vice President
Anthony Holmes is a survivor of police torture. In 1973, Jon Burge and two detectives tortured Anthony into confessing to a 1972 murder. This resulted in a 30 year prison sentence for Anthony. Anthony’s testimony was critical in shedding a light on the Burge cases. Anthony is also a member of Chicago Torture Justice Memorials (CTJM) and was a leader in the campaign for reparations for Burge survivors. He is still active in this work with CTJM and serves as a member of the CTJMF board in support of the final piece of the 2015 legislation: the memorial.
Carla Jean Mayer
Advisory Board Member
Carla Jean Mayer is a writer, educator, and artist who has worked for Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Park District. She’s been a member of Chicago Torture Justice Memorials since 2011 and is an original and current board member of the Chicago Torture Justice Center. She lives in South Shore and rural SW Michigan.
Carl Williams
Advisory Board Member
Carl Williams was wrongfully convicted at age 17 and served almost 27 years in prison. He is a torture survivor, activist, and the Community Engagement Specialist at Chicago Torture Justice Center. Carl works on criminal justice reform issues, juvenile issues, and young adult issues. Through his work, Carl supports the formerly incarcerated as well as those currently incarcerated. He has spoken at several colleges about criminal justice issues, including limits, rights, and re-entry, including education and employment for those returning home. Carl is now continuing to fight for his complete exoneration.
Gregory Banks
Advisory Board Member
Gregory Banks (he/him) is an activist and works at the Chicago Torture Justice Center as the Safety Coordinator. He experienced abuse and torture at the Chicago Area 2 police station in 1983 and spent many years in the Illinois Department of Correction due to being tortured, and coerced into a false confession. Gregory is a former substance abuse counselor and avid reader. He spends his time going out into the community and educating Chicago Public School students on the topic of police violence and reparations. He also serves on the Survivor and Family Advisory Council and R.I.S.E. (Realizing and Implementing Strategies to End Police Violence) at the Chicago Torture Justice Center.
Iván Arenas
Board Secretary
Iván Arenas (he/him) is an Associate Director at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Trained as an anthropologist and architect, his research focuses on how social movements use creative art practices to establish solidarity. Dr. Arenas is a practicing artist and has curated three yearlong exhibits at UIC that have mobilized and extended his research on the intersection between protest practices, social transformation, and aesthetics. Beyond the University, he is active as a member of Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, Chicago United for Equity, the Pilsen Housing Cooperative, and the Chicago ACT Collective. Dr. Arenas has an undergraduate degree from Columbia College of Columbia University and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Joey Mogul
Board President
Joey Mogul is a movement lawyer, organizer, initiator and co-founder of Chicago Torture Justice Memorials (CTJM) and a partner at People’s Law Office. Mogul works with and represents organizers in their campaigns for justice and liberation. Mogul has sought justice for Chicago Police torture survivors for over 25 years, successfully representing survivors in their criminal and civil rights litigation, and at the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) in Geneva, Switzerland. Mogul drafted the original City Council ordinance providing reparations for the Chicago Police (Burge) torture survivors. Mogul co-led the multi-racial grassroots coalition of CTJM, Project NIA, We Charge Genocide and Amnesty International, USA, to successfully pass the historic reparations legislation in Chicago’s City Council making it the first municipality to provide systemic redress for racially motivated police violence. Mogul is also a co-author of Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the U.S. (Beacon Press 2011).
Lisa Yun Lee
Board Treasurer
Lisa Yun Lee (she/her) is a cultural activist and the Executive Director of the National Public Housing Museum, the nation’s first cultural institution committed to preserving and interpreting the history of public housing and propelling housing as a human right. She is also an Associate Professor in Museum and Exhibition Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and serves on the Boards of the Field Foundation, Landmarks Illinois, and the American Association of State and Local History.
Mark Clements
Advisory Board Member
Mark Clements (he/him) is a Chicago police torture survivor. At age 16 in 1981 he was taken to area 3 violent crime unit where he was tortured to confess to a crime. Mark was one of Illinois first juvenile’s sentence to natural life without parole in the state of Illinois. He remained incarcerated for 28 years before his conviction was overturned in 2009. In 2009 he was hired as administrator and organizer with the Campaign to End the Death Penalty in which he held other positions working from Chicago and Austin, Texas. He also helped to organize and establish the existence of the Illinois Fair Sentence of Youth through Northwestern University of School of Law, while sitting on the board of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. Mark works at the Chicago Torture Justice Center as a Community Organizer.
Mary Patten
Advisory Board Member
Mary Patten is a visual artist, video-maker, writer, educator, and long-time political activist. For years, Patten has participated in many public collaborations and actions – Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, ACT UP Chicago, the Madame Binh Graphics Collective, and Feel Tank Chicago – to reclaim a “utopia of the everyday,” a way of being together in the world that allows for anger, joy, and reparative visions. Patten has exhibited and screened work for over thirty years in many artist-run and alternative spaces, university museums, and international film / video festivals, and is Professor Emerit at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Michelle Y. Clopton
Advisory Board Member
Michelle Y. Clopton is a living testament of resilience, after suffering at the hands of Jon Burge detectives disguised as goons and spending 27 years behind bars, Michelle refuses to be defined by what she endured. She states that, “ the mind has an incredible power”, not just to remember pain, but to rise above it”. Ms. Clopton is an inspiring, uplifting activist and organizer who focuses on helping to win the support of the Southside community residents. Since her release she has helped to win the support for the memorial in the Washington Park community. She motivates teensyoung adults to become their best selves.
Patricia Nguyen
Memorial Co-Designer
Patricia Nguyen, PhD is an artist, educator, and scholar born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. She earned her doctorate in Performance Studies at Northwestern University. Her artistic work and research examines the intersections between the military and prison industrial complex, forced migration, oral histories, inherited trauma, torture, and nation building. Through embodied research, performance, installation, and community happenings she explores ecologies of migration, incarceration, asylum, borders, and war to reveal histories of violence and create abolitionist futures. She has exhibited and performed at the Nha San Collective in Vietnam, Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco, Jane Addams Hull House, Links Hall, Prague Quadrennial, Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile, Milwaukee Art Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. She is the co-founder and executive director of Axis Lab, an arts and architecture community-centered organization focused on ethical development. Dr. Nguyen is the co-designer of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial.
Mearon “Rick” Diggins
Advisory Board Member
Mearon “Rick” Diggins is a Burge torture survivor. In October of 1984, Diggins was taken to Area 2 and tortured into confessing to a murder. He spent nine years and nine months incarcerated until returning home in 1995. Diggins has a background in lawn care and is now an active member of CTJMF and a full-time grandpa.
Sarah Ross
Advisory Board Member
Sarah Ross is an artist and educator whose work is centered on the spatial politics of race, gender, class and control. Since 2006, Sarah has been working with incarcerated artists in IL prisons. In 2011-2024, she co-founded and co-led the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project (PNAP), a cultural project that brings together artists, writers and scholars in and outside Stateville prison to create public projects. In 2024, Sarah worked with Pablo Mendoza to start Walls Turned Sideways, a gallery and community space dedicated to artists and people impacted by incarceration. Her work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, Montreal, Copenhagen, Rio De Janeiro, among other places. She is a co-author of The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences, Working Toward Freedom (2019); Carving Out Rights From Inside the Prison Industrial Complex (2021) and Our Tuesday Girl: An Unfurling for Dr. Margaret T.G. Burroughs. She is an Associate Professor in Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Stanley Howard
Advisory Board Member
Stanley Howard was born in Chicago in 1962. He was arrested in November 1984 and tortured into signing a false coerced confession to crimes he did not commit. Stanley was sentenced to death in 1987 and was the key organizer of the Death Row 10 – other Jon Burge torture survivors on death row, He was exonerated from death row in 2003 but remained in prison on other bogus convictions. Stanley received a G.E.D. and taught himself criminal law. This led to the “Law Class”he started/organized on death row, where he taught criminal law and paralegalism to a host of other condemned men. He received a Paralegal/Legal Assistant Certificate, three different Construction Certificates, and authored the book TORTURED BY BLUE: The Chicago Police Torture Story while in prison. Stanley also spent most of his time on death row and in prison teaching and helping other incarcerated men with their legal struggles, which led to some being released early or exonerated. He was eventually released from prison in 2023 after 39 years, and immediately resumed his work as a social justice advocate.
Our Staff
Jen Ash
Executive Director
Jen Ash (she/her) was a volunteer member of Chicago Torture Justice Memorials (CTJM) during and after the campaign for reparations, and returned to working on the memorial project in 2021 in a paid capacity. Bringing her nonprofit work experience to the table, in 2023, Jen was hired as Executive Director, establishing and directing CTJMF operations. As an academic historian Jen enjoys teaching history, gender and women’s, and Black studies courses at local universities when she has the opportunity, and loves traveling and cooking at home for her family and community.
Victoria Agunod
Administration
Victoria Agunod (she/they) is an educator and facilitator based in Chicago. Victoria earned her BA and MA in Women’s and Gender Studies at DePaul University, with her thesis focused on student direct action and community organizing within the neoliberal university. She teaches in the Peace, Justice, and Conflict Studies Program, the Disability Studies Certificate Program, and the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at DePaul University. Her teaching and personal focuses include disability studies, disability justice, identity politics and feminist theory, Palestinian liberation, student organizing, intergenerational organizing, and the impacts, legacies, and co-histories of social movements.
Lee Andel Dewey
Bookkeeper
Lee Andel Dewey (they/them) provides sliding-scale-to-free accounting, bookkeeping, & consulting services under their business, LADhoc Accounting. They are an organizer & advocate for the Trans/GNC, queer, & HIV+ communities, all to which they belong, & also in collaborative support of folks at other intersections of marginalization. Their activism is rooted in anti-racism, anti-capitalism, & the abolition of police/prisons/related systems, & focused upon effecting positive radical change. Lee is the Lead Organizer/Facilitator for CommunityCave Chicago, a Board Member for Crossroads Fund, & a Community Advisory Board Member for AIDS Foundation Chicago. They are a fangurl of the arts & occasional artist, a denizen of the dance floor, an all-season city cyclist, & dreaming of their next escape into the desert.
Monica Paulson
Grant Writer/Development Coordination
Monica Paulson (she/her) serves as CTJMF’s part-time grant writer and supports with development projects for the memorial. Monica has worked in resource development and grassroots fundraising for community based non-profits and organizing campaigns. She is grateful to have joined CTJM in 2020, supporting fundraising efforts for the memorial.
Ryan Griffis
Volunteer
Ryan Griffis (he/him) volunteers with CTJMF, providing website and tech support. Ryan is an artist, educator, and faculty member at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He works across media and institutions on stories about the intersections of social and environmental justice on Peoria, Kickapoo, and Potawatomi Lands in the US Midwest.
