The Pozen Center is thrilled to announce the Autumn 2018 launch of the Human Rights Lab, which seeks to advance critical new questions around human rights theory and practice through the lens of deep research, experiential learning, and critical community building. Led by Alice Kim, Pozen Center Director of Human Rights Practice, the Lab will focus on human rights issues surrounding mass incarceration and police violence in its initial three years.
Alice Kim organizes, teaches, and writes about the prison system, capital punishment, police torture, and access to education for incarcerated people. Kim is co-editor of The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences, Working Toward Freedom (with Erica Meiners, Audrey Petty, Jill Petty, Beth Richie, Sarah Ross, Haymarket Books, September 2018). She was a 2016 Soros Justice Fellow and is working on a book about the Chicago police torture cases (with Joey Mogul, Beacon Press).
Kim teaches at a maximum-security prison with the Prison Neighborhood Arts Project, a visual arts and humanities project that connects teaching artists and scholars to incarcerated students through classes, workshops and guest lectures. She is also a cofounder of Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, the group that spearheaded a campaign that won unprecedented reparations legislation from the Chicago City Council in May 2015 for survivors of Jon Burge police torture. Kim worked closely with the Death Row 10, a group of African American men who were tortured under Jon Burge and sentenced to death, and was a leader in the movement to end capital punishment in Illinois and nationwide.
Beginning in Autumn 2018, the Human Rights Lab will present Reimagining Justice, a series of public events to bring together authors, activists, artists, and community leaders to explore new strategies and forms of justice. Please join us at the Lab’s inaugural event, a book release and panel discussion about long term incarceration with editors and contributors of The Long Term. The event is free and open to the public, and will take place on Thursday, October 25th, at 6:30PM. (Arts Incubator, 301 E. Garfield Blvd.)