Court finds continued systemic constitutional violations in California prisons 

A federal judge ruled Wednesday in our case Ashker v. Governor of California that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is continuing to systematically violate the due process rights of imprisoned men despite a settlement agreement where the agency agreed to sweeping changes to its use of solitary confinement. Judge Claudia Wilken found that CDCR is relying on inaccurate and even fabricated confidential information to place individuals in solitary confinement, using dubious gang affiliations to deny them a fair opportunity for parole, and holding them in a restricted unit in the general population without adequate procedural safeguards. 

Citing these rights violations, Judge Wilken extended for a second additional one-year term a historic 2015 settlement agreement to end indefinite solitary confinement in California prisons. 

“The more we dig, the more clear it becomes that CDCR prison officials routinely lie about information from so-called ‘confidential sources’ and use that facrbicated, secret evidence to send people to the torture of solitary confinement,” said Senior Staff Attorney Rachel Meeropol who is representing the men who brought the suit. “It cannot continue.”

Learn more about this case development on our website.

We’re honoring righteous Black rage all year long 

Rage is a righteous response to injustice. Black rage is a powerful source of insight into the intolerable reality of anti-Black racism and a guiding force toward our collective liberation. This Black History Month, we honor Black rage and commit to protecting the love-fueled fury that helps us fashion the world we deserve.

Through film, oral histories, writing, and events, Black Rage: Protecting Love, Power, and Revolution will honor the righteousness of Black rage and reaffirm our commitment to protecting the space for all Black people to reject the inhumanity of human hierarchy, express love-fueled fury, and demand fundamental change. 

Read our statement and check out our website throughout the month for more Black History Month programming.

Mark your calendars! You’re invited to “Remaking the Exceptional: Tea, Torture, and Reparations | Chicago to Guantánamo” 

We are excited to collaborate with the DePaul Art Museum (DPAM) and the Tea Project on Remaking the Exceptional: Tea, Torture, and Reparations | Chicago to Guantánamo, which will run March 10 to August 7, 2022. The exhibition explores themes of torture and reparations through paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations produced by torture survivors, artists, and activists, including Center for Constitutional Rights clients Djamel Ameziane and Ghaleb Al-Bihani who were detained at Guantánamo.

In addition, our Advocacy Program Manager Aliya Hana Hussain and our client Majid Khan are contributors to the exhibition catalog, which brings together artworks, poetry, testimony by torture survivors, and scholarship at the intersection of aesthetics and politics.

To find out more information about public programming and visiting the exhibition, please visit the DePaul Art Museum’s website.