​​But Some of Us Are Brave: Honoring Black Feminist Resistance to Patriarchal Violence 

This Women’s History Month, we are honoring the spirit of Black feminist organizing and recommitting to continued struggle against what bell hooks distilled as “imperialist white supremacist capitalist (cis)heteropatriarchy.”

Black feminist organizers and intellectuals have been foundational to our historical and contemporary understanding of gender justice. This Women’s History Month, we are disrupting traditional oppressive white and cisgender narratives around womanhood and instead centering the freedom dreams of Black cis/trans women, girls, non-binary, and transmasculine people. Through political education, oral histories, writing, and archival work, our programming, But Some of Us Are Brave: Honoring Black Feminist Resistance to Patriarchal Violence, will shine a light on the unparalleled legacy of Black feminist struggle against patriarchal violence, highlight our continued commitment to rallying against racialized sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, and celebrate the right to bodily autonomy and the power of gender self-determination in creating a society of safety and human flourishing.

Learn more about how we’re commemorating Women’s History Month on our website.

Read our submission to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the activities of technology companies 

On February 28, we made a submission on behalf of the Immigrant Defense Project’s (IDP’s) Surveillance Tech and Immigration Policing project in response to the Office of the High Commissioner’s call for stakeholder input on Resolution 47/23, “New and emerging digital technologies and human rights.” In it, we address the growing ecosystem of public-private surveillance of migrants and immigrants in the United States and the ways that the state and business enterprises consistently violate all three core “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.” Our submission focuses on the ways that technology companies fuel the U.S. government’s surveillance, invasive biometrics collection, policing, detention, and deportation of migrants. To draw on the risks that the resolution itself highlights, state actors, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and technology companies, jointly threaten and violate citizens’ and noncitizens’ “right to equality and nondiscrimination, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, the right to an effective remedy and the right to privacy.” Particularly in the absence of effective remedy, private companies’ enabling of ongoing violations of international human rights law warrants enhanced scrutiny, regulation, and national and international action.

Read the submission on our website.

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.

On the Blog: “We’ve Come This Far by Faith" by Donita Judge 

On our blog, Associate Executive Director Donita Judge speaks on the historic nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court: 

Judge Jackson’s nomination reflects the hopes and dreams of many in this nation who’ve been excluded. For too long, little Black girls have matured into Black women who, having breathed the toxic air of racism and white supremacy all their lives, quietly question their achievements and wonder if they’re good enough—if they belong. 

Pioneers like Judge Jackson affirm that yes, we are good enough – and show that, to scale to heights historically reserved for white men, we must be truly exceptional.  

Continue reading on our website.

Deadline FRIDAY — We’re hiring! Facilities and Office Services Manager 

The Facilities and Office Services Manager, under the direction of the Director of Operations (DO), has primary responsibility for day-to-day oversight of facilities and office services and for the range of duties enumerated on our website to ensure the safe and efficient functioning of the organization.

The physical plant comprises two floors, owned by the Center for Constitutional Rights, in a medium-size commercial condominium building in Manhattan. Given both organizational growth in size, and the growing proportion of staff working remotely either full or part-time, we anticipate embarking on a major renovation project within the next year or two.

To learn more about duties, salary, and how to apply, head to our website. The application deadline is March 11.