What you're trying to do in people’s law both inside of the courtroom and outside of the courtroom, with the support and leadership of groups and organizations and families outside of the courtroom is to tell the stories from the point of view of people's history—to tell the stories from the point of view of those who are victimized and who have survived the victimization or, in the case of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, those did not survive.

Flint Taylor, co-founder of the People's Law Office, joins us to discuss his new book, The Conviction Machine: Prosecutors, Politicians, and Police Violence in Chicago from Haymarket Books.

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Guest

Flint Taylor

As a law student, Flint Taylor was a founding member of the People’s Law Office and has been a partner of the PLO since 1972. As a student and lawyer, he has been dedicated to litigating against police violence and racism for more than fifty-four years. Among the landmark cases that Taylor has litigated are the Fred Hampton Black Panther case; the Greensboro, North Carolina case against the KKK, Nazis and Greensboro police; and a series of cases arising from a pattern and practice of police torture and cover-up by Chicago police Commander Jon Burge, former Cook County State’s Attorney and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, and numerous other law enforcement officials. He has represented, and continues to represent, many wrongfully convicted persons, including police torture victims who have spent decades in prison and on death row. He has chronicled his work and that of the People’s Law Office in an award-winning historical memoir titled The Torture Machine.

Chicago's Conviction Machine / Flint Taylor

Flint Taylor

Monstrous Torture by the Depraved Police / Flint Taylor

Fighting the torture machine: On the past and present of Chicago police violence.

Fighting police crime, and the city that covers it up.

Remembering the assassination of Fred Hampton, and the threat to Black liberation today.

The city won't reform the police. The city is the police.

Understanding the civil mechanisms of police impunity.

The Chicago police department won't fix the Chicago police department.

Uncovering Chicago police secrets with the man fighting Homan Square.