Quilt Remembering Those Killed by Chicago Police Takes Shape

CHICAGO, IL - A quilt remembering everyone who has been killed by members of the Chicago Police Department over the past decade is nearing completion.

The ‘Gone but Not Forgotten’ community quilting project will continue on Saturday and Sunday at the Hyde Park Art Center as participants and local activists will help sew on the names of roughly 150 people who have died at the hands of Chicago police since 2006.

An organizer is calling it “a way to remember” the lives and to “speak the names.” This weekend, the group will work on quilt squares dedicated to Laquan McDonald, the teenager shot by police officer Jason Van Dyke on the West Side in 2014 and Bettie Jones, who died by police fire earlier this year even though she was not connected to a domestic dispute that required a police presence.

The project, which began in October 2014 during the uproar in Ferguson, Missouri, is a collaboration between the We Charge Genocide group and Rachel Wallis, an artist and activist based in the city’s Albany Park neighborhood.

We Charge Genocide formed in 2014 in response to the death of Dominique Franklin Jr., who was killed when police used a Taser on him on the city’s North Side.

The weekend gatherings in Hyde Park also will offer a discussion on police-induced violence. Anyone planning to attend needs to RSVP here first. Attendees are limited to 30 at each session.

In addition to McDonald and Jones, the group will work on squares for people with lesser known stories like Kevin Demetrius Garrett and Philmore Wilkins.

The quilt eventually will be 40 feet long and should be completed by the end of the year, Wallis said.

“We are documenting, to the best of our abilities, anyone who was killed while in police custody since 2006,” she said. “While we have 144 names to put on the quilt, we are pretty sure that list is not complete. When we can’t find a person’s name, we will recognize them with their age and date of their death.”

A majority of the work on the quilt takes place during planned Quilting Circles, such as the ones scheduled for Saturday and Sunday in Hyde Park. Wallis says participants will read aloud the stories of the people they are honoring. They get them from media reports and sometimes straight from the families of the fallen.

“Sometimes it’s a five-page article in a newspaper, but sometimes it’s just a paragraph,” said Wallis. “Not every case of a police involved shooting is like Laquan McDonald where there is a dash cam video everyone is talking about.”

It’s often a struggle to find the information needed, Wallis said.

“This info is not usually publicly available,” she said. “The police don’t compile a list of people that have been killed and the city doesn’t release the info voluntarily. We can’t truly begin to talk about this issue if we do not know the full scope.”

The completed quilt will have 145 squares, 143 of which recognize a person killed by the Chicago Police Department since 2006. The family of a man killed by police in Calumet City and one killed in Chicago in 1999 requested their loved ones be added as well.

Saturday’s meeting will be more of a discussion, while work on the actual quilt will be on Sunday.

Photos by Salome Chasnoff and Rachel Wallis.