Survivor Repair Fund

Survivor Repair Fund is sponsored by Chicago Torture Justice Center. This mutual aid fund provides financial assistance to survivors of police and carceral violence who have completed an intake with the Chicago Torture Justice Center. Payments are dependent on fund availability.

Survivor Repair Fund — Chicago Torture Justice Center Chicago Torture Justice Center’s Mutual Aid Fund for survivors of police and carceral violence To apply, complete the form online Applications to the Fund are required with each request An application does not guarantee receipt of funds Applications are reviewed on a monthly basis Any application received by the 20th will be reviewed that month Recipients will receive a response via email by the end of the month Applications received after the 20th of each month will be considered the following month Guidelines and Eligibility: Payments are dependent on availability Participants are able to request up to $300 every three months as long as sufficient funds exist Anyone impacted by police violence who has completed an intake with CTJC is eligible to apply, even if you have previously received support from the Fund The Fund is 100% supported by community donations, not a government entity Currently, CTJC is only able to send funds through PayPal The Survivor Repair Fund is fully sustained by our community, and 100% of donations go directly to survivors.

All one-time and recurring donations are needed, welcome, and deeply appreciated! As much as we would like it to be, the Fund is not an endless resource, and we sometimes have to pause payments while we fundraise to replenish it. Recurring donations are one way to help us work towards avoiding those gaps in the future.

We invite you to consider a contribution if that’s possible for you, and to spreading the word to your community! In March of 2020 with the beginning of the COVID lockdown, the Chicago Torture Justice Center (CTJC) launched the Survivor Relief Fund to offer emergency material assistance to Center participants struggling during the pandemic.

The existence of the Repair Fund illustrates the ongoing crises of structural violence, racialized over-policing, an d ongoing pandemic, and the disproportionate impact of deep systemic inequity on Black and Brown communities. Today, as we continue to respond to the crises of structural violence, CTJC has committed to continuing to offer this community-funded resource as the Survivor Repair Fund, as long as sufficient support exists.

While the work of the Fund is critical and requests to the Survivor Repair Fund have steadily grown over the years, the work of maintaining the Fund has required we revisit our policies to better sustain this resource and our team. After our team identified specific challenges, we began meeting to collectively analyze and problem-solve how to continue showing up for our community in sustainable and equitable ways.

We have since adjusted the Survivor Repair Fund policy, and will continue to meet as conditions change – which they always will – to make sure we are supporting our community and our team as well as we can. We know payments from the Fund alone are not sufficient to provide all of the resources that communities impacted by racist state violence deserve.

While we work to transform these systems, we encourage participants to also connect with these resources compiled by Chicago Coalition to end Homelessness , and with these CTJC partner organizations: Southside Heroin Opioid TASK FORCE While relief often comes as a short-term response to an emergency, we see repair as a continuous act of healing and care that happens together with community.

The existence of a resource like the Repair Fund illustrates the ongoing crises of structural violence, racialized over-policing, and ongoing pandemic, and the disproportionate impact of deep systemic inequity on Black and Brown communities. We see with clarity the need for structural redistribution of resources, and we are not absolving the system of creating these conditions of crisis.

The Fund is an important resource with critical impact, and we know it is a temporary means of survival while we continue to work to build the new world we envision.