For my seminar class a few weeks ago, Darrell Cannon, a survivor of the John Burge tortures, came and spoke to us. If you are not familiar with the John Burge torture case, it involves police commander, John Burge, torturing murder suspects until they confess to the crime, even though they did not do it. He tortured them until they would have done anything to make it stop. As a result of them signing the confessions, they were put in prison for decades for a crime they did not commit. Darrell told us his life story, about his time in prison, and what he is doing today. I was very touched and inspired by his optimism about everything. It was something I did not expect from someone that has been so wronged for so many years. He is now currently working for Cease Fire, a local organization that is fighting to stop the violence in Chicago.
This week in our seminar, we went to Northwestern Law to hear about youth giving false confessions and being put in jail because of it. Chicago is the capital of false confessions in the United States. Many youth are being wrongfully accussed of crimes and then questioned for hours and hours about it. After so much time sitting and being lied to about the police, many youth are led to believe that if they just sign a paper, they will be able to go home. However, that is not the case because essentially, the police just tricked them. We learned about the case of Daniel Taylor, who has been in prison for two decades for a crime he did not commit but gave a false confession to. The crazy part about is story is that he was actually in police custody when the murders he was found guility of occurred. There is no way he could have been at the scene of the crime. However, he is still in prison today. I never wold have thought things like this still happen today in the United States. Hearing all about this made me so angry! I hope to definitely get involved somehow in fixing this situation and other similar ones. It was definitely an eye opening experience.
I finally figured out my independent study project topic, so that has taken a huge relief off my shoulders. I plan to research the correlation between mental health and running, specially how it might affect your self esteem and why people run. I plan to join a few running clubs and interview members about why they run. I also will do some research on the side about the correlation and hopefully be able to fit everything into a conclusion by the end of the semester. I am very excited to start running with the clubs and see for myself how they affect my well being :)
On a social note, St. Patricks's Day in the city is CRAZY. I was on a train into the city from one of the suburbs on Saturday morning and it was completely jam packed with people dressed in green. When I got into the city, I could not believe how many people were downtown. It was just completely wild. Even though it was extremely windy and FREEZING! I cant even imagine what it was like last year when the weather was actually warm. But here is a picture of the green river :)
Author: Maria W.
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