SR0849 104TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

SR0849 LRB104 21290 LAW 36054 r

SENATE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois Senate are saddened to learn of the death of Standish E. "Kwame" Willis, Esq. of Chicago, who passed away in his spiritual homeland of Ghana, West Africa on February 28, 2025; and

WHEREAS, Stan Willis, born to Mr. Andrew and Mrs. Plumie Willis on August 16, 1941, was a lifelong Chicagoan who was raised on the West Side and infuenced by his mother's Church of God in Christ (COGIC) faith, his father's work ethic, and his uncle's Garveyite ideals; he was a first-generation high school graduate who enlisted into the United States Air Force during the Vietnam War; after being honorably discharged, he worked as a bus driver for the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), where he helped organize several wildcat strikes, including the largest in Chicago's history that disrupted travel city-wide during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which helped win concessions from the CTA union and led the City of Chicago to begin dismantling racist policies and practices impacting Black drivers; and

WHEREAS, Stan Willis, while still with the CTA, attended Crane Junior College, where he was an active student leader; during his studies, he led a march to protest the murders of Black college students by South Carolina National Guardsmen in Orangeburg, South Carolina; he also served as editor of the college yearbook, founded the Afro-American History Club, and was elected as president of Student Government, through which he led the student movement to name the new campus after Malcolm X; upon completing his associate's degree, he transferred to the University of Chicago, earning a Bachelor of Arts and a master's degree in Latin American Studies; he studied economics at the master's degree level at the University of Illinois Chicago, and he earned his Juris Doctor from Chicago-Kent College of Law of the Illinois Institute of Technology; and

WHEREAS, Stan Willis became a lawyer who specialized in civil rights, police brutality and misconduct, criminal defense work, and human rights; he initially joined Peoples' Law Office (PLO) as a partner, during which time he also joined the Lawyers for Washington movement; he served with PLO for several years prior to establishing his own firm, The Law Office of Standish E. Willis, in 1989; he tried numerous federal jury trials and several state jury and bench trials, and he argued many cases before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals; he also litigated hundreds of civil rights lawsuits against many municipalities involving public officials, served on the Federal Defender Panel and its prestigious Selection Committee, and was named one of Chicago's "Tough Lawyers" by Chicago magazine in 2002; and

WHEREAS, Stan Willis taught in various settings over the course of his professional life, devoting the same level of dedication and rigor to the classroom that he brought to the courtroom and community organizing; he taught a number of courses, including the GED program at Malcom X College, African American history at Stateville Correctional Center, and economics at Roosevelt University for ten years; he was a frequent guest lecturer at Chicago-area law schools and led annual workshops for lawyers and lay people across the nation, providing state-certified continuing legal education (CLE) credits; he served as a faculty-lecturer for the annual civil rights seminar sponsored by the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education (IICLE), the Chicago-Kent College of Law, and the American Bar Association in the area of 42 U.S.C. 1983 on civil rights liability and litigation; he also maintained speaking engagements on issues related to the criminal justice system, the death penalty, police violence, community control of police, the prison-industrial complex, America's political prisoners, racism and the American legal system, international human rights, and reparations; further, he was the subject of and contributed to articles and chapters of numerous books, dissertations, and documentaries; and

WHEREAS, Stan Willis founded the grassroots organization Black People Against Police Torture (BPAPT) in 2005; he led a coalition of lawyers, activists, and community members to internationalize the Chicago Police Torture cases by means of international human rights mechanisms and treaties to which the U.S. was subject; he presented evidence of police torture before the Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2005, the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) in 2006, and the United Nations' Committee to Eliminate Racial Discrimination (CERD) in 2008, helping to bring a modicum of justice in the Chicago police torture cases by sparking the indictment of former Chicago Police Department Commander Jon Burge; through BPAPT, he called for reparations, was among the first to challenge Chicago's right to host the Olympics, coined the now familiar phrase of "the torture capital of the U. S.", and personally initiated and drafted the legislative bill that was ultimately enacted in 2009 in the form of the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission (TIRC), securing justice and freeing many torture victims and survivors; and

WHEREAS, Stan Kwame was involved in many social justice campaigns, including the Free South Africa Movement to end Apartheid; he organized the African-American Defense Committee Against Police Violence after the televised beating of Rodney King in 1991 and The Riverdale Eight, a group of African-American women who were brutalized by Riverdale police officers, in 1995; he joined many abolitionists globally to spare former Black Panther Party member Mumia Abu Jamal from execution, organizing and chairing the African-American Committee to Free Mumia Abu Jamal; he continued educating and mobilizing support for all victims of racial and political oppression, including the numerous victims of the notorious Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) by authoring a stakeholders' report on COINTELPRO Political Prisoners in 2010, which was submitted to the first UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United States; he was also instrumental in leading then-Governor George H. Ryan to clearing Illinois' death row and commuting the death sentences of four men who had been convicted based on tortured confessions; and

WHEREAS, Stan Willis was a longtime member of the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL), serving as chair of its Chicago Chapter; he was a longtime board member for the Black United Fund of Illinois (BUFI) and co-founded several significant institutions, including the Communiversity, a pre-cursor to the Center for Inner City Studies, the Black Student Congress, African Liberation Day in Chicago, the National Anti-Imperialist Movement in Solidarity with African Liberation, the Chicago Conference of Black Lawyers/NCBL affiliate, and the Office of HBCU Development and International Cooperation (OHBCUD); he also served as a member of the Durban 400 in 2001, helping secure a UN declaration that the Transatlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity; and

WHEREAS, Stan Willis was often recognized for his unswerving commitment to social justice work and solidarity by groups across racial, generational, and class lines, including the National Lawyers Guild, the Arab American Action Network, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Cook County Bar Association, and the National Conference of Black Lawyers; he became the namesake of the Standish E. Willis Community Service Award by Black law students at Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1984; and

WHEREAS, Stan Willis will be remembered as a tireless advocate for oppressed communities across the globe who stayed true to his Chicago roots and Pan African calling, remaining guided by the needs of the community and the people; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE ONE HUNDRED FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we mourn the passing of Standish E. "Kwame" Willis, Esq. and extend our sincere condolences to his family, friends, and all who knew and loved him; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to the family of Stan Willis as an expression of our deepest sympathy.