by Miles Harvey
We created a video to share this success and to help cities from across the country find solutions to conflict. During a recent restorative-justice conference in Oakland, a Chicago team met with a member of the Oakland City Council, as well as the city attorney and chief of the school-district police, among others, to share the video. Later, officials in Oakland decided to show the video at a full city council meeting to demonstrate a way that all parties can address issues in a constructive way. I am not sure if the Chicago Police even know that they had that kind of positive effect on another city.
Organizing peace circles is rewarding, but the time has come for these kinds of restorative practices to be institutionalized and become an integral part of the system. In order for real change to occur, there must be joint effort from communities, restorative-justice practitioners and individuals at the highest level of government. If we value peace, healing and cooperation, we all must give our time and treasure to it. Like Juvenile Court, it’s complicated and takes effort. But it’s worth it.
—Interviewed by Kaitlyn Willison
Endnotes
55 Chicago Public Schools.
TRYING TO BREAK THE CYCLE
KIM
Kim—who asked that we give her a pseudonym—is an 18-year-old Vietnamese-American living in Uptown, a North Side neighborhood known for its ethnic diversity. Although it’s not one of the city’s high-crime areas, Uptown has been contending with pockets of gang violence for years.
Despite flirting with gang life and dating a Latin King who is now in prison, Kim became valedictorian of her high school class and is a straight-A college freshman at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Her interview takes place at a local Starbucks—not Kim’s favorite spot, due to her strong opposition to the gentrification of Uptown. “They actually want to knock down the building I live in,” she says. “They’re like, ‘Oh, we need to put up some more condos.’ And that’s their approach to like, what? Helping their society? Just to push all the so-called bad people to another area? That’s not effective.”
Although the coffee shop is quite warm and comfortable, Kim leaves on her white puffy coat with its faux fur-lined hood and keeps it zipped all the way up for the entire hour. Except for an initial sip, she doesn’t touch the hot chocolate in front of her.
I feel like somebody’s watching over me.
Every single time somebody gets hurt or there’s a gang shooting, I’m not there. Ever. It’s like, “Wow, I could have been a victim if I would have left out the house a little bit sooner.” Like last week, I was on my way to the train, and an hour before that, somebody had just gotten shot in the head—right at the corner of my house. It was a drive-by shooter, so that could have hit me.
I honestly feel like somebody’s watching over me.
Anything could happen, and you never know when it’s going to happen. I don’t come outside. The only time you will find me outside is going to a train and then walking home. I mean, I have a younger brother and sometimes I find myself sitting in class and I’m like, “Oh, is he okay?” And then I’ll text him because it’s like, you know, I’m paranoid something’s going to happen.
I live with my mom and brother. And that’s it. I grew up right here in Uptown. We moved up and down the street, the same street—Winthrop. We just moved a couple blocks down, a couple blocks up and then back.
My mom, she doesn’t have parents. She was raised in Vietnam and her father, an American soldier, died in the Vietnam War. My mom’s mom, like, didn’t even want her. I think the pregnancy was from a one-night stand. She tried to abort her with an abortion pill, but it wasn’t effective. My great-grandmother raised my mother.
American soldiers’ sons and daughters, they were being treated poorly over there in Vietnam. So in the late 1980s, the Bush administration,
they had a program to send all the people who are mixed-race over to
America.56 So my mom was the sponsor for her family and they all
came. She was in her 20s—probably 23. My step-grandfather, he lives
by Kimball Avenue and my grandmother is in Kansas. They separated a couple months after they got to America. I don’t talk to my grandmother. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to my elders and stuff, but she didn’t even raise my mom.
My mom told me that she met my dad when she was taking English and he was a math student in an adult education class here in Chicago. And he kept talking to her or something like that. He wasn’t around that much. I don’t know if he lives in Uptown, but Argyle’s57 right there and Asian people, they just, like, gather there. I see him walking outside.
My mom works pretty hard. She used to work two jobs. I mean, she raised two kids by herself. She’s the only person that means anything to me.
About 12 years ago, my mom, she was a victim of attempted rape. This African-American guy, he impersonated a police officer. My mom doesn’t speak that much English and she doesn’t know her rights. She didn’t know that an officer cannot come into her house without a warrant. So she let him in, and he attempted to rape her. She kicked him in his private parts, and he pushed her, and she hit her head on the wall. She had to get stitches, and now she forgets a lot. Sometimes she gets headaches, I guess. And she gets, like, crazy upset when she’s not on her medication. Like, she would sometimes try to choke me for no reason. She can’t work anymore. She’s on disability pension. But she’s okay with the medication.
I was at school when the rape happened. I didn’t really know what was going on. They were using big words at the hospital, and I remember, even when I was translating for my mom, I was confused. But I was calm. I just remember that they said that this guy also had raped 11 other victims. My mom was the 12th but he was unsuccessful. They caught him.
That incident kind of changed my whole life because I didn’t get to be a child anymore. I didn’t get to be a kid, even though I wanted to. I had a rough relationship with my mom when I was probably 16 or 17. We was just constantly fighting and arguing. You know, I didn’t listen, and I was kinda, like, drifting on the bad side of stuff. I was always smart; I always did well in school. But I was socializing with the wrong people. I guess it’s kind of hard to avoid those kind of people, especially if they all grew up in the neighborhood, so you can’t just walk past them and be like, “I don’t know you.” I think if my mom didn’t get tough on me, I probably wouldn’t be in college right now. I would not have graduated. Something could have happened to me where I could not have accomplished everything.
And it almost did happen. I met this guy named Corey, hanging out with some girls from school. We dated for, like, two months. And he was a gangbanger. And for some reason, at that age, I thought that was cool. He was a Latin King. Right now, he has 14 years to do in prison. He did armed robbery, grand theft auto and then assault.
One night, I almost went to jail because I was affiliated with the Kings. I was getting a ride from one of Corey’s friends, Sal, to go to the county jail to see Corey. It was early evening, probably like 5 o’clock. Sal was dressed from head to toe, gold and black—the Latin Kings’ colors. So if members of enemy gangs saw him, it was like, you know, a “shoot me, shoot me now” type of thing.
We were driving down—what street is that?—California. And there was, like, some other gang—I don’t even know what it was—and we were involved in a car chase. I could have lost my life because they started shooting, but, at that moment, I was just, like, so careless about it because I was just so immature. And Sal was driving all crazy. I mean, like, he drove down the street on the wrong side, trying to get away, and he could have caused a car accident.
I was just like, “Drive! Hurry! Drive! Let’s get away from them.” Then he turned in an alley and we lost the guys. When we came out of the alley, the police stopped us. I was really scared because I was like, “I’m gonna get arrested. My mom’s gonna knock me out.” And thank God he didn’t have drugs in the car.
Oh my God, I’m a horrible teenager. I put my mom thro
ugh a lot when I was associating with those people. I think if I could go back, I wouldn’t do any of it. But then again, I might go back and still be 16 and be stupid and do it again.
I was going through a phase, a need to fit into my environment, a need to socialize and be cool or whatever. That’s why it was so hard to stop talking to people like Corey. I think the wake-up call was when my mom cried. I was, like, 17. She never cries, so when she cried, it was when Corey called me from jail. He called collect and I accepted the charges. My mom was there and I was trying to play it off like, “Oh no, it’s somebody else.” But the house phone’s kinda loud, so she got pissed. I guess she felt disappointed because she raised me better than that. She yelled at me and she cried. I mean, I saw her cry about other stuff, but I wasn’t the cause of that, so I didn’t really feel guilty about it before.
See, despite all this stuff, I never really liked making my mother upset. I just wanted to be rebellious, but it caught on to me that I had to stand up and help my mother, take care of her. When I hit 18, I was like, “Really? I’m smart. I’m not going to be socializing with you people. Why would I put what I have on the line? I have scholarships lined up for me to go to college. Like, I’m a straight-A student.” You gotta look at reality. Where can you get without an education? I mean, that stuff that people do on the streets, like, it’s fast money, but I mean, you can’t get retirement and pension to come out of that.
Now I’m a freshman at UIC. I thought about going to University of Michigan, but I couldn’t afford it. But either way, I think I would have still chosen to stay home. I’m studying criminal justice. I want to be a detective. I mean, it’s a lot of people that complains about a lot of stuff, like, “Oh, this is happening, that is happening,” but they don’t do anything about it. And what’s better than getting paid for something you want to do? Which is, like, make a change in society.
I want to go into homicide because I feel like that’s something that’s most dangerous. And then I want to get my graduate degree because I don’t want to be a cop my whole life. I want to go do other stuff, too, like be a prosecutor.58
I went to visit the county jail on my own. I wanted to see what was really going on in there, because, it’s like, I hear people, you know, coming out of jail, like, “It was horrible” and I just wanted to see it. It’s actually a wonderful place. They actually get help, but they can only give you so much so if you don’t take anything from it while you’re in there, you come back out and, you know, do the same stuff. And it’s understandable that some people can come out and do the same stuff because it’s not like they ship you out to Harvard University when you get out. They ship you back to your freakin’ neighborhood. That’s all you know, that’s all you’re exposed to. But there are people in my neighborhood that are in the same situation that I’m in and I’m doing better than them, so I guess they need motivation. But I don’t know. I don’t know how to help these people.
That’s one reason why I want to move my family out of the neighborhood. If it changes, then I’ll come back because, I mean, I grew up here, this is my home. All 18 years of my life, I’ve seen the same thing—the same cycle.
If my mom was able to have a good mother, like fortunately I have a good mother, she would have been able to come over here when she was younger and she could have went and got her education. She would not be in this neighborhood and the assault would not have happened to her and she would have gave birth to me somewhere else nicer where I don’t have to deal with this stuff. In 20 years, I don’t want someone to attempt to rape me like my mom. It’s like a chain. That’s why I say the change should happen now. Just break the cycle or it’s going to happen again and again and again.
—Interviewed by Stephanie Gladney Queen
Endnotes
56 Congress passed the American Homecoming Act—also called the Amerasian Homecoming Act—in 1988. It allowed Vietnamese children born of American fathers to emigrate to the United States.
57 The West Argyle Street Historic District is known for its Vietnamese
restaurants, bakeries and shops, as well as for Chinese, Cambodian, Laotian and Thai businesses.
58 When we last spoke with Kim, she reported that she no longer wants to be a detective. She has decided to enroll in law school after receiving her bachelor’s degree.
The Girl Was a Fighter
CRISTINA FIGUEROA
Cristina Figueroa has seen youth violence from many angles. The child of a Puerto Rican mother and a Mexican-American father, she grew up in a home where beatings and fights were regular occurrences. She also experienced bullying in elementary school. And, during her teen years on the Northwest Side, she explains, “a lot of my friends were gangbangers, because at the time, that’s who I felt had my back.”
As a runaway teen mother, she found herself in an abusive relationship, facing a dead-end future. Determined to turn her life around, Figueroa earned her GED at the age of 22. Since then, she has received a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago and a master’s degree in public administration from DePaul University, where she teaches part-time. From 2001 to 2006, she was a juvenile probation officer in Lake County, Illinois, counseling, supervising and helping to rehabilitate young people. Now she works with adult offenders as U.S. probation officer.
A short, dark-haired woman in her early 40s, Figueroa maintains a youthful appearance and has an abiding compassion and empathy for at-risk youth.
Kids are not born bad. There are very few sociopaths out there. Kids are not inherently bad. That’s learned behavior. And I think that if people take the time to investigate kids’ lives and what they go through, it will all make sense to them why they are behaving the way they are behaving.
As a child, I experienced a lot of domestic violence. There were a lot of fights between my parents. My mom was ultimately the victim. That started before I could remember, and it was pretty much all I knew up until I was a teenager.
I always knew when there would be a fight just based on how my dad rang the doorbell. I don’t know why he didn’t just use a key, but he always rang the doorbell when he came home from work, and I could always tell when it was going to be a bad night. It was almost like Pavlov’s dog. You hear a certain ring and you know what your response should be. I knew where emotionally and psychologically I needed to put myself. That’s not healthy for any child. People can’t expect kids to be subjected to that type of environment and to grow up psychologically healthy.
Did I get hit? Yeah, we all got hit. I think my brothers got it much worse than I did. My dad definitely used corporal punishment. Sometimes he would go overboard. The thing about my dad is that he didn’t take pleasure in it. I know that’s how he grew up. He was subjected to very serious abuse, not only at home, but at school. And so that’s how he dealt with my brothers. Back then, it was very difficult to handle and to understand, and I felt a very deep sense of hate. I was robbed of my childhood, because I always lived in fear.
Aside from the violence in the home, there were a lot of issues in school. I mean, fights and things of that nature. I was bullied all the way from first grade to seventh grade, just constant bullying. I remember having to run home from school. You hear people talking, and someone would come up to you and say, “Such and such is going to wait for you after school,” because they wanted to fight. So I would then have to start plotting my exit strategy. I lived seven blocks from my school, Haugan Elementary, in Albany Park. So the moment the bell rang, I would take off running, and I would run nonstop, and I’d have crowds of people chasing me. And this would happen constantly.
The isolation that you feel sometimes, feeling defenseless, both at home and at school, when you can’t stop it, being a victim of it, it’s very impactful. At some point, you get so tired of it. You know, it’s that saying, “When you can’t beat them, join them.” So it just came to the point where I said I was no longer going to become a victim and I became an aggressor.
My first fight was in the seventh grade. A girl and I just kind of got in a spat in the library. Her name was Alma. I will never forget that it was in the library. And I remember she said, “Your mother’s a bitch.”
And I just said, “No. Now you’re going to wait for me after school.”
She came out ready to fight, and we had a crowd, and I fought her. And unfortunately I wound up beating her ass. I say “unfortunately” because, all of a sudden, people started to be nice to me because they saw that I was able to fight. Then it gave me a sense of empowerment and I was no longer scared, so when things would occur, I wasn’t running from it anymore. Now I was confronting it, but confronting it aggressively. I was ready to fight.
Although it empowered me, I hated it. I was very, very good at what I called “verbal judo,” very good at talking my way out of things. Sometimes, when I could sense when something was escalating, I would quickly be able to de-escalate the situation verbally because I didn’t want it to result in a fight. My biggest fear was that I would wind up in a fight and they would wind up killing me. So I didn’t run around looking for fights, but I wasn’t going to back down from one, because I felt that if I backed down, I’d become the victim again.
I was 17 or 18 when I left home. You know, I don’t remember the exact situation. I know that it was a fight with my dad. I’m not necessarily going to blame him for the fight. I know that it was because of something that I did. At that point, I was just a rebellious, hard-to-deal-with teenager. And I’m going to take full responsibility, because I just didn’t care. I went to a friend’s house for a little bit, and then I kind of bounced around wherever I could stay. If I was able to sleep somewhere, I slept somewhere, and if I didn’t have a place to sleep, I would just stay up all night. Hang out with whoever was willing to hang out. All night. I did that for about two months.