Advisors Meet to Discuss the Chicago Peace Fellows Progress
Advisors to the Goldin Institute’s Chicago Peace Fellows initiative came together over dinner April 30 to hear updates about the Fellows and discuss the implications of their work in a context of the city’s ongoing crisis of violence.
Over plates of pasta at a restaurant across the street from City Hall, Goldin Institute Executive Director Travis Rejman, Program Coordinator Burrell Poe and Special Advisor Gabe Gonzalez briefed the attendees on the Peace Fellows’ progress through the capacity-building curriculum the Goldin Institute created based on our 17 years of experience working with grassroots organizers around the world.
The Peace Fellows initiative was launched earlier this year with the support of the Conant Family Foundation to connect and equip 19 prior grantees from the Chicago Fund for Safe and Peaceful Communities who were provided with a stipend as well as an iPad pre-loaded with the GATHER learning software authored by the Goldin Institute.
John Zeigler, director of DePaul University’s Egan Office of Urban Education and Community Partnerships, participated in the Peace Fellows workshop dedicated to “asset mapping,” and came away impressed. Asset mapping - creating geographic representations of community-based resources - must be done methodically to be effective, he cautioned, but many of the Peace Fellows had long histories in their neighborhoods, which they used to inform their maps.
[quote]“Many people in the room were legends in their own right. What was rich in the conversation was that they could connect stories to their assets. What I heard was knitting together their stories so they became a map.” -- John Zeigler [/quote]
Deborah Bennett, a senior program officer at the Polk Bros. Foundation, one of the philanthropies participating in the Fund for Safe and Peaceful communities and supporter of the Peace Fellows program, said interviews with prior grantees revealed that many felt isolated, even from other organizers who were in the same neighborhood. They were focused mainly on their day-to-day struggles and were rarely able to get an overview of their own communities, let alone the city as a whole.
Deborah shared, "What we learned was that they really appreciated the value of bringing people together so they could figure out what was going on in their communities.” Deborah was certain, therefore, that the Peace Fellows would be able to help each other in their work even as they met with people in key institutions and shaped their understanding of life in the neighborhoods.
[quote]“We’re lifting up the ideas of those most impacted by violence.” -- Deborah Bennett[/quote]
Mimi Frankel, a member of the Frankel Family Foundation’s Board of Directors and the Goldin Institute’s Board of Advisors, questioned the efficacy of traditional approaches to counteracting gangs and illegal drug trafficking, and suggested greater involvement from the corporate sector.
[quote]“Businesses are out there and they’re looking for a way to be involved." -- Mimi Frankel [/quote]
Teny Gross, executive director of the Institute for Non-Violence, said Chicago was behind other large cities such as New York or Los Angeles in developing strategies for reducing violence, but was optimistic that the key players were in place and major change would soon be realized.
The dinner was also attended by Leslie Ramyk, executive director of the Conant Family Foundation; Lisa Dush, a DePaul University professor who is conducting an academic evaluation of GATHER; Keith Lewis from the University of Illinois at Chicago; Leif Elsmo, executive director of community & external affairs at University of Chicago Medicine; Teresa Zeigler; Gia Biagi, director of Urbanism and Civic Impact at Studio Gang; and Goldin Institute Chief of Staff Oz Ozburn.
Chicago Peace Fellows Update from Dr. Sokoni Karanja
I have enjoyed my first few weeks as a GATHER Peace Fellow. There are many reasons for that statement! One, it provides such an opportunity for place making. By that, I mean our collective action could help define how Peace is achieved in a City so challenged by violence! The second reason is that I have had an opportunity to interview the other fellows:
Maria Velazquez, who is an organizer in Little Village, is a warm and gentle spirit but inside that exterior is a determined heart that shows up every day to take on whatever challenge she encounters. She has taught me about dealing with losing community as you organize. People get tired or get involved in their personal life struggles and must step back from the community effort.
Johnny Payton is about 6 foot 4, maybe taller, but managed to survive and thrive during his early years in the Cabrini-Green public housing development. He is and was an excellent athlete. He managed to walk through every gang in Cabrini and not join. He was of the community but kept his eyes on his goals. He works for the Chicago Park District and has for 22 years. He is committed to the youth of the community, succeeding in all the legitimate ways.
Gloria Smith is the sister to Phil Jackson, who taught my grandson Tai Chi Chuan and was the founder of the Black Star Project. After her brother’s passing, Gloria has come to fill his very large shoes!!! Phil was a bold human being. He picketed the MacArthur Foundation for their injustices to poor black and brown communities and turned around and received grants from them! Gloria and Phil were the niece and nephew of Vincent Harding, an icon of the Civil Rights movement. Just as importantly, Gloria has shared tapes of her uncle’s mentor, Howard Thurman, another icon of the African American community. She is another gentle spirit with a strong heart who is fearless. She works in three organizations, and she loves Bahia, Brazil.
And finally, the staff of GATHER are long suffering. They have endured my lack of understanding of this iPad machine they have told me is mine to keep!! It feels some days like my worst enemy. I am a turtle and they keep encouraging me. I have a space at their office where I practice with my tutors regularly. Thank you for the opportunity and for the many kindnesses.
Warm love,
Sokoni
PS: Our work is suffering from some loss of community!! As we have reduced the violence, created a successful garden, and formed positive relationships with other organizations, some of our participants have begun to step away from regular involvement in our activities. We are now revisiting our base through door-to-door canvassing to rebuild interest and attract new involvement. The garden at 5131 S. Calumet will be the focus of our effort to re-engage the community, and our first meeting around that target was on April 13, 2019, from 10 a.m. to noon.
Principles and Practices that Empower Shared Learning
On Wednesday, April 3, the Chicago Peace Fellows came together to build a list of principles and practices that will unlock shared learning and collaborationfor the group. This workshop was hosted by Peace Fellow Alex Levesque at his Automotive Mentor Group, where he trains young men and women to remodel classic cars. His program recruits youth at high risk of being involved with violence.
Alex started the workshop with a tour of the facilities and details of his program, sharing how he helps young people find purpose through their work with cars. He told us about his triumphs in helping young people find gainful employment and some of his challenges with reaching young people and the barriers they face around employment, homelessness and violence in the community and at home.
We started our conversation about the differences between best practices and best principles with Alex’s locker full of belts. He has a locker full of belts because it is a requirement that everyone has a belt on when working on the shop floor. He noted that many young people do not wear belts and that it would be a challenge to have to turn away a participant simply because they didn’t have the appropriate attire. Many of his participants come from different parts of town and have long and complex commutes. His best principle is safety first and a best practice that he developed was to have belts at the shop for anyone that needed one.
After this conversation, we moved into a workshop where we sat in different groups and discussed what our best principles can be as a group. The group reflected on the course curriculum and reviewed the dozens of comments on the theme on the discussion board.
After a process of grouping comments into themes and prioritizing values that we can share and enact, the group refined the list to the following five core principles:
- Communicate openly, inclusively, honestly and respectfully.
- Promote compassion, harmony and peace.
- Embrace mutual support and accountability.
- Adopt an intergenerational and intersectional worldview.
- Foster a growth mindset.
The group will continue to grapple with these principles but they committed to adhering to these as a group in how they engage with each other, the curriculum and the communities in which we work. Often, what is shared between practitioners are best practices but we focus on best principles because the practices should fit the context, and principles encourage others to develop practices based on what’s best for them.
Illuminating Perspectives: Art and Social Justice
When artist and educator Cecil McDonald Jr. began working with children in the Chicago Public Schools some years ago, he heard something that disturbed him. The children were enjoying themselves in the playground and appeared to be carefree, but when Cecil interviewed them, he heard them “repeating the grand narratives of violence and pain,” a narrative that was created by adults and taught to them through the media they consumed.
He resolved to do something about it by creating images that find dignity and beauty in the everyday activities of African American families, and by empowering the youths to document their own lives through photography.
“I made that my charge,” McDonald said. “You ask them: ‘What image do you see? How do you see those images?’ And then you give them the camera so they can go out and tell their own stories.”
McDonald recently hosted the Chicago Peace Fellows at his exhibit of photographs entitled “In the Company of Black” at the Chicago Cultural Center. Containing large, posed images of African American subjects performing quotidian activities inside their homes – reading, sleeping, playing, getting ready for the day – the exhibit was created by McDonald over seven years to represent what he described as the “extraordinarily ordinary.”
[quote]“Artists are in the business of creating truth, creating magic. I depend on my ability to create to make the everyday seem extreme.” -- Cecil McDonald, Jr.[/quote]
For McDonald as for the other artists, the work had a common purpose with teachers, organizers and others working to empower communities. While artists are usually “the last ones brought in,” McDonald said artists focus people’s energy, reconstitute their self-image, and define their purpose.
McDonald was one of several artists who spoke to the Peace Fellows in an April 2nd workshop hosted by the Chicago Cultural Center entitled "Illuminating Perspectives: The Role of the Arts in Social Change." Tonika Lewis Johnson presented her Folded Map Project while artistic director Jane Saks talked about the intersections between art and social justice and the work of Project&, and Rahmaan Statik Barnes discussed his work as a street artist and muralist.
Tonika’s Folded Map Project utilizes Chicago’s long north-south streets to make visual connections between residents who live at corresponding addresses on the North and South sides of the city. She began the project as a photographic study but it proved very popular with the residents themselves, who enjoyed meeting their ‘opposite,’ and quickly gained widespread attention from mainstream media outlets so that Tonika added video and a new web site. The Folded Map Project is an investigation of urban segregation and its impacts on the people’s everyday lives.
The founding president of the Chicago-based Project&, Jane Saks has participated and led many different kinds of collaborations between artists and activists such as “Working in America,” a traveling exhibition and web archive inspired by Pulitzer Prize-winner Studs Terkel’s 1974 book “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do,” a gathering of photos and stories of working folk in 17 states.
Jane enthusiastically cited her experiences to aver that artistic collaborations are uniquely situated to function as an ‘ecology’ where issues of equality and equity can be defined and discussed.
[quote]“In an ecology, things are not equal. They’re equitable. We’re not born with equality, but we can work for equity.” -- Jane Saks[/quote]
Turning to the Peace Fellows, Jane pointed out the similarities between their work as grassroots organizers and artists.
“As community activists, as social justice leaders, what you’re working to do is what people in the arts do,” Jane said. “Social justice workers and artists are both envisioning a future and creating things into existence.”
The Peace Fellows also heard from Rahmaan Statik, a public artist, designer, fine artist, illustrator and art teacher, who described the inspirations he received growing up on the South Side surrounded by urban art and public murals. A co-founder of a graphic arts and mural collective called R.K Design, Statik has produced over 400 murals and earned commissions for Coca Cola, Toyota, the village of Rosemont, and Red Bull, among other corporate clients.
Meet the 2019 Chicago Peace Fellows
The Goldin Institute invites you to learn about each of our Chicago Peace Fellows representing 14 neighborhoods across the city as they join together and establish a community of practice determined to promote peace across the city!
ABOUT GATHER
The Fellows are learning together through GATHER, which is both a mobile platform for shared learning and a curriculum for people who want to build on the talents of their neighbors and the assets of their communities to make real and lasting change. Gather Fellows learn and work together through an innovative curriculum that comes pre-loaded on a tablet device with all the connectivity, materials, videos, practices and tools necessary to provide a mobile classroom and toolkit for community leadership.
The Chicago Peace Fellows project will connect and equip a select group of past grantees of the Chicago Fund for Safe and Peaceful Communities to reduce violence and promote peace. Chicago Peace Fellows will be the first all-Chicago cohort to utilize the GATHER platform, an online learning hub built by the Goldin Institute to empower grassroots leaders.
The participants have been selected from past grantees of the Chicago Fund. They will engage in a 14-week course of intensive shared learning as well
as group projects, culminating in a graduation event in October, 2019. The curriculum has been designed in collaboration with the grantees themselves, based on their practical knowledge and hard earned wisdom, with input from a wide range of civic leaders. Fellows will reflect on their past summer work, identify successes and lessons learned, and improve their abilities by sharing strengths and learning new skills.
The Goldin Institute and the Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities have aligned missions that value authentic community leadership. The Chicago Fund is uniquely effective at finding motivated problem-solvers and community-builders. By connecting Chicago leaders through GATHER, their efforts to nurture safer and more peaceful communities will be more effective, interconnected and lasting.
To follow along the learning journey with the Gather Fellows, please sign up for our newsletter and follow up on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
If you would like to apply for the next cohort of Gather Fellows, please visit apply.goldininstitute.org.
