How Long Will I Cry? (25 page)

Once people found out about the Dream Club,
they started asking me to share the experience. A probation officer
asked me to speak to students. The topic was how to be successful
on juvenile probation. So I went to this school, and I saw a bunch
of kids who seemed fairly bored and not real thrilled to see a
judge coming in to speak to them.

Then one young man asked me about a police
shooting in New York City. “How did the police get away with
that?”

A lot of people ask judges questions like
that. But I couldn’t answer that question because I didn’t know all
the specifics. I wasn’t in the courtroom. I left thinking, “I did a
horrible job and I am never going back to a Chicago public high
school again.”

Still, I was really taken by their passion.
As soon as that young man brought up the issue of the police and
community relations, the whole room came alive. I was ignorant that
this issue was a concern for kids. I thought, “With all the things
that they have to worry about—violence, teen pregnancy, drug use,
incarcerated parents and high unemployment—why do they care about
the police-community relations?” They didn’t seem interested in
talking to me about things that I thought had a more direct effect
on their lives. Yet they were very interested in talking to me
about the police and the community.

About a week later, the same probation
officer asked me to speak at Fenger High School in front of about
100 kids. I thought, “Are you kidding me? Oh my God, this is nuts.”
When I told friends that I was going to Fenger to speak, they said,
“It’s a big a waste of time. Those kids aren’t going to listen.
They’re going to act like wild animals. They’re going to completely
disrespect you.” After all the stories I had heard, I was half
expecting the principal to walk down the hallway with a gun in his
hand and be like, “Okay, I gotcha covered, Judge!”

But Fenger was a beautiful school. It was
clean, the floors were polished, and there was great woodwork all
over the place. The teachers seemed energetic, and the students
were in uniforms and seemed really well-behaved. I was really
struck by that, because the principal told me earlier that day that
a minor had been stabbed outside the school. So there was this
contradiction that I was aware of as I walked the hallways.

The teacher introduced me: “All right,
everybody, quiet down. Judge Sheehan is here, and she’s going to
teach you about civics.” I was a
bit shocked by that and said, “Thank you, but I am
not
going
to teach
you about civics. I came here today in spite of everyone telling me
not
to come.”

I continued, “I am not here to speak to you.
I am here to listen.” You could have heard a pin drop.

I said, “I’m going to treat you with the
respect that you deserve as young men and women. I expect the
same—to be treated the same way—and if I’m not treated that way, I
will leave. I will assume that you will behave
like young men and women and that you and I can have a dialogue
with each other.”

Well, I could see them sitting up straighter
in their chairs. I could feel sort of the honor that was somehow
bestowed in the room, the respect from them to me and me to them,
and it changed the vibe of the room. I spoke for a while and then,
just like before, a young man started aggressively questioning me
about the police and his community and how they get away with what
they get away with.

I could feel that I was losing them as they
aligned with their classmate. I tried to convince him, the young
man, that there were good and bad police, same as with any group.
But he just said, “You ain’t out here. You don’t know.” And then he
kept saying, “What are you gonna do about the problem? What are you
going to do?”

And finally I looked him square in the eye
and said, “What are
you
going to do about it?” And that
stopped the room. I mean, the room was
quiet
.

And then he looked at me and said, “Well,
what
can
I do about it?”

I said, “I don’t know. I guess you can do
what you just did. Speak up when you see injustice. But it’s easier
to be a victim and say what’s wrong than it is to be a part of a
solution. It’s a whole lot harder, and it takes a lot more courage
to be part of the solution.”

And at that moment, I had a sudden image of
police and youth sitting together at a round table to talk about
their conflict, a safe place to deal with this pain. Because I saw
that most of this was born out of pain and crisis. So I asked,
“Would you be interested in sitting in a circle not invested in
blaming someone, but invested in a solution to this problem?”

He said he would. And, after my talk, about
ten kids came up to me and asked, “Are you really gonna do
that?”

I said, “I guess I have to now.” That is
where the journey began.

I started talking about my idea to anyone
that would listen. I was referred to a wonderful group called
Community Justice for Youth Institute (CJYI). The group was very
active in communities, using restorative-justice tools like peace
circles. Since that day at Fenger High School, there have been many
circles involving police and youth. Not long ago, I helped organize
a daylong summit of 80 police and youth. They exchanged ideas,
laughter and tears with each other. They lunched together and even
participated in a “street yoga” session.

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 through 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.