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Humanity's Journey to Peace: From a Chicago Lunchroom to the World Stage
When we listen to and empathize with our “enemy,” we can start seeing beyond the moment and working to create a world that works for everyone. We can only evolve together.
May 10, 2026
Yes, I’m still trying to write a book. Meanwhile, horrific wars rage and the outrage I feel quietly morphs into helplessness and then, after a while, shame. I believe, in some deep place inside me, that we can move beyond this. I know we can.
I also believe I have a role to play, as a writer, to help push our collective awareness beyond a public shrug over the cost and consequences of militarism: our trillion-dollar-plus military budget and ho-hum acceptance of the “collateral damage” that budget inevitably winds up creating... over there somewhere. This is simply assumed to be the nature of power. You know, dominance. It’s how we stay safe.
What I want to cry out is that this is fake power. It’s a trap. It keeps us in hell. Connection and creative conflict resolution are a different form of power. When we listen to and empathize with our “enemy,” we can start seeing beyond the moment and working to create a world that works for everyone. We can only evolve together.
I say these words humbly, quietly. In no way am I suggesting that anything about such a process is simple. But it can only begin if we believe it’s possible, and then find the collective courage to begin the journey... together.
When emotions are uncontrolled—when they are uncontrolled and armed—the fragmentary nonsense has lethal potential.
So I open up the soul of my book and tell a story: a story about Restorative Justice, which I have written about a great deal. People sit together in what is called a peace circle, sometimes to discuss a harm that has been done, a wrong that has occurred. All sides in the matter are part of the circle; they sit in vibrant equality. A talking piece is passed around. When you hold it, you speak; otherwise, you listen. Often the words go deep. People tell difficult truths.
The following story is that of Robert Spicer, who at the time was the culture and climate coordinator at Chicago’s Fenger High School. To put it more simply, he was the peace guy. He had a peace room. He trained students in conflict resolution. He brought Restorative Justice to Fenger.
One day, as students were eating breakfast in the cafeteria, waiting for the first bell to ring, two boys were standing together and suddenly ignited the volatility in the room—the volatility present at every struggling school in a low-income neighborhood. They tried out a new handshake.
Amid the talk and laughter, Spicer explained: “Another student noticed them doing their handshake and began to question them about what they were doing. Feeling disrespected, the students started to have words and then other students gathered around to see what was going on.”
And suddenly, the first two boys, he explained, “postured themselves to fight.”
But Fenger was a high school that knew about something beyond fighting—beyond the unleashing of righteous anger, the subduing of an enemy. Fenger, like other schools that have opened their doors to Restorative Justice, had peace ambassadors roaming their hallways. These are young people trained in restorative practices, like listening, like keeping calm, like refusing to surrender to the inevitability of hatred. Sometimes they were called peer jurors: students who help run conflict-resolution circles, circles that address disputes and attempt to undo—that is, heal—harm that has been done.
And there were peace ambassadors in the cafeteria that morning.
“As I was preparing for my day, some of my peer jurors who were in the lunch room approached me and told me about the situation and who was involved. One of my peer jurors said, ‘You’re going to have a big peace circle today. Let me know if you need my help.’ Quite frankly, because this situation happened in the lunchroom, I knew that all of the eight male students involved were not going to end up in my office but be sent home on a suspension. But was I in for a surprise that day!”
Both the dean and the principal had interviewed the boys and, oh changing world, decided they needed to sit in a peace circle with one another. The Chicago Public School System, like most American school systems, is primarily ensconced in punishment-based discipline, but this is changing.
Eight boys, along with the dean and the principal, entered the Spicer peace room and sat with one another. They passed the talking piece around the circle. As each one talked, an awareness filled the room: This was a big misunderstanding, nothing more. Some of the boys talked about other issues they were dealing with, complicating their day and their behavior. People got it.
“After the closing ceremony,” Spicer wrote, “each of the students shook hands and even hugged each other as they were preparing to leave my office. They did this without any adults prompting them to do this, which showed their sincerity. Once we concluded the circle, the adults decided to allow them to blow off some steam and play basketball. And the students who were the main ones in conflict were on the same team. They played for about 25 minutes and afterwards were sent to class skipping and excited about the school day.”
And so it begins. Kids talk, a community that hadn’t existed—a sense of commonality and understanding among a group of tough guys at a Chicago high school—emerges. Punishment morphs into basketball, into joy, into healing. This is not a simple process, but—cynics, beware—it’s possible; it happens, in schools and elsewhere. An awareness is slowly shifting.
Sometimes it’s a matter of life or death. When emotions are uncontrolled—when they are uncontrolled and armed—the fragmentary nonsense has lethal potential. This is the case in so many broken communities, around the country, across the planet.
How can we transcend war? For those planning for peace, Restorative Justice is a gold nugget.
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Shady Loan Deals With JPMorgan Chase Put Chicago Schools in a Financial Vice
Big banks like Chase have repeatedly targeted communities, taxpayers, and even our schools with predatory debt. It's time to fight back.
Sep 16, 2024
Chicago’s school year kicked off amid a looming budget crisis that jeopardizes stability for both students and teachers. At the heart of the issue is a silent killer of public education: predatory bank loans, particularly from JPMorgan Chase.
During a bargaining session with the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), I urged Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to stop allowing big banks to hold Chicago students hostage. Instead of delaying contract negotiations with teachers and risking program cuts that harm students, CPS and state officials should take legal action to recover the funds lost due to these toxic bank deals.
CPS has a deficit projection of over half a billion dollars, perpetuated by the several hundred million dollars in predatory loans from banks like JPMorgan Chase taken out nearly a decade ago. These loans have strangled CPS finances and prevented the district from providing the high-quality education Chicago's children deserve.
Predatory loans are a familiar problem for families in Chicago and around the country. These risky loans are hawked as a short-term solution to fill a gap in finances–with a steep interest rate buried in the fine print that balloons over time.
Chicago Public Schools should hold banks like Chase accountable for the harm they’ve caused Chicago’s schoolchildren.
Chase has repeatedly targeted communities, taxpayers, and even our schools with predatory debt. Chase and its predecessor banks pushed Black and brown Chicagoans into the predatory subprime mortgages that caused the 2008 financial crisis, leading to a tsunami of foreclosures that resulted in a massive loss of household wealth in communities of color.
And nearly 10 years ago, Chase closed a predatory deal with CPS that has haunted our finances ever since.
CPS was already reeling from drastic cuts to special education services in 2016, prompted by the immediate payment of $234 million in termination fees for bad deals they entered into a decade prior. An unfair school funding formula forced 50 schools to shutter three years earlier and continued to destabilize the same South and West side neighborhoods.
A twin set of threats were on the horizon: a potential takeover of schools by Governor Bruce Rauner, a Republican who was hellbent on making Illinois more like Texas, and a threat by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to lay off 6,000 teachers to close a budget gap caused by structural underfunding.
The school district desperately needed funds to pay for projects like lead abatement. Rather than face a takeover or mass layoffs, they decided to issue bonds in order to pay the termination fee. But because CPS’s credit rating had been downgraded to “junk” just a few months prior, financial giants like Chase and Nuveen exploited the opportunity.
Banks purchased the bonds from CPS at a lowball price but then sold them to other investors just months later for a much higher payoff. Over a span of two months, Chase bank made a 9.5% profit on $150 million in bonds through this arbitrage scheme, an annualized profit of 82%. This calls into question whether Chase met its legal obligation to give CPS a fair price for the bonds. Our schools are still impacted by these bad deals, paying $200 million annually for loans taken out during this moment of crisis.
CPS was also the victim of toxic interest rate swaps deals that cost the district, Chicago, and the state of Illinois hundreds of millions of dollars in the early 2000s. Banks had marketed swaps as a way for cash-strapped governments to save money, but they were laden with hidden risks that materialized as a result of the 2008 financial crisis, causing payments to skyrocket and costing taxpayers a fortune.
As with Chicago’s parking meter and Skyway deals, future generations of taxpayers were stuck holding the bag. From 2012 to 2016, the City of Chicago handed over $145 million to Chase Bank alone to terminate these toxic swaps.
CPS should hold banks like Chase accountable for the harm they’ve caused Chicago’s schoolchildren. There is strong reason to believe the banks that trapped CPS into these predatory deals violated their legal responsibilities to the district. While the district has improved its financial health since 2016, recovering the millions lost to predatory lending would help build on their progress.
Decades of underfunding and predatory banking have swallowed the district’s reserves. Now, faced with a federal reduction that could slash funding by $800 per student, the district has reached an inflection point: Will CPS hold banks accountable and fund the programs, resources, and staff that students deserve—or will they make cuts that set kids back?
Teachers Union Demands Probe of Predatory Big Banks Loans That Made Chicago Schools 'Broke on Purpose'
"it is not that Chicago Public Schools does not have the funds. It's that Rahm Emanuel sold the school district to Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase, and other bankers and left it broke on purpose."
Aug 14, 2024
The Chicago Teachers Union on Wednesday demanded a state investigation into a series of loan deals made with "predatory" Wall Street banks under ex-Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner that left the city's school system "broke on purpose."
"For years, banks scammed [Chicago Public Schools] with predatory financial deals, taking money out of our classrooms and shortchanging our students," CTU detailed in an online contract update. "For years, CPS and many other Illinois school districts have been systematically underfunded, burdened by bad bank deals, and forced to do more with less. We will need leadership from every level of government to transform our schools with the resources they deserve."
According to the Chicago Sun-Times: "During the financial crisis, stemming from the budget stalemate under... Rauner, from 2016 to 2018, CPS took out six high-interest loans. Just on these loans, CPS must pay $194 million this year."
CTU's letter to Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul requesting a probe says that "the predatory loans CPS took on were at sky-high interest rates unheard of for municipalities and public bodies, especially at a time when interest rates were at record lows."
As the union—now in bargaining talks with the city over a new contract—said in a statement about the request:
In other instances of predatory banking, state and local officials sought remedy through class-action lawsuits and other legal efforts to recoup funds, address the harm, and defend the public. However, in Chicago, the school district is still paying $200 million per year to lending institutions for loans that JPMorgan Chase, among others, sold and earned 9.5% profit or $110 million in the first year alone.
The CTU points to multiple historic examples of public officials upholding their responsibility to defend the public from such practices and is calling on current elected officials to fulfill the same obligation.
CTU Local1 president Stacy Davis Gates stressed Wednesday that "it is not that Chicago Public Schools does not have the funds. It's that Rahm Emanuel sold the school district to Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase, and other bankers and left it broke on purpose."
"Our elected officials have the responsibility to investigate those predatory bank deals, just as they did successfully in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis, and recoup the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that the banks stole from the public and our children," she asserted.
The union is arguing that Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, the Chicago Board of Education, and city officials including Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin and Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former CTU organizer, "must all play a role in helping fund our schools and undoing the damage from the Rahm and Rauner years of predatory bank deals, and the decades of inadequate state funding."
CTU held a Wednesday morning press conference, during which Saqib Bhatti, co-founder and executive director of the Action Center on Race & the Economy, said that "we're here at Chase today because Chase took a bunch of money that belongs to our kids."
"CPS is [in] dire financial straights right now, and one of the big reasons is because banks like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America systematically ripped off CPS for years and years and years," Bhatti continued, surrounded by people holding signs with messages including "Chase Profits Off Students" and "Bad Bank Deals Cost CPS."
"We know during the subprime crisis that banks were selling predatory loans to Black and brown families, loans that were designed to fail," he explained. "They did the same thing with CPS."
CTU also invited Bhatti to speak during Tuesday's public bargaining session at Morgan Park High School—the third event of its kind since the union began negotiating with CPS in April, before the teachers contract expired on June 30.
The Chicago Board of Education passed a $9.9 billion budget last month. As Chalkbeat noted at the time, it features "cuts to central staff and administrative costs to help close a roughly half-billion-dollar deficit," and doesn't account for increases to teacher salaries, due to ongoing talks. Both Johnson and the union opposed staff layoffs.
CPS claimed during the Tuesday event that the additional cost from just 52 of over 700 CTU contract proposals would increase the district's projected deficit for fiscal year 2026 from $509 million to $2.9 billion, and by fiscal year 2029 it would hit $4 billion.
As the
Sun-Times reported:
The CTU's bargaining presentation for Tuesday's session did not ask the district to take out a loan, but it challenged officials' financial analysis and claims that they lack funding.
The union pointed to revenue initiatives that the city and state could explore, like more heavily taxing millionaires and corporations—which would require changes to state law—or seeking federal funding for school building improvements. The union also suggested efforts that could take years and would not solve the budget problems in the short term, like fighting banks for past "predatory" loans to CPS or seeking money back from past "bad vendor contracts."
"These predatory deals are costing hundreds of millions a year," said Pavlyn Jankov, research manager for the CTU. "The district has to make every effort to claw back those funds."
The newspaper noted that CPS chief financial officer Miroslava Mejia Krug "revealed that the school district is actually a part of some national lawsuits against banks, but it is unclear whether those lawsuits specifically address high-interest loans."
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Chicago Middle-School Students Berate Officials: 'Don't Close Our Schools!'
Feb 09, 2013
"We're counting on you!" said middle-schooler Marcos Reyes to the row of Chicago Public Schools officials seated in front of a packed auditorium.
Voice cracking, Reyes, dressed in his ROTC uniform, continued, "My parents have been here for seven years working hard for me so I can have a better future ... and you guys can stand here and close my school. I don't really think that is fair!"
The hundreds of students, parents and teachers in attendance jumped to their feet, clapping and cheering as the Madero Middle School student wiped tears from below his glasses.
The Wednesday night gathering in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood is one of 28 public hearings being held by the Chicago Board of Education about its bid to save money by closing public schools dubbed "under-utilized."
The board has not said how many schools will be closed. Analyses by the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Teachers Union and parent groups indicate that 100 or more schools could meet the board's definition of "under-utilized." Schools officials have indicated the number will be much lower, without giving specifics.
Many parents and teachers--whose union carried out a historic nine-day strike in September--think the planned closings are intrinsically linked to the administration's plans to open up to 60 new privately run charter schools. The Chicago Teachers Union, like teachers unions nationwide, sees the opening of non-union charter schools as a way to undercut organized labor. Hence charter schools were a major subtext to the fall strike, though the union has no official power to bargain over them.
The stated reasoning behind closing public "community schools"--distinct from other public schools such as charters, magnets and selective-enrollment schools--and opening private charters funded with public money is that, based on student standardized scores, the community schools are inefficient and failing. Supporters of the Chicago community schools say that the administration is not taking into account the many measures of success that don't show up on standardized tests; and that it is also not giving them adequate support and resources to reach their potential.
"You should be working with us to make [community schools] better, not closing them down," said a mother of students at Telpochcalli School, an arts-focused public school in the nearby neighborhood of Little Village. "Where's [Mayor] Rahm Emanuel? He wants charter schools. He should be here telling us from his heart to our faces why he wants these charter schools...Why?"
From the crowd, voices yelled out, "Money!" "His rich friends!"
Parents, teachers and students spoke passionately about the academic achievements of their community schools, the dedication of the teachers and the creative programs--like mariachi band and folkloric dance--that schools have launched despite a severe lack of resources and a student body facing many challenges outside school.
That describes the four Pilsen elementary schools on the list of more than 100 schools that meet the administration's definition of under-utilized, meaning they could be targeted for closure. Three of them --Finkl, Pilsen Community Academy and Jungman--have student populations that are close to 100 percent low-income and almost entirely Latino, with 30-50 percent speaking limited English. The other Pilsen elementary school, Paderewski, has an 81 percent African-American student body that is also almost exclusively low-income. All the schools also have a significant percentage of special education students and students with disabilities.
Young students at the meeting from Peter Cooper Elementary Dual Language Academy, dressed in Cooper Jaguars T-shirts, held heart-shaped signs saying "I Love Cooper" and noting ">60 Percent Bilingual" and ">10 Percent Special Education." The education journal Catalyst reported that a third of the schools under consideration for closure have special education "cluster" programs, meaning special education and autistic students - and special education teachers - could be disproportionately impacted by closures.
Several speakers described how the number-crunching used to label schools as under-utilized doesn't do justice to the reality of schools that are actually in some cases still overcrowded; where classrooms the board considers unused are actually being used for science labs or parent programs; and where smaller classes of special education students who require extra attention are skewing the numbers.
Periodically, the speakers were drowned out by the sound of pounding on the doors of the auditorium and the chants of "Let us in!" from more than a hundred parents and community members outside who did not make it into the over-capacity auditorium.
The outpouring showed the strength of community sentiment against the school closings. During the teachers strike, parents and teachers allied over the issue of closings, which were seen as part of a larger battle over the future of public education and the role of privatized charter schools.
During the strike, Emanuel frequently accused teachers of endangering students--by causing school days to be cancelled--and putting their own interests before students' well-being. Testimony at the Wednesday hearing from parents and students contradicted this view.
Madero student Natalie Torres described teachers constantly staying after school voluntarily to work with students. "They waste their own time and get no money, they do it for free, and yet you are going to fire them?" she said.
"If they give up on us, we'll give up on ourselves," she also told the crowd. "Closing down our school is closing down millions of futures."
Marta Ramirez, mother of two students at Jungman Elementary, said her daughter asks her "morning, afternoon and night" what is going to happen to her school.
"My question to all of you, is how can you guarantee the physical and emotional safety of our children?" asked Ramirez.
The two aldermen representing the Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods both promised to fight against any closings of schools in the neighborhoods. The crowd cheered for Alderman Ricardo Munoz, part of the small progressive caucus on the city council, before and after he promised to "fight arduously against any closings or consolidations because we deserve our community schools." Alderman Danny Solis, a close ally of the mayor, was booed loudly when he took the floor, but then people applauded when he promised to oppose closings of Pilsen schools.
A list of schools to be closed was supposed to be finalized by January, under state law, but Chicago officials successfully petitioned the state legislature for more time so that an independent commission could study the matter. Among the commission's recommendations, released in an interim report Jan. 10, [WHEN?], were that no high schools be closed, because of the risk of increased gang violence when students are transferred; and that no schools which have undergone tumultuous consolidation or "turn around" proceedings in the recent past be closed.
The board will release a list of schools to be closed on March 31, and an interim list in mid-February after concluding the hearings. Then they will hold another series of public hearings on the schools officially planned for closure.
Catalyst revealed that the school closings hearings were funded, to the tune of $478,000, by a major proponent of charter schools--and a major opponent of unions: the Walton Family Foundation, affiliated with Wal-Mart. The foundation's largest grant for charter schools is going to Chicago. Catalyst reporter Sarah Karp also revealed that the consulting firm retained by the city to provide advice on the closings meetings, the Civic Consulting Alliance, received a separate $220,000 grant from the Walton Family Foundation and is housed in the same offices as a pro-charter organization, New Schools for Chicago.
Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett is in the process of recruiting a retired Marine with experience negotiating prisoner exchanges in Kosovo to help students transition safely to their new schools. The symbolism was not lost on some parents and teachers, who have said students and families face extreme stress and danger when switching schools.
"There's going to be more gangbanging if you close our schools," said Torres. "You guys will have to spend more money to hire more cops."
Sarah Chambers, a special education teacher at Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy in Pilsen and member of the Chicago Teacher Union's governing progressive Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE), noted that Byrd-Bennett and the mayor were not at Wednesday's meeting.
"Where is Rahm Emanuel, who is the puppet master of all of this?" she asked. "If they are not here, what does that say about how much they value our input?"
"The board is not asking us whether or not school closings are a valid option," she continued. "They're asking us which schools should we close. They're asking us to plan our own funeral. Are we going to let them do this?"
"No!" people yelled.
"The board is a constant revolving door: You stay a couple years, closing our schools, privatizing our schools and making money off our tears," said Chambers. "But we are here, and our schools are here to stay."
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Students Rally Behind Their Teachers in Chicago
Sep 14, 2012
Marie Sklodowska Curie Metro High School is located in a hardscrabble neighborhood on Chicago's southwest side. A coal-burning power plant lies just to the north and various factories and warehouses stand on surrounding streets.
Gang violence is a serious problem in the area, and the economic crisis has hit many immigrant families hard.
Students and teachers describe the school as a safe haven, a place where, despite a severe lack of resources, teachers offer innovative lessons with real-world context and organize clubs and after-school programs on topics like literature, science, and the environment.
Curie students say they recognize the extra lengths their teachers go to in making sure they get a stimulating, top-flight education even in such trying circumstances. Hence many students and former students have spent the past few days on the picket lines with their teachers and former teachers.
"This is my family," said Nicolas Coronado, 19, a DePaul University political science student on the picket line with his former IB History teacher, Homero Penuelas. "I loved it here."
A student marching band has been helping to keep their teachers' spirits up on the picket line, and one student has even turned up each day in a hot dog costume with a sign saying "Mayor Emanuel Is a Weenie."
On Thursday morning, 2007 Curie graduate Jose Xavier Montenegro gave a younger student pointers on drumming.
"I wasn't the best student but I look up to these teachers," said Montenegro, who now works as a laborer with his own company and competes in power-lifting. "I know what it's like in those classrooms. It's jam-packed; in one class we had 42 students. One time a rat ran through the classroom. Teachers could do a lot more if they had more resources."
Students describe teachers regularly buying supplies out of their own pockets.
"It's like being in a factory and paying your own money for the parts you need to make a phone," said Curie senior Adam Cabanas, 17, standing on the picket line Thursday with senior Cheyenne Watkins. "I love my teachers. They are always there for you."
"They take money out of their own wallets for us," added Watkins, 17. "For teachers to be treated badly after they have put so much of their lives into this is not fair. [The administration] tries to make it look like teachers are hurting students. But students are hurting in the classrooms - there's no air conditioning. You have 38 students in one class."
Jazmin Gonzalez, a seventh-grader at Lindblom Elementary in the nearby Englewood neighborhood, joined her mother and Curie science teacher Maricruz Gonzalez outside the school, wearing a sign around her neck saying "CPS student and daughter of CPS teacher - Double Whammy."
"It's a little scary but this has to happen for teachers to get what they need to teach us effectively, they are some of the hardest working people I've ever met in my life," said Gonzalez about the strike, noting that in her overcrowded classes there are "people sharing desks and sitting at the teacher's desk."
Karina Alcorchas, a 2012 Curie graduate, credits Curie teachers with inspiring her to pursue chemical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. "It's important to give back to the teachers who have given so much to us," said Alcorchas, who earlier in the week walked picket lines with her former elementary school teachers.
Curie highlights the main reasons the teachers union opposes standardized testing used to determine merit-based pay, which the school board has backed off on, and merit-based evaluations, which the board is still demanding. (After negotiations Wednesday, both the school board and union president Karen Lewis said progress was being made and students might be back in class on Friday).
"Merit pay works only in neighborhoods where you're not dealing with the kinds of things we're dealing with here," said Penuelas. "I have students who go to work after school and work until 1 in the morning, then we start school at 7:30 am. Many are the breadwinners in their families. We try our best to help our students but these are hard things to overcome."
Rosana Enriquez, Curie's only social worker, elaborated on the challenges facing students.
"Just last week I talked to three kids whose fathers are in jail, and one whose mother had been deported and she was living with relatives, and teen mothers. That's not to mention the foster kids we serve," she said, noting that more social workers in the schools are desperately needed. "Kids are living with depression and anxiety because of the violence in the neighborhood."
Teachers at Curie, as at many public schools, often incorporate the harsh realities that their students live with into their lesson plans, an approach Penuelas noted can also apply to the strike.
"This is as prime an example as any of a civics lesson," he said. "If parents are worried about their kids being at home not getting an education, they should bring them out here. It's a lesson in democracy and power in numbers."
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