Working to Level the Playing Field: Creating Peace in Chicago’s Neighborhoods

Fall 2020 Dominican Magazine



Faculty and alumni are addressing social inequities in a time of crisis Dominican University is one of only 26 higher education institutions across the country to be selected by the Association of American Colleges and Universities to participate in the Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) project, a comprehensive, community-based process committed to addressing historic and contemporary effects of systemic racism, and to advancing transformational and sustainable change.

Working to Level the Playing Field: Creating Peace in Chicago’s Neighborhoods

Clinton Nichols, assistant professor of criminology, has done research on racially biased policing and is a volunteer instructor for the Prison and Neighborhood Arts Project at Stateville Correctional Center. He was joined by Binyamin Jones ’07, a field training officer with the Chicago Police Department who has been involved in the Becoming a Man program, which brings together at-risk youth and police for basketball games and roundtable discussions. Berto Aguayo ’16 is the founder of Increase the Peace and a community organizer who has been recognized by the Obama Foundation. This summer, he was involved in voter registration and efforts to build solidarity between Chicago’s Black and Brown communities.



Jones spoke about the very difficult work of policing in 2020. “It’s been difficult to deal with the pure anger against the few who have done something not morally or legally right,” he said. “The initial protests in July went somewhat as expected, but the mass looting in all areas was not anticipated. The looting and destruction of property was largely opportunistic, done by those seeking to get away with crimes. My weekends off were canceled for several weeks in a row.”



Aguayo reflected on the work of the community organization he founded in 2016. “Our main mission at Increase the Peace is to prevent violence. Since March, we’ve had to pivot to meet the community where it’s at: offering a food pantry, a street vendor relief program, and protecting small businesses in our community to prevent them from being looted,” he said. Aguayo added that Dominican prepared him to be receptive to using non-violence. “Non-violence is courageous, not passive. During one downtown protest, I was beat up with batons and pepper sprayed by the police and it was really hard not to react to violence with violence. We’re fighting injustice, not those who are committing injustice. Dominican taught me to look at things holistically. It’s not that I don’t like police officers, I hate the system that creates tension between communities of color and police officers.”



Nichols offered insight on the current nature of policing. “Police departments are bureaucracies. We can see that a bureaucracy allows police to engage in bad behavior. Do we see ‘bad apples,’ or are aspects of the entire structure problematic? High levels of gun violence and opioid deaths speak to an issue of suffering that we are not willing to acknowledge in this country. How are we allocating resources? How can we reimagine policing? The community are the police and the police are the community. Hopefully we can find a way to bring that spirit back,” he said.