Kanoya Ali (00:03):
Welcome to License to Operate, a podcast that takes you inside the work happening on Chicago streets to reduce gun violence and transform lives. I'm Kanoya Ali.

Peter Cunningham (00:14):
And I'm Peter Cunningham.

Kanoya Ali (00:19):
Today we're talking to Chico Tillman, the executive director of the Community Violence Intervention Leadership Academy at the University of Chicago.

Peter Cunningham (00:28):
We'll hear about his life growing up in Chicago into the criminal justice system and back out where he has become an anti-violence leader. He's earned a PhD in criminology and has been recognized by everyone up to the president of the United States. If you haven't already, hit subscribe and let's get started.

Kanoya Ali (00:45):
Let's get started.

Peter Cunningham (00:53):
We are here with Mr. Chico Tillman, who's the executive director of the Community Violence Intervention Leadership Academy at the University of Chicago. But that's only the latest thing you have done. I know there's a lot more of the story and we're going to get that story, aren't we?

Kanoya Ali (01:13):
Where you from? Man? Chicago? Let's talk about it man.

Chico Tillmon (01:17):
Man, I always not only recognize but attribute a lot of the things that I've learned that kind of made me who I am from being from the west side of Chicago, from the Austin community, lived in a few places in the Austin community. First I lived on Laurel and Ohio and went to Howell and then I lived on La Claire and Concord over a little bit further north. But yeah, the west side of Chicago, born and raised and it really, a lot of times people talk about some of the challenges and it was a lot of challenges, but it taught me some things, whether it's survival skills, wisdom, how to navigate different situations that really I carry with me to this day and being from the west side of Chicago makes you built for certain situations where other will self-destruct or falter and I just got to get credit to the west side of Chicago and the people who helped me learn how to navigate difficult situations.

Peter Cunningham (02:22):
I mean most people don't realize the education you get by growing up in the kind of communities you did, but the fact is we all know that the only people who can do the kind of work you do and you do are people who had that education, not the education I had. The one you had.

Chico Tillmon (02:40):
Yeah. When you talk about, I think it's

Peter Cunningham (02:42):
Even though you got a lot of other education too

Chico Tillmon (02:45):
In terms of education, I think some of the skills that you develop are based upon living in an environment where you learn these survival skills and these skills to be able to maneuver in difficult terrain in order to live the next day. And it teaches you to become a critical thinker. I'm not going to say you can learn it because some of these things I believe are innate. I believe you develop intuition or instincts to be able to discern if an environment is hostile without even anybody saying things or doing anything. I could walk into a room, feel the tension through the vibrations of the room and say either it is safe or something is about to happen. And you can only learn that from being in situations or living in situations, whereas tumultuous and it's a possibility something could happen. Traumatic.

Peter Cunningham (03:53):
Tell me about growing up and how you got into the world that we are involved with here.

Chico Tillmon (03:58):
I'll tell you this, right? I grew up, I'm going to say something weird. I grew up in oblivion or oblivious because man, I say it over and over again, man, when you growing up, life is what it is. I didn't know I was poor. I didn't think nothing was wrong with going to the corner store with a note saying, my mama going to pay you on Thursday. I thought food stamps was cool. I didn't see nothing wrong with borrowing sugar from the neighbor or eating syrup sandwiches or mayonnaise sandwiches or cheese sandwich or getting the cheese from the free cheese, government cheese. Because in our community that's how we live. So we didn't, one thing about concentrated poverty as opposed to poverty and pockets is everybody in the community has these struggles. So you believe this is the way life is. You don't look at it like we are poor because everybody in the community has similar struggles.

(05:04):
So you learn how to navigate and live in those conditions, but it prepares you for life and it teaches you to appreciate things in a way that even my children can't never understand. I appreciate the smallest of things. I know what it's not to have without. Now, the rough part about growing up on the west side was society painted a picture of what masculinity or a man should be and in the black community at that time, it was a negative connotation. I was born in 1970, so I grew up during black exploitation where it was cool to be a pimp or a hustler because of the Mac and Superfly and all this stuff going on. So all my male figures in my life, now I understand what's negative because that's what was to be cool, was to be negative. So I grew up, I don't want to say confused, but dichotomous, I was pretty good in school, but still I wanted to acquiesce or grow into manhood.

(06:19):
So I adopted maladaptive behaviors just to be masculine. I'll tell you something else that was taught in our community, which a lot of times we don't talk about, which has translated in some of the challenges that we have. Promiscuity, we was taught you supposed to date a lot of women, you supposed to. That was the mindset of being a boy or growing into a man. You don't settle down early. So I grew up with all these misconceptions and unhealthy thoughts. You and then even the way we viewed what we would call subculture groups or organization culture or gang culture, the way I got wrapped up into that is not like people think. Some people sensationalizing and we watching on tv, these are the bad guys and they ain't going to school, they ain't doing right and you got to get beat up to get in and everybody rock.

(07:19):
No, I lived in the community. Everybody stuck together. Actually I played basketball at how and I went to Tymes and played basketball and when we played other teams, they knew I lived in a particular neighborhood and I was associated with that neighborhood. It didn't have nothing to do with no doggone gang, it had nothing to do with no damn gang. So I was declared in the gang before I even got involved in it. My relationships were strong with those guys because these my neighbors, this who looked out for me, this is who I looked out for. We built bonds through challenges and struggles and initially I could say I did the right things on the rowing, gifted classes, went to the military international guard, but it wasn't a pathway really for success for me. I was still broke, I was still struggling. And this was during the crack epidemic.

Peter Cunningham (08:15):
So this is not late eighties, early nineties.

Chico Tillmon (08:17):
Yeah, late eighties. And what happened was I was always sharp and good with math. I wasn't scary. I play sports. In sports, we love aggressive, tough people, be tough,

Peter Cunningham (08:31):
Competitive,

Chico Tillmon (08:33):
All of that good stuff,

Peter Cunningham (08:34):
Right?

Chico Tillmon (08:34):
So all these skills that I developed naturally where I got involved in other stuff that it just took me to another level.

Kanoya Ali (08:44):
It puts you in a position of leadership. It was easy for you to grow into that.

Chico Tillmon (08:49):
Yeah, natural. Because even in basketball I played guard, point guard. So I'm used to you do this, you do this.

Peter Cunningham (08:56):
So you did the military right after high school?

Chico Tillmon (08:58):
Yeah.

Peter Cunningham (08:58):
Okay. And then you came back to the neighborhood?

Chico Tillmon (09:00):
I was in the Air National Guard. So one of the challenges, I never left Chicago.

Peter Cunningham (09:04):
Oh, I see, okay.

Chico Tillmon (09:05):
So I was gone. I went away for six months, then I was gone a weekend a month. So really I was drawn in by the lure of the economic boom from the crack era. I never had substance use disorder problem, but I'm working two jobs in the military and dead broke and maybe a couple of my friends making $10,000, $20,000 a day. And I'm like, what the shit? I'm smarter than them shit, but I look like I'm the one dumb. I'm walking, they paying for my food and they like, Hey man, they like this what we doing? And it was easy to, the accessibility got me involved and it took off from there.

Peter Cunningham (09:54):
I do know you did ultimately you got convicted of something, you served some time, right?

Chico Tillmon (09:58):
I started 16 years, three months in prison for introducing two people. Federal prison. Yeah, I was in the feds for 16 years.

Kanoya Ali (10:04):
You said for introducing people, how did that go?

Chico Tillmon (10:07):
Situation came about. A person wanted to meet somebody else. I introduced them, somebody told on me and they wanted to know who was I introducing Peter to. And I wouldn't tell them. I was like, I ain't did shit. But introduce two people. What they do after that is they business if they didn't you

Peter Cunningham (10:26):
Even do, they didn't catch you with drugs or anything?

Chico Tillmon (10:28):
No, they didn't catch me with no drugs. But somebody said he the leader, so he the brain child. And there was a lot of lying at court and what really got me convicted is material things. At the time I had a townhouse and I could see it. Now I look guilty.

Peter Cunningham (10:52):
You obviously had money from something.

Chico Tillmon (10:53):
Hold on. This is what I'm saying, right? This is critical. This is what allowed me to do 20 years for something that I wasn't guilty of. I was doing wrong, I just wasn't caught in the act. So the way the case was, it was all circumstantial evidence. He got a townhouse, he got two brand new cars, he got jury, he got all this stuff at 23. Even though we ain't got no evidence about him doing it, he did it right.

Peter Cunningham (11:25):
I believe I read it was conspiracy, right?

Chico Tillmon (11:27):
Yeah, conspiracy.

Peter Cunningham (11:28):
That's how conspiracy laws work, right? They don't have to catch you with the drugs. They got to catch somebody with the drugs and then everybody he talked to and he introduced somebody and somebody knows somebody. Next thing you know you got a conspiracy case, right?

Chico Tillmon (11:41):
The thing that got me is I paid for people hotel room since I paid for a damn hotel room, I must be the big guy because what you got to think kids at that time, and I told you I had a military, but ain't too many people had credit cards and all that stuff to even pay for no damn credit. So by me paying for the hotel rooms, it tied me into knowing the people and all of that. But it was a bunch of bull. But hey, what allowed me to do the time was I knew I wasn't an innocent person. I'm being real. I wasn't guilty of what they charged me with, but I wasn't innocent. So it wasn't like, I'm not going to paint this picture. I was walking down the street, they just grabbed me off the street and no, I get it.

Peter Cunningham (12:32):
Get it. You involved, you involved.

Chico Tillmon (12:33):
Yeah, but not in that what they charged me with. No, I got it, I got it. But I just think they was tired and it was like, damn, let me get him and see what he talked and I couldn't do it.

Kanoya Ali (12:48):
One thing, even when I'm hearing you say that, and what throws me off sometimes is that you convicted for something that you didn't do and you saying, man, I did something wrong. But we know too many people that's been convicted and stuff they didn't do and didn't do nothing wrong too. And then, it's like then you try to find even in that space, well, I didn't do, they're trying to deal with they time, but man, I ain't do that, but I did something else. But that's not right. That's not fair, that's not justice at all. Because if I didn't do something and you convict me of something I didn't do, and all you wanted me to do is tell on someone else. If I told on someone else I don't do 20 years in prison.

Chico Tillmon (13:33):
But let me say this right? Let me tap into your spirituality. And that's what helped me tapping into God and me recognizing before God, whatever man. So Aisha also reaps so God, I say, God, if this is my punishment for all the stuff I did, then I accept it. And my prayer, believe it or not, in prison was not, let me get out of here, but God don't send me back the same person. Because my mindset even at that time was revenge, was to, I wasn't trying to hear nothing. I felt like somebody had took my life and the first thing I was like, I ain't 20 years is a lot of time. And at that time people was getting 20 years in the state for murder. So I got more time for a quarter key then people was getting for murder.

Peter Cunningham (14:27):
That was the tail end of the drug war, right? Reagan?

Chico Tillmon (14:30):
Yeah, but when you look at it, the tail end, no, I went right before the big cases in Chicago, so I was one of the first ones right before they did the one on the west side and the one on the south side with Larry Hoover and all them. So I went before them. I went in 93 and I think they was in 95 and 96. So yeah.

Peter Cunningham (14:52):
Yeah. Is that when Mr. Banks...

Kanoya Ali (14:54):
I think he went in 94.

Chico Tillmon (14:55):
Yeah. Yeah, they went right after me.

Peter Cunningham (14:58):
Well obviously you did change and you didn't come back, the same person did. You came back a different person.

Chico Tillmon (15:04):
You know when you think about the work we do and I give all praise to God and I thank God because prison allowed me time to understand myself and some of the things I was doing that was insane, that could potentially lose my life every day. And it really gave me a reckoning and an epiphany and I didn't want that same life for my children. And when I came home initially I thought I was going to be in ministry, but I used to tell God, I was like, God, I really don't. And I want to say this in the most respectful way. I really don't want to be no preacher or no pastor because it's a church on every block and I don't want to get out saying all of a sudden I'm a pastor and I'm finna compete with all these churches on every other block.

(16:01):
I say, God, it got to be something else for me to do. And even when you think about this work, a lot of people say they discovered a purpose. My purpose kind of discovered me. I came home, it was a war in North Lawndale, not North Lawndale, west Garfield Park. And believe it or not, I came home like anybody else, I'm broke, I need a few dollars. And just so happened two of the people that was into it, one of the dudes I grew up with and one of the dudes was my cellmate who I did like six years with. So I'm going to see them anyway man. I need a few dollars to get on my feet and I was able to mediate it at first, let me back up. When I first told people they was like so-and-so and so into it. I was like, what? I was like, man, I could stop that shit, man. We've been working on this. You know how on the street we've been working on that? I was like, no, that's the dude, my little brother and this my man. I can't let, it ain't got nothing to do with no violence prevention organization.

Peter Cunningham (17:16):
You didn't know this could be a career.

Chico Tillmon (17:17):
No, I didn't know what, I didn't know how big it was. I just thinking these two of the guys, these my guy when we was in the street, we did that all the time. Mediated things.

Kanoya Ali (17:29):
Somebody over here, this is my cousin, you don't know this, my cousin and then you my man, but I found out y'all in two. Hey man, that's my man.

Chico Tillmon (17:38):
No, that's my little cousin. You might be like, damn,

Kanoya Ali (17:40):
I ain't know.

Chico Tillmon (17:41):
Even if they bogus,

(17:43):
I could ease up. This is my man cousin. And so when I did it, that's why I say the work found me when people was like, no, you stopped the war. You did this. You did. And there was other people involved too at Ceasefire West. Man, I ain't never felt that good in my life. They say, man, no, we stopped. And then I got to give some credit too to Marilyn Pitchford and Fred Man, I came on man and Marilyn seen something in me. I wanted to go back to school and she gave me a real flexible schedule. First she told me that I need to go back to school. She was like, you so smart, you need to go back to school. I was like, cool. And then I got straight. She gave me a flexible schedule so I could go to school. Where were you in school? I went to Northeastern Illinois and I did it in two and a half years. I got my bachelor's and then...

Peter Cunningham (18:43):
And all you had was a high school degree before that.

Chico Tillmon (18:45):
No, I had an associate's.

Peter Cunningham (18:46):
Oh, okay.

Chico Tillmon (18:47):
So I got in two years and then I got my master's in 13 months. But even with the bachelor's, I graduated number one, I graduated iCal law and with the master's I got straight A's too.

Peter Cunningham (19:02):
And you've gone on to get a PhD, right?

Chico Tillmon (19:04):
Yeah, it took me six years, but six years now. The first two was, and I ain't going to lie, people be like, was it easy getting a PhD? Hell no. But it wasn't hard because of school. It was hard because of life. And that's what this lady I worked with, this old Jewish lady told me, she said, I was like, man, they say it takes six to 10 years to get your PhD. And she gave me the most wise phrase ever. She said, Chico. I said, yeah, I'm expecting something deep. She say, six or seven years going to pass and two things going to happen. Either you're going to have a PhD or you won't. And I was like, damn. I was like, she say, don't worry about how long it take, go through the process. And I went through the process and was able to, and I think I got to attribute the west side of Chicago and shout out my brothers, my big brothers and my little brothers. That's what allowed me to get my PhD. It was hard. I was married, I ended up getting a divorce. I had to make a lot of sacrifices. But coming up in such a challenging or difficult, not always difficult but intense, I use that word environment, prepared me for anything.

Peter Cunningham (20:29):
So talk a little bit about the state of the CVI field today. You are running an academy that is training that's really professionalizing this field, right?

Chico Tillmon (20:38):
Yeah.

Peter Cunningham (20:38):
It's teaching people that this is a profession.

Chico Tillmon (20:41):
Now let me give you a little backdrop. So league cure violence went to the and followed Eddie ran that for a while, but then along with being a practitioner and going to school, I began to think about the work different and I began to see gaps. I'm one of the first people start talking about an ecological systems approach and using the ecosystem and I was teaching that and saying that we can't do everything. We got to collaborate and it hit. And one thing that happened was when I was saying that around the country, people began to notice and I was one of the people picked to be on the transition team with the Biden Harris administration and that catapulted me into a different stratosphere and put me in a position to help write a small portion of the A bill, the American rescue plan and to do advocacy with the director of Susan Rice, me and my comrades from the black and Brown Peace Consortium along with the fun piece people and me, Marcus McAllister who used to be at Cure Violence and Stephanie who around and did advocacy, putting pressure on mayors and governors and help get 3.7 billion allocated for CVI.

(22:10):
So that's what led to the school. Once I began to see the progress of the funding coming, I said, damn. I said, we got to prepare these small orgs to be able to manage this scale that's coming fast.

Peter Cunningham (22:30):
Just all the compliance with the federal grants, things like that. It's a lot of work,

Chico Tillmon (22:35):
Not just the money too. It's different from managing two people. Now I got enough money to hire 20 people and have a full staff and it's overnight. You know what I'm saying? So I said, what can we do? And we had often been talking about standardizing the field and at that time I was working at the University of Chicago Crime and Education Lab as a senior fellow and I brought them this idea. I said, I want to build a school. And along with the steering committee, we constructed this school had two people from UIC, Catherine and Julian take our thoughts, take our ideas and create it into a curriculum. And here it is and I'm the one had the opportunity to spearhead it and ensure that it was implemented with fidelity.

Kanoya Ali (23:28):
What has been the benefits of students that have graduated from the school?

Chico Tillmon (23:33):
What? Look, the first thing I'm going to tell you one thing about me, right? One of my superpowers is goal setting and I often set my goals beyond my reach. So wherever I land, it's progress. Some people teach the opposite and say set reachable goals so that you could see milestones. Hell no. I set minds for the moon. So wherever I land, I went farther than anybody ever anticipated. And I think the first thing that we did was also stratospheric rockstar type stuff was the first class graduated inside the White House and had Kamala Harris as the keynote address. So what that did is it brought recognition, but then the people who worked to go back and talk about the work in a different way because we brought the best professors from around the country, but also we brought the best subject matter experts that do the work from around the country and we took people around the country to see the work through different lenses, not just the Chicago lens, Chicago, New York, la, the DMV. So they seeing how the work looks. So now the way they talking about it, they're able to fill gaps and bring things to, and their institutions was like, whoa. One person became a deputy mayor after coming to it, two or three people went on to national roles at philanthropy groups. People started getting promoted and being poached right out of the program because now a level of understanding along with their lived experience made them superstars.

Kanoya Ali (25:25):
You professionalize a space with the help of others, but you kind of like you are a trusted voice in the community that people know, okay, nah, it's validity behind what he say by doing this work on the ground and taking it to a level that many have never taken it to as far as getting your doctrine coming from where we come from, knowing the streets, knowing that educational sphere and then taking it there and allowing others an opportunity to kind of follow those footprints. And we may not get to the doctrine we can, but we may not get to the doctrine, but at least by stepping in some of those footsteps, I think what you're doing is allowing us to see where we can go with this work and this being beneficial for the city of Chicago. I know one of the things we wanted to talk about is we seeing a lot of violence decrease in the city of Chicago. We talking about over 40% right now. How important do you think the CVI work is to the decrease in violence in the city of Chicago?

Chico Tillmon (26:32):
I think the first thing we got to say is I believe let's do this right? I believe in shared responsibility and I think without CVI, we don't have this reduction because CVI is specifically focused on individuals in snared in a cycle of violence. So the individuals that are most likely to shoot or individuals most likely be harmed through gun related things. So let's start there. So by us going being surgical and working directly with that, less than 1% population and picking them off one by one, we taking away the people that would shoot somebody now and now they're enrolling in things like C-B-I-C-B-T, other programs, workforce development,

Kanoya Ali (27:26):
Anger

Chico Tillmon (27:27):
Management, anger management, substance use disorder. So now they not shooters, we're decreasing the probability of shooters. Now what I would say that other people, I don't want to diminish the work of other people in the ecosystem such as social service agencies, people that provide housing, people that provide road first development, people that do all those other things because they equally as important because they attack the root causes of violence and law enforcement play a role, but without a doubt, without CVI, this house will be on fire. And we've seen, let's just be real, we've seen what it's like when we don't invest in CVI and what we see now is we've made more investment and we've made, there's a correlation, we made more investment, we have more progress. When we've had less investment, we had a spike in

Peter Cunningham (28:24):
Homicides and shootings. My big thing is we want CVI to be a permanent feature of the public safety ecosystem because I think too many people still think of it as some kind of a pilot program. We're just going to try it. The ARPA money made it possible for a lot of people to expand, but right now the city, the county, the federal government pulled out under Trump and city and county getting tight on money state, getting tight on money and

Chico Tillmon (28:51):
I disagree.

Peter Cunningham (28:53):
You disagree with what?

Chico Tillmon (28:54):
It's not tight on money.

Peter Cunningham (28:55):
Oh, okay.

Chico Tillmon (28:56):
It's tight. If we don't invest, hold on. Lemme say this. I got to say this. That's the wrong way to frame it. We never say when the money gets tight. You know what? It's getting tight. We finna take 10,000 police off the street

Peter Cunningham (29:10):
Now. That's my point. Exactly.

Chico Tillmon (29:11):
No, so what I'm saying is if it costs up to 2.5 million per homicide, the problem is we can't afford not to invest because we going to lose money if we don't invest. What we need to do is double down what a cost savings come at. Just think about, I would love someone to do an analysis not on the 40% decrease and stop. How much money has the 40% decrease saved Chicago. And so really look, if you look at it, you invested, even if you invested a hundred million, but you might've saved the state or the city 10 billion or 50 billion.

Peter Cunningham (29:54):
Some people say every shooting, every shooting costs a million dollars. In policing healthcare it's 1.5 to 2.5 million. And so you said you have a hundred fewer shootings, that's a hundred million dollars. Right?

Kanoya Ali (30:06):
I'm glad you framing it this way because if people don't see, the reality is how does it make sense to not put more money in something that's actually working, that's going to cause you to not spend

Chico Tillmon (30:21):
More money as a test fit? No. What really? You make money by investing in CBI we framing it, right? It's not charitable. It's an investment. That's like saying, you know what? Ain't putting no more money in this high yield and savings account. That's stupid. But every time I put a dollar in, they match it. It doubles. Yeah, my money getting tighter. I can't afford No, you can't afford not to put money in there. That's the case We need to keep making. It's not superfluous, but know what we got to get people to think like that. Like damn, by investing 25, I saved 250. So if I invest 50, I might save 500 million. I'm going to tell you something that we did the fun piece and the black and brown Peace Consortium behind doors, I could put it out there, right? And me and him, cool now so I could bring his name up to one of my friends.

(31:16):
Thomas app had wrote this thing around Build Back better. Initially they were going to give us 900 million over 10 years. When we seen that, you know what we told the Biden team, that's some bullshit. It's not going to do nothing. 900 nationally for the whole country, 900 million. But this is the way they looked at it. We giving y'all nothing now we going to give y'all 90 million, 90 million a year. It was 900 million over 10 years. I'm going to tell you what I told him, take that and keep it because hurt us more than it'll help us. And here's why. Because if they gave us 90 million and saw no results, they'll say it don't work. But what I told him, what we told him collectively, the black and brown Peace Consortium was that's not even damn 2 million of state. That's not going to have no impact. I asked him, I asked them one

Peter Cunningham (32:11):
Neighborhood of Chicago.

Chico Tillmon (32:12):
Yeah, I asked them if you gave me the money to build a car but didn't give me me enough to put wheels and tires and all of that on it, all you gave me was the frame and the engine and no. And you asked me why ain't running because you ain't give me enough. We got a resource for the first time. It was resourced somewhat properly and we seen the impact. So that shows you at least at the bare minimum, we got to be where we was during there. And what we should be talking about is look, these politicians supposed to be the smartest people, they running our fucking city. You pick somebody to be CEO of the city because he's supposed to be a smart leader. How can I double down on this and move things around? Because the most important thing in Chicago is life is people being able to live in healthy communities. If a person can't live healthy in the community, then nothing else matters. So how can we double down and get it to, because it's possible because New York went all the way down to 200 homicides.

Peter Cunningham (33:25):
Yeah, I know they do. From 2000

Chico Tillmon (33:26):
And New York got 7 million people, almost three times as many as us. So we can get down under 200. So we should be saying, how do we double down on our investment to get to 200 because it's attainable.

Peter Cunningham (33:40):
The work you're doing I think is so crucial to us making our case and continuing to make our case because the field is becoming professionalized. We are setting standards, we're bringing strong people in, and we're running more and more sophisticated organizations doing this work. And that's a lot of that is because of the work at the

Chico Tillmon (34:00):
Academy. I want to say a couple things, man. I appreciate now I wasn't even feeling my best, but I know the importance of us getting our message out and that's why not feeling well at all. I came out to support this podcast and also I want to tell y'all my movie is out the credible messenger, and I paid and did a documentary not to make money, but to continue to tell our story around the world so people can understand who we are and what we do along with the podcast. The credible messenger is on Amazon Prime.

Kanoya Ali (34:38):
We got to promote that. I've been promoting on the Shy podcast,

Chico Tillmon (34:41):
But also we need Peter to start promoting because he's a storyteller. I need you behind me, Peter, you a musician and a storyteller.

Peter Cunningham (34:49):
I'm all with you, brother. I'm with you. That's right. I'm with you. I'm behind you. I'm in front of you. I'm with you.

Kanoya Ali (34:54):
I want to ask you this question too before you get out of here, man, because when we talking about the investment that Chicago make and we hear numbers about the Bare stadium and certain neighborhoods, 78, and you talking about buildings being built for a billion dollars at a time, and I mean you've heard these kind of numbers, so when I hear somebody say something like, that's too much of an investment or that's something to think about because if you think a hundred million dollars in CVI work in Chicago, what would that look like?

Chico Tillmon (35:29):
It'll look like. You know what it'll look like summertime shy. It'll look like people having fun. It'll look like peaceful picnics. It'll look like people on the lakefront being able to have a good time. It'll be like people on 31st Street Beach being able to swim and laugh and play. I think just creating an atmosphere so Chicago can transcend what we've always been called, which a second city to the number one city in the world. I love my city, I love Chicago, but it's really going to take real investment in communities that have been overlooked. And that's the thing. It's not that we don't invest in Chicago, it's just like underserved, vulnerable communities have been missing a slice of the pie and what we understanding now, if we don't support those particular individuals in those communities, that we going to feel it. It's an African proverb. It said, if a child doesn't feel the warmth of the heat, he'll burn down the city. Thank you. We're going to push the this out. We're going to promote your movie. Yes,

Peter Cunningham (36:39):
Sir. What's the name of the movie again?

Chico Tillmon (36:42):
Credible Messenger. The Credible Messenger and it's on Amazon Prime. Amazon by the movie is $9.99. You already know a portion of the proceeds going right back and what into the work because that's what I live for.

Kanoya Ali (37:00):
That's all for this episode of License to Operate. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcast and share this episode with your friends and family.

Peter Cunningham (37:09):
This podcast is a co-production of The Chi Podcast and Cunningham Creative. Until next time, I'm Peter Cunningham.

Kanoya Ali (37:15):
And I'm Kanoya Ali. Remember guys, when the children in the village feel ignored, they'll burn it down to fill a warmth.