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 (00:16):
Today we sharing the story of Billy Moore, a site manager for Chicago CRED who spent 20 years in prison before becoming a powerful voice of change in the community of Chicago.

Peter Cunningham (00:27):
We're pulling back the curtains on Billy's journey from tragedy to transformation, his mentorship with Larry Hoover and how he channels his experience into saving lives on Chicago's West side. Let's get started.

Kanoya Ali (00:38):
Let's get started. Welcome to LTO, the license to Operate. We have an amazing guest today, our brother, Billy Moore, William Moore, author, father, grandfather, prestigious individual who's definitely been helping our community in so many different ways. Man. How you doing, Billy? I'm doing great, man.

Billy Moore (01:06):
I'm doing great. Saturday morning. Y'all got me out early, but it's all good. That's what's up, man. Yes,

Kanoya Ali (01:12):
Sir. So Peter, man, what we talking to Billy about today at LTO?

Peter Cunningham (01:17):
Well, the whole idea here is that we really want to hold up and lift up folks like you who are saving lives, how you're saving those lives, why you do this work, whatever it is in your background that brought you to this stage of life and just what we can expect in this city because there's a lot going on right now. You're probably aware that the violence trends are looking better every year. We've had three years in a row of declining gun violence. This year we're down 25, 30%. Things are looking good and we don't always stand up and say it's because of us. We're all with Chicago Cred, of course. But we do think that we're making a difference. So I'd love to just begin by asking you to talk about the work you do now you are the site manager for one of Craig's seven or eight sites, one on the west side, right?

Billy Moore (02:11):
Yes sir.

Peter Cunningham (02:12):
Yeah. Tell me what does that mean? What does that do?

Billy Moore (02:15):
So as you guys know, Chicago CRI is made up from the five pillars approach through street outreach, life coaching, the therapeutic component education. And then when guys phase through those particular cycles, they go on to employment and training. My job is to make sure that all those things align together for the mission to create with the main focus of helping to reduce the risk of the individuals that come into our program. Those are our clients. Our clients are from the west side, north Lawndale area that comes into my site. You talked about saving lives, right? And it was interesting because one of our check-in questions early this week, if you had a superpower, what would it be? And we went around the whole room asking these young men that, and staff participated in check-ins too. So when it got around to me, I said, I already have a superpower.

(03:15):
And it was saving lives and I started by saving my own life, but I can't save nobody life. They have to save their own life. The only thing we at Chicago CRI can do is offer the space and the opportunity and the tools to give them to save their own life. And what we as a staff have to offer is examples too on how to do that. But with that being said, we also got to embrace the reality that we can't save everybody life. So we're saving lives. You mentioned how we down the numbers is down, the percentage around

Peter Cunningham (03:57):
The violence is down,

Billy Moore (03:57):
The violence is down. And I believe we have to take a lot of credit in that, not just Chicago crib, but the overall CVI community, community violence intervention because law enforcement, describe for me what these guys are like when they walk in our door first time,

Peter Cunningham (04:16):
What are they like?

Billy Moore (04:18):
They come in straight from they circumstances and we already know what creates violence in Chicago. Right. The circumstances that exist in certain communities where they don't have a lot of

Peter Cunningham (04:32):
Plenty of guns.

Billy Moore (04:34):
Oh man, everybody got guns in Chicago.

Peter Cunningham (04:37):
How old were you when you first got a gun or you first saw one or first touched one or

Billy Moore (04:41):
I was real young. Guns is like American pie, apple pie in Chicago. It's a pastime. Right.

Peter Cunningham (04:49):
How old were you when you first

Billy Moore (04:49):
My family had guns. Yeah, everybody had 'em, right? I was a kid. You talking

Kanoya Ali (04:55):
About New Year's Eve? Yeah, everybody shot guns. Everybody outside shooting in the

Billy Moore (04:59):
Air. I was like five, six years old when my grandfather let me shoot this gun, like you say on New Year's Eve. But when I probably touched my first gun and turns to me having a gun, it was probably around 13, 14 years old. And I think that the day that I kind of picked up a gun, I instantly fell in love with a gun. I understood. I didn't understand, but I had this perception of what type of power that you had with a gun, right? But I didn't realize at the time that me picking up that gun is what kind of paved my path to the penitentiary as well. And I realized that looking back on that time, when you start carrying guns, you going to get gun problems. And once you get gun problems, you tend to deal with situations different with a gun, then you probably would deal with a situation if you didn't have a gun.

Kanoya Ali (05:56):
Billy, just to double back just a little bit, I know we getting into certain things, but before we go too far, I want people to know who you are, you know what I'm saying? What brought you to this work?

Billy Moore (06:10):
What brought me to this work was that that journey started probably when I was 16 years old, when I had pretty much for the most part made the worst mistake of my life being responsible for taking away the life of another young man. And I won't go so far into that because that story is well known, but it was a tragic mistake that cost me 20 years of my life in prison. I spent 20 years incarcerated. But during that time of being incarcerated, I had to really self-reflect on the type of way that my life needed to be. I couldn't do nothing but that time at the time. But while doing that time, I started preparing my mind how I need to start living my life, right? And I couldn't make these type of mistakes that will continue to cost me like this. So if I was fortunate enough to live through that situation, I would come home and I would do everything I can to be, I would say a contributing factor to myself.

(07:16):
I didn't think that my life would turn out to be such a contributing factor to the community, but I knew that I had to contribute to myself and my family to never find myself in that position again. I was fortunate enough to have a son and I was really hoping that I could do everything I could for him when I came home so that he wouldn't end up making the mistakes that I made. Unfortunately, I ended up losing my son to gun violence. I literally lost my son to gun violence two weeks before I found myself doing community violence intervention work. I had worked for over 10 years with an organization that helped me get back on my feet when I transitioned back into society, it was a reentry organization, they employed me. That was my introduction into really the social service field. So I was helping men, not recidivate, going back to prison.

(08:16):
That job was heavily dependent on public funds and at some point we end up losing our funding. So I lost my job. So I had to figure out my next career move. And at that time, Arne Duncan had started Chicago crib maybe about a year before this happened, 2016. My son had got killed July 6th, 2017. And I had found out about this organization called Iman, the inner city Muslim Action Network and how they green reentry department had just got expanded by Arnie Duncan's organization, Chicago cri, which was in 2017. And a young lady who had worked with me at Safer told me this would be a good organization for you to come and work at. So I ended up going over there. I found out that the brothers, they used to go to this restaurant early in the morning after they prayed. So I started showing up at the restaurant.

(09:23):
I got to know the executive director, some key individuals over there, and basically they offered me the opportunity to interview for the position. That's when I met Ali. We all got hired at the same time, but literally when I got the call that offered me the job and they told me my first day they wanted me to start, which was a Friday, July 14th, I told eight days after your son was killed, eight days after my son was killed. They had no idea what happened. I told them I wasn't going to be able to make that training and they asked me why. And I told him because that's the day of my son's funeral. So Romney, the executive director, told me, he said, we can hold back off starting with you on that day. I told him, I said, no, I'll be there Monday. And the reason why I knew I had to show up Monday is because that was the only way I was going to be able to deal with my grief of losing my son because I knew who I was going to be working with.

(10:32):
I knew the young men who was going to be in that program. They was just like my son. They was just like I was at one point in life. In order for me to really just stay focused on kind of honoring the promise I made to myself when I was 16 years old and also the honor, the promise I made to my son and any young man that was pretty much like my son and quite honestly my victim was for me to be able to show up Monday morning and give my whole heart to these young guys so that they wouldn't end up like my son, like me or even like my victim. And since that day I met Ali, we had been doing this work. It was literally four months after I got hired. I lost my first participant.

Peter Cunningham (11:24):
We've lost something like about 40, 45 people between the participants and staff since Craig started. I did a count a year ago. It was about 40. And I know we've had a couple since then. So

Billy Moore (11:38):
Well, I personally lost 14 that I've worked with personally. Me and Billy

Kanoya Ali (11:43):
History is real rich and different because I never knew how he got the position because we were up for this supervisor position and he got it. But I just found out he was going to breakfast with the brothers early in the morning to get there. I didn't do that. I was trying to figure out how they hire this guy to, well, he my supervisor, but I had been volunteering atman for years, right? So I could not put this together. You a politician man. He's working on the politics. I'm the Muslim. I'm the Muslim. This our brother, but he ain't Muslim. I'm like, man, how they hire him over me? So what Billy said was that basically you talking about a participant named Steven Ward that we lost. He was from Cabrini Greens, and at first initially he was supposed to be on my caseload. I looked at his address and the address read that he was from my neighborhood, which is KTown L Town. Don't do that again. Don't mix

Peter Cunningham (12:53):
Them up. KTown. L town. L

Kanoya Ali (12:55):
Town. Remember this about LTO. Don't do that.

Billy Moore (12:58):
Licensed. I don't do. I know your

Kanoya Ali (12:59):
Neighborhood. Don't do that. Brooklyn, do I call you? Say the Bronx? Do I say y'all man, you from Island Bronx? See what I'm saying? I'm saying that's what I'm talking about the Bronx. That's what I'm talking about. So what I will say is that when I seen his address, I initially thought he was from my neighborhood, but what happened was his child's mother was from that area, his fiance, she rented an apartment there, but he wasn't from there. But I had never met him. I didn't know Billy had recruited him. We just got the case on. I'm like, nah, I'm going to pass him on because I initially, I want to kind of see where he at, make sure we on the up and up, just in case he may have heard something about me, anything. So long story short, Billy got him and he came in his first day, he came in, shot up literally the first day he came in.

Peter Cunningham (13:56):
He'd been shot two days earlier or

Kanoya Ali (13:57):
Something. He had been shot up the night before, the day before

Billy Moore (14:00):
Somebody. So remember we sent the guys through orientation and he showed up every day for orientation. And we only had so many slots for guys to be in the program unfortunately. But he made it. So the first day that they were supposed to start the program, the first day after orientation that night, he had got shot in the hip. So when the first day he called me and he was like, man, I've been in the hospital all night. I'm like, why? He said, well, I'm going to be late. That's what he was called. I'm like, why? I was in the hospital all night. I'm like, okay, what happened? Somebody shot me. I'm like, somebody shot you. But as I'm listening to him on the phone, I'm hearing his voice too. I'm like, where you at? He's like, I'm walking up the stairs.

Kanoya Ali (14:46):
We looked in the hole. He got like a crutch going up the stairs.

Billy Moore (14:50):
This young man wanted to be a part of the program. I was going to say he wanted so bad he left the hospital. He didn't want to miss out. He had a hold his leg. I sent him home. I said, no, man, you got to go home. You can't catch no infections and stuff like that. But the backstory on Steven Ward is the fact that he was a young man who was the middle child, his oldest brother, and he had a younger sister. He never knew who his father was. He was incarcerated his whole life and his mother was a drug addict. So they basically raised themselves. He was basically grew up in the street, in and out of jail. He had his past, but then he was able to meet a young lady who was a few years older than him. And what he had to do was kind of level up to where she was at. She had some expectations and him finding this program was his chance to really get focused and start doing what was right. They got engaged and they was expecting their first child. So this program became everything to him and he

Kanoya Ali (15:53):
Was dedicated

Billy Moore (15:53):
Everything to him.

Kanoya Ali (15:54):
He was dedicated, meaning we had a program for Monday through Thursday. He wanted to be there Friday, Saturday, Sunday type of thing. That was his dedication. We started working on a piece of property to make it for the youth building and he was doing carpentry training, a trade. So he's working on this trade, he's learning how to put the drywall in. We had footage of this. So he was doing this thing. We was able to

Billy Moore (16:23):
Document all

Kanoya Ali (16:24):
This very intense, and I'll never forget the day before he got killed, we was in the office and he was begging to work that day.

Billy Moore (16:35):
He asked our program manager, could he work, see what Iman every year has this year end event where they raise money and it's a black tie event where all the staff all hands on deck. We got to show up. And he wanted to work that day. And for whatever reason, I didn't know this, but he went to the program manager because he was kind of here over the project. Ali talked about the construction project and he told him no. So when we had the event that Saturday morning, I woke up to 20 missed calls, my phone just loaded up with text messages. Now you never want to wake up to your phone having all these missed calls and text messages in this work, in this work. Never a good thing. And when I looked before I opened up the message, I seen missed calls from his fiance and his mother. And I knew right then and there something wasn't right. So by the time I called him back, she's hysterical and said Steven was just shot and killed. And just understanding that this is like four months after my own son had got killed. The first guy I recruited into the program lost his life. And that was real hard for all of us. The circumstances around Steven getting killed was that he was out with his fiance at a child birthday party. They was at some of the jumping sky zone

Peter Cunningham (18:14):
Zone jumping jack thing

Billy Moore (18:16):
Out in the western suburbs enjoying family time. And as they left, it was just some people, man from his old neighborhood saw him. And as much as we try to change everybody, don't care about your change. That's why it's important that the work we do, we scale so high that we able to touch as many people. It's possible because if I'm working on changing my life, but if I did something to Ali three years ago and ain't nobody reached him yet to help him change his life, he's still caught up in what it was that I've long moved beyond. But it may catch up with me if he see me.

Peter Cunningham (19:02):
I mean, I always wonder if one of the things we have to do is just help all our guys just get out of their environment, somehow get out of their neighborhood. Can they stay in their neighborhood?

Billy Moore (19:15):
But that's really not

Peter Cunningham (19:17):
Practical. It's not practical. Right.

Billy Moore (19:19):
And because I mean it is like I heard somebody say, if the flower is broke, you can't fix the flower. You got to fix the environment in order for the flower to become unbroken. If you want to see that flower nourish, you can't unpluck it unrooted and take it somewhere. You need the environment that flower grow in. So what we have to do, and Peter work is very important that we scale it so we can touch as many young men as possible. Because whoever shot and killed Steven Ward would be somebody that we would be actively recruiting to get in the program before he did that. So he wouldn't do that. Since Steve got in the program, he was somebody who we was working with who got shot, who wouldn't go retaliate.

Peter Cunningham (20:09):
He gets shot in the western suburbs with

Billy Moore (20:12):
His fiance and his baby. She got shot too. She was pregnant at the time with his firstborn and he really died a hero. When he saw the guys coming up, he laid his body on top of her. Oh yeah. And he took the brunt of it. She caught one in the arm, but he died saving them.

Peter Cunningham (20:32):
So what would've been in the minds of those shooter in this situ? Just speculate a little bit. Why would these guys be going after Steven who's been staying out of trouble for months, who's there with his kid and his wife or his fiance? Why would they do that?

Billy Moore (20:49):
I can't speak for they mindset, I don't know. But the only thing I can surmise is that when we find ourselves caught up in situations and I feel like I need to get my lick back. If I see the opportunity, I just take it.

Peter Cunningham (21:07):
So it could have been from something a year earlier,

Billy Moore (21:10):
Two

Kanoya Ali (21:10):
Years earlier. The answer to what you're saying often is trauma. It's trauma. You talking about

Billy Moore (21:17):
Unresolved,

Kanoya Ali (21:17):
Unresolved trauma, somebody I'm hurt, I'm hurting, and I want somebody else to hurt.

Billy Moore (21:24):
I'm going to say this too. That's the basic simpler way of explaining that. But the street live by a certain set of rules and politics, and that's why CVI, we just don't work to reduce violence. We also try to work to mediate conflicts that exist in the community. Some of these conflicts, young men been grandfathered into 'em. They go back 20 and 30 years and they don't even understand why they just grew up in a certain area and inherited the bullshit that's been going on over there for so long. So I can't explain from the mind of the individuals why they did that. I can only say that it was probably some things that had took place, whether Steve was directly involved or not. They knew he was from a certain area, they was probably from a certain area and they just felt like this was an opportunity to get at somebody who they felt like they was into it with. Now, is that the case? I don't know. But they haven't arrested. They never arrested anybody.

Kanoya Ali (22:36):
When they reported it in the news report, they said something like gang related,

Billy Moore (22:42):
Gang member, shot

Kanoya Ali (22:43):
Killed, gang member, shot killed. Once again, even what Billy saying, man, it's somebody who saved the life of a woman that he was in love with that was pregnant with his child. That took the, I mean we talking about character morals, talking about somebody who tried to go to work and wasn't allowed to work that day. And I'm not blaming anybody, but this was the, and instead of going to work, I can't go to work. Well, let me spend some time with my family. The average man would

Billy Moore (23:10):
Do. So the narrative of that usually is painted in circumstances like this young gang affiliated killed right now. You know what the message there is, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Don't worry about this guy.

Kanoya Ali (23:25):
Don't worry about, that's what I'm talking about. That's when I said it wasn't nobody that was, but we

Billy Moore (23:29):
Had to push back on that. You know why? Because we knew Steven Ward was much more than what they described. These are people who don't know the circumstances, who didn't know him, didn't see him showing up every day, showing up the first day with a bullet in him and willing to do whatever he needed to do to change his life. They didn't understand that this was a young man who we loved and he loved what he was able to do and learn about himself, what he was accomplishing. So we didn't see Steven as a gang member. We didn't see Steven Ward as somebody that you just write off in a three word narrative to dismiss him and his whole life is gone. Nah. And we wasn't going to allow that to be what was going to be his legacy either

Kanoya Ali (24:17):
Just to add. And before he died, he had this passion to really calling himself almost like narrating or telling a story about Kenika Jenkins and her situation being her found in a hotel. He was adamant about trying to figure out if it was any foul play and he was going on Facebook live with this type of stuff. So his life had made a real change, a 180. He really made a real change. So that's one of the stories that I definitely wanted to come out.

Billy Moore (24:50):
Me and Ali. And you talked about the number of people who we've lost at cri, right? Me and Ali sharing a lot of these losses that I talk about, the 14 of working with these young men and all them got stories that is more than just how society will kind of write them off as being not worthy of living. That's

Peter Cunningham (25:16):
My whole purpose here.

Billy Moore (25:17):
Yeah.

Peter Cunningham (25:18):
That's my job here, is to help lift up these stories and show people absolutely that these are good human beings who are trying to survive in a tough world. And I think a lot of people just don't understand what it's like. They just don't understand. Certainly a lot of people from my community just do not understand what it's like to grow up around gun violence, to grow up around hunger, around poverty, around homes, unstable homes. So they need to hear it.

Kanoya Ali (25:53):
I just want to make sure we get some things out that a lot of people just wouldn't know, right? Because we from different cultures, different world. We in the same world, but our coaches are different. And when we talking about the media and what was portrayed to the media, I often think about you seeing Billy today and so much in his past. It was negative as far as written what was written about him today, he's an author. But just by me knowing him and speaking to him in our years, he had what someone would say is probably an unlikely mentor, someone that people hear almost as the boogie man. But when you hear Billy's side of what the mentorship he got from this man, you may see a different picture. Who is this person Billy? You're talking about Larry Hoover. And now when you went to prison, I mean, tell us about how you met Larry Hoover.

Peter Cunningham (26:53):
Larry's in prison today. He was the head of the Gangster Disciples.

Billy Moore (26:59):
Yeah.

Peter Cunningham (26:59):
Growth and development organization.

Billy Moore (27:02):
Absolutely. Everybody from Chicago, I'm sure probably then heard of Larry Hoover and what he was partly responsible for establishing the street organization, gangster Disciples, growth and Development. But as a kid, when I got sent to prison, I went to Stateville when I was 18 years old, my lawyer who actually worked on my case by the name of Isaiah, skip Gantt, was also Larry's lawyer and part of the legal team that represented the brothers that was called the Pontiac 17. For those people who don't know what the Pontiac 17 is, it was 17 young men at the time who was indicted for three murders that took place in Pontiac, three correctional officers during the 1978 Pontiac Riots. And what happened was my lawyer and that team represented those 17 guys and Larry happened to be one of the 17 Pontiac 17. They ended up getting acquitted at that case. So when I got arrested, caught my case, I ended up having that lawyer and he told me, if you go to Stateville, make sure you reach out to Larry and let him know. Skip told me you should holler at him. I'm like, I knew if I was going to Stateville, I was going to holler at Larry anyway. Right? But when I got, he

Peter Cunningham (28:33):
Was a leader even in prison.

Billy Moore (28:35):
Oh, absolutely. So when I got to Stateville, Larry sent for me and basically told me, man, keep my head down, do right and go to school, stay out of trouble. And for three and a half years while I was in Stateville, Larry was there before he was transferred. And pretty much the things that I got a chance to learn from not just Larry but the other brothers that was there under that form of leadership, under that concept, under the culture that was established or that was existing at that time in prison. It benefited me a lot to be able to start helping myself think, right? The same thing that we kind of helping these young men work through around self-regulating their thoughts and not being so reactionary and their emotions and stuff like that. Those were the lessons that I had started learning at that time that benefited me to be able to do my time in prison.

(29:39):
And because of Larry's leadership, Larry had a real interest in seeing young guys be able to stand strong in their manhood and be able to go and endure prison. So he made sure that all the crazy stuff wasn't happening. You know what I'm saying? People was going to get affect shake, and if you was able to stand on your own, you didn't have to worry about nothing. That gave me the opportunity to really do my bit and learn a lot. You know what I'm saying? From people like Larry. So I can accredit it a lot of the way I think, you know what I'm saying? How I saw myself and the way I was able to maintain and survive that time was partly due to him and some of the things that I was able to learn from him for damn near three and a half years. So

Kanoya Ali (30:30):
You said one time he told you, you said, man, what should I do? He said, man, go to school. And then you said when you finish and got your high school diploma, you went back to him and said, okay, now what should I do? He said, what? Don't stop. Go back to school. Finish, finish.

Billy Moore (30:47):
Yeah,

Kanoya Ali (30:47):
Keep going. Now you're talking about a guy that got at the time, Billy got 20 years to do so. The reason I think this is important is because we hear from one side what a person is about, based on the circumstance, whatever took place. Now we all go in court and we say not guilty, but sometimes you don't hear the other side just based on, I'm being told not to even speak on what really occurred. But the character of a person speaks on the actions that they do without people knowing what they're doing when

Peter Cunningham (31:25):
No one's looking,

Kanoya Ali (31:25):
When nobody's looking. So he don't know Billy's going to become an author or come out and being life coach and a site manager. But Billy would tell you that his influence probably caused a lot of that at an early age.

Peter Cunningham (31:39):
It

Billy Moore (31:39):
Did.

Peter Cunningham (31:39):
What inspired you to write a book and tell your story?

Billy Moore (31:43):
Because if anybody knew the circumstances around what sent me to prison, same way, what we just talked about with Steven Ward and how the media described him as just being this gang member who was shot and killed and they just kind of dismissed him and wrote him off with that little statement was kind of the same reason why I decided to write my book. Because what was said about me was that I wasn't deserving of a life beyond the mistake that I made 16 years old. I was kind of made to be the worst. They talked about the circumstances. So many people had so many interpretations around the circumstances of what led me to prison, which wasn't true. And what I seen when I started working at Eman, we invited this organization called Contexto to work with our young men, right?

Peter Cunningham (32:39):
Yeah. They help people tell their stories and write their stories and things.

Billy Moore (32:42):
But what stood out was a proverb that I heard and it says, the tail of the hunt will always glorify the hunter until the lion speaks. And that kind of made me feel like, man, that's speaking to me. I felt like when I started working at Eman, I came through prison. I've been doing this, that and the other. I'm doing this now. Probably is the best time for me to tell my story now because prison, I wasn't going to write a book in prison. I didn't know how, first of all, I needed to just keep waking up every day. Then hopefully one day I'll be free. And then that happened. Then I came home, then I lost my son. I got able to get into a position where I could take care of myself. A good job, not just a job. I found myself with a career, but I ain't think that I ain't really got nothing to talk about right now.

(33:42):
I still got some work to do. So finding myself in the CVI field and on the heels of losing my son and then working to save lives of young men that was just like me, just like my son, just like my victim. And see these guys for who they are. See the good in them. See how man Ali could tell you about so many days. We sat in Iman and laughed and just had so much fun with these young guys getting to know them and seeing their character. My nephew also was killed. My nephew became a part of Iman. He ended up losing his life. He was probably one of the funniest little dudes ever came through that program. But now I'm compelled because they still telling the narrative around how our people are and it's not true. It wasn't true for them as well as it wasn't true for me.

(34:44):
They define us so much based off the mistakes that we make. They define us so much based off the circumstances which we got to navigate to live through. They defined us based off so much of the wrong decisions we made left with the smallest amount of choices that we got to make. They defined us based off these narrow margins we live in, and once we step outside of them, we pay the heaviest consequences. So I decided I had to tell my story now and step outside of those margins. People have to see us beyond these mistakes that we make. People have to see us beyond the circumstances that we come from, which we forced to make decisions based off how we live.

Peter Cunningham (35:26):
And the book

Billy Moore (35:27):
Is called

Kanoya Ali (35:28):
Until The Lion Speaks. Until the Lion Speaks one of the best books ever written. Man, you got so many different tools under your belt, it seemed like it was like that time was preparing you for this time. We know 20 years a lot of time. I don't know if that was what it takes to bake the Billy cake to really

Billy Moore (35:51):
Be ready to be serviced to the people. Man, I'm so glad you said that, Ali, because looking back on that, it probably did take that. And the reason why I say that because I was locked up during the crack era. I was locked up when crack came to Chicago nineties. I was locked up during the time where I spent time in prison with a lot of guys who left and went home and became victims of the crack era. Whether they ended up dying, whether they ended up becoming addicted or whether they ended up becoming indicted federally and going away for life. And I'm going to be honest, at one point, being young, still real young, I was like, man, I get out now. I can get rich. You know what I'm saying? Because everybody I know getting rich, maybe that was probably the best time for me to be away, unfortunately, because things got real worse in our community. You know what I'm saying? During that time that I was incarcerated and when I

Peter Cunningham (36:55):
Went, that was the really high levels of gun violence in the 1990s.

Billy Moore (36:59):
It was

Peter Cunningham (36:59):
Close to a thousand. You got

Kanoya Ali (37:00):
Locked up. 86, right? 84. 84, yeah. And you got out when? In 2004, 2004. You missed a whole.

Billy Moore (37:08):
But think about that. Think about that particular era. It was two things that really impacted our community. It was the crack era, which gave rise to mass incarceration. Because when I went to prison, that was not a lot of black people getting federally indicted. Black people didn't really start hitting the state prisons until the mid seventies. It wasn't number 16. Prisons in Illinois when I went to prison. Now it's over 40. And then when Clinton became president, they came up with the crime bill where they started paying states to adopt federal sentencing laws.

Kanoya Ali (37:50):
That's Peter Mann.

Billy Moore (37:51):
Well, he was the one who really adopted the Republican way of thinking around crime. And they started building prisons across the country. And the fed started indicting. That's the prison industrial

Peter Cunningham (38:06):
Complex.

Billy Moore (38:07):
The Fed started to indict a lot of brothers in the nineties and mass incarceration exploded.

Peter Cunningham (38:13):
It's a jobs program in a lot of places in America. It's a jobs program,

Billy Moore (38:16):
Just

Peter Cunningham (38:16):
Like in a lot of rural areas in America. It's a jobs program. Put a prison in, create 500 jobs.

Billy Moore (38:24):
Well, think about slavery. That was the American economy, plantation and now prisons, penitentiary. That created a lot of economy in these depressed communities, in these rural neighborhoods. They take 65% of the prison population is coming from Chicago and Illinois. And where they going?

Kanoya Ali (38:46):
Yeah, to the rural area. The prison real.

Billy Moore (38:49):
Where they creating jobs for? Look, we had a conversation. One, it's a cash crop. My lead life coach, he said when I was in prison, I went to jail in 1983. He said, I did 22 years. He said, when I was in prison, my father was in prison. My oldest brother was in prison. We was in prison where I had a correctional officer that was a lieutenant whose father worked at that prison and his son had just got hired.

Peter Cunningham (39:19):
Yeah, it's family business.

Billy Moore (39:20):
I'm there with my father on both my oldest brother being housed by a dude who father him and his son worked in the same prison. Two sides, a different spectrum. That's deep. Peter said something earlier, you said, we down in terms of violence,

Peter Cunningham (39:38):
We are down three years in a row, six out of the last eight years and down about 30% this year so far.

Billy Moore (39:43):
And I know for a fact, and Peter goes to the highest levels of government to advocate for this work because of that, right? That's right. Now, CVI, whether we want to take credit or not, how much is the police budget A year? Every year.

Peter Cunningham (39:58):
2 billion a year. Chicago,

Billy Moore (40:00):
$2 billion. And they just started in the last

Peter Cunningham (40:03):
Three years, half a trillion dollars nationally.

Billy Moore (40:06):
How much they pay out on complaints.

Peter Cunningham (40:08):
On complaints. Oh man. Hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Billy Moore (40:12):
So if we putting $2 billion into policing, and this ain't just the last three years, but now CVI is really ramping up, collaborating, very intentional, and we double digits down. That lets you know that it's not from a law enforcement point of view specifically.

Peter Cunningham (40:37):
I mean, the challenge is it's hard to show what's called causation. You can show correlation like we are active and the numbers are going down and that correlates. But to stand up and say it is because of us. That's where some people will say, wait

Billy Moore (40:51):
A second, I'm not saying that. But what I'm saying is I know CVI has an active intentional role in preventing

Peter Cunningham (40:58):
No question. And the cops will say it too. The cops will say, your job is to stop the next shooting. My job is to investigate the last shooting.

Billy Moore (41:05):
So they don't have a real strategy around preventing it. They're going to respond to it.

Kanoya Ali (41:10):
But my question is, what have they done differently? What they, I mean, I'm saying the violence going down. What did the police say? We did this strategy. Now this, I mean, for one

Peter Cunningham (41:20):
Thing, their work is much more data-driven today than it used to be. In the old days, guys would walk a beat. And again, I'm not a policing expert, but I did work for the city back in the nineties. In the old days, a guy walk a beat and now they know every single shooting, they know exactly what time of day it happened. They know exactly the corners where it's happening. They know much more about the kind of guns. They used to have shot spotter. So a cop would show up in a shooting and they already knew there were three guns involved. There were 30 bullets shot. They would know the exact location. It's great intel in the old days, 9 1 1, somebody called it happened around the block. I dunno where it was. I don't know how many shooting. I don't know. I heard something.

Kanoya Ali (42:02):
So

Peter Cunningham (42:03):
You think about how much more information a cop today had?

Kanoya Ali (42:05):
No, I think they got a lot of information. Question. What did that information do to cause crime that go down, gun violence go down?

Peter Cunningham (42:13):
I don't know. But what I can tell you is that they have come to understand in a much, much deeper way that if they want to prevent violence, they need to work with organizations like ours. They need to talk to guys like you. They need to be engaged with community leaders who are actually talking to the people at risk. And they have to identify the people who are most at risk, which is what we do, and go find them and give them some help to get them before they fire the gun. They now know that. And they didn't always believe that. They just believed that the thing to do was to arrest somebody and send them away.

Billy Moore (42:50):
And then that's to my other point, because when I talked about mass incarceration, creating these laws to incarcerate people didn't slow down people from going to jail and committing crime. No. I mean, the fact is we have

Peter Cunningham (43:07):
Fewer shootings, fewer homicides and fewer arrests today. Fewer arrests and fewer shootings. Put two and two together. What do you got? What you got is deterrence. What you got is somebody's out there preventing shootings.

Billy Moore (43:22):
Exactly.

Peter Cunningham (43:22):
And when you prevent a shooting, you don't get an arrest. Right? So I mean the number of arrests today from police officers, about half what it was every year before the pandemic.

Billy Moore (43:32):
And to that point, we have to also be mindful that if you don't involve the community around addressing this, well, this is something that we now see. This is the evidence when you do involve the community, when you do work together. Because before then you had mass incarceration in the midst of them creating these draconian laws to incarcerate, you had policing thinking that we don't have to work with nobody. We going to do what we do. I'm talking about up until now, and it never stopped people from committing crime, it never deterred violence from happening. You can't arrest a young man saying, I'm going to make you an example because guess what? 10 of his homies is waiting to be the same example.

Peter Cunningham (44:23):
I want you to say what LTO means to you, and then we're going to finish with that. Okay?

Billy Moore (44:28):
LTO as we know, licensed to, that's just having a credibility to be able to go into a place, a community where young guys, where we have identified it to be a problem, it may be a conflict that's going on. It may be an area where can't too many other people go, because it may be a high crime rate. It may be a high propensity for violence. Or you dealing with young men who you know are violent. And in order to try to curb that violent, someone has to have a relationship with these young men to talk about what can we do to help you. And they have to be able to receive you, respect you, and trust you to an extent to listen.

Peter Cunningham (45:12):
And why do you have LTO and why are you able to do this work?

Billy Moore (45:17):
Well, you have to build it up. Your credibility has to be established based off who you are, the work you do, the relationships you have. It's not easy to build a LTO. It's easy to lose it if you're not sincere about what you're doing. If you're not a man of your word, if you're just doing this for a paycheck, you can't buy credibility. My heart is in this work, I talk about the 14 young men I lost, right? But I never try to forget about the hundreds of young men that I haven't lost that I've been able to establish a good relationship with. And that's where my LTO is at right there with all those young men that I've worked with that I've hopefully helped them to have a better life, man, a better outlook on life. Get 'em some hope. A lot of these young guys, they don't have hope. You know what I'm saying? So the lion

Kanoya Ali (46:15):
Has spoken. That's right.

Billy Moore (46:16):
My brother.

Kanoya Ali (46:18):
I brother, man. Appreciate real LTO, man. See you next time. That's all for this episode of Likes to Operate. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcast and share this episode with your family and friends.

Peter Cunningham (46:37):
This podcast is a co-production of The Chi Podcast and Cunningham Creative. Until next time, I'm Peter Cunningham.

Kanoya Ali (46:43):
And I'm Kanoya Ali. Until the lion speaks. The tail of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. Remember that.