Kanoya Ali (00:01):
Welcome to License to Operate, LTO. A podcast that shares the inside work happening on Chicago streets to reduce gun violence and transform lives like I told you before, I'm Kenia Ali. And I'm Peter Cunningham. Today we're talking to Bilaal Evans, the founder of Restorative Project in Englewood, who's been doing gun violence prevention since 2007.

Peter Cunningham (00:27):
We're exploring Bilaal's journey from wrongful conviction and 15 years in prison to becoming a powerful advocate for justice and healing in his community, including surviving, being shot in the head while doing this work. If you haven't already, hit subscribe. Let's get started.

Kanoya Ali (00:43):
Let's get started. So introducing our brother Bilaal Evans, one of the greats, man, been doing a lot of work in Englewood and throughout Chicago, originally from the west side of Chicago, even though he don't like to claim it, the Henry Horner Project. Actually, man, I don't want to tell your whole story. I know so much about you. I can go on for so long, man, but let's hear from you, man. So let's start man with what got you involved in the work.

Bilaal Evans (01:16):
Like he said, I'm initially from the west side. I grew up in Henry Horner projects. My family was one of the first families that was in there from the first time it got built. And so I have a history of cousins, uncles that have died in them buildings during the gang wars and the different conflicts that go on in the street. I can say up to 2021, I lost over 26 cousins in the Henry Warner projects. I left the Henry Warn projects when I was 11, moved out south to the south side, Englewood 64th and Bishop. And for a long time I didn't really want to embrace the new community, so I would get on that Ashland bus every day after school and go right back out west. But eventually I started hanging out in the neighborhood and I liked it and I made my bones there, as they say in Englewood.

Peter Cunningham (02:17):
Now, did you grow up in the street life, so to speak?

Bilaal Evans (02:20):
Yes, sir. I mean, it was all I knew. I come from a family that's a prison culture. All my uncles, all my older cousins, everybody, and I hate to say it, but the majority of 'em went to prison for murder. And so that was the life that we lived and that's what I saw at their knees. And so I just followed the tradition innocence.

Peter Cunningham (02:43):
And why is it so much a part of your whole family background? Because they couldn't see other ways. They didn't have other ideas about things they could do and jobs were not accessible.

Bilaal Evans (02:53):
I think that the problem really is that when you think about bonding, people somehow feel that their experiences are different from other communities and that we actually suffer from the same traumas. And the problem is that because we feel our trauma is different, that creates the conflict. We can't identify what's hurting us and we know that they hurting too, but we feel like us stepping into their sphere or them stepping into our sphere is a challenge. And so that's why the cycle of violence continues. Jobs, hopelessness, lack of education. Because on the west side, the majority of my cousins, if they make it, they make it. They barely make it to high school.

Peter Cunningham (03:41):
A lot of them died as teenagers or even younger.

Bilaal Evans (03:43):
Yes, there was a book that was written called There Are No Children Here.

Peter Cunningham (03:48):
I know it. Yeah.

Bilaal Evans (03:49):
The young man Lafayette, who they story talk about, he mentions his best friend Bird Leg in that book. That's one of my first cousins that was killed in Henry on projects at 16.

Peter Cunningham (04:00):
So this idea of breaking the cycle, like you say, you were talking about can you break a cycle? That's a lot of what your work is, right?

Bilaal Evans (04:07):
No doubt, no doubt.

Peter Cunningham (04:09):
Talk a little bit about Restorative Project.

Bilaal Evans (04:10):
Well, Restorative Project is a community-based organization. Our mission is to change the way young people deal with trauma. So we create safer neighborhoods by instituting different modalities such as cognitive behavior, intervention, job training, youth mentorship, to steer the young men and women away from those same traumas that we talking about now into a more positive way of thinking and a positive way of living.

Peter Cunningham (04:39):
How's it going?

Bilaal Evans (04:40):
It's going good. As we all know, it's a lot of work to be done. So it's day by day.

Peter Cunningham (04:47):
Yeah, I mean, I could tell you that the numbers this Ali, the numbers have gotten a lot better since COVID. COVID was bad and then before COVID, it shot up way up in 2016, which is the year a lot of us got into it. How long have you been at this work?

Bilaal Evans (05:03):
Man? I was a pilot career advisor before it was that it was ceasefire, so I've been in it since 2009. I came home from prison in 2007 and shortly thereafter I started to work with the different community organizations.

Peter Cunningham (05:19):
How long were you in prison?

Bilaal Evans (05:20):
15 years from the time I was 18 into 33.

Kanoya Ali (05:25):
Let's go back, I'll just take it back a little bit. When you say you went to prison, you want to speak about how that actually occurred?

Bilaal Evans (05:33):
Well, in all honesty, and I talk about this a lot in my neighborhood, I was considered the person that the police are always chasing, always trying to catch. To be honest with you, I did a lot of more fighting than I did shooting. And I used to get into it, the young guys and we'd meet up at the park and I'd say, man, put the pistol down in let's box. And a lot of 'em didn't want to do that. So I had a lot of fights, but then a lot of shootouts too, because they was chasing me, trying to kill me. They like, nigga, you ain't even whoop me. So I had got a reputation for being aggressive in the community. So a murder happened in my neighborhood and they didn't have no real evidence on what happened in the crime into Kenneth Boudreau and Thomas [unclear] And they were some of John Burge's cronies. They identified an incident where I had a fight with a guy and kind of roughed him up pretty good. And so him and his mother filed police reports against me and they came to interrogate me for the fight and ended up arresting me for first degree murder.

Peter Cunningham (06:42):
Now Burge was the chief police detective in Chicago in the nineties who was notorious for torturing guys beating confessions out of them. And a number of his cases have been reversed. I think he was the subject of some lawsuits. He actually, I think he himself was ultimately convicted of something, but he died a few years back. So you encountered him, huh?

Bilaal Evans (07:07):
Not him personally, but some of his cronies, some of the his team out of area three 39th of California. When they actually arrested you, what happened? So they arrested me for the fights and they ended up interrogating me. So I told 'em I want a lawyer, I'm going to see a lawyer. They like, okay, we got you, we'll let you see a lawyer. And then they put me in a lineup and the victim brother didn't identify me. I had on regular street clothes like everybody else because I had just got arrested and got into the system. But the police was bent on getting me, so they took me and put me in the county jail, took me to a thrift shop around the corner from the 39th Street police station and found me a pair of blue khaki pants. But they took me out of my,

Peter Cunningham (08:03):
Supposedly like the guy they were looking for or something or Why did they push you?

Bilaal Evans (08:07):
I don't know. To this day I never really thought about that. But what I did know is that they put me in the IDOC shirt. My lineup picture is an IDOC shirt flipped over, but it's clear that this is an IDOC shirt,

Peter Cunningham (08:22):
Illinois Department of Corrections.

Bilaal Evans (08:23):
And then they brought me back another day and put me in that same lineup. Then they arrested one of the guys that was also a part of my case who was on the scene when I was fighting the other dude. And so the police report was against both of us and they arrested him. And now I wasn't in the police station with him, but what he later told me is that they pulled the gun out and put a bullet in there and kept spinning it and clicking it at him, telling him sign the stab against me, sign the staber against me. And he ultimately did. And so it wasn't until the statement was signed that they put me back in the lineup with the DOC shirt and then they got a mirror, a reversible mirror, but you could see because there's a light up over the mirror you could see in there. And the dude ended up picking me out of the lineup after that.

Peter Cunningham (09:16):
Based on that, they charged you and convicted you and you served 15 years?

Bilaal Evans (09:20):
Yep.

Peter Cunningham (09:22):
How do you feel about that?

Bilaal Evans (09:23):
Shit? I'm angry. I didn't like it. I went through a whole series of violence when I got in there because for me, injustice don't sit right in my spirit. And so I ended up getting into with the police and spending seven years in seg for fighting the police. I would do anything I could to hurt one of 'em. Every time they came past my cell, they put me behind a steel door or I can't spit on 'em. I can't throw shit on him, I can't do nothing. I spent that seven years in Pontiac Center.

Kanoya Ali (09:59):
To hear you speak on that. You talking about going to prison at what age?

Bilaal Evans (10:03):
I caught my case at 17 and I went to prison at 18.

Kanoya Ali (10:07):
So being incarcerated at 17 years old child for something you didn't do, and see, the thing is what people don't understand is like, okay, I'm out of prison now. Why would I keep the lie going if I'm lying? I'm telling you that I didn't do this and I had to go to prison for 15 years. Whoever killed this person was still out there. So no justice was served at all. It was complete injustice overall. You just took a child off the street that was acting bad fighting, had some run-ins, but never kill nobody.

Peter Cunningham (10:49):
How does this whole experience inform your work now? What do you say to young guys?

Bilaal Evans (10:56):
It made me a champion for justice because I hate injustice. I have hard injustice. I don't care how simple it is, I hate it. You know what I'm saying? That's what going through what I went through did for me. It made me hate injustice. The mistreatment of anybody, I hate it. I don't care how simple it is. If we stand in the line and a kid in the line first and somebody just walk up and I'm going to say something, man, get out the way. This brother was there first. Wait your turn. So for me,

Peter Cunningham (11:25):
Little, little every day, injustices matter.

Kanoya Ali (11:29):
Something that when I think about the history that we got and we never talked about this, I kind of put some things together. I knew some of the backstory, but I ain't know everything. But I'll say this though, one thing that always struck to me, we would have young guys that we deal with and they'll get locked up and you would be like, we got to go get him. You know what I'm saying? Let's put the bond money together right now and go get him. So they wouldn't spend a night and I'm like, bro, nah, he hard here, let, he might need to sit for a little. He like, nah, Uhuh, let's go get him. So what you saying make right now, it kind of put some meat to the bones for me with why you was doing that all the time.

Bilaal Evans (12:15):
For me, it's personal. When it comes to community violence intervention, for me it's personal. I don't care about no accolades, I don't care about no publication of, I probably got the worst website out of everybody that's in the CVI profession.

Peter Cunningham (12:34):
I saw it was pretty good.

Bilaal Evans (12:35):
No, it ain't the best, but for me, the ground game has to be for real. It can't be a joke.

Peter Cunningham (12:43):
Well talk about LTO because that's what we're doing here. This podcasts called to operate. Talk a little bit about what that really means to you and what it means in Englewood.

Bilaal Evans (12:52):
It means being your authentic self, helping from a place that's given, not doing it just to be seen to men. I know a lot of the situations that I found myself in had I been a part of some organizational community network that helps young men who didn't have fathers growing up, my outcome probably would've been different because I wouldn't have put myself in the situation to be targeted. So I think that for me,

Peter Cunningham (13:25):
Did you not have a mentor when you were growing up?

Bilaal Evans (13:27):
No, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. Now you can live in a household and my mother had nine kids. All of us chose different paths, but only one of us did something that was straight positive their whole life. And that was my older brother. He started his own business. He came very successful at what he was doing. He had trucking companies and unfortunately he died from diabetes at 39, but we lived under the same roof, but everybody chose a different path. My other brothers, we all chose the street life and we did different things with our choices, but we all chose the street life.

Peter Cunningham (14:13):
When you say you chose it, what do you mean? Why did you choose it? Why did you say I want that?

Bilaal Evans (14:19):
You got to realize what it means to be an individual. You know what I'm saying? You choose your own path,

Peter Cunningham (14:25):
You going to find another one.

Bilaal Evans (14:26):
But that has nothing to do with your work ethic and things like that. For me, those are intrinsic. Those are things that come from you. Whatever you pick up in your development, those things come from you. And so I didn't have the drive to go to school even though I was the smartest kid my mother had academically. I never did homework a day in my life.

Peter Cunningham (14:48):
I mean, the question I always ask is we know there's a pipeline of kids coming up and some of them are going into the street life and maybe some of them aren't, but a lot of 'em are. And how do we work with a lot of the older guys? We work with guys in their twenties and sometimes even older, but there's all these 10 year olds and 12 year olds and 14 year olds who are coming up who we're not getting to them, right?

Bilaal Evans (15:14):
No. Well, we trying to, but the reality is this, you have kids as young as 10 years old, attending grammar school, elementary school at age 10 years old, negotiating for their safety, hanging out with social groups just because they know that either you're going to be a part of what we doing or you're going to be fooled, you're going to get you we going or you're at risk. So you at risk,

Kanoya Ali (15:42):
You've been through a lot of different things in this work, man. One of the most tragic things you've been through a couple years ago, man, you got shot in the head sitting in the car, right?

Bilaal Evans (15:53):
No, I was driving.

Kanoya Ali (15:54):
You was driving? Yeah. Can you speak to what took place?

Bilaal Evans (15:58):
So my work is primarily in Englewood and I was dealing with some young men and I was already in the house, in the bed. So one of the young guys had court and he needed some money for court. So I say, you got Zoom, you got a Zelle or whatever. He's like, no, don't got that. So I said, okay, I'm going make it a trip with my family. So I got all my family in the up and we got in the car and we started driving. We made it to the area first. We went and got something to eat and then we pulled up on the block. When we pulled up on the block, they was living in a house that's abandoned. So at the time it was the anniversary of some guys that they was into it with they deaf. And so this was the time that they chose the slide.

(16:47):
And so the ops, the ops, the opposition. And so as I knock on the door, I got my kids in the car, so we not going to be over here for no time. I gave him the money. I said, man, let me know how court go out tomorrow. He was like, all right, I got you. Turned around, jumped in the car. When I was leaving off the porch, they had just came back around and they saw me get in the car from a distance. So they didn't know who I was, but all they knew was that this was the trap house and I just came out of there.

Peter Cunningham (17:17):
You just were walking out of the wrong house.

Bilaal Evans (17:20):
And so I started driving down.

Peter Cunningham (17:21):
You were there just to give some guy some money for court and you didn't even know it was the anniversary of the death of these people. They were into it with

Bilaal Evans (17:28):
Everybody know me in that neighborhood, all of the guys that's diametrically opposed to each other. This is why this is where I grew up. This is where they fathers, their mothers, whatever. This is like the neighborhood where I felt I'm safe. I'm safe right here. So as I leave out the house and go to my car, I drive down, I make an illegal turn. Don't tell the police. I made an illegal turn on 65th and Bishop to Loomis and then made a right hit Marquette and started heading eastbound. By the time I made it to Morgan, they was on my ass. They had already started shooting the truck. They shot my truck up 20 so times.

Peter Cunningham (18:13):
You got your whole family in the car?

Bilaal Evans (18:14):
All my kids, everybody. But they shot from the angle to hit me. They ain't no marksmen so they could have hurt my babies. And so when I got shot in the head, my kids are screaming or whatever and I don't know the seriousness of it, but I see blood shooting down my neck and it won't stop and I'm trying to calm them down. But at that point I look across the street and the car that did the shooting turned around and now they waiting to see me. And so my child's mother jumps out the car with the car seat. Y'all shot the wrong car. We not no young people. Why y'all do that or whatever.

Peter Cunningham (19:05):
Your wife jumps out of the car?

Bilaal Evans (19:07):
Yeah,

Peter Cunningham (19:07):
Yelling at the guys with the guns.

Bilaal Evans (19:10):
And when they seen that, they went the other way.

Peter Cunningham (19:14):
They knew they screwed up.

Bilaal Evans (19:17):
But because I came from that block where I just came from, I had to let them know, listen, this just happened and so y'all might be in danger. They went right back over there. As soon as they left for me, they went right back over there

Peter Cunningham (19:30):
Looking for someone else?

Bilaal Evans (19:31):
Yes. They didn't say, okay man, we just created a problem. Let us get up out of here. They said, no, we want somebody. So they went back over there.

Peter Cunningham (19:40):
Obviously you recovered.

Bilaal Evans (19:42):
By the grace of God.

Peter Cunningham (19:43):
And no one in your family was hit. How many were in the car with you?

Bilaal Evans (19:47):
Five. Wow.

Peter Cunningham (19:49):
When did that happen?

Bilaal Evans (19:50):
December of 2021 or 22, 21.

Kanoya Ali (19:55):
I remember that came across in they like, man, but I got shot in the head man. I personally was sick like man, bro, it just did something like, man, damn, because we know you. You know what I'm saying? So whatever it was, it just, when you doing this work, you don't expect one of us to get it, but it can happen because of the element that we dealing with. I don't think a lot of people understand that part.

Bilaal Evans (20:26):
And again, I really want to see change. And so I deal with the young people directly, personally. Every day they bullshit. I see the mile away, I call him on it, whatever. So what ended up happening is that when I got shot and they went back to retaliate, they car got shot up, they drove off or whatever, and so they talked to each other. They was like, man, go pick your mans up. Say y'all shot the wrong motherfucking man, y'all really fixing to die type deal. And so I intervened. No, as soon as I left the hospital, I found out who done it. I stayed in the hospital for three hours.

Peter Cunningham (21:07):
So right now who did it? Of course I did. Was there an arrest?

Bilaal Evans (21:11):
No sir. That's not what we do.

Peter Cunningham (21:14):
Did the police talk to you about it?

Bilaal Evans (21:16):
No sir. I don't talk to the police about crimes. It's not my job to solve crimes. No disrespect to the no family or no victims or gun violence, but it's not my job to solve crime. That's not the field I'm in. I'm in the field of helping to restore young black men.

Peter Cunningham (21:31):
But you were a gun violence victim in this case.

Bilaal Evans (21:33):
I was. I was.

Peter Cunningham (21:34):
But you just decided you weren't going to press charges, you weren't going to try and have them arrested. Nothing.

Bilaal Evans (21:40):
Even if I would've died, my family already know that. That's not what we do in any war. And I feel there's a war on gun violence. There's going to be martyrs, any war there's going to be a martyrs.

Peter Cunningham (21:51):
And is this sort of the old no snitching kind of thing that you grew up with or something?

Bilaal Evans (21:56):
Not so much "No Snitching," of course I don't believe in that. But it's not about not snitching, it's about losing an incident to create opportunity for healing. That's it. That's how I see it.

Kanoya Ali (22:10):
Just think of it. I can hear what you're saying Pete, but this is what I'm saying. If you think about a guy that was in prison for 15 years for a crime that he didn't commit, I remember being in prison for eight years and I thought the last thing I wanted my worst enemy. I wouldn't put in here because of the feeling you getting and I did the crime. I can only imagine not doing the crime and any kind of calling the police. The police have a position and then there's some people that got another position that's not opposed to the police, but you got a lane over here and this another lane right here, and these lanes just don't intersect in that sense, it's a hi, bye, hey man, do your thing. That type of thing. I feel like, like I said before, the position that a lot of us that came from the street is we trying to prevent crime from happening. Would you say that to be the case and then the position of the police is to solve crime on their end, however they did it after it happens when crime happened. If that takes place, that's what you get paid for, right?

(23:27):
Would you say that or not?

Bilaal Evans (23:29):
I would and also let's keep it, keep it real. I wasn't the target. I was a mistaken identity. I wasn't the person that they was looking for.

Peter Cunningham (23:38):
Right? I mean, in theory there is a relation. You and I, we all know that in the neighborhoods we work in, the percentage of shootings that get solved is very, very low, right? 19 out of 20 non-fatal shootings don't lead you an arrest.

Bilaal Evans (23:55):
And I'm going to keep it real. That's only because when I got arrested in those days, the police never cared about evidence. They never cared about who actually did nothing. They never thought about that. They just saying, we want to clear this case. So who's a likely target of our bs? And so because of that, the laws changed. In particular, they brought the cameras in for interrogations. And so now any type of person that's get arrested for murder, they have to be interrogated under the camera. And any juvenile interrogated for murder had to have someone of a guardian present during the interrogation of the case. So now they starting to utilize the proper protocol in arrest because back then if somebody said you've done it, they're going to come beat your motherfucking ass until you say you've done it or they're going to hold you 72 hours and let you go, then find somebody else where they can beat they ass and say they done it.

Peter Cunningham (24:51):
Now, do you think it's happening less than it used to today?

Bilaal Evans (24:54):
Yes, without a doubt. That's why the cases can't be solved. That's why the cases aren't solved. They don't got nothing to do with witness evidence, witness tampering, witness fear, and none of that. They just getting due process.

Peter Cunningham (25:06):
When you think about our work with Chicago Cred, Restorative Project, what makes you feel hopeful about that we can reduce this gun violence? Chicago still has more gun murders than every other city in America.

Bilaal Evans (25:20):
What I think is hopeful is addressing each issue at its core, that's what we at the Restorative Project say, and as long as we can continue to identify the root cause of each and every young man's challenge in this trauma, we'll reach triumph in our work in helping them to root out those issues.

Peter Cunningham (25:41):
Alright, well, I know you're tight on time, so we can leave it right there, but we appreciate what you,

Kanoya Ali (25:48):
We appreciate you.

Peter Cunningham (25:49):
Yep, same words. See that we're starting to finish each other's sentences now.

Bilaal Evans (25:55):
Marriage of the minds.

Kanoya Ali (25:56):
There you go. Appreciate you, Bilaal. Thank you for coming.

Peter Cunningham (25:59):
Appreciate you, brother.

Bilaal Evans (26:01):
No problem.

Kanoya Ali (26:08):
That's all for this episode of License to Operate. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and share this episode with your family and friends.

Peter Cunningham (26:16):
This podcast is a co-production of The Chi Podcast and Cunningham Creative. Until next time, I'm Peter Cunningham.

Kanoya Ali (26:22):
And I'm Kenoya Ali. Don't fit in with the crowd. Be yourself and get greater later.