Don't Laugh, Mayor — Peace Circle Is A Chance To Lead By Example

CHICAGO — Nothing happened, except the same ol' shouting.

That was the big news from Friday's special City Council meeting — a gathering called by a collection of ward bosses regularly at odds with Mayor Lori Lightfoot over, well, almost everything.

In case you missed it, Aldermen Ray Lopez, Leslie Hairston, Anthony Beale and Anthony Napolitano cited a rarely used parliamentary move to force the first meeting successfully called by the City Council since the late Mayor Richard J. Daley was in office.

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The attempt sought to force a public discussion on whether city leaders should ask the governor to send in the National Guard as added protection against further looting amid national civil unrest and to debate the city's budget woes. But it got shot down by Lightfoot's allies, deferred to City Council committees to be discussed another day.

There were moments of heated rhetoric reminiscent of the Council Wars during the late Mayor Harold Washington's administration — only milder and virtual, with the mayor's majority controlling the day.

"This is not a dictatorship," Beale said, demanding to be heard.

Lightfoot dismisses Beale and Lopez, among her most frequent council critics, accusing them of grandstanding to get media attention. The mayor and Lopez, you might remember, have engaged in a public war of words that I wouldn't use within earshot of my mother.

Lightfoot made it clear at a previous council meeting that she thinks Lopez is "100 percent full of s---."

"F--- you, then," was Lopez's response to the mayor.

It's entertaining political theater but does little to help a city in chaos beyond providing distractions from an unfortunate truth: Some aldermen feel left out of City Hall's response to the converging crises of coronavirus and civil unrest.

So, I asked the mayor if there was anything that could be done to mend the rift with her detractors, Lopez chief among them. Maybe a "peace circle"? I suggested.

Lightfoot laughed and made a joke at the expense of an unrepentant muckraker.

"Mark Konkol suggesting a peace circle. Let me just pause on that for a second," she said.

Maybe you think it's a silly idea to expect a big-city mayor and her City Council critics to sit crossed-legged on the floor with restorative justice experts to squash bitterness and overcome rifts that have resulted in F-bombs, grandstanding and political stalemates.

But I don't. I learned about the power of peace circles from Robert Spicer, the restorative justice expert who brought the safe-space conflict resolution strategy to Fenger High School as a means to settle disputes between feuding students.

More than decade ago, when Richard M. Daley was mayor, Spicer and a collection of activists conducted a peace circle with Chicago Board of Education officials over three days that led to eliminating a zero-tolerance discipline policy that inequitably impacted Black students.

"I'm gonna tell you straight up. They laughed at me, too," Spicer said of the initial response to an effort to convince the Chicago Board of Education that a better way to settle disputes than zero-tolerance suspensions, expulsions and arrests was to sit feuding kids on a rug in a safe space, speaking only when they held a rock in their hands.

"They said I was crazy, and the kids were going to tie me up in that rug and hit me upside the head with the rock."

Instead, those early peace circles at Fenger reduced serious disruptive behavior nearly fivefold. They also inspired the ongoing push for more social workers and fewer police in Chicago public schools as part of the effort to end the so-called "school-to-prison pipeline."

When you sit in a peace circle, Spicer said, everyone is equal. Two trained facilitators help guide tense discussions, reminding participants of their common values. The goal is to build trust necessary to mediate big problems.

More than personalities and political agendas, Lightfoot and Lopez are at odds over a big problem. City Hall sources call it the "Burke Factor" — as in Alderman Ed Burke, the powerful Southwest Side boss facing bribery charges as part of an ongoing federal corruption probe.

Almost from the moment Lightfoot took office, the mayor has accused Lopez of "carrying the water" for Burke.

Some people say the move to force Friday's special meeting without the mayor's permission seemed to have the fingerprints of Burke, a master parliamentarian, all over it.

Lopez told me he talked with Lightfoot about her assertion that he acts as Burke's council surrogate in an attempt to "bury the hatchet" after they hurled dirty words at each other this spring.

It didn't work. Lightfoot still dismisses almost everything Lopez says and avoids mentioning Burke's name in public. And Lopez says the mayor is suffering from "paranoia that prevents her from working with someone she thinks is intellectually inferior," referring to himself.

But Lightfoot and Lopez have plenty in common, too. They're both Democrats, racial minorities and partners in same-sex marriages. As far as anyone can tell, they want some of the same things: safer streets and a more equitable city.

For that, each of them has been a target of criticism, and worse. Threats get made against Lightfoot and her family daily, and she takes heavy criticism from the police and teachers unions and President Donald Trump and his loyalists who see her as an enemy. Three times in July, Lopez had bricks thrown through the windows of his home and 15th Ward office after clashing with local gang members.

While political insiders might get a chuckle at the suggestion that a peace circle could end their conflict, Spicer sees an opportunity for the mayor to set a powerful example to a city at war with itself.

"Resolving conflict peacefully is what's on our mouths and hearts and minds. The conflicts between gangs. Instead of getting the guns and shooting, call in the peacekeepers," Spicer said.

"As Chicago's first African American, openly gay mayor, Lori Lightfoot has the tools to show leadership on that. If she's willing to sit in the circle with aldermen, and they come out of there with unity that they can disagree on certain things, but on other issues are ready to work together, there's no telling what effect that's going to have on the city of Chicago, a world city. And there's no telling what effect that might have on the world."

All that he's saying is give the peace circle a chance.

What do you say, mayor?

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series, "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots.

More from Mark Konkol:

• CTU Bosses Demanding Hazard Pay For Teachers In Empty Classrooms
• If Foxx Lied To Public She Represents, Take Away Her Law License
• Lightfoot Stands Alone, Talks Like 'Boss' She Doesn't Want To Be
• Who's To Blame For Chaos In Chicago? Fingers Point At Everyone
• Are CTU Bosses Backing Madigan Or Fighting For Social Justice?