Watch | FIRSTHAND: Peacekeepers

Damien is dedicating his life to making one Chicago neighborhood safer. He finds himself driving from one crisis to the next as he stops at crime scenes, visits victims at the hospital, mediates disputes, brokers peace agreements, and leads peace circles. But when Garfield Park’s violence hits too close to home, Damien’s peacekeeping skills are put to the test.

Judge Spratt spends most of her week in a traditional courtroom in Maywood. But every Thursday, she turns her attention to healing and reconciliation in North Lawndale, where she leads the neighborhood’s Restorative Justice Community Court. Her role is to transform young lives through restorative justice. The goal is to heal victims, the community, and the offenders themselves.

Diane has been keeping the peace in Roseland for the past 20 years by offering positive alternatives to gangs and drugs. She runs her grassroots organization Kids Off the Block from her living room. It's her calling, she says, to help local youth by "all means necessary”—offering them food, clothing and activities—necessities they have been denied amidst the disinvestment in their neighborhood.

Adrian is working to bring peace to the same streets that his gang-involved family once claimed as territory. His parents were among the founders of Humboldt Park’s Spanish Cobras in the 1970s. Now, he's using those same neighborhood connections to broker peace and build community. But, a late-summer walk through the park reveals that his neighborhood’s challenges run deeper than he imagined.

Cedric was given a second chance and he’s determined not to let it go to waste. After his life prison sentence was commuted, he returned to Chicago to push peace in the same neighborhoods where he once sold narcotics. Cedric is working for a nonprofit, where his job is to de-escalate conflicts, broker peace agreements among local gangs, and recruit others to help in these efforts.