To join a gang or not to join? People who grew up in Chicago often remember having to make a decision predicated on their geography and their survival.
Cobe Williams, who co-authored the book Interrupting Violence: One Man’s Journey to Heal the Streets and Redeem Himself with Josh Gryniewicz, saw 1990s gang culture as normalized because his father was a Black Disciples gang member.
Williams is best known for his appearance in the critically acclaimed 2011 documentary The Interrupters, which tells the story of CeaseFire, a group of Chicago street outreach workers who leveraged their life experiences to stop violent confrontations in city neighborhoods.
In the book, Williams discusses the trips his family would take to visit his father in prison. Later, he’d follow in his footsteps:
“Dad went down on his knee and took my hands in his own. One of his mitts swallowed my own tiny kid-sized hands in a single gesture. He contorted my fingers into flashing a three, then bent both hands to form a star with digits. The guys thought it was hilarious. In response, they roared with laughter and a round of applause, throwing signs back and patting me on the head.
We took some Polaroids with Dad, posing like doing a family portrait at Sears studio. It was some side hustle for one of the guards to sell the instant images. Then it was all over. It seemed we were in the parking lot before the images even developed. The whole thing was a whirlwind. I was still floating on the high of that attention, though. I could feel my father’s palm print, still warm on the back of my head and a sense of confidence rushing through me.”
These days, Williams is the Director of U.S. Programs for Cure Violence Global, an organization that treats violence as a health issue by implementing prevention programs in collaboration with impacted communities.
Williams knows from personal experience how violence—specifically, learned behaviors—can destroy families, which often bottoms out the community as a whole.
Williams, born and bred in Englewood, sat down with the Weekly to discuss how gang culture was normal for him at a young age, what media and other institutions often miss when studying violence, and how Chicago stacks up when it comes to violence in other urban centers.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
In the book, you discuss how people who were originally friends—once they became gang-affiliated, those friendships were severed. In some cases, you know, they became rivals. It seems like that phenomenon was pretty common in 1990s Chicago. Why do you feel that needed to be noted in the book?
When you start off as kids playing football… As you get older, that friendship stuff still remains right there, but everybody ends up going their separate ways. And by them going their separate ways, they become a part of different street organizations. And once you become a part of the street organization, now I’m looking at this person as my opposition or something … But remaining friends [with some], though, it helped us mediate a lot of conflicts, and stopped a lot of that stuff when a lot of shooting and killing was going on, because you had that relationship with a person. I think one thing I always try to remind people is we can’t forget about our history, our roots and different things like that… It was more violence then, in the late 80s and early 90s, than it is now. So I want to say it’s ways that you could look at the old and now look at the new, and see what are some of the things that you could put in place to help stop it before [the violence] will get that high.
What do you think people are unaware of when it comes to violence in communities?
It was really normal to see somebody get shot or somebody get killed, or somebody get jumped on, or whatever. It was a normal thing. And you are seeing so much of that… But people don’t understand, you know, the cards we was dealt. It’s like, from the beginning, we already was dealt a bad hand. So it’s really now trying to play survival, and how to maneuver out these situations and all that. These situations have always been right there. We know, growing up and seeing it, being exposed to so much violence and all that… And sometimes people felt like it wasn’t important because they weren’t experiencing some of that violence until it hit home. I always tell people it’s important to try to get involved. Everybody ain’t got to be like I was, like a mediator…a guy who mediates conflict, deescalate, everybody ain’t got to be that, but to resolve a lot of these conflicts and all that a lot of times people, what they end up doing is just seeing this from afar and don’t want to get involved with it until it hit home. Somehow, everybody got to be like a mediator.
In the book, you explained how the press, and then the police, kind of had a certain view on how to do things, and that also interfered with how CeaseFire saw things. So what do you know that the media and police don’t understand about violence?
I think it’s important for people to try to understand people and meet people where they are. That’s so important. And you’ll never understand what people have been going through. But a lot of times I say—with the organization I’m a part of, Cure Violence Global, we focus on behavior-changing mindsets; changing behavior. We meet people where they are. We’re not being judgmental. So a lot of people come from different walks of life, and they’re going through so many things. A lot of them are so traumatized. They’ve been through so much trauma in their life, it’s so much trauma built up inside of them…. Somebody makes a choice in their life, and they might end up in a penitentiary; some people end up getting killed or dead, and sometimes people are put in situations…. And sometimes people don’t understand that.
Since you’ve traveled a lot talking about violence and how that can manifest in communities. How is Chicago different from other places?
We definitely have these problems everywhere. I know people are turning on the news, and I know I’m based in Chicago, but these same problems are tearing down this country. I’m gonna tell you three communities that stuck out. I’m like, man, I thought Chicago was something. And these places ain’t big, the population ain’t bigger than Chicago, but it’s something else. I remember when I was going to Camden, New Jersey; North Philly, and Albany, New York—and that’s the capital of New York. Man, these places ain’t no joke. You see a lot of the same violence everywhere…violence definitely just spreads like a disease. Even me going out of the country to places like Trinidad and all that. I look at some spots man—not trying to compare— but people think Chicago tough… When going to these places, getting out the car, you know these are dangerous spots. When you’ve been in the trenches, been in the streets all your life, you know where you’re at when you hit these places. We’re working with people all over the world, and we’re working with people like myself, who are credible, who are from these communities, who have relationships and all that, but you still keep you on your P’s and Q’s. Where you are watching yourself, watching your surroundings and everything. Because you know, Chicago is a place that really teaches you a lesson.
In the book, you discussed how “normal” it felt when you used to go see your father in prison. Considering your own prison experience, knowing that you would go see your dad and then end up there yourself… What would you tell young Cobe—or somebody like a young Cobe—or even your own children?
So back then when I was going to see my father, it was kind of crazy because I remember we’d be in the visiting room, and his friends was teaching me how to represent [a gang], how to throw up signs and different things like that. You know what I’m saying? Well, he was cool with everybody and everybody knew him and all that. So it’s all about the respect he had while he was in there. So me, following his footsteps, you don’t really want to be like him because he is my role model, and that’s who I looked up to, and me wanting to be like him and start living that same lifestyle with him. … But I look back at all that like, damn man, I spent time in these places… So now I wouldn’t want to see my son go through that. I think it’s important to be able to show him something different and all that. And, you know, I must say, all my life, I knew right from wrong. But I still chose to go down that road because, I guess I thought I was slick and it was cool until I got older.
What would you tell someone who’s new to town and wants to see how the city really moves, or they want to get involved somehow?
So when I think about anybody who wants to get involved somehow, I respect Joakim [Noah, former Bulls center] and Matt [Forte, former Bears running back] because they went through the community and saw what’s going on… So I think it’s important for brothers or sisters to go through the community and listen to the people in the community and hear what they got going on in these communities and all that.
How do you reckon with your past? You’re doing the work of violence interruption, knowing that no matter what you’ve unlearned, some folks will always see you as a gang member or a felon.
Yeah, I mean, I still get that all the time. … I’ve been doing this violence prevention work for over twenty years. I think it’s important for people to let the past be the past and let people continue doing what they’re doing. You know, I took so much from the community, but now I’m giving so much back to the community, and I want people to understand that. And I want people to recognize it’s going to be a lot of brothers and sisters coming home from prison and different things like that, but man, give them that second chance that they deserve. I look at a person like me and a lot of people all over the world who are doing violence prevention. We started one way and we finished it in another way. So man, let us be. And a lot of times, people don’t give us that opportunity to let us be and grow and come back and be a part of society.
Can you tell me about a conversation you’ve had regarding forgiveness and coexistence when it comes to violence? Because, locally, we’re aware of Ben Wilson and years later, his brothers forgave his killer.
I think people have to remember a lot of times when we’re young, we want to [act like we’re] mature all the way, right? And I’m saying that our brains wasn’t adapted and fully developed. A lot of times we made a lot of choices in our life that affected families, our family and our life. So you know, things happened in the past, but now…. I understand some people ain’t going to be forgiving as everybody, because some situations are different, right? So the people who do forgive people, I applaud them, but the people who won’t forgive people, I ain’t gonna try to put nothing negative on them. Because sometimes you never know what somebody put somebody through.
Interrupting Violence: One Man’s Journey to Heal the Streets and Redeem Himself by Cobe Williams and Josh Gryniewicz. 328 pages. Rowman & Littlefield Publishing, 2024. $29.95 Hardback.
Evan F. Moore is an award-winning writer, author, and DePaul University journalism adjunct instructor. Evan is a third-generation South Shore homeowner.