ON CITY'S MEAN STREETS, ONE CORNER OFFERS HOPE

A West Side center offers solace from violence and helps young men to
change their lives

The seeds of a partnership were sown a decade ago, the night the
mother of a young heroin dealer phoned Maurizio Binaghi after 2 a.m.
asking for help.

Fourteen years old and drunk on Hennessy cognac, Joseph Williams had
stormed off with a .32-caliber pistol. His mother had no one to turn
to but the Italian seminarian who worked with young offenders.

Williams was hunting the gunmen who earlier that night had shot his
girlfriend, his brother and his best friend as they hung out on a
street corner. Williams' friend was hit in the back. His girlfriend
fell in his arms, wounded in the forehead. His brother took a bullet
in his left eye.

Williams, his mother said, wanted revenge.

Binaghi, who knew Williams and his mother through his work with
youth, caught up with the boy on a forlorn stretch of West Chicago
Avenue lined with warehouses and sheet metal plants. There, a pact
began that would lead Williams to renounce vengeance and eventually
join the staff of Binaghi's storefront outreach, The Peace Corner Youth Center.

He persuaded the boy to throw away the gun.

Now 24, Williams works full time at the drop-in center run by the
Comboni Missionaries, a Roman Catholic order. On streets where
violence and drugs can seduce, the center's mission is a matter of
urgency. Binaghi, now a priest, has talked rival gangs into a truce
there. Youths can shoot pool, organize summer outings to the beach or
prepare for their GEDs.

Binaghi and Williams are an unlikely pair. The 43-year-old Italian
gave up a career as a high school teacher in Milan for a ministry on
the West Side of Chicago. Williams acts as a big brother to young men
who often are caught up in drugs and violence, as he was.

Williams' journey to The Peace Corner began the night of the
shooting, Nov. 30, 1995, at West Chicago and North Kostner Avenues.
When Binaghi caught up with the boy, he talked him into driving to
Hyde Park to throw the gun in the lake, both men recalled recently.

The boy was in a welter as they approached dark water. His girlfriend
lay in a coma. He thought his brother would die. The pistol was his
protector, but it also drew him into the violence. Giving up the gun
meant entrusting retribution to the legal system or God.

For a moment, the white Italian and black American stood at the water's edge.

Williams hurled the gun. A splash.

Then Binaghi hugged the boy. "You did the right thing."

"I think so, too."

"That makes you a man, a real man."

The boy was on the verge of crying but held back his tears.

'A moment of grace'

"It was, I think, a moment of grace, in which peace and forgiveness
won over violence," Binaghi recalled later.

Williams' girlfriend suffered permanent brain damage, and his brother
lost his eye. The man who shot at them, a member of the Four Corner
Hustlers named Michael "Psycho Mike" Austin, now 31, went on to kill
a construction worker who asked him to stop dealing drugs in a park
near his home. He is serving a 90-year sentence at Stateville
Correctional Center.

Violence has bloodied The Peace Corner itself. On June 28, a drug
dealer and bank robber allegedly shot to death a man the gunman had
been quarreling with in front of the center at 5014 W. Madison St.

The Peace Corner operates out of a storefront in a black neighborhood
where whites from the suburbs drive through on weekends to buy drugs.

The storefront is a refuge where gangsters from the Four Corner
Hustlers and Mafia Insane Vice Lords--tough guys, some of whom write
at a 2nd-grade level--can get job training or earn their GED. Some
study the Bible as well. In literacy tutoring, students read old
spirituals to avoid insulting them with Dick-and-Jane textbooks and
to get them in touch with their roots.

"Jesus, when he came, he really went for the outcasts, those people
everybody else rejected for whatever reason," he said. "And that's
the idea behind The Peace Corner, really, to serve those youths who
are somehow outcast."

The Peace Corner is addressing an urgent need in the neighborhood,
said Jackie Reed, executive director of the Westside Health
Authority, a non-profit community agency.

"These are not mean kids; these are kids that have not had
opportunities," Reed said. "The community doesn't have parks where
the kids can go and not have fights and be safe, and they don't have
the bowling alleys and the game rooms. They don't have the money
anyway. And [Binaghi] recognized that, and he's tried to find a place
for them other than the street."

Street background

Williams grew up on these streets, in a family with six brothers and
two sisters. His father abused drugs and eventually left. As a teen
Williams joined the Conservative Vice Lords gang and dropped out of
high school. Gangs, he said recently, are not only the dispensers of
violence, but also sources of identity and protection.

"Ain't nobody mess with y'all, ain't nobody come over here on y'all
turf and start nothing, because y'all got y'all gang," he said.

Williams, who dropped out of high school, would continue selling
drugs for years after he threw away the gun. Eventually, however,
under Binaghi's influence, he gave up dealing as well. He has earned
his GED and keeps the certificate framed on a wall in The Peace Corner.

Binaghi comes from a blue-collar family in suburban Milan, Italy. He
earned a doctoral degree in education and taught high school for five years.

But he felt called to the priesthood, and in 1994 he came to Chicago
to earn two master's degrees at Catholic Theological Union. He began
volunteering with young offenders through an archdiocese ministry. He
went back to Italy for a few years to work with African immigrants
but returned to Chicago in 2001. That year he hired Williams to work
in the center.

The priest now lives a few blocks from The Peace Corner. His order
has rented an apartment next door for young men who have found work
and are saving up for the first month's rent and deposit on
apartments. And Binaghi's own quarters are always open to the desperate.

On a recent morning, an 18-year-old in street clothes lay face down
on a bed, asleep. The youth had shown up at 7 a.m., saying he had
been out all night and had nowhere to go.

In a sometimes rough neighborhood, Binaghi and Williams have had
successes. One is Kory Butler, 20, who wears a button that reads,
"Stop Killing People." He never knew his father. When he was 5, his
mother, LaTrice, was sentenced to 60 years for shooting an off-duty
fireman and his girlfriend to death.

By the time Butler was 9, he had formed a children's gang. At 13,
Butler began selling drugs. Eventually, he was arrested and spent 3
months behind bars. When he found his way to The Peace Corner, the
fatherless boy was inspired by Williams' devotion to his family.
Williams lives with his girlfriend and their three children.

'A big influence'

"Knowing his background was a big influence on my life," Butler said.
"Like, 'Wow, you turned your life around.' A guy that came from a
hard background, similar background to me--actually worser than my
background--all of a sudden to see him turn around and get a job. And
not like the men out here nowadays, he supports his kids. Stays in
touch. He's an influence to all the kids around here."

Recently, Binaghi met with Williams and Javon Churchill, 19, another
employee, to discuss matters that included a Peace Corner participant
who had been spotted selling drugs on a street corner. The young man
was banned from the center, but he had asked to return recently and
promised to mend his ways.

Binaghi didn't want the young man sneaking drugs into the center, as
he was suspected of doing in the past.

"What I'm tempted to do--I know it's very bad--but he's going to be
searched every time he comes in, away from [other kids'] eyes," the
priest said. "If he accepts that, even if we don't do it, it means
he's willing to leave it outside."

"That's my choice," Williams said. "I give everybody a chance. He got
to be serious, though. First time he shows signs of not being
serious, he's got to go."

Williams has learned the value of being given a break, but he also
knows the urgency of avoiding the streets and the "fast money" that
drug dealing offers. You get the fast money, he tells the kids,
you'll end up dead fast or in jail fast.

Binaghi asks him and Churchill to keep an eye on the street corners
where narcotics are dealt, making sure that several youths from The
Peace Corner aren't hanging out there.

"I'm concerned about the outside," he said. "If they're hustling, or--"

Williams interrupted. He was way ahead of the priest.

"This is what I'm doing," he said, "with all of these kids."