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player ready...Tio Hardiman had 10 siblings. Six didn’t fare too well: One succumbed to pneumonia at a very young age. Two died in drug-related deaths. Two are in jail. One is strung out on drugs. But four of Hardiman’s siblings have fared considerably better: One is an attorney. Another is a playwright. Another owns a beauty shop. And another is a blues musician.
As for Hardiman, he’s the director of the anti-violence initiative CeaseFire Illinois. Over the weekend, he organized evening marches in several Chicago neighborhoods terrorized by young men shooting up their communities.
Because Hardiman, 47, grew up amid hustlers, gangbangers and drug dealers, he has a unique understanding of the mindset of young men whose code of the streets dictates that retaliation for even the smallest infraction too often means some innocent bystander will be caught in the gunfire.
“When a young brother has been infected at the highest level of violence, he zones out about who’s around him when it’s time to retaliate,” said Hardiman, who has been with CeaseFire since 2000. “This young brother has smoked something to get his courage up and he’s not concerned about the babies and the mothers. If they have to be a casualty of the war, then so be it.”
Years before Hardiman started working as a community organizer he was growing up in a toxic environment where this type of pathology thrived. He said that although he has never been a gangbanger, he was an alcoholic and drug addict for 10 years as well as a hustler and high school dropout.
“I was growing up in a dope-fiend infested house,” said Hardiman, who lived with his maternal grandmother from age 7 to 13. “My uncles shot dope around me. I watched my older sister get turned out. She started shooting dope and later lost her life.”
Hardiman’s grandmother was dying of cancer and didn’t know that her home had been transformed into a drug den. When she passed away, his uncles lost the house and he was sent back to live with his mother, who was struggling to rear her children in the Henry Horner Homes housing project on the West Side.
“All I had was a bag of clothes and the first time I set foot on the porch, a guy asked me where I was from,” said Hardiman. “I said the South Side and he punched me in the jaw. But he made a mistake because my brothers and I went after this guy for payback. And that’s how it goes today.”
Hardiman said that for the most part, he was rearing himself, often hungry and devising hustles to buy food. By age 16, he had dropped out of high school and was getting high on marijuana and beer. He’d eventually graduate to stiffer drinks and stronger drugs. At 17, he had a lucrative hustle in which he cooked fake hashish and sold it downtown to sailors stopping through. (He made enough money to buy a used Cadillac Fleetwood.)
But, he said, his life was empty. He began to dream about his grandmother, remembering how she had sent him to Catholic schools trying to save him from the very life in which he was spiraling.
“I needed something to connect myself to, so I decided to trace my roots,” said Hardiman. “I needed to find out who the hell I was, and that search gave me something to strive for.”
He got his GED and later met a woman who introduced him to community organizing. He eventually earned a master’s degree in inner-city studies from Northeastern Illinois University.
“When people talk about everything they’re going through, I tell them that I’ve been through a lot and I don’t blame nobody,” said Hardiman, who’s married and has four children and two stepchildren. “My mother did the best she could. At a point, I had to man up.”
In the coming weeks, Hardiman said, CeaseFire — whose strategy is to attack violence in the way one attacks the spread of infectious disease — is planning several interventions in hopes of curbing the violence that has some politicians suggesting the city seek help from the National Guard. One effort is a midnight jog.
“We’ll be handing out literature and talking to these guys standing on the street corners, getting them to pledge that they will call us before shooting anybody,” said Hardiman. He added that CeaseFire already this year has mediated more than 100 incidents this way.
But does the marching really matter to gun-wielding thugs? Do they really care?
Hardiman believes it matters to the many law-abiding residents of these embattled communities. It matters to young men who need to know that they don’t have to be a casualty of the streets, or cause any more harm.
“You have to keep people motivated and believing they can change things,” said Hardiman. “When the good people lose hope or feel they can no longer get a handle on their community, when they give up on their own children, then that’s when it’s time to send in the National Guard.”
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