Peace Warriors are student activists at North Lawndale College Prep (NLCP) who have dedicated themselves to easing the violence that pervades their world. Peace Warriors play an impactful, and risk-taking role here at NCLP. After a process of education and training in Kingian Nonviolence Principles, students become Peace Warriors, and they encourage a culture of peace and even find a way to make peace cool. We never know how far a good deed will go, but we do know that this lifestyle choice has much impact on the culture at NLCP. With encouraging a culture of peace, we have created multiple pieces of a peaceful culture. One of those are our Peace Celebrations. Both campuses track “Days of Peace” with a large public calendar marking off each day and offering student incentives for consecutive days with no fights. The incentives include dress-down days, a DJ in the cafeteria, dancing, and other fun to help encourage and strengthen a positive culture at the school.

Despite some limitations, I’m now a senior, and I’ve been a Peace Warrior for two years. Peace Warrior training brought about a personal transformation in me. I wasn’t always nonviolent, and I’d messed up in the past. Choosing non-violence was a struggle for me at first, but I know that this is the only way we are going to make permanent change. I can also say that the Peace Warrior Organization has helped to encourage a culture of peace here at school. We work together to maintain a Beloved Community, a Kingian Nonviolence term which refers to the equal opportunity and love of one fellow’s human beings. Through reasoned compromise, both sides resolve the injustice with a plan of action. Each act of reconciliation takes us one step close to the Beloved Community. To me and my fellow Peace Warriors, Principle #2 means the end result of nonviolence is redemption and reconciliation, it has a gathering impact on our school-which makes us become more knitted and loving to each other. As Peace Warriors we kindly make a difference in others day. We do that by during kind gestures like Sympathy Runs, Birthday Runs, and Check-Ins which will help someone who seems to be struggling. We pair two Peace Warriors together and send them with a candy bag to visit an NLCP student who has lost a relative or seems to be struggling. We simply want to let them know that we care. For Birthday Runs we place a birthday certificate on their locker to let everyone know to celebrate someone. All of this works together, in big and small ways, to help bring us together.

By Roosevelt Harris-Williams