WATCH: Peace Portraits Featured on
ABC7 Chicago’s ‘Our Chicago’
Ahead of the launch of the 2026 Peace Portraits, Metropolitan Peace Initiatives Communications Manager Camille Travis and Institute for Nonviolence Chicago Outreach Supervisor Tavares Harrington appeared on ABC7 Chicago’s Our Chicago to discuss the project and the honorees being celebrated for their work.
Peace Portraits, now heading into its second year, is a visual series dedicated to spotlighting the extraordinary individuals working every day to build safer, stronger, and more peaceful communities.
“I think the best way to tell those stories is to let the people who do the work tell how they do it and show the work directly,” Travis said. “We wanted to show a different narrative. I know we hear a lot about the gun violence in Chicago and all that’s going on, but we wanted to tell the other side of that and show the people who are actually doing the work to bring peace to the neighborhoods.”
Harrington, who is one of six honorees being spotlighted this year, spoke about his motivation behind his work in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood. Despite losing his mother and niece to gun violence, Harrington is serving his community to prevent the next tragedy from occurring.
In speaking about receiving the honor, Harrington said, “It was a blessing just to hear it. I’ve been doing the work, boots on the ground, hammering at it for some years now. Really just to have [Community Violence Intervention] itself recognized is what I’m really happy about because we don’t have a lot of light shined on what we do.”
In addition to Harrington, this year’s honorees include Luis Bahena, Scaling Community Violence Intervention for a Safer Chicago (SC2) Street Outreach Supervisor at New Life Centers; Diane Latiker, Executive Director of Kids Off The Block; Benny Lee, CEO and Co-Founder of the National Alliance for the Empowerment of the Formerly Incarcerated; Steven Perkins, Director of Field Instruction at Metropolitan Peace Initiatives; and Nicole Reed, Executive Director of The Still Searching Project.
The 2026 Peace Portraits will launch Monday, June 1 on the Illinois Peace Project website and will continue throughout the month. Learn more about the series and view last year’s honorees here.
Watch the Our Chicago interview here.