Advocate for the disenfranchised
Pete Keller says he ‘knows how to talk’ to today’s kids in trouble
It is a small and lovely little park, tucked behind the firehouse that sits on the corner of Armitage Avenue and Larrabee Street in the cozy and comfortable Lincoln Park neighborhood.
It is called “Fire Station Park” and sitting in it one recent morningwas Peter Keller, who had come here by car fromthe South Side, where he lives. Hewas being asked to detail his life and that is no simple task, for his 50 years have been jammed with enough events and adventures, both good and bad, for a dozen lives.
OKthen, here’s some of it: He is a little boy in this park, and then he is learning that his parents are getting divorced and that he is adopted; getting kicked out of various schools in the neighborhood; being a gangbanger and all that entails, including making $2,000 a day selling drugs; taking four trips to prison, including a three-year stint on drugsgun charges, and during that stay getting his GED; flirting with the entertainment business as performer and manager; being a spoken-word artist who performs atMarc Smith’s Uptown Poetry Slam; falling in love and having children; becoming a newspaper publisher; starting a foundation; writing books. … And there’s more.
“My life, it’s been a ride,” he says. “This right here was a playground forme and for a lot of kids. There used to be an old fire truck here andwe’d climb all over it and skateboard and everything.”
Thatwas decades ago, when the surrounding neighborhoodwas shabby, gang-infested and dangerous, andKellerwas just a kid on hisway to, you surelywould have thought if you’d met him then, a bad end.
Much of his physical past has been erased. This neighborhood has been transformed into one of the city’s most desirable and expensive. The CabriniGreen housing project, whereKeller lived and “worked” for many years, was a few blocks south and nowis gone but for a few low-rise buildings.
“Itwas a city within a city,” he says. “The people there took care of one another. Though living conditionswere not the best or finest, wewere a community.”
This feeling is echoed in a fine 2013 book, “HighRise Stories: Voices from Chicago PublicHousing” (McSweeney’s Books) a gathering of stories from former residents of public housing compiled and edited by Audrey Petty with a foreword by Alex Kotlowitz.
For a great understanding of this city, thiswould be a fine book to read, as wouldKotlowitz’s “There areNo ChildrenHere” (Doubleday). You might want to add Ben Austen’s 2018 “High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and The Fate of American PublicHousing” (Harper).
You should also read Keller’s two books or give him a call. He is eager to tell his story and articulate his vision for a safer and more equitable city. He is a force
ful and impassioned presence.
He runs a foundation, ULON, which stands for United Legion OneNation, and is a do-it-himself social services operation. He calls himself a “grassroots activist” but also a “busybody,” saying, “I have to be. I get calls at three in the morning. I’m out helping people all the time. There is a great need here.”
Keller makes a modest living as a propertymanager, taking care of buildings, which involves getting rid of drug-dealing tenants, which he is able to do “because I speak their language. I knowhowto talk to these young people and showthem different roads.”
He helps people find jobs, food to eat, places to live, medical and mental support. Keller is a fountain
of encouragement and enthusiasm.
He runs the foundation out of his apartment. He has been too busy these past locked-down months to actively fundraise, but on his wish list is securing a storefront headquarters and perhaps enough money to hire an assistant or two. His is surely a good cause.
“Thatwould go a long ways to allowing us to do , and there is so much more we could do,” Keller says. “There arewayswe could be able to deal with the city’s violence and other troubles.”
More of that outlook and philosophy are on the pages of the two self-published books that he has written, both insightful about himself but also the gang life, thewonders and
troubles of this city, and the joys— yes, joys— of living in Cabrini-Green. They are powerful, enlightening and honest.
The first book, “Cross the Bridge,” came out in 2008 and attracted very little attention.
The second, more ambitious and considerably more polished, is the recently published “Cabrini Green: The PeterKeller Chronicles.” It has attracted modest notice— a couple of radio interviews and a recent television spot— in large part because “Cabrini-Green” evokes such frightful images and memories, though very few from those who actually lived there.
The book ends early in 2006, afterKeller had been shot and released fromthe hospital (a bullet remains lodged in his head to this day). He felt transformed, writing “I thought about all the robberies I did: all the people I had shot, the home invasions, the stick-ups … the community that I poisoned selling drugs to get ahead, but hurting others.”
“Thatwasmywake-up call,” he says, and he began to transform his life.
Keller is in contact with his father and sees his mother frequently. Though nevermarried, he is close to his adult children. He has friends, though many old friends are no longer living. He is aware that it is easier to transform a neighborhood than to remake a human life.
The towers of the city’s public housing projects— containing at one point some 200,000 people— have vanished but the people who once called those places home have not.
“With public housing gone, in some quarters there’s a notion that everyone’s made it, that poverty has gone out of fashion,” Kotlowitz writes. “Former residents still struggle … even as their neighbors have been scattered to the winds, many living in equally impoverished neighborhoods in the city.”
Fewknowthis better thanKeller. With no publishing experience, he took over for a time in the late 1990s, as the housing projectswere being razed, Voices of Cabrini, the community newsletter that had been out of print for a year. He printed stories of the death of Cabrini.
“Death is inevitable, and yet with all ourworries, skepticisms, scared-ness and sadness, life goes on,” he says. “I suppose in the end what matters is how we affect people, what dear memories or humanity progressionswe bestow upon our fellowbrethren.”
WithKeller on this day in this park is a shy but brightly smilingwoman named Latesha Parker. She was the victim of frightening abuse— a former boyfriend purposely crashed the car in which the two of themwere riding — before she escaped back to her hometown. She talkedwith some old high school friends who steered her toKeller. He helped find her a place to stay, medical aid and a job.
“I don’t knowwhat I would have done without him,” she says. “Everybody knows him.”
The three of us start to walk the sunny streets. I tell them that Iwent to La Salle School a few blocks to the southeast andKeller says, with a laugh, “So did I. I got thrown out when Iwas in third grade because I burned the teacher’s grade book and threw it on the roof.”
Hewas a wild child, splitting time between his parents’ homes, and one can only imagine what sort of psychological troubles were caused by divorced parents, learning hewas adopted and being white in amostly Black environment. But that, and all the rest, have given him a unique perspective on life.
Some days after meeting in the park, we met for breakfast at Valois, that 53rd Street cafeteria in Hyde Park thatwas once frequented by a young Barack Obama. The place was not crowded— social distancing and all— but the foodwas good and more than one person nodded in recognition atKeller.
“I have been out all over this city,” he says. “I nowgo out andwork with those who are where I oncewas.
“It’s been a long road, but long live Cabrini. There’s a piece of Cabrini in each of us.”