On Chicago’s South and West Sides, the people closest to violence have long carried the clearest understanding of what safety requires. LIVE FREE Illinois is organizing that knowledge into power.
Rev. Ciera Bates-Chamberlain, founder and executive director of LIVE FREE Chicago–LIVE FREE Illinois, has built a faith-rooted organization that mobilizes Black churches, violence-prevention leaders, survivors, and residents to improve public safety and transform the criminal justice system. Born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, Bates-Chamberlain brings social work, theology, organizing, and lived community commitment to the work.
A New Definition of Community Safety
The organization begins with a different definition of safety. Safety is not simply the absence of crime or the presence of law enforcement. It is the presence of healing, trusted relationships, opportunity, stable resources, and institutions that answer to the people most affected by their decisions.
LIVE FREE Illinois puts that definition into practice through community intervention and awareness, Sabbath events, public forums, organizing trainings, phone banks, nonviolent action, night walks, peace pop-ups, and community response chaplains. Congregations become more than places of worship. They become bases for leadership development, civic participation, neighborhood care, and moral action.
The Community Healing Resource Center Network is one of the clearest expressions of this strategy. The network uses trauma-informed, culturally competent, community-based support to reduce violence, promote healing, and strengthen neighborhoods. Services include outreach and education, trauma-informed case management, clinical counseling, community healing, and client advocacy.
That approach matters because violence creates ripples far beyond a single incident. Survivors and families may need counseling, housing support, help navigating institutions, or a trusted person who will stay with them through a difficult process. Healing centers create an infrastructure of care.
Organizing for Structural Change
LIVE FREE Illinois also calls on elected officials to invest in violence prevention, support returning residents, improve police accountability, and build public systems that do not rely on punishment alone. In 2026, the organization joined a coalition calling for a dedicated Chicago Department of Gun Violence Reduction to coordinate resources and create a durable prevention strategy.
This work connects the body, the ballot, and the buck. The body means protecting life and supporting healing. The ballot means organizing voters and holding officials accountable. The buck means directing resources toward jobs, entrepreneurship, prevention, and community institutions.
Rev. Ciera Bates-Chamberlain and LIVE FREE Illinois show what organized faith can accomplish when it is accountable to community. Families become advocates. Congregations become organizing homes. Survivors become leaders. Neighborhood priorities become public demands.
That is the power of the LIVE FREE network in Chicago and across Illinois: not power held over communities, but power built among people determined to make safety, dignity, and freedom real.
