Handling the crime of your city!

Photo from Corey Brooks at Projecthood.org

One month ago I remember walking by the memorial of security guard, Troy Cameron, 22 and a young 15 year old boy at the Chicago and Franklin Walgreen’s. The occasional reminders like this are but a glimpse of the larger scale violence plaguing our city. According to Pastor Brooks, “More young people are killed in Chicago than any other American city”. Since 2008, more than 530 youth have been killed in Chicago, According to Project Hood.Org. These are Neighborhoods within a 15-minute drive of my campus at Moody Institute Bible.

Pastor Brooks in a radical effort to confront the violence pitched a tent on November 22 2011 atop of a hotel roof. Earlier today I joined him in his tent to get to hear of his three month journey. I started by asking why this hotel roof he responded, both the prostitution industry as well as the drug trade through the community used the hotel rooms. He then shared with us how his church got involved, “staring at us literally across the street, we had to get involved. We started negotiating, asking the hotel to remove all association and ban such activities from their property, unfortunately the hotel refused.” So Pastor Brooks launched a campaign of prayer walks as well as picketing the hotel. During this time communication with the city allowed the hotel to finally be shut down. 

Professor Clive Craigen of Moody Bible Institute lives with his family a few blocks away in the same community as Pastor Brooks. Professor Craigen summarized the mission of Pastor Brooks as threefold, “Firstly shutting down the negative in the community, then raising awareness and Funds for the property, and lastly building a community economic development center and school.” Pastor Brook’s shared some thoughts and encouragements for the church to continue to be involved in the daily life of the city. Learn of the daily events in the city and crime going on. Learn of the upcoming funerals of kids from the neighborhoods you work in and be present. Let the city see the church beat back crime block by block. We can all spend one hour of the week getting involved in some aspect of our community!

Follow Pastor Brooks at http://www.projecthood.org/