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/

Community

Head up look right look left, why is it that I’m fearful to walk down my street on the south side of Chicago. Yes its dangerous, yes there are problems, but there are problems everywhere. Every neighborhood, every city, every country has its problems. I’ve slept in the slums of Manila, stayed in a remote village in Zambia yet I find myself reciting scripture as I walk,  “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4) The people here are no different then anywhere else I’ve been. We are all creations of God beautiful yet corrupted by sin.

Looking back at my journal over the past two weeks, I saw that paragraph staring up from the pages. My fearful attitude from that first day got torn down before my eyes and was replaced with passions and love for my new neighborhood. God’s opened my eyes to the beautiful community that exists here in Woodlawn. Everyday I walk to Sunshine Gospel Ministries where I’m interning, I love my daily walks. Getting to talk to the elderly men in the community has become one of the main reasons I prefer to walk. Just today on my way back from the suburbs I came across one of my neighbors who I say hi to every morning. This time I sat and talked with him for a while he first complimented my hair cut and then went on to learn about why I choose to move here, he went on to encourage me in my ministry. We shared the next few minutes talking about the impact one conversation can have on the youth… haha ironically he was having an impact on me. It amazes me that on my walks I come across men and women who ask me how my day is and talk with me about their lives.

Community, here is strong. Hopefully this summer God will reveal to me more about how community can develop and grow. Robert Brault, a freelance writer wrote in one of his blog posts, “I nod to a passing stranger, and the stranger nods back, and two human beings go off, feeling a little less anonymous.”  The nod was always fun in high school sort of acknowledging one another. Yet here instead of nod, a simple “how ya doin?” sparks so many conversations and relationships. How many conversations do I miss a day because I am too busy to say how are you to someone. Today on the CTA L, I met a woman who told me how she has tried to kill herself 8 times from crack to overdosing on prescription drugs yet somehow she hasn’t died. I asked her why do you think that your still alive after all that. She responded, by simply saying God seems to have a purpose for my life, I just don’t know what that is. What if I never talked to her, and never got to hear her. Never got to reveal God in her life.

So I hope I can leave a little encouragement on seeking community. One passage from the Bible which is awesome when it comes to community is Acts 2:42-47. Here’s some great books that I’d encourage for our own growth as well as a larger desire for community Crazy Love, Irresistible Revolution, Radical. For those that you that believe in the power of prayer I would love some prayer for this week we are taking all of our kids to Michigan, for summer camp! Many kids are not Christians, most have very rough lives, and all come from the South Side of Chicago. 

Food options

Learning more and more about the city I call home has become a pursuit of mine over the past year. Yet over all my exploration and understanding of the city one huge mystery has laid untouched for me. The South side; known by most people as dangerous. So over the next two months I want to maybe shed some light on this other side of Chicago. I don’t know exactly where my journeys here will take me, or What God has in store for me while I’m here but I hope to effectively and accurately display that on my blog site.

A week ago I moved into the Woodlawn Neighborhood over on the south side of Chicago. The neighborhood is mainly residential with very little stores or other options for food. I can walk from my house over on 62^nd ST. to Save a Lot, a very small grocery store barely bigger then a 7Eleven, there are also two corner stores and one family restaurant. For starters this surprised me a year ago when I first moved to Chicago. How do some neighborhoods have very little options for people to choose from? How can you make healthy choices on food when there are few to none to choose from?

Some of the money we pay for taxes goes to provide low-income families living below the poverty line in the US money for food. The majority of families in this neighborhood I live in are below this line. So imagine you are low-income family struggling to make ends meet. You apply for a Links card, food stamps and are accepted to help pay for groceries for your family. Yet when you go to the store all you see are frozen foods and isles of junk food. So you have to buy these frozen foods, and you think to yourself well at least there’s food.

For me its become just an annoyance, I have to get a ride to a store or take the L but for most in this community that’s not an easy option. It’s to much of an expense when you barely have money to cover rent. So my question over this thought is how does a bad diet affect our daily life?

Quick response I’m sure any of you can go do some longer research then just look it up on answers.com but this is what I gathered from this site. “Junk foods also consist of refined (processed) carbohydrate. Refined (processed) carbohydrates are a major cause of weight gain, obesity, and many diet related diseases. For good health and well-being, these foods should be strictly limited apart from the occasional treat”

I don’t have any answers on how this can be fixed in a quick and easy way. Some long term ideas are the role of the church, and Christians. Sunshine Gospel Ministries provides a fresh food market weekly here in Woodlawn that accepts the food stamps, Links card. More organizations both Christian and non-could very much improve this issue by helping their neighbors go to places that provide fresh food. Or those of us in business could open up a restaurant or grocery store in a low-income neighborhood. Yes that business wouldn’t make as much as somewhere else but it would enhance the community and the life of others. There’s more to life then money and status