(The Center Square) – Corey Brooks is on a mission to improve lives in Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhood.
Mere hours after the Project H.O.O.D. (Helping/ Others/Obtain/Destiny) founder announced this month that he had secured another $8 million donation toward the $35 million he is seeking to build an 85,000-square-foot community center in the heart of the notorious Parkway Gardens neighborhood came yet another jarring example of why Brooks works as hard as he does to fulfill his cause.
A new study published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open finds that the risk of men ages 18- to 29-years-old dying in a shooting in the Garfield Park neighborhood flagged as the city’s most violent was higher than the death rate for U.S. soldiers in the Afghanistan war or for soldiers in an Army combat brigade stationed in Iraq.
At the same time, city of Chicago data for 2022 highlights that arrests were made in only 5% of offenses in Chicago’s major crime categories, which covers such offenses as murders, sexual assaults, aggravated batteries and carjackings.
“When you hear numbers like those the first thing that comes to mind is we need to do a better job of making sure police and prosecutors have witnesses that are willing to talk about all the crime,” Brooks, pastor of New Beginnings, told The Center Square. “A lot of times, you see where arrests are being made, but people won’t cooperate because of this ‘no-snitch’ policy. We need to start seeing things differently, realizing that stepping up to speak out against someone doing things against our communities, especially our children, isn’t snitching. I call that being committed to keeping your community safe.”
With his Project H.O.O.D. expansion, Brooks is hoping to start changing more hearts and minds by giving more Woodlawn area residents a greater sense of pride and investment in their community.
“We’re hoping this center will help transform the neighborhood to the point all the residents feel they have an opportunity, feel as if they truly have access to the American Dream,” he said.
With the center set to include a social space with after-school programs, wi-fi lounges, space for vocational training and a multimedia lab and performing arts center, Brooks said the McCormick Foundation donation puts him just $6.5 million short of reaching his overall target.
“We’ll continue fundraising and hopefully by April we’ll be able to start digging and building,” he said, adding that the center will be known as the Robert R. McCormick Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center and once it opens, Parkway Garden residents will be given free memberships.
“We’ve been working toward this moment for more 10 years now,” said Brooks, who first came to prominence back in 2021 when he camped out in a tent on a nearby rooftop for more than 100 days as a way of bringing greater attention to some of the neighborhood’s greatest struggles.
“We’ve always been consistent with our message,” he said. “But now I would say the idea of change is resonating with more people because we’ve all had enough.”
