Can We Create Safer Cities? | Pastor Corey Brooks

- [Voiceover] We believe and have always believed in this coun­try, that man was cre­at­ed in the image of God, that he was giv­en tal­ents and respon­si­bil­i­ty and was instruct­ed to use them to make this world a bet­ter place in which to live. And you see, this is the real­ly great thing of America.

- [Doug voiceover] It’s time to dis­cov­er what binds us togeth­er. And find­ing it has the pow­er to trans­form our world. That’s what I believe. How about you? Hi, every­one. I’m Doug DeVos and wel­come to Believe. I’m real­ly thrilled today to have a chance to be with pas­tor Corey Brooks, to talk about an issue that’s real­ly impor­tant for all of us across our coun­try. And that’s about our cities, and how do we cre­ate safer cities? That’s the ques­tion we wan­na explore. Pas­tor Corey Brooks has been on a rooftop in his neigh­bor­hood to bring atten­tion to the sub­ject of vio­lence, par­tic­u­lar­ly gun vio­lence in his com­mu­ni­ty. And he’s tak­ing a stand. He has a strong sense of belief and com­mit­ment. And I’m so excit­ed to have the chance to speak with him and to under­stand, to get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of who he is and how he came to these beliefs and what he sees so we can learn, and then we can apply his expe­ri­ence in our lives, and we can be bet­ter neigh­bors in our com­mu­ni­ties wher­ev­er we may be. And so I wan­na wel­come Pas­tor Corey Brooks. Pas­tor Brooks, wel­come to Believe. We’re so glad to have you here and real­ly look­ing for­ward to this conversation.

- Thank you. I’m glad to be on this show and I appre­ci­ate the oppor­tu­ni­ty. I’ve been look­ing for­ward to it this morning.

- All right. Well, that’s great. Well, yeah, we had a chance to talk about some of the phys­i­cal real­i­ties of liv­ing on a rooftop and get­ting a good-night’s sleep when it’s windy or being when it’s cold. How’re you doing in this mis­sion of yours?

- Well, I’m doing pret­ty good. I mean, I tough it out. Dur­ing the day­time is pret­ty easy because there’s tents, it absorbs the sun’s rays. So it warms up real­ly well, dur­ing the day­light. But at night it can get a lit­tle cold. And then of course, it’s def­i­nite­ly hard to sleep when the wind is blow­ing because the tent makes so much noise. And you add that to the out­side noise of the urban noise that we’re already expe­ri­enc­ing, it can make it pret­ty tough.

- Yeah, it can. Well, I’m just so encour­aged by you and your com­mit­ment, and your depth of belief in stand­ing up for what you believe in. Tell us a lit­tle bit. I wan­na start just, how did that start with you? Tell us about your child­hood, your upbring­ing, your fam­i­ly. What were some of the things that hap­pened in your life that caused you to wan­na become a pas­tor and that instilled in you this sense of depth and com­mit­ment that you’re displaying?

- Well, okay. I was born in a lit­tle town called Union City, Ten­nessee. My fam­i­ly grew up on a farm in Ken­ton, Ten­nessee, pop­u­la­tion of about 1900 peo­ple. It’s the home of the white squir­rel. Mat­ter of fact, I did­n’t even know squir­rels were brown and oth­er col­ors until I got to 10 years old. I almost got a fight on the play­ground with a kid argu­ing about white squir­rels because where I grew up, it was only white squir­rels. So we moved from Ken­ton, Ten­nessee, when I was about 11 years old, to Muncie, Indi­ana. My mom got mar­ried to my step­fa­ther and we moved to Mid­dle­town USA, Muncie, Indi­ana. And I got saved and came into a rela­tion­ship with Jesus Christ at 12 years old. At 13, I real­ized, I knew I was being called to preach, but that was the last thing I want­ed to do. For what­ev­er rea­son, I just did­n’t have a high opin­ion of pas­tors. Maybe because some of the exam­ples that I had seen. But at 19, I final­ly yield­ed to the Lord after this girl that I want­ed to date. She was so pret­ty, Doug. She was… I mean, Doug, she was a pret­ty girl and I asked her out for a date. And of course, she said, ​“Yeah, you can take me out for a date and pick me up at 10:30 in the morn­ing after we had par­tied on a Sat­ur­day night.” And I thought we was gonna go to break­fast or some­thing, but she end­ed up tak­ing me to church. And when she took me to church that day, that Sun­day, it was the first time I heard some­body, a preach­er, real­ly explain the gospel in a way that made me want to do that for the rest of my life. And at 19 years old, I yield­ed to the Lord and start­ed preach­ing, and grad­u­at­ed from Ball State Uni­ver­si­ty. Went to Law School, Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da. Knew I should­n’t have gone to law school. I should have went to sem­i­nary. After one year I left and went to Dal­las the­o­log­i­cal sem­i­nary and it was the best thing that ever hap­pened to me because it was there in my first class with Dr. Howard Hen­dricks on how to study the Bible that I real­ized my eyes were being open to a whole oth­er world. And ever since that, I’ve had a pas­sion to preach and to be a pastor.

- That’s absolute­ly spec­tac­u­lar. And it’s amaz­ing how the Lord touch­es us and finds ways, whether it’s pret­ty girls or it’s won­der­ful pas­tors who reveal the Bible to us. And now, you’re the senior pas­tor at New Begin­nings Church. You are the founder CEO of Project H.O.O.D. So talk a lit­tle bit about your church and about Project H.O.O.D. Tell us a lit­tle bit about that so we can have a bet­ter understanding.

- So 22 years ago, we start­ed New Begin­nings church. An urban, con­tem­po­rary, cre­ative, incred­i­ble type of min­istry we want­ed to use to reach peo­ple who were mar­gin­al­ized, peo­ple who were on the fringes of soci­ety. Peo­ple who felt ridiculed, resist­ed, and reject­ed by church and the things that the church offered. We want­ed to reach a seg­ment that was not being reached. So we start­ed the church and we start­ed it in the tough­est neigh­bor­hood of Chica­go because we want­ed to reach indi­vid­u­als who real­ly need­ed the gospel. I tell every­one, they asked me, ​“Why did you go to, what Chica­go some­times called, the most dan­ger­ous neigh­bor­hood in all of Chica­go?” And I told them, ​“Because God sends his best to his worst.” And so we plant­ed in that area and we start­ed New Begin­nings Church. And we’ve been try­ing to reach peo­ple for the Lord in this com­mu­ni­ty for over 22 years now. And 10 years ago, we start­ed Project H.O.O.D as a result of me being on the roof of a motel for 94 days. That motel caused a lot of issues in our com­mu­ni­ty, sex traf­fick­ing, pros­ti­tu­tion, drugs, gangs were using it. And I decid­ed I want­ed to do some­thing about it. So I went on top of the roof of that motel to raise enough mon­ey to pur­chase it. And I protest­ed there for 94 days until we raised the mon­ey. And we bought it, and tore it down. and that’s kind of rea­son… And while I was on the roof, that’s how we start­ed Project H.O.O.D.

- Well, you are then there­fore famil­iar with roofs and you’re famil­iar with act­ing on your beliefs and doing some­thing about things that you see and things that you believe. And you’re com­pelled by the gospel to start… by your faith and the gospel to start this church and reach out to peo­ple, You’re com­pelled by see­ing some­thing in your com­mu­ni­ty to do some­thing about a motel that was a place for a lot of bad things hap­pen­ing in your com­mu­ni­ty. How do you think you came about this desire to express your beliefs in a pow­er­ful, in a pub­lic way like this, to share your beliefs with oth­er peo­ple in a way that, you know, through the church and through your demon­stra­tion and your protest? Still has com­pas­sion for peo­ple. And every­thing I’ve seen here, you’re express­ing love for peo­ple, even though you’re frus­trat­ed with the situations.

- Yeah. You know, I real­ly do believe that God gives you a pur­pose and a pas­sion, and gives you cer­tain gifts, skills, and abil­i­ties. And for what­ev­er rea­son, God has just giv­en me a gift of com­pas­sion for peo­ple who find them­selves in cir­cum­stances like where our church is min­is­ter­ing sin­gle par­ent house­holds, where 80% of them are sin­gle par­ent house­holds, guys who are in gangs who need a sec­ond chance, who need oppor­tu­ni­ties and alter­na­tives. Peo­ple who find them­selves on the fringes. That’s just where God has gift­ed me to have an over­whelm­ing amount of grace and com­pas­sion toward those indi­vid­u­als. And it’s hard to explain. All I know is that God has placed it in my heart, and I love to do it. I would­n’t wan­na do any­thing else in the world. You know, peo­ple say, ​“Hey, you went to Dal­las. You could have went to the sub­urbs or any­where in the coun­try.” But yeah, that may be true. But, it might have not been the place that God want­ed me. I know with­out a shad­ow of a doubt that where I am, in the hood, on the south side of Chica­go, one of the tough­est neigh­bor­hoods in Amer­i­ca, that’s exact­ly where God wants me. And I wan­na be in the place where God wants me min­is­ter­ing to the peo­ple that God wants me to min­is­ter to. And it takes… He’s giv­en me the grace. Not just the grace to do it, but the faith and the courage to do it because you need a lot of it. It takes a lot of courage to stand for, to stand out and have beliefs that are some­times dif­fer­ent from the peo­ple that you min­is­ter to and dif­fer­ent from your peers. And it takes a lot of faith and trust in God, just to believe that God is gonna fix it and turn it around and make a way for you out of nowhere. And so those are the three things that I think God has just real­ly blessed me with, a lot of grace, a lot of courage, and a lot of faith.

- Yeah. That’s a great sto­ry. And you’ve talked about… I like your phrase, ​“God sends his best to the the worst or the most dif­fi­cult places.” You’ve talked about your com­mit­ment to your neigh­bor­hood. And you’ve talked about… This is where you feel called to be. How do you feel about you know oth­ers that you work with in your neigh­bor­hood? You have that sense of com­mu­ni­ty in that neigh­bor­hood? A feel­ing that oth­ers are with you and sup­port­ing you and join­ing you in your work?

- Yeah, absolute­ly. You know, there are a lot of peo­ple in our com­mu­ni­ty who want to see the com­mu­ni­ty be bet­ter. They wan­na see it turn into a neigh­bor­hood and not just the hood. They wan­na see com­mu­ni­ty. They wan­na see a sense of belong­ing. And so there are peo­ple who are real­ly excit­ed about what we do. But then, you know, there are those who are not as excit­ed, who want things to stay as they are at the sta­tus quo and keep peo­ple depen­dent upon gov­ern­ment and keep them depen­dent upon oth­er peo­ple. And so there’s a fringe of peo­ple who, who are def­i­nite­ly against me, but you know, there’s more for me than against me.

- There you go. I like that. And you’re gonna work with those who, work with any­body to do good.

- Yes.

- And keep mov­ing your­self for­ward. Let’s talk and shift a lit­tle bit, maybe more specif­i­cal­ly to the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion and what you’re talk­ing about now. And that’s the vio­lence that has been impact­ing you and your neigh­bors. Tell us about that, and what you’re see­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing cur­rent­ly that led you to take this stand.

- Yeah, the… You know, when I talk about God grac­ing you to do some­thing and giv­ing you the pas­sion and the pur­pose to do it, I can’t remem­ber a time where I’m get­ting ready to talk about vio­lence and what’s going on in our neigh­bor­hood where I don’t feel a sense of, almost feel­ing over­whelmed, want­i­ng to break down and cry. Even now, as I talk about our neigh­bor­hood, and you can hear the sirens in the background.

- Yeah.

- As I talk about our neigh­bor­hood, it real­ly, I have to back tears because I see the pain. I see the strug­gle, I see the heartache. And I see that some­times it seems as if no one even cares what’s going on in urban Amer­i­ca. Just yes­ter­day, a 15-year-old boy was shot 24 times. He was­n’t in a gang. He was­n’t a bad kid. All he was doing was walk­ing to the gas sta­tion to get a bag of chips. When you think about that, it pains you. And so I’ve just tak­en it upon myself to try to bring as much aware­ness that I can about the vio­lence, but also do what­ev­er I can to help peo­ple who are in these sit­u­a­tions to change their lives around. And because our neigh­bor­hood is nev­er going to be bet­ter if we don’t do some­thing about it. A lot of times, I believe a lot of peo­ple wait on gov­ern­ment to come in and save the day. But I tell every­one that, you know, there’s no Super­man com­ing in to save us. There’s no Won­der Woman com­ing in to save us, that we have to roll our sleeves up and get involved in the com­mu­ni­ty and do every­thing we can to change the plight of what we’re expe­ri­enc­ing every sin­gle day. And so I’ve just tak­en it up on myself to put my head down and pray like it all depends on God and work like it all depends on me.

- Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you’re right on both those fronts, aren’t you? All does depend on God and he asks us to do the work that we’re called to do. And what we can’t do, He steps in and fills in.

- Absolute­ly.

- Can you tell us a lit­tle bit, you know… The sta­tis­tics are are appalling, but they’re sta­tis­tics. You just talked about a 15-year-old boy that had fam­i­ly and had friends, and whose life was tak­en need­less­ly. What are the sto­ries of inno­cent peo­ple who’ve been killed because they were sim­ply caught in the cross­fire of this vio­lence? And how can we ful­ly grasp the mag­ni­tude? And as you said, it wants… You wan­na just cry. It brings you to tears. And when I talked to pas­tors in our town here in Grand Rapids with sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences, they just talk about the indi­vid­ual. They talk about the fam­i­ly. They talk, ​“This is a good per­son. This is a good kid whose life was tak­en.” Help us under­stand that depth.

- Yeah. You know, there’s so many sto­ries. Just in Jan­u­ary alone here in Chica­go, 30 women were shot. Sev­en of them were killed. Two of them were preg­nant and the babies died as well. That’s in Jan­u­ary. In Feb­ru­ary, 15 days into Feb­ru­ary, we’ve had 10 teenagers to be shot and killed. Those type of num­bers are alarm­ing. And then you think about these are moth­ers and sons and rel­a­tives of peo­ple, how much the pain spreads, you know. And I real­ly think a lot of peo­ple… And I try to under­stand, you know, every­body is not as graced as me to feel a cer­tain way towards those issues. Some peo­ple feel the same way I feel about can­cer patients or oth­er patients, or oth­er things that are going on. So I under­stand that. But there is a deaf­ness that is of com­mu­ni­ty and love and com­pas­sion that is miss­ing in our neigh­bor­hood that peo­ple just would not even understand.

- Wow. Well, those num­bers are rep­re­sent­ing people.

- Yeah.

- And when you talk about Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary, that’s just recent­ly. That’s not even to say the past year.

- Right.

- And it does­n’t appear to be an end in sight. So why do you think… Why is this get­ting worse? What’s behind it? What have you seen that’s changed? You’ve been in the com­mu­ni­ty 22 years. You’ve been pas­tor­ing at your New Begin­nings church. You’ve been reach­ing out to peo­ple. And cer­tain­ly, in that expe­ri­ence, you’ve seen prob­a­bly some bet­ter times and worse times, and you’ve seen things ebb and flow. What do you see is behind this seem­ing­ly, you know, dra­mat­ic shift that many in the coun­try have been watch­ing in Chica­go for quite some time now?

- Right. Well, one, you have the absence of God. There there’s so much lack of moral­i­ty in Chica­go and where God has been total­ly dis­missed and put on the side­line in peo­ple’s lives. That’s first and fore­most. Sec­ond­ly, this opin­ion that I’m going to share is not the most pop­u­lar opin­ion, but you asked me. So I wan­na answer it as truth­ful­ly as I pos­si­bly believe. And I to think post ​’60 lib­er­al­ism has a lot to do with it as well. That a lot of the poli­cies that were set in place in these urban areas have led to a decline of the neigh­bor­hoods, have led to a decline of fam­i­lies, have led to a total decline of edu­ca­tion. And all of these things added up togeth­er, have caused these com­mu­ni­ties to be rav­ished and to be in tur­moil and help to set the mind­sets of indi­vid­u­als who live here. And so I think has to hap­pen is that we have to change that mind­set. We have to show peo­ple that there is anoth­er way, give them options, alter­na­tives, and oppor­tu­ni­ties. Help them to come to under­stand about self respon­si­bil­i­ty and account­abil­i­ty, and move them from depen­den­cy upon any oth­er thing oth­er than God and them­selves, and move them toward fam­i­ly. Those are the… And oh, we def­i­nite­ly have to fix our edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem. In our neigh­bor­hood, they are the low. The school in our area and our zip code, the ele­men­tary school, 4% of the kids are read­ing at effi­cien­cy lev­el. 6% of the kids are at math pro­fi­cien­cy lev­el. That is, can­not be tol­er­at­ed. And so we need to fig­ure out how to give these kids bet­ter edu­ca­tion­al options so that they can go on to be suc­cess­ful in life. But those are from my opin­ion, some of the things that are caus­ing the dra­mat­ic crime that we’re see­ing every sin­gle day.

- Wow. Wow. Well, Pas­tor Brooks, you have just iden­ti­fied, in a very short peri­od of time, a wide range of top­ics. And I’d love to kind of dive in a lit­tle bit on each one of them or a few of them as we go. And maybe we can frame it up, you know, by think­ing about some of the insti­tu­tions of soci­ety, if you will. And maybe we’ll start with edu­ca­tion. You just talked about, about where the pro­fi­cien­cy is in read­ing and in math for stu­dents in the neigh­bor­hood. And of course, we start with a belief that every­one’s a child of God and every­one has great poten­tial and capa­bil­i­ties. So what are you see­ing, if you drill down into that, what are you see­ing as some of the rea­sons why things are so chal­leng­ing and to cre­ate, and I won’t say edu­ca­tion­al or school, to cre­ate a learn­ing envi­ron­ment where chil­dren can learn and be pre­pared for a bet­ter future? What are some of the things you’re see­ing that we should think about in our com­mu­ni­ties as well about this sub­ject of learn­ing and explo­ration and gain­ing under­stand­ing? Help us under­stand your per­spec­tive and what you’re see­ing in your neighborhood.

- Well, forc­ing fam­i­lies to send their chil­dren to fail­ing schools is to me the, civ­il rights issue of the day. That no child should be reg­u­lat­ed to have to go to a school that’s low per­form­ing and con­tin­ue that low per­form­ing to spread into your child’s life. So I’m a real big pro­po­nent of choice of char­ter schools and school choice, and hav­ing the mon­ey fol­low the child and not the sys­tems. That’s real­ly, real­ly impor­tant from my stand­point of view because if we’re gonna get these kids out of pover­ty and get them edu­cat­ed, then they need to be able to go to bet­ter schools. I think in Chica­go, I can’t speak about oth­er places. But I know the unions, the teach­ers union has real­ly con­trolled a lot of what hap­pens in these schools. We have some awe­some teach­ers, so I’m Pro­Teacher, it was teach­ers that helped get me on the right track. So I’m Pro­Teach­ers. But our teach­ers union has caused so many bad poli­cies to impact our chil­dren that it’s caused them to have seri­ous learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. And that needs to be dealt with. And I think the best way to do that is by allow­ing competition.

- Yeah. Com­pe­ti­tion. You got it. You know, and I appre­ci­ate so much your per­spec­tive because you’re iden­ti­fy­ing, in my opin­ion, you’re iden­ti­fy­ing caus­es and you’re just artic­u­lat­ing obser­va­tions. And you haven’t tried to make it polit­i­cal in that sense. But you’re observ­ing things that as a com­mu­ni­ty, we need to be think­ing about and we need to be talk­ing about. And we need to be con­sid­er­ing inno­va­tion, is what I’m hear­ing. Talk about how that applies, well, kind of stay in the edu­ca­tion­al area. How are kids gonna learn some of the things, I wrote them down, when you talked about being respon­si­ble. idea of reliance, of inde­pen­dence and not being depen­dent on any­thing, as you said. But God, you know, how is that gonna… Can that be formed in a child with­out a good edu­ca­tion base?

- Absolute­ly. You know, as I make these type of state­ments, I try to talk about more about what I’m for than what I’m against. But when you get to talk­ing about what you’re for, then you come to the clear real­i­ty that some­times you have to do some­thing about it your­self. And so we’re in the process of design­ing a school for young Black boys from sin­gle par­ent house­holds that are below the pover­ty line. And we want it to be a Chris­t­ian school so that we can teach seri­ous god­ly prin­ci­ples like you just men­tioned. I think the only way we’re going to get out of this sit­u­a­tion that we’re in in urban Amer­i­ca, in Chica­go, espe­cial­ly with these young Black boys and the vio­lent crimes that we’re see­ing, is that we have to grab these boys ear­ly. And we have to begin to edu­cate them, and we have to begin to men­tor them, and we have to begin to father them. And like I said, no one is going to come in and do that for us. So if I real­ly believe that it’s imper­a­tive that peo­ple like me who have the same thoughts, start try­ing to devel­op edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions to help these chil­dren along the way, because they are des­per­ate­ly miss­ing it inside the present edu­ca­tion­al system.

- Yeah. Wow. I love how you’re for some­thing, and that’s the whole point of what we wan­na talk about. Peo­ple who have beliefs and they’re express­ing them and they have a foun­da­tion of val­ues, and that turns into I ideas that they wan­na action and take for­ward. So thank you thank you for shar­ing that, for what you’re for. And when you’re for some­thing, some­one’s gonna be against you and that’s okay. But you just keep stay­ing strong to your beliefs. Let me talk about it, kind of anoth­er insti­tu­tion, in soci­ety, and that’s busi­ness. So this whole idea of, you know, eco­nom­ics and the devel­op­ment of wealth. What do you see in the abil­i­ty in your neigh­bor­hood for peo­ple to cre­ate wealth for them­selves, to be part of the eco­nom­ic sys­tem, to engage? How do you view and see what’s hap­pen­ing or what you think needs to be done?

- You know, I’m a cap­i­tal­ist. And so I believe in free mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism. And I think that one of the ways that peo­ple get pulled out of pover­ty is to involve them­selves in free mar­kets and involve them­selves in a cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety. One of the great oppor­tu­ni­ties that we have as Amer­i­cans, regard­less of where you live is to par­tic­i­pate in an econ­o­my that opens doors for you and gives you oppor­tu­ni­ty if you walk through those oppor­tu­ni­ties in those doors. But on the flip side of that, we have to help peo­ple devel­op those con­cepts, that mind­set, and those oppor­tu­ni­ties. One of the things about liv­ing in a neigh­bor­hood like this is that some­times it’s void of those oppor­tu­ni­ties, those alter­na­tives. So what we’re try­ing to do here at Project H.O.O.D is give peo­ple the oppor­tu­ni­ties and the doors to walk through to cre­ate busi­ness­es, the train­ing and the devel­op­ment that they need to cre­ate busi­ness­es. Because the truth of the mat­ter is, if we don’t cre­ate busi­ness­es in our com­mu­ni­ty, if we don’t have entre­pre­neurs, then we’re gonna con­tin­ue to see a eco­nom­ic decline because peo­ple can­not flour­ish where there is no cap­i­tal­ism going on. And that’s one of the rea­sons why we have so much vio­lence in our com­mu­ni­ty, because there are a lack of busi­ness­es, the econ­o­my is not as strong.

- What are some of the things? So if you’re talk­ing out­side of your neigh­bor­hood, to your neigh­bors out­side of your neigh­bor­hood, in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. What are some of the things that you would like to encour­age them to think about of how they could expand oppor­tu­ni­ty, how they could engage in being part of cre­at­ing or estab­lish­ing path­ways so that every­body can tru­ly par­tic­i­pate, you know, with a real oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate well for them­selves in a vari­ety of ways? What would your mes­sage be?

- I would tell them, you know, find places like what we’re doing and things like we’re doing where you can get a return on your invest­ment. And some­time the return on invest­ment, peo­ple have to decide what they’re look­ing for. Some­time they want a finan­cial return And that’s fine, I under­stand that. But some­time it’s a peo­ple return. that there’s some­thing good about help­ing a com­mu­ni­ty to turn around. There’s some­thing good about help­ing a com­mu­ni­ty to trans­form. And so I tell busi­ness and CEOs who have been com­ing here to stay in the tent with me, help us cre­ate strate­gies and sys­tems and struc­tures so that peo­ple can suc­ceed. One of the things that I’ve learned about this expe­ri­ence being on the roof and these CEOs who come here, they’re so smart and so in intel­li­gent. And they have a way of look­ing at prob­lems and then help­ing you to design sys­tems and struc­tures to get peo­ple towards suc­cess. And so I tell them, ​“Lis­ten, you may not plant your busi­ness here, and I under­stand that. But you can still put some time and some of your tal­ent. and some of your trea­sure here to help us turn this thing around. And busi­ness­es in Chica­go or busi­ness­es in Amer­i­ca that do that, we make Amer­i­ca a bet­ter place. And some­times it’s dif­fi­cult show­ing peo­ple and get­ting peo­ple to under­stand that. But mak­ing Chica­go, the south side of Chica­go, a bet­ter place, Makes Chica­go a bet­ter place. Mak­ing Chica­go a bet­ter place makes Illi­nois a bet­ter place. Mak­ing Illi­nois bet­ter place makes Amer­i­ca a bet­ter place. And we have to get peo­ple to under­stand that even though these urban areas have drugs and gangs and things going on, we have to trans­form them because it makes it bet­ter for all of us. And that’s the mes­sage that I try to com­mu­ni­cate to a lot of busi­ness own­ers when they come here.

- Yeah. Well, Pas­tor Brooks, what a great mes­sage of being bet­ter and being neigh­bor­ly, which is what we’re all called to do, in that idea. And it just, you know, just flared and encour­aged peo­ple to care and to apply their time, tal­ent, and trea­sure in ways to gen­er­ate finan­cial and non-finan­cial returns. There’s so much that could be done there. Let me shift to anoth­er insti­tu­tion in soci­ety, our gov­ern­ment. You talked about that a lit­tle bit. And we all know the role of gov­ern­ment and how it was estab­lished in the his­to­ry of our coun­try. What do you see, you know, as the prop­er role that would be help­ful in your com­mu­ni­ty? What would be a role or some of the actions from a gov­ern­ment per­spec­tive, that would be help­ful? And what are the things that, frankly, they may need to stop doing? Because some of the things that… Some­times we, and we all do this, and I’m not just blam­ing gov­ern­ment. But some­times it’s like, ​“Stop help­ing me.”

- Yeah.

- You know? So to talk a lit­tle bit about that, if you could.

- I think one of the things that we def­i­nite­ly need gov­ern­ment to do is reeval­u­ate some of these pro­grams that have been inef­fec­tive for over 70 years. And they have to come to the harsh real­i­ty that these pro­grams are not work­ing and have the courage to change them. There­in lies the prob­lem. Gov­ern­ment does not have the courage to change prob­lems that they have cre­at­ed. And so we, as the peo­ple, have to force them to do it. And the way we force them to do it is have a reck­on­ing with them at the vot­ing booth. We have to get involved in the process of vot­ing. And we have to vote peo­ple in and out who are more aligned to our beliefs and what we’re try­ing to accom­plish. But gov­ern­ment, def­i­nite­ly, in our com­mu­ni­ty. has caused a lot of prob­lems. And there’s no one mak­ing them account­able. And when you don’t make peo­ple account­able, they will con­tin­ue to do what they’ve always done. And we call that insan­i­ty. When you’re doing every­thing that you’ve always done, try­ing to get a dif­fer­ent result. It just does­n’t work.

- Well, you’re spot on there. That’s a great illus­tra­tion to get our­selves to this lev­el of hold­ing peo­ple account­able. And a cou­ple thoughts. I know that a lot of times, in talk­ing to poll­sters, that’s a huge word for any vot­er. They real­ly want gov­ern­ment to be a account­able. And then sec­ond­ly, I am engaged with an orga­ni­za­tion in Philadel­phia, the nation­al con­sti­tu­tion cen­ter, which talks about civic engage­ment. And as you say this, this idea. You are on a rooftop speak­ing out against vio­lence. And when you talk about forc­ing change, you talk about a vote.

- Yeah.

- You talk about you don’t talk about any­thing that includes vio­lence. You talk about sim­ply engag­ing in know­ing what the gov­ern­men­t’s doing and then exer­cis­ing your beliefs through your vote. Help us, you know, talk about that a lit­tle more. There’s a lot of dis­cus­sion, this coun­try about vot­ing. You know? And elec­tions. But give us your per­spec­tive. I’m curi­ous how you see it.

- We live in the great­est place in the world that pro­vides us a democ­ra­cy. And a democ­ra­cy allows us the demo­c­ra­t­ic process to par­tic­i­pate in vot­ing indi­vid­u­als in and out of office. To me, that is the great­est thing in the world that a coun­try can have because it affords us the oppor­tu­ni­ty when we dis­agree, or when we don’t like a cer­tain pol­i­cy, to do some­thing about it. And so I think we have to get peo­ple more engaged. I know I’m going through the process of get­ting peo­ple more engaged in the polit­i­cal process. But also, giv­ing them the tools to be more knowl­edge­able about the whole process. And our cul­ture, we’ve been over the years, groomed and taught that the demo­c­ra­t­ic process, the Democ­rats, are the only way to go. It’s the only life to live. Well, I don’t believe that. I think that Democ­rats have tak­en advan­tage of our com­mu­ni­ty and tak­en advan­tage of our cul­ture for far too long, because they just have… They know that 95% of the Black peo­ple are gonna vote for them. So why do any­thing for them? How­ev­er, my con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can broth­ers and sis­ters have not done any­thing either. They’ve said that, you know, they’re all… The Black peo­ple are just gonna vote for Democ­rats. So we just leave it alone. That’s not… So in one par­ty takes advan­tage of us, the oth­er par­ty ignores us. Some­how, some way, we have to teach in our com­mu­ni­ty to get both of those par­ties engaged and hold both of those par­ties account­able. And so that’s what I’m into. I’m into try­ing to give peo­ple the tools and knowl­edge about what it means to be a con­ser­v­a­tive as I am. And most Black peo­ple are con­ser­v­a­tive. They just vote Demo­c­rat. They… And that’s because they don’t under­stand it. So edu­cat­ing peo­ple is a big, big thing that has to hap­pen going for­ward for us to real­ly make some real true changes in urban Amer­i­ca, in the vot­ing process. And I plan to real­ly help with that.

- Oh, wow. Well, thank you so much for your obser­va­tion and your insight, that it’s not just one polit­i­cal par­ty, it’s some­times as polit­i­cal process. And if we, as cit­i­zens don’t pay atten­tion and don’t vote for the things we believe in, and then the peo­ple to rep­re­sent those things, you know, then we’ll either get tak­en for grant­ed or ignored.

- Yes, absolute­ly. Every sin­gle time.

- Yeah. And that’s a us a great, that’s such a wise insight for every­body, for your friends in your neigh­bor­hood, for every­one’s friends who’s lis­ten­ing to this con­ver­sa­tion in their neigh­bor­hood, pay atten­tion, care, you know, about our neigh­bors and about, you know, those we elect for respon­si­bil­i­ties in our communities.

- Absolute­ly.

- Yeah.

- We have to get peo­ple involved and we have to get peo­ple to care because that’s what’s gonna change the world, when we care.

- Yeah. When we care. Yeah, absolute­ly. And talk about, so if… Let’s kin­da bring it home here and talk about chang­ing the world. And we’ll talk about maybe com­mu­ni­ty insti­tu­tions, and let’s talk about the church, you know. What do you or what can, not only your church, but oth­er church­es do? And how should, you know, how should peo­ple of faith or peo­ple who don’t have faith think about a reli­gious insti­tu­tion in their com­mu­ni­ty? And how should they think about their own, you know, their own beliefs in that area? How do you see it? And how can we be more engaged, you know, in com­mun… And I’ll iden­ti­fy the church, but to even talk about com­mu­ni­ty insti­tu­tions, char­i­ties, oth­er insti­tu­tions in our com­mu­ni­ties. I’d real­ly love your per­spec­tive on that.

- Absolute­ly. Absolute­ly. Well, first of all, I love the church and I you know, if it were not for the church, I def­i­nite­ly would not be prob­a­bly talk­ing to you right now. And I real­ly do believe that the church is the hope of the world. So when I talk about the church, those are the two par­a­digms that I come from. I love the church. And the church is the hope of the world.

- Say­ing that, I believe that church has to do a lot more. And when I speak of that, I think about here in Chica­go, on the south side, we’ve got church­es every­where. But they’re not engaged out­side of Sun­days. They want peo­ple to come to their church on Sun­days, and then their doors are closed the rest of the week. They’re not engaged in their com­mu­ni­ties. And I would love to see more church­es engaged in the com­mu­ni­ties. If every church in Chica­go on the south side just took respon­si­bil­i­ty for their block, we could change Chica­go, instant­ly. But it’s sad to say that for what­ev­er rea­son, we’re not inter­est­ed in being the salt of the earth, we’re not inter­est­ed in being light to a dark world. We’re stay­ing hid­den under a bushel, and we need to get out of the salt shak­er and get involved. And that’s the rea­son why our church is so active­ly engaged in every­thing that we could be engaged in to help trans­form this com­mu­ni­ty. Because I think the gospel has to move out­side of the church. And I think peo­ple want to see a ser­mon before they hear a ser­mon. And peo­ple need to know how much you care before you talk about how much you care. And so that’s my per­spec­tive on the church. And that’s my per­spec­tive on how I wish the church would do a lot bet­ter in reach­ing people.

- All right, it’s great because we live our faith every day, every moment of every day, you know. Sun­day’s a great day to re reflect, refresh, renew with our, you know, our fel­low wor­shipers, you know, in what­ev­er ever set­ting. Some­one’s faith may lead them, But we got­ta live it every day.

- Absolute­ly. And I think that’s the piece that we’re try­ing to get to. Maybe a cou­ple things, there’s a lot of talk, you know, in our, you know, in our soci­ety about things that divide us in neigh­bor­hoods and com­mu­ni­ty. In our whole con­ver­sa­tion, you haven’t talked about that. You’ve talked about what you’re for.

- [Corey] Yeah. How do we get beyond this idea of divi­sion of pit­ting group against group, peo­ple against peo­ple, neigh­bor­hood against neigh­bor­hood, what­ev­er it may be. How can we address poten­tial­ly divi­sive issues in a spir­it that, that bring… Finds a way to get to a lev­el of com­mon ground or uni­ty? And I don’t mean by just kin­da giv­ing up or rolling over. I mean, by, you know, address­ing real issues that we may have dif­fer­ences of opin­ions about, but doing it in a way that uni­fies peo­ple. I think that’s what I… In this whole con­ver­sa­tion, I’m just over­whelmed how you’re talk­ing about real­ly diff issues, but you stay so pos­i­tive and you’re still bring­ing peo­ple together.

- Right. You know what? Deal­ing with the gangs has helped me to under­stand a lot. And one of the things I’ve real­ized in deal­ing with the gangs and peo­ple who are divid­ed and who hate one anoth­er, I mean, to the degree that they actu­al­ly want to kill one anoth­er, I have learned this, the only way you can get them togeth­er is, one, you have to get God in the fore­front. After you get God in the fore­front, then the two things have to hap­pen. You have to be self­less, and there has to be some humil­i­ty. And when I say self­less, I mean, you have to put your­self aside some­times for the sake of uni­ty. And some­times your own per­son­al views need to be side­lined for uni­ty’s sake. And humil­i­ty is a big piece of that. I’m a very pride­ful per­son, but I have learned, I have to hum­ble myself a lot, espe­cial­ly with my views being so dif­fer­ent. I have to hum­ble myself a lot and hear peo­ple out and lis­ten to them and com­mu­ni­cate. So being self­less, prac­tic­ing humil­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tion are essen­tial to mov­ing for­ward with peo­ple. And if you lis­ten close­ly to peo­ple’s con­ver­sa­tions with­out being turned off, you can find some­times things that, ​“Okay, we may dis­agree on these 99 things. Let’s put that to the side. Let’s go ahead and work on this one thing for the sake of our com­mu­ni­ty. We may not like each oth­er. We may not agree on 99 things, but let’s this one thing, let’s try to work on it.” And I’ve found and dis­cov­ered that some­times, once you work on that one thing, you dis­cov­er you have some oth­er things in com­mon as well.

- Yeah, yeah. So true. I have felt that in many ways in my life, and I know you have felt it and prac­ticed it, that you can find an area of a game that you saw, ​“Oh, maybe there’s anoth­er one. There’s this third one. There’s a fourth one.” And then you just kind of build a rela­tion­ship and you can build trust as you go from there. So Pas­tor Brooks, this has been fas­ci­nat­ing. Maybe we could just kind of wrap up. You are putting things into action. Tell us a lit­tle bit more about your church, about Project H.O.O.D, about the school. How… Tell us just a lit­tle bit more about what you hope to achieve and what those projects are.

- So we’re try­ing to change a com­mu­ni­ty. we’re try­ing to trans­form. In 2014, the Chica­go some­times said, it was the most dan­ger­ous neigh­bor­hood in all of Chica­go. We’ve tak­en offense to that. They call it O Block because it was named after a young man named Odee Per­ry, who was shot and killed. The gangs took the own­er’s name and start­ed call­ing it O Block. We decid­ed we’re gonna keep the O, but we’re gonna change it to Oppor­tu­ni­ty Block. And how we’re gonna cre­ate those oppor­tu­ni­ties? We’re gonna build this cen­ter. It’s eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty cen­ter where we’re gonna teach the trades in con­struc­tion, elec­tri­cal, plumb­ing, auto­mo­tive. We’re gonna have restau­rants because there are not a lot of restau­rants in our area where we can teach culi­nary arts and teach peo­ple to train to be cooks and all kinds of things in oth­er restau­rants in oth­er places. We’re gonna have a trau­ma coun­sel­ing cen­ter where we can help peo­ple move through the stages of trau­ma that they’ve expe­ri­enced, this post trau­mat­ic stress that a lot of peo­ple have in our neigh­bor­hood. We’re gonna have an entre­pre­neur­ial cen­ter where we can start to get these busi­ness­es off the ground and help them to devel­op and to scale as well. We’re gonna have this school where we’re going to teach these kids ear­ly on how to be dis­ci­plined, how to be account­able, how to be intel­lec­tu­al, and still how to be cool at the same time.

- We’re gonna-

- It’s all cool.

- We’re gonna cre­ate a place where peo­ple can have some fun, a swim­ming pool, a bas­ket­ball gym, a golf sim­u­la­tor, a music stu­dio, a the­ater, a place where a com­mu­ni­ty can total­ly trans­form and find every­thing that they need to trans­form their lives. That’s what we’re doing here on the south side of Chica­go. And that’s why we’re… I’m appre­cia­tive of you giv­ing me this plat­form today to share it, because I want every­one in the world to know about the change that’s tak­ing place. And when it’s all done, I want every­body to know that it was not because Corey Brooks was so smart. But I want them to know that it was because we serve an awe­some and a won­der­ful God that just hap­pened to pick this neigh­bor­hood, to show the world that He still lives and that He still trans­formed his indi­vid­u­als. And that the church is the hope on the world.

- Wow. Pas­tor Corey Brooks, I, I am so thrilled to have had this time to talk to you and to thank you, engage and hear from you, hear your wis­dom and just thank you for what you’re doing with the New Begin­nings Church, with project H.O.O.D and the Oppor­tu­ni­ty Block.

- Thank you.

- You’re tak­ing some­thing that has a vio­lent and dif­fi­cult his­to­ry, and you’re turn­ing it into some­thing that has a bright future. And it’s because of your action and your faith that you are putting into, your faith that you’re putting into action in your cam­paign to end vio­lence, to do it in a way that brings peo­ple togeth­er and brings peace to of your neigh­bor­hood and your com­mu­ni­ty. Pas­tor Corey Brooks, I’m just, I’m grate­ful. Thank you for the hav­ing the time, to allow­ing me to have the time with you this morning.

- Oh, I thank you and I appre­ci­ate it. I’ve enjoyed it immensely.

- All right, my friend. You stay warm. You stay well. And we look for­ward to con­nect­ing with you in the days ahead and times ahead. So thank you for your inspi­ra­tion for all of this. Thank you for tak­ing the time. Have a great, have a great time.

- You as well. Cheers.

- All right. Thanks, my friend. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

- Well, that’s it for this episode of Believe with Pas­tor Corey Brooks. What an uplift­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty that we’ve had to hear from some­body who is liv­ing his faith in a pow­er­ful and impact­ful way. Not only in what he’s doing in his com­mu­ni­ty, but by shar­ing what he’s doing. He has a chance to impact all of us as well. So again, thanks to Pas­tor Corey Brooks for join­ing us. So that’s it for this episode of Believe. And we’ll look for­ward to see­ing you all again next time and very soon.