0:02

Hey, everybody, it's a Bill Courtney with an

0:05

army of normal folks. And we continue

0:07

now with part two of our conversation

0:09

with Pastor Corey Brooks. Right

0:12

after these brief messages from our

0:14

generous sponsors, let's

0:27

talk a little church business. Let's

0:29

talk the back office. Absolutely,

0:33

the work to

0:35

church for the unchurch is a beautiful

0:38

thing, and I get it. Yeah,

0:41

And I think, you know, I think the

0:43

corporate church since

0:46

the fifties and sixties in the United States

0:48

and large part, has been its own worst enemy in

0:51

terms of declining

0:54

membership and participation because

0:56

the narrative believe like me or you're going to Hell

0:59

is a pretty tough for sure.

1:02

And my faith is

1:06

grace and forgiveness and love and

1:08

compassion and service. Yes,

1:11

I think in large part the church has a verse

1:13

course seeing their ways and started

1:16

to work hard to put

1:18

the narrative of what my faith is out there. But

1:21

there was a long time where that was

1:23

secondary. And I think in large

1:25

part the church has been some worsetent.

1:27

Me.

1:29

So there's a large population of the unchurched

1:32

who had family members who are Christians

1:34

or who had been introduced to the church that are reachable,

1:37

right and guys

1:39

like you plopping down in

1:42

areas of need and reaching

1:44

out to those folks and starting to church

1:46

the unchurched is I think incredibly

1:50

valuable needed. Ok But

1:53

there's a business side of a church. We're

1:56

not talking about Tammy

1:59

Fay and jets and

2:02

massive stuff, all

2:05

right, that's a different world. What

2:07

I'm talking about is the reality of

2:09

a church is it costs some money to run it. Absolutely.

2:12

You've got to keep the lights on. You've got to pay I

2:14

think you have to pay you. I know you don't have to pay income, but I think

2:17

you do have to pay property tax, don't you

2:19

No, we don't have to pay property tanks. Okay, so you don't have

2:21

but you got to keep the lights on. The

2:24

men and women running the church

2:26

have to have a salary. They free, and

2:28

you don't want them to be paupers, so you're

2:30

not going to make them bajillionaires. But they

2:33

have to feed their family and

2:35

take care of their children. And you know, so there's

2:37

there's salaries that have to be paid, there's phone

2:39

lines that have to be paid. You gotta

2:42

pay for maintenance on the building. I mean

2:44

it has to take money, absolutely, And the

2:47

church gets its money from tithing.

2:49

Yes, so many

2:51

of the pastors that I've talked to over

2:54

the years who have started churches for

2:56

unchurched, we're

2:59

afraid that commitment

3:02

Sunday was one of the things that really

3:04

turned off prisoners

3:06

because oh, here they go, ask me

3:08

for my money, Here comes the offering

3:11

plate. And they walked

3:13

a difficult fine line

3:16

reaching to people who'd been chased out of the

3:18

church to have the church fun

3:20

churchdom, while still explaining

3:25

that tithing was part of the deal

3:27

because without the tithing, the church doesn't exist,

3:30

and frankly, were

3:32

called to do it right, how'd

3:34

you handle that? Because and was that a

3:37

thing? Yeah?

3:37

Absolutely, here's which I'm not just

3:40

No, you're right on point.

3:42

I've always handled stewardship from

3:44

the standpoint of financial

3:47

responsibility and accountability.

3:50

So for us, teaching the tide

3:53

was just part of it. So even

3:55

to this day, when we teach about finances,

3:58

we're teaching about budgeting. We're

4:00

teaching about living below your

4:02

mean, not overspending,

4:05

learning how to be content. We're

4:07

talking about savings. So we teach

4:10

people the ten ten eighty rule, you

4:12

know, stuff like that. So from the

4:14

very start, we've always taught not just

4:16

tithing, but we want you to be better financially.

4:18

And I think that's one of the things that kind

4:20

of appealed to the younger group

4:23

that we were reaching, is that they understood,

4:25

Look, we're not just trying to get you to tie. We want

4:27

you to be financially accountable,

4:30

we want.

4:30

You to be literate.

4:31

Yeah, we want you to be in a position to take care

4:33

of your family. We're not just trying to get something from

4:36

you. We're trying to give something to you.

4:38

Now.

4:38

Part of that is learning

4:40

how to give to God, putting him first.

4:42

And when you establish that, I think people

4:44

receive it a lot different. So they know at our church,

4:47

they know we're not just talking about finances

4:49

and money just so we can get something from you. Yeah,

4:53

that's good stuff, but it's

4:55

a big thing. You know, even even now.

4:58

You know, just Sunday I was saying, and

5:00

I don't look

5:02

at weekly and monthly ties and offerings

5:05

and things like that. Annually I'll

5:07

go back and look and say okay. And so

5:09

this year when they brought me to report, I was a little taken

5:11

back because I looked at the tithe

5:13

and Report of our leaders and the tithe and Report

5:16

of some of our staff and people who work

5:18

and I was like, whoa. And

5:20

I was really really upset, and I was

5:22

going to just write a model letter and you

5:24

know, go off, but the

5:27

Lord convicted me of and I you know, it was and

5:29

I felt, you know what, it's really more of an indictment

5:32

on my teaching and preaching. Maybe I need

5:34

to be a better communicator and

5:36

teaching about financial responsibility. So

5:38

that's the way I started keeping my

5:40

approach there. It's about financial responsibility

5:43

and financial literacy.

5:45

The greatest measure of the success of a leader

5:47

is the actions of the followers.

5:49

Absolutely, yeah. And if they ain't

5:52

getting it right, you gotta look at yourself

5:54

first. That's the first place, you

5:56

know, So go to leaders. So go to church, that's

5:58

right. Yeah, all right, So

6:01

here comes the Route sixty

6:03

six church and

6:07

you're in Woodlawn and across

6:09

the street there's a hotel. Yeah.

6:12

So we're in Woodline. We're the

6:14

toughest area in Chicago, on

6:17

the most dangerous

6:19

street in Chicago twenty

6:22

fourteen. The Chicago sometimes called

6:24

it the most dangerous neighborhood in all of Chicago.

6:27

Some think it's even the most make

6:30

it in the country. Yes, something I was

6:32

going to say. Some people think it's one of the most dangerous

6:34

streets in the country.

6:35

So here we are.

6:37

We got this church and it's across

6:39

the street from this motel, and

6:41

this motel gangs

6:43

are using it for drug sales and gun

6:46

sales, and prostitution

6:48

is going on.

6:49

You know.

6:49

It's it's called the stroll, you

6:52

know, where prostitutes are using

6:54

it to walk in front of and sell them

6:56

sells. So it was really here

6:59

we are, this church and you know this

7:01

this place is right across the street. So

7:05

something has to be done. So we

7:07

tried talking to the owner and negotiating

7:11

with the owner, and none of that work. And

7:15

two things happened. We want to buy it, Yeah,

7:17

we wanted to buy it, and he wouldn't sell

7:19

it. Now I understand why he wouldn't sell it. You know, the gangs

7:21

were involved, and he was making a lot of illegal

7:23

money. So and I later found

7:26

out that he that these sleazy

7:28

hotels were part of a lot

7:31

of sleazy hotels across the America owned

7:33

by a group that was participating

7:36

in these type of activities. But I didn't find that out until

7:38

it got later on in the in the process.

7:41

But this hotel.

7:43

It is a sleezy hotel, and.

7:45

We're trying to you know, we want to take

7:47

it on, we want to buy it, so

7:49

he wouldn't sell it.

7:50

Could you see? I

7:52

think were your parishioners and your personal children

7:54

walking out and seeing all this mess

7:56

going on across.

7:57

The streets, absolutely, especially a prostitution on

8:00

Sunday were they were they walking the streets

8:02

in front of the church. There were prostitutes

8:04

walking the street. And now I know from

8:07

hearing you already, you weren't condemning them.

8:09

No, you probably wanted to reach out, and we were

8:11

reaching out. We were reaching out. We were trying to get him

8:13

in programs. We were trying you

8:16

know, we never would condemn them. We never would

8:19

still, yeah, but it was it was they were

8:22

there and one Sunday you said, so,

8:24

yeah, One Sunday, the gang

8:26

somebody beat this guy up so bad

8:29

and he ran into our congregate. Our church

8:32

was jam packed. He ran in

8:34

the lobby, but naked,

8:36

bleeding he had gotten on Sunday

8:38

mornings stripped him.

8:41

We were like, okay, we got to do something. So

8:44

from that point we were like, this

8:46

is it Monday, I'm going over to talk

8:49

to this guy who's gonna have to sell this hotel.

8:51

So I can remember going over and having this big

8:53

discussion with him, and I

8:55

remember saying to me, look, there's

8:58

a church over there, and

9:00

he pointed at this church that was not too far

9:02

from us, and then he said, there's a church on

9:04

that corner down there, and they were there

9:06

before you got here. And then he said

9:09

to me, and what

9:11

makes you think you're gonna do something

9:13

different? And right

9:15

there is when I feel like, okay, he's throwing down

9:17

the gatlin. So the next Sunday,

9:19

I told our church, we're gonna be protesting out in

9:21

front of their every Friday and Saturday night.

9:24

We're going to act like we're filming people going

9:26

in doing illegal stuff, and we're going

9:28

to try to shut it down. And so for a whole summer

9:31

we cut his business off.

9:33

And hang on what the gang

9:35

members not too happy with that, Well, you're not worried

9:37

about a little shooting. It

9:38

was It.

9:39

Was it was confrontations, it was confroation.

9:42

The good thing is that we had

9:44

been in the neighborhood and so people

9:47

will started joining our church from the neighborhood.

9:49

So some of these same gang guys were

9:51

related to people who were in our church, so

9:54

our members, our

9:57

members were able to quiet

9:59

stuff down on a lot, right. So

10:01

we hadn't had that connection, it probably in

10:04

the words of our neighborhood, it would have went up for sure.

10:07

Yeah, okay, so you're protesting. So we're

10:09

protesting all summer. We're cutting this drying

10:11

his business up. He's he's hurting.

10:13

So we got him on the you know, on the ropes. So

10:16

the name of Jesus, you've

10:20

grinding them up. Jesus

10:23

real bad. So uh,

10:26

I tell people we were gangstering for God.

10:28

So we're so

10:30

so new. So the end of the summer comes,

10:33

the fall comes. He's,

10:35

you know, in a tough situation. And

10:38

in November, a young boy

10:40

in our church gets shot

10:42

and killed. And that's

10:44

when things went to a whole other level.

10:47

We had the funeral at the church. It

10:49

was a it was a warm day on a Saturday.

10:51

The kids were walking into the neighborhood

10:53

from five six blocks away,

10:56

a very large funeral. And I'm

10:59

up in the office getting ready, and all of a sudden,

11:01

I hear semi automatic

11:03

gunfire and my heart sank because

11:06

just like she said, she was worried exactly

11:09

happened. The kids from the

11:11

block that our churches on started

11:13

shooting at those kids, and

11:15

thankfully no one got shot and

11:17

killed, and it was chaotic. We

11:20

were still able to have the funeral. After the

11:22

police came, we debated should we

11:24

even have it, but I decided, you know, look this many

11:26

young people here. Something positive needs to be said

11:29

about the Lord. So the police

11:31

stayed, they were everywhere, and we finally

11:33

were able to have this funeral. And that's

11:35

when things kind of like I

11:38

made a commitment to God.

11:39

Look, I'm all in.

11:41

I thought I had been all in, but something

11:43

has to be done about the violence in this name.

11:46

To say about a society that has to have a

11:48

massive police presence or a child can

11:50

be buried, Man, it's very

11:52

sad. It's nothing like it.

11:53

I mean.

11:55

Broken.

11:57

I can remember thinking

12:00

and even while the worship service was going

12:02

on, it's going to

12:04

take a miracle to change this neighborhood.

12:07

And I was thinking, even why the

12:09

funeral's going on, Man, I should

12:11

just lead this neighborhood.

12:12

Why am I here? I shouldn't.

12:15

Yeah, I started to doubt, and I started I was really

12:18

internally wrestling about

12:20

the whole situation. But

12:22

at the end of that funeral, something happened

12:25

that had never happened to me. Ever,

12:29

I really believe that Lord

12:32

still speaks and urges you by the Holy

12:34

Spirit. I believe that, and I really

12:37

believe that the Holy Spirit was just functioning

12:40

me to say something to those boys

12:42

who had brought illegal guns into the church.

12:45

And so I said, at the end of

12:47

the funeral, I stopped the process. I stopped everybody

12:49

and told everybody to sit down, and I said,

12:52

you know, I'm not trying to scare anybody. I'm not trying to be spooky.

12:54

I'm not trying to be prophetic. But I

12:56

do believe when God

12:59

speaks to me, gives me a certain

13:01

function. And I said, there's some

13:03

young brothers in here who brought guns in here illegally.

13:05

And this is what I said, God

13:08

wants you to turn those guns in today,

13:10

because if you diss Him by going out these

13:13

doors with those guns, He's gonna diss you. So

13:15

I'm gonna say a prayer, and at the end

13:17

of this prayer, we're gonna have a gun

13:19

turn in. And I got the police to agree

13:21

that I could do it. They wouldn't rest anybody. We

13:23

could do a gun turn in and I

13:26

said a prayer, and I thought it was

13:28

gonna be I don't know if you're familiar with Billy Graham,

13:32

but I thought it was gonna be like one of them Billy Graham crusades,

13:34

you know what he prays, and then everybody comes down

13:36

and everybody's

13:40

crying. Everybody's so I

13:42

thought it was gonna be like that. But I said amen, and

13:44

it was so quiet, nobody moved.

13:46

I thought, oh my god, I made a big mistake.

13:49

And then all of a sudden, after about

13:51

a minute of quiet, this young

13:54

brother with a T shirt on, saggy

13:57

pants locks, pulls

13:59

up his pants. He's got a

14:01

nine milimeter clock, holds

14:03

it up in the air, turns it in.

14:06

Another person turns in the gun. Another person

14:08

turns in the gun, and I said,

14:11

God that this is a

14:13

miracle. Whatever you want me to do from this point,

14:16

I'm all in. So as

14:18

we're walking out at the end of the funeral,

14:20

the sergeant of police stops me and she's crying

14:23

and she says, passor thank you so much.

14:26

She said, underneath the seat, we found this gun

14:28

and it was another nine milimeter but it had an

14:30

extended clip and

14:32

so I just recommitted again the same thing

14:34

I just committed.

14:35

God, I'm all in whatever I got to do this violence,

14:38

I'm all in.

14:39

And little did I know I would walk from

14:42

the back of our church to the front door of our

14:44

church and they're that motel is the

14:46

first thing I put my eyes on, and

14:49

the same unction I had in the funeral,

14:52

I got that same unction again. This time

14:55

it was more like, go

14:58

on top of the roof for that motel and

15:00

stay there until you raise enough money to

15:02

purchase it and tear it down and

15:04

start building a community center.

15:06

Okay, so now we're gonna

15:08

get to this part of the story, which is phenomenal.

15:12

But brother, are you crazy? Because here

15:15

I think I was, because I

15:17

think you gotta have a little crazy. How you gonna

15:19

go up on a roof and buy a hotel?

15:21

I mean, here's the truth. You go

15:23

on the roof of this building right now. But that

15:26

don't mean you're gonna buy nothing. Which is

15:28

is are you gonna find enough quarters on the

15:30

room you're gonna be able to buy?

15:31

How are you gonna buy a hotel

15:34

by going on the roof. That doesn't even make sense.

15:36

It doesn't make any sense.

15:37

At all, and I tell people I know it now

15:40

looking back, it made

15:42

no sense and I didn't even

15:44

think it. I wasn't even thinking it through. I just

15:46

really believed in my heart and mind

15:49

I'm hearing from God. I was

15:51

believing that because I was in that

15:54

gun turned in kind of like just

15:58

messing me up and have me. Man,

16:01

you got brothers turning in guns.

16:03

I'll believe it.

16:09

We'll be right back. One

16:18

of the reasons why at the beginning of our conversation,

16:20

I really wanted to establish

16:25

your pedigree, your educational

16:27

pedigree political science and Dallas

16:30

and got into law school. I'll

16:33

tell you another quick story. I've

16:35

done more stories on this. The

16:40

Rain Hotel over here on Mulberry

16:42

Streets where Martin Luther King was shot and killed

16:44

in Memphis. And Memphis

16:49

was a major manufacturing

16:53

area prior to nineteen April fourth,

16:55

nineteen sixty eight, and there

16:57

were riots and riots and riots, and a lot

16:59

of companies Caterpillar International

17:01

Harvester, Firestone, Firestone

17:04

had a plant over here that was seven hundred acres,

17:07

couldn't deal with it and pulled up stakes. And

17:09

it's set back this city thirty

17:12

years, not only culturally and racially,

17:14

but economical Memphis

17:17

is still dealing with it. I mean, Memphis at one

17:19

time was one of the top ten largest

17:21

cities in the country. And the

17:23

crossing of the river, I mean the

17:25

Memphis has struggled and it's coming

17:27

back. And there are great corporations

17:29

still here, like International Paper and AutoZone

17:32

and FedEx and others. But

17:35

that incident, and I don't need to

17:38

mean to downplay the social impact of that incident,

17:40

which is most important, but it had a devastating

17:43

economic impact on the city. As

17:46

a result, the area around the Roman Hotel

17:49

went to hell, right, And

17:52

so in eighty seven,

17:54

nineteen eighty seven, I'm at Olmsson

17:56

College, mine of my own business. Well

17:59

not really, but that's where I am, and

18:01

this TV the

18:04

news comes over, and

18:07

the city and county and a private

18:10

public partnership of raised enough money to

18:12

buy their own hotel, do

18:15

millions of dollars with the renovations

18:17

and make it the National Civil Rights Museum

18:19

and honor doctor King and

18:22

make it a museum that's DC New

18:24

York quality, which stands today.

18:27

Great, great deal.

18:29

But the woman who

18:31

was running that motel's name was Jacqueline

18:34

Smith, not the Charlie's Angel Jacqueline

18:36

Smith, an African American woman named

18:38

Jackie Smith who was

18:40

using the hotel to

18:44

house beaten,

18:47

battered, abused children

18:50

and mothers and

18:52

people are on the streets caring for the very

18:55

people that your heart cares. And

18:57

her argument was, museums

19:01

and monuments don't perpetuate the

19:03

memory of doctor King actions to and

19:05

if we're going to spend twenty five million dollars on

19:07

this place, why don't we rehabit to a center

19:10

for the people that need it the most.

19:13

Well, nobody understood that all

19:15

the news showed was this black

19:18

woman having all her stuff

19:20

thrown on the curb and being dragged out

19:22

by her feet and hands down

19:24

the stairway, hollering loud.

19:28

And you know what she looked like. She looked

19:30

like a crazy street woman, right, crazy

19:32

black woman, angry black woman,

19:35

crazy angry black woman, just

19:37

raising hell. And

19:39

then they drop her on the curb with all her stuff

19:42

and put a tarp over it.

19:45

It's twenty twenty four and that woman

19:47

is still there, Wow, tonight

19:52

because she believes so desperately in her

19:54

heart that actions,

19:56

not monuments, better support and perpetuate

19:59

the memory the works of a man like doctor King.

20:02

Now you can argue whether or not the

20:04

Civil Rights Museum as an educational

20:07

tool and as a monument to the

20:09

greatest civil rights leader of our time

20:12

is appropriate or not. I personally think

20:14

it probably is, But I also

20:16

understand her. So

20:21

I drove up there, and now this

20:24

was not a place in the city that many

20:26

folks went, and certainly not redheaded,

20:29

fat white dudes, right, And I

20:32

ended up spending two nights on the sidewalk with

20:34

her, and Wow, heard her story,

20:36

wrote it down, and wrote an article

20:38

that ended up getting published and like readers,

20:41

dijust and time and all that. So

20:43

it was my first full way into storytelling,

20:45

frankly. But what I

20:48

learned about Jackie Smith is she had a degree

20:50

from the University of Southern Mississippi

20:52

and was a lead soprano

20:55

in the Chicago metch Boldern Opera at one time,

20:58

and she left all that to come back home to serve

21:00

the most disadvantaged in community. And her protest

21:02

was righteous. I'm

21:06

telling the story for this reason. When

21:08

I first heard the story of a black man camping

21:10

out on somebody's roof in Chicago, I

21:13

thought you were just a crazy, angry.

21:15

Black man yeah, you know,

21:17

and I can understand that, and I think

21:20

that's not just was your thought. I

21:22

think that's probably what a lot of people thought. Even

21:25

people on my staff thought. Passed,

21:28

this is crazy, don't you know. They were trying to talk

21:30

to me out of doing it. But I was so convinced

21:33

and still am to this day that

21:35

that's what God wanted me to do that I was not gonna

21:38

No one.

21:38

Could have changed my mind. Tell us what you did.

21:41

So on November the twentieth, twenty

21:44

eleven, about four am

21:46

in the morning, Rafa, who

21:48

is our church maintenance engineer,

21:51

we snuck up on the roof and

21:54

we put a tent up there and I just refused

21:58

to come down, and I

22:00

said I wasn't gonna come down until

22:03

we raised enough money.

22:04

How tall is this fielding?

22:06

It's about three stories, So your three

22:08

stories up there, three stories up in the air.

22:12

People lobbing your cans of beans? How you eating?

22:14

And so at first I was fast,

22:16

and so so I was on

22:18

the twenty one day fast because I was thinking this is what

22:20

I really just think. I was like, Okay, I go

22:23

up here on this roof and people

22:25

are here about it. It's crazy. Black preacher

22:27

on the roof attend

22:30

not eating seven days, I'll be down.

22:33

I really thought that's what's going to

22:35

happen, but

22:39

it did not happen like that. I'm thankful

22:42

to a lady by the name

22:44

of Hermeane Hartman, who

22:47

was really close to Reverend Jesse Jackson,

22:49

and she's you know, she's really historic

22:51

in Chicago as far as media is concerned,

22:54

on black radio, and she knows everybody.

22:57

She just happened to hear that

23:00

I was on the roof, and she did not believe

23:02

it. And so she came by there

23:04

on the second day in her car, her and her

23:06

friend, and she was hollering up

23:12

and so I come over to the side of the roof.

23:14

She said, I didn't I did not believe you were

23:16

up here.

23:17

I'm gonna go and tell everybody, And sure

23:19

enough she started, Yeah,

23:21

she started spreading the word. I

23:24

started getting attention. The mayor

23:26

called and we got into a big argument. Man,

23:29

Rommy Manuel on the third.

23:30

Supposed to be a big progressive Democrats

23:33

support the people kind of guy.

23:34

Yeah, I tell people, I didn't

23:37

know he could cuss. I didn't know you could cuss preachers

23:39

out like that.

23:40

He cussed me.

23:41

Out real good cause you know, he's

23:43

like, I'm gonna get after off and

23:46

have people on the roofs all across the city if

23:48

he allows it to go.

23:49

And that, yeah,

23:51

he was gonna start. I'm starting something, starting

23:54

something everybody gonna do. And I control

23:57

off the roof off and you told the mayor,

24:00

no way, you have to come and

24:02

get me. Let me buy this hotel exactly,

24:05

And he was.

24:06

Like, I can't help you buy the motel,

24:09

and you're gonna come off that roof. Matter of fact,

24:11

if you don't come off by three o'clock, we're gonna

24:13

come and get you. And I tell everyone he should have

24:16

he made a big mistake. He told

24:18

me the time. When he told me the time, I

24:20

called every gang banger.

24:22

I knew every

24:24

grandmother, everybody,

24:26

the whole the block was

24:29

packed.

24:29

It was so many people that the police

24:32

and the fire department couldn't come up to get me off

24:34

the roof. What it looked like the press

24:36

was there. The press was there. So

24:38

he called back and he's like, okay,

24:40

okay, I'm gonna let you stay on the

24:42

roof, but you gotta let us inspect it and

24:45

make sure it's safe. So by

24:47

that time, we had got a lift, that rented

24:49

a lift, so they come all the way up there. So

24:52

the fire chief gets on and

24:55

here the fire and the chief of the fire department

24:57

in Chicago coming up on the roof. So

24:59

he comes up there and he's he's really laughing

25:01

because he knows that, you know, he's

25:04

laughing about rom them trying to make me get off. So he's

25:06

like, listen, man, I just do

25:08

this, do this. And all the things he told me to do

25:10

were safety things. And I'm glad he did

25:12

because on the third day, once

25:14

we got everything up, that night a

25:16

snow It was the only snowstorm that

25:19

hit while I was up there. This is the

25:21

winter, yes, November,

25:23

the twentieth.

25:24

Wind's blowing. Yet Wins.

25:27

The wind is blowing, I'm freezing.

25:29

I'm really not prepared for

25:31

a snowstorm.

25:33

And I was like, oh

25:35

my god.

25:36

But when that snowstorm hit, we

25:38

had sealed the inside of the tent

25:41

down with two by fours and drilled it to the roof

25:43

so it wouldn't blow away. And so I

25:46

was glad. He's

25:50

going crazy. The bank's going crazy.

25:53

So we're fighting with the bank. We're fighting with

25:55

them, but they couldn't. They couldn't get me

25:57

off because the neighborhood by that time, they

25:59

were like in full support, and it was like it

26:01

had become a thing of man

26:03

pasting bricks is on the roof. We're gonna so

26:06

everybody so the games. Instead of being mad,

26:08

they started protecting me, and it

26:10

was it was amazing. It was an amazing sight to

26:12

behold. And it lasted

26:16

ninety four days. That's

26:18

over three months. Yes, I

26:20

thought it was gonna they come down for Christmas.

26:23

Nothing. I came down. The only time

26:25

I came on Sunday, I preached

26:28

and they streamed it in.

26:29

So before all the streaming and stuff was

26:32

going on, we had already figured

26:34

out streaming. So they would they would put me

26:36

on the roof. I was

26:38

passing from the roof. I would preach a sermon

26:40

from the roof and they'd be in there.

26:41

It was about this, what

26:44

about using the bathroom?

26:45

So you know, I'm a country boy, so I

26:47

knew it ain't got my

26:52

I don't remember a lot about my childhood, but

26:54

I do remember being six

26:56

and seven and we had an outhouse in

26:58

Kenton, Tennessee, So going and using

27:01

it outside was no big deal to me. So we I

27:03

got this camping little thing

27:06

it's used for camping that you use it to a

27:08

porter pot with powder. Yeah, the powder,

27:10

and you bought like a little it's

27:13

like a little trash bag. You use it and in

27:15

the pot. You tied it up and throw it out. So

27:17

by that time I was did

27:19

you have I was I was a ported pot expert.

27:22

Did you have any electricity?

27:23

We we finally got some electricity

27:25

up there, because after that third day I almost

27:27

froze to death. I was like, I'm not going

27:30

to be able to make it. So we we hijacked

27:32

the electricity from across the street at the church,

27:35

wired it all the way across the

27:38

electric poles without the city

27:40

knowing. Yeah, we we We used some

27:42

some ghetto tricks and.

27:45

We So, man,

27:48

just sitting across from you, you got.

27:49

This warm smile and this warm

27:52

presence, right, yeah, I appreciate it.

27:54

I gotta believe though you

27:58

were tight lift and you

28:00

weren't showing that warmth from the top

28:02

of that roof.

28:03

No, no, no, you know I have

28:05

a warm side the form

28:08

the nice, fuzzy, cuddly

28:11

warm side, but I

28:15

also have that side that you

28:17

know, I'm

28:19

an edgy, and I think I

28:22

have to be that way because I don't think you can passor

28:24

in our neighborhood without

28:27

without being a man's man.

28:29

I don't know how you're a Peter Disciple.

28:31

Yeah, yeah, definitely,

28:34

that would be me. I'm always learning

28:36

to turn the other cheek, and you know, I'm

28:39

always learning how to be humble.

28:41

But the guys laugh a lot

28:43

with me because you know, I've gotten into

28:46

some major confrontations with guys who

28:48

from the neighborhood. So but I

28:51

try to be as golly and as golly example as

28:53

I can.

28:53

But I'm just not gonna let you bully me. So

28:55

you up there for ninety three days,

28:57

and at this point, I don't

29:00

know how that's going to help you to buy the

29:02

building. It may bring attention

29:05

to the flight.

29:06

So I was bringing it. So I tell people

29:10

I'm on this roof for two reasons. One

29:12

to bring attention and awareness to the violence

29:15

in the Woodline, Chicago area that

29:17

is out of hand.

29:19

It's too much.

29:20

No one should have to deal with as much violence in

29:22

any neighborhood. Children should be able

29:24

to walk to the store without being shot. They should

29:26

be able to go to the playgrounds, and play without being

29:28

shot at. They should be able to go to school

29:31

safely. So that's I was trying to

29:33

bring as much attention to that I could to

29:35

the to the violence. And that's what

29:37

I did. And so even while I was on the roof.

29:39

The one time I did come down, it was for

29:41

a young boy who had gotten shot at a Lee's

29:44

Chicken and New York Times came

29:46

and did a story on it. But that was the only time I

29:48

came down to do that funeral of that young

29:50

boy. But I

29:53

was committed toward, you know, toward

29:55

that effort and bringing

29:57

attention and awareness. And then number two, I

29:59

would tell people, well, I'm raising money to

30:01

purchase this motel to turn

30:03

into a community center. Now, I'll

30:06

be honest, I think one of the reasons

30:09

why it took so long. I

30:11

think one of the reasons why it took so long is

30:13

that in our community,

30:17

people are used to preachers saying

30:19

they're going to build something and do something, and

30:21

sometimes we don't do it.

30:24

So I think I had I had

30:26

that uphill struggle to deal with

30:29

and getting the message out to convince

30:31

people that hey, I'm serious, I'm going to do it. But I think

30:33

over time. Once people saw man,

30:36

this man must be serious because he's not coming

30:38

down. It's Christmas,

30:41

it's Martin Luther King's birthday, it's

30:43

Groundhog Day, it's Valentine.

30:45

True, your wife get pretty angry at some

30:47

point.

30:48

You know what, It got tired of you being on the Only

30:50

thing my wife got mad about is I kept

30:52

begging her to come up there.

30:53

You know, got

31:01

you go past her roof pical

31:04

business.

31:06

She wouldn't cooperate. She

31:10

used to tell me. She used to tell

31:12

me, I don't want to come up there. People are

31:14

gonna think we're doing it. And I'm

31:16

like, that's because we're

31:18

gonna be If you come up here, let

31:24

me show you my let me show you the r ruth.

31:28

To believe that you come up here, Lord,

31:34

expect to go that way.

31:38

We'll be right back.

31:47

I kept a diary and I wrote

31:49

every day in the diary. On day ninety two, I

31:52

wrote about God, I'm really

31:54

expecting you to do something soon. I

31:56

just feel it, And I said, I just want to thank

31:58

you right now for what I believe

32:01

you're going to do. I know you're going to do it, so

32:04

thank you in advance. That was

32:06

day ninety two. On day ninety four, I

32:10

got a bunch of calls. People calling me and said

32:12

they're talking about you on the radio. They're trying to get in touch

32:15

with you my phone. It was so

32:17

many calls. I'd never experienced this that

32:19

my cell phone got locked because so many

32:22

people were trying to call me. And so finally

32:25

Tyler Perry got through. Cayler

32:28

p Yeah. On the ninety fourth day, Tyler

32:31

Perry and Tom Joyner. He was

32:33

on the Tom Joyner Morning Show and

32:37

somebody had told him about what I was doing, and

32:40

he called me and they had me live

32:42

on the radio and he said, is

32:45

this the crazy Black Preacher on the roof

32:47

in Chicago? And I was like, yes, it

32:49

is. And he was like, hey, this

32:51

is Tyler Perry. And I got

32:53

a movie coming out called Good Deeds.

32:56

He said, I want to give you the motorcycle

32:59

from the movie be Good Deeds. And

33:01

I was like, oh, man, thank you, but I'm thinking in

33:03

my mind, man, I need more than a motorcycle. I'm

33:05

trying to get off this roof. But I didn't want to say

33:07

that on the lote. Yeah, thank

33:10

you for the motorcycle, but you know, so

33:13

he goes on he said I got this movie coming

33:15

out called Good Deeds. I want you to attend

33:18

it, I said, miss spiriy I.

33:20

Man, I really would love to attend the movie, I said,

33:22

but I can't because, yeah,

33:25

unless I have the money to come down off the roof, you

33:27

know. So I'm going into it now. Unless

33:30

I have the money to come down off the roof, I can't.

33:32

And then he's like, well, how much more do you need. I was like,

33:35

we need one hundred thousand dollars, and

33:37

he's like, I'm going to give it to

33:39

you. Come on down, I said, missus

33:42

Perry, I would come

33:44

down, but I made a vow to God. I couldn't

33:46

come down till we have it all in our possessions. So

33:50

so they started laughing. He said, okay,

33:53

my people gonna talk to your people. There's gonna be done

33:55

by two o'clock. This is

33:57

early in the morning. Sure enough, by two o'clock

33:59

they had transfer the funds. I

34:01

had learned a little bit about pr and all that

34:03

stuff, and I knew that we're gonna need the

34:06

momentum to build the center. So even

34:09

though we had the money at two o'clock, I said, We're gonna

34:11

wait until five o'clock, so we

34:13

catch the five o'clock news and six o'clock news

34:15

and all of that, and it'll make a big deal.

34:17

Out of it.

34:18

And we had the streets packed and the neighborhood

34:20

was packed, and it was a

34:22

real big thing. And so that's how

34:24

I got off through Tyler Perrygate the last one hundred

34:26

thousand dollars and then.

34:28

Our total of five hundred and something.

34:30

Yeah, five, that made us have four hundred

34:33

and fifty thousand, and

34:35

then that's what the building costs. And then

34:37

we had a gentleman by the name of Marty Ozinga

34:40

from Ozinga Concrete that came. He

34:42

came up there probably around about three o'clock, wanted

34:45

to see me his Ozinga Concrete. There's

34:47

like four generations of Thoozinga's the Osinger

34:49

Concrete company. And Marty came

34:51

on top of the roof. He said, hey, he hadn't heard about Tom

34:53

Jonner. You know, they don't listen

34:55

to Tom Joinner. So he says, me and my brothers,

34:58

we want to give you something. And

35:00

it was one hundred thousand dollars. And I was like,

35:03

Marty, thank you so much, I said, But in

35:06

all honestly, I cannot take

35:09

this because Tyler period gave us all

35:11

the money that we needed, and so

35:13

I have the money to purchase the building. And

35:15

then he said, well, well,

35:18

I don't want to take it back. I want to we want to give

35:20

it to you. He said, well, how much money you got to tear it down?

35:22

Right, He's got to tear this building down. I said yeah.

35:25

He said, well how much is it going to cost to tear it down?

35:27

I said probably about one

35:29

hundred thousand. So

35:34

he gave thousand This just

35:36

so happens, one hundred thousand dollars and

35:38

so he gave us the money and that's how we tore it down.

35:41

Then we started our journey to you

35:44

know, we want to turn this into a community

35:46

center.

35:46

And that was a long, long journey. That

35:51

is a phenology. One

35:53

of the things we talk about all the time is

35:55

when our discipline and our passion

35:58

meet opportunities, when I'm amazing, things

36:00

can happen. I believe you're passionate

36:02

about this neighborhood. You had

36:05

the discipline to bring notoriety

36:07

to it. You saw an opportunity and

36:10

for ninety four days, yeah,

36:12

you filled it. So you

36:15

got the thing down right.

36:16

Yep, that's two thousand. So in twenty twelve

36:19

the building came down. It's

36:22

just vacant land, and so we put some

36:24

basketball courts up there. We

36:26

drew up some plans the type

36:28

of center that we wanted to have. We created

36:30

an organization called Project Hood while

36:33

I was on the roof. Project Hood stands for helping

36:35

others attain destiny. And we started

36:37

looking at all the issues that we needed to deal with to get

36:39

rid of the poverty and the violence in the neighborhood.

36:42

And so that was in twenty twelve, and

36:44

so the land was there. We put

36:46

some basketball courts on it. We used it as a place

36:48

where kids could play. We beautified it, make

36:50

it look nice, made it look nice, but

36:53

we didn't have at that time. It

36:56

started off being a twenty million dollar building.

36:59

Then you wanted to be that. We wanted to build

37:01

communities, a community center. Now is this a community

37:04

center for the church or like a

37:06

private community center for the just the community.

37:08

Yes, it's a community center for the community.

37:10

It's a place where we teach where we're going to

37:12

be teaching the trades. We have a culinary

37:15

art school, construction, automotive,

37:18

electrical, plumbing. We have a theater,

37:21

two gyms, a golf simulator, an

37:23

Olympic sized swimming pool, three

37:25

restaurants.

37:26

This is all on the plant, This is all in the plans. What

37:28

I like though, is it's a place

37:31

for kids to come and everything else. But it's also a

37:33

place people can learn the hard skills. Yes,

37:35

it's a place to learn skills.

37:37

It's about it's a place about for transformation

37:40

for young people. It's about them having safe

37:42

spaces and places to go because

37:45

in our community, unfortunately, so

37:47

many times young people just didn't don't

37:50

have safe places. The YMCA

37:52

is about a mile and a half and kids

37:55

in our neighborhood they can't There's

37:57

no way possible they can walk to that YMCA

38:00

because they have to walk out across so many

38:02

gang turns to do it.

38:03

So I didn't understand that. I

38:06

bet you know. R Shae Cooper. Yes, Archae

38:09

was a guest and he

38:12

said from He's also

38:14

from not this neighborhood, but that side

38:16

of the city, south side right, I

38:19

mean west side, right, So he

38:21

said. One of his dreams

38:24

as an eight year old, he

38:26

could see the top of Sears Tower

38:28

from the top of his apartment building. And

38:31

one of his big dreams was just

38:34

to go one day be able to see the serious

38:36

town. And that

38:39

means one of the kid's

38:42

biggest dreams was just to be able to drive

38:44

ten miles across his city. Yes,

38:47

or ride on a bus. Yes. And

38:49

I said, well, why didn't you just go there and see it?

38:51

He said, I'd have been killed, yep, because

38:54

I had to cross four or five or six

38:57

different neighborhoods with different gangs, and I

38:59

had never there and back. You never

39:01

ventured off your block never. You

39:04

know.

39:04

There's a guy who's a kid, who he

39:07

lives with us. His name is Da Marius.

39:09

He's my son's best friend. And

39:12

I can remember when he was sixteen years old.

39:14

I was taking all of them to open up an account

39:16

at Chase Bank, and

39:19

the Marius Chase Bank

39:21

from our church, from their neighborhood is

39:23

exactly nine blocks

39:26

away. It's on We're on Keen

39:28

Drive there on Stony Island, and

39:30

I can remember as we're going across like four

39:32

or five blocks, he's looking around. I'm

39:34

like, I notice he's kind of anxious,

39:37

nervous, and I find it's like, what's

39:39

going on?

39:39

What's wrong? All right? He's like, I

39:41

have never been over here.

39:44

I was, like, never been over with five

39:47

blocks? He said, my mom would

39:49

not allow us to cross Vernon.

39:52

Vernon is only two blocks.

39:55

And I thought, man, this

39:58

is crazy showing people say

40:03

I don't get it about these people. Yeah,

40:06

quote these

40:08

people. We got

40:10

free education. You go, get

40:12

you a breakfast and a lunch, you

40:15

can study up and learn. We

40:17

give away food stamps, government

40:21

assistant housing. I

40:24

mean, as

40:27

a country, we literally

40:30

provide free education, free

40:32

meals, all of

40:34

this stuff. All people got to do

40:37

is take advantage of the opportunities, pull themselves

40:39

up by their bootstraps and go to work. How

40:45

are you ever going to grow as

40:47

a child when you can't

40:50

even go beyond two blocks? And

40:52

what does it say about a part of our culture.

40:55

They're not dreaming to be doctors, they're not

40:58

dreaming to be accountants, they're not dreaming to go to college.

41:01

Their dream is to be able to go eight miles

41:03

to downtown Chicago to see a tower.

41:05

Yeah. If that is the apex

41:08

of your ability to dream,

41:11

what are you ever going to achieve?

41:13

Yeah? Exactly.

41:15

And you know, the lack of exposure

41:18

with a lot of the kids in Chicago is

41:21

tremendous. You know, people would be really

41:23

amazed that there are

41:25

young people in Chicago who have never

41:28

ever been downtown. They

41:31

would be amazed that there are kids who never seen,

41:35

never been to the beach at Lake Michigan. And

41:38

that's you know, a

41:40

mile away, a straight shot. It's

41:43

not like they have to go zipping around

41:45

corners a straight shot and they've never been to

41:47

the lake.

41:48

Because they're too afraid to walk outside.

41:50

Absolutely, Now, how you're gonna learn, how

41:52

you gonna dream, how you gonna achieve, how you

41:54

gonna be anything? Yeah? Absolutely. You know.

41:57

One day, I remember, probably about

42:00

a year and a half ago, it was

42:02

some gunshots that rang out near the school

42:04

ground and all the kids

42:06

new to hit the ground. They

42:10

taught they teach the kids shooting

42:13

drills on how to hit the ground on the playground.

42:16

And when you're in environments like that where kids

42:19

don't feel safe, they don't want to go outside

42:22

their environments, it's hard to get

42:24

them exposed. It's hard to get them to dream, it's

42:26

hard to get them to think that they can be something. It's hard

42:28

to think get them to believe that they can

42:30

achieve anything that they you know that

42:33

people tell them they can achieve. It's just it's

42:35

just a hard, hard sell.

42:39

We have all kinds of organizations

42:44

that are dealing with are greater and

42:46

greater understanding over the last decade and

42:48

a half about our service

42:50

people coming back around the rock wherever

42:53

they serve, in their PTSD and the trauma

42:55

and the anxiousness

42:57

and the triggers associated with violence.

43:01

They're involved in defending

43:04

our country and for a living. When

43:08

our children know more about how

43:10

to respond to gunfire than they do about

43:12

curious George, what

43:15

is the trauma in their lives? What is

43:17

their PTSD? And how do you

43:19

expect those people to learn? Second

43:21

point is man,

43:25

the first time I ever heard the term white privilege,

43:27

it pissed me. Also bad Cory.

43:32

It made me so angry.

43:35

My mama did her best, but we didn't

43:37

have much of nothing. I went to school on a scholarship.

43:39

I worked three jobs, and you

43:42

know it wasn't no white privilege. I

43:46

worked hard, and I'm gonna tell you something.

43:48

I've got a nice business and all, but

43:50

to this day I owe the bank

43:52

a bunch of money. And if I don't make

43:55

my notes, they're coming to get my house. In my

43:57

wife's car and it's

43:59

a lot of stress. But I can

44:01

tell you this, I

44:04

wasn't dreaming about walking across the block.

44:06

That was no big deal. And

44:08

the truth is, despite

44:11

how hard I've worked to do everything else, by

44:16

comparison, the kids are growing up in the neighborhood you're

44:18

serving, I was quite privileged, and

44:21

you've got to understand, white privilege is

44:23

not a knock on white

44:26

people who've done well. It's

44:29

just trying to

44:31

open eyes to there's a segment

44:34

of our urban populations that is

44:36

largely African American that

44:38

children don't even have the chance

44:40

to go to blocks from their homes safely.

44:43

And the fact

44:45

that I never experienced that

44:48

is a privilege That

44:50

does not mean it makes me bad or discredits

44:52

any of the hard work I've put in. In fact, most

44:54

people celebrate it, and that's great, but

44:57

we also have to remove ourselves

44:59

and our ego from that and try to start

45:02

understanding the desperation

45:04

these children are growing up in.

45:06

Yeah, you know, I may not agree with the

45:08

term white privilege, but I'll say this that

45:11

I think all of us have different

45:13

situations and circumstances that make us privileged.

45:16

Even I would call myself when as

45:18

it relates to those kids, I

45:21

was privileged. I wasn't in an environment

45:23

even though I was my stepfather was

45:25

abusive and crazy and deranged.

45:28

I wasn't in an environment where I couldn't

45:30

walk to school. I can remember walking

45:32

to school safely. I

45:35

can remember going to the playground, not having

45:37

to worry about was gunfire going to break out. I

45:39

can remember having friends, not

45:41

having to worry about was another gang gonna jump

45:43

us and we're gonna get a fight. Those were

45:46

environments shot

45:48

and killed as as a kid, just

45:50

one one. Yeah,

45:53

the kids you're pastoring, according

45:55

to what you just told me, they've all had at

45:57

least twenty five exactly. My

45:59

son, my youngest son, Kobe,

46:02

deals with a lot of trauma,

46:06

and at first it was hard for me to

46:08

understand, but then

46:10

I realized how many

46:12

friends he had that were actually

46:14

shot and killed or

46:17

in prison because we never sheltered

46:19

them from the neighborhood we grew

46:21

up. They grew up in the neighborhood.

46:24

Those kids, their their friends, their brothers,

46:26

their sisters, and so he's had

46:28

to deal with a lot of traumatic experiences.

46:31

You know, of people that

46:33

he's been close with to be shot

46:35

and killed, and I really didn't understand

46:37

it at first, but when

46:40

I started looking at it, I'm like, man,

46:42

he's even though he has a

46:44

mother and a father that love him and siblings,

46:48

he still has a traumatic experience

46:50

because he's in this environment with all

46:52

these young people who have been killed.

46:54

Did you ever worry about him getting brought into the life

46:56

by his friends that mak good.

46:59

You had to keep them close?

47:00

Oh, for sure, you know, we definitely,

47:03

we definitely had to keep an eye on. Are the

47:05

two youngest ones, my daughter Danielle and

47:08

Kobe. They were our hardest cases. But

47:10

thankfully they're turning out to be some

47:12

great kids. But Kobe definitely, you know, because

47:14

those boys, the group that he

47:17

was with that was that's

47:19

a tough little group rounders. Huh yeah,

47:22

definitely a tough little group.

47:25

We'll be right back. So

47:35

you're not just being nice to build to try

47:37

to build this community center. It's a need.

47:40

It erases some of the lack of privilege.

47:43

You can go across the street, you can get exposed

47:45

to trades, you can get exposed to ideas. This

47:47

thing is is a way for children

47:50

to

47:52

eradicate themselves with the trauma of

47:54

what is their daily lives in

47:57

your church's block. Absolutely

47:59

block is called Oh Block.

48:01

And the reason why it's called Old Block is because it's

48:03

named after a young man named Ode Perry who

48:06

was shot and killed and the games

48:08

picked up the O in his name and they started calling

48:10

it Oh Block. If you Google

48:12

it or up, you

48:14

know it's gonna talk about. Old Block is mentioned

48:17

in all kinds of rap lyrics, all kinds of

48:19

things is being said about Old Block. Well, we decided,

48:21

you know, okay, cool, We're gonna keep

48:23

the O, but we're gonna turn into Opportunity

48:25

Block.

48:27

We're gonna, we're gonna, we're.

48:29

Gonna transform it, and we're gonna take

48:31

this and make it a place where people's

48:33

lives can be totally changed and not are

48:36

destroyed. And so this

48:38

center is a beacon of

48:40

hope of what can be done when

48:42

you work hard to transform a community,

48:45

not just so you can have a big community center,

48:48

but when you work hard to transform something

48:50

to help change people's lives. And so that's

48:52

what it's really all about. So we're we're

48:54

really adamant about how it looks,

48:57

We're adamant about the excellence that it's going

48:59

to have. We're adamant about the

49:01

programs that it's going to have because we wanted

49:03

to be a model for

49:05

what can be done, even in places

49:08

like Memphis where they're having situations

49:10

with gangs. You know, they just

49:12

had some big murders here two hundred

49:14

and fifty four last year exactly, So

49:16

we need to be in places like Memphis showing

49:19

a different way Saint Louis, New Orleans.

49:21

So we're creating a model for something

49:23

that we know works and we can change oh block,

49:26

we can change any block in America. And

49:31

you've been thinking about this since you tore that building

49:33

in twenty twelve every single day.

49:35

So now you're on a twelve year mission and you hadn't

49:37

broke ground yet.

49:38

Yeah, so no, we broke ground so.

49:40

Oh yeah recently there, Yeah,

49:42

we recently broke ground.

49:43

So how much money does this thing cost?

49:45

So now it's up to thirty eight million dollars

49:48

thirty eight thirty eight road.

49:50

You had to stay on a roof for ninety three days

49:52

to get four fifty and Tyler Perio to bail you

49:54

out. How you gonna get thirty eight million?

49:56

So a the tenth year anniversary

49:59

of when I was on Ruth. The first time my

50:02

son and Brian came to me. They were

50:04

like, listen, either you got

50:06

to build this center or you got to change your

50:09

vision. Because you've been talking about this center for ten

50:11

years. What are you gonna do? So

50:13

I said, okay, you got much did you have? That's

50:16

what I asked him. I said, go and see,

50:18

you know, look and see what we got what we can work

50:20

with. They came back, they

50:22

said, man, we don't have any money. We

50:25

got zero to work with. Yeah, we

50:28

got zero to work with. And so I said,

50:30

okay, I'm going to pray and

50:32

figure it out. And so I came back to him and

50:34

said, I want to get eight train containers.

50:37

I want to put them together.

50:38

I'm going to build a deck on that property, on

50:40

the train containers, and I'm going to go

50:42

up there and stay and raise the money. And everybody was

50:44

like, oh no, not again this.

50:47

We don't want to go through this ordeal. It is not gonna

50:49

work. You've already done that. Some of the people on my

50:52

board. One of my one of

50:54

my mentors, Patrick Milligan, this old

50:56

Irish guy, he's about seventy

50:58

seven. He's like, oh, you

51:00

already did that. Let's not do that again.

51:02

So everybody was against it not but again

51:06

I just felt that unction that I think

51:08

this is gonna work, and I think the Lord is

51:10

gonna gonna do it. So

51:12

I went up there on the roof again, and

51:15

this time I thought, okay.

51:16

At least do it in the summer.

51:17

This time, well part

51:19

of the summer. But I went up on

51:22

the November the twentieth again,

51:24

on the exact anniversary date, and

51:27

I thought, Okay, this

51:30

time, maybe it'll take one hundred days,

51:32

because you know, we raised

51:35

five hundred and fifty in ninety four

51:37

days, and so I think

51:39

we can raise enough money in one hundred days.

51:41

Back then, we didn't have any of the social

51:43

media stuff, or we didn't have any

51:46

of the now yeah, we got social media,

51:48

we got a little movement people know about

51:50

us. Twenty twenty two,

51:52

this would have been so yeah, this would

51:55

have been twenty twenty one. So I thought one hundred days

51:57

at least, And so I committed

51:59

to hundred days.

52:01

And you think you're gonna weigh thirty something million dollars

52:03

an under that, Yeah, I'm thinking I'm gonna raise this twenty five

52:05

because at that time they become twenty five million

52:07

dollars.

52:08

That's how much it was gonna cost. So it went from twenty million

52:10

to twenty five million because we changed some stuff

52:12

in prices had gone up. I'm like, okay,

52:14

I'm gonna raise this money. I just believed

52:17

it. I didn't know how.

52:18

I just believed it.

52:20

And so we

52:22

started getting the word out and

52:24

people started giving, and somewhere around.

52:27

Like day.

52:30

Sixty five, Fox

52:33

called me and asked me, hey, can you

52:35

do a story about what's going

52:38

on in Chicago from the rooftop? And

52:41

I was like sure. Now, I

52:43

said, like, what's the parameters? So they said here and here are

52:45

the parameters. You can do the story anyway you want

52:47

to do it. We won't edit it, just stay

52:49

within our parameters. And I was like okay.

52:52

So I did the story and

52:54

it ended up being one of their top stories

52:56

on their website and they were

52:59

I think they were little surprise too. I

53:01

didn't tell them, but it was also the

53:03

top money day as far as people donating

53:06

to our costs.

53:08

And so they called me again.

53:10

They said, hey, that story, what was

53:13

was really good and really well, can you do another

53:15

one? And I was like sure, So

53:17

I did another one, and again we

53:20

had a great response, and

53:22

so then they came back, they said, hey, why don't

53:24

you do something until you

53:26

come down. I was like every day,

53:29

every day, and so they

53:32

let.

53:32

Me do this.

53:32

That's they're giving you a national

53:35

commercial. It

53:37

was that about five minutes. It's about I

53:40

wrote a story.

53:40

Five minutes of national airs.

53:44

I wrote a story for every every

53:46

everything. We called them rooftop revelations,

53:49

and so so I wrote a

53:51

story and I would tackle issues that people

53:53

were concerned about around America.

53:55

We were talking.

53:56

We wouldn't just talk about the violence in Chicago, but

53:58

we would talking about just a

54:00

lot of views that that people were concerned and

54:04

race, school choice, You kept music,

54:06

yes, woke uh

54:09

DEI everything I talked about

54:11

it, Yes, And people

54:14

loved it and responded well. And

54:16

as a consequence, I ended

54:18

up being on the roof for three hundred

54:21

and forty three days a

54:23

year, yes, almost.

54:25

A year, and didn't come down.

54:27

The only time I came down was for my

54:30

mom's funeral. My mom's funeral.

54:32

And you your mind, bro, Yeah

54:35

yeah? Vote After that,

54:37

did you still have the extension cord and everything?

54:40

I did it at this time, I had it right though we

54:44

had the extension cord still and

54:46

we set up three tenths. This time, we sat, we

54:48

had my tent. Then we had

54:50

a guest tent where we invited CEOs

54:53

from around the country and people

54:55

would influence to stay all night and people would

54:57

come and stay all night. And then we had a middle

55:00

that we called the Ten of Meeting and Ten of Prayer that

55:02

we would have meetings and things like that.

55:04

So we had figured it.

55:06

We kind of figured it out a little bit, and we

55:09

really used social media. Fox

55:12

was so gracious to let us, you

55:14

know, do the platform, the

55:16

stories on their platform. We went

55:19

from about having one hundred national

55:21

donors to having over

55:24

twenty one thousand new donors

55:27

from across America, and we

55:29

raised about twenty five million

55:31

dollars. After it was

55:34

all said and done, we had

55:36

two really big gifts from

55:38

a one eight million dollar gift from a foundation

55:41

and another five million dollar gift from Ken Griffin

55:43

who moved from Chicago to Miami.

55:45

Ken Griffin from Citadel. That

55:48

movie if you ever seen the movie

55:50

Dumb Money, where that Yeah, that Ken

55:52

Griffin is one of the financial guys

55:55

in that movie. Yeah, So he gave us five

55:57

million dollars and then all

55:59

the rest of it from all over the place.

56:05

Yeah. Yeah, and now across the country,

56:07

a twelve year vision and you have broken

56:09

ground. We've broken ground. The building

56:12

is being built.

56:12

If you go to our website projectthood dot org,

56:15

you can see a wonderful facility being built

56:18

there.

56:18

Now.

56:19

This week we reached the milestone because they're

56:21

pouring concrete on the second floor now.

56:24

So the second floor is being poured

56:26

and it's an exciting time in

56:28

our neighborhood the building because

56:30

it's taking it so long. The cost

56:32

is now thirty eight million dollars.

56:35

We raised thirty one million dollars, so our

56:37

goal is to raise another ten

56:39

million so we can pay for We want

56:41

to pay for debt free, so we don't have debt,

56:44

and we want to make sure that we have some some

56:46

money in our endowment so that something

56:49

ever happens to me or that

56:51

the center can go on and continue to do

56:53

all the wonderful programs, because that's what's really important.

56:56

I mean, this, this thing's the money

56:58

you're talking about. Besides, you're talking about the sin's got

57:00

to be able to survey a.

57:01

Lot of people, yes, a lot of people,

57:04

and we're not charging for memberships,

57:06

so We're not like the YMCA where

57:08

they charge you for a membership, or we're

57:11

not charging like a school that charges

57:13

you to take the construction classes. We

57:15

just recently, you know, the need

57:18

is so great in our neighborhood that we have these

57:20

cohorts construction cohorts where we teach

57:22

construction. And our

57:24

cohort's getting ready to come up this month.

57:27

There's only thirty slots. Thirty

57:29

people can get in. We had a three hundred

57:31

and sixty sign up, but only

57:34

thirty can get in. But when we open the center, we'll

57:36

be able to take on hundreds. So

57:39

we're really excited about that.

57:45

We'll be right back. I'm

57:54

so encouraged to hear you talk about

57:56

carpentry courses and all

57:58

of that, you know, learning

58:01

the skills like we talked about. I just

58:03

want to kind of go down a

58:05

list of stuff I've read and then just have you

58:08

comment on this thing. Because Project

58:10

Hood is phenomenal.

58:13

You've got Chicago Adventure

58:16

Therapy, which I

58:18

love that especially for kids who are

58:20

afraid to go more than two blocks from their house. Re

58:23

Entry services to prevent

58:25

recidivism, which is huge

58:28

because I imagine a lot of people returning

58:30

to your neighborhood are returning from prison

58:33

and trying to get it right. And we know

58:35

that if we don't have intervention for

58:38

returning citizens from prison, that eighty

58:40

five percent of them will be back in jail within three

58:42

years. Absolutely, so you're working

58:44

on cutting that off. For project hood, You've got

58:47

entrepreneurship courses, you've

58:49

got coworking, office space, camp

58:53

refuge, you've got the

58:55

world's largest baby shower

58:58

hoops, You've got violence predict

59:01

prevention.

59:02

Yes, I mean this

59:05

is more than a Saint No YMCA.

59:07

No, it's not an YMCA. We tell people

59:09

it's more like a YMCA church trade

59:12

school on steroids all mixed

59:14

together.

59:15

Talk about a few of those things

59:17

that project to it is I love the Chicago

59:19

Adventure therapy after hearing what the kids

59:22

and then maybe the re entry.

59:24

Proctice us about the Chicago Adventures

59:26

is about when we discovered that

59:28

kids were not being exposed

59:32

even to the city of Chicago. We start

59:34

taking excursions, taking

59:36

trips downtown so they can see certain

59:38

sites, taking trips to museums,

59:41

taking them to the beach, taking them

59:44

to sporting activities. We

59:46

even take them camping, which is

59:48

phenomenal. You know, we're

59:51

even now trying to find land where we'll take

59:53

kids camping.

59:53

I'm thinking about har Shane Cooper. He

59:56

told me the first time they put him in a boat.

59:59

Right, this is a kid, right,

1:00:01

I've never been swimming. Yeah, that

1:00:04

he had a gang banging one of the toughest

1:00:06

guys he knows, sitting behind him

1:00:08

on a lake right and right

1:00:10

off Lake Michigan. But just like one of them

1:00:13

those downtown before

1:00:15

they ever put a powder on the water, was crying

1:00:18

like a baby, scared to death.

1:00:20

I believe swim. Never been in a boat.

1:00:23

You can go back. And I'm not even gonna say it,

1:00:25

but what Arche said about his friends talking

1:00:28

about black folks in a boat, you

1:00:30

could imagine a

1:00:33

lot of kids don't know how to swim.

1:00:34

That's one of the reasons why we're that's that's a

1:00:36

big, big reason why we haven't

1:00:38

a limp about.

1:00:40

Taking kids from the hood and putting in a tent in the woods.

1:00:42

Oh yeah, you know that's.

1:00:45

There was one of the kids we took

1:00:47

them camping. Brian was

1:00:49

with this group and he said they

1:00:52

were trying to get this kid to go to sleep

1:00:54

in the tent, but he wanted

1:00:56

to stay outside, and they kept asking.

1:00:58

What what's the big deal?

1:01:00

Yea, And all he kept doing was looking up

1:01:02

in the stars and he said he had

1:01:04

never seen so many stars

1:01:06

in all of his life, and he was just amazed

1:01:09

to see the stars. So taking

1:01:11

these kids camping, exposing

1:01:14

them is really important because

1:01:16

they get to see a lot of things that they don't get to

1:01:19

see. Even now, we're

1:01:21

planning our first trip out

1:01:23

of the country. We're trying to take thirty kids

1:01:25

off the block. It's called oh Block

1:01:27

goes off the Block, and we're trying

1:01:30

to take them to Africa. So we're

1:01:32

gonna, yeah,

1:01:34

we're gonna.

1:01:35

Take them to you.

1:01:36

I think it's Uganda and South

1:01:38

Africa, and our goal

1:01:40

is for them to it's either Zambia or

1:01:42

South Africa or I can't even remember

1:01:44

which one is near South Africa. Unfortunately

1:01:47

I'm not good in geography. But we're

1:01:49

going to We're going to those two countries

1:01:52

in Africa and taking

1:01:54

those kids, and we're gonna take some adults

1:01:57

with us. But the goal is to

1:02:00

expose them that Listen, I

1:02:02

know you're on old block and you're in

1:02:04

a tough area, but we're going to show you there's some

1:02:06

tougher areas and some areas in the

1:02:09

world where people are really poor and to poverished

1:02:12

and impoverished, and we're going to

1:02:14

teach them how to serve people who are in a worse off

1:02:16

condition than them. And so we're really

1:02:19

hoping that that's going to turn into an annual

1:02:21

trip to take kids. So that's

1:02:23

what that's what the Chicago Adventure

1:02:26

is all about.

1:02:26

What about the returning

1:02:29

Yes.

1:02:29

So we have a big recidivism program. It's

1:02:32

going to be it's featured on the news

1:02:35

in Chicago coming up in

1:02:37

the next week or so. But we get

1:02:39

brothers and sisters who are coming back home

1:02:41

from prison and we try to make sure we

1:02:43

remove every obstacle that would

1:02:46

keep them from that would keep

1:02:48

them from going back. So we help them deal

1:02:50

with the trauma of family counseling,

1:02:52

we help them find jobs, we help them do training,

1:02:55

we help them get housing, IDs,

1:02:57

licensing, anything that would make sure

1:03:00

that we help them stay on the track.

1:03:01

Learned is huge. Yeah, after

1:03:03

doing this show now our year and talking to a lot of people

1:03:06

that work in that space, just getting an idea

1:03:08

of license the BA basics

1:03:10

just and you like, what's

1:03:13

the big deal? Well, if you ain't got tramp

1:03:15

station and you don't have forty five dollars and you

1:03:17

don't know how to do it. Yeah, and you're

1:03:19

intimidated by the system. That's it.

1:03:21

You're intimidated having to go and

1:03:24

wait in the line and never have done that

1:03:26

before and not really knowing

1:03:28

about the test. That's it's

1:03:30

challenging. So we help prepare them

1:03:32

to face those challenges so they

1:03:34

can make sure that they get back on

1:03:37

track. So that's one of our better programs. And then our

1:03:39

violence prevention program is made up of

1:03:41

which is our top program

1:03:43

to stop violence. In our neighborhood

1:03:46

in Chicago, violence was going

1:03:48

up and we were featured on CBS

1:03:50

because we had fifty two reducts fifty two

1:03:52

percent reduction in violence in

1:03:54

what they call the worst neighborhood in the city,

1:03:57

and that was because of our violence prevention

1:03:59

program. We have fourteen full

1:04:02

time employees all

1:04:04

made up of the different gangs in our neighborhood,

1:04:07

where we teach them about conflict resolution,

1:04:09

We send them to trauma counseling, We

1:04:12

get them to recruit for us for our construction

1:04:14

classes for our other programs,

1:04:17

and their goal is to mediate conflicts

1:04:19

and so those individuals help us

1:04:21

to curb violence a big deal in our

1:04:23

neighborhood. And then they help to oversee

1:04:27

forty part time workers from the different

1:04:29

gangs who are part of our BOLEESCE prevention

1:04:31

team as well. So those programs

1:04:34

are some of the things that are helping us to make a

1:04:36

major transformation of the neighborhood.

1:04:38

Yeah, this community center ain't

1:04:40

basketball courts and a few bouncers hand

1:04:42

them with no sir, no sir. Now, this

1:04:45

is a

1:04:47

revitalization of entire neighborhood

1:04:49

project based around the community center

1:04:51

type model.

1:04:52

Right, we call it a leadership and economic

1:04:55

opportunity center.

1:04:56

It's phenomenal. Yeah.

1:04:59

Yeah, you're not only shepherding

1:05:02

and pastoring to this community. You

1:05:05

are now literally providing work

1:05:08

force training. Yes, financial

1:05:11

literacy.

1:05:11

Yes, we have a

1:05:13

bank right now in our church lobby,

1:05:16

win Trust Bank. They're going to be

1:05:18

in the center, but they decided, which

1:05:21

is unheard of, hey let's get

1:05:23

a jump start and can we

1:05:25

have a portion of your lobby. So they came and

1:05:27

put a bank, Southside

1:05:30

Community Bank in our lobby until

1:05:32

we get the center open. So

1:05:35

we have a full full

1:05:37

bank with tellers and everything.

1:05:41

You're turning this

1:05:44

neighborhood on tire exactly. That's

1:05:46

what that's the goal. You

1:05:48

know.

1:05:49

When Chicago sometimes wrote that article on twenty

1:05:51

fourteen, the most dangerous block in

1:05:54

all the Chicago everything

1:05:56

in me from Dallas came

1:05:59

up, you know, and I can remember

1:06:03

being that missions week. I can remember them

1:06:05

talking about, if a church

1:06:07

is in a neighborhood and a neighbor and it's not making

1:06:09

any difference in the neighborhood, what

1:06:11

are you there for. I can remember them talking

1:06:13

about, if you have a church in a neighborhood

1:06:16

and your church has moved out of the neighborhood,

1:06:18

would they know that you were ever there? And

1:06:21

that article and the fact that our

1:06:23

church was there made me say,

1:06:27

listen, we have got to transform this neighborhood.

1:06:30

And we need to do it not just

1:06:32

for the kids on this block who

1:06:34

are suffering and struggling and

1:06:36

the adults who've been living in this community,

1:06:39

but we need to do it for

1:06:42

American cities across

1:06:44

the country who are dealing with the same issues

1:06:46

that we're dealing with every single day. Because

1:06:49

if we can prove that this model works,

1:06:52

then we can go to other neighborhoods.

1:06:55

And that's really the ultimate goal

1:06:58

to show them that, look, we changed the

1:07:00

toughest block in the country.

1:07:03

We can take this and change

1:07:05

any block, any city if

1:07:07

we have the resources and the manpower

1:07:10

and the passion to do it.

1:07:12

I believe that with all my heart. A

1:07:15

dude from Union City learned

1:07:18

how to go to the bathroom in an outhouse.

1:07:20

Real foot Lake, realt

1:07:22

Lake really calls by

1:07:24

the earthquake, yeah eighteen

1:07:27

something, or the Mississippi River

1:07:29

flowed backwards two days and created

1:07:31

the lake you grew up on. That's right to

1:07:37

Dallas to Chicago,

1:07:43

left started and you've turned

1:07:47

a roller skate rink and

1:07:50

a drugged out gang bamed

1:07:53

prostitution pimped trafficking

1:07:56

house into

1:07:58

a church in a community so all

1:08:02

to turn the worst

1:08:05

neighborhood, the most violent, dangerous

1:08:07

neighborhood in our country, into

1:08:10

an oasis of hope in the middle of a lot

1:08:12

of despair.

1:08:14

Only God, That's all I can say. You

1:08:16

know, a kid from

1:08:19

ken Tennessee, Union City, Tennessee, growing

1:08:21

up in Monthsy Indiana, I would have never, in

1:08:25

my wildest imagination and dreams,

1:08:27

thought that God would

1:08:29

allow me to serve

1:08:32

His purpose and his people to do

1:08:34

such an awesome thing, and

1:08:37

I realized, Man,

1:08:40

I don't have enough sense to do it. I

1:08:42

don't have enough wherewith

1:08:45

y'all, I don't know enough people. And

1:08:47

it's only through the grace of God

1:08:51

that we've been able to accomplish what we're accomplishing.

1:08:53

And I'm probably you

1:08:55

know I have I have big

1:08:58

faith, crazy faith, but I

1:09:00

am probably the most amazed person out of

1:09:02

all of it because I know what

1:09:04

God is working with.

1:09:06

You know, I got

1:09:08

one question for you. Sure do you

1:09:10

think if your mama would have let you build a treehouse

1:09:12

you'd ever got up on that road? I

1:09:15

think you just didn't grow up with a treehouse.

1:09:17

With a treehouse, he's going to get all the rute

1:09:19

that might be that might be no treehouses.

1:09:22

If somebody wants to support

1:09:25

you, which I hope people

1:09:27

hear this, I want to support you Project

1:09:30

Hood, the church, the

1:09:32

community center. How

1:09:34

do they reach you?

1:09:35

So they can go to Project

1:09:38

Hoood dot org, Projectthood dot

1:09:40

org and they can learn about all the programs and everything

1:09:42

that we're doing. Specifically the

1:09:45

community center that we're building, or

1:09:48

New Beginning's Church of Chicago, which is right

1:09:50

across the street from where we're building the center, and

1:09:53

that addresses sixty six twenty South

1:09:55

King Drive, Chicago, Illinois,

1:09:58

six oh six three seven And and I

1:10:00

tell everybody this that if you really

1:10:02

want to get in touch with me, call

1:10:04

me on my cell phone three one two

1:10:06

eight one three five two one

1:10:09

one. You know, I found out a long

1:10:11

time ago when people are trying to get in touch

1:10:13

with you to give something to help you build a visit, they

1:10:15

don't need to be going through secretaries and red tape.

1:10:17

So anybody can call me at any time,

1:10:20

and I'll be glad to answer. If I don't answer this,

1:10:22

leave a message, I'll call you back.

1:10:24

As a matter of a fact, I

1:10:26

have been reached out by a number of pastors

1:10:28

who I know listen to

1:10:30

the show. I've been emailed by

1:10:32

three or four. I also give my personal

1:10:34

contact information, and weekly I get

1:10:37

a bunch of emails. So you understand how

1:10:39

I do. And I'm the same. I'm

1:10:42

glad you gave your phone number because my hope

1:10:44

is some of these pastors hear you,

1:10:47

and if their church

1:10:51

is not on fire for the true calling of

1:10:53

a Christian, maybe

1:10:56

they might want to reach out to you and talk about how to get

1:10:58

their church alne the way church is a line,

1:11:00

because I think ultimately, just

1:11:03

as in the past, the corporate

1:11:06

church may have done its own worst enemy. If

1:11:09

we follow your illustration

1:11:11

of discipleship, I

1:11:14

don't know how anybody wouldn't want to be involved

1:11:16

in that.

1:11:16

Yeah, I would love for any pastors

1:11:18

or any churches to reach out to me. I love the church.

1:11:21

I love the church, for the church has helped me to become.

1:11:24

I know I wouldn't be anywhere near the

1:11:26

person I am if we're not for the church. So I love

1:11:28

the church, and my

1:11:31

hatred for pastors has grown to a deep

1:11:33

love and passion for pastors. I love

1:11:35

pastors, and I want to help as much

1:11:37

as I possibly can. So anything I can do to

1:11:40

help anybody anywhere, man,

1:11:42

I want to do that. So they

1:11:44

can call me anytime.

1:11:46

That'ster Corey Brooks, the founder of New

1:11:48

Beginning's Church, the founder

1:11:50

of Project Hood, who turns

1:11:53

dilapidated skating rinks into sanctuaries

1:11:57

and whorehouses into

1:12:00

beacons of hope in the most dilapidated neighborhoods,

1:12:03

and wants to export this idea

1:12:06

to areas across our country. And

1:12:08

all you have to do is email and we'll call him and I'll

1:12:10

help you. And if you feel

1:12:13

called to help him raise

1:12:15

the last seven million dollars he needs to do the work

1:12:17

he's doing, he will take

1:12:19

your money. Corey,

1:12:23

thanks for coming to him, for sharing your story. It has been

1:12:25

my honor to meet you. It's been a blessing

1:12:27

to meet you. Thank you so very much. I

1:12:29

appreciate it, and

1:12:34

thank you for joining us

1:12:36

this week. Guys, if

1:12:38

pastor Corey Brooks or any

1:12:40

of our other guests has inspired you

1:12:42

in general, or better yet,

1:12:45

inspired you to take action by volunteering

1:12:48

with Projecthood, by donating

1:12:50

to them, by starting something like

1:12:52

it in your own community, or something

1:12:54

else entirely, please

1:12:57

let me know. I'd love to hear

1:12:59

about it. You can write me anytime

1:13:02

at Bill at normalfolks

1:13:04

dot us, and I promise you I

1:13:06

will respond. You can just ask

1:13:08

Badger. And if you enjoyed this

1:13:11

episode, share our friends and on social

1:13:13

subscribe to the podcast, rate

1:13:15

and review it, become a premium

1:13:17

member at normalfolks dot

1:13:19

us. All these things that will help us

1:13:22

grow an army of normal

1:13:24

folks. Don't forget,

1:13:27

the more people, the more impact.

1:13:30

I'm Bill Courtney. I'll see you next

1:13:32

week.