After the Civil Rights victories, many folks on the South Side of Chicago expected things to get better. It was already a solid working class community with a grocery store, a delicatessen, and other small businesses. Instead the liberal policies that came out of the post-60s era nuked us into a devastating culture of dependency.
The one thing that always strikes me is that not one new building since the 1960s has been built in my neighborhood. McDonalds left years ago and so did Walgreens. Both structures sit empty. The Projects which takes up most of my neighborhood has declined precipitously since its days of providing apartments to working class families. Nobody owns anything. So the gangsters claimed ownership and renamed the projects after their friend who was gunned down: O-Block.
That is why I consider it a miracle that I along with my staff at Project H.O.O.D. have been fortunate to start the building of a nearly 100,000 square foot Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center. To see the construction, the cranes, the daily arrival of construction materials, the cement poured and on has been nothing short of amazing. We are not just building a center but a symbol of hope.
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I know this might sound cliched for the more cynical folks, but there is nothing cliched about hope in my neighborhood. As I mentioned earlier, we have had generations of children born into a world where they know the government as one of their parents. So, by building this center we are teaching these children that anything is possible and attainable. The blight they were born into does not have to be permanent. They can be the change just like I decided one day to be.
The beauty of this center, once built, is that it will help them develop into intelligent and developed individuals with ambitions for a good career and life. Inside those beams and boars, there will be job training, financial literacy, trauma counseling, trade school, music and arts center, a STEM lab, entrepreneurship accelerators, and a private Christian school for boys who have been written off by the system.
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By giving the youths in our neighborhood this opportunity, we are creating the possibility that they will one day be able to follow the path of opportunity of their own choosing.
But we still have a ways to go when it comes to finishing the building. We have completed 40% of the progress so far. The steel is up, the cables being wired, the elevator shafts being built, the walls forming, and the floors have been installed. The vision is becoming visible. What started as a rooftop dream is now a street-level revolution.
I have already noticed changes in the neighborhood culture. Moms and Dads bring their young ones to watch the building being constructed. Kids tell me they can’t wait to visit and that they’re going to bring their friends. The older residents tell me they never thought they would see such a sight in their lifetimes. All of them keep asking me when the center will finally open.
I tell them soon, as soon as possible. We have received no government handouts for this work and we have been pushing forward to stretch every dollar with faith, grit, and sacrifice. We still have to raise more funds to build this center as a debt-free enterprise so that every dollar we have goes to our kids, the future of America.
Not a day goes by when I don’t thank the people of America for their donations. Their generosity made this miracle possible. I also want to thank the team at Fox News Media for giving me this platform to speak to America — I can never repay them for their generosity.
For those of you who are reading this and are wondering if change is still possible in my neighborhood as well as the greater America — I say look at this building. It’s not just steel and concrete. It is proof. It is proof that when people gather around a purpose, poverty can be pushed back, violence can be replaced with a purpose, and despair can give way to destiny.
Wherever you are in America, you can be the change for a better future.