A pastor building a community center in inner city Chicago, heavily populated by black youth prone to committing crime due to poverty, lack of education and absentee dads, sounds like a good project for Black Lives Matter. At least one would think so, but Black Lives Matter itself disagrees.
Patrisse Cullors ran BLM when Brooks asked for help from the group, but she’d rather focus on other priorities. “Cullors paid her baby father $970,000 for ‘creative services’, her brother $840,000 for security, a fellow director $2.1m and reimbursed the organization $73,000 for a charter flight.” When Candace Owens confronted Cullors at her home, all she could come up with was to smear right-wingers as “dangerous,” and lambaste Owens for being a black woman perpetuating a “white agenda.”
Black Lives Matter made a fool out of the gullible as it swelled its pockets and did nothing for blacks.
The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag was used roughly 47.8 million times on Twitter in the month following Floyd’s death….there were around 500,000 daily #BlackLivesMatter during the summer of 2016, which saw the fatal shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
And the group raised tens of millions of dollars.
“Chicago pastor: ‘I live on a roof to raise cash for black youths—but BLM won’t help,’” by Rev. Corey Brooks, New York Post, May 28, 2022:
Since Nov. 20, 2021, Rev. Corey B. Brooks has been living on a roof on the South Side of Chicago. He won’t come down until he gets $35 million in donations to build a new 84,000-square-foot community center across from his New Beginnings Church, which he established 20 years ago as a place of worship where local youths can get an education and train for jobs. A leader in the fight against violence on Chicago’s South Side for almost three decades, Brooks, 53, had hoped that Black Lives Matter, which took in $66 million in donations following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, would help him with some funding. But though he reached out to the group, he said he never got a response.
Here, Brooks tells The Post’s Dana Kennedy his story…
I’m living up on the roof to bring attention and awareness to the violence that is so commonplace in Chicago. I want people to know what goes on here.
I stay up here 24/7. I make phone calls. I sleep in a tent, and I do pretty much everything by Zoom. I have a baby’s bathtub that I fill with water to clean myself. I use a five-gallon paint bucket with trash can liners to relieve myself. For food we either have restaurants who donate or we order from UberEats. I get by in the cold months by layering up but it feels like the Arctic up here in the winter.
Rev. Corey B. Brooks has been living on a roof on the South Side of Chicago. He won’t come down until he gets $35 million in donations to build a new 84,000-square-foot community center.
Brooks has lived on the roof for over 170 days and conducts all his business there.
Matthew Gilson for NY Post
We’re fighting to change the mindset. We are about making people take responsibility for their actions and not blame others. I also hope to bring in some money so that we can build a community center here across the street from the church.
We’re up against a lot in our immediate area. First of all, a bad education system. The elementary school has a 4% reading proficiency level, a 6% math proficiency level. So we get a lot of young men who are growing up but can’t read and so when they get to ninth grade they drop out because they’re so frustrated. Secondly, we have one of the highest unemployment rates in the country in our area, especially among young black males. Then when you add the fact that we have so many gangs from block to block those issues compound. We’re dealing with the Gangster Disciples, the Black Disciples and the Black P Stones among others.
Brooks said he needs $35 million to build a community center across the street from his church, which will house all his programs, including construction training for gang members.
Brooks said he needs $35 million to build a community center across the street from his church, which will house all his programs, including construction training for gang members.
Ninety children have been shot this year alone in Chicago. Over 25 of them have been killed. It’s tough for a lot of these mothers, especially the single mothers who are trying to do the best they can to raise their children in such a violent environment. The stress these families are experiencing is overwhelming.
I would never walk around here at night. You could be mistaken for a gang member and shot. But since we’ve been here, we’ve been able to get rid of a motel that had sex trafficking and drugs. We’ve been able to get people hundreds if not thousands of jobs….
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