South Cook News

Republican candidate for governor Gary Rabine is singing the praises of Chicago pastor Corey Brooks over his investment in the city’s South Side community.

“He's so passionate about the Chicago community,” Rabine, a Bull Valley businessman, told Public Affairs. “He's got an entrepreneurship center. He's got kids in his private high school. You need 20 Corey Brooks and you need hundreds of CEOs in Illinois that care about Illinois that are backing him up, helping bring opportunity and job training and boot camps.”

Rabine said it’s going to take that kind of investment to get the state on the right track.

“I talked to kids at the Corey Brooks organization,” he said. “I tell them your vision has to be built beyond the community you're in today. My goal is for kids out of high school to make $50,000 a year before they are 24. Their goal should be $50,000 or more, and they're on their way to a real job supporting a family, maybe buying a house someday. How do you do that? They have to think beyond their community. They have to understand that jobs are all over the place. If they get the skills for something they're passionate about, jobs are abundant.”

Pastor of the New Beginnings Church on the city’s South Side, Brooks also established Project H.O.O.D, a community center in the Woodlawn neighborhood left scarred by out-of-control gang violence.

On its website, Project H.O.O.D. touts its mission as “to empower people with the guidance, information and tools necessary to become peacemakers, problem solvers, leaders, and entrepreneurs in their communities.”

Brooks once memorably slept on the rooftop of an abandoned motel in his neighborhood for over three months as a way of bringing attention to the gun violence that plagues it.