I have seen what violence does to a community.
For over 20 years, I have pastored on the South Side of Chicago at my New Beginnings Church. I remember the first time I saw a dead body in the street, a pair of Air Jordans sticking out from beneath a white sheet. I have officiated at funerals for young men and women who should have had decades ahead of them. I have watched mothers bury their children and then walk back to the same block where the murder happened because they had nowhere else to go. I know what violence costs, not as a statistic or a public policy debate, but as a wound that never fully heals.
Even the name of my block is a homage to violence, notoriously named O Block after a gunned-down gangster.
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So when people ask me what the solution to violence is, I know they want a quick solution, an easy fix of sorts. They want politicians’ lies that something will be done, a momentary salve that numbs the pain of knowing that nothing will truly be done. The honest answer is never simple.
The solution is opportunity.
That is it. When there is opportunity, violence goes down. When there is opportunity, people are busy bettering themselves. When there is opportunity, people are aiming for the future instead of living in the past—a graveyard of grievances. When there is opportunity, people pick up the computer instead of the gun. When there is opportunity, people deposit hard-earned cash instead of withdrawing government dependency funds. Most of all, when there is opportunity, people walk with purpose, a smile on their face instead of hanging out on the corner or on porches.
All the pity we have received since the 1960s is killing us and continues to do so. All those press conferences held by mayors and police chiefs have done nothing, absolutely nothing. All the government interference in our lives has left us deadened and divorced from the American pipeline of opportunity.
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That is why the only solution is opportunity.
And it is why I seek to rename O Block as Opportunity Block. There is nothing more self-defeating than romancing violence. It’s a weak man’s game. Anyone can worship the devil, but to truly follow God? Like the pursuit of faith, the pursuit of opportunity is one of the hardest things one can do and yet the most rewarding.
As Shelby Steele says, “Opportunity follows struggle. It follows effort. It follows hard work. It doesn’t come before.” Opportunity is the embrace of freedom. Opportunity is the belief in oneself. Opportunity is the belief in America and her principles. Most of all, opportunity is the belief that hard work has its rewards.
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My words here are not just talk. I have been walking across America to raise $25 million to finish our Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center. When complete, it will do nothing but provide opportunity pipelines through teaching trades, math and reading, financial literacy, and the Bible. We seek to make our youth whole — many of them come from broken homes and violence, but we will not allow them to use these tragedies as excuses.
The path of opportunity is often merciless. It requires sacrifice. It requires leaps of faith into the unknown. It requires the strength to look past doubters and keep pressing forward. And most of all, the pursuit of opportunity requires the wholesale embrace of American values and principles, and it is this embrace that separates them from the world of violence and government dependency.
If they succeed down this path of opportunity, they will likely achieve a standard of living that their family has never known. They will likely marry and stay married. They will have faith in God, for they know where they escaped from. And they will have children who will carry on the pursuit of opportunity. It will become tradition.
When opportunity enters a neighborhood, violence leaves. When opportunity enters a neighborhood, the strong rise over the weak. When opportunity enters a neighborhood, the boards come off the windows of shuttered businesses. When opportunity enters a neighborhood, the language changes from bad faith to future plans. I’m betting my whole life on this. I know it is the truth, and you do too.
