06.04.15 by Justin Glawe

A pastor on the South Side is asking Republicans to talk to his flock after what he says are 50 years of disappointment from the other party.
CHICAGO — It is difficult to imagine a less likely GOP presidential campaign stop than O Block.

After all, it’s the most dangerous stretch of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in Chicago and one of the toughest territories in the city.

But if Republicans stand a chance of chipping away at Democrats’ dominance over the black vote in this city and elsewhere, it might be something to consider.

“African Americans have been loyal to the Democratic Party,” Pastor Corey Brooks said. “But there is a group of African Americans that feel like the Democratic Party has not been loyal to us.”

Not far from O Block—named for a fallen gang member killed by a female assassin—is New Beginnings Church of Chicago, where Brooks sat in his office Wednesday morning laying out the case for Republican presidential candidates to visit the area.

So far, only Rand Paul already has taken him up on his offer—extended to all candidates of each party. The two walked through Parkway Gardens, an apartment complex along O Block, after Paul’s speech to his congregation.

Brooks isn’t the only person to believe a great change must occur for inner cities across the country to be able to break free from the poverty and crime that envelope them. But the pastor is looking to a different source than others for that change, one that doesn’t usually count O Block among its campaign stops: Republicans.

Look around the neighborhood that contains O Block—Woodlawn—and you’ll see why, Brooks said.

“We have a large, disproportionate number of people who are impoverished. We have a disproportionate number of people who are incarcerated, we have a disproportionate number of people who are unemployed, the educational system has totally failed, and all of this primarily has been under Democratic regimes in our neighborhoods,” Brooks said from the office of New Beginnings Church of Chicago, his own, Wednesday morning. “So, the question for me becomes, how can our neighborhoods be doing so awful and so bad when we’re so loyal to this party who is in power? It’s a matter of them taking complete advantage of our vote.”

So Brooks has mobilized.

Not only did he take it upon himself to bring Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner to New Beginnings as he ran to become the first Republican to lead the state in more than two decades, but Brooks also supported Rauner, something that didn’t exactly come roaring out of Chicago’s South Side.

And while Brooks has yet to announce publicly who he supports for president, his political leanings are well known in his church and around Woodlawn.

But the reason he invited all active presidential candidates to New Beginnings isn’t to secure votes for the GOP, he said, but to give members of the community the opportunity to be as informed an electorate as possible.

And why not? Since the civil rights movement blacks have overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, both on the national and local levels, Brooks noted.

But the results simply aren’t there.

“They have a failing plan,” he said of Democrats. “A business owner wouldn’t allow the person who runs it to remain in charge for 50 years, constantly running it into the ground.”

for more:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/20...ack-church.html