On Sunday, President Donald Trump threatened war on Chicago in a supposedly satirical social media post. Though Trump has since claimed the post was a joke, he has not denied that he wants to “clean up” the city.
Amid this rhetoric, local leaders are making progress to improve the city they love and over the weekend, they broke ground on a new project: a renovation of the MAAFA Redemption Project’s Center for Arts and Activism.
The MAAFA Redemption Project, born out of New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church by Rev. Dr. Marshall Hatch Sr., says this new center will serve as a reminder of hope in West Garfield Park and provide services for young men and women including reentry services, mentorship and mental health support, education, workforce training and community healing.
“Especially given the dialogue in the country now about violence, urban violence, projects like ours are making the case that investment in people, the root causes of some of the pathologies that we have to deal with, we need to invest in people,” Hatch Sr. said. “For many of our young men and women, this is not just another chance for many of them, it is their first chance.”
Hatch Sr. has been a pastor for 40 years and has spent 32 years at New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church. Throughout this experience, he says he has learned what it takes to encourage youth to make better decisions.
“I learned then that in order for young people to make better decisions, we have to have better options,” Hatch Sr. said. “That’s kind of what the MAAFA Redemption Project is tasked to do is to give young people better options than they get on the street corners, and so when people have better options, then they can be challenged to make better decisions.”
The center will also be a cultural hub, providing arts education, community organizing and civic empowerment. These services are more important now than ever, according to Rev. Marshall Hatch Jr., executive director of the MAAFA Redemption Project.
“They’re essential, not just for keeping young people afloat and inspired, offering these services, but also economic opportunities, employment opportunities,” Hatch Jr. said. “But it’s pointing a way forward for the future of the neighborhood, especially in this political climate where you see this assault, not just on Chicago, but on this neighborhood.”
The $8 million project involved renovating an old Saint Barnabas Episcopal Church building to create the second building in the Sankofa Wellness Village in West Garfield Park, the 2022 recipient of the Pritzker Traubert Foundation’s “Chicago Prize.”
A groundbreaking ceremony for the center took place at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday. The ceremony led off with what Hatch Jr. called an “intergenerational call and response,” in which elders of the church led a prayer, scripture and song followed by the children’s choir singing “This Little Light of Mine.”
Other speakers at the event included Illinois State Senator Lakesia Collins, young men from the MAAFA Redemption Program, a young woman from the Beautiful Seed Foundation and several Black elected officials.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was slated to speak at the event but instead had to attend a press conference after ICE raids began in Chicago over the weekend. This development set the backdrop for the ceremony, Hatch Jr. said.
“That was the context for our celebration,” Hatch Jr. said. “It was celebratory. It was sobering given that context, but it was also very meaningful given what the work represents and the life of the MAAFA Redemption Project, but also in West Garfield Park.”
As Trump continues to paint Chicago as “out of control,” local leaders feel emboldened. Hatch Jr. said it would be likely that federal troops would be stationed in the West Garfield area and feels the work of the MAAFA Redemption Project is especially important right now.
“If you can imagine the message that it sends to residents, young and old, it’ll feel like an occupation. … the resistance has to start on the ground, and so the organizing that we’ve been doing is even more important now, so that people feel inspired and encouraged and people are not fearful of the President’s message,” Hatch Jr. said.
Trump continues to threaten to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, and in the meantime, Hatch Sr. says the work of the MAAFA Redemption Project will not slow down.
“We live in close proximity with people that are statistics to some people, but human beings to us,” Hatch Sr. said. “Clearly, we know that the answer is not a military force trained for battle, on battlefields. We pledge we want to work with constitutional policing locally, we support the police, but we certainly don’t need the National Guard. That’s a melodrama that doesn’t address long time and root causes.”