Pastor Brokers Truce Between Woodlawn Gangs

Chicago, IL, June 23, 2o16 -- Pastor Corey Brooks, who famously camped out on the roof of an abandoned motel to protest gun violence in his neighborhood, tweeted Wednesday morning that Woodlawn gang members had declared a truce.

In an interview with WGN Radio’s Judy Pielach, Brooks said that 100 gang members representing various factions and groups got together Tuesday evening behind closed doors at New Beginnings Church in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood.
“The meeting started off a little rocky, a little tough, but we got them to declare a truce to have peace in Woodlawn,” the pastor said. “We going to get through summer and continue to meet with all the groups involved to reach our goals to make sure this summer we don’t have the murder rate we’ve been experiencing this year and in the past.”
According to the Chicago Tribune’s Crime in Chicagoland, Woodlawn is tied at 17th place among Chicago’s 77 community areas for violent crime over a 30-day reporting period (May 14 to June 13, 2016).
Asked by Pielach if Chicago police were involved in the gang summit, Brooks responded “absolutely not.”
“We didn’t involve the police or contact any media because we wanted to everything behind closed doors,” he told WGN. “These are family issues …It’s up to us as adults and caretakers of the community to get our young brothers together to come to terms that they’re taking lives from one another and destroying families. I think what happened as a result was that things worked out in a good way without any police or outside interference.”
Brooks said the church would continue to hold periodic meetings with the gang participants. He described the young men at Tuesday’s meeting as having a lot of pain, a lot of hurt and a lot of trauma from losing loved ones to gang violence.
“It was a little scary at first, but once we got the dialogue going and talking I think they discovered we have more in common than what they’ve been believing and hearing.”

Listen to the full WGN interview