Project HOOD Communities

Someone Just Broke Two More Windows at Our Community Center. Here’s What They Don’t Understand.

A few days ago, a man walking past our property stopped, picked up a piece of brick, and threw it through one of our ground-floor windows. We told ourselves it was one person, and we immediately began taking action. But before we could install additional security and surveillance cameras, two more windows were shattered.

This time, it wasn’t a ground-floor window. It was two of the large, colorful windows on the side of our Leadership & Economic Opportunity Center—the very windows meant to tell every child and every family driving by that something beautiful was finally being built in this neighborhood.

We don’t know who did it. We don’t know if it was the same person. But one thing is painfully clear: this wasn’t just an attack on glass. It was an attack on hope.

We have to be honest about what is happening.

This isn’t “the system” doing this to us.

This is us doing this to us.

We often talk about Black Wall Street being destroyed. We talk about neighborhoods divided by highways, decades of disinvestment, and opportunities that were taken from our communities. Those conversations matter because they tell our history.

But this is different.

No outsider drove into our neighborhood to destroy this building. Someone from our own community chose to damage something built for his own neighbors, for our children, and for generations yet to come.

That’s the painful truth.

Some people watching from the outside will say, “See? That’s why you can’t invest there. That’s why those neighborhoods can’t have nice things.”

I understand why they say it.

But I refuse to let that become our future.

The answer isn’t to stop building. The answer is to build even more. To keep believing. To keep showing up. To keep creating opportunities that can transform lives.

The windows will be replaced.

The mission will not.

We’ll keep showing up every day. We’ll keep welcoming our community. We’ll keep choosing construction over destruction, hope over despair, and faith over fear.

Because you can break our windows, but you cannot break our vision.

Camp days mean big smiles at Project H.O.O.D.! ☀️✨ Meet Kemari, one of our super fun campers — loving football, beach days, and park trips this summer! Active, kind, and dreaming of becoming a police officer to help their community. 👮🚓