Pastor and Project H.O.O.D. founder Corey Brooks says mentorship is an underrated pathway to change in America and calls on critics of the violence and poverty in Chicago to get involved rather than sit back and complain.

Dear America,

On Tuesday, November 5, we will elect our 47th president to lead you, our great nation. I do not know what the future holds, but I write to you as someone who sees both your brilliance and brokenness. Most of all, I write to you as someone who still believes in you.

It has been my great fortune to be born an American. I have been blessed with a life that has taken me from the rough streets on the South Side of Chicago where I minister to people in the highest offices of the land. I have seen equalities, inequalities, the love, the hate, the peace, the violence, the urban, the pastoral, and throughout it all I have never lost one belief: I still believe in you, America.

WHY SO MANY BLACKS LIKE ME ARE LEAVING THE CHAINS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

From the CEO offices in the sky to one of my ex-gangbangers landing his first construction job, I have witnessed the best of you — the way you reward merit, the way you prize resilience, the way you value individualism, and the way your people, strangers often, step forward with a helping hand.

It is this latter quality of yours that warms my heart the most. That ex-gangbanger that I just mentioned was trying to survive and put food on the table for his kids when he told me he was not going to take the construction job I helped him get. I looked at him, "Why not?" The man told me there was racism out there and that people wanted him to fail. He was going to go back to his old ways. I drove him to his job the next morning and watched him go through the door. Today, that same man now has friends all over Chicago, attends company cookouts religiously, and has since been........

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