Within a block of Homan Square Park, Google Maps becomes unnecessary: all you need to do to find Project sWish is follow the small herds of sweaty-shirted teenagers in gym shorts and stuffing their faces with Beggars pizza, forming a spotty trail to the gymnasium inside the field house. Barely a block southeast of the park, on the corner of Homan and Fillmore, sits the infamous CPD evidence and interrogation facility that made headlines around the world after the Guardian reported it was being used by the department to unlawfully detain, torture, and disappear more than 7,000 people.
McKinley Nelson, 22, founded Project sWish last August with an understanding that access to basketball programs means more than simply giving young people ages 14 to 24 on the south and west sides a court to play on between 5 and 9 PM Thursdays through Sundays. According to the National Archive of Criminal Justice data, juvenile violent crimes peak between the hours of 7 and 9 PM on days when there’s no school. “The goal is to provoke change and provide resources in the community,” Nelson says. “We want to provide an opportunity for these kids to be off the streets during these times, in these neighborhoods.”
Nelson played basketball all four years at Whitney Young before going on to attend Xavier University in Cincinnati, where he studies sports management; he expects to graduate next year.
Placing their open runs in these locations has been no coincidence. “The reason we’re at these gyms, in these neighborhoods, at these times, is because we recognize that these are high-crime areas and high-crime hours,” Gilbert says. “If we can lower the crime rate by even half of 1 percent, then we’re reaching our goal.”
While the team admits that they sometimes butt heads on things when it comes to organizing the events in a way that feasibly accommodates the needs of the players, they understand they must put their egos aside to get the job done. They all share the common goal of making the city a safer place to grow up.
