The smashed window at Check It. (Photo courtesy of Check It)

A community hub for LGBTQ youth in Anacostia has already reached its fundraising goal to replace a window reportedly smashed by a woman screaming about gay people.

D.C. police are investigating the incident at Check It Enterprises, which occurred shortly after 6 a.m. on Tuesday, as a suspected hate crime with an anti-gay bias, according to the police report.

Check It Enterprises is a community center on Martin Luther King Jr. Ave SE that opened in the summer of 2017, formed by a group that began as a gay street gang and turned into entrepeneurs selling clothes. The center also offers mental health services, food bank partnerships, sexual health education, and other services, and the building rents space to other groups, like the Center for Black Equity, the National Association of Returned Citizens, and Damien Ministries. Check It was the subject of a well-received eponymous documentary in 2016.

Ron Moten, a mentor for Check It and a community activist, says a neighbor heard a woman in front of the building early Tuesday morning screaming about gay people. (The police report does not mention the suspect shouting anti-gay language.) He says she tried to throw a brick through the door, which shattered but did not break, before successfully throwing it through the building’s 8-foot double pane glass window.

“By the time a neighbor came outside, she had already busted the window,” says Moten, who lives nearby. Alerted to the situation, he tried to chase her but she turned a corner, he says.

While Check It has security cameras inside, condensation on the windows obscured their view of the perpetrator. Moten says he’s working on getting the footage from We Act Radio’s security cameras, which are outside. He adds that witnesses indicated that the suspect appeared to be on drugs.

Does the incident have the youths who come to the Check It community center concerned about their safety? No more than usual, says Moten. “They’re always concerned about their safety.”

“The sad thing about this is that it is becoming regular in our community,” says Moten, listing a window busted at a nearby carry-out about three weeks ago and the burglary at We Act Radio last summer as some examples.

“The community has been very supportive, but you always worry about stuff like this. It’s almost the initiation price you pay to do business,” says Moten. “You can’t call the insurance company because your deductible is higher than the amount to fix it.”

That’s why Moten launched a GoFundMe page to finance replacing the windows, which has already surpassed its $2,500 goal by hundreds of dollars. The surplus will go toward programming.

He says that the successful fundraiser “means that good will always conquer evil. Don’t let the bad things stop you from doing good.”