Nine. One. One.
The 2020 Civil Rights Movement Brings Repeats of 1968 Vietnam Demonstrations: American Citizens Starting Protests and Police Starting Riots
Sherrilyn Ifill, author of a book on the legacy of lynching, reminds us that the lynchings of African Americans in the United States were often carried out in the public square, with hundreds and sometimes thousands of people watching. Surely not all of these observers were celebrating. Some were likely horrified, but very few tried to intervene. –– Catherine A. Sanderson & Harvard, Why We Act
Three buttons. Beep beep beep. The first time I ever hear the telephone ring to the tune of 911 I am a preschool student peaking my face beneath the curtains in Reading, Pennsylvania’s Farming Ridge Boulevard amidst my parents having another one of their quarrels. Maybe my father had run off with the mistress again, maybe my mother had run off with the credit card without my father’s permission. Whatever the cause, my first encounter with Mr. Officer is his requirement to diffuse a nonviolent, unimportant situation. I watch as my parents spend one of their final days together and I learn that sometimes a 911 call is an overreach, wasting the resources of taxpayers and taking away the ability to respond to a far more important call. Nobody is horrified in Farming Ridge Boulevard on this day. Nobody needs to intervene. One day I will be horrified, and intervention will be necessary. I’ll call 911 — or I won’t.
epiphany noun /ɪˈpɪf.ən.i/: a moment when you suddenly feel that you understand, or suddenly become conscious of, something that is important to you (Cambridge)
No one — no one thought to call 911?… You didn’t feel like… like you could leave, and call? Somewhere else? Go outside? Or do anything? You didn’t think…?
In the summer of 2019, I intern with Manhattan’s Greenwich Village Chelsea Chamber of Commerce. It is a sprawling opportunity that allows me to become an Event Planner in the most prestigious city in our world. I get the opportunity to implement the 2019 Holiday Lights program for historic Bleecker Street, a block that directly intersects with Cornelia. I can walk into a Michelin star restaurant and state, “I’m with the Chamber” in turn receiving a specialized discount. I spend days, far too many for a nutritionist to count as proper, at Christina Tossi’s Milk and Cream Cereal Bar. Oozes and squirts fill my mouth as I try soup dumplings at Joe’s Shanghai for the first time.
Some of the biggest events of the summer go on to be the steady Safe City Safe Streets with the NYPD in Manhattan. Come time for the Ninth Precinct tour, it is up to me and a fellow Event Planner to ensure everything sails smoothly as our Chamber President is away in Atlanta. We are on our own to ensure there is enough food for the event, to ensure that the police officers are in the right place at the right time and that the Chamber didn’t employ a couple of fools as Event Planners.
Now there’s one common question that arises at such Safe City Safe Streets events: When should I call 911? The NYPD officers are quick to point out that the decision to call 911 is never easy, and it can often be hard deciphering whether or not we should make that call at the moment. I had been in that situation in the past, I wish I had been given this lecture before the events of February 2, 2017.
The NYPD notes that when we call 911, we don’t actually work to prove anything, as most of us are not lawyers, judges, or jurors. Instead, calling 911 is actually a first amendment right that falls under the category of petitioning our grievances to the government and even free speech. It is then the duty of an executive branch official, in the form of an operator or police officer, to decide if our call is truly an emergency. As we’re all humans with different concerns and grievances, the likelihood of any two people calling 911 in the same scenario can vary drastically.
Such events such as Manhattan’s Safe City Safe Streets are becoming ever more prevalent during a time of civil unrest. In July of 2020, TransformChurch hosts a dinner with the Reading Police Department to show continued appreciation for the force that keeps Pagoda City safe.
Pastor Tracie showcases the thank you cards planned to be presented to city police officers during the dinner. I fumble around with that card in my hands, understanding the meaning behind it all yet perplexed as to any positive words I could say to a police officer in times like this. This is only two days after I help lead a protest with Duke University Chapel’s Deonté Moses throughout the streets of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Our protest is attended by both the Police Chief of Chapel Hill and the Police Chief of the University of North Carolina. We protest the lack of proper charges after K. Miller, a Black woman, is assaulted by a white man in front of a Baptist church in Chapel Hill. K. Miller hears the words, “This isn’t about Black lives. Blue states are the problem!” directly before being punched in the face. It takes days of protesting for K. Miller’s assailant to finally be charged with Ethnic Intimidation. Sorry, Pastors — Ben, Erin, Craig, and Tracie (B.E.C.T) — but I had nothing nice to write on that paper within those few seconds.
My feelings on that day are real and okay: Not every idea floated around in Reading, Pennsylvania church services appeal to the masses, neither should they. Dear Mr. Officer, Thank you for scarring my life. Thank you for forcing me to call 911.
On May 30, 2020, Protests erupt all across the United States in reaction to the Killing of George Floyd. Buildings are burned down, businesses looted, and voices heard. The divide within our country becomes strengthened even further. Conservatives are quick to utilize fallacies, combining rioters and protesters into the same group. Liberals are quick to label all conservatives white supremacists. The media is quick to stir the divide and ignore peaceful protest groups while propping up extremist groups that the Office of Homeland Security would be quick to label domestic terrorists. I am quick to pray and trust that God has a hand in all of this.
I watch the news in my Raleigh, North Carolina apartment as small demonstrations grow into large-scale protests. These aren’t the kind that kicked off on college campuses after the election of Donald Trump, with angry young adults hurling their rage towards a power they have no authority over. These protests are something oh so different, something that resembled the history books I browsed through in middle school that contained the pictures of Martin Luther King, Jr.
In December 2019, as I walk through the campus of the North Carolina Art Museum in Raleigh, I pass an advertisement for the Frida Kahlo exhibit currently on display. My brain immediately believes the exhibit is outdated, that I was not so close to something so vast and grand. These are the same paintings I saw in my first-grade history book. My brain can’t comprehend the fact that I could be standing here being offered History on a Platter, with the universe asking me to come in and have a taste. On May 30, 2020, I’m not simply being offered History on a Platter; I am challenged to serve History on a Platter. I am challenged to prepare the recipe, gather the ingredients, source the best dishes North Carolina has to offer, polish and refill the water glasses as need be, cook the dish to perfection, and offer it straight to you.
Whether you sit here and read this piece in your home or office or favorite park and it’s the year 2020 or the year 2094, I know we sit here together on a path of Truth-seeking.
The idea of being embedded into a 2020 Civil Rights Movement didn’t even cross my mind on the morning of May 30. Go downtown, listen to the voices of the concerned, watch as activists march throughout the streets of Raleigh, and maybe even march a little bit myself. That all changes very drastically and very fast.
Dunkin’ Donuts is known by many as one of the top breakfast food chains in America, serving up our warm doughy goods and iced coffees. On June 9, 2020, whilst meeting for the first time North Carolina House Whip Jon Hardister and Representative Kristin Baker, I publicly expose Dunkin’ Donuts’ ties to the tear gas being sprayed into activists’ eyes across America. “The same company that owns Dunkin Donuts, The Carlyle Group, also manufactures the tear gas our law enforcement officials use in protests. Oh, what a world,” I tell the crowd at Halifax Mall.
The Carlyle Group has recently come under scrutiny by Taylor Swift for unethically helping to release the album Live from Clear Channel Stripped 2008 without her permission. We have much in common, that Taylor Swift and I. Born in the same hospital, taking our first breaths in that monopolistic Reading, Pennsylvania air. Our tears ricochet, we can go anywhere in this world we want to, just not home. “The Carlyle Group [has] seen the latest balance sheet and realized… they need money. Just another case of shameless greed in the time of Coronavirus. So tasteless, but very transparent.” Getting tear-gassed during a worldwide respiratory pandemic isn’t tasteless, nor is tear gas transparent.
Tear gas has taken up a larger part of my memory than I ever thought possible. Back on May 30, 2020, while hitting the streets of Raleigh, North Carolina, and protesting the battles that have been instilled inside of me my entire life, I run into tear gas in an all too weird way.
The first time I take a sneak peek at that canister squirting out a mystical white mist, I think that I am simply looking at a little smoke, a nondangerous crowd deterrent. An interesting yet distasteful tactic to end a Civil Rights Movement, I said to myself. And then I begin choking. Then my eyes start watering. Then I begin gasping for air, bending over with my hands placed on my knees as if I just got done running gassers after football practice. Spits. Spits they called me. Now I’m spitting out tear gas.
There are no windows smashed, no gunshots, yet the tear gas comes. Cars come rushing down the street, with people honking their horns in support of the Black Lives Matter campaign… cars filled with women, children, and babies. I run up and down the street and scream, “Close your windows! Tear gas! Tear gas!” Some fellow protesters come over to me with water bottles and help to clear out my eyes. What the heck is going on?
As the night progresses, the use of tear gas heightens. Now people are angry. To slander protesters over Twitter, sure, but to throw tear gas and flash grenades and rubber bullets into crowds of protesters; to create a riot. Well, now you have a riot.
Jon Hardister says it best during our meeting on July 28, 2020, “And sometimes using force such as tear gas and rubber bullets might actually encourage people to riot.” From my first-hand experience, the tear gas and rubber bullets come first, the riots come second. Although rubber bullets may sound juvenile due to the use of the word ‘rubber,’ one would probably not desire to have an encounter with such a lethal weapon. After the tear gas is deployed and just before the Wake County Sheriff’s Office escalates the night into a full-out riot on May 30, I watch as a young man from across the street falls to the ground, having just been shot with a rubber bullet. He never stands up.
I’m screaming and I’m yelling at the police officers to call for medical assistance and get an EMS to the scene. None of the police officers listen to me. I’ve been in this situation before, yelling at fraternity brothers to call 911 for a dying pledge. I never thought I would be in such a situation with police officers taking the place of the fraternity brothers.
STOP running and get the right help, Kordel! Stop calling the FBI, 911, Ambulances, The Department of Health, DHS, lawyers, senators, and whoever else you think actually believes your convoluted stories. — Love, Mom
Harvard University didn’t write about me in Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels for games and giggles. I reach into my pocket, take out my phone, and I call 911.
The dispatcher is immediately caught off guard when I note that there are no ambulances present at the scene. The excessive amounts of tear gas being sprayed into crowds left EMTs with the desire to remain away from the madness.
I can see this young man, lying on the ground, rolling over back and forth, thrashing around, and making awkward movements. I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending. I think I’ve seen this film before…
“Do you think you can get over there to the victim, and help him out?” the dispatcher asks me. “There’s police everywhere, they’re throwing tear gas and shooting rubber bullets. I’m not really sure I can do that.” The dispatcher encourages me again to please get over to the victim and help him.
I think I’ve seen this film before.
For the first time in my life, I am scared of the police. Yes, I’m Black, but I’m “light skin Black.” If I dress well enough, if I put enough Shea Moisture in my hair, if I articulate well enough then I could never encounter issues with law enforcement, right? All those cards had fallen over, torn apart with tear gas and rubber bullets.
STOP running and get the right help, Kordel!
I decide the safety of this victim is far more important than my comfortability at the moment. I brace myself for what is to come: Running through a police barricade as a Black man in America. With my phone in hand, the 911 operator encouraging me to take actions I am too nervous to do three years prior, I run through a police barricade to help a crime victim.
The victim is lying on the ground in clear pain as I walk over to him. He looks as if he had been forced to drink mass amounts of alcohol and couldn’t escape this nightmare. Gasping for air, thrashing around, and making awkward movements.
I think I’ve seen this film before. And I didn’t like the ending.
“If he starts throwing up, make sure you move him over onto his side,” the 911 operator says to me. How could a police force cause such havoc on its own citizens? Trump sent out a tweet on June 9, 2020: ‘Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75-year old Martin Gugino has pushed away… Could be a setup?’ No, Donald, the setup was when we allowed you to take command of our National Guard which in turn led to an extreme misuse of tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash grenades during the 2020 Civil Rights Movement. None of this will be forgotten come 2024.
The 911 operator asks me where the victim was shot. It isn’t easy getting the words out. “He was shot in his reproductive area.” The operator stutters in disbelief and asks the same question again. “He was shot in his testicles.”
“What?” Rubber bullets are supposed to be shot at the ground as crime deterrents, never directly aimed at someone’s body or used as a lethal weapon. In this case, the bullet was both purposely shot at someone’s body and used as a lethal weapon in a scenario that begs me to ask if this individual will be able to have children in the future.
When the victim and I finally reach the ambulance, which takes much longer than it should due to the excessive concentration of tear gas in downtown Raleigh and the EMTs not wanting to get it in their own eyes, he realizes his injuries are much worse than he initially imagined and the EMTs recommend he go to the hospital for further inspection. Before his late-night visit to the chaos center, we get to know each other a little bit, finding out our hometowns are quite close to each other.
“So, you’re from Reading, and I’m from West Chester,” are some of his last words to me. Questioning how he gets shot with rubber bullets, how the very people that are meant to protect us have become assailants against him, and the emotional projection is dealing with the geographic proximity of our hometowns. Same age, same home state, same disdain for the insanities ripping through our nation. “That’s God that makes those interactions happen,” Pastor Craig and Tracie’s daughter tells me.
I speak about these events with WRAL, ABC11, and The News & Observer. Directly before my interview with WRAL, I tell Amanda Lamb that the combination of flash grenades, tear gas, and rubber bullets flying everywhere makes me feel as if I were in a reincarnation of the film Joker. “I felt as if I was in The Purge,” she tells me, her description being even more accurate than mine.
Juneteenth 2020 (June 19) is known as the day that Confederate statues are torn down from the Capitol Monument in Raleigh, North Carolina. The event goes on to be covered by The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, and several other mainstream media outlets. The event is also the main tool Donald Trump uses to utilize the Veteran’s Memorial Preservation Act and state that any protester who dares to attempt to take a statue down will be jailed for ten years. Such protesters who wreak such havoc aren’t threatened by such statements from Trump, they see it as their plans coming to maximum fruition and their spotlights finally being formed.
The young man on top of the monument sports a Rutgers University t-shirt. Banners are held all across the Capitol grounds in the hours leading up to the tumbling of the statues. The staged delivery is clear evidence that such a night had been long planned. Rumors swirled for weeks that protest organizations are planning to bomb down the Capitol monument, with one agitator calling the Raleigh Police Department and stating that a “Hispanic man named Cordell, spelled with a C and two L’s” was planning to bomb down the Confederate monument.” I’m not Hispanic, my name begins with a K, and the Critical Intelligence training I received certainly didn’t prepare me for bombing down statues. But it did prepare me to understand when such events are soon to occur.
During National Hazing Prevention Week 2019, I speak at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina. I travel through fields of cotton on my way to Buies Creek, running straight into the very lands that my ancestors ran away from. I find comfort in knowing that a Baptist university would invite me to campus to speak on a topic that many believe I shouldn’t. His failure to call 911 makes him just as culpable as the rest. — Love, Mom
I encouraged my fraternity brothers at Penn State’s Beta Theta Pi to call 911, yet I didn’t call 911 myself, critics say. “What do you think about me telling this story, even though the pledge’s parents claim it is ‘not [my] story to tell?’” I ask a professor of mine at her home in Princeton.
“Society right now is hungry for these types of stories. Whenever somebody gets up and tells their story, there are going to be critics and angry people. You have a story that needs to be told.” Harvard University Press states: “Although [Kordel’s] attempt to help didn’t save [the pledge’s] life, it provides evidence that there are certain factors that can push people to overcome group pressure.”
I find myself working with Campbell University once again on Juneteenth, this time in an ever so large effort to overcome group pressure. The night began as such: Lawyers from Campbell University Law School partnered with Truth Revealed Organization for a Black Letters Campaign that resulted in over 600 people writing letters to our legislators, voicing their concerns, demanding that the Confederate Capitol Monument be taken down and replaced with African American memorials and an African American Freedom Park. The night ended as such: Lawyers from Campbell University Law School ran for their lives as fringe groups and rioters tied ropes to the necks of statues causing the heavy metal to wobble over our heads. It wasn’t an ending that shocked me at all.
[ Read: Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison Discusses Kordel Davis’s Juneteenth Actions ]
My Eagleton Institute Critical Intelligence training kicks in the second I see new protesters approach the Capitol sporting bandanas over their faces rather than facemasks and carrying large banners. Having been on the streets almost every single day since the protests began, it would be hard for any new groups to pop up without me noticing. I walk over to a fellow activist I organize with: “I don’t trust this group that just approached the Capitol grounds.”
The group that approached wasn’t a cookie-cutter organization. Donald Trump likes to label them ANTIFA, which is really more of political affiliation rather than a single group with a single leader. Nevertheless, these people fly from city to city to wreak havoc and belittle Civil Rights movements. Such groups are well above the paygrade of a local police department. “Do you have friends that do drugs?” a student at the Eagleton asked an FBI agent. “Yes, I have friends that do drugs. I’m the FBI, not the local police patrol.”
Critical Intelligence training exposes the fact that most terrorists in America are white, could easily go to the local grocery store and buy a pack of gum with few questions from the cashier, and are infatuated with movements such as Black Lives Matter. The training I receive in the Eagleton Institute of Politics is excellent preparation for the events that occur on Juneteenth. If out of all the people standing at the North Carolina Capitol grounds on June 19, 2020, I wasn’t the only one with Critical Intelligence preparation, the statues would have never toppled over.
After the initial failed attempts to tear the statues down, and after the police retreat, the organizations that I have been protesting with, Truth Revealed Organization (TRO) and U.N.I.T.Y., attempt to calm the fringe groups down and inform them that there are negotiations underway to build African American monuments and create an African American, Freedom Park. “Those resolutions did eventually pass,” Representative Kristin Baker informs us during our legislative round table on July 28.
Nightfall. The high in Raleigh on June 19 is 86°. The moon at 9:11 PM, when the confederate soldier lands on graphite, is at a waning crescent. The sudden transition of sunlight to moonlight correlates with a transition of power from the North Carolina Capitol Police to an angry mob. Peaceful critics are loudly told to back off. There is no way to win this fight. The statues come toppling down.
“Are the white men who are doing this, who are awkwardly stalking me, even a part of the Black Lives Matter movement?” a white female banker asks me as we watch statues being drug down Salisbury Street.
These rioters claim they are some sort of justice advocate, yet they harass multiple people from multiple groups and even send someone to the hospital in their pursuit of victory. I actually called 911 on June 19 for a peaceful protester assaulted by the mob, but the noise was so loud and the operator so unable to understand me that all I could do was hang up. I should’ve taken the hint when the Capitol Police retreat that “the threats against our community and the quest for justice for victims” aren’t exactly on high alert.
I sit at the Capitol after the crowd disperses, sporting a Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences shirt, the same college and department I was a part of the first time I encountered such a mob. Is this as nonsensical of a protest as a protest can get? That dang school where nobody would heed my advice, labeling me crazy and insane. And the protests over at that school are something quite odd: Black men winning football games followed by white men knocking over street lamps and smashing windows.
As important as protesting is, shouting in the streets and making noise is only one piece of the Civil Rights puzzle. The entire point of protesting, truly, is to be able to “go from outside to inside, to get a seat at the table and move government in a more just direction” in the words of T.D. Jakes.
When we topple statues down with our bare hands, we lose any chance whatsoever to join legislatures at the table and help shape the future of our nation. The shouting in the streets should lead to politicians being filled with a desire to sit at the table with us, not questioning if the word “protester” being brought up mid-conversation means they should hide ya’ kids hide ya’ wife and hide ya’ husband. There is a supply and demand curve for protesting just as there is for corn and football. When protesters act up, the demand to meet with us diminishes.
Since 2018, I have worked with the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees in getting land back to Black farmers and raising awareness on the stolen African American wealth at the hands of government corruption. We have had meetings with Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden. My public cry for a better world within the food system, posted to Youtube entitled “USDA Discrimination, Elizabeth Warren, and The Future,” even caught Warren’s attention and helped to shape the Warren Farm Plan.
On June 9, I meet with Jon Hardister and Kristin Baker on behalf of the Coalition and share some of the issues we fight for. Representatives Hardister and Baker meet with me again on July 28 during our legislative round table with many more protesters. Bryant E. Riddick II adamantly explains that on June 19, it was not the Black man who lynched statues on street signs in the Capital of North Carolina, yet it was white men repeating the very actions of their ancestors. To what extent does the repeat of history actually create change?
[ Read: George Floyd Protests in North Carolina ]
In the days following the events of Juneteenth, I am emotionally drained. I had gone up against a mob, attempted to convince them to take a different course of action, and my attempts failed. Agitators screamed that I “work with cops” and should “get the f*** out and meet with Joe Biden again.” Some far-right North Carolina Facebook pages went as far as to create the narrative that I was sent down to North Carolina by the Joe Biden campaign to shift the swing state from Trump to Kamala. There was so much going on with so few answers.
[ Read: TRO and U.N.I.T.Y. statement regarding Juneteenth events ]
Then, on June 21, only five days after the statues are torn down, everything changes. Steven Furtick delivers a Father’s Day sermon with the theme of the Powers of a Plot Twist. God can use the actions of dark powers and spirits to break down walls and positively make history. On June 19, I came into contact with some of the darkest powers our universe has to offer. Still, Governor Roy Cooper can use these dark powers to sign an executive order stating the continued existence of the Confederate monument at the Capitol would warrant a danger to society.
I watch for several days in a row as the Department of Transportation tries and fails multiple times to remove the remainder of the Confederate monument. I meet an array of people during this period, such as Ashad Hajela from The News & Observer. He informs me that he read my article “My Bad Morning with Good Morning America,” and watched my interview with Robin Roberts. “I don’t think she was trying to bash you as much you believe.” When I run into George Stephanopoulos in Central Park on May 20, there is no, “You didn’t think to call 911?” He remembers me right away and says we initially met “a while back.” He shakes my hand and says oops because of COVID, but whatever — it’s been a while.
The crowd of thirty or so of us, filled with faces that over the past few months became quite familiar to me, faces that had been tear-gassed and glossed across The Triangle’s television screens. Nowhere in sight was Conrad James, the “activist” who claimed credit for the toppling of the statues. There was, however, an ex-convict who a la Kamala Harris’ Back on Track program, went from a hardened jailed criminal to one of the most prominent photographers in North Carolina through The Carolinian Newspaper.
“I used to sell drugs. In jail, everyone wants their pictures taken with loved ones. When will they see each other again? So I decided to choose the Photographer as my job in jail,” he explains to me. He tells me that at major photographic opportunities such as Confederate statues being taken down, he tracks down every one of importance present. This includes police officers, politicians, witnesses, and protesters. It also includes the very crane operators and Department of Transportation officials that take down the monuments. He points to some workers lassoing the monument onto the back of a big rig, “Each of these guys, they’re going to want to be able to remember doing this. This is historical.” This photographer goes from selling a gram of cocaine for $100 pre-jail to selling a photograph each for $1,000. “And if they want to buy the distribution rights from me, that’s $10,000.”
The 2020 Civil Rights Movement has called us to Elevate, to Transform. The fringe groups knocking down statues all across America did something many of us are too hesitant to do: take immediate and decisive action. Plot twist. Plot twist. I drive past the corner of Hillsborough and S. Salisbury with my brother in November 2020. “That’s where the Confederate monument once stood. They took it down over the summer due to the protests…” Due to the fringe groups.
We hail from Pennsylvania, less diverse than North Carolina yet less racist monument-filled. I can’t believe I am looking at a seventy-five-foot-tall Confederate monument when I first make North Carolina my new home in May. Now my brother passes this very same corner without having to see the horrors of slavery and racism at his front door, the very same year that I did. I realize in this very moment: this is the future. This is Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream finally coming to fruition.
The 2020 Civil Rights Movement begins in Raleigh, North Carolina with innocent protesters being tear-gassed, riots being created due to Donnie J’s uneducated orders. And the grandest Plot Twist of all is that those same officers who were forced to tear gas innocent protesters backed down on June 19 to allow the statues, filled with their memories of slave lashings and lynchings and black business burning, to come tumbling on down. The world is now forever changed for the better. Quod erat demonstrandum.
