These are the words of Levert Kemp, a 64-year-old black man. He was asked to describe how he felt about Alton Sterling’s death, and these words were his response.
Kemp, a pastor at Greater Antioch Baptist Church, is one of hundreds, from activists to faith leaders to media members, who piled into the main hall at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church for a meeting organized by Together Baton Rouge, a broad-based coalition of local leaders and religious groups created to build relationships across the community and improve Baton Rouge.
The church is mere blocks away from the Triple S Food Mart where Sterling had been killed by police only one week before. While the city’s pain is still raw, the meeting is Together Baton Rouge’s first town hall designed to help the community heal. Attendees represent the diversity of Baton Rouge, with people from all over the city and from all different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds present. They split into small groups to speak candidly about their thoughts and feelings on Sterling and similar tragedies that have deeply affected Baton Rouge and the entire country.
In one of the rooms, Kemp speaks first and loudest in his group, unafraid of judgment.
“It’s like a Gestapo,” Kemp says. “I live in an African-American community, and the police come in and they don’t treat you like they would if you lived somewhere else. And it goes on and on. All these kids dying, and no one ever pays for it because of the blue code.”
Emotions simmer in the room after everyone gets a chance to speak. Some shed tears. Some describe the pain and injustice they’ve experienced. Some pray.
Everyone is staring at each other, at a loss. They try simultaneously to say what they feel but also to not say something insensitive. It’s an uncomfortable, delicate balance, but the people in the group still try because they want to come together. There’s a line repeated throughout the meeting: They want to fix what is broken.
After the smaller group sessions finish, citizens, reverends and community leaders speak to the crowd in the main hall, using Bible verses, their life stories and other resources to urge everyone in the room that change must be made.
Kemp speaks at the front of the room, his voice strong, sturdy and melodic. He talks about how our community must be rebuilt from the ground up.
These deaths are more than high-profile news topics, he says. They are more than hashtags. These are lives lost.
While the meeting’s purpose is for Baton Rouge to start finding solutions, Kemp and others made sure no one forgot the community members who have been affected most by this—Alton Sterling’s children.
Sterling’s five children no longer have a father. They will grow up without him, remembering how he was killed by police in the parking lot of a convenience store where he sold CDs. There is a video of it. And that video is sure to haunt their dreams forever.
It haunts every Baton Rougean within the four white walls of the church hall.
Toward the end of the meeting, a metaphor about the foundation of a house became a call to action. We sit on a cracked foundation, says Broderick Bagert, a 40-year-old white man and the lead organizer of Together Baton Rouge since 2009.
“Some in this city won’t like the changes we need to make because they have been benefiting from this cracked foundation,” Bagert says, with his nostrils flaring, his voice thunderous and angry. “But we need to make the changes.”
The crowd stands up, cheering and applauding at his words as they reverberate throughout the room. Bagert continues on with a rousing speech, asking people to vote in local elections, talk to their legislators and encourage others that they have the power to make changes for the better.
He also asks that they join Together Baton Rouge in beginning a new rapid response team to help guide the organization in action around protests and the initiation of police reform. His speech gets a standing ovation.
During a final prayer to end the meeting, people hold hands, swaying back and forth and singing a hymn.
“Bind us together, Lord, bind us together. With cords that cannot be broken. Bind us together, Lord, bind us together. Bind us together with love,” they sing.
Local Reverend Lee T. Wesley asks at the end of the prayer for everyone in the room to hug someone. They all do.
At this meeting the despair is palpable, but so is the hope. The hope to fix the cracked foundation—together.
This article was originally published in the August 2016 issue of 225 Magazine.
