Disclosure: AJ Williams, a candidate for the Durham City Council’s Ward III seat, is the child of INDY Week staff writer Thomasi McDonald. We will not make an endorsement in the Ward III race.
My homie texted me yesterday: “Gun violence coming in hot.”
I feel a familiar heartache and longing for change.
Three Durham residents have lost their lives to gun violence over the last 48 hours. On the heels of the NCCU parking deck shooting where Tavis Rhodes and Shamori Brown were shot and later declared dead, and the more recent shooting at Fayetteville and Dupree that I’ve been ruminating on for the past 48 hours, I feel a deep sense of grief and outrage for the ways our City, Black children, and our people as a whole have gone neglected by nearly every system and institution in this nation. I mourn for Black mothers like my own, who have poured and spoken life into their children only to have them taken away. I mourn for all of our babies and young people who have died at the hands of gun violence in our city. We are now forced to reckon with a reality that has been true for decades in Durham. We are dying by the gun.
My concern for the murders of young Black boys and men by police, and each other, is a pain deep in my belly. It shapes my daily experience of navigating the world. My nine-year-old nephew is growing up in a world where “Black Lives Matter” must be explicitly stated on yard signs to call attention to the issue. Last year he dialed me up, with grief in his throat, and asked me why police are killing Black people. I have brothers who have directly interfaced with police violence, on the other side of the taser and the gun. I am read as a cis Black man every day and live in constant fear of being murdered by police, and I hold my breath every time I hear sirens, triggered by flashing red and blue lights on police cars. My mom gifted me a dash-cam a few months ago, because she’s well aware of the risk I take every time I leave the house.
I was urged by community members to run for City Council. Folks who have worked side by side with me, speaking truth to power, mobilizing hundreds to City Council and County Commissioner meetings and work sessions, planning direct actions, sending out petitions and making every attempt at pushing back against the deluge of social ills that impact our people on a daily basis. Representing Durham means holding the cultural nuance of this city. I was born at Durham Regional Hospital in 1987. I went to preschool at Scarborough Nursery School. I got immunized at Lincoln Community Health Clinic. My family has lived on every side of town, primarily in subsidized housing. Edgemont Elms, Braggtown, Rochelle Manor. I’ve wondered, if I’m not Durham enough to represent us, who is?
When I was a kid, despite their very best efforts, the generation before me was unable to win the resources and support our neighborhoods urgently needed, was unable to defend us from eviction, displacement, and mass incarceration, tearing apart our community fabric. I remember hearing the endless calls to Stop the Violence, and even more so for unity amongst community members. Now I’m 34 years old and we’re having the same conversations about how to fix gun violence. At every level of governance and for far too long, this system has failed Black people, and our people of color and indigenous kin. Our generation calls for a new way forward.
When I say we need stronger investments in community-led safety, instead of hearing what that means, I’m being inundated with rhetoric around defunding the police. Lest we forget, that saying was birthed out of an uprising following the murder of George Floyd last year. Our generation of Black visionaries being fed up and saying enough is enough, as generations of Black visionaries have declared many times before. The truth is that nobody has defunded Durham Police Department to date. I’ve been told that now is not the time to experiment or try something new. But to, in fact, continue to fund the same failing systems that have devastated Black communities. Me emphasizing that we need to invest in communities and reallocate those resources away from the systems that are killing us is not rhetoric or buzzwords. It’s the actual work that we desperately need to keep our folks alive.
I have been present for every era of gun violence in our city. I grew up in the ’90s and the early 2000s during the period captured in the gang life documentary Welcome to Durham. I was at the Welcome to Durham Little Brother feat. Big Daddy Kane Music video for the official song. My peers were part of the early emergence of gang culture in Durham, young people looking for belonging, camaraderie and purpose. My classmates were showing up to school, banging Blood, Crip, GD, and Folk Nation. For years we lived in Braggtown, on a Section 8 voucher on Berwyn Avenue circa ‘98, just around the corner from Bluefield and Oxford Manor. I saw instances of young people stackin’ in the parking lot of Walmart at Oxford Commons. We barely got to play outside because of gunshots ringing out.
Like many Black and Brown Durham residents, my life experience has been shaped by police violence, trauma, and interpersonal harm. My uncle Donnie was shot in the head and killed before I ever got a chance to meet him. I have cousins that still bang. Young boys I grew up with sold crack. Neighbors that I grew up with who just got out of prison, or classmates who are serving life sentences for murder. A young basketball star that I went to high school with, Chris Turner, got killed in a shooting. I’m from the generation who first saw School Resource Officers patrolling our hallways. Young people being humiliated, walking single file like inmates escorted by officers to in-school suspension, or being isolated at separate cafeteria tables during lunch. I was sexually abused in Parkview. Durham is not just home, it has been a place of deeply held trauma for me. That is a significant reason why I’m committed to finding paths towards reparative, transformative work, to address and dismantle the cycles of harm that plague not only our city, but our lineages. Running for City Council is just part of the deep generational healing work that I am called to do.
During my candidacy, I’ve been yearning for the eldership that encourages young Black people, like myself, from this city to take up the mantle, and get into positions of power that will affect change. Instead, I’ve often felt like I’ve been met with some of my Black elders stacking the odds against me, a fourth generation, visionary, young Durhamite. I’ve been fighting narratives that have hinted that holding a progressive politic somehow negates my concern for my people. That couldn’t be further from the truth. We know that the Black community is not a monolith, and yet my lived experience as a Black trans person gets used to dismiss my claim to the Black Durham communities I was born and raised in. When I say we need Black freedom and liberation, I mean for all Black people. When I say we urgently need an end to the violence, I mean all the violence. Not only gun violence but also the forms of interpersonal violence that disproportionately target Black girls, women, trans, and gender non-conforming people.
My ancestors have given my generation a mandate to dismantle the systems that have oppressed our people for centuries. I’m still holding space for everyone who is for justice to help answer that mandate, to help clear obstacles for that path to be blazed more freely. We need all of us to survive. The prison industrial complex is devastating our people. Young fathers and mothers and caregivers, women, femmes, gender non-conforming, and trans folks are trapped behind the walls of the Durham County jail, being punished for poverty. Police do not keep us safe. How many times do we need to witness the death of Black bodies on social media feeds before we comprehend that reality? When I was a child, my Durham elders taught me I could imagine something better.
Policing is an institution based in the establishment of slave patrols in the 1600-1700s, and in modern times, policing continues to perpetuate racial capitalism, unjust class structures, and the protection of white property over human life. As Black people, that is a history that we cannot continue to ignore.
The institution of policing has foundationally been the most destructive force in capturing our families using state sanctioned violence (as it was designed to do centuries ago), and relegating our folks back to enslavement, per the 13th Amendment, which states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Black people have been under lockdown before the pandemic, in our own communities. We will still be having this conversation 10 years from now if we don’t build the education, healthcare, and basic needs infrastructure that addresses the root causes of violence—poverty, racism, and human suffering. We need to decriminalize substance use and struggles with mental illness and start caring for each other. Durham residents are fighting a system to keep custody of their children. Durham residents are living under unconscionable conditions in public housing. Durham residents are making incredibly hard choices related to their survival. Durham residents are depressed, suffering from PTSD, in deep despair with no hope, and for good reason—nobody shows up, nobody cares. How can we consciously prepare to fail an entire generation again?
I helped organize efforts against bringing ShotSpotter technology to our city so our people wouldn’t be unduly surveilled and unfairly targeted in our own neighborhoods once more cops are deployed to a scene every time a gunshot-like sound goes off. ShotSpotter technology has shown to be flawed, by the City of Chicago’s Inspector General in this critical report. From inaccuracies in its sensor detection, alterations to data and modifications of alerts from ShotSpotter analysts, to unverified evidence, the use of the technology by our City would only be a bandage on a problem that requires surgical intervention. That feels ethically unprincipled. It is principled to be about action, and work on shifting policies that will change the material conditions for our people. Understanding what our people need requires a posture of deep listening; something that I will always be doing, during this race, and as an organizer.
I’m tired of politicians pacifying our people with false “solutions” that center law enforcement, as if police have the power to do something more than investigate once harm or a violent act has occurred. Policing creates the illusion of safety and protection by increasing patrolling. Increasing patrols instead of addressing root causes sends a harmful psychological message that signals to our communities that we aren’t worth investing in, but only worth monitoring and locking up.
For the last few years, I’ve been organizing around ending the cash bail system in Durham so that Black folks aren’t being held for ransom at the jail, penalized for being poor; and organizing to end pre-trial detention so that are people aren’t left in cages for months without their chance to appear in court. We have fought for needs assessments instead of risk assessments, to take into account that people can’t get back to court because they have to work, or don’t have transportation, or childcare let alone afford court costs.
Many Black and Brown people have died in the custody of Durham Police Department and Durham Sheriff’s Department in recent years and I pray their souls rest easy. I think about the brother who was wrongfully detained by Durham Sheriff’s deputies, and left in the middle of Angier Avenue in cuffs while driving food deliveries to make a living in June of this year.
Last year, close friends of mine who live in East Durham witnessed law enforcement forcefully enter and raid a home, throwing what appeared to be a flash grenade into the house, where there were children and an elder with disabilities, apparently traumatizing the family.
We must reduce the likelihood of fatal interactions between police and Black people by reallocating City funds to strengthen Durham communities. Having won the creation of Durham’s Department of Community Safety, we must fight for robust staffing, so every Durham resident who seeks unarmed, skilled, compassionate support in the midst of a personal crisis has the option to do so. We need an active solution to gun violence now, and investing in increased policing will not bring about such a solution. I grew up in Durham and it is deep for us.
Our people are suffering, our people are dying, and the situation didn’t get this way overnight. We need both a short term and long term strategy to change the trajectory of our city, and save the lives of our people. It will require not only creating the life affirming systems that our people need to survive and thrive, but moving away from systems that have done deep harm. We all have to put our hands, hearts and minds together; every auntie, grandma, cousin, sib, brother, uncle, City Councilmember, faith leader, organizer, and OG. I’m committed to being part of that work, and I’m down to build with anyone and everyone else who expresses that same commitment. In the words of Black poet June Jordan, “And who will join this standing up, and the ones who stood without sweet company, will sing and sing, back into the mountains and, if necessary, even under the sea: we are the ones we have been waiting for.”
We are indeed the ones we have been waiting for.
Support independent local journalism. Join the INDY Press Club to help us keep fearless watchdog reporting and essential arts and culture coverage viable in the Triangle.
Letter: Healing Our Grieving City—An Urgent Call to Action
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Disclosure: AJ Williams, a candidate for the Durham City Council’s Ward III seat, is the child of INDY Week staff writer Thomasi McDonald. We will not make an endorsement in the Ward III race.
My homie texted me yesterday: “Gun violence coming in hot.”
I feel a familiar heartache and longing for change.
Three Durham residents have lost their lives to gun violence over the last 48 hours. On the heels of the NCCU parking deck shooting where Tavis Rhodes and Shamori Brown were shot and later declared dead, and the more recent shooting at Fayetteville and Dupree that I’ve been ruminating on for the past 48 hours, I feel a deep sense of grief and outrage for the ways our City, Black children, and our people as a whole have gone neglected by nearly every system and institution in this nation. I mourn for Black mothers like my own, who have poured and spoken life into their children only to have them taken away. I mourn for all of our babies and young people who have died at the hands of gun violence in our city. We are now forced to reckon with a reality that has been true for decades in Durham. We are dying by the gun.
My concern for the murders of young Black boys and men by police, and each other, is a pain deep in my belly. It shapes my daily experience of navigating the world. My nine-year-old nephew is growing up in a world where “Black Lives Matter” must be explicitly stated on yard signs to call attention to the issue. Last year he dialed me up, with grief in his throat, and asked me why police are killing Black people. I have brothers who have directly interfaced with police violence, on the other side of the taser and the gun. I am read as a cis Black man every day and live in constant fear of being murdered by police, and I hold my breath every time I hear sirens, triggered by flashing red and blue lights on police cars. My mom gifted me a dash-cam a few months ago, because she’s well aware of the risk I take every time I leave the house.
I was urged by community members to run for City Council. Folks who have worked side by side with me, speaking truth to power, mobilizing hundreds to City Council and County Commissioner meetings and work sessions, planning direct actions, sending out petitions and making every attempt at pushing back against the deluge of social ills that impact our people on a daily basis. Representing Durham means holding the cultural nuance of this city. I was born at Durham Regional Hospital in 1987. I went to preschool at Scarborough Nursery School. I got immunized at Lincoln Community Health Clinic. My family has lived on every side of town, primarily in subsidized housing. Edgemont Elms, Braggtown, Rochelle Manor. I’ve wondered, if I’m not Durham enough to represent us, who is?
When I was a kid, despite their very best efforts, the generation before me was unable to win the resources and support our neighborhoods urgently needed, was unable to defend us from eviction, displacement, and mass incarceration, tearing apart our community fabric. I remember hearing the endless calls to Stop the Violence, and even more so for unity amongst community members. Now I’m 34 years old and we’re having the same conversations about how to fix gun violence. At every level of governance and for far too long, this system has failed Black people, and our people of color and indigenous kin. Our generation calls for a new way forward.
When I say we need stronger investments in community-led safety, instead of hearing what that means, I’m being inundated with rhetoric around defunding the police. Lest we forget, that saying was birthed out of an uprising following the murder of George Floyd last year. Our generation of Black visionaries being fed up and saying enough is enough, as generations of Black visionaries have declared many times before. The truth is that nobody has defunded Durham Police Department to date. I’ve been told that now is not the time to experiment or try something new. But to, in fact, continue to fund the same failing systems that have devastated Black communities. Me emphasizing that we need to invest in communities and reallocate those resources away from the systems that are killing us is not rhetoric or buzzwords. It’s the actual work that we desperately need to keep our folks alive.
I have been present for every era of gun violence in our city. I grew up in the ’90s and the early 2000s during the period captured in the gang life documentary Welcome to Durham. I was at the Welcome to Durham Little Brother feat. Big Daddy Kane Music video for the official song. My peers were part of the early emergence of gang culture in Durham, young people looking for belonging, camaraderie and purpose. My classmates were showing up to school, banging Blood, Crip, GD, and Folk Nation. For years we lived in Braggtown, on a Section 8 voucher on Berwyn Avenue circa ‘98, just around the corner from Bluefield and Oxford Manor. I saw instances of young people stackin’ in the parking lot of Walmart at Oxford Commons. We barely got to play outside because of gunshots ringing out.
Like many Black and Brown Durham residents, my life experience has been shaped by police violence, trauma, and interpersonal harm. My uncle Donnie was shot in the head and killed before I ever got a chance to meet him. I have cousins that still bang. Young boys I grew up with sold crack. Neighbors that I grew up with who just got out of prison, or classmates who are serving life sentences for murder. A young basketball star that I went to high school with, Chris Turner, got killed in a shooting. I’m from the generation who first saw School Resource Officers patrolling our hallways. Young people being humiliated, walking single file like inmates escorted by officers to in-school suspension, or being isolated at separate cafeteria tables during lunch. I was sexually abused in Parkview. Durham is not just home, it has been a place of deeply held trauma for me. That is a significant reason why I’m committed to finding paths towards reparative, transformative work, to address and dismantle the cycles of harm that plague not only our city, but our lineages. Running for City Council is just part of the deep generational healing work that I am called to do.
During my candidacy, I’ve been yearning for the eldership that encourages young Black people, like myself, from this city to take up the mantle, and get into positions of power that will affect change. Instead, I’ve often felt like I’ve been met with some of my Black elders stacking the odds against me, a fourth generation, visionary, young Durhamite. I’ve been fighting narratives that have hinted that holding a progressive politic somehow negates my concern for my people. That couldn’t be further from the truth. We know that the Black community is not a monolith, and yet my lived experience as a Black trans person gets used to dismiss my claim to the Black Durham communities I was born and raised in. When I say we need Black freedom and liberation, I mean for all Black people. When I say we urgently need an end to the violence, I mean all the violence. Not only gun violence but also the forms of interpersonal violence that disproportionately target Black girls, women, trans, and gender non-conforming people.
My ancestors have given my generation a mandate to dismantle the systems that have oppressed our people for centuries. I’m still holding space for everyone who is for justice to help answer that mandate, to help clear obstacles for that path to be blazed more freely. We need all of us to survive. The prison industrial complex is devastating our people. Young fathers and mothers and caregivers, women, femmes, gender non-conforming, and trans folks are trapped behind the walls of the Durham County jail, being punished for poverty. Police do not keep us safe. How many times do we need to witness the death of Black bodies on social media feeds before we comprehend that reality? When I was a child, my Durham elders taught me I could imagine something better.
Policing is an institution based in the establishment of slave patrols in the 1600-1700s, and in modern times, policing continues to perpetuate racial capitalism, unjust class structures, and the protection of white property over human life. As Black people, that is a history that we cannot continue to ignore.
The institution of policing has foundationally been the most destructive force in capturing our families using state sanctioned violence (as it was designed to do centuries ago), and relegating our folks back to enslavement, per the 13th Amendment, which states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Black people have been under lockdown before the pandemic, in our own communities. We will still be having this conversation 10 years from now if we don’t build the education, healthcare, and basic needs infrastructure that addresses the root causes of violence—poverty, racism, and human suffering. We need to decriminalize substance use and struggles with mental illness and start caring for each other. Durham residents are fighting a system to keep custody of their children. Durham residents are living under unconscionable conditions in public housing. Durham residents are making incredibly hard choices related to their survival. Durham residents are depressed, suffering from PTSD, in deep despair with no hope, and for good reason—nobody shows up, nobody cares. How can we consciously prepare to fail an entire generation again?
I helped organize efforts against bringing ShotSpotter technology to our city so our people wouldn’t be unduly surveilled and unfairly targeted in our own neighborhoods once more cops are deployed to a scene every time a gunshot-like sound goes off. ShotSpotter technology has shown to be flawed, by the City of Chicago’s Inspector General in this critical report. From inaccuracies in its sensor detection, alterations to data and modifications of alerts from ShotSpotter analysts, to unverified evidence, the use of the technology by our City would only be a bandage on a problem that requires surgical intervention. That feels ethically unprincipled. It is principled to be about action, and work on shifting policies that will change the material conditions for our people. Understanding what our people need requires a posture of deep listening; something that I will always be doing, during this race, and as an organizer.
I’m tired of politicians pacifying our people with false “solutions” that center law enforcement, as if police have the power to do something more than investigate once harm or a violent act has occurred. Policing creates the illusion of safety and protection by increasing patrolling. Increasing patrols instead of addressing root causes sends a harmful psychological message that signals to our communities that we aren’t worth investing in, but only worth monitoring and locking up.
For the last few years, I’ve been organizing around ending the cash bail system in Durham so that Black folks aren’t being held for ransom at the jail, penalized for being poor; and organizing to end pre-trial detention so that are people aren’t left in cages for months without their chance to appear in court. We have fought for needs assessments instead of risk assessments, to take into account that people can’t get back to court because they have to work, or don’t have transportation, or childcare let alone afford court costs.
Many Black and Brown people have died in the custody of Durham Police Department and Durham Sheriff’s Department in recent years and I pray their souls rest easy. I think about the brother who was wrongfully detained by Durham Sheriff’s deputies, and left in the middle of Angier Avenue in cuffs while driving food deliveries to make a living in June of this year.
Last year, close friends of mine who live in East Durham witnessed law enforcement forcefully enter and raid a home, throwing what appeared to be a flash grenade into the house, where there were children and an elder with disabilities, apparently traumatizing the family.
We must reduce the likelihood of fatal interactions between police and Black people by reallocating City funds to strengthen Durham communities. Having won the creation of Durham’s Department of Community Safety, we must fight for robust staffing, so every Durham resident who seeks unarmed, skilled, compassionate support in the midst of a personal crisis has the option to do so. We need an active solution to gun violence now, and investing in increased policing will not bring about such a solution. I grew up in Durham and it is deep for us.
Our people are suffering, our people are dying, and the situation didn’t get this way overnight. We need both a short term and long term strategy to change the trajectory of our city, and save the lives of our people. It will require not only creating the life affirming systems that our people need to survive and thrive, but moving away from systems that have done deep harm. We all have to put our hands, hearts and minds together; every auntie, grandma, cousin, sib, brother, uncle, City Councilmember, faith leader, organizer, and OG. I’m committed to being part of that work, and I’m down to build with anyone and everyone else who expresses that same commitment. In the words of Black poet June Jordan, “And who will join this standing up, and the ones who stood without sweet company, will sing and sing, back into the mountains and, if necessary, even under the sea: we are the ones we have been waiting for.”
We are indeed the ones we have been waiting for.
Support independent local journalism. Join the INDY Press Club to help us keep fearless watchdog reporting and essential arts and culture coverage viable in the Triangle.
Comment on this story at [email protected].