By Unity
ALI 400 — Chapter 23
On my seventh birthday, my mother gave me a Bible.
It was a Good News Bible, written in modern English. Unlike the other Bibles I had seen, this one was readable—understandable to a seven-year-old growing up in the poorest parts of Louisville, Kentucky.
Because it spoke plainly, I assumed that perhaps God was making an effort to speak to me.
Stricken by a sense of responsibility far larger than my age, I promised that I would read seven chapters a day until I finished.
On the second day, I satisfied my daily commitment and completed Chapter 14.
I thought to myself:
God doesn’t like those who just do the bare minimum.
He loves those who do extra credit.
So I read a little more.
I reached Genesis 15:12–15, where God tells Abraham that his descendants would be enslaved in a land not their own, treated harshly for 400 years, but later freed—leaving with great wealth and becoming a blessing to the nations.
I remember thinking:
That sounds like Black people in America…
But I was seven.
I dismissed the thought.
Yet, something told me to ‘stay-tuned’—something told me to watch.
The Year of Return
Fast forward to August 20, 2019.
Africa commemorated four hundred years of African American history and declared it The Year of Return.
I marked the moment with a tribute under the banners of Arts & Activism and ALI 400.
For years after returning to Louisville, I had carried a quiet conviction that somehow the center of the civil rights struggle would return to this city—directly to my doorstep.
I shared that instinct with almost no one.
—Then the world shut down.
The Square
In 2020, a global pandemic erased the familiar order overnight.
Emergency powers activated across nations simultaneously.
And in that same year, the killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville ignited protests nationwide.
When I arrived downtown on the second day of demonstrations, the energy was volatile.
People of every ethnicity filled the streets.
Near the police station—the center of gravity—I witnessed something deeply disturbing.
A young man was urging unarmed teenagers to break through the police station doors while officers stood behind chained entrances with rifles prepared.
It was reckless.
It was cowardly.
And it felt engineered.
I knew immediately: our elders would never sanction this.
Something was wrong—not simply with police misconduct, but with the orchestration of chaos itself.
Gunshots had erupted the night before. People were hurt.
I knew that if this continued, lives would be lost.
So I intervened.
I confronted the instigator, then turned to the teenagers and asked loudly:
“Which of you has a gun?”
Silence.
I pressed further—forcing them to confront the consequences of what they were being urged to do.
None were prepared for it.
And in that moment, I understood something critical:
I could not leave.
Holding the Line
For months throughout the duration of the protests, a pattern emerged.
If I left, people got hurt.
If I stayed, violence rescinded.
For weeks, I spent sixteen to twenty hours a day in the square—sometimes seven days a week—mediating conflict, separating rival factions, and preventing police from engaging protesters.
The people listened to me.
The police could not touch me.
I had been sanctioned by the mayor, who personally urged continued protest, and the optics of harming me—often dressed in all white—would have been catastrophic for the department.
Still, something was missing.
We had momentum without cohesion.
Force without unity.
Energy without alignment.
So I created The Unity Fair @ Breonna Square.
The Unity Fair
It was a three-day, weekend-long Arts & Activism festival centered on Positive Hip-Hop and community services.
Almost overnight, chaos dissolved.
Where there had been snipers, tension, and fear, there was now:
music,
poetry,
jazz,
dialogue,
joy.
Artists came from across the city and state.
Media attended daily.
People felt safe—perhaps for the first time since the protests began.
We screened documentaries.
Held public conversations.
Hosted nonprofits, therapists, youth employers, housing counselors, and small-business lenders.
Provided space for children to play.
We didn’t just demand change.
We demonstrated it.
Negotiating Power
Soon after, leadership within the Louisville Metro Police Department selected me to represent the African American community in negotiations surrounding calls to defund the police.
I wasn’t interested in defunding.
I wanted something more strategic:
community-based forces trained in partnership with police to address cultural and manpower deficits.
They listened.
Around that same time, a national African American militia announced plans to come to Louisville.
Rather than allowing tensions to escalate, we reached out directly.
Dialogue replaced confrontation.
Through the most unexpected partnerships, we achieved historic levels of activism, courage, and cooperation.
The Test of Independence
By then, I had been offered a grant with unlimited funding to take Arts & Activism citywide and beyond.
National expansion was guaranteed.
But I declined.
Not because the work lacked value—
but because I understood sequence.
I never wanted dependency.
I never wanted control to shift away from the people.
And I never wanted a system born of spirit to become captive to funding.
What I wanted was confirmation—proof that the work met the highest standards of legitimacy.
If it passed that bar, then ALI 400 had something to offer the world.
The Principle of Unity
Unity did not require resources.
It required alignment.
And alignment, once achieved, changed everything.
What unfolded in Louisville clarified something that would later guide every major decision surrounding ALI 400.
We had achieved scale without capital.
We had produced unity without budgets.
We had negotiated power without dependency.
That sequence mattered.
Activation Before Capital
So when funding later appeared—vast, immediate, and unrestricted—it did not arrive as validation.
It arrived as a test.
The work had already proven that activation, coherence, and legitimacy could be generated without external control.
To reverse that order would have compromised the very conditions that made unity possible.
For this reason, ALI 400 remained intentionally independent.
Not because resources are unnecessary—
but because funding must follow alignment, not precede it.
What was built in the square, in classrooms, and in community spaces confirmed the principle at the heart of this book:
Activation is the foundation.
Capital is a multiplier.
Confusing the two collapses both.
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