Listen to Jordy and Reverend Smash’s Stories

“I was deeply inhaling the truth of the gathered community, the truth of deep, deep pain and inconsolable rage. The truth of a disorienting reality. The heartache, the courage, the intentionality. The truth of gentle resolve that tends to fold together within the thick of communal mourning.”

- Rev Smash

Interview Transcript: Jordy Yager

Jordy Yager

So this was actually the day after. This was Sunday, August 13th, 2017. To my left with the “Love” hat on is Reverend Brittney King Connelly with Congregate Charlottesville, who've been organizing resistance for months around A11, A12. The day before this shot, I actually grabbed an amazing picture of her as she was marching arm in arm through the city with other local clergy and Cornell West. Next to her, you can barely see him crouching there, but that's Will Solace. He's an amazingly talented and criminally underrated photographer who that year I'd run into all over the state at different neo-Confederate events. I was working as a reporter at the time for public radio, and here I'm working on a story, holding my recorder, capturing the sounds of the crowd. Some folks are making speeches. The crowd broke out in song. At one point they chanted. They held space and silence. This was where Heather Heyer had been killed and dozens injured just the day before. It was surreal coming back the next day. I was about 20 feet from Heather when she got hit. I remember putting down my recorder and camera and going into a sort of crisis response mode. I helped a guy stand up who was bleeding from his leg. I handed a young woman back her shoe that had flown off, and I worked with paramedics to hold the tight perimeter around Heather as they gave her CPR. So, yeah, in this photo, we're all gathered at the intersection of Fourth and Water. And really as an audio producer here, I'm just listening. I'm glancing up from time to time to see who's saying what, but really my head's down and I'm just absorbed in listening. And it's interesting looking back at this image now because this was sort of the start of what became the city's attempt to really listen to its African-American residents. The white supremacist violence that weekend was so extreme that for the first time, our largely liberal and progressive area said that it was open to examining the ways that we enact and support local, liberal and progressive white supremacy here every day. And a lot's happened over the last five years. For the first time, we had two Black members of council serve at the same time, and they were able to accomplish an extraordinary amount in the face of a lot of opposition. So yeah, we've made progress in some areas, but we've also returned to the status quo. There's a younger generation of Black leaders coming up right now that gives me an immense amount of hope. But that community-wide hunger for real significant change that was front and center on this day when this photo was taken, that desire to really listen, to not only repair past injustices, but to sit in the discomfort of what a more just future entails…that hunger has now quieted. The need for change, however, has not. It's still shouting. And I've no doubt, as all of life moves in cycles, we'll be able to listen again. 

Music credit: Sayuri Hayashi Egnell / Kasumi / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com

Interview Transcript: Reverend Smash

Rev Smash 

I was told that people were gathering and creating a memorial on Fourth Street where the neo-Nazi had attacked community members with his car. I decided that I wanted to be present in community, to bear witness, to help hold despair. When I showed up there with my friends, at first I felt completely wrapped up in hyper-vigilance, as we were well aware that the white supremacists were still in our town, terrorizing and plotting. But then I started hugging folks and listening to some people speak their feelings out loud. And someone, somewhere in the crowd shouted my name and asked me to share some words. I stepped forward and honestly, I don't remember what I said in moments like those when I'm surrounded by public grief, a lot of times something moves in me, you can call it the Divine Spirit or the Holy Spirit if you want, but something moves and words flow out of me, even in the midst of confusion and hypervigilance and fear. I can be sure that I talked about the evil of white supremacy because I talked about that all summer long without ceasing. I'm sure I encouraged folks to hold each other tight as we came to terms with our individual and shared traumas. I'm sure I acknowledged our need to continue fighting the less overt racism that's enshrined within our structures and systems. This picture catches me in prayer after I spoke. I was deeply inhaling the truth of the gathered community, the truth of deep, deep pain and inconsolable rage. The truth of a disorienting reality. The heartache, the courage, the intentionality. The truth of gentle resolve that tends to fold together within the thick of communal mourning. All summer, I had yearned for the peace of August 13th. And then August 13th came. And it felt way too similar to August 12th and August 11th and July 8th. The white supremacist rally was over, and yet our lives were changed in drastic ways. We were changed in ways that some of us are still parsing out. Some of the traumas, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual, they will never fully heal. Some of the interpersonal conflict, it still plays out between us. There is still so much work to be done in fighting white supremacy in Charlottesville and throughout the country. Still so much work to be done in learning to love each other better. And even though none of us showed up perfectly during the summer of 2017, I will always hold tightly to the courage, the resilience, and compassion demonstrated by so many in our community. I pray that we can keep our hearts open as we continue to fight.

Music credit: Hanna Lindgren / Shape of Your Breathing / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com