Kansas City protest organizers running ‘on fumes’ but see progress, vow to continue

Henry Service knows the American dream doesn’t work for everyone.

His parents emigrated from Jamaica to England, where he grew up before working his way through undergraduate school in Canada and law school in the United States. While his classmates pulled up to school in Porsches, Service washed dishes and worked other odd jobs to pay the bills. He worked hard and did everything he was supposed to in order to establish himself as a lawyer and eventually own a building at 18th and Vine in Kansas City.

But hard work couldn’t stop systemic racism.

In court, Service said a judge yelled at him, believing he was the defendant and his white client was a lawyer. Other times he said judges ruled against his clients even if the other party didn’t sign a necessary petition, and when officials disrespected him older lawyers told him that’s just the way it is. And two weeks after buying his Maserati, he said eight police officers held him at gunpoint across the street from his building, believing he fit the description of someone suspected of stealing a car.

“I can’t walk down the street,” Service said. “I can’t buy a nice car and drive to the building I own without the police jumping out on me and pulling guns. Day after day (there’s the) daily bullshit you’ve got to go through just to be a Black person. You’ve got to be perfect, you can’t make a mistake.”

Service, like many Black people, has been angry for decades at a system that continues to discriminate against him. In the past three weeks he’s lost his voice and stayed up until 4 a.m. many times to lead protests in Kansas City calling for police reform and other changes following the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis that has ignited protests in small towns and major cities around the world.

But long before now, Service and others have organized protests against the injustices they’ve faced to demand change.

During his undergraduate years in Canada in the ’80s, Service organized demonstrations pushing his university and other businesses to divest from South Africa and stop police brutality and housing discrimination. In law school at Ohio Northern University in the ’90s, Service said he helped start a petition for an LGBT student organization to get a charter, so they were allowed to meet on campus. When he later moved to Kansas City, Service said he pushed back on City Council’s neglect of the 18th and Vine district.

“I have this sense of fairness that’s always been with me for everybody,” he said.

Brandi Olachi has organized several protests in the last few weeks with Black Lives Matter KC and met with local and state government officials to demand local control of police, a multi-step de-escalation procedure and funding for body cameras, among other reforms. She said the protesters and organizers have barbecues together and have grown as a family, which has helped keep numbers at protests steady even as national media coverage wanes.

“Even for the smallest event, they’re there,” she said. “I’m able to delegate a bunch of tasks to a lot of different people, and everyone’s on top of it. Everyone is there for each other.”

Justice Horn, a recent University of Missouri-Kansas City graduate, also helped lead several recent protests with Black Lives Matter KC, but got involved as an activist for LGBTQ+ rights when he found out he was the first openly gay multicultural wrestler in the NCAA while attending a college in South Dakota.

While Horn recently left Black Lives Matter KC after saying he witnessed homophobia and transphobia from some activists within the movement, he’ll continue organizing actions on his own. Hundreds attended a protest he held Saturday at the Plaza, which featured speakers from the Urban League of Kansas City, #BlackAtBSSD and the KC Community Bail Fund among other local organizations pushing for racial justice.

Horn worked with his roommate and another friend to plan the action, and he hopes other activists will realize they can also plan events and make a difference on their own.

“The movement isn’t controlled by one entity or organization,” Horn said. “Everyone should feel like they can make a Black Lives Matter protest in their city, no matter if you’re Black or white.”

Like Horn, Olachi and Service, Latahra Smith also has led demonstrations across Kansas City and Missouri. Smith has been involved with the KC Freedom Project since its founding in 2013. Motivated by her son’s case in Texas in 2008, when he was falsely accused of murder, Smith has looked into and exposed wrongful convictions.

Her organization pushed for an investigation into former prosecutor Amy McGowan, who retired from the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office one month after Ricky Kidd was exonerated after spending 23 years in jail for a murder he didn’t commit in Missouri.

Cases pile up in boxes around Smith’s office and photos of the people she’s helped line her desk to serve as inspiration for her to continue pursuing cases and pushing people of power out when they do their jobs poorly.

“I see a lot of stuff in those cases that’s wrong,” she said. “Black men, white men, a lot of them have been done really bad by the justice system, and I see it right in this office downtown. … Without me continuing to dig and find stuff for them, they would continue to sit in prison for a long time.”

Compared with past movements, Service said he sees more white people showing up than before. When white people publicly supported the civil rights movement of the ‘60s, they were few and far between and often viewed as radicals, Service said. He sees people from all backgrounds volunteering to protest and bring supplies, changing activism so that all people push back against inequalities.

While some people subscribe to the alternate All Lives Matter movement, Service said they should check their privilege and understand that Black people face police violence at higher rates.

“We’re really saying Black lives also matter,” he said, “but we have to say Black lives matter because no one seems to get that our lives matter just as much as anyone else.”

Olachi said she fought back tears while watching white allies show up at City Hall last week to call on local leaders to release arrested protesters. She’s surprised by the number of non-Black allies who show up not only during a major protest with media attention, but also smaller actions that lead to change.

“I’ve never seen this kind of energy with our allies,” she said. “Black people, we’re always passionate about this issue, but I see that passion there, too.”

Olachi is planning an appreciation event for allies in the movement to encourage them to continue showing up.

Moving forward, Service will continue fighting against police brutality but also pushing the city to invest more in Black businesses and districts in the area. Like Olachi, he’s hopeful the allies the movement has picked up will stick around to work toward police reforms.

Even though those who are new to the movement may start to feel tired with the constant news cycle and protests, Service said that he and other Black activists have felt exhausted for a long time, but they all need to keep fighting.

“I’m (running) on fumes,” Service said, “but when I see results I get more fuel in the tank.”