LouLife

by Joe Atkinson
Photos by John Nation

“What’s up, nephew?”

It’s a warm August night in the Sheppard Square housing project, and more than 250 people are gathered to remember one of their own. Many are flocked around the wall of Building 28, where blood — still wet — pools in the grass. All around it is a collection of stuffed animals and bottles — teddy bears from the children, beer and liquor bottles emptied and left by adults — an odd memorial that mirrors those being left behind at murder scenes in parts of Louisville as signs of respect for the dead.

Less than 24 hours earlier, 26-year-old Lajuante Jackson was killed on this spot. He was gunned down at 4:30 a.m. along Building 28 of the project — less than three months after getting out of prison — leaving behind a young wife and two very young children.

So tonight, his friends and family are holding a vigil in his honor. They’re surrounding the bloodied grass; they’re taking over the courtyard around it. And making his way among them is the event’s organizer – a thin, bald man in a dark suit and glasses, who greets each young man as his “nephew,” each adult man and woman as his “brother” and “sister,” and each young woman as his “niece.”

By the evening’s end, he will have spoken to every man, woman and child present. Each will greet him with the utmost respect; the men will clasp his hand, and pull him in for a quick embrace; the women will hug him warmly, sometimes kissing his cheek, sometimes crying on his shoulder.

And when he gets up to speak, everyone — from the quiet elderly to the roughest, most hardened youths — will stay quiet and listen respectfully. He will not preach to them; he will pray with them; and he will ask their help in stopping the violence.

Then, he’ll cede the stage to anyone with words to share.

It’s a ritual Christopher 2X has led dozens of times over the past year. As Louisville’s homicide rate continues to rise, 2X’s phone continues to ring. He has become a fixture at the remembrances and funerals of Louisville’s murder victims, and a beacon of hope to their grieving families.

“I don’t know what me and my family would do without Chris,” says Miranda Lyvers, whose brother, Antoine Thompson, was killed on Derby week/files/storyimages/in May. “He has comforted our family in such a supportive way — he is there whenever we need him. And he has talked to many different people, asking questions about my brother’s death, trying to get (witnesses) to come forward if they’ve seen anything. He’s done everything he can to help us as a family — to cope with it and to get us some answers.”

Talk to any number of victims’ families, and you’ll get the same story: 2X entered their lives after their loved one’s death, helped them deal with the funeral, and stayed with them through memorials, through the investigation, through trials. In many cases, 2X acts as an intermediary for the family. He speaks to the media on their behalf; he acts as a liaison to the police department.

But who is Christopher 2X? Why is he doing this? And where did he come from?

The son of a bank officer and a munitions plant foreman, Christopher Bryant was born in Louisville in March 1960. His parents were married more than 50 years — until his father’s death from lung cancer in 1998 — and provided young Christopher with what he now calls a “stable” home life. The closest thing he had to difficulty was an occasional shifting of residences between Louisville and Jeffersonville, which was closer to his father’s work in Charlestown, Ind.

But by the time Christopher Bryant was a teenager, he identified his home as someplace entirely different: the streets. At 15, he entered the world of drug trafficking; later that year, he got picked up for his first juvenile offense: a curfew violation. It was a minor offense, considering that he was already dealing both cocaine and marijuana, but it stung his family all the same.

“That was very painful for my parents,” 2X says now. “You’ve got to look at it from their perspective: They’re providing some kind of stable home at the time, and still, out of rebellion, I was doing this. That had to be painful for them.”

Over the next three years, he was picked up for several juvenile offenses — he doesn’t remember now how many. And he didn’t stop when he turned 18; he just changed up the pattern. For the next 20 years, the young 2X would sp/files/storyimages/his time doing one of three things: holding a job, running the streets or living in prison. And he didn’t do the the first of those often.

“I might catch an off-and-on little job, but I didn’t hold them,” he says. “They were just basic labor jobs, unskilled labor jobs. But I didn’t hold any of them very long; I liked the streets too much.”

At 24, 2X got stung in an undercover drug operation when he attempted to sell cocaine to a police informant. He was sentenced to nine years in prison, for which he served three-and-a-half before getting out on parole.

But prison hadn’t reformed him. Almost immediately, he went back to his old life, and for a while he got away with it.

Eventually, though, he was caught.

“It was pretty much me in rebellion mode,” 2X says. “I figured I’d get out and do what I wanted to do. So I got violated out on parole, and I went back in for the remainder of my nine-year sentence.”

He doesn’t credit the justice system for reforming him while he was inside. In fact, he doesn’t believe the justice system is responsible for anyone’s rehabilitation. In order to make a change inside, 2X says, a convict has to go in determined to change, and has to come back out with the same determination.

Because there is no one inside, he says, who will help you clean up.

“I feel that you really have to be in with a determined mind to self-develop inside of prison, and be prepared to actually follow the same structure when you get out of prison,” he says. “Most of the prison conversation is going to be about what I do when I get back out to get me some money. It’s not going to be about, ‘How am I going to straighten my life out?’

“You have to be determined when you walk out, and determined when you come in.”

By the time 2X got out of jail the last time, he was resolute about making that change. At 38 years old, he’d already spent almost 20 percent of his life behind bars. He didn’t want to waste any more time there.

That was 1999, the year he changed his name to Christopher 2X and the year he decided he needed more structure in his life. “I said I needed a spiritual structure, so I converted to the Muslim religion,” he says. “It wasn’t anything against any other religion; I just thought it was the best structure for me. So I started my journey, like Ali and others, and I got the 2X last name.

“Then I started going through the neighborhoods — the same ones I wreaked havoc on — and I said I was going to start working with the neighborhood. Anything I could do that would be positive, I would do it.”

“Hey, X!”

Christopher 2X turns to the street, raising a hand and smiling in salute.

“Hey, nephew!” he shouts back, as a young man hanging his head from the driver’s window of a small, red car whizzes past. 2X then turns to his traveling companions for the day and mumbles, “I get that all the time.”

Indeed, spending a day in Lousville’s West End with 2X could be likened to spending a day with Denzel Washington   . . . well, anywhere. At this moment, he’s been standing on the sidewalk outside his office for less than 40 seconds, and already two youngsters have sped by, poking their heads out the car window to shout his name.

It doesn’t matter who he passes. Young black men go by, both downtown and in the housing projects, and yell out for him. They call him “Unc” — short for uncle, a term of affection saved for those worthy of the deepest respect. Adult black men and women drive past in cars and slow to have a word with 2X. And in the housing projects, everyone — black and white, young and old — stops to shout at 2X when he walks by.

“Brother X,” one elderly man says, as he sits against the wall of his building in the Beecher Terrace development, “you are an inspiration to us all.”

“Thank you,” 2X says. “I love you, brother.”

How did 2X garner this kind of respect from his community? He’s quick to point out that he hasn’t brought anything material to help these people who seem to revere him. He hasn’t come forth with money or resources, and he doesn’t bring the promise of either in the future. He hasn’t stopped the killing or made life in the projects any less difficult or desperate.

“He ain’t sellin’ no dreams,” says Beecher Terrace resident Chris Kelso. “And we ain’t buyin’ no dreams.”

Perhaps that, in and of itself, is at the root of 2X’s appeal. He’s gained credibility because he’s genuine; he knows the lives people are living because he’s been there. And he doesn’t make promises about pulling them out that he can’t keep.

“He keeps it real,” says Cynthia Brown, a West End resident working with 2X in his Unified Women Against Street Violence group. “As far as credibility in those neighborhoods, the minute somebody is trying to be fake or is out of their element, they can spot it a mile off. But he’s very genuine in who he is and how he approaches them. He doesn’t try to come across as a lot of stuff that sounds good to them.

“He just lets them know: ‘I’m here, I understand your plight, and I’m here for whatever I can do.’”

Several project residents repeat the refrain: “He’s real,” they say. “If anything go down, and you need anybody’s help, you can call him,” says one young man who goes by the street name “Tez.” “He says he gonna do something, he does it.”

What 2X does for the neighborhoods can’t be measured in material things. It’s in the comfort he brings to victims’ families, by helping them through their difficulties or by holding vigils like the one for Lajuante Jackson in late August. It can be measured in the options he’s offering the community by starting groups such as Unified Women Against Street Violence and Young Adults for Positive Change, both designed to unite people — be they mothers or at-risk youths — to make a choice against guns and violence.

“The influence of him is strong on a whole lot of people,” says 25-year-old Morris Green. “I’ve known people that he’d talked to and changed attitudes and minds about doing things. . . . I know he has me.”

Or 2X’s contribution can be measured by his presence. Residents of several different housing projects all talk about 2X being in their neighborhood “all the time.” 2X estimates he spends about nine hours a day on the streets. When he encounters someone, he often promises he’ll come see them soon, then keeps his promise. And he does it all traveling by bus. In July 2004, 2X quit his five-year job at a factory in East Louisville to focus on his activism. Since then, he’s lost his car and he’s taken to crashing on a cousin’s couch because — in his words — “the resources have about run out.”

“If there is such a theology, my theology is humanitarian,” 2X says. “Good works and deeds — that’s God to me. Doing good works and deeds are what drives me to God.” And he’s done more of those good works and deeds than most, simply because of his gift for communication  — both with the neighborhoods and on their behalf.

2X is a well-spoken man. He wears a suit every day — something he can afford only because local tailor Aqueelah Haleem believes in his work and allows him to pay for his attire over time. And he seems as comfortable talking to public officials and television cameras as to his brothers, sisters and nephews on the streets. “He just tries to do all he can do,” says LaShay Banks, an eight-year resident of Beecher Terrace. “Every day, you flip on the news, and somebody’s dead, and who do you see on the news? 2X.

“He’s stepping up. There ain’t been nobody else come through like that. I’ve been here eight years and he’s the first person came to try and help people.”

Which is why when something happens in the neighborhoods, 2X is among the first to get a call.

“I’ve established a network within those neighborhoods,” he says. “So when something goes down, somebody will call me and say, ‘Chris, somebody got killed here.’ It might be from people who might be directly involved with the victim or it might just be somebody concerned from the neighborhoods.”

That’s how 2X ends up on many violent-crime scenes. And often, when the family sees him there — even if they weren’t the ones who called in the first place — they will approach 2X about helping them through the difficulties to come. He’ll don his suit and speak for the family — with police, in the courts, on the news. For many in the neighborhoods, that alone is an accomplishment.

“A lot of people feel like they don’t have a voice in this community,” Brown says. “But he’s given people a voice — he’s spoken for them as far as what the issues are and what they’d like to see happen.

“With Chris speaking out for this community, it gives other people the realization that this (violent crime) isn’t OK with us — we don’t want to live like this.”

On July 17, David Williams was shot in the rear of his Lafayette Street apartment.

Louisville Police Lt. Steve Green was leading the investigation at the scene when the victim’s cousin arrived. He was running down the street, making a beeline for the crime scene tape and the apartment behind it. Procedure dictated that the officers present warn the cousin away from the tape and, if necessary, physically stop him from crossing over and contaminating possible evidence at the crime location. But Green knew that, with a crowd of spectators all around, it wouldn’t exactly be good PR for police officers to gang up on the victim’s cousin.

“I saw the cousin coming from a block away and I said, ‘Here comes a problem,’” Green recalls. “We were going to have to deal with him once he crossed through. And (2X) was standing right there by me and said, ‘You want me to handle this?’ And Chris went out there, talked to (the cousin), and led him away.

“That helped us tremendously. That way, it’s not the mean policeman putting the guy down — it’s Christopher leading him away and explaining to him what was going on.”

To many public officials, 2X’s ability to communicate with both sides in such a situation — and his willingness to do so for everyone’s benefit — gives him credibility. Green has several stories about working with 2X, either on a crime scene or as a liaison for a victim’s family during a murder investigation. One of those interactions, played out in the local media, brought 2X to prominence beyond the neighborhoods he grew up in.

After 19-year-old Michael Newby was gunned down by a Louisville police officer in January 2004, 2X offered to use his experience in the court system to assist the family, and do whatever else he could to help them in that difficult time. Eventually, when the officer was acquitted in court, 2X served as a mouthpiece for the family, publicly expressing their wishes that the black community accept the verdict “with dignity” and not retaliate with violence.

“After the verdict, (many young men and women) were ready to march on the courthouse, and he headed them off and told them that (Newby’s) parents didn’t want this kind of violence because it was to no avail,” says Jerry Bouggess, Newby’s stepfather. “He brought 30 or 40 of those involved to the house, and my wife spoke to them, and that calmed the situation down. So he was very helpful in preventing a race riot.”

Many public officials acknowledge off the record that this calming influence distances 2X from some other leaders of his community. While 2X is compared to others — most often the Rev. Louis Coleman — they’re perceived as more reactionary, to the point where public officials have a harder time relating to them.

2X says he isn’t trying to fight the system. He describes his style as more “measured” than many. He tries to work from within rather than from outside the legal and power structures — to present his opinions respectfully to the right people, and to try to get them to acknowledge his ideas.

That, he said, is the message he is trying to get across to other young blacks: To work within the system instead of railing against it.

“Do I agree with everything that is going down in the juvenile courts and judicial center? Of course I don’t,” 2X says. “But I’m trying to teach young black minds that the system isn’t going anywhere — they don’t have a bulldozer to knock it down. So they need to learn the system and work with the system.”

And part of doing that, he says, is to communicate with the community at large. He wants those outside the West End to learn what is going on in the projects. He wants them to understand so they can relate and possibly help. That’s why, lately, he has begun taking his bus rides to other neighborhoods as well. He’s spoken at schools, churches — anywhere he’s invited or anywhere he thinks he can reach minds and hearts. And in doing so he’s made believers of many influential people — be they in business, government, or just community leaders — across Louisville.

“I want to have him out to my community — to the church and the community — to give people a chance to see and touch this guy,” says Gregg Cobb of PMI Mortgage Investment Co., who is set to be one of the board members of 2X’s new Ceremonial Healing Group. “I think he’s genuine. He has a higher calling, however you translate that — whether it’s religious, spiritual, whatever. I think he’s put his money where his mouth is and he left a perfectly good job to do it. That shows character.

“I think there is a lot of work to be done, and I hope to be a part of that change for him and with him.”

Others seem to share this view. Former Judge Louis Waterman, venture capitalist Jonathan Blue and Cobb are among those who have approached 2X about starting the not-for-profit Ceremonial Healing Group. The organization would formalize much of 2X’s work throughout the city and give him a salary to sustain his efforts long-term.

“The purpose is to create some healing between diverse groups . . . to try to heal where there are rifts — focusing, obviously, on children,” Waterman says. “We want to say that we’re not going to tolerate violence; that’s not what our community is. But we want to say it using Chris’ philosophy of healing. We want to include the police, the government, the courts, and we want to empower people — particularly the younger ones — to say, ‘This doesn’t have to be this way.’

“Ultimately, I want to see Chris make his living doing this. I think he’s gifted at it, and I think he should be doing it.”

That’s one thing both the East and West ends might be able to agree on.

“There are several organizations out there for us, but there is no one like him,” says Miranda Lyvers, sister to the murdered Antoine Thompson. “He’s one man, and he has been the only one I’ve seen at every vigil supporting the families and everything else.

“We just thank him so much for what he’s doing for us right now.”