He won’t sit for journalists’ photos or videos. He won’t sue the sheriff’s deputies who inflicted injuries that might mark his face for life and have certainly scarred his psyche forever.
He’s not looking for attention, publicity or a payout.
Nahshon Bain-Greenidge simply wants you to know his truth, a revelation unloosed by the fists of the sheriff’s deputies who didn’t like the questions the coffee shop shift manager asked when they swarmed without warning the parking lot of the west-side Knoxville Starbucks he oversaw.
Policing in America is broken for Black Americans, Bain-Greenidge says. He doesn’t have a solution. But he wants every American to ponder the truth revealed to him and what it means about our commitment to liberty and justice for all.
Before his encounter with sheriff’s deputies, Bain-Greenidge was just another guy trying to work and do the right thing. The 29-year-old had just graduated from Arizona State University with a sociology degree.
He’s soft-spoken, slender, and small-framed with a gentle personality. He’d worked for Starbucks for three years, and the company had helped him pay for his education. He was preparing to leap into his career, leaving the coffee shop to take a job related to his major working with children in Knoxville.