Political signs get vandalized, but this Charlotte man wonders if his race played a role
For the last 25 years, Ray Kodzai has been one of a handful of Black homeowners in his south Charlotte neighborhood, which can feel isolating at times, he said, but not uncomfortable.
That was, until recently, when the sign with Kamala Harris’s face he displayed in his yard was removed and set on fire. Now he can’t help but feel he was targeted for his race, he said.
“The temperature’s kind of gone up a little bit with the tensions going between the two parties and everything,” Kodzai said. “But we’ve never had an issue in this neighborhood that I’m aware of.”
Kodzai was coming home from a 10-hour work shift in the evening in late August when he noticed that his sign, which was close to the sidewalk, was missing.
He saw some of the color of the sign had dripped off onto the sidewalk. He found the sign, burned at its corner, in his neighbor’s yard. The neighborhood is off South Boulevard.
“That was a statement of somebody that really didn’t either like that particular sign or a statement to me,” he said. “But I’m not intimidated by that.”
Dan Busch, who is white, lives across the street from Kodzai. The same night Kodzai’s sign was burned, Busch also had a Kamala Harris sign taken from his yard and vandalized.
The sign was scribbled and stomped on, and thrown into his next door neighbor’s yard, but not burned.
“We live in a diverse country where people have different attitudes, it’s okay that you disagree. It’s okay if you want to vote for Trump,” Busch said. “One of the things that I believe about the anger that this engenders is that we got to figure out a way to get past our anger and say, ‘Listen, how about if we talk about this?’”
Kodzai said he thinks it was someone within the neighborhood who vandalized the signs. Busch also said Kodzai is well-known around the neighborhood for walking his dogs and getting to know the neighbors as he passes them.
Because of this, the burning of Kodzai’s sign feels targeted, they both said.
Kodzai decided to take a look around the neighborhood to see if any other yards had their signs tampered with.
He noticed that the Harris sign close to the sidewalk in one yard was gone. He spoke with the white couple and learned their sign had been vandalized as well, but not burned.
As far as he’s aware, he’s the only neighbor whose sign was burned.
He offered to buy the couple a new sign, but they said they were going to get a much larger banner instead.
While looking around the neighborhood, he also noticed that neighbors with Donald Trump or Robert F. Kennedy signs kept their signs closer to their homes. And he wondered if it was because they also had signs tampered with, or because of a sense of paranoia from the tense political climate.
Kodzai and Busch displayed signs in their yards for past elections, including Barack Obama, but never had those signs tampered with or vandalized.
They both hope that, in the future, people might come to them directly to talk about their political disagreements instead of skulking through the night and destroying their private property.
“People should be able to exercise their constitutional right without having to destroy somebody’s side,” he said.
Although he doesn’t want to, he said, he’ll call the police if he catches someone vandalizing his signs.
Kodzai’s burned Kamala Harris sign now sits displayed in the front window of his home for all to see. He’s also going to continue displaying political signs in his yard close to the sidewalk during the day.
However, he has decided to be more cautious after the incident and will put the signs closer to his home at night, he said. His dogs would alert him if anyone got too close, he said.
“After this incident happened, I decided I was going to exercise my constitutional right by putting more signs there,” Kodzai said.
