“Will everyone who’s here to support me please stand?” asked Jorge Cornell at the Greensboro City Council meeting on Sept. 2.A group of 14 or 15 Guilford students stood up with heads held high. Cornell has gained quite a following at the college, and the reasons why became clear as he tried to show the council how diverse and in need of help Greensboro is.

Cornell has been standing up for the rights of citizens in the urban communities of Greensboro for years now as the leader of the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation (ALKQN) for the state of North Carolina.

“I’m tired of these politicians that come into your neighborhood and offer you the world, looking for your vote. You go out there and you vote for them and then they don’t remember you,” Cornell told The Guilfordian.

Cornell unified gangs in Greensboro under this position with acts such as the “Towards A Peace Agreement Among Gangs” document (because of which he was shot twice but which has still been largely successful) and the “Paradigm Shift” document, a proposal to help gangs and street groups come together and help the community rather than cause violence. He is also part of the School Safety Committee for the Board of Education and is now running for Greensboro City Council.

“It takes a person with a certain thickness of skin to endure the things I have endured – police brutality, racial profiling, discrimination – and still sit there and tell the system, ‘You’re wrong,'” said Cornell.

His participation in the ALKQN and the Paradigm Shift has made him a popular figure at Guilford.

“I’ve been working with him for a year now,” said his campaign manager, Eric Ginsburg, a Guilford senior. “He was at a community meeting discussing the gang peace treaty that he initiated and he said he wanted outreach for college campuses, so I offered to help him out.”

In addition to holding meetings in the community center on campus, Cornell has been to various classes to talk about racial profiling and harassment.

“Jorge Cornell’s sincerity and openness to transformation and new ideas is something rarely seen today and while I generally disapprove of politics in general, I feel that what he brings to the table is worth getting involved with,” said Cornell supporter Damian Popkin.

But Cornell is about more than his campaign for social justice- for him, it is really all about unification. He has been known to come to Guilford just to play touch football or soccer and generally be together with the students.

“That’s the only way we’re going to get the system off our back – by coming together as one community,” said Cornell. “One body, one mind, one soul, one heartbeat.”

Editor’s Note: Eric Ginsburg is also a staff writer for The Guilfordian.