Black, White and Brown

The crowd surged forward, pushing up from all sides, pulling with a sway, a rhythm. They were truck drivers, school teachers, fast-food and government workers. Hurting families, single parents, alcoholics and drug addicts. A common purpose and need drove them, rising in a fragrance of sweat and desire. Some danced, some sang, some just came to see why.

It looked like rain but no one cared.

The whole scene felt like a tent revival, a circus sideshow, a melodious carnival filling the air with a sense of hope. There were children, parents, grandparents. Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Jews. Black, white and brown mingled together like a handful of earth in a child's hands.

Banners waved above the singsong chants and scatter step walk. Hands clenched together stretching along divided streets around bends and curves. Traffic stopped. School children rode alongside on bikes, running to the front and back for a glimpse of what was happening.

They had marched their way out of the ghettos and projects, low-income housing districts and government housing, up though the boulevards, out of the city, and into the suburbs. From the windows of cookie cutter houses, wide eyes peered out trembling with fear from misunderstanding. The police had come long before, attempting to redirect their route. But the crowd passed by, walking on in peace.

"Hey, Reyes, I think I see your cousin." Officer Randolph Philips yelled to his partner.

"Fuck you, Randy."

"Really though, you ever wonder if anyone you know is in one of these?"

Officer Martin Reyes looked out into the crowd. He saw their faces, but looked past their joy to a pointless purpose. An elderly woman and her grand-daughter passed by. He envisioned the image in the corner of a pompous, left-wing newspaper emblazoned with words like a life insurance ad, HOPE FOR TOMORROW.

"Hey, you okay over there?"

"Yeah, just thinking."

Officers Reyes and Philips watched the crowd move on, lifted the barricades, and proceeded to the next point. In the car, Randolph resumed, "So what do you think this is all about anyway?"

"Same old shit. We're poor. We're neglected. They have what we don't."

Officer Philips laughed and said, "Damn man, no sympathy vote?"

"Look. I'm all about a person getting ahead. But you've got to fucking work at it. You can't just expect people to lie down and let you get what you want. My mother was a single mother raising four goddamn kids. She never asked for handouts."

"Chill, just trying to make small talk. This might be the shittiest job we've had, babysitting the inner city."

"But that's what I'm saying. Nothings being done here. It's a bunch of lazy fucks mucking up traffic so they can get on TV and bitch about being poor."

"Look man," said Officer Philips before being cut off.

"No, you look. These people are being force fed a bunch of bullshit. Pity us, look at us. Well, here we are. And we see a bunch of slackers wearing FUBU and Hilfiger waving banners around about reparations, reputations, or whatever. You want to talk about poor? Go to fucking Africa, Vietnam, Columbia. You'll see poor. People drinking water from the same hole they shit in. These people bitch about wiping with one-ply when their neighbors got Charmin."

"Alright, I get your point. Calm down. Leave the anger to outside."

The crowd was angry. But they were not violent. It was the anger that wells up inside a person from being looked down upon, cast off, set aside as though inferior. It was the anger that inspires a person to stand up, get out and make their voice heard. The anger was healthy and it breathed a tension that needed release, required an answer. And so they walked on.

When they finally came to rest, the crowd was at the top of a hill in Evermeadow Park overlooking the suburbs and the city. In a final act of preparation, someone had arranged a makeshift stage of shipping crates and plywood. On top stood a podium, a mike, and a couple of speakers. Off to the side a small generator hummed and sparked the stage to life as the crowd gathered round, finding their place amongst the field and trees and street.

"Now that's nigger riggin' if I've ever seen it," said Officer Philips. "Ten bucks says that if we ran those serials they'd turn up stolen."

Officer Reyes looked to Philips but did not respond. He felt bitter, cold, strange and out of place. As he worked to set up the barriers around the park, the words repeated in his head. He heard in Philips another voice, prejudice disguided as jest. It was moderate at best, but somehow that made it even worse.

"How many people you think are out here?" Officer Philips asked.

"Who knows?"

Some said there were hundreds, others thousands, tens of thousands, standing together as one. They had grown as they came and rested in harmony awaiting the words of another amongst them.

From the heart of the crowd a man moved forward with a simple disposition. His walk was matter-of-fact. His face filled with immense joy and purpose. And his heart raced with a sizeable thunder that seemed to leap out before him like an advancing guard. The crowd parted as he walked, making way for their spokesman, thier prophet, thier voice.

Stepping up to the podium, he looked out across the vastitude and smiled.

"Look at this guy, some MLK wannabe," said Officer Philips, squinting his eyes for a better look.

He was neither young, nor old. He was not a politician, though his words traveled with moral climate beyond the weathered masses to the doorsteps of justice. For when he spoke it was like honey. When he yelled it was like thunder.

As he breathed to speak, the crowd died down and all that could be heard was the slow hum of the generator. Officer Reyes leaned over the barricade with an odd sense of expectation.

"Brothers and Sisters, Mothers and Fathers, today you have joined in a march that began at the dawn of civilization. We stand gathered here not as an angry mob, but as a nation in need. This is not an invasion, but an invitation. An invitation to take part in the most significant advancement in the history of our great nation.

The crowd responded with applause and cheers.

"We live in a time of great responsibility, faced with many challenges. Our greatest enemies are not those with guns or weapons of mass destruction. Our greatest enemies are apathy, fear, and distrust.

Applause.

"These sentiments are being spread through every medium conceivable. They are fed like sugar to our young, our children. They are fed to us like sweet wine which devours from within.

From the crowd came Yes and Amen.

"From these sentiments come their fruits, which are the continuation of our mutual disassociation; unspoken segregation and racial prejudices.

"Are we a nation united beneath the banners of freedom and opportunity? Or are we divided along lines of race, religion, and income?

"Sisters, Brothers, Mothers, Fathers, we are a nation in constant transition. We choose to embrace our cultural evolution, to encourage its development in benefit to all, or else be devoured in its wake.

Yes. Amen.

"The search for equality begins today in the way in which we view one another. For what is most evident, is the separation amongst the poor according to the color of our own skin. We must be diligent in our pursuit of justice, to remove the dividing lines which separate us. We must remind ourselves, that poverty and injustice are not limited to one race, one sect, one color. We must remind ourselves that happiness is not equated to wealth.

An uproar. The man stepped closer to the mike, his voice rising.

"The health of a nation must not be measured by the wealth of its rich, but by the opportunity of its poor.

Louder. Yes. Amen.

"We must no longer allow the banners of freedom and democracy to be waved as excuses for terror and tyranny.

"There are those who have robbed our nation of its rights, who have plundered our great nation's trust in the pursuit of greed, who have squandered our children's inheritance as they pillage our neighbor's.

The response from the crowd was deafening.

"If we are to save our nation, then we must not be afraid. WE MUST STAND!

He was yelling now. The sound of his voice boomed from his lips, beyond the mike, beyond the speakers, beyond the crowd and down into the city.

"Here we go," said Officer Philips, "it's I have a dream all over again."

"Shut the fuck up, Randy."

"WE MUST STAND for a nation that will not pawn off its young in expense for its fears!

YES! AMEN!

"WE MUST STAND in defense of our freedoms and liberties, our hopes and our dreams!

"WE MUST STAND in affront to leaders that lie, cheat and steal in support of those which do the same!

And for a moment it was as though heaven and earth stood still, as he paused and came forward one last time to the mike. His voice still booming, though settled from its thunder. Officer Reyes leaned even further trying not to miss a word.

"Mothers, Fathers, Sisters, Brothers, we seek not charity but change. We aspire to virtue in the stead of violence. And as we continue on this march, as it has continued before us, we must not denigrate our goals by succumbing to violent whims. Though the axe may fall at our necks, we must stand firm in our benevolence, lest we justify...

Silence.

The man had been blown back from the mike as though thrust by the hand of God.

At first no one moved, no one spoke. Then, with eyes wide and hands outstretched, fear surged through the crowd like a shockwave. Screaming, yelling, falling, running, the crowd broke apart and trampled its hopes beneath its retreat. Mothers clutched children to their breasts. Men scrambled over each other to escape their darkest fear.

"Holy Fuck!" yelled Officer Philips. "Reyes, call for backup."

But Officer Martin Reyes could not hear him. He was already running toward the center, the apex. His heart racing, his mind ablaze with protocol and procedure. When the shot had been fired he bolted from his position, scanning the horizon in search of a gun, a glimpse, a glimmer of a face that might be responsible.

No one heard the shot. No one saw where it came from.

When he finally came to the podium, Officer martin Reyes found that not one single person had stopped ot help the man. He kneeled beside him, boots resting in blood as he looked about to ensure that they were safe. A second later he pressed his hand against the wound to stop the bleeding, but blood kept pouring out, pumping between his fingers onto the earth below.

The man's eyes were full of fear and pain, face flush, lips red with his own blood. Arms outstretched and lifeless, he looked to Officer Reyes and smiled. "It's okay, Brother. They can't kill hope."

On the news that evening the entire broadcast was focused on the death, MAN SHOT DURING SPEECH.

But there would be no discussion on the breadth of his actions. No discourse concerning his unifying words. At most, the crowd was reduced to images their flight, his importance limited to the odd circumstances of his death.

That night Officer martin Reyes sat in bed unable to sleep, watching footage and memories blend as he wept for reasons unknown.

Across town, Officer Randolf Philips hugged his wife, tucked his children into bed, and drank a bottle of beer.

And as darkness settled over the city, shadow reclaimed the light of dreams, for there would be no justice; the poor would be poor, divided and uncertain, hidden beneath dim, lit streets as death walks amongst them.