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“That,” Payne said, “is the winning of hearts and minds, and more than one at a time.”
Payne then glanced over at the television screen.
“Oh, good,” he said. “Looks like it’s showtime! Care to join me in watching all the rally festivities on the video feeds next door?”
VIII
[ ONE ]
North Twenty-ninth and West Arizona Streets
Strawberry Mansion, Philadelphia
Saturday, December 15, 5:40 P.M.
Reverend Josiah Cross, in his signature flowing black robe and white clerical collar, stepped onstage just as the rail-thin Tyrone “King 215” Hooks shouted out the last refrain of his “Beatin’ Down The Man.”
Using the profane language of the street, the rapper’s song preached that they had failed at overcoming the oppression by The Man through peaceful methods and encouraged not only responding in kind in the event that The Man used violence—but also preached instigating it.
The oppression by The Man, according to the hip-hop lyrics, occurred every day in the form of any police action, but particularly a shooting—thus justifying the title and refrain of the song:
“To our brothers the fuckin’ Five-Oh daily rains / Nothin’ but nines to our young brains / We got to get beatin’ beatin’ beatin’ / Get beatin’ down the man!”
The music—mostly a deep bass beat blaring from the pair of heavily amplified speakers on either side of the podium—was replaced by loud applause and cheering from the crowd that packed the streets. Cross estimated there to be at least a thousand people, maybe even a couple of thousand.
Most of those in the crowd appeared to be in their twenties and thirties, about a third of whom were white, with the majority a mix of those with darker complexions.
Directly in front of the stage, facing the crowd and standing shoulder to shoulder, stood a line of a couple dozen people who wore over their coats and sweatshirts the white T-shirts with STOP KILLADELPHIA! in bold lettering on the front and back, the STOP printed in bright red ink and the KILLADELPHIA! in black. A cameraman from a local TV news station, moving slowly in a crouch down the line, captured video of them with Hooks strutting onstage in the background above them.
Hooks, now holding his chromed-mesh microphone triumphantly over his head, took a grand bow as Cross, his robe flowing, swept across the stage toward him.
Cross carried his own microphone and put it close to his mouth as he waved his free arm over his head to draw the crowd’s attention.
He loudly announced, “Let’s give Philly’s favorite hometown artist another big round of applause for that very gifted performance.”
Cross, startling Hooks, then grabbed his outstretched hand and added, “Sisters and brothers, King Two-One-Five!”
Hooks recovered, and did a short celebratory dance that consisted of jumping up and down a few times, and bowed again.
Cross then proceeded to carefully tug him in the direction of the end of the stage. When Hooks felt the tug, but in the excitement of the moment did not initially move, he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his rib cage. He look
ed at Cross, but could not tell if the elbow, hidden from view by Cross’s flowing black garment, had been thrown intentionally or not.
As Hooks hopped down from the stage, Cross quickly swept back across it to the podium and placed his microphone beside the dozen others already there that belonged to the news media. Draped above and behind him, tied across the red faux pagoda roof, there was a white banner emblazoned with the same red and black STOP KILLADELPHIA! as the T-shirts.
Cross gripped the top of the lectern with both hands and quietly scanned the crowd, making eye contact as he did so.
As the people became more quiet, he then leaned forward.
“This, my friends,” he intoned in a booming voice, “is both a very sad day—we mourn those who were killed today and pray for their souls, and”—he paused as there came a wave of people saying “Amen!” then went on—“and it is an uplifting day because all of you have gathered here to help”—he gestured dramatically at the banner behind him—“to Stop Killadelphia!”
The crowd applauded. There were more amens.
Cross waited until the crowd again became quiet, then deeply intoned, “Seventeen thousand! That’s how many citizens of this city have been shot in the last decade! They are our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles—loved ones all. Seventeen thousand in ten years! That equals four of God’s children each day. Four a day, I say!”
Cross then formed an imaginary pistol with his thumb and index finger and, as he repeated “Pow!” two times, mimed firing at the line of people before the stage wearing the STOP KILLADELPHIA! T-shirts.
With the first Pow! the third person from the far end fell to the ground, his arms flailing in dramatic fashion. At the second Pow! a woman at the opposite end of the line dropped to the ground, her arms flailing also in dramatic fashion.
