novelnext Chapter 71 Hunger
Chapter 71 Hunger
Chapter 71 Hunger (Total 19600 words published)
An open-air plaza in the west end of Pittsburgh.
This is one of the most racially diverse areas in the city.
On the left side of the street is a traditional white working-class neighborhood, where rows of old brick houses are inhabited by Irish and Polish descendants who have worked in the steel mill for generations.
On the right side of the street is a rental area for African Americans and Latinos, where cheap apartment buildings are crammed with low-income laborers struggling to make a living in the service industry.
Normally, the boundaries of this street are not obvious; people buy groceries at the same supermarket and refuel at the same gas station.
But today, the air is thick with the smell of gunpowder.
The flyers that Cartwright distributed spread throughout the community.
White workers gathered on the street corner, staring suspiciously and hostilely at the other side of the road, clutching leaflets that claimed Leo was going to use their tax money to build a garden across the street.
The young Black men stood on the other side of the steps, their eyes cold and wary.
The rumor they heard was that the white man named Leo was just putting on a show and didn't care about their lives at all. The two groups were separated by a road less than ten meters wide.
Two Pittsburgh Police Department patrol cars were parked not far away, with several officers sitting inside, but they made no move to get out and maintain order.
They are waiting.
Waiting for conflict to erupt, waiting for someone to throw the first bottle, waiting for Leo's campaign rally to turn into a racial riot.
If fighting breaks out here, tomorrow's headlines will nail Leo to the pillory of shame for a radical candidate who sparked community riots.
Leo stood on the makeshift wooden crate platform, wearing only an ordinary work shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
Frank stood below the stage with several burly union members, their expressions tense as they watched their surroundings, ready to respond to any unexpected situations.
Sarah was live-streaming from behind, her hands trembling slightly as the hostility in the room seemed almost tangible.
"Good afternoon, everyone." Leo's voice came through a cheap megaphone, crackling with static. "I'm here today to talk to you about our future."
"future?"
A shrill laugh immediately rang out from the crowd.
A white man in a leather jacket with a burly face pushed his way to the front.
He was a professional agitator specifically hired by Cartwright's team.
"Stop making empty promises, Wallace!" the man yelled, pointing at Leo's nose. "We just want to know one thing! Whose side are you on?"
His voice was so loud that it even drowned out Leo's megaphone.
"Are you planning to help us hardworking white people get our jobs back, or are you going to use our hard-earned money to support those lazy bums across the street who do absolutely no work?"
This sentence was like a spark thrown into a pile of dry wood.
The white crowd began to murmur, with someone loudly echoing, "Yes! Explain yourself!"
The Black residents across the street were also enraged, and someone started yelling back, "Who are you calling a lazybones? Get back in your trailer!"
The pushing and shoving began.
The instigator looked at Leo smugly; he had accomplished his mission.
No matter how Leo answers this question, it will lead to a dead end.
Taking sides is tantamount to division.
Not answering is weakness.
Leo looked at the crowd below the stage, which was about to spiral out of control, and at the faces that were contorted with anger.
Roosevelt's voice immediately rang out.
"Don't fall into this trap of binary opposition, Leo."
"A hundred years ago, Southern plantation owners did just that. When poor white sharecroppers and black slaves wanted to unite because of hunger, they threw this bone at them."
"Racism has never been a simple emotion; it is a political tool used by oligarchs to divide the lower classes."
"Tell them the truth."
Roosevelt's voice was as loud and clear as a bell.
"Tell them that their suffering is not because of the skin color of their neighbors, but because of the greed of those at the top."
"Take their eyes off each other and make them look up."
Leo took a deep breath.
He made a gesture.
He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out two crumpled pieces of paper.
Those were props he had prepared in advance.
"Quiet!"
Leo yelled into the microphone, using the voice he'd honed on the construction site.
The crowd quieted down a little.
Leo held up the note in his left hand.
"This is Mike Kowalski's payslip."
He pointed to Frank in the audience. Frank was stunned, not expecting Leo to take his nephew's payslip.
"Mike is a white man, 35 years old, a steelworker. He works ten hours a day in a high-temperature workshop, and his hands are covered with burn scars."
"This is his take-home pay from last month: two thousand two hundred dollars."
Leo read the number aloud.
Then, he held up the note in his right hand.
"This is David Jackson's payslip."
He looked across the street at a Black sanitation worker standing on the edge of the crowd; he was a friend he had met at the barbershop.
"David is a Black man, forty years old, who works as a cleaner in an office building downtown. He has to get up at four in the morning every day to clean the toilets in the entire building and doesn't finish until eight in the evening."
"This is his take-home pay from last month: $1,800."
Leo held the two sheets high and placed them side by side.
"Mike, tell me, do you think David stole your job? Does he have an easier job than you? Does he get paid more than you?"
He then turned to the other side.
"David, do you think Mike has any privileges you don't? Can he afford his daughter's hospital bills? Can he afford the mortgage?"
The scene was deathly silent.
The agitator opened his mouth as if to speak, but Leo didn't give him a chance.
Look at these two numbers!
Leo waved the two pieces of paper.
"What do they have in common? Their only thing in common is that they're low!"
"So poor you can't afford to support a family! So poor you're afraid to get sick! So poor it makes a grown man want to cry when he looks at the bills in the middle of the night!"
"Hunger has no color!"
Poverty knows no distinction between right and wrong!
"When your stomach rumbles, it doesn't ask if you're Irish or African! When the cold wind blows through your drafty windows, it doesn't give way just because you're white!"
Leo turned around abruptly and pointed into the distance.
That's in the direction of downtown Pittsburgh, where the towering glass curtain wall building of Morganfield Industries reflects a dazzling golden light in the setting sun.
"When you're here, hating and shoving each other over a few slices of bread, over who got a little more perk."
"Do you know what the people living on the top floor of that building are doing?"
Leo's voice turned icy cold.
"They were drinking champagne that cost hundreds of dollars a bottle, looking down at us and laughing."
"They laughed at our stupidity."
"They mocked us, saying we were like a pack of dogs in a cage. When our owner threw us a bone, we tore at each other, forgetting to bite the person holding the bone!"
"What they fear most is neither Black people nor white people."
"What they fear most is us standing together!"
"What they feared most was that Mike and David would discover that their enemy was the same one!"
Leo stepped down from the podium and walked directly into the crowd.
The white workers and black residents, who had been on the verge of conflict, made way for him.
Leo stood in front of the instigator.
The burly man with a face full of scars actually took a step back instinctively under Leo's furious gaze.
"You're asking me which side I'm on?"
Leo stared into his eyes.
"I stand on the side of those who are exploited."
"I'm on the side of those who can't afford the medicine."
"I stand on the side of wanting to live like a human being."
"The one who steals your future is not your black neighbor next door, nor the Mexican immigrant who took your job."
Leo turned around and looked around at everyone.
"It's the person who closed the factory for profit!"
"It's the person who cut benefits to boost the stock price!"
"It's about class!"
At that moment, there was no sound in the square.
People looked at Leo, at the two pay slips he was still clutching tightly in his hand.
Those eyes, blinded by racial hatred, began to clear.
The primal instincts awakened by the "dog whistle" were replaced by a deeper, more painful, and more real class resonance.
Mike, the white man, glanced at David, the black man opposite him.
He saw the same helplessness in David's tired face as he saw in himself.
Those are the marks left by the crushing weight of life.
Those are traces of our kind.
I don't know who started it.
Maybe it was Frank, maybe it was the black barber.
Applause erupted.
At first, it was sparse and hesitant.
But soon, the applause spread like wildfire throughout the entire square.
The white people were clapping, and the black people were clapping.
They no longer viewed each other with hostility; their eyes were all focused on the young man standing in the middle of the road.
The instigator, seeing the change in the atmosphere around him, immediately realized that things were not going well.
He tried to incite again: "Don't listen to his nonsense! He's just a—"
"Shut up!"
A white welder standing next to him grabbed him by the collar.
"Get out! You're not welcome here!"
"Get out!"
The surrounding workers roared in anger.
The once aggressive instigator was pushed and shoved by the angry crowd and fled the scene in a disheveled state.
The police officers in the police car exchanged glances and silently rolled up their windows.
The riots they had anticipated did not occur.
What happened was something else that made them even more uneasy.
Leo stood in the middle of the crowd, panting heavily.
That speech had exhausted all his strength.
But he won.
He used the most classic class narrative and the most straightforward analysis of interests to temporarily suppress the flames of racism.
He not only held the position, but he also pushed the front line forward.
He made these people understand a principle: in this quagmire, only by uniting and climbing upwards can there be a glimmer of hope.
Roosevelt's voice echoed softly in his mind.
"Well done, son."
"You have found the only spell that can break the curse."
"Now, Cartwright's second move has also failed."
"Get ready, he only has one card left in his hand."