Melting Pot

by Adam Mayes, Copenhagen, Denmark

"BANGLADESHI?!!?" Rajah screamed.

The other gang-members flinched and edged closer to the fire. They'd not seen him his angry in months.

He stabbed his stubby fingers at the paper. "Do you see what they're writing about us? Do You!? We're not Bangladeshi! We're American! I'm fourth generation!"

"But Raj." A foot soldier who spoke up. Raja thought it was Abdul, but, really it didn’t matter. "We're proud of our heritage. We keep talking about the Motherland and…stuff."

Raja glared at him. "That doesn't matter! It's bad enough that they call us midgets! We're LITTLE PEOPLE! They're profiling us! Trying to set us apart. It's Racist."

Raja stomped across the yard. The paper he was carrying was a broadsheet, and his feet caught the trailing edge. He stumbled, and the paper ripped in his hands. He screamed in frustration, pulled a box over to a set of palettes and scrambled up. "Look at us - we're American's. We're not an invading army. Americans! We're as American as meatballs, as...as Bagels. Hell - we're as American as The Statue of Liberty!" He pointed a small finger at where he assumed it was.

One of the gang looked confused and drew a breath as if to say something, but another nudged him and shook his head.

"That bastard wants it like that, does he? We'll give him profiling."

***

Lacey stood in the old neighbourhood. It was a risk coming back to The Bronx, but she couldn't come without seeing where she escaped from.

She took a deep breath, coughed at the stench until her eyes watered and she thought she was going to be sick, then fitted her nose filters and tried again.

She looked up at the smog cloud - the blackouts had stolen the dull orange glow of her childhood. She looked at the broken rooftops, trying to make out landmarks from her youth but she didn't recognize a thing.

It was a waste of time. The Bronx had been taken from the girl as much as the girl was taken from The Bronx. She turned to go and collided with something. Looking down she saw a midget.

She started to apologize when another barrelled into the from behind, taking her legs out and pitching her backwards. Her head hit the ground with an alarming crack. She kicked out - her heel catching something soft that screamed. She rolled onto her hands and knees, and felt her head spin. She must have landed harder than she thought.

Someone hit her, then another. A third climbed on her back. She felt short, fat fingers press into her ears, another into her nose snapping her filters, which sliced both the invading hand and the lining of her nose. She heard someone cuss; slip the fingers away allowing her to
blow the bloody shards out. Then the hands were on her again.

She gasped for breath; she tried to stand.

But they were on her like rats. The combined weight of the gang forced her down.

There was a crack across the back of her already injured head and everything went black.

When she woke she was tied and gagged. She didn't know what was in her mouth - and she didn't like how it tasted.

She couldn't feel her legs, in fact, nothing below the knee. She tried to turn and see why but her hair was also tied and any movement was agony.

One of the midgets came up to her, grabber her hair and forced her head back. The gag stole her scream, but she coughed and choked.

He looked into her eyes and screamed. "You listen. You listen and remember this. Tell Ranjitsinhji that we're fucking American. Not Bangladeshi - American." He sprayed flecks of spit into her face.

Raja waddled over to a low table and picked up something sharp and metal. In another place she’d have laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation.

But when she saw how the implement was barbed she suddenly couldn't see the humor.

The midget came back. "You're lucky.” He said, scarier now for the calm in his voice. “You get to deliver the message personally."

For the next 3 hours, Lacey couldn't tell why she was lucky at all.

***

Captain Ranjitsinhji stood inside the private ward. He hadn't appreciated this call.

It came as he was about to shoot up and a late night run to the hospital was not on the cards. He didn't care if it was police business. Actually, he cared even less. The bastards had driven him to sticking dirty needles in his veins; let them work out their own shit. His missing wife stared at him from her photo. He put the needle down and grabbed his car keys.

The 50th Precinct had a monopoly on freaks. On his way over, Ranjitsinhji had wagered who was responsible tonight. He hoped it wasn't Cannibals.

***

He stared a mess of a woman.

It wasn't Cannibals.

Her legs were completely hacked up. It was their M.O. But the rest of her…he had to look away. He'd never seen them do anything like this.

She rasped something. He wasn't going to be able to hear from across the room. He was going to have to get up close and personal. He leant in and listened.

"American. He told me...they are American."

Ranjitsinhji stood up. He had no idea what she was talking about. Crazy talk from a Death Midget victim. And they pulled him away from his fix of sprocket for this?

"We'll do all we can, miss," he said, full of mock sympathy and concern. 'Which is absolutely nothing! Damn fool woman walking around The Bronx like a tourist,' he thought, driving home again.

It was about the time the fifth body turned up on White Plains Road - each with the words "We're American" carved on them - that the Captain realized he was in the middle of a public relations war.

And that he was losing.

Indigenous Resistance and the Western Socialist Uprising.

by Jeremiah Liebrecht, San Francisco, CA, USA

Little Big One?

Every time I hear what happened referred to as “The Little Big One”, my blood boils. I am a second generation San Franciscan. My grandparents had my mother there in 2007, stuck it out through the War and Second Depression. My parents lived there up until the pretremors, and moved up to the Sacramento Delta to join like minded socialist groups rallying at the Capital. We were always proud of our counter culture roots, when The City all but disappeared, I lost a lot of family and comrades, it was the biggest tragedy to hit the Revolutionary movement experienced since it was founded in 2035. I almost become violent with rage towards my comrades when I hear someone call the Quake that—it sounds like a joke, and it’s not cute.

Shortly after California’s seceded from the Union, my wife, two daughters and I joined my first cousin, Jorge’s family and a group of comrades to head towards Idaho. We were under-armed, and granted passage out of the state under the Objector’s Act. When we got to the Oregon border, we had to surrender all our weapons except a cleaning knife per adult male, and two Benelli R14 hunting rifles, with 12 rounds per gun. If we came across game, we had to be thrifty. We were also ordered to carry a white flag through Medford. We carefully fished along the random lakes and rivers as we headed to the Klamath Falls rendezvous point. Most fresh water fish were contaminated with mercury and had to be tested before consumption. Luckily, Jorge was a naturalist and his knowledge kept our little traveling clan safe. Our organization had made a trade/labor pact with the Indigenous Resistance Movement that had settled the northern Rockies. From, Boise in the west, to Laramie, Wyoming in the east, to Missoula, Montana and, Spokane in the north.

We knew the most fighting was going on along the southwest Colorado border, and Northwest, Spokane area, mostly from White Power groups. The Indigenous Resistance was born of the ancient American Indian Movement. Most of the Western Socialist Uprising, like my family, are mixed Mexican and Gringo, We had a lot of solidarity movements with the I.R.M. throughout the direct actions against the war, and the mass imprisonment of the non conformists.

What happened at the Klamath Falls train station was reminiscent of the European holocaust my Dad would tell me about. A freight train yard crowded with pacifist mixed-race socialists, being herded by U.S. National Guard for the 15 hour train ride to independent Boise. We were nervous boarding the train. I had the girls sit far forward of the freight car, huddled and hidden under a small Kevlar pancho. There had been a shaky cease fire between the U.S. and the I.R.M. for a few years, since the Union had been enveloped with the fighting along California, and Mexico. They had more or less left us to be victimized by the White Power Militias, who attacked the train relentlessly as we crossed state lines.

Dry River

by zesi, Atlanta, GA, USA

The Rio Grande, the border of Texas and Mexico

The name Trevor Reyes, Border Control glints off his badge in the unbearable sun, unsympathetic to all human life, regardless of lado. His green-blue eyes are the only safe water in sight; he has a Camelback IV keeping him hydrated. Otherwise, he’d be dead and stinking like the viejos he picks up, lucky enough to get through all the border shit, but run dry and ragged like so many of the creeks here. They flooded the Rio with all the water they could find around here; hired a biologist, who, in his supreme rational mind, decided that to make the territory more dangerous and less livable, they needed a river of waste to stay flowing, and the land around to die. It’s only Texas, after all. It’s only Mexico, tambien. Care has been carefully excised from his scientific method, the concerns of human life beyond that of a man beyond humanity. Green should grow in pockets.

Trevor’s badge is what keeps him and the others from being picked up here. Ex-coyotes, gangstas, gangsters, petty thieves, drug runners, and tejanos sin viviendas, como Trevor, whose town has turned into a gashed land, the land cracked deep enough to lose a baby or dog in, hemorrhaging its residents, who would pray at their altars if they still believed in the strength of altars, of gods. “Dios ya se fue,” said Trevor’s mother, and she, too, fue a otro lugar, al norte. At one time when she was little, she’d say, she could cross the border, see her other family, the home language ringing loud in her ears, the home food siting warm in her belly, the home people everywhere, to touch and to watch be. With the coming of la fuerza at the border, their voices became echoes, and with the land dead now, the home language just faintly sounded, and only between her two ears. She sent him a letter, Hijo, she said, I stay in Oklahoma, Hijo, she said, why are you still there?, Hijo, she said, why not move here with me? Hijo, she did not say in ink, but in the faint hum between her ears, don’t you remember me, the music I come from?

Trevor sits, sighs, no dead bodies today, their remains smell likes God’s farts, powerful, lingering. Reconnaissance, maybe they have moved further down the river. This is his favorite, to walk in an abandoned place, the work running in his subconscious, his alert mind contemplating dinner, a new shirt for his date, sex with air conditioning. They can run, but they can’t hide, his commander said and smiled, his gold tooth the same color as his sweating skin. He does not think of his mother here, he does not think of Mexico. He thinks of the border, of himself simultaneously as a cowboy, a vigilante of justice, a gatekeeper. He has never been to Mexico-Mexico, it does not exist at the border’s jointly-controlled no man’s land. He could never go because he could get stuck there, his passport stolen or his body held for ransom. Still, when he was little and the wind was right, the smell of Mexico would go over the river and reach him. But that his been some time now. And even with his mother’s food and her Mexinglish, he knew that there was not the same as here. He has convinced himself of this country being his patria, this Texas, this United States, his for the taking. Like his mother had, like los blancos that had crossed so long ago. While the taste of promised freedom had become bitter, acrid in his mother’s mouth, he ate it all, like a plate of meat and three. Consumed by the hunger, he digested without tasting. Maybe he could marry Brittany, Mexican in that 1/16th of her that is her last name, blonde, perfect, a could-be willing wife, a supplicant to his ambition. Their kids could have his eyes, her skin and pedigree, his smarts. Could live where they want, do what they want, take care of Mommy and Daddy when they get old.


His eyes search for the border language, directional signs, rosaries, shoes, worthless money of their home saying in its silence, come this way, you can get there this way. When he finds it, he pockets it. He searches for the satellite jammers, homemade from computer parts and stolen telecommunication parts, that the smarter ones plant to give themselves some lead time before they meet La Llorona™, the anti-illegal security system. He marks all that he finds on his map, beaming his data back to satellite, the data they’ve been collecting for twenty five years, an ever shifting collection of dots around the Rio’s expanse, moving like the desert this has now become. They joke on both lados and call it the Little Sahara.

He sits down for his lunch, unpacks some shade from his backpack. His alert bracelet sounds. Shit, he mumbles with mustarded bologna crumbs falling out his mouth. Illegals fucking up my lunch.

The Last Black Woman In Brooklyn

by Tasha Hanna, Bushwick, Brooklyn, USA

Bed Stuy, NY

Bush died today...

I SAID Bush died today.

Who ma?

...the forty third president. You know when New York lost the first trade center and America went to hell.

Yes mother, we know. When companies ruled the world through the illuminati, when Brooklyn was invaded by white folk and Bush didn't care about black people.<

Don't mock me.

Would I do that?

I gave birth to your ungrateful behind, the least you could do is listen to me before I go senile.

You're already...

What?! I may have given you your trust fund already,but i'm still on the board, I'll have you out on the street so fast with those "closer nature folk"...

Relax mother I'm just tired.

Tired?! You don't KNOW tired. Taking a 45 min train to school, walking home during the black outs, working 8,9,10 hours works days, two, three jobs. Manually turning on the TV, AC, Physically opening doors...doors with KNOBS for that matter, actually talking to people. pssssht you don't KNOW tired.

But things are better now right? Could you turn down the volume on your headset mother? Your shouting at me and I have a headache...

If you actually listened i wouldn't have to 'shout'. Where'd all the black folks go?

Mother i'm right here.

Chile, you ain't black, you kinda look black if i squinted really hard

{Mumbles}... and you are?

I just miss the darker folk, I shoulda left NY when they said 'the people' were leaving. how you gonna have a migration and leave folks behind?! Even the brown latinos left i'm mean damn...

please watch your language...the grandchildren...and you're not the last black person in brooklyn?

well it sure feels that way

I love you too mother.