Jamison remembered that moment in the hallway with his seven
th-grade history teacher the morning he got the call that Ras was being released from jail. He knew that it was his work, his belief in his friend, dedication to finding any way he could to support him and shine a light on the injustice for all to see, that had led to Ras’s release. The news story on Fox went viral like every other video of Jamison. The story and copies of police reports Jamison had left at the news station were picked up by the Associated Press, and soon every major outlet in the nation had a story about the names missing from Ras’s police report. Every article had its angle. Some argued police brutality. Some for Ras’s right to practice his religion. There were even the conspiracy theorists who felt the entire case was just the government’s way of sending a message to militant men like Ras. So many voices. A threat of the Georgia Supreme Court getting involved. The local court had to act.
When Ras was released from the jailhouse later that morning, there was a swarm of local reporters, journalists, bloggers, protest groups, and plain old nosey folk waiting to hear what he had to say about his arrest. Who was he fighting? How would he fight back? And what would he do next? There were folks in Free Ras T-shirts and others handing out handbills with www.freeras.com printed on the back. There was an Internet campaign. A fund. Followers. Fans. Stringy-haired white women who’d vowed to name their children after this man. Stringy-haired black women who vowed to have children with this man. All aligning themselves with the likes of Mumia Abu Jamal, Fred Hampton, and even Malcolm X.
His lawyer pulled him to a podium where open ears were waiting to hear Ras’s first wise words.
Jamison stood toward the side of the crowd with Leaf looking on.
“You think he has any idea what all of these people want from him?” Leaf asked Jamison.
“Yeah, he does. And I know Ras—he’ll give it to them,” Jamison answered as the crowd began to cheer, “No justice, no peace!”
Following revolutionary etiquette, Ras began pounding his fist at the podium. The crowd was enlivened and the chanting grew louder as supporters closed in tighter around the podium.
By then, Jamison and Leaf had already put together the pieces of the puzzle of Ras’s arrest. Everything Ras had told Jamison was true. There were evil eyes all over that scholarship program. Even with Ras’s release, suddenly none of the basketball players would talk to him again. And Jamison’s biggest backers had made calls to his office to say they would pull out their dollars if the mayor did business with Ras. The siding with one team or the other was par for the course for a man whose main job was signing contracts, but the pressure made it clear the message was coming from somewhere up top. Keet was clear about that. Jamison just needed to figure out who it was.
“What I’m about to say isn’t for anyone standing out here,” Ras said when the crowd quieted. “Because if you’re out here, you recognize truth. You know I stand for truth. You support the truth.”
The crowd began chanting “truth,” and Ras waited until the noise petered off.
“This message is for everyone at home. For those of you who are still trying to understand what is really happening here. I want you to know this is a war. A war these people are fighting against our children. Against our black children. Against our poor children. This isn’t about them trying to lock Ras up. This is about them trying to lock your children out. Out of this process. You ever wonder why in nations like Demark and Germany and Brazil and Finland, a college education is free, but in this nation, the most wealthy nation in the world, poor children are either denied a college education because they don’t have the money or they’re forced into massive student loan debt they’ll be paying off for the rest of their lives just to get a decent job? Why? It’s because more and more in order to get somewhere in this country, you need a college education. If you don’t have one, you can forget it. And if you don’t have one they approve of, you can forget it. The system is forcing you out. Forcing us out. Forcing our children out. I, Glenn Roberson, was just trying to do my part to stop the educational caste system in this country. That’s why I ended up here. Don’t let anyone else tell you anything different. Look it up online. Find out the facts before you fall for the okeydokey. That’s what they want you to do.”
Ras threw up the peace sign and attempted to step back from the podium, but people started yelling questions. The loudest was from Alina Blue, who was up front with her new camera crew.
“Ras, what do you want the people to do?” she asked. “What can they do to help you?”
Ras looked over the crowd as if he hadn’t considered that someone would ask that very obvious question (though he had). Then he refocused and looked into Alina’s camera, which was pointed at him.
“Go into your neighborhood and find a kid and make sure he knows what’s coming. Make sure he’s prepared,” he said. “If he’s not prepared, he’ll lose for sure. And stop giving your money to these churches. If each of you donated your ten percent to a local scholarship fund to make sure the kids in your communities went to college, it would be a different place in four years. Put your money where your mouth is. Back your prayers for change with action.”
The crowd dispersed quickly when Ras was stuffed into the back of his lawyer’s black minivan. A few reporters lingered to ask Jamison questions about his support of Glenn Roberson and he engaged them with planned responses about seeking the truth no matter how many feathers he’d ruffled. He made it clear that the situation with Ras was far from over. While Ras couldn’t face any charges concerning the guns because he had a license and there weren’t any laws in the state of Georgia that stated how many guns he could actually own, he still faced felony charges for the marijuana and the police department still hadn’t released the names of the other three officers involved in the arrest. When asked if the mayor’s office would continue to follow the case, Jamison said it was his job to ensure the safety of Atlanta residents, so yes, he would.
Emmit was waiting beside Jamison’s car. Standing up straight with a cell phone in his hand.
“Something about this car and parking lots,” Jamison said, approaching Emmit with a grin. He’d already realized that Emmit was somehow connected to Ras’s arrest and knew once he spoke out on the news, Emmit would come around with one of his warnings.
“Better to have people meet you here than at night in your bedroom, you think?” Emmit replied darkly, but then he quickly smiled. “Can’t be too safe from the forces of evil.”
“That’s why I’m wearing a cape.”
Emmit looked over Jamison’s shoulder playfully. “Must be invisible.”
“Just so the bad guys can’t see it.”
The two laughed uneasily.
“You a bad guy?” Jamison asked.
“Nah. I’m an old guy. What they call mature. Experienced.”
“Is that so? I guess that’s why it was so easy for you to kill Dax,” Jamison said.
“Hold up now, son—”
“Don’t call me son!”
“No one knows what happened to him. He played the game. He knew the rules. He broke them,” he said.