Recently in the People’s Republic of Boston there was a terrorist attack, resulting in a man hunt. When a suburban citizen found a loose tarp over his boat and a trace of blood he called the police. For this perilous action much ink has been expended proclaiming him a hero. I read two entire pages of newsprint describing his sedentary heroics. In light of such degradation of the ancient honorific term "hero" with it being applied to disease sufferers and passive military casualties, I have decided to join the fray.

It is a cowardly act really. I would never taunt the ghost of Great Achilles in such an underhanded manner if I was not confident that he, if risen again and stalking the streets of Baltimore, would choose to slack his vengeful bloodlust on the press core before he got around to me. So, in my defense I will now define the fallen hero of the moment, a weekend Harm City casualty in the struggle against The Man.

Paul is a Harm City hero. He is a small, hard-working janitor/parcel pickup clerk who was once stomped by four hood-rats while on the job. He goes through life outweighed, outranked and outnumbered yet still dares to backtalk and walk tall. Paul did not bitch, moan, cry, sue, press charges, or even call out the next day, after he had been stomped out behind the gorilla wall, but kept cleaning that parking lot! Paul is also prone to verbally abusing fat Baltimore City police officers, as well as fat shoplifters, both higher on the food chain than he.

Last but not least Paul gets over on The Man. Paul makes far less getting over on The Man through his petty flaunting of company policy than he does punching that time clock. You see, Paul games the system and gets over not for material gain, but to keep up the struggle, to undermine the Evil World Order, and to send out a ray of hope, like a beacon in the night, for all other lowly janitors to see! In his own small way, Paul is the Janitor Messiah.

Let me set the sacrificial stage.

Paul is one of two janitor/parcel pickup clerks at the busiest supermarket in Harm City, where Big Gus [the dude throwing me around in The Logic of Force photos] works on the night crew. Most of the customers are pedestrians, and they buy a lot of food. This means a bonanza for cabbies and hacks. Hacks are illegal cabbies, entrepreneurs battling The System if you will, thumbing their nose at The Man.

Do not have a heart attack at this ghetto food market during peak hours or you will die! Recently the cabbies, limited by law to one car at a time at the cab stand at parcel pickup, were, as is their habit, crowding the front of the store like hyenas at a kill. The hacks, like jackals, skulked around the fringes. When an ambulance came to pick up a heart attack sufferer the cabbies refused to move and the patient had to be wheeled around them.

This heinous act by the government-licensed cabbies, none of whom are U.S. citizens, seems to have incensed our hero, who, along with his accomplice on the other shift, set up a ride brokerage system with the hacks. Our heroes take a dollar or two for their trouble to arrange for a pickup outside the ring of Nigerian, Pakistani, Sikh, and Ghana-boy cabbies, and help spirit the food purchase past this ring of high-charging government-licensed ghetto invaders.

No one knows what went wrong. But this past weekend a hack and passenger that Paul brokered a deal with had a dispute after they left the property. The passenger came back on Paul and a big ugly scene transpired on Company camera, on Company time. The altercation also came to the attention of the property management outfit that provides security for Cheap Guys Are Us and the other businesses in the strip mall.

Paul and his associate, a handy-capped fellow, who stood boldly between the welfare mothers of West Baltimore and the alien invaders in their yellow machines that have been licensed to fleece these poor women, have been cut from the Cheap Guys Are Us Team and banned from the property by Mall Security.

It might seem a small thing to you, but Paul stood up against The System, The Man, and The Company—even heckling cops on the company payroll when he thought they deserved it—and paid the ultimate modern price. He has been sentenced to Economic Death, has fallen Hector-like before the scythe of Fate.

We will miss you, Paul, and we will never forget the battle you fought at the foot of the gorilla wall, where you fell dustpan in hand.

May you rise phoenix-like from this blow as well.

I will endeavor to search out Paul for an interview.

James, 4/24/2013

Moral Minority Survival at the End of Caucasian Time Paperback