CELESTIALS PRESENTS: VOLITION PARK
Chapter I: Humble Beginnings
Living in Stonesville wasn’t for everybody. I believed that with my whole heart even before I was old enough to understand what sex was.
I was reminded of that each time I looked over the wired fence across Chestford Crossing and saw how those privileged kids lived in Strasdale. I noticed and observed their every move; everything from the way they spoke and how their parents spoiled them with affection, to their complete ignorance towards our kind.
When it came to us, their oblivion was inevitable. Almost like it was ingrained in them at birth.
‘Whatever you do, just don’t look over Chestford Crossing,’ was all I could imagine their parents telling them. They treated us like a disease.
Wasn’t nothing but a thing to us though. Stonesville was all we knew. It was everything to us, and all we had love for. Nothing else, no one else.
I remembered the church community center, near the statues in Volition Park. I reminisced about the rallies and food drives, the after school programs. Everything our leaders did for the community was for the youth — for us kids who were yet to understand the significance of standing up for something.
To nurture and to build a generation of young revolutionaries.
JaKar used to call us soldiers.
I remembered all the times he got in trouble for that too.
The world was tired of war. Our leaders knew that, so they taught us that the fight for true freedom didn’t have to be a fight.
JaKar always thought that was just wishful thinking though. I agreed with him.
Fighters. Even if it wasn’t the intention, our leaders raised fighters. Calling us “revolutionaries” was a way of watering it down but JaKar always knew that wasn’t enough to accurately define what we were — who we were.
If we had a scent to identify us by, it’d probably smell like a blacktop. A greenhouse, or maybe a bonfire. We took our passions with us wherever we went, attracting attention like moths to a flame.
Truth is we were full of love, overflowing with life and youthful energy. Brainy school kids with supposedly bright futures populated our streets, but that didn’t stop the state from treating us like a ghost town. The government did all they could for everyone else, and didn’t pay us any mind.
So us Stonesville kids made a statement wherever we were found. A loud one. We knew the state feared our power, it had us feeling like we could take over the world; And the government had better not dare to help us reach that goal in any way. Any more public school grants and our administration would’ve used that money to try to stage a coup. Really.
Why not; we had the bodies, the machinery.
Maybe it was something in the water. We all knew we deserved better, so we did all we could to see better. From food drives and rallies to marching through the streets of other communities. Whatever it was, the message was always the same. Not just equality, but equity.
Unity. How would the world progress if everyone wasn’t on the same page? How did those rigid community barriers help inspire equity? Why did our youth have to live in a shadow of envy because of what the other communities had? Why were the state communities in the western world a carbon copy of what was happening in the eastern world? (By this time, what was formerly known as the European Union had merged to form The Municipality.) We thought we were taking notes from them on what it really meant to unite. In reality we just took on their fears and made them our own, promoting intrastate isolation.
I think unity was JaKar’s favorite word. True unity. That word brought out the best and the worst in him. He often took us to the streets proclaiming a message: ‘intercommunity unity’ was what he would say.
We traveled all throughout Stonesville and some other neighboring communities; the friendly ones who didn’t hesitate to let us in.
Some days we would walk until we couldn’t feel our legs, blisters on the soles of our feet. We loved it though. Not in a masochistic way — we loved it because we knew we were doing our part. To see better.
The real challenge started the day we decided to journey all the way to the Strasdale community across Chestford — the same privileged folk who would wipe us off the face of the earth if they had a button for it.
And so unity; this word was what led us into one of our first tests as young men.
