Razing The Ghetto - Blue Cities, Inner City Kingpins, And The Holy Crusade Of Donald Trump

Pharoah Jones was the king of Anacostia, the Big Man on the street, crewe leader, godfather of the inner city.  He had risen from minor gofer to Lafarge Evans, longtime boss of the nastiest, most violent, most untamed ghetto of Washington, DC. to the top of the crime pyramid. 

'Imagine that', he said to a group of homeboys gathered on the stoop of A block of the Frederick Douglass Homes, Washington's biggest project, a city within a city, ground zero for Jones' Fentanyl, prostitution, and extortion business, an enterprise netting millions.  

He was untouchable, given a bye by the police, in an understanding partnership with the Mayor and the City Councilmember from Ward 8, and friends with the Washington liberal establishment for whom he was the black man, sentient, intelligent being of the forest transplanted but ascendent, a true expression of street culture. 

During the halcyon years of the Biden administration, Pharoah had expanded his various businesses manyfold. He extended his Fentanyl operation to Baltimore and Richmond, made sweet deals with the Obregon Mexican cartel for wholesale pricing in return for volume, ran prostitution rings not only east of the Anacostia but on Capitol Hill, and had renascent cooperation agreements with the Jamaican posses to distribute crack cocaine which, thanks to that understanding, was having a Washington rebirth. 

Pharoah Jones was indeed the Godfather of Anacostia just as Frank Lucas had been in Harlem a few decades earlier.  He was street smart, politically savvy, and generous when it mattered.  Police captains, judges, municipal officials, federal law enforcement, and Congressmen were in his pocket

He was able to exert and maintain influence, like Frank Lucas, thanks to his generosity and brutal intimidation.  Those in his pay who began to have doubts were schooled, and schooled in no uncertain terms.  Their houses were torched, cars disappeared, and unequivocal warnings clipped to their pillows. 

Little of this violent intimidation was needed during the Biden years which were among the most congenial he and the ghetto had ever known.  DC police were withdrawn from the streets of Anacostia after George Floyd; and in the interest of community policing and black rights, federal intervention was unknown, and the streets of the neighborhood were his and his alone. 

In the Biden years black idolatry reached unheard of proportions.  Jones was feted by the Mayor as 'a man who has dedicated his whole life to black cultural integrity, the final end to racism, Jim Crow, and the legacy of slavery, and the historic ascendancy of the black man to the highest pinnacle of American society'. 

The white progressive establishment applauded in unison, and featured Jones in their revisionist views of cultural history.  This was the black man of the new millennia. 

This all came to a quick and abrupt end with the election of Donald Trump who vowed to clean up Washington and make the Nation's Capital a model of crime-free, trash-free, and homeless-free America.  ICE, DEA, and the National Guard were sent in to Anacostia, Brentwood, and the other morally vacuous slums of the city and began to round up everyone in sight in this neo-Puritan sweep. 

Jones was unmoved.  This President for all his Sturm und Drang could be had just like the foundering, blubbering, incompetent Biden; and in a closed door meeting with the Mayor he concluded an 'Agreement of Defiance' according to which neither the sovereignty of city nor the integrity of the inner city would be violated.  The city and its neighborhoods would stand strong against fascism and the storm troopers of Donald Trump. 

It was a canny, heady mix- racism and sovereignty - and both the Mayor and Jones were sure that it would halt the Trump juggernaut in its tracks.

Both were defiant. The Mayor chose DC Independence Day, the day the District gained some measure of political autonomy and distance from its Congressional overseers to speak against the armed insults of Trump

Today we celebrate the freedom and independence of the District of Columbia from its plantation overseers in Congress who have for far too long treated our city as their cotton fields and our citizens as their slaves.  This will not stand. Statehood will be ours!

The crowd assembled by City Hall to hear the Mayor cheered with loud applause.  This was what they wanted to hear -  resounding defiance of the white man, a rejection of his supremacy, arrogance, and oppression and a commitment to black power.

Pharoah Jones who had been invited by the Mayor to share the podium with her was no less eloquent. Standing tall, and surrounded by his bodyguards looking much like Papa Doc's Tonton Macoute and Louis Farrakan's black tigers, he began

Ain't no way that honky goin' fuck with us, no way.  We black folk standin' proud against that Simon Legree, that racist muthafucka who say he goin' come into our neighborhoods.  Well, we solid, we strong, we black, and we proud, and that nig-er hater ain't comin' within a light year of us. 

The Mayor winced at the language, the 'Bama accent, the ad hominem references to the President of the United States, but that was part of the 'Agreement of Defiance'.  Jones was to take care of the ghetto, she would take care of the city, and together they would stand firm against the Gestapo storm troopers of the White House. 

'I'll fix this', said Pharoah to his lieutenants after his speech.  'That muthafucka gwine listen', and so it was that he sent his avant garde across the Anacostia to official Washington, to Homeland Security and the FBI.  The wealth of Croesus was offered and refused.  No respect was paid, no homage rendered.  To these newcomers Pharoah and his legation were just black men who were not in prison.

Not only that, Pharoah's slum, now out in the open, became a target for the purges of the city; and before the legation had returned to the projects, Homeland Security and FBI agents were already there handcuffing Fentanyl dealers and throwing them in the back of paddy wagons.

'Do you know who I am?', shouted Sha-Kwanda Evans, counsellor to Jones and emissary to Congressman X, faithful supporter and lifelong friend of the ghetto., to an FBI agent.  

'I don't give a flying fuck who you are, nig-er', said the agent in body armor and mask and threw him in the van. 

When the Mayor heard of the assault, she was outraged and incensed, and went public with her anger and defiance.  She went straight to the White House and demanded an explanation, but the President who saws a photo opportunity, welcomed her into the Oval Office and treated her with treacly, smarmy compliments; and with a wave of his hand sent her 'back to where she belongs'. 

With the Mayor humiliated, dismissed, and politically neutered, Trump ordered his agents to arrest Pharoah Jones, and in short measure had him behind bars, indicted, and awaiting trial for every felony under the sun. 

Anacostia erupted of course, with the remnants of Black Lives Matter leading the demonstrations, but Trump paid it no mind.  Anacostia meant nothing to him but a pestilential slum to be razed, and as far as the Mayor was concerned, she would be brought to heel in short order - she and her corrupt counterparts in Chicago and Portland, cities next on the President's hit list.