Shades of Blue

By Demetrius Jefferson

“It’s not socialism, if it’s what the people want”, said The President-Elect to endless cheers. “That makes it populism..."

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665553711

Demetrius Jefferson

In 2015, following his high school graduation, Demetrius Jefferson decided to pursue his love affair with writing instead of going directly to university. The seven years that followed have been a whirlwind. Though he still hears the beckoning call of a Law and Politics program, finding success as a writer is his foremost desire. In 2017, Dreams was his debut work. Shades of Blue, his sophomore novel, was such a passion project because he found the ability to intertwine his love of storytelling with his adoration of public policy. This book manages to be relevant for today yet ahead of its time. It reaffirms what we all know so well that love, politics and society at large is merely an inheritance from generation to generation, with the younger having to decide which things to keep, maintain, transform or totally do away with.

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© 2022 Demetrius Jefferson. All rights reserved.

Cover by Sydney Price

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/02/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-5372-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-5370-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-5371-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022903980

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Rage Pays

The Great Progressive

America’s Playground

Primary Colors

An Unwavering Platform

Fighting Browning Was Fun

FDR Would Be Proud

This is MY Legacy

America v. Cuba

Midpoint

Spanish Guitar

The Revolution Consumes Everyone

We have a two party system: the Democratic party, which is a party of no ideas, and the Republican party, which is a party of bad ideas.

-Lewis Black

RAGE PAYS

I HAD ZERO INTENTIONS of tolerating their bullshit one more second. Last night, exceeded the breaking point after months of tongue biting and moving the red line. For weeks, the three of us prepared for the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner. I squandered full days networking, planning and preparing. I was told the night before the event at my birthday party that my ticket had been given away. Malik Evans had been my one and only friend since we were twelve years old. We met in Cary, N.C. in one the state’s most celebrated private schools. We bonded heavily and crafted plans for inquisitions that would lead to world domination. For the next nine years we moved in unison. Malik and I navigated our entire way through high school together and we outlined in great detail what would follow after.

Malik’s parents were impressive, to say the least. At the time of Malik’s birth, his mother Kaycee Lawson-Evans was the Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives. She then served as a two term mayor of Raleigh, N.C. and was immediately succeeded by her husband, Malik’s father, Donovan Evans. He also governed the capitol city for four years. Eleven months after Mr. Evans was poised to begin his tenure as mayor, Malik’s mother won the North Carolina Gubernatorial Race. Following previous formula, she held the position as North Carolina’s governor for a term and the then First Gentlemen, followed suit. Combined the Evans had more than two decades in elected office. All of Malik’s life they maintained high profile positions in North Carolina.

The attention Malik received clashed with his personality often. He was the sheepish type. His parents’ status followed him always, as did the zest for law and politics. It’s my honest assessment, Malik handled the surrounding attention admirably. He had pride in what his parents were able to achieve, and it certainly made him well liked and sought after. There was never a second Malik wasn’t humble while also being cognitive of what was expected of him because of who his parents were. Our conjoinment actually began while having a group discussions in civics during an election. The entire class, our teacher and the ninth grade administrator, watched with bated breath as he offered his opinions on roaming subjects. Malik had control of the temperature in the room. Everyone kept themselves quiet and focused as if this twelve year old was going to break news or offer insider information and analysis. Each eye that attached themselves to him raised his anxiety. Our teacher made himself a novelty when he deferred to a child and asked him to make predictions up and down the ballot. When Malik’s turn to contribute to the conversation came around again, he choked. His eyes swelled. The veins in his neck and forehead were visible from across the room. The watching eyes were still on him, but they were frightened opposed to the thrill they showed moments earlier. I did the only thing I could think of. I got him out of the room and went through his book bag for his asthma inhaler.

The year of our high school graduation was also the final year of the Evans Administration Pt. II. Mr. Evans enjoyed high popularity in the Tar Heel State and was being mentioned as a possible Presidential Candidate in the coming election, so was Mrs. Lawson-Evans.

For six years, I was fortunate spend to nights at the Governor’s Mansion, go to holiday parties and get a first-person view of what life was like at it’s very best. Malik invited me over any time his parents were busy which was often. His mother and father became second parents to me. They treated me like a son and I revered them a great deal. It hurt me as if I too were an Evans, when the United States Department of Justice notified both current and former Governor Evans that a grand jury indicted them both on eleven counts of racketeering, wire fraud, conspiracy, misuse of public office for personal gain, witness tampering, obstruction of justice and several other public corruption charges.

The DOJ rolled out a robust case stemming from a decade long FBI Investigation. They alleged the Evans used their elected titles to make their consulting firm more successful. The thirty page indictment first published by the Charlotte Observer, highlighted the eight years where one of the Evans held no office. This being the four years while Mr. Evans was a private citizen during his wife’s mayoral regime, and the four years of civilian life she enjoyed while he was Governor. During both periods, where one Evans out of power he/she was the director of Evans Solutions, a consulting and lobbying firm for candidates seeking office and interests groups looking to bolster legislation in their favor, exclusively in the state that gave earth Krispy Kreme. The Justice Department outlined a muscular case about the clients who contracted the firm for aid in campaigns. Seventeen clients hired them in pursuit of seats in both The North Carolina and The United States House and Senate. One hundred percent of their clients went on to win their race, some in major national upsets. Before a grand jury, a secret witness, alleged the Evans gave sensitive information and state analytics to their clients leveraging each election.

Unknown Witness 02 went on to accuse the pair of withholding funds from welfare, schools, policing, and public works programs in the heat of elections where the challenger was a client of Evans Solutions, creating a narrative the incumbent was failing their constituents. On the lobbyist side, the government asserted that the lobbying clientele paid inflated prices, in some cases twenty times the estimate of comparable firms for consulting on sought legislation. The clients who paid for lobbying services also enjoyed a one hundred percent success rate with all of their proposals turning into law.

This news torpedoed and engulfed them. Malik took it very hard. The mansion he spent all of his teenage years in, became his prison. The attention he masterfully spent time shying away from took on another life and chased him with haste. He had grown accustomed to constant questions, seeing his parents on television, and being a party to stressful conversations, but it struck a much different tone with the implications of criminal activity. Mr. Evans’ last year as governor was no cake walk either. He was denied requests to address a joint session of the North Carolina legislature. He was plagued by calls for his resignation, impeachment and prosecution. The entire year was a lame duck session for him. Malik was a zombie. He spent his last year of high school hiding from his shadow. Spring break, prom night, senior ditch day, and graduation we sat in his bedroom obliterating armed forces, violently evading arrest and living as an outlaw in the old west on PlayStation.

The nastiness and unknown outcome continued even after the next governor was elected and sworn in. It dragged well into our freshman year of college. I was accepted to a full ride at Columbia University and Malik became the third generation of both his parents’ family to attend St. John. We had schemed about moving to the city for years, and the escapades we would have studying law and political science together. When the time arrived, the dark cloud over Malik’s head followed him. Something about being introduced to our overwhelming new home coupled with our complete independence, school work, and the rumors swarming over his parents, Malik slid into a depression and found himself even more docile.

This is not how things were to supposed to go, Malik cried. Mom would be president now. I would not be walking around holding my head in shame. We had plans.

In a conclusion that could only happen in American politics, Unknown Witness 02 had his identity revealed and was subsequently indicted, charged, convicted, and imprisoned for perjury, lying to federal investigators, falsifying documents and obstruction of justice. All charges against the Evans were dropped and the pendulum swung completely in their favor. The Evans and Evans Solutions filed a civil lawsuit against the Department of Justice and The Federal Bureau of Investigation.

They claimed the government conducted a ten-year long investigation, tarnished the reputations of two well respected public servants with public accusations, hamstrung the final year of a gubernatorial administration, and bankrupted a successful business, all bed rocked on false testimony from a former political opponent who himself recanted and apologized. The Evans claimed that the intention of the prosecution was to quash a Presidential bid from either Evans. A federal judge scolded the government for hiding behind the indictment process, appearing to conduct a corrupt investigation where the star witness was a political adversary, and adversely affecting politics and elections. The Evans were given their good name back along with a substantial settlement.

From there on, the New York City dream we had all throughout high school finally manifested. I saw Malik become a completely different person. He opened himself back up to joy. We moved about through the city, school, and life in general happily without hesitation. Our sophomore and junior years of college were majestic. We both made the Deans List at our schools every semester and we made tons of inroads and connections within the party through organizing and volunteering as much as we humanly could.

There were no flaws in our days, until our senior year. Mr. Evans called Malik and asked him for a favor. In Springfield, yet another political scandal was snowballing and starting to torch everything in its path. The former Attorney General of Illinois, Ebony Spencer, was being charged by the very institution she led for eight years. After leaving office, she went into the private sector as a criminal defense attorney. Mrs. Spencer only took high profile clients and she had the second highest retainer fee in America. According to the criminal complaint, the former Attorney General was able to secure sweetheart deals, sentence reductions, and have charges vacated because of her close ties to the Illinois prosecutors. It was asserted that murderers, white collar offenders, and dishonorable politicians were able to divert justice because of the corrupt connections Ebony Spencer maintained with her former employer. Malik’s parents were friends of Mr. and Mrs. Spencer. They too attended their alma mater St. John University and being high office holders in the party kept them in each others orbit. Javonte Spencer was taking his mom’s battle the worst. It was requested of Malik that he guide Javonte through the tough time. Because Malik had recently experienced similar complications and because Javonte was living in New York and going to college, their parents assumed it made sense.

From the moment Javonte became a factor he was a problem. He became dependent on Malik for normal functions almost over night. From our first conversation Javonte and I rubbed each other the wrong way. We immediately established it would be impossible to be friends going forward.

Confrontation became inevitable when Malik suggested Javonte move into the vacant bedroom we had. I did not enjoy talking to him, so living with him made me understandably uneasy. Javonte had no talents except for an unrelenting ability to nitpick the most minute details and be genuinely shocked once he had you enraged. On multiple occasions, I overheard Javonte remark to Malik that he was afraid of me. He felt that my quick temper was cause for concern. Javonte expressed fears about being in the apartment with me when Malik was not present. I did not care at all that Javonte disliked me, quite contrarily I enjoyed the fact that he was uncomfortable with me. The incivility between the two of us was starting to conflict Malik. After attempts to moderate, mediate and lower the volume of our disagreements Malik stopped completely and would disappear into thin air the moment our interactions signaled a pending argument.

The night of the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, I walked around our apartment with my blood damn near boiling. I looked forward to this outing for a considerable time and I did a million small things to make sure it would a night that would create lifelong memories. With less than twenty four hours notice I was told that I was no longer going because.

Vonte doesn’t think he will have a good time if you both go, Malik said. We are sure the two of you will spend the entire night arguing.

That was the full conversation. Malik and I went to this dinner four years in a row together, once with his parents before we moved to the city for college, and every year afterwards. To this day,