[b]Vancouver[/b]

"Everybody get on the fucking ground!"

The mid-afternoon silence at the First Federal Bank shattered when the three gunmen rushed through the door, the robber in the lead shouting through a bandanna covered face. To his right a small man wearing a baseball cap, a black bandanna, and sunglasses carried a shotgun and fired it into the air. The half dozen people queued in the three teller lines yelled in shock. The masked man in the middle waved a pistol in the air as he approached the customers and the teller window.

"This is a fucking robbery, everyone acts cool and nobody gets hurt. Now, get on the fucking ground!"

The short man with the shotgun kept it on the bank patrons as they sprawled on the marble floor. The leader and the third gunman, a man with a sawed-off shotgun and a satchel around his shoulder, leaped over the teller's desk and the small glass partition separating them from the lobby. While the pistol-packing robber rounded up the teller's and got them on the floor, the robber with the satchel quickly rushed into the bank vault behind the teller's desks. The large vault's stainless steel door gleamed in the florescent lights that hung overhead. The masked robber reached into his satchel and coupled a device to the vault's lock. The mess of motherboard and wires were connected to a small quantity of plastic explosives. With gloved hands, the robber connected the device and ran out the room.

A violent explosion that rattled the bank followed a few seconds later. The shaking of the foundation wouldn't go unnoticed in the area. The three bankrobbers shared looks before the satchel man rushed back inside. The bomb had destroyed the locking mechanism of the vault, allowing him to turn the wheel that opened it with ease. Inside his satchel, he pulled three folded up canvas gym bags and went inside the vault. A minute later, he was out with the three bags and his satchel loaded down with American Greenbacks. Thirty seconds after that, the three bankrobbers were running out the door to a waiting car double-parked outside the bank. They jumped in and the masked driver sped off just as the distant sounds of sirens became audible.

"Fuck yes!" Alex cried from the front passenger as he took off his mask. "We did it!"

Arthur and Joanna took their masks off and looked at each other, beaming and high on adrenaline. From the front seat, Alex looked through the gym bag he had and counted off stacks of twenty, fifty, and one hundred dollar bills. He lost count after ten thousand and had to start over again.

[b]Natchez, Mississippi[/b]

"It's been a long time coming," the protesters sang in harmony with each other. "But we know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will."

There were twenty of them in all. Twenty black men and women dressed in their Sunday best, standing in front of the Adams County courthouse singing and carrying signs that read things like "Time for a Change" and "Jim Crow has Got to Go." They sweltered under the intense Mississippi sun, but they stayed steadfast and determined to protest. Today marked their fifth day occupying the courthouse's front lawn. 

From across the street, James Calhoun watched from underneath the shade of a tree. He took a break from farm work to come down and watch. His daughter, Sarah, was among those protesting. She occasionally glanced over in his direction while he watched. James could see the disappointment in her face each time she looked his way. Sarah hadn't spoken to him since they started the protests here. She didn't say it, but she expected him to join in since his voting registration rejection is what started the whole mess.

Sarah was passionate, but she was young. She didn't realize all that their family had to lose. The man who owned the mortgage to their farm was white, as was the man who ran the feed and seed store in town that James had to buy his farming supplies from. It was good and all to take a stand... but he could not risk all he had for something so silly as... as... what, exactly? The right to vote, the right to actually go into a bathroom that wasn't just a shit bucket next to a water hose? The right to be treated like a person? Was that worth giving up all he had?

Sirens filled the air. A pair of Natchez PD cars drove up the street and stopped in front of the courthouse. James balled his hands up when he saw the four police officers get out of the cars. This was the fifth day of the protest, but not the first run in with the local law. The twenty left to protest had started out as forty, those numbers had been whittled down every day by the Natchez police that drug off as many of the protesters as they could, throwing them in the jail overnight for "disturbing the peace." Sarah herself had been arrested on the second day, James and Whitney raced to the jail to get her out only to be met by the Ethiopian who said her bail had been paid by sympathetic people with money. James didn't know what to make of that, but he accepted it and tried to talk some sense in Sarah, but she ignored him and was right back here.

"Alright, y'all know the drill," Wilbur Graves, the fat and elderly chief of police announced to the group. "I know y'all ain't bright people, but I figured you'd goddamn learn by now." 

"I go to the movies and I go downtown," they kept singing in defiance. "Somebody keep telling me don't hang around. It's been a long time coming, but a change gonna come."

Isaiah Wolde, the man they called the Ethiopian, came to the forefront and stared at the police chief through his glasses. 

"I tell you once more that this is a peaceful protest, chief. We have committed no crime, and this right of peaceful assembly is part of our constitutional rights."

Graves hawked and spat on the grass in front of Wolde's feet.

"That's what I think of that, boy. Now, round 'em up!"

The police went to work, arresting the protesters. For their part, the men and women quietly went along with the police, singing still as they went.

"It's been a long time coming, but a change is gonna come."

James tensed up when he saw one of the young police officers accost Sarah. She was led to a police car and frisked. James felt his blood starting to boil when he saw the man getting too familiar with his daughter. From across the street, he saw Wolde's eyes lock with his while the singing continued. 

Then I go to my brother, and I say brother help me please. But he winds up knocking me back down on my knees."

In a sudden rush, James found himself across the street and knocking the police officer away from Sarah. She yelled while confusion broke out in the crowd. The man he pushed snarled at him and produced a billy club. The bat pulled the air from James' lungs when it struck him in the chest. He spat blood when it hit him in the mouth, and fell to the ground when the club took out his knees. 

"But I know a change is gonna come," was the last thing he heard before the club connected with his head and knocked him unconscious.