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children of the inner city to starve and thirst for a better lifestyle.

These are the real facts, the grinding pains of life that told one exactly who and where they were. This stench was never, not even for a second, overcome by the delusional fog that one day you might live in the hills of Malibu, exploiting and neglecting the poor. You were the exploited and the neglected.

Gary was a close-knit society that did not have the opportunity to welcome outsiders. While catholic America prays at football games in the great green stadium located in South Bend, and millionaires flaunt their cash by building great palace casinos on Lake Michigan, no one dares to creep past the border of Joliet. These are the raw emotions, the craving for equality, that charged the very atmosphere.

It was in this town that a letter, written some two-thousand miles away, would awaken a revolution. And to that ignoramus who so snidely utters "Words can never harm," you have never known words to become the whips and chains of society cutting and slashing at your soul, reminding you of oppression. It will be those very same words that form the mob who kick and beat you in search of justice.

Mobs rarely form with the intention of turning violent and this would be no exception. A fairly quiet neighborhood awoke to a news story that hit very close to home, a big Chicago newspaper decided to run a story on its front page-the heartfelt confession of an attorney from Orange County, California. However, in the story, the name of a well-known Chicago attorney was mentioned-Anthony Clayton Bauer.

Normally, this would not have affected the small town of Gary, but earlier that month, Bauer had taken the case of a young man by the name of Eli Lawson. Bauer had volunteered to take the case, pro-bono, and now because of Rebecca's letter everyone knew why. Lawson was the oldest son in a large family and the residents of the industrial town of Gary either knew Eli or one of his family members.

Originally the community had been angered by another arrest, but that type of anger had been felt so intensely, for so long, that it had dulled into bitter acceptance. Until, of course, when the letter surfaced and the entire town had some glimpse of that letter. And all those emotions, that had been swallowed and dismissed for years, came rising to the surface.

"Now, that's a damn shame. They got that boy locked up for a crime they know he didn't commit!"

"Yeah, but that's the way it's always been done and that's the

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