Shadow Empire

Chapter 187 Slogans for Rights

William's supervisor is also an old federalist and a local. He is very familiar with the development of Jingang City over the years.

When William mentioned the Imperial District, he suddenly realized that this must be related to the Lance family, which has been developing rapidly in the Imperial District recently.

But he would not say it all, this was their most basic rule, "The Empire District has been developing very rapidly recently, William, I think you have great hope."

As he spoke, he stood up, walked around the desk, and walked towards William, stretching out his hands as he walked.

There are etiquettes for shaking hands. It doesn't mean that the handshake is over when everyone extends their hands and shakes them.

In different situations, who reaches out first, who reaches out later, whether there are other actions, these all have many different manifestations.

William immediately noticed these changes, and he took the initiative to stretch out his hand, took two steps forward, and greeted the supervisor. The two of them intertwined their hands and shook them vigorously.

"I really don't want you to leave. I never worry about anything not being done well when you are here. You are more important to this office than I am!"

William had a smile on his face, and seemed to agree with what he said, but he didn't take it seriously.

For twenty years, he was a staff member, not an office head or the head of a department. He knew whether he was important or not.

But the purpose of the other party saying these words now is just to realize that he is different now than in the past and is a helpful person.

The Lans family not only represents the voter preferences of the Empire State District, but also campaign funds.

In an age of commercialized elections, money is more important than ability!

With votes, money, and the certain support of the Federal Party, he already has the basic qualifications to become a city councilor.

Perhaps the next time they meet, it will be in the lobby of the municipal council hall, with the supervisor sitting at the last seat as an observer.

And he, Mr. William Lawrence, will sit at the long table closest to the center of power, and he will be the only one in that row!

After the two exchanged a final greeting, the supervisor walked him to the entrance of the office building before watching him leave.

At this moment, William felt more clearly the value of power and its significance to life!
Although his supervisor was nice to him in the past, that kind of niceness was just the ordinary niceness he gave to a capable employee.

Unlike now, he even walked around the table, shook hands with me, and walked me out.

Because he is really capable at work?
No, it’s the other party who thinks that he may become someone that the other party needs to look up to!
A sense of ambition emanated from deep in his heart. He clenched his fists, looked back at this building which was not very special but represented the pinnacle of power in the city, then turned and got into the old car.

"Honey, if I'm not mistaken, now is your time to work." Emily was flipping through a fashion family lifestyle magazine.

The ladies' themed gathering every other week is about to begin, and this time the focus of their discussion is "Modern Life".

This word is in fashion now, they have talked about it more than once, but they still like to talk about this topic.

Making their lives stylish and refined and becoming a model that everyone envies seems to be what the middle class likes to do most.

William was like a wild beast at this time. He threw his briefcase by the door, took off his coat and walked towards Emily.

The latter looked at his appearance and hugged the pillow, "Honey, I'm a little scared when you do this!"

William did not hide his desire to vent his emotions at all, "I need to relax..."

Ten minutes later, William was lying on the bedside smoking a cigarette. Emily was very satisfied. This was the longest time he had spent alone in the past few years.

There was heating in the room, so she lay down in front of him, "Honey, is there anything good you want to share with me?"

"I quit." William said, turning over and standing up. Before Emily could react, he walked into the bathroom. "I'm going to have dinner with Lance tonight, if he has time."

"At home?"

"No, outside..."

It was less than six o'clock, and Lance felt a little strange looking at the phone in his hand, but he still agreed to William's request for a meeting, especially when he heard that William had resigned.

This is not quite the same as their plan. According to Lance's plan, William should have resigned at the end of April or early May, not now.

Twenty minutes later, William drove to Empire Night nightclub. He was wearing a beige long trench coat and a dark wool fedora hat. His face was hidden under the brim of the hat, and even the neon lights of Empire Night did not illuminate him.

Because Empire Night is selling alcohol, there will be people watching at the door, but it is obvious that Lance has already greeted everyone, so William walked straight in the door.

It was a bit stuffy here, he felt it as soon as he came in, and he walked through the hall under the guidance of a young man.

There were already some performances going on in the hall, with coolly dressed girls dancing arm in arm on the stage.

It's strange that federal people, especially federal men, now seem to have no resistance to this kind of dance in which the performers wear two-piece clothes, expose their thighs and keep raising their legs.

The girls were decorated delicately, with white glitter and some colored lights that reflected a psychedelic glow when shone on them.

And on the ceiling, there is a row of large lights that illuminate their legs.

Every pair of legs is different, but they all have one thing in common: healthy and round.

The men sitting below kept whistling, and some threw coins or banknotes onto the stage.

Under the stage, girls dressed in bunny girl costumes carried trays and kept moving between the bar and each individual table. Their furry bunny tails always made people want to pinch them.

The smell of desire and indulgence in the air was addictive. He withdrew his gaze, knowing that he could not look any further.

After coming upstairs, he met Lance. There were also some other people sitting there. They all looked at William, which made William a little nervous.

A girl stood up, walked over to him, and motioned for him to take off his coat and hat.

It took him a moment to react, and then he felt a little embarrassed at the girl's chuckle, "Sorry!"

The girl didn't care. "It's okay. You don't need to be too nervous."

Lance was on the phone, and when he saw William coming over, he ended the call.

It was Alberto's. He was coming back soon and brought some good things for Lance, as well as two new friends. He asked Lance to pick him up, and then they would go out and have some fun in Jingang City with their new friends.

Lance had no objection to this.

"Please sit down. Have you eaten?"

William shook his head. "Not yet, but I ate something on the way."

"We have a good chef here. Let's have someone send some food over..." The first sentence was said to William, and the second sentence was said to Alvin.

He gestured and the young people in the room left, and Lance wanted to talk to him alone.

"Why did you suddenly resign?" Lance opened the cigarette box, took out a cigarette and threw it to William, and soon the two of them began to smoke.

"The Socialist Party representatives will be staying in Jingang City in the next few days. Did you know about this?"

Lance nodded. "I know. Are you planning to use their power to do something for you?"

William became more interested and excited. "Didn't we talk about illegal immigrants obtaining legal status before?"

Lance nodded, cigarette between his lips, "Yes, but it's hard to do, when we were talking before."

"Now's the chance!" William said with certainty. Lance became interested and motioned for him to continue.

"If the Socialist Party wants to gain recognition from grassroots voters, it must find a way to address some social pain points and make people realize that they are not just clowns who are only good at waging power."

"So, the delegates are running around the states, they want to get something done."

"The Liberal Party's propaganda offensive is very fierce, especially in neutral states."

In this era when information flow is not smooth, let alone things happening in the neighboring state, even if something happens in the neighboring city, no one will know if no one reports it.

The Socialists don't proactively report that they're having a terrible time in the neutral states, and the Liberals don't proactively report that they're neck and neck with the Socialists, making it sound like they're inherently inferior to the Socialists.

As for the Federal Party, they think it is not the right time yet. So the Socialist Party representatives denounced the president's previous shitty practices within the party while trying to capture voters and public opinion.

"The federal illegal immigrants are a large group. If they can see that the illegal immigrants can stand on their side, then they are likely to continue to push for the previous plan to grant status to the illegal immigrants."

Although there was no one around, he still lowered his voice and acted very mysterious. Perhaps this is the essence of politics - selfish and mysterious!

"There are 200,000 to 300,000 illegal immigrants in Jingang City. If these people can be converted into legal immigrants, even if the conversion rate is only 10%, this will amount to tens of thousands of voters."

"Then lower your expectations a little bit, to 5 percent. That still means there are 10,000 to 20,000 voters."

“The Socialist Party gave them their identity and rights, so isn’t it natural for them to vote for the Socialist Party?”

Lance listened carefully, nodding his head in agreement. "What about the Liberal Party?"

"They won't do nothing, will they?"

"Even we know there is a huge opportunity here. They have always wanted to defeat the Socialists, and this time they almost succeeded. Will they not do nothing?"

William smiled. “No matter what they do, the president must sign it in the end!”

A hammer!
No matter how well you do, most people cannot possibly know about the dirtiness and struggles between the two parties. They only know that the President signed his name on the decree and then it came into effect.

People will chant "Mr. President" instead of chanting the name of some person who is pushing it!

But that doesn't mean they won't do it. They will do it, but only in neutral states and on their own turf.

They won’t come to Jingang City to do this on their own initiative.

"We have to push this forward so we can profit from it."

"Listen, Lance, this kind of opportunity may only come once every few years or even decades, because there is no threshold for it!"

"It's not like discussing national policies and regulations in Congress. If you want to participate, you must be a senator or a member of the House of Representatives."

"Now as long as you have the courage and appeal, you can push this thing forward!"

He was referring to the blue work uniforms of Lans. The media has also paid attention to this group. Their number has reached an astonishing eight or nine thousand people, and it is said that they are not far from ten thousand!
In fact, you don’t need a lot of people to carry out a political movement, because the goal of expressing your demands will not really count the number of people. As long as they think there are a lot of people, that’s enough.

After thinking about it for a moment, Lance nodded, "It's no big deal if we fail anyway."

William pointed at him and said, "That's it!"

"If we succeed, there won't be any problem for us to take over the Empire District together."

"If we fail, we won't suffer any loss. The Immigration Bureau will not send these 8,000 to 9,000 people back because they don't have that much money!"

Lance thought he could do it. "I can organize the workers first. When will they go to the dock?"

"Three days later, they are socializing in the Bay Area these days. You know, there are many people here who are willing to make friends with them..."

Soon, Alvin brought up two servings of seafood beef fried rice. This was not the food that the federals liked. They actually preferred bread and steak, and macaroni was also acceptable.

Only a few people liked this, and Lance was one of them.

William praised it highly after taking two bites. He rarely ate food other than this traditional Federal recipe and felt it was amazing.

The two ate and talked, and soon made a plan...

After finishing dinner and settling some details, he hurried back, looking very lively.

At around eight o'clock in the evening, while lying in bed, he thought again of the snow-white or wheat-colored thighs under the dazzling lights of the nightclub, and a force was once again generated in his body.

He turned over, and as Emily screamed, he pressed her down again...

As for Lance, he was looking at the nightclub whose business was obviously not as good as in the previous few days, and no one knew what he was thinking.

The casino was closed down, and some customers came and left directly. Their purpose of coming here was to gamble.

Whether it was during the Camilla Gang's operation or now, they all think this place is very stable.

Some casinos are not so stable. The reason why people are willing to come here is that they believe in the strength of the operators here.

But now the casino is gone, so they can only go somewhere else.

There is no essential difference between a gambler and a drunkard. If you don't let a drunkard drink, it's like not letting a gambler play a few games, he will go crazy!
And it's not just the nightclub business that's slowing down, other bars are also having a slow business tonight.

Lance's new bar opens, and word spreads among the drunks that there are "quite a few girls."

For alcoholics, alcohol is of course their first love, and their second love is most likely the opposite sex.

They also like money, but they know they can't have it.

If they could have it, they would have had it long ago, but if they can't have it, there is a high probability that they will never be able to have it in the future.

So sex became their second goal.

Especially when the news that someone took a girl home directly after having a couple of drinks with her in a bar started to spread quickly, it attracted them even more!

Have a drink and get a free shot, what could be more comfortable than this?

But they don’t know that most of those girls nowadays are “actors”.

But even if they knew, they would most likely pounce on it. For them who are at the bottom of the society, besides spending money to buy happiness and flirting with beer girls, this is one of the few places and opportunities for them to come into contact with young people of the opposite sex.

On Friday morning, Mr. Jobaf's face did not look as good as it had been a while ago. He thought the mayor had a change of heart and did not arrange too much expenses for him, but it turned out that it was not his turn at that time.

He was the one who paid for almost all the spending of Socialist Party representatives in the Bay Area these days, and another tens of thousands of dollars was spent.

He also showed up in front of the three party representatives as he wished, and toasted everyone as the mayor called him "a generous sponsor who has provided us with all the services free of charge."

Amid the interweaving of false light and shadow, he was dazed for a moment.

Spending tens of thousands of dollars in exchange for a compliment that was not genuine and some scrutinizing looks from people, is this really what he wanted?
he does not know.

But having come this far, he couldn't accept the sunk costs if he left, so he had no choice but to move forward.

The situation was better today. They just had to go to the dock and chat with the dock workers, and then treat these damn workers to some hot dogs, fifteen cents each, which he could afford.

So his expression today was just not so good-looking, not ugly.

The mayor's secretary had previously suggested that he buy a few more luxury cars so that when they needed a car, they wouldn't have to go to a car dealership to rent one.

But he rejected them all. He knew very well that once he really bought those cars, it would be hard to say who they would eventually belong to.

It nominally belongs to him, but they drove it away. Can he go and get it back?

he can not!
It is better to rent a car. Although the cost is not low, it is at least more cost-effective than buying a car.

After he got dressed, his assistant and he went to the hotel together. At 9:15, representatives of the Socialist Party came down from the guest room, surrounded by a dozen people.

Mr. Jobaf does not need to pay for this part of the cost, another fool will pay for it.

He now regarded the other party as a fool, but he also regarded himself as a fool, an imperial fool who longed to gain recognition and enter the upper class of the Federation!

The mayor soon appeared here, and after a brief greeting, they got on the luxurious convoy and headed to the dock.

Their main purpose today was to understand the dock workers' current views on the Socialist Party, and then do something to appease them, promising something that was neither too light nor too heavy, in exchange for their continued support for the Socialist Party...

The start of the convoy startled the birds that were foraging for food outside the hotel. The birds flapped their wings and flew into the sunless sky, which always looked strange.

(End of this chapter)