Day 873: 5 Minute Freewrite: Wednesday - Prompt: words
“We can't even talk about it – we can't even talk about it in public – our words are getting repeated to the Lofton County Free Voice and we don't even know from where!”
Richard “King” Castle, after getting checked and all the way shut down by Mayor Garner, was busy Thursday night trying to find a way to get rid of the mayor. There were plenty of people who felt the same way, but it was Mr. Castle who felt strongly enough about it – because personally humiliated – to mention the word “assassination.”
This, of course, had gotten him shut down again, because the Lofton County Free Voice had its opponents spooked. The existence of the paper – the only Black news organization to survive more than a week in Lofton County, VA – was bad enough. The fiery words of James Varick IV in his editorials were bad enough, when most of the elite of Big Loft, VA and the surrounding county remembered a time in the South when one could kill a Black man and destroy his whole world for just looking at a White person wrong.
It was extremely bad that the paper was not centralized – the only time the Free Voice had come to ground was to set a trap for those most likely to try to burn it down, and their trap had been very effective. The Gilligan House Stand had sent ripples through domestic terrorist groups not felt since the Deacons of Defense and the Black Panthers had finished their runs.
But, worse than all of these: everything the Free Voice and the men around it were doing was backed with receipts – they had hard evidence for all their claims, and hard evidence to present when they decided to defend themselves with lethal force. They were getting their receipts from inside information … somehow, the information was leaking out and they were snatching it up and making it public.
It therefore was getting more difficult to plot against the Free Voice and the Black community it represented … for the first time in their existence, the elite of Big Loft and of Lofton County understood the paranoia of knowing that a few words said at the wrong time to someone with power could lead to one's public humiliation and destruction.
How thick was the paranoia? For Mr. Castle having even brought it up, someone called the police from within his circle and turned him in for making threats against the mayor … and provided the audio!
How justified was the paranoia? The Lofton County Free Voice made space for the fall of Richard “King” Castle in their paper the very next morning, and they too had the audio!