Weekend Freewrite - 8/3/2019 - Single Prompt Option: Spent and Tired

Spent and tired – if there were two words to describe many people in Lofton County, VA on the third weekend after the Gilligan House Burning, those were it. (To understand what that was all about, "Black and White and RED All Over" is the ticket!)

61 percent of the county was tired of seeing themselves represented in the news as rank, relentless, heartless, but ultimately helpless criminals, collapsing under the weight of their own evil. Five police commissioners in a row, the mayor and the vice major of Big Loft, the county's biggest city, had fallen; half the county board of supervisors, the county prosecutors, and members or former members of every police department in the county were exposed.

The news was so bad that the Black and Latino citizens of Lofton County, who usually were portrayed as the only bad guys in the world, could not even get their usual air time – the crimes of poverty were too petty by comparison to the crimes of affluence and power being revealed among the superiors of those who thought themselves superior.

Meanwhile, over root beer floats, Henry Varick IV, Harvey Harrison, and Thomas Stepforth Sr. were also spent and tired, but smiling. These three principals of the Lofton County Free Voice, the first Black newspaper to survive in Lofton County ever, remembered the first day that they posted up the first issue of the paper, called the wickedness now exposed what it was, demanded the data that proved it, and walked by faith … to a first victory.

“Mission #1 accomplished,” said Mr. Stepforth.

“Right,” said Mr. Varick. “Now it is time to use our leverage to get organs of power in this county and its towns the way we need them to be for our children and grandchildren.”

“Right,” said Mr. Harrison. “While this exposure runs its course, we begin implementing Phase 2.”

Mr. Varick chuckled.

“They can't handle Phase 1, and it's not done. They sho' 'nuff ain't gonna be ready for Phase 2...”