Speaker 1: Pushkin, locked and loaded. The American Patriot Raleigh took to
Speaker 1: the steps of the state Capitol today in a world
Speaker 1: gone haywire. Sometimes art is the only thing that can
Speaker 1: make sense of it all. The Georgia three percenters say
Speaker 1: they are strictly a defensive force. Yeah right. I'm Ashley
Speaker 1: Ford and this is the Chronicles of Now, where we
Speaker 1: ask writers to dream up short stories inspired by the news.
Speaker 1: There are more than five hundred militia groups in the US.
Speaker 1: Right wing militias and vigilante groups have been part of
Speaker 1: the American landscape for decades, but a recent movement seems
Speaker 1: to have focused their attention here to demand those in
Speaker 1: attendance a Trump voters angry at the ongoing lawlessness across America,
Speaker 1: threatening to take matters into their own hands at a
Speaker 1: time of uncertainty. Some law enforcement officials have even blessed
Speaker 1: or turned a blind eye to armed militias upset about
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter. Recently, a sheriff in Florida made news
Speaker 1: when he issued an unusual statement. Daniels vows that he
Speaker 1: will deputize regular citizens who have gun permits to help
Speaker 1: his department respond should violent protests break out in Clay County.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be the first time vigilantes have taken matters
Speaker 1: into their own hands. Did the West Bank turn into
Speaker 1: the Wild West? In the days following Hurricane Katrine? How
Speaker 1: many people you shoot? Thirty eight people? Trayvon Martin, an
Speaker 1: unarmed black teenager, was shot down by a white neighborhood watchman.
Speaker 1: Video captures the final moments of Ahmad Arbory's life while
Speaker 1: he was jogging through this brunchway. There's something about, Oh no,
Speaker 1: We're about to lose this power. Dantel dubbed you. Monice,
Speaker 1: is the author of a forthcoming collection of stories, Milk
Speaker 1: Blood Heat. Her story here explores what life might be
Speaker 1: like in a deputized in America. That this is fiction,
Speaker 1: but this is like a very real terror that has
Speaker 1: been going on in this country since its foundations. Within
Speaker 1: hours of the press conference, gun and animal stores throughout
Speaker 1: the county sold out. Customizable metal badges catering to that
Speaker 1: uniquely American appetite for playing cops and robbers were back
Speaker 1: ordered online until late October. Production shut down, as it
Speaker 1: was during the plague, but one could still find the
Speaker 1: golden shaff stars used for cowboys and Indians and though
Speaker 1: slightly marring the illusion, they did in a pinch lawful
Speaker 1: god owners, the sheriff had said, But even if there
Speaker 1: had been something to buy, the phrase wouldn't mean them,
Speaker 1: not Jaya or her two brothers, and not her mother,
Speaker 1: who slept with a pink and silver luger under her
Speaker 1: pillow just in case things went bad in the night.
Speaker 1: Two weeks ago, a man was executed for unpaid parking tickets,
Speaker 1: and yesterday at toddler who'd grabbed a pack of gum
Speaker 1: from a shelf at the Quick Mark was shot as
Speaker 1: soon as his oblivious mother stepped outside the store with
Speaker 1: the child in her arms. Another one they'd heard about.
Speaker 1: She'd been doing nothing, daydreaming on a park bench, but
Speaker 1: they claimed they'd seen a weapon, and anyway, wasn't it
Speaker 1: suspicious the act of her sitting? And we actually incredible
Speaker 1: affirmation that these criminals were anything could become a crime.
Speaker 1: With the Deputize on every corner, watching in grocery stores,
Speaker 1: in car lots and coffee shops, shit like this only
Speaker 1: happens in backwood city. People outside the South were saying,
Speaker 1: we don't do that here. They did that there in
Speaker 1: Chicago and New York and La. The only difference was
Speaker 1: none of their elected officials got on the internet to
Speaker 1: sanction it. Clocking out of work that evening, Jaya was exhausted.
Speaker 1: It had been a stressful day at the store. They'd
Speaker 1: finally gotten in toilet paper and pasta, but there was
Speaker 1: relatively little neat and the lines were still too long.
Speaker 1: No one was happy about anything. One deputized prominent Adams
Speaker 1: Apple no mask, went through her line twice, the first
Speaker 1: with two six packs of light beer, a chicken tender sub,
Speaker 1: and a gallon of store brand sweet tea, the second
Speaker 1: an hour later, for just a TwixT Both times, his
Speaker 1: eyes on her intensely. The sky was streaked cantalope from
Speaker 1: the setting sun, the sidewalk still damp from rain. Jaia
Speaker 1: through the disposable mask her employers had provided her into
Speaker 1: a waste basket and put back on the cloth one
Speaker 1: she brought from home, a black mask with three bold
Speaker 1: white letters B LM. Jaya. We have to be supportive
Speaker 1: of all our customers. We don't get political here, her
Speaker 1: manager had said this with exaggerated patience, Blinking rapidly, her
Speaker 1: soft spotted hands clasped at her chest. Life is what
Speaker 1: you make it, and our company policy centers on positive engagement.
Speaker 1: You understand right. Jaia had looked past her as she
Speaker 1: spoke toward the customer service counter, where two of her
Speaker 1: co workers issued money orders and lotto tickets, their lower
Speaker 1: faces covered by gray scale American flags with a thin
Speaker 1: blue line. Day after day, her manager never said anything
Speaker 1: to them. Jaia decided she wouldn't tell her mother about this.
Speaker 1: That morning, when she'd put the mask on, her mother
Speaker 1: had said, you're asking for trouble. Jaia put her head down,
Speaker 1: shouldered her tote, and began walking. She used to love
Speaker 1: this unoccupied time, the meditative space between leaving a destination
Speaker 1: and arriving someplace else, mused, extrumming through her mind, But
Speaker 1: these days she left her earbuds out, the walks instead,
Speaker 1: filled with static anxiety. Five blocks and she'd be outside
Speaker 1: her second brother's job, where she would buy a smoothie
Speaker 1: and find a table and read until he got off.
Speaker 1: As much as they could. They walked home together. After
Speaker 1: a few minutes, Jaia felt something and increase in intensity
Speaker 1: of the static ticking up her spine. She looked over
Speaker 1: her shoulder and saw several feet back the deputized man
Speaker 1: from her line. Her mother's instructions zipped through her head.
Speaker 1: If it happens to you, find somewhere safe. She quickened
Speaker 1: her pace, eyes darting toward the storefronts around her. A
Speaker 1: furniture boutique, a beauty parlor, a party shop, all shuddered.
Speaker 1: There was nowhere to duck inside. Jaia tried to calm
Speaker 1: her breath. She slid the metal nail file she always
Speaker 1: carried from her pocket and gripped it in her fist.
Speaker 1: As she rounded the corner of the next street, the
Speaker 1: deputized closed the distance between them, grabbing her arm and
Speaker 1: slinging her against the concrete wall of a closed Chinese takeout.
Speaker 1: Jaia heard music from across the street and locked eyes
Speaker 1: with a woman on her balcony. If you can't find
Speaker 1: a safe place, find a witness. After a moment, the
Speaker 1: woman looked away, picked up her portable speaker, and her
Speaker 1: read inside. Once the sliding door closed, they were alone.
Speaker 1: He pressed jay Heard against the wall and smiled, blocking
Speaker 1: her with his body, one hand flat against her chest,
Speaker 1: the other on his gun. His badge was plastic, likely
Speaker 1: a last resort purchased from the local dollar store, and
Speaker 1: briefly she wondered what he'd done with the playcuffs. It
Speaker 1: was surely packaged with But it didn't matter what the
Speaker 1: badge was made of, or that it was a toy.
Speaker 1: It only mattered that he believed in it. Do you know?
Speaker 1: He asked her, why you're being detained? He sounded so polite,
Speaker 1: so normal. He could have been saying, how are you today?
Speaker 1: This common man? With her heart beneath his hand, he
Speaker 1: let up on her and pulled the mask from her mouth. This,
Speaker 1: he said, fingering the cloth. Well, it's defamation of character,
Speaker 1: plain and simple, the same language they now used whenever
Speaker 1: a journalist was killed. She knew enough to know what
Speaker 1: happened next. If she was lucky, there might be outrage,
Speaker 1: a new hashtag on Twitter. And if she wasn't lucky, well,
Speaker 1: Jaya's hand tensed around the nail file. He wouldn't expect
Speaker 1: her to fight, which meant she must. In her head,
Speaker 1: her mother held her said, don't let them see you
Speaker 1: beg That was in Jama Kumara narrating What We Make
Speaker 1: It by Dantio w Monice Hi Dantio Hi Ashley. The
Speaker 1: news hook for your story involves the sheriff of Clay County, Florida,
Speaker 1: near Jacksonville, who recently said he'd deputized every gun owner
Speaker 1: if his deputies couldn't handle Black Lives Matter protesters. I
Speaker 1: remember when that was said, and I remember a distinct
Speaker 1: chill down my spine at hearing someone say that, I
Speaker 1: guess out loud. What did you think when you first
Speaker 1: heard about that. I mean, honestly, it froze me. I
Speaker 1: was looking and seeing the headline, and I thought, wow,
Speaker 1: this is something that so many people feel. It already happens.
Speaker 1: There's vigilantes that, you know, neighborhood watch. If you look
Speaker 1: at something as simple as Trayvon Martin, that would have
Speaker 1: been a situation of a deputized person. But just to
Speaker 1: hear someone say it out loud and for whatever nefarious purposes,
Speaker 1: like you know this person is up for reelection, Oh
Speaker 1: I'm going to get on the good side of these people,
Speaker 1: It just felt like that's a moment that needs to
Speaker 1: be looked at, that needs to be examined. That Sheriff
Speaker 1: Darryl Daniels is himself a black man. Yeah, yeah, What
Speaker 1: do you make of a black law enforcement official appealing
Speaker 1: to gun owners in a southern state. So that is
Speaker 1: the other complicated part of the story that I chose
Speaker 1: not to for the purposes of the story, you know, portray,
Speaker 1: But I felt as if it made sense to me.
Speaker 1: It seems that, you know, if this is someone who
Speaker 1: is an accounty that upholds these kind of patriotic, you know,
Speaker 1: type of laws, that this person who's so desperate to
Speaker 1: gain that footholds that he seemed this power that he
Speaker 1: has seems that they would do anything. And so to me,
Speaker 1: it falls in line with I don't know, can I
Speaker 1: say coonery? Is that allowed me? Yeah? I just felt like, okay,
Speaker 1: so this is someone who has been given power who
Speaker 1: feels like they want to keep it by whatever means,
Speaker 1: and if that appeals to him to say, oh, let's
Speaker 1: shoot down protesters in the street, then let's do that.
Speaker 1: And that's a little bit of evil that also is
Speaker 1: just chilling. Oh yeah, but a tale is all this time? Yeah?
Speaker 1: How person, Sinol was this story to you? Did you
Speaker 1: draw from experiences in your own life in order to
Speaker 1: write it? I mean, you know, at a base level,
Speaker 1: if you are a black woman who lives in America,
Speaker 1: you have consciously or unconsciously experienced prejudices and racism against you.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's easy in that way. But
Speaker 1: for me, I just thought, what would be the most
Speaker 1: terrifying thing, And the most terrifying thing is to go
Speaker 1: through life not being able to believe in what you
Speaker 1: believe in, being attacked for what you believe in, and
Speaker 1: then being killed for what you believe in. And whether
Speaker 1: you know, whether you think Jaya at the end dies
Speaker 1: or doesn't die, or you know, that's a little bit
Speaker 1: I've left a little bit ambivalent, But it's terrifying and
Speaker 1: it's real. It's what happens every day in this country.
Speaker 1: Poles show that large majorities of Americans support Black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter and their aim of eliminating police violence against black
Speaker 1: people specifically. Yet Trump is doing everything can, it seems like,
Speaker 1: to stir up a racist reaction. How do you think
Speaker 1: that's going to play out for him in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: I think it might work in his favor. I think
Speaker 1: that the people who support him, regardless of countless evidence
Speaker 1: that he is not who he says he is, He
Speaker 1: does not have the intentions for this country that he
Speaker 1: has said that he has. I think that despite all
Speaker 1: of that, these people have like, you know, bought in
Speaker 1: and now they're like, I have to, I have to.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like a bad investment that you've put
Speaker 1: all of your money into, but to take it out
Speaker 1: would be detrimental to not just your economic wealth, but
Speaker 1: also your pride. When I think that Americans cannot suffer
Speaker 1: damage to their pride, it's like almost like the worst
Speaker 1: thing that could happen. So unfortunately, all of the discourse
Speaker 1: that he's doing is working in his favor. But I'm
Speaker 1: hoping that the people who are now becoming more awake
Speaker 1: to the situation, will you use the power that they
Speaker 1: have and the privilege that they have to enact some
Speaker 1: different course than where it looks like we're heading for
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. I hope that you are not right, but
Speaker 1: we'll see saying, you know, I know say, but we'll
Speaker 1: see what happens. It's really interesting. Thank you, Dantill W. Monise,
Speaker 1: thanks for your story and thanks for coming on the
Speaker 1: Chronicles of Now. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: You can read my full interview with Dantill W. Monie
Speaker 1: on our website Chronicles dot fm, where you can also
Speaker 1: read the story you just heard and other short fiction
Speaker 1: torn from today's headlines. Our sound designer and composer is
Speaker 1: Bart Warshaw, our producer is Curtis Fox, and our associate
Speaker 1: producer is Emily Rostick. Tyler Cabott is the executive producer
Speaker 1: and founder of Chronicles of Now for Pushkin Industries. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Letalmulad. Special thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Carly Migliori,
Speaker 1: Heather Faine, and Eric Sandler for the Chronicles of Now podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Ashley Ford. Thanks for listening. The com pat a
Speaker 1: pocket of the tone