My County Executive Wants A Private Army
Nassau County's Bruce Blakeman is making an effort to create what amounts to a militia of gun-owners in case of an emergency. I need to talk about it.
Hello, friends,
Last week, we spent some time talking about gas prices we’re misleadingly nostalgic for.
This week, I want to talk about something close to home. According to PIX 11, our county executive, Bruce Blakeman, wants to create a “sheriff’s deputy” status for legal gun-owning residents in the county.
He is very explicit that he would use those on his already-100-strong list of candidates to suppress political speech if it was a riot,’ telling PIX, “I would consider it, especially at the level they were burning buildings.“
First off, that’s simply never happened in Nassau history to my knowledge. I’ve been at some of these protests, and they hardly qualify as anything more than friendly little campouts with signs. That’s not a bad thing! That’s actually a pretty safe way to express one’s opinions and reach crowds at large.
But, yeah, we’re gonna have a bunch of ill-trained folks with fuzzy legal authority enforcing anti-riot laws?
Why, yes, this plan has earned comparisons to the Brownshirts from Nassau County Legislative Democratic Minority Leader Delia DeRiggi-Whitton, something Blakeman takes soreness with.
Meanwhile, Nassau has extremely low crime compared to the rest of the country, suggesting maybe we just don’t need this force.
As Deriggi-Whitton told NBC New York: “Nassau County has 2,500 well-trained police officers who have a billion-dollar budget. She also said the provisional deputies are wholly unnecessary.”
Again, it’s almost like we don’t have any need of this extra force. Hurricane Sandy is brought up as an applicable situation this force might be needed for, but when Sandy happened, the National Guard was brought out. We didn’t need some ill-trained, under-equipped, legally-fuzzy squad of gun owners.
But, alas, never give a Republican an idea about a private army.
Never mind that Blakeman’s Battalion would be responsible directly to him before the people. Never mind that he’s apparently been curating a list of specific people he’s interested in recruiting - and he’s a far-right maniac who is creating drama about Trans athletes who, at present, don’t exist in our county. Never mind the lack of clear legal responsibility they have, or the lack of training.
All he probably cares about is that they’ll follow his orders, and I know too much about him to know what kind of orders he might give if, say, an election is stolen on January 6th, 2025.
So What Are We Doing About This?
First off, the quick and easy way to push back against this is to sign a Change.Org petition against it.
Second, there is going to be a protest organized at the Nassau County Legislative Building’s front steps (my second-favorite place to protest in the area, just after the courthouse) on April 8th at 11:00 AM. I understand not everyone can go (I know, that’s Eclipse day, people might be busy), but that’s what the petition is for! Hat tip to Katie Hawkland of the Long Island Progressive Coalition for informing me of this protest, BTW.
Other than that, I’m not sure what more we can do. Certainly, I can’t think of things that can be done from afar. This isn’t the kind of situation where raising funds will raise awareness, but rather the kind of thing where we need to inform people. So, if you know a Long Islander, feel free to say something to them about how insane this is.
Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe. If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list. This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a former hyperlocal journalist and sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.