![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/owasco/23uQjymaMdba98vR4tB65VLLd2WnHPUsJ1MHyyRiWxLe2Gmq2Auuk5LDgYGStXYqd687J.png) ![text16.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmcvVqhGMbF1KAHTn9Wh8FiRhmpAbiEuAKerVM7ugDnXfX/text16.png) I would not be surprised to learn that many people down at village hall in this hillbilly town hate my guts. I protested. Oh yes I did. The agenda for the evening's bimonthly board meeting listed the announcement of an award received, compliments of the village treasurer, of 50,000 dollars for something called NYS Strengthening Essential Cybersecurity for Utilities and Resiliency, made nice and warm and fuzzy by the acronym SECURE. What could go wrong, right? I looked into it before the meeting. Now, I have often warned them that government handouts, called grants and awards, come with strings attached. Stuff you have to do that you would not have to do if you didn't take the dang money in the first place. Do they listen to me? No they do not. They think I'm whacked. I got busy looking up this award's strings. I found whole bunches of stuff, onerous stuff, that the officials of this village will have to do *in perpetuity* if they take this money. I showed them the mush shorter list of stuff they will be required by law to do if they don't take the money. The treasurer, who was very proud of herself for securing the grant/award, glared at me. "Where did you find all this?" one of the board members asked. "I did an AI query." Maybe AI isn't so bad after all. ![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/owasco/243WpwU3ZSK16oiApd5TkCh4MLw6cn6U4awbwq8RoAeRgP1XdxJFd7VFJ5BBnaLczbTt4.png) This is my entry to @mariannewest's daily freewrite [challenge](https://peakd.com/hive-161155/@daily.prompt/12-august-2026-freewriters-community-daily-writing-prompt-day-3193-protest). Today's prompt is ***protest***. I used eggtimer and wrote madly for five minutes. After the timer went off, I proofread without making content changes. This is a true story. I appear to be on a mission to stop my local government officials from tightening the shackles already on their wrists, and on those of the residents of this very fine little village, by gratefully accepting every single dime any government anywhere wants to hand out to us. This particular grant will force us to expose our utilities, until now independent and inexpensive, to control by the state government, under the guise of protecting us from cyber attack. What a load of crock. What we need protection from these days is our state government. This particular law is the very first of its kind in the nation, no less. Watch out for protection coming for you, wherever you are. https://steemitimages.com/DQmY73bhwxZbFPVvGvGshKPCtEzK7fseuHjaxCDEW4fB6Pe/Freewritehouse-footer-500px.png

[image](https://pixabay.com/es/photos/escultura-l%c3%adnea-de-pan-depresi%c3%b3n-18142/)

Shackles, a freewrite