The New York Times is on Line 1. CNN is on Line 2. The Associated Press is on Zoom. Tuesday was one of those days. Media requests for interviews were pouring in faster than leaves were falling from the huge 200- or 300-year-old mulberry tree in the backyard I grew up in and on a fateful day in August of 2023 inherited.

You might think all this media attention about a bunch of cops rifling through newsroom drawers, seizing computers and cell phones, was a bit unwarranted. Maybe you think the $3 million that the county agreed to pay in the first and less significant part of lawsuits brought because of the raid was some sort of windfall for those of us at the paper.

At least one poster on anti-social media suggested as much after news of the agreement for a stipulated judgment was released.

Truth is, the money doesn’t matter. And in some ways, the First Amendment doesn’t either. Yes, it’s important that the press not be targeted by weaponized law enforcement for personal or political ends. But this suit wasn’t about just the media. It was about a society in which bullying by those in power has become the norm.

This is a little newspaper in a little town. If we were a kid on a school playground, we’d be the diminutive one most likely to be picked on for lunch money. What’s important is that the system, in this case, didn’t fail us. Although all sorts of powerful people were trying their best to put us out of business and to oust Vice Mayor Ruth Herbel, they didn’t succeed.

That’s an example society as a whole needs to see. We don’t have to cower in our homes, afraid to speak out or challenge those in power. This is America. Factual debate and free exchange of different ideas are what we’re all about. It’s only when people start doubting their ability to influence debates and become afraid of speaking up for fear of retribution that democracy starts to fail.

The first symptom of a failing democracy is when people start electing candidates whose policies and tactics they don’t necessarily agree with, but they vote for them anyway because they know the candidates will stir things up. That’s how virtually every freely elected dictator originally came to power.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not necessarily talking about Donald Trump. These days, we’re beset at all levels of government by myriad Donald Trumps — some of them Democrats, some of them Republicans, some of them something else altogether — who push their power to the limits and basically dare anyone to challenge them.

The money we’ll be receiving not only will be a lot less than the $3 million awarded. Legal fees, taxes, and a whole lot more need to be deducted from that. It still will be a significant sum, but the main significance will be symbolic — a reminder that sometimes the picked-upon fight back, occasionally they win, and all the time all of us need to realize that it’s our duty not to simply resign ourselves to abusive officials and hide out in our homes.

Tuesday was Veterans Day, on which we honor those who put their lives on the line on battlefields to protect our freedom. These days, those battlefields extend to the home front. All of us must be champions of freedom and democracy and not shelter at home as if the threat to our way of life were some new type of COVID virus.

We didn’t win the lawsuit against the county. Democracy did.

— ERIC MEYER