Our Town Chapter 1: Sometimes You Find Silver

9:14Meribah Knight:The building was right around the corner from the restaurant, right off the town square. a prime location and rare find.

9:22Susan Berfield:And I had mentioned it because some of the other buildings in town, it's very hard for them to come there, pass down through family.

9:29Meribah Knight:Cassie had learned this about Gainsborough, that it was tight-knit. She'd moved there about five years earlier from Florida, and the town had given her a lot.

9:38Susan Berfield:I could not have been to this point in my life without the support of this town, Whether it's council members, community members, business members, employees, like it has just been an effort from everybody.

9:54Meribah Knight:Cassie is a recovering drug user, sober 13 years. So the idea of having this kind of welcome and support system to open a business, it meant everything to her.

10:05Susan Berfield:I was such a bad person for such a long time. And it's really nice to like take that effort that I used to be into being an addict and put it into the good stuff in the community and like helping. It just is like, I know it sounds cheesy and I say it does. It's better than being high. Like it really is. It makes you feel good. It makes you feel valuable. All the opposite feelings you get whenever you're an addict.

10:29Meribah Knight:But Cassie loved helping Gainsborough grow, because like her, it too had struggled in years past. Hollowed out by job losses and stagnant wages, nearby factories had closed, the Shirt Factory, Oshkosh-Bagosh. Then came the opioid epidemic. But over the past decade, people like Cassie had started opening restaurants and stores that drew tourists. So when this real estate guy showed up in town and bought the building that Cassie tipped him off to, she was delighted. He bought it along with his son, who'd just moved from Texas to Gainsborough. He was becoming a regular, too. His name was Josh Abattoi.

11:13Meribah Knight:Soon he'd started coming in with other men, men who also seemed new to the town. She wasn't sure if they were colleagues or friends.

11:21Susan Berfield:As many times as they came into my restaurant or did anything, they never would talk to me.

11:27Meribah Knight:But that didn't deter Cassie from chatting Josh Abitoy up.

11:32Susan Berfield:After I'd found out that they had bought it, Josh, his father, and another gentleman were sitting at the restaurant. And I can remember, I remember it was table 10, and I was sitting there talking to them about, you know, what are you guys doing? And, oh, it's an appraisal business. Just very, like, not putting a direct stamp on it. Like, we're still trying to figure out It's going to be a couple different things. And I was like, oh, I'm going to have to come down and check it out.

11:58Meribah Knight:All the Gainesboro business owners were close.

12:01Susan Berfield:Here in town, like all the businesses on the square, we like do so many things together. We just are each other's biggest cheerleaders.

12:08Meribah Knight:But that was not the response she got from Josh Abattoi.

12:12Susan Berfield:And I can remember him looking up at me and saying, we're just gonna have to wait till it's done. We don't, we're not going to let anybody in there till it's done. From right then, it was like closed off. It went from open conversation to like, now I'm just not going to talk about what this place is anymore. I should have been like, well, that's kind of weird.

12:30Meribah Knight:Then a couple months after Abattoi purchased that building by the square, the town would find out why. Nothing was quite the same for Gainsborough after that. More after the break.

12:46Susan Berfield:Quick one before you jump back in. You're listening for ways to help teams move faster, make sharper decisions, and turn scattered context into work they can use. ChatGPT for Business can help. ChatGPT for Business gives teams a shared workspace with admin controls, permissions, and access to work and codecs in ChatGPT. This means your business can move from question to answer and code to rollout quicker. Join over 10 million business and enterprise users worldwide already using ChatGPT for Work. Download the ChatGPT desktop app or contact sales to learn more.

13:45Susan Berfield:connected, not complicated, for patients and providers. Things like making it easier to get care that looks at the whole person, from primary care doctors to mental health support and even in-home care, and then using technology to make sure they all work together. Technology designed to help doctors spend less time on busy work and more time with their patients. And those prescriptions? Optum is working to bring costs down, save patients money, and make it easier to get refills. Little by little, Optum is helping make healthcare work as one for everyone. Head to business.optum.com to see how.

14:21Susan Berfield:Wise is the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the globe. If you've ever sent money internationally using a traditional bank, there's a good chance you've paid more than you realized. Hidden fees, exchange rate markups, and extra charges can quietly add up before your money even arrives. There's a better way. Try Wise. Wise uses the exchange rate you'd usually find on Google, helping you avoid the unwelcome surprises that often come with international transfers. Whether you're sending money to family overseas, spending while on your holiday abroad, or paying bills across borders, Wise makes moving money simple, transparent, and straightforward.

14:57Susan Berfield:Wise offers 24-7 customer service and runs over 7 million daily checks to spot and stop fraud. And most transfers happen in under 20 seconds, which means your money arrives in less time than you've been listening to me. Join millions saving billions. Be smart. Get wise. Visit wise.com or download the wise app today. T's and C's apply.

15:22Susan Berfield:A friend of mine texted me about three o 'clock.

15:27Meribah Knight:It was a Friday in mid-November when Mark Dudney, a preservation planner and historian for the area, received a message from his friend. It was about an upcoming news story.

15:38Susan Berfield:Phil Williams was going to have a peace on Monday night.

15:43Meribah Knight:Phil Williams is an investigative reporter with News Channel 5 in Nashville, been on the air for decades, and has a well-known series called Confronting Hate.

15:52Susan Berfield:New data appear to reveal a disturbing trend, the rise of hate in Tennessee.

15:58Meribah Knight:And the next story in the series, Mark learned, was going to be about Gainsborough.

16:03Susan Berfield:I felt like my blood pressure ramped up. I don't have an alarmist personality. I'm a really flat line on an EKG.

16:12Meribah Knight:Mark had grown up in Gainesboro, then left after high school, but had recently moved back.

16:18Susan Berfield:Well, this is sort of getting into personal stuff, but I got divorced last year.

16:23Meribah Knight:For Mark, like Cassie, Gainesboro was a place to recover, to breathe.

16:29Susan Berfield:My family has been here seven generations. I grew up going to a little church right down the road here. Very tight-knit.

16:37Meribah Knight:Mark's dad had also passed away that year. Dr. Dudney, he was Gainsborough's beloved local doctor, delivered many of the town's babies. So Mark had a lot to process. Being home helped. So had turning off the news.

16:52Susan Berfield:I was listening to a lot of Allman Brothers. And so that was just a pleasure to be back here. That lasted about six weeks.

17:01Meribah Knight:More specifically, until November 18, 2024. The night the TV news story about Gainsborough aired.

17:11Susan Berfield:That Monday night, I watched it with my sister. Tonight, News Channel 5 Investigates special report reveals the Christian nationalists who want to turn a small Middle Tennessee community into their base of operations. Phil, you found that longtime residents didn't even know this was happening. This has very much been developing under the radar. I was glued to the television.

17:34Meribah Knight:Mark pulled a chair right up to the TV. In many ways, the views of some of these people are not so different from the white supremacists we've seen marching down Nashville streets in the past year,

17:46Susan Berfield:although they dress up their ideas with intellectual buzzwords and call it Christian. And they've announced that Gainsborough, the Jackson County seat, will be the focus of their efforts to resettle like-minded people from around the country.

18:00Meribah Knight:The goal, from what Mark understood, was to turn Gainsborough into their own type of Christian town. The report focused on two newcomers, a pair of podcasters who'd already moved to Gainsborough. They say they, quote, hate democracy. They're rooting for a partisan dictator. And they think God made men to rule over women. Williams described the two podcasters as ambassadors for the larger venture.

18:26Susan Berfield:The two Christian nationalists denounced the efforts of civil rights leader Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in general. They celebrate images of whites-only diners in the 50s, and they mock historical incidents like the...

18:39Meribah Knight:As Mark watched, he learned the real estate group running the whole venture had already bought 100 acres right in Gainesboro, and another 500 acres somewhere in the Appalachian Hills, all to build the community.

18:52Susan Berfield:We were all flat-footed. We didn't have a clue.

18:59Meribah Knight:The report, a mere 10 minutes, shook the tiny town. Mark, despite his usual flatline EKG demeanor, was feeling all sorts of feelings.

19:10Susan Berfield:I do remember getting hot. The arrogance, the hubris is mind-blowing.

19:20Meribah Knight:There was a phrase in the news report that hit Mark especially hard, Christian nationalist. With his penchant for constitutional history, he was familiar with the term Christian nationalist, though many of his fellow residents were not.

19:34Susan Berfield:To me, Christian nationalism is fundamentally un-American. Really, this is just about white supremacy.

19:41Meribah Knight:One important note, the podcasters do not call themselves white supremacists. They've called their podcast, quote, the number one Christian nationalist podcast in the world. But one of them told us he doesn't describe himself that way. And the guy in charge of the larger venture says he's not a Christian nationalist. Christian nationalists believe that America is a Christian nation and should be led by Christians for Christians, and more specifically, Christian men. Gainsborough, the Jackson County seat, may have seemed like a good fit. The county is overwhelmingly white, 96%. It's also Christian and conservative.

20:25Meribah Knight:81 % voted for Trump. So it might be easy to stereotype.

20:30Susan Berfield:What people commonly think about Jackson County, they think we're all backwards, hateful, racist, and, oh, he's from Jackson County. I could carry something around here.

20:39Meribah Knight:Brian Allen, the guy with the inquisitive mind and the metal detector, had also watched the report and felt an odd combo of emotions.

20:48Susan Berfield:In a weird way, like vindication. But he also felt... Terror. This can't be real. I guess a here-we-go moment. This isn't a fly-by-night LLC that will be shut down. They're here to, I guess, Homestead to make a town. And I didn't know how the community would react.

21:05Meribah Knight:The town was practically vibrating, talking, texting, Googling. It was all the talk at church on Sunday. Days later, Phil Williams returned for a follow-up story, a sort of town hall on the square. About 40 people came.

21:20Susan Berfield:When you hear them talking about coming here to build a town, what's your reaction? This town is not for them. No, it's not for them.

21:31Meribah Knight:The vice chair of the local Republican Party spoke up. It scares me that they are very clear about taking over. Bryant stood in the back of the room, his mind racing.

21:47Susan Berfield:It was more like, why is this really happening?

21:52Meribah Knight:It was all making sense now. He thought back to the 99 acres across from the high school that he'd investigated months before. Back then, he'd worried he was being a little paranoid. Now, he realized he'd been on to something. That real estate company, Ridge Runner, the one Brian had Googled.

22:11Susan Berfield:We see rising demand for new types of communities around a shared vision for local life in America.

22:19Meribah Knight:They were the ones who'd purchased those 99 acres. That land was their start to building their community, to remaking Gainsborough.

22:29Susan Berfield:Build the America you want to live in.

22:32Meribah Knight:It was all a part of this plan.

22:38Meribah Knight:Inside the town hall, Bryant was relieved to hear his neighbors' objections. What message would you have for these people? We all want to be a part of a racial hate community. Yes, we do.

22:52Susan Berfield:The bond that formed was almost magical.

22:56Meribah Knight:This was the Gainsborough he knew. Meanwhile, Mark Dudney, the historian, sat second row in the town hall, listening and making all kinds of wild connections.

23:09Susan Berfield:It was so close to Halloween. I've been watching horror movies. And I shot my mouth off and made some reference about Salem's Lot.

23:18Meribah Knight:Salem's Lot, a novel-turned-film by Stephen King, in which a man returns to his hometown only to discover that a strange businessman has also arrived, along with an ancient vampire, to take over the town.

23:32Susan Berfield:And as far as I'm concerned, Mr. Barlow and Mr. Straker can load up the coffin and get out of Salem's Lot. You've got somebody coming in who is trying to recruit and multiply. and it was not that far off as an analogy.

23:52Meribah Knight:The town now believed it was part of a plan to build a far-right community, that outside money was flowing in to make it, and that podcasters, far-right Christians, were already here and promoting it. Everything else was still a mystery. What exactly was Ridge Runner? Who were these guys? And how many were already in Gainesboro? There was one person at the town hall standing in the back near Bryant who had some answers. Cassie Kessler, the restaurant owner. She'd recognized the two podcasters from the TV report. She knew them. They'd eaten at her restaurant. And what's more, the real estate guy, the one she'd helped find the building for, his son, Josh Abitoy, who'd moved from Texas.

24:39Meribah Knight:He was the leader. He was the CEO of Ridge Runner. the company behind this whole thing.

24:46Susan Berfield:Like, I instantly shot back to the night of the election.

24:51Meribah Knight:The night of the 2024 presidential election, just two weeks earlier, the last time Cassie had seen Josh Abitoy. He'd come in for lunch that day, and again for dinner.

25:03Susan Berfield:We made sure a nice table was set up for them, you know, Abitoy's family, they were all there with their whole family.

25:10Meribah Knight:She and Abitoy even made a friendly wager.

25:13Susan Berfield:I was like, who do you think is going to win? And it was just like me just being like funny. Like, I can remember him leaning back like this and going, it's going to be Trump. He's going to take it. And I was like, I'm going to buy you a beer if he wins. He's like, OK, I'm going to hold you up to that. And we just, you know, chuckled.

25:30Meribah Knight:While Cassie headed home from the restaurant for an early bedtime, a very different night was ahead for Josh Abattoi, who left the coin to go be on a podcast.

25:43Susan Berfield:Hello and welcome to ContraMundum. It is election night. I'm Andrew Esker. This over here is CJ Engel.

25:48Meribah Knight:The hosts were the two podcasters, the ones who'd already moved to town to help Josh Abattoy with the Ridge Runner development. To many people in town, they'd become the voice of the venture.

26:00Susan Berfield:Awesome. All right, CJ, what are your thoughts? I am ready to doomscroll. Doomscroll Twitter all night long?

26:06Meribah Knight:Cassie hadn't seen this live stream when it aired. But now, after the TV news story, she watched some. It was nearly nine hours.

26:15Susan Berfield:So I was just very angry, and I knew that I was going to see them at some point.

26:20Meribah Knight:Many others in town now also watched, eager to learn what they could about these newcomers. The two podcasters wore matching blue suits and ties, thanks to their wives.

26:30Susan Berfield:Yeah, they bullied us into matching.

26:32Meribah Knight:They already seem giddy.

26:33Susan Berfield:You didn't get the pocket square. I have the pocket square.

26:35Meribah Knight:They're Trump supporters. Andrew Isker was new to Tennessee. He said he fled Minnesota for its wokeness.

26:42Susan Berfield:We will win.

26:43Meribah Knight:His co-host, C.J. Engel, left California for the same reason. I'm pleased as punch. You ever said in Tennessee? Sure. We do now.

26:50Susan Berfield:All right.

26:51Meribah Knight:And now here they were, live streaming their podcasts from Gainesboro, from the same building Cassie had tipped Josh Abattoi and his father off to. It was now Ridge Runner's headquarters. The name of the podcast, Contra Mundum, is Latin for against the world.

27:09Susan Berfield:I don't see any reason why things will continue to justify women going more and more to college. Like women's lib, you know, liberation or emancipation and the career women, that's only led to despair. And I think that women are starting to recognize that. It will probably be easier to get rid of democracy as a whole before getting rid of the 19th Amendment.

27:27Meribah Knight:The 19th Amendment, the women's right to vote.

27:30Susan Berfield:And women are basically going to revert back to their natural station, like a natural order correction. It's so crazy to me that it's freedom for them, but only people that like seem like them.

27:45Meribah Knight:All their talk about women's natural order. Well, Cassie was not a mother. She had tried, really tried, but she wasn't a mother. She was a wife, an entrepreneur, a voter. She served her community in all sorts of ways.

28:00Susan Berfield:If you really did your research, almost every business on this square is run by a woman.

28:06Meribah Knight:A stroll around the town square reveals how many women anchor the Gainsborough economy.

28:11Susan Berfield:Myself, Miss Sally's, Nostalgic, Gib Flow.

28:16Meribah Knight:The pharmacy, the realtor next door, FaZe Cafe, the gift shop down the street.

28:21Susan Berfield:And then we have a woman judge, and we have a woman attorney, and we have women aldermen. We're all women and we're all just keeping our heads down and we're trying to grow this town. Starting with our 8 o 'clock ad read here. The 8 o 'clock hour is sponsored by Paxmail. Fellas, get off of gay email. Join Paxmail.cc instead. Keep the money with the brothers. The Muslims in Dearborn, they voted for Trump. This is amazing. Thank you for your service, but you're going back. Sorry, you can be deported last.

28:57Meribah Knight:You know what's hilarious? By hour four, it was clear that Trump was going to win. Hold on, hold on. That was Josh Abitoy, the CEO of Ridge Runner, chiming in. This is our democracy. Our democracy. Yes, it's ours now. This is our democracy. We are the captain now. Yes. By hour eight, it was confirmed. Kamala Harris had lost to Donald Trump.

29:17Susan Berfield:He is the atlas holding up the world of the patriarchy right now. Yes.

29:23Meribah Knight:And that's when...

29:24Susan Berfield:I've got the glass ceiling. Ten inches thick.

29:27Meribah Knight:The glass ceiling jokes began. The glass ceiling just got ten feet taller.

29:33Susan Berfield:Heritage America won. Oh, he did purge. That's the only kind of America there is, man.

29:37Meribah Knight:Honestly, though. The podcasters finally signed off by talking about their new hometown.

29:42Susan Berfield:This is really cool, though, to be able to do this from Gainesboro, Tennessee. We've been building up for this moment for months. And we're here. We made it so much planned. We have great families here. We have great guys here. It's just really great to connect with a small town of Trump-loving Americans. There's 7 ,000 of you watching. Come here. Go to RidgeRunnerUSA.com. Yeah. Come move here to be with us. I think this is just the beginning of a lot of things. I couldn't have asked for a reason better. Amazing. Amazing. It's crazy.

30:11Meribah Knight:After listening to this, Cassie felt duped.

30:14Susan Berfield:Then it's like one of those like retrospects in a movie where like you find out something and then you go back and all the flashbacks of like, oh my gosh, that makes sense.

30:22Meribah Knight:Conversations Cassie witnessed in her restaurant months earlier now had an entirely different meaning.

30:28Susan Berfield:They're trying to sell these plots. So they bring people in, give them a tour of the town, and then they would bring them to lunch. And because they get great service, they say, look, we're welcome here. Look, when you move here, you can get this. Look how much they like us. They're all like us here.

30:45Meribah Knight:Like in that moment, you're just thinking that some people having a conversation. Oh, they like my restaurant.

30:48Susan Berfield:Like, do not use my hard work and my businesses and my staff and everything that they do to sell your bullshit.

30:58Meribah Knight:As news of the real estate venture continued to spread through the town, so did anxiety about who might come here. After all, Josh Abattoy had been pretty explicit.

31:09Susan Berfield:The whole point of it is to plant a flag and say this small town is where our people are gathering.

31:17Meribah Knight:After the TV news story dropped, Abattoi laid low. I remember not even really seeing them around town. But one of the podcasters, CJ Engel, did make an appearance, a virtual one.

31:30Susan Berfield:All right, thanks for calling. I'm going to go ahead and give you to CJ, okay?

31:33Meribah Knight:On a YouTube show called Truth With Proof, hosted by a local preacher, Engel's new neighbors were eager to talk to him.

31:42Susan Berfield:So are you really an American? Are you a spy from Russia? I mean, what's your deal, buddy? Yeah, I'm American and I love this country and I'm here because I think it represents the American ethos much better than California did. I got a question. Why are you in Jackson County? I'm buying in Jackson County because I like the region and it seems like a good place to raise families. And this is where my friends decided to go. Who's your friends? Well, Josh Abitoy and Andrew and people like that. And we have friends here that have grown up here as well. How did you meet them? On the internet. That's where you meet people these days.

32:22Susan Berfield:Yeah. Yeah. I'm a low fashion. Look, Will, I appreciate your cynicism, and I don't take it offensively. So thank you for calling in, and I hope to earn a better reputation over the next couple of years. And here's another problem, buddy. Sure. With y 'all coming in buying land from Jackson County people, you're taking that land away. then you're marketing that land to people from Minnesota, California, Wyoming, Colorado, wherever it is you're trying to get them from. That land will never be able to be back in the hands of young people from Jackson County who want to buy a house of two acres, five acres, 15 acres, whatever.

32:59Susan Berfield:They'll never be able to get it because it's going to be in y 'all's little Nazi party. I don't understand how you think that's good for our people. You're not welcome.

33:08Meribah Knight:Not everyone who called or texted was opposed to Ridge Runner.

33:11Susan Berfield:Someone says, hey, CJ, you're handling all the calls well. Those who watch the podcast in full will see your fruits and your intentions.

33:19Meribah Knight:But by and large, people were suspicious and very confused.

33:23Susan Berfield:OK, I have a question about you all stating that you were going to plant a flag and start a town. I don't understand that exactly because we are currently a town. So I wasn't really for sure what that meant.

33:38Meribah Knight:That's what everyone wanted to know. What did it mean when they said they were building a town and would plant a flag? It's probably analogous. You know, like, I don't think, I don't have any plans to start a town.

33:51Susan Berfield:I mean, Instead he brushes it off as just talk. But I don't have any plans. And I say this very, very seriously. Our plan is to assimilate into the culture of the area and to participate in making Gainesboro a better place to live.

34:09Meribah Knight:Engel was as civil as can be, even said he'd gotten plenty of sympathetic messages in the weeks after. But those who wanted more details were frustrated. His answers on the show didn't reveal much. Then he and the others seemed to disappear from public life in Gainesboro. So residents decided they needed to take matters into their own hands. That's after the break.

34:35Susan Berfield:Quick one before you jump back in. You're listening for ways to help teams move faster, make sharper decisions, and turn scattered context into work they can use. ChatGPT for Business can help. ChatGPT for Business gives teams a shared workspace with admin controls, permissions, and access to work and codecs in ChatGPT. This means your business can move from question to answer and code to rollout quicker. Join over 10 million business and enterprise users worldwide already using ChatGPT for work. Download the ChatGPT desktop app or contact sales to learn more. Let's talk about healthcare for a second.

35:13Susan Berfield:It doesn't always work the way people expect it to. If you've ever waited on a prescription refill or had a hard time getting the care you needed, you know the feeling. The system should just work better for everyone. That's exactly what the people at Optum are trying to do every day. They're a healthcare company linking patient care and pharmacy services and using data and technology to drive the whole system so care is connected, not complicated, for patients and providers. Things like making it easier to get care that looks at the whole person, from primary care doctors to mental health support and even in-home care, and then using technology to make sure they all work together.

35:50Susan Berfield:Technology designed to help doctors spend less time on busy work and more time with their patients. And those prescriptions? Optum is working to bring costs down, save patients money, and make it easier to get refills. Little by little, Optum is helping make healthcare work as one for everyone. Head to business.optum.com to see how. Wise is the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the globe. If you've ever sent money internationally using a traditional bank, there's a good chance you've paid more than you realized. hidden fees exchange rate markups and extra charges can quietly add up before your money even arrives there's a better way try wise wise uses the exchange rate you'd usually find on google helping you avoid the unwelcome surprises that often come with international transfers whether you're sending money to family overseas spending while on your holiday abroad or paying bills across borders wise makes moving money simple transparent and straightforward wise offers 24-7 customer service and runs over 7 million daily checks to spot and stop fraud.

36:53Susan Berfield:And most transfers happen in under 20 seconds, which means your money arrives in less time than you've been listening to me. Join millions, saving billions. Be smart. Get wise. Visit wise.com or download the wise app today. T's and C's apply.

37:13Meribah Knight:The Gainesboro Resistance, as it's come to be known, started with 70-year-old retired art teacher, Nancy Pruitt. My family goes back to, you know, when Gainesboro was formed. Nancy knows the town gossip, even has a police scanner on her kitchen counter, always chattering in the background.

37:33Susan Berfield:Nancy actually was the one who came and told me about it.

37:35Meribah Knight:You know, Nancy can tell you.

37:37Susan Berfield:Nancy was talking about that at one point. If she wants you to know something, she will make sure you know it.

37:42Meribah Knight:Nancy taught in the local public schools for many years. Since retiring, she's been living her best life, traveling the world, volunteering. This town is very special. To think that people wanted to come in and change everything, I was very disillusioned.

37:58Susan Berfield:It was a very sad day, and it changed my life forever.

38:03Meribah Knight:Nancy, who grew up staunchly Republican and voted as one until 2016, had never heard the term Christian nationalist. And now, the two men behind the so-called number one Christian nationalist podcast were living on her street.

38:19Susan Berfield:CJ lives down here, four houses from me.

38:23Meribah Knight:Nancy worried about how the town might be fooled by Ridge Runner. Not because they were uninformed, but because they had other things on their mind. Jackson County, where Gainsborough is located, is one of the poorest in the state. And I did not know how many people were going to be concerned because they had to figure out how they were going to get their next meal.

38:44Susan Berfield:I couldn't get people to understand the gravity of the situation.

38:49Meribah Knight:Gainsborough has a live and let live kind of attitude. There were some folks who had concerns at first, but those faded. Some weren't worried at all. Others likely couldn't pass up a top-dollar offer for land. We have such a low voter turnout in the city

39:05Susan Berfield:that they knew that this was a place that they could take over

39:10Meribah Knight:and plant their flag, as they said. Gainsborough has just 605 registered voters.

39:16Susan Berfield:And if they move 50 families in, then they could take over the politics and the government. And I was a city alderwoman, okay? And I know that I had a landslide with 130 votes, and the next person was 100 votes. So if they got 50 people to move in here, yes, they could take over our little town.

39:46Meribah Knight:Gainsborough's protests kicked off with a small gesture. One of the podcasters had gone to social media to say how much he hated what white, educated women had done to America. So Nancy being Nancy walked to the square and asked the owner of a local gift shop to print a t-shirt with a slogan on it. Dangerous, educated women. She wore it around town. It was her first public act of resistance. I just was trying to figure out what I personally could do. Nancy began contacting her neighbors, old co-workers, a local pastor, restaurant owners. She estimates she spoke to 50 people.

40:28Susan Berfield:And then slowly people started getting on board.

40:33Meribah Knight:Nancy was consumed. She spent an hour every morning researching while she had coffee, and in the middle of the night when she couldn't sleep. My closest friends, they were concerned because they said, you're so obsessed by this. I said, I think we all need to be. Nancy realized she needed to do even more, something that the podcasters on her street would be sure to see. We need to let them know that everybody on their street and surrounding them are not okay with their views. So in came the lawn signs. They said, hate has no home in Gainesboro. On November 30th, 10 days after the town hall, Nancy posted on Facebook, Anyone want a yard sign?

41:16Meribah Knight:Message me. The requests rolled in. Yes, please. Amen. I want one. I need six of them. We had signs all over this town, in everybody's yard, on the side of the road. 300 signs in all. In a small town, it felt like they were everywhere. Someone put up a billboard, too, right on the main road into town. It read, Small Town Big Heart. Here, nasty notions play no part. Gainsborough, where all are welcome. A few weeks passed. The holidays offered a bit of quiet and much-needed normalcy for the town. Then, at the start of the year, Josh Abattoy, the head of Ridge Runner, made a surprising overture, an invitation to talk, not to Nancy, but to her neighbor, who promptly shared it with Nancy.

42:13Meribah Knight:And he said, I'm reading, quoting, I moved to Gainesboro over the summer.

42:18Susan Berfield:Phil's mistaken reporting is not how I would have chosen to be introduced to my new neighbors. I would love to grab coffee sometime and dispel what Phil has

42:28Meribah Knight:said about me and my company.

42:30Susan Berfield:Hopefully the warm welcome to all people.

42:32Meribah Knight:Abattoi has denied being a Christian nationalist. He says the podcasters are not Ridge Runner ambassadors. They're customers, and they don't speak for the company. Ridge Runner says its community will be built around a shared ethos of land, liberty, and legacy. As Nancy kept reading Abitoy's invite, she saw an opportunity. We've been happily invited several times to the Dairy Queen Morning Coffee and have gotten the ability... He was talking about a weekly coffee clash of local veterans that he and CJ, the podcaster, have been joining.

43:06Susan Berfield:The ability to meet people,

43:08Meribah Knight:so you're welcome to come as well. And so we did. We just took more than one person. It would be the first time everyone who had been anxious and alarmed would gather, in the same place as their new neighbors. And they'd have breakfast at the local Dairy Queen.

43:24Susan Berfield:A group of people in the community wanted to just do a show of community unity.

43:30Meribah Knight:That's Mark Dudney, the historian. What's your mindset like walking in that morning?

43:36Susan Berfield:We need some bacon and eggs.

43:39Meribah Knight:Dairy Queen is not yours and we are aware of what you're doing That same morning, Brian Allen, the metal detector guy, got a text from a friend telling him, go to Dairy Queen now

43:52Susan Berfield:Okay, I'll go get a sausage biscuit, I don't know But I walk in and I'm like, all these people are like, what is going on? Is it Free Dilly Bar or something? Free Blizzard?

44:03Meribah Knight:The place was packed every booth taken

44:06Susan Berfield:I was like, what's going on? Like, is that, oh, there's a sit-in.

44:10Meribah Knight:It would come to be known as the DQ sit-in.

44:15Susan Berfield:People that I argued with on Facebook politically are there and they're mad. And I'm like, oh God, thank you. Both sides of the political spectrum being there was chill inducing. Like it was like, all right, we got this. We were expecting about 30, 35 people and about 75 showed up. I've never been so proud of my community. The one thing that you have to process is that this is so foreign to us. There is no guidebook available, you know, about what to do. I come in and so I see Abitoy standing over there.

44:55Meribah Knight:Josh Abitoy, the CEO of Ridge Runner.

44:58Susan Berfield:Just seeing him like a jump scare.

45:02Meribah Knight:Abitoy came in and I went straight to him. Nancy wanted to talk about the house across the street from her, where one of the podcasters lived.

45:10Susan Berfield:I introduced myself and I said, I know you purchased that. And he goes, no, I didn't purchase that.

45:16Meribah Knight:Josh Abattoi is right. Actually, his dad bought it. But to Nancy, all Abattois led to Ridge Runner.

45:22Susan Berfield:And I said, yes, you did. He said, how do you know that? And I said, well, I give one hour of my life to you every morning over coffee, doing research.

45:32Meribah Knight:So I called the owner that sold it to you. Nancy decided it was time to say her piece.

45:39Susan Berfield:So obviously you purchased it and then you did a quick deed and put it in their name for whatever reason. I said, I don't know. And I said, and then Isker moved in that next day, I guess. And that's when he got frustrated and didn't want to talk to him anymore. I sat down next to CJ.

45:58Meribah Knight:Cassie Kessler, the restaurant owner, slipped into a booth next to the podcaster.

46:03Susan Berfield:And I said directly to him, I'm like, you know, why are you here? And he said, you know, we're from all different parts of the country. You know, we have a bunch of woke people that got elected into office and then came in and changed the whole town. And it just didn't align with us anymore. So we left. And I'm like, so what's the difference in what you're doing now to us? And he goes, well, you know, we're not trying to change your town. I looked right at him. I said, you say all these things about women. I said, but I own my building. I pay local tax. I pay sales tax. I pay liquor tax. I have employment.

46:37Susan Berfield:I have a nonprofit. But because I can't physically have children, I'm not worth anything. And he says something, God, something to the effect of I have different beliefs than you. And I will tell you, and I hope he's listening. you were shaking like a leaf.

46:59Meribah Knight:Josh Abattoi declined to speak with us for this story, but you'll hear directly from the podcasters, CJ Engel and Andrew Isker, later in this series.

47:12Meribah Knight:A couple weeks after the sit-in came the biggest standoff to date. Ridge Runner applied to join the local chamber of commerce, guaranteeing them public ribbon cuttings and gripping grin photos with the town's business leaders. Cassie Kessler, who was on the chamber's board, said the news landed with a thud.

47:32Susan Berfield:As a board, we were not fans of letting them on. But we live in a democracy, so we wanted to leave it open to the people. We held an open meeting, and there was not one member in that room that wanted them to be a part of it.

47:49Meribah Knight:Next, the board hired an attorney.

47:52Susan Berfield:He said, you don't have to accept it because things that they were saying discriminatory that went against pretty much everything in our morality clause.

48:00Meribah Knight:So the chamber rejected Ridge Runner. From what folks remembered, the chamber had only denied a few businesses. Some years back, it rejected a topless auto repair shop called Boob & Lube. Now the chamber was denying Ridge Runner. It was Gainsborough's first official repudiation of the venture.

48:18Susan Berfield:We had a certified letter drawn up and we sent it to them with a full refund. I think they thought we were going to all cower with our tail between our legs and run away.

48:30Meribah Knight:After the denial, the chamber received a letter from a lawyer in Missouri, notifying it that Ridge Runner intended to sue the chamber and possibly individual members, who it claimed, quote, knowingly discriminated or conspired to discriminate against Ridge Runner.

48:46Susan Berfield:That we were infringing, we were discriminating against them.

48:53Meribah Knight:The letter demanded the chamber preserve all communication regarding its decision to deny Ridge Runner. All emails, texts, faxes, floppy disks, metadata, video, audio, thumb drives, everything.

49:06Susan Berfield:Then you're going to sue us. So then we're going to tie up whatever little money we have in legal fees, which means our Christmas parade gets canceled. Our tree lighting gets canceled because we have no funding to do that. So now you get to go tell the town that you canceled Christmas. Go ahead. As a bunch of Christians, tell this town that all of our Christmas festivities cannot be put on because your feelings will hurt because you didn't get into the chamber and you didn't get your propaganda picture. Get the fuck out of here.

49:37Meribah Knight:The threat letter hung over Gainesboro. So did Ridge Runner's growing stockpile of land, which they almost always paid for in cash. Then, exactly a week after the DQ sit-in, Ridge Runner announced its largest land purchase yet. 450 acres, an old family farm they'd acquired for$2.5 million, a stunning price by local standards. All told, Ridge Runner now controlled upwards of 1 ,200 acres in the county and beyond. Ridge Runner's footprint was growing so rapidly, it now eclipsed the size of Gainsborough itself. Locals would soon discover that this venture was connected to something much bigger, a vision of turmoil, collapse, and a new America.

50:28Meribah Knight:Next time on Our Town.

50:31Susan Berfield:Tell us the response to this, this dangerous venture of yours. Has someone already bought the land? Yes, yes. It's being divided up and sold, you know, as we speak. We need cities on a shining hill. There's no question that they were brought here intentionally. It means I was chosen by God. The old order was all coming to an end. She was determined to see what they were about. They're pouring money into this and they have a lot more to pour. They will start with one state and they have chosen Tennessee as that state.

51:07Meribah Knight:Our Town is written and reported by me, Mara Benight, and Susan Burfield. Rebecca Lax is our senior producer. Ken Armstrong edited the show with additional editing from Rebecca Lax. Original score and sound design by Alex Aguera. Fact-checking by Annika Robbins. Additional production and editorial support from Julia Weaver, David Fox, and Laura Newcomb. Special thanks to Bloomberg's Alana Susnow, Bob Blau, Kristen Powers, Anthony Mancini, the Big Take Podcast team, and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamster-Boer.

51:56Susan Berfield:When you're running a business, the best days are the ones where priorities stay on track. For midsize and large companies, risk can affect multiple parts of the organization at once, from property and liability to cyber and regulatory challenges. At that level, managing risk becomes an ongoing discipline. At the Hartford, the focus is on helping businesses manage risk before it turns into something more disruptive. And when losses do happen, that work is paired with insurance coverage shaped by years of underwriting, risk engineering, and claims experience. Learn more at thehartford.com slash risk mitigation.

52:31Susan Berfield:Policies provided by Hartford Fire Insurance Company and its property and casualty affiliates, Hartford, Connecticut. Everyone's talking about how AI is transforming work, especially in sales. While the landscape shifts, one thing remains the same, the thrill of closing a deal. Whether it's a gong or a confetti machine, every team has its celebration rituals. Adio is designed for that moment. It's the agentic CRM that turns customer signals into actionable insights, helping you close deals faster with revenue agents and automations working around the clock. You'll have everything you need to scale your go-to market efforts.

53:03Susan Berfield:Elevate your wins with Adio. Start your free trial at adio.com slash iHeart. The washer won't start and the laundry's already piled to the ceiling. Hopping on grandappliance.com. Great idea. I heard they have next day delivery. Uh-huh, I'm seeing that too. And they have a bunch of GE options in stock. Oh, that's great. We've always had good luck with GE appliances. This one looks perfect. Scheduling for tomorrow. Gosh, Grand really makes it easy. Another crisis averted by the team at Grand Appliance. Visit GrandAppliance.com today. Grand Appliance, appliance experts since 1930.