Further on Ferguson

One test I apply to determine someone’s status as a hero of liberty is whether he could shake a Founding Father’s hand should one of them miraculously appear among us. Could my nominee walk up to George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or Nathan Hale or Benedict Arnold, look him in the eye, and say, “I tried my hardest to protect the freedom you won for us?”

Dan Johnson passes that test. As a student at Bowling Green State University in 2012, he founded PANDA, or People Against the NDAA. This “organization … works against the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012.” And not only works against it but has scored major victories: PANDA’s volunteers have “pushed Anti-NDAA legislation in over 20 states and countless local jursdictions, … and have helped pass several pieces of legislation across the country.

Mr. Johnson is now “in Ferguson [not] on behalf of his activist group, but on his own time to lend his expertise in organizing a coordinated political effort to push back against such police action.” From there he’s written and broadcast accounts of what he’s seeing:

I have been here since Saturday morning. I have seen everything from prayer circles and press conferences with the protesters, to National Guardsmen positioned as snipers on store rooftops. I have been directed out of parking lots by military police, and ordered to keep moving by highway patrolmen. … I have had my eyes completely opened while down here. …  This is what the NDAA looks like. When the only difference between the police and military is one is under the DoD (Department of Defense), and one is not, there is no practical difference. The Ferguson police coalition treated peaceful protesters like criminals, instead of dealing separately with a small criminal element.  They acted like, and continue to act like, an occupying force in the community. Of course, now even the National Guard is here. …  I challenge any organization that considers liberty important to send people down here and truly stand up against the military state.

Not to create work for Mr. Johnson, but perhaps in his travels around Ferguson, he can substantiate the following information from Freedom Outpost:

one of my most trusted sources, a member of DHS, … stated that DHS is running the Ferguson Police Department and that their actions are designed to antagonize and to provoke the locals to violence. He further stated that he believed that the ultimate goal is to inflame the local citizens to such a point martial law will be declared.

I’m kinda boggled at trusting anyone at DHS; hence, my hopes that Mr. Johnson might corroborate this allegation. On the other hand, such an agenda explains why the FPD sat on a surveillance tape for six days that purports to show Michael Brown shoplifting moments before he died. As I mentioned yesterday, it’s intensely curious that the cops, who have endured a week of withering scorn (and rightfully so) for Mr. Brown’s murder, never so much as hinted at, let alone released, a videotape that would go a long ways towards justifying their kill in some minds. “Small minds,” I should say, the sort that insist on interpreting the events in Ferguson as a racial issue rather than as the predictable result of Progressive politics and tyranny.

Meanwhile, if the DHS is indeed orchestrating events in Ferguson, I wonder whether Al Sharpton, last seen on the payroll of the FBI, is once again collaborating. How I long for the day when one of the State’s black victims stands up to this charlatan and refuses to help him exploit other people’s grief.

Share

11:36 am on August 19, 2014