FERGUSON • Following a night of arson fires and bashed storefronts that hit close to home, Greg Hildebrand stood naked Tuesday, drying off from a needed shower, when he noticed somebody on the rooftop.
“I opened the window and said, ‘Hey, can I help you?’” said Hildebrand, 35, a website developer.
The man said he was security and would be up there at night with others to protect the pocket of second-story apartments and lower-level storefronts near the Ferguson Police Department. A day earlier, rioters had broken out windows below Hildebrand’s apartment in the 100 block of South Florissant Road and torched a nearby beauty supply store.
“I am in the middle of a difficult spot,” Hildebrand said. “I feel a lot better having those guys up on the roof.”
But he wasn’t clear exactly who “those guys” were or where they came from.
Puzzled and alarmed protesters have wondered, too — some accusing the mysterious guards in military fatigues of being in the Ku Klux Klan.
In fact, they are volunteers affiliated with a 35,000-member national organization called Oath Keepers. Yale Law School graduate and libertarian Stewart Rhodes said by telephone from Montana that he founded the group in 2009 to protect constitutional rights, including those of protesters confronted by what he described as overly militarized police.
But Rhodes, who said he is Mexican-American, was quick to assure that Oath Keepers is not anti-government. He said those pulling rooftop security in Ferguson are current or former government employees and first responders, many who have intense military, police and EMS training.
“We thought they were going to do it right this time,” Rhodes said of government response to the grand jury decision released Monday night in the Darren Wilson case. “But when Monday rolled around and they didn’t park the National Guard at these businesses, that’s when we said we have got to do something.
“Historically, the government almost always fails to protect people,” he added.
Kudos to Jesse Bogan, and Post Dispatch, for good coverage of an outstanding civic action by Oath Keepers. Salute!
COMMENT BY STEWART RHODES, FOUNDER OF OATH KEEPERS:
That is is a great article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about our unpaid, volunteer security team in Ferguson that has protected four businesses and also apartments this past week. Reporter Jesse Bogan deserves our thanks and gratitude for reporting fairly and accurately, which is, sadly, such a rarity among mainstream media that have covered us.
Despite the still ongoing negligent lack of protection by the Governor and his men for the businesses in Ferguson, our volunteer security team of Oath Keepers members have been able to prevent arsonists from burning these buildings down, saving several small businesses owned by hard-working Ferguson residents, such as Natalie Dubose of Natalie’s Cakes and More, and also saving the occupied apartments on the upper floors, and very likely saving the lives of the residents.
This we will defend: Natalie Dubose, a hard working single-mother of two who got her start selling cakes at a local Flea Market, opened the small bake shop of her dreams just this past summer. She has a right to life, liberty, and property – a right to live her dream and feed her children by doing so – and we are proud to defend her rights, along with the rights of the other good people on her block.
You should know that arsonists directly threatened to burn these buildings down, in callous, evil disregard for the lives of the people who live there and the people who’s dreams and livelihood are tied up in their businesses there (in addition to Natalie’s bakery, there is a family owned Chinese Restaurant, a family owned beauty supply store, and a dentist office, among others).
On Tuesday afternoon, as our Oath Keepers volunteers were boarding up the window-fronts, some thugs walked up and said “we’ll just tear those down to get in” to which one of our men said “we won’t let you get that close to the buildings.” The thugs responded with “then we’ll just throw Molotov Cocktails on the roofs tonight and burn these Fu*%@#g buildings down.” But that didn’t happen, because our military and police veterans were on the rooftops that night, wetting them down, and standing guard with a fire-extinguisher in one hand, and a rifle or shotgun in the other.
Gotta have a sense of humor, even during riots and unrest. Even the Fire extinguishers in Ferguson have Guy Fawkes masks on.
Our security team did spot coordinated arsonist teams moving along the street, assembling Molotov Cocktails as they went. And some did initially try to approach the buildings we guarded, but when our men shined their bright tactical flashlights on the wanna-be arsonists, and, in loud voices from above, told them “your current chosen profession is not a healthy one to pursue here,” the arsonists suddenly remembered they had somewhere else to be.
And that’s how it went all week. Other buildings around them, some as close as 75 yards away, were set on fire and vandalized, but the buildings our team guarded went untouched, and unburned. Passing thugs occasionally shouted insults and obscenities, and made threats, but none of them had the courage of their convictions. None stepped up to walk their talk.
And our men, fortunately, did not have to use force on anyone. Their presence and vigilance alone were a strong and effective deterrent. They were cool, calm, and professional, but also firm in making their resolve to defend the buildings and residents known.
The closest our security team came to actually having to use force was on Thanksgiving night when Nebraska Marine veteran Nick Nesbitt spotted several men accosting a lone female, who began to yell in distress as one of the men grabbed her. Nick put his bright light on them and told the man to take his hands off the woman “NOW!” and the man let go of her, grabbed her cell-phone, and ran down the street. Our team let the police know what happened and where the strong-armed robbery suspect had gone, and the police found and arrested him.
Why did we do this? First, because we felt honor bound to defend those who needed defending, and who were being abandoned as sacrificial lambs to the agenda of oath breaking politicians. It was just the right thing to do. As local Oath Keepers CPT team leader Sam stated, “it is about the strong defending the weak.” As we suspected would happen, Governor Nixon dropped the ball – again – failing to protect the people of Ferguson. As a scathing St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial put it:
Gov. Jay Nixon, who spent the past two weeks rattling his saber and declaring a state of emergency before there was one, made sure the National Guard was protecting the hell out of the courthouse in Clayton, but left Ferguson to burn.
Our local Oath Keepers could not, in good conscience, just stand by and watch as the city went up in flames. We at national agreed. We had to do something. And Oath Keepers from across the country agreed, and answered the call we put out Monday morning (once we realized what was about to happen for the second time).
Oath Keeper Nick Nesbitt, a U.S. Marine veteran from Nebraska, watches from a snowy rooftop near the Ferguson Police Department, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo. He and a group of volunteers watch and protect local businesses from getting vandalized as protesters gather in the neighborhood. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Second, we did this because we felt compelled to lead by example to show the American people a constitutional answer to civil unrest and violence. We wanted to show them that they have the power – already in their own hands – the right, and the duty to secure themselves and their communities. Over and over scheming politicians and their flunkies in both major parties are presenting the American people with a false choice between lawless chaos, violence, looting, and arson on the one hand, and a hyper-militarized, rights-violating police state on the other.
Perversely, the more government bureaucrats and politicians refuse to actually protect the people and their property, the more they insist that they need even more power, and they insist that the people need to give up even more rights.
The more severe the crisis, the more the chaos will be used to justify a ratcheting up of police state power, and it will not end until all of our children have the boot of a totalitarian police state on the back of their necks (and remember, when there is a boot on your neck, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a left boot or a right boot or whether there is a white foot or a black foot inside it. Police states oppress all).
As we pointed out in our open letter to Governor Nixon, and also in our letter to the people of Ferguson, there are ways to stop looting and arson that are also respectful of the rights of peaceful protesters, and in obedience to our Constitution. We don’t have to sacrifice liberty to get security, not if We the People do as the Founders intended and stand together in defense of our own communities. In our Open Letter to the People of Ferguson, we specifically addressed the veterans of Ferguson:
We call on the veterans in your community, in particular, to step up and lead the way to defend the lives and property of their neighbors, and we call on them to form neighborhood watches and patrols to put a stop to acts of violence. You have the power to police your own neighborhoods, and keep them safe for all. Black veterans have a proud and noble example to follow, in the Deacons for Defense and Justice, who were World War II and Korean War veterans who stood up to the violence of the Klan, except this time, you must defend against violence by anyone, whether outsiders or locals, of any race, against anyone, of any race. If you take care of your own neighborhoods, it removes the sense of emergency that is used to justify a heavy police presence. And that can also have a lasting effect even after the protests are over. Be your own “police.”
Veterans of Ferguson, you swore the same oath to defend the Constitution that we did when we served. Like us, you are also still bound by that oath, and that same duty.
When it came to it, we realized we needed to show them how it’s done, by leading by our own example, and by doing so, we are now showing the entire country how it’s done. And we are not alone! Some brave young black men of Ferguson are also stepping up to show what is possible by serving as armed volunteer guards over a local gas station and store owned by a white family. We wish them all the best, and we will support their effort in any way we can. We consider them to truly be brothers in arms.
We salute our brave volunteers who honored their oaths by stepping up to do what was right and decent in Ferguson, and by doing so, showed the American people that the Founding fathers were right when they described a militia made up of the people themselves as being necessary for the security of a free state, because we will be neither secure nor free unless we accept and act on our civic duty to protect our communities.
And that is what this has to do with our oaths to defend the Constitution. We have a duty to shine the light of liberty and show the way for the rest of the country to follow, back to the Constitution. Sometimes educational talking and writing is just not enough. Sometimes protesting is not enough. Sometimes you need to act to show the way. And what happened in Ferguson this past week, and what our brave volunteers did (as well as what the young black men did by guarding the Conoco station) show exactly what must be done – community organizing for community security and mutual assistance in emergencies – which is the whole point of our Community Preparedness Team (CPT) Program. We must do this, to be secure and free, and as a vital stepping stone on the way back to a truly revitalized state militia made up of the people themselves, organized, trained, and equipped. Such a people cannot be terrorized by private or public criminals. Such a people are free.
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. - George Orwell
We salute these fine men and women (yes, we had two women serve last night – a Army veteran combat journalist and her assistant) for standing guard all night while the people they protected slept in peace. Thanks to our volunteers, Thanksgiving was a day of peace, love, and joy for those residents and small business owners rather than a tragedy of fire and terror, as the arsonists wanted. God bless them! They do their country proud.
