Josh Harkinson on some of the outsiders joining the Ferguson protests: -Erika Crisis is the leading edge where change is possible, Lisa Fithian, an itinerant protest organizer, once told me. Nowhere does that seem more true right now than in Ferguson, Missouri, where ongoing protests have drawn attention to a deep national vein of racial animus. Its not surprising, then, that national figures have begun parachuting into town: the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, actress Keke Palmer, Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey—and the list goes on. The threat of outside agitators is a meme that has accompanied protests dating back to the civil rights era and beyond. But in Ferguson, there are indeed complaints from local organizers that some outsiders are making the situation worse. On Monday, when Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon signed an order to bring in the National Guard, he cited violent and criminal acts of an organized and growing number of individuals, many from outside the community and state. On Tuesday, US Sen. Claire McCaskill said on MSNBC that the protesters have now been invaded…by a group of instigators, some coming from other states, that want a confrontation with police. An officer told the Washington Post that visitors to Ferguson are engaging in looting tourism. Arrest statistics appear to bear them out, up to a point. Of the 78 people arrested Monday night, police told reporters, 68 percent were from the St. Louis metro area, but 18—or 23 percent—had come from out of state, some from as far away as New York and California. So who are these outsiders, and what do they want? I went looking for every nonlocal organization claiming to have members protesting in Ferguson, from fringe to mainstream. Here are some I found:
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 21:35:09 +0000
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