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January 03. 2015 12:01AM Herb Rothschild Jr.: Waco and Ferguson When Timothy McVeigh committed the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, I was stunned to learn that his motive was outrage over the FBI’s siege of David Koresh’s compound two years before. It had completely escaped my attention that far right militants were so angered by the actions of federal law enforcement there, as well as their siege of a much smaller group of alternative religionists at Ruby Ridge a year before. The Ruby Ridge incident hardly registered with me, but Waco was impossible to ignore. At the time and for many years afterward I didn’t question the government’s assertions — that Koresh engaged in statutory rape, physically abused children and stockpiled weapons for dangerous purposes; that Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) agents couldn’t peaceably serve a warrant because he never left his compound; that when they came to the compound (complete with assault helicopters) to serve it, those inside fired on them; that Koresh started the fires that killed him and 73 others, including women and children. That Koresh never left the compound proved demonstrably false, and the truth of the other claims to varying degrees were contested. Among those contesting them were survivors of the siege and members of the McLennan County Sheriff’s Department. I can’t adjudicate these points. Only an impartial tribunal could, and that won’t happen. What I can speak about authoritatively is why I was so ready to believe the official version of those events. The explanation does me no credit. Koresh represented something I didn’t like. He was a cult leader who had sex with multiple women in his flock, and he stockpiled assault weapons. This knowledge conjured up Jim Jones and racist militiamen. Don’t such people hate federal agents and kill them and their own disciples when cornered? Prior experience should have warned me not to presume Koresh’s guilt and law enforcement’s innocence. In my years with the ACLU, I had known frequent instances of police misconduct, including unwarranted fatal shootings, and ensuing official cover-ups. The day after a grand jury in St. Louis refused to indict the police officer who killed Michael Brown, I stood in Vogel Plaza in Medford with others distressed by that outcome. We got varied reactions from passing cars. The negative ones were almost always from white males. Some were strident, such as “He got just what he asked for.” These people are in no better position to judge what actually happened in Ferguson than I’m able to judge the events outside Waco. Like me, they let their prejudice toward the victim determine their belief in the official version. I dare say that at least a few of them would be highly critical if ATF agents shot a gun rights advocate walking down the streets of Medford with an assault rifle, and a few of us might think he got just what he asked for. When I arrived in Vogel Plaza, none of the signs expressed what I wanted to say. So I made my own. It read, “Black lives are as precious as white lives.” What I now want to say is that every life is as precious as every other. Whenever anyone is killed, we should be disturbed. And starting with ourselves, we should be about reforming a world in which, for some people, some other people are bad guys and thus fair game. If we did, from the streets of our inner cities to the expanses of western Iraq the death toll would drop. Herb Rothschild Jr. is chairman of the board of Peace House. http://www.dailytidings.com/article/20150103/OPINION/150109971 © 2015 Copyright © 1995-2011 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Statement -->