Politics
Rep. John Lewis to Barack Obama: “Declare Martial Law in Ferguson, Missouri”
U.S. Rep. John Lewis. PHOTO/Creative Commons
U.S. Rep. John Lewis has suggested that U.S. President Barack Obama declare martial law Ferguson, Missouri, in the wake of the police killing of an unarmed African American teenager (Michael Brown) and the resultant clashes between angry protesters and police.
According to Lewis, a civil rights icon and veteran, “It is very sad and unbelievable. It’s unreal to see what the police is doing there,” Lewis said in a Thursday interview with Andrea Mitchell of the MSNBC.
“First of all, Ferguson, Missouri, is part of the United States of America. People have a right to protest. They have a right to dissent. They have a right to march in an orderly, peaceful, nonviolent fashion. And the press has a right to cover it.”
Lewis, whose skull was fractured by police during the 1965 march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, told Mitchell that the situation in Ferguson reminds him of “the ’40s, the ’50s, and ’60s”.
Read more: Huffington Post