I saw neighbors in Ferguson Missouri walk up to, kindly talk with, and sometimes sternly confront the militant trouble makers who’d come into their community to destroy people, property and steal. I saw several good people surround a law breaker making it impossible for him to cause damage. I heard that many neighbors broke into a local car dealership and took the keys to the new cars and all the spare tires home for the evening in order that these things not be stolen. That’s a lot of trouble they went to for someone else. Then the people brought these items back the next morning. The neighborhood did not prevent all breaking up and stealing but they put their lives in danger to protect their community and I believe they prevented much.

I attended George Washington High School in Watts, California in the sixties. The summer of the riots my friends spent ten days under their beds. Their Mom’s shoved meals under their beds to them. I attended a drawing club and two of our members, professional artists for an aircraft company, didn’t come and they stayed home from work for two weeks because their community was completely run but looters.

Law breakers travel immediately to natural disasters and areas of protest to create a riot, to break, destroy, and steal but the intrepid neighbors in Ferguson Missouri put themselves  to great inconvenience and great danger to prevent anarchy. My heroes.  nancymauerman.com