A clip from yesterday shows CNN’s Don Lemon being pushed back by police as demonstrators are ordered to leave the area of sidewalk they had been peacefully occupying all day.
“Move out of the way, let’s go,” shouts one officer as demonstrators chant, “We’ve got rights!”
An officer then tells Lemon that police are trying to corral the protesters into a nearby parking lot, while Shabazz simultaneously gives the same order on the bullhorn.
Shabazz then leads the group of demonstrators over to the car park, a de facto ‘free speech zone’ wherein the protesters can be easily controlled by police.
Lemon states that Shabazz has also been telling people “to not demonstrate and not protest after sundown,” confirming that Shabazz is working with authorities to enforce the unconstitutional curfew that has stripped protesters of their First Amendment rights.
Lemon notes that people on bullhorns were repeatedly encouraging protesters to “do what the police say” and directing them where to go, suggesting that Shabazz and his fellow New Black Panthers are functioning as little more than mouthpieces for the authorities in moving protesters around to where police want them to be like a herd of cattle.
As we reported yesterday, Shabazz was also pictured coordinating with Captain Ronald Johnson during last week’s protests.
The fact that a leader of the New Black Panthers (renamed Black Lawyers for Justice) is working directly with authorities to control protesters is bizarre given that Shabazz has been characterized as a “racist black nationalist with a long, well-documented history of violently anti-Semitic remarks and accusations about the inherent evil of white people,” and is “particularly skilled at orchestrating provocative protests.”
The FBI also sent out an alert last week warning that New Black Panthers had arrived in the area and were “advocating violence against police.”
Given the history of New Black Panther members working with federal authorities as informants, as well as the Justice Department’s protection of the group in the past, the role of Malik Shabazz in corralling protesters at the behest of police suggests that he is colluding with authorities to suppress the constitutional rights of demonstrators in Ferguson.
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