Ferguson shooting shows need to engage

The tragedy in Ferguson, Mo., might well be a wake-up call to its people and a reminder to us all of fabricated words coming from a like-fashioned Pogo: We have met the enemy and he is us.

As Winston Churchill had it, 'Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others” and in any place on Earth where people are pressed into varying degree of dependence upon each other, governance will always be in the hands of someone. Such governance in our land has been at its best as Abe Lincoln described and defended it: 'Government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

This is what I would like to see more fully the case throughout our land and particularly in Ferguson with its people henceforth participating fully in making it the kind of community of them, by them and for them.

In exercise of our First Amendment right to assemble, you, I and they need to join together in political party, nominate our preferred candidates for public service, set a platform for their guidance and testing, vote them into office and night or day home or away be sure to ring their phones off the wall or out of their purse or up from belt clip where they keep their cellphone to be more readily available.

Regardless of what occurred between the two at the center of this tragedy that has happened in Ferguson, someone saw it coming and it should have been dealt with before it so devastatingly came crushing down in destruction of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Sam Osborne

West Branch