Ferguson has something in common with 5th century BC Athens

And that is ostracism. It was a practice where unpopular people would be thrown out of a city if enough people wanted them gone. There's a theory mentioned in the Wikipedia article on the subject that suggests that the purpose of ostracism was to satisfy the anger of the populace while avoiding the troubling outcomes of vigilante murder or mob lynching, or political tyranny if the person was a public official. That's an interesting statement. The idea is essentially that ostracism appeases the anger of the mob. There were no rules for why someone should be ostracized, except that there had to be a sizeable vote by the citizenry to cast him out. It could be for no good reason at all, as you'll note at the end of the first link.

Officer Wilson is apparently leaving Ferguson "willingly." Yeah, right. I don't think he wanted any of this hullabaloo to happen for the simple fact that he did his job. Yes, the evidence is in. Here is the AP link hub to all of the Grand Jury documents.

Wilson wasn't likely forced out by an official act of the police department. Although facts may come out to the tune that he was pressured to leave, that's probably unlikely as well. No, it seems clear that he can't live a normal life in the city any more because of the public lynching-in-effigy that has occurred by people with no facts, but plenty of racial animosity toward him. He's a hated man. He's unsafe wherever he goes, because someone might think that they can make a name for themselves by taking him out.

"They got some intelligence that suggested there were going to be some targets at the Ferguson Police Department and the minute he said that, he also indicated that he thought his resignation might alleviate some of those threats," one of Wilson's attorneys Neil Bruntrager said. "They had some intel that suggested there was going to be some action of a violent nature." source

It's injustice, but it is reality. He'll have to go somewhere else because he's unwelcome. He's been ostracized.

And Ferguson's race rioters and the criminally biased news media have taken social progress back 2500 years.

~ Rak Chazak

PS I was initially misled (thanks to CBS-sponsored news-tickers at my workplace) to believe that there were reports that Wilson was leaving the city itself, not just the police force. I wanted to put this here to correct that, although I still think it's likely that he'll eventually leave anyway. How could you stay there when you have no hope of a living in your chosen career, and where everybody from the gutter to the ivory towers hates you and wants to turn your life into a failure in order to vent their private frustrations? But that's speculation. The point about being pressured out by public opinion still stands, as shown in the citation I added.

"Darren Wilson has a new wife and a child on the way. And while his wife works for the Ferguson police department, Wilson is now unemployed. People have been trying to keep their income afloat with vigorous online fundraising efforts."

Filed under, lives ruined by racism