Editor’s Note: This story has been corrected to show the original tweet was a hoax. We apologize for the error.
A widely reported tweet from the leader of an armed anti-government group occupying a wildlife preserve in Oregon comparing the actions of his militia members to civil rights icon Rosa Parks was revealed to be a hoax.
“We are doing the same thing as Rosa Parks did,” read the tweet from the account @Ammon_Bundy. “We are standing up against bad laws which dehumanize us and destroy our freedom.”
Bundy is the leader of the group “Citizens for Constitutional Freedom” which took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Saturday in a remote part of eastern Oregon. Among their demands is the release of two ranchers convicted of burning federal land and for the federal government to relinquish control of the wildlife refuge.
READ MORE: Armed group in Oregon fears raid; critics decry goals
Parks was the black woman who, on Dec. 1, 1955, refused to give her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., to a white man while protesting legally sanctioned discrimination. Parks’ efforts led to the Montgomery bus boycott and resulted in a Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment.
Many Twitter users lashed out to the alleged tweet.
The armed occupation by roughly 20 people at the refuge entered a fifth day Wednesday with no end in sight.
Bundy told reporters they would take a defensive position anticipating a possible raid and late Tuesday, the group moved a large plow in position to block the refuge’s driveway.
While the group has refused to leave, critics argue the protesters’ stance doesn’t make sense.
“It is frustrating when I hear the demand that we return the land to the people, because it is in the people’s hand – the people own it,” Randy Eardley, a Bureau of Land Management spokesman, told the Associated Press. “Everybody in the United States owns that land … We manage it the best we can for its owners, the people, and whether it’s for recreating, for grazing, for energy and mineral development.”
Comments