Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog [3],
You probably haven’t heard of Mark Paffrath, the 28-year-old Navy veteran, and former employee of the Drury hotel chain, who was fired from his job and called a “terrorist” for taking pictures of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) vehicles and posting them to his personal Facebook page.
The story of his recent job termination is further proof of fascism’s relentless bull market within these United States. What happened to Mr. Paffrath could easily happen to any of us, and it’s imperative that we support him and reject the type of backwards fear-mongering being perpetrated by his control-freak employer.
Just two weeks ago, we saw a 90-year-old vet threatened with jail for feeding homeless people [4] in Florida. Now this.
TechDirt reports [5] that:
Mark says that on Thursday after work he snapped 2 photographs and a short video of several dozen Homeland Security vehicles in the parking garage. He then uploaded them to his Facebook page. In his post he writes “why are all the cop cars here…I wonder if it has anything to do with Ferguson”, he also included the hashtags #Ferguson #NoJusticeNoPeace.
On Friday, shortly after arriving to work at the Drury Plaza Hotel, Mark stated that he was called to the office of Jeff Baker, the General Manager. Upon arriving Mr. Baker advised Mark that he needed to remove the photos and video from Facebook. Mark immediately complied and removed the post. Mark then continued and finished his shift.
That should be the end of it, but of course it’s not…
Saturday, Mark stated after being at work no more than 30 minutes, he was again called to the General Manager’s office. Waiting for him was Jim Bohnert, Director of Security for Drury Hotels Company, LLC. Mark told ASN that Mr. Bohnert advised him that his Facebook posts almost cost the company a $150,000 contract with the Department of Homeland Security and because of this he was being terminated.
Jim Bohnert — formerly of the Secret Service and the St. Louis Police Department — had more to say on the matter. He called the former military member a “terrorist” and told him he had “dishonorably served his country” by posting pictures of vehicles parked in a garage where any guest or employee of the hotel could have seen them. In fact, any member of the public could have seen them simply by entering the garage, which is not secured. Argus Streaming News writers were able to see “over 100″ DHS vehicles in the garage while driving through it on their way to speak to the hotel’s manager.
Bohnert also threatened Paffrath with arrest if the photos were reposted (presumably by someone with more power than Director of Security for Drury Hotels, Bohnert’s current position).
Specifically, this is what Bohnert supposedly said [6]:
Mark stated that Mr. Bohnert ended the conversation with “if you repost the photos and video you will have the federal government knocking on your door and you will be incarcerated”.
We must all support Mr. Paffrath, and let Drury Hotels know that it is their behavior that is unacceptable, not Mark Paffrath’s. It’s perfectly representative of the addled, insane society we live in that the hotel’s security director had the nerve to call a U.S. veteran a “terrorist” for posting pictures to Facebook. I think we all know who’s actually behaving like a terrorist in this case. The time for getting outraged has long since passed.
