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An 11-year-old St. Louis boy has garnered national attention in the wake of his remarks to county officials during the demonstrations in Ferguson last month, CBS News reported.
Marquis Govan has been profiled by CBS News and NPR following his comments to the St. Louis County Commission regarding the protests that were spurred on by the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
“The people of Ferguson, I believe, don’t need tear gas thrown at them,” Govan said at the Aug. 19 meeting. “I believe they need jobs. I believe the people of Ferguson, they don’t need to be hit with batons. What they need is people to be investing in their businesses.”
Marquis goes on in a sit down interview and shows himself to be wiser than most of Congress:
Marquis: The minority community needs more African American police officers.
Interviewer: Who in your school aspires to grow up and be a cop? Anybody?
Marquis: Look let me tell you why. From the beginning we have felt abused by these people. Why would you grow up to serve among the abusers. It does not make sense.
And some more from
NPR
"One of the questions he asked just blew everybody away. I think he said, 'How are you going to create businesses? We have businesses now. But how are you going to create businesses and then retain them in St. Louis County?' " she says. "Whatever he said, it was so intellectual that I couldn't even go back and repeat it."
When he's not at county council meetings, Marquis is a student at Loyola Academy in St. Louis. Between classes, the sixth-grade political junkie opines on national politics, deriding certain senators as "politicrats."
"I will call Mary Landrieu a politicrat," he says. "I will call Mark Pryor a politicrat. They will do anything to stay in Washington."
...
For now, he wants get his classmates interested in the political process — one day, he may need their votes. He describes himself as a Democrat, though more conservative than one of the politicians he hopes to emulate.
"I want to be one of those leaders like Nancy Pelosi," he says. "But sometimes I don't necessarily agree with her politically. I want to be a leader like her, except I want to be this new wing. I want to lead all the conservative Democrats and moderates who are sometimes left out of their party, saying they're party-switchers. They're not party-switchers. They're compromisers."