Last week, the Liberty movement lost one of its most eloquent and courageous voices when William Grigg passed away at the far too young age of 54. William worked as a writer for The New American from 1993-2005, and was a contributor to LewRockwell.com and Antiwar.com. He also published many important articles at his Pro Liberate blog. In October 2016, William helped found The Libertarian Institute, and served as the Institute’s managing editor from its founding until his passing.
While he wrote on a variety of topics, William is best known for his writings on police brutality and police militarization. Years before modern police practices became a focus of national debate, Will was exposing how the rights—including the right to life—of innocent Americas are too often collateral damage in the war on drugs and terrorism. The liberty movement’s focus on this issue owes much to the work of Will Grigg.
What made Will so effective was that he took the time to gather the facts behind each case that he wrote about, often traveling at his own expense to interview his subjects. He then combined this mastery of detail with a powerful critique of the policies used to justify the transformation of America from a Republic to a Welfare-Warfare-Police State.
Unlike many who write on these issues, including some libertarians, Will never avoided discussing how racial minorities bear the brunt of modern police state policies. However, he never pretended that police brutality was solely a minority issue. He would not ignore certain incidents because the victim’s race did not fit the preferred narrative.
My wife Carol, myself, and all of us at Campaign for Liberty, the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, and The Ron Paul Liberty Report join Will’s many friends in sending our best wishes and prayers to his wife, Korrin, and his six children. I also join libertarians across the country in expressing gratitude for the example that Will set in how one can combine old-fashioned investigative reporting and a passionate commitment to freedom to make a real difference in the movement to reclaim our liberties.
Will Grigg dead at 54. David Rockefeller, at 101. Not fair.
You can add Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, George W Bush, Bill Kristol, James Clapper, Michael Hayden, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, et al, to that list.
He ranked in the top tier of my all time favorites = This is so wrong…at 54
….his writing got your attention…RIP
RJ O’Guillory
Will Grigg (and Ron Paul and Will Jasper) put my mind in the right direction some 25 years ago, and it said there (though some might disagree). Very important part of my life. Respect
Root cause of crime and terrorism being your upper-half of society hoarding all the land and wealth, please do explain your logic?
Not once did Will Grigg or any libertarian mention that the 1,100 each year that are gunned down by killer-cops are virtually all impoverished laboring men.
Not once did Will Grigg or any libertarian mention that virtually all of the
2.3 million inmates in the jails and prisons of Empire USA are poor laboring men.
Not once did Will Grigg or any libertarian mention that their privileged upper-half of society, they being the 51% most greed driven and wealthy, that they own all of the land, wealth and political power in there expansion loving Empire USA.
Not once did Will Grigg or any libertarian mention that if their privileged upper-half paid a living wage to my impoverished lower-half, that it would free the upper-half of the burden to give government charity.
Such is hypocrisy, in an Empire void of compassion, pity or charity.
Would you provide some provenance to support that statement. Black criminality is rampant across socioeconomic barriers in this race although most of these committing crimes are terminally unemployable. No social skills, education, no concept of teamwork except on a court. All the things that go into running a successful business, these people lack. Pleas take your crocodile tears elsewhere. You’re going to continue to find a hostile audience here.
Just because you never actually bothered to read Will Grigg or any other libertarian, that doesn’t mean nobody else did.
You’re wrong, Will and myself had worked on a number of projects together. There is one large one that I am going to see through by myself. And note his passing and his Horne. By saying Will did not cover the numbers of police induced homicides of citizens, you are off in La La Land and have absolutely no merit in saying he didn’t cover such information. He did so in many different writing. You sir do not know Will Grigg, anything about him or what you’re talking about. You must be a cop who was on the receiving end of one of Will stories.
He was articulate and had a good camera presence – and was black – but did we ever see him offering commentary on network TV “back in the days” when police abuse was the subject of TV punditry? Did he or anyone else try to hook him up on that? Too far / expensive to travel to NYC? Or just that he was politically incorrect both ways? I get so sick of seeing that Sheriff David Clark that Fox trots out whenever they feel the need to bash Black Lives Matter, and so bored with the standard spiel of BLM supporters who appear everywhere else.
So awfully sad. I know he had to scrounge for a living and had a big family to support. I sent him money now and then. I see the DONATE button at Pro Libertate is still there. Does that go to his family now, I wonder?
“He was articulate and had a good camera presence – and was black…”
If you mean ‘black’ as in being of African decent, I made that same mistake early on based on the small photo of him that appeared with his articles on LRC. One of his many interviews with Scott Horton a number of years ago set me straight. I didn’t recall the specifics, but a check at Wikipedia informs me that he was of Hawaiian/Cherokee/Basque/Irish descent.
ah, duped by an overexposed photo perhaps. Thanks for setting that straight.