Jonathon Burns, 26, of Shrewsbury, Mo., has established himself as a rising star in the Tea Party movement while stoking the ire of a large number of liberal students, officials and transit advocates here with his outspoken opposition to interventionist government and tax increases.

Courtesy of John Burns

John Burns pictured at the gulag demonstration on campus last November.

Burns was one of several people who protested socialism with a mock gulag display on campus in November 2009. Burns, who was virtually unknown a year ago, has quickly become perhaps the most recognizable opponent of Proposition A—a proposed half-cent sales tax increase for Metro that has been popular among students. He is the spokesman of the opposition group Citizens for Better Transit.

In a flurry of newspaper submissions, blog posts and appearances at local Tea Party events, Burns cast Proposition A as an attempt to funnel money from the middle class to powerful political and business interests.

“I think Proposition A is an example of the hijacking of democracy,” Burns said in an interview with Student Life.

Burns also acknowledged his role in the gulag display, which the University chapter of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) built one afternoon in November to warn people of what Burns said are the dangers of socialism and increased government control of the economy.

His views on Prop A and socialism have found relatively little support at the University. Rather, they have ruffled the feathers of community members and Proposition A supporters here, who have accused Burns of fear-mongering and distorting the facts.

But Burns and some members of the Tea Party movement deny that. If anything, they argue, Burns has been an inspiring champion of smaller government and lower taxes. “John is just a really courageous voice in that,” said Gina Loudon, a St. Louis Tea Party leader. “I would have never expected so much courage from someone that young.”

Burns has focused much of his criticism of Proposition A on the University’s U-Pass program, which allows full-time students and benefits-eligible faculty and staff to ride Metro for free. Burns has claimed that the $2.3 million the University pays Metro for the program is 80 percent less than what the school should be paying; while the University pays only $100 per U-Pass for 25,000 of them, passes for the disabled cost much more, he argues.

Chancellor Mark Wrighton and Metro officials said Burns’ allegation is baseless, as any school or business can sign up with Metro to receive discounts for bulk purchases of passes.

And Metro spokesman Charlie Bosworth and spokeswoman Dianne Williams explained that Metro calculates ridership based on the number of boardings, not the number of people with passes. Government-audited ridership figures from fiscal 2009 show that U-Pass users accounted for about 4.13 percent of Metro’s ridership, while the University’s payment equaled about 4.65 percent of Metro’s passenger revenue in fiscal 2009.

“They’re actually paying a little bit more than the average rider,” Bosworth said.

Wrighton also noted that while the University buys passes for all eligible community members, “only 75 percent actually request a U-Pass.”

The University did not comment on Burns himself. But one administration official said that the administration seeks to promote the proposition instead of fighting back against Burns. Officials’ private reactions have ranged from befuddlement that Burns is targeting Washington University to exasperation with his media attention and his criticisms of the U-Pass program.

“My personal frustration is that we have to waste time arguing with him about something like our U-Pass program, which really has nothing to do with the issue at hand,” said the official, who wished to remain anonymous for professional reasons.

Still, Loudon said this isn’t about Washington University. “This is about something that has been portrayed one way that is entirely another way,” she said.

Burns’ criticisms of Metro and the U-Pass reflect his broader concerns with government power. He believes in the power of ordinary people to serve as citizen journalists, exposing fraud and wrongdoing in the government by going undercover.

“As a journalist, that’s a very noble cause,” Burns said.

Some of the organizers of the mock Russian Gulag on Washington University’s campus last November were arrested in New Orleans on Tuesday after they attempted to tamper with phones at the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La.

Two of the four men arrested, James O’Keefe and Joseph Basel, were in costume at the mock Gulag constructed on campus. Two other men, Robert Flanagan and Stan Dai were also arrested.

According to the FBI affidavit signed by Special Agent Steven Rayes, Flanagan and Basel entered the Hale Boggs Federal Building, where they met O’Keefe, each wearing blue denim pants, a blue work shirt and construction-style hard hats.

The affidavit stated that the two claimed to be employees of a telephone company and requested access to a telephone in the office. A staff member, identified only as “Witness 1” in the affidavit, directed the men to the U.S. General Services Administration to access the main telephone system.

Basel tried to call the phone from his cellular phone and said he could not get a call through.

According to the affidavit, Flanagan and Basel “attempted to enter…for the purpose of willfully and maliciously interfering with a telephone system.”

When asked by a second witness for credentials to show they actually worked for the company, the two said they had left them in their vehicle. U.S. marshals then arrested the men.

The affidavit states that O’Keefe and Dai admitted to assisting with planning and coordination for the incident to federal agents. O’Keefe also said he had been videotaping the other two while they were in the office.

According to Dirk Doebler, president of the University’s chapter of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL), O’Keefe was present at the November Gulag event on campus doing filming.

Some initial reaction to the incident referred to it as “Louisiana Watergate.” Officials do not believe that the intention was to wiretap the office. Just before midnight on Wednesday, O’Keefe posted the message “Govt official concedes no attempt to wiretap” on his Twitter account.

“Their lawyer said there was no wiretapping going on,” Doebler said. “[O’Keefe] does try to get the story in an unorthodox way.”

No further information has been released regarding what the men planned to do with the phones, and the affidavit did not give details about what they did with the phones.

Flanagan had previously written blog posts that were critical of Landrieu for her stance on health care legislation and that raised questions regarding campaign finance.

O’Keefe gained notoriety after he posted videos of himself consulting with Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) workers on advice about how to open a brothel while he and an associate, Hannah Giles, posed as a pimp and prostitute. ACORN is suing O’Keefe and Giles over the so-called “pimpgate” video.

Landrieu has been the target of anger over the recent health care legislation, as she was one of the last Democrats to sign onto the plan.

The men were released on $10,000 bond and a preliminary hearing has been set for Feb. 12. If convicted, the four men could face sentences ranging from a fine to 10 years in prison.

While O’Keefe was present during the Gulag display, according to Doebler, no further contact between the University’s YAL chapter and O’Keefe has ensued.

“We haven’t had any contact with them,” Doebler said. “There hasn’t been any contact since that event. I met O’Keefe that week [of the Gulag event].”

Young Americans for Liberty began the year with an event that distributed Constitutions to the student body on Constitution Day. In one of our less provocative events, which Thakur fails to mention, we were successful in distributing nearly 300 Constitutions to the student body. Our next event was a free trade versus fair trade coffee tasting, which distributed information on the problems with the supposed “fair” trade system. We then held a film screening for “Not Evil, Just Wrong,” which questioned the veracity of claims made by global warming alarmists. Thakur attacked this film in a different article despite the fact that she admittedly did not bother to watch it. She mistakenly claimed that YAL was an arm of the Republican Party and went on to attempt a film review based on the movie’s trailer. Next came our infamous, yet fantastically successful gulag event. Finally, we held a well-attended rally outside the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis building that called for transparency in our nation’s central banking system.

Thakur, however, seeks to characterize YAL based solely on her poor interpretation of our gulag event. The gulag was not intended to represent the state of the country under the Obama administration as Thakur suggests, but rather to show the inevitable consequences of continuing down the road to serfdom on which the United States has been marching for nearly 100 years.
Thakur describes our gulag as distasteful, inappropriate, bizarre and offensive to those who actually suffered under the tyranny of the Soviet Union. This description is wildly inaccurate and does not in any way reflect the success of the gulag event. Following the event, YAL received considerable donations from political groups around St. Louis who praised our activism and initiative. We then went on to receive a $500 award from the national Young Americans for Liberty organization for the best Berlin Wall event in the country. We have received praise for our event from several other national political organizations such as Campus Reform, Campaign for Liberty and biggovernment.com.

Furthermore, Thakur’s assertion that the display was offensive to those who suffered under the Soviet Union simply does not reflect the response we received. For instance, I was recently approached by a German immigrant who thanked me for the event, as it called attention to the oft-forgotten horrors suffered by her father, who was imprisoned by the Soviets many years ago. Also, this Tuesday, Wash. U. YAL will be holding a lecture by a retired Washington University professor, Dr. Gregory Nikiforovich, who lived in the Soviet Union until 1989, was very grateful for our event, and will be speaking on the implementation of socialism in his former country. It seems to me that the only people who were offended by the gulag were not those affected by the horrors of socialism, but rather socialists themselves who were made uncomfortable by the frank portrayal of the results of their ideology.

Thakur then makes the patently false claim that we devote the majority of the space on our Web site to attacking individuals who disagree with us. Despite her claims to the contrary, there is nothing on our Web site that attacks the Students for Fair Trade. The Web site merely acknowledges the fact that the group refused to engage us. There is a video of the Event Services personnel conspiring to shut down our gulag; but neither the video nor the post contains commentary on the nature of Event Services’ actions.

Thakur spends the rest of her article attacking a comment made by John Burns and posting on our group’s Web site. She characterizes Burns as an ungrateful student of Washington University and another “disgruntled” member of YAL. A quick perusal of our Web site, however, reveals that Burns is neither a member of YAL nor a student at Washington University, but rather the owner of the construction company which erected our gulag.

Thakur should just be honest: She doesn’t approve of our group’s message of liberty. That is fine; she certainly isn’t the first. But to cherry-pick and mischaracterize  facts in an attempt to cast our organization as some sort of band of vicious reactionaries is incorrect and inappropriate. I encourage Thakur to attend one of our meetings if she wishes to better understand our goals.

Matt Mitgang | Student Life

Sophomore Emily Piontek stands inside of a gulag created by Wash. U. Young Americans For Liberty. (Matt Mitgang | Student Life)

Members of the Washington University chapter of Young Americans for Liberty erected a mock Soviet prison camp, or gulag, in front of the Women’s Building Monday morning, but were later told by a representative from Event Services to disassemble the display.

The University said in a statement Tuesday that the students had not mentioned the display when requesting the space and built the display using power tools without permission and without oversight from the facilities office. YAL members said the display was not in violation of Event Services’ policies and that while the students did use an automatic drill, Event Services did not specify in its policies that students could not use power tools.

“We feel that this was more of the administration and faculty getting upset about the display than it was about safety issues,” said junior Dirk Doebler, president of the University chapter of YAL.

YAL members built the mock gulag to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and to condemn Soviet communism and socialist regimes. The display was a four-sided wooden structure with fake barbed wire on top and Soviet Communist propaganda posters on its sides. A large sign on the structure read “Peaceful Justice Social Reeducation Clinic.”

Several students who were dressed as prisoners stood inside the mock gulag, some of them with fake blood on their clothing. Other YAL members who were dressed as Soviet soldiers patrolled around the structure. Students played Russian opera music at the display.

YAL members at the display also handed out fliers to students that detailed the history of gulags and included a passage on resisting tyranny.

After the students had finished building the display, a representative from Event Services told them they had to disassemble it.

The University statement said the display was shut down because it had not been approved and was unsafe, not because it was controversial.

“The University has a long history of accommodating disparate and often unpopular points of view and continues to support the rights of its students and faculty to express their differences and opinions, as long as the venue has been reserved, described accurately and deemed safe and free of physical risk to themselves and others,” the statement said.

Sophomore Emily Piontek, a member of the YAL who posed as a prisoner in the mock gulag, said the main purpose of the display was to raise awareness about problems with Soviet communism that are connected with the Berlin Wall. Piontek said another reason for the display was to raise concerns held by some members of the YAL that U.S. government health care reform is bringing America closer to socialism.

“I think it was mostly about the Berlin Wall, but I think certain policies that are going on today and certain things in the government, and mostly the health care plan, were reasons that we wanted to host the event,” Piontek said.

But James Wertsch, the Marshall S. Snow Professor and director of International & Area Studies, said that the emergence of communism and socialism are not big issues today and that new forms of nationalism are currently greater issues for America.

However, he said that it was appropriate for YAL to commemorate the gulag since huge numbers of people suffered in these prison camps.

“If I would have stopped and talked to them and seen that it was a gulag exhibit I would have been interested, but for the reason of commemorating it, not because I’m afraid that communism is coming back,” Wertsch said.

John Burns, an area resident who is not a student but who is involved with the Washington University YAL and participated in the display, said he felt the University censored students in a manner similar to Soviet communists.

“I guess the students at Washington University were in a gulag all along, and the administration proved it through their stifling of free speech,” Burns said.

With additional reporting by John Scott