ABOUT THE AUTHOR

From 1976 to 1977, Johnson engaged in international travel and studies that significantly impacted his professional trajectory towards working against abuses of gov-emment power. He attended graduate school classes at Punjab University, in the city of Chandigarh in Northern India studying the impact of religious traditions on Indian politics. When he first arrived, Indians had been living under a National Emergency declared a year earlier by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

The Emergency allowed censorship of the press, suspension of civil liberties, arrests of political opponents and a consolidation of power without judicial oversight. An ongoing National Family Planning Program forced sterilizations on approximately 8.1 million young Indian men and women. In rural villages, there were instances Where police arrived unannounced in buses at dawn, grabbed young people at random and took them to be sterilized without any form of due process.

As a then Rotary Club International Scholar, Johnson had an opportunity, along with another American gradu-ie student, to visit privately with the Prime Minister. When asked what message she would like conveyed to Rotary Cllubs in the United States, she calmly said: "Tell the United States to stay out of our business." 

On the way home from india, Johnson visited Tehran that was ruled at the time by the Shah of Iran, a dictator installed through a U.S.-supported coup. After Iran, Johnson worked as a volunteer on a "kibbutz" in Israel, on the Mediterranean Sea, near the Gaza Strip. Armed guards patrolled the "kibbutz" 24 hours a day as there was a constant threat of terrorist attacks. It was very unsettling being around people every day with Uzi machine guns casually strapped over their shoulders.

In 2008 and 2012, he worked as a volunteer lawyer in a "Voter Protection" capacity during early voting at the Downtown Registrar's Office in Cleveland, Ohio, answering voter questions and helping ensure that everyone legally qualified

Vote could vote. In 2012, he observed firsthand how newly adopted state election laws sought to suppress the black vote in Cleveland by drastically limit-ing, compared to 2008, the days and hours available for early voting.

Additional, prior experiences with government abuse included working for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1975 and investigating Nixon Administration manipulation of the federal civil service through planned, "con-structive terminations" of career civil servants to create job openings for political supporters.

Johnson has observed a wide range of individual conflicts and government abuses over the course of his career and continues to work to resolve disputes whenever pos-sible. Success however depends upon people being willing to talk to each other, to make agreements in good faith and to keep their word. Where circumstances, personalities and/or priorities make this impossible, it's time for the parties to part ways and move on with their lives.