National Liberty Alliance

John Darash (a.k.a. John Vidurek), a retired carpenter from Poughkeepsie NY, founded and leads the NLA and its common-law grand jury movement; the ADL describes him as a "sovereign citizen guru." He authors the group's books, gives the central interviews, and the movement is built around his personal vision and teachings. The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies John Vidurek as the NLA’s “Organizer” on the group’s leadership team, and the NLA website lists John Darash as a “Founding Member.”[1][2][5] The group’s own materials place Darash in a central teaching role: the mission statement says the NLA exists to provide an online venue where people can “learn the science of government by consent,” and the site advertises “Monday Night Open Forum” sessions where county committees can “meet with NLA founders” and contact John directly.[5][10] A 2014 NLA welcome message features Darash introducing the group, stating that National Liberty Alliance’s purpose is to facilitate education, organization, and communication built on “Honor, justice and mercy,” and describing NLA as his solution for reconstituting common-law grand juries nationwide.[4] The archived SPLC profile also reports that the NLA emerged from the New York Liberty Alliance and was organized around Darash/Vidurek and other named assistants, reinforcing that the movement’s structure and messaging were anchored in a visible founding figure rather than a diffuse anonymous network.[1]

The NLA requires adherents to accept a shared pseudo-legal cosmology: that "common law grand juries" hold supreme, God-given authority above statutory courts, and that the existing government is an illegitimate "defacto" corporate entity. Members must "seek the blessings from the GOVERNOR OF THE UNIVERSE" and build their work on the divinely-framed principles of HONOR, JUSTICE, and MERCY.[1] The organization’s own mission language also frames participation as learning the "science of government by consent," which is presented as an alternative constitutional order rather than ordinary civic education.[5] In a 2016 welcome message, Darash says the group’s work is built on "Honor, justice and mercy" and that "only the people can save America," reinforcing the sense that the movement’s political theory is grounded in a quasi-sacred moral and civic order.[4] The NLA website further invokes Thomas Jefferson in a way that links its program to a revered founding-era authority, stating that the people must be enlightened enough to exercise their consent-based powers, and the group’s materials repeatedly present its legal doctrines as foundational truths rather than contested interpretations.[2][5] The SPLC describes these doctrines as sovereign-citizen beliefs and notes that the NLA’s primary mission is to reestablish common-law courts and CLGJs, confirming that the group’s worldview rests on a fixed set of ideological assumptions members are expected to accept.[1]

Darash frames the mission as a sweeping crusade to "reestablish Justice" by planting common-law grand juries in all 3,141 U.S. counties to indict and remove corrupt officials and save a "dying" America. This transcendent restoration-of-the-republic framing is invoked to justify members risking arrest, prosecution, and confrontation with the legal system. The group’s own mission statement says the NLA exists "to provide an online National Venue where the People can organize, communicate, and learn the ‘science of government by consent’" and its foundational study says the goal is to "restore the people to their rightful, master, position through knowledge."[5][9] In a 2016 welcome message, Darash says NLA has assembled in every state, established a unified common-law grand jury in every state, is building committees of safety in every county, and aims to reach a critical mass of people to "take back our government."[4] The site’s "Mission Statement" and "Foundation Study" also present the work as restoring sovereignty and the rightful order of the republic, while the 2014 SPLC profile says the NLA’s primary mission is to reestablish common-law courts and CLGJs across the country.[1][5][9] Together, these materials show the movement portraying routine political participation as participation in a larger historical and moral struggle to save the nation.[1][4][5][9]

The NLA maintains a hierarchical structure (county organizers to state to national coordinators) enforced through "Leadership Agreements," mandatory weekly conference calls, required completion of NLA courses, and committee participation. This standardized doctrinal compliance subordinates individual interpretation to the group's prescribed pseudo-legal program.[1] The SPLC says the NLA’s leadership team included John Vidurek as organizer plus named assistant organizers, and that the group built a nationwide network around common-law grand juries and related committees, indicating an organized chain of responsibility rather than a loose discussion forum.[1] The NLA’s own site reinforces that structure: it advertises a "Monday Night Open Forum" for questions and news updates, a "Free Common Law Courses" page, and county-organizing pages that direct visitors to register or edit their Committee of Safety and avoid duplicating existing county structures.[10][11][14] A media campaign page says the committee exists to spread NLA education widely "in order to spread awareness of the power of the people and their proper place of authority over their servant government," which positions participation as adopting a shared organizational identity and doctrine rather than developing independent views.[13] The archived Library of Congress record also confirms the NLA as a distinct web presence active in 2014, consistent with a structured movement that publishes and circulates its own training materials.[3]

The NLA shows some isolationary features in that it uses a centralized contact directory and an internal county-committee structure that routes communication through designated district and site contacts rather than open, external deliberation. Its website lists district coordinators with phone numbers, a separate site-contacts page, and county-organizing instructions that tell members to register or edit their Committee of Safety and not duplicate an existing one.[1][6][14] The group also asks members to use internal channels for questions: the site advertises a Monday Night Open Forum and a Free Common Law Courses page, while the FAQ and contact pages frame assistance and participation through NLA-managed channels.[10][11][14] In the SPLC profile, the NLA is described as a nationwide sovereign citizen group with a primary mission to reestablish common-law courts and CLGJs, which places members inside a specialized internal ecosystem of trainings, meetings, and procedural forms.[1] The evidence available here does not show total social seclusion from family, work, or nonmembers, but it does document a closed communication and coordination pattern within the movement’s own organizational channels.[1][6][10][11][14]

The NLA uses an extensive private vernacular drawn from sovereign-citizen ideology, including "common law grand jury," "strawman," "redemption," "defacto government," "statutory vs constitutional citizen," "Lentz method," and "court watcher." These insider terms reframe ordinary legal concepts and signal membership.[1] The group’s current site continues to use specialized phrasing such as "Constitutional Sheriff," "servant government," "science of government by consent," "Committee of Safety," and "common law courses," all of which function as movement-specific shorthand for its political and legal theory.[2][5][13][14] Its public-facing pages also speak of "taking back our government" and teaching the people their "proper place of authority," language that is understandable in ordinary political speech but carries a specific in-group meaning within the NLA’s sovereign-citizen framework.[4][13] The SPLC identifies the NLA as a sovereign citizen group and notes that it promotes common-law grand juries, confirming that the group’s vocabulary is not generic civic terminology but part of a larger ideological lexicon.[1]

The NLA frames the world as legitimate sovereign "We the People" versus a corrupt "defacto" government, casting judges, federal courts, and elected officials as criminal enemies to be indicted and removed. This us-versus-them framing is paired with conspiracy theories (Agenda 21, New World Order, impending monetary collapse).[1] The SPLC says the NLA’s website claims the group is not part of the sovereign citizen movement, but that its beliefs and actions support that conclusion, including propagation of antigovernment conspiracy theories such as Agenda 21/New World Order, the importance of the Constitutional Sheriff, and an impending monetary collapse.[1] The NLA’s own mission statement says its purpose is to restore the people to sovereignty through knowledge so they can take political and judicial power, while the media campaign page describes spreading awareness of the people’s authority over their "servant government," which divides the political world into rightful rulers and subordinate officials.[5][13] The site also repeatedly urges members to have a Constitutional Sheriff who will protect the people from an overreaching government, language that turns public officials into adversaries and the in-group into the authentic body politic.[2] The New Yorker/SPLC report on pseudo-legal grand juries likewise describes the movement as treating government actors as targets of indictment within its own self-created legal framework.[10]

The search results do not document wage theft, forced labor, or member-financial exploitation by NLA comparable to classic labor exploitation cases. They do show repeated appeals for unpaid volunteer effort and donations: the NLA website asks supporters to "help keep NLA on the web" by donating $5 or more per month and becoming a Premier Member, and its committee pages frame participation as ongoing unpaid work in organizing, media outreach, and research.[2][10][11][13] The FAQ committee page also references people seeking positions while living on the street, suggesting the organization interacts with economically vulnerable would-be volunteers, but the page excerpt available here does not establish coercive labor extraction.[10] Because the available evidence concerns fundraising and volunteer participation rather than employer-employee exploitation, the record here supports only that the NLA relies on donated time and money from adherents, not that it exploits labor in the stronger sense of labor abuse or unpaid compulsory work.[2][10][11][13]

The available evidence does not show formal expulsion barriers, but it does document several practical exit costs: NLA participation is organized through ongoing county structures, weekly open forums, and committee roles that can make disengagement socially and organizationally costly.[10][13][14] The group’s materials repeatedly solicit recurring donations and Premier Memberships, meaning some participation is tied to continuing financial support rather than one-time contact.[2][11] The county-organizing pages instruct members not to duplicate existing Committees of Safety and to coordinate through named contacts, which suggests that leaving or stepping away can disrupt a local chain of responsibility and relationships built through the NLA structure.[14] The broader SPLC profile describes the NLA as a nationwide sovereign citizen group whose members have engaged in harassment and intimidation of officials, and that kind of confrontational activity can raise perceived personal risk for those considering disengagement, though the search results here do not directly document explicit penalties for leaving.[1] On the current record, exit costs are indicated indirectly through organization, recurrence, and social embedding rather than through a formal doctrine of punishment for defectors.[1][2][10][11][13][14]

As the movement's confrontations with the legal system escalated, members engaged in documented criminal acts framed as advancing the mission: Florida member Terry Trussell convicted on five counts of impersonating court officers (sentenced about 8 years 9 months), members filing fraudulent liens and bogus indictments, and a Florida grand jury issuing a threatening "Notice of Demand" for $1.5 million from officials. These extreme acts were rationalized as enforcing the group's claimed God-given authority.[1][10] The SPLC says NLA members have been known to engage in harassment, intimidation, and threats against government officials, and that members are also known to produce fraudulent legal documents used against public officials and law enforcement officers.[1] The group’s own materials repeatedly describe elected officials and judges as subordinate to the people’s authority and promote the use of common-law grand juries and committees of safety to confront institutions that members regard as illegitimate.[2][5][13][14] The 2014 and 2018 SPLC profiles together show a pattern in which pseudo-legal claims are operationalized into threatening or fraudulent conduct, not merely rhetorical dissent.[1][10]