Protect our civil liberties

[cosmolinguist]

Three Medford, Oregon, school teachers were threatened with arrest and escorted from a Bush speech after they showed up wearing T-shirts with the slogan "Protect our civil liberties."

The women said they did not intend to protest. "I wanted to see if I would be able to make a statement that I feel is important, but not offensive, in a rally for my president," said Janet Voorhies, 48, a teacher in training.

“We chose this phrase specifically because we didn't think it would be offensive or degrading or obscene," said Tania Tong, 34, a special education teacher.

"The U.S. Constitution was not available on site for comment, but expressed in a written statement support for 'the freedom of speech' and 'of the press' among other civil liberties," a Democratic news release said.

Thursday’s event in Oregon sets a new bar for a Bush/Cheney campaign that has taken extraordinary measures to screen the opinions of those who attend Bush and Cheney speeches. For months, the Bush/Cheney campaign has limited event access to those willing to volunteer in Bush/Cheney campaign offices. In recent weeks, the Bush/Cheney campaign has gone so far as to have those who voice dissenting viewpoints at their events arrested and charged as criminals.

Thursday’s actions in Oregon set a new standard even for Bush/Cheney – removing and threatening with arrest citizens who in no way disrupt an event and wear clothing that expresses non-disruptive party-neutral viewpoints such as “Protect Our Civil Liberties.”

When Vice President Dick Cheney visited Eugene, Oregon on Sept. 17, a 54-Year old woman named Perry Patterson was charged with criminal trespass for blurting the word "No" when Cheney said that George W. Bush has made the world safer.

One day before, Sue Niederer, 55, the mother of a slain American soldier in Iraq was cuffed and arrested for criminal trespass when she interrupted a Laura Bush speech in New Jersey. Both women had tickets to the event.

Comments

[hephaestos.livejournal.com]

Anyone acquainted with the administration's stance on the "civil liberties issue" might have seen that coming.

[cosmolinguist]

Of course political leaders are liars and bastards. But they used to have to at least pretend they cared about people, remember?

[kratkrat.livejournal.com]

Stories like this one make me grind my teeth. Bush and Cheney are beyond horrible. They've thrashed the Constitution, and have done so shamelessly. How the many millions of people who do support them do not see this is completely beyond me.

"Protect our civil liberties" gets you censured? Unbelievable.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine it would be any different had some people gone to a Kerry rally with "Don't defame Vietnam Vets" shirts, or some such thing.

Rallies are made for TV, and they're made to show support. That's why they're rallies.

[cosmolinguist]

Kerry's rallies are open to the public; you don't need to work for his campaign or be allowed to get a ticket as you do for Bush's.

Also, while Vietnam is an issue about which there is still much controversy, one would expect civil liberties to be a thing all USians are in favor of, or at least say they are.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

And any US presidential candidate would say that he does respect vietnam vets.

[cosmolinguist]

Do you think Kerry doesn't? (I'm just trying to figure out why you're using this as an example.)

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

No, I think that Kerry does, but also that there are those who think he doesn't, and seeing a shirt like that at a rally would remind everybody of those who think he doesn't and of their point.

Much like I'm sure if you were to ask Bush, he'd say that he's doing what he can to protect civil liberties. (although really, both candidates are bad bad bad for civil liberties.)

[cosmolinguist]

Regardless, no one's ever been arrested or threatened with arrest for merely showing up to a Kerry event with a dissenting view (or what is, in this case, essentially a non-partisan view that still is, as you say, obviously something Bush isn't good at). The idea that rallies are spectacles to show support has been taken to extreme by the Bush administration, who doesn't let anyone besides grinning supporters in his line of sight; protestors are relegated to "free speech zones" miles away or something. This annoys a few people who remember that "freedom of speech" stuff.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

protestors are relegated to "free speech zones" miles away or something.

Actually, the 'free speech zones' were an invention of the DNC during their convention in Boston.

[hephaestos.livejournal.com]

Actually, the invention (http://www.amconmag.com/12_15_03/feature.html) predates that by quite a bit.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

hmm, interesting, thanks!

[cosmolinguist]

No, they weren't.

[hephaestos.livejournal.com]

I also seem to recall seeing pictures of federal troops on the ground during the Democratic National Convention, but I don't think the Democratic National Committee had the authority to order them there.

[hephaestos.livejournal.com]

As a Vietnam vet who has been recently defamed, I don't think Kerry would mind.

For Kerry's staff to throw someone out of a rally in this example would indicate implicit approval of defamation of Vietnam vets.

[blanx73.livejournal.com]

Get monkeyboy out of my country, now.

[5-rings.livejournal.com]

In the AP versions of Perry Patterson's story, she was asked to leave before being arrested. Her getting arrested is a form of civil disobedience, I guess. But if this is a jackboot, it's a jackboot in a velvet sock.

On the other hand, that's a rather benign rendition of the Niederer story. In most mainstream press accounts (CNN, AP, etc.) Niederer showed up at the Laura Bush event wearing a t-shirt which read "George Bush Killed My Son" and proceeded to shout attack questions for some length of time before she was forced to leave by the police. She subsequently said that she wished she could shoot the President in the crotch. Indeed, she is a paragon of civil discourse.

That I have little sympathy for the folks described may obscure the fact that I feel the free speech zones around the Bush campaign -- and the Democratic Convention -- are largely bullshit, a creative interpretation (destruction) of First Amendment rights. Of course, this erosion of the First Amendment began with the first legally sanctioned speech bubbles, those around abortion clinics, in which the "right not to hear disagreeable speech" became all but codified.

Everyone destroys the First Amendment if they deem it necessary, and everyone -- left and right -- will reap what they sow. Times like these make me wish Nat Hentoff was Attorney General.

[cosmolinguist]

I was sure that the article I saw here was not unslanted, but I figured that instead of looking up the other details I could just wait for you to point them out to me. You didn't let me down. :-)

I'm not saying, of course, that the Republicans have all the fascism, or all the loonies, at their rallies. You're right to say that limiting the First Amendment will end up being bad for both sides.

And the part about Nat Hentoff made me grin.

[5-rings.livejournal.com]

And the part about Nat Hentoff made me grin.

Nat Hentoff would be a great Att'y General :-) He would be the first AG in fifty years more interested in protecting rights than taking them away.

[cosmolinguist]

I ended up having to explain him to Andrew, who didn't know why I was so excited by this idea of yours. I started talking about him and Andrew quickly realised he knew him as a jazz critic—he does write great stuff about jazz and blues—but I also mentioned the Hentoff books I read in junior high: The Day They Came to Arrest the Book and Does This School Have Capital Punishment? (I can't remember the titles exactly, but those should be close at least). He got excited upon hearing about that second one, remembering it as "the kid who hangs around with the jazz trumpete" and telling me he'd read it at about the same age I had. It's weird how these conversations get started.

[wardytron.livejournal.com]

I'm waiting for the outrage about the Democrats trying to stop Ralph Nader standing as a candidate. That's more of a serious issue than people being escorted from a campaign rally, but nobody seems to mind. Should I assume that if there was a right wing equivalent of Nader who threatened to take 1-2% of Bush's votes away, and if the Republicans made legal challenges against his right to stand, we'd all be ok with that?

[cosmolinguist]

There are definitely people who mind the attempts to keep Nader from showing up on the ballot. And there are extreme right-wing parties that have a candidate for president, at least sometimes or in some places.

I realize this isn't the most serious atrocity ever committed, to say the least. I think people pick up on these stories because it seems just more indication that politicians are no longer even pretending that they have any concern for the people and our supposed rights. And failing to notice and take what measures we can to counteract these trends will only encourage them. Silence is implied consent, and all that.

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

I don't recall any legal challenges by the GOP when Perot won, which lead to Clinton winning twice.

[5-rings.livejournal.com]

There's double disenfranchisement at work there. Not only is Nader being denied ballot access, but those states in which Democrats are contesting Nader's presence have been thus far unable to print absentee ballots. Large numbers of people, military personnel in particular, may be denied the right to vote if their ballots don't get printed and mailed in time.

(Of course, I realize that absentee ballots aren't counted unless the election is close, yet that seems like what this election will be -- another 50-50 race.)