1115.org

At some point when I wasn’t paying attention (probably around the time of the megaphone incident at Ground Zero) the President (and by extension, his whole administration) somehow got a reputation for being tough guys, manly men and manly women.

As I prepare for my trip to New York City to observe the Republican National Convention next month, I have been reading about “Free Speech Zones” and their effect on dissent in this country.

You may remember this scene from earlier this year:

The President went to Atlanta on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and made absurd claims about being committed to King’s legacy and civil rights. But more importantly, protesters were not only kept across a plaza and a street from the President, they were further isolated by a line of buses and intimidated by police carrying automatic weapons.

Contrast that with this:

I took this photo in 1993 at Greater Pittsburgh International Airport. It was Bill Clinton’s first visit to to my hometown since taking office, and protesters were out in significant numbers to be heard about a chemical incinerator in the area. Not in a different terminal, not in a free speech zone in the parking lot, but front and center. The woman bending Clinton’s ear in the photo was closer to him than I was.

The two photos are a microcosm of the last two presidencies. Clinton wasn’t persuaded by the woman’s arguments, and allowed the incinerator to move forward, but she was allowed to speak with the then-President in person.

The only people outside of the administration who get to speak with the current President are props in staged photo opportunities. I have a hard time even imagining how an ordinary citizen with no connections could get their opinion heard by this President. At public appearances any dissent is shielded, and even in the rare event when a protest is covered by the media, it still doesn’t reach the President because he doesn’t watch TV news or read newspapers.

If the President is such a tough guy who has such “moral clarity,” then why is hearing dissenting views off limits? Does it hurt his feelings? Are his handlers afraid that he might be swayed by their arguments? If so, what does that say about who is really in charge?

The only time (to my knowledge) that Bush has expressed anything approaching a viewpoint that deviates from the “plan,” he was reminded not to stray:

Bush: “Haven’t we already given money to rich people? This second tax cut’s gonna do it again.”

Karl Rove: “Stick to principle. Stick to principle. Don’t waver.”

Could this have something to do with this statement turning down the invitation to speak to the NAACP:

I describe my relationship with the current leadership as basically non-existent because of their rhetoric.

versus:

George Herbert Walker Bush, our president’s father, spoke at the NAACP convention in 1988, when he was running for president, and that was after being booed at the convention in 1986.

It’s remarkable how, in so many ways, the current President can make his father look like a good President.

Getting back to protests and “free speech zones,” many pixels have been sent to their deaths called into action to explain why protesters have to use designated areas to demonstrate their points of view. In both New York and Boston, such “free speech zones” are being arranged. While both zones are said by protesters to be far too small to handle the expected crowds, at least the Boston zone is within sight of the Fleet Center. The New York zone is four blocks away, and out of sight from Madison Square Garden.

In a densely packed city like New York, it would be extremely disruptive to have tens (or hundreds) of thousands of people clogging the streets. Residents of San Francisco go through something like this once a month when the Critical Mass bikers take over the streets to protest cars, snarling traffic for hours. Protesters in New York risk irritating the very people they wish to convince just as the Critical Mass riders in San Francisco do. But there is no reason for the City of New York to corral them in a pen out of range of the convention. Since the Constitution explicitly makes the whole country a free speech zone, the protesters should get the benefit of the doubt to at least be heard by the convention goers. After all, one of the groups organizing the protests applied for their permits over 400 days ago. Anything less than allowing the protesters to exercise their rights smacks of authoritarianism.

As U.S. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) said

“As we read the First Amendment to the Constitution, the United States is a ‘free speech zone.’” That’s right. No one — not even the President of the United States — may restrict free speech to certain areas of this country. This entire nation is a free speech zone, by design. Everyone has a right to stand right in front of the President, if they want to, proclaiming that his war is unjust or that his policies are wrong.

As I said above, this issue is a microcosm of this administration, and certainly one that deserves much closer inspection by legislators, the courts, and the press. For 200 years, dissent has been among the most patriotic actions that a citizen could take. Restricting dissent (at best) or criminalizing it (at worst) is reprehensible.

But it doesn’t hold a candle to this exchange on Fox News :

Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade: When is it OK to whack them [protesters] around?
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly: Never.
Kilmeade: If they are not moving, if they are threatening you, can you whack them around?
Kelly: No. No. No. Believe me, we do things according to the Constitution and laws of New York state. So that’s not something we engage in.
Kilmeade: I hate seeing these protests.

Sounds like Kilmeade is calling for a repeat of the violence that rocked the 1968 Democratic convention. He’s certainly earned his third tier anchor status on a fourth rate “news organization.”

I keep Kilmeade’s words as well as Ari Fleischer’s infamous statement (”all Americans…need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is,”) on the top of my head as I prepare to travel to New York.

Since I already promised to bail people out if they get arrested, the question becomes: who’s going to bail me out?