Commentary: Caging Free Speech

August 4th, 2008 Tony Robinson Posted in Commentary |

In Boston, they forced them into a black pit. Behind chicken wire and concrete slabs, in metal cages topped with razor wire and black netting, and hidden beneath an underpass. A “Free Speech Zone,” officials called it, ordering anyone with something to say into the prison-like structure, surrounded by police and out of sight of anyone attending the 2004 Democratic Convention.

How sad it is that Denver officials are poised to repeat Boston’s shameful shrinkage of rights to free speech and assembly. In Denver, as in Boston, Convention demonstrators will be forced into a small caged enclosure, under police surveillance, and located 700 feet from the Convention.

This caging of free speech rights fits well with Denver’s official goal to use the convention not as a populist event to invigorate democracy, but as a marketing ploy to attract business.

When Denver was chosen to host the DNC, officials issued a press release, claiming: “The Convention will undoubtedly bring an unparalleled opportunity for economic development to the Denver area…In addition to unprecedented media attention on the city.” (Source)

What a revealing set of priorities! The nation faces a divisive war, the economy is in a tailspin, homelessness abounds, the globe warms, and our constitutional liberties shrink. In the midst of such challenges, Denver officials do not see the DNC as an opportunity for people to join in a democratic discussion, nor as an opportunity for people to challenge their leaders, but rather, as an “unparalleled opportunity for economic development.”

Such sentiments are a shriveled view of what party conventions could mean to a people. It is regretful that so many leaders obsess over the negative and disruptive aspects of political demonstrations, such as during the Chicago convention in 1968. “Free speech rights do not mean that someone can yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater,” officials note, arguing that protestors shouldn’t be allowed to instigate disorder.

But what if the theater is actually on fire? What if the nation is actually in the midst of an ill-thought out war, what if the economy is crashing, what if the Constitution has been ignored by our leaders? In those cases, isn’t it proper for someone to stand up and yell “Fire!” , to yell “Enough!” to shout back at our leaders?

That’s what happened in 1968, and it’s what many demonstrators seek to recreate in Denver. They have a point to make. It was the free speech activists of 1968 that created the climate of turmoil that ultimately ended the war in Vietnam, earned 18 year olds the right to vote, and toppled a corrupt presidency. The nation WAS on fire in 1968, and the disruptive speech of convention activists helped changed the world.

If we persist in caging speakers, and in forcing them to speak in hidden locations far away from policy makers, we not only shrivel and encage the First Amendment—we may also be dooming ourselves to sitting oblivious in a blazing theater, fiddling while Rome burns.

KGNU’s national politics analyst, Tony Robinson, is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado Denver. You can find more at mypoliticscampaignblog.wordpress.com