By Brad Poling for Occupy – Universities across the country may be on the precipice of a new era in activism, politics and – in the most basic sense – expression. Motivated in part by recent high-profile protests against controversial speakers, at least 10 states are currently considering some variation of a bill proposed by the conservative Goldwater Institute that would implement punitive measures for students involved in protests on campuses. The bill also curtails public universities’ ability to take a stand on “controversial” issues – without providing a lot of guidance about what exactly these controversies may include. The states proposing the bill – California, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and North Carolina – have introduced slight variations of the original into their statehouses. But each bill is marked by gray areas and vague uncertainties that pose a serious threat to the very thing they seek to defend: free speech. For example, take Wisconsin’s bill, the Campus Free Speech Act. Considering how smoothly the legislation progressed through the state’s Republican-dominated Assembly, it has generated a fair amount of confusion as to how exactly the law would work.
By John W. Whitehead for Counter Punch – Unfortunately, this is how the government at all levels—federal, state and local—now responds to those who choose to exercise their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble in public and challenge the status quo. This police overkill isn’t just happening in troubled hot spots such as Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, Md., where police brutality gave rise to civil unrest, which was met with a militarized show of force that caused the whole stew of discontent to bubble over into violence. A decade earlier, the NYPD engaged in mass arrests of peaceful protesters, bystanders, legal observers and journalists who had gathered for the 2004 Republican National Convention. The protesters were subjected to blanket fingerprinting and detained for more than 24 hours at a “filthy, toxic pier that had been a bus depot.” That particular exercise in police intimidation tactics cost New York City taxpayers nearly $18 million for what would become the largest protest settlement in history. Demonstrators, journalists and legal observers who had gathered in North Dakota to peacefully protest the Dakota Access Pipeline reported being pepper sprayed, beaten with batons, and strip searched by police.
By Staff of ACLU – WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia today filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia, Metropolitan Police Department officers, and D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham for making unconstitutional arrests, using excessive force, denying arrested people food, water, and access to toilets, and invasive bodily searches of protesters exercising their First Amendment rights on Inauguration Day. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a legal observer, a photojournalist, and two others arrested that day. While the overwhelming majority of Inauguration Day protesters demonstrated peacefully, a small number caused property damage. In response to the vandalism, MPD officers employed a controversial crowd-control tactic known as “kettling,” where officers corralled more than 200 protesters—including many who had broken no laws—by trapping and detaining them for several hours before formally arresting them. Officers also deployed nonlethal crowd-control devices—including pepper spray, tear gas, flash-bang grenades, concussion grenades, and smoke flares—upon protesters and others both on the street and inside the kettle, without warning or threat of harm to officers or other members of the public.
By Popular Resistance. Tell Ajit Pai to protect net neutrality. In 2014 the people fought the Giant Telecoms to win reclassification of the Internet as a common carrier under the Obama administration. This success gave us Net Neutrality – everyone can go wherever they want on the Internet. Now, under the Trump administration, the new chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, a former lawyer for Verizon, is moving quickly to take net neutrality away! He plans to start that process on May 18 unless we stop him. Send him an email now!
By Tighe Barry. In the recent past, frivolous charges like these would have been thrown out of court. But, Trump and his cronies in the Justice Department are going out of their way to crackdown on dissent, especially in the form of nonviolent protest. Republican officials are jumping on Trump’s bigoted bandwagon to restrict liberties at the local, state and national level. We see laws being passed in over a dozen states to make protesting a crime, while at the same time, North Dakota has passed a law where running over a protester is not a crime. We see state laws being passed to criminalize campaigns that support Palestinian rights. We see that over 200 people who protested Trump’s inauguration have been prosecuted and charged with ridiculous offenses, such as felony rioting charges. We should see our Justice Department prosecuting real criminals, like those responsible for war, not convicting people for laughing in Congress. Unless we rise up and demand our first amendment right to dissent, then the joke will be on the American people. And that is no laughing matter.
By Chip Gibbons for BORDC – “For someone to be assaulted and then arrested for asking a question, in a public library of all places, is abhorrent. The library should be a place where people of all points of view can feel safe and welcome,” Steve Woolfolk, director of public programing at the Kansas City Public Library told the Dissent NewsWire. But that is exactly what happened during a question and answer session with former Bush Administration official and current Washington Institute for Near East Policy…
By Alejandro Vidal for Tax Revolution Institute – Washington, DC — The free-speech rights of nonprofit organizations, such as advocacy groups, educational institutions, labor unions, and business leagues, are under serious threat, and the clock is ticking. In response, the Tax Revolution Institute (TRI) — a Washington-based nonprofit group that promotes “justice and integrity in the tax system” — has launched the First Amendment Alliance: a non-partisan effort to protect the free-speech rights of nonprofits.
By Adam DeAngeli for Tax Revolution Center – The draft of the House of Representatives’ financial-services appropriations bill contains language very similar to what was passed last year to defund the IRS from implementing the nonprofit muzzle rule. If enforced, the rule would harm the nonprofit community by curtailing their First Amendment right to speech and creating legal exposure for accidentally violating these new draconian limits. It’s well and good that the IRS will be prohibited another year from carrying out this rule, but unfortunately this bill leaves the door open for the IRS to move forward with their mandate the following year.
By Nozomi Hayase for Common Dreams – On April 5, 2010, WikiLeaks published classified military footage of a July 2007 attack by a US Army helicopter gunship in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad. The video titledCollateral Murder depicted the killing of more than a dozen men, including two Reuters staffers. At the time of release, the WikiLeaks website temporarily crashed with a massive influx of visitors, while versions popped up on YouTube, reaching millions.
By Raphael Minder for The New York Times – MADRID — A puppet show at an open square in Madrid during Carnival festivities this month featured a policeman who tried to entrap a witch. The puppet officer held up a little sign to falsely accuse her, using a play on words that combined Al Qaeda and ETA, the Basque separatist group. Angry parents complained, and the real police stepped in. They arrested two puppeteers, who could now face as much as seven years in prison on charges of glorifying terrorism and promoting hatred.
By Chip Gibbons in Defending Dissent – Just days after the killing of both Goforth and another law enforcement officer, Charles Gliniewicz, USA Today published an op-ed by Ron Hasko, President of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, blaming Black Lives Matter for the deaths of both officers, as well as violent crime across the United States. Hasko asks his readers not once, but twice if there is “hard data and empirical evidence” to support his suppositions. Both times he concedes there is not. Yet, Hasko will not let this admitted lack of evidence derail his attempt to smear a social movement for racial justice, as “concluding that both [the deaths of officers and the spike in crime] stem from the anti-cop themes from such protesters, liberal politicians and the mainstream media is hardly counterintuitive.”
We won! As of yesterday, we defeated Pennsylvania’s “Gag Mumia Law”, SB 508. It’s hard to rejoice in this victory when Mumia is under medical neglect, riot police are terrorizing Baltimore, and the state violence that killed Freddie Gray and is putting Mumia’s life on the line is not unique but ingrained in the U.S.’ racist system of policing, surveillance and imprisonment. But we want to take this moment with you to recognize this enormous win, which shut down the Fraternal Order of Police in their tracks and will keep Mumia and all prisoners able to speak to the public. Email us at info@prisonradio.org and we will send you the order. We must be vigilant the FOP has vowed to go back to the legislature and try to silence Mumia again.
Bonnie said that this trial is about a constitutional free speech issue and the jury should be the ones to decide on whether she was trespassing or had a constitutional right to be on the base sharing her literature. The judge responded that deciding about constitutional issues is not up to the jury and Bonnie will not be allowed to bring that up. Bonnie will now be going to trial on April 1 without being able to offer a strong defense. Her ability to do so has been taken away by the prosecutor and the judge before the trial even begins. This happens so many times in trials for protestors and it is outrageous. We are gagged and then we are censored. As we consider this grave miscarriage of justice in Wisconsin, we realize it is all part of a bigger system of illegal actions by our government.
Reps. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) and Juan Vargas (D-Calif.) have introduced the United States-Israel Trade and Commercial Enhancement Act into Congress. This bill, according to Roskam’s press release, would “counter the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and strengthen the U.S.-Israel economic relationship.” The bill cites its raison d’être not as a political defense of Israel, but as concern over “politically motivated actions” that would constitute barriers of trade in violation of the General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs (GATT). It would tie U.S. trade policy, most notably the pending trade deal with the European Union, to opposing BDS.
I’ve heard free speech isn’t free, and Brandon Duncan, who raps as Tiny Doo, has learned that the hard way. Until recently, Mr. Duncan spent eight months in jail on “gang conspiracy” charges arising from several shootings in San Diego from May 2013 to February 2014. Prosecutors admit he wasn’t at the scene of the crimes, and they have no evidence linking him to the shootings. Mr. Duncan, who has no criminal record, also says he had no knowledge of the crimes. But the district attorney charged him all the same because he raps about shootings. That’s not only absurd; it’s a blatant violation of the First Amendment.
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