[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Tyranny in the Name of Freedom

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Tyranny in the Name of Freedom

August 12, 2004
 By DAHLIA LITHWICK 



 

So it has come down to this: You are at liberty to exercise
your First Amendment right to assemble and to protest, so
long as you do so from behind chain-link fences and razor
wire, or miles from the audience you seek to address. 

The largely ignored "free-speech zone" at the Democratic
convention in Boston last month was an affront to the
spirit of the Constitution. The situation will be only
slightly better when the Republicans gather this month in
New York, where indiscriminate searches and the use of
glorified veal cages for protesters have been limited by a
federal judge. So far, the only protesters with access to
the area next to Madison Square Garden are some
anti-abortion Christians. High-fiving delegates evidently
fosters little risk of violence. 

It's easy to forget that as passionate and violent as
opposition to the Iraq war may be, it pales in comparison
with the often bloody dissent of the Vietnam era, when much
of the city of Washington was nevertheless a free-speech
zone. 

It's tempting to say the difference this time lies in the
perils of the post-9/11 world, but that argument assumes
some meaningful link between domestic political protest and
terrorism. There is no such link, except in the eyes of the
Bush administration, which conflates the two both as a
matter of law and of policy. 

It started with Attorney General John Ashcroft's
declaration, shortly after 9/11: "To those who scare
peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my
message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists." This
was an early attempt to couple disagreeing on civil
liberties with abetting terrorists. And while I'm not
reflexively opposed to the entire Patriot Act, two
provisions do serve more to quell protest than terrorism. 

One section invented a broad new crime called "domestic
terrorism" - punishing activities that "involve acts
dangerous to human life" if a person's intent is to
"influence the policy of a government by intimidation or
coercion." If that sounds as if it's directed more toward
effigy-burning, or Greenpeace activity, than international
terror, it's because it is. International terror was
already illegal. 

A second provision, already deemed unconstitutional in one
federal court, was used to prosecute Sami Omar al-Hussayen,
a Muslim graduate student at the University of Idaho who
was charged with using the Internet to offer "expert advice
or assistance" to terrorists by posting fatwahs and
hyperlinks to a Hamas Web site. He was acquitted by a jury
this summer, partly because the judge warned jurors that
speech - even speech advocating the use of force or the
breaking of laws - is constitutionally protected, unless
directed toward inciting imminent lawless action. 

An even more pernicious use of the federal law enforcement
power to quash protest has been observed at presidential
speeches, where the Bush team has used the Secret Service
at public events to create "free-speech zones" that keep
dissenters away from the president. 

In 2002 Brett Bursey, a South Carolinian, was arrested for
holding a "No War for Oil" sign near a hangar where Bush
was speaking. The West Virginia police reported that the
Secret Service had directed them to arrest a couple
sporting anti-Bush T-shirts at a public speech this year.
And an account by Justin Rood in Salon last week revealed
that at a recent rally in Duluth, Minn., Secret Service
checkpoints were festooned with photos of men posing some
ostensible physical danger to the president: one was a
professor active in the Green Party, another a pacifist
homeless activist. Both had plans to protest the war during
Mr. Bush's visit. 

Michael Moore's cookie-wielding Fresno peace activists look
almost dangerous in comparison. Without evidence that
pacifist protesters plan to violate their own credos and
bludgeon the president with their Birkenstocks, the use of
the Secret Service to silence them is an abuse of executive
power. 

Enormous national events will inevitably be terror targets.
So will the president. But before we single out the
anarchists and the environmentalists and the puppet-guys
for diminished constitutional protections - before we herd
them into what are speech-free zones - we might question
whether they represent the real danger. If we don't
recognize the distinction between passionate political
speech and terrorism now, it may be too late to protest
later. 

Dahlia Lithwick, a senior editor at Slate, will be a guest
columnist during August. Thomas L. Friedman is on leave
until October, writing a book. Maureen Dowd is on vacation.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/opinion/12lith.html?ex=1093347680&ei=1&en=fdf03377e058bb6b


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