The Hypocrisy of "Free-Speech Zones"

There is a cold wind blowing on the face of politics today, and it chills me to the bone. It's not the lying, the cheating, the constant rhetoric... no, these things have been a part of politics since Ceasers time. No, it's the wanton and unabashed violation of one of the primary freedom that this country enjoys, the freedom of speech. Since the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration has tread on our civil liberties like no other administration before it. Bush and his cronies have invented a diabolic means of violating people's rights of free speech and protest, a terrible blight on the surface of civil rights, called "Free-Speech Zones." The named must be regarded as intentionally deceptive, as they are not so much "Free-Speech Zones", as they are a holding pen for political protesters and dissidents.

When Bush travels around the United States, the Secret Service visits the location ahead of time and orders local police to set up “free speech zones” or “protest zones” where people opposed to Bush policies (and sometimes sign-carrying supporters) are quarantined. These zones routinely succeed in keeping protesters out of presidential sight and outside the view of media covering the event.

When Bush came to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002, 65-year-old retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a sign proclaiming, “The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us.” The local police, at the Secret Service’s behest, set up a “designated free-speech zone” on a baseball field surrounded by a chain-link fence a third of a mile from the location of Bush’s speech. The police cleared the path of the motorcade of all critical signs, though folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted to line the president’s path. Neel refused to go to the designated area and was arrested for disorderly conduct; the police also confiscated his sign. Neel later commented, “As far as I’m concerned, the whole country is a free speech zone. If the Bush administration has its way, anyone who criticizes them will be out of sight and out of mind.” [James Boward of The American Conservative]

Mr. Neel is one of many people who have been arrested for their refusal to be corraled, simply because of their message of dissention or disapproval. It's staggering that any president who would declare himself a champion of freedom, and push his "forward strategy of freedom," would rip freedoms away from those who need them the most, the dissenters. Now, I should be fair. While The Monkey and his Ad-monster-ation invented this technique, and continue to implement it with other Gestappo-esque tactics for silencing the people, they are not the only ones practicing this dirty game. The Democratic National Convention in Boston also has one of these beguilingly named "Free-Speech Zones," and it's a horrific sight.

The protest zone, which most people here simply call "the cage," is beneath an elevated section of disused subway tracks near a newly paved bus parking lot.

Activists say the zone resembles the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The zone, surrounded by two layers of chain link fences mounted on Jersey barriers, draped with black mesh and topped with razor wire, violates the protesters' free-speech rights, said a legal observer for the Boston chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

"You can't have free speech inside a prison," said the observer, Tony Naro, a recent college graduate who plans to start law school this fall.
[Wired News]

Rant Approaching. Consider yourself warned.
Almost everyone who came of age in the 60s, as my father has told me many times, was at least slightly anti-establishment, if not ragingly so. Yes, the FBI did attempt to quell the uprisings, if you will, but they didn't have access to nearly as much power as they do now, thank you very much, Patriot Act. Why are we now being denied our right to protest the policies and activities of political figures? Why is no one OUTRAGED? Sure, the ACLU and a few other groups are suing the FBI, but why don't I hear about this when I'm at my local pub? Why isn't this a huge topic of conversation? The politicians are trying to take our most basic rights as free citizens of the United States of America, and here sit we, lowing softly as they rip our freedoms away and force us into a Draconian government. We might as well elect Bush as the next totalitarian dictator (or dick-tater if you will), becase that's basically what's going on. How can The Monkey and his Ad-monster-ation talk about "freeing" people in Iraq, when they're trying to silence and imprison their fellow citizens of The United States? WTF? I hope they have a special place in Hell for Bush and his beef-witted cronies. I'd like to leave you a portion of the lyrics to Rage Against the Machine's "Wake Up":

Come on!
Uggh!
Come on, although ya try to discredit
Ya still never edit
The needle, I'll thread it
Radically poetic
Standin' with the fury that they had in '66
And like E-Double I'm mad
Still knee-deep in the system's shit
Hoover, he was a body remover
I'll give ya a dose
But it'll never come close
To the rage built up inside of me
Fist in the air, in the land of hypocrisy

Movements come and movements go
Leaders speak, movements cease
When their heads are flown
'Cause all these punks
Got bullets in their heads
Departments of police, the judges, the feds
Networks at work, keepin' people calm
You know they went after King
When he spoke out on Vietnam
He turned the power to the have-nots
And then came the shot

Wake up, people, or we're all going down.