Putting the FREEDOM back in Free Speech

Denver Police & Homeland Security decided they would contain protesters near the DNC convention in a fenced area, dubbed the “Freedom Cage”. Here is a picture of that area– empty.
CommonDreams reports:
“On Monday afternoon, a couple hours after the convention kicked off, the zone was an asphalt desert. A microphone stood on a lonely stand. A Canadian documentary crew waited for protesters, who never came. An official sign-up sheet near a low-rise platform was a study in sarcasm.

Requesting the 7 a.m. slot was one “G. Washington,” who listed his cause as “You can’t cage freedom.” At 11:30 p.m., “B. Obama.” Topic: “Hope for Cages.”

“It’s so far away (the freedom cage, from the convention venue), it’s surrounded by cops, it’s just ridiculous.”

One of the most active groups is Recreate 68, an alliance of anticorporate and antiwar protesters that has demonstration permits every day of the convention. But rallies and parades have also being staged by groups pitching everything from immigrant rights, women’s equality, and Ralph Nader to lower fuel costs, legal marijuana, and a united Jerusalem.

As of Tuesday night, the city had reported 135 convention-related arrests. Most occurred Monday night, when police say a crowd of 300 disrupting traffic near Civic Center Park refused requests to disperse and then rushed a police line.

Suspects were charged with disobeying orders, obstructing a public street, and interference, violations of city ordinances. But most events have been peaceful, officials say.”

On Wednesday, a throng of protesters, lead by Veteran for Peace, surged a group of people three blocks long, led by members of the Iraq Veterans Against the War, streamed from the Denver Coliseum on Wednesday in an anti-war protest march to the Pepsi Center, where the Democratic National Convention is being staged.

By contrast, in China, the Government allowed people to apply for permits to protest in official designated zones– but then never approved one permit to do so. In fact they slapped a few 70 something year olds, who wanted to protest their displacement, loss of homes due to the Olympic construction, with a sentence of “re-education classes” something usually given to prostitutes and thieves. They were told if they disliked the re-education program, they could be sent to labor camp, an even worse fate. One of them nearly blind, both elderly.

So the US did not require the permit process, they tried to contain protesters in a fenced zone lorded over by law enforcement officials. The police presence has been crushing in Denver already, with caravans of cops flying around the city and eight or 12 guys in full riot gear hanging onto the outside of big SUVs in a show of force. The free speech crowd rejected the secluded area, and one person said no cars could get within a several block radius, making it difficult for the elderly & handicapped access.

No surprise that protesters are thinking outside the box, or in this case, outside the cage.

cross posted at ramblings

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As Bloggers, good thing we don’t live in Singapore..

This article jacked my jaw..seriously it did. As a blogger, I was taken aback by this news. From the AP writeup:

A U.S. lawyer was charged in a Singapore court on Monday for allegedly insulting a judge in an email and on his website, court documents showed.

Gopalan Nair, who runs a law firm in California and was previously a Singapore citizen, was arrested last Friday and charged on Monday for “threatening, abusing or insulting a public servant” in an email he circulated and posted on his blog, singaporedissident.blogspot.com, official documents showed.

We value our ‘freedom of speech’ here in the good ole US of A. We sometimes need to be reminded that we enjoy these types of freedoms because the majority of the world does not.. even though George Bush has tried to take these freedoms from us..they are still in place. Amen to that.

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Anti-Gay hatred rampant in Florida High School

By Sweet Pea and Rachel

This one is a little weird, but not unexpected, but you might want to brace yourself anyhow. The Ponce de Leon High School in the Florida panhandle has decided that it would be a really cool idea to ban symbols and speech which might prove supportive of GLBT rights. No, I am not kidding. After lesbian student was harassed the demented school board not only refused to help the abused student; the board went so far as to side with the attackers by banning Gay symbols and speech which might be deemed as supportive of the GLBT community. The end result is an atmosphere of fear and censorship in which homophobic students will be encouraged to act out against gay students or against those who are supportive of equal rights for the GLBT community. Moreover the board has created an atmosphere within an institution of learning in which the free exchange of ideas has been successfully stifled. Not exactly something one thinks about when he or she hears the term education.

And what was the board’s excuse? Initially it stated that it felt that the use of symbols such as rainbow flags or even shoes or T shirts emblazoned with expressions of support for the gay community might prove “disrupptive.” But then the board and its attorney went so far as to suggest that such symbols might promote “illegal organizations.” A ridicules suggestion if ever there were one. Why it’s enough to make one ask the obvious question: since when did harassment on the behalf of homophobic students become legal while supporting that student can be construed as promoting “an illegal organization.” It seems to me that the real crimes here are being comitted by the board and its attorney who are in effect aiding the free low of hate speech while putting a damper on free speech and freedom of expression.

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