Imagine a town where restrictions on protest signs, unlimited mayoral power to deputize anyone in the service of maintaining order and unbridled use of surveillance without any protection or oversight is common. This town is also run by a police force which is illegal to record while engaged in its duties and that may willfully deny anyone free speech without any reasonable cause.
Chilling. Sounds like something out of a Cold War drama set in Soviet Russia.
But it isn’t. This is Chicago.
American citizens Dan Ponce and Donte Williams being arrested for practicing First Amendment rights.
While you might think I mean the Chicago of 1968 (a town firmly under the jackboot heel of King Daley I, a gruesome thug that deserved imprisonment for his crimes against the citizenry of Chicago, but instead had a civic center named after him), you would be wrong. Chicago’s dreadful treatment of civil liberties continues on, and it is safe to say that in the beginning of 2012 it is alive and well.
Several days ago a police officer arrested NBC reporter Dan Ponce and photographer Donte Williams for not leaving a median strip across the street from a hospital. The men were only briefly held and no charges were ultimately levied against them
So, in short the CPD did this in a gross violation of the right to free speech. One officer, who was recorded by the news crew, was angry that his entirely illegal assault on free speech was not shown the proper amount of respect. Check it out.
4 Comments
Theo–
Did you write this article from a bomb shelter after a long day of cleaning guns and stocking spam? You are starting to sound more an more like your own episode of “Doomsday Preppers” with your paranoia.
Our police forces throughout the US protect citizens and deal with more BS than you can imagine. These officers had just witnessed the aftermath of a young child killed. How would that play on your psyche personally? In the aftermath of a 6yo girl killed and helping her mother and other families into the hospital…would you be able to function properly? Why jump to conclusions and form the assertion that they “intentionally impeded 1st amendment rights” and use the Glenn Beck buzzwords without taking a more logical stance that one officer obviously acting in error, on a power trip or perhaps even a little bit shaken up emotionally merely over-exerted power in order to protect the family from what he perceived as a mob of cameras and reporters?
This is a prime example of paranoia taking over common sense. You even compared this to communist Russia. What is wrong with you? If it was your daughter and your family in mourning, what would you want the police to do? Protect your family or just sit there as they are overrun questioned and taped in their most private time merely for some entertaining B-Roll on the 5:00 news.
So here we are a small group of officers acting in error…all of the sudden we have a city-wide Stalin/Hitler/anti-free speech conspiracy on our hands!!!
Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn has an interesting take on this epidemic of fear promoted by the right.
He calls it “scaroin,” the right-wing’s antidote to what Trib columnist John Kass has cynically coined as Obama’s “hopium.”
Right-wingers tend to be ruled by their fears and the Republicans manipulate the masses by playing on those fears, whether it’s gay marriage somehow ruining hetero marriages, or that the government is going to take over every aspect of their lives. It doesn’t really matter who or what the bogey-man is, as long as it creates enough fear, the faithful will become compliant.
Just look at how they have demonized Obamacare by playing on the fear of death panels, long lines, loss of freedom, etc. The typical right-winger is so afraid of Obamacare that they are willing to repeal it even though Republicans have absolutely no plan to replace it with something better.
Wingnuts are so afraid of Obamacare that they are content to go back to a system where insurance companies can deny coverage and drop coverage on those who become sick. They don’t even mind that built into the cost of their insurance and care is the cost to subsidize the uninsured who, by law have to be treated by hospital emergency rooms.
You talk about the protesters rights ! Theses are not peaceful protesters . They’re profession protesters from the west cost with intentions of causing mayhem and destruction of property costing tax payers. They are anarchist looking to hurt police officers by throwing human waste at them. When did the police officer become the bad guy? The county is in sad shape.
Mr. Roe,
I enjoy reading what you write in the same way I enjoy “People” magazine…..Mindless reading…All you seem to do is try and stir the pot with people. Most of what you write is fun to read and not based in fact. There is enough truth in what you write to make an argument that what you are saying is completly factual. God bless everyone of our men and women in blue. Each and everyone of them are true heros.