Don’t believe me? A few months ago, before Obama took away the G8 summit, Rahm managed to push through a few nice little ordinances which go a long way to destroying a Chicagoan’s right to free speech and protest. Above and beyond these new police powers Emanuel has reserved for himself, he also lords over the country’s largest and most comprehensive (at least, according to former Secretary for Homeland Security Michael Chertoff) private security camera network. Sounds like the Red Squad all over again, except this time the watchers never fall asleep, never go off duty.
With the deck so stacked against us, what can we do?
Spread the word. Get it out there, on the internet, on TV, in streets. Forward this article (or any of the dozens like it) to people you know in Chicago – or write your own editorial on the subject. I would like to say that preservation of our free speech rights is a bygone conclusion, but there is ample proof that, at least in Chicago, this may not be the case.
Keep the information flowing and people talking, while it is still feasible to do so, and while something can be done to wrest ourselves back from this precipice.
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.