Is my outrage misplaced? Although I would have to say that outrage must be good for the heart, because this 80-year-old heart is still going strong, maintaining a low heartbeat and low blood pressure—‘course, no one is around to check either when I am reacting to news on TV or radio…
Is it not our Constitution that makes our country exceptional? And don’t we love to recite the First Amendment, including the priceless phrase “…the right of the people peaceably to assemble…”
Mayor Bloomberg has just said that the first amendment “protects speech but it does not protect tents.” Oh, WOW, just consider, the Supreme Court has ruled that money is speech, yet Bloomberg proclaims that tents are not speech.
If you want to watch the police state in action, as NYPD destroys Zuccoti Park village, you will have to watch Democracy Now, at freespeechtv or linktv, or access it on the internet at www.democracynow.org as I believe they were the only journalists at the scene when the park was raided this morning. If you are not moved, then I would have to say, as Rick Perry did in another context, “you have no heart.” One of the most moving moments was perhaps when Amy Goodman leaned over and picked up out of the debris a battered paperback book, “Brave New World Revisited.”
How is it that we applaud the Arab Spring, as it occurs in foreign countries, and condemn the governments that suppress those protests, and yet around our country storm troopers and riot police are invading encampments, beating and harassing and arresting protesters, evicting them and destroying their belongings?
Shouldn’t the First Amendment trump park rules? How is it that simply making rules about curfews and tents can stop the people’s right to freedom of speech and to peaceably assemble? Who put limits on when or where these protests could take place? Oh, right, remember the “Free Speech Zones” at national political conventions?
A few days ago someone, probably on Fox News, opined that every parent watching these scenes of occupiers is fearful of spotting the face of a child in the crowd. Well, don’t count me in that bunch. I find myself, with hope, scanning the faces I see at those protests for any sign of a grandchild of mine, and do know this, I would stand with that grandchild, in spirit at least.
Is Hope, in fact, still shut up in Pandora’s Box?
Gramma Windy
Hi Gramma Windy:
ReplyDeleteThere is no contradiction.
Gotta remember that the US government did not support any part of the Arab spring until it was clear that the respective dictators' days were numbered - cynical pandering. Many American people cheered the Arab Spring, but the Spring scared the us govt. half to death. THAT, the US government, is the force that is beating and harassing and arresting here in the U.S.
One friend on facebook said this:
ReplyDelete"You can't evict an idea whose time has come."