Fw: To Be Silenced, Or Not to Be: That is the Question or is America still the land of the free?

[Guest guest]

Please for the sake of our nation, please take 5 minutes of your day and read

this.

If you find it offensive, I hope it is because you believe in America and you

are as upset about what is happing as I am.

Thank You for your time.

Mikki Sage Harper, keep America FREE

To Be Silenced, Or Not to Be: That is the Question

Published on Thursday, October 21, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

To Be Silenced, Or Not to Be: That is the Question

by Debi

" Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all

subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us. "

--Justice O.

Last week, both vice presidential nominee and President

W. Bush visited Southern Oregon. Considering the area is relatively rural,

sparsely populated, and Oregon is a state that usually gets little attention in

a

presidential election, it was an unprecedented and rather exciting occasion. I

decided to try and get tickets to both events for my kids and myself.

Getting tickets from the County Democratic Party Headquarters for the

event was pleasant and easy. They didn’t ask me to declare a party,

didn’t ask who I was voting for, didn’t ask me to provide personal

information

or a DNA sample.

Not so at the County GOP headquarters. First they wanted to know my na

me, address, phone number, email, and my driver’s license number. " Do they

really have the time, funds, and need to run all this data through some security

check? What are they afraid of? " I asked myself. But hey, if it’ll get me

some tickets, I’ll grudgingly fill out the application.

It didn’t get me the tickets. " Are you a Bush supporter? " I was asked. I

explained that I was a registered Independent and not necessarily a Bush

supporter. " Are you going to vote for Bush? " I was asked. " No, " I honestly, and

out of

curiosity to see what would happen, replied. I was summarily told that if I

wasn’t planning on voting for Bush, I wasn’t welcome. " " came over to

make

sure I got the message. I told him I’d taken my kids to similar events (we saw

Clinton and Gore in 1996) and didn’t he think it was good to get my kids

involved in the democratic process early? To take them to events such as these

and

let them make up their own minds? I guess not. He just kept repeating, in a

rather intimidating way, that if I wasn’t a supporter, I wasn’t welcome.

(Funny how he wasn’t worried about how this sort of attitude might affect the

future of the Republican Party. Hmm.)

I initially found the whole thing absurdly funny even though I was shaking

(intimidation will do that to you) as I walked out of GOP headquarters. As the

day wore on and the more I reflected on the starkly different experiences I’d

had at both headquarters, the more frustrated and indignant I became. What is

happening in this country that my children and I are kept out of a rally for

the man who is currently our president? I had no intention whatsoever of causing

any disturbances or protesting the event in any way. We’re a homeschooling

family that uses a variety of life experiences and opportunities as our

classroom. This was simply just another unique event for my children and I to

attend

and learn from.

Incidentally, I observed nary a protest during the entire rally the

following day, despite the fact there had been no effort to keep anyone out

based on their viewpoints or political affiliations. Why couldn’t the Bush

Campaign and the GOP behave in the same congenial and democratic fashion I

wondered,

and again asked myself, " What are they afraid of? " I even tried to come up

with a new acronym for the GOP. Grand Old Paranoia came to mind.

Feeling more and more outraged by the sanitation of the Bush event, I decided

to attend the unWelcome Bush rally to be held in ville. ville

is a tiny little dot on the map (pop. 2245). It’s a well-preserved gold mining

town that now houses museums, tiny boutiques, eateries, and small inns. Bush

would be spending the night here following his presumptuous and premature

" Victory Rally " being held a few miles away in Central Point. A politically

active

friend of mine had organized the peaceful demonstration and had spoken several

times with local authorities, informing them of the event, and asking all the

pertinent questions. She was told that as long as people remained on the

sidewalks, there should be no problem and that they were there to protect the

president as well as our right to peaceably assemble.

Our group started out small, 70 or so people carrying signs, water bottles,

video cameras, and children. As the evening wore on more people began

gathering—Bush supporters, and protesters alike. There were several blockades,

manned

by security, at different intersections to the west of where we were. People,

to my knowledge, were respecting the requests not to move beyond the blockades

as well as continuing to respect the request to keep to the sidewalks. When a

helicopter started making low passes overhead, a portion of the motorcycle

motorcade came by, and a throng of riot cops made their appearance guarding the

west end of the block, we assumed the President was on his way. Everything

continued to remain fairly calm, even with the mixture of chanting from both

sides.

Suddenly, an officer within the line of riot cops ordered the crowd to move

back two blocks to 5th Street. They allowed about four seconds for this to sink

in and then started pushing us back by moving forward in a line. The

sidewalks could not contain the sudden movement of people, and subsequently the

streets became crowded and chaotic. If their desire for us to move had been

communicated earlier, or if that portion of the street had been blocked off to

begin

with, people probably would have, in general, respected it, even though we were

in our legal right to be in the vicinity. But instead, the authorities in

charge chose to create confusion and conflict instead of wisely diffusing it

ahead of time. And the result was an unnecessary melee: sudden gunfire; people

running, falling, being shot with pepper bullets; children upset by the gunfire,

and coughing from the pepper; women who were carrying their children being

grabbed and pushed violently; people daring to ask questions being forcibly

pushed and intimidated. It must be reiterated, this event was organized to be

peaceful, non-violent, and family friendly. And, even though there was a mixed

demographic on the street, the event remained non-violent and relatively

peaceful…except for the actions of a few of the less than restrained riot

cops. Riot

cops, who were, we have to remind ourselves, taking orders from a higher

command.

I fully expected to see the presence of the secret service, the snipers, and

a multitude of officers at this event. What I didn’t expect to see was a

completely unnecessary use of extreme force in a situation that clearly didn’t

warrant it. If there was, and to my knowledge there wasn’t, anyone doing

something

illegal or outside their constitutional rights, then why couldn’t a couple of

these well-trained officers peacefully remove the offenders? I was at the

front of the crowd when the mayhem broke out and I saw nothing that would

warrant

shooting pepper bullets, especially into a crowd so full of young children.

After returning home from this disturbing event, I turned on the news. The

only thing that aired on my local NBC affiliate regarding the event was an

interview with a Bush supporter in the darkened street. I did learn later that a

couple other outlets offered a slightly more balanced, though still sanitized,

viewpoint. Several independent video clips documenting the overuse of force

have also been sent to various media outlets over the past few days, and to my

knowledge, none have been aired. More sanitation. Could this be happening all

over the country? How many valid stories are going unreported by the major

media? Or are so sanitized as to be a faint glimmer of the actual truth?

Who runs this sanitation department?

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of

opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly

repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens

and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

--Harry S. Truman, 33rd president of the U.S.

After about 10 minutes of Internet research, I observed a picture beginning

to develop. And, my friends, the picture isn't pretty. Yes, the silencing is

happening all across America. At Presidential visits, during peace rallies,

non-violent demonstrations, in high schools where kids draw anti-war pictures in

art class, in small towns where people put dissenting comics on their car. All

these events have resulted in visits, interrogation, and intimidation by the

Secret Service. When you begin to notice the larger pattern of thought control,

intimidation, and downright attack upon the very bedrock of our nation’s

guiding principles by the people who are sworn to uphold it, a sick feeling

begins

building in your gut.

In answer to my question, ‘who runs this sanitation department?’ Dave

Lindorff, investigative reporter, journalist, and columnist succinctly explains,

" White House advance teams and the Secret Service have routinely instructed

local

police at cities where the president or vice president plan to visit to

remove demonstrators—particularly those carrying signs which might mar the TV

imagery of a triumphant presidential motorcade or rally—and pen them in, often

in

fenced-in enclosures, well away from the event and the media. The result is

news coverage that has seemed to suggest a universally adored administration. "

The AFL-CIO, commenting on the well documented suppression of free speech and

intimidation witnessed during the FTAA Ministerial in Miami last November

said, " Some are calling the repression witnessed…the ‘Miami model.’ The

Miami

model calls for authorities to foment irrational fears about peaceful political

protest in order to legitimize suppression of our rights. This climate of

panic enables top police officials to harass and intimidate protestors and

sympathetic members of the public…. These tactics are designed to discourage

ordinary

Americans from exercising their Constitutional rights to free speech and free

assembly. People in America should not have to fear violent attacks funded by

their own tax dollars when they participate in peaceful and permitted

demonstrations. These tactics are part of a larger strategy of the Bush

Administration to chill political dissent and stifle civil liberties here in

America. "

At the very Bush rally I was refused entrance to, three teachers (who were

craftier than I when trying to obtain tickets) were kicked out for the crime of

wearing t-shirts that said, " Protect our civil liberties. " Reportedly, a rally

volunteer said the shirts were " obscene. " These three women were even

threatened with arrest if they did not leave the event.

How have we come to such a point where advocating for protection of our civil

liberties is obscene?? Of course, that’s a silly question come post 9/11,

right? Obviously, 9/11 (which was the all too convenient " catastrophic and

catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor " that the neo-cons had been frothing

at the

mouth for since writing their thesis Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy,

Forces and Resources For a New Century in 2000) meant that in order for

ordinary American citizens to experience security we’d have to give up many of

our

freedoms. Duh. Fall in line sheeple. Don’t ask questions. Don’t be

unpatriotic. Don’t dissent. For heaven’s sake, go shopping. Go to Disney

World. But

whatever you do, don’t think… your security’s at stake.

Yes, our security is at stake. We are in the midst of a massive takeover

(some would say corporate) of this country. But the real enemy isn’t some

nefarious terrorist out there. It isn’t in those shipping containers Kerry

mentions.

It isn’t in Iraq. It isn’t in your neighborhood mosque or at the peace rally

down the street or in the underbelly of the next plane you ride. You know why

Bush lost interest in Bin Laden? It’s because he knows who the real enemy is,

and where he resides. And no, let's not blame this all on Bush.

Aside from believing the enemy within is much larger than W. Bush, I

also believe a big chunk of the blame belongs on the media’s doorstep. In a

few

short years, media ownership has been consolidated into fewer and fewer (for

profit) hands. According to the website www.corporations.org/media/ " In 1983,

50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. "

And in 2004? " Only 5 huge corporations -- Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News

Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) -- now control

most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric's NBC is a close sixth. "

These mega-conglomerates are in the business of selling you something. And

the closer you look, the fishier it smells. But don’t take my word for it. You

owe it to yourself, and your country, to more deeply investigate the wily

purveyors of our nation’s " news. " One current and particularly egregious

example of

media totalitarian boot stomping is Sinclair Broadcasting. The same Sinclair

Broadcast Group that in April forbade its ABC affiliates from showing Ted

Koppel's 40-minute tribute to fallen troops in Iraq, because the programming

appeared to be " motivated by political agenda " , has the audacity to order, yes

order, their stations to preempt regular programming, days before the election,

to

air a film that attacks Senator Kerry's activism following the Vietnam War.

Sinclair Broadcast Group, the country’s largest owner of TV stations, has

also, among other things: required journalists to read pro-Bush statements

(verbal loyalty oaths), refused to air ads criticizing Bush and/or featuring

video

clips of the President making false claims, and have aired " news stories "

written and paid for by the government. And this isn’t being " motivated by a

political agenda " ??

Freedom Chips Anyone?

At first glance this may seem completely off the subject, but what about the

fact that the state of Virginia is contemplating inserting RFID chips in all

state issued drivers licenses? As per Kent Willis, Executive Director of the

ACLU of Virginia:

" Almost everyone carries a driver’s license, and RFID chips allow people to

be tracked. This proposal would allow anyone to set up an RFID reader to

capture the identities and personal information of every person who comes within

range. FBI agents, for example, could sweep up the identities of everyone at a

political meeting, protest march, gun show, or Islamic prayer service. "

This morning, I mentioned this RFID program to my son, asking him how he’d

feel if he lived in a country that monitored your every move via a chip that was

implanted in your driver’s license, internal passport, or even worse, your

body (technology that was just recently approved by the FDA, by the way). He

nonchalantly replied that he wouldn’t necessarily like it but that it

wouldn’t

be any big deal. I talked to him about civil liberties, about privacy issues,

about the freedoms this country fought long, hard, and bloody battles to

obtain. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very convincing. But fortunately, he doesn’t

get

all his schooling from me. He’s also enrolled in several classes outside the

home and this afternoon I walked in to find him doing some homework for one of

them…reading excerpts from Orwell’s 1984.

I know people are probably tired of all the Orwellian analogy. But this is

just the tip of the iceberg. And we’re headed for a terrible sinking if we

" stay

the course. " I sat down to look through the excerpts my son had been reading,

remembering back to when I’d read the book as a teen. Included in the reading

homework was the preface Walter Cronkite wrote in 1984 for that year’s

edition of Orwell's novel. It reads, in part:

…If not prophecy, what was 1984? It was, as many have noticed, a warning: a

warning about the future of human freedom in a world where political

organization and technology can manufacture power in dimensions that would have

stunned

the imaginations of earlier ages.

…That warning vibrates powerfully when we allow ourselves to sit still and

think carefully about orbiting satellites that can read the license plates in a

parking lot and computers that can tap into thousands of telephone calls and

telex transmissions at once and other computers that can do our banking and

purchasing, can watch the house and tell a monitoring station what television

program we are watching and how many people there are in the room…And we hear

echoes of that warning chord in the constant demand for greater security and

comfort, for less risk in our societies. We recognize, however dimly, that

greater

efficiency, ease, and security may come at a substantial price in freedom,

that law and order can be a doublethink version of oppression, that individual

liberties surrendered for whatever good reason are freedom lost.

…It has been said that 1984 fails as a prophecy because it succeeded as a

warning--Orwell's terrible vision has been averted. Well, that kind of

self-congratulation is, to say the least, premature. 1984 may not arrive on

time, but

there's always 1985.

Or 2004.

Yes, I blame this neo-oppression on the Bush cabal, I blame the media, but I

also blame myself, and everyone else like myself, who just hasn’t had the

time, or taken the time rather, to pay sufficient attention. To question. To

reason. We were born into very fortunate circumstances—our country having

fought

long and hard for the opportunity to be self-determining, democratic, and free.

Yet we have mostly squandered that gift by our inattention and often

slobbering focus on all things material. It’s we the people who’ve handed

over our

power to the media, to corporations, to the government. We’re the ones who

left

the store, leaving the door wide open and the keys in the till. A few months

ago I ran across a rather chilling and haunting quote:

What no one seemed to notice...was the ever widening gap...between the

government and the people....And it became always wider....the whole process of

its

coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think

for people who did not want to think anyway...and kept us so busy with

continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated...by the machinations of the

'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these

dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us....Each

act... is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next

and

the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when

such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow....But the one great

shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never

comes. That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all

reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the

concerts, the cinema, the holidays....Suddenly it all comes down, all at once.

You

see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't

done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You

remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if

one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood....You

remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised

beyond

repair.

--An excerpt from Milton Mayer’s " They Thought They Were Free, The Germans

1938-45 " (1955, University of Chicago Press)

Hopefully history has taught us what we must now do before it’s too late.

Before we are compromised beyond repair. First, we must take responsibility for

becoming better informed, and we must do so by seeking out a wide variety of

information. Secondly, we’re approaching what’s probably the most important

election in our nation's history. The powers that be have tried, successfully it

seems, to drive a wedge through the middle of this country’s heart. Not since

the civil war or the civil rights movement have we been so vehemently divided.

Does the term " Divide and Conquer " ring a bell? Now is not the time to allow

ourselves to be silenced or divided. We must speak out. We must listen to each

other. Up to and following this election, we must continue to build bridges

through the use of informed dialogue and compassionate listening. It can, does,

and will make a difference. We must not be silent. For as Jefferson

said, " All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to

remain silent. "

Debi -- meal making, laundry washing, toilet swishing, bill paying,

teen transporting, hug giving, information gathering concerned American --

writes

from Ashland, Oregon, where she shares a home with her husband, two children,

a cat, and a dog. She can be reached at debi@...

###

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