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Anti-Bush Protesters Silenced at Ohio State Gradua
Josey1
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Anti-Bush Protesters Silenced at Ohio State Graduation
Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive
July 15, 2002
George W. Bush came to Columbus on June 14 for Ohio State's commencement, and university administrators made sure he wouldn't hear any criticism.
At rehearsal and right as the ceremony began, a school administrator, Richard Hollingsworth, Associate Vice President of Student Affairs, warned that any protesters would be kicked out and arrested. Some students said they were told they would be denied their diplomas if they protested.
(The story of the suppression of the OSU protest was broken in the left media by portside@yahoogroups.com and by FAIR.)
The university was responding to a planned silent protest by a group calling itself Turn Your Back on Bush.
Hillary Tinapple, a graduating senior, was one of the organizers of the group.
"I was quite upset ever since I read in the campus paper that Bush had been invited to speak at my graduation," she wrote on the group's web site (turnyourbackonbush.com). "That man signifies everything that is wrong in this nation: the abuse of power, the privatization of profit and the socialization of burdens, the destruction and dismantling of what I call progress without any consideration of the consequences, but most especially the Bush Administration's foreign policy and actions around the 9-11 issues. I am a member of the Green Party, and a passionate community activist, so of course my gut response was that something HAD to be done to show we do not approve."
She called an emergency meeting, and she "was excited about seeing new faces in the group," she wrote.
"About forty folks came to the first planning/brainstorming meeting, and about thirty came to the next one," she told The Progressive.
They decided to turn their backs when the President spoke.
But the threat from the administration "changed the whole feeling of the protest," she wrote, and scared off many students.
She told The Progressive that Hollingsworth warned them "he knew about the web site, and that if you do not cooperate, you could be arrested, and if you are arrested, then you would not graduate."
Hollingsworth did not return The Progressive's phone call for comment.
But Randy Dunham, an assistant director of media relations at Ohio State, says the threat to withhold diplomas from protesters was "an urban myth. Somebody took a statement out of context completely. What was said at commencement was anyone who attempts to block the hearing or view of others would be removed from the stadium and subject to arrest."
I asked Dunham why a silent protest would warrant an arrest. "If they blocked the view of others" it would be justified, he says.
Tinapple says "four graduates and about ten others" participated in the protest. "At that point , it became more about my freedom of expression as an individual than any single issue about the Bush Administration," she wrote on her web site.
But Dunham says, "This should not have been a political event. The President's speech wasn't about politics. It was about voluntarism."
For the record, the President, who happens to be a political figure, did talk about subjects other than voluntarism.
"We are called to defend liberty against tyranny and terror," Bush said. "We've answered that call. We will bring security to our people and justice to our enemies ... Our nation is the greatest force for good in history."
"Eight people turned their backs, and none were arrested," says Dunham. "That leaves 59,992 who seemed pretty pleased."
While none of the protesters were formally arrested, the police reportedly did eject at least one of them from the ceremony and threatened him with arrest. Jeff, who is identified as an OSU alumnus on the group's web site, wrote: "I saw one of Columbus's Finest heading our way ... We were being led out of Ohio Stadium. To the officer's credit, he realized there was a three-year-old in my arms and was not at all hostile. I asked him if I was under arrest, and he did not answer me. When we reached the exit ... he told me we were being charged with disturbing the peace. If we chose to leave, the charges would be dropped immediately. With our daughter in mind, we chose not to fight it ... On this day, June 14th, 2002, I came to the realization that we no longer live in a free society."
Yoshie Furuhashi, a lecturer in the English at Ohio State, was also one of the organizers of the protest. Her conclusion: "The police and the OSU administration didn't respect our rights to free speech and free assembly at all," she wrote on the group's web site.
Furuhashi told The Progressive that some of the protesters are in touch with the Ohio Civil Liberties Union to see what legal recourse they might have.
"There was no need for them to clamp down on free speech," says Joseph Levine, a philosophy professor at Ohio State who joined several dozen protesters outside the ceremony that day. "They knew pretty well what was planned. There was nothing especially disruptive about that. This was an attempt to really put a chill on protest activity."
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13594
Matt Rothschild is the editor-in-chief of The Progressive.
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive
July 15, 2002
George W. Bush came to Columbus on June 14 for Ohio State's commencement, and university administrators made sure he wouldn't hear any criticism.
At rehearsal and right as the ceremony began, a school administrator, Richard Hollingsworth, Associate Vice President of Student Affairs, warned that any protesters would be kicked out and arrested. Some students said they were told they would be denied their diplomas if they protested.
(The story of the suppression of the OSU protest was broken in the left media by portside@yahoogroups.com and by FAIR.)
The university was responding to a planned silent protest by a group calling itself Turn Your Back on Bush.
Hillary Tinapple, a graduating senior, was one of the organizers of the group.
"I was quite upset ever since I read in the campus paper that Bush had been invited to speak at my graduation," she wrote on the group's web site (turnyourbackonbush.com). "That man signifies everything that is wrong in this nation: the abuse of power, the privatization of profit and the socialization of burdens, the destruction and dismantling of what I call progress without any consideration of the consequences, but most especially the Bush Administration's foreign policy and actions around the 9-11 issues. I am a member of the Green Party, and a passionate community activist, so of course my gut response was that something HAD to be done to show we do not approve."
She called an emergency meeting, and she "was excited about seeing new faces in the group," she wrote.
"About forty folks came to the first planning/brainstorming meeting, and about thirty came to the next one," she told The Progressive.
They decided to turn their backs when the President spoke.
But the threat from the administration "changed the whole feeling of the protest," she wrote, and scared off many students.
She told The Progressive that Hollingsworth warned them "he knew about the web site, and that if you do not cooperate, you could be arrested, and if you are arrested, then you would not graduate."
Hollingsworth did not return The Progressive's phone call for comment.
But Randy Dunham, an assistant director of media relations at Ohio State, says the threat to withhold diplomas from protesters was "an urban myth. Somebody took a statement out of context completely. What was said at commencement was anyone who attempts to block the hearing or view of others would be removed from the stadium and subject to arrest."
I asked Dunham why a silent protest would warrant an arrest. "If they blocked the view of others" it would be justified, he says.
Tinapple says "four graduates and about ten others" participated in the protest. "At that point , it became more about my freedom of expression as an individual than any single issue about the Bush Administration," she wrote on her web site.
But Dunham says, "This should not have been a political event. The President's speech wasn't about politics. It was about voluntarism."
For the record, the President, who happens to be a political figure, did talk about subjects other than voluntarism.
"We are called to defend liberty against tyranny and terror," Bush said. "We've answered that call. We will bring security to our people and justice to our enemies ... Our nation is the greatest force for good in history."
"Eight people turned their backs, and none were arrested," says Dunham. "That leaves 59,992 who seemed pretty pleased."
While none of the protesters were formally arrested, the police reportedly did eject at least one of them from the ceremony and threatened him with arrest. Jeff, who is identified as an OSU alumnus on the group's web site, wrote: "I saw one of Columbus's Finest heading our way ... We were being led out of Ohio Stadium. To the officer's credit, he realized there was a three-year-old in my arms and was not at all hostile. I asked him if I was under arrest, and he did not answer me. When we reached the exit ... he told me we were being charged with disturbing the peace. If we chose to leave, the charges would be dropped immediately. With our daughter in mind, we chose not to fight it ... On this day, June 14th, 2002, I came to the realization that we no longer live in a free society."
Yoshie Furuhashi, a lecturer in the English at Ohio State, was also one of the organizers of the protest. Her conclusion: "The police and the OSU administration didn't respect our rights to free speech and free assembly at all," she wrote on the group's web site.
Furuhashi told The Progressive that some of the protesters are in touch with the Ohio Civil Liberties Union to see what legal recourse they might have.
"There was no need for them to clamp down on free speech," says Joseph Levine, a philosophy professor at Ohio State who joined several dozen protesters outside the ceremony that day. "They knew pretty well what was planned. There was nothing especially disruptive about that. This was an attempt to really put a chill on protest activity."
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13594
Matt Rothschild is the editor-in-chief of The Progressive.
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Comments
Daniel Kurtzman, AlterNet
July 30, 2002
Here's a question for constitutional scholars: Can a sitting president be charged with plagiarism?
As President Bush wages his war against terrorism and moves to create a huge homeland security apparatus, he appears to be borrowing heavily, if not ripping off ideas outright, from George Orwell. The work in question is 1984, the prophetic novel about a government that controls the masses by spreading propaganda, cracking down on subversive thought and altering history to suit its needs. It was intended to be read as a warning about the evils of totalitarianism -- not a how-to manual.
Granted, we're a long way from resembling the kind of authoritarian state Orwell depicted, but some of the similarities are starting to get a bit eerie.
Permanent War
In 1984, the state remained perpetually at war against a vague and ever- changing enemy. The war took place largely in the abstract, but it served as a convenient vehicle to fuel hatred, nurture fear and justify the regime's autocratic practices.
Bush's war against terrorism has become almost as amorphous. Although we are told the president's resolve is steady and the mission clear, we seem to know less and less about the enemy we are fighting. What began as a war against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda quickly morphed into a war against Afghanistan, followed by dire warnings about an "Axis of Evil," the targeting of terrorists in some 50 to 60 countries, and now the beginnings of a major campaign against Iraq. Exactly what will constitute success in this war remains unclear, but the one thing the Bush administration has made certain is that the war will continue "indefinitely."
Ministry Of Truth
Serving as the propaganda arm of the ruling party in 1984, the Ministry of Truth not only spread lies to suit its strategic goals, but constantly rewrote and falsified history. It is a practice that has become increasingly commonplace in the Bush White House, where presidential transcripts are routinely sanitized to remove the president's gaffes, accounts of intelligence warnings prior to Sept. 11 get spottier with each retelling, and the facts surrounding Bush's past financial dealings are subject to continual revision.
The Bush administration has been surprisingly up front about its intentions of propagating falsehoods. In February, for example, the Pentagon announced a plan to create an Office of Strategic Influence to provide false news and information abroad to help manipulate public opinion and further its military objectives. Following a public outcry, the Pentagon said it would close the office -- news that would have sounded more convincing had it not come from a place that just announced it was planning to spread misinformation.
Infallible Leader
An omnipresent and all-powerful leader, Big Brother commanded the total, unquestioning support of the people. He was both adored and feared, and no one dared speak out against him, lest they be met by the wrath of the state.
President Bush may not be as menacing a figure, but he has hardly concealed his desire for greater powers. Never mind that he has mentioned -- on no fewer than three occasions -- how much easier things would be if he were dictator. By abandoning many of the checks and balances established in the Constitution to keep any one branch of government from becoming too powerful, Bush has already achieved the greatest expansion of executive powers since Nixon. His approval ratings remain remarkably high, and his minions have worked hard to cultivate an image of infallibility. Nowhere was that more apparent than during a recent commencement address Bush gave at Ohio State, where students were threatened with arrest and expulsion if they protested the speech. They were ordered to give him a "thunderous ovation," and they did.
Big Brother Is Watching
The ever-watchful eye of Big Brother kept constant tabs on the citizens of Orwell's totalitarian state, using two-way telescreens to monitor people's every move while simultaneously broadcasting party propaganda.
While that technology may not have arrived yet, public video surveillance has become all the rage in law enforcement, with cameras being deployed everywhere from sporting events to public beaches. The Bush administration has also announced plans to recruit millions of Americans to form a corps of citizen spies who will serve as "extra eyes and ears for law enforcement," reporting any suspicious activity as part of a program dubbed Operation TIPS -- Terrorism Information and Prevention System.
And thanks to the hastily passed USA Patriot Act, the Justice Department has sweeping new powers to monitor phone conversations, Internet usage, business transactions and library reading records. Best of all, law enforcement need not be burdened any longer with such inconveniences as probable cause.
Thought Police
Charged with eradicating dissent and ferreting out resistance, the ever- present Thought Police described in "1984" carefully monitored all unorthodox or potentially subversive thoughts. The Bush administration is not prosecuting thought crime yet, but members have been quick to question the patriotism of anyone who dares criticize their handling of the war on terrorism or homeland defense. Take, for example, the way Attorney General John Ashcroft answered critics of his anti-terrorism measures, saying that opponents of the administration "only aid terrorists" and "give ammunition to America's enemies."
Even more ominous was the stern warning White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer sent to Americans after Bill Maher, host of the now defunct "Politically Incorrect," called past U.S. military actions "cowardly." Said Fleischer, "There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is."
What would it take to turn America into the kind of society that Orwell warned about, a society that envisions war as peace, freedom as slavery and ignorance as strength? Would it happen overnight, or would it involve a gradual erosion of freedoms with the people's consent?
Because we are a nation at war -- as we are constantly reminded -- most Americans say they are willing to sacrifice many of our freedoms in return for the promise of greater security. We have been asked to put our blind faith in government and most of us have done so with patriotic fervor. But when the government abuses that trust and begins to stamp out the freedom of dissent that is the hallmark of a democratic society, can there be any turning back?
So powerful was the state's control over people's minds in 1984 that, eventually, everyone came to love Big Brother. Perhaps in time we all will, too.
Daniel Kurtzman is a San Francisco writer and former Washington political correspondent.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13714
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"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
At State Fair
South Dakota Libertarian Party
Published 08. 4. 02 at 8:11 Sierra Time
Huron (3 AUG 2002) - Libertarian candidate for governor, Nathan A. Barton of rural Rapid City, was arrested today by security guards at the so-called "Freedom Stage" on the South Dakota State Fairgrounds, at the beginning of a congressional candidates forum which did not include Libertarian candidate Terry Begay of Volin.
Mr. Barton was standing on the side of the audience area and asking in a loud voice, "Where is Terry Begay? There are three candidates on the ballot for US House, where is the third candidate? Don't we have a right?" when he was grabbed in mid-sentence by two police or sheriffs deputies moonlighting as security for either the State Fair or Dakota News Network (sponsor of the series of three forums, for House, Senate and Governor). All of the forums featured only the Democratic and Republican candidates, and excluded the three Libertarian candidates and one Independent candidate who have made the ballot for the November 5th election for the various offices.
Mr. Barton had earlier spoken to the moderator, who had first said that only "invited" candidates were to be featured, and then claimed that it was only because the Libertarian Party campaigns had not contacted DNN that they were not included. Another Libertarian, Kurt Evans, candidate for the US Senate, had been warned by DNN that if he attempted to go on the stage, he would be stopped by security. Mr. Barton made his comments from the side of the outdoor audience area, and did not attempt to say anything on the stage.
The security guards carried Mr. Barton about twenty yards to the street side near the "Freedom Stage," aggravating an injury to his right thumb (which had been sustained earlier in the week). He was then ordered to immediately allow himself to be escorted from the Fairgrounds, and was told that he would be arrested on trespassing charges if he tried to reenter the Fairgrounds.
Mr. Barton objected to that, stating that he was an exhibitor on the grounds, that it was public land, and that he was only exercising his right to free speech. One of the officers told Mr. Barton, in response, that he didn't like Mr. Barton and didn't like what he was saying, that he was disturbing good people. Mr. Barton replied that was why we had a first amendment: to protect speech we did not like. One of the security guards repeated the order, and Mr. Barton again refused, and the guards then told Mr. Barton that they would arrest him and take him to jail. They handcuffed Mr. Barton, knocking his glasses off, injuring both his right thumb and his left wrist.
Mr. Barton was then taken to the Fairground Security Office, arriving there with blood dripping down his wrists and staining his clothing. A Fairground EMT treated Mr. Barton and he was taken to the Beadle County Jail, where he was booked on charges of "disorderly conduct" and "obstructing a law enforcement officer," and released on $500 bond and a judge's order not to return to the Fairgrounds until after 4 PM that afternoon. Mr. Barton was released about 1 PM, and was well treated at the County Jail and by the arresting officers at the jail.
Mr. Barton's older son, Gareth, was aiding in distributing flyers at the time and witnessed his father's arrest. When Mr. Barton was taken to jail, both his older son and his younger son, Matthias, were left abandoned on the Fairgrounds. Only through the aid of friends were the boys taken care of while Mr. Barton was in a holding cell.
Mr. Barton and other Libertarian candidates emphasize that this treatment of people whose views vary from your own, and the tendency to resort to force in any situation is one of the reasons that they are running for office as Libertarians. Increasingly, on our college campuses, in our schools, and on the media, dissenting views are ridiculed, ignored, and often completely silenced.
Mr. Barton had been at the State Fair since Wednesday, along with other Libertarian candidates and activists at the party booth. This is the first time the Libertarian Party has been able to have a booth at the annual event. Following his release, he returned to West River for other engagements and projects. He intends to maintain his campaign schedule despite the attack and charges. For more information contact: ? James Christen, Huron area Libertarian coordinator, 352-4559 ? Bob Newland, SDLP ExComm, 255-4032 ? Nathan Barton, SDLP ExComm, 390-7255
c 2002 SierraTimes.com
http://www.sierratimes.com/02/08/04/arlp080402.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
I suppose there are two ways of looking at it. One, here's the President coming to your University to speak, the only time in your life you may host a President and hear him speak. you want to put your best foot forward. Rudeness under such conditions would seem out of the question -- in fact, hospitality would seem the order of the day.
Then you have those who figure this is maybe the only chance in their lives to protest the President in person. So what do you do, risk making yourself a * with your peers and everyone else present, or sit quietly and give the event its dignity -- and protest him on the way in or out? Of course, you are aware, from a perfectly selfish point of view, that there may be more cameras on him while he's talking, so your agenda will maybe get more airplay if you disrupt the proceedings, but then again, you get dragged off looking like a crackpot * to the hosts of the event. So what do you do? Hmmmmm.....
- Life NRA Member
"If cowardly & dishonorable men shoot unarmed men with army guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary...and not by general deprivation of constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Edited by - offeror on 08/05/2002 15:34:38
rodney colson