Category Archives: Free Speech

You hear it all the time from conservatives: The left mustremember to tolerate dissenting opinions. Butif youve followed the news cycle recently, you may have noticed that it hasnt been the left imposing social penalties on its members for expressing controversial opinions recently. Its been the right.

Tomi Lahren formerly of The Blaze, who was once hailed as the second coming of Ann Coulter, is now fighting to retain control of her Facebook page after being unceremoniously dropped for daring to express a pro-choice opinion. Meanwhile Milo Yiannopoulos formerly of Breitbart whom the right once claimed to venerate because of his willingness to flout the taboos of discourse was toppled last month when it was discovered he had once seemingly condoned ephebophilia.

So what gives? Why are members of the left regularly denounced as special snowflakes when the right just took down two of its highest profile pundits for daring tostray from the ideological reservation?

Both ends of the political spectrum can be vociferous defenders of speech with which they agree, but are sorely tested when speech offends them, said Ken Paulson president of the First Amendment Center and dean of Middle Tennessee State Universitys College of Mass Communication, as well as former editor-in-chief of USA Today. America became a great country in large part because everyone could share an opinion, and over time, the best ideas forged our nation. Today everyone is free to speak, but wheres the value if no one is willing to listen?

The First Amendment protects insightful ideas, but also stupid, insensitive, hateful and deeply offensive speech,Paulson added in an email. Theres no cherry-picking the right to speak.

David Hudson, alaw professor at Vanderbilt University,echoed Paulsons views.

I call it the dissonance between the ideal and the real, Hudsontold Salon in an email. The ideal is that we support free speech; we tolerate and even encourage opposing viewpoints. The real is that we despise contrary viewpoints and take measures to silence them; we fail to adhere to the essence of the First Amendment our blueprint for personal liberty.

Liberals and conservatives both suppress speech, Hudson concluded. Neither side has a monopoly on it. Censorship is as common an impulse as sex. What we need is a greater commitment all across the political spectrum to accept and listen to speech that we dont like.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE, was able to back up Paulsons and Hudsons observation about both sides suppressing dissent by citing their own experience. In an email to Salon,Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Advocacy Will Creeley described having to stand up for speakers from right-wingers like Milo Yiannopoulos to left-wingers like Bill Ayers, and that they have had to defendstudent activists regardless of whether they are promoting pro-LGBT or anti-abortion positions.

Unfortunately, there are many more instances of students, administrators, and lawmakers from across the political spectrum calling for censorship of speech they dislike, Creeley wrote. He also pointed out that a great deal of campus censorship defies simple political labels. For example, weve stood up for the rights of students seeking to discuss thoughtsof self-harm with friends, stage artistic installationsthat explore institutional ties to slavery, promote animal rights,and criticize former PresidentsBarack Obama and President George W. Bush simultaneously.

In the opinion of this writer, Hudsons final sentence that we need a greater commitment all across the political spectrum to accept and listen to speech that we dont like speaks to the heart of this issue. When right-wingers silenced Lahren for being pro-choice or Yiannopoulos for being blase about sexual abuse, they came up with rationalizations as to why the expression of those views was somehow beyond the pale, just as the 40 percent of American millennialswho were willing to support government suppression of bigotry against minorities no doubt had rationalizations for why that form of censorship would be okay.

The point here is not that one has to agree with Yiannopoulos or racial bigotry or Lahrens perspective on abortion. It is that, regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with those perspectives, it is essential for a free society worthy of the term to practice free speech as well as preach it.

To quote Evelyn Beatrice Halls famous biography of Voltaire:

I dont agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

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Free speech vs. safe spaces: Are conservatives special snowflakes when it comes to discourse they don't like? - Salon

HARRISONBURG, Va. Corey Stewart led a rally against illegal immigration on the steps of a historic courthouse Saturday after two local restaurants, bowing to threats of boycotts, backed out of hosting the firebrand Republican running for Virginia governor.

You know youre winning the battle when your opponents try to shut you down, Stewart told the crowd.

Stewarts campaign originally booked a Harrisonburg restaurant for his Rally to End Illegal Immigration. But the restaurant canceled last week after receiving phone calls and emails from members of Harrisonburg Indivisible and other local activists. Complaining about Stewarts divisive rhetoric, they told restaurant managers they would no longer patronize the eatery if it hosted the rally.

Stewarts campaign then reserved a room at a second restaurant, but that got canceled as well after another round of emails and phone calls. His team scrambled Friday to get a permit to hold the rally at the Rockingham County Courthouse, where on Saturday Stewart declared a victory for free speech.

[GOP chair slams Va. gubernatorial contender for calling rival a cuckservative]

Stewart used his canceled reservations saga in fundraising appeals as a critical campaign finance deadline approached Friday, claiming that the activists were on the payroll of financier George Soros something the activists said was not true.

George Soros and his group of paid liberal activists, Indivisible, have launched an attack intending to stop my rally against illegal immigration, one fundraising email reads. They are trying to convince people that my ideas are unreasonable. But how can protecting the safety of American citizens and upholding the rule of law be considered unreasonable?

Stewart is in a three-way race for the GOP nomination with former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie and state Sen. Frank Wagner (Virginia Beach). On the Democratic side, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam and former congressman Tom Perriello are vying for their partys nod. Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) is prohibited from seeking reelection this year under the state Constitution, which bars governors from serving consecutive terms. Both nominations will be decided in June 13 primaries.

Stewart was chairman of Donald Trumps Virginia campaign, and he is seeking the governorship in similarly provocative style. Far behind Gillespie in fundraising and endorsements, the chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors has often sought to stoke controversy and attract counterprotesters to his events.

[Trumps Virginia Mini-Me: Corey Stewart ties his ambitions to the GOP candidate]

Stewart has used heated rhetoric regarding illegal immigrants, vowing to hunt them down. He has, at times, called the preservation of the states Confederate monuments the most important issue in the governors race. His campaign got lots of mileage out of video showing liberal protesters mobbing him in Charlottesville in February, when he held a rally to defend a Robert E. Lee statute that city leaders want removed.

Harrisonburg looked like fertile ground for that kind of visual. Nicknamed the Friendly City, it is a college town with a population more diverse than its Shenandoah Valley surroundings might suggest. The Latino population has grown from just under 9 percent in 2000 to nearly 19 percent in 2015, according to census figures. About 17 percent of residents are foreign-born, up from 9 percent in 2000. Church-based refugee resettlement programs and a poultry industry dependent on immigrant labor are behind the trends.

Yet Saturdays rally was no repeat of the Charlottesville mob that shouted Stewart down. The event drew only about 20 supporters and 10 protesters. Except for a man who shouted Scumbag! at Stewart, the protesters were not disruptive. They stood silently around a sign that said, No matter where you are from, were glad youre our neighbor, in Spanish, English and Arabic.

In a conversation after the rally, Stewart stressed that he does not oppose legal immigrants, only those who come to the country illegally.

Danny Maybush, a truck driver in a Make America Great Again cap, said he only opposed immigrants who come up here and want to get a better life and start some stupid gang.

I like that its a melting pot, he said of the country. I have a Hispanic family that lives near me, and they came here legally, and they all work hard. We had a big snow the year before [last]. I was going to snowblow their driveway but they already had seven people out there going at the driveway.

The on-again, off-again lead-up to the rally ultimately proved to be more dramatic than the event itself. Stewart began by unfolding a piece of paper with three mug shots. They were of three illegal immigrants from El Salvador who were charged last week in the death of a Lynchburg teenager, 17-year-old Raymond Wood. Stewart went on to ask for a moment of silence for Wood and all the other boys and girls in Virginia and across the country who have been murdered by illegal aliens.

That was the kind of rhetoric that John Schaldach, a Harrisonburg Indivisible organizer, said he objected to when he organized the email and phone call campaign to the two restaurants, Daves Taverna and Wood Grill Buffet.

Ask them to cancel the Stewart event, his email to activists said. Let them know if they dont, you will not patronize Daves and you will ask your friends to do the same. Please be kind to the manager! ... Thank you for taking action on this critical local issue! Together we can make sure Corey Stewart knows his message is not welcome here.

Schaldach, a 46-year-old piano technician, did not dispute Stewarts right to express his views in public, as the candidate ultimately did at the courthouse. But he said the activists had a right to let local restaurants know that they opposed his message.

My concern is that his rhetoric is divisive, he said. The effect of his rhetoric is a segment of our community ends up feeling isolated. ... He talks about illegal immigration, and then he talks about crime and he mixes it all together. And you come out the other end, and you think immigrants are related to crime. When, in fact, the opposite is true. ... Theres no evidence they commit more crimes.

In linking the protest to Soros, Stewart was echoing a claim White House press secretary Sean Spicer and others have lobbed against Indivisible activists who have sought to disrupt GOP town hall meetings nationally.

[Republicans see AstroTurf in Democratic protests]

Soros has pumped millions into liberal causes since the 2004 election cycle. But Soros spokesman Michael Vachon has disputed claims that Soros has paid Indivisible protesters or picked up their transportation tab. Schaldach said his group gets no money from Soros.

The Harrisonburg group is one of more than a thousand Indivisible spinoffs created nationwide and organized around the Indivisible Guide, an organizational how-to manual drafted by former Democratic staffers. Stewarts campaign noted that some of the aides now work for Soros-funded organizations, such as the National Immigration Law Center.

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Corey Stewart declares victory for free speech after two venues back out of immigration rally - Washington Post

Ernest Freeberg, Guest columnist 5:05 a.m. ET April 2, 2017

The Dough Boy, a memorial to veterans of World War I, sits in front of the Old Knoxville High School, pictured May 27, 2010. (NEWS SENTINEL ARCHIVE)(Photo: KNS Archive, J. Miles Cary/News Sentinel)Buy Photo

Today, Americans will pause to remember the centenary of President Woodrow Wilsons stirring message to Congress, asking for a declaration of war on Germany. We have no selfish ends to serve, he told lawmakers in 1917. We desire no conquest, no dominion. Instead, the United States would join this terrible conflict in order to bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

Many Americans were deeply inspired by Wilsons call for the nation to fight in the name of a just and lasting peace. After Germany was beaten, Wilson predicted, the United States would lead in the creation of a new international order that would defend the rights of small nations and,through collective action, make the world safe for democracy.

While the Great War marks a major turning point in the nations engagement in international affairs, it is well for us also to remember the terrible toll that this war took on Americas democracy on the home front.

Ernest Freeberg(Photo: Submitted)

First, we must understand that a great number of Americans remained unpersuaded by Wilsons arguments. A vibrant peace movement had seen the war coming for more than a decade, and had warned against the threat that militarism posed to American values a bloated budget, higher taxes, and an expansion of federal authority that would distort the nations democratic values. Further, a third of Americans in 1917 were either immigrants or the children of immigrants, and fighting with the Allies tugged on the conflicting loyalties felt by German, Irishand Jewish Americans. Christian pacifists, such as Tennessees Alvin York, felt religious scruples against violence, and political radicals scoffed at Wilsons lofty sentiments, declaring the war a turf battle between Europes economic rivals. The only victors, they warned, would be American bankers and arms manufacturers; this would be a rich mans war and a poor mans fight.

This is a 1919 photo of Sgt. Alvin York of the U.S. Army in an unknown location. Two Tennessee researchers who think they pinpointed the World War I battlefield where Sgt. Alvin C. York's valor earned him a Medal of Honor. (AP Photo/Department of U.S. Army)(Photo: DEPARTMENT OF U.S. ARMY, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Desperate to draft, train and ship an army of 4 million men to France, the Wilson administration decided that free and open debate was a luxury that the nation could not afford. The attorney general asked citizens to report anyone who seemed suspiciously unenthusiastic about the war, and federal agents soon spent countless hours tracking down bogus tips. Congress passed the Espionage Act, a law that proved useless in catching spies but empowered prosecutors to send thousands of anti-war speakers to jail, some for 10-year sentences. Another federal law threatened similar harsh punishment for anyone who spoke or wrote any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the government, the Constitution, the flagor the armed forces. The U.S. Post Office used these laws to silence any publication that dared to challenge the governments policy.

memday4.SY--met-- A detail of a battle scene on the pedestal of World War I Doughboy statue at Fifth Ave. in front of the Old Knoxville High school building has been completely restored and cleaned. 2005 Saul Young/News Sentinel (Photo: Saul Young)

This intolerant fervor spread to state lawmakers, who passed their own sedition laws, forced teachers to take loyalty oaths, and struck a blow for liberty by taking the German language out of the public-school curriculum.

Not content to silence its critics, the Wilson administration took unprecedented control of the marketplace of ideas. Recruiting some of the nations finest writers, scholars and artists, the government advertised America at home and abroad. When the war broke out in August1914, few observers on either side of the Atlantic could agree on the causes of this horrendous conflict. But by 1917, government propaganda portrayed the war as a cosmic clash between the forces of darkness and light. As a concerned journalist observed, the government conscripted public opinion as they conscripted men and money and materials. They goose-stepped it. They taught it to stand at attention and salute.

World War I soldiers visit a Red Cross canteen at the Southern Railway station. (McClung Historical Collection)(Photo: McClung Historical Collection)

All this fake news had a terrifying effect. Across the country, Americans with a bad case of war fever attacked immigrants, pacifists, political radicalsand sometimes just those stubborn individualists who dared to speak their mind in public. Men exercised their patriotism by flogging, tar and feathering, and lynching their fellow citizens.

In the end, American soldiers made a decisive contribution to the Allies victory. But Wilson proved unable to deliver the more rational and just postwar order he had conjured in his 1917 war declaration. Disillusioned, a growing number of Americans came to recognize the enormous pressures that war puts on the nations democratic traditions. Among them was a small group of lawyers, from all sides of the political spectrum, who created the American Civil Liberties Union, first organized to defend the rights of those jailed for opposing the nations role in World War One. An important but often forgotten legacy of the Great War, the ACLU has been working ever since to defend the right of citizens to speak their minds in times of war.

Ernest Freeberg is the head of the University of Tennessee History Departmentand the author of "Democracys Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent" (Harvard University Press, 2008).

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Ernest Freeberg: President Wilson waged a war on free speech - Knoxville News Sentinel

UN rights experts have voiced concerns over bills recently introduced by a number of US states aimed at restricting the right to assembly, saying they are undemocratic and violate international human rights obligations adopted by Washington.

Since January 2017, a number of undemocratic bills have been proposed in state legislatures with the purpose or effect of criminalizing peaceful protests, the UNs top experts on freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, David Kaye and Maina Kiai, said in a recentstatement.

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The proposed bills, if approved would severely infringe upon the exercise of the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly, the statement says, noting that it would be incompatible with US obligations under international human rights law and with First Amendment protections.

The trend also threatens to jeopardize one of the United States constitutional pillars: free speech.

According to the UN experts, since the presidential election in November, US lawmakers in at least 19 states have introduced legislation restricting assembly rights by various degrees.

This comes as the US has seen an unprecedented surge in mass protest movements, from Black Lives Matter demonstrations to mass protests against Trumps migration laws, environmental and Native American protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline, and the Womens Marches. The latter, for instance, was held across hundreds of cities and ended up as one of the largest demonstrations in US history, some estimates indicate.

Individuals and organizations across society have mobilized in peaceful protests, as it is their right under international human rights law and US law. These state bills, with their criminalization of assemblies, enhanced penalties and general stigmatization of protesters, are designed to discourage the exercise of these fundamental rights, the UN experts warned.

In their analysis, the UN experts pointed out a number of bills regarding unlawful obstruction of traffic by protesters, for instance in Florida and Tennessee, where it has been proposed to exempt drivers from persecution if they accidentally hit and kill people demonstrating in the road.

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A similar Indiana Senate bill could allow law enforcement to use any means necessary to clear the roads of demonstrators, while at least eight other states propose bills that would disproportionately criminalize protestors for obstructing traffic, like the one in Missouri, which sets a prison term of up to seven years for obstruction of traffic.

Kaye and Kiai mentioned that many of these bills target opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline construction in North Dakota and could have a chilling effect on environmental protesters. A little over a month ago, several dozen law enforcement officers in riot gear raided the protesters camp near the site and arrested a number of people who had been camping there for months.

The experts also criticized the use of the word unlawful regarding public assembly in the proposed legislation, as well as the term violent, which they deemed to be entirely inappropriate in the phrase violent protest common for most of the bills.

There can be no such thing in law as a violent protest. There are violent protesters, who should be dealt with individually and appropriately by law enforcement, they said, noting that one persons decision to resort to violence does not strip other protesters of their right to freedom of peaceful assembly.

This right is not a collective right; it is held by each of us individually. Peaceful assembly is a fundamental right, not a privilege, and the government has no business imposing a general requirement that people get permission before exercising that right, they explained.

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US anti-protest bills 'undemocratic' & 'alarming' trend against free ... - RT

By Kate Daniels and Megan Provost | March 31, 2017 10:07 pm

The Madison branch of the Industrial Workers of the World held a demonstration speaking out against fascism and recent violence against members of their union Friday.

The demonstration, titled All Out Against Fascism and Hate, and organized by the unions General Defense Committee, attracted roughly 45 people to Library Mall.

Demonstrators gathered at Library Mall to listen to speakers such as Alex Gillis of the Union de Trabajadores Inmigrantes, Lariisa Stewart of the Madison Feminist Directory and Sam Olson of the Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement. Speakers covered topics such as injustice against minority groups and national responses surrounding President Donald Trumps election.

According to Erik LW, member of the IWW, the demonstration was a direct response to the recent shooting of an IWW member in Seattle during a counter protest of a Milo Yiannopoulos event.

Were just trying to bring more attention to basically a violent movement that were seeing in this country and around the world, LW said.

In the demonstrations Facebook event, IWW specifically cited student organizations on campus that they believed were perpetuating violent ideals. Those organizations included the American Freedom Party and Young Americans for Freedom.

YAF partnered with Young Americans for Liberty to mobilize and promote their agenda of free speech in response to the accusations of fascism by the IWW.

We all kind of joined together to discuss how were kind of upset with how our campus has been kind of rebelling against free speech, YAF Recruitment Chair Abby Streu said.

Streu and YAL Chair Cahleel Copus were quick to dismiss claims of fascism and violence made against their organizations by the IWW.

We are not out here protesting our ideas. Were literally out here promoting free speech, Copus said. We think that free speech is a beautiful thing. Its a great liberal tradition on college campuses that people freely exchange all ideas, and we want to promote that concept.

While the event remained peaceful, heckling was present between both sides of the demonstration.

This is not an attack on your free speech. Were standing up for people who need it, Stewart said in response to opposing demonstrators.

YAF member Kyle Reski said he believed the demonstrations were not productive.

I appreciate disagreement, but when people are just screaming at you calling you racist and hateful and violent you cant have a conversation with that, Reski said.

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Demonstrators protest against fascism, promote free speech on Library Mall - The Daily Cardinal

The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a student protest which took place during the 196465 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio,[1]Jack Weinberg, Michael Rossman, George Barton, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Michael Teal, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and others. In protests unprecedented in scope, students insisted that the university administration lift the ban of on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students' right to free speech and academic freedom.

In 1958, activist students organized SLATE, a campus political party meaning a "slate" of candidates running on the same level a same "slate." The students created SLATE to promote the right of student groups to support off-campus issues.[2] In the fall of 1964, student activists, some of whom had traveled with the Freedom Riders and worked to register African American voters in Mississippi in the Freedom Summer project, set up information tables on campus and were soliciting donations for causes connected to the Civil Rights Movement. According to existing rules at the time, fundraising for political parties was limited exclusively to the Democratic and Republican school clubs. There was also a mandatory "loyalty oath" required of faculty, which had led to dismissals and ongoing controversy over academic freedom. On September 14, 1964, Dean Katherine Towle announced that existing University regulations prohibiting advocacy of political causes or candidates, outside political speakers, recruitment of members, and fundraising by student organizations at the intersection of Bancroft and Telegraph Avenues would be "strictly enforced."[3] (This strip was until then thought to be city property, not campus property.)

On October 1, 1964, former graduate student Jack Weinberg was sitting at the CORE table. He refused to show his identification to the campus police and was arrested. There was a spontaneous movement of students to surround the police car in which he was to be transported. The police car remained there for 32 hours, all while Weinberg was inside it. At one point, there may have been 3,000 students around the car. The car was used as a speaker's podium and a continuous public discussion was held which continued until the charges against Weinberg were dropped.[3]

On December 2, between 1,500 and 4,000 students went in to Sproul Hall as a last resort in order to re-open negotiations with the administration on the subject of restrictions on political speech and action on campus.[3] Among other grievances was the fact that four of their leaders were being singled out for punishment. The demonstration was orderly; students studied, watched movies, and sang folk songs. Joan Baez was there to lead in the singing, as well as lend moral support. "Freedom classes" were held by teaching assistants on one floor, and a special Channukah service took place in the main lobby. On the steps of Sproul Hall, Mario Savio[1] gave a famous speech:

...But we're a bunch of raw materials that don't mean to be have any process upon us. Don't mean to be made into any product! Don't mean Don't mean to end up being bought by some clients of the University, be they the government, be they industry, be they organized labor, be they anyone! We're human beings! ...There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.[4]

At midnight, Alameda County deputy district attorney Edwin Meese III telephoned Governor Edmund Brown, Sr, asking for authority to proceed with a mass arrest. Shortly after 2 a.m. on December 4, 1964, police cordoned off the building, and at 3:30a.m. began the arrest. Close to 800 students were arrested,[3] most of which were transported by bus to Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, about 25 miles away. They were released on their own recognizance after a few hours behind bars. About a month later, the university brought charges against the students who organized the sit-in, resulting in an even larger student protest that all but shut down the university.

After much disturbance, the University officials slowly backed down. By January 3, 1965, the new acting chancellor, Martin Meyerson (who had replaced the resigned Edward Strong), established provisional rules for political activity on the Berkeley campus. He designated the Sproul Hall steps an open discussion area during certain hours of the day and permitting tables. This applied to the entire student political spectrum, not just the liberal elements that drove the Free Speech Movement.[5]

Most outsiders, however, identified the Free Speech Movement as a movement of the Left. Students and others opposed to U.S. foreign policy did indeed increase their visibility on campus following the FSM's initial victory. In the spring of 1965, the FSM was followed by the Vietnam Day Committee,[3] a major starting point for the anti-Vietnam war movement.

The Free Speech Movement had long-lasting effects at the Berkeley campus and was a pivotal moment for the civil liberties movement in the 1960s. It was seen as the beginning of the famous student activism that existed on the campus in the 1960s, and continues to a lesser degree today. There was a substantial voter backlash against the individuals involved in the Free Speech Movement. Ronald Reagan won an unexpected victory in the fall of 1966 and was elected Governor.[6] He then directed the UC Board of Regents to dismiss UC President Clark Kerr because of the perception that he had been too soft on the protesters. The FBI had kept a secret file on Kerr.

Reagan had gained political traction by campaigning on a platform to "clean up the mess in Berkeley".[6] In the minds of those involved in the backlash, a wide variety of protests, concerned citizens, and activists were lumped together. Furthermore, television news and documentary filmmaking had made it possible to photograph and broadcast moving images of protest activity. Much of this media is available today as part of the permanent collection of the Bancroft Library at Berkeley, including iconic photographs of the protest activity by student Ron Enfield (then chief photographer for the Berkeley campus newspaper, the Daily Cal).[7] A reproduction of what may be considered the most recognizable and iconic photograph of the movement, a shot of suit-clad students carrying the Free Speech banner through the University's Sather Gate in Fall of 1964, now stands at the entrance to the college's Free Speech Movement Cafe.[7]

Earlier protests against the House Committee on Un-American Activities meeting in San Francisco in 1960 had included an iconic scene as protesters were literally washed down the steps inside the Rotunda of San Francisco City Hall with fire hoses. The anti-Communist film Operation Abolition[8][9][10][11] depicted this scene and became an organizing tool for the protesters.

The 20th anniversary reunion of the FSM was held during the first week of October, 1984, to considerable media attention. A rally in Sproul Plaza featured FSM veterans Mario Savio, who ended a long self-imposed silence, Jack Weinberg, and Jackie Goldberg. The week continued with a series of panels open to the public on the movement and its impact.[12] The 30th anniversary reunion, held during the first weekend of December 1994, was also a public event, with another Sproul Plaza rally featuring Savio, Weinberg, Goldberg, panels on the FSM, and current free speech issues.[13] In April 2001, UC's Bancroft Library held a symposium celebrating the opening of the Free Speech Movement Digital Archive. Although not a formal FSM reunion, many FSM leaders were on the panels and other participants were in the audience.[14] The 40th anniversary reunion, the first after Savio's death in 1996, was held in October 2004. It featured columnist Molly Ivins giving the annual Mario Savio Memorial Lecture, followed later in the week by the customary rally in Sproul Plaza and panels on civil liberties issues.[15] A Sunday meeting was a more private event, primarily a gathering for the veterans of the movement, in remembrance of Savio and of a close FSM ally, professor Reginald Zelnik, who had died in an accident in May.[16]

Today, Sproul Hall and the surrounding Sproul Plaza are active locations for protests and marches, as well as the ordinary daily tables with free literature from anyone of any political orientation who wishes to appear. A wide variety of groups of all political, religious and social persuasions set up tables at Sproul Plaza. The Sproul steps, now officially known as the "Mario Savio Steps", may be reserved by anyone for a speech or rally.[3] An on-campus restaurant commemorating the event, the Mario Savio Free Speech Movement Cafe, resides in a portion of the Moffitt Undergraduate Library.

The Free Speech Monument, commemorating the movement, was created in 1991 by artist Mark Brest van Kempen. It is located, appropriately, in Sproul Plaza. The monument consists of a six-inch hole in the ground filled with soil and a granite ring surrounding it. The granite ring bears the inscription, "This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity's jurisdiction." The monument makes no explicit reference to the movement, but it evokes notions of free speech and its implications through its rhetoric.[17]

Sol Stern, a former radical who took part in the Free Speech Movement,[18] stated in a 2014 City Journal article that the group viewed the United States to be both racist and imperialistic and that the main intent, of Stern's own group (Root and Branch magazine), after lifting Berkeley's loyalty oath was to build on the legacy of C. Wright Mills and weaken the Cold War consensus by promoting the ideas of the Cuban Revolution.[19]

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Free Speech Movement - Wikipedia

Free Speech TV launched in 1995 as part of an effort to provide a larger platform for progressive perspectives on television. Founded by John Schwartz and co-founded by Jon Stout, Free Speech TV built off the popular The 90s cable and PBS show and The 90s Channel, a network of seven full-time cable channels dedicated to independent media.

The networks pioneering efforts in streaming media online won it accolades such as a 1998 Streamers Award and 1999 Webby Award.

In January 2000, Free Speech TV became a full-time channel on DISH Network, bringing truly independent reporting to a national audience. Following the World Trade Center tragedy on September 11, 2001, Free Speech TV helped launch the television premier of Democracy Now!, which remains one of the networks most popular shows.

Free Speech TV also launched GRITtv with Laura Flanders and helped bring Thom Hartmann to television, stepping up the networks daily coverage of national politics. During the Arab Spring, the network pre-empted much of its regular non-news programming to carry Al Jazeera Englishs exemplary on-the-ground journalism from Tahrir Square and other hotspots.

In 2008, the network piloted its eStudio at the National Conference for Media Reform, where it broadcast and streamed conference plenaries, workshops and special interviews conducted by Amy Goodman, Laura Flanders and Jeff Cohen. Since then, Free Speech TV has taken its eStudio on the road, broadcasting exclusive live coverage from the One Nation March, the Netroots Nation Conferences, Take Back the American Dream Conferences, talks held by The Nation and The New School, and the annual conventions of the NAACP, SEIU and the LOHAS Forum.

In 2011 and 2012, Free Speech TV coverage provided a unique window onto the unprecedented battles to roll back workers rights in Wisconsin and other states, as well as onto the Occupy Wall Street movement. To facilitate a national dialogue about growing economic disparities, the network produced Occupy the Media, a weekly, live, call-in program that featured frontline activists, policymakers and those bearing the brunt of economic injustice. A hallmark of Free Speech TV-produced content, this series offered a national television platform for many of our peers in progressive radio, print and online journalism.

In 2010, the network secured a national channel on DIRECTV, launched an app on Roku in 2011, and fulltime cable channels in Burlington, VT and Ashland, OR in 2012. Free Speech TVs television footprint has grown to over 40 million homes in the United States and reaches millions of viewers online.

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History | Free Speech TV

Each year, usually in October, the staff of the Central European University Press meet with its advisory board, of which Im a member, in an elegant circular room just off the rectors office at the universitys headquarters in Budapest. The press is small, staffed by a young Hungarian team. Most of the titles that they publish sell in the hundreds or low thousands of copies, like many academic publishers lists. The meeting is orderly, respectful. It is a far from radical or revolutionary endeavor.

Yet this modest press and the university that houses it areunder direct attack by Hungarys right-wing prime minister, Viktor Orban, whose government has added an amendment to anti-immigration legislation that would regulate the movement of international staff and students for unspecified national security reasons. The Central European University (CEU) operates in the English language; its 1,440 students come from 108 nations; more than half the faculty and the large majority of the administrative staff are Hungarian; and the rector is the distinguished intellectual and former Liberal Party politician Michael Ignatieff, who is Canadian and married to a Hungarian. The effect of the proposed law would be to make it impossible for the university to continue its operations, according to the CEU.

But the real reason that the CEU has been targeted is the identity of its founder the financier and Open Society Foundations activist George Soros. The billionaire philanthropist funded the creation of the university in 1991. Since then, it has become one of the highest-ranked in Central Europe. But the universitys pedigree is not, apparently, enough to save it from association with the era after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Even though Orban personally benefited from a scholarship from Soros to studyat Oxford University, he leads a fiercely nationalistic government. The CEU has become a soft, handy political target. Soros, a liberal internationalist, is the antithesis of Vladimir Putin, a nationalist authoritarian who happens to be Orbans political role model.

And thats why the CEU matters. It is not a relatively small institution caught up in a local political spat; it is part of the larger test of Western liberal values. It is also a university, committed to learning, to actual facts, to rigorous scientific method, and to a wide and diverse student body. Its press is not a rival to the Oxford University Press or Harvards, but it publishes with integrity and supports scholarly expertise. Yet it is under existential threat.

Viktor Orban has spoken of his determination to pursue an illiberal democracy in Hungary, modeled on the Russian example. Clearly, it starts with the shuttering of free speech and inquiry. One of the special focuses of the CEU Press is Cold War studies. The lessons of that period are suddenly very necessary. Americans, who know how to defend First Amendment rights, need their government to fight for the CEUs right to speak, publish, and exist in an environment free from political harassment or legal peril. In other times, we could protest the kind of bullying intolerance shown by Orban through the U.S. ambassador, but the Trump administration has yet to appoint one in Hungary. So, we must shout all the louder.

Photo credit:ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP/Getty Images

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Stand Up for Free Speech and the CEU - Foreign Policy (blog)

GENEVA Nineteen U.S. states have introduced bills that would curb freedom of expression and the right to protest since Donald Trump's election as president, an "alarming and undemocratic" trend, U.N. human rights investigators said on Thursday.

Concerns for free speech in the United States have risen in part because of the Republican Trump's antagonistic relations with prominent U.S. media, which he has branded "the enemy of the American people" as it has reported on policy missteps and dysfunction in his administration.

The push for stricter laws on expression has come as Trump's liberal foes have pursued public protest against his policies on issues ranging from immigration to abortion and climate change.

Maina Kiai and David Kaye, independent U.N. experts on freedom of peaceful assembly and expression respectively, said in a statement that the state bills were incompatible with international human rights law.

"The trend also threatens to jeopardize one of the United States constitutional pillars: free speech," they said in a statement, calling for action to reverse such legislation.

From the Black Lives Matter movement, to the environmental and Native American movements in opposition to the Dakota Access oil pipeline, and the Womens Marches, individuals and organizations across (American) society have mobilized in peaceful protests, Kiai and Kaye said.

They said it was their fundamental right to do so, but that bills in Republican-governed states like Indiana, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Missouri sought to stop them exercising that right.

The civil rights movement known as Black Lives Matter has been fueled by a series of shootings of unarmed black men by white U.S. police officers that triggered national protests.

The U.N. experts' statement came a day after they criticized Russia's treatment of peaceful protesters who took to the streets following allegations of corruption against Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

The U.S. State Department had also criticized Russia's handling of those protests, calling them an affront to democratic values.

Supporters of the U.S. state legislative action say it sums up the frustration some people feel about protests that get in the way of daily lives, and reflects a wish to maintain public safety. Free speech advocates say the bills are worrying, seeing them as opening the way to criminalizing peaceful protests.

The U.N. experts said several bills proposed in Colorado, North Dakota and Oklahoma targeted opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota and would have "a chilling effect on environmental protesters".

Last month dozens of armed U.S. law enforcement officers swept through a protest camp near the site of the pipeline, clearing the gathering that for months served as a base of opposition to the multi-billion-dollar project.

In Missouri a bill proposed a seven-year prison term for "unlawful obstruction of traffic", while the Minnesota bill would criminalize peaceful protesters for participating in demonstrations that subsequently turned violent.

The U.N. experts said there was no such thing as a violent protest, only violent protesters. "One persons decision to resort to violence does not strip other protesters of their right to freedom of peaceful assembly," Kaye and Kiai said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; editing by Mark Heinrich)

PARACHINAR, Pakistan A bomb apparently targeting a mosque in Pakistan's northwestern city of Parachinar killed at least 22 people on Friday and wounded dozens in an attack claimed by the Pakistani Taliban.

VALLETTA/BRUSSELS The European Union offered Britain talks this year on a future free trade pact but made clear in negotiating guidelines issued on Friday that London must first agree to EU demands on the terms of Brexit.

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UN experts see 'alarming' US trend against free speech, protest - Reuters

Think of it as the Milo Yiannopoulos ofcoach vehicles.

For the past week, anti-transgender activists have toured the East Coast in a big, orange Free Speech Bus. Sponsored by the Spain-based advocacy group CitizenGo and several other conservative organizations, theyve hopped from city to city todemonstrate againstthe notion that biological sex is different from gender identity.

Boys are boys and always will be. Girls are girls and always will be, reads a slogan emblazoned on the sides of the vehicle. You cant change sex. Respect all.

Like Yiannopoulos aformer Breitbart News editor and right-wing agitator, not to mentioncritic of transgender rights the Free Speech Bus is, by all appearances, there to provoke a reaction.

And its getting one.

The bus rolled into downtown Boston Wednesday morning, stopping first atthe Massachusetts State House. About two dozen protesters were there waiting for it, holding signs and chanting, No hate, no fear, trans people are welcome here! as the Boston Globe reported.

Then the bus moved on to City Hall, where Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh, flanked by dozens of supporters, hoisted the transgender rights flag in opposition.

We will not be intimidated by discrimination or harassment, Walsh said. And we will not tolerate these types of actions. When you deny the experience of transgender individuals, you are denying the experience of basic human civil rights.

As the Free Speech Buscrawled through the city toward its third destination, Cambridge, Mass., protesters stood in front of it, blocking its path. At one point, someone lobbed a cup of coffee at the buss door, as local media reported.

Transgender advocates say a strong response is necessary in light of the threats the LGBT community faces on a daily bases.

Words, in this setting, are violence, Mason Dunn, a protest organizer, told the Globe.Were concerned about the health and wellness of our community.

The buss organizers say theyve come to expect such confrontation.If anything, the visit in Boston was relatively uneventful compared to the buss other stops.

The Free Speech Buss campaign started in Spain in response to a transgender rights pamphletthat featuredanillustration of a boy with female genitalia and a girl with a penis. Beneath the image, a phrase in Spanish read There are girls with penises and boys with vaginas.Its that simple.

Gregory Mertz, U.S. director of CitizenGO, said they brought the tour to the United States to demonstrate against policies that accommodate transgender people.

Theres an agenda and movement thats saying its OK for a boy to be a girl and that you can use whichever restroom you want, Mertz told the Associated Press Wednesday. We think thats very harmful.

(Advocates say views like this misrepresenttheir goals. Measures seeking equal bathroom access, for example, are intended toallow people to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity, rather than thesex on their birth certificate.)

Given the heated debateover transgender rights playing out in the country, Free Speech Bus organizers said they were preparing forconflict on their U.S. tour.

We dont know what the response to the #FreeSpeechBus will be in the US, but we expect that radical gender ideologues may try to get our bus shut down, they said in a post on CitizenGos website. Whatever happens over the next few days, we will not give into the pressure to stop this important campaign.

The bus arrived in New York on March 22, stopping at Times Square, Trump Tower and the Stonewall Inn, the Manhattan bar that was the site of the legendary 1969 riots by members of the citys gay community. LGBT advocacy groups turned outin protest, condemning it as the hate bus, as USA Today reported.

The following day, after parking in front of the United Nations headquarters, protesters vandalized the bus,spray painting it with graffiti reading trans rights and smashing its front window.

After spending a couple days out of commission, the bus traveled to New England. It skipped a stop in New Haven, Conn., but a group of demonstratorsheld a rally against it anyway, erecting banners that read, Every breath a trans person takes is an act of revolution., as the New Haven Independent reported.

The Free Speech Bus is now headedsouth, with stops planned in New Haven, Philadelphia, and Baltimore in the coming week. Its expected toarrive in Washington on April 3, organizers say.

Opposition to the bus hasnt been limited to on-site protests. The Californiagame developer Aquma recently released an online video game that allows Free Speech Bus opponents to fight the anti-transgender campaign in the virtual world, as Vocativ reported. In Ignorance Fighter II based off the classic martial arts game Street Fighter II players can punch and kick a rendering of the Free Speech Bus until the tires and windows fall off.

When players succeed,an admonition appears on the screen: Go rethink your bigoted beliefs. Gender identity is separate from biological sex.

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An anti-transgender 'Free Speech Bus' is rolling through the East Coast, sparking protests and a video game - Washington Post