“We don’t need this type of hate. So my message is clear to this group. We don’t want you in Boston. We don’t want you on Boston Common. We don’t want you spewing the hate that we saw yesterday, and the loss of life.”Too. Damned. Bad.
The city issued a permit. His job is to protect the Constitution, and to send the police to protect the speakers.
Like Cleveland did in 1999.
Cleveland is in the New England tradition because it was part of Connecticut's Western Reserve.
Moses Cleaveland laid his city out complete with a public square called Public Square. (I lived in Parkersburg for three years. It has a city park named City Park.)
As a lad, when I visited Public Square, people still used it to make their views be known.
And on August 21, 1999, as the new Cleveland Browns prepared for their first game at their new ballpark -- then called Cleveland Browns Stadium -- the Ku Klux Klan decided to hold a rally near City Hall.
Democratic Mayor Michael White said OK. He issued a permit. He set up fences to protect the klansmen. He even let them use a city parking garage to change into their costumes to protect their identity.
The ACLU praised this:
While recognizing the offensive and racist nature of the Klan's message, the ACLU today commended White for allowing the marchers to prepare in an environment safe from physical violence.
"From our perspective, allowing the use of the police garage is a public safety issue, nothing more and nothing less," said Christine Link, Executive Director of the ACLU of Ohio. "It doesn't mean the mayor endorses what the Klan has to say; it means he takes seriously his duty to avoid violence and preserve law and order."
Under well-established First Amendment law, organizations such as the Klan have a right to speak, and public officials are obligated allow that speech to go forward on public property.
"The mayor has taken a tough stand on a difficult issue," said ACLU Legal Director Raymond Vasvari. "No one expects his position to be popular, but the First Amendment extends its protection to even the most vile speech."Need I mention that Mayor White was black?
Now 18 years later, Mayor Walsh wants free speech banned in Boston.
Up his.
The Constitution not only explicitly protects free speech, but it protects the right to peaceably assemble.
From CBS in Boston:
Mayor Marty Walsh sent a strong message that hate groups will not be welcome in Boston ahead of a planned “Free Speech Rally” that will reportedly take place on Boston Common next week.
The rally is slated for Saturday, though Walsh said it is being planned by a different group than that one that organized a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville that led to the death of one woman and injuries to 19 others.
The Boston mayor said police are gathering information to see who the group is.
“We don’t need this type of hate,” said Walsh. “So my message is clear to this group. We don’t want you in Boston. We don’t want you on Boston Common. We don’t want you spewing the hate that we saw yesterday, and the loss of life.”Like I said, too damned bad.
Mayor Walsh does not know who they are but he said: “We don’t want you in Boston.”
What an ignorant man.
They might be the Klan. They might be Nazis. They might be the Sons of Liberty.
Their message is none of his business. Don't like the speaker? Don't listen.
Mayor Walsh's job is to protect those speakers from harassment from his virtue signaling pals.
We protect unpopular speech because it is unpopular.
Popular speech does not need protection.
Hate speech tops the list of protected speech.
Liberal Glenn Greenwald called out the virtue signalers:
Last week, the ACLU sparked controversy when it announced that it was defending the free speech rights of alt-right activist Milo Yiannopoulos after the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority refused to allow ads for his book to be displayed on public transit. Lost in the debate was that other groups the ACLU was defending along with Yiannopoulos were also censored under the same rule: Carafem, which helps women access birth control and medication abortion; the animal rights group PETA; and the ACLU itself.
For representing Yiannopoulos, the civil liberties group was widely accused of defending and enabling fascism. But the ACLU wasn’t “defending Yiannopoulos” as much as it was opposing a rule that allows state censorship of any controversial political messages the state wishes to suppress: a rule that is often applied to groups which are supported by many who attacked the ACLU here.
The same formula was applied yesterday when people learned that the ACLU of Virginia had represented the white supremacist protesters in Charlottesville after city officials tried to ban the group from gathering in Emancipation Park where a statue of Robert E. Lee was to be removed (city officials tried to move the march to an isolated location one mile away).
One board member of the ACLU of Virginia, Waldo Jaquith, waited until the violence erupted to announce on Twitter that he was resigning in protest of the ACLU’s representation of the protesters — as though he was unaware when he joined the board that the ACLU has been representing the free speech rights of neo-Nazis and other white supremacist groups (along with communists, Muslims, war protesters, and the full spectrum of marginalized minorities and leftists) for many decades.The city of Charlottesville failed to protect the Nazis.
The police failed to barricade roads.
A Nazi rammed his car into counter protesters killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 other people.
From Katherine Mangu-Ward at Reason:
The people wielding "No Free Speech for Fascists" placards might as well be holding up signs saying "No Free Speech for Muslims." And in fact, many on the right have been making just that argument against the ACLU for years now, arguing that exceptions to our free speech principles should be made to curtail extreme speech by Muslim religious figures or activists in the name of security, or even (in the stupidest variant of the idea) that the ACLU is part of a radical Islamic conspiracy. But if the justification for restrictions on the speech of one man is violence committed by another, there can be no end to list of people who may be silenced in the name of order.
I have my beefs with ACLU too. I wish they'd see the importance of defending free speech even in situations where money is changing hands — to my way of thinking, the group has lately been on the wrong side of a few debates over freedom of conscience and association in the commercial realm. But the ACLU's work on speech in the public sphere is unbeatable. They did the right thing to let Unite the Right gather in Charlottesville. Sticking up for free speech for fascists doesn't mean you love fascists, it means you love free speech.Apparently, things will be different in Boston.
From the CBS story:
Boston Police Superintendent William Gross said on Sunday that police will be developing a plan throughout the week ahead of the latest planned rally.
“We’re going to send a strong message in Boston that we protest peacefully, using our voices of logic and not the ignorance of destruction,” said Gross.
“We’re going to be working together this whole week to send a message to everyone that’s heading to Boston, those that are of the mindset of white supremacy to those who understand we’re all God’s children – we’re working together. No violence.”What stopped the klan in 1999 was so few people showed up. Less than a dozen.
Mayor White knew what he was doing. Boston Mayor Walsh should learn from Cleveland.
***
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Boston? Boston!
ReplyDeleteIn the early and mid-60's it was a beacon for the Civil Rights movement and had a large folk music community along with it.
Thomas Sowell said something to the effect of:
o If you were for equal rights and equal opportunity in the 60's, you were a radical.
o If you were for equal rights and equal opportunity in the 80's, you were a liberal.
o If you are for equal rights and equal opportunity today, you are a racist.
-Ken
I'm betting the mayor won't learn from Mayor White.
ReplyDeleteThis is political posturing from the mayor. The same group had a rally a few months ago.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.facebook.com/pg/BostonFreeSpeech/posts/?ref=page_internal
Who would be against free speech? Tyrants.
People ask why does the progressive left, which in the past favored free speech, now seeks to crush it?
ReplyDeleteProgfascists (profas) only promote free speech where they lack the power to enforce profa speech codes, e.g. the Free Speech movement in Berkeley in the 1960s.
Where the profas are in the majority and have the power (e.g. Evergreen State, college towns generally, etc.), they immediately enforce speech codes and crush free speech.
Once they have the power, the profas always crush free speech.
As Pat Riley said in Showtime, Boston thinks of itself as the Athens of America...in our experience, it's more like Beirut. They've banned books, fielded the whitest NBA team for many years, and loved Ted Kennedy. Boston's a sick, schizo town. Fuck Boston.
ReplyDeletePlease do not take what I am saying as support of racism or scary racist organizations:
ReplyDeleteAntifa and BLM are hate groups that always, always, always intend to or, through their "innocent" raging hate and zeal, get violent. I wish, especially, the Sessions DoJ would allow for that possibility but also, say, Boston, which is going to go in, it sounds like, with a plan to hold the Nazis and racists down for Antifa to beat them.
It doesn't sound like a looming success.
A footnote to this, or an explanation for the anger I feel as I see report after report, is that the president's message seemed fine and today's addendum is fine -- but the media and the establishment have so politicized this into a reason to blame Trump (and all Republicans, as there isn't one Republican in the whole world that a Democrat would sign a petition to allow to continue to live), that violent leftist groups are getting a free pass to rage, hate, and assault.
I guess freedom returns to its place of birth to die.
ReplyDeleteCrush Line of the Day. Hands down.
Delete“We don’t need this type of hate,” said Walsh.
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of hate *does* he prefer?