Free Speech — Right

Vice President Cheney is speaking at UT on November 15. Some Knoxvillians want to speak out and hold Cheney responsible for his role in dragging us into this war. It won’t be easy. First Ammendment rights are the first thing to go during wartime.

During Vietnam in 1970 Knoxvillians tried something similar at Neyland Stadium and were arrested. Professor Charles Reynolds’s case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The UT Faculty Senate even approved an official report on the events. Jack Neely has a great article remembering the Billy Graham Crusade protest in the Metro Pulse.

Nowadays free speech regularly gets put on the back burner whenever a president comes to town. Protesters are quarantined into fenced “free speech zones,” which keeps protester signs and chants away from the president and from TV cameras. Anti-Bush sign-wavers are sent to the pokey while pro-Bush sign-wavers are sent to the front of the crowd. Sometimes the media is even prevented from talking to protesters. Here’s a great article in The American Conservative on the issue.

Charges brought against Reynolds were not for rioting, violence, or sedition. This professor and ordained minister was charged under an obscure Tennessee law preventing the disruption of a church service. Nevermind the fact that this service was in a football stadium on a college campus and included members of the Republican Party. Nevermind that Nixon had illegally expanded the war into Cambodia. Nevermind that four students had been shot and killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State protesting the war. Nevermind that Nixon had been holed up in the White House avoiding protesters for a year. This was a church service.

The event was a typical GOP mix of religion and politics. Then as now, the religious right explicitly supported the political right. Then it was through a stadium crusade, now it is though http://www.justicesunday.com/ “Justice Sunday,” An event organized and hosted by Southern Baptists to support Bush’s neo-conservative Supreme Court nominees.

Which takes me back to a warm night in Neyland Stadium thirty-five years ago. Then as now, leaders in the Executive branch were lying to the public about a war. Then as now, brave Americans were dying unnecessarily. And then as now, it may require breaking the law to reveal truth and begin to restore the peace.

Many Knoxvillians want to tell Cheney to his face, “You lied and we want the truth about this war.” But we’d have to risk arrest to do it.