“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”--The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified Dec., 15, 1791.
Dennis Kucinich - An open assault on the First Amendment is occurring across America, as college students who are peacefully exercising their Constitutional right to freedom of speech, challenging government policies, are being arrested in droves. The self-appointed Congressional Overseers of Higher Education, who hauled politically naïve university presidents into their star chambers and publicly castigated the savants for not admonishing their students to be sufficiently sympathetic to genocide, essentially demanded loyalty, not to America, but to the deadly agenda of a country not our own…
Obey, or there will be no graduation. Obey! Or you cannot be valedictorian. Obey! Or be suspended, expelled, even denied employment opportunities. Obey! Or you will be marked for life as a troublemaker, a disrupter. Obey! If you want to get ahead in society. Obey! Don’t make demands. Don’t even ask questions. Obey! You are students. Your lot is to listen, and Obey….
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, campuses were the flash points from which the Vietnam-era anti-war movement grew. I remember student rallies at Cleveland State University. Then, instead of threatening students with arrest, CSU President Harold Enarson created a space for them to gather, spoke to students, encouraged peaceful protest and, as a result, Cleveland State University, still in its infancy, was a catalyst for social and political change.
The protests focused public attention on the Vietnam War. The political became personal. President Lyndon Baines Johnson became the target. “LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today,” was a chant heard on campuses and on streets where masses gathered to demand an end to the war. The protests drove Johnson from the presidency. He announced on March 31, 1968: “I have concluded that I should not permit the presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year….Accordingly, I shall not seek, and will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”…
We should view campus protests as one of the few healthy signs in a nation where government spying, support for a genocidal war, abandonment of Constitutional liberties and media complicity has constructed not only an alternate politics, but an alternate reality.
College students are not rejecting the evidence of their eyes and ears. Thirty-Four thousand dead Palestinians, most of them women and children. The students know the horrific violence going on thousands of miles away, and they know their government is licensing it. They are demanding the war cease.
They are standing on more than two centuries of citizen action challenging the government. Those who misuse their authority to suppress legitimate dissent are undermining foundational Constitutional freedoms, the Freedom of Speech and the Right to Protest. The First Amendment is the cornerstone of the American Republic.
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