This afternoon (Sept. 30), I'm chairing a panel at Broadmoor Community Church involving the police chief, reporters, and activists discussing the St. Patrick's Day arrests in Colorado Springs. I'd like to thank Colorado's moronic neolithic neocon columnist Mike Rosen for providing me perfect grist for the mill with his Friday column on the Gainesville taser incident. Rosen seems to think that whenever free speech becomes annoying, it's time to bring out the chokeholds and tasers. He resonates with the large number of American citizens who think there's some kind of amendment protecting their right to enjoy entertainment events undisturbed, without some crazy person pontificating who should have been relegated to a "free speech zone." Paine and Jefferson are spinning in their graves. The only right to protection FROM free speech consists in walking away from the speaker.
3 comments:
How'd it go? Were you able to maintain the peace?
Oh, yeah, the police chief is really a very interesting guy. He just came to CS from Appleton, WS a few months back. When we described the sequence of events that led to the Feb. 15, 2003 march getting tear-gassed (Colo Springs was one of only two cities globally, along with Athens, Greece, tear-gassed on that day), he seemed genuinely taken aback. It was fun. I'll try to get pictures from the organizers to post.
Well, whaddya know? Even our arch-conservative Colorado Springs Gazette has published an editorial, saying it is ridiculous to maintain charges against two of the St. Patrick's Day Seven, and calling for dropping charges against them all. Seems like folks of all political stripes understand that - except city government -
http://www.gazette.com/opinion/
health_28022___article.html/
care_benefits.html
(Scroll down past health care.)
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