Ain't That America
By Peter Orvetti
Published 09/01/09

Officer Wesley Cheeks, Jr., inadvertently revealed a sad truth during a confrontation with a peaceful demonstrator last Tuesday in Reston, Virginia. The man was one of several holding up signs outside a town hall forum on health care hosted by Rep. James Moran. Cheeks, a security officer employed by the public through the Fairfax County Public Schools, singled out this man because he did not like his sign.

Cheeks approached the demonstrator and told him to obscure the sign from view. When the demonstrator asked why he was being singled out, Cheeks gave the dubious answer that it was because his sign had a picture on it. Cheeks threatened the man with trespassing charges, and when the activist said he was engaged in legal protest, Cheeks replied, "I’ll charge you with whatever I want to charge you with."

"This is America! This used to be America!" the agitated demonstrator replied. Then came Cheeks’s moment of truth. "It ain’t no more, okay?"

Well, it’s not quite as bad as all that. The demonstrations over the health care debate have been passionate and sometimes incendiary, but they have been happening. Dissent has not been snuffed out. But over the past decade, those in power have cynically abused the legitimate need for public safety and security in order to stifle opponents.

Probably the first known "free speech area" was created by the city of Atlanta during the 1988 Democratic National Convention. One abortion rights advocate complained that the city "put us in a free speech cage." A decade later, the raucous demonstrations at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle led to greater deployment of the tactic. The National Lawyers Guild, which monitors First Amendment abuses, said it saw "a notable change in police treatment of political protestors" following the 1999 WTO meeting. The Guild said a "pattern of behavior that stifles First Amendment rights" began to emerge in cities across the U.S.

Such "protest pens", as activists later dubbed them, became commonplace during the presidency of George W. Bush. In September 2002, a retired steel worker named Bill Neel was holding up a sign critical of Bush when the president came to Pittsburgh. Police cordoned off anti-Bush demonstrators at a fenced-in baseball field a third of a mile from the site of Bush’s speech; those with pro-Bush signs were allowed to line the motorcade path. Neel refused to go to the pen. "As far as I’m concerned, the whole country is a free speech zone," he later said. He was arrested and his sign was confiscated. During Neel’s trial, a local police officer testified that the Secret Service told police to segregate those making a statement "against the president and his views."

Such incidents became common. In 2003, St. Louis police blocked members of the media from talking to protestors during a Bush visit. In another instance, antiwar demonstrator Brett Bursey was ordered to go to a "free speech zone" a half-mile from Bush’s location during a South Carolina trip. Bursey refused, and was arrested. Bursey said he asked if it "was the content of my sign, and [the officer] said, ‘Yes sir, it’s the content of your sign that’s the problem." One journalist summed up the policy in these words: "Protestors will be free to speak as much as they like just as long as they can’t be heard."

Thankfully, not all law enforcement officers have forgotten what country they live in, or what principles it is founded on. The members of Oath Keepers, a "nonpartisan association of currently serving military, peace officers, firefighters, and veterans," swear to "fulfill our oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Oath Keepers will not conduct warrantless searches, detain American citizens as "unlawful enemy combatants", disarm citizens, or obey any order that infringes on free speech.

On their website, the Oath Keepers say, "We don’t care if unlawful orders come from a Democrat or a Republican, or if the violation is bipartisan. We will not obey unconstitutional (and thus unlawful) and immoral orders." Noting that some decent officers are torn between their commitment to liberty and their duty to follow commands, the group says, "We are in a battle for the hearts and minds of our own troops. Help us win it."

The Oath Keepers and their allies are making sure that this is still America — no matter what Wesley Cheeks Jr. might think.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=187

Long live the Oath Keepers!

Little pink houses for you and me........

Little pink tutu's for willing and me

We could dance and twirl all night long.

I don't know where you grew up but this goverment beats its citizens all the time .I know for a fact they treat there own worse than the arabs . I know 12 guys who were hung up over a 1 " water pipe with hand cuffs and then beaten until they confessed to murder . one of them never broke and they beat his eye out and then with the eye hanging down on his face a mo hy patrol officer took his club and smashed the eye ..

The oath keepers are awesome. So are the L.E.A.P people.

I posted this because the story shows how both sides have been eroding our 1st amendment for awhile.

Also because it shows that there are officers and military that take their oaths extremely serious and those are the guys I'd like to hold up as heros in this country, especially now, at a time when there seems to be such a huge shortage of real ones and Americans are being given pathetic and false replacements in their stead, like sports folks or American Idol.

I don't have anything interesting to contribute to this thread unfortunately, but I have Pink Houses running through my head every time I see this thread.