Limits of Free Expression from a Conservative Pov: Readings

LIMITS OF FREE EXPRESSION FROM A CONSERVATIVE POV: READINGS

October 27, 2011

Cities Begin Cracking Down on ‘Occupy’ Protests

By JESSE McKINLEY and ABBY GOODNOUGH

OAKLAND, Calif. — After weeks of cautiously accepting the teeming round-the-clock protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street, several cities have come to the end of their patience and others appear to be not far behind.

Here in Oakland, in a scene reminiscent of the antiwar protests of the 1960s, the police filled downtown streets with tear gas late Tuesday to stop throngs of protesters from re-entering a City Hall plaza that had been cleared of their encampment earlier in the day.

Those protests, which resulted in more than 100 arrests and at least one life-threatening injury, had appeared ready to ignite again on Wednesday night as supporters of the Occupy movement promised to retake the square, where the encampment site was fenced off.

After about an hour of speeches, the crowd removed the fences around the site. The number of protesters swelled to about 3,000 people, but the demonstration remained peaceful. Leaders led a series of call-and-response chants. “Now the whole world is watching Oakland,” was one phrase that was repeated as passing cars honked in approval. The police had gone, compared with a heavy presence the night before.

The official protest broke up around 10 p.m. local time, peacefully, with protesters dancing, carrying American flags and generally celebrating what seemed to be a well-attended demonstration.

Shortly after the end of that protest, however, hundreds of demonstrators began to wander down Broadway, Oakland’s central thoroughfare, in an unplanned march. The Oakland police, who had been noticeably absent during the protests at City Hall, began donning protective riot gear as demonstrators chanted and tried to board Bay Area Rapid Transit trains. Several entrances to the BART system were closed, agitating protesters and adding to an increasingly tense atmosphere in Oakland, which had exploded in violence a mere 24 hours earlier.

The impromptu march continued west toward Oakland’s waterfront as it became more apparent that there was little central organizing structure.

About 10:25 p.m., a crowd of a thousand protesters arrived at Oakland’s police headquarters and began milling about. Some tried to put garbage cans in the street, while others beseeched the crowd to remain peaceful. The Oakland police manned the front door of their headquarters and maintained a loose perimeter.

At midnight, a much diminished crowd of perhaps 500 marched back to the City Hall encampment site, Frank Ogawa Plaza, where violence broke out Tuesday night. Some protesters were sitting in intersection, but the police kept their distance.

Across the bay, meanwhile, in the usually liberal environs of San Francisco, city officials there had also seemingly hit their breaking point, and they warned several hundred protesters that they were in violation of the law by camping at a downtown site. Concerns had been raised about unhealthy and often squalid conditions in the camp, including garbage, vermin and human waste.

In Atlanta, Mayor Kasim Reed ordered the police to arrest more than 50 protesters early Wednesday and remove their tents from a downtown park after deciding that the situation had become unsafe, despite originally issuing executive orders to let them camp there overnight.

And like many of his mayoral colleagues nationwide, Mr. Reed openly expressed frustration with the protesters’ methods.

“The attitude I have seen here is not consistent with any civil rights protests I have seen in Atlanta,” Mr. Reed said in an interview, “and certainly not consistent with the most respected forms of civil disobedience.”

Similar confrontations could soon come to pass in other cities, including Providence, R.I., where Mayor Angel Taveras has vowed to seek a court order to remove protesters from Burnside Park, which they have occupied since Oct. 15.

And while other, bigger cities, including New York, Boston and Philadelphia, have taken a more tolerant view of the protests — for now — officials are still grappling with growing concerns about crime, sanitation and homelessness at the encampments. Even in Los Angeles, where the City Council passed a resolution in support of the protesters, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa warned Wednesday that they would not be allowed to remain outside City Hall indefinitely.

Dot Joyce, a spokeswoman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston, echoed that sentiment. “It’s a daily assessment for us,” Ms. Joyce said.

More and more, mayors across the country say they have found themselves walking a complex and politically delicate line: simultaneously wanting to respect the right to free speech and assembly, but increasingly concerned that the protests cannot stay orderly and safe.

“We can do lots of different things to help them on our end,” said Mr. Taveras, who estimated that roughly 200 people had camped out in Providence, despite a city rule forbidding such behavior. “But we cannot allow an indefinite stay there, and we can’t allow them to continue to violate the law.”

The protests showed little sign of slacking. In Chicago, for example, demonstrators gathered Wednesday outside the office of Mayor Rahm Emanuel requesting 24-hour access to Grant Park and demanding that charges be dropped against the more than 300 protesters arrested there in the past weeks.

“He’s denying us our constitutional right to not only free speech, but peaceful continual assembly,” said Andy Manos, 32, one of the protesters.

Even in Democratic Chicago, officials seemed to be straining to allow for dissent, while maintaining order. “We’ve been working hard to strike a balance,” said Chris Mather, a spokeswoman for Mr. Emanuel. Ms. Mather added that the mayor’s office had tried to set up meetings with protesters, who themselves said they were trying to find a permanent home for their demonstrations.

Indeed, some city officials said the tensions surrounding the Occupy protests have been increased by the fact that many of the groups involved have few recognized leaders.

“It’s a significant challenge to deal with their decision-making process,” said Richard Negrin, the managing director of Philadelphia, where tents form a protest village outside City Hall.

In Oakland, where one protester — Scott Olsen, an Iraq war veteran — was in critical condition at a local hospital after being struck in the head with a projectile during the chaotic street battle on Tuesday, city officials defended their actions, saying that the police used tear gas after being pelted with rocks. The police are investigating what happened to Mr. Olsen.

As the protests continued, worries about possible violence percolated.

In Atlanta, Mr. Reed said the last straw came Tuesday, when he said a man with an AK-47 assault rifle joined the protesters in Woodruff Park. On Wednesday, after all protesters who had been arrested were released on bond, some said the man with the assault rifle — who was carrying it legally under Georgia law — was not part of their group and should not have been a factor in shutting them down. “We don’t even know that guy,” said Candi Cunard, 26.

Protest organizers said many of the troublemakers in Oakland and elsewhere were not part of the Occupy movement, but rather were anarchists or others with simply with a taste for mayhem.

“The people throwing things at police and being violent are not part of our ‘99 Percent’ occupation,” said Momo Aleamotua, 19, a student from Oakland. “They’re not us, and they’re not welcome.”

Jesse McKinley reported from Oakland, and Abby Goodnough from Providence, R.I. Reporting was contributed by Malia Wollan from Oakland, Ian Lovett from Los Angeles, Jess Bidgood from Boston, Robbie Brown from Atlanta, Kate Zernike from New York, and Steven Yaccino from Chicago.

EDITORIAL: Wall Street protesters' 'demands?

Source: Chattanooga Times/Free Press (TN), 10/31/2011

Document Type: Article

Accession Number: 2W61224662353

Database: Newspaper Source Plus

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EDITORIAL: Wall Street protesters' 'demands?

Oct. 31--One of the more disturbing aspects of the ongoing so-called "Occupy Wall Street" protests -- not only on Wall Street but in other locations around the United States -- is the demonstrators' listing of various "demands" that they want society to meet.

Whatever you may think of their grievances about "corporate greed," the vague threat that is implied when a rowdy crowd lists its "demands" is troubling.

And yet demonstrators in New York have put together a "Demands Working Group" to spell out what they want.

But what exactly does that mean? Does it mean that if they do not get what they want, they will continue forcibly occupying public and even private locations after they have been lawfully ordered to disperse? Or will they engage, as some of them have, in outright violence?

That is certainly not the protected right of peaceful assembly that was envisioned -- and is guaranteed -- by the First Amendment to our Constitution.

Anyone can verbally "demand" anything, but the use of violence, coercion and public disorder to achieve those demands is wrong -- and un-American.

Copyright of Chattanooga Times/Free Press (TN) is the property of Chattanooga Times/Free Press (TN). The copyright in an individual article may be maintained by the author in certain cases. Content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.Source: Chattanooga Times/Free Press (TN), Oct 31, 2011

Item: 2W61224662353

Why Journalists Are Not Above the Law.

Authors: Schoenfeld, Gabriel

Source: Commentary, Feb2007, Vol. 123 Issue 2, p40-45, 6p

Document Type: Article

Subject Terms:

FREEDOM of the press

JOURNALISTS -- Legal status, laws, etc.

CIVIL rights

GOVERNMENT & the press

NATIONAL security -- United States

Abstract: This article discusses the Constitutional freedom of the press. First Amendment lawyers in the United States claim that this freedom is being threatened under the administration of United States President George W. Bush, but the author suggests that journalists should not be exempt from national security laws.Lexile:1550

Full Text Word Count: 4491

ISSN: 00102601

Accession Number: 23821222

Database: MasterFILE Premier

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Why Journalists Are Not Above the Law

To HEAR some tell it, the fundamental freedom of the press promised by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is in peril today as perhaps never before. In his four decades representing the media, says Floyd Abrams, one of the country's leading First Amendment lawyers, the work of reporting has "never been as seriously threatened as it is today." Norman Pearlstine, until recently the editor-in-chief of Time Inc., warns that today's situation "chills essential news-gathering and reporting." William Safire, the longtime columnist for the New York Times, says "the ability of journalists to gather the news" is "under attack." Nicholas Kristof, also a Times columnist, says "we're seeing a broad assault on freedom of the press that would appall us if it were happening in Kazakhstan."

The source of the problem, according to these and other concerned observers, is the American government, in the form of the White House and the Justice Department. Both are threatening to prevent journalists from doing their work by depriving them of the right to rely on confidential sources of information: the lifeblood of the journalistic profession and the prime avenue through which the public learns about impending shifts in policy, about official wrongdoing, and about much else besides.

Overstated or not, such worries reflect continuing reverberations from a number of recent cases. The most prominent involves Judith Miller, a reporter for the New York Times who had gathered information about the leak of an undercover CIA officer's name in possible violation of the Intelligence Identities Act. In his effort to uncover the leaker, the government's special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, brought Miller before a grand jury in 2005 to answer questions about what she had learned.

Declining to disgorge her confidential sources, and citing her First Amendment rights as a journalist, Miller refused to testify. In July 2005, the judge presiding over the process held her in contempt. She spent the next 85 days in the Alexandria City jail before finally naming her source: I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.( n1)

The spectacle of a reporter from our country's premier newspaper going to prison for almost three months was only the most visible example of the heavy hand of government. Another journalist, a video blogger by the name of Josh Wolf, is currently sitting in a California jail for declining to turn over to a grand jury video clips of an anarchist riot in San Francisco. And there are similar cases elsewhere that have stirred fears among reporters over the increasing legal hazards of their work--not to mention the alarm of those like Floyd Abrams who are convinced that the public's fundamental access to vital news is being impaired by an overreaching officialdom, bent on protecting itself from legitimate scrutiny.

With such apprehensions on the rise, Congress has come under increasing pressure to establish an official reporter's privilege--analogous to the attorney-client, the priest-penitent, and the husband-wife privilege that already exist in law--exempting a journalist from having to disclose his sources in any federal criminal investigation or trial. Today some 31 states have formally created such a "shield law," while everywhere else, with the exception of Wyoming, reporters enjoy a more qualified privilege as a matter of common law. Only the federal system remains without such a statute--a deficit that a coalition of news organizations and First Amendment activists now seeks to rectify in the new Congress.

A number of prominent Republicans, including Senators Arlen Specter and Richard Lugar, have long championed such a law. The new chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and a bevy of other Democrats including Charles Schumer of New York and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, are also firmly behind it. With bipartisan support in place, and with the Democrats now in charge, the prospects for passage of such a bill are better than they have been for a generation.

IN ITS modern form, the issue of a reporter's privilege is exceptionally nettlesome, and has been so ever since the Supreme Court ruling in Branzburg v. Hayes (1972). That ruling brought together a number of then-recent cases. Paul Branzburg, a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal, had witnessed people manufacturing and using illegal narcotics. More or less at the same time, two other journalists, a Massachusetts television reporter and a reporter for the New York Times, were also believed to have witnessed behavior that appeared to be illegal. All three were summoned to testify before grand juries. All three, citing the First Amendment, declined to answer questions about their confidential sources. All three were held in contempt.

Presenting the same set of legal issues, the three cases were combined and made their way up to the Supreme Court. Its majority decision, written by Justice Byron White, held that the First Amendment did not offer a privilege for journalists that "other citizens do not enjoy," and the Court emphatically declined to create one.

White's ruling was crystalline in its logic and seemingly absolute in its conclusion. But it did not put an end to controversy. For one thing, nothing in White's ruling barred Congress from establishing a reporter's privilege as an act of law. For another thing, the 5-4 decision of the Court was itself deeply muddied by a concurring opinion, written by Justice Lewis Powell, which even Powell's colleagues called "enigmatic."

While adding his name to White's decision, Powell undercut its central premise by suggesting that courts should operate on a case-by-case basis, the better to strike "a proper balance between freedom of the press and the obligation of all citizens to give relevant testimony with respect to criminal conduct." Leaving unspecified the ground rules for this balancing act, Powell's opinion had the effect of plunging lower courts into confusion. Today, five of the twelve circuits in the federal system have relied on Branzburg to compel journalists to provide confidential information; another four, basing themselves on Powell's inscrutable words, have granted journalists a qualified privilege.

This confusion has only added fuel to the latest push for a shield law. But is such a privilege warranted? And is it desirable?

IN CONSIDERING those questions, one might profitably turn to another case now before the courts. This one, too, involves Patrick Fitzgerald and Judith Miller, and centers on the disclosure of sensitive government material. In contrast to the Scooter Libby affair, this case is surprisingly low-profile; and again in contrast to the Scooter Libby affair, it is of exceptional national importance.