NLG report “Assault on free speech”
The National Lawyers Guild last month released a report entitled, “The Assault on Free Speech, Public Assembly, and Dissent.” (PDF) In it, they interviewed people from across the United States and documented the “ongoing reaction of law enforcement to the legal exercise of free speech in the US.” In short, they found that our various law enforement officials and departments are engaged in an agressive, concerted and overt effort to destroy lawful public expressions of dissent and free speech.
To read the testimony is to know that the American democracy is in serious trouble. Not because the country lacks for a successful
economy or a splendid military equipage, but because the wisdoms in office find the practice of democratic self-government vulgar and unsafe. Too loud, too uncivil and disrespectful, too many people in the room who donŐt belong to a health club or the Council on Foreign Relations, not enough marble in the ceilings and the walls. The corporate and political gentry disapprove of the company and deplore the noise; whether seated in the Senate, installed in a television studio, charged with the management of an insurance
company or a police precinct, they donŐt like to be reminded that democracy is by definition a work in progress, a never-ending argument between the inertia of things-as-they-are and the energy
inherent in the hope of things-as-they-might-become.
–Forward by Lewis Lapham