7 November 2011 >>
Recently, I brought a camera and a few multiple-choice questions to Zuccotti Park, where I conducted a quiz game with some of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. As a reward for getting the answers right, contestants were able to choose among several options for prizes. Unfortunately, one gentleman in the audience apparently did not appreciate the prize selections made by his fellow protesters, so he disrupted the game, bear-hugged me, grabbed the question cards out of my hand and attempted to run off with them before I stopped him.
You can watch the video embedded below, or visit YouTube:
Click through to the video page to see footnotes for the questions in the quiz.
Video >>
31 March 2010 >>
Not too long ago, taking to the streets to protest your government was considered a patriotic act.
It’s true!
But it seems that publicly airing your grievances stopped being patriotic right around noon on January 20th, 2009.
Once President Obama was sworn in, protesting became incitement to violence.
If you’ve opened up a newspaper or watched a cable news program in the past week or so, you’ve probably seen members of the media painting Tea Party activists as dangerous bigots. That’s because disagreeing with President Obama on issues like government spending and high taxes makes you a racist, you see.
What’s interesting about the media’s latest freak-out is that there were radicals a-plenty under President Bush. They protested in the streets. They talked openly about revolution and killing. But oddly, the violent imagery used by people claiming to be advocates for peace never registered with the media. They were too busy fawning over Cindy Sheehan.
Why the difference in coverage? Did the media cheerlead protests against President Bush to hurt him politically? Are they trying to marginalize the increasingly powerful Tea Party movement because they favor President Obama’s agenda?
One thing’s for sure: If there is such a thing as dangerous rhetoric, then the media is at least one president too late in reporting the story.
Don’t believe me?
Well, then let’s take a trip down memory lane...
Video >>
25 March 2010 >>
When Barack Obama decided to launch his political career in the living room of unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, he tacitly endorsed using violence as a political tactic.
Implicitly, Obama was using the threat of violence to get the bankers to acquiesce.
During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama didn’t shy away from confrontation. In fact, he encouraged it by telling supporters to “argue with” opponents and to “get in their face[s].”
The Obama Administration’s confrontational tone included some violent imagery last August, when one White House official encouraged Obama supporters to “punch back twice as hard” against opponents.
Later that day, at an anti-ObamaCare rally in St. Louis, a black man named Kenneth Gladney was handing out “Don’t Tread on Me” flags when he was approached by pro-ObamaCare SEIU union members. One of the men asked Gladney, “What kind of nigger are you to be giving out this kind of stuff?”
The union thugs then beat him so badly he required overnight hospitalization.
Obama’s supporters got the message. They were getting in people’s faces, and they were punching. And kicking. Repeatedly.
Yet despite the fact that the Kenneth Gladney beating occurred the same day that the Obama Administration recommended supporters “punch back twice as hard,” there was no hyperventilating in the media about political violence or the veiled threats that encouraged it.
Today, however, the Democratic politicians who rammed through ObamaCare over the wishes of the American public are worried about the ugly environment that the Obama Administration spent over a year stoking. And if Obama and the Democrats truly believe that words lead to violence, then they should accept responsibility for the beating of Kenneth Gladney.
I’m certainly not condoning political violence, and would condemn any that actually happens. But there has been no reported violence against any Congressman, Senator or government official, despite the media frenzy of stories describing a crazed American public ready to terrorize politicians.
All politicians receive threats; any moderately trafficked blogger receives threats. So while I would hate for there to be any actual violence, excuse me if I chuckle at the chatter of the chickens in the media and our political class. This media-driven national freakout is a diversion, designed to de-legitimize opposition to ObamaCare and to take your attention away from the illegitimate and unprecedented usurpation of power by the Democrats in Congress and President Obama. They’re banking on you forgetting by November.
If the media is going to report on this atmosphere without discussing the Obama Administration’s words or the SEIU beat-down of Kenneth Gladney, if they are going to spend time breathlessly reporting rumored threats that have not been carried out while ignoring violence that actually occurred but didn’t fit their narrative, then it is yet more proof of the media’s patent bias.
20 August 2009 >>
Not too long ago, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets with signs comparing our president to Adolf Hitler, painting him as “the world’s biggest terrorist,” even calling outright for his killing. Here in New York City, posters of a cartoon George W. Bush replete with simulated bullet holes began springing up around town.
It was a time when Democratic politicians complained loudly whenever they felt their patriotism was being impugned. In those days, bumper stickers reminded us that “Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism” and Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, declared that disruptive protests were “very American and very important.” Now that protests are directed against a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, Nancy Pelosi thinks such disruptions are “un-American.”
During the Bush era, the media looked the other way at the extremist element in the protest movement; the large number of protest signs bearing swastikas and mathematical formulae like “Bush=Hitler” just didn’t interest them. But it did interest me, and because the media didn’t want to report it, I did some reporting of my own. The videos I posted online inadvertently launched me on a second career as a documentary filmmaker.
I recently dug through my old footage and found many examples of the same kind of inflammatory speech that the media and the Democratic Party—forgive the redundancy—now decry. What follows are just a few examples.
More >>
Notice how there was no “antiwar” movement during the ’90s, even though we were at war the entire time in Iraq, Haiti, Kosovo, a dab here and there in Afghanistan and Sudan. Then, after 9/11, it was the “Next Vietnam” with a passionate “antiwar” movement with the [New York Times]’s full treasonous participation, just like the good old days. And now, even though the daily death count has matched the highest daily rate we ever saw in Iraq, there is no “antiwar” movement or daily casualty count in all the newspapers. It’s like the “antiwar” movement can be turned off and on like a switch, depending on which party is in the White House.
22 April 2009 @ 8:13AM >>
Michael Barone, now of the Washington Examiner, makes a good point:
[T]he idolators who attended Obama events last year seemed entranced by the candidate’s persona, while the tea party participants seemed preoccupied with serious issues of long-term public policy. Which side was more intellectually serious?
When the media covered the crowds that came to see then-candidate Barack Obama speak, it was a sign that average Americans were getting engaged in the political process, a positive thing.
When, during the Bush presidency, protesters called the president a terrorist and compared him to Hitler, even accusing him of staging the September 11th attacks, the media took the protesters seriously and certainly never challenged or denigrated them or their cause.
Of course, now that Barack Obama is in office, protesting is not only unhealthy, it’s unpatriotic. And it seems the media will do everything in its power to diminish and demean anyone who dares disagree with our saintly president.
19 April 2009 @ 2:11PM >>
In the Wall Street Journal, David Horowitz makes a telling observation about the state of free speech on campus. Horowitz discusses a recent speech he delivered at the University of Texas, and describes being questioned afterwards by a Professor Dana Cloud:
She presented herself as a devoted teacher and mother who was obviously harmless. Then she accused me of being a McCarthyite menace. Disregarding the facts I had laid out in my talk — that I have publicly defended the right of University of Colorado’s radical professor Ward Churchill to hold reprehensible views and not be fired for them, and that I supported the leftist dean of the law school at UC Irvine when his appointment was withdrawn for political reasons — she accused me of whipping up a “witch-hunting hysteria” that made her and her faculty comrades feel threatened.
When Ms. Cloud finished, I pointed out that organizing mobs to scream epithets at invited speakers fit the category of “McCarthyite” a lot more snugly than my support for a pluralism of views in university classrooms. I gestured toward the armed officers in the room — the university had assigned six or seven to keep the peace — and introduced my own bodyguard, who regularly accompanies other conservative speakers when they visit universities. In the past, I felt uncomfortable about taking protection to a college campus until a series of physical attacks at universities persuaded me that such precautions were necessary. (When I spoke at the University of Texas two years ago, Ms. Cloud and her disciples had to be removed by the police in order for the talk to proceed.)
I don’t know of a single leftist speaker among the thousands who visit campuses every term who has been obstructed or attacked by conservative students, who are too decent and too tolerant to do that. The entire evening in Texas reminded me of the late Orianna Fallaci’s observation that what we are facing in the post-9/11 world is not a “clash of civilizations,” but a clash of civilization versus barbarism.
13 October 2008 @ 8:58AM >>
The latest media meme is that Republicans have become unhinged and dangerous at political rallies.
For some reason, the last 8 years of deranged anger towards President George W. Bush was never reported by the establishment media. Perhaps that’s because they felt it, too.
But it was an important story. I got my start in documentary filmmaking by capturingthe ugly, violentpassions of liberalactivists. The only reason the stories I covered were unique is that the media refused to cover them. Sure, plenty of political protests got coverage, but the extremist element at those protests were ignored by the media’s presentation.
And today, you’ll find plenty of hate directed at the campaign of John McCain and Sarah Palin. But for some reason, the media has not constructed a narrative depicting Barack Obama’s supporters as angry and divisive. There certainly hasn’t been any criticism of Obama for encouraging confrontation by telling his supporters, “I want you to argue with [McCain backers] and get in their face.”
If I were a cynic, I might even conclude that the media has chosen sides in our election.
A teenager is facing prosecution for using the word “cult” to describe the Church of Scientology.
The unnamed 15-year-old was served the summons by City of London police when he took part in a peaceful demonstration opposite the London headquarters of the controversial religion.
Officers confiscated a placard with the word “cult” on it from the youth, who is under 18, and a case file has been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service.
[...]
The incident happened during a protest against the Church of Scientology on May 10. Demonstrators from the anti-Scientology group, Anonymous, who were outside the church’s lb23m headquarters near St Paul’s cathedral, were banned by police from describing Scientology as a cult by police because it was “abusive and insulting”.
Writing on an anti-Scientology website, the teenager facing court said: “I brought a sign to the May 10th protest that said: ‘Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult.’
“‘Within five minutes of arriving I was told by a member of the police that I was not allowed to use that word, and that the final decision would be made by the inspector.”
[...]
After the exchange, a policewoman handed him a court summons and removed his sign.
Legal action has been dropped against a 15-year-old who faced prosecution for branding Scientology a “cult”.
[...]
Lawyers for the human rights group Liberty represented the teenager in his legal battle.
James Welch from the organisation said: “The police may have ended their inquiries into this tawdry incident but rest assured that Liberty’s inquiry will continue.
“Democracy is all about clashing ideas and the police should protect peaceful protest, not stifle it.”
It was quickly pointed out by civil libertarians that the eventual happy outcome did nothing to reverse the consequences of the initial error. If expressive materials at a public protest can be confiscated pending two weeks of review by prosecutors, then not much is left of the right to protest, practically speaking.
[...]
It constitutes no “victory” for freedom of expression that he was let off arbitrarily just because the public took his side against a secretive and widely ridiculed religious group. On the contrary: the police succeeded in communicating their real message to those who might wish to imitate him. Watch what you say. We have enough power to give you a hard time, whether the crown backs us up in the end or not. And make damned sure your targets are relatively unpopular, or you might not find so many columnists and activists leaping to your defence.
This is what comes of attempting to legislate offensiveness of speech and thought out of existence: all of us are left at the mercy of those who do the actual policing. In this case, it was a couple of ignorant coppers who decided they didn’t like the look of the “c” word.” In Canada, it might be some dowdy, politically connected empire-builder working in the office of a human rights tribunal. (Would it be actionable to say or write that “Islam is a cult” here? Who but someone with money, free time and a law degree would dare try?)
This is why the principles of free expression have to be guarded stringently in a liberal democracy, and why they cannot safely be subjected to nudging by those who think enforced politeness comes ahead of fundamental liberty. Any law allowing for the suppression of content because it might exasperate someone is bound to be tested more and more ambitiously until its actual political limits are found. And it will go on being tested, and go on growing in scope, as political sentiments change. And any such law will always end up being a more effective suppressant through the fear of inviting expense and trouble than it is by its actual application.
The second video shows what happens when a sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justice comes to give a speech on campus. In Welcome Wagon NYC, students at NYU Law School object quite strongly to the presence of Antonin Scalia, giving him a reception worse than the President of Iran received at that other large Manhattan institution, Columbia University.
9 November 2007 @ 2:24PM >>
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education announces another victory:
[A] federal judge has ordered San Francisco State University (SFSU) and the California State University System (CSU) to stop enforcing several unconstitutional speech codes. The codes were challenged in a lawsuit filed by attorneys from the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) in cooperation with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).
“This decision is a vital step in the fight against unconstitutional campus speech codes,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “The court’s decision frees hundreds of thousands of students throughout the CSU System from unlawful restrictions on their expression.”
The lawsuit—brought by the SFSU College Republicans and two of the group’s members—came after the SFSU College Republicans were put on trial by a campus tribunal for stepping on makeshift Hamas and Hezbollah flags as part of an anti-terrorism rally they held in October 2006. Despite having the power to dismiss the charges at any time, SFSU dragged the plaintiffs through a five-month investigation and hearing before ultimately clearing the group of baseless “harassment” charges. The plaintiffs’ lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, asks the court to hold SFSU accountable for unlawfully mistreating the plaintiffs on the basis of their constitutionally protected expression and to strike down several unconstitutional speech codes at SFSU and in the CSU System.
Burning the American flag is protected First Amendment speech, on the grounds that actions intended to convey a political message should be treated no differently than actual speech. The Supreme Court made that decision in the 1980s. So it’s good to know that, decades later, stepping on the flags of two terrorist organizations is also protected speech.
But it’s troubling that administrators at a taxpayer-funded university—an entity legally prohibited from punishing students for protected political expression—are so ignorant of the basic parameters of their students’ rights that the school needed to be brought to court in the first place.
You shouldn’t need to hire a lawyer in order to exercise rights enumerated in the Constitution.
25 October 2007 @ 9:07AM >>
Last night, David Horowitz came to speak at Emory University as part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, an event created to highlight the human rights abuses committed in the name of Islam around the world. Horowitz started off by showing a picture of a woman being shot in the head for “sexual improprieties.” In some Muslim cultures, sexual impropriety includes being a victim of rape, something for which countless women have been killed in an attempt to restore the “honor” of the rape victim’s family.
It used to be that leftists would be outraged by such a thing. After all, they claim to sympathize with the oppressed. But these days, when women are killed for being the victims of rape, or when gays are executed for being who they are, leftists first must look into who is doing the killing. If it’s a Muslim doing the killing, then for some reason, it is excusable.
That’s because there is a hierarchy of political correctness, where one group’s rights can be superceded by another group’s rights depending on which group is viewed as more oppressed by Westerners. This leads to some rather strange double-standards: if a Christian opposes gay marriage on religious grounds, he’d be branded a bigot and would be blacklisted from campus. But if a Muslim leads a country that routinely executes gays, he would be welcomed with open arms.
This is the environment into which David Horowitz stepped when he tried to demonstrate the very real crimes against humanity that are committed in the name of Islam. So, naturally, the leftists at Emory University had to make sure that Horowitz’s speech got shut down: in today’s politically correct world, the “rights” of radical Muslims to murder women who run afoul of Sharia law apparently trumps the right of David Horowitz to criticize those murders. So, naturally, Horowitz needed to be silenced.
The Emory University College Republicans, which sponsored Horowitz’s speech, issued a press release describing what happened:
On Wednesday evening, the Emory University Chapter of the College Republicans hosted acclaimed author and activist David Horowitz for a lecture on radical Islam as part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. From the beginning of Horowitz’s speech, rowdy protesters continually interrupted him and less than half an hour into the event, the crowd became so disruptive that police were called in and Horowitz had to be escorted off stage.
Over 300 people - a cross-section of students, professors, and Atlanta community members - packed into White Hall where the event was held. The audience included a wide range of Leftists from Amnesty International, Veterans for Peace, and Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as Muslim groups such as the Muslim Student Association. In addition, members of “National Project to Defend Dissent & Critical Thinking in Academia,” an organization dedicated to opposing Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week events throughout the country, participated in the protests dressed in orange attire as a reference to Guantanamo Bay. There was also a sizable group of men and women dressed in traditional Muslim garb as well as students wearing Kafiyehs, a symbol of Arab solidarity.
“I’ve spoken at Emory University several times and I’ve never seen it this bad,” said Horowitz responding to the crowd as they shouted and jeered. “This is exactly what the fascists did in Germany in the 1930s.” Protesters began their efforts as soon as Horowitz was introduced with boos and chants of “Heil Hitler.” Despite the people who stood with their backs to Horowitz and the shouting of obscenities and other remarks from audience members, Horowitz attempted to deliver his speech that covered academic freedom and radical Islam. The loud chants, sign-waving, and disruptive gestures continued to escalate from audience members until the atmosphere was so chaotic that even the police present were unable to subdue the crowd. Horowitz was led off stage and left the campus under tight security, and the event came to an abrupt end.
This is yet another example of how college campuses no longer have any tolerance for diversity of thought. Free speech is only welcome on campus if you say the right things.
5 October 2007 @ 9:12AM >>
If an extremist group such as the Ku Klux Klan sponsored rallies in Washington D.C. that drew hundreds of thousands of people, I suspect the media would report who was behind the protests.
But several years ago, when anti-war protesters started rallying under the banners of communist relics, the media kept silent. The fact that the media was ignoring the radical element of the groups organizing the anti-war rallies was the prime reason that I was motivated to shoot the first few videos for this site.
Now that the protest movement has fizzled, a little light is finally being shed on the shady groups that sponsor the rallies. Reuters reports:
Saturday’s protest, sponsored by the Troops Out Now Coalition, came two weeks after an antiwar event sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition, which drew roughly 10,000 people. ANSWER also sponsored a rally in March.
The groups’ agendas are similar, opposing what they call “imperialist” U.S. policy not only in Iraq but toward countries like Cuba and Iran — which has alienated some supporters.
[...]
Both groups’ leaders were associated with the Workers World Party, which advocates a shift toward a Soviet-style planned economy. But a 2004 dispute prompted some members to form the splinter Party for Socialism and Liberation.
I wouldn’t exactly call this extensive reporting—only two sentences alluding to the extremism of the organizers—but these few words are still the most I’ve seen the establishment press write about the ideological underpinnings of the protest movement. And this is years after the fact, and only after the groups proved ineffective. Why are we just hearing about this now? Why hasn’t this been more extensively reported? Or even reported at all?
My suspicion is that reporters feared mentioning this sooner because it would have marginalized the protest movement. The protest leaders would be seen for the extremists that they are.
Perhaps I should be thankful for the media not doing its job. If this information had been reported several years ago when the story was still relevant, I might not have ended up with a career as a filmmaker.
24 November 2006 @ 3:00PM >>
The New York Postnotes that it’s been over a month-and-a-half since left-wing students at Columbia University launched a near-riot in order to silence a speaker invited by the student College Republicans group:
[W]hat transpired that night is clear: Just as Jim Gilchrist, founder of the anti-illegal-immigration Minuteman Project, opened his remarks at a campus event sponsored by the college’s Republican Club, thugs bum-rushed the stage and physically attacked the speaker.
Their assault was premeditated. Gilchrist was barely able to utter a word before being hustled away by security.
Apart from some boilerplate rhetoric immediately after the attack, university President Lee Bollinger has had little of substance to say about it.
Despite promises from the university to investigate the incident, so far, nothing has happened:
Since then, not a word of apology has been offered to those whose rights were trampled - nor an ounce of punishment meted out to the offenders.
The only thing, in fact, that Columbia’s administrators have done is to announce an “investigation” - which, of course, they would do.
Beyond that, Columbia’s silent.
* No comment on when the investigation might wrap up.
* No comment on how many students are under investigation.
* No comment on how many face possible expulsion.
Maybe Columbia’s hoping the whole matter will simply go away.
Or perhaps the administration is just too scared to confront its brownshirts.
This is not complicated: Students and faculty have rights to invite speakers to the campus. Others have rights to hear them. Those who wish to protest have rights to do so. No one, however, shall have the right or the power to use the cover of protest to silence speakers. This is a sacrosanct and inviolable principle.
Mr. Bollinger was right: this isn’t complicated. There wasn’t much to investigate; the perpetrators were caught on video and could be easily identified by other members of the campus community. The only real question was whether Columbia University had the institutional fortitude to punish people whose crime was shutting down the speech of an ideological minority. Would President Bollinger stand up to the brownshirts, especially when those brownshirts seem to represent so many on campus?
These are reassuring words. And I hope Mr. Bollinger intends to stand by them and see that the principles therein are enforced at Columbia. I’ll believe it when I see it, though; Columbia doesn’t exactly have a stellar reputation when it comes to these politically-charged investigations.
I’d prefer for my suspicions to be proven wrong. But there’s not much time left for Columbia to stand up for the principles that President Bollinger claims are cherished by the university he leads.
In this case especially, justice delayed is justice denied. As this semester draws to a close, some students will leave campus with their degrees. The school won’t be in a position to punish students once they’ve already graduated. So unless the school is holding its fire until people forget or until any punishment would be moot, Columbia should either announce its findings or a timetable for delivering them. Otherwise, it looks like yet another cover-up at Columbia.
9 October 2006 >>
If you set foot on a college campus these days, you’ll be bombarded with feel-good buzzwords intended to convince you of how caring and inclusive the environment is.
The words “tolerance” and “diversity” are drilled into students’ heads from orientation on, but it doesn’t take savvy students long to figure out just how empty those concepts are in academia these days.
The concept of diversity is only skin deep; everyone is welcomed regardless of color or sexual orientation—as long as they don’t deviate from the narrow ideological framework that dominates many college campuses. Diversity of thought—presumably the most important type of diversity in an institution whose purpose is to enrich the mind—is not valued. And tolerance never seems to extend to those who reject the worldview that schools attempt to impose.
Students stormed the stage at Columbia University’s Roone auditorium yesterday, knocking over chairs and tables and attacking Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minutemen, a group that patrols the border between America and Mexico.
Mr. Gilchrist and Marvin Stewart, another member of his group, were in the process of giving a speech at the invitation of the Columbia College Republicans. They were escorted off the stage unharmed and exited the auditorium by a back door.
[...]
The student protesters, who attended the event clad in white as a sign of dissent, booed and shouted the speakers down throughout. They interrupted Mr. Stewart, who is African-American, when he referred to the Declaration of Independence’s self-evident truth that “All men are created equal,” calling him a racist, a sellout, and a black white supremacist.
A student’s demand that Mr. Stewart speak in Spanish elicited thundering applause and brought the protesters to their feet. The protesters remained standing, turned their backs on Mr. Stewart for the remainder of his remarks, and drowned him out by chanting, “Wrap it up, wrap it up!” Mr. Stewart appeared unfazed by their behavior. He simply smiled and bellowed, “No wonder you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“These are racist individuals heading a project that terrorizes immigrants on the U.S.-Mexican border,” Ryan Fukumori, a Columbia junior who took part in the protest, told The New York Sun. “They have no right to be able to speak here.”
As of now, the Columbia administration has taken absolutely no disciplinary action launched an investigation.
If it infuriates you to read this, then you may want to be sure you’ve taken your medications before watching the video.
Update: Columbia University president Lee Bollinger released a statement on the incident, which I’ve excerpted:
The disruption on Wednesday night that resulted in the termination of an event organized by the Columbia College Republicans in Lerner Hall represents, in my judgment, one of the most serious breaches of academic faith that can occur in a university such as ours.
Of course, the University is thoroughly investigating the incident, and it is critically important not to prejudge the outcome of that inquiry with respect to individuals. But, as we made clear in our University statements on both Wednesday night and Thursday, we must speak out to deplore a disruption that threatens the central principle to which we are institutionally dedicated, namely to respect the rights of others to express their views.
This is not complicated: Students and faculty have rights to invite speakers to the campus. Others have rights to hear them. Those who wish to protest have rights to do so. No one, however, shall have the right or the power to use the cover of protest to silence speakers. This is a sacrosanct and inviolable principle.
It is unacceptable to seek to deprive another person of his or her right of expression through actions such as taking a stage and interrupting the speech. We rightly have a visceral rejection of this behavior, because we all sense how easy it is to slide from our collective commitment to the hard work of intellectual confrontation to the easy path of physical brutishness. When the latter happens, we know instinctively we are all threatened.
These are reassuring words. And I hope Mr. Bollinger intends to stand by them and see that the principles therein are enforced at Columbia. I’ll believe it when I see it, though; Columbia doesn’t exactly have a stellar reputation when it comes to these politically-charged investigations.
24 June 2006 @ 5:50PM >>
The sad thing is, these demands will probably be met:
Like generations of citizens before them, California State University, Chico, students Alba Miranda, Hector Najera and Rene Ochoa descended on the Capitol on Monday to petition members of the Legislature.
Except the three honor students aren’t citizens — they’re illegal immigrants, who under state law have a legal right to in-state tuition at California’s colleges and universities, but are not eligible for financial aid.
Dozens of students like them from across California came to Sacramento to urge legislators to support a measure — Senate Bill 160 by Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles — that would allow them to apply for such assistance.
“This legislation would just allow us to be able to fill out applications and compete for a scholarship,” Ochoa said.
The measure has cleared the Senate and is scheduled to be heard Tuesday by the Assembly Higher Education Committee. Cedillo predicts it will land on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk later this summer, as immigration heats up as an election year issue.
31 May 2006 >>
Last year, ProtestWarrior—the counter-protester group known for mocking anti-war protesters with clever signs and strong spines—had their website hacked. Thousands of credit card numbers were stolen by the hacker, apparently a left-wing activist named Jeremy Alexander Hammond, who targeted ProtestWarrior because of the political views of the site’s operators. (Does that make it a hate crime?)
After the FBI started looking into Hammond, he claimed that the investigation was politically motivated. (Would the FBI not typically investigate the theft of thousands of credit card numbers?) Now Hammond’s looking at hard time: an indictment was handed down last week for a crime that could carry a jail term of up to five years.
I suspect you’ll see more attempts to use technology to stifle political opponents. Until now, the Internet has been used primarily to enable speech. But it can also being used to suppress it. A number of other prominent websites have also been taken offline by hackers, and that’s just one incident in one day.
Throughout history, people have been executed and books have been burned in attempts to stamp out ideas. Humans always seem to have an urge to muzzle people who disagree with them. As more speech moves online, so will the attempts to stop it.
P.S. While I was over at ProtestWarrior, I ran across this link to a description of how The San Francisco Chronicle cropped a photograph at an anti-war rally to remove the more extreme visual elements. It’s a perfect example of how the establishment media sanitizes reporting of the protest movement, scrubbing away any hint of the more radical left-wing elements behind the protests.
4 May 2006 >>
Stuart Browning, one of my business partners in On The Fence Films, stopped by the May Day protest in San Francisco to gather some footage. He also noticed signs and banners from the various extremist groups that backed the protest, and wonders why the establishment media is glossing over the radical nature of the organizers.
El Uno de Mayo, his two-city report (which incorporates some of my footage from New York), is now available for free online viewing.
4 May 2006 >>
Earlier today, Power Line posted an in-depth video report of the May Day protests held around the country this past Monday. The effort was coordinated by documentary filmmaker Andrew Marcus, who edited and narrated the report
I shot some of the New York City footage, and contributed a few comments to the report via phone interview. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been able to dedicate enough time to creating a short video for Brain Terminal, but with the work on Indoctrinate U winding down this summer, I hope to be able to post some new videos of my own in the not-too-distant future.
2 May 2006 @ 4:07PM >>
Stuart Browning, one of my partners in On The Fence Films, took his video camera to the May Day protest in San Francisco yesterday. For now, he’s got a series of stills from the rally; in a few days, he’ll be posting a video covering multiple cities.
Also, documentarian Andrew Marcus leads a multi-city team in covering the protests in conjunction with PowerLine and Pajamas Media. He’s got a few scenes from the protests, and will also be following up with more footage later this week.
The Montgomery County schools’ decision to grant students community service credit for attending Monday’s immigration rights protest is raising concern among some parents as well as activists who say officials should focus on education, not political advocacy.
[...]
Student participation in the event is being organized by CASA of Maryland Inc., a Silver Spring-based group that works with the Latino community. It is CASA’s role — as organizer — that has some questioning whether the school system is allowing an outside group to push its political agenda on students. “I do understand that CASA offers some worthy services to immigrants and that’s noble, but it’s a stretch to allow students to protest for a particular side of an issue,” said parent Melissa Andersen. “I’m taken aback by it. I think it’s poor judgment.”
[...]
Maryland students are required to put in 60 hours of community service to graduate from high school. They can undertake a number of activities — including working for political campaigns — as long as the work is done for a secular, nonprofit community organization that is tax-exempt and that school officials have approved.
It would be interesting to see what other organizations have been approved by school officials. I think it is unwise to offer school credit in the name of community service for political advocacy. But if the school board insists on granting credit for one type of political activity, then they should be even-handed and give credit without regard to the political orientation of that activity. Otherwise, it is quite obvious that the school system is attempting to encourage students to adopt a particular set of political views.
School board member Stephen N. Abrams [...] said students have the right to express their opinions, and if they choose to do so at a political rally — as long as they abide by the credit rules — they should not be barred from participating.
“The last time I checked, the First Amendment is not a right to question what the speech is,” he said. “I’m sure if students were participating in a tax cap rally, these same people would not be objecting to that.”
Perhaps. But would the school district offer credit for a rally in support of lower taxes? Do such rallies even exist? Maybe that’s part of the problem. For whatever reason, leftists seem more prone to public protesting than others. People who want lower taxes are more likely to engage in other forms of political activity instead of marching around holding signs and chanting slogans.
I’m attempting to find out whether the Montgomery County school system has ever given credit to students for attending other political rallies.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to report my findings soon.
30 August 2005 @ 11:06AM >>
Documentary filmmaker Andrew Marcus recently told me he’d be traveling to Crawford, Texas to cover the protesters and anti-protesters. That was a few days ago, and he has now posted some pictures and video from his visit.
I had to e-mail you about this little sentence here:
“When some female students saw that the [Women’s Resource Center] was in the business of arranging trips to political protests, they asked for similar help setting up a trip to a rally with a different political philosophy. The students were turned down.”
I’m just curious if you have any additional details about which rally we’re talking about here. I could almost feel you batting your eyelashes innocently when I read that, so I’m wondering if these other female students weren’t attempting to be demonstrative. I know in the past here at [my university], I’ve seen exactly this type of behavior. A group is offended by some attention their opposition is receiving from the University, and asks for permission to do something completely out of the question just to get the “no” answer. It’s happened *quite* a few times recently.
On the other hand, I’ll just go ahead and concede your general point that these groups tend to be affiliated with more liberal than conservative philosophies. Except at Bob Jones University...
Hope all is well!
Always,
Court
Court,
The rally that the Women’s Resource Center sponsored was the “March for Women’s Lives,” which was billed as a pro-choice rally, but from all the pictures and videos I’ve seen, it was indistinguishable from any other anti-Bush administration rally. (Perhaps there was a higher percentage of hand-drawn vaginas on signs that bore the slogan “Bush out of my Bush,” but I’ve seen those at anti-war rallies as well.)
The female students approached the WRC about sponsoring a trip to an anti-abortion rally.
Their request seems pretty fair and legitimate to me—perhaps not to others, the WRC being an obvious example—and in my mind is another bit of evidence showing that the WRC has a political agenda that goes beyond merely “serving women.”
10 March 2005 @ 1:16PM >>
Amir Taheri poses some important questions to leftist protesters:
[T]he Arab street seems to be heading for an explosion. From North Africa to the Persian Gulf and passing by the Levant, people have been coming together in various “Arab streets” to make their feelings and opinions known.
[...]
In almost every case we are witnessing a new kind of citizens’ movement, an Arab version of people power in action. But the most important feature of these demonstrations is that they are concerned not with imagined external enemies, be it Israel or the United States, but with the real deficiencies of contemporary Arab societies. In almost every case the key demand is for a greater say for the people in deciding the affairs of the nation.
[...]
What is interesting is that there are, as yet, no signs, that the “Western street” may, at some point, come out in support of the new “Arab street.”
[...]
I spent part of last week ringing up the organizers of the anti-war events with a couple of questions. The first: Would they allow anyone from the newly-elected Iraqi parliament to address the gatherings? The second: Would the marches include expressions of support for the democracy movement in Arab and other Muslim countries, notably Iraq, Lebanon and Syria?
In both cases the answer was a categorical no, accompanied by a torrent of abuse about “all those who try to justify American aggression against Iraq.”
[...]
Why are so many Westerners, living in mature democracies, ready to march against the toppling of a despot in Iraq but unwilling to take to the streets in support of the democratic movement in the Middle East?
Is it because many of those who will be marching in support of Saddam Hussein this month are the remnants of totalitarian groups in the West plus a variety of misinformed idealists and others blinded by anti-Americanism?
Or is it because they secretly believe that the Arabs do not deserve anything better than Saddam Hussein?
Those interested in the health of Western democracies would do well to ponder those questions.
