No Talking in the Library

As Quaker Dave notes, in Get up. Stand up. Get busted, "Free speech in this country is in serious trouble, especially when it comes to debating the war or anything having to do with the military."

The Quaker Agitator is referring to a recent incident involving a former Gulf War Vet and his wife who were in the Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library in Ohio, when they noticed two military recruiters trying to enlist someone in the next room. Deciding to have her say, the wife wrote a few messages on 3x5 cards & placed them on a window sill.

“Don’t fall for it! Military recruiters lie,” said one.

“It’s not honorable to fight for a lying President,” said another.

This episode was reported by The Progressive's Matthew Rothschild, Vet Prosecuted for Opposing Recruitment in Library, who added:

The recruiters were none too happy with the cards.

One of them came out and asked Coil who put them up.

When she admitted she had, he asked for her name, which she didn’t give him.

He told her that she and her husband couldn’t put the cards up.

“My husband asked him if he was trying to keep us from using our freedom of speech,” Coil says.

He didn’t answer that, she says, but he did tell her again to stop.

He took the cards and went to find the library director.

In the meantime, Coil put some more card on the sill:

“Don’t do it.”

“My husband is a Gulf War Veteran. He can tell you the TRUTH.”

“To the military, you are cannon fodder.”

“Recruiters: You’re fighting for my freedom of speech, too!”"

The library director, Doug Dotterer, told them that if they put up one more card, he was going to ask them to leave, Coil says. He told them they couldn’t display things that were disturbing other people in the library. She told him that the Army had its brochures out on a nearby table, and they were disturbing her, she says.

“My husband said that the library was a public place and we are allowed our freedom of speech,” Coil says. “The director said it was his library, and so we would have to follow his rules.”

* * * *

But on his way out, Tim called the director a name.

“One more word from you and I’ll arrest you,” the police officer told Tim.

Then Tim shouted, “Don’t let the military recruit people in the library.”

Whereupon the police arrested him and took him to the station and booked him for disorderly conduct.

* * * *

The police report says Coil was arrested for “causing a disturbance within a library.”

Quaker Dave expresses his objections to allowing military recruiters in publically-funded places, like schools and libraries -- especially in light of the aggressive tactics being employed these days (which I agree with).

The free speech (or lack thereof) issues are also extremely troublesome to me. Incidents such as this, as well as the man who was arrested for approaching the vice president and saying, ' 'Your policies in Iraq are reprehensible,' see Reprehensible You, are all signs of the erosion of our First Amendment rights to freedom of expression. By playing to our fears post-9/11, with a slogan of "you have no civil liberties if you are dead," the government has slowly, but surely eviscerated our constitutional rights beyond recognition.

I'm not suggesting that the current Administration is the first to try to muzzle anti-government protesters, but this gang has taken it to a new level. By using national security as a means to quell dissent, through tactics such as proactive arrests to minimize political demonstrations, see Just Calm Down, Please, to "Free Speech Zones" or Protest Areas, see “Free-Speech Zone”, where protesters herded to keep the Administration far from the maddening crowd, we've grown accustomed to not being permitted to say our piece. Speech has been chilled -- if not frozen. As I said before, when we reach this point, Dead or Alive -- It's Lost.

Tags: Civil Liberties, Law, Politics