I won't though, because I wouldn't want to abuse my free speech privilege. Sarah Palin, who aspires to be Vice President of the United States, a job that requires upholding our Constitution, has reminded us lately that freedom of speech is a privilege that the press should not abuse. Indeed, I clearly recall how in 8th grade history we learned the first ten amendments to the Constitution (they formed what was called the Bill of Privileges), and that the first privilege listed after the Privilege of Religion was the Privilege of Freedom of Speech.
Another privilege we learned about was the Privilege of the People to Peaceably Assemble. I'm sure that if Sarah Palin ever gets to be president she'll keep us on the straight and narrow there, too.[Right: Some women peaceably assembled to ask politely to be granted privilege to vote. "Please, sirs, with sugar on top!"]
Our activist Supreme Court, abusing its privilege to interpret the Constitution, declared decades ago that people retain privileges of association, asserting they could not otherwise exercise their speech and assembly privileges. Palin has clearly understood how wrong this is.
When Palin accused Barack Obama of associating "with terrorists who targeted our own country" she referred to the fact that Bill Ayers, who helped found the Weather Underground when Obama was 8, and Barack Obama have both worked on the same two non-profit boards. Palin would regard that as an abuse of the privilege of association.
She's absolutely right. Suppose I'm helping put out a fire, at, say, a kindergarten, and I know that the guy passing me buckets of water is none other than Bill Ayers, who blew up a critical Pentagon file-cabinet once. I should walk away from that fire because associating with known terrorists is always wrong, wrong, wrong. The kindergarteners would understand, when they got older, if they weren't burned to a crisp. If they were burned to a crisp, they'd have to ask themselves in the afterlife what the heck were they doing going to a kindergarten in the same neighborhood with a known terrorist?
[Above: President Lyndon B. Johnson shakes hands with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the signing of the landmark Civil Privileges Act of 1964.]As if just to show you don't have to be republican to have the same kind of grasp of law on privilege as Sarah Palin, this past weekend the administration of our Democratic Mayor Greg Nickels put out a Notice of Land Use Violation threatening to fine a long list of individuals and associations for their support of Nickelsville, at least one of whom was listed for the sole crime of having emailed his support to another of them.
The Notice of Violation notably lists SHARE/WHEEL, the homeless grassroots organization that was NOT responsible for Nickelsville, as a supporter, and includes mention of its Vancouver, Washington, office. But the Vancouver WA office is that of an entirely different organization that just happens to have the name Share.
Therefore Nickels carries Sarah Palin's thinking a step further. Not only should people not do good things if the wrong people join in, they should also pay for having the wrong name. Again, this is as it should be. Share House, Vancouver, started in 1977. SHARE/WHEEL started in 1990. Share House has had 18 of its 31 years in existence to change its name. They have totally abused their privilege of name-having.
But Nickels went too far listing John and Jane Doe as "Persons Responsible For The Violations".
We know what he's doing. He's getting ready to fine everybody who so much as wrote a letter to the editor in support of Nickelsville, $150 a day, every day it exists.
Now we need everyone who cares about Nickelsville and the RIGHT of homeless people to survive to declare themselves to be John or Jane Doe -- I am John Doe.
[Below: I already posted this on my other blog Run Off, but it's worth posting again.]
Spartacus [I now think the subtitles are in Turkish.]
