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Our Constitution in every language is our greatest defense against bigotry.

The First Amendment Looks Especially [...]

(Photo courtesy of the ACLU)

This post originally appeared at the American Civil Liberties Union website.

In 2006, a human rights advocate, who is a friend, wasprevented from boarding his flight from New York to California because of Arabic.

My friend was wearing a T-shirt with the words We will not be silent in both Arabic and English. He was told he could not fly until the offending Arabic script was covered. And lest we think our issues with Arabic have resolved themselves in the last decade, remember that simplyspeaking Arabic on an airplanewas grounds for removal from a flight just last year.

How we got to this point is a complicated matter, but the path forward doesnt have to be.

Lest we think our issues with Arabic have resolved themselves in the last decade, remember that simplyspeaking Arabic on an airplanewas grounds for removal from a flight just last year.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Arab-Americans and American Muslims have come to be viewed by some of our fellow citizens and our own government as either victims of hate or potential perpetrators of violence. The latter view dictates we should be seen through a securitized lens and has produced profiling and surveillance of our communities,watch lists and special registry programs, to name but a few programs targeting us.

However, both oversimplifications fail to capture the experience ofbeing Arab or Muslim in post-9/11 America, and last years presidential campaign demonstrated that with extraordinary clarity. We have heard condemnation of thesurge in hate crimesbut little discussion on how the rhetoric during the election contributed to that hate, particularly by leading policy makers and candidates. Instead of challenging bigoted misinformation, some candidates furthered it.

At aNew Hampshire town hall, a voter declared to then-candidate Trump,We have a problem in this country. Its called Muslims. He concluded by asking, When can we get rid of them? Mr. Trumps answer: We are going to be looking at a lot of different things.

One could reasonably suggest President Trumps Muslim bans, inboth incarnations, were the logical continuation of that conversation in New Hampshire. The Muslim ban is a candidate delivering on a campaign promise unlike any we have seen in our lifetime.

Thankfully, it is not that simple in our country.

Standing in the path between bigotry and policy is our Constitution. In this case, specifically the First Amendment.

Standing in the path between bigotry and policy is our Constitution. In this case, specifically the First Amendment.

Among the five freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment are freedom of speech and the right to religious freedom. Thus far, numerous judges have found the bans to be in violation of our First Amendment and their implementation has been stalled. In the guise of keeping us safe, Trump has proposed unnecessary, ineffective policies that sow fear. Americans know it, and responded by showing up at our nations airports with banners and legal pads to defend our Constitution and protect the people most impacted, including those who speak the feared language of Arabic. In addition to winning the first stay of the ban, the ACLU has launched a We the People campaign that features the First Amendment translated into other languages, including Arabic, and is displaying it in ads and billboards. Seeing the First Amendment in Arabic is particularly satisfying at this moment as a fitting reminder that those words apply to all of us.

I worked on Capitol Hill on Sept. 11, and I was in the room when Attorney General John Ashcroft first presented the Patriot Act to congressional leadership. Many at the time asked: Are we striking the right balance between protecting our national security and our civil liberties? We should always remember that if we are told we must choose one or the other, we are being offered a false choice and a shortsighted remedy that will provide neither. The same goes for bigoted, undemocratic policies demanding that we choose between freedom or safety.

Like those who advance them, policy remedies can either move our country forward or take us back.

The slogan on my friends shirt belonged to a resistance campaign led by theWhite Rose, an extraordinary group of young people who were brutally executed for distributing leaflets in opposition to Nazi policies in Germany during World War II. The phrase We will not be silent is how they concluded theirfourth resistance flyer.

Our fear of Arabic or more specifically, of Arabs and Muslims remains a problem for some, including those who currently hold some important positions in our government. It is driving anincrease in incidents of hateand bad policies. We hope they will soon get over that irrational fear but until they do, we too will not be silent and are protected by the words of our Constitution and the judges sworn to uphold them.

After all, remember that my friend who was targeted for the two words of Arabic on his T-shirt is protected by the 34 words of Arabic or 45 in English appearing on a billboard near you.

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The First Amendment Looks Especially Beautiful in Arabic - BillMoyers - BillMoyers.com

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A Missouri church's playground is now a First Amendment exercise for Supreme Court Miami Herald A U-turn by Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens might let the air out of a highly anticipated Supreme Court challenge to the state's 2012 rejection of a church school's scrap-tire grant application. While the complex clash pitting the First Amendment against ... Will Gorsuch Reshape the First Amendment This Summer?Rewire all 32 news articles »

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A Missouri church's playground is now a First Amendment exercise for Supreme Court - Miami Herald

News By Whitney McDonald | April 14, 2017

Amazon is using the First Amendment to argue that its customers commands to Echo devices should remain private. The company hopes to stop law enforcement from using the recordings in criminal investigations.

Customers may be unaware that their conversations with the Echos Alexa are being stored. Questions and Alexas answers are retrievable through the app.

I think it should be my option to release recordings and have myself recorded, Echo user Vanessa Ortolan said.

Amazon was asked to turn over the recordings during a murder investigation in Arkansas. Amazon denied the request at first and told authorities that they could obtain that information through a different source.

By implication they said that that should also prevent them from having to hand over search histories from the Amazon Echo, said Lansing attorney Collin Nyeholt. I can see that would be a logical extension (of the First Amendment) because whether youre typing a search into an Amazon search box as opposed to saying it outloud to an Amazon Echo I think that the same protection would apply.

Users are changing the way they use and trust Alexa considering the Echo stores personal information such as home addresses, phone numbers and credit card numbers.

Amazon has claimed that the conversations between the user and Alexa are protected under free speech in the First Amendment.

Amazon does not seek to obstruct any lawful investigation, but rather seeks to protect the privacy rights of its customers, Amazon said in the Memorandum of Law in Support of Amazons Motion to Quash Search Warrant. When the government is seeking their data from Amazon, especially when that data may include expressive content protected by the First Amendment, the memo said.

There is a very delicate balance that we strike in this society and what we let law enforcement do to keep us safe versus letting them go too far so we dont become a police state, Nyeholt said. The unfortunate result is that there are things law enforcement could be doing more of but we say thats too much of a violation of peoples rights were not going to let them do it even if it lets bad people off of the hook.

I am a student studying Journalism at Michigan State University. I am currently writing news concerning the "First Amendment". I aspire to report on politics and news as I continue on in my career.

This Michigan State journalism project looks at how First Amendment freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition are exercised and tested during the first 100 days of the Trump administration.

Link:
Amazon uses First Amendment to protect users' Echo commands - Spartan Newsroom

By Eric London 15 April 2017

In a speech Thursday at a Washington, DC think tank, CIA Director Michael Pompeo called the whistleblower site WikiLeaks a non-state hostile intelligence service and said news organizations that reveal the governments crimes are enemies of the United States.

Pompeos remarks announce an open break with the First Amendments protection of freedom of speech and a threat that the Trump administration will not tolerate opposition to war, surveillance and corporate plunder.

Referring to WikiLeaks founder, Pompeo declared that Julian Assange has no First Amendment freedoms. Pompeos remarks were prompted by Assanges April 11 op-ed in the Washington Post, in which the whistleblower defended WikiLeaks. The threat of US prosecution or assassination has forced Assange to seek refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012.

In his remarks, Pompeo said, We have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.

Pompeo is the head of an organization whose record in criminality, illegality and murder is unsurpassed. Over the course of its 69 year history, the CIA has overseen assassinations and coups dtat, trained and armed fascistic death squads, collaborated with dictators, and, following 9/11, established a global network of black site torture chambers, giving rise to a new vocabulary of words like extraordinary rendition, advanced interrogation, and rectal rehydration. The number of people killed by the CIA and its collaborators over the years is in the millions.

Organizations like WikiLeaks have exposed government actions that violate the US Constitution and international law. Had it not been for individuals like Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, the public would have never learned about the National Security Agencys mass surveillance, the Guantanamo Bay prison operating procedures, many of the worst US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the Democratic Partys efforts to force through the nomination of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 party primaries.

Pompeo called these exposures false narratives that increasingly define our public discourse and demean and distort the work and achievements of the CIA. Those who are behind them are committing treason.

This thuggish statement is a direct threat aimed at Assange and all who oppose the crimes of the government. In the US, the punishment for treason is death. Last November, Pompeo argued that whistleblower Edward Snowden should be put to death.

There is an element of trepidation in Pompeos remarks. He and the military-intelligence apparatus are concerned that in the absence of a vocal rebuttal, these voices, ones that proclaim treason to be public advocacy, gain a gravity they do not deserve.

The government is frustrated that figures like Assange, Snowden and Manning are widely regarded as popular heroes. In todays digital environment, Pompeo said, whistleblowers can disseminate stolen US secrets instantly around the globe to terrorists, dictators, hackers and anyone else seeking to do us harm.

Pompeo launched a personal attack on Assange, calling him a darling of terrorists, a narcissist, a fraud, and a coward. Assange and his ilk make common cause with dictators, Pompeo said.

Assange and his kind are not the slightest bit interested in improving civil liberties or enhancing personal freedom. They champion nothing but their own celebrity, he added. Their currency is click-bait, their moral compass nonexistent, their mission personal self-aggrandizement through the destruction of Western values.

Pompeo also made clear that he considers as enemies those who grant a platform to these leakers. Many of these groups may be smalland I mentioned one particular character a few times [i.e. Assange]but its much bigger than that. Its much broader and deeper than that.

Pompeo compared opposition news organizations to terrorist groups and countries like North Korea and Syria that are presently targets of US military intervention. This new threat, he said, has as its motive the destruction of America in the very same way that those countries do. And Im confident this administration will pursue them with great vigor.

The CIA director attacks Assange for comparing himself to Thomas Jefferson in the Washington Post op-ed and then explains that the government relies on legitimate news organizations such as the New York Times and the Washington Post to protect against this threat of misinformation and propaganda. He called the corporate media truth-tellers extraordinaire and said, Im hopeful that we will get some of the truth-telling from these people.

In fact, Pompeos praise for the corporate media affirms the prescience of Jefferson himself, who wrote in a 1785 letter to the Dutch statesman Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp:

The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers to keep the nation quiet.

Pompeos speech has been uncritically cited by the Times and other corporate media sources who serve as the standing army of American imperialism. The Times covered Pompeos remarks only to criticize them as the latest sign that neither Mr. Trump nor many of his most senior officials consider themselves beholden to statements they made or stances they took in the presidential campaign, citing the fact that Pompeo once tweeted a link to WikiLeaks documents targeting Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The fact that Pompeos fascistic rant calling for the abolition of free speech has passed without criticism is the product of two parallel and interrelated processes bound up with the growth of social inequality and the decline of the USs world economic position.

First, the government is controlled by an oligarchic ruling class made up of powerful banks and corporations that have empowered the military and intelligence agencies to wage 25 years of permanent war aimed at securing world domination and access to cheap labor and resources. The marriage between the two political parties, Wall Street and the military-intelligence agencies has purged the media and political establishment of any genuinely oppositional voices. A figure like Donald Trump could have only emerged out of such a toxic climate of militarism and political reaction.

Second, permanent war and growing social inequality have created widespread social opposition in the working class to the policies of war, domestic surveillance and corporate dictatorship. Aware of growing subterranean discontent, the government is declaring that opposition is treasonous and illegal. Pompeos speech lays out the new standard: The First Amendment only applies to speech that the CIA deems tolerable.

Here is the original post:
CIA Director calls WikiLeaks an enemy, says Assange has no First Amendment freedoms - World Socialist Web Site

New York Times

Can Churches Hire Police? Alabama Legislators Reckon With the First Amendment New York Times After the shooting at Sandy Hook and in the wake of similar assaults at churches and schools, Briarwood recognized the need to provide qualified first responders to coordinate with local law enforcement who so heroically and effectively serve their ... A Church Can Have its Own Police Force, Alabama's Senate DecidedNewsweek Bill Text: AL SB193 | 2017 | Regular Session | Introduced | LegiScanLegiScan Church Can Start Its Own Police Force, Alabama Senate SaysNPR Big Story AP - Associated Press -Briarwood Presbyterian Church, PCA -Alabama Public Radio all 74 news articles »

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Can Churches Hire Police? Alabama Legislators Reckon With the First Amendment - New York Times