From college campuses to community centers across the country, students and other activists have faced orchestrated and aggressive attacks when speaking in support of Palestinian rights. Many have had their viewpoints shut down and have even been called anti-Semitic. Once vibrant forums for free speech are becoming restrictive places where individuals daring to speak out against injustice are unabashedly bullied.
On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, thousands of people converged on Washington, D.C. to see Barack Obama sworn in for his second term as president. Some of those people were celebrating the inauguration. Some of them were protesters.
Make no mistake, Aaron was a criminal and, despite popular belief, there was no prosecutorial overreach.
Army surveillance, like Army regimentation, is at war with the principles of the First Amendment. . . There can be no influence more paralyzing of that objective than Army surveillance. When an intelligence officer looks over every nonconformist’s shoulder in the library, or walks invisibly by his side in a picket line, or infiltrates his club, the America once extolled as the voice of liberty heard around the world no longer is cast in the image which Jefferson and Madison designed . . .