A must read

BuzzFlash links us to a wonderful article found in the San Francisco Chronicle for January 4. It's much too long to quote, but it starts this way:

When President Bush travels around the United States, the Secret Service visits the location ahead of time and orders local police to set up "free speech zones" or "protest zones," where people opposed to Bush policies (and sometimes sign-carrying supporters) are quarantined. These zones routinely succeed in keeping protesters out of presidential sight and outside the view of media covering the event.

And it gets better from there, citing a number of cases where protesters were "secured" far from the target of the protest (Bush) at the specific insistence of the Secret Service - and were arrested if they didn't cooperate. One case in particular caught my attention.

Police have repressed protesters during several Bush visits to the St. Louis area as well. When Bush visited on Jan. 22, 150 people carrying signs were shunted far away from the main action and effectively quarantined.

Denise Lieberman of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri commented, "No one could see them from the street. In addition, the media were not allowed to talk to them. The police would not allow any media inside the protest area and wouldn't allow any of the protesters out of the protest zone to talk to the media."

It's no longer possible to deny that there is a deliberate, conscious, evil policy of making protest literally invisible while maintaining a fiction of free speech. The First Amendment, at least where Bush is concerned, is being disappeared.

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