It is dangerous to be right when the rulers are wrong.
—Voltaire
While anti-tax activists wrapped themselves in the ethos of the Boston Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street is beginning to resemble the Boston Massacre. Very early Tuesday, an army of hundreds of cops in riot gear blockaded Liberty Plaza. They then barred reporters from covering the action. Police pushed away or arrested reporters at barricades blocks away from the park. NYPD helicopters refused to allow news helicopters from filming the raid from the air. Once they had secured a media blackout, the NYPD stormed the camp. As they did, the Occupiers reportedly chanted “This is what a police state looks like…” You can’t really argue with them. Their “crime” may have been a technical violation of sanitation codes. By the city’s own logic, then, a massive SWAT team was deployed on a military scale to prevent littering. This is self-evidently nonsense. Their real crime was speaking.
This escalation of the police intimidation campaign against OWS reveals that “free speech” may be an oxymoron in America. As grainy cellphone videos attest, police gassed and viciously beat protesters without apparent provocation.
The raid makes Mayor Michael Bloomberg look like a cartoon villain. Bloomberg is the 12th richest man in America. He made his billions with Bloomberg News, which reports on Wall Street for the super rich. He changed term limit laws so that he could be mayor indefinitely. After the raid, a judge ordered the city to allow the protesters to return and give them back their tents. Bloomberg used the police to barricade the square for several hours while he shopped around for a different judge who would give him the ruling he wanted. Bloomberg News hosted a parade of elitist shills on its programming, including this gem with Niall Ferguson who, lifting his nose at the common rabble and their horrid tents, thanked Bloomberg for restoring the rule of law. This extraordinary concentration of financial, government and media power in the hands of one man epitomizes how broken our system is. Over the last 30 years, powerful financial interests quietly tore down the walls that prevented corruption. The person of Michael Bloomberg is the entire feedback loop of influence between corporations, government and the media which chills democratic participation.
Speech is supposed to be free but has become extremely costly in two ways. On one hand, speaking has become costly in the sense that if you voice the idea in public that government should work for the bottom 99% of wage earners a little more you stand a good chance of being pepper sprayed, beaten and violently arrested.
On the other hand, it has become costly in the sense that it costs a lot of money. To really have your voice heard, you have to own, manage or be in the good graces of large media corporations, hire an army of lobbyists or donate enormous sums to politicians in the form of newly legalized money laundering. Either way you’re looking at writing a check with at least 6 or 7 zeros if you want to be taken seriously. For the average citizen, coughing up millions to be heard by the government is inconceivable. For the corporations, Wall Street and the billionaires, it’s pocket change. For the 1%, speech is free except for a relatively nominal surcharge. For the rest, it is becoming illegal.
This dichotomy between speech for the rich and the rest is widening. The Supreme Court cavalierly ruled that money is speech, so campaign donations cannot be limited. This ruling took ‘speech’ which is rightfully ‘free’ and made it into a commodity that can be bought and sold like oil or gold. This is the most radical reinterpretation of ‘free speech’ in history. So it is ironic that speech is being interpreted in such a pedantic, technical way when it comes to protests, as a judge—clearly in Bloomberg’s pocket—ruled that speech does not extend to tents. But someone spent money to buy those tents, and thus those tents are protected speech, right? If we expand our definition of “speech” beyond “words” to “money,” why not expand it to “tents”? Especially when those tents are essential to the peaceable assembly whereby words are formed?
One of the greatest services that Occupy Wall Street has performed is to illuminate how sick our public sphere is. They have flushed out the institutions that seek to ridicule, undermine and intimidate anti-corruption protesters into silence. A vibrant public sphere is essential to a healthy democracy. The Founders saw that the marketplace of ideas was the key to their early organization and ultimate success against the British crown. In the years preceding the Declaration of Independence, the 13 colonies were abuzz with underground newspapers debating political ideas, publishing houses cranking out pamphlets, protests on public squares which evolved into boycotts, coffeehouses serving up hours of discussion. These sparks of public debate lit the fire of Revolution on which our nation was founded.
The Founders feared nothing more than tyranny and believed the antidote was an absolute right to free expression. The First Amendment to the Constitution enshrines the right of the population to speak:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
No law. It is impossible, impermissible, unconstitutional, for any legislature to make any law that would abridge the freedom of speech or of the right to assemble peaceably. When Bloomberg says the protesters—who are peaceably assembled and exercising free speech—are making a mess, there is no law for him to refer to. There is no law that the police can enforce. There is no law on which a judge can slam her gavel. The way the authorities in New York and around the country speak about the movement, you would think there’s a clause at the end of the First Amendment that says “unless the rabble shall be making a mess.” Free Speech does not end when it becomes messy. Democracy is messy. Freedom is messy. The Founding Fathers made a mess when they declared that government derives its power from the consent of the governed. A capitalist oligarchy ensured by brute police force is clean. Those who insist that citizen expression be neat and orderly are outing themselves as pro-plutocracy and anti-democracy. The time has come to make a mess.
The raid violated the “freedom of speech” and the “right of the people peaceably to assemble” phrases of the Amendment. It also significantly violated the “freedom…of the press” phrase. NYPD roughed up journalists, arrested the ones who tried to pass them and created a media-free bubble on the ground and in the air around Liberty Plaza. Again, there is no law that limits press access to a protest for them to enforce. The First Amendment does not say “freedom of the press unless the rabble shall be making a mess whereupon constables beat them forthwith.” Authorities arrest protesters and silence the media in dictatorships. That does not happen in free, open, democratic societies. If the mayor and the police genuinely have nothing to hide in their raid, then why hide it?
In a healthy democracy, the public sphere allows for all ideas to be voiced equally and considered on their merits under the bright light of reason. Ideally all citizens have an equal chance to voice their thoughts on the issues that confront society. In this way, ideas are weighed in the open, ensuring the population’s freedom and its active participation in the unending project of civilization. The beauty of this free approach, in theory, is that good ideas gain steam and bad ideas fall to the wayside. In a healthy democracy, bad ideas are not dangerous because they will inevitably self-destruct. Thus, if the protesters in Liberty Plaza had bad ideas, everyone could safely ignore them. Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the NYPD to embargo the press and raid the Occupy Wall Street protest BECAUSE the protesters’ ideas have merit. Their ideas that America is a democracy and that our economy should work for our society, not just the corporations are dangerous ideas BECAUSE they are good ideas. They are simple and straightforward. They cut right to the heart of the biggest problem facing our society: financial and corporate interests bought all three branches and both parties of our government.
America is barely capable of considering ideas on their merits anymore, because our public sphere has been privatized. The 1% rely on their monopoly of speech to muffle the public sphere. The protesters propose to re-create a public sphere by bringing the real issues into the streets. This is a profound threat to the power structure that enriches the wealthy elite. Bloomberg's raid announces that the billionaires who are really running our country will use all of their formidable power and influence to crush any notion of economic justice or government accountability. But they are terrified. They know that their position is morally untenable. They know that if the populace awakens to the reality of the power dynamics in our institutions, they will fall. We can no longer tiptoe around the issue of class war. The 1% have openly declared total war on the middle class who are becoming poor and the poor who are becoming desperate.
America is barely capable of considering ideas on their merits anymore, because our public sphere has been privatized. The 1% rely on their monopoly of speech to muffle the public sphere. The protesters propose to re-create a public sphere by bringing the real issues into the streets. This is a profound threat to the power structure that enriches the wealthy elite. Bloomberg's raid announces that the billionaires who are really running our country will use all of their formidable power and influence to crush any notion of economic justice or government accountability. But they are terrified. They know that their position is morally untenable. They know that if the populace awakens to the reality of the power dynamics in our institutions, they will fall. We can no longer tiptoe around the issue of class war. The 1% have openly declared total war on the middle class who are becoming poor and the poor who are becoming desperate.
A slow silent coup took place in America over the last 30 years. Government of the money by the money for the money has swallowed our democratic way of life. The real rulers will not give up their power and privilege without a fight. They can break protesters’ bones but they cannot club an idea. They can poison protesters’ lungs, but they cannot gas an idea. They can raid a protest but they cannot evict the idea that American society could be freer and more just.
