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Once nailed to the door, now shuffled out of sight
© St. Petersburg Times, One of the great protesters of all time was a German guy named Martin Luther. Back in the 1500s, he got fed up with the excesses of the Catholic Church. Luther wrote and circulated a list of 95 points of debate. According to legend, he posted his "Ninety-Five Theses" right smack on the door of the church at Wittenberg University. A mighty movement arose from Luther's words. The Reformation split the Catholic Church from this new wave of breakaway protesters -- called Protestants. If today you are a Baptist or a Methodist or a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian or any number of other forms of Christian, you owe part of your freedom of choice to Martin Luther. It is a good thing that back in Luther's day they didn't have Designated Protest Areas. Modern spin doctors would have fenced off Luther out of sight, several blocks away, where he wouldn't bother decent people. There would have been no nailing of anything on the church door, nosiree. "Hey, look at me!" I can hear poor Luther shouting, his voice echoing across the empty cobblestones. "Look, I have some Theses!" Everybody would figure he was a nut. All the big scribes would be blocks away over at the university. At most, Luther would get a tiny, it-takes-all-kinds photo back on page 7B of the Wittenberg Daily Bugle ("Lone Protester Fails To Spoil Leo X's Day.") Location is everything. So when today's government claims that it has the power to keep dissent at a remote physical distance from the thing being protested -- and when the police claim the power to arrest citizens who refuse to obey -- it is an anti-American suppression of free speech. We should support the right of the anti-Castro protesters of the Latin Grammy Awards in Miami not to be banished, out of sight and out of camera range, so they won't upset the pretty little celebrities. We should support obstreperous grandmothers from Clearwater who demand the right to wave a sign of protest against the president of the United States in a baseball park (a baseball park bought with MY tax dollars for Mr. Steinbrenner!) without getting hauled off by the Tampa police. We should support protesters against the Democratic and Republican national conventions. We should support protesters at the Salt Lake City Olympics. We should support the so-called anti-globalization protesters who will gather yet again in Washington next month. We should oppose attempts by the government, by special event organizers and by commercial developers of places such as Centro Ybor to designate public or publicly subsidized areas as "private" property so they can kick out undesirables. We should support the right of citizens to protest abortion clinics peacefully, up until the instant that they interfere with the rights of others. When it's the feds, everybody throws up their hands and says, "You can't argue with the Secret Service." But each mayor should tell the Secret Service, if you won't let our citizens be citizens, then we won't stage your dog-and-pony show. Go away. Advocating free protest is not advocating anarchy or crime. The government certainly can enforce neutral rules of the road. Trespassing on truly private property is still illegal, sure. Arrest the trespassers. Violence is still illegal. Arrest anybody who breaks the law. Nobody has the right to silence anybody. But the premise behind out-of-sight "designated protest areas" is that politicians and big shots can use the government to force citizens who disagree to disappear. Does this make it easier for police to enforce "security"? You bet it does. Lucky for us, the primary purpose of the Bill of Rights is not to make life easier for the police. I like to think that Luther, despite taking 95 theses himself, would have admired our First Amendment's economy: freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, of assembly and the right to petition for redress of grievance, all in one package. The sentiment would not have seemed too out of place, nailed to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. - You can reach Howard Troxler at (727) 893-8505 or at troxler@sptimes.com.
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Times columns today Howard Troxler Robert Trigaux Bill Maxwell John Romano Ernest Hooper From the Times Metro desk Howard Troxler |
