Bush Zones Go National
by JIM HIGHTOWER
[from the August 16, 2004 issue]
At the 2000 GOP nominating convention in Philadelphia, candidate Bush created a fenced-in, out-of-sight protest zone that could only hold barely 1,500 people at a time. So citizens who wished to give voice to their many grievances with the Powers That Be had to:
(1) Schedule their exercise of First Amendment rights with the decidedly unsympathetic authorities.
(2) Report like cattle to the protest pen at their designated time, and only in the numbers authorized.
(3) Then, under the recorded surveillance of the authorities, feel free to let loose with all the speech they could utter within their allotted minutes (although no one--not Bush, not convention delegates, not the preening members of Congress, not the limousine-gliding corporate sponsors and certainly not the mass media--would be anywhere nearby to hear a single word of what they had to say).
cont... http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040816&s=hightower
by JIM HIGHTOWER
[from the August 16, 2004 issue]
At the 2000 GOP nominating convention in Philadelphia, candidate Bush created a fenced-in, out-of-sight protest zone that could only hold barely 1,500 people at a time. So citizens who wished to give voice to their many grievances with the Powers That Be had to:
(1) Schedule their exercise of First Amendment rights with the decidedly unsympathetic authorities.
(2) Report like cattle to the protest pen at their designated time, and only in the numbers authorized.
(3) Then, under the recorded surveillance of the authorities, feel free to let loose with all the speech they could utter within their allotted minutes (although no one--not Bush, not convention delegates, not the preening members of Congress, not the limousine-gliding corporate sponsors and certainly not the mass media--would be anywhere nearby to hear a single word of what they had to say).
cont... http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040816&s=hightower