|
Comment on this article |
View comments |
Email this Feature
|
|
Why Public Protest Matters: War Tax Info Picket on Mattis |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sarah Kanouse
Email: kanouse (nospam) students.uiuc.edu (verified) |
15 Apr 2004
|
|
This morning, I spent a couple of hours at the Mattis post office distributing literature on military uses of our tax money. When we were asked to leave, it revealed a great deal about the limits of permissible speech and ideas about public space. |
This morning at 9 am, I was picked up by a Catholic Worker and whisked away in a great boatmobile to the main Champaign post office. We were planning to hand out informational leaflets on what our tax money is buying--billions for the war in Iraq, cuts for veterans benefits, and an ever-mounting death toll.
After about 15 minutes handing out leaflets outdoors--quite politely, of course, and without interfering with the conduct of business at the post office--the postmaster came out of the building and demanded that we leave. He said it was illegal to protest on federal property and gestured toward the tiny city sidewalk adjacent to the 50 mph boulevard and suggested we try to leaflet there. We asked what regulation we were violating and why free speech could be restricted on public property, and he refused to answer, instead threatening to call the police.
We retreated to the car and called city legal affairs and the library, both of which confirmed that we had a right to be there and were not doing any of the forbidden things--blocking entrances, putting flyers on cars, harassing people, or (and this is funny) distributing leaflets on behalf of a foreign government without first registering ourselves. Strengthened with this specific information, we resumed our leafleting, receiving the usual mix of support and advice to leave America if we didn't love it.
Another half hour passed, and the postmaster returned, still refusing to tell us if we were breaking a regulation and insisting that it wasn't what we were saying but that we were saying anything at all. He didn't want the post office to become a site of political speech (!), and at times he almost pleaded with us to leave because customers were complaining. "Do it for me," he said and then more sternly, "I'm going to call the police, and I won't ask you again."
About 20 minutes later, the police showed up. Officer Bloom handled everything very professionally and supportively, asking that we refrain from passing out literature while he checked the statutes but not asking us to take down our signs. We had an interesting and remarkably harmonious chat about the limits of free speech on government property, whether there should be any so long as the speech was not impinging the speech of others, and what institutional neutrality means. A small crowd gathered, and a man got angry at the police for interfering with us. Eventually, the answer came down that while we were not doing anything forbidden, the postmaster is master of the property, and he/she has the right to evict anyone from the space as if it were private land under his/er control.
The incident put into focus questions about the relation of physical and discursive space, the fetishization of public harmony, and the dominance of the notion of the private as a model of spatial management.
While the internet has been a powerful tool for information distribution and political organizing, it is by and large a very safe space for most activities, despite how it is monitored and surveilled. Because most anti-hegemonic information must be actively sought out by the browser, oppositional content is mostly tolerated because it is physically and discursively remote from the issues it addresses. It's safe--those who access it and those who post information are mostly privileged, and directing energies exclusively to that domain reinforces the myth of the free society while leaving the restrictions of space unchallenged.
Our activities at the post office were objectionable because our bodies were there, because we were bridging the space between our bodies and others' bodies enough to pass a sheet of paper between them. Had there been a public bulletin board at the post office (there is not: posting flyers is actually prohibited at the post office, while handing them out is not), I'm sure no one would have complained to the postmaster about the dry-looking flyer. We interfered more in discourse not merely around taxes but also around public space by choosing to challenge the limits of permisssible activity in uncontestably public space of federal land.
Second, the operational metaphor of public space used by the postmaster and to a lesser extent the police is the idealized space of harmony. Their belief was that conflict, protest, and politics do not belong in public space. In this view, the role of government is to manage or prohibit protest in order to create the illusion of consensus and political neutrality. Granting access to a political cause wso that people don't feel uncomfortable and can conduct their business without the 'annoyance' of politics. The resulting 'smooth space' is undifferentiated and bleached of the markers of difference, conflict, or power. But because difference, conflict, and power are facts of our social organization, the maintenance of harmonious space reinforces the current distribution of power by concealing that and how it operates.
Last, the dominant metaphor of property is 'private.' That is, while the law proscribed certain activities in public space, thereby implying that others were permitted, it gave an out that allows for the management of that space into harmony. The postmaster is literally 'master' of the public property he manages, and ultimate authority is vested in an individual for the dispensation of access to public property. One woman who probably complained to the postmaster, advised us to get away from the 'property' before the police arrived, and her dropping of the modifer 'public' spoke volumes about where she was coming from in thinking about public space. While it is well known that free speech doesn't apply to private property, in the end it appears not to apply to public property, either, if it challenges either the wishes of the appointed manager or the reductive harmony of the space.
I wonder, given the dominance of operational metaphors of private property and public-as-harmony, if we are even able to conceive of public space. The word 'public' is defined in the OED by its opposite, as that which is not private. I'm dismayed by how readily individuals accept and even demand limitations on activities in public space, but until there is a powerful and workable notion of the public itself--one that embraces the diversity of uses and users of the space--we will have no touchstone or guide othe than our understanding of the private and the behaviors and expectations implied. |
This work is in the public domain. |
Comments
|
Re: Why Public Protest Matters: War Tax Info Picket on Mattis |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 18
15 Apr 2004
|
Dear Sarah,
Are you not the same "winner' who shortly after 9/11 went around to businesses and said how offended you were by them displaying the American Flag? Is it not there right of Free Speech to display the flag everybit as protected as your right to bug the crap out of people as they face the worst day of the year?
Anyway, I am sure that a large portion of my tax dollars go to colleges and universities so kids like you can enroll with grants, and defaulted loans so you will never have to face the real world.
Go Illini, Go USA and God Bless America.
Jack |
|
Re: Why Public Protest Matters: War Tax Info Picket on Mattis |
by Muck Raker
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 12
15 Apr 2004
|
Dear Jack,
Aren't you the same Jack Ryan who is running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican candidate, and may also be a gay porn star?
I'm glad that you're able to live with the contradiction of making a living from a lifestyle that your party condemns and would make illegal.
Isn't the closet getting a little stuffy?
regards,
Muck |
|
Re: Why Public Protest Matters: War Tax Info Picket on Mattis |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 15
15 Apr 2004
|
M.L.
You're up late tonight censoring me. Had a rough day, didn't you? What with everyone disagreeing with you. Is it hard to censor when you are crying?
Face it Bud, you control your own fiefdom here and do a pretty decent job, I might add. However, in the arena of ideas, you are no match.
Why not teach me to censor my own stuff and that may save you time.
Take Care,
Jack |
|
Re: Why Public Protest Matters: War Tax Info Picket on Mattis |
by Sarah Kanouse
kanouse (nospam) students.uiuc.edu (unverified) |
Current rating: 4
16 Apr 2004
|
Hey Jack,
Yes, I am the same person. And of course people have the right to fly the flag, as much right as I have to ask them why they do it, as much right as they have to ask me why I leaflet. I tend to believe more _serious_ dialogue is better than less, which is why your posts depress me so. |
|
Re: Why Public Protest Matters: War Tax Info Picket on Mattis |
by Ricky Baldwin
baldwinricky (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 11
16 Apr 2004
|
|
I think a letter to the editor is in order, and maybe a few letters to the postmaster in question -- and maybe to his superiors. |
|
Re: Why Public Protest Matters: War Tax Info Picket on Mattis |
by 5
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 2
16 Apr 2004
|
Dear Jack,
Are you the same Jack Ryan that uses ethnic slurs and sexist putdowns and lies about being shipped off to Iraq? |
|
Re: Why Public Protest Matters: War Tax Info Picket on Mattis |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 2
16 Apr 2004
|
Dear 5,
Yes.... |
|
Re: Why Public Protest Matters: War Tax Info Picket on Mattis |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 24
16 Apr 2004
|
Dear Sarah,
What offends you so much about our nations symbol, which provides to you the very rights which you seem to take advantage so often?
That flag, or the people who carry it, has liberated millions of people and extended to them the very freedoms that you now take for granted.
I feel sorry for you.
Jack |
|
Re: Why Public Protest Matters: War Tax Info Picket on Mattis |
by Sarah Kanouse
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 9
17 Apr 2004
|
Jack ,
I wish I could take your tone at face value, but it's hard to given how you post on this site.
For the record, as the card I distributed explained, I was not 'offended' by the flag so much as 'uncomfortable' with its use at that time because its meaning was so ambiguous. I didn't know if the flag meant mourning, or a cry for war, or agreement with everything the government might do, or a desire to silence all who might question the nation's course of action. If it did signify mourning, I wasn't sure why that particular symbol was chose, given its clear military and nationalistic associations (as your post points out). Given all that has happened in the last two and a half years, I continue to be uncomfortable with the flag's display, especially when it is championed by people like you who very clearly wish to intimidate and shout over those who have created a forum for oppositional speech.
I don't intend to engage you further on this matter. |
|
It takes a brave Jack Ryan..,. |
by Muck Raker
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 10
17 Apr 2004
|
to spend hours a day posting poorly reasoned, jingoistic spew to a website that he claims not to particularly like or appreicate.
I know a bunch of guys who wear white sheets as uniforms who are as brave as you. |
|
Re: Why Public Protest Matters: War Tax Info Picket on Mattis |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 19
17 Apr 2004
|
Dear Muck,
You know a number of guys with white sheets? Are you talking about the Klan? Do you really know Senator Robert Byrd. I am impressed.
Jack |
|
Re: Why Public Protest Matters: War Tax Info Picket on Mattis |
by Kevin Oehler
kevart (nospam) ameritech.net (unverified) |
Current rating: 3
02 May 2004
|
Excellent and perceptive.
Connects a single protest event to larger issues of public space, architecture, and the tacit expectation that these spaces verify the status quo.
Thanks! |
|
Re: Why Public Protest Matters: War Tax Info Picket on Mattis |
by dfhart
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 6
04 May 2004
|
|
Bravo, Sarah! Well reasoned and presented. I wish there were more with your obvious capabilities who would have the courage and gumption to engage as you have. |
|
