Free speech, that's what!
At least, that's the impression created by the reactions of local elected officials to speakers at public meetings who presume to think that it is up to them to decide what the lowly people may say and how they may say it. It's indicative of a disdain for free expression that pops up locally from time to time.
Here are four local offenders:
Skip Alston & Bruce Davis
The most recent case is of Guilford County Board of Commissioners chairman Skip Alston and commissioner Bruce Davis questioning the propriety of a speaker showing a video in support of certain candidates for office during her time as a speaker from the floor at a public meeting. According the Rhino Times, Alston and Davis attempted to intervene to prohibit the video from being replayed. Here is the portion of the meeting Alston and Davis would censor:
The most alarming cause for concern in that clip is this, from Commission Chair Alston:
I would hope that we would try to screen our videos, when someone bring us a video so we can know exactly what is going to be going.[snip] Any other videos, we would like to see those before they are played.No, Mr. Chairman. That would be prior restraint, a form of censorship that is forbidden in the United States.
Robbie Perkins
Then there was City Council representative and mayoral candidate Robbie Perkins' confused reaction to an April Fools presentation in 2008 by a group promoting an arts festival that found Perkins successfully censoring the record of the group's appearance.
During speakers from the floor at a city council meeting, a speaker, backed by a quartet of kazoos, asked that people help "Save the monkey whale" and directed people to "monkey whale dot com." It was a cleaver stunt to promote an arts festival. Perkins subsequently misinformed his colleagues that the promoted website contained pornographic content and council proceeded to vote to remove the offending portion of the meeting from the video record.
Here is what was removed from the record:
Bill Knight
Finally, there is Greensboro mayor's Bill Knight's general disdain for speakers from the floor, first he moved speakers from near the beginning of the meeting to the impossible-to-predict near the end of the meeting. Then he proposed that speakers be limited to one thirty minute period, once a month, with an eight day advanced "registration" required. Thankfully, those proposals went nowhere.
Speakers from the floor are going to, from time to time, include crackpots, jackasses, self-promoters, performance artists, and candidates in waiting. They come with the territory, that territory being a free society guided by the United States Constitution and its First Amendment. It's fundamental; and politicians who act against free speech are to be regarded with caution.
