I was disturbed by the race to war against Afghanistan and, later, Iraq. I was also disturbed by our deteriorating civil liberties. I wanted to show where I stood on both counts, and so I displayed my poster in the front window of my apartment.
"War is not the answer" seemed to-the-point but also, at least to my thinking, noncontroversial. Plus, it featured the peace sign, a universal symbol of nonviolence. I had seen many more forceful messages displayed at the rallies I'd attended, messages that I felt were not in keeping with a stance of peace, but were rather derisive and too in-your-face.
And yet soon after I had placed the poster in my window, I had to call Triple A to jumpstart my van. The tow truck driver, an African-American man in his 50s, wondered if that is the message I should be sending at this time. He seemed to agree with my sentiments, but felt that I could get into trouble for expressing them.
Sure enough, a few days later, two Long Beach police officers showed up at my door. They asked if they could come in, but, thinking quick, I said that it was a nice day, that we could talk on my front porch. They asked if this were my place. Interpreting the question as, "Do you own this place?" I answered, "No."
"But you just came out the door," one of the officers said. "Yes, I live here, but I don't own the place," I clarified.
They hemmed and hawed a bit, then asked me if that were my poster. I answered that it was. Finally I asked, "Is there a problem, officers?" They reluctantly said, "No." I then asked if I were free to go. "Yes," one answered.
I walked to my van across the street and sat in it for a good 10 minutes. All that while, the officers sat in their patrol car. Finally when they left, I left too.
And so I come to one of my hopes for the new administration: that exercising one's First Amendment freedoms will no longer be a crime, will no longer put one on a subversives list, will no longer result in police intimidation. In a broader sense, I hope that the Constitution will be restored, that "free speech zones" will be a thing of the past, that the entire country will once again be a free speech zone.
Obama is off to a good start in that direction, as he will be closing Guantanamo Bay, something that I have spoken out against on many occasion and have called my senators, representatives, and president on many, many occasions. If we cannot keep people from torture, then all the talk in our Constitution about civil liberties is all wasted ink.
