Stu Bykofsky | Free speech in America?
ON ONE HAND you've got Don Imus, and you can argue whether his firing was justified until the hos come home.
ON ONE HAND you've got Don Imus, and you can argue whether his firing was justified until the hos come home.
Despite what my daughter thinks, I didn't know any of the guys in white wigs (aka the Founding Fathers) personally, but they weren't thinking of shock jocks when they fashioned the First Amendment. Political speech "was foremost in their minds," according to Schnader Law First Amendment specialist Carl Solano.
On the other hand, you have a couple of citizens - Brian Rudnick and Marianne Bessey - who were called out while engaging in precisely the activity protected by the guys in white wigs.
The 53-year-old Rudnick, an attorney and educator, wants to kick Donna Reed Miller out of the Eighth District Council seat. A Green Party candidate, Rudnick is probably idealistic and unrealistic, because his chances of defeating an incumbent Democrat in Philly is on the order of hitting the lottery while getting a lap dance from Charlie Manuel.
Two weeks ago, Rudnick was outside the Acme at Germantown and West Sedgwick asking people to sign a petition to get him on the ballot.
A store employee came out and told Rudnick to leave. Rudnick asked who the man was and why he was telling him to leave. (I know this because Rudnick whipped out his cell phone and taped it.)
Rudnick continued collecting signatures. The Acme staffer (later identified as Darrell Dor-sey) came out again and grabbed a pen from Rudnick's hand and threatened to call police.
A short time later police arrived, called by someone at Acme.
Rudnick feels someone's trying to deny him his rights.
Not at all, Acme spokesman Walt Rubel told me.
Rubel said store employees told him Dorsey grabbed the pen because Rudnick had pointed it at him in a threatening manner, and police were called because Rudnick "was loud and he was boisterous."
Rudnick called the pen allegation an "outright lie."
Hillary Aisenstein, chair of the Green Party of Philadelphia, who was standing next to Rudnick, laughed when I asked if Rudnick had threatened Dorsey with the pen. "At no time was I afraid for Mr. Dorsey's safety or Brian's," she said. "Brian might have waved his pen at him, but not in a stabbing motion."
Eugene Epperson, an Acme shopper who had signed Rudnick's petition before entering the store, told me Rudnick was not loud, boisterous or aggressive. "I normally don't sign petitions," but did because Rudnick was polite.
Acme permits civic, charitable, other community groups - and politicians - to solicit in front of its stores, Rubel said, but wants to be asked for permission.
A more troubling case is that of Bessey, 45, arrested in April 2005 for handing out leaflets to protest a UniverSoul Circus performance near the Mann Music Center.
Unlike the Acme case, Bessey was in Fairmount Park, indisputably public property. Police ordered her to move to a distant point; she refused and was arrested, handcuffed, charged with disorderly conduct and jailed for more than two hours before being released.
She was found not guilty in a trial that cost her $2,000. Now the American Civil Liberties Union is suing Philadelphia in federal court on Bessey's behalf.
Temple University professor of constitutional law David Kairys told me that in recent years Supreme Court decisions have tightened limits of free speech and that when it comes to dissidents, "the authorities want to keep them out of sight and out of mind."
That betrays what the guys in white wigs wanted. *
E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns: