City is wrong to block NAACP billboard

By Robert Rooks

The United States accounts for less than 5 percent of the world's population but about 25 percent of its prisoners. This is a fact. Unfortunately, though, the city and its advertising agent, Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, have suppressed the NAACP's constitutional right to share this information via a billboard at Philadelphia International Airport.

Of all the rights granted by the Constitution, the right to free speech has the greatest impact on the nation's ability to function and grow. This is especially true of speech about our government, including our outdated, inefficient prison system.

The NAACP's proposed billboard would feature an image of the Statue of Liberty and the text: "Welcome to America, home to 5% of the world's people & 25% of the world's prisoners." It adds, "Let's build a better America together." Philadelphia and Clear Channel rejected it despite having allowed other issue-oriented and educational advertisements in the past.

One can only wonder how Philadelphia and Clear Channel would have responded if we had chosen to advertise the fact that the nation's prison population tripled between 1987 and 2007, growing by more than a million people. What if our billboard were to note that Pennsylvania spends about $33,000 per prisoner every year, but only $4,000 per college student? Or that 65 percent of Philadelphia's lowest-performing schools are in impoverished and predominantly minority neighborhoods?

Statistics like these, which shed light on the flaws in our system, should be shared with residents of Philadelphia and the rest of the nation. Such knowledge is the first step toward fixing the system. Earlier this year, an NAACP report on prison and school funding, titled "Misplaced Priorities: Under Educate, Over Incarcerate," earned praise from politicians and interest groups across the political spectrum - including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist, and U.S. Student Association president Lindsay McCluskey.

America has an imperfect criminal justice system, but it can be fixed through reforms such as fair sentencing policies; drug laws that recognize the difference between drug abusers and predators; more parole for nonviolent offenders; and, crucially, more investment in education and treatment programs both inside and outside of prisons, including programs that provide alternatives to incarceration. Many states have already implemented some of these measures, and the movement for "smart on crime" policies is growing.

This is not the time to shield America from the kind of important information that would appear on the NAACP billboard. To protect our constitutional right to present it, we, in conjunction with the ACLU, have filed a lawsuit in federal court requesting that the airport be compelled to accept and display our advertisement, much as it has in the case of animal-rights and environmental messages.

Frederick Douglass said, "To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker." We must not let Clear Channel and the city double the wrongs of our criminal justice system.