Over at Addicting Info (a.k.a. Buzzfeed for liberal politics) Justin Rosario is trying to portray the Supreme Court’s recent decision striking down so-called “buffer zones” around abortion clinics as a case of giving special free-speech rights to rich people:
It seems that while your regular woman on the street has no way to keep religious fanatics from harassing them while they seek 100% legal healthcare, the rich can hire security to keep you and your petty complaints at arm’s length. So because they’re rich they get special rights. Again. What a shocker!
Uhm, I’m pretty sure that private bodyguards aren’t allowed to close off parts of the public sidewalks for their rich clients. More likely, they conduct their affairs on private property that’s big enough to keep the rabble away.
I pointed out that during the Occupy Wall Street protests, we were not allowed to actually march on Wall Street. We were diverted around it. This should have been 100% illegal but, of course, you can’t have the rabble pestering the masters of the universe as they rake in billions from an economy they destroyed.
Yeah, that wasn’t private security keeping you off Wall Street. That was the New York Police Department. (That police departments often function as private security for the rich and powerful is a different problem.)
However, Rosario sort of touches on something I’ve been wondering about ever since the court handed down the decision: If free speech means that anybody on a public sidewalk has the right to talk to anybody else that’s there, and if this includes the right to approach close enough to have a conversation, then shouldn’t this mean the end of “free speech zones”?
Whenever there’s a World Trade Organization meeting or a political convention or a controversial college guest lecturer, police like to set up these so-called “free speech zones” for protesters, usually far enough away that the people they’re protesting against can’t hear or see them. But if you can’t keep people from protesting outside an abortion clinic, how can you keep them away from a convention hall?
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