macor / Depositphotos.com
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – You can imagine the crazy liberal groups that will descend on Milwaukee this summer during the Republican National Convention. They’ll be barely moored to reality as they protest, picket, scream and shout as Donald Trump comes to town to accept the GOP nomination.
Add in some Antifa activists and some anarchists, and you can easily imagine how things could spiral out of control.
Unfortunately, the City of Milwaukee’s approach managing the unhinged protesters is wrong. Milwaukee will require demonstrators to get permits. There will be limits on how many protests will be allowed at the same time. And there will be rules about where protests will be allowed – so-called ‘free speech zones’ blocks away from the convention all.
I understand that managing the loony-left is nearly impossible, but, sorry Milwaukee, your approach is unconstitutional. It violates the first amendment protections of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. The fact that a protest or a rally might happen at a time and place that’s inconvenient for those in authority are too bad. You can’t be denied a permit because your group’s rally is unpopular, and the entire country is a free-speech zone, not just penned off areas determined by the police.
Why is this important? Because it’s liberals, not conservatives, who have a fetish to shut down free speech. Got an opinion that’s unpopular with the left? Watch what happens if you try to speak on a college campus.
So what’s poor Milwaukee to do? How about enforcing existing laws? Blocking traffic; that’s illegal. Arrest them. Assaulting people who disagree with you? Lock ‘em up and charge them. Property damage? Unlike those, um, ‘mostly peaceful’ Black Lives Matter protests, let’s file charges and not dismiss them.
What can’t happen is limits on free speech. Once one group is shut down, watch how quickly that precedent will be turned on you.
Chris Conley
Comments