In both the USM art-show controversy of a few years ago and this current situation, the police have attempted to prevent public events from taking place.
Do they have a legitimate role in the discussions surrounding these events? They have a role — they have their own forums and access to media outlets. I could be wrong on this, but didn’t they get an invite to the USM forum on the art-show cancellation and decline? Anyway, we usually allow extensive Q&A after I speak. The prosecutor and judge from the sedition trial were invited to the UMass gig. The police in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York have been hammering away at me in the media for the past two weeks or so. They don’t appear interested in discussion. They appear interested in silencing a voice that addresses issues like political prisoners in America.
Why is it important to you to continue speaking out on these issues?
Because I still feel deeply the injustices done to people every day, in the name of power and wealth. Some issues that I speak about — like political prisoners in America — are rarely spoken of by others. Oppressed people are usually marginalized by corporate media. The voiceless. The powers that be want to keep it that way — which is evident in the UMass controversy and police intimidation. I try to be principled in the way I live my life. It’s not all that complicated. My mind knows best what’s in my heart, and my heart says — despite the risks involved — speak out for justice and the affirmation of life in an era of darkness.
This situation brings to mind the controversy surrounding Barack Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers, which caused him problems during the campaign. What changes do you think need to happen so that people who were part of the radical undergrount movement in this country can have a legitimate place in ongoing dialogues without having their right of free speech trampled?
The people of this country need to pull back from the slippery slope of becoming a police state.
Related:
Critical Mass, Censorship for Me, Penelope, Liberals collapse, More 
- Critical Mass
If free speech is what gives value to the campus "marketplace of ideas," UMass Amherst would long ago have gone bankrupt.
- Censorship for Me, Penelope
Lisa Jahn-Clough's young-adult novel Me, Penelope is the subject of a recent dispute at Tavares Middle School in Orlando, Florida.
- Liberals collapse
Could a compromise have been reached, or would Manning's art have come down regardless?
- Newspapers censor Bono’s ‘fucking’ gaffe
Why does our ostensibly “free” press insist on acting like prudes or cowards when reporting stories for which it’s vital that readers learn someone said “fuck” rather than an undefined “expletive”?
- Promoting human rights at home
“We have a holier-than-thou” attitude in the United States about human-rights violations abroad, said Bart Carhart, a student organizer of the new Amnesty International chapter at the University of Southern Maine.
- Prisoners of politics
The giant sucking sound that all of Southern Maine heard coming from Forest Avenue last week was not some accidental draining of a huge milk tank at Oakhurst Dairy, but the integrity and independence of Maine’s largest public university going down the toilet. Slideshow: Thomas Manning's exhibit at the University of Southern Maine Brut portraiture: Inmate Manning's art part of outsider tradition. By Ian Paige
- Well shut my mouth!
Are today’s college students thinner-skinned than were previous generations?
- Smells like free spirit
Encountering Charlie Hewitt’s work for the first time, at his Farnsworth Museum retrospective, was like meeting someone from the neighborhood where you grow up long after you’ve grown up.
- Less
Topics:
This Just In
, Deval Patrick, Barack Obama, Criminal Sentencing and Punishment, More
, Deval Patrick, Barack Obama, Criminal Sentencing and Punishment, Social Issues, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Prisons, University of Massachusetts Amherst, censorship, Ray Luc Levasseur, Ray Luc Levasseur, Less
