A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they’re treated as public nuisances and evicted.
Robert Reich
A funny thing happened to the First Amendment
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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/supreme-court-occupy-wall-street_b_1097489
Above is the original source for the quote.
Mr. Reich is almost uniquely talented in his ability to look at a situation, same as everyone else, and yet come away with a point of view that almost no one agrees with. And yet, he still gets published by the likes of The Guardian.
In the article linked above, Reich says this: “Yet if Occupiers now shift tactics from passive resistance to violence, it would spell the end of the movement. The vast American middle class that now empathizes with the Occupiers would promptly desert them.”
One wonders what world Reich actually lives in? “Vast American middle class” empathizes with the Occupiers? Since when? Just because the Occupiers claimed to represent the “99%” did not mean they did, anymore than Antifa’s claiming to be “anti fascist” meant that they were *actually* anti-fascist, since they are not. If anything, they use typically fascist tactics with the best of them. One must imagine the Antifa lack so much self-awareness, they likely confuse the original “stormtroopers” with the white armored fellows from Star Wars.
Evicted from exactly where?
I suspect that Mr. Reich is leaving out some pertinent information here about what said people got up to during their assembly.
I have also never gotten a satisfactory answer about how individuals coming together and setting up an organization suddenly give up their free speech rights.
In Reichland, if they assemble as a union their dollar-backed speech is just fine, especially if they support his ideology; but not fine if they assemble as stockholders, especially if they resist his ideology.
It’s not the speech per se his breed finds offensive but its content.