Democrats Learn The Wrong Lesson

Bush Zones Go National


by Jim Hightower



At the
2000 GOP nominating convention in Philadelphia, candidate Bush created
a fenced-in, out-of-sight protest zone that could only hold barely
1,500 people at a time. So citizens who wished to give voice to their
many grievances with the Powers That Be had to:



(1) Schedule their exercise of First Amendment rights with the decidedly unsympathetic authorities.



(2) Report like cattle to the protest pen at their designated time, and only in the numbers authorized.



(3)
Then, under the recorded surveillance of the authorities, feel free to
let loose with all the speech they could utter within their allotted
minutes (although no one–not Bush, not convention delegates, not the
preening members of Congress, not the limousine-gliding corporate
sponsors and certainly not the mass media–would be anywhere nearby to
hear a single word of what they had to say).



Imagine
how proud the Founders would be of this interpretation of their
revolutionary work. The Democrats, always willing to learn useful
tricks from the opposition, created their own “free-speech zone” when
they gathered in Los Angeles that year for their convention.



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