By Glen T. Martin
Professor of Philosophy, Radford University

The evening of November 14 was alive with a vibrant dialogue regarding the Occupy Movement and the right to free speech guaranteed by the 1^st and 14^th amendments of the US Constitution. The keynote speaker was first amendment attorney Jay Bender along with a panel made up of RU faculty, students, administrators, and campus police.  Jay Bender presented a powerful view of the right of free speech and expression and fundamental to democracy and noted the several ways that RU fails to support free speech: (1) in its limiting speech to “free speech zones,” (2) in requiring prior approval for postings on campus bulletin boards, (3) in limiting free expression only to officially recognized campus groups, and (4) in restricting how the fraternities and sororities around campus can display their signs.

While some students and faculty in the back of McGuffey 203 displayed “Occupy RU” signs, all members of the panel defended the right of the Occupy Movement to a broad range of nonviolent free speech actions.  Police Sgt. Scott Shaffer spoke of the responsibility of the police for the safety and security of everyone, both protestors and the community, and Dean of Students and Associate Vice-President Dr. Don Appiarius spoke of the need for mutual respect: protestors should see others as a “Thou,” as human beings with dignity who should not be dehumanized into an “It” or an enemy.

In spite of all these feel-good congratulations of the rights and freedoms of our “democracy,” some students in the audience tried to raise a different note with facts about how the 1% has colonized the mass media, disenfranchised the people, purchased most politicians, sponsored police brutality against occupy movements throughout the country, and caused immense financial misery for millions. The responses of these perceptive student critics, I think, need to be developed a little further into a criticism of this panel and its defense of orderly and nonviolent free speech.

The key confusion on the panel involved the notion of violence. In spite of the facts raised from student critics in the audience, the panel maintained its assumptions that (1) we live in a democracy, (2) that we have free speech protected by the Constitution which is fundamental to democracy, and (3) that such free speech is a central means for nonviolent change (the people’s right to petition their government). Jay Bender, therefore, several times spoke of free speech as a “release value” for people to protest so that they would not have to turn to violence.

All these assumptions are false. If the 1% have colonized the mass media, disempowered the people from determining their collective destiny, purchased the politicians, significantly control the police and the military, and have raped the economy by throwing millions into poverty while accumulating untold billions for themselves, then it is simply a lie to speak of our country as a “democracy.” What is the function of “free speech” within this situation? It is exactly as Jay Bender declared: free speech within this situation (of the 1% controlling nearly everything) functions as a “release value,” allowing people to blow off steam without substantially changing the near total domination of the plutocracy.

Free speech in this situation becomes what philosopher Herbert Marcuse called “repressive tolerance.” The tolerance and mutual respect accorded both protestors and those they protest against substantially changes nothing. The Institutionalized repression continues and the empty façade and formalism of democratic free speech only serves to protect the system itself.  Free speech in the name of a false democracy that is really a system of domination and control by the 1% only serves to protect that system. The question, then, is the much more difficult one (that this panel ignored) of how to transform an oppressive, undemocratic system without using violence.

The system itself, however, is already deeply violent. The police and the military dedicated to protecting the system and enforcing its laws are protecting a system of domination and exploitation, not democracy and the US Constitution as they are led to believe. Well-paid and very comfortable first amendment layers and university administrators, by allowing free speech on campuses or in public parks, are in effect defending a system of domination and exploitation, since this “free speech” functions as a “release value” that prevents truly substantial change.

The fact is that the system as it now exists is one of immense structural and oppressive violence. It is likely that every member of this panel pays federal income taxes, 50% of which go to wars destroying the lives and communities of people around the world in the service of US interests for oil, geo-political domination (with 730 military bases worldwide), and murder of those deemed hostile to American imperialism by death squads, remote drones, and CIA assassination teams.  It is likely that every member of this panel benefits from cheap goods and resources found in the big box stores like Wal-Mart, Lowes, Sears, JC Penny, etc., whose materials are produced in dehumanized conditions in foreign sweatshops.

The life-prospects are robbed from hundreds of millions of wage-slave people in sweatshops throughout third world countries so that the 1% can maximize hundreds of billions more dollars in profit and so Americans can buy inexpensive goods to underwrite their comfortable lifestyles.  This global system of capitalist exploitation is kept in place by the US military imposing immense violence on helpless nations worldwide, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya.  By promoting the illusion that we live in a “democracy” and ignoring this immense system of violence, domination, and exploitation that is our true situation, this panel has served to protect the system. They have advocated free speech as repressive tolerance, a tolerance that only covers up and reinforces this horrific, undemocratic system.

The 1% has colonized not only the mass media, the politicians, and the police. They have colonized the universities. It is interesting that our panelists spoke of the need of RU protestors not to interfere with classes or “vendors” doing their job.  Vendors of Coca Cola company perhaps?  Coca Cola is a global corporation repeatedly implicated in assassination of union organizers in Colombia and in destroying the water systems of poor villages in India while polluting the environment wherever its factories operate in the world.  Universities are up to their eyeballs in protecting the military-industrial complex, multi-national corporations, and the status quo.

What is the Occupy Movement to do in the face of this vast colonization of society by undemocratic forces?  Simply protesting politely will only serve the interests of the status quo. It will only serve as a “release value” as Jay Bender put it.  Occupy RU, and all Occupy movements, will have to nonviolently get “in the face” of this oppressive system and the complicity of universities, politicians, police, and the entire lying system of false democracy.  The Occupy movement will have to expose the complicity of the university and the rest of US society in this vast cover-up of its immense system of violence and death.

They will have to shout from the roof tops, make people uncomfortable, call out their true allegiances to this oppressive system. They will have to cause a great turmoil and discontent. They are not just groups within a democracy petitioning a government for redress of grievances.  They are revolutionaries nonviolently building a new world of freedom, peace, justice, and prosperity for all.  They are in the process of overthrowing the 1%: overthrowing them worldwide, in solidarity with oppressed peoples everywhere. Real democracy serves the 99%, and for that to happen, there will have to be a great commotion in the land.

For more about Occupy RU, see http://www.facebook.com/groups/267716473269860/

For more about Occupy Blacksburg, see  http://www.facebook.com/OccupyBlacksburg

For more about Occupy Roanoke, see http://www.facebook.com/groups/Occupyroanokeva