Latest / The Real News Podcast / What Is Free Speech? America at 250

Transcript

What Is Free Speech? America at 250 · The Real News Podcast

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: It's good to see Mansa.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: This is good to be sneaky.
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: I want to start us in Washington at the Lincoln Memorial.
• 0:24
  Speaker 4: I'm standing at the inside the man's videum of the
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: Lincoln Memorial, President Abraham Lincoln, sitting on his chair, staring
• 0:35
  Speaker 4: out looking down cross Washington.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Over the reflecting floor at the Washington Monument in the Capitol.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: So early last fall, I went down to Lincoln Memorial
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: on the Washington Mall, and I wanted to go because
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: this is for me. It's kind of one of the
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: most iconic places I can think of for free speech
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: in the United States.
• 0:57
  Speaker 5: That's the greatest demonstration fort freedom in the history of.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: Our nation, clearly like the images of the nineteen sixty
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: three March on Washington and Martin Luther King's I have
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: a dream speech and hundreds of thousands of people covering
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, running all the way back.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Along the reflecting pool.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: And I went there to ask people what free speech
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: meant to them. Me, sir, Yes, my name is Mike Fox.
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: I I'm a freelance reporter and I'm working on a podcast.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: About free speech.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: And so I spoke with one guy named Rick. He's retired.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: He's from Arizona. He came there with his wife. They
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: were in town for the day. He actually works as
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: a pit line firefighter for NASCAR.
• 1:42
  Speaker 6: And he told me the freedom to say what you feel,
• 1:47
  Speaker 6: to express what you have in your heart, and to
• 1:55
  Speaker 6: just be open and honest.
• 1:58
  Speaker 7: You know.
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: I asked him what he thought about free speech rights
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: in America today, and he said.
• 2:03
  Speaker 6: Well, with who's in charge, it seems like it's kind
• 2:07
  Speaker 6: of controversial that if you say something against him that
• 2:15
  Speaker 6: he will retaliate against you, which I think is totally absurd.
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: I'm working with a story about free speech and what
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: it means today in the United States.
• 2:24
  Speaker 8: I don't want to make any comments about the free
• 2:26
  Speaker 8: speech in uniss I understand.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Oh no, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, people are nervous to talk.
• 2:38
  Speaker 9: You know.
• 2:39
  Speaker 10: Uh.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I think I'm good.
• 2:41
  Speaker 11: Thank you though, It's all good.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Take care.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Wondering if I could interview in your fast I'm not
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: it's okay.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: I love your camera, but thank you very much, take.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Care of Thanks. I wonder if I could interview you guys,
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: no osod.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Appreciate it.
• 2:56
  Speaker 8: I don't even know if he's next little chair.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: What is free speech being to you?
• 3:02
  Speaker 7: Do you know that you can be able to say
• 3:04
  Speaker 7: what you want to do what you want, as long
• 3:05
  Speaker 7: as it's not.
• 3:07
  Speaker 11: Rude or dispectful to anyone else.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: I spoke with Ronald Jackson from Burningham, Alabama, into me
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: and Nash from Las Vegas.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: They were in town for a funeral.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Today.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: You feel like anyone can say whatever they want to say.
• 3:21
  Speaker 5: See, well, free speech is we can say what we
• 3:25
  Speaker 5: want to say, but we had consequences behind that. Really
• 3:29
  Speaker 5: we won't have free speech. And they always want to
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: kid you, take you out and do whatever want. So
• 3:36
  Speaker 5: basically we don't have no free speech.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: They too, are really concerned about free speech rights today.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: There was an interesting conversation I had with this one
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: gentleman from Ghana. He's actually a military officer there.
• 3:52
  Speaker 12: Whenever we are to talk of states that promotes free speech,
• 3:58
  Speaker 12: the first states that comes in your mind is the
• 4:01
  Speaker 12: United States. Then at a society, so at a conscious.
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: But that it's recently become again really complicated. Some people
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: are trying to take advantage.
• 4:12
  Speaker 12: To bring in it kind of chaos or especially out
• 4:17
  Speaker 12: the way it has some issues of misinformation, disinformation and malinformation.
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: I think one of the things that's interesting is that
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: almost everyone I spoke with across the political spectrum, because
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: I spoke with people on the left and on the
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: right and for everyone, everyone was kind of concerned about
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: this moment for free speech in the United States.
• 4:37
  Speaker 8: I don't feel like we're as free to speak our
• 4:38
  Speaker 8: minds we were in the nineties.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: That that was my other question.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: Where do you think we're at today with free speech?
• 4:43
  Speaker 8: And you America, Well, I mean, you've got people getting
• 4:46
  Speaker 8: shot on college campuses over it. So it's kind of
• 4:49
  Speaker 8: hard to say we're moving in the right direction. But
• 4:52
  Speaker 8: something's gonna have to change.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: It's this kind of mixed bag.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: But in general people you know, of course, standing up people,
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: we need to defend it, but very concerned about where
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: we are today and the state of free speech today
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: in the United States. Man, So, where where do you
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: see free speech in America today? Where do you see
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: the state of free speech today in the United States?
• 5:17
  Speaker 13: In the client State, we see that freedom of speeches
• 5:23
  Speaker 13: is not really freedom more, it's heavily regulated.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: It's Saturnian. You do a lot of shift shaping.
• 5:32
  Speaker 13: You know, free speech, You say fake news, So I
• 5:37
  Speaker 13: undermine this your speech by characterizing it's fake news. When
• 5:43
  Speaker 13: I characterize fake news, I take an action against it.
• 5:47
  Speaker 13: And that's our reality we confronted with. Free speech is
• 5:50
  Speaker 13: not really free no more. It comes with a price.
• 5:53
  Speaker 13: And I say that, you know, no earnest it comes
• 5:56
  Speaker 13: with a price. You know, it was never free for
• 6:00
  Speaker 13: go on opress people. It was never free for Indigenous people.
• 6:04
  Speaker 13: It was never it was never intended for us to
• 6:07
  Speaker 13: have a voice. It was never free for to con
• 6:10
  Speaker 13: or Mexican American migrants that comes in this country the
• 6:14
  Speaker 13: later on become a part of the problem, and never
• 6:17
  Speaker 13: was free. It was always designed for a specific class
• 6:20
  Speaker 13: of people. And we're free to do what I want,
• 6:23
  Speaker 13: when I want, how I want it, and say what
• 6:25
  Speaker 13: I want.
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: This is the Battle for Free Speech, a multipart narrative
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: podcast brought to you by the Real News. In this series,
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: we take you on a journey to understand the important
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: role free speech has played in US history and the
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: fight being waged over it. Today I'm your co host,
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: Michael Fox, and I'm so excited to be joined today
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: by Mansa Musa. He's a longtime social activist and a
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: former Black panther. He's the host of the real news
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: show Rap the Bars about the US system of mass incarceration,
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: and this is something he knows a little bit about
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: because Manson, you spent forty eight years and nine months
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: in prison, right that? So, Mansa, thank you so much
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: for joining me today. I'm so seriously so excited for
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: this conversation.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Am I.
• 7:17
  Speaker 13: You know, like I'll definitely enjoy like I would say
• 7:21
  Speaker 13: what you I enjoy your insight, I enjoy your premimit
• 7:24
  Speaker 13: to you know, people's freedom and our freedom in general.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you so much, Mansa.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: So today's special episode in particular because it's dropping on
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: the eve of the United States two hundred fiftieth birthday.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: And yet things, as we've seen in recent episodes are
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: not good. Press freedom is an all time low. Hundreds
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: have lost their jobs for speaking out online. Tech barons
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: are deciding whose voices are lifted and who's remained in
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: the shadows, just like Manson just said, and Trump has
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: launched an all out assault on our free speech. Today,
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: I want to take a step back and kind of
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: unravel what that even means. What does free speech even mean,
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: what's the state of it today? What should it mean?
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: And for the last year I've been speaking with people
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: on the streets in the United States but also in
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: numerous countries on three different continents about what exactly is
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: this and how do we need to understand free speech?
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: And Look, we've dug into this in recent episodes in
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: many different ways. We've looked at all the different facets
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: of free speech.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Today.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: I kind of want to underline so many of these
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: points and try and tie them together. The bottom line
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: is this free speech is clearly under attack, but it's
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: also so much more than we can imagine and which
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: we usually consider. I want to start this episode by
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: playing you something to try and center this discussion Manson
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: because everything we've been hearing and everything we're going to
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: hear over the next few days will be about Trump's
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: Grand July fourth party.
• 9:12
  Speaker 10: This will be a time like you've never had in
• 9:14
  Speaker 10: your lives America till fifty.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Thank you, I love you all.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: And for me, what we see all the time from
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: Trump is him kind of trying to claim everything for himself.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: It's as if.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: Everything he does is to try and erase history and
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: transform it into something that's actually his. And I found
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: this piece of tape when I was researching for this podcast,
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: and I thought it was fascinating because it's an old
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: documentary clip. It shows old news, real footage of the
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: nineteen sixty three March on Washington, and I was really
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: intrigued by it because of what the narrator says and
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: what it means for this podcast.
• 9:58
  Speaker 9: Sum Maria by rovers, some by train and plane, some
• 10:03
  Speaker 9: drove private automobiles, thirty fifty miles all now walked to
• 10:09
  Speaker 9: the memorial site preserved in honor of Abraham Lincoln.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: So as as I'm playing this, man say, you see
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: people kind of walking with signs arriving for the nineteen
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: sixty three March on Washington. You see the steps full
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: of people. You see people walking past the reflecting pool.
• 10:26
  Speaker 9: They walk to express to the nation in a peaceful fashion,
• 10:30
  Speaker 9: their rights to freely assemble and be heard, as spelled
• 10:34
  Speaker 9: out in the First Amendment of the Constitution of the
• 10:37
  Speaker 9: United States. The First Amendment requires that the government not
• 10:42
  Speaker 9: only refrained from interference with peaceful assemblies, it must restrain
• 10:47
  Speaker 9: the restrainers as well. The Boston Tea Party let off
• 10:51
  Speaker 9: a long chain of effective social protests in America. The
• 10:56
  Speaker 9: Suffragette demonstration spread to many cities before their cause was victorious,
• 11:02
  Speaker 9: and the struggles of American labor were traditionally advertised through
• 11:06
  Speaker 9: the right to peacefully assemble.
• 11:09
  Speaker 8: And be heard.
• 11:11
  Speaker 9: A renowned American jurist recently said, a function of free
• 11:16
  Speaker 9: speech under our system is to invite dispute. It may
• 11:21
  Speaker 9: strike its prejudices and preconceptions and have profound, unsettling effects
• 11:26
  Speaker 9: as it presses for acceptance of an idea.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: What does that mean to you? What is what do
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: those words mean? But also what did that moment, the
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: nineteen sixty three March on Washington mean?
• 11:44
  Speaker 13: In the nineteen sixty three March of Washington really was
• 11:47
  Speaker 13: a turning point in this country where it gave value
• 11:53
  Speaker 13: to people's ability to assemble and gave value to people's.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Ability to tell the talk.
• 12:02
  Speaker 13: So this was the one time where you see the
• 12:05
  Speaker 13: marginalized communities and moginalized people, oppressed people, poor people. They
• 12:10
  Speaker 13: came from all over the country and some from around
• 12:13
  Speaker 13: different parts of the world to assemble here to say
• 12:19
  Speaker 13: we have a right to a symbol, but in our assembly,
• 12:23
  Speaker 13: we have a right to say what we wanted to
• 12:26
  Speaker 13: say they felt as though they had they were not
• 12:30
  Speaker 13: being recognized, their rights wasn't being recognized. They had a
• 12:32
  Speaker 13: right to say something about that. That meant a lot
• 12:36
  Speaker 13: because before that you had Jim Crow. So the Jim
• 12:42
  Speaker 13: Crow or okay, you you had we had the sembilus
• 12:46
  Speaker 13: of free speech in the North, a sembling, but you
• 12:49
  Speaker 13: had no free speech in the South. You had a
• 12:52
  Speaker 13: similars right to a symbol in the North, it depends
• 12:56
  Speaker 13: on where you was at. But in the South, we
• 12:58
  Speaker 13: had no right to a symbol. Under those service it
• 13:01
  Speaker 13: was death. So now you hey people saying we go
• 13:05
  Speaker 13: on to this Washington who come together in the symbol.
• 13:09
  Speaker 13: It took a lot of heart for the people that
• 13:11
  Speaker 13: even wanted to do that because of the state that
• 13:14
  Speaker 13: this country was in at that time.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: You know, one of the things that I've spoken with
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: Mark a lot about and also in this podcast is
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: the importance of free speech and standing up for free
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: speech comes from the abolitionist movement, it comes from the
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: civil rights movement, and I think we forget like these
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: deep roots.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: In organizing and struggle.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: And I think that's why I was impressed by this
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: documentary clip where they were talking about free speech on
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: this specific day in this specific place. It's just it's
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: another reminder of how important like the root and the
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: struggle is and the rout in the organizing and the
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: route and the fight against racism and what's that's men's historically,
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: but what it still means today. Man, So we're where
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: were you on that day of you know, the march
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: on Washington.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: I'm I'm a lady Washingtonian.
• 14:08
  Speaker 13: I was in living in southeast and then projects of Washington, see,
• 14:16
  Speaker 13: and everybody in my family was gathered around the TV
• 14:21
  Speaker 13: watching laid on my cousins, elderly cousins. They was there,
• 14:26
  Speaker 13: so they came through the house and they retold what
• 14:29
  Speaker 13: they seen. So all of us was all of us
• 14:32
  Speaker 13: were sitting there like in awe at at that.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: What it did. It just took a picture.
• 14:39
  Speaker 13: Of time of what was going on with this country
• 14:43
  Speaker 13: at that time and how and how much it impacted people.
• 14:48
  Speaker 13: That's where the turn when people started become more socially conscious.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: More more active, more vocal.
• 14:57
  Speaker 13: More confrontation as opposed to before you know, you had
• 15:02
  Speaker 13: isolated incidents of resistance, You had isolated incidents and people
• 15:07
  Speaker 13: standing up.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: But this right here to maybe now.
• 15:11
  Speaker 13: Oh, I got a right to say something.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: I got a right to a symbol.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: So it's how old were you?
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: I think I was like nine, maybe ten.
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: Amazing, you were right there, right down the street. That's awesome, mensal,
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: What what does free speech mean to you?
• 15:31
  Speaker 13: I rest on the principles that was founded on, you know,
• 15:36
  Speaker 13: the right to speak in a symbol without government interference,
• 15:42
  Speaker 13: without being regulated.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 15:44
  Speaker 13: You can't yell fire in the theater, you know, you know.
• 15:49
  Speaker 13: So it's some limitations on. But for me, it's a
• 15:53
  Speaker 13: person god given right to say whatever they feel and
• 16:00
  Speaker 13: the right for me to be able to say that
• 16:02
  Speaker 13: in a symbol. Well out bear retaliation. I'll being subjugated
• 16:10
  Speaker 13: without feel me being a kidnapped.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:15
  Speaker 14: On Tuesday, a federal judge in Texas handed down unusually
• 16:19
  Speaker 14: harsh sentences ranging from thirty to one hundred years, to
• 16:23
  Speaker 14: a group of anti ice protesters convicted of terrorism charges
• 16:26
  Speaker 14: in March. Federal prosecutors had accused the nine defenders.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: I want to take a step back for a second
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: because I've been speaking with a woman named Mary and Franks.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: I've brought her in in some of these other episodes
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: with Mark. She's a legal scholar at American University, also
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: there in Washington, DC, and she's the author of Fearless Speech,
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: Breaking Free from the First Amendment, and she is a
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: really important perspective not just around what free speech is
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: or what the First Amendment is, but what free speech
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: should be.
• 17:07
  Speaker 15: What I really do think sincerely, you know, having now
• 17:10
  Speaker 15: had many conversations with many different audiences about what do
• 17:14
  Speaker 15: people think free speech means?
• 17:15
  Speaker 11: What does it mean to them?
• 17:17
  Speaker 15: Overwhelmingly, what I realize is that it's because there's a
• 17:19
  Speaker 15: kind of narcotic effect of those words. People are kind
• 17:22
  Speaker 15: of lulled into a sense of don't ask me about
• 17:25
  Speaker 15: the details.
• 17:26
  Speaker 11: I know what free speech is.
• 17:27
  Speaker 15: And it's because we think we know it so well
• 17:29
  Speaker 15: that we don't know anything about it.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: But she says, we have to take it to another level.
• 17:36
  Speaker 15: So we need to do a kind of estrangement from
• 17:39
  Speaker 15: free speech. Free speech needs to become strange to us.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: She says she asked her students about this when she
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: teaches First Amendment, and she asked them, when was the
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: last time you had a really good conversation.
• 17:51
  Speaker 15: And they'll start giving the same set of characteristics, and
• 17:53
  Speaker 15: it's either, you know, maybe on a bus, or at
• 17:56
  Speaker 15: the kitchen table, or you know, friends conversations.
• 17:59
  Speaker 11: I'll ask them, well, what made it good?
• 18:01
  Speaker 15: And they'll say, well, we took turns talking, I learned something,
• 18:04
  Speaker 15: the other person listened to me. We weren't shouting at
• 18:06
  Speaker 15: each other, and we both came away thinking that there
• 18:08
  Speaker 15: was something valuable that we learned.
• 18:10
  Speaker 11: And I thought, you know, is that a version of.
• 18:12
  Speaker 15: Free speech that is more robust and more significant than
• 18:16
  Speaker 15: whatever we think we mean by this kind of mix
• 18:19
  Speaker 15: of quasi legal, quasi psychological, quasicultural concepts of free speech.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: Like, shouldn't we be taking it to another level where
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: it's not just my right to speak? But actually, what
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: do we want with this? What are we trying to achieve?
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: How do we come together around it?
• 18:35
  Speaker 15: I really do think that term free speech has become
• 18:37
  Speaker 15: emptied of meaning, and we need to start thinking specifically
• 18:40
  Speaker 15: about what is a good speech outcome for the environment
• 18:44
  Speaker 15: I'm in right now? What does it mean to have
• 18:46
  Speaker 15: a good family conversation, What does it mean to have
• 18:49
  Speaker 15: a good classroom conversation? What do I want a newspaper
• 18:52
  Speaker 15: to teach me? What do I want to learn?
• 18:54
  Speaker 9: What?
• 18:54
  Speaker 15: What are my goals for this particular interaction I'm having
• 18:57
  Speaker 15: with someone else, and really kind of resist the idea
• 19:00
  Speaker 15: that free speech.
• 19:01
  Speaker 11: Can be something meaningful in that abstract sense.
• 19:03
  Speaker 15: It usually means something quite concrete in the context that
• 19:06
  Speaker 15: we find ourselves.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: I think this is so interesting because I had never
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: when she was speaking this, I've never thought about free
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: speech like this, at like another level of free speech, really,
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: you know, because today free speech has been boiled down
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: to well, I'm allowed to say whatever I want and
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: you can't do anything about it, and I can criticize you,
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: and I can attack you. It's not about coming together
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: as a country or having a community or a conversation,
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: which is really at the end of the days, I
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: think that's what most people anywhere want, right We want
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: to build community, we want to have friends, and we
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: want to have a conversation. And what we have now
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: has been the exact opposite, particularly with Trump trying to
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: flatten out the discourse to us versus them.
• 20:00
  Speaker 11: I like that.
• 20:00
  Speaker 13: I like that perspective, and she's offering and I was
• 20:04
  Speaker 13: eventually to say this here, this is the principle was there,
• 20:07
  Speaker 13: this was founding on. It's not perfect. You know, the
• 20:11
  Speaker 13: people that put this thing together, you know, got a
• 20:14
  Speaker 13: lot of baggage, but they put something elasticity to it. Well,
• 20:19
  Speaker 13: this is what what she described is or free speech.
• 20:24
  Speaker 13: The intent behind free speech, The intent behind free speech
• 20:27
  Speaker 13: is not because I can say something, but some got
• 20:30
  Speaker 13: to come out of my speech, Some got to come
• 20:33
  Speaker 13: out of my conversation. No, it's not just that or
• 20:35
  Speaker 13: I got in mouth, I talked, you got ease, you listen.
• 20:38
  Speaker 13: It's a matter of like, oh, we engaging in conversation
• 20:43
  Speaker 13: for the purpose of advancing our community, our neighborhood.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: Our family. So this conversation is the gathering.
• 20:54
  Speaker 13: The coming together is coming together for that purpose to
• 20:58
  Speaker 13: socialize within our socialiszation. With SOCIALI we'll develop a social network.
• 21:03
  Speaker 13: It's something it's in exchange. And you know where you
• 21:06
  Speaker 13: see you know where you see that at and and
• 21:07
  Speaker 13: today was talking about this in the in the book.
• 21:09
  Speaker 13: If they come in the morning, they come for your night.
• 21:12
  Speaker 13: You know, you see that what she talked about, you
• 21:15
  Speaker 13: see that. You see it in prison. You see that
• 21:17
  Speaker 13: what she said, the attitude about speech and engaging, you
• 21:22
  Speaker 13: see it in prison. Because of where we confine ourselves,
• 21:27
  Speaker 13: we develop a social network where the conversation result in
• 21:31
  Speaker 13: something of a then what I can get out you.
• 21:35
  Speaker 13: It might be the conversation might result in ideas about
• 21:39
  Speaker 13: how to make some progress. It might result and you know,
• 21:43
  Speaker 13: we just give you're here to listen to have a
• 21:46
  Speaker 13: conversation where you feel comfortable talking about some being vulnerable.
• 21:50
  Speaker 13: It results in you ask you know, you tell me
• 21:53
  Speaker 13: about your family, telling you about my family. You know,
• 21:56
  Speaker 13: these conversations become any conversations about man, I gotta go
• 21:59
  Speaker 13: get knife and kills somebody.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Oh man, my life is thread.
• 22:03
  Speaker 13: You see a lot of that what she talked about,
• 22:05
  Speaker 13: and what to a point, why can't it be like there?
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Why can't you get rebered? Why can't you get back
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: to being there?
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Exactly? Exactly.
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: I want to talk about prison a little bit more,
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: but we'll get to that in a second. I want
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: to take you to a place brin Mark College in Pennsylvania,
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: nineteen eighty six. It is the commencement speech, so graduation ceremony,
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: and on the podium is speculative fiction writer Ursula k LeGuin.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: So she passed away years later. She passed away at
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: the age of eighty eight in twenty eighteen. But she
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: says something here which I think is really important and
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: it kind of got obscured and forgotten in the past,
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: and I want to ring it out too, because it's
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: another layer of this manson that I think is really
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: important for us to analyze and understand when we're talking
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: about free speech.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: This isn't necessarily.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: First Amendment, and it's more for us to be really
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: grappling with how should we be thinking about free speech?
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: So this is kind of like a second piece to
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: what Mary Ann Franks was talking about.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Ursula Kaylagwen. She speaks to the crowd.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: There's only a transcript of her speech, and I couldn't
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: find a recording, so I actually asked a voice actor
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: to play her.
• 23:36
  Speaker 14: Thinking about what I should say to you made me
• 23:38
  Speaker 14: think about what we learned in coll It and what
• 23:41
  Speaker 14: we unlearned in coll It.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: But in her speech, she looks at the difference between
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: what she calls father tongue and mother tongue, which are
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: two different ways of speaking for her. Father tongue, she says,
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: is the language of power, of.
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: Social power is the public discourse, and one dialect.
• 24:02
  Speaker 11: Of it is speech making by politician.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: She says, it doesn't speak itself, It only lectures. It
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: talks down, It talks at there's no dialogue, there's no communication.
• 24:15
  Speaker 11: The father tongue is spoken from above.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: It goes one way.
• 24:19
  Speaker 15: No answer is expected or heard.
• 24:22
  Speaker 14: The mother tongue, spoken or written, expects an answer.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: It is conversation.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: Mother tongue, she says, is quote language, not as mere communication,
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: but as relation, relationship.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: It connects.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: It goes two ways in many ways, an exchange.
• 24:42
  Speaker 16: A network.
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: Its power is not in dividing, but in binding, not
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: in distancing, but in uniting.
• 24:49
  Speaker 11: It is written, but not.
• 24:51
  Speaker 9: By scribes and secretaries for posterity.
• 24:54
  Speaker 11: It flies from the mouth on the breath.
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: That is our life and is gone. And and so for me,
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: this was this was really profound when I learned about
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: it just a.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Few weeks ago.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: And I think it's so important because it demands a conversation,
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: like like the mother tongue is both speaking.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: But also listening. It's dialogue.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: It's not talking down, which is what Trump does. And
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: so much of this stuff online, like everything we see
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: online nowadays over X or TikTok or whatever it is,
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: it's all people yelling at each other, all telling everybody
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: else this is the truth, and it's and and you're
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: bad and I'm true and I'm.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Good, right, it's all us versus them.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: But what she's saying is, no, we need to be
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: thinking about this and we should be striving for mother tongue.
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: Free speech should be about mother tongue. It should be
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: about a dialogue and a conversation like how do we
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: how do we build unity and have this dialogue together.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: We should be pushing to build community.
• 26:03
  Speaker 14: I think we have a responsibility to freedom, and especially
• 26:06
  Speaker 14: to freedom of speech.
• 26:08
  Speaker 7: Obedience is silent, it does not be answered, it is contained.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: Right at a time when which everyone's being pushed aside
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: and Trump is telling you know, he's trying to divide
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: everybody else, we should be striving to try and unite
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: each other as much as possible. And I think I
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: just think that what she mentioned and what she brought
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: up in this speech, this obscure speech, which is you know,
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: got left in the past. It was republished in one
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: of her books, but people don't really.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Talk about this.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: But I think it's really important to be thinking about
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: how do we speak and what's the language that we speak,
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: and how much do we sit to listen and how
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: much do we allow others to have this conversation?
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Right? Agree?
• 26:56
  Speaker 13: And because you know, we find ourselves in this space
• 27:01
  Speaker 13: where we're in a mother tongue state of mind. So
• 27:05
  Speaker 13: I'm engaging you not to get something out of you.
• 27:08
  Speaker 13: I'm engage you because I'm building it's my it's a
• 27:11
  Speaker 13: social construct. I'm building a relationship around ideas. And because
• 27:18
  Speaker 13: I'm building a relationship with you around ideas, I'm listening.
• 27:25
  Speaker 13: It's an African tradition, I think, and it staying correctly.
• 27:28
  Speaker 13: They got what they call the talk, talk and stick.
• 27:31
  Speaker 13: So whoever holding the stick is leading the conversation. Once
• 27:36
  Speaker 13: he passed or he or she passed a stick, that
• 27:38
  Speaker 13: person can go into whatever they want to go into
• 27:42
  Speaker 13: relatives to what either they say or what they want
• 27:46
  Speaker 13: to say. But the whole thing of the talk with
• 27:49
  Speaker 13: stick is everybody get a chance to say something and
• 27:52
  Speaker 13: everybody else get a chance to listen.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: So I'm not passing the.
• 27:56
  Speaker 13: Stick and say I have my you know, I ain't
• 27:59
  Speaker 13: trying to hear you got some it's a it's a network.
• 28:02
  Speaker 13: So in in regard to her. But now since yeah,
• 28:08
  Speaker 13: and and again, I'm gonna keep emphasizes this point. This
• 28:11
  Speaker 13: was the original intent of the First Amendment, cause you
• 28:15
  Speaker 13: look at the historical context, they didn't have a voice.
• 28:21
  Speaker 13: The British controlled everything and let it be known to.
• 28:24
  Speaker 17: Behold these truths to be self evident.
• 28:27
  Speaker 13: They was in an environment where they was they had
• 28:30
  Speaker 13: to be low on each other's neighbors.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: So it's not a matter of like, I got it
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: right to say what I want.
• 28:37
  Speaker 13: No, in this context, I got freedoms to speak with
• 28:41
  Speaker 13: the intent on mobilizing or educating or or socializing with people.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: And learning from people and growing.
• 28:50
  Speaker 13: As a result of that, not just because I got
• 28:52
  Speaker 13: something to say and it got to where we see
• 28:54
  Speaker 13: it now because of the father tongue doctrine or thinking
• 28:58
  Speaker 13: where thinking it.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: Was ingrained social media.
• 29:01
  Speaker 13: The more I get more likes, the more vulgar I am,
• 29:05
  Speaker 13: the more neuro minded I am, more ignorant I am,
• 29:09
  Speaker 13: I get likes, So I'm trying to get I'm monetizing stupidity.
• 29:13
  Speaker 13: But at the same time I'm doing it under pretest
• 29:16
  Speaker 13: that I got right. I got free speech. The free
• 29:19
  Speaker 13: speech that I'm offering is not free speech but regulated speech,
• 29:23
  Speaker 13: control speech, conditional speech.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: Exactly, controlled and conditional even more by the algorithm and
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: by the owners of these big corporations that control whose voice,
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: you know, gets to do what other people see and
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: whose voice gets silenced, which we see a time and
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: time again.
• 29:41
  Speaker 9: Right.
• 29:42
  Speaker 13: The thing I like about what you're offering in terms
• 29:46
  Speaker 13: of like support of alternative way of looking at free
• 29:49
  Speaker 13: speech is this is what This is the reason why
• 29:54
  Speaker 13: we find ourselves in the state that we're in there,
• 29:56
  Speaker 13: because if we are actually living in an original attend
• 30:01
  Speaker 13: the Constitution, then we don't have a Donald Trump, we
• 30:06
  Speaker 13: don't have a Mega, we don't have Jim Crow, we
• 30:11
  Speaker 13: don't have these things because we got a.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: Right to agree to disagree.
• 30:16
  Speaker 13: The fact that I'm in a state of mind where
• 30:18
  Speaker 13: I want to be in harmony with people, then that's
• 30:22
  Speaker 13: going to keep me grounded on maintain that kind of
• 30:26
  Speaker 13: level of sympathy and empathy or compassion towards my neighbors
• 30:32
  Speaker 13: and people that I'm engaging. So my speech is there
• 30:35
  Speaker 13: to grow not only the first but to grow me
• 30:38
  Speaker 13: for me to go as well.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's absolutely true.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: And here's here's the thing, and this is the direction
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: I want to go into, is that not only is
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: social media and Trump and all the political discourse, this
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: you know, father tongue speech, so top down, it's not inclusive, clearly.
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: But what we're also seeing now, and I've spoken about
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: this in some of the previous episodes, but I want
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: to get back into it now, is this push by
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: Trump to try and redefine what we even understand as
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: free speech.
• 31:16
  Speaker 10: Today, I will also sign an executive order to immediately
• 31:19
  Speaker 10: stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: And just to kind of back up a little, I
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: think that many people for a long time would say, oh,
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: free speech is, you know, our right to stand up
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: and speak our minds. But it's also I think what's
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: been one in the past decades is like free speech
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: is our right to stand up in protest. That's what
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: comes from the free speech movement and the anti war movement.
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: That it's this thing that if I don't like something
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: that's happened, I can get into the streets and I
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: can stand up and demand my rights and we.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: All have an equal voice right.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: And I think part of what Mark and I have
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: talked a lot about in this podcast is how we're
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: now seeing rollbacks in free speech or censorship of free
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: speech in the name of free speech, and this push
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: to redefine free speech in order to mean something that
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: is akin to it's my right to post whatever I
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: want online, and it's the big media tech company's right
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: to not have regulation over social media and to not
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: have regulation over AI and to not have regulation online.
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: That is what they're trying to transform this all into
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: it this moment so that Trump can push his agenda,
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: because the more he closes that space for dialogue and
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: the more he closes the space about what people are
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: allowed to say, the more he controls communication and controls
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: the agenda, which is exactly what he wants, right.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:53
  Speaker 18: I think by co opting the definition of what free
• 32:56
  Speaker 18: speech and freedom of the press is and what quote
• 32:59
  Speaker 18: unquote good news media, what good reporting constitutes, I think
• 33:04
  Speaker 18: that is not only distorting democratic values, but really I
• 33:08
  Speaker 18: think making it much more difficult to even follow the conversation.
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: Catherine Jacobson, she's from the Committee to Protect Journalists.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: I spoke with her in the last episode for.
• 33:18
  Speaker 18: Not using common language to even talk about what's going on.
• 33:22
  Speaker 18: With a common shared definition of what freedom of the
• 33:25
  Speaker 18: press is, then it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to
• 33:30
  Speaker 18: have any meaningful conversation about how to protect media freedom,
• 33:35
  Speaker 18: about how to protect journalists, about how to ensure that
• 33:39
  Speaker 18: people feel free, that they people feel that they can
• 33:41
  Speaker 18: have true online discourse in a healthy fashion, or in
• 33:46
  Speaker 18: person discourse for that matter.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: Gone are the days, she says, where you have a
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: debate on the Senate floor and then you go have
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: lunch together. That type of thing is over, and it's
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: been lost in large part because of the shrinking space
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: for free speech and Trump's attempt to redefine what free
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: speech is in the United States today.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Do you see this mental.
• 34:14
  Speaker 13: We're almost definitely, most definitely. And I always like laugh
• 34:19
  Speaker 13: at reporters. Some got awards out the Yin Yang. I mean,
• 34:24
  Speaker 13: like in this awards, and how in a conversation with
• 34:28
  Speaker 13: him they find themselves dumb and down because the conversation
• 34:33
  Speaker 13: is not gonna have no substance.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: I'm find myself in like no, you lie, you know,
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: you lie, No, you lie, no, you lie, no, you lie.
• 34:40
  Speaker 13: No, find myself being dumbed down because of what they
• 34:44
  Speaker 13: have taken and done with free speech.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: So, like she said, gone all them days. We can't
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: rely on nothing.
• 34:51
  Speaker 13: That is mass media information wise. We gotta be real
• 34:58
  Speaker 13: concerning some media or AI generated information. We gotta be
• 35:03
  Speaker 13: real discerned. So we find ourselves, nay, in a space
• 35:06
  Speaker 13: where we gotta do a lot of night when they
• 35:09
  Speaker 13: talk fact check, we gotta do a lot of ven
• 35:11
  Speaker 13: information that we get because there's no such thing as
• 35:15
  Speaker 13: free speech in this country. Name it's regulated speech in
• 35:20
  Speaker 13: his control speech.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: So I just want to underscore why this is happening,
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: and particularly with Trump, but many other people Trump allies.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: And it's because Trump can't win with communication and dialogue.
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: He doesn't when we come together and we have I talk,
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: you listen, just like what Marianne Franks and of course
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: LeGuin we're speaking about. Trump doesn't win.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: He has to listen, and that doesn't work. And that's
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: why he lies.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: He makes up his own his own fake news, his
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: own truths. He can't win with equal communication, so he
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: yells and attacks people, and of course not just him,
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: but other members of his administration and many others. And
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: also that actually supports him because it makes him look powerful,
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: which many of his supporters that's what they want to see, right.
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: So he's able to control the message, he's able to
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: control the conversation.
• 36:18
  Speaker 10: And as we enter the Golden Age of America, that's
• 36:20
  Speaker 10: what we have.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: This is the Golden age. We've never had anything like
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: it week.
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: And it's not just happening in Washington. This happens on
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: the local level with politicians and the local level, it
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: happens in our own families. We see it over the
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: Thanksgiving table, right.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: But I think it's.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: Important for us to like understand this reality so that
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: we can see it when it's happening and analyze it,
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: to understand what it is and not fall victim to it,
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: because I feel like this is part of what happens,
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: is that we don't understand what's actually happening. We just
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: get pushed around like we're like boats that are kind
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: of tossing at sea, right, rather than understand what's at
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: play and the tools and the tactics that trucks and
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: many others are using. And it all has to do
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: with our speech, and it all comes back to our
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: free speech and our way of communicating. I just wanted
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: to kind of place that there because I think all
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: of that is really important to understand this moment, but
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: also understand kind of the background when we take a
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: step back from talking about free speech or first amend
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: whatever else to really try and analyze what communication is
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: and how we should be talking or what kind of
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: speech do we want to have?
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Mansa. I want to bring us back.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: To the two and her fiftieth birthday of the United States,
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: and to do that, I want to take us to
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: another place in history. Eighteen fifty two, Rochester, New York,
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: July Frederick Douglas has been invited by the Rochester Ladies
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: Anti Slavery Society to deliver an Independence Day speech.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: What to the American slave is your fourth ofly Now?
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: Of course, Douglas was a leading abolitionist. He had escaped
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: slavery in Maryland in eighteen thirty eight, fourteen years before,
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: and his speech on July fifth, eighteen fifty two is
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: still remembered.
• 38:13
  Speaker 17: To him, your celebration is a sham, your boasted liberty
• 38:20
  Speaker 17: and unholy license.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: In it, he reminds the country of the hypocrisy of
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: celebrating freedom and the fourth of July while millions were
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: still enslaved. He says, I say it with a sad
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: sense of the disparity between us. I am not included
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: within the pale of glorious anniversary. Your high independence only
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: you this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: your fathers is shared by you, not me. The sunlight
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: that brought light and healing to you has brought stripes
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: and death to me. The fourth of July is yours,
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: not mine. You may rejoice, I must morton man, So
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: what do you feel when you hear this? What does
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: this speech mean today?
• 39:22
  Speaker 13: So you're telling me, like malc will say, don't call
• 39:25
  Speaker 13: me a dinald.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: I'm sitting at the table with an empty plate.
• 39:28
  Speaker 13: When we look at Frederick Douglas's speech, it's appropriate today
• 39:33
  Speaker 13: in the district of Columbia, you got over fifty percent
• 39:39
  Speaker 13: of the citizens living low income areas. They you know,
• 39:43
  Speaker 13: they can't get food stamps, they can't get subsidized rent
• 39:48
  Speaker 13: because all these things have been cut. So really, Gregori
• 39:51
  Speaker 13: Douglas is talking speaking to this country when he's saying
• 39:55
  Speaker 13: like why, why, why should we be celebrating this call
• 39:59
  Speaker 13: for July. It's two hundred and fifty year of oppression
• 40:02
  Speaker 13: that we've been unsubjugated too. Since we've been in this
• 40:04
  Speaker 13: country two hundred and fifty year under the only class
• 40:09
  Speaker 13: of people that they systematically target always got something they
• 40:14
  Speaker 13: thought throwing at us, going to.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: Try to get us extinct.
• 40:17
  Speaker 13: As opposed to say y'all celebrate, we more, I say
• 40:22
  Speaker 13: y'all celebrate and we organize, agitate and resist.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: That's awesome, man. So you know, I want to talk about.
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: The prison industrial complex for a minute because I think
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: it's really important. The United States is one of the
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: highest incarceration rates in the world. That's gone up with
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: tens of thousands of people in iced attention. Clearly more
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: people are in jail in the United States than any
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: other country in the world, nearly two million people according
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: to the Prison Policy Initiative. You have done a ton
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: of work around incarceration and the prison system, and you
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: don't just talk about it on your show Rattling Bars,
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: but you you lived it yourself for decades. What does
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: the fourth of July mean for those in prison? What
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: did it mean for you when you were there? And
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: what do we need to be understanding about the prison
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: system today in the United States? That still two million
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: people are behind bars, which is just like a shocking
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: figure that I think that people just don't don't even realize, dude.
• 41:39
  Speaker 13: Prison, that's what complex and so multi billion dollar industry.
• 41:44
  Speaker 13: But more importantly, it's so fragmented that it's hard to.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: Like dismount it.
• 41:51
  Speaker 13: Now one corporation controlling the whole entire infrastructure. We got
• 41:55
  Speaker 13: some controlling the gozz, we got some controlling the food,
• 41:59
  Speaker 13: we got some controlling the telephone. So and it's so
• 42:03
  Speaker 13: dissected in everyguard it's hard to like and smell it.
• 42:07
  Speaker 13: And in terms say like we're gonna abolish this because
• 42:11
  Speaker 13: it's so much money invested in it.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: Like if you go down in Alabama, they won't.
• 42:17
  Speaker 13: They so entrenched on maintain that system. People got the
• 42:23
  Speaker 13: right to be parole because they want to maintain your label.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: They won't give you parole. They just keep denying you parole.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: Not because you're working in the street. You don'et worked
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: in the street for the last five year hit, but
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: they deny your parole and they.
• 42:38
  Speaker 13: Just come over with some obscure reason because your labor
• 42:43
  Speaker 13: cheap label.
• 42:47
  Speaker 17: You're getting a new data on immigration and Customs enforcement.
• 42:50
  Speaker 17: It shows that the number of immigrant detainees without criminal
• 42:53
  Speaker 17: records has grown exponentially since the starts of the second
• 42:57
  Speaker 17: Trump administration.
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: To ben been hearing reports that a lot of people,
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: in particular in these in these ice crackdowns over the
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: last year, are being held for months and months in
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: prisons before being deported. You know, they might be scheduled
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: to be deported, but they're still held for months. Do
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: you think part of that behind that is the profit
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: motive by these large corporations.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: So yes, it's all about profit everything. This right here.
• 43:28
  Speaker 13: When he campaigned on getting rid of so called illegal immigrants,
• 43:33
  Speaker 13: that was he was basically campaign on, you know, nine
• 43:36
  Speaker 13: smiles pockets because the very people you initially say that
• 43:40
  Speaker 13: you was coming to get. You initially say criminals, but
• 43:44
  Speaker 13: you got all day labors. You got people that in
• 43:48
  Speaker 13: central polity infrastructure of this country. You to round them
• 43:51
  Speaker 13: up and took them and put them into detention centers.
• 43:55
  Speaker 13: But no of a reason than to say we can
• 43:58
  Speaker 13: do that. But more importantly, well profit purpose.
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: Right because the federal government is also paying these companies
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: for each bed each time and somebody's in there, one
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: of these people, they picked them up, and that company
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: is then making more money. What are these top companies,
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: the prison companies that run these prisons, what are they call?
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: What are the names again.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was Geo and core Civic.
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: Big money off of the immigration crackdown and off of
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: the incarceration system. Before we move on to dive back
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: into to free speech. Just man, So what was for you?
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: What was I mean?
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: I can't even imagine nearly forty nine years in prison,
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: like if you were able to sum that up for
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: people out there kind of what did that mean? And
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: why were you held for so long?
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: Well?
• 44:50
  Speaker 13: First reason why I was they so long? Because Maryland
• 44:53
  Speaker 13: has a draconian hegos system. They later resulted in beginning
• 44:58
  Speaker 13: out instructions. But I don't I don't try to like
• 45:03
  Speaker 13: sit back and and unpack high.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: I survive. I survived what I tried.
• 45:08
  Speaker 13: What I try to do, what I try to focus
• 45:10
  Speaker 13: on is what got what I got out of that.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: And I got out of that.
• 45:15
  Speaker 13: Eddie Conway, members of the Black Panther Party or becoming
• 45:19
  Speaker 13: raising my consciousness to lit to put me in a
• 45:22
  Speaker 13: space where I'm not I'm not a prisoner. I'm a
• 45:25
  Speaker 13: political prisoner, and I'm political prison because of the way
• 45:29
  Speaker 13: this country treat or and oppressed people, it was inevitable
• 45:33
  Speaker 13: that I would find myself in a situation where I
• 45:37
  Speaker 13: would be struggling to do something petty or other wire
• 45:41
  Speaker 13: So it educated me, it gave me, and what it
• 45:44
  Speaker 13: did more importantly, it created in me a sense of
• 45:47
  Speaker 13: purpose that now I understand my responsibility. You know, they
• 45:53
  Speaker 13: say dare to struggle there to when that's my model,
• 45:55
  Speaker 13: I'm I'm the epitome of all the cliches. Since I've
• 45:59
  Speaker 13: been out, I've been in this space, you know, advocating.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: It's not easy thing to look back on. I learned
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: over the years that.
• 46:11
  Speaker 13: When you get five or six people that's been posserrated
• 46:14
  Speaker 13: in the room together, that's five or six people they
• 46:18
  Speaker 13: served collectively three hundred years or closer two hundred years.
• 46:21
  Speaker 13: That's how much time they get out of people.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: I thought it was fascinating what you said just a
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: couple of minutes ago, man, about how the mother tongue,
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: first of the Gwin's kind of description, how the mother
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: tongue was so strong amongst inmates in the prison where
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: you were, and yet at the same time, what you
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: saw the father tongue, this is what you would see
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: from the guards.
• 47:01
  Speaker 13: And I told you end of the day, we said
• 47:02
  Speaker 13: that she found in prison where you had the most
• 47:06
  Speaker 13: human social network that she's seen because we cared for
• 47:11
  Speaker 13: each other. You know, we're you know, our commonality is
• 47:15
  Speaker 13: immediately identified. We serving time, we're being subjected servetudated to
• 47:21
  Speaker 13: the same thing. So why would we become a continuous
• 47:25
  Speaker 13: source of oppression and the humanization We find a space
• 47:30
  Speaker 13: where you know, if you met my neighbor and we
• 47:34
  Speaker 13: get packages, food packages and you don't have no family member,
• 47:38
  Speaker 13: I said, let me get a package in your name.
• 47:40
  Speaker 13: I get a package in there, I give you some
• 47:41
  Speaker 13: of them, or you know, I give you the clothes.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: I asked you what you want.
• 47:46
  Speaker 13: If you know people, that's how people thought if they
• 47:49
  Speaker 13: had more than the next person, they would really share,
• 47:52
  Speaker 13: you know, and the communication, like I said before, the
• 47:55
  Speaker 13: communication wouldn't be uh were, speech wouldn't be.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: I got the right to say what I want to
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: say to you.
• 48:01
  Speaker 13: I'm engaging in a speech system that is called away
• 48:08
  Speaker 13: me to become.
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: More human and called the way you to become more human.
• 48:12
  Speaker 13: In regard to each how we look at each other,
• 48:14
  Speaker 13: how we look at this environment amongst our sales.
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I want to dive back into this question
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: of misinformation and disinformation that's being pushed out there and
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: Trump's just constant lies. And the reason why this is
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: important is because if we look back at actually the
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: history of the United States and how free speech was
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: seen historically, going back into the early part of the
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: twentieth century, there is actually a different vision about what
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: should be allowed and what shouldn't be allowed.
• 48:56
  Speaker 15: Freedom means what's a prime I say, human rights.
• 49:00
  Speaker 9: It everywhere. Oh support those to those whose proud to
• 49:07
  Speaker 9: gain those rights and paper.
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: Of course, what we've seen in recent times is almost
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: all fact checking being rolled back, and it's now pretty
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: much a free for all online. But I spoke with
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: this one professor Farah du Boivla. He's a Princeton professor.
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: He wrote the book What is Free Speech? The History
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: of a Dangerous Idea, And this is so fascinating because
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: he talks about how in the nineteen Thursday, in the
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: nineteen forties, as the totalitarian systems is rising in Germany.
• 49:36
  Speaker 16: And they can see how powerful propaganda is and that
• 49:41
  Speaker 16: vehicles of mass communication are not neutral, they are instruments
• 49:45
  Speaker 16: of power.
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: There was this push within the United States to kind
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: of push back on propaganda, and.
• 49:54
  Speaker 16: Out of that comes an attempt to reconsider free speech
• 50:00
  Speaker 16: as also a matter of the public good, and indeed,
• 50:05
  Speaker 16: as people conceptualize it at the time, of the right
• 50:09
  Speaker 16: to truthful information on the part of citizens.
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: And so this is crazy because in fact this is
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: then weaved into the UN Declarations of Human Rights.
• 50:19
  Speaker 16: Because after all, an American document drawn up under Ellen Roosevelt.
• 50:23
  Speaker 7: We stand today at the threshold have a great event
• 50:27
  Speaker 7: both in the life of the United Nations and in
• 50:31
  Speaker 7: the life of mankind. This Universal Declaration of the Human
• 50:36
  Speaker 7: Rights may well become the international Magna Carter of all
• 50:42
  Speaker 7: men everywhere.
• 50:44
  Speaker 16: If you look at that documents definition of freedom expression,
• 50:48
  Speaker 16: it channels what is then the mainstream American and European view,
• 50:51
  Speaker 16: which is, on the one hand, freedom of socion is
• 50:54
  Speaker 16: the right. On the other hand, it can never be
• 50:56
  Speaker 16: abused to harm the rights of others. So it's a
• 51:00
  Speaker 16: balance might some responsibilities, and it includes the right to
• 51:05
  Speaker 16: truthful information.
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: And this is really interesting because in the United States
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: we think of it as just it's just a free
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: for all. It's just, you know, it's just my right
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: to say what I want. It doesn't matter if I
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: harm you or not.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: But in that.
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: Time, in particular, there was this other understanding that there
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: should be professionalism and journalism, that there shouldn't just be
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: you know, fake news and disinformation being spread, but that
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: it actually we have this right within our understanding of
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: free speech too, truthful information, even if that's not in
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: the First Amendment.
• 51:43
  Speaker 9: Will there be peace or war?
• 51:49
  Speaker 16: And out of that also came a huge effort to
• 51:53
  Speaker 16: impose on or remind the mass meeting of the age
• 51:57
  Speaker 16: of their responsibilities. And out of that come ways of
• 52:01
  Speaker 16: rethinking what mass media could be, the public broadcasting, you know,
• 52:06
  Speaker 16: subscription models, all sorts of ways in which we might
• 52:09
  Speaker 16: you know, have a better alignment between the incentives of
• 52:13
  Speaker 16: the of the media and the incentives and the needs
• 52:16
  Speaker 16: of the public. But also journalism school, the professionalization, especially
• 52:22
  Speaker 16: in America, and they're taking seriously by news organizations of
• 52:27
  Speaker 16: their responsibilities fact checking, making sure that you're not telling
• 52:33
  Speaker 16: lies to the public, and you know, correcting things as necessary.
• 52:36
  Speaker 16: It's hard, it takes a lot of money, it takes
• 52:38
  Speaker 16: a lot of effort, but people generally in what we
• 52:41
  Speaker 16: now disdainfully called the legacy media were very heavily invested
• 52:46
  Speaker 16: in that project because they saw what the stakes were.
• 52:49
  Speaker 16: The stakes were a healthy public sphere with truthful information, and.
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: I think this this is so fascinating because it's almost
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: been forgotten. And part of what Phaarah talks about is
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: how with the Internet revolution and the communications revolutions in
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: social media, that's just been all that's just been thrown
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: out the windows.
• 53:09
  Speaker 10: Who fake news, ABC fakes one of the worst, one
• 53:13
  Speaker 10: of the worst in the business.
• 53:15
  Speaker 16: That model has been destroyed by a new ecosystem where
• 53:21
  Speaker 16: these things are simply not attended to at all, And
• 53:25
  Speaker 16: we as a public have lost sight of the fact
• 53:27
  Speaker 16: that we used always, including in the United States, to
• 53:30
  Speaker 16: regulate mass media in the public interest, for the public good,
• 53:37
  Speaker 16: for precisely this reason. That happened to broadcasting, it happened
• 53:41
  Speaker 16: to television. The FCC was set up for that purpose.
• 53:44
  Speaker 16: All markets, even in the United States, are regulated. All
• 53:48
  Speaker 16: that is now under assort by right wing authoritarians who
• 53:54
  Speaker 16: whose project is made easier by the fact that our
• 53:57
  Speaker 16: public discourse has now been overwhelmed by greedy social media
• 54:01
  Speaker 16: companies that take no account at all of the public
• 54:05
  Speaker 16: good insofar as it contravenes their profits.
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: And really what we're now seeing is this push for
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: just full deregulation right whether it doesn't matter if it's
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: fake or not, and that's creating I think part of
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: the problem in the divisions and of course only supporting
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: Trump that we're seeing right now.
• 54:24
  Speaker 13: We have regulated speech, we don't have free speech, and
• 54:28
  Speaker 13: the speech is being when I say regulated, if you
• 54:31
  Speaker 13: would MEGA, you bladly fall under regulation because because you
• 54:37
  Speaker 13: can say whatever you want to say and with impunity.
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: If you're anti stabishment.
• 54:44
  Speaker 13: He won't, he won't spend it in and on amount
• 54:46
  Speaker 13: of time he will investigating them, tying them up or
• 54:51
  Speaker 13: locking them.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: M hm Mansa.
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: I want to take our discussion of free speech to
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: another place. Obviously, I've been talking to a lot of
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: people in the streets over the last year, and I've
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: been noticing something in my reporting that I really need
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: to underscore because I think this is really important for
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: us to understand what free speech means in the United
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: States for US today, but also what.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: It means abroad elsewhere.
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: And I'm generalizing slightly, but pretty much, every time I've
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: interviewed someone in the United States about what their definition
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: of free speech is, they usually say something like it's
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: my right to say what I want when I want,
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: full stop. But when I interview people outside of the
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: United States, they usually include a caveat, so they'll say
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: it's my right to say what I want when I want.
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: But then they include just as long as it doesn't
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: harm or injure others. So there's these two visions, and
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: it's crazy, man's because I've done this in a lot
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: of countries on three different continents, and I've tested it
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: in a bunch of different places, and I just want
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: to kind of bring us to Quito, Ecuador, for for
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: just one second, because I think this example is important.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: So I was at a park.
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: Last year in Quito, and I was interviewing people. And
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: remember this is a country that has one of the
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: highest murder rates in Latin America. The president has called
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: the fight between drug traffickers and the armed forces and
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: internal armed conflict. But even there, almost everyone I spoke
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: with included this caveat that you can't harm or threaten others.
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: So I spoke with this one woman, so Betea Camacho,
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: she's a Venezuelan immigrant to Ecuador.
• 56:42
  Speaker 19: Buen Naltai Pressio, and she said freedom of a speech
• 56:49
  Speaker 19: is the way that a human being has to communicate freely,
• 56:52
  Speaker 19: as the word says freedom.
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: But she said you're right, and where mine begin, and
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: the way I am free to express myself, to act.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: To live well.
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: It always has to be framed in respect for others.
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: Alejandro Torbanta is an Ecuadorian police officer who I also
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: interviewed at that park, and he told me the freedom
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: of speech is to be able to freely say what
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: one feels without fear of reprisals from an authority.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: But he said there also have to be limitations.
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: So when I spoke to him, there had just been
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: this right wing protest a few days before where people
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: in the march were using the Nazi symbol, and I
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: asked him about that. I said, do you feel they
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: should be allowed to do that? And he says, I
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: don't agree with the Nazi slogan and it's not good
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: for certain people. It has nothing to do with the
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: freedom of speech. It's a message that is repressive and authoritarian,
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: and I don't agree with what they did.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: But here's the thing.
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: Manson like in the United States, that would be permitted
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: and then defended by the ASLU, because in the United States,
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: the idea is that all speech, regardless of how harmful
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: it is, should be protected under the Constitution, and this
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: is really different from what you see elsewhere. So I
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: spoke with Professor Farra du Boivla about this, and he
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: describes these two definitions as absolutist and balancing definitions of
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: free speech. So absolutists believe that free speech is absolute.
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: You have the right to say whatever you want, full stop.
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: It doesn't matter what it is. KKK rally, neo Nazi propaganda, Trump,
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: denouncing the elections, it's all good. The balancing method says,
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: I can say what I want, but the right to
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: free speech isn't absolute. It's a balance between this right
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: and the other rights that I and other people have.
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: So depending on the country, there might be laws against races,
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: them against hate speech, and you just can't say certain things.
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: In Germany, for instance, you can't deny the Holocaust and
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: disseminate Nazi propaganda. You just can't do it. Some of
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: that could actually get you months or years in jail.
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: Not in the United States. But here's the thing that
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: most people in the US don't understand. The US, and
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: most people inside of it, I would say, embrace this
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: absolutist definition. For the United States, it's pretty much absolutist
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: that's the way the laws work First Amendment, but pretty
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: much the rest of the world, every other country sides
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: with the balancing approach. Say what you want, but there
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: are limits you can encroach on other people's rights. And MANSI,
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: I think this is so important because people just think
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: that we have the best country in the world, we
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: have the most freedom in the world, but they don't
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: understand how the US vision fits within a US concept.
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: But every other country has these other ideas. And it's
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: also important to understand that even this idea has been
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: in flux, because when I spoke with Fera du Voivla,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: this professor, he said, the United States didn't always have
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: this absolutist understanding of this.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 16: For most of American history, actually, from seventeen eighty nine
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 16: all the way to the nineteen sixties, Americans had views
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 16: that work quite similar to those in the rest of
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 16: the world, and more balanced understanding of free speech as
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 16: a matter of both of rights and of responsibilities, as
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 16: something that required attending to the public good, something that
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 16: required looking at the role of the mass media, et cetera,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 16: et cetera. And it's only because of the Cold War
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 16: really that they diverged into a more hardline libertarian outlook,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 16: the results of which we're living through today.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: I think that's just so fascinating how even the very
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: definition of free speech is constantly in flux from what
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: we are, even what we understand within the United States,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: but also you know, all these other countries, and this
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: is really important, like to understand where this comes from,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: but also to say, to understand like why it can
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: also be important to be kind of critical of this
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: definition and the First Amendment itself. Farah talks about mansa
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: how he sees the Constitution and also the First Amendment
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: in the United States.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: Like having a very old car, you.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 16: Can be proud of it, but it's not necessarily roadworthy
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 16: in the twenty first century, and there are very few
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 16: citizens rights in that Indeed, even the First Amendment is
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 16: not a right of citizens. It's another big flaw that
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 16: Americans tend to overlook. It's only a prohibition on the
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 16: government censoring anything in the private sphere. People get sacked
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 16: and fired all the time for expressing their views political
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 16: or otherwise. So it's not a right of citizens.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: But the fact that there are.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 16: Very very few other rights in the Bill of Rights
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 16: and in the Constitution and that this one happens to
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 16: be named first has given it this and because we
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 16: all love free speech, of course, it's given it this
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 16: elevated popular kind of supremacy, which means it's the ultimate
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 16: legal trump card. Does nothing that can trump the First Amendment.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: So it's been used and weaponized by corporations and the
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: powerful to claim that money equal speech and corporate power
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: shouldn't be limited, and if they constantly use it in
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: order to kind of protect corporate rights.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 16: That's why it's especially been weaponized by anti regulation corporate forces,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 16: by people who want more money in politics, and all
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 16: sorts of ways, because there's no legal comeback against it.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 16: Once you can define something as free speech in American
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 16: in an American court room, your home and dry, and
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 16: that's not necessarily the best way of balancing the right
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 16: free speech, which is a great thing, against other important
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 16: rights and indeed the common good.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: It's this very complicated place where it's been used at
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: this point to kind of push an agenda, Oh, well,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: it's my right to say whatever I want. Anyone can
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: say whatever they want, rather than understanding that it should
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: be a place for all of us to find a
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: place and stand up, but also to speak truth, to
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: speak truth to power, to organize what free speech with
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: the First Amendment has meant for so many organizations and
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: so many movements, going back to the abolitionists, to civil
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: rights movement, and now it's being used to really gut
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: our own voice right censorship again, censorship in the name
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: of free speech.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 13: Yeah, because in this country, what corporations do they letitious
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 13: so they once they get into the Supreme Court, it
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 13: become law. So if I can get so my shift
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 13: is not so much as a shift away from we
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 13: have this absolute menial.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: My shift or being more liberal.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 13: My shift is I got to get this codified, and
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 13: now I get this to become law. So I foil
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 13: a lawsuit, I create a condition to foil lawsuit, and
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 13: then the law say, oh, operations and be free like this.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: So now I'm I'm pat I'm a good shift.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: So, clearly the First Amendment isn't perfect, but it's what
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: we have and we have to defend it. And we've
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: seen so many attacks on it and in our rights
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: in recent months, people and journalists assaulted and intimidated, arrested,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: And this is something that I think is really important Mansa.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: And I know this is controversial, but you know a
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: lot of people have been talking to that are working
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: around these issues, are saying that maybe we need to
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: be looking at elsewhere about how other countries are reacting
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: to these authoritarian threats.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 15: And I firmly believe this. And you know, if I'm
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 15: on the other side of people when I say this,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 15: so be it. But the first amendments. One job is
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 15: to keep us from becoming a totalitarian society. That's its
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 15: primary job. Everything else is secondary. And if your free
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 15: speech doctrine, if your free speech law isn't keeping us
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 15: from sliding into fascism, but is instead accelerating our path
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 15: to fascism, then it's not working.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: Mary and Franks I mentioned it earlier.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 15: I go back and I think about that moment in
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 15: nineteen forty three where our Supreme Court is looking at
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 15: totalitarianism taking over other countries and Justice Jackson saying, here's
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 15: why we will not be like those countries.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 11: And it's because we recognize.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 15: That the real evil here is the government and position
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 15: of orthodoxy that we are. That they're being told that
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 15: for their own good or for whatever reason, or being
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 15: convinced that they are choosing this kind of domination.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 11: I think about how tragic it seems to me that.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 15: If we're ever going to get out of our own
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 15: destroyed society, right, it's because we're going to have to
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 15: look to other countries.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 11: It's going to have to flip. Right, it's actually going
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 11: to be Europe probably teaching us a lesson.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 15: If the First Amendment couldn't stop Trump from doing everything
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 15: he's doing, then what is it worth?
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 15: This might be what actually shakes us out of our
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 15: complacence to say, why do we keep saying, against all
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 15: evidence to the contrary, that the First Amendment protects us
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 15: uniquely when we're not allowed to say that we didn't
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 15: like some of the views of someone who was killed,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 15: and other countries that would not be something you could
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 15: go to jail for, right, So we become that country
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 15: that we're looking at as the kind of object lesson
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 15: of what you don't do in a democracy, and that
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 15: is a really difficult thing to have to come to
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 15: terms with.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: And what she's saying is that maybe we need to
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: be looking elsewhere because it clearly didn't stop Trump from
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: becoming president, and it's not stopping Trump from taking over
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: the country. And pushing whatever he wants, and so I
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: think we need to be looking out of the box.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 13: The elevators say, those who believe in freedom must not wait.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: So we must.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 13: Those that believe in freedom, you know, must take a
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 13: stance on like how we deal with this nonsense that
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 13: we see in now, and we create alternative information sources
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 13: to challenge them and be prepared.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: For to pickback we got. It's up to us.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 13: It's up to those it's resistance, it's up to those
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 13: that understand this phenomenon.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: It's up to us to say do something.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 13: It's the Real New it's Mike Fox, it's rallying the bar,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 13: it's any news source, yes, coming out saying this ain't right.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: You have a right to this way, don't believe the height.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: Man to thank you so much, I really really appreciate.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: It's been fantastic talking with you.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: Nice five.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: Next we go to Brazil to understand how the next
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: largest country in the Western Hemisphere is also standing for
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: free speech and fighting fake news and authoritarian assaults, and
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: how tech barons and far right activists and even Trump
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: himself are trying to undermine its democracy. That's all for now.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. If you enjoy today's podcast and you
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: like this series, please do us a favor. Go to
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: your podcasting app and give us a like, a follow,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: a subscribe, or tell a friend about it and leave
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: us a comment or a review. It really helps to
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: spread the word about the show and the state of
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: free speech in the United States today. We are now
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: also on blue sky to search for the Battle for
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: Free Speech.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: Folks.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: If you'd like to follow my work on the Battle
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 3: for Free Speech and my other podcasts, you can find
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: me at patreon dot com, forward slash Mfox. You can
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: also follow the link in the show notes there you
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: can support my work, become a monthly sustainer or sign
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: up to stay a bread of all the latest on
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: this podcast and my other reporting in the United States
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: and across Latin America. This really helps me to continue
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: to do this important work. You can find links to
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: all the people I spoke with today in the show
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: notes and a huge thanks and shout out to Mansa
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: Musa for joining me in this episode today.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: Also, please make sure to sign up for the Real
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: News Networks newsletter so you never miss an episode. You
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: can find that at therealnews dot com. The Battle for
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: free Speech is a production of the Real News. Thanks
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: for listening, See you next time.