The People Will Speak

 

By Gretchen Garrity

“To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.” – Frederick Douglass

There is a concerted effort across the United States to quash free speech. In Christian County, the effort is being seen in library and school board meetings with increasing restrictions on what people can say or do during public meetings.

From a 2015 Springfield News-Leader article regarding public comments during open meetings:

“Missouri's Sunshine Law, which requires that most government meetings and records be open to the public, surprisingly says nothing about requiring public comment. Likewise, state statutes generally mandate that cities discuss and vote on new ordinances during open meetings, but don't specifically require that citizens be allowed to speak.”

Perhaps legislators should take another look at the statutes and ensure the right of the public to speak when the people’s business is being discussed and decided by their elected officials.

To not make specific provision for the right of the public to comment during open meetings is to give officials too much discretion over free speech rights. It encourages elected and appointed officials to restrict free speech when their actions are not in concert with the public.

The Christian County Library Board of Trustees is one example. Citizens have been addressing the board for nearly a year about the library’s policy of allowing access to sexually explicit and pornographic books in the children and teen sections.

While citizens are increasingly diligent about challenging the inappropriate books and informing the board of the issue, little headway has been made beyond relocating a book or two, and removing one. The library staff seems adamant that books containing gender ideology, critical race theory, and age-inappropriate introductions to sexuality should be accessible to children.

At the September 26, 2023 board of trustee meeting, Board President Allyson Tuckness, presented a new policy that included restrictions such as “no clapping, no responding, no vocal anything from the audience.” Additionally, Tuckness said if there was any such disturbance the meeting would be immediately adjourned.

The irony is not lost that while children and teens are being used in a “free speech” ploy by organizations like the American Library Association (ALA) and its numerous spin-offs, parents and citizens are having their right to comment on that agenda restricted at library meetings.

This is a direct result of the pressure the library board and staff are feeling from an increasingly alienated public. Further restricting public comment, even to the point of banning any kind of vocalizing from the “audience” as Tuckness refers to citizens, will not deter the public from exercising their free speech.

Dr. Naomi Wolf has written an essay titled “Neo-Marxism and the End of Language” in which she argues that the “changes I see being introduced into English speech in America, are designed to kill off the practices and assumptions of individual freedom and responsive representation that have also been embedded for generations in us as a people.”

While her essay deals primarily with how Marxists are changing the meanings of words and how those words are used in order to suppress free expression, she also mentions this is having a chilling effect on the ability of citizens to comment in exchanges with our elected representatives.

Dr. Wolf writes, “There is a change in how dialogue is being conducted at a public level. Questions are being dissevered from answers and we are being propagandized that that is ok. A feature of the Biden era is that the Western notion that in a representative democracy, your elected officials have to answer you, or at least, have to appear to do so, is being demonstrated to be dead.”

Further on, Wolf says, “Questions in public from the public to “officialdom,” or to elites, will soon feel theoretical, cosmetic, or purely rhetorical. Questions themselves will be drained of the positive social valence that they have had in the West. As in any totalitarian system, we will conclude: why even bother asking?”

The public comment policy that is read at each library board of trustee meeting states, “As a general rule, the Board will not respond to public comments at the time they are made. The Board may ask clarifying questions, comment, or take action at their discretion. Questions for staff about library operations should be made during normal business hours.”

In essence, a county commission-appointed public body is telling taxpaying citizens they are above responding to stated concerns unless they choose to do so.

At the October 24, 2023 board of trustee meeting, Rep. Jamie Gragg ably contested the board president’s unilateral changing of library policy regarding public comments. (See here.)

When some public officials set themselves above the people, the people will respond, either via their elected representatives or through their own resourcefulness.

@right2winozarks NO MORE APPLAUSE OR EMOTIONS AT ANY MEETINGS!!!!BECAUSE SHE SAID SO. #christiancounty #missouri ♬ Shh! be quiet…! Song loop of thief image - Hiraoka