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.
