The Right to Protest

      The December 10 issue of the New Yorker has an article by Anand Gopal titled, "The Island of Democracy," about a town in Syria where free elections were held for the first time anywhere in Syria since 1954. Candidates were chosen, campaigns were held, and, in spite of the dangers ("from Syrian and Russian jets, from concertina-wire-crowned berms and highway checkpoints under the control of Al Qaeda"), people came to the polls to vote. When election results were announced, at 3:00 a.m., "applause rolled across the room. The results mattered less than the fact that citizens had taken part in a ritual of democracy. People were in tears."

      The ability to vote – to say, publicly, "This is what I would like to see happen in my town" – had come at a high price. In March 2011, six young men "decided to hold a protest in Saraqib that Friday and took an oath to secretly invite one or two other people they trusted." The protest was simple: during the recitation of prayers at a mosque, a young man shouted, "Allahu Akbar!" (God is greater), a "standard religious interjection" which, in this context, also implied that Assad wasn't the greatest of all things real and conceivable (the "abiding principle of Syrian life"). Years of killings, suppressions, fear, and destruction followed, in spite of which a democratic election was eventually held.

      All those citizens wanted was to be able to say, one way or another, "This is what I believe or think or would like to see happen." In this country we are familiar with this right. I can join protests and hold up signs and write letters and make my opinion clear in any way that doesn't infringe on the rights of others to do the same.

      But it seems that that freedom has become an illusion, at least here in the Applegate. An organization in the Applegate was wanting to hold a rally at the Star Ranger Station to protest the Forest Service proposal to include new off-road vehicle (OHV) trails in the Upper Applegate Watershed Restoration Project. The reasons to protest that plan are not relevant here. In fact, the very relevance is in not knowing the issues. The point is that whoever has an opinion about the issue has a right to express that opinion in any legal way, a right to make a statement: "This is what I would like to see happen in my town."

      As in Saraqib, notice about the protest was sent secretly only to people personally invited, but somehow, of course, word leaked out. The next notice I got from the organizer was to inform me that the protest was canceled because "OHV enthusiasts are threatening both to personally come to my house and harass me and to crash our protest. They are organizing it as an 'open carry event' and we don't feel we need to subject ourselves to armed thugs."

      What?! Those whose opinions differed were bringing guns to the event? They threatened personal danger to someone solely for planning to publicly express opinions different from theirs? The opinions of some people were not allowed to be expressed because they were on the"wrong" side, according to other people? Is this really a country were freedom of expression is a sacred right?

      The USA is not Syria, of course, and the Applegate is not Saraqib, but the differences are not as great as one would like to think. And that makes me inexpressibly sad.