Free speech? Them's fightin' words

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Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Free speech? Them's fightin' words

By SUSAN PAYNTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

IT'S GETTING FRACTIOUS, even ugly out there.

One person's banner of free speech is another person's red flag in Seattle as revelations of prisoner abuse and ongoing American death tallies continue out of Iraq, flaming home-front tempers to a boil.

Take the disparate accounts just now filtering in from a confrontation more than a week ago at Seattle's longtime bastion of the left, Freeway Hall.

Listeners of KVI radio's John Carlson show already know what happened, at least from their point of view. As Carlson saw it, the Freedom Socialist Party, Radical Women and others at the hall "went too far" when they displayed a sign in the window saying, "Victory to the Iraqi Resistance." Other signs said, "End the Occupation of Iraq," "Bring the Troops Home Now" and "Capitalism Is the Cause, War Is the Effect."

Hardly the shock of the new for a place known for decades for taking controversial stands. Still, KVI thought something had to be done. So the station spent much of a day marshaling forces to go to the hall and show those people what for.

It would be one thing, Carlson told me Monday night, if the signs had said, "Down With Bush." "But this was supporting the people who are killing our soldiers!"

He couldn't believe there actually would be a sign somewhere in America that, in his view, cheered on the people killing Americans. To him, it was a bitter burp of the kind of Vietnam-era bile that rose to support the Viet Cong instead of merely objecting to the war.

It's left-wing hate speech, Carlson said, and it has to be answered.

OK, so maybe he did go a little too far himself, Carlson admits. At the point that about 30 defenders of the hall dwindled to a measly two or three against 70 protesters from KVI, Carlson made this remark on the air: "Where did everybody go? The time for the needle exchange must be over!"

"It was a wisecrack that was a bit over the top, sure," he says. But "that crowd" had just hit a new low and his anger bubbled over the surface.

He insists he did not hear anyone in the KVI "crowd" say things the Freeway Hall folks accuse them of. Such as calling a free-lance photographer a "faggot" and the N-word.

In fact, it was only after a listener suggested that people ought to stomp down there and put a brick through the window that Carlson whipped up a demonstration of words.

He had waited in vain for outrage from religious leaders, anti-war activists, or anyone else, to condemn this "anti-American extremism," he says. Someone had to do just as he would, he claims, if the banner had been against gays or blacks or feminists.

Wow. KVI as the defender of the marginalized is a concept that will take some getting used to. Isn't this the same station that organized support of the event against same-sex marriage at Safeco Field? And the station that has rallied against tent city?

It's true, Carlson insists. When extreme speech lapses into hatred it must be answered, whether it's anti-gay or pro the bombing of abortion clinics. "Things got really ugly during the Vietnam War," he says. "And the kinds of people who displayed this sign are the kinds of people who spit on our soldiers 30 years ago."

This isn't the opposite side of the KVI coin, Carlson says. Democratic Congressman Jim McDermott is the opposite side of the coin. These people are over the rim.

And what do the Freeway Hall people have to say about their signs and the KVI 570 crowd showing up at their door? They saw pro-war fanatics making an assault on free speech.

"We're being vilified for standing with the Iraqi victims of U.S. aggression in a war Congress never declared and millions of people tried to stop," says Freedom Socialist Party organizer Luna Nichol. "We don't want the lives of U.S. soldiers destroyed any more than those of Iraqis."

And it was not an assortment of junkies looking to exchange needles who came to defend dissent, Anne Slater of Radical Women told me. The defenders of the signs included anti-war activists, neighbors of the Hall who remembered its defense of targeted Somali grocers, church members and students.

Exactly who is "the resistance" in Iraq, anyway? "First we were told it was the Syrians, then people from other Middle East countries. Now it seems clear that it's a massive popular uprising," Slater says.

The signs do not support killing Americans. "They say victory to the slaves, not kill the slave-owners," she says. And quashing dissent is downright un-American in her view. "But we have John Carlson and his ilk saying that, if you don't agree with what's going on, you should just shut up."

Not to worry. It's unlikely that anyone is apt to shut up soon on either side of this gulf. But, at least for now, we're using our words and banners instead of our bricks and bats.

And I have to say I am looking forward to a rally organized by KVI at the next ugly sign of anti-gay hate speech. I'll be holding my breath.

Susan Paynter's column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Call her at 206-448-8392 or send e-mail to susanpaynter@seattlepi.com.

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