If you’re not afraid of losing the country you love and kissing your constitutional rights goodbye, you will be after you see this.
The video below shows the Mayor of Surprise, Arizona, ordering the arrest of a local woman to eject her from a public meeting of the Surprise City Council. Local resident Rebekah Massie took her turn at the podium during the public comments period in order to criticize the city attorney and his salary.
Free speech is on life support.
When you listen to the nearly three-minute video, Surprise Mayor Skip Hall tells Massie to stop talking. Why? Because she was criticizing city councilors and city staff by name, which Hall claimed was against the rules.
Huh? It is amazing what petty tyrants will do when they think they can get away with it, and Hall clearly thought he was going to get away with it. He did, in the moment. An obedient cop who seems unfamiliar with the First Amendment dutifully dragged Massie out in full view of everyone. Like cowards, the entire city council sat their mute while Massie was unconstitutionally silenced. It doesn’t seem like anyone in the crowd had her back either.
They always appeal to “the rules,” these commissars. Rules they made up, and rules they believe supersede the United States Constitution. Mayor Skip Hall was keen to point out the rules printed on speaker sign-up forms:
“Oral communications during the City Council meeting may not be used to lodge charges or complaints against any employee of the City or members of the body…”
Convenient, no?
It looks like Hall and his city council are going to have to face some legal and perhaps financial discomfort, as legal experts say it looks like Rebekah Massie has a good first amendment case against the city.
Constitutional law attorney Robert McWhirtier told local media, “I think that she may have a case against the City of Surprise.” The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) thinks so too. The group is mainly devoted to protecting the constitutional rights of students on college campuses, but it has begun to pick up broader free expression cases that the woke-compromised American Civil Liberties Union will no longer touch.
Public reaction on social media will both inspire and disappoint you. Many Americans who understand their constitutional rights are four-square behind Massie.
Another user is asking a question we bet Mayor Skip Hall would find “inappropriate.”
Sadly, your fellow Americans also include people who don’t understand their own rights, and don’t seem to think they need them in the first place. It’s amazing how many adults seem to actually believe that ice cream social rules govern what citizens may and may not say in government meetings.
This user is correct, but what he cites is beside the point.
The rules of free speech are not limited by one party’s subjective perception of being “attacked.” No American has to prove she didn’t “attack” a government official in order to be allowed to criticize them.
