[Newspoetry] good time to start boycotting amazon.com

[Sam Markewich 2]

Which threatening actions---speech acts? If they simply say, in effect,
that someone does not deserve equal protection under the First
Amendment, I think that's fine; they're well within in their rights. Do
you know any examples where industries, the Klan, or libertarians have
threatened others' 1st Amendment rights by exercising their own?

Yes.  The law around photograph and film ownership is a great example.  The
prototype of this is the Linda "Lovelace" case where she was held hostage and
forced at gunpoint to make the movie "Deepthroat".  In court when she tried to
get the movie removed from the market it was ruled that she had no right to
have it removed regardless of how it was made because it constituted
expression on the part of the film maker.  Thus, the precedent set in that
case says that freedom of expression is *more* important than any other civil
liberty that may have been violated in the making and distribution of the
film.  Linda "Lovelace" wasn't simply saying that she didn't want the movie on
the market because of how she had been treated in order for it to have been
made, she was saying also that she would be treated a certain way by the
public because the movie was in wide circulation.  This precedent is connected
to the reason why those Think Different billboards are legal, because the
copyrights on the photographs belong to the people who take them and not to
the people who are in them who will be effected by their use.  Another example
is that the Klan has as one of its practices marching in areas widely
populated by African American people as a kind of "quiet" intimidation
practice.  In one such case in Mississippi it was decided by the court that it
was legal under the first amendment for the Klan to do this in spite of a
number of testimonials that claimed that the Klan's presence was not merely
objectionable to the residents of the town but traumatizing given that many of
the residents had seen their relatives killed and beaten by the Klan when they
were younger.  I think that being forced to endure trauma in the name of
freedom of speech is a gross violation of rights. This case was ruled several
years *after* the civil rights era.  There is also a case in which two college
students were corresponding over e-mail, writing pornography together and
sharing it with thousands of people on a chat group.  One of them used a
classmate of his as a character and in several stories mutilated and killed
her for sexual pleasure.  The other one secretly filmed his next door neighbor
naked and sent the video tapes to the first to make a story out of.  Both
started to write back and forth about how the writing wasn't doing it for them
anymore and they were getting ansy to act out what they had been writing. 
They began to plan how to do this with tentative dates and designs on how to
escape after killing the female classmate-made-character.  They were about to
visit each other in person for the first time to further discuss this when
their e-mails were accidentally intercepted and reported to the police.  The
judge ruling in the case ruled that the e-mails contained actual substantive
threats against the female classmate's life and that they were therefore
criminal.  The ACLU, however, got the case overturned on appeal on the grounds
that the threats were only in writing between the two men and did not
therefore actually constitute threats at all but only free speech.  I've read
the transcript of this case, including the e-mails in question, and I find it
very hard to stomach that free speech would've been called up in this case. 
The threats are just too obvious and direct and were even about to be carried
out. The libertarian party is a different story.  There is nothing I can site
that they've done that has had a legal effect.  Yet, they espouse a mythical
"free" market that is claimed to allot equal freedom of everything to everyone
if only it would be left completely alone to do its thing according to its
inherent laws.  One can look to history to see how grossly infringed upon are
the rights of workers in an unrestrained free market such as espoused by
libertarianism.  It is true that the libertarians only speek about such a
thing.  Yet, whatever is plausible almost always gets more airplay than what
is not, and libertarianism is plausible.  They're also running for election,
and that means they are seeking power to bring about what they now can only
speak about.  Therefore, I think that the speech of libertarians around
certain issues does infringe on, for instance, my own right to free speech,
again if free speech is going to be connected not merely to speaking but to
having influence through being heard.


What does it mean to give precedence to the 14th amendment in deciding
those questions? Does this have anything to do with MacKinnon & Dworkin's suit
against purveyors of porn in Cleveland, alleging that they were violating
women's civil rights?

To give precedence to the 14th amendment in deciding these questions means to
consider first whether a given action impinges on anyone's right to equal
protection of the laws as stated in the 14th amendment and to only secondly
consider whether or not the action is protected by any other amendments, such
as the 1st, if it is determined that it is not a violation of the 14th
amendment.  I've never heard of the suit against Cleveland that you refer to. 
I have a book by Dworkin and MacKinnon called "In Harm's Way" which contains
the full court proceedings from all of the cities they attempted to get their
anti-pornography civil rights ordinance passed.  There's nothing on Cleveland.
 Are you maybe confusing the Cleveland suit with the fact that they were asked
by the city councel members of Minneapolis to write an anti-pornography civil
rights ordinance for that city and did so?  Anyway, yes, it does have to do
with that.  I've studied the Dworkin-MacKinnon cases a lot and read a lot of
their writing about them, and I find MacKinnon's legal points and analyses
quite compelling and reasonable.


What does equality in power and influence mean? It is very vague.

Yes, it is.  Unfortunately, equality is a very vague term, as are power and
influence.  I'll try to flesh this out.  By equality I mean equality of
result.  In other words, everyone covered under a given equality law would be
able to achieve what the law outlined.  So, for instance, everyone covered
under the 1st amendment would be able to achieve freedom of speech and
expression, which again means that if one person's exercise of speech and/or
expression impinged on another's the first's would not be covered by the 1st
amendment.  By equality in power I mean that no one can exercise any form of
power that gives her or him power over another.  While it is probably never
going to be possible to know in every instance if this is happening, it is
possible to demonstrate in many instances that a given exercise of power has
an oppressive and/or exploitative effect on another.  When this could be shown
the given exercise of power would have to cease.  By equality in influence I
mean that anything and anyone that one person has access to influence all have
access to influence and that any measurable means of influence (money, votes,
education, transportation, media, etc.) open to one will be open equally to
all (Yes, this does mean that if one person has one million dollars that s/he
wants to give to a cause every one should be given one million dollars by the
government to do the same with or that person's contributions should be
regulated in accordance with what the poorest person in the country can
afford).  I hope that's less vague.

- Sammy