Cry Freedom of Speech

Acclaimed author Terry Tempest Williams is currently on the road for a cross-country "Open Space of Democracy Tour" sponsored by Orion Magazine and Orion Books, publisher of her most recent book, The Open Space of Democracy.

5:30 a.m. Wake-up call. Eyes open. Rise. Stumble around the motel room. Turn on light. Walk to bathroom. Look in mirror. Frightening image. Turn on water. Brush teeth. Spit. Turn off water. I realize I have no comb, no brush, and that I have not even attempted to comb my hair since Friday morning in Salt Lake City. Run fingers through hair for some semblance of order. Thank heavens for elastic bands and pony tails. Look at watch. Thirty minutes to pack. Reorganize papers, which are scattered everywhere.

I look out the window. Still dark. I know the San Juan Mountains are out there. The crescent moon looks like a smile. Venus is poised near.

6:30 a.m. We were about to board the plane when the security guard says, "Ladies and gentlemen, someone has left their laptop computer at the security check. Does anyone recognize this?"

He holds up a silver Macintosh.

It looks just like mine. Suddenly, I realize it is mine.

I raise my hand, step out of line. The security guard hands me my computer. People around me are stupified. Quite frankly, so am I.

"Any reason we should keep it?" he says jokingly. I cannot help smiling.

Irony. All of this. Our lives. Here. Now. What makes sense? Nothing makes sense.

Last night, after talking with Brooke, I called to see how my family was doing. Called my father. I had warned him the night before that I mentioned to Mrs. Sykes, a reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune, that he would be accompanying me to Florida, that he was a Republican voting for Bush.

We caught up with news. He was watching the Cardinals/Dodgers game at his friend's house.

I told him I hoped the news from Florida Gulf Coast University had not embarrassed him or caused him any problems. When I asked him if he had received any calls from friends, he said, "Only one from Jonie James," a college friend of my mother's, outraged that he was voting for George Bush.

Long pause.

"Well, Dad --," I said, teasing him. "Are you?"

Longer pause.

"I don't know."

* * *

There are miracles in the world. Dawn. Light cresting over the Rocky Mountains. Convergences in our lives that we do not plan, could not have imagined. Synchronous moments when we wonder what is real, what is true, what do we fight for, and what do we simply accept. Where is there room for hope and when does hope collapse into denial.

I cannot stop thinking about my brother.

* * *

8:15 a.m. Denver airport. Sitting at a faux French restaurant. I have bought a Denver Post and a New York Times. I am reading a boxed editorial about Judith Miller and the possibility of her going to prison because she will not give up her sources.

What is happening to this country of ours? Does the First Amendment mean nothing?

My phone rings. It is Steven Barclay.

"Do you have a minute?" he asks. "I want to read you a letter."

President William Merwin
Florida Gulf Coast University

Sir,

Besides the concerns that have led friends of mine, including Terry Tempest Williams herself, Jane Hirshfield, and Robert Hass, to write to you about your recent decision to withdraw the invitation made last May to Ms. Williams to speak on your campus, I have another, and it would seem more personal, ground for doing so. Evidently we are more nearly related than I would have guessed, for we share a name which, as you must be aware, is not often encountered, and therefore, I must suppose, a common ancestor not long ago. Once in London I met Miles Merwin, the former governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, who was an impassioned devotee of the history of the family. I did not follow his researches very assiduously, I am afraid, nor, I believe, contribute much to them, but I have learned that there have been other writers, and indeed artists of various kinds who had the name I was given at birth, and I know that there have been differences of political and doctrinal persuasion, over the generations. Mine have differed increasingly from my father's, since my early youth. He was a Presbyterian minister and a Republican. But at the age when the watershed between our beliefs was unmistakable he wished me, above all, "the courage of my convictions," and his own opposition to racism and religious intolerance were reassuring examples to me for years. They confirmed something that I managed to believe was a long-evolved and hard-won achievement of humankind: the ideal of democracy which brave and visionary spirits from Jefferson to Martin Luther King had held up as something that we might claim and cherish.

My hope in that was not crucially threatened until these last four years. The recent menace to it is exemplified by the political climate of the past decade, the failure of the electoral process and the consistent, invasive campaign by those in power and their managers to silence, deny, and disparage public criticism and dissent, labeling it "unpatriotic," to begin with. In a life more private than public, I have been unable to help noticing that those presently directing the country have come to discourage not only open consideration of such central issues as foreign relations, the environment, the role of government in the welfare of the people at large for whom the government exists, but that increasingly they do not want the issues to be raised at all. I can of course understand their reluctance to have their record examined too closely, but the historic precedents for all such suppression are dismal, and their predecessors bear names only too familiar in our time.

Your decision, and its confirmation by your trustees -- or by all of them who had been appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush -- is an unfortunate example of this present erosion of democracy itself at a time when the acting executive government has set out to force the forms, at least, of democracy upon peoples that cannot help but regard us with deepening distrust.

Though I am in little danger of having your decision ascribed to me, I write to you deploring this utter difference between us, and its appearance in a place -- a university, somewhere that holds out an invitation to open learning -- that is so important to what I have hoped for in imagining a democracy. Your first loyalty, apparently, is to those responsible for your present position, your party, your governor and his family, whatever their principles or their records may be. Mine, as your words and your decision make clear, would be of no interest or concern to you. I congratulate you, however, in having stirred students at your university to a realization that freedom of speech, and access to the views of others and to the records of those who, by whatever means, have put themselves in the position of owing public service, are important enough to be acted upon and to be claimed, in a democracy, as their right.

Sincerely yours,

William S. Merwin
Haiki, Hawaii

I cannot speak. Steven understands my silence and we hold it together.

This is the power and courage of the poet who recognizes the present moment as a microcosm of the larger condition and responds, passionately, eloquently, now.

I walk to Gate 23 to board Flight 6282 from Denver to Salt Lake City.

I see on the departure board, the flight has been delayed for an hour. I am relieved. I cannot move this fast in the world. And more to the point, I don't want to. For one hour, I sit, close my eyes, and breathe.

* * *

Home in Utah. Family. I paid Brooke's uncle, J.D. Williams, a visit. He has taught political science for over 50 years at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Utah. He is a fierce advocate of free speech. For over 25 years, he was the director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah. During the Nixon administration when Watergate was exposed, J.D. was one of the strongest voices calling for President Nixon's impeachment. This did not play well in Utah. The Hinckley family was receiving a great deal of pressure to fire J.D. because of his stand. The board of directors met to discuss the issue. After several hours of discussion, mental anguish, and soul searching, Mr. Robert Hinckley telephoned J.D. who was anticipating the call and knew he very well may lose his job.

In a dramatic moment, Mr. Hinckley said, "The purpose of the Hinckley Institute is to inform and inspire students to become politically active and take a stand around the issues that affect their lives -- which is exactly what you have done. Thank you for setting this example for our students."

I knock on J.D. and Bea's door. He opens it and hugs me hard.

"Let's talk about the First Amendment. I've got all my materials ready for you."

I follow him downstairs and take off my jacket.

"J.D., I'm in way over my head." I said. "I need you to educate me on the basics of free speech."

For the next two hours, our knees touch each other as he sits at his desk and I sit across from him. He tutors me in the principles and laws of the First Amendment. He gives me his lectures. I listen.

Freedom of Speech in a Current World

1. Epton v. NY: A demonstration in Harlem, 1964, where a black youth has been killed by police. Communist Epton takes to the soapbox: "We're going to have a demonstration, and we don't say that it is going to be peaceful because the cops have declared war on the people of Harlem and ... no country or peoples in the world that have had war declared on them have not declared war on their enemy ... and every time they kill one of us, damn it, we'll kill one of them, and we should start thinking that way right now ... We're going to have to kill a lot of these cops, a lot of these judges, and we'll have to go up against their army."

Epton was found guilty by the New York courts.

2. 1983, a group of parents in the Alpine School District persuaded the school board to drop the Children's Great Books course. One parental objection: Jack and the Beanstalk taught children to steal.

3. 1986 to 1990, the FBI succeeded in suppressing In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen by means of lawsuits for defamation of character. Book proved that the infamous COINTELPRO program of the FBI extended to the Sioux Reservation, long after the program was supposedly abandoned.

4. Book removal:

Davis County, Utah: Parents requested that John Gardner's Grendel be removed from high school reading lists because there was "too much violence" in this modern version of Beowolf from the monster's point of view.

Alabama: Efforts by some members of the Alabama State Textbook Committee to remove The Diary of Anne Frank because it is a "real downer."

J.D. gives example after example of freedom of speech violations.

"Do you want a Kleenex now or after I read you this quote from Thomas Jefferson?" he asked, well-known for his sense of dramatic presentation.

"Now," I said.

J.D. sets the stage. Jefferson is in Paris. Madison rushes the adopted draft of the Constitution to Jefferson by sea boat. It is Dec. 20, 1787.

He writes James Madison: "Let me add that a Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on Earth."

Thomas Jefferson goes on to say, "The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable."

J.D. looks right at me. "Prior censorship. Prior restraint. This is what has happened to you. Defined as silencing someone before they have had a chance to speak. Consider the court case Near v. Minnesota, 1931."

"Even if the president of Florida Gulf Coast University is not calling it censorship but 'postponement'?" I ask.

He gets up from his desk, walks over to his bookcase, and pulls out a book and hands it to me. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty.

"Your assignment is to read Chapter Two, 'On the Liberty of Thought and Discussion.'"