More Rights Violations

The Progressive has an
article today that should piss off just about every American there is. It is a
story of how our civil rights continue to get shredded under the administration
of George W. Bush.

Wal-Mart Turns in Student’s Anti-Bush
Photo, Secret Service Investigates Him

Matthew Rothschild October 4, 2005

Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck
County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the
Secret Service question her or one of her students.

But that’s what happened on September 20.

Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class “to take
photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights,” she says. One
student “had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the
picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a
thumb’s down sign with his own hand next to the President’s picture, and he
had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster.”

According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing
his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent.

But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to
be developed, this right is evidently suspect.

An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk
police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to
the Secret Service.

On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High.“At
1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had taken
his poster,” Jarvis says. “I didn’t believe him at first. But they had come
into my room when I wasn’t there and had taken his poster, which was in a
stack with all the others.”

She says the student was upset.

“He was nervous, he was scared, and his parents were out of town on
business,” says Jarvis.

She, too, had to talk to the Secret Service.

“Halfway through my afternoon class, the assistant principal got me out
of class and took me to the office conference room,” she says. “Two men from
the Secret Service were there. They asked me what I knew about the student.
I told them he was a great kid, that he was in the homecoming court, and
that he’d never been in any trouble.”

Then they got down to his poster.

“They asked me, didn’t I think that it was suspicious,” she recalls. “I
said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!”

At the end of the meeting, they told her the incident “would be
interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student could
be indicted,” she says.

The student was not indicted, and the Secret Service did not pursue the
case further.

“I blame Wal-Mart more than anybody,” she says. “I was really disgusted
with them. But everyone was using poor judgment, from Wal-Mart up to the
Secret Service.”

A person in the photo department at the Wal-Mart in Kitty Hawk said, “You
have to call either the home office or the authorities to get any
information about that.”

Jacquie Young, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart at company headquarters, did
not provide comment within a 24-hour period.

Sharon Davenport of the Kitty Hawk Police Department said, “We just
handed it over” to the Secret Service. “No investigative report was filed.”

Jonathan Scherry, spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, D.C.,
said, “We certainly respect artistic freedom, but we also have the
responsibility to look into incidents when necessary. In this case, it was
brought to our attention from a private citizen, a photo lab employee.”

Jarvis uses one word to describe the whole incident: “ridiculous.”

We see that we are no longer free to express ourselves in this nation without
the fear of persecution. Wal-Mart should reprimand this employee for taking such
action and hopefully the ACLU will get on the case of the secret service. We
have a need to protect our President but when it comes to shredding the rights
of our citizens then the President’s feelings do not matter.