The Right Suddenly Believes In Freedom Of Speech

Over the weekend the right launched a campaign of protesting on overpasses, carrying signs that read “impeach Obama.” In other words, they are trying to go the route of the Freeway Bloggers, that emerged in the early days of the Iraq War, although the right is trying to claim this is some “new idea”. At one of these protests in Missouri, the police ended up getting involved and arrests were made. Here’s the video of the incident. The description of the YouTube video has this to say:

Survival Doc (the videographer) and Mark M. are arrested for not obeying an officer and Mark was also charged with resisting arrest. Did he resist arrest? You be the judge. Oh, and they never read us our Miranda Rights. We spent 24 hours in the St. Charles Count Jail with Missouri Hwy Trooper Jenkins acting as judge, jury and executioner. (Note: I am the videographer of this video and the activist who was arrested wearing the yellow t-shirt. Near the end, as a cop had my left hand in a handcuff behind my back I am holding the camera in my right hand and as the cop is reaching for my right hand I pass the camera off to Constitution Kim who finishes the recording documenting my arrest.)

He asks us to be the judge on rather Mark was resisting arrest. I’ve watched this video numerous times. The arrest occurs starting about the 3:15 mark. The officers ask Mark to put his hands behind his back. Instead, he grabs onto a strap around his chest and continues questioning the officers. Officers then try to pull his arms back, but Mark doesn’t let go. That’s when they had to go to a choke hold to pull Mark to the ground in order to arrest him. So was he resisting? Absolutely. Now let’s compare that video to another one from back in April, where two Iraq war veterans were arrested for protesting the opening of the Bush library: In this video, starting at about the 2 minute mark, you can see police trying to push the protesters forward. I don’t hear any commands, though they could be drowned out by the protests, and this guy didn’t lock his hands in front of him. He was tackled to the ground and arrested. Or how about this incident? We all remember that from not even two years ago. That pepper spraying sent numerous people to the hospital. Now going back to the original video. What I didn’t see is how they were protesting. Were they obstructing traffic? Ironically we don’t have video of the actual protest, just the encounter with law enforcement. Since we know they had a camera there, the activities that lead up to the arrival of police would really shed some light on what happened. Why haven’t they shared that? Now I’m not saying that they were in the wrong or deserved their protest to be interrupted by police. I firmly believe that everyone in this country has the right to exercise their freedom of speech. What does trouble me is that the other two incidents I posted, incidents of the left protesting, became punchlines for the right. The left has also gone through this for over a decade now, with protests starting to heat up at the start of the Iraq invasion. Not once during the hundreds of incidents like this, did the right come out and say “hey – they have a right to protest”. Instead they laughed when they were protested and many even called for their arrest. This is what really pisses me off. I get tired of the right acting like they are some big defenders of our rights and freedoms, yet they laugh when those rights and freedoms of people on the left get violated. It proves that the right doesn’t give a damn about our Constitution or the freedoms we enjoy from it. If they did then these incidents would outrage them no matter who it was protesting or what they were protesting.