In the last month or
so, I have been thinking a great deal about the First Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States.
Not because of the NFL
protests or whether to take a knee. Not about how the twisting of the free
exercise of religion to exclude Others.
Not about the current administration’s attack on the free press as the
enemy of the people.
Clearly the First
Amendment did not consider the free press an enemy, but an essential check
& balance of the how a democracy must operate in order to survive.
No, I have been
thinking about the First Amendment because I have been accused of violating Others
of their right to free speech.
Many of my family
& friends & readers know that I a reluctant admin of a closed Facebook group
here in the not quite one square mile city in which I live.
If there is one
certain thing I know about myself, it is that I am not suited to be an admin of
any
Facebook group. I doubt that there are
many people less suited.
While I always attempt to be a kinder & gentler Jaki
Jean - I do not suffer a fool gladly, I am intense, dramatic, emotional &
too often volatile. I have been advised
to avoid the appearance of intelligence.
I fight to filter & censor myself every day, to take
time to write out a response in Word before posting, walk away & return to
rethink & rewrite.
Pausing to decide if I should post or not.
Pausing is not natural to me. But I have learned as I have participated in
this still new social media forum to pause.
When I was recruited to be an admin, I told those
recruiting me that I was unsuited for the task.
Unequal to the task.
For me, that was the end of the discussion. But
somehow, I was added as an admin.
A succession of previous admins had withdrawn due to some
not quite neighborly or civil push back. No
one wanted the job.
I agreed to help because the remaining admin has a decades
old connection to our family & was facing some stressful challenges at the
time.
The group has clear, basic parameters, membership
requirements, & a call for civil discourse.
Must be a
resident of MP. To become a member please message me a copy of your utility
bill showing MP address. Any member that belittles or insults other members in
post will be deleted. NO POLITICAL POSTS ON THIS PAGE. TAKE IT TO YOUR PERSONAL
PAGE.
It is a group designed to share & disseminate
information to residents. To report,
find & rescue lost animals, ask for a recommendation for a service, post reminders
about community events.
It is not a political forum.
In the years I have
played this reluctant role, I can count on less than one hand the number of
posts I have independently taken down.
Until this midterm election cycle.
In all other cases, I
have consulted with my fellow admin, whom I consider to be the lead.
As we approach the
midterms, neighbors have declared their positions with yard signs, gathering
together with like minds in person, at rallies & establishing Facebook
groups.
And, to my dismay,
tested the NO POLITICAL POSTS rule in
our group.
In the beginning, all of the posts in violation of our
neighborhood group rules were taken down before I had to act. Until a friend of both myself & the lead
admin entered the equation.
It was a difficult choice, a difficult position for our
friend to place us in.
I contacted the lead, who was dealing with a family medical
issue. She told me to handle it.
Then I deleted the violating post & published a post of
my own, reminding members that the group has a No Political Posts
policy.
The reaction online did not take long. That it was a shame that the bad behavior of
a few members meant that others could not exercise their First Amendment rights
to free speech.
In other words, my removal of the post infringed upon the right of free speech.
My first thought was are you fucking kidding me? (Sorry,
Jean.) ME?
The person who deliberately reads banned
& censored books? Me? The person who still has the once
controversial Leonard Cohen’s “Energy of Slaves” on a bookshelf? Me?
The liberal?
Me? Seriously?
Not to the group, but to a woman I know & called friend. A woman who passionately believes in the
agenda of the Republican party & its interpretation of the role of government.
A woman who understood she was pushing the envelope, a
woman who knew I would advocate for removing the post.
The more I wrote, the more incensed I became. I read & reread & read & reread
the First Amendment.
A closed Facebook group is not publicly traded. It is not a news media outlet. It is not the New York Times, the Wall Street
Journal, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the National Review, the Atlantic, the
Weekly Standard or Time Magazine.
In the musings of my pause, my cell phone rang & it was
my friend.
I took a gulp of wine & answered the phone – not with Hello but with Did you really just fucking invoke the First Amendment against me?
A long conversation followed, the details of which no
longer matter. I listened, I
interrupted, I listened, I attempted to participate in civil discourse. And I ignored every effort to save me from
the liberal abyss.
At last the phone call, that seemed to go on for hours,
ended.
Again, I paused.
And thought about the First Amendment & its contents.
During these divisive times, there is a great deal of
banter & debate about the First Amendment, the Second Amendment & about
the Constitution.
The First Amendment addresses two issues – the fact that
these are the first issues addressed is paramount to our understanding of the Constitution.
First, Congress shall make no law establishing
religion or the free exercise thereof.
Understandable. The
thirteen British colonies were under the rule of a state established religion –
the Church of England. The history of
the Church of England is complicated & spans monarchs from Henry VIII to
George III.
The bottom line is that the founding fathers did not want a
republic that required allegiance to a state religion.
Instead, they chose to protect the citizens of new Republic
and establish the separation of
church & state.
And then the First Amendment turns to the right of free
speech, abolishing the abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peacefully assemble and
to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The second part of the First Amendment is about protecting
the citizens of the Republic from the government an citizen’s
freedom of speech & of censoring the press.
It is about the right of citizens to peacefully assemble in dissent or
support & the right to petition the government for a redress or objection
of policy.
The second part of the First Amendment of the Constitution,
demands civil discourse, peaceful protest & the right to petition the
government.
The right guaranteeing free speech & a free press does
not allow for me, as a woman, to enter the men's side of a mosque during prayers without removing
my shoes, ignoring that I was entering a house of worship & a holy place
& insert myself with a reading from the New Testament.
I could not claim that by removing me from the mosque, its
members violated my First Amendment rights.
In such a scenario, it could be argued that I ignored &
disrespected more than a Muslim directive.
It could be argued that I forgot God’s directive to Moses: Take
off your sandals, you are on Holy ground.
I did not, even with my hubris & drama & intensity,
violate anyone’s First Amendment rights.
I enforced a rule, a condition of participation in a closed Facebook
group.
In many ways, I still cannot wrap my body & text around
the accusation against me.
When I told my sister about this encounter, she said:
This person does not know
you.
If have learned anything from this convoluted experience,
it is this: never, never accept the role
of admin in a Facebook group against your gut instincts.
And I have learned what I have long suspected - that, unfortunately, friendship does not always transcend politics.
Friendship that envelops open, civil discourse, that does
not demand a winner or loser of a debate or discussion, that listens & respects the views
of the Other – that is a friendship which transcends politics.
