Public Please

In his endorsement of Barack Obama at American University, Senator Edward Kennedy announced that “with Barack Obama we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion”, but this is not my experience with Obama’s campaign staff. On April 14, 2007, long before Kennedy endorsed Obama, Obama staffers prevented me from participating in an Obama rally at Georgia Tech because I carried a small home-made sign that read “Peace Is Good” on one side and “War No More” on the other side. I was totally shocked!

They brought down the head staffer and he explained that while he agrees with the sign, he cannot let me carry it into the rally. He said that if he let me carry my peace sign into the rally, he would have to let other people carry in other signs with messages he disagreed with. Another staffer explained that they would have to for example, let Nazis with their signs if they let me in with my peace sign.

I could not believe these justification for political censorship. I asked them if I was at a Democratic rally? I thought that the staff of Barack Obama, a lawyer who taught constitutional law, would know that the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects our freedom of expression, our right to peaceably assemble and our right to petition the government. All of these civil rights were violated by the Obama campaign.

My suprise and disappointment was compounded by the hypocrisy of the staffers’ argument for political censorship. They failed to realize that most people inside the rally were already waving signs such signs such as the American flag and those with Obama’s name on them. Why didn’t these signs raise the same concern as my peace sign?

I didn’t have a video camera on me, so I was not able to record my experience, but another blogger recorded the wide spread use of Obama signs and American flags:

Apparently, Obama’s campaign did not turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion.

I called the campaign and asked to speak to a senior campaign manager, but they refused to listen to my request for change. Is this the kind of “Change We Can Believe In” ?

Notice how all of the students are waving Obama placards. Where are the homemade signs like the one I made that addressed substantive issues like war and peace? Why does his campaign want us to chant “change” instead of specifying the change we want?