Free Speech

[TBF]

Campus protesters are being criticized for squelching free speech, but the right wingers leading the attack are really concerned about protecting the right to be a racist.

But this media smear fits a familiar pattern: When Black people raise their voices against oppression, a reason is quickly found to prove how they are being oppressors. Just as Republicans falsely insisted for years that African Americans going to vote were committing voter fraud, now Black students speaking out against racism are accused of silencing others.

They don't want to hear our free speech
December 3, 2015

THE NEW movement against anti-Black racism took another step forward in November when protests burst out on college campuses across the country.

Many of these actions were inspired by the powerful University of Missouri (Mizzou) demonstrations that gained national attention when the football team threated to go on strike unless the university president resigned. But all focused on the impact of institutional racism specific to each campus.

At dozens of rallies, sit-ins and occupations, students talked about being profiled and harassed by campus police, the stress of feeling more like a token of diversity than a fully accepted student, and the lack of support from universities they are putting themselves into decades-long debt just to attend.

This eruption of struggle on campuses is clearly an expression of anger and pain that has simmered away for years beneath the well-maintained surfaces of college life. Yet to many hostile observers, the protests somehow represent the opposite: a suppression of the right to free expression ...

Much more here: http://socialistworker.org/2015/12/03/they-dont-want-to-hear-our-speech