Editorial 10.9, September 2008, by Deirdre Helfferich Food for Thought Fall Bounty I love this time of year. The colors and the scents especially remind me of how wonderful it is to live here, to have grown up here and spent my autumns surrounded by the incredible bounty of the boreal forest and the alpine tundra. I was out berry picking on a recent evening, and once again marveled to myself at how lovely the green and yellow leaves are that blanket the forest floor, contrasting with the black and brown and purple twigs of the bushes, the intense reds and purples and oranges and magentas of the berries and rosehips, translucent with ripeness and damp from the rain. The astonishing amount of wild food in the woods here is comforting. The mushrooms, flowers, sap, fruit, and leaves of so many plants are delicious and healthy. Others provide dyes and medicines. I feel at home in these woods, part of them. They settle me, to the point that when I am in a car and we go from a highway or built-up area to a back road where the trees are close to the edge, I feel myself relax—even when I thought I was relaxed. So going out into the forest to pick berries was soothing and pleasant. And then I walked into a Siberian pea. Spiky, foreign, and invasive (although mildly so). It was jarring to see it there, competing with the highbush cranberries and the lingonberries. I ripped it out, and felt a little better. I moved on, thinking about the forest around me, and the changes it will see in the very near future. Our governor and president’s doubts notwithstanding, it’s pretty clear that things are changing in Alaska’s biosphere, not for the better, and that people have a lot to do with it. But so far, the berry bushes seem okay. The weeds mostly haven’t made it into the woods yet, and I plan on doing what I can to keep it that way. And I’ll be making jam and a few pies in the meantime. Free Speech Zone: Getting Smaller, Even in the Great State of Alaska At the Republican National Convention, three of the five elements of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights were trampled on, stomped flat by the Minneapolis-St. Paul police department. These were: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Press, and Freedom to Peaceably Assemble. A few other rights were also disregarded, such as protection from unreasonable search and seizure and from cruel and unusual punishments. There has been an increasing tendency in the last several years for police forces to infringe on these basic rights. Much of this has stemmed from the so-called “War on Drugs,” but the inroads on our freedoms have accelerated since the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act—the most unpatriotic piece of legislation passed since the Alien and Sedition Acts. What is even more disturbing about the police roundup in Minneapolis is that out of 800-plus people arrested before and during the convention, journalists covering the protests, plus several street medics and lawyers, were among them. This is made still more Orwellian by the fact that several of these were arrested in a pre-emptive raid on the headquarters of the independent media outlet I-Witness Video. Before the protests or the convention. While people were working, in their offices. At the latest count, forty-six journalists were arrested or detained. Reporters covered with press credentials were swept up with protestors and bystanders. This includes Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! and Variety managing editor Ted Johnson, as well as Associated Press photographers and journalists, journalism students and professors, freelancers, and other editors, reporters, and photographers for various news outlets. The International Federation of Journalists has condemned the arrests of journalists at the convention; the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota has condemned the mass arrests of the protestors and called for an investigation. From the perspective of many of the arrested journalists, the police appeared to be attempting to intimidate them and prevent them from doing their job: reporting on the protests. While independent and alternative media have reported extensively on this aspect of the convention, the mainstream media have virtually ignored the protests and arrests (particularly those of reporters), or concentrated on the outbreaks of rioting. I find the increasing restrictions on demonstrations and the people participating in them or reporting on them ominous. The recent “open to the public unless you disagree with our point of view” tack taken by the organizers of the rally for Sarah Palin in Fairbanks was a very mild—but very dangerous—restriction. The police here were fine with the protestors, treating them with civility; likewise, the demonstration was a calm event. But the treatment of free speech and freedom of the press as somehow being privileges rather than rights is simply wrong, and the expectation that public events with public officials are not for dissenters goes against everything our Revolutionary forebears fought for. | ||
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