By Dave Shiflett (Bloomberg) – If you think someone’s watching you, you may not necessarily need medication. So suggests fabled civil rights lawyer Martin Garbus in “Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech,” which airs on HBO June 29 at 9 p.m. New York Time. Garbus, most famous for defending neo-Nazi marchers in Skokie, Illinois and serving as a lawyer in the Pentagon Papers case, warns that Americans face growing threats from a government with unparalleled snooping powers, compliant courts and fellow citizens with axes to grind. The 75-minute show, hosted by Garbus’s daughter, filmmaker Liz Garbus, begins with a paean to the First Amendment, which Garbus, now gray and soft-spoken, calls the “cornerstone of democracy” and a “miracle.” The miracle, he says, isn’t universally revered, especially in wartime, when dissidents are likely to pay a price for speaking their mind. One segment takes up the case of University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, fired in 2007 after an investigation found him guilty of academic misconduct, including plagiarism and fabrication. Garbus says Churchill’s real sin was an inflammatory post-911 essay which argued that the attacks at least partially payback for U.S. policies, a case of “chickens coming home to roost,” as Churchill says in an interview. That analysis picked up steam in 2009, when Churchill won an unlawful termination lawsuit. The show features other luminaries including former special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, attorney Floyd Abrams, Columbia University professor Eric Foner, Appeals Court judge the Hon. Richard Posner, along with activists Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz, both of whom vociferously opposed Debbie Almontaser, a Lebanese-American named to head the Khalil Gibran International Academy, an Arabic-English public school in New York. Almontaser was accused of harboring terrorist sympathies before the school ever opened, a charge picked up by sympathetic journalists at the late New York Sun and the New York Post. The show indicates she was the victim of hysteria-driven smear job, though Garbus says there was no libel. Free speech, we are reminded, can have unpleasant consequences. That was also a lesson learned by Chase Harper, a California high school student suspended for wearing a t-shirt bearing a Bible verse condemning homosexuality during a school gay awareness day. Though no students complained, he was sent to the vice-principal’s office, where he says he was told, “If your faith is offensive, you have to leave it in the car.” “Are we in the United States?” Harper asks. Well, yes. The show makes clear that protecting freedom of speech has been a struggle since the get-go, tapping into HBO’s “John Adams” miniseries to hear Adams and Thomas Jefferson debating the merits, and drawbacks, of untrammeled tongues. Garbus recalls the late 1970s uproar in Skokie. Many Jews, he said, believed the ACLU shouldn’t take up the case, and when it did he was the target of advanced vitriol. All told, he says, it was a “horrendous experience” though certainly a sacrifice worth making. The future should offer plenty of opportunities for First Amendment lawyers, the show indicates. Government is using the war on terror as an excuse to curb dissent and snoop on Americans who have not been accused of any crime. At the 2004 Republican convention in New York City, marchers could hardly get to chanting before they were rounded up and arrested, according to the show, which says there were 1801 arrests compared to 688 arrests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Government surveillance, Garbus warns, is more pervasive than ever before, thanks to technological advances and a compliant court system. Perhaps most disturbing is apparent public support for curbing speech. According to the show, before 911 20 percent of Americans believed freedom of speech “goes to too far.” After the attacks, the number rose to 50 percent. The apparent message to Lady Liberty: Muzzle up, Buttercup.
