By: Repeacer Monday, 02 January 2012

In 1963, John F. Kennedy gave one of his greatest speeches, the focus of which was peace. At the time, the concept of peace was heavily entrenched in the subject of war, the relationship between the USA and the Soviet Union, and the amounts of nuclear weapons in both countries' arsenals. At the time, Kennedy wanted to discuss a different kind of peace, in his words, "a more practical peace."

Montana’s Supreme Court has issued a stunning rebuke to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 that infamously decreed corporations had constitutional rights to directly spend money on ‘independent expenditures’ in campaigns.

I believe that we are coming to a crossroads as a nation. Since 9/11, we’ve been traveling down a road bristling with guns, military technology, paranoia and fear.  Though most of our aggressive energy has been aimed outside our borders, there has also been a steady preparation for mass violence within the U.S. as well.

(Photo: ©Giles Clarke)

Taken together, the right to free speech, the right of assembly, and the explicit right to express grievances to the government add up to an expansive right to “dissent” enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Beyond written or spoken words, the right to dissent is the right of citizens to organize themselves, to associate, to make themselves heard in order to achieve political and social change and oppose government policies without fear of impediment or reprisal. Despite these clear protections, the government has not always lived up to its constitutionally required mandate to protect our right to dissent. Indeed, it is this right that the government, whether federal, state, or local, has typically targeted for repression, especially in times of claimed “emergencies.” That has been true historically and it is true today. Often, federal agencies and state and city governments, at times of both war and relative quiescence, try through surveillance, infiltration, and limits on protest to suppress dissent.