Defend Your Right of Free Speech
Please contact our senators to let them know that you do not approve of the U.S. Congress legislating away your first amendment right of free speech. Do not pass bill S.170.
Senator Richard Blumenthal has signed on with Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Ted Cruz and 14 other Senators as a co-sponsor of U.S. Senate Bill 170, titled “Combatting BDS ACT of 2017”.
This profoundly flawed legislation supports initiatives that infringe upon our First Amendment right of dissent. As Americans and supporters of BDS we have every right to oppose the ongoing human rights abuses that Israeli policies inflict upon the Palestinian people, and to do so without state action imposed to discriminate against such dissent.
BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) is a nonviolent peace and justice movement that seeks freedom, justice and equality for the people of Israel and Palestine. It is a response to a 2005 call from Palestinian civil society for boycotts to be imposed against Israel until it complies with three demands concerning its ongoing treatment of the Palestinian people. The BDS movement specifically calls for the following actions by Israel:
1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality;
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestine refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.
The rights to boycott and hold dissenting views are sacred threads of our democratic fabric that have served to protect the human family. The civil rights boycotts in the South were necessary strategic pressures in our nation’s ongoing struggle to overcome the discriminatory vestiges of slavery. Likewise, boycott, divestment, and sanctions strategies have been heralded as tools to stop exploitation of farmworkers, end Shell Oil’s violations in Nigeria, protest Nestle’s marketing of infant formula in impoverished communities, and assist the international effort to topple racist South African Apartheid. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution gives citizens the right to criticize the policies of our government, as well the policies of foreign governments.
The U.S. Constitution forbids the use of state power to chill political speech. The BDS movement is aimed at pressuring Israel to change its policies. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that boycotts to “bring about political, social and economic change” are a form of political speech protected by the First Amendment. The First Amendment protects BDS speech and conduct. In addition, the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits any state from abridging freedom of speech or of the press.
Legislation that denies BDS proponents state contracts, funding, or investments simply because of the content of their democratic advocacy contravenes First Amendment protections. There is a significant First Amendment distinction between government speaking, e.g., deciding not to invest in corporations profiting from apartheid, which is permissible, and government restricting citizens’ speech merely because of the content. In the first instance, the government is simply stating its views and exercising a permissible form of marketplace participation. In the second instance, it is using state power, e.g., the threat of withdrawing funding, in order to pressure citizens to stifle or alter their message. As noted by Chief Justice Roberts in his 2013 majority opinion: “The relevant distinction that has emerged from our cases is between conditions that define the limits of the government spending program – those that specify the activities Congress wants to subsidize – and conditions that seek to leverage funding to regulate speech outside the contours of the program itself.” Senate Bill 170, if enacted only serves to support state initiatives aimed at stifling BDS in contravention of the First Amendment.
2/26/2017 Contact Jewish Voice for Peace New Haven at: JVPNH.org
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