WE WILL BE HEARD: Voices in The Struggle for Constitutional Rights Past and Present

Imagine yourself living in a country where you work as a librarian. A librarian is a special person. They run libraries where people go to check out books, usually at no cost, do research, read periodicals and access the Internet. The Public Library is a time honored institution. For young and old alike, it is a repository of information and an invaluable resource. It is free speech in action. Imagine that one day, government agents come into your library, armed with letter that required you to hand over all personal information about your librarians patrons. They do this without a court order. These letters that these government agents have given you impose a gag order on you. Imagine that you are not allowed to speak about this to your family, your friends or your colleague.

Imagine living in a country where air transportation within and without it’s borders is heavily regulated. The transportation authority of this country has two lists: one list is of persons who are not allowed to board airplanes, the other list are people who are subjected to intensive, intrusive searches. Imagine you are a lawyer defending a group of people who are not popular with the government, or a political activist that is challenging the government policies. You are placed on the list and when you arrive at the boarding area, you are pull aside, made to pull down your pants in a huge part of the airport, standing their in your undergarments. Or imagine being a nun who belongs to a peace group on your way to a protest and instead of being allowed out of the airport, you are held by government agents overnight.

Imagine you are the citizen of a country of a certain ethnicity. The government issues an Executive Order that states all citizens of your ethnic background will be evacuated from their present homes by 12 noon and relocated to an internment camp. You had committed no crime but you are now surrounded with barbed wire fences, armed guards, searchlights and machine gun nests. Imagine hearing rumors that all the males of this ethnicity would be castrated and sent back to the land of their ancestors

Imagine immigrating to a new country, one that you admire and are fascinated by the freedom it professes. You get married and have a daughter. Then as sometimes happens, you go through a bitter divorce and custody battle. One day, while working in your store, five government agents barge in and arrest you and hold you for deportation. You are given a court hearing and the charges from the prosecution are that you are a threat to national security, you are plotting to kill a high-ranking official. The to the judge that they have evidence against you, but it is secret evidence and the judge can’t see it. The judge orders you held without bail and you spend 19 months in jail on the basis of information that these government agents refused to disclose

After reading these few paragraphs you may be thinking this country could be the Soviet Union, Cuba, Taliban Afghanistan, Iran, Nazi Germany. If you thought that, you are wrong. The country that I mention above does not have to be imagined, it exists, and if you are an American citizen, you are living in this country: The United States of America

Merrell Publishers launched the photo and story book “We Will Be Heard: Voices in the Struggle for Constitutional Rights Past and Present” last night at the law offices of Clifford Chance. It was an historic evening. “We Will Be Heard” is the result of over thirty years of passionate work by Bud and Ruth Schultz and could very well be the most important book ever published in this decade. “We Will Be Heard “covers nearly a century of individuals standing up for freedom of association and expression from the 1920s to the present. Noted Georgetown Law Professor David Cole calls it “the most beautiful political book you will ever read”. There are more than 90 first-person accounts, accompanied by stirring portraits where you can see the pain of the struggle yet the resilience and determination on these individuals faces who demonstrated remarkable courage by refusing to be silenced. The stories of Janet Nocek, Ray Rogers, Jim Guyette, and Hany Kiareldeen and others should be required reading. This book is the “Profiles in Courage” for the New Millennium. By standing for their rights, they have fought for the protection of rights for everyone. As the Greek legal scholar Solon pointed out: “Justice will not come until those who are not hurt feel just as indignant as those who are.”