Shut Up!
Blame it on her having a long day, or simply being tired, or perhaps she had an obligation she was trying to get home to resolve. Or blame it on the fact that maybe she’s just getting tired of being the Mayor. Whatever it is, it was a shock to hear Mayor Loretta Gluckstein tell an Atlantic Highlands citizenry that she’s in favor of shutting them up.
Well, to be honest, she doesn’t want them shut up forever. She just wants to limit their speech… That’s the first step to shut them up forever.
She wants to do that for every meeting of the Mayor and Council. No matter what the issue. No matter what ideas a citizen might suggest.
No matter that council members can interrupt a speaker and carry on a debate between themselves for many minutes.
Mayor Gluckstein doesn’t think the folks who put her and everyone else up there in office, the folks that pay those taxes and sit through discussions of an ordinance they obviously haven’t thought enough about in the past month … should only be able to have their say for five minutes.
Doesn’t She?
Doesn’t she remember all the grief the borough attorney just went through when she tried to tell these same people they had no right to ask questions? When the Council tried to shut them up before …
Doesn’t she remember when this five-minute gag was tried before and shot down? When the Council tried to shut them up before …
Didn’t she hear the speaker at this very meeting remind everyone there that it is Effective Communications Month?
Doesn’t she realize that effective communications come about through speech, sharing ideas, sharing thoughts?
Doesn’t’ she remembers Mark Fisher’s famous last words a little more than two months ago? Or did she really think because Mark wasn’t present in the meeting room that she could get something past him?
Mr. Fisher
Mark Fisher isn’t an elected official. Nor does he want to be. He just loves his town and spends an awful lot of time studying it, riding around it, thinking of how it could be better…and keeping his eye on the folks that run it. He’s told them about many times in the past that he believes, as have Americans believed since the days of Thomas Jefferson, that everyone has the right to have something to say to the people who elect them.
Mark’s parting words to the many who read his thought provocative and news-filled Atlantic Highlands news page, ahnewsbymarkfisher@gmail.com in April were:
I’ll keep watching and listening for the future attempts to muzzle the public at Council and other meetings. There is ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT in my mind that sometime again in the future, another attempt to deny or limit our free speech right WILL be tried again.”
He certainly can read his elected officials far better than I can.
Can You Repeat That?
I was so stunned at the mayor’s suggestion I had to ask her to repeat it. Then define whether she meant she wanted to shut people up just at this meeting or at every meeting. Did she mean people could only speak once then forever hold their peace? She explained she meant it for every meeting from this day forward. But they could talk twice, she said, once during the public comments section on the agenda at the beginning of the meeting and once at the end.
I think she was also hinting at permitting someone to speak more than once during each of those sessions if they kept each address down to the five minutes. She did not say whether the borough would be paying a timekeeper to be sure everyone obeys the rules. But she says yes, there would be a timekeeper… A time keeping to insure that after 5 minutes, you shut up!
Continuing with Mark’s opinion, he was not there in person listening from his seat in the back of the room last night. But he was there via ZOOM. And he told the governing body once again he would continue to stand up for his rights and fight it if the idea comes up again.
Shut Up! Sit Down!
He’s started his defense of the Constitutional right already. In his comments today, Mark termed the idea “asinine”. Then, always looking forward rather than predicting the future, he piqued interest by saying it will be VERY interesting to see how the 2023 Mayoral and Council candidates will react to this next attempt to tell the residents of Atlantic Highlands…their voters…that “shut up, and sit down, your 5-minutes are up” is a swell idea.
Then he urged his many readers to be sure to show up at the June 8 meeting to see if anyone has the audacity to try to shut up the public. And he urged them also to be sure to let the elected officials know how they feel about at attempt to keep them quiet.
There are three members of council on the ballot in five months. Bet none of them will offer a Your Speech is limited motion at any meeting between now and November. Know there was another candidate at the meeting who herself often gets up to opine. Never timed her, but know she always likes to detail her ideas just to be sure they’re understood. She also listens, which is apparently a novelty these days. Don’t think she would want to muzzle the folks either.
Disappointment
Sorry, Mayor, but you already know how I feel about Thomas Jefferson and the magnificent things he has done for our country; you already know his strong feelings on freedom of speech…. without any limits, since limits by their very definition, prevent freedom of speech.
But even before the third President, Voltaire had a few things to say about freedom of speech. “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
It’s disappointing you would not do the same.
Another Council story here
