Another Protest Worth Attending

Here's another example of a protest that gives me hope. Last week, a man who worked at a Frederick ad agency was fired from his job for heckling Bush at a rally in W. VA. Interestingly, he says he understood why he was fired and then later asked the protestors not to protest directly in front of the business. He felt it was "unfair" to disrupt their business.

GIVE ME A BREAK! Isn't the goal of a protest to cause disruption so that people pay attention to an issue? Moreover, doesn't this guy seems not to value his freedoms, as he didn't mind being fired. Who knows, maybe he hates his job.

What this points to, of course, is not just our diminishing rights as US citizens, but the subjugation of our rights to corporations. Businesses aren't democratic, many of them try to avoid taking a political stance on issues (at least publicly--let's not go into lobbyists now). The point is that when people go to work, they are often expected to leave their politics at the door. Conversely, constitutionally protected rights are also left at the door. This is particularly true in terms of the first amendment. (In fact, I'm really glad people can't bring guns to work.)

However, is it fair, as in this case, for an employee to be simultaneously silenced and forced to attend a political rally? Isn't that essentially an attempt to indoctrinate by a supposedly non-political entity?

Of course, this was an ad agency, so they may have been hired by Bush Co. There's probably a number of details of this story that's not being shared. All the same, the fact that he was fired just for heckling the President, however inappropriate his timing might've been (according to his boss--I can't imagine a time when it would be inappropriate to heckle Bush), illustrates how much individual power we've given away to corporations. And the fact that this situation doesn't bother the victim at all is a true example of what Herbert Marcuse called "surplus repression."