Chip Gibbons on Defending Dissent

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Keystone XL protest, White House, 2014 (cc photo: Joe Brusky)

(cc photo: Joe Brusky)

This week on CounterSpin, what makes the work we’re doing even possible: the freedom to speak our criticism of the powerful out loud, to protest against actions taken by the state and by corporations, to communicate openly with one another about how to demand the better world we know is possible.

Corporate news media serve up a lot of palaver about free speech, but when people actually act on that ideal, media elites use their megaphones to dismiss and deride, and to circumscribe conversation to make it appear that ideas that threaten their interests aren’t really serious ideas, and the people fighting for them are marginal, even dangerous. The power is with us, and our ability to speak and to hear one another—and holding on to that ability is just another part of the work we have to do.

We talk about all this with Chip Gibbons, policy and legislative counsel at the group Defending Rights & Dissent.

This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission from FAIR.