Concord Community Bulletin Board

The American Dissident
A Literary Journal of Critical Thinking
In the Samizdat Tradition of Writing against the Machine
A Forum for Examining the Dark Side of the Academic/Literary Industrial Complex

In the Spirit of the Citizen... or Chamber of Commerce?
The Community Bulletin Board
Today, our society has been becoming increasingly controlled by Orwellian-type anonymities, often insidiously rather than overtly. More control ineluctably translates into less free speech and free expression, in spite of the spirit of the First Amendment. Nebulous terms, including “inappropriate” and “disrespectful” are evoked to curtail free speech and expression. Obscenity is another such nebulous term, defined, of course, usually quite nebulously, for example, by the Assistant Town Manager of Concord, as “most reasonable people would agree that they ‘know it when they see it.’”

When I noticed the bulletin board and my dissident flyers had disappeared from Monument Square, I walked over to Town Hall and queried the Assistant Town Clerk, who kindly forwarded my questions to her boss, the Town Clerk. The following “dialogue” was composed from actual statements taken from our email correspondence.

Town Clerk: My understanding is that the decision to take down the old bulletin board (which was erected in the early 1970s and was in need of repair), and replace it with an enclosed board, was made by the Town Manager's Office, in response to complaints and a request from the Chamber of Commerce. Funding for the new bulletin board came from a donation from the Lions Club.

Citizen Dissident: As a citizen of Concord, I would like to examine the complaints, regarding the bulletin board. No doubt, the complainers detest the First Amendment and people who hold different ideas than theirs and dare express those ideas publicly. Where are the complaints kept? How might one lodge a counter complaint in the name of the First Amendment? I find the removal of that bulletin board despicable. It was the only positive area in Concord for an overt freethinker. Where now is one to post an opinion? The Concord Journal refused to publish my accounts of being harassed by police at Walden Pond for merely holding a Free Speech placard; the public library will not permit my non-commercial flyer on its bulletin boards, Town Hall will not permit it on its bulletin boards, and Walden Pond authorities threatened to incarcerate me if I continued distributing it on its grounds.

Town Clerk: The complaints received about the condition of the former bulletin board were verbal, and have been coming for the past couple of years from individuals since the dedication of the veterans memorial adjacent to the phone booth/bulletin board area. Since the memorial area was spruced up, the area around the phone booths was more visibly an eyesore, with flying and torn debris, and no one responsible for removing dated material. That was what prompted the effort to spruce it up with a new bulletin board and plantings. As to your first amendment rights, there is nothing that would prevent you from distributing your literature on the sidewalk or public parks, providing you don't solicit money. There is also nothing in the First Amendment guaranteeing you access to a free bulletin board to distribute your literature.

Citizen Dissident: The police at Walden prove you wrong. Your statement on the First Amendment ignores the very spirit of that keystone of American democracy. That bulletin board was a place where all citizens could express their opinions and ideas without police harassment or having to run them through Town staff for approval. By the way, I think it positive to have some things in our visual arena not perfectly square, round, trimmed, pruned, and otherwise unnaturally sanitized. Nature is thus. Will the Chamber of Commerce next lodge a complaint to remove pedestrians from the area whose shirts are not tucked in, who are not shaven, who are wearing odd hats, or who are not attired in business suits? Is it not also an eyesore and nuisance for pedestrians on the sidewalk to have to look at and walk around the clothing racks erected there upon?

Since the above “dialogue,” I met with the Town Manager to depose a complaint, request to examine the complaints (he mentioned they were oral and has no record of them) and discuss the issue of free speech. I have also received a copy of the Ten Rules for posting on the new Community Bulletin Board. They will diminish free speech and expression considerably, thanks to the two-week maximum posting time, reduced posting space (a map of Concord covers nearly half of the board now), and especially the Orwellian-like rule #8: “Messages containing obscenities or other inappropriate content, as determined by Town staff, will not be posted.” Rule #7 prohibits messages from being posted on the outside of the enclosed board. But what will the consequences be for a person doing just that? Will there be fines? If so, how much and under what authority? Will there be police pursuit of criminal First-Amendment patriots? Also, The Concord Journal published an article with a photo regarding the new bulletin board. Apparently, it will not be publishing this alternative view, which I sent to the newspaper three weeks ago.