| Skokie alienated me from the ACLU (I was in my senior year at St. John's at the time). Had I been a member, I would have resigned. The rights of freedom and assembly are always subject to time/place restrictions, although they are supposed to be as little restrictive as possible. Nevertheless, the potential for disruption is taken into account, and the needs of the police to maintain order are always factored in. Nothing guarantees that one gets to take a particular route, or set up in a particular public space. In the case of Skokie, it was a town that was not only mostly Jewish, but filled with Holocaust survivors. There was no reason to inflict the Nazis on them, or to invite a riot. Reasonable accommodation could have taken place anywhere in the Chicagoland area. It was clear that the Nazi insistence on marching in Skokie had nothing to do with freedom of speech and assembly, by with behaving provocatively in that particular location, presumably with the hope of gaining publicity. In my opinion, only a "liberal pinhead", to borrow a phrase, would think that it was necessary that the Nazis exercise their rights in that precise location, as long as nearby alternative venues existed......... |
