Picketing protesters pitched: Campus cops said—You Gotta Go

Picketing protesters pitched: Campus cops said—You Gotta Go

An 80 year old black farmer, along with a group of elderly and mostly disabled supporters, braved blustery winds and sleet in front of the Frankfort, Kentucky campus of Kentucky State University to protest what he says is the illegal and fraudulent sale of his western Kentucky farm. With little or no traffic on campus, the farm protestor moved the protest to the perimeter of the land grant college’s exhibition farm, in the grassy shoulder of the road, several feet from the farm’s entrance, and that’s where it really got ugly.

Harry Young had already been battling with KSU officials for more than a week over exercising his constitutional rights of assembly and free speech. At first he was told he could only protest in a distant football stadium, far from the campus location of the publicly-funded farm conference.

After a long-distance telephone campaign, which included calls to the Governor, the university president, campus security and various functionaries, he was able to move the location of his freedom of assembly protest from the football stadium to the main entrance of the University.

After over than an hour of standing in front of the university, it was more than apparent that nothing was happening on-campus. Traffic was non-existent and there wasn’t a person visible, as far as the eye could see.

Young decided that he had to be visible, visible to the participants of the tax-payer funded farm conference (to which he received an invitation) and it would make sense to move the protest to the entrance of the university’s exhibition farm where the conference attendees were corralled under an over-priced tent (more on that later).

Acquaintances, research professors, and farm activists from Texas, Missouri, Indiana and Iowa, who were interested in the issue, drove hundreds of miles to attend the conference and to interview Young as part of their on-going research into farm property rights issues and the black farmer crisis.

Having finished dinner, they decided that there was nothing else of real interest going on in the conference tent, so they got in their cars and drove to the entrance of the farm to talk to Mr. Young. That’s when things really started heating up.

Mr. Young, along with a few of his mostly elderly and disabled supporters, had already been denied access to restrooms and the cops were fast losing patients with these old protesters. Campus security rolled down the lane and now was denying them access to the farm grounds, even the grassy shoulder of the road by the farm entrance.

The head of campus security himself, delivered the news. Then he parked his car across the lane to make sure the protesters could not enter the grounds, or go any where near this publicly funded, taxpayer supported event—and event which was being held half a mile away, down a country lane, on a public university campus farm.

The protesters were neither loud, nor disorderly and numbered less than 10, but their numbers, their very presence was obviously a thorn in the side of university officials, who wanted then gone in no uncertain terms. Eventually, after apparently communication with university officials, the campus police chief told the protesters that they couldn’t protest at the entrance, but would have to move across the road, to a non-existent shoulder, which would have been extremely dangerous.

That would have meant the vehicles would have been blocking the highway. But, wait a minute. Security wasn’t done yet. When several conference participants came out of the tent and drove down the lane to talk to Mr. Young, campus security rolled up in his vehicle and told the protesters “You got to go.” And, because some of the conference participants were talking to Young, the campus police chief told them, “You’re with these people—you got to go, too.”

So, now we are talking about multiple cases of violations of freedom of speech and assembly laws. Read on, it gets better.

Participants say the “conference had more farm program and university employees than participants”. The university also paid a reported $4,000 for a one-day rental of a meeting tent, which, according to attendees we spoke to, was so poorly anchored that not only did it dangerously sway in the wind, but one of the anchor strings actually came undone and went on a scalping mission against a Native American woman who was attending the conference. Thanks to the fast work of an observer, Mrs. Melissa Seaver only lost a few strands of hair, instead of an eye.

More evidence of poor planning. Given the mid-November date, one would think that conference organizers would have planned for the weather. The late November conference luncheon was held under blustery conditions, beneath a tent, which had no heating, was poorly erected and reportedly cost taxpayers $4,000—and that was just for the tent! We’re not even talking about the mid-morning run for a propane heater to ward off the winter chill.

This type of pre-emptive denial of freedom of assembly rights flies in the face of what this nation stands for. The Constitution does not say—freedom of assembly, but only at the convenience of public officials. The Bill of Rights does not say freedom of speech—but only if you say what the government wants to hear.

The right to freely express one’s self, the right to freely assemble and air grievances to the public, these are the very foundations of what this nation holds dear. The fact that a black farmer was evicted from a publicly supported historically black college is an outrage.

This university is supported by tax payers. Harry Young is a tax payer and an American citizen. Given the bloody history of black farmers, the lynching, threats, intimidation, theft of property and life which black farmers endured, the denial of Harry Young’s freedom of speech and assembly rights is a true abomination, made only more outrageous by the trespassing and vandalism of his fields by purported members of the KKK a month ago.