Skokie is Different
Mikva, Abner
SKOKIE IS DIFFERENT ABNER MIKVA AbnerJ. Mikva represents Illinois' 10th district in Congress. This area includes the Village of Skokie. He has served on the House Judiciary Committee and now sits...
...Within this context—on a hot June day, with a crowd of 50,000 people and a band of Nazis in full regalia nearby— what are the prospects that the Skokie police department will be able to maintain order, to avert What is the obvious purpose of the Nazis' demonstration in Skokie with their brown shirts and swastikas...
...They do a good job of serving the village...
...with preserving the right of people and groups to express their ideas, even when we think those ideas are odious and despicable, but ensuring, too, that public safety and order are maintained...
...But if there is a responsibility on the part of an audience or on-look-ers to behave within the bounds of some restraint, what responsibility is there on the part of the speaker and those who demonstrate with him...
...Perhaps it would be a blow to the head from a club...
...Their obvious purpose is to provoke the fears and anger of the concentration camp survivors and others...
...It's up Sheridan Road, then west on Dempster, with Evanston landmarks such as the Lake Michigan shore line and the Northwestern University campus disappearing into the background...
...The courts will make their determination based on three Skokie ordinances currently under review...
...Perhaps it would be worse...
...More than 40,000 Jews live in Skokie, and they make up about 60 percent of the total population...
...the meaning and scope of the First Amendment is not so self-evident as is sometimes thought...
...Perhaps as many as 7,000 Skokie Jews are survivors of the Holocaust and Hitler's concentration camps...
...ago, we have been experimenting, not only with democratic government generally but with the meaning and scope of the First Amendment in particular...
...And, if so, which rights ought to be compromised...
...Is there a point at which the resources of a community are stretched beyond some reasonable limit so that a community can no longer be expected to cope adequately with competing rights...
...I continue to hope that the courts will eventually rule that the Constitution does not require that the Nazis be issued a permit to march in Skokie...
...He has served on the House Judiciary Committee and now sits on the Committee on Ways and Means...
...How does a small town protect its citizenry...
...Supreme Court authoritatively declare that this law had been unconstitutional...
...So the meaning and scope of the First Amendment is not so self-evident as is sometimes thought...
...The First Amendment and the right to express one's views are not necessarily ends in themselves...
...In October, 1976, during the final weeks of the national elections, candidate Jimmy Carter came to Skokie at my behest and appeared at a synagogue...
...There can be no doubt that the purpose is to inflame and incite, to rub raw the fears of thousands of people, to create public furor...
...I hope that the Nazis do not march into Skokie...
...Courts have ruled many times that the First Amendment does not grant the right to say whatever one pleases, wherever one pleases, whenever one pleases...
...But they have virtually no experience in crowd control, even with crowds of friendly people...
...But this does not mean that all speech is protected speech or that the context of the speech is irrelevant to the protection required to be afforded by the State...
...But perhaps some light can be shed on this dilemma by posing another question: What is the obvious purpose of the Nazis' demonstration in Skokie with their brown shirts and swastikas...
...The Skokie police force is a good one...
...These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, the insulting or 'fighting' words—those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace...
...Their invasion of Skokie invites the kind of retaliation and chaos with which the Skokie police are not equipped to cope...
...They are means to enhance the possibilities of life...
...of freedom of speech so rigid as to tolerate no concession to society's need for public order...
...As the Supreme Court has said on many occasions, freedom of speech must include not only the right to express popular ideas but unpopular ones, too: not only ideas which seem informed and respectable, but ideas that may seem silly or even ideas that may be loathsome...
...These are not easy questions to answer for one who is sensitive to the broad protection of the First Amendment...
...In a landmark case, the Supreme Court said that some narrowly limited classes of speech fall beyond the protection of the First Amendment, "the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem...
...For the better part of two centuries, we have been trying to find answers to the often difficult issues raised by the exercise of speech...
...Sixty years ago, in one of their eloquent statements of the rationale for this broad protection of speech, Justices Holmes and Brandeis said that...
...After he finished his speech, Terminello was arrested and convicted of inciting a breach of the peace...
...Jackson termed the speech "a provocation to the immediate breach of the peace...
...The Terminello case went to the Supreme Court and although a five-man majority overturned his conviction based on the trial judge's instructions to the jury, it was Justice Jackson's passionate dissent that had a strong influence on later Court decisions...
...The topography of the suburban Village of Skokie may be a little different from the shtetlach, but there are roots that are common to both...
...bloodshed, to avert the loss of human life...
...that we must forego order to achieve liberty...
...There must often be a difficult and delicate balancing of rights and hence, difficult choices...
...The First Amendment gives broad protection to speech, to the expression of opinions and ideas...
...For example, if the Nazis are allowed to march in Skokie, there will undoubtedly be an enormous number of other people who will also come to Skokie to express their opposition—maybe 25,000, maybe 35,000, maybe even 50,000...
...when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas—that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market____That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution...
...In Chicago, in September, 1966, George Lincoln Rockwell, then head of the American Nazi Party, wanted to demonstrate in Chicago during the Jewish holy days...
...It was not the first time that a dissenting opinion of the Supreme Court articulated the delicate balancing of rights that is the Bill of Rights...
...The Village of Skokie has no facility that I know to accommodate a crowd of that size...
...If the Nazis march into Skokie wearing their brown shirts and swastikas, symbols of the genocide that the Skokie survivors narrowly escaped, symbols which are closely akin to fighting words, there is a real chance for human tragedy...
...a civil libertarian must be concerned with life...
...A Federal District judge enjoined Rockwell and his followers from demonstrating within one-half mile of any Jewish house of worship on any Jewish holy day, if clothed in Nazi garb or displaying Nazi symbols...
...These kinds of words, the Court noted, "are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality____" In short, a civil libertarian must be concerned with life...
...It is also the balancing and meshing of those two values—of liberty and order—that is involved in the concept of "fighting words...
...They are also means by which we can examine, debate and discuss ideas, so that we can make more enlightened judgments, so that we may move closer to the truth...
...It has been said that there are more concentration camp survivors living in Skokie than in any other single community in the United States...
...If you lived in Evanston, Illinois, where I live, just to the north of Chicago, you would be a ten-minute ride away from the town that the Nazis are making famous...
...Difficult cases such as Skokie make the First Amendment operative but not rigid...
...I do not want the Nazis to march in Skokie...
...But this view) fixes its eyes on a conception...
...Perhaps in no other community in the country, including other communities adjacent to Skokie such as Evanston, would the invasion of Nazi storm troopers have the same impact and meaning that it does for thousands of Holocaust survivors...
...Skokie Cherishes Every Human Life" is a message on signs dotting the village as part of an auto safety campaign...
...Some years ago in Chicago, this issue arose when, as reported by one First Amendment scholar, "Father Terminello, a Catholic priest under suspension by his bishop, had come from Birmingham, Alabama, to spew forth his message of racial and religious hatred to some 800 sympathizers inside (an auditorium...
...It would be a green light for groups to silence unpopular ideas by threatening or causing a public disturbance...
...Outside, over 1,000 demonstrators had gathered to protest and ultimately to hurl bricks, bottles and stink bombs...
...Their invasion of Skokie invites the kind of retaliation and chaos with which the Skokie police are not equipped to cope...
...While Holmes and Brandeis, as well as other proponents of the value of free speech, have argued for broad protection, they have also recognized the vagaries of the conduct to be measured...
...Not at all surprisingly, therefore, the recent events involving efforts by a group of Nazis to march in Skokie have traumatized a substantial segment of that community...
...It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment...
...The chaos and crush of humanity, the traffic jam and resulting confusion nearly turned a happy event into a debacle...
...So, if the Nazis must come to Skokie, let them come in suits and ties and do their persuading in civilian garb...
...And there is the rub...
...Its uniqueness lies not so much in its claim to be the world's largest village, but in the fact that it is a sanctuary for thousands of Jewish Americans who still bear the scars of Hitler's Germany...
...In other words, why Skokie...
...For many of these people, the sense of community that they have been able to share, not unlike the bond of the shtetl, has provided a critical measure of emotional security...
...Perhaps 3,000 people came, all friendly, all eager to see Jimmy Carter...
...That has been true from the beginning 200 years ago, and it is true today in the case of Skokie...
...which) therefore cannot claim constitutional immunity from punishment____" To absolve Terminello of responsibility, Jackson suggested, implies that liberty and order are "enemies of each other and...
...A few moments before you see Sam and Hy's delicatessen or Big Herms' kosher hotdog palace up ahead, a brown, wooden sign with white letters proudly announces that you are entering Skokie, "The World's Largest Village...
...Unfortunately, the First Amendment does not contain some lever that can be pressed to give an automatic definition of what kinds of conduct fall under its protection...
...Moreover, while it is hoped that all who come will be peaceable, it is not beyond the stretch of imagination that some will come with other intentions...
...And so it is with the values of freedom of speech and public order...
...In supporting the constitutionality of Skokie's position vis-a-vis the Nazis, one of the country's most respected constitutional scholars, University of Chicago Law School professor Philip B. Kurland observed that "no one denies the value of protecting the right to speak...
...And let the rest of us take that occasion to reaffirm not only what we Americans oppose, but what we stand for—to recall to anyone who has forgotten not only the evil and madness of Nazism, but also the positive ideals and values we want to preserve for our children and grandchildren...
...From the beginning, 200 years...
...SKOKIE IS DIFFERENT ABNER MIKVA AbnerJ...
...Tempers began to flare amid the frustration, and it was largely luck that prevented something worse than a few angry words from being exchanged...
...One First Amendment scholar has observed, "Not until 1964 did the U.S...
...But the issues raised in the present situation go beyond the narrower legal questions of whether one or more of the Skokie ordinances is constitutional...
...And it is on some of those larger issues that public debate ought to be focused...
...So, Skokie is more than a village which happens to be part of suburban America...
...A large city can require paraders to use a certain route so as not to inconvenience motorists...
...Why Skokie...
...The survivors of the Holocaust have been subjected to the prospect of an invasion by Nazi storm-troopers in brown shirts, jackboots and swastikas, a scene all too reminiscent of the indescribable terror unleashed on them and their families two generations ago...
...Perhaps it would come from a thrown rock that knocks out an eye...
...The answer to that question is inextricably tied to the legal, moral and public policy questions that have put Skokie on the national map in bold letters ever since a small band of Nazis announced last year that they wanted to hold a demonstration there...
...One of the Skokie ordinances prohibits a parade in such garb...
...Someone once said that although it may not be possible to distinguish precisely between when the night ends and the new day begins, we must sometimes try to draw that line...
...For example, just seven years after the First Amendment was ratified, Congress adopted the Sedition Law of 1798, intended to silence what the majority saw as the subversive political talk of its opponents...
...How does a community like Skokie provide for the First Amendment rights of the Nazis and provide for the safety of thousands of lives...
...This is not to suggest that I condone or approve of what some have called "the heckler's veto"—that is, when an audience makes or promises to make a disturbance because they dislike what a speaker has to say, thereby forcing the police to move in and preventing the speaker from saying his piece...
...To pursue such a course as a matter of public policy generally would set the level of freedom at the whim of the violence-prone...
Vol. 3 • June 1978 • No. 7
