First thing, the Black Panthers need to hustle up to north Georgia and get themselves a stretch of highway to tidy.
Some folks might flinch at the notion of a group that once called for vigorous self-defense and even armed insurrection. But they also had a social services program in addition to the violent bluster, and besides, the right to jabber has always been protected in the USA.
The Ku Klux Klan historically has been much more threatening and diabolical. But, of late, it has dwindled to collections of misfits who are largely reviled and ignored. That is unless they want to pick up trash on a highway. Then they pack courtrooms with media types and legal gawkers.
Three years ago, a group calling itself the International Keystone Knights of the KKK, applied to the state DOT to pick up litter on a stretch of Ga. 515 in the Appalachian Mountains. But the problem was that when a group adopts a mile of highway it gets an honorary sign erected with its name, kind of a government-sponsored bragging rights program, which is the least the state can do in exchange for the free labor. The signs usually tout the Kiwanis or the Boy Scouts or even a certain colossal American retail conglomerate that sells Chinese-made merchandise.
(If I can digress, the term “International” in the group’s name is ambitious because such orgs are normally small, motley clusters. I once interviewed a South Georgia Klan leader but could barely hear him because the lap dogs in his doublewide were barking too loud. Turns out he was a “one-man Klan.”)
“We just wanted to do something good,” said Steve Chamson, a rep from the Keystone Knights. “It was a way to do something in a more visible way.”
Chamson resides “somewhere in North Georgia” and declined to say much about the size of his organization. “We are a secret society, but we have more than enough to take care of the program.”
Actually, all you need is two guys with Hefty bags, one for each side of the road.
The Knights’ request for volunteer service was denied by Transportation Commissioner Keith Golden, who said he worried about safety of those working along a road with a 65 mph speed limit.
Besides, he added in a letter to the group, “The impact of erecting a sign naming an organization which has a long-rooted history of civil disturbance would cause a significant public concern.”
And that’s what brought us to the stately chambers of the Georgia Court of Appeals last week. The Keystone Knights called in the ACLU to help them sue the state on First Amendment grounds, an argument a Fulton County judge bought, saying the state improperly employed “viewpoint-based discrimination.”
Which, of course, it did. The question is, should it?
Georgia argued that by erecting a sign, it would, in essence, create state-sanctioned speech.
“The state puts its name in big bold letters on the top of the sign as well as the state emblem,” assistant attorney general Brittany Bolton told the appellate judges last week.
But the Keystone Knights’ legal team insists that explanation is simply the state quashing free expression. Alan Begner, who is taking time off from his busy schedule fighting for the right of women to bare all in strip clubs, is arguing on behalf of the Klan.
Begner does work for the ACLU and is known to pick up disparate causes. He once represented civil rights firebrand Hosea Williams in a free speech lawsuit against Atlanta arguing that the city’s heavy-handed handling of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue in its protests was prior restraint.
In this case, Begner said the DOT commissioner, in discussing the Klan’s history in his denial, “was the worst answer he could give. You can’t deny on content.”
The Klan’s Chamson remembered the Klan’s first meeting with Begner. They talked about the case, “and the next thing he said is ‘I’m a Jew. Is that a problem?’ We said ‘Absolutely not.’”
After the hearing last week, Begner was joined outside the courtroom by Maya Dillard Smith, the new executive director of the ACLU’s Georgia chapter. She had just moved from California and this was her first order of business as the chapter’s head.
It provided a peculiar American moment: a husky, ponytailed Jewish lawyer with a fluffy white beard standing next to a trim African American lawyer with stylish bangs outside a courtroom where together they are fighting the state on behalf of an organization that historically despised them.
“Today, the issue is the KKK, tomorrow it will be Black Lives Matter when it is no longer politically correct,” Dillard Smith said.
The adopt-a-road program had no guidelines as to what civic groups were eligible — or ineligible — so “when the government determines what speech is good and what is bad, that is a problem,” she said.
Later, I asked her how she, as a black woman, felt about the Klan. She shooed the question away, saying, “What I believe is irrelevant here. Our constitution affords free speech to everybody.”
The next day, I spoke with Rev. Joe Beasley, the southeast director of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
“I have a lot of admiration for the ACLU; they have helped us a lot,” he said. “There’s a lot to be said for free speech. But hate speech is a different thing. Look at the outcome of what happened in South Carolina.”
The Klan’s Chamson said history is just that, something in the past, and the group is allowed to express their feelings.
He brought up some of the stereotypes of Jews and blacks, adding he is not denigrating an entire race or entire religion. “Alan is a great guy,” he said. “And there are some good black people.”
Of course there are, especially when they are helping you. It almost shows a kinder gentler Klan.
“We are normal folk; we have a belief system you may not like, but it’s our belief system.”
Chamson argues this is not a publicity stunt. They didn’t call the media. The dude just wants to pick up some trash. Moreso, he wants a sign; the whole thing has become some sort of quest for affirmation, which is exactly why the state is telling them to get lost.
If they win, then what?
“We’ll be out there,” he said. “But out there in jeans and T-shirts. We’re not going to be out there in robes.”
No doubt a smart move. Who’d want his nice white bedsheets soiled by motor oil and discarded fast food wrappers?
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