March 24, 2006 Rocky Mountain News

The following article published in the Rocky Mountain News is about a brother of ours here in Denver who is black, works with the local Cop-Watch, speaks his mind and stands up for what he believes.
Shareef Alim runs up against the "new Amerika" every day of his life. I know him as a friend and a comrade who is one of the most peaceful men I've ever met. I've had the privilege to work with him on several projects over the last two years. I will comment on this story in a separate entry. Here's a column written today by a columnist who is often on the other side of peace and justice issues than Shareef but who clearly understands the implications of racism and the erosion of our basic freedoms.


Johnson: T-shirt brouhaha is downright baffling

Bill Johnson
email bio
March 24, 2006
Forty-five days.
I don't know why that number should appall me. Except that it confirms, in way too many ways, what we have become these days.
I had to read the story twice, just to make sure I hadn't missed something, such as the defendant throwing a fit and cursing the judge.
But that wasn't the case. Shareef Aleem got sentenced on Wednesday to a month-and-a-half in the slammer for wearing a T-shirt without a single bad word on it.
I can't even figure out what offense prosecutors and Adams County District Court Judge Katherine Delgado took to the shirt.
It bore a picture of executed Crips street gang co-founder Stanley Tookie Williams and the words "Should have been saved" and "Redemption."
I know of a few clergymen who wouldn't mind having one of the shirts in their closet. And would Shareef Aleem have been jailed if those same words had appeared with a photo of, say, Jesus, instead of ol' Tookie?
Forty-five days?
Shareef Aleem, you might know, is an outspoken activist and a harsh critic of law enforcement. He loudly proclaims that it treats minorities unfairly. Ironic, isn't it? So perhaps the contempt-of-court citation isn't about the T-shirt at all.
He was before Judge Delgado in the first place for allegedly assaulting a police officer who was escorting him from a University of Colorado Board of Regents meeting for yelling that he and others had a right to speak as the board discussed controversial CU professor Ward Churchill.
A jury earlier this month deadlocked on the assault charge, and a new trial has been set for May 8.
There is no question that Shareef Aleem is loud, impolitic and in-your-face confrontational - qualities that these days can get you surveilled and jailed.
The judge earlier had told him to remove another T-shirt. It depicted a lynching and the words "U.S. History 101."
You could argue the truth of that message, as well, but not even Shareef Aleem fought back when the judge told him to lose it.
But he refused to remove the Tookie shirt on First Amendment grounds. Maybe the judge, who is not talking, just didn't like the sass.
Forty-five days.
But not for now.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Shareef Aleem should be freed from jail until his sentence is officially appealed and it moves through the legal process. He could be released by the time you read this.
Mark Burton, Aleem's attorney, can barely disguise his astonishment at the length of the jail term.
"Those, last I looked, are common words in the dictionary," he said of what was written on the T-shirt. The 45 days, he added, weighing his words carefully, are "highly unusual for direct contempt. And I really don't understand the objection (to the shirt)."
A day after Shareef Aleem went to jail, dozens gathered Thursday on the steps of the Capitol to protest a different loudmouth, the Rev. Fred Phelps, of Topeka, Kan., whose congregation - composed mostly of his own offspring - has created a national stir by staging protests at the funerals of soldiers.
I won't dignify the reason they give for staging the protests by repeating it here. Yet in a response, Colorado legislators on Thursday were furiously mulling passing a state law to counter Phelps by outlawing demonstrations at military funerals.
That's silly, too.
This newspaper on Wednesday editorialized, quite correctly, that even wackos like Phelps have free speech protections - no matter how much we abhor the message.
This country, in fact, has a long history of protecting the free speech rights of even the most unsavory among us, said David Hudson, a research attorney with the Nashville, Tenn.-based First Amendment Center.
"I forget who originally said it, but it still rings true," David Hudson said: "One man's vulgarity is another man's lyric."
If it seems that more and more people are being arrested and going to jail over T-shirt slogans, it is only because they are, he said.
He cites the removal and arrest of anti-war Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan by Capitol police at last month's State of the Union Speech for wearing a T-shirt that read "2,225 Dead. How Many More?"
A congressman's wife was ejected, but not arrested, that same night for wearing a quite different "Support the Troops - Defending Our Freedom" T-shirt.
And then there were the legions who went to jail for wearing protest T-shirts and stickers at George W. Bush election rallies in 2004.
"There is an endless supply of speech that seems to offend these days," David Hudson said.
"So many of our current rights and freedoms have been advanced in the name of some not very nice people, such as Larry Flynt of Hustler magazine fame," he said. "It is the protection of those on the fringes that benefit the mainstream."
We often forget that fact, he says, in trying to slap down the Fred Phelpses of the world.
"There have been - what? - 26 legislatures that have passed or are about to pass laws to restrict him. And most of these laws wouldn't pass even a cursory court review," David Hudson said.
Indeed, for a nation founded on popular dissent, we seem these days to have forgotten everything about it.
Even Patrick Henry might have tired of those in power today and just kept his mouth shut.
I have an idea, though, what Katherine Delgado would have done with him if he hadn't:
Forty-five days.
Bill Johnson's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
Call him at 303-892-2763 or e-mail him at
johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com