Free Food and Whistleblowers Help Students Realize Freedom
By Brittny Valdes and Jose Velez
Guards dressed in all black, armed with batons and riot shields screamed at people who forgot they gave up their freedom of speech in exchange for some free food.
The dispute was part of the FIU-chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists’ first annual First Amendment Free Food Festival, FAFFF.“
The event was bizarre and uncomfortable,” said Ivette Duran, a criminal justice and psychology student at FIU, who found it difficult to stop chatting with friends. “I am all for freedom of speech.”The school of journalism’s center courtyard looked like the Kingdom of the Republic of SPJ-FIU: an authoritative space enclosed by yellow caution tape, where visitors could eat free, but not live free.
SPJ-FIU members, acting like totalitarian oppressors, watched as students, professors and university visitors signed away their First Amendment rights in exchange for the food that consisted of pizzas, burgers, tacos, fried chicken and more.
Kevin Duran, a journalism student, didn’t realize what was taking place until he signed his name.
“I noticed accusations and censorship,” he said, noting the times he tried to speak out against the guards. “You should be able to express yourself.”
The FAFFF was created by SPJ’s Region 3 Director Michael Koretzky to show students the importance of the First Amendment by deliberately taking it away.
The guards swung their batons at visitors who did not obey the rules, such as no complaining or gathering with friends to eat.
They kicked out a student who was dressed as a priest because he repeatedly tried to share the gospel with the masses.
“If you have something your whole life – like seeing the sky everyday – eventually you’ll forget it’s there,” said Jeffrey Pierre, an SPJ-FIU member who dressed as a religious figure to drive home the message of freedom. “You don’t really value it unless your campus happens to be throwing a First Amendment rally.”
Pierre stood outside the marked boundary with student protestors who chanted peace mantras and held up signs that read, “Eat free or live free, choose” and “No justice, no peace.”
SPJ-FIU held the FAFFF on Oct. 23 during Free Speech Week.
The event ended with a panel discussion about whistleblowing by visitors from the Government Accountability Project, which just so happened to visit SJMC that day.
The GAP panel consisted of whistleblowers Jesselyn Radack, former ethics director of the Department of Justice; Thomas Drake, former senior official of the National Security Agency and the second whistleblower in American history to be persecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917; and Louis Clark, president of the GAP.
Their visit to SJMC was part of a nationwide whistleblower campus tour that the GAP embarks on annually to educate students about whistleblowing as well as the increased need for whistleblowers in the ever-expanding digital world.
“In this country, right now, there’s a war on whistleblowers, journalists and hackers,” said Radack, who blew the whistle on FBI agents who wrongfully interrogated, and ended up injuring, an American citizen. “It’s part of a larger war on information.”
Radack, Drake and Clark traveled to South Florida after meeting with Edward Snowden in Russia.
Their goal is to inform the public of U.S. government wrongdoings. They do this by sharing how government officials suppress information that is of public interest, taint the images of whistleblowers through the media and intimidate editors and reporters to reveal their sources.
“The mainstream media is becoming the lapdog of the government instead of the watchdogs,” said Drake, who was charged with 10 felonies and life in prison after retaining NSA information that supported evidence that the government was collecting data that threatened individual privacy rights.
Drake urged journalism students to be future reporters – not stenographers.
“I violated the unwritten rule that, ‘you don’t make us look bad, and if you do, we have to cast you out,’” he said. “It was bad form for me to have held up a mirror. But is freedom worth it?”
After a deliberate afternoon without freedom, it’s safe to say that it is.
