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Rights Holder and Contact
UCSD Guardian
Description
Vallino, L and Groundworks. (2017, October 8). Statement on Behalf of UCSD Left Regarding the Events of 6 October 2017. The UCSD Guardian. Retrieved from http://ucsdguardian.org/2017/10/09/student-disrupts-free-speech-demonstration-by-stabbing-giant-beach-ball-is-questioned-by-police/ Naoum, J. (2017, October 15). Letter to the Editor. The UCSD Guardian Opinion. Retrieved from http://ucsdguardian.org/2017/10/15/letter-to-the-editor-2/ Statement on Behalf of UCSD Left Regarding the Events of 6 October 2017 Friday afternoon, returning from class, one of our members happened to pass by the lower portion of Library Walk, a few feet from Silent Tree. There he found organizers, including non-students, from the organization calling itself “Young Americans for Liberty”. They had prepared a large beach ball, 5 feet in diameter, and were encouraging people, in the name of the 1st amendment, to write whatever they wished on the surface of the ball. Apart from the usual phrases from Far Right dictionary, several slogans were plastered on its surface of an extremely dangerous and despicable nature, including #ropegang, a slogan used to identify people wishing to ejaculate semen on the faces of women, and anti-immigrant slogans. In addition to these, obscene slogans condoning gang rape appeared on the ball. Motivated by indignation at this offensive and dangerous language, our member punctured the ball with a short blade. After being accosted by an organizer, who admitted to being a non-student, he departed. The puncturing of the sphere was an admittedly poorly-considered attempt to symbolically protest these intolerable slogans and to make it known that such sexist and racist language will not be respected by a campus with as long a history of defense of free speech as this. These reactionary, opportunistic, and hypocritical slogans did not, and do not, constitute a free exercise of rights... The organizers of YAL did not explicitly underwrite or condone any such language, but permitted it as a defense of legal rights, and did not engage with this language in a condemnatory way. Letter to the Editor: President of UCSD Young Americans for Liberty My name is Jonah Naoum and I am the UC San Diego Chapter President for Young Americans for Liberty. Our group is dedicated to advocating for liberty, free markets, limited government, and the Constitution. On Friday, Oct. 6, we were tabling with a free speech ball on Library Walk, exercising our First Amendment right to free speech through YAL’s National Fight for Free Speech campaign. We passed out pocket Constitutions, spoke to students and gave everyone the opportunity to write on our free speech ball. Let me be very clear: We do NOT condone any markings of encouraging rape, antiimmigrant slogans, supremacy, or the like. I can assure you that as a son of Iraqi immigrants I am very well aware of discrimination and do not condone any anti-immigrant slogans. However, everyone does have the right to free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment; I acknowledge that right. UC San Diego Library, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0175 (https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/contact)
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