A LITTLE more than a year ago, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression erected a monument to the First Amendment in front of City Hall on Charlottesville's downtown mall. Deemed "Freedom Plaza," this interactive monument consists of a large chalkboard, replete with chalk available to all who pass by, and a much less noticeable podium. Because the wall is cleaned twice weekly, local pedestrians and tourists have enjoyed chalking endlessly in a gesture to celebrate and exercise their constitutional right to free speech.
Though the aim of the Freedom Wall is innovative and carries with it a worthy symbolic message -- that Charlottesville celebrates free speech -- the Freedom Wall's medium is nothing more than a cheap, interactive platitude. I have visited the Freedom Wall many times and reflected on its message. But I eventually realized that the exercise of free speech through largely anonymous scribbles hardly amounts to a "tangible and enduring embodiment of the concept of free expression," as the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression called it.
One must wonder why the Charlottesville community would enshrine feckless, often inane, chalkings in a gesture to honor free speech. A monument should honor the greatness of a subject, which the Freedom Wall fails to accomplish. Certainly Americans are allowed, without fear of government penalty, to write things like, "I love my penis" (an actual inscription). But should the people of Charlottesville approve of a forum to enshrine that sentiment? Is the free-for-all Freedom Wall the most fitting medium to honor the right to free speech?
We seem to have forgotten that with every right granted there is a corresponding duty. This country was founded on that very idea; the Founders believed that they no longer had a duty to the crown of Great Britain because they were denied their rights as citizens. In more recent times, men under 21 who could not vote, but were drafted into the Vietnam War petitioned for the voting age to be set at eighteen. As Benjamin Constant, a French politician during the revolutionary era, said, "Where there are no rights, there are no duties." Implied then in the possession of rights is an obligation to duty.
Interestingly though, the way the Freedom Wall celebrates free speech -- anonymous chalking -- intimates that the right to free speech comes with no corresponding duty. In reality, the right to free speech carries with it a responsibility to do so in an accountable, civil, and participatory manner.
Ironically, the Freedom Wall is a reflection of how little we actually value free speech, an indication that individual Americans, in this case Charlottesvillians, are not interested in taking responsibility for their opinions. Rather, exercising free speech within the comfort of unaccountability and anonymity, as seen so often in the blogosphere, lowers free speech into a realm that is far from ideal or productive. The things people say when no one is watching and when they will not be held accountable for their words are not always honorable and certainly do not deserve their own monument.
As one chalking aptly put it, "Our forefathers died to give us this right -- Do we have the courage to use it?" Writing on the Freedom Wall is not an act of courage. It is a comfortable and safe way to feel good about free speech, but that which is easy and thoughtless need not have its own monument.
We must pay homage to our freedom in more meaningful and accountable ways. It would have been much better to use the money for Freedom Plaza to fund a newspaper or erect a public space dedicated to meaningful debate and dialogue.
So of course keep the wall and hold onto fuzzy platitudes about community, freedom, and dialogue, but do not expect to see me chalking anytime soon. Scrutinize my words and ideas here where they are held to account and subject to debate.
Christa Byker's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at cbyker@cavalierdaily.com.
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