Gun Control & RKBA
Related: About this forum"Why Civil Rights and Gun Rights Are Inseparable"
I have not yet read the full book, Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms, by Nicholas Johnson, but the following review (from Reason Magazine) and excerpt of the book's introduction (at the author's own blog) have whetted my appetite.
First the review:
http://reason.com/archives/2014/05/10/why-civil-rights-and-gun-rights-are-inse
"The principle of self-defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi," King argued in his debate with Williams. "When the Negro uses force in self-defense, he does not forfeit supporthe may even win it, by the courage and self-respect he shows."
King had no quarrel with black Americans keeping and bearing arms strictly in self-defense. In fact, King himself once applied for a permit to keep a concealed gun in his car in response to the many death threats he had received, though bigoted local officials denied him the permit on the arbitrary (and preposterous) ground that King lacked "good cause" to keep a gun at the ready.
Nor was King alone in that regard. As Negroes and the Gun makes clear, a vast number of nonviolent civil rights activists either carried arms themselves or were surrounded by others who did, including Rosa Parks, who described her dinner table "covered with guns" at a typical strategy session in her home, and Daisy Bates, "the first lady of Little Rock," who played a pivotal role in the famous battle to integrate her city's Central High School. Thurgood Marshall, who stayed with Bates in 1957 while litigating the Central High case, called her residence "an armed camp." Bates herself packed a .45 automatic pistol.
and the author's blog:
http://law.fordham.edu/30743.htm
This book tells a dramatically different story. It chronicles a tradition of church folk, merchants and strivers, the very best people in the community, armed and committed to the principle of individual self-defense. This black tradition of arms takes root early and ranges fully into the modern era. It is demonstrated in Fredrick Douglass advice of a good revolver as the best response to slave catchers. It is evident in mature form in 1963, when Hartman Turnbow of Mississippi fought off a Klan attack with rifle fire. Turnbow considered this fully consistent with the principles of the freedom movement, explaining, I wasnt being non-nonviolent, I was just protectin my family.
The black tradition of arms has been submerged because it seems hard to reconcile with the dominant narrative of nonviolence in modern civil rights movement. But that superficial tension is resolved by the longstanding distinction that was vividly evoked by movement stalwart Fannie Lou Hamer. Hamers advice about segregationists who dominated Mississippi politics was, Baby you just got to love em. Hating just makes you sick and weak. But asked how she survived the threats from midnight terrorists Hamer responded, Ill tell you why. I keep a shotgun in every corner of my bedroom and the first cracker even look like he wants to throw some dynamite on my porch wont write his mama again.
Like Hartman Turnbow, Fannie Lou Hamer embraced private self- defense and political nonviolence without any sense of contradiction. In this she channeled a more than century old practice and philosophy that evolved through every generation, sharpened by icons like Ida B. Wells and W.E.B. Dubois, pressed by the burgeoning NAACP, and crystallized by Martin Luther King who articulated it this way:
Violence exercised merely in self-defense, all societies, from the most primitive to the most cultured and civilized, accept as moral and legal. The principle of self-defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi. When the Negro uses force in self-defense, he does not forfeit support he may even win it, by the courage and self-respect it reflects.
But violence as a tool of advancement, involving organization as in warfare poses incalculable perils.
I found the King quote to be sufficiently powerful to be worth re-quoting twice...
-app
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)Black men walked into Target with AR15's?
My guess is we would hear on the news about the new, new Black Panther Party.
beevul
(12,194 posts)So what do you think should happen if ten Black men walked into Target with AR15's?
I'm all ears.
Sweeney
(505 posts)upaloopa
(11,417 posts)beevul
(12,194 posts)Mine, however, was addressed to you.
How about answering it.
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)upaloopa
(11,417 posts)is that carrying guns openly into public places scares people and should not be done out of respect for other people's feelings.
Legally I think nothing would be done.
beevul
(12,194 posts)The question was this:
So what do you think should happen if ten Black men walked into Target with AR15's?
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)kioa
(295 posts)Huey P Lewis Gun Club protest of police brutality.
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2014/08/huey_p_newton_gun_group_and_black_panthers_march_mlk_and_malcom_x_streets_to_protest_police_brutalit.php
Now that you know what has happened, tell us what you think should have happened.
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)upaloopa
(11,417 posts)that they could be hurt and they would leave the store. I don't know what should happen in your sense. I guess legally nothing, but in my world it shouldn't happen out of respect for the feelings of others.
I also think if the folks were all Black there would be more police involvement than if they all were White.
kioa
(295 posts)Isn't that a problem of racism, not rights?
If a 'large group of black men' entered Wal-Mart with baggy coats 'scared a lot of people', would you support an infringement of the 4th amendment & insist on stop-and-frisk as policy?
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)But I would be in favor of passing a law that would let business owners decide if guns can be carried in their place of business. Such as the no smoking laws in my state. Then people can decide if they want to do business there.
I wish it could be done voluntarily but I doubt that would work.
kioa
(295 posts)That's already law. a private business has the right to allow or exclude firearms in their establishments, whether open or concealed.
shedevil69taz
(512 posts)state already has provisions for businesses to be able to choose if they allow it on their premises.
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)Duckhunter935
(16,974 posts)It is always great to learn something new I say
Duckhunter935
(16,974 posts)That is one reason it is to the advantage of some of the pro-controller side to engage firearms owners instead of name calling and demonizing. Not saying you did that but quite a few do.
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)in the future.
Duckhunter935
(16,974 posts)Hope you have a Happy and safe New Year
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)Bjorn Against
(12,041 posts)Reason has a long history of racism and it is no surprise that they would endorse a book with a racial slur in the title, they also endorsed apartheid in South Africa in the past and even once had an issue promoting Holocaust denial.
Somehow I don't think too many black people are going to be convinced by a Koch funded racist magazine telling them that a book called "The Negro and the Gun" proves that guns are just as important as their civil rights however. As a matter of fact I think many black people who have seen other black lives lost from gun violence would be highly offended by the suggestion that gun rights are as important as their civil rights.
The Koch Brothers have not exactly been champions of racial equality and if their magazine gives a positive review to a book with a racial slur in the title you can be assured they are not doing so because they support civil rights.
pablo_marmol
(2,375 posts)And the fact that Reason magazine has published a positive review of the book in no way suggests that it should be ignored.
Somehow I don't think too many black people are going to be convinced by a Koch funded racist magazine telling them that a book called "The Negro and the Gun" proves that guns are just as important as their civil rights however.
Strawman. Nobody has suggested this.
Bjorn Against
(12,041 posts)I could also write to Ben Carson, Alan Keyes, Herman Caine, and Alan West.
It would be a waste of time however, just because a person is black that does not make them representative of the black community.
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)I find his perspective on Second Amendment liberties to be worthwhile. If you'd like to discuss these issues, great. But if you prefer to try character assassination via unrelated black leaders like "Ben Carson, Alan Keyes, Herman Caine, and Alan West," then I think it's safe to assume you've got nothin'.
-app
Bjorn Against
(12,041 posts)I was told to contact the "black author" and I pointed out that just because a person is black that does not mean the author represents the black community just as the people I listed do not represent the black community.
You say I got nothing but no one has responded to the King quote I posted, a quote in which King explicitly states that guns go against his principles of non-violence. The OP is extremely misleading as it presents King as an advocate for the use of guns in self defense while neglecting to mention that he later reconsidered his position and got rid of his gun.
pablo_marmol
(2,375 posts)If you were to read the book I linked to, you'd get all the evidence you needed to understand that. But of course, you'll never read the book because you lack the courage to confront your biases.
As the book title honestly asserts - no guns, no Civil Rights Movement.
ETA: http://www.amazon.com/This-Nonviolent-Stuffll-Get-Killed/dp/0465033105/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419899081&sr=1-2&keywords=negroes+and+the+gun+-+the+black+tradition+of+arms
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)And here you are doing it again:
Who are you to proclaim just who does and does not "represent the black community"?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3130197
47. I am white...
Whitesplaining and mansplaining have long been practiced by gun control advocates at DU:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1172&pid=157704
(read down)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1172&pid=157792
Hold your nose and read down, you'll find much of the same rigidity, self-righteousness,
and overweening sense of privilege:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x447729
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x459922#460759
As the saying goes, "Great minds..."
Bjorn Against
(12,041 posts)What I did say is that just because someone is black that does not mean they represent the black community, which is true. I already knew the author was African American before anyone in this thread "informed" me, but that did not change my opinion on the article any more than Clarence Thomas being black makes me change my opinion on his positions.
The fact that you use the term "whitesplaining" says more about you than it does about me.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)Original message
Rosa Parks was an armed. No surprise from this Cracker.
Tim Tyson, Visiting Professor at Duke Divinity School, did a little "myth-busting" on NPR's "On The Media" last year, saying this about the fabled civil rights leader Rosa Parks:
"There's a sense in which Mrs. Parks is very important to our post-civil rights racial narrative, because we really want a kind of sugar-coated civil rights movement that's about purity and interracial non-violence. And so we don't really want to meet the real Rosa Parks. We don't, for example, want to know that in the late 1960s, Rosa Parks became a black nationalist and a great admirer of Malcolm X. I met Rosa Parks at the funeral of Robert F. Williams, who had fought the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina with a machine gun in the late 1950s and then fled to Cuba, and had been a kind of international revolutionary icon of black power. Ms. Parks delivered the eulogy at his funeral. She talks in her autobiography and says that she never believed in non-violence and that she was incapable of that herself, and that she kept guns in her home to protect her family. But we want a little old lady with tired feet. You may have noticed we don't have a lot of pacifist white heroes. We prefer our black people meek and mild, I think."
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2010/08/27/02
_____________
Parks, like Fannie Lou Hammer, kept herself armed for immediate self-protection, and probably knew the limitations of violence within the civil rights movement, so "non-violence" was probably not a philosophical, but more a practical choice. I cannot help but notice that the Washington Post -- agitprop of record for gun-control -- continues to throw mythological pixie dust about in support of the myth of Ms. Parks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacons_for_Defense_and_Justice
The Deacons for Defense and Justice is an armed self defense African American civil rights organization in the U.S. Southern states during the 1960s. Historically, the organization practiced self-defense methods in the face of racist oppression that was carried out by Jim Crow Laws; local and state agencies; and the Ku Klux Klan. Many times the Deacons are not written about or cited when speaking of the Civil Rights Movement because their agenda of self-defense, in this case, using violence (if necessary) did not fit the image of strict non-violence agenda that leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached about the Civil Rights Movement. Yet, there has been a recent debate over the crucial role the Deacons and other lesser known militant organizations played on local levels throughout much of the rural South. Many times in these areas the Federal government did not always have complete control over to enforce such laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Currently, this group is "calling for arms" in black communities both mentally and physically through the second amendment.
The Deacons are a segment of the larger tradition of Black Power in the United States. This tradition began with the inception of African slavery in the U.S. and began with the use of Africans as chattel slaves in the Western Hemisphere. Stokely Carmichael defines Black Power as, The goal of black self-determination and black self-identityBlack Poweris full participation in the decision-making processes affecting the lives of black people, and recognition of the virtues in themselves as black people.<1> Those of us who advocate Black Power are quite clear in our own minds that a non-violent approach to civil rights is an approach black people cannot afford and a luxury white people do not deserve.<1> This refers to the idea that the traditional ideas and values of the Civil Rights Movement placated to the emotions and feelings of White liberal supporters rather than Black Americans who had to consistently live with the racism and other acts of violence that was shown towards them.
The Deacons were a driving force of Black Power that Stokely Carmichael echoed. Carmichael speaks about the Deacons when he writes, Here is a group which realized that the law and law enforcement agencies would not protect people, so they had to do it themselves...The Deacons and all other blacks who resort to self-defense represent a simple answer to a simple question: what man would not defend his family and home from attack?<1> The Deacons, according to Carmichael and many others were the protection that the Civil Rights needed on local levels, as well as, the ones who intervened in places that the state and federal government fell short.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php/http:/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x337407
Edited on Tue Aug-31-10 01:30 PM by friendly_iconoclast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Tyson
....In 1998, Tyson published an influential article in the Journal of American History, "Robert F. Williams, 'Black Power,' and the Roots of the Black Freedom Struggle." The following year, his Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power, published by UNC Press, won the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for best first book in U.S. history from the Organization of American Historians, as well as the James A. Rawley Prize for best book on the subject of race. "Radio Free Dixie" provided the foundation for "Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power", a documentary film made by Sandra Dickson and Churchill Roberts at the University of Florida's Documentary Institute and broadcast on national television in February 2007. "Negroes with Guns," for which Tyson served as lead consultant, won the Erick Barnouw Award for best historical film from the Organization of American Historians....
An interview with Robert F. Williams:
You can buy the DVD of "Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power" here:
http://newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0178
And watch the whole thing here, albeit in low resolution:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/opinion/blow-rosa-parks-revisited.html?_r=0
...On the verge of the 100th anniversary of her birth this Monday comes a fascinating new book, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, by Jeanne Theoharis, a Brooklyn College professor. It argues that the romanticized, childrens-book story of a meek seamstress with aching feet who just happened into history in a moment of uncalculated resistance is pure mythology.
As Theoharis points out, Rosas family sought to teach her a controlled anger, a survival strategy that balanced compliance with militancy.
Parks was mostly raised by her grandparents. Her grandfather, a follower of Marcus Garvey, often sat vigil on the porch with a rifle in case the Klan came. She sometimes sat with him because, as the book says she put it, I wanted to see him kill a Ku Kluxer....
...Rosa married Raymond Parks, a civil rights activist who sometimes carried a gun and who impressed her because, she said, he refused to be intimidated by white people.
http://www.amazon.com/Rebellious-Life-Mrs-Rosa-Parks/dp/0807033324
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)friendly_iconoclast Donating Member Thu Jul-22-10 12:57 AM
Original message
Remembering Robert Hicks and the Deacons of Defense
Edited on Thu Jul-22-10 01:01 AM by friendly_iconoclast
http://www.thesouthernshift.com/news/2010/04/remembering-robert-hicks-and-deacons-defense
Submitted by Southern Shift on Mon, 2010-04-26 11:32
The story around Robert Hicks and his group Deacons for Defense have all but been erased from public consciousness. You check on familiar touch points like YouTube and there's nothing there. Pictures are hard to find and articles are scant. The thought of armed Black men standing up to the KKK and successfully protecting lives and propert during the harsh days of the Jim Crow South is a scary thought for many. The truth of the matter is many African Americans did not sit back and just allow themselves to be beaten and terrorized by the KKK. Hicks represented an underplayed part of our history..
The passing of Robert Hicks will not be acknowledge on the same scale as the passing of Guru, Dr Dorothy Height and Benjamin Hooks but he is no less important. We tip our hat because he did what many have come to belive was the unthinkable.We also encourage folks to try and pick up a copy of the movie that stars Forest Whitaker
-Davey D-
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/us/25hicks.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=robert%20hicks&st=cse
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: April 24, 2010
Someone had called to say the Ku Klux Klan was coming to bomb Robert Hickss house. The police said there was nothing they could do. It was the night of Feb. 1, 1965, in Bogalusa, La.
The Klan was furious that Mr. Hicks, a black paper mill worker, was putting up two white civil rights workers in his home. It was just six months after three young civil rights workers had been murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.
Mr. Hicks and his wife, Valeria, made some phone calls. They found neighbors to take in their children, and they reached out to friends for protection. Soon, armed black men materialized. Nothing happened.
Less than three weeks later, the leaders of a secretive, paramilitary organization of blacks called the Deacons for Defense and Justice visited Bogalusa. It had been formed in Jonesboro, La., in 1964 mainly to protect unarmed civil rights demonstrators from the Klan. After listening to the Deacons, Mr. Hicks took the lead in forming a Bogalusa chapter, recruiting many of the men who had gone to his house to protect his family and guests....
To this day, some will deny that there was an armed element to the struggle for civil rights.
I salute you, Mister Hicks. You were a true patriot.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)And just like this one, there's some associational fallacy thrown in:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php/http:/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x366156
"No Guns for Negroes"
The aforementioned whitesplaining:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php/http:/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x366156#366164
...followed by an epic takedown:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php/http:/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x366156#367478
The disinterested reader will note that particular whitesplainer disappeared after that...
pablo_marmol
(2,375 posts)friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)pablo_marmol
(2,375 posts)pablo_marmol
(2,375 posts)......of the Black community."
Obviously not -- however your charge of a "racist book title" is quite ridiculous.
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)...are in no position to throw stones
pablo_marmol
(2,375 posts)No? So your point is a childish one - and that's putting it very politely.
All of the author's points are supported by another Black writer - Charles E. Cobb Jr. in "This Non-violent Stuff'l Get You Killed". What are you going to pull out of your backside to dismiss Mr. Cobb?
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)I think you will find folks at DU share this same sentiment about the fascist brothers with excellent reasons. Do you know what they could be?
DonP
(6,185 posts)We were all wondering who Skinner appointed to define what the folks here all thought.
Congratulations on knowing the minds of "the folks at DU" on all things Democrat.
Good to know.
A little narcissism goes a long way. Try speaking for your self and don't try and interpret what others think.
pablo_marmol
(2,375 posts)All of the author's points are supported by another Black writer - Charles E. Cobb Jr. in "This Non-violent Stuff'll Get You Killed". What are you going to pull out of your backside to dismiss Mr. Cobb?
Bjorn Against
(12,041 posts)I was much more afraid in Montgomery when I had a gun in my house. When I decided that I couldn't keep a gun, I came face-to-face with the question of death and I dealt with it. From that point on, I no longer needed a gun nor have I been afraid. Had we become distracted by the question of my safety we would have lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors.
So as we can see the Koch Brother's magazine left out a key part of the story. While they tell us that King applied for the gun permit, they omit the fact that he later determined that guns went against his principles of non-violence and he got rid of his gun. It seems this would be a crucial fact to anyone looking for the whole story, but the whole story of Martin Luther King does not fit well with the Koch's agenda so they leave out key context.
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)The quote of King's I shared in the excerpts above was from 1959:
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/the_social_organization_of_nonviolence/
and the quote you shared was from 1958:
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/chapter_8_the_violence_of_desperate_men/
Are you now going to attempt to lump Dr. King in with Alan Keyes, etc.?
I prefer to place Dr. King with another inspiration, Whitman:
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/whitman/song.htm
-app
Bjorn Against
(12,041 posts)Apparently not, because if you had read it you would have seen this at the beginning of the article...
That does not look like pro-gun advocacy to me.
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)"Taking up arms" means a group is organizing and drilling as a militia, in order to combat the government or other social order. You & I agree that King opposed violence as an instrument of social policy. Even our Second Amendment says that militias themselves are to be "well-regulated."
But you seem to be operating under the fallacy that personal firearm ownership and employing firearms for self-defense was also something that Dr. King opposed. This is not the case.
-app
Bjorn Against
(12,041 posts)I posted a quote above in which King very explicitly said that he gave up his personal firearm because it went against his principles of non-violence. He was clearly talking about individual defense in that quote, he was not suggesting he got rid of his gun to prevent himself from taking up arms.
Contrary to what the NRA tries to pretend there are ways to defend yourself without a gun.
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)Again, look at the link to understand his full quote from 1958 in context:
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/chapter_8_the_violence_of_desperate_men/
"How could I serve as one of the leaders of a nonviolent movement and at the same time use weapons of violence for my personal protection?"
He is saying that the hassle of parsing self-defense from violent social policy such as organizing a black militia was not worthwhile TO HIM as a civil rights leader. He was more concerned about how he would be perceived, and how that perception would be used to degrade the movement as a whole. That was his choice. I have no argument with the choices he made for himself, especially those that served the greater good. He was an incredible, dedicated, intelligent, visionary human being.
But I have seen no quotes from him urging others to give up firearms ownership.
Sure, there are ways to practice self-defense besides guns. But that also does not argue against personal firearm ownership for those that choose it.
-app
Bjorn Against
(12,041 posts)You can try all you want to try to explain King's words for us, but people can read his words for themselves and see what he is very clearly saying.
Gun advocates need to stop invoking King's name to promote their own agenda.
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)Let's try bold-facing for emphasis this time:
Violence exercised merely in self-defense, all societies, from the most primitive to the most cultured and civilized, accept as moral and legal. The principle of self-defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi. When the Negro uses force in self-defense, he does not forfeit support he may even win it, by the courage and self-respect it reflects.
But violence as a tool of advancement, involving organization as in warfare poses incalculable perils.
-app
Bjorn Against
(12,041 posts)I know you really want to believe King was promoting guns, but self defense is not just about guns. The quotes I provided show that King had serious reservations about guns.
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)Firearms have been the preeminent personal defensive (and offensive) weapon for soldier and civilian alike since at least the 18th Century.
Though for beating dead horses, the buggy whip is still used plenty around these parts...
-app
pablo_marmol
(2,375 posts)My Gawd........can you get any more disingenuous?!
kioa
(295 posts)Please explain to me how the words "weapons" and "bloodshed" when talking about self-defense exempts firearms.
"The principle of self-defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, "
pablo_marmol
(2,375 posts)C-Ya!
kioa
(295 posts)pablo_marmol
(2,375 posts).....armed self defense was critical to the success of the civil rights movement -- and I have little doubt, based on what I've read, that this book is likely a strong read.
Here's another strong book on the subject written by a Black man:
http://www.amazon.com/This-Nonviolent-Stuffll-Get-Killed/dp/0465033105/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419899081&sr=1-2&keywords=negroes+and+the+gun+-+the+black+tradition+of+arms
ileus
(15,396 posts)Before all else we must assure our ability to protect ourselves and loved ones.
Water, Food, Shelter, Country all come in a distant second.
Bjorn Against
(12,041 posts)You honestly think guns are more important than food, water, and shelter? What good does your gun do for you if you are dehydrated and starving to death?
I hope you are joking because if you are not then this is one of the dumbest posts I have seen on DU.
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)shenmue
(38,506 posts)I've seen his other posts.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)It's pretty explicitly stated in California's state constitution, even comes before freedom of the press, IIRC.