On the cover of The Atlantic's magazine this month, the cover article is entitled, "[47] Wants You to Forget This Happened." With it, a photo displaying the chaos the of Jan. 6 uprising, now five years past.
A court case concerning an inscriber in Muskego makes that shout with irony. He was a full year ahead of this national magazine, but without access to glossy pages. He chose another medium and surface to pronounce the same sentiment: in chalk, on a sidewalk. He wrote, on Jan, 6, 2025, "Remember Jan. 6."
The reaction to it was quick and predictable. After some investigation and a positive ID from video cameras (see below), the writer was arrested for disorderly conduct.
The sidewalk on which he wrote was right outside the Muskego Post Office. The writer, a fellow named Jim Brownlow, is a person who might know a thing or two about controversial speech. He is 77 years old, and God bless him, still an active librarian. (this story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) I don't know whether the Muskego library system has been assailed by the likes of Moms for Liberty, but considering the situation, I wouldn't be surprised.
"Remember Jan. 6" is, at it stands alone, a politically neutral comment, crying out for context. So why did Brownlow feel so compelled to proclaim such a sentiment on a public sidewalk, or what he probably believed to be public, since it's actually privately owned (a strip mall located nearby) by Muskego Partners, LLC, which received numerous complaints from those who either don't want to hear about Jan. 6 anymore, or who want to hear it only from people with whose political affiliations they're more confident? For himself, police believe that Brownlaw also wrote close by, "We almost lost our democracy," which pretty much clarifies that (he denies the latter). "If we're going to improve our democracy, we've got to remember what happened on that day," Brownlow said in an interview with the Journal Sentinel.
He's right, but now I'd like to ask him: How's that working for you, or perhaps--for us?
Originally, Brownlow, who was recorded on camera, was charged with criminal damage to property, a low-level criminal offense. But because he was potentially a criminal (!), he was handcuffed and taken to the police station for booking.
Handcuffed. For writing an unobscene message. A real threat to public peace there, right? What's he likely to do, wield more chalky weapons? Does he play hopscotch, too?
The charges were reduced to disorderly conduct, with a potential fine of $565. I don't know of Brownlaw's financial background, but for most of us, $565 isn't chump change. He chose to fight the charges--himself, lawyerless, the cost of which could easily have run rings around his potential fine.
The court system, of course, has stretched out what should be a simple matter. More than a year later, the case is still tied up without resolution. The decision was supposed to be made this past Monday, but the judge, Lisa Warwick, has ordered new briefs to be filed by next Monday, with a final decision made to either dismiss the case or proceed with final arguments within a month.
So it's back to the internet for Brownlow, who's already spent lots of time, he says, on research. How much sleep this has cost him from nights awakening at 3 a.m., staring at the ceiling, wondering what in blue blazes kind of country this has become to make this big of a deal over something this minor to string it out more than a year, is unknown.
But he has a case, and I think it's a damn good one. There are limitations on speech in our society, and there should be; intentional speech meant to do damage is wrong and should be prosecuted. But it has also been a watchword of our political and social culture that the benefit of the doubt should go to the speaker because the response can be both immediate and expose a disingenuous or lying speaker (such as the one who cause the insurrection features on The Atlantic cover) to be exactly that by doing what the respondents, too, are supposed to have every right to do: speak out in corrective, even defiant, opposition. Such rights are, at present, being smothered by ICE agents in Minnesota as you are reading this.
Where such a situation is unclear, it's been a rule of law that the relative damage done by the speech, or its threat to public safety, should be weighed against the intent of the speaker. Such challenges have, you might have surmised, gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and started doing so long ago. A few come to mind--my master's degree in journalism working here--which you might want to google:
- Near vs. Minnesota
- Gitlow vs. New York
- Whitney vs. California
- Brandenburg vs. Ohio
- Johnson vs. Texas
All these cases, decided back in the last century, featured ferocious attacks that simply overwhelm what happened in Muskego. It pales in comparison. Our jumpy, post-9-l1 attitudes are probably the only thing that's keeping this case, simple and obvious, from a quick, summary dismissal.
The litigants claim that it's damage to property that should measure cost. By chalk? Let's return to hopscotch. Is there such a thing as indelible chalk? You mean a sharply streamed water hose can't wash it off--at a cost of what?
Will a dismissal of the charges lead someone else to write something else on that same sidewalk? Will Muskego develop a kind of "sidewalk debate"? Funny: Nobody had before. Mr. Brownlow is left to measure his act against the trouble he's had to go to. But he got the attention he sought. The message got through. The price he's paid for that is plenty--and far too great.
This shouldn't be close. We have more serious issues to contend with, such as whether or not fascism, recently introduced in America, will make other efforts to achieve justice moot and, as Mr. Brownlow may or may not have also written, dispose with our democracy. Such matters outweigh those sidewalk scribblings like a whale outweighs a minnow.
But then, we've just learned that part of the reason why 47 is obsessed over Greenland is that he didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize--until he did, from the vice-president of Venezuela, whose country he has seized. A temper tantrum addressed? A booby prize delivered? A world gone crazy?
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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