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Eugene Debs holds flowers and is flanked by four other people on either side of him
MFP Voices

Free Speech Wasn’t So Free 105 Years Ago: ‘Seditious’ and ‘Unpatriotic’ Speech Was Criminalized

As a scholar and lawyer focused on freedom of speech in the U.S., I have studied the federal government’s attempts to restrict speech, including during World War I, and the legal cases that challenged them,” Eric P. Robinson writes. These cases helped form the modern idea of the First Amendment right of free speech. But the conflict between patriotism and free expression continues to be an issue a century later.”

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Woman reacting to the news of the Derek Chauvin trial results
MFP Voices

Why This Trial Was Different: Experts React to Guilty Verdict for Derek Chauvin

Scholars analyze the guilty verdicts handed down to former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the 2020 murder of George Floyd. Outside the courthouse, crowds cheered and church bells sounded—a collective release in a city scarred by police killings. Minnesota’s attorney general, whose office led the prosecution, said he would not call the verdict “justice, however” because “justice implies restoration”—but he would call it “accountability.”

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