This past Sunday night, I was physically dragged out of Kennedy Catholic Preparatory School auditorium in Somers, New York after asking my Congressman, Rep. Mike Lawler, what red line Donald Trump would need to cross for Mr. Lawler to finally stand up to these attacks on our Constitution.
I didn’t attend the town hall expecting to be forcibly removed. I didn’t expect to have my image plastered all over the internet. In fact, it feels like a cosmic joke that my family has once again found ourselves at the center of a free speech debate.
In 1949, my father, Irving Feiner, was arrested for making a speech on a street corner in opposition to racial segregation. The police ordered my father to stop speaking, claiming that he was trying to incite a riot. When he refused, they arrested him.
His free speech case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where the justices voted 6-3 to uphold his conviction. His conviction — and subsequent blacklisting — ended his dreams of a career in law before they started. Though he suffered personal and professional consequences for his convictions, ultimately he was vindicated by history.
My parents taught me to stand up for what’s fair and just, even if what’s fair and just is unpopular, and to use my voice to speak up for those who are unable to speak for themselves. If that somehow makes me a “radical” activist — in Lawler’s words — so be it. I would choose my father’s legacy of moral courage over the GOP’s cowardice every day.
Mike Lawler, GOP cannot claim ignorance on Trump’s assault on the Constitution
What we are seeing in America right now recalls some of the darkest times in our history — and not just American history. I remember how my grandparents would talk about the early stages of authoritarianism in Europe, before they became refugees after being forced to leave their home countries. I’m deeply concerned that Trump is slow-walking us to a similar fate: disappearing legal U.S. residents without due process, targeting universities and law firms that refuse to comply with his orders and dismantling our system of checks and balances.
Lawler and his Republican colleagues are claiming ignorance in the face of these brazen attacks on our Constitution. They tell us they’re standing up to Trump behind closed doors, but all we’ve seen is fear and complicity. If my own congressman can’t tell me where his red line is, at what point he’s willing to say enough, then I can only conclude he has no red line, and that he will let democracy crumble before he so much as says a cross word about Trump.
In his dissenting opinion in my father’s free speech case, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote: “[Feiner] was entitled to know why he should cease doing a lawful act. Not once was he told. I understand that people in authoritarian countries must obey arbitrary orders. I had hoped that there was no such duty in the United States.”
I, too, wish I had been told why I should cease engaging in the lawful act of asking a question of my congressman, or that I had been informed why I was being physically dragged out of a public meeting.
Unfortunately, this erosion of due process is becoming far too common under this administration, and it seems that we won’t be able to count on our Republican members of congress to stand up to the rising tide of authoritarianism in our country.
If Lawler and other Republicans in Congress have a red line, a point where they are willing to publicly oppose Trump, they should say so.
Emily Feiner lives in Nyack.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: I was dragged from Mike Lawler’s town hall. When will he stand up to Trump? | Opinion
Reporting by Emily Feiner / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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