The Defense of Oregon's Dr. Marie Equi for Opposition to WWI
Dr. Equi was arrested in the most savage assault on civil liberties in the history of the United States. Woodrow Wilson, who had campaigned on a peace platform, was determined to wipe out any dissent from his decision to rescue the empires of Britain, Russia and France in WWI.
. Dissenters were jailed for Espionage, and even deported to foreign countries. Newspaper reporters, magazine editors, and especially political activists were imprisoned. The Ku Klux Klan was called in by politicians, including the mayor of Portland, by business men and women settling old scores with labor activists.
A pall was cast upon the country's political debate . The press and the public debate has never since recovered the free wheeling spirit which had previously prevailed, no matter the backdrop.
Wilson, adamantly opposed to the Women's Suffrage amendment, was particularly vicious with suffragettes who stood in the way of his war machine. Dr. Equi was one such, and she was imprisoned for 3 years for opposing conscription in WWI.
Dr. Equi's appeal was handled by C.E.S. Wood, a friend of Clarence Darrow whom the state of Oregon's Blue Book refers to as the most colorful figure in Oregon history. Wood began his summation on Dr. Equi's behalf by calling attention to what he took to be inviolable principles of the First Amendment.
"It is relatively easy {he said) to support the principle of protecting the many from the tyranny of the few, he reminded the court. But the Constitution gives equal importance to safeguarding minority views from the tyranny of the many. Even though the people of the United States overwhelmingly supported the war against Germany, the “insignificant and scattered minority” who opposed war still had a “constitutional right to say their say about the Government’s methods and about the war itself.”1’
“They were entitled to speak, and if by speech and reason they could turn their minority into a majority and by our political methods could upset the administration at Washington, and, as to ourselves, end the war, they had a perfect right to do so. The Declaration of Independence says so and every principle of free government says so. They had a right to overturn by free speech the very form of government itself.... To deny the right of a minority to turn itself into a majority by discussion is to deny free speech and substitute for the tyranny of an autocrat the tyranny of a majority or what the Government pleases to call a majority.”
"...Are not these words clear enough; do they need 1nterpretation? “Abridging” is the word—not “abolishing”—not “preventing”—not “blocking” or “impeding”—but “abridging.” That is, Congress shall not in the least degree impair, limit or pare down the full freedom of the minority, nor of any one person, to protest in speech and in press, in war or in peace, against the government—freedom to fully criticize every policy, law and act of the government without fear for the consequences."
"..Just consider the atmosphere of the trial we are discussing.... Fences, walls, windows, hotel lobbies and banks were decorated with posters inspiring the most pusillanimous fear and unreasoning hate.... Truth was suppressed and lies manufactured and deliberately and knowingly published, atrocities that never happened—fears of invasion, foolish and groundless. Falsities fostered by Government because bonds must be sold and soldiers conscripted—till finally sauerkraut became “Liberty” cabbage; German pancakes, “Victory” pancakes, and American noodles refused to eat German ones. This was the atmosphere....Instead Instead of depending on the spirit of a free people in a true war for true “Democracy” and true “Liberty,” the American people were treated as poltroons and imbeciles, too cowardly to face danger and not fit to be trusted with truth.... To hint that we were jumping in between two systems of imperialism, fighting to the death, subjected the speaker to prison sentence. That was the atmosphere."
- Quoted in Two Rooms by Robert Hamburger