Bar Association and Bar Foundation Include Demagogue on Democracy Panel. Anwar Called for Silencing Press.
The Connecticut Bar Association and the Connecticut Bar Foundation have included state Senator Said Anwar (D-South Windsor) in a lecture for lawyers on “Systemic Racism, Voting and American Democracy.” U.S. Representative Jahana Hayes and University of Connecticut School of Law professor Douglas Spencer will join Anwar on the panel Tuesday, August 25th. Former WFSB political reporter Duby McDowell is the moderator.
Anwar used a June 4th virtual vigil marking the death of George Floyd by police violence to attack First Amendment rights of free speech and a free press. “There was a nasty article written about me by somebody at the Journal Inquirer, Chris Powell, who hates when I speak about minorities,” Anwar charged. “And there’s a person who lives in South Windsor, on Main Street, who hates me because of what I look like, and what can I do? He’s a writer. He can write whatever he wants but I cannot change the color of my skin. I cannot change my faith. … We will have to silence the voices which are nasty and hate-based, and they are among us.”
I am the writer in South Windsor who was the target of Anwar’s smear. Truth is the demagogue’s persistent adversary. Anwar’s coarse bid to intimidate me and incite others failed. He inadvertently included one truth in the pernicious nonsense of his June rant: There is a hate-filled voice among us. It is not mine.
An enduring glory of freedom is our confidence in extending it to those who would deny it to us. The demagogue in his rancid fantasies exercises that freedom in furtherance of his abuse. Malice and intimidation are his companions; imagination and subtlety are not. The demagogue reveals himself as he spews his venom. We cannot claim we did not know.
The fundamental democratic act of voting in frequent and fair elections has no meaning without free speech and a free press. Today’s democracy panel provides a glimpse of the sponsors’ own poverty of commitment to the liberal values that ought to inspire their work. Freedom is doing its vital revelatory work today for 1.5 continuing legal education credits.