Anonymous Expression: It Helped To Make America

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is one of the heroic marvels of human freedom. Written carefully by one of America’s greatest legal minds, James Madison, and widely approved by the First Congress and the original 13 States, its words toll out as a celebration of liberation and a warning to would-be tyrants everywhere, particular in terms of its speech and press freedom provisions:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

A lot of people – smart and educated people – do not know that until the establishment of the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution in the late 1860’s, the First Amendment’s limitations on government only applied to the national level, not the state and local levels. Well up to and during the Civil War, states, counties and towns routinely censored newspapers and other media for all sorts of local reasons, from discouraging slave rebellions to preserving the religious reputations of major leaders of faith, both living and dead. But with the 14^th Amendment’s provisions requiring states to obey and incorporate the 1^st Amendment, that issue has been long settled, at least in law.

Today, with the explosion of Internet use, the right to express oneself through publishing has moved to the forefront. Before the Web the common person did not have the means, or the interest, to establish and publish a newspaper. Until the 1990’s, the concept of free expression for most citizens strictly centered around speech, not press. But the online world has utterly transformed that equation.

One of the most interesting topics concerning free expression today, not just in

China is cracking down on anonymous writers; should we?

the United States but also in other huge Internet markets like India, China and Brazil, is the question of anonymous online expression/publication. It's moved to the front of civil rights controversy. Over the past two years, both repressive governments and regimes considered to be relatively free have passed laws, along with corporations that run major websites, limiting or barring anonymous online publication and expression. Additionally, Google and the Huffington Post have moved towards a “real name” policy, and this has gotten a lot of Americans upset, and for good reason.

With the advent of the web and especially the tween and teen embracing of it, anonymous publishing has gotten a bad name. Today it seems only cowards and bullies post and publish without identifying themselves. These people seek to use their words as weapons and not bear any responsibility, legal, moral, or otherwise, for their ramifications. And yes, as a parent and educator, I will admit that online bullying is a problem and one that needs to be challenged with increased education and sensitivity training. Words hurt, they do; but words also allow us to live, breathe and change.

Many of my readers may be surprised to learn that, in American law, the right to anonymous publication and expression is not only a longstanding, enshrined principle, but that much of the nation’s laws and identity is wrapped up in it.

First, we need to look at the history. In the years leading up to the American Revolution, pamphleteers and writers by the thousands engaged in rigorous, sometimes downright uncouth, rowdy arguments on core issues. Did the British Parliament have the right to tax the colonists without colonial representation in Parliament? Do Kings have the right to rule merely due to their Divinely ordained birth? Can commoners and church authorities alike interpret the Bible? How should the people of Massachusetts handle confrontations with British tax collectors? All of these questions were posed in the years leading up to 1776, and all – most, in fact – were addressed by anonymous writers and publishers. Benjamin Franklin was Silence Dogood, while other future founders used more haughty-sounding, Latin-based names like “Publius” and “Brutus”.

Today, the most respected, written legal commentary on the United States Constitution, The Federalist Papers, is required reading from high school history classes to law schools. The Federalist Papers were written in the late 1780’s by John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in order to convince the American people to approve the then-proposed U.S. Constitution. These works have been utilized in thousands of court cases on the state and national level and cited as high authority in many of the United States Supreme Court’s most famous decisions. And what is most interesting, and important, is that when they were first published in newspapers not a single commentary contained an actual name. All were first published anonymously, every one. Jay, Hamilton and Madison - all knew that if they affixed their names to their works, reputations and petty politics might get in the way of the expression and debate over the most noble of ideas.

In 1995 the United States Supreme Court citied such historical examples in the landmark case McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission. In that case the Highest Court in the Land was faced with a controversy that intersected several points of First Amendment law. The case originated from an anonymous publication emerging out of a hotly contested school tax election in the 1980’s. Ohio law required all such publications to contain an author’s name, but this one didn’t. Ohio fined and the defendant appealed – and won.

In the decision, the Supreme Court stood up strongly for the First Amendment and its creation of a “marketplace for ideas.” Specifically the Court stated:

"The interest in having anonymous works enter the marketplace of ideas unquestionably outweighs any public interest in requiring disclosure as a condition of entry.”

Further backing this concept, the court directly addressed the controversy of anonymity:

“Anonymity thereby provides a way for a writer who may be personally unpopular to ensure that readers will not prejudge her message simply because they do not like its proponent.”

So to all of the would-be opponents of anonymous speech I say, stop and withdraw. Leave this sacred and recognized mode of expression alone. Anonymous expression made this nation what it is today, and it is worth preserving, and ought to be rightfully fêted.

China's Newark Lights the Way: Wuxi Adopts Free WiFi

Located right outside of booming Shanghai is, at least in my opinion, the closest community to being “Newark’s Twin” in rising China: Wuxi. The city of Wuxi’s population is considerably larger than the Brick City, but its relationship with its metropolitan neighbor is akin to Newark’s with New York. As with Newark, so much of the smaller Chinese city’s economic, cultural and educational links are connected with the larger, being Shanghai. Again as with Newark and New York, both Chinese cities are not only geographically proximate but also connected through a complex web of rail and road links. Every day hundreds of thousands pass through both cities en route for greater employment and financial opportunities.

The government of Wuxi isn’t under any illusions; it’s not going to surpass Shanghai and doesn’t seek to. Instead, it actively works to coordinate its growth and economic development with its larger neighbor. Wuxi has to do this, because Shanghai is quickly becoming the “New York City” of not only China but all of East Asia. Shanghai, within this generation, could very well wind up to be the urban pivot that the entire Pacific Rim swings upon.

Again, the administrators of Wuxi know this. They’re counting on it. They know that their close neighbor is investing billions of U.S. dollars in critical infrastructural improvements, such as modern highways, increased public transportation, and especially communications systems. So just last month, Wuxi made a big decision, a decision that Newark desperately needs to make and implement within the very near future, if the Brick City is serious about its growth, safety and employment potential. Wuxi has decided to establish its own “wireless cloud,” it’s own urban Wi-Fi system that will cover nearly every square foot of the city.

Ten years ago this would have been a colossal prospect for any city or town, anywhere. Some cities, like Philadelphia, experimented with the prospect, called “Municipal Wi-Fi.” But they found that the equipment was extremely expensive, fragile, and with limited geographical range and benefit. Then, over the past decade, time and the electronic marketplace exercised their magic and now what was expensive yesterday is more or less peanuts today. In short, a $350 Internet router from 2003 can be had for $25 or $30 in 2013, with the contemporary equivalent being better, more durable, with dramatically wider range capabilities.

Wuxi’s leaders were aware of these market changes, and have acted accordingly. Over the next year and a half, they’ve pledged and budgeted, in an ambitious private-public partnership, to “light up” the city with 40,000 Wi-Fi hotspots. Yes, you read that right; not 4,000…but 40,000!

Yesteryear’s equivalent of the “Moon Shot” is this year’s parallel of paving a road, or something like that. Regardless of whatever lame way I put it, within a year or so Wuxi’s residents: young, old, rich, poor, middle-class, homeless, lost, employed, and jobless will be able to access email and the full benefits of the web, at least when they’re on the streets, trains and busses of the municipality. And here’s the kicker: it won’t cost that much money. Actually, costs will be a fraction of what they were projected even five years ago. And with the possibility of added economic development due to the network’s deployment, the new system may actually wind up quickly paying for itself.

Newark, to my knowledge, has nothing like this in its planning books. In fact, the Brick City is caught up in one of the worst crime waves of the past 25 years that threatens to erase two decades of civic progress. To make matters worse, the city’s unemployment rate continues unabated while the Federal government cuts one of its most essential benefits, food stamps. Well, if you’re going to cut food stamps, and tell a city with a huge jobless population to “get a job,” then don’t be a hypocrite:give them the means to find one. City and state officials need to get their heads out of the clouds and turn on an electronic cloud in Newark, before the city is permanently left behind as a 20th century urban backwater.

Newark citywide Wi-Fi doesn’t have to be put in place all at once to be immediately successful. As a person who lived in the city for years, and now works there, I can tell you that there are places where Wi-Fi could be rapidly installed for maximum effectiveness. Newark’s downtown core, its parks and its long, major boulevards could be “illuminated” first. Also, streets adjacent to schools and schoolyards would be included, as would busses. This would immediately better the lives of those who transit through these areas daily (like my students). Then, after six months to a year, the city’s outer zones, its residential neighborhoods and housing projects could follow.

The city leaders of Wuxi know that Wi-Fi is an urban need, like water or sewers or other utilities. A globally-connected city simply cannot exist and prosper without it. When will Newark’s leaders come to the same conclusion? 

Newark's Trading Connections With China: Profitable and Preserving the Peace

Cranes awaiting container ships

Newark’s relationship with China – yes, China – is one that goes back far into the histories of both locales. Though Newark was founded as a quiet and pious Puritan town in the 1600’s, by the early 1800’s the Brick City was becoming increasingly involved with that faraway land. In the first half of the 1800’s, the city sent numerous Christian activists, travelers and merchants to what local papers termed the “Celestial Kingdom.” Newark even developed a Chinatown of its own that was located (until the 1950’s) in the Central Ward, in the area between City Hall and the new Prudential Center. The neighborhood was so prosperous that fundraisers came from as far as China itself to raise money for Nationalist Party of China in the first decades of the 20th century.

With the overthrow of the Nationalist Party of China in 1949, and the rise of the Communists, Newark’s vibrant cultural, religious and economic relations with China came to a sudden halt. A land that was once smiled upon as a source of wealth and religious fulfillment for many in Newark had been devoured by the Communist Enemy. Between the late 1940’s and most of 1980, from the perspective of any person in the Brick City, Mainland China might as well have fallen off the map.

During the mid-20th century that great nation devoured millions of its own at the command of one of history’s most fanatical and ruthless dictators, Mao Zedong. Mao cut the nation off from the rest of the world and drove the Chinese economy and all of its ancient trading relationships into the ground. But then something wonderful happened, and most Chinese scholars of any stripe would probably agree with me. In 1977, Mao took his last breath and died. (But don’t worry…you can still visit his preserved, moldy, displayed remains in his Beijing mausoleum today). After a short power struggle within the Communist Party, by the late 1970’s Mainland China had decided to rejoin the world. Now led by a more capitalist-oriented clique (within the Communist Party), Red China focused on economic development and sought to renew its former trading connections. And what where was one of its first stops going to be? Yes, Newark...

And so began the modern, trillion dollar trading relationship between Communist China and the Brick City that continues to this day. The actual start – and I believe future historians will regard the date as one of the city’s most important – was December 26, 1980. It was on that chilly day that the Fei Chui Hai slid into Port Newark. It wasn’t much of a ship, just a large bulky hull intent on importing Newark’s abundant scrap and crap metal between North America and Asia. It wasn’t particularly majestic. It wasn’t even originally built in China, but rather, sold to the Communist Chinese by a British firm a few years earlier. But it was a beginning; it was the first vessel from Communist China to ever dock at a U.S. East Coast port.

Newark’s residents were delighted to see the ship and the once-menacing flag of Red China flying from it. Longshoremen – port workers – greeted its sailors with courtesy and optimism. While Americans were not in love with the Communist regime, here were people that had come to do business, and only business. The ship’s crewmen were given a generous amount of shore leave. Many took the time to visit Newark and Manhattan and surely marveled at skyscrapers that would be regarded as stunted by any present resident of Shanghai. In any case, the ship’s visit went smoothly. Nobody defected. Nobody got arrested. There were no “international incidents” to speak of. Upon departure the Chinese government informed officials at Port Newark that they could expect many more ships in the near future. Their promise was quickly fulfilled.

Today you can see gigantic container ships from all over the world, but especially China, routinely pass in and out of Port Newark, dropping off every conceivable good. This trade has deeply impacted the Brick City in countless ways, for both good and ill. Positively, the trade enables the port to employ thousands of Americans in hundreds of different jobs. The taxes paid on the imports help to fund our national treasury. Negatively, the cheaper manufactured goods have all but decimated the city’s factory sector that used to be one its largest employers. But you can’t totally blame the Chinese, as this trend was already operating globally in the late 1960’s throughout the so-called industrialized world. Interestingly enough, China’s present-day leaders worry that the same companies that left America for China will depart China for cheaper wage markets in places like Indonesia, Bangladesh and Vietnam.

But perhaps, and I discuss with frequently with my Arts High students frequently, we’re missing the major point here. With the intensification of trade, easily visible at Port Newark (right off the New Jersey Turnpike) on any given day, the possibility of war between the world’s sole remaining superpower and the only rising one has remained small. Yes, we do have disagreements with Communist China. We’re not exactly allies…but we’re not enemies either. We’re each other’s best customers, and it makes sense not to kill your customers…from any perspective. So we have to give credit where its due…Newark’s great port, and its renewal of ties with the economic behemoth of Asia, keeps an important, mutually profitable global peace. Hopefully that peace will continue as Mainland China grows and becomes more empowered in the near future. Hopefully the ships will keep coming and going, as they have since that brisk day in December of 1980. 

In the 1840's, the Brick City Threw A Brick that Landed in China - And Helped to Stoke a Rebellion

Sometimes the best of intentions wind up doing the exact opposite. I tell this to my Arts High students from time to time, especially when we study the roles of the variousidealistic movements throughout American and global history. One of the most interesting examples of this that I’ve brought up in class involves the efforts of many of the most religious, “upstanding” people of Newark in the 1840’s. Their extensive and expensive efforts to spread their version of Protestant Christianity brought new institutions of learning and healing to distant China. But, inadvertently, their undertakings would also bring upon the greatest rebellion and humanitarian disaster in Chinese and all of human history. It is the greatest event that most Americans have never heard of: The Taiping Rebellion.

Let’s start at the beginning of this convoluted and fascinating story. China before the 1840’s was one of the world’s most ancient and developed civilizations. While Europeans were living in the darkness of the Middle Ages, the Chinese were manufacturing paper, ammunition and using advanced machines. In the century before Columbus landed in The Americas, Chinese ships sailed the waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, looking for new lands and new partners for trade. Then, due to internal political developments mixed with a healthy dose of ethnocentrism, China shifted into swift decline. This decline continued into the 1840’s, as the once-great empire was soundly defeated by the British in the Opium Wars. One of the main effects of the war – and this is where Newark, New Jersey enters into our story – is that Christian missionaries would now be allowed into China to “spread the good word of the Gospel.”

The Christian ideal was a central part of Newark’s entire existence since its founding by Puritans in the 1600’s. After American independence, the city became home to every conceivable and competing Christian sect, from Presbyterians to Anglicans to Catholics to Unitarians. In the early 1800’s these religious sects dominated social and political life in the Brick City. Their beautiful stone churches still line the city’s great boulevards to this day.

With China now open to Christian missionaries, Newark’s Protestants openly planned, funded and sent representatives to China’s coastal cities to spread the faith. One of the most dramatic stories from this time comes from a November 16, 1843 speech at one of the city’s churches. The speech, given by Reverend Dr. Boone, electrified the entire religious community of the city.

Boone had come to Newark to galvanize support for his missionary program. He told one congregation that while the recent British war in China had been unfortunate, it had opened “the heathen” to the Christian message. Boone claimed that the time was ripe for Newark’s churches to fund and send missionaries to the ancient kingdom, to bring “redemption” to the whole land.

Boone informed his listeners that missionaries had already arrived there, establishing new churches, making public speeches, and handing out Bibles and religious tracts. These tracts, he claimed, were eagerly welcomed and read by the masses. What he told them on one level was correct: the religious publications had made a deep impact on the Chinese, particularly in the Southeastern portion of the country. What he failed to mention was that most missionaries were sloppy. In China at this time, many a Christian preacher entered a town, gave out tracts, preached a bit, baptized many, declared a Victory for the Lord, and then moved on. Christianity had indeed come to China, but one rather twisted but brilliant man would interpret and spread a version of it that would lead to a civil war like no other. In some respects, the war would be so destructive that parts of China would not recover from it until the late 20th century.

In the late 1830’s and 1840’s, inspired by those very same Christian publications he had received, a Chinese man named Hong Xiuqan convinced himself and eventually millions of others that Christianity was needed in China – or at least, his version of it. Hong claimed in a series of visions that he had journeyed to Heaven and was informed by both God and Jesus that he was “God’s Chinese Son.” Hong asserted that he was not only Jesus’ brother, he was THE Divine Instrument on Earth that would rule China with Holy Authority. Using a combination of Christianity and widespread hatred for China’s rulers, Hong’s movement took off. He called it the “Taiping” (Chinese for “Heavenly”) Kingdom.

Between 1850 and 1864, Hong raised a colossal army that occupied, at its height, 1/5 of China. His troops at one point threatened the entire Chinese regime and threatened to topple it entirely. Between the two sides, the Chinese Empire on one and the Taipings on the other, there was no mercy. They slaughtered each other without pity, burning villages and entire cities, even killing each other’s prisoners of war. Like modern day fanatical holy warriors, millions of Taiping soldiers preferred suicide to capture.

Meanwhile, missionaries from America, and especially Newark, kept arriving in China. Records from the time show us that, except for a few Westerners, for the first years of the rebellion few knew of Hong’s distortions of Christianity and monotheism as a whole. During one of the fiercest periods of conflict, one local newspaper reported of a large gathering and send-off in Newark of several missionaries. Thousands had gathered at a church off Broad Street to praise Mr. and Mrs. Myers and one Mrs. Knight, as they left for the troubled Asian country. At another meeting one inspired member of a Newark audience offered up an immediate donation of $100 – a huge sum in those days for anyone, rich or poor. Meanwhile, speaker after speaker at meeting after meeting offered an endless stream of good news. Christians were establishing new schools…caring for orphans…spreading God’s word. They spoke of a transformed China headed towards Heaven, instead of the real state of the land, transformed into a hell.

Meanwhile, Hong had made serious mistakes and his most fatal one was the belief that those in the West would come to his defense in the name of a common Christianity. But by the early 1860’s word had gotten out of Hong’s megalomania and this all but shut the door for British, French or American support.

When the Taiping Rebellion finally faltered and failed in 1864, over 10 million were certainly dead. Some scholars today claim that between the war and the famines it caused, over 50 million were lost.

Whether anyone in Newark was aware of Hong’s ideas or not, their concern for the souls of the Chinese mattered little by 1861. By that time their attention had firmly shifted from the Pacific Rim to the impending conflict in America. The American Civil War had begun, and Newark’s churches and citizens would be at the forefront of modern hospital construction and the funding and provision of medical care for tens of thousands of wounded Union soldiers.

I always tell my students that Newark’s History is America’s history, but Newark and its residents have impacted the world, both near and distant, with their industry, energy and ideas. The Taiping Rebellion certainly wasn’t the fault of anyone in Newark, per se, but well-intentioned citizens of the Brick City undoubtedly played a part in laying the groundwork for it.