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Episode Description
When the government cannot prove the crime, it often reaches for the label.
In today’s Opening Argument, Tony Michaels tells the story of Lucy Parsons sitting in a Chicago courtroom, watching her husband Albert Parsons face trial after the Haymarket bombing — not because the government proved he threw the bomb, but because his words, politics, and associations made him useful to punish.
Then we bring that lesson forward.
A crime should be prosecuted. Violence should be prosecuted. But protected speech, unpopular politics, poems, pamphlets, journals, associations, and labels cannot become a shortcut around evidence.
The First Amendment was not written to protect speech the government already likes. It was written for the speech the government is most tempted to punish.
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