Coastal voices: Cherishing our protected freedoms

It was a bright, sunny Tuesday two days ago when the bailiffs ordered us from the courtroom.

Within minutes, 75-100 citizens, court staff, attorneys and judges were quickly and calmly ushered across H and Fourth streets by deputies Mike Shine, Harold Esparza, Jeff Dickson and Sgt. Drew Davis, passing the Crescent City firefighters who had cordoned off the streets and entered the courthouse for a bomb sweep.

The crackle and spit of the radios, punctuated by the fire engine sirens, failed to unnerve the people delivered across the streets. You might say delivered "to safety," if it didn't sound melodramatic or implausible. Just another bomb scare called in by some malcontented moron, who either had his savings wrapped in United Airlines stock or, more likely, couldn't pass the pop quiz of a random urine test at probation.

I looked down from the second floor of the Eldredge Building, watching the people at curbside quietly banter while the pros in their fire gear and uniforms swept the courthouse.

The scene from my office window morphed into other ones that also began as routine and without fear before the towers buckled in New York or the carillons rolled across the campus in Blacksburg, Va., or Katrina smashed the levies, or my cousin was vaporized at the Pentagon.

Since 2001, I think of many things on Sept. 11. Last year, I wrote of our misplaced definition of heroes, too often relegated to angst-ridden, pubescent TV "talents," tone-deaf, instrument-challenged music clones and professional jocks. I singled out Barry Bonds, Michael Vick and Kobe Bryant, due to their sports memorabilia selling the most in their respective sports, while selling out in the greater game of Life. Some Mensan, disregarding those stats, wrote to accuse me of being a racist. Call it evolution, creationism or affirmative action, heck, every village has an idiot or two.

Somehow, that guy and my ability to trade barbs and ideas, no matter how shrill or indicting, got me to thinking about the things that truly define my country. The things 19 men wanted to destroy seven years ago this day.

I thought back to late July when a traveling Christian evangelist group, the Heartbeat of Jesus Ministries, pitched its tent and invited people to attend its worship services. An antiquated, incomprehensible county ordinance prohibiting "any assemblage of people or automobiles" without a permit was invoked by one sole, irate citizen who didn't like the Christian music or the minor "assemblage" of cars parked on his neighbor's private property.

County code enforcement responded, citing the ordinance and ordering the ministry, its tent and worship service down the road in 24 hours.

After I was asked to help by our local Daily Bread Ministries, some midnight research produced a temporary restraining order against the county, which was to be filed the next day. A courtesy call to County CEO Jeannine Galatioto and County Counsel Dohn Henion yielded an amicable invitation to the Flynn Center to discuss the matter. What I told them mirrored what I said later that night under the Hearbeat of Jesus Ministries' tent.

That the service I had witnessed nights earlier reminded me of a trinity — not that one — but three men named Jefferson, Franklin and Marshall who helped draft a document called the Bill of Rights. Of those 10 amendments, I said that none more than the first, which grants freedom of speech, assembly, religion and its free exercise, defined what America was and should continue to be. And that those constitutional freedoms should not, and could not, give way to impermissibly vague laws or the minutiae of skewed musical tastes.

Ms. Galatioto and Mr. Henion deliberated for several minutes and then told me that the ministry could continue its services until their conclusion four nights later, asking that next year they apply for a permit consistent the new ordinance they promised to draft.

Justice and the United States Constitution had a good day because two of this county's representatives kept their hearts, minds and doors open. And their eyes on the prize.

I looked down to notice the fire engines departing and the flag gently waving over the people returning to the Courthouse I work in each day. To some, just another dry run. For some of us, a minute in time for silent thanks to all those people, seven years ago and again Tuesday, who continue to quietly, unselfishly and unfailingly deliver, here in a place called America.