McHenry County Blog

Here is the video that David Moore took of Grafton Township Trustee Betty Zirk making a motion to require all photographs, video recordings and tape recordings to be taken from the back of the room. It is Section 14 of the recordings of the April 8, 2010, meeting of the Grafton Township Board. From left to right, the trustees are Barbara Murphy, Betty Zirk and Gerry McMahon.

Betty Zirk makes the motion for what she calls “reasonable rules.” Photo is from David Moore's video.

Trustee Barb Murphy points to the back of the room where the Township Trustees' $250 a meeting videographer is recording the meeting. Photo is from David Moore's video taken from the front row of seats.

Gerry McMahon makes sure the public record includes his intention that Township Supervisor Linda Moore's husband, who took the video above, is included in the motion that all taking pictures of the meeting must be at least in the back row of chairs.

The article with my complaint and the initial reply from the Illinois Attorney General’s Public Access Counselor’s Office can be found here. You may remember that the McHenry County Board considered a similar plan to banish photographers to the back of the county board room.  After pressure from the Northwest Herald, the board members changed their minds. And, here’s an ironic twist. The Northwest Herald lawyer who sued my on my birthday last summer defended my actions in taking photos. My guess is that, having sued me, the Northwest Herald won’t get involved this time around. They have no corporate stake in the matter. I’ve never seen a NW Herald photographer at one of Grafton Township’s regular or special township board meetings. Usually, there’s not even a reporter.

Daily Herald reporter Kerry Lester wrote a column about the First Amendment and challenges to it revolving around McHenry County College this week.

She starts at an appropriate place, the amendment itself:

“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.”

She finds three elements—four, if you count Freedom of the Press–of the First Amendment at work this past week at MCC

• the censure of the two MCC trustees for changing their minds and being bold enough to admit it at a public meeting where it might do some good (the latter my observation, not hers),
• objections formalized in a petition campaign by Latinos Unidos, the Latino student organization, to the college’s having rented its auditorium to the Illinois Minuteman Project for lectures on ways to deal with illegal immigration,
• MCC President Walt Packard’s defense of the Minutemen’s right to assembly, and
• the locked doors and closed corridors around the auditorium before and after the Minutemen’s meeting, not to mention the prohibition of signs.

Lester concludes:

“It’s both ironic and fitting to me that such explosive First Amendment issues–freedom of speech and the right to assemble–have come to a head at a place of learning.

“Neither problem is solved, neither issue is over. But pushing aside politics and mudslinging for a moment, MCC is a place where individuals feel the right and need to speak their minds. For someone who’s work is based on another part of that encompassing First Amendment — the freedom of the press — that’s the bright spot from a complicated week.”

Daily Herald reporter Kerry Lester wrote a column about the First Amendment and challenges to it revolving around McHenry County College this week.

She starts at an appropriate place, the amendment itself:

“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.”

She finds three elements—four, if you count Freedom of the Press–of the First Amendment at work this past week at MCC

• the censure of the two MCC trustees for changing their minds and being bold enough to admit it at a public meeting where it might do some good (the latter my observation, not hers),
• objections formalized in a petition campaign by Latinos Unidos, the Latino student organization, to the college’s having rented its auditorium to the Illinois Minuteman Project for lectures on ways to deal with illegal immigration,
• MCC President Walt Packard’s defense of the Minutemen’s right to assembly, and
• the locked doors and closed corridors around the auditorium before and after the Minutemen’s meeting, not to mention the prohibition of signs.

Lester concludes:

“It’s both ironic and fitting to me that such explosive First Amendment issues–freedom of speech and the right to assemble–have come to a head at a place of learning.

“Neither problem is solved, neither issue is over. But pushing aside politics and mudslinging for a moment, MCC is a place where individuals feel the right and need to speak their minds. For someone who’s work is based on another part of that encompassing First Amendment — the freedom of the press — that’s the bright spot from a complicated week.”