As I picked my way through the crowded living room, I thought, “I’ve never seen a house party with such energy!” Conversations in casual, animated or deeply serious tones abounded amongst the 30 to 40 participants. From time to time, our host and hostess would calmly quiet the room, knowing how much their neighbors would relish the opportunity to call in a public disturbance complaint.

Yet this party wasn’t like the others that most college-aged people would be headed to on a Thursday night. The guests’ ages ranged from 4 to 70, most with families and established careers. No one spoke of getting drunk or scoring with chicks. The topics here were community organizing and ways to fight the Bush administration’s conservative agenda. I was a guest in the home of Virginia and Steven Pearcy, the Land Park couple whose anti-war protest display has been at the center of a national debate about the right to free expression.

The original display that incited a frenzy of conservative consternation, a limp set of military fatigues adorned with a sign that said “Your Tax Dollars at Work” and hung by a noose from the Pearcys’ roof, was stolen weeks ago. Their message that the tax dollars we send to Washington are being spent on an unjust war, which has wasted the lives of too many American soldiers, apparently rubbed some folks the wrong way.

The Pearcys asked the Sacramento District Attorney’s office to press charges, including vandalism and trespassing, against the person who took the fatigues, who was filmed by numerous television crews and later gave an on-camera interview.

Yet the district attorney’s office has dropped the charges, citing a “lack of evidence of vandalism” because the fatigues were left on the ground in front of the house and later stolen by someone else. This is despite the television cameras recording the man climbing on the Pearcys’ house, taking down the display, giving an interview and zooming in on his car’s license plate as he drove away.

The person who stole the replacement set of fatigues will go unpunished as well, as the district attorney’s office said it is “unable to identify a suspect” and “such cases are not ordinarily prosecuted.”

Given these conditions, Steven Pearcy feels the district attorney’s excuses are patently wrong. “Applying the DA’s logic, if someone came along and reconfigured the artwork of a sculptor, because the same clay remained, it would not constitute vandalism,” he said. This is an obvious case of selective enforcement that essentially shuts down the voices of political dissenters. If someone did this same thing to a sign that said ‘Re-Elect Jan Scully’ in front of the DA’s house, there’s no question that someone would be arrested and charged within hours.”

A protest last month by the right-wing Move America Forward took on a similar tone when a family friend of the Pearcys, Samantha McCarthy, crossed the street to meet the protestors and invite small groups of them inside to speak with the Pearcys directly. But a self-identified spokesperson for the group, not offering her name, stepped forward to declare, “We aren’t here to talk! We’re here to support the troops!” After that statement, for any of the protestors to even consider a reasoned discussion with the Pearcys would be unthinkable. It’s a trademark of the political right wing to fiercely enforce one-mindedness, which often translates into closed-mindedness.

This same closed-mindedness brings us back to the house party. Our reason for gathering, along with thousands of others across the nation that night, was to organize our neighborhoods as a first step toward broader success for progressive causes.

Leaving the party and hopping on my bike for the short ride home, I was heartened by the sight of the Pearcys’ home: full of laughter and positive energy, full of hope for the future and still adorned with another display of a soldier’s uniform, illuminated and paired with a sign that said “Bush Lied, I Died.” Public agreement or disagreement with the message’s content or context should not decide whether it stays on the Pearcys’ home this time. The only deciding factors in the longevity of this display should be our respect for the rights of the Pearcys and their courage to soldier on.

——————————————————–

Sean Catanese can be reached at [email protected]