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Angel Sotelo

Ms. Zaffetti

English I

March 29, 2019

Freedom of speech Research Paper

Freedom of speech is a right that Americans have that allows them to express their

opinions and feelings without censorship or restraint. This lets say things about race,

religion, and government or other things like that without consequence. Freedom of

speech is an important right for Americans. People have used this right to make big

changes like letting women vote, and it helped people not have bad work conditions.

The freedom of Speech is a part of the First Amendment in the Constitution and

the Constitution was written in 1787. The freedom of speech is important because

without it would get punished like, “Galileo Galilei was brought before the Inquisition for

insisting that the Sun does not revolve around the Earth. His punishment was a lifetime of

house arrest — a crime that would have been protected by free speech a century later”.

This shows how important the freedom of speech is Galileo was punished with lifetime of

house arrest because he didn't have freedom of speech. However, freedom of speech does

have some limitations, like making threats. In a 1969 case, Clearance Brandenburg, a

KKK leader in Ohio, was fined and sentenced to ten years in prison because he made a

threat to the government and to colored people. Brandenburg held a KKK rally which he

allowed to be televised. He gave a speech on television describing the “revengeance”

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against certain ethnicities and the American government. Due to this speech,

Brandenburg was charged for breaking the Ohio Criminal Syndicalism Act and sentenced

to 10 years in prison. Brandenburg filed an appeal, claiming a violation of his First

Amendment rights” (DoSomething, 7). This shows the limitations that the freedom of

speech has.

People can used their freedom of speech to protest. Like a 1969 case in Iowa

students from a school in Des Moines decided to wear black armbands to support for the

truce in the Vietnam War. “plan a public showing of their support for a truce in the

Vietnam war...They decided to wear black armbands throughout the holiday season.”.

The students planned to do this but were stopped by the principle he created a policy

which says “that any student wearing an armband would be asked to remove it, with

refusal to do so resulting in suspension.” The parents of the students sued the school for

violating the students rights. They went to the supreme court which ended with the

students winning the case.

The Freedom of speech is an important right. In this news article it talks about

Donald Trump and how he signed an executive order protecting freedom of speech on

college campuses.

This is how freedom of speech is used in America. Donald Trump probably did this

because colleges were banning words because they didn’t want people to be

offended.Donald Trump is promoting freedom of speech with this because he says “If a
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college or university does not allow you to speak, we will not give them money." this

shows that if schools don’t allow free speech they won’t receive fundings. Donald Trump

also realized that students weren’t allowed to speech freely and he said “We're here to

take historic action to defend American students and American values. They are under

siege,”, this shows me that freedom of speech is an important right to americans.

The freedom of speech is important today because it allows people to express

their opinions and emotions without consequence. Also this article says “The ability to

express our opinion and speak freely is essential to bring about change in society.”. This

shows me that freedom of speech is essential to America like when we were working in

bad conditions but we changed that with the power of freedom of speech. Freedom also

helped us get women to vote. Freedom of speech helped the LGBT community by letting

them have gay marriage. Freedom of speech is essential because people need to be able to

communicate with each other so that they can share ideas because bad ideas are often

defeated by good ideas.

So in conclusion this was to show the importance of freedom of speech, why we

need it, how we could use it, and why it was created. Freedom of speech is a important

right for americans because it lets them make big changes and it helps make the world a

better place.
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Work Cited

Svrluga, Susan. “Trump Signs Executive Order on Free Speech on College Campuses.” The

Washington Post, WP Company, 21 Mar. 2019,

www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/03/21/trump-expected-sign-executive-order-free-

speech/?utm_term=.dfb7fc90ccd5.

Vazquez, Maegan, and Betsy Klein. “Trump Signs Executive Order on Campus Free Speech.”

CNN, Cable News Network, 21 Mar. 2019, www.cnn.com/2019/03/21/politics/campus-free-

speech-executive-order-donald-trump/index.html.

Index on Censorship. “Why Is Free Speech Important?” Index on Censorship, 28 Sept. 2018,

www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/04/free-speech-important/.

“{{Meta.pageTitle}}.” {{Meta.siteName}}, www.oyez.org/cases/1968/21.

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“SPAN Landmark Cases | Brandenburg v Ohio.” C, landmarkcases.c-

span.org/Case/23/Brandenburg-v-Ohio.

“11 Facts About Free Speech.” DoSomething.org, www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-

about-free-speech#fn7.