But are they really terrorists?

To the editor:

(re: “Assemblyman Dinowitz: Protesters who block roads are ‘terrorists,” Feb. 29)

There comes a time when you heed a certain call and can’t sit and be silent anymore.

Maybe it’s your heart. Maybe it’s your soul. Maybe it’s your rage about some injustice — and not just yours, but it spreads widely and others feel the same way.

You can see when such suffering, silence, complacency sparks even a global nerve to take to the streets.

People are saying, “pay attention.”

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in Selma, Alabama, once said, “Morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society some are guilty, but all are responsible.” 

Does this make him, or Martin Luther King Jr., “terrorists”?

The Dialogue and Decorum Act in the Assembly creates a ludicrous police state where any or everyone — even a mother and child — protesting and blocking the street could be charged with terrorism.

Really? How far do you expand the term to change constitutional rights of assembly and free speech? How many more court cases and people in Rikers because they cannot post bail? Where is this harshness going in our constitutional democracy?

We cannot be silent or complicit with those who only grant “thoughts and prayers” to suffering and to harms done. Please let this bill die in committee.

Robert Foltz-Morrison