Thank you, Nicole and Jeff Rank for standing your ground — and standing up
for all of us.
This young couple from Charleston, W. Va., was arrested on the grounds of the state Capitol during a July 4 appearance by President George W. Bush [see Hightower, “Is this America?” Aug. 5]. They came to see the president in person, but also to make a quiet statement of their own. They wore hand-painted T-shirts with the international “no” symbol slashed across Bush’s name.
That was it. They didn’t shout, heckle, or disrupt anything. They simply wore T-shirts.
But as they stood there peacefully, two Secret Service agents accosted them, demanding that their T-shirts be removed or covered. No, they quietly said, so the agents instructed local police to arrest them. They were handcuffed, jailed, and charged with trespassing. Nicole, who worked for a federal agency, was dismissed from her job.
The Ranks, who had never before engaged in protest, fought the ridiculous trespassing charge, and now a local judge has thrown it out of court. Also, Charleston’s embarrassed city council has publicly apologized for violating the Ranks’ First Amendment rights, noting that city police only acted because they were directed to do so by the Secret Service. And the federal agency backed down and rehired Nicole.
The Ranks have since filed a federal lawsuit against both the White House and Secret Service, seeking a court ruling declaring such repressive political actions unconstitutional. Jeff, a registered Republican, says simply: “Unless common citizens like ourselves are willing to stand and fight for their civil liberties, those very liberties that our nation was founded upon, ideals of freedom that keep us strong today, will wither and erode until they are gone forever.”
Thanks to the Ranks for standing so tall.
This article appears in Oct 7-13, 2004.
