The annual First Amendment Free Food Festival (FAFFF) will return to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire campus mall today (Oct. 24) from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The event offers participants a free lunch – pizza and sodas – in exchange for temporarily surrendering their First Amendment rights. It is open to both the campus and general communities.
Participants will be invited to visit the “Democratic Republic of Freelandia,” a roped-off section of the mall between the Davies Student Center and Schofield Hall. Before entering, they will need to sign a form agreeing to relinquish their First Amendment rights – the freedoms of speech, press, religion, assembly and petition – in exchange for the food.
Once inside, they will be subject to various commands from a “dictator,” many of them designed to illustrate what life can be like without the protection of the First Amendment. For example, friends who may want to enjoy lunch together could be ordered to separate, because their freedom of assembly has been signed away.
Conversations could be prohibited because there is no freedom of speech in “Freelandia.” Reading a newspaper could be punished because freedom of the press doesn’t exist there. And if a person doesn’t get a preferred type of pizza, complaints would be useless because there is no right to petition the government to redress grievances.
FAFFF will again be sponsored by the UW-Eau Claire chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). First held here in 2009, it is intended to make participants more aware of the importance of their First Amendment rights.
“The event is something we do every year, but it never loses its importance,” said SPJ chapter president Taylor Pomasl. “We hope the event continues to teach people how vital protecting their First Amendment rights is.”
Volunteers from SPJ and other campus organizations will interact with the Freelandia visitors to drive home the freedoms they have given up. Students will play a variety of roles, including the dictator, an enforcement squad and protesters.
Failure to obey the dictator will produce consequences such as being jailed to undergo “re-education” or being required to write such statements as “free speech doesn’t matter.”
Toppers, a co-sponsor of FAFFF, will provide pizza for the event. An additional co-sponsor, the UW-EC Department of Communication and Journalism, will contribute the sodas.