Freedom?

Today’s Washington Post reports on this weekend’s Freedom Walk in Washington D.C.:

Organizers of the Pentagon’s 9/11 memorial Freedom Walk on Sunday are taking extraordinary measures to control participation in the march and concert, with the route fenced off and lined with police and the event closed to anyone who does not register online by 4:30 p.m. today.

The march, sponsored by the Department of Defense, will wend its way from the Pentagon to the Mall along a route that has not been specified but will be lined with four-foot-high snow fencing to keep it closed and “sterile,” said Allison Barber, deputy assistant secretary of defense.

[…]

Barber said that organizers would rather not have such stringent measures on their event but that police had requested them.

Pettiford said officers would patrol to keep interlopers out because the Pentagon restricted the event in its permit application. “That is what their permit called for, so we have those fences to keep the public out.”

[…]

What’s unusual for an event on the Mall is the combination of fences, required preregistration and the threat of arrest.

This is a freedom march?

As a wise fictional character once said:

“You keep using that word…I do not think it means what you think it means.”