Mount Pleasant, SC, May 22, 2025- William Hamilton, will appear as a legal observer at upcoming demonstrations in the SC Lowcountry. A social justice advocate for 50 years, it’s now clear that he no longer needs to work at organizing regular demonstrations, but needs to shift his efforts to protecting free speech and citizen’s rights in the many demonstrations, protests and social justice actions now being presented in and around Charleston, SC.
The Legal Observer effort is an effort of Pettigrew Free Speech Defense, a project of Lowcountry Up is Good, PAC, Inc.
Image, right, credential badge worn by non-attorney Citizen Legal Observers working on the project.
Hamilton deploys with a body camera, live internet feed, and team of trained activists who operate separately from the demonstrators themselves. The goal is to gather evidence which can be used in court to protect the constitutional rights of the demonstration participants and community at large from the increasingly repressive attempts of some local governments to strip ordinary Lowcountry Citizens of their rights while turning control of the region over to right-wing political operatives and their millionaire supporters, the “Petite Oligarchs.”
Download printable 4 up information postcards for this effort
Hamilton is an attorney (SC Bar #2632), writer and activist born in 1959 and admitted to the SC Bar on November 25, 1985. He has been litigating cases in Federal, Civil, Family and Municipal Courts for over 39 years. He is lead counsel in Brown v. Charleston, a free speech case pending in SC Federal District Court before Judge Norton, seeking to have Charleston’s anti-free speech ordinance declared unconstitutional, null and void.
Hamilton has himself organized and conducted over 100 demonstrations in the SC Lowcountry. These have included the April 2025 Ace Mace Demonstration; the 1992 Rally in the Alley for Reproductive Choice; the Place at the Table Demonstration Demanding George Bush meet with ordinary citizens during his presidential visit to Charleston in 1990; and the 2012 Block the Boat action which shut down the Port of Charleston for several hours and helped millions of workers in Bangladesh obtain better working conditions and higher wages.
Hamilton is a lifetime resident of South Carolina and his family has been in the state since 1695. He has written over a million published words about Lowcountry culture, society and history in the Post and Courier, Moultrie News, Poor William’s Omnibus, The Point, The Doormat, and the Little Bird. Hamilton is the Executive Director of Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit, Inc. and Lowcountry Up is Good, Inc., PAC which conducts Free Speech protection as part of its Pettigru Free Speech defense project. He received the City of Charleston Spotlight award for community leadership in 2019 and the I’On Community Civitas Award in 2004.
Hamilton was severely burned in April 2025 while making Rosa Parks pancakes at a demonstration at Brittlebank Park when the city refused use of a table under its anti-free speech ordinance. He received 3rd degree burns and was treated in the burn ward of the MUSC hospital for four weeks. He has since been discharged and is now healing. He anticipates a return to all of his commitments shortly.
He lives in Mount Pleasant, SC at the “Home of the Brave” in the I’On Community. Hamilton is handfasted to his better half, Wendy Temple (jewelry artist, writer and activist) and was married to the late Julia B. Hamilton (musician, writer & activist) for 34 years. He is the father of W. Jackson Hamilton, IV, also an activist. Hamilton enjoys sailing, cooking and baking and burning man activities in which he is known as "Oatmeal."
Hamilton is convinced that 2025 is the most significant wave of activism in his lifetime (with the exception of the 1969 hospital strike led by his friend and adoptive mother Louise Brown) and others.
It is Hamilton's belief that unless the direction of culture and government in the SC Lowcountry changes, that the region has no rewarding futures available for young people. Low wages, inadequate transportation, high housing costs, inadequate schools and weak healthcare options for many will continue to drive the remaining social and politically competent citizens out of the region, making reform impossible. He is convinced this is the intended goal of the current Mayor of the City of Charleston and his collaborators on City Council. He has witnessed hundreds of his friends being driven out of the region so that resistance becomes overwhelmingly demanding on the surviving cadre of mostly older activists.
At the same time, the City of Charleston is actively recruiting a new class of multimillionaire residents from other places to supplant the eroded Planter Class which has controlled the city for 350 years. The city is implicitly promising these “Petit Oligarchs” a city drained of it’s civic vitality, freedom and diversity where they can be indulged and catered to at the expense of the city’s middle and working class residents. The Holy City will become a playground for the semi rich, people wealthy enough to be important here who couldn’t impress the billionaires of New York.
Hamilton comes from a family who has fought native Americans, the Spanish, the French, The British, the Union, the Germans and the Japanese. His ancestors have built two towns, three churches and two schools. He is unwilling to surrender his birthright and the rights of others to the privileged assumptions of those who believe they can buy what his family’s blood has already paid for.
Hamilton will begin his work as a legal observer in May 2025 and will build a team of trained observers following the model tested by the ACLU. You do not need to be an attorney to participate.
For more information contact:
Attorney at Law
Executive Director, Lowcountry Up is Good, Inc. (Petigru Free Speech Defense Project
Ph. (843) 870-529(
Email wjhamilton29464@gmail.com
Blue Sky https://bsky.app/profile/wjhamilton29464.bsky.social
#TIDEact
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