The anti-capitalist OccupyDC street demonstrators in Washington aren’t just idealistic. They are tough about their street rights.
Today at 15th & K St, NW in downtown Washington some organizers were handing out laminated cards from the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless to make sure activists know how to assert themselves when confronted by police or city authorities.
The organizers hope their liberties — tied to the rights of the homeless — can be used as they try to set up a tent city or a 24-hour presence at McPherson Square in downtown Washington, two blocks from the White House. A flyer handed out by “OccupyDC” urges citizens to “camp out overnight at McPherson Square” if they wish. The flyer says the occupation period will be “indefinite.”
Among the rights they say demonstrators should assert if confronted:
- “‘Vagrancy’ or loitering is not a crime — you can’t be stopped or arrested simply for being in a public space like a sidewalk pro park. Police cannot force you to move from public property if you are doing nothing illegal.
- “You generally have there right to lie down or sleep in public (except on federal parkland) as long as you are not blocking the sidewalk.
- “If you are approached or questioned by an MPD (Metropolitan Police Department) officer or are not told you are suspected of a crime, you do not have to answer any questions or give any information.
- “If the police ask or order you to move from a particular area, you do not have to move unless you are violating the law by being there.
- “If you are stopped by the police, always ask for the names and badge numbers of the officers and write this down immediately.”
Throughout the afternoon there were about ten to twenty protestors, waving signs on K Street. They are mostly young students and a few jobless people. All insist they will be peaceful. A number of those present had just come from the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York. One boasted he had been arrested twice by New York City police.
Nobody is more touchy about civil rights than somebody who shows up in the street to attack the Constitution. Useful idiots are the laughingstock of those who use them because the idiots always and everywhere assume that, of course, when the hammer falls, special exceptions will be made for them, personally. That’s why they are idiots.
All the parks and squares inside DC are federal park land under Park Service control. So they could run you out if they wanted to.
To clarify I was referring to McPherson Sq
Hey protestors! It is your right to camp inside the White House fence. It’s the people’s house.
Go scale that fence right now!
Your Constitutional rights will protect you from the wood shampoo that’s in store for you.
Just in case, here is the Putin’ized version..Vlad will love it.
- «”"бродяжничество” или слоняющийся – это не преступление — вы не можете быть остановлены или арестовываться просто, для того, что является в общественном месте подобно профессиональному парку тротуара. Полиция не может вынуждать вас двигаться от общественной собственности, если вы не делаете ничто незаконное.
- «Вы вообще имеете там правый ложиться или спать публично (кроме на федеральных парковых насаждениях), как только вы не блокируете тротуар.
- «Если вы получаете просьбу или подвергался сомнению чиновником (Отдел Лондонской полиции) MPD или не получаете сообщение, что вы подозреваетесь в преступлении, вы не должны отвечать на любые вопросы или давать любую информацию.
- «Если полиция спрашивают или приказывают вам двигаться от специфической области, вы не должны двигаться, если вы не нарушаете закон, тем, что является там.
- «Если вы остановлены полицией, всегда просите названия и числа значка чиновников и пишете вниз немедленно.»
Marched in DC Nov. ’69. Lots of fun, especially after the demo, when some Marxists provoked the cops and the tear gas blew down the street. Ain’t nothing to brag about if you don’t get tear gassed. I was a useful idiot for the murdering Viet Cong, who were themselves useful idiots for the demented Hanoi Politboro. More serious now with a Marxist in the White House.
Young people today have no sense of adventure.
A number of those present had just come from the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York. One boasted he had been arrested twice by New York City police.
When’s Pajamas Media going to do a story on professional protesters? The MSM certainly won’t. Who’s buying their bus and plane trips, who pays their per diem, and are those resources skimmed off taxpayer dollars like so much other left-wingety activism is?
STREET PROTESTS ARE SEDITIOUS
We Americans have soldiers dying at war and it is seditious to cause problems back home as it puts stress on our soldiers and that stress gives aid and comfort to the enemies. It puts the soldiers into “A clear and present danger.” At one time this meant prison for the trouble makers…now America is getting soft like crybabies. We have politically corrected ourselves into a corrupt government full of inept tokens and quotas.
Sedition Act of 1918
The Sedition Act of 1918 (Pub. L. No. 65-150, 40 Stat. 553, enacted May 16, 1918) was an Act of the United States Congress that extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds. One historian of American civil liberties has called it “the nation’s most extreme antispeech legislation.”[1]
It forbade the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt. Those convicted under the act generally received sentences of imprisonment for 5 to 20 years.[2] The act also allowed the Postmaster General to refuse to deliver mail that met those same standards for punishable speech or opinion. It applied only to times “when the United States is in war.”[3] It was repealed on December 13, 1920.[4]
Though the legislation enacted in 1918 is commonly called the Sedition Act, it was actually a set of amendments to the Espionage Act.[5] Therefore many studies of the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act find it difficult to report about the two “acts” separately. For example, one historian reports that “some fifteen hundred prosecutions were carried out under the Espionage and Sedition Acts, resulting in more than a thousand convictions.”[6] Court decisions do not use the shorthand term Sedition Act, but the correct legal term for the law, the Espionage Act, whether as originally enacted or as amended in 1918.
Woodrow Wilson evil.. he needed that law because the plan was for government to do evil.. just saying..
I suppose it didn’t occur to you that using this absurd interpretation the Tea Party is also seditious.
The answer to offensive speech is never an attempt to silence it, the answer is more free speech.
street protests have nothing to do with soldiers – a democracy that is worth fighting for is one where democratic rights to protest are upheld – that is why many of us fight, to protect our democracy
The United States is not and has never been a democracy. A democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what will be for dinner. An old joke to be sure, but an apt one. One has to read history to understand the meaning of democracy and to understand just how fragile and susceptible to political will they really are. If you have not read the Communist Manifesto you really should. Marx clearly delineates the steps to be taken in order to reach a totalitarian communist state. The first step is to dismantle a republic so that it exists in a far weaker, more susceptible form – the democracy. The democracy is then weakened until it becomes a socialistic system. Finally, communism.
Also on your reading list should be “And Not A Shot Is Fired” by Jan Kozak, a Communist party insider who knows of what he speaks – he and his fellow politicians transformed the representational republic of Czechoslovakia into a Communist police state through subtle but consistent changes in law. It is very similar to what is being done in America today. Fascists tend to think alike – and unlike most Americans, they pay fastidious attention to history. Incidentally, the English title has been sanitized for American consumption. The actual title translated from Czech is “How Parliament Can Play a Revolutionary Part In The Transition To Socialism, And The Role Of The Popular Masses.”
Though I’m (fairly) certain your comment was well-intentioned,it begs the question of why anyone would be protesting on Wall Street when the regulations which control Wall Street come from President Obama and the Congress. This president has nationalized 1/6 of the economy, formed numerous public-private partnerships, allows industries to write their own bills to congress, issues copious amounts of signing statements which favor Wall Street and other doners and is fast at work dismantling the U.S. Constitution. Not to mention the corrupt and crony-ridden health care bill – do you know that it is being funded in no small part by the government takeover of the student loan program? I could go on and on. Democracy sucks and Socialism sucks worse. They are both a recipe for tyranny.
This is going to sink Obama
Harry, this is in most likelihood being organized by Obama and his backers. The primary initial funders of the Occupy Wall Street movement are the president of the SEIU and MoveOn.org, a George Soros joint. They are joined by ACORN, the wonderful organization which was so complicit in the housing meltdown, along with their head lawyer, Barak Obama. Soros continues to back Obama for president and so do the unions and the Communist Party of America. Just check their websites. I walk by these bozos every day and they grow more and more out of control. They are being joined by union members to swell their numbers and now they are pushing police by intentionally blocking roads and inciting riots. They want a push back by police so they can call themselves victims.
These guys watched the riots in Tarir square (which is, according to many insiders,looking more and more like a coup organized by the military and funded by the Muslim Brotherhood to take over the country) and said, hey, that’s the ticket. If we can just stir up lots of racial hatred with flash mobs, stir the class hatred against wall street, and consistently call the Tea Party folks racists and radicals, we can confuse the heck out of everyone and win us some useful idiots to advance our cause. Then, if it takes, we can jump in and call it a “people’s movement.” It’s been done by the Communists in that way so many times throughout history that it’s amazing people don’t see through it every time. Then again, young Americans and leftists don’t read history and that’s what the Communists are counting on.
HeyHo – I agree with you. Nobody’s being fooled here. I just remember back to Chicago it was a radical event but it blew up on the Dems. Sure it radicalized a bunch of kids – some grew up like the Clintons, I think they would have turned out that way anyway. It sure stirred up the complacent middle.
Just because I know most people will not delve into a political text like “And Not a Shot Is Fired” as light reading I will post two excerpts which nicely summarize what is going on today with the current administration:
“First, the legislative power, at all governmental levels, — local, state and national — is manipulated as pressure ‘from above’; then the people’s power is manipulated as ‘pressure from below’. Concurrently, a ‘wide popularization of the demands and slogans of the policy of the Communists’ is promoted, serving ‘as a means of revolutionary education of the popular masses.’ (P. 19) Gradually, and by cooperative legislative action, business, industry, agriculture, finance, the professions, and even living conditions come under the domination of The State. (P. 20)
“Thus, by ‘a democratic and constitutional course’, the legislature is reconstituted ‘into an instrument of the transformation of the whole state and its machinery…[and the] revolutionary transformation of capitalist society into a socialist one…[proceeds] absolutely legally.” (P. 33)
And re ObamaCare:
“How does the technique work? It may, for instance, be applied to some easily discoverable public concern. To answer the need, a piece of “enabling legislation” is suggested, carrying no authority, expressed or implied. It sets up an “agency.” The agency, once established, follows normal agency behavior. The need becomes more precisely defined. A modicum of authority is requested. Pressures are organized, artificial and real, from “above” and from “below.” The requested authority is voted, and pressures wane. In due course, further authority is suggested, and new coalitions of pressure appear. All in good time an Authority is there, self-contained; a new instrument of power has arisen, sufficient unto itself. This instrument may be local, regional or nationwide. Its key word is Authority. In the beginning, this word is seldom employed.