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Sunday, May 29, 2011

Amerika: No dancing allowed
Posted by Jill | 12:09 PM
Nice to know the D.C. park police are protecting us from Dancers of Mass Destruction:



The guy on the ground is lucky these cops let him live.

Just in case you thought anything would be different just because the president has a "D" after his name.

All this in the shadow of a statue of a man who said this:

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. "


More here.

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7 Comments:
Blogger Nameless Cynic said...
That video looks really bad. One thing, though.

That's only one side of the story.
5/29/11, 3:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Where did my country go?
5/29/11, 4:13 PM  
Anonymous mandt said...
We live in a police state and proud of it: Tazer Nation, oh yeah!
5/30/11, 2:48 PM  
Blogger jurassicpork said...
I can only imagine what Jefferson himself would've said about these fascist pigs doing this in his own Memorial.

And people wonder why I loathe and despise law enforcement as much as I do.
5/31/11, 12:18 PM  
Blogger Lotus said...
I loved the part about the necessity to maintain "an atmosphere of reverance" at the site. What is it, some kind of church? A shrine, at least, to a thoroughgoing deist? How weird is that?

And the requirement of a "tranquil and contemplative mood?" Have we forgotten - of course we have - that Thomas Jefferson was a traitor to the lawful government (that of Great Britain) and a violent revolutionary?

Dancing really is supposed to be some kind of affront to the memory of that sort of man? Really?
6/1/11, 6:13 PM  
Blogger Lotus said...
Nameless Cynic, referring to your linked post:

Sorry, but your "other side of the story" winds up on the same side.

The whole bit about Adam Kokesh is thoroughly irrelevant and changes not a single material fact of the incident.

Beyond that, you yourself wind up saying the law is "stupid" and "hell, yes," the police overreacted to a completely nonviolent protest of that same "stupid" law. How that expresses anything different from what Jill expresses is impossible for a reasonable person to grasp.

One other thing:

"Plus, an organized protest is required to get a permit," the judge did not add.

Bzzt. As a general legal principle, which is what you appear to be expressing, organized protests in public areas are only required to get permits if the action is such as to deny the use of some public facility or area to others - which neither the flash mob which started this nor the later protest did. (Take that from someone who has organized quite literally dozens of rallies and picket lines.)
6/1/11, 6:31 PM  
Blogger Nameless Cynic said...
Well, since you went to the linked post, you might have missed my reply to you there, as follows:

There is nothing in what you say (um... type?) that's wrong. The officers were wrong from the beginning. As were the protesters.

Jill only saw one side. I felt that there was a little bit more to the story. Doesn't exonerate the Park Police, by any means.

The sergeant should absolutely have told them what the charges would be. (To be honest, I don't think he had to - that's a police issue. Federal officers run under different rules - local authorities can hold you for 24 hours without charging you, but the feds can hold you for 72 - and that was before the Patriot Act was in place.) But how stupid would he have looked trying to say "We'll charge you with dancing in a memorial?" It's the second stupidest law ever put down. But, yeah, should've at least gone with "protesting without a permit."

Which, by the way, they needed. They had in excess of 93 people confirmed being there, and I think 1500 possibles. (Yeah, this is Facebook, but you still have to plan for the worst.) Even if they only got half the "confirms" and 1 of the "possibles", that many people just at the scene, not to mention dancing around. Even if (gods help us all) it hadn't been declared illegal to dance in the fucking Jefferson Memorial.

(Looks like they got a little over 10% of the confirms and none of the possibles, but who's to say?)

Overreaction? Hell, yes. Nobody needed to get bodyslammed. That was ridiculous. One guy on each arm, slap on the cuffs, move him out. But they didn't do that. They felt they were pressured, they reacted badly.

(Plus, this is the Park Police. They get no respect to begin with. They're treated as a joke by most other Law Enforcement agencies, so maybe they get a little testy on the subject. It's like a guy in the Coast Guard (* cough * my brother-in-law) surrounded by a bunch of ex- and current military types trading stories...)

I'm just saying that:

a) dancing in the Jefferson Memorial is not necessarily equivalent to the civil rights movement, the anti-war protests of the 1970s, or the women's suffrage movement, and

b) this is just some media whore trying to jump his profile into public view, with a viral video that doesn't really tell the whole story.

Take that from someone who may side, in principal, with the protesters, but has been on the other side of that line.
6/4/11, 2:50 PM  
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