Police attacking the left across Midwest

[Berzerker]

Oedo -

an assembly necessarily disturbs the right of others, who just want to pass the location where the assembly takes place.

Not inherently, two people can assemble without blocking others.

so your logic can lead to the conclusion, that there is absolutely no freedom to assemble.

Freedom means the absence of coercion or constraint on choice or action. If I'm intentionally blocking you from walking by me, then I've constrained you. But if you walk on by without incident, I'm not violating your freedom. You say this freedom to assemble is not absolute, but public property confuses the issue because we all use public property while no one person can be identified as the owner. Is your freedom to assemble with your friends in your house absolute? Yes.

wow. interesting. we don´t need such a thing. it can happen that we have to respect certain conditions for an assembly, but generally everybody can assemble, whenever he likes.

I think Dinodoc is referring to permits for large demonstrations, parades, etc, that will obstruct the normal flow of everyday business. The permits allow for the city to plan ahead with detour signs, etc, but yes, sometimes cities have used the permit process to deter politically unpopular groups from assembling.

in other words: sometimes you just have to take another way - in the name of your precious democracy.

Trust me, democracy ain't mine and I certainly don't consider it precious.

Sava -

Some people care about the civil rights of everyone, not just the people that happen to agree with their politics.

That's ironic, you defend left wing protestors blocking people but oppose abortion protestors blocking people.

[Sava]

That's ironic, you defend left wing protestors blocking people but oppose abortion protestors blocking people.

not at all perhaps you should read my posts more clearly

IMO, I think that police should be able to break up protests that block streets.

[Berzerker]

I did Sava, when I used the same example of abortion protestors blocking people on public property, you called it "assault". But when it comes to other protestors, leftists, you said they have the freedom to block others.

[Ned]

Attached is the recent Thomas v. Chicago Park District case.

Below is FN 2 from Thomas.

"Petitioners do not argue that the Park District’s ordinance fails to satisfy other requirements of our time, place, and manner jurisprudence, under which the permit scheme “must not be based on the content of the message, must be narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest, and must leave open ample alternatives for communication.” Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement, 505 U. S. 123, 130 (1992); see also Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence,"

In Forsyth, they charged a fee, capped at $1,000, that varied according the level of police the demonstration required. The Court held the ordinance unconstituional and said in doing so,

"Speech cannot be financially burdened, any more than it can be punished or banned, simply because it might offend a hostile mob."

[uh Clem]

If somebody stupidly places his site of employment near an area frequently used for peaceable assemblies (like the capital city of the US), then he should expect to be inconvenienced.

And if he's going to barge through my assembly and thus block people from getting to this constitutionally protected act, he should be charged with assault and possibly even civil rights violations.

* * *

See? It all depends on who's got the power, whose ox is beng gored, etc.

Ned, Oerdin, Slowwhand, Imran, DD, Berzerker, et al.: Would you be this complacent if we were still living under Bill Clinton & Janet Reno? Because you do realize that a government assault against one person's civil liberties is an assault against everyone's, right? Or do you think that you're somehow immune?

Your statements remind me a lot of responses by public officials throughout the South during the era of civil rights demonstrations. In Birmingham, for instance, where the authorities tried to break up the bus boycott because it led to people using commercially unlicensed vehicles for hire. Why, it had nothing to do with civil rights, just a concern for public safety!

Right.

[HershOstropoler]

Originally posted by oedo

wow. interesting. we don´t need such a thing. it can happen that we have to respect certain conditions for an assembly, but generally everybody can assemble, whenever he likes.

Germany? Yes, there is no permit requirement, just an obligation to notify authorities in advance according to the VersammlungsG, IIRC. With an exception for spontanious assemblies.

As for traffic problems: "Impediments to public traffic have to be accepted, as long as they cannot be avoided without detriment to the purpose of assembly" (BVerfGE 69, 315)

Are those US "permits" actual permits, or just a notification system?

[Lefty Scaevola]

The permits are a system for allocating resources. So there will be adequate police and emergency personnal on duty, so that emergency sevices will know what routes are temporatily obstructed, and so there will not be two assemblies trying to use the same space at the same time. The original term was parade permit.

[HershOstropoler]

Well the crucial question is: What happens when I file for a permit, and the authorities do nothing? Are we allowed to assemble, or not?

[Sava]

Originally posted by Berzerker
I did Sava, when I used the same example of abortion protestors blocking people on public property, you called it "assault". But when it comes to other protestors, leftists, you said they have the freedom to block others.

You obviously misunderstood what I was saying. Let me clarify. I was defending, in principle, the rights of all people to assemble on public property to protest. The difference between your abortion scenario is that there is intent to stop a specific operation. I used the term assault to describe if somebody was physically restrained from getting to the clinic. You twisted what I said and that is the source of confusion. If the "leftists" were blocking a Halliburton office or something, they would be just as at fault as the abortion people. Hopefully this will clear things up. I don't like it when people create fictitious double standards from a misunderstanding of my words.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by uh Clem
Ned, Oerdin, Slowwhand, Imran, DD, Berzerker, et al.:

Does questioning the veracity of any site under the indymedia banner somehow equate with supporting the violation of others' civil rights?

[GePap]

OK, I have to say the whole questioning of media has gone too far. I still think Fox, and newsmax, are biased, but if every time someone posts soemthing from them, or indymedia, or all the other sources Che gave, and it turns into a debate of "they are biased", "they are not", then the usefullness of posting anythign not from a very small group of sources people can agree are not biased becomes nill, and then we become limited to the few sources.

I have yet to hear anyone really doubt the facts of the case (people arrested, building condemend, thigs found). Ife evryone agrees on the facts, then why continue tha arguemtn about sources, and just not continue to the argument about interpretation, which is what we are always arguing about any posted source anyway?

[DinoDoc]

I only did that early in the thread. I've been mostly lurking since then because the thread has been fairly interesting. I was just curious how I got thrown in with the rest of that group in Clem's post.

[GePap]

Maybe Clem is a bit like the police in St Louis: he saw you were a member oft he Evil capitalists, and you got rounded up as a "usual suspect".

[Ned]

Originally posted by HershOstropoler


Germany? Yes, there is no permit requirement, just an obligation to notify authorities in advance according to the VersammlungsG, IIRC. With an exception for spontanious assemblies.

As for traffic problems: "Impediments to public traffic have to be accepted, as long as they cannot be avoided without detriment to the purpose of assembly" (BVerfGE 69, 315)

Are those US "permits" actual permits, or just a notification system?

HO, You might want to read that Supreme Court case I attached to my last post, just above yours. It describes permits, and when they are lawful and when they are not. If they are content neutral that effectively leaves no discretion to official as to when they can be denied, they are constitutional. Otherwise, they are not.

The problem I have here with what apparently happened is that they condemned the building in the morning, conducted a raid the same day and arrested many (for what reason it is not clear) so that they could not attend the protest. The picture Che paints seems to be enough for a constitutional violation of both the 4th and 1st amendments.

But of course, we have only heard one side of the story.

[SlowwHand]

Just out of curiousity, anyone heard from MrFun?