Saturday May 21, 2005
Right to Assemble in Ft. Lauderdale
The Organization of American States will be meeting in Ft. Lauderdale on the weekend of June 5th. Lots of people have a problem with the OAS, and are planning a protest.
So far so good, right? This is America, and that’s how we do things.
Well, not so much. Ft. Lauderdale has declared a “no protest zone,” which basically means that protesters can’t come within one mile of the meeting site.
There is something here to be said about the First Amendment. The question is, does a right to assemble peacefully mean that we can assemble wherever we damn well please, or does it mean that we can assemble where the government tells it’s ok to? Apparently, this issue is not yet settled, and so a number of parties are suing the City of Fort Lauderdale for the right to assemble where their protest might actually make a point. The ACLU is involved.
This is actually not shocking. Stuff like this has been going on for a few years, notably at George W. Bush’s first inauguration. The trend in US history is that in times of trouble people’s civil liberties get put on hold, even those that are right there in the first amendment.
Tags: civil liberties
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The constitution doesn’t mean anything to these people anymore. It’s just a piece of old paper they wipe their fascist asses with.
Dead on, GlennK.
When the Free Trade crowd assembled in Miami last year, the nazi police commissioner did everything but loose the hounds on the protestors (and media!). This is the same thug who imposed martial law on Philadelphia during the Republican National Convention when he was running the police force.
They call it safety for the citizenry and protecting property, when it’s actually shitting on the Bill of Rights.
What’s scary is how little most people care about this. As Orwell pointed out, it often takes a truncheon to the head or a boot in the kidney before people figure out what’s happening to them.
What is a truncheon, anyway?
trun·cheon n.
1. A short stick carried by police; a billy club.
2. A staff carried as a symbol of office or authority; a baton.
We have the same thing happening up here. The town next to Margate, Ventnor has a bully-boy right-wing fascist gov’t. These guys act like brown-shirts. If you dare to speak up at a City meeting they scream in your face and threaten you. It all starts at the top with Bu$h and the fascist gang he has surrounded himself with.