take names, get petitions, finally file a class action lawsuit against the mayor and the RNP, yes the whole damn party itself. Get them in their wallets because that's how they bought our rights away from us in the first place.
they have NO IDEA what they mean when they pick on "liberals" for our "activist judges" -- wait 'til they see the real thing.
Yes, $1000 per day per person illegally detained (what the judge fined NYC) is not enough.
Note that this person was arrested earlier in the week...she wrote, "Plans were being made for a massive assembly around Madison Square Garden on the night that Bush accepts the nomination." This must be why they tried to detain the protesters.
Bush says the soldiers in Iraq are defending our freedom. Meanwhile, he is curtailing our freedom at home. This really sickens me.
I've been covering the protests since Sunday in my blog, direct from the newsfeeds of two Indymedia sources, NYC and Portland (which, surprisingly, had better word on what was happening sometimes, cell phones being occasionally erratic, and texting sometimes difficult.
If any of it will be useful to anyone you know, direct them there. The only changes I made to the source material was to put it in chronological rather than blog order and to add emphasis to police actions (when I had time to do it; I was also covering the political speeches.)
getting them in their *wallets* TAKES AWAY FROM THE CITY and the INNOCENT people who live there...so let's not get FRELLING DUMB, okay!!!
So you were unjustly arrested and/or held without just cause...get over it and try a more CONSTRUCTIVE way in dealing with it! Filing a law suit for something like this is just as destructive as out and out stealing from the city.
Filing a law suit for something like this is just as destructive as out and out stealing from the city.
How do you figure that? Filing lawsuits will drag police officers and, hopefully, political officials who should have known better into court. Maybe the judge will lecture them into a sense of shame. Failing that, maybe s/he will fine them, and award the money to people who will use that money to fund further protests, or make up money lost for time lost at work, or something. Yes, depending on who exactly is fined, taxpayers may pay more, and then they may exert more pressure on police/politicos to not be such anti-freedom jerks.
Being able to pursue due process to redress wrongs done to one is part of what helps us NOT descend into destructive acts.
Pursuing due process should NEVER line the pockets of anyone...period...we all make choices...they do not always turn out fairly or the way we expected them to and having a judge hold people responsible for indescrepencies is o ne thing...making money from it is another and is clearly wrong...
Anti-freedom jerks??? I have news for you...It is a vicious cycle...and the only winners are those who can enact change in a way that does NOT take away from innocent people in any way, shape or form...Our freedoms are also pretty much BOGUS...they are given to us and taken away just as easily....they are presented as freedoms to give us a sense of mental security and nothing more.
People have the choice to either participate in whatever people are protesting or not...if they choose not too, they should NEVER have to suffer from those who DO choose to participate...if they choose to participate in a protest they also choose both the good and the bad of any protest..its the risk once chooses to take by their choice....protest doesnt go the way protestors planned, taking it out on innocent people is NOT an option unless the protestors could care less about innocent people around them.
I have attended many protests in my time concerning many different reasons...eight out of ten protestors do NOT carry themselves in a decent, affective manner...which only makes them as pathetic as the people they feel are doing wrong.
Fines are one way to make people sit up and take notice. It's a real consequence for behaving badly. Taking money as civil redress for being wronged is not wrong.
At the protests/marches I have attended, the people I could see behaved decently and peacefully.
People have the choice to either participate in whatever people are protesting or not...if they choose not too, they should NEVER have to suffer from those who DO choose to participate
Way to support the power structure and the status quo, even when it's already taking far more away from innocent people than peaceful protests do, in many ways, shapes, and forms.
Typical. Maybe having to pay a little financial redress to protestors will make those top brass stop pandering to rich people's deep pockets instead of curtailing people's right to peaceably assemble. Whether or not you like the idea of a social contract, the point of having one, as opposed to whatever sort of anarchy is the flavour of the month in Randroid circles these days, is that you don't just throw it out the window when it's convenient, and that's the trouble with what happened here. A lesson to that effect would probably be quite handy, and might remind the people doing the decision-making for "crowd control" and other city-level police projects what their priorities ought to be.
The thought of collateral damage -- that hurting the city government too badly would hurt innocent citizens -- did cross my mind. But I do feel that a Message Needs To Be Sent, and one way to make people feel such a message is to make it enough to hurt. Ideally we'd wind up with a balance that doesn't result in laying off teachers or bankrupting the city but still hurts enough to send the message DON'T DO THAT EVER AGAIN!
First, those wrongly arrested and those treated illegally once arrested (two largely overlapping sets) should be compensated for having been wronged. If some people guilty of misdemeanors get off scott free because the police fucked up, maybe that too will convince the police not to fuck up that way in the future.
Then, after just compensation, there should be punitive damages. I personally don't care who gets the money from the punitive damages as long as the folks responsible for the wrongdoing feel the pain. Let the damages get donated to the UN to help fund election monitoring, or to the Red Cross -- whomever.
Will this also get some "Hey I just live here" New Yorkers ticked off? Probably, depending on how talk radio spins the whole mess. In a perfect world they'd see it as being a sign that those currently in charge need to be reined in or replaced rather than seeing it as being the fault of the protesters, but even if it does piss off some unconnected New Yorkers, a message needs to be sent. Clearly shouting very loudly, "We don't think this is fair!" is not going to do the trick, since we've already seen how they're currently handling peaceful protests! I'm sure you'd not prefer that I advocate violence.
The only other path that strikes me as immediately obvious is to persue criminal charges against a whole lot of police officers who were apparently following orders from higher up, as well as whatever higher-ups we can actually pin this on. Methinks suing them is more likely to do the job.
"Our freedoms are also pretty much BOGUS...they are given to us and taken away just as easily"
I'm not willing to sit down and accept that situation, thank you very much.
"People have the choice to either participate in whatever people are protesting or not."
People got caught for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Apparently someone got caught because they chose the wrong moment to take out their garbage. Someone else got caught because he was trying to get on the subway and wasn't involved in the protest at all.
"eight out of ten protestors do NOT carry themselves in a decent, affective manner"
The coverage I've seen has made it clear that this time there was a serious attempt among the protesters to enforce discipline and that people who were making every attempt to follow the rules were being rounded up unfairly and illegally. Yeah, the ones who are out there to get arrested to make a point don't get to complain about being arrested (though they may get to complain about being treated unfairly once they're picked up). And the ones who go off and do stupid shit deserve to be punished (but probably won't get the punishment they deserve anyhow because of the huge number of innocent people swamping the system in this mess). But come on, when the police instruct a group, "Do this and this and there'll be no trouble because you're following our rules" and then without warning changing the rules and rolling a fence around the group that had been following the rules is just fucked up.
Yeah, the real protesters -- the people who weren't just caught in the wrong place as they tried to go about their business -- did choose to participate. But "you may not peacably assemble" is not an acceptable rule in the U. S. of fucking A.
What do you suggest folks do instead? Stage another protest?
In your own journal you generally strike me as being anti-whining, and your cynical observation on the nature of our freedoms sounds (to me) consistent with that.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
back to the courts...
they have NO IDEA what they mean when they pick on "liberals" for our "activist judges" -- wait 'til they see the real thing.
(no subject)
Note that this person was arrested earlier in the week...she wrote, "Plans were being made for a massive assembly around Madison Square Garden on the night that Bush accepts the nomination." This must be why they tried to detain the protesters.
Bush says the soldiers in Iraq are defending our freedom. Meanwhile, he is curtailing our freedom at home. This really sickens me.
(no subject)
I've been covering the protests since Sunday in my blog, direct from the newsfeeds of two Indymedia sources, NYC and Portland (which, surprisingly, had better word on what was happening sometimes, cell phones being occasionally erratic, and texting sometimes difficult.
If any of it will be useful to anyone you know, direct them there. The only changes I made to the source material was to put it in chronological rather than blog order and to add emphasis to police actions (when I had time to do it; I was also covering the political speeches.)
::waving to you::
Okay people....
So you were unjustly arrested and/or held without just cause...get over it and try a more CONSTRUCTIVE way in dealing with it! Filing a law suit for something like this is just as destructive as out and out stealing from the city.
Re: Okay people....
How do you figure that? Filing lawsuits will drag police officers and, hopefully, political officials who should have known better into court. Maybe the judge will lecture them into a sense of shame. Failing that, maybe s/he will fine them, and award the money to people who will use that money to fund further protests, or make up money lost for time lost at work, or something. Yes, depending on who exactly is fined, taxpayers may pay more, and then they may exert more pressure on police/politicos to not be such anti-freedom jerks.
Being able to pursue due process to redress wrongs done to one is part of what helps us NOT descend into destructive acts.
Re: Okay people....
Anti-freedom jerks??? I have news for you...It is a vicious cycle...and the only winners are those who can enact change in a way that does NOT take away from innocent people in any way, shape or form...Our freedoms are also pretty much BOGUS...they are given to us and taken away just as easily....they are presented as freedoms to give us a sense of mental security and nothing more.
People have the choice to either participate in whatever people are protesting or not...if they choose not too, they should NEVER have to suffer from those who DO choose to participate...if they choose to participate in a protest they also choose both the good and the bad of any protest..its the risk once chooses to take by their choice....protest doesnt go the way protestors planned, taking it out on innocent people is NOT an option unless the protestors could care less about innocent people around them.
I have attended many protests in my time concerning many different reasons...eight out of ten protestors do NOT carry themselves in a decent, affective manner...which only makes them as pathetic as the people they feel are doing wrong.
Re: Okay people....
At the protests/marches I have attended, the people I could see behaved decently and peacefully.
People have the choice to either participate in whatever people are protesting or not...if they choose not too, they should NEVER have to suffer from those who DO choose to participate
Way to support the power structure and the status quo, even when it's already taking far more away from innocent people than peaceful protests do, in many ways, shapes, and forms.
You're a Libertarian, aren't you?
Re: Okay people....
First, those wrongly arrested and those treated illegally once arrested (two largely overlapping sets) should be compensated for having been wronged. If some people guilty of misdemeanors get off scott free because the police fucked up, maybe that too will convince the police not to fuck up that way in the future.
Then, after just compensation, there should be punitive damages. I personally don't care who gets the money from the punitive damages as long as the folks responsible for the wrongdoing feel the pain. Let the damages get donated to the UN to help fund election monitoring, or to the Red Cross -- whomever.
Will this also get some "Hey I just live here" New Yorkers ticked off? Probably, depending on how talk radio spins the whole mess. In a perfect world they'd see it as being a sign that those currently in charge need to be reined in or replaced rather than seeing it as being the fault of the protesters, but even if it does piss off some unconnected New Yorkers, a message needs to be sent. Clearly shouting very loudly, "We don't think this is fair!" is not going to do the trick, since we've already seen how they're currently handling peaceful protests! I'm sure you'd not prefer that I advocate violence.
The only other path that strikes me as immediately obvious is to persue criminal charges against a whole lot of police officers who were apparently following orders from higher up, as well as whatever higher-ups we can actually pin this on. Methinks suing them is more likely to do the job.
"Our freedoms are also pretty much BOGUS...they are given to us and taken away just as easily"
I'm not willing to sit down and accept that situation, thank you very much.
"People have the choice to either participate in whatever people are protesting or not."
People got caught for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Apparently someone got caught because they chose the wrong moment to take out their garbage. Someone else got caught because he was trying to get on the subway and wasn't involved in the protest at all.
"eight out of ten protestors do NOT carry themselves in a decent, affective manner"
The coverage I've seen has made it clear that this time there was a serious attempt among the protesters to enforce discipline and that people who were making every attempt to follow the rules were being rounded up unfairly and illegally. Yeah, the ones who are out there to get arrested to make a point don't get to complain about being arrested (though they may get to complain about being treated unfairly once they're picked up). And the ones who go off and do stupid shit deserve to be punished (but probably won't get the punishment they deserve anyhow because of the huge number of innocent people swamping the system in this mess). But come on, when the police instruct a group, "Do this and this and there'll be no trouble because you're following our rules" and then without warning changing the rules and rolling a fence around the group that had been following the rules is just fucked up.
Yeah, the real protesters -- the people who weren't just caught in the wrong place as they tried to go about their business -- did choose to participate. But "you may not peacably assemble" is not an acceptable rule in the U. S. of fucking A.
What do you suggest folks do instead? Stage another protest?
Another thought
Do not mistake outrage for whining.
Re: Another thought
Re: Another thought