"War Protester Pulled from Oswego County Parade, Arrested"

[GreenPartyVoter]

Mark Harris, a 20-year veteran of the Air Force, was not pleased to see a sign-carrying Iraq war protester in Thursday night's Mexico Volunteer Fire Department Field Days parade.

What he saw happen to the man, though, raised some questions for him and, he said, his children.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0716-06.htm

[DanCa]

1. That is so wrong

This is america people have a right to protest.

[SmokingJacket]

2. "Parading without a permit."

That's the excuse they use to arrest protesters. I now have a record because of that. x(

[Obamarama]

3. The sheriff is FULL OF SHIT

SNIP
Oswego County Sheriff Reuel Todd said Davies was arrested because he was a spectator who jumped into the middle of the parade. "He was not entered in the parade," Todd said.

"We had a complaint that he disrupted the parade," Todd added. "He was arrested and released on an appearance ticket."

Are you telling me, Sheriff Todd, that you would have even bothered responding to a complaint of someone with pro-Bush and pro-war signs, let alone SEARCH, HANDCUFF, AND ARREST them for simply "not asking" to be a part of the parade?

What in the FUCK is this country coming to? Just when you think it's gotten about as bad as it can get a bone chilling account like this comes along.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Your parade

Let's suppose you, KzooDem, organize a parade to support using excrement and copulation in public discourse, pay money to build floats, people put in their valuable time, and you get the necessary permits. On the day of the parade, your three people show up, and 200 pro-life, pro-war Republican sign carrying demonstrators jump into your parade and hijack it. You think that is right? It's your parade, you bought it, you own it. Well, if it is not right for 200 people to sabotage a parade, it is not right for one person to sabotage a parade.

What is right is for the protestor or protestors to make their statement from the sideline or to organize their own parade.

The finest moment in protesting a parade in American history was written up by Molly Ivans about the Austing Texas KKK march where a few dozen paraders were not interfered with, but were mooned by a wave that progressed down the street among 5000 protestors.

[Obamarama]

9. Please...don't even insult me with such a lopsided comparison...

I'm not that stupid, and neither is any other DUer who doesn't live under a bridge.

To overuse a phrase, that's like comparing apples with oranges. And you know it. How could you even possibly condone what happened to this man? They had a choice to simply remove him from the parade...a search and arrest was absolutely excessive.

[wli]

6. you think this is chilling? it's not even 1% of it

The RNC NYC protest and WTO protests were far more bone-chilling than this laughable idiocy. Those featured blatant government-sponsored provocateurs, massive police brutality, and dumping large numbers of protesters into Guantanamo-like detention facilities far larger than needed to hold them (some large fraction of the protesters were captured this way, to the tune of effectively locking up everyone who protested). The lawsuits filed by those not protesting who were arrested and those who were mutilated and seriously injured by the police brutality are IIRC either still pending or dismissed.

Google for "Guantanamo on the Hudson" for the RNC/NYC protests.

[Smarmie Doofus]

8. And in NYC, where Bloomberg is up for reelection....

the DEM party, and it's four submediocre candidates for Mayor, don't believe that the RNC abuses and Bloomberg's denial of a parade permit for the main protest, are important enough to bring to the electorate's attention.

[wli]

11. popping up everywhere

These Guantanamo-on-the-Hudson -like affairs have been popping up everywhere and spooking various right-wing gun nuts, who while otherwise insane have done the useful task of going out looking for them and catching them on camera (though they've also listed a bunch of sites based on pure rumormongering). The right-wing nuts have (of course) been flying off the handle as clearly the Pearblossom detention camp et al are too small for their crackpot notions despite being impossibly huge in absolute terms as a capacity of 100000 is insufficient to put away all of L.A. Public disclosure of these things has rather come out in relation to "civil disturbances" such as protests, suggesting the detention camps are probably intended for mass arrests during protests and L.A. riot -like scenarios.

Anyway, the Pier 57 and other detention camps for US citizens haven't been getting bandied about much by anyone sane, but really should be because they're a "support structure" for mass arrests that have actually already been used. These mass arrests and police riots (police going nuts and beating, gassing, etc. peaceful protesters and passersby) are extremely grave violations of civil liberties, as are the "Free Speech Zones" they're associated with. We need to disassociate the subject from the idiot "NWO conspiracy theory" psyop and get the real issues of protest smashing, union-busting, police militarization, and mass arrests on the table.

[AX10]

10. We need Police Reform. Police are "peace officers".

They are not the military.

[blm]

4. In Gore or Kerry's America, you could protest freely. Not Bush's America.

AND THAT'S AN IRREFUTABLE TRUTH.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Yes. And no.

They both won and neither governed. x(

[sakabatou]

12. I smell 1984

:tinfoilhat: