This Is What Your Pig Pen Will Look Like
June 25th, 2008
Denver city officials have released new details about Denver’s, ahem, free speech zone.
Details released Monday
* Wire mesh fencing will be used to mark public viewing area.
* Parade route starts at Larimer Street and Speer Boulevard.
* Parade route ends at Seventh Street and Auraria Parkway, which is the entry and exit point for the public demonstration zone in Parking Lot A.
* Permits are not required for entering or using viewing area.
* People using the public viewing area will be protected from unreasonable search and seizure but could be subject to search and seizure under constitutional standards.
* No one will be allowed to obstruct the public viewing area in a way that would prevent free use of the area by others.
The rest.
I ain’t buying for a fucking second, by the way, that Hickenlooper or anyone else in the city is calling the shots on DNC preparation any longer. This is the pigs at the Democratic National Committee.
And, make no mistake, they are pigs. Anyone who would put you in a cage to exercise your civil rights is a pig. They’re not even crypto-fascists, they’re flat-out fascists, they’re fucking pigs.
A right is a right. The pigs at the DNC no more have the ability to allow you your rights than you have the ability to allow the moon to rise. The only thing they can do is use force to ensure your compliance.
It’s no different than what a mugger does.
Or, for that matter, a rapist.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Oink, said the pig, oink-oink.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
regarding the last item in the list, that one will not be allowed to obstruct the public viewing area;-… I bet they included that to cover the practice of hanging a banner on the fence with letters large enough to be read by democrats over in the convention center, or which could be visible in photographs taken from the center.
June 25th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
The choice to call it a public viewing area is telling. They don’t even pretend it’s for speaking anymore, just for observing, like your television.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Hmm. If any of you are junior high teachers, I wonder how long it would take to deduce what’s going to happen if you were exploring right to assembly, and asked them to forecast what will happen at 4pm, after the 3pm end of the permitted march. Some case law has let the gov’t regulate the manner of assembly, but it is key that it is primarily so that the gov’t can help the free expression by stopping traffic, and gov’t just doesn’t retain the right to stop assemblies because they don’t like their perspective or they claim their limited budget won’t allow enough traffic monitors to be available.
But focusing just on practical matters for the city, they are seriously creating more work and problems for themselves by limiting the mainstream large march. The police to protester ratio required at the pen or a large march is far less than when they scatter everyone at 3pm. Are they going to all get on the bus to their campsite, or go out to eat at this time? Instead, groups of people just below the limit where you need a permit for public assembly - say 9 people - some of them carrying black hoodies and garnering paranoid security calls if they enter the mall, will start wandering the city in a decentralized fashion until it gets dark. It’s in their interest to make that pen really nice and bring them pizza, water, handwashing stations, some shade structures.