Whew! With the election over, I feel more free to discuss topics that would have been a distraction even a week ago. For example, this:
Government Surveillance of the Occupy Protests
The following documents, distributed by people working with counterterrorism and intelligence-sharing offices known as “fusion centers,” are a selection from among about 4,000 pages of unclassified emails and reports obtained through freedom of information requests by lawyers at the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, who represent Occupy participants. The documents, which they provided to The New York Times, offer details of the scrutiny of the Occupy protests in 2011 and 2012 by law enforcement officers, federal officials, security contractors and others.
I have been both celebrated and vilified among the Occupy OC (and San Diego, Long Beach, and Los Angeles) communities for demanding, as OOC’s Civic Liaison, that we strictly adhere to non-violence and non-destructive protest. (This was not only an ethical decision, but a practical one: violence and property damage would not scare the political and criminal justice leadership in Orange County; we saw how much they enjoyed dressing up and rolling out the heavy equipment to oppose it during the Anaheim civil unrest protests. But it would certainly alienate us from the populace — much of which came here seeking personal security — and distract from our larger message anti-corruption message.)
By and large, local activists agreed — though they got out any frustration with visits to Long Beach and elsewhere, as depicted above — and, to its discredit, local media simply refused to cover us much if we weren’t going to give them blood and broken glass, which is what my critics had warned would happen.
So, as these reports on government surveillance of Occupy Wall Street start to come out, can I ask that they be evaluated in the context of Cliven Bundy and of people carrying firearms to retail stores and to political rallies they want to protest? Do those people have rights that we didn’t? If Occupy becomes active again, what’s the principle that denies US — or Black and Latino youth engaged in their own protests — the right to openly carry firearms? How about the right to carry concealed weapons with a permit? Can anyone explain the new rules — in a way that doesn’t reduce itself to “society thinks it’s OK to discriminate in Second Amendment rights when it comes to race, ethnicity, and ideology”?
This is your Weekend Open Thread. Talk about that, or anything else you’d like, within reasonable bounds of decency and decorum.
“society thinks it’s OK to discriminate in Second Amendment rights when it comes to race, ethnicity, and ideology”?
That is too fu**ing funny! Do you really think that? Prove it.
“Proving it” might require having a bunch of buff young Latinos going into retail stores while openly carrying semi-automatic rifles, skally. I hesitate to do that because I’m pretty sure that I’m right about how they’d be received (and whether a jury would convict whoever shot them.) I’m not going to suggest that you yourself put on brownface and accompany them, but you can join them while wearing one of the Occupy “Guy Fawkes” masks, to test the “ideology” part of the hypothesis, and see what it feels like to lose your “comfortable old white guy” privilege. Good luck!
(for WOT, not as ‘proof’!)
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/drones-seattle-didnt-want-land-in-la-with-a-cautious-police-department-spying-on-angelenos/?utm_source=CAPoliticalReview.com&utm_campaign=caba19c36a-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b855a22bd3-caba19c36a-302742077
Think my aluminized mylar umbrella business might have a chance?
Where was that picture taken, in California?
Those people look like homeless, jobless, state welfare receivers.
Everyone who isn’t wearing a suit looks that way to you.
Why has the Voice of Orange County been shut down?
Did you try VoiceofOC instead of spelling it out?
Greg,
First off Open Carry, or OC’ing is illegal in CA since your party rammed it through the legislative process.
Concealed carry, or CC should be just fine…but I would sure check and double check that one, just to make sure and talk with the various PD’s and make sure they are aware that some folks would be legally carrying. Just to make sure nobody overreacts to an emotional situation, since authority figures tend to overreact to such situations.
HOWEVER you would probably find that those on the other side of the line would overreact to that. The media would also fry you since they have wood for getting rid of all firearms, except for some seriously stupid reason, those owned and operated by….those very folks that protect and serve those 1% hill top people, and those that are going around the world in conquest, for those same 1% for total economic domination.
Right — there’s an implicit “if open carry were legal” clause in there. I never said that it is legal here.
I look forward to what Sheriff Hutchins — and the DA, and the police — do about issuing “mandatory” concealed carry permits to 19-year-old Latino men.
Targeted ad on this post: “Retire to Another Country”
Holy crap………or Wholly crap?????
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/6/top-intelligence-official-claims-obama-admin-just-/
The Moonie-owned Washington Times, BigBox. Wholly crap.
“Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the lone American prisoner of war from the Afghan conflict, has been released in exchange for five Taliban prisoners at Guantánamo Bay”
5 for 1
Orly Taitz, has written to the President of Mexico and offered to return 12 million Mexicans (nationals) in the USA for the one US Marine they hold.
12,000,000 for 1