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Washington DC -- A handful of dancers got cuffed on Saturday for doing what they say the Founding Fathers would have wanted them to do - expressive dancing in National Parks.
A court recently ruled that expressive dancing was in a category with picketing, speech making, and marching - a banned activity at national memorials.
A small group came out on Saturday, May 28th, to protest the ruling, by dancing together inside the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial.
But after a few minutes, their moves got busted by Park Police.
Five were arrested, while listening to earphones and moving rhythmically in the shadow of Thomas Jefferson.
"The founders understood that the only thing that was going to make the American experiment succeed was the people standing up for these rights," Jared Denman, a demonstrator, told me.
The memorial was shut down while demonstrators got arrested.
Some visiting from out of town were less than impressed with the protesters' interpretive moves. "I think its ridiculous," said Edward Kelly of Richmond. "We just traveled up the steps and we've been waiting for 15 minutes."
[ Video of the Park Police wrestling some of the dancers to the ground has appeared on YouTube. ]
[Updated on: Mon, 30 May 2011 03:41] |
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DesDownunder
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Likes it here |
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
Registered: September 2010
Messages: 127
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It is really worrying that this can happen in a country that tried so hard to protect its citizens in its constitution.
When you take this into consideration alongside their insane religiosity and political corruption it does not bode well for their future...or ours.
Somehow they have reversed their priorities.
DesDownunder
Call me naive if you want, but life without trust in the goodness of others would be intolerable.
Religious indoctrination: It gets better, without it.
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... I do have to marvel at why I'm not surprised.
Not quite a year ago in Toronto, the Canadian government spent (at last accounting) a little over 10 billions to feed house and secure the bodies of the illustrious G20 Heads-of-State then meeting in Ontario for their semi-annual summit.
In the process civil liberties, rights of assembly and freedom of speech were violated right out the wazoo ... and for what net gain ... absolutely nada, other than of course the legal nightmare that will probably go on for another 10-years sorting out who infringed upon whose rights and the whys and wherefores of it's having transpired at all.
Unfortunately, we in Canada, are not so removed from the oafish behaviours being exhibited south of our borders, any more than the Global community is. This is the 7-24-365 generation ... there's no "film at eleven" ... it's right now and in our faces, and not likely to change any time soon either. Common sense doesn't appear to prevail ... damn the torpedoes being the rule of the day, with Joe and Jane six-pack left to sort out the pieces at the alter of expediency and National Security. Can anyone say the Patriot Act, which recently got extended for a further 10-years of Civil Rights infringements and Constitutional by-passes. It's bad enough I live in Canada where we just a few weeks ago, for the first time in our history, elected a faith-based government (God help us); I definitely wouldn't want to be living in the U.S.A. at all, and under any circumstances. Not right now, I wouldn't, and probably not ever again.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
"... comme recherché qu'un délice callipygian"
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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It is impossible to repeal an act known as the Patriot Act. It was named with care to ensure it could never be repealed. Anyone seeking to do so is labelled unpatriotic and thus unAmerican. It might, perhaps, be rem]named first as a way to start it.
The unaware will not know that it is named thus as an acronym form the words "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001."
Thus: USA PATRIOT ACT
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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It seems the Republicans (yes, I did my homework before posting my examples) have a distinct way of crafting titles of Acts and Initiatives that discourage challenge. Who would think the Clear Skies Act would actually allow industries to create more pollution by buying credits of other cleaner industries? Or, the Healthy Forests Initiative, that would allow logging companies to clear-cut rather than to take only certain trees, all in the name of fire prevention (also joked about as "No Tree Left Behind" by the Sierra Club).
The one that hits home for me is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Never heard of it? The first Bush presidency coined the friendly-sounding label "No Child Left Behind". Who would want to leave any child behind educationally? What isn't said is how the testing is so insidious as to practically have no public school be able to meet the requirements by 2014, thus reinforcing the "need" for privatization of the education system.
To find out who is really in charge of policy in the US, I always follow the money.......
Sorry the post is slightly off topic, but it's a tangent.
Cycling is the one sport where a guy can shave his legs, wear spandex and bright colors, and be accepted.
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DesDownunder
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Likes it here |
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
Registered: September 2010
Messages: 127
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Timmy, I don't think it is that off topic at all, if you consider the topic to be corruption of civil rights, let alone human rights.
The question that faces us all is, where will we find ourselves as a result of this corruption? Where will our descendants find the references to their intrinsic freedoms if we do not work to expose these authoritarian violations of our human rights?
DesDownunder
Call me naive if you want, but life without trust in the goodness of others would be intolerable.
Religious indoctrination: It gets better, without it.
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US Is A Police State- Don't be fooled by claims otherwise 
Re: US Is A Police State- Don't be fooled by claims otherwise 
