July 7, 2006

this is scary

Mike Ferner: Has This Country Gone Completely Insane?: "This afternoon, drinking a cup of coffee while sitting in the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center on Chicago's south side, a Veterans Administration cop walked up to me and said, 'OK, you've had your 15 minutes, it's time to go.'

'Huh?', I asked intelligently, not quite sure what he was talking about.

'You can't be in here protesting,' officer Adkins said, pointing to my Veterans For Peace shirt."

According to the blog, he was arrested and escorted off the premises and told that if he returned with that shirt, he would be booked and jailed.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw this last week - Chicago Trib, I think. I was really struck by both how broadly the anti-protest laws are being interpreted as well as how subtle the "protest" was. The purpose of protest is to raise attention to grievances, so if you protest and no one notices, was it indeed a protest?

For the Zen among ye, "What is the sound of one t-shirt protesting?"

Wasp Jerky said...

Sounds like a few more people should go sit in that medical center and "protest."

Karma Girl said...

I hope he wins his lawsuit and if the conservative right know what's good for them, so should they. Protestor discrimination can cut both ways, on both sides of the issue.