RUNDLE DROPS CHARGES AGAINST JOURNALIST
Fair is fair. The State Attorney immediately dropped charges against a journalist arrested by police who was out after curfew covering the marches. Journalists are exempt from the curfew order when covering the story of a march or others violating curfews. This was the correct decision.
The WSVN story is here.
ERRATUM: The courthouse did NOT close yesterday. Your judges bravely held the fort and the line.
Remember our motto: "Sometimes wrong...never in doubt".
This is the flyer some protestors were handing out yesterday.
Personally, we think they could have chosen a more flattering picture.
Let's be clear:
ReplyDeleteIndefinitely imprisoning 2.7 MILLION people in their homes, shutting down thousands of businesses and depriving them of millions in revenue, in a county the size of Delaware, as a response to isolated acts of violence in small parts of the county is ham-fisted administration and a gross abuse of power.
Here's what Mayor Gimenez's order means:
...A mom in Homestead cannot stroll her baby to sleep on her own street, because dog-walking (within 250 feet of your home) is exempted, but mere human walking is not.
...A guy in Carroll City who works two jobs cannot go the pharmacy or the grocery store during the only time he has a available, because the shops are closed.
...A restaurant owner in Aventura, who was just getting back on his feet, has to shutter his place hours before closing time and send the staff home.
...Free citizens cannot take an evening drive and buy an ice cream.
And NONE of that does a single thing to make anyone safer. Address violence or looting or arson with sharp policing? Sure. But a curfew designed to make even peaceful demonstration de facto unlawful, and applied so broadly as to criminalize fundamental rights of freedom of travel and association and commerce? There's no other word for it but tyranny. Petty tyranny, perhaps, but tyranny still.
As for me, I am making it a point to defy this curfew every single evening with a walk down my quiet suburban street. It's just a tiny little act of civil disobedience. (And likely it is a very safe one -- older-than-middle-aged white suburban lawyers have the privilege of fearing little from authorities even when we flout their authority. This I know.) So this is hardly Gandhi's Salt March. I can see that some would even find it laughable. That's OK. I've been laughed at for less.
But at bottom it comes down to this: free men and women do not ask permission to leave their homes.
Why not file a wrongful arrest case at 73 West Flager?
ReplyDeleteFlyer makes the ASA look like a White Walker from Games of thrones.
ReplyDelete