Pending: Coverage from the NATO Protests in Chicago

by | May 19, 2012 | 7 comments

After a 27 hour journey with activists from around Massachusetts and New Hampshire, early yesterday morning we arrived in the windy city. Expending almost every battery for the recording devices that I own, there is now upwards of 14 gigabytes of video, image, and audio files waiting to be processed. Throughout the day I filmed scenes from a scheduled rally in Daley plaza (where a cell phone jamming device was being used), an unpermitted march throughout downtown Chicago, and an evening assembly in Grant park. The Chicago Tribune has published photos from Friday’s festivities. Today crowds are expected to continue swelling. Here’s a juxtaposition preview of some of the coverage you’ll soon be seeing at Free Concord. The first image was a much more common sight than the second.

This post originally published at freeconcord.org.

Fed Judge to Orlando: Chalking is a Right

by | Apr 14, 2012 | 4 comments

Tim Osmar arrested for chalking, Dec 15 2011

After a cost of eighteen days in a cage and a few months of legal threats, there is good news to report on chalking freedom out of Orlando, Florida. The ABA Journal published yesterday that Timothy Osmar, who was twice arrested for chalking at the Orlando city hall plaza, had his rights violated when he was legally kidnapped over protected political speech. US district magistrate David Baker’s ruling deemed the arrest for violation of a city ordinance to be an overreach of a code designed to prevent unauthorized commercial advertising. Unlike NH, Florida’s towns and cities are endowed with the power to write words powerful enough to invoke arrest for their violation.

Prior to the decision Friday, Orlando officials indicated that they would be appealing an “adverse ruling”. The city would find it difficult to play a purer than thou antichalk attitude in this case. Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer encouraged downtown businesses to chalk their sidewalks in support of the home team Magic when they were in the NBA playoffs in 2009. The city also permits a yearly chalk art festival held by the local Rotary Club. David Baker told Orlando bureaucrats, “The city may not selectively interpret and enforce the ordinance based on its own desire to further the causes of particular favored speakers.”

Mayor Dyer did not seem thoroughly interested in the deeper constitutional and moral issues regarding chalking arrests. His comment, while charges were pending was, “This was a guy who wanted to be arrested, by all accounts, and has been… This guy was given every opportunity not to go to jail, but he chose to go to jail.” (more…)

Monadnock Students Speak Out Against Oppressive Silence Campaign

by | Mar 29, 2012 | 17 comments

As you know if you’ve been reading the blog over the last few months, school outreach events have been taking place at Monadnock Regional High School – much to the chagrin of some administrators and students, who don’t believe in free speech. They believe that you need to ask permission from your betters prior to speaking. (This is one thing they teach you in government school.) The anti-speech students, ostensibly on their own, have come up with a campaign of oppression to discourage their peers from taking information from freedom-loving activists – they call the campaign “Remain Respectfully Silent”. Recently, they have hung signs in the school hallways featuring the slogan.

Thankfully, some in the school support free speech and have made signs to counter the oppressors. Since it would have looked really bad for them to say no, admins approved the students’ signage. See the full photo by clicking the thumbnail on the right.

It’s crystal clear that the side of liberty and free speech is the right message, which is why the oppressors have resulted to taking the low road. While I was writing this article, I saw an update from MRHS student Hayden relating that someone has taken down her “Speak your mind” poster, within the first day of it being hung. It seems she struck a chord!

Thanks to Hayden, Apey, and anyone else who helped with this awesome project. Updates to come as they develop.