比美国政府还美国政府?
下面这几篇可不是"新华社"的.
(1)
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAJBUE7YCD.html
Anti-War Activists March Through Mall to Protest Arrest of Man Wearing Peace T-Shirt
By Damita Chambers Associated Press Writer
Published: Mar 5, 2003
GUILDERLAND, N.Y. (AP) - Officials at a mall where a man was arrested for refusing to remove an anti-war T-shirt asked Wednesday that trespassing charges against him be dropped.
Police said managers from Crossgates Mall called and asked that the complaint against Stephen Downs be withdrawn. Police Chief James Murley said he would support the mall's decision.
Earlier Wednesday, about 100 anti-war demonstrators marched through the mall to protest the arrest. They told a mall manager they would stop only when charges against the shopper were dropped and when the mall outlined its policy.
"We just want to know what the policy is and why it's being randomly enforced," said Erin O'Brien, an organizer of the noontime rally. "It's only the people in the recent months who have anti-war or peace T-shirts that are being asked to leave the mall."
A mall spokeswoman did not return repeated calls for comment.
Downs' son, Roger, said dropping the charge would not rectify the arrest. "My father feels there's more to this. Crossgates hasn't examined what was wrong here," he said. "I think he'd like an apology."
He said his father would wait to see how the mall handles the case before deciding whether to sue.
Stephen Downs, 61, and his son were stopped Monday by mall security guards and asked to remove their shirts that read "Peace on Earth" and "Give Peace a Chance," or leave. Roger Downs, 31, took off his shirt. But his father, a lawyer with the state Commission on Judicial Conduct and a former Peace Corps volunteer, refused.
The guards called police, and he was charged with trespassing and pleaded innocent.
Tim Kelley, director of Operations for Pyramid Mall management, the mall's owner, said in a statement that Downs' behavior and clothing was disruptive to other shoppers.
The men had had the T-shirts made at a mall store and wore them while they shopped.
AP-ES-03-05-03 2309EST
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http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000526.php
March 05, 2003
Arrested for Anti-War T-shirts
WNYT-TV and MSNBC report today that two men, Roger and Stephen Downs, were asked to remove T-shirts reading "No War With Iraq" and "Give Peace a Chance" while shopping at a mall in New York State. When Stephen Downs refused to remove the t-shirt he was asked to leave the mall. When he refused he was arrested.
The two T-shirts, purchased for $23 in a store in the mall, apparently was "likely to cause a disturbance". The mall apparently has a policy against "wearing of apparel... likely to provoke disturbances."
"We were just shopping. We were wearing these T-shirts. We weren't handing out leaflets, we weren't saying anything," said Roger Downs.
Security personnel at the mall asked the two men to remove the T-shirts. When the older Downs refused he was ordered to leave the mall. When he refused to leave the mall he was arrested by local police officers for trespassing.
This is, of course, terrible. This follows cases where earlier incidents involving anti-Bush t-shirts and posters that resulted in Secret Service interrogations.
The AP has more detail. Apparently the police officer who arrested Stephen Downs gave him a specific ultimatem: Take off the T-shirt or be arrested. Downs responded by saying "All right then, arrest me if you have to." He says "So that's what they did. They put the handcuffs on and took me away."
Says the AP article:
Monday's arrest came less than three months after about 20 peace activists wearing similar T-shirts were told to leave by mall security and police. There were no arrests.
Come on folks... It's everyone's responsibility to respect free speech, to respect the Bill of Rights and the founding principals of this nation. That goes for shopping mall owners and local police officers too. I just have nothing else to say abuot this. It's un-American. It's terrible. It's depressing. What kind of country do we live in?
Dissent is something to be proud of! Three cheers to Stephen Downs for refusing to remove the T-shirt. Six cheers for doing so under pain of arrest.
Posted by George Paine | Comments (59) | TrackBack (3)
From the "Democracy in America" Department as of 09:58 AM
(3)
http://www.progress.org/2003/aclu37.htm
School Administrators Fail to Respect U.S. Constitution
High School Student Sent Home for Wearing Anti-War T-Shirt
Anti-American bureaucrats have seized control of a high school in Dearborn, Michigan, and deprived a United States citizen of his Constitutional free-speech rights.
In defense of American values, here is a report from the American Civil Liberties Union.
The American Civil Liberties Union today said that it is looking into possible litigation on behalf of Bretton Barber, a junior at Dearborn High School who was told to go home if he did not remove a t-shirt with a picture of President Bush between the words "international terrorist."
"It’s a gutsy thing for a high school student to take on a school administration in this way," said Kary Moss, Executive Director of the ACLU of Michigan. "It’s obvious that Bretton feels very strongly about this issue and we want to make sure that his ability to express his political opinion isn’t hindered in any way."
"I’m hoping that we can resolve this issue without going to court," Moss added. "However, if the school is unwilling to allow students the right to political expression, we’ll have no choice."
The incident arose on February 17, when Barber wore the t-shirt to school to express his concern about the President’s policies on the potential war in Iraq. After wearing the shirt in school for three hours without incident, school administrators asked him to remove the t-shirt, turn it inside out, or go home, saying that the shirt might cause a "disruption."
To justify their actions, a school administrator cited a famous 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision about student free expression rights. But Barber, who was familiar with the decision as well, pointed out that the official was citing from the dissenting opinion, not the often-quoted majority decision that a student's rights to free speech don't end "at the schoolhouse gate." That decision actually supports his position, Barber told the official. Nonetheless, he was told to remove the shirt.
Barber, who has nearly a 4.0 average and was second in his class last semester, said that he is hoping to go to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to pursue a career in constitutional law. He has been a "card-carrying member" of the ACLU since the 10th grade and has contributed whatever he could afford to the organization since middle school.
"The shirt was meant to emphasize the message ‘no war,’ and I feel that I’ve been successful in getting that message out," said Barber. Although he has given up wearing his shirt until the issue with the school can be resolved, he said that he hopes to organize a group of students to protest the banning of the t-shirt.
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(4)
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1470392/20030306/index.jhtml?headlines=true
Anti-War T-Shirts Land Teens, Lawyer In Hot Water
03.06.2003 3:27 PM EST
Global anti-war protests have recently drawn hundreds of thousands into peaceful demonstrations in the streets. But, over the past three weeks, from Michigan to New York to Chicago, students have been warned and suspended, and one adult arrested, for expressing their anti-war and anti-Arab-discrimination sentiments on the most American of forums, the T-shirt.
On February 17, Dearborn High School junior Bretton Barber was asked, and he refused, to remove a shirt with a photo of President Bush and the words "International Terrorist" when administrators at his Michigan school feared the shirt might disrupt classes.
Lebanese-American Finley Junior High School eighth grader Ian Itani was suspended from his suburban Chicago school two days later for wearing a T-shirt that featured a drawing of the twin towers, an airplane and a man in a traditional Arab headdress. Itani's shirt, according to his mother, was a response to taunting from his classmates.
Last Friday, 17-year-old junior David Dial was suspended from his Broomfield, Colorado, high school for one day for posting fliers promoting Wednesday's "Books Not Bombs" international student walkout (see "Anti-War Movement Rallies Round The Web"). Though he was told he was not allowed to post the flyer in the school's hallways, Dial did so anyway and administrators, citing the same disruption of school activities policies, gave him the suspension, according to the Denver Post.
Lawyer Stephen Downs was arrested at the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, New York, on Monday and charged with trespassing after refusing to remove a T-shirt, made and purchased in the mall, which featured the phrase "Peace on Earth" on the front and "Give Peace a Chance" on the back. After security guards were unable to convince Downs to either leave the mall or remove the shirt bearing the John Lennon-inspired phrase, they summoned the local police, who arrested and handcuffed Downs, the director of the Albany office of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.
The arrest of Downs has already drawn offers from the American Civil Liberties Union to help defend the case, but an ACLU spokesperson said the three school cases are a legacy of a previous generation's anti-war protests.
Because many schools have codes of conduct that include rules against wearing clothing that is either disruptive or distracting to the educational process, cases such as Itani's and Barber's are fairly common, said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Whether it is a Marilyn Manson shirt or one with an anti-war message, these students often pay the price for wearing their hearts on their sleeves (or chests). "He was asked to not wear that particular shirt and he chose to go home," David Mustonen, communications director for the Dearborn Public School system, said of Barber's case, citing the school board's policy on disruptive clothing. "There was no suspension or disciplinary action."
Mustonen said straight-A student Barber, who returned to school the next day without incident, was asked to remove the shirt after an assistant principal received comments from unspecified persons who "did not favor the shirt." A spokesperson for the Michigan ACLU said the organization might soon get involved in a legal filing in Barber's case. "There was no disruption of school business. He wore the shirt for three hours with no incident. This [shirt] is truly protected political speech," said the ACLU's Wendy Wagenheim.
The issue of student anti-war protests in schools came of age during another controversial military action, the Vietnam conflict, when a trio of Des Moines, Iowa, students took their cause of protesting the war all the way to the Supreme Court. In Tinker Vs. Des Moines Independent School District (1969), 15-year-old John F. Tinker, his younger sister Mary Beth and 16-year-old Christopher Eckhardt fought for their right to wear black armbands as a silent protest against the war.
The school board banned such protests, the students refused to remove the armbands and they were told to leave school and not return until they complied with the school's policies. The district was eventually found guilty by the Supreme Court of denying the students' First Amendment rights. As a result, students' rights to free expression were broadened following the decision, though many schools now have "disruptive" clothing rules in their codes of conduct.
That explains why officials in Chicago Ridge told 14-year-old Itani's mother that his homemade shirt had to go. The shirt, which featured a black marker drawing of the towers and an airplane on the front and a bearded man in an Arabic headdress on the back, could be seen as a "promotion of terrorism," according to school officials, quoted in an Associated Press report. Colleen Itani said her son was attempting to show his peers that not all Arabs are to blame for the September 11 attacks.
School superintendent Bernard Jumbeck would not comment on the issue.
"Everywhere I go people call us camels because of what happened," Ian Itani said in the Associated Press report. "So I put (the drawing) on my shirt to tell them who did it and to say that me and my Arab friends didn't do it."
The walkout Colorado student Dial was supporting was part of a National Youth and Student Peace Coalition-sponsored event in which students on 200 campuses worldwide walked out of classes at 8 a.m. on Wednesday.
"It's not like we're promoting violence or any kind or discrimination," Dial told the Denver Post. "It's just a peaceful protest against the war in Iraq." Administrators objected to the promotion of a walkout and offered to let Dial post the fliers elsewhere.
"The backdrop to this is a climate of hostility to civil liberties," Lieberman said. "The Bush administration has launched a broadside against civil liberties in ways never imagined just two years ago and attacks on free speech are happening in schools, at the mall and on the street."
Lieberman said the arrest of 60-year-old lawyer Downs (his 31-year-old son agreed to remove his shirt, which read "No War With Iraq" and "Let Inspections Work") was troubling because, while a mall is a private entity, it often benefits from and uses city services and is seen by many as a community gathering place. The precedent set in the arrest, she said, was disturbing to civil libertarians. "It's as if the Yankees wouldn't allow you in to a game if you were wearing a Mets cap," Lieberman said.
James R. Murley, chief of the Guilderland Police Department, said officers spent an hour trying to convince Downs to follow the example of his son and remove his shirt, but the lawyer refused. "The mall has it posted that certain apparel that is considered disruptive is prohibited," according to Murley, who said Downs is facing a maximum of 15 days in jail.
One hundred anti-war demonstrators marched through the mall Wednesday to protest the arrest, saying they would not stop until the charges were dropped. Later in the day, mall officials asked for the charges to be dropped, according to the Associated Press.
―Gil Kaufman
