First Amendment Issues - The Art of the Prank

May 17, 2007January 15, 2019

NYPD Releases All 2004 RNC-Related Documents

The NYPD decided not to appeal a judge’s decision that the NYPD should declassify its surveillance documents from the 2004 RNC, so it has set up a special NYPD RNC Documents website with the documents. Of course, you have to scroll down to the very bottom for a zip file of the 600 pages of documents. And what’s above the documents is the NYPD’s rather thorough explanation/ defense justifying why it did such extensive surveillance of disparate groups and people, listing various terror incidents between 2001 and the convention as well as other incidents of protest. Here is Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s statement:

“I think a close examination of the documents is going to show that the New York City Police Department did an outstanding job in protecting the City during the Republican National Convention. People wanted to come here and shut down the City, to replicate what happened in Seattle, Montreal and Genoa. We simply didn’t let that happen, and I think it’ll just underscore the outstanding work of the men and women of the Department. In terms of gathering information, the vast majority of information that was gathered was open-source information. It was gathered from the Internet; these groups that were coming here were advertising what they were going to do “” bragging about what they were going to do. It wasn’t particularly difficult to get the vast majority of this information.”

Good to know that the NYPD is watching all of us, including MSNBC and the Sierra Club. The NY Times has all the documents plus highlights which people and/or groups were mentioned in the documents. Here are but a few:

ACT UP, Sierra Club, City Council members (Charles Barron, David Weprin, Bill Perkins), Sept. 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Johnny Cash Bloc, MSNBC, A31 Coalition, NYCLU, NOW, Planned Parenthood, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, Stuyvesant High School Students, Westboro Baptist Church, Indymedia, Democratic National Committee, Coalition of Fire and Police Unions, Grandmothers Against War, Falun Gong, Arab Muslim American Foundation, Time’s Up, Billionaires For Bush, United for Peace and Justice, The Surveillance Camera Players, ACLU, Hip Hop Summit Action Network, The Federation of East Village Artists, Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, Restaurant Opportunity Center of New York

The NYCLU’s executive director Donna Lieberman said, “These documents paint a picture of a surveillance program that was broad, clumsy, and often unlawful. The NYPD failed to differentiate between unlawful behavior and behavior that is not only lawful but should in fact be cherished and protected. Today the public can finally bear witness to that failure.” The NYCLU also offers an index of the groups monitored as well as the documents released yesterday, plus others previously released.

And City Councilman Charles Barron told the NY Times’ Sewell Chan, “First of all, I”m going to be getting some legal advice. I”m not going to let this go. This is ridiculous that you would spy on democratic, legal, political activity. This smacks of former fascism. It certainly is selective spying. It is absurd that people in this city can”t exercise their constitutional right to protest without being spied on by the police.”

Photograph by ireallylovecake on Flickr

Originally by Jen Chung from Gothamist on May 17, 2007

May 14, 2007January 15, 2019

Manufacturing Censorship

Mural of the side wall of the Englewood, Colorado Headed West smoke shop put there to deter taggers.

From FOX 31: “Some say it”s art, some say it”s promoting drug use. A mural on the side of an Englewood building is creating controversy… on South Broadway.” Video here.

More on this story from: News2 KWGN and The Denver Channel

May 4, 2007January 15, 2019

Corporate control of profanity – Part 2

This video is presented by the Media Education Foundation, which produces and distributes video documentaries to encourage critical thinking and debate about the relationship between media ownership, commercial media content, and the democratic demand for free flows of information, diverse representations of ideas and people, and informed citizen participation.

Directed by Byron Hurt, former star college quarterback, longtime hip-hop fan, and gender violence prevention educator, this is a “loving critique” of a number of disturbing trends in the world of rap music. He pays tribute to hip-hop while challenging the rap music industry to take responsibility for glamorizing destructive, deeply conservative stereotypes of manhood…

Dealing with issues of race, gender violence, and the corporate exploitation of youth culture, it is a terrific follow-up to yesterday’s blog post from the Black Agenda Report.

April 24, 2007January 15, 2019

David Halberstam, 1934-2007

We mourn the loss of a crusader for truth. The following excerpts are from the Associated Press – JS

Author David Halberstam Dies in Crash
By Lisa Leff
Associated Press
April 23, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — David Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who chronicled the Vietnam War generation, civil rights and the world of sports, was killed in a car crash Monday, his wife and local authorities said. He was 73.

Halberstam, of New York, was a passenger in a car that was broadsided by another vehicle in Menlo Park, south of San Francisco, San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault said. The cause of death appeared to be internal injuries, he said.

The accident occurred around 10:30 a.m., and Halberstam was declared dead at the scene, Menlo Park Fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman said.

The driver of the car carrying Halberstam and the person driving the car that crashed into his were injured, but not seriously…

In an interview earlier this month with The Associated Press, Halberstam recalled the zeal with which he and his colleagues covered Vietnam.

“Maybe we were 28, 29, 26 and we had a great story, which we knew and we had a lock on the truth because we had such great sources. When for a variety of reasons – a flawed, deeply flawed policy – the government starts lying, that is when independent journalism really matters,” he said.

Such reporting, he said, is a key component of democracy.

“The idea that somewhere before it is a big story that there is some young person… putting themselves on the line morally, ethically, journalistically, that is a great thing,” Halberstam said. “I mean, that is what a free society is about.”

Read the whole AP story here.

April 12, 2007January 15, 2019

The times they are a’changin’?

This New York Times article by Alex Williams about the history and psychology of the heckler from Shakespeare’s time to the present was sent in by Scott Pellegrino. Both artists and their critics are grappling with First Amendment freedom of speech issues… and bad manners.

Rise of the Takedown
by Alex Williams
The New York Times
April 8, 2007

To Alicia Estrada, a professor of Central American studies who was ejected from a screening of Mel Gibson”s “Apocalypto” last month after grilling him about the historical accuracy of that Maya epic, which he directed, she was not a “heckler,” as Mr. Gibson”s representatives called her, but a dutiful academic asking of him what she asks of students in her classroom.

To Kyle Doss, an audience member who helped spark Michael Richards”s tirade at a Los Angeles comedy club last November by yelling “You”re not funny” following a racially charged joke, he was not a heckler, but a champion of tolerance. “I think freedom of speech should have some kind of limit,” Mr. Doss later told a reporter.

To Jean Sara Rohe, one of the students who assailed Senator John McCain about Iraq at his commencement address at the New School last May, she was not a heckler, as newspapers later called her, but a crusader for peace, doing what her “conscience called for.”

For decades, hecklers who railed at entertainers, politicians and athletes were confined to the margins “” Continue reading “The times they are a’changin’?”