street protestors downtown st pete

[jimboloco]

[Ah the evening traffic at Baywalk, owned by the Sembler Corp, the only movie theatres around the entire Tampa Bay area that did not show Mikey Moore's 9/11 A lovely family place, true, but mercy, the war is there too, intrusion into Saturday night, not the time or place, either here at Baywalk or outside the presidunce's ranch in Crawford, JA, MON, will the real America please stand up.

Yes, the upscale dress shop, waddya call them? like botique (i slammed my slacker step-son to find the word, we bullshitted and then i asked "you know,a clothing store for ladies" and he said it, BO TEEK! Yes, rather fashionable formal evening wear, or dressy atire, the surrounding community is real swank, high rise all around, luxury condos with large balconies, and large ballrooms as well, penthouse for gardening and swimming, just below the ballroom, i mean up scale, all around there, and we all come to the Muvico theatres as well very family friendly place at all hours, yet the group has been resilient for over 2 years and growing in numbers....

Love the golden glow of this one, looking to the west, the line extends to the corner, sweet. will the real America please stand up? Ah Baywalk and traffic, an evening with war protestors, will the real America please stand up?

ah, what there is in a symbol, the peace signs, not swastikaz,
the (gesture) peace sign instead of a straight armed salute
interesting, the peace sign is both a symbol and a gesture
it would be pretty hard to do a swastika salute, twisted yoga,
oy vay, i think I recognise the guy behind, he is Bob, an engineer, owns a biz, makes molds for human body parts used to stabilize them in MRI's, eminovations1@yahoo.com spent 4 years in the Michigan Guard during Vietnam era, we did some peace vigils across from the VA hospital, He has a big family, they rent a house.will the real America please stand up? (ps i saw bob last eve, he now is famous. thanks BOB!8/19)

this one is real cool to the max
bearing witness, not-knowing,

I think this is my friend Domingo Romero, haven't seen him since I was in the street last year, he swooped by in his car and I gave him my last VFP button, we did a zen retreat together across to the east coast of Florita, has put on some weight and gray whiskers, he moved up to Clearwater and eschews the local zen group so now I've lost contact, mayb he has gotten a VFW shirt all well, but is not yet connected, I wanna find my old friend back, he came to our wedding, another ex-Marine from Brooklyn who is anti-war.....his wife works in a animal shop, they got married in the store with ribbinsd all over and said their vows to all the critters.....will the real America please stand up?

[Zlatko Waterman]

Great pictures, Jim.

Thank you.

I was among the millions who hit the pavement faithfully every Friday and Saturday ( here in CA) beginning Feb. 1, 2003 during the run-up to the attack by the US.

It's great to see folks getting exercised this far into the senseless war.



--Z

[Arcadia]

great what you are doing there, jimbo!. Also great photos and words, I like the contrasts in them.
saludos,

Arcadia

[jimboloco]

We have to feel enabled, a defeatest attitude is not where it's at.....viva Amereeka libre!

[panta rhei]

where do these fences come from?

i always see them when i see pictures of american protesters.
who puts them up? whom are they supposed to protect?

[jimboloco]

Well, yes the fences, that has been the issue recently, the city moved the fences to be more constricting to the street demonstrators, so some of them got arrested as they were literally in the street, it got a lot of local media coverage and what resulted was the re-opening of the area with a more open posting of the fences and a surge in locals getting out on Saturday nites into the street.....I will look for some links about the recent issue with the fences.

ah here's one, with video and sound links, you can hear the drummers! this was after the arrests,
http://stpeteforpeace.org/baywalk.photo ... .2005.html
man they partied in the street

http://tampaindymedia.org/bin/site/temp ... 8.1875.dat

Das ist gut!

[panta rhei]

thanks for the links, jim... great pics there to add to yours above!

so these fences are a common thing at street protests?
does this mean that in the u.s., demonstrations are mainly held standing at the side of the roads or in front of certain locations?

here, a 'demo' usually means a group of people with signs and posters wandering down a main street or through the city.

[jimboloco]

well it depends, we have demos in the parks, with advance permit, others such as this one in the street are in public throrughways, on the sidewalk, but not allowed into the interior of the downtown property, Baywalk, which has the shope, restaurants, and bars, and theatre,

and street marches as well need permits, but being at the side of the road, off the street, on public property does not require a permit, so spontaneous demonstrating can happen...

.there are restricted "free speech zones" which are fenced in, where protestors can stand huddled together, set up at certain events, to contain protest and avoid any important political personage from direct exposure, like when bush was here in tampa during the last political campaign, he appeared at the minor league baseball stadium owned by the Tampa Yankees, the anti-bush throng was kept virtually secluded from the entire area and several people who came to the event with advance invitational tickets were not allowed admission if they had on a democratic or otherwise political button.....

these fences here were initially positioned as you see them, to keep people off the street, yet did not limit access,
the fences were recently placed in a prohibitive way, causing congestion of protestors and Baywalk visitors, so that some of the protestors went into the street in protest.....

[panta rhei]

ah, i see.
marches need advance permit (here too), but at the sides of the streets, within restricted areas, spontaneous protests are allowed to happen.

thanks for explaining, jim.
i just wonder where the cops (or whoever sets up the barricades)spontaneously get all these fences from...

[jimboloco]

to the barricades!

here is a link with more photos of the press conference held in the street
http://stpeteforpeace.org/press.conference.aug.9.html
the bearded gent at the mike is Mark Kamleiter, a local Green Party activist and a lawyer, I saw him in action at a Tampa Fed court pro-bono defending "Dirt" McLean, a Rainbow family vet for peace, for demonstrating at the entrance to the va hospital a couple years ago,
here is the url for a one minute video clip about this matter, www.wmnf interviewing the leader of st pete for peace, chris ernesto, about the barricaides.....
http://stpeteforpeace.org/press.conf.aug.9.2005.01.wmv

Ich weiß nicht, wo der barricaides von kommen.

[jimboloco]

you can vote online for the poll about the protesters and the barricades, St Pete Times.....

http://sptimes.com/2005/08/19/Southpine ... ar_b.shtml

Yes, the protesters deserve to have the space 2924 votes - 73%


No, the protests hurt business in the entertainment complex 772 votes - 19%


The existing metal barricades are fine 283 votes - 7%


Total: 3979 votes

[jimboloco]

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/08/21/Colum ... _pra.shtml

BLUMNER
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E-mail:
Click here blumner@sptimes.com.
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Archive
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER, Times Perspective Columnist
Published August 21, 2005


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We hear the call to "get involved" all the time. From the 1970s-era summons to "Think globally, act locally," to MTV's Rock the Vote, we are told that it is our civic duty to educate ourselves about political issues and become more active citizens. Public officials bemoan the insuperable apathy of the electorate. But they don't really mean it. The greatest burr in an official's side is when a citizen becomes truly informed and starts challenging the status quo. "Gadfly" is pejorative for a reason.

Protesters are greeted with this same contempt. Citizen activists who actually care about an issue enough to stand in a public place, exposed to the elements, with nothing fancier than words on a placard expressing their views, are usually considered rabble-rousing troublemakers, if not a little nutty.

This is how a group of antiwar activists in St. Petersburg has been treated. The group, St. Pete for Peace, has been showing up on most Saturday nights for the past 2 1/2 years to protest on a public sidewalk outside BayWalk, St. Petersburg's popular dining, shopping and entertainment venue. They hold signs denouncing the Iraq war and hand out leaflets to passers-by. These few dozen of our neighbors understand and embody the role of citizen and should be applauded for "acting locally." But the city has reacted as if they are an infestation.

Because BayWalk businesses have complained that the protesters affect their walk-in traffic, all kinds of ideas have been floated to drive away the menace. Under the excuse that pedestrians are endangered by the protesters' presence - the city says there are no traffic-accident statistics to back this up - city officials first considered designating the sidewalk as a "no-protest" zone. After that idea was dropped because it was blatantly unconstitutional, an equally noxious one took its place. Craig Sher, president and CEO of the Sembler Co., the company that owns and manages BayWalk, would like the city to transfer the sidewalk to his group. Once it was put under private control, the protesters could be run off as trespassers. So far, to the credit of City Council members, the city has let the sidewalk remain a place of public protest, but new recommendations are being formulated by city staff to address the pedestrian safety issues, including a fine option of closing the street in front of the disputed sidewalk to cars on busy Friday and Saturday nights. In the meantime, metal barricades have been erected at the site to direct pedestrian traffic.

The barricades have antagonized the protesters, but I'm less concerned about the new steel dividers than the harassing arrests. On Aug. 6, a 13-year-old protester was arrested for "obstructing a sidewalk," and Michael O'Neill, 33, was arrested while videotaping the scene.

O'Neill was arrested for "trespass." He claims he was standing on a spot on the sidewalk that BayWalk security had told him is public. He says he believes he was arrested because he refused a St. Petersburg police officer's demands for identification. The officer's report says O'Neill was arrested on BayWalk property when he failed to move after multiple warnings. (George Kajtsa, public information officer for the St. Petersburg Police Department, says you basically need a tape measure to discern the difference between the public part and the private part of the sidewalk at BayWalk.)

I asked St. Petersburg Police Chief Chuck Harmon why a 13-year-old should be taken away in handcuffs for such a petty transgression as sidewalk blocking. Harmon defended the arrest by saying that when confronted by an officer and told to move along, the young man "let loose this string of profanities at the officer."

As troubling as this boy's potty mouth might be, the use of profane language is not a crime. Right?

Wrong, asserted Harmon, who said that the disorderly conduct statute gives police the power to arrest anyone using offensive language. "Police officers can't be the ones offended," Harmon said, "but if an officer notices that a mother is covering her child's ears, then there is a violation of the statute."

I relayed to the chief the seminal U.S. Supreme Court decision of Cohen vs. California, in which a man prosecuted for wearing a jacket that read "F___ the Draft" had his criminal conviction set aside because his speech was deemed constitutionally protected. "One man's vulgarity is another's lyric," the court famously held. But Harmon had no interest in First Amendment jurisprudence. He insisted that verbal offense is an illegal act and he had successfully arrested many people over the years on those grounds.

Later, Harmon called to clarify that the 13-year-old "was charged with obstructing (a sidewalk), having nothing to do with disorderly conduct or his language." But he didn't back away from the view that one's manner of speech could land one in the pokey.

In St. Petersburg at least, police officers are apparently not schooled in the finer points of the First Amendment. According to Sam Walker, professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, police typically receive "pretty spotty" training in free speech issues.

It shows.

Public protests can be inconvenient, annoying and noisy affairs. But our Constitution has chosen the mess of freedom and democracy over the order that comes with repression.

When police address protesters in an aggressive manner and resort to hypertechnical arrests for minor offenses, they are creating an intimidating environment in an effort to discourage future demonstrations. Our community's priorities are clear: It's commerce over conversation at BayWalk, where our areas's most active and engaged citizens are decidedly not welcome.