Chisel. Chisel — First Amendment v American Fascism

[The Supreme] Court’s decision to leave the Fifth Circuit’s attack on the First Amendment in place could be temporary. As Sotomayor writes in her Mckesson opinion, when the Court announces that it will not hear a particular case it “expresses no view about the merits.” The Court could still restore the First Amendment right to protest in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas in a future case. For the time being, however, the Fifth Circuit’s Mckesson decision remains good law in those three states. And that means that anyone who organizes a political protest within the Fifth Circuit risks catastrophic financial liability.

"HOLDS POLICE INTERFERENCE WITH SPEAKERS IS ILLEGAL," Toronto Star. August 17, 1933. Page 21. ---- Brantford Magistrate Asserts Offence Not Committed Till Violence Urged --- ASKS COMMON SENSE --- Sarnia. Aug. 17.--Interference such as has frequently taken place with assembly and speech is absolutely unlawful, in the opinion of Magistrate S. Alfred Jones, K.C., of Brantford, who devoted a considerable portion of his presidential address to the Ontario Magistrates' Association to this subject.

Mr. Jones also advocated extension of the right to order strapping to juvenile court judges, maintaining that fines were paid by the parents and confinement frequently taught the boy criminal practices.

"The question of the legality of police interference with assembly and speech is one which has been forced upon the attention of the public. My personal view is that such interference as that which has frequently taken place is, under the facts as they have been stated, absolutely unlawful. Freedom of speech is well defined by the attorney-general in his introduction to the report of the appeal in the Timothy Buck case, which was a conviction under section 98 of the Code, in which he says: 'Any man may advocate whatever type of Government he thinks most desirable: he may attack all existing Institutions; he may argue for any, even the most radical changes; it is only when the use of force, violence or physical Injury to person or property is threatened, advised or defended. that an offence is committed."

Regarding assembly or gathering, in order to justify interference several elements must be present. There must be an assembly of three or more persons, with a common purpose, who conduct themselves that persons in the neighborhood fear as riot, and fear must founded, be an reasonable fear. "If a lone speaker should mount a soap box, and a crowd of strangers gather to hear him, no matter how many, interference would be absolutely illegal, provided his speech was kept within bounds. The place of gathering is, of course, subject to municipal regulations."

"Apart entirely from the legal question, there is the common sense view. By such interference police officials furnish the anarchists and Communists with the very food and drink on which they thrive... The Psychology of the situation has long been recognized in England by the officials of the finest police organisation in the world the Metropolitan Police, which does not tolerate interference, but allows the fullest liberty in free speech."

Lackadaisy Enrichment

Man in truck with “wraptor"license plate, runs over female pro choice protestors on Friday, police speak to driver yet no arrest made

https://news.yahoo.com/truck-driver-rams-abortion-rights-022957605.html

Yeah, I think if you and all your coworkers find out you got fired via a press release, you should be allowed to sue the corporation who fired you.

Update on May 1st protests and how the french goverment handled them?

^ The May 1st protests were pretty violent esp. in Paris; two cops were set on fire (they're ok, one has 2nd degree burns), lots of destruction in city streets, and hundreds of injured protesters. The French gov is sticking to its M.O. of denying any police violence against protesters, emphasising protesters' violence and portraying it as mindless anti-democratic savagery rather than the result of their own anti-democratic policies.

There were more people protesting in the streets on Monday than at any other May Day protest in the past 20 years (by a large margin—7 to 10x more people than usual.) And the numbers are still impressive in terms of this current social movement—there were about 1.2 million people at the first protest against the pension reform in January, 900K at one of the February protests, around 1.1M on March 7 and I think 1.2M on March 23rd... We're in May and there were 800K people in the streets on Monday (using the police's probably low estimate). The first marches earlier this year were peaceful; people started destroying shit in March after the 49.3 (=the gov not letting elected representatives vote on the reform); in the following weeks we saw a brutal escalation of police violence + suppression of just about any means of non-violent protest, which results in more violence.

The vast majority of protesters are still peaceful, but in terms of providing context for the increased violence, well—people protested peacefully, peaceful protests got banned. People banged pots and pans, pots and pans got banned and confiscated. People started a petition on the National Assembly website which got a record number of signatures, the petition was closed before its deadline and ignored. MPs asked (twice!) for a national referendum on the reform to be held, their requests were denied. Electricity unionists cut power in buildings Macron was visiting, now he travels around with a portable generator. Unions tried to distribute whistles and red cards (penalty cards) to football supporters before the French Cup finale last week, so the ones who wanted could use them if Macron showed up (he ended up hiding and greeting the footballers indoors rather than publicly on the stadium lawn); the police prefecture tried banning union members from gathering outside the stadium to distribute these items (although the ban was struck down by the judiciary as it was illegal, like most bans these days...)

Confiscating saucepans was already so absurd it felt like a gratuitous fuck you, but now they're trying to prevent the distribution of pieces of red paper. Cancelling petitions that would have had no real impact anyway. Prosecuting people for insulting Macron. Arbitrarily arresting hundreds of nonviolent protesters to intimidate them out of protesting (guess who's left then?). The French gov is systematically repressing democratic or nonviolent means of making your opinion heard, and when people get more violent they're like "This is unacceptable, don't these terrorists know there are other means of expressing dissent??" Where? This week a 77-year-old man was summoned to the police station and will be forced to take a "citizenship course" for having a banner outside his house that read "Macron fuck you" (Macron on t'emmerde). Note that he would have been arrested (like the woman who was arrested at her home and spent a night in police custody for calling Macron "garbage" on Facebook) but they decided not to only because of his age.

So that's where we're at; on Monday two cops caught on fire (well, their fireproof suit did) after protesters threw a Molotov cocktail at them. (The street medic who tried to help them with their burns ended up getting shot by a cop's riot gun a few seconds later—with French police no good deed goes unpunished!) The media talked a lot more about this incident than about the fact that the cop who got most severely injured on that day (broken vertebrae) was injured by an explosive grenade that a colleague of his meant to throw at protesters (you can see it at the end of the video below). If police with all their protective gear get so badly injured by their own weapons, no wonder the worst injuries have been on the protesters' side. (nearly 600 injured protesters on May 1st, 120 severely, according to street medics.) I'm not including images of these incidents in the video but on May 1st a protester had his hand mutilated by a police grenade + a 17 year old girl was hit in the eye by a grenade fragment, may end up losing it (during the Yellow Vests protests, Macron's first attempt at repressing a social movement, 38 protesters lost an eye or a hand).

What you see in the video: cops charging the front of a march to tear a banner off people's hands then retreating and drowning the street in tear gas when protesters throw paint bombs at them (protesters have umbrellas because of police drones); at 0:30, a journalist saying "They're not even arresting him, just kicking him when he's down—they kicked him right in the face!" then police spraying with tear gas protesters who try to fend them off; at 0:46 when a protester being arrested asks a journalist if he's filming and starts reading out loud a cop's ID number, another cop shoves the journalist and throws him to the ground; at 0:54, an Irish journalist runs away from the police tear gas grenades that you hear going off, at 01:08, the incident mentioned above when a cop drops a grenade he tried to throw, which explodes in his group, breaking another cop's vertebrae. There's a lot more I'm not including, like how CNN said "there's so much tear gas in Paris, our foreign correspondent can barely breathe", how another journalist was hit by a sting-ball grenade (he was also bludgeoned on the head so hard it broke his helmet—even though cops know the people wearing helmets are journalists...), and yet another journalist who was calling out a cop for aiming at people's heads with his riot gun (which is illegal) ended up having the guy aim the riot gun at his head from 2 metres away (getting shot with this "less lethal weapon" from that distance would be lethal.)

All of these videos are from May 1st (most of them from this account monitoring police violence.)

So yeah, nonviolent protests followed by violent police repression and bans of nonviolent means of protesting result in more violent protests. The French government responds by a) pikachu surpris, b) condemning violent protesters and praising violent police to the skies, c) continuing to ban everything they can think of. Confiscating saucepans didn't work but confiscating pieces of red paper will do the trick! Let's prosecute people for bashing or burning an effigy of Macron, because banning symbolic violence always works to prevent actual violence! And this week after the May 1st protests we learnt that the gov is thinking of making street barricades illegal, because that'll definitely solve everything. It's going to be interesting for history teachers to teach students about the 1789 revolution that allowed us to take down an absolutist regime and become a republic, under a government that banned barricades because they see them as terrorist anti-republican structures.

^ Statue symbolising the French Republic (on Place de la République in Paris) dressed with a 'Macron resign' shirt by protesters on May 1st.

It's time to fight back!

LGBTQ+ folks and allies, our rights are under attack. The ACLU, which tracks anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the nation, has identified over 400 bills currently making their way through state Congresses and Senates. We must stand together against these horrific policies for the good of all queer people.

On March 31st, 2023, Queer Youth Assemble is planning protests across the nation to center youth voices and allow all queer people and allies to make their displeasure known.

Join us at marches in over 30 states (with more joining up every day!) as well as Washington DC. Turn up in large enough numbers so that legislators know that we will not stand for this.

Read and sign our List of Demands!

Find a march near you! Tumblr masterpost of marches can be found here!

Donate (we are raising money for transportation, organizing expenses, free masks, and ASL interpreters!)

Follow this page for updates and to see state marches featured.

To learn more, send an ask here or email [email protected]!

Find us on Instagram and Tiktok—@queeryouthassemble!

….I’ll be there for you at your lowest….

….and at your highest moments in time….

….Rooting you on….

….No matter if you feel like you are winning….

....or losing right now….

little things keeping us going

she walks the lonely street, stares at herself and thinks: “this is someone i don't want to know.”

U.S. Marshalls Spied on Abortion Protesters Using DATAMINR >

Twitter’s “official partner” monitored the precise time and location of post-Roe demonstrations, internal emails show.

DATAMINR, AN “OFFICIAL PARTNER” of Twitter, alerted a federal law enforcement agency to pro-abortion protests and rallies in the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, according to documents obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Internal emails show that the U.S. Marshals Service received regular alerts from Dataminr, a company that persistently monitors social media for corporate and government clients, about the precise time and location of both ongoing and planned abortion rights demonstrations. The emails show that Dataminr flagged the social media posts of protest organizers, participants, and bystanders, and leveraged Dataminr’s privileged access to the so-called firehose of unrestricted Twitter data to monitor constitutionally protected speech.

[Sam Biddle, The Intercept, May 15 2023]

I wanted to pay a little tribute to one of my favorite video games of all time :')

You can also grab a PDF of this on my itch.io for just $1!

Can we all pour one out for one of the most important unnamed characters of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker and that's Dr. Seward's housekeeper. That lady must have had no idea what the fuck was happening and she still had to feed everyone.

so something I’ve realized is I don’t like film/television to look too realistic, bc then it doesn’t feel as real. HD, where every pore and wrinkle is not only captured but lit by overhead stage lights, will never give the same effect as the hazy softness that film (or a good grain) will give you. I’d rather a puppet that’s clearly a puppet ambling across the set than a cgi counterpart. I’d rather watch a stuntman operate within human limitations or see handmade costumes that wrinkle. I don’t think it’s merely a preference of aesthetic, and while I’m not saying modern tech and computer adjustments do not have their merits, the root of the problem is that something grounded in such stubborn “realism” will never suspend my disbelief the way film did pre mid 2000s

You know what? I’m gonna say it. Delilah Briarwood was the most normal of the leadership of the Cerberus Assembly.

She just wanted to save her husband. The rest of them are trying to eat the gods. Or bringing in a living eldritch city to devour everything. Or indoctrinating kids and making them kill their families.

Awful people

mama's boy, mama's boy...