On 3/16/2010 1:51 PM, bj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> > From the CVUG comes a lot more information on the Burlington VT incident.
> Below ...
>
I finally had time to scan the reports, etc.
There is a constant ebb and flow in US cities and towns between civic
leaders, upright citizens and merchants on the one hand and those poor,
crazy to some degree, homeless and all the others of us who fall outside
the desires of the preceding group.
This is a case of a group finding a legally questionable method of
control and getting unquestioning, and undeserved, cooperation from
police and a municipal court. I can't imagine it would stand up to real
challenge in court. It's simply too far outside accepted and court
tested standards for abridging Constitutional guarantees of free speech
and assembly in the name of public safety and order.
The fact that a guy who fell afoul of it happens to be a street
photographer says nothing at all about "Americans are losing their right
to enjoy photography in public places"
San Francisco is in the middle of a debate on how to leiminate agressive
panhandling and behavior in general by folks hanging our for hours on
sidewalks in one neighborhood, a difficult and delicate business.
Dear old liberal Berkeley wrestled with a similar problem on Telegraph
Ave. for some time. They finally started an aggressive clean sidewalks
campaign, with small power sweepers run up and down the sidewalks day
and evening by city employees. Having to get up and move over and over
again turned out to be too much for most of the "problem" folks.
> "Dan Scott speaks up about the incident on Flickr:
>
Without testimony from both sides in a neutral, controlled setting, I
see no way to tell whether he was intrusive, a handful of local women
employees unreasonable or - most likely - some combination of the two.
A. Temperate Moose
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