The very premise of the question irks me. According to Newsmax host, Steve Malzberg, the constitutional right of an individual stops when that person goes to work or put on a uniform.
In an interview with Iowa’s Republican congressman, Steve King, Malzberg argued that he disagrees with the coach of The 49ers who said that Kaepernick has a constitutional right to protest.
“No, not on the field. Not in uniform!” Malzberg exclaimed. “You know I can’t sit here with my fist in the air in a form of protest over something while I do my show. I’ll be fired! My boss would say you can’t do it!”
Malzberg then states that “there is no constitutional right for a freedom of expression when you’re in uniform and working for a football team.”
Of course Steve King totally agreed that the constitutional rights of Americans stop at employment. “I would fire them,” King said, of anyone who want to work for him while exercising their constitutional right to protest. King then went out on a limb to blame Kaepernick’s “Islamic girlfriend” for the changes in Kaepernick and for him asserting his constitutional right to protest.
Ferguson police are still trying to suppress the protesters and their constitutionally protected rights, and they are also trying to suppress the information about those protests.
On Sunday night, hours before a curfew went into effect, Ferguson police used tear gas in trying to break up ongoing protests. Streaming the events live was Mustafa Hussein, a student who works at a local all-volunteer music station, Argus Radio. The station is using video equipment it purchased to live-stream concerts to broadcast the protests in Ferguson.
Tonight, as tens of thousands of people around the world watched, Hussein was threatened by an officer wielding a weapon. “Get the fuck out of here! You get that light off or you’re getting shot with this!,” the man shouts. That portion of the live-stream was uploaded to YouTube. Undeterred, Hussein continued broadcasting. Subsequently, he can be heard reporting the incident to a different officer and other reporters. He then called his dad to tell him he loved him.
The fight in North Carolina wages on into its 4th week. Ever since the people of this state elected a Republican Governor, a Republican House and a Republican Senate, the wheels have begun to fall off in the name of, “balancing budgets”. Gov. Pat McCrory and his Right Wing cronies have had backroom and midnight legislation passed without even a vote in some of his key moves. “If you meet with lobbyists secretly but refuse to meet with us publicly, you are violating the constitution,” said Rev. William Barber, North Carolina President of the NAACP.
McCrory’s GOP surrogates have made certain to pass other legislation including dismantling the Head Start program, making the Voter I.D. national argument a law, overturning Obamacare, decreasing Unemployment benefits from a maximum of $500 a week to $350 weekly and decreasing the length of Unemployment from 26-weeks to 13-weeks.
Rev. Barber stated in an interview, “They have cut 30,000 children, Black and white, from the preschool rolls,”. He continued, “They are trying to restart the death penalty. And we have the highest number of people on death row who have been exonerated. They have ended Sunday voting and have rolled back early voting. When we looked at all this, we decided that we had to go to another level.” This is a systematic attack by McCrory and the Republican party of North Carolina but what they didn’t count on was the backlash that has ensued.
Thanks to Rev. Barber, national attention is being brought to the ‘unrest’ in Raleigh in which Blacks and Whites, young and old, clergy, students, professionals, blue collar and white collar workers have stood together at the Legislation Building in what has been deemed, “Moral Mondays”. As they sing Spirituals and chants during the protest, the police have handcuffed and ushered them off to prison. They’ve also stood and prayed as they get ready for the next wave of what they call “civil disobedience” toward change.
They are fighting decisions to make cuts to Medicaid, education, unemployment and voting rights. Together they lit candles. Each one representing groups affected by these cuts. That’s what has made this movement similar to the Civil Rights Movement when Dr. Martin Luther King became the center of “change”. You had All types of People in All walks of Life supporting what was seen throughout the country, throughout the world as the worst form of discrimination. We see again the same Movement with All People coming together against a group seemingly passing legislation to continue to keep the ‘Elitists’ for and above the lowly.
How can people achieve the smallest of dreams when they’ve been laid off of work and need assistance through unemployment to make ends meet? With a family of four or more, $350 week won’t do it. Or how about Medicare assistance? If the Republicans have their way, that assistance will be null and void, leaving thousands of elderly searching for financial and medical assistance elsewhere. Has the Republican Party come up with an alternative to offset these cost to the elderly? NO! The overwhelming viewpoint to the protesters is They don’t care. Haven’t we seen this before?
The Head Start program that has been a major benefit to single parents is under fire as well. The GOP is looking to disband it causing preschoolers to be left in the cold and the single parents searching for other means of educational options for their child/children. And everyone knows the pre-years are the most important for children to get a “Head Start” and be prepared for elementary school.
Now, with the Voter I.D. legislation about to become law as well, this State is just about ready to boil over with discontent for this Government. And as we head into week 4 of the “Moral Mondays” protest, it’s time for National Attention to be brought to North Carolina. B.E.T. interviewed Rev. Barber recently so it has begun. But now, Big Guns need to be brought in to solidify the movement.
Understand people, just because Rev. Barber has taken the lead in this protest, this is Not an NAACP movement. EVERYONE in North Carolina is being affected by the Republicans continued barrage of unfavorable legislation. Medicare cuts will affect the elderly whether you’re Black or White or Latino. The unemployment benefits will affect Everyone, Black or White or Latino. The Head Start Program affects mostly low income people, Black, White or Latino. The Voter I.D. law will affect Black, White or Latino. With sweeping legislation, the Republicans have come in and done exactly what the Nation is trying to do across the board, get richer, make their corporate buddies richer and keep the low income and disenfranchised beneath them without a chance of progressing.
The protesters at Occupy Wall Street get their First Amendment rights violated on a regular basis. They’re rounded-up, thrown to the ground, punched and pepper sprayed like animals by the police. Yet today, the New York Police Department is planning to sue any protester who “causes injury” to a police officer.
Reporting from the New York Post today quoted the president of NYPD’s Sergeant’s Benevolent Association as saying;
“In light of the growing violence attendant to the ‘Occupy’ movements across the country, particularly as evidenced by the recent events in Oakland, I am compelled to place these so-called ‘occupiers’ on notice that physical assaults on police officers will not be tolerated.”
Of course no one is advocating violence at any of the Occupy movement protests, and all the police departments across the country know this. Of all the thousands of protesters nationwide, it is almost impossible to find Occupiers demonstrating violence against the police. There may be a handful of incidents, but in the grand scheme of things, given the many thousands of protesters on the streets, two or three incidents nationwide is nothing to sue over.
So is this a plausible argument by the New York Sergeant Benevolent Association? Of course not.
The unnecessary amount of arrests police departments nationwide have taken part in, have nothing to do with unruly protesters, but everything to do with police trying to suppress the people’s rights to protest. If the police will just do their jobs, instead of intentionally perpetrating violence against peaceful protesters, then for the most part, calmness will prevail.
Maybe the New York Sergeant Benevolent Association should look at the instigators instead, and realize that the violence begins, for the most part, inside their own ranks.
You thought the New York Police Department was the only one attacking peaceful protesters for… protesting? Think again.
The San Francisco Police Department has successfully added their interpretation of “excessive police action” to the historic movement that is Occupy Wall Street, with their actions earlier tonight in California.
To chants of “The whole world is watching!”, police, apparently irritated with the peaceful crowd and their video cameras, took a page from the NYPD. They began destroying the Occupiers food supply, then later, tossed the protesters around as they made their arrests.
To serve and protect has taken on a whole new meaning, and it doesn’t seem to include the people at Occupy Wall Street.
Why is the New York Police Department beating up on the peaceful protesters at Occupy Wall Street. Well we’re sure there are a number of reasons, but when we came across this little piece of news, we had to do a double take and wonder if this may have had something to do with it.
It may be a simple coincidence, or it may be the perfect embodiment of exactly why thousands of protesters across the US are hitting the streets en masse under the banner of Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Earlier this year, financial giant JPMorgan Chase & Co. donated $4.6 million to the New York Police Department (NYPD) to “strengthen security in the Big Apple” and several months later, the NYPD conveniently arrests over 700 individuals, all at one time, involved in peaceful OWS protests.
JPMorgan Chase, of course, is already the epitome of what OWS protesters are speaking out against — the corporation was one of the first to receive taxpayer-funded federal bailout money to the tune of at least $12 billion from the Federal Reserve back in 2008. And meanwhile, millions of Americans are still unemployed or underemployed as the US economy continues its rapid descent into oblivion.
There is definitely something real fishy going on, when peaceful Americans, doing what this country was built on are gathered up, maced and locked up. Four million, six hundred thousand dollars sure buys a lot of fish!
Occupy Wall Street has gone nationwide, with protests today in Los Angeles and Maine. But the group of young people who started the march in New York didn’t take the day off today, they took their protests to the next level and were joined by various unions as well. A faction of the group in New York eventually ended up on the Brooklyn Bridge, less than a mile away from Wall Street.
Below is an unedited video showing some of the protesters, as they shut down the bridge. Reports suggests that some 400 people were arrested.
Occupy Wall Street started about 3 weeks ago by a group of individuals tired with the way Wall Street have manipulated the system and the negative way their actions have affected the economy.
Russell Simmons, who recently wrote an article demanding that the rich pay their fair share in taxes, is beginning to take another look at the 12 day old protest on Wall Street. In an interview today on MSNBC, Simmons, worth almost $350 million, told Martin Bashir;
… if I get involved really heavily in this one, we find the agenda and have a common ground… we can bring hundreds of thousands of people… small seeds are planted, but it could grow into something very big.”
Occupy Wall Street began as a small grassroot protest meant to send a message to the wealthy that middle class Americans are mad as hell, and they’re not gonna take it anymore! Since it started, the money controlled Media have totally ignored the protesters until recently, when unnecessarily aggressive crowd control measures by the New York police department got an entire segment on The Last Word on MSNBC.
Russell Simmons and a few hundreds of thousands more protesters will be a nice little addition.
On a recent visit to Canada, former vice president Dick Cheney was greeted with chants of “war criminal,” as Canada’s residents expressed their displeasure in the actions taken by the Bush Administration in Iraq and their blatant violations of the Geneva Convention through the Administration’s torture policy.
Dick Cheney appeared at The Vancouver Club, where attendees paid up to $500.00 to hear him speak. Referring to Mr. Cheney, one protester called him a terrorist, saying;
“…well you can say the The Vancouver Club is harboring a terrorist and a war criminal tonight cause I think crimes of state, can also be acts of terror. Terrorizing people in Iraq, terrorizing detainees and prisoners… so to borrow some of the rhetoric of the Bush Administration, they are harboring a terrorist.”
To block the entrance to the building where Cheney was giving his speech, protesters sat in the road and literally held the legs of attendees trying to gain access while police struggled to keep the pathway clear.
This should be Dick Cheney’s welcome everywhere he goes.
Not even a week after formally announcing his intentions to run for President of the United States, Rick Perry is already getting his share of protesters, and questions about Social Security caught Perry so off guard, that he stuffed his mouth with food to avoid answering.
Twenty four hours after arriving in New Hampshire, Perry and his group went to grab a bite to eat. Outside, a group of seniors from the New Hampshire Alliance For Retired Americans gathered on the sidewalk outside the Popovers on the Square restaurant, holding signs with slogans like “Another Texas idiot for sale,”
ABC reports what happened next:
As the presidential candidate from Texas walked into a local restaurant, Popovers on the Square, he was forced to shake hands with voters amid shouts of “Hands off Social Security and Medicare!” and “You’re a threat to America” from the anti-Perry forces who gathered just a few feet away from him. It was the first organized protest of this kind since Perry arrived in the Granite State.
Inside the café, Gail Mitchell and a companion grilled him: “You said Social Security was unconstitutional.”
“Social Security’s going to be there for those folks,” Perry answered his inquisitors, making reference to the elderly.
“But you said Social Security is unconstitutional,” Mitchell repeated.
“I don’t think I — I’m sorry, you must have,” Perry said before stopping himself.
Instead of elaborating, Perry stuffed a generous piece of popover in his mouth. (Perry called them “pop ups.”)
“I’ve got a big mouthful,” Perry said and then ordering a glass of water. He later tripped over one of the women standing at his side pressing him on Social Security.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Perry said to her.
It’s only the beginning Perry, hope you stocked up on the popovers!
This Youtube video by Moustafa Mahmoud shows a birds-eye view of what started out as a peaceful protest in Alexandria Egypt, until about 1:30 seconds into the video, when an individual walks up an alley, hands raised and jacket opened. A few moments later, he is shot by Egypt’s secret police.
The Youtube video is called, “Death in Alexandria.”
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