Goddamnit. Wish I lived in DC. Need a demonstration that there’s no such thing.
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Best possible outcome is to fight that law on 1A grounds and get it taken off the books.
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I was born and raised in the DC area. There IS such a thing but they’re being disingenuous in more than one way.
First, the various buildings housing Congresscritters’ offices are not “prohibited demonstration areas”, although you do need to get permission before occupying the buildings or their grounds. There is no blanket ban, unlike an actual prohibited area.
Second, the person projecting the image wasn’t in the building and may very well not have even been on the grounds at all. No, the sidewalk/street outside these buildings is not a “prohibited demonstration area” at all.
Third, the glaring elephant in the room is this was very obviously protected speech, under the 1st Amendment. No claims to harassment, public indecency, or the like are going to fly. So what, exactly, was the problem…?
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Nonononono… I think you miss my point. there is no such thing. I have zero intention of respecting any supposed law, even if it exists.
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Certainly. But lumps on thy noggin come with that stance, as a bonus ^^’. My point above was that while yes, those types of zone DO exist, they’re not what’s being presented by the Capitol Hill police.
Capitol Hill police are notoriously foul. The city police hate their guts for many excellent reasons.
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I wonder if they’ll find a way to apply it to someone “projecting” an informational protest wifi hotspot?
Asking for a friend…
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you can’t stop the signal
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Looks like a nice, and expensive setup. Hope they were just holding it for him until he gets out of jail. Suspect not.
I dunno, it looks like they were trying to peaceably assemble in order to petition their representatives for a redress of grievances.
How is this materially different than calling, emailing, or faxing members of Congress who work in that building? If this is demonstrating in a prohibited area, why aren’t they arresting all the lobbyists?
I get that there are places in DC that are restricted from
general protest because without the rules chaos would ensure - but
it still makes me uneasy.
I gather (not totally clear) that the equipment used was setup on
the street. Obviously, if they rented a billboard with this
message it would be protected. - Interesting hypothetical, though
- if someone projects words on your building from their building,
do you have a legal recourse to stop them?
The real charge, as we all know, is lèse majesté.
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Yes, where are my Verizon 5G is confirmed to destroy your subconscious robot and rek’dify a senate ads?
b> You can’t stop the signal.
You can’t hide it well when it’s defs not spring yet and each passing thing kicks up some trace matter (rocks, cats, auto suspension bushings) into the projection cone.
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some more details here.
apparently, the projection thing is NEW! and Improved! Bullshit dating from February.
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IANAL, but I’d imagine only if you can show actual harm, if the message is, itself, not illegal (exhortations to violence/crime, hate speech, etc.) and the projection does not originate on your property. So you almost certainly could stop a competitor who wanted to pull a fast one, but something like this…? I don’t believe so.
…This leads me to the idea of hiding the building’s actual entrance in detail, and projecting a false one elsewhere. Hmmmmm… Wile E., maybe you ARE a super-genius!
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Useful Information:
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In conjunction with the arrest, the projection equipment was seized. There’s a GoFundMe for legal fees & replacement gear here:
I had the privilege of collaborating with Robin on a participatory media project in the early 2000’s. He’s a great creative mind and sincere activist.
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