Glitch, where do you see it suggested that she visited his home? I’ve read a bunch of articles, and haven’t seen that. I do see the protesters repeatedly saying they have never threatened nor even spoken to the colonel, which would be important if it’s true.
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The comparison to a personal stalker is pretty specious, the charges may be related in some abstract ways, but apparently not at all in this case. Creating the image of Mary Anne as equivalent to a psycho ex-boyfriend mailing dead cats to his terrified ex is not helpful. Here’s another account in editorial form, admittedly from another supporter, but at least one that was there.
Here’s a pretty important passage:
Grady-Flores, a grandmother and self employed caterer, was clear with all of us as were we planning the witness that she was not going to be part of the action because she did not want to violate the OOP. She was going to stay on the other side of the road. She crossed over briefly to take a photo — still thinking that she was not on base property — and returned to the other side of the street.
After the Ash Wednesday witness calling for our government to stop the bombing and killing of innocent people was over, and we had all been cuffed and hauled off, Grady-Flores was walking down the road, on the other side of the street, when a police officer recognized her as one of the people who had an OOP to stay away from Evans and arrested her.
So let’s get the entire picture here.
This “order of protection” is for Col. Earl Evans, the commander of the Hancock Air National Guard Base in East Syracuse — who has never spoken to or met — any of the people against whom he has requested these orders of protections — much less been threatened by them.
At Grady-Flores’ trial the good Colonel testified that he was not threatened by any these people, nor was he afraid of them. The orders of protection are to “keep people out of the road,” he told the court.
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You’re missing the forest for the trees.
The story isn’t “grandmother gets jailed for peaceful videotaping”, or “stalker gets jailed for violating restraining order”.
It’s “US uses drones to practice targeted assassination in foreign countries”. She knows that - videotaping on a military base, or violating a restraining order telling her not to, are just tools she can use to get the word out. As are the followup appeals and even serving time. Good for her - non-violent protest, civil disobedience, and jury nullification are tools civilized citizens can and do use to effect change in popular opinion. Unjust laws are meant to be changed or broken, and sloppy targeted foreign assassinations are a reasonable thing to protest against.
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From the Popular Resistance article that this one cites.
The orders had been issued to “protect” Colonel Earl Evans, Hancock’s mission support commander, who wanted to keep protesters “out of his driveway.”
I admit, it does not state that she did, in fact, visit his home - it merely implies it. It could simply be poetic license and exaggeration on the part of Evans, but it also could be quite literally true. Unfortunately, we don’t have all the details.
See, if the article was about the protests themselves, that’d be the case.
But it’s not - the article was about Ms. Flores, and in that context it’s pretty hard to focus on anything other than the fact that a woman whose prior actions resulted in a restraining order got arrested for violating it. Everything else is ancillary.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get an article about the protests. Instead, we got an editorialization of an individual’s criminal violations of the law, which merely clouds the larger issue.
Leaving comments to posts on the internet doesn’t really do anything, unfortunately. For sites like Boingboing which do an admirable job in bringing attention to things like this ought to take things one step further. Maybe a link to the judges phone number, at least? A link to some activist organization combating this sort of thing? Anything, really.
So, if you want to call the judge, David S. Gideon to express your disapproval.
[mod edit: removed contact info. Link to public website]
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Let me get my head around this a sec.
So, the USA uses drones and other weapons of mass destruction to blast, bomb, shoot etc other nations into adopting and complying with their brand of democracy & freedom.
Back in the USA, this brave woman puts these freedoms to good use, maybe by suggesting there are other ways to going about this sort of business.
This becomes slightly embarrassing and mildly annoying for the authorities, most likely because they know she is right.
So, instead of just putting up with her right to protest, you know, exercising those freedoms that the USA tried to bomb into existence earlier, in other places, a Colonel and his goons hide behind the courts. So brave of them.
She must have been so very very dangerous.
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You seem quite willing, however to give him the benefit of the doubt. Personally, I don’t give a fig for laws if I believe them to be ridiculous, or wrongly applied, but each to their own.
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Well, she has good company…
at around 60 years of age, she was known as Mother Jones. In 1902 she was called "the most dangerous woman in America" for her success in organizing mine workers and their families against the mine owners. In 1903, upset about the lax enforcement of the child labor laws in the Pennsylvania mines and silk mills, she organized a Children's March from Philadelphia to the home of then president Theodore Roosevelt in New York.I wonder if the US will start creating a Special Zone for politicals in the
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The article is about Mrs. Flores - but the story is the drones. You’re focusing on one skirmish in a much larger conflict.
I have absolutely no doubt - without being more familiar with this woman and her situation than I’ve read in Cory’s article, and these comments - that she knew full well what she was doing, and did so on purpose, with a sound mind, and anticipated (if not expected) that incarceration was a possible outcome. The fact that “poor grandma get jailed for peaceful videotaping of protest” is sensational is almost certainly not an accident, nor is biased reporting on both sides, intentional or not. If you want to understand who does what why, and who reports which facts how - you have to step back and look not just at this event, but the context.
If you expected a totally ‘fair’ article about this, or any politically charged subject… you’re either optimistic, or naive. People who are truly disinterested in a particular topic, and might thereby offer a real balanced outcome, are generally disinterested in writing about that topic. If you want the real story, trust no single source - read everything, sort out the wheat from the chaff, and go to original sources.
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Apply this same logic to an anti-abortionist protesting at a clinic. In their point of view, the law has been wrongly applied in allowing abortions, and also in preventing them from picketing and harassing women in the parking lot and on the very steps of the clinic itself. Would you champion their right to violate the law in the name of their beliefs?
Law exists because we cannot rely upon the judgement of individuals. Anti-abortion protesters are just are passionate and driven as anti-drone protesters, but that doesn’t mean either party should be allowed to break the law in the course of their protestations.
If you believe a law is ridiculous, you challenge it legally and get it changed - you don’t merely defy it. Whether the law is that you can’t harass women seeking abortions, or if the law is that you cannot approach an individual who has requested and been legally granted a restraining order, if you believe it to be improper, the proper course of action is to contest it in a court of law, not willfully display contempt for the court and for the law.
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Goodness, you really believe that the Military is as vulnerable as a woman seeking medical treatment?
The Law in this case, that exists, has been chosen to be applied simply to stifle dissent.
But, if I understand your argument, you are suggesting that your leaders, in authority, are incapable of making appropriate decisions and judgements on a needs must basis, so one size fits all?
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Sez you. See, I don’t do reprehensible things because I believe them to be wrong. Me, personally. That is wrong. So I’m fine with that law. I think we are completely orthogonal on this subject, however. You do love to argue, though.
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No, I sincerely believe quite the opposite. But my beliefs aren’t relevant.
You claim that the law has been misapplied, and you claim you even know the motivation for the supposed misapplication of the law. These are serious claims - do you have rational proof to their effect?
Which is more likely? That an individual protester took their passionate demonstrations too far and consequently was served with a restraining order? Or that there’s some sort of secret collusion between the military and the courts wherin they have conspired to silence a single individual through abusing the law and meritlessly enacting a restraining order on her, for some vague reason?
Occam’s Razor would have us take the simpler explanation. I personally find it much easier to believe a passionate individual took rash actions that prompted the issuance of a restraining order than I do that the military and the courts would go to the effort and risk of quietly orchestrating an absurdly complex conspiracy for the sake of silencing a single disenting voice.
You do not understand my argument, it would seem.
Our leaders are human and flawed, but that does not excuse the dismissal of the rule of law. A want of accountability is not in and of itself a justification for the selective dismissal of law, nor does such dismissal produce accountability.
If we are ever to have a system of laws we can be proud of, we cannot simply resort to ignoring those aspects we find distasteful or improper. If change is to come about, it must be through behavior we can all agree is sound and proper.
Selectively ignoring the laws you personally dislike is grounds for anyone, anywhere to ignore any law they personally dislike. In contrast, lawfully enacting changes to the law is merely grounds for others to also lawfully enact changes.
If you wish to have a world in which people obey laws they disagree with, you yourself must obey laws you disagree with. If you don’t want antt-abortionists defying the law for their causes, you must be unwilling to defy the law for your own causes.
If you want peace, you do not achieve it through war. If you want justice, you do not achieve it through injustice. If you want people to obey the law, you do not achieve it through breaking the law.
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I simply believe a vengeful authority applied the law in the instance to stifle dissent.
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You are free to believe whatever you want, but if you expect anyone to take your beliefs seriously they need to be grounded in some degree of rational evidence.
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The evidence is away to do twelve months porridge.
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What we need is some of that non-harassing protesting like they have on the internets. That is really the only kind of protesting we should use.
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Also, more data here, including her sentencing statement and current address where she can receive support mail. And another address where she can receive support checks.
http://forusa.org/blogs/jim-murphy/drone-resister-sentenced-one-year-prison-bases-order-protection-begs-judgement/1298
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So long as you don’t break any Laws, mind.
