Isn’t that called a sit-in? 
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As a public service to those who are as culturally deprived as I am (I had to google the lyrics), here is a link to a site that examines the meaning.
Peter Gabriel - Games Without Frontiers
BTW: Great post, topical reference 
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Touché
I’ve been agreeing with you on most of your comments, but you’re wrong here.
Abusing and invading the property and privacy of a private individual is completely different, under our laws, from “verbally abusing” and invading the property of a government institution.
The second very much falls under our First Amendment right. It’s practically why the First Amendment was written.
You can say “well, the right to protest against a government institution ends here”, but don’t rhetorically ask why there should be any difference between protesting an individual and an government institution. That’s just silly – we have many many laws detailing how they are different.
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Look, you really don’t seem to understand what she did, or why it is that she honestly does deserve to have some recompense for the illegality of her actions. A legal sit-in doesn’t block traffic. That video I supplied above was to show that the very first time you do so, you are breaking the law. You don’t really ever have the right, unless you paid to close a street, to be in a street or driveway to protest.
Here’s another example of a form of “protest” blocking traffic, and doing so illegally. This time it’s motorcycle riders going through stop signs as a group, and having one of their members block traffic from the other direction so their can all pass without waiting. There’s nothing legal about this action, and it’s a ticketable offense for he group.
So first, Ms Flores was illegally protesting (which it is quite possible to do) and then she broke an OoP telling her not to return to a specific address. It’s written on the OoP twice. Her excuse? She was just there to “take pictures” of other protestors. That doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all why she was there. If an OoP gets issued, you aren’t allowed to visit the named location unless you notify the court. BTW, the OoP was first issued in 2012. In all of 2013, she could have bothered to fight that and clear it legally. She never did.
You may be totally unhappy about the fact that the OoP was issued (because you back the politics of the person in question), but it was issued legally, and not lightly, because Me Flores chose - with 15 other people - to repeatedly perform an illegal act that put themselves at risk. I already wrote this isn’t the normal use of OoP’s, but they do get used this way - sometimes by abortion clinics when protestors get too close to them. Would you like to remove their protections as well? Because that’s what you’re suggesting. Ms Flores winning will make it harder for anyone to use an OoP for this reason — even the people whose politics you may like.
That’s pretty stupid, since Glitch has been here for years and has 1200 posts, and you’ve got 160 posts.
Disagree with Glitch, but keep the argument honest.
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Hey SamSam - The original OoP in this case was issued after the protestors had blocked gates on at least three occasions. There had been warnings, fines and arrests, and they continued to return. The order was issued to protect both parties, the protestors - who were putting themselves at physical risk by playing in traffic, and members of the base - whose egress was blocked.
It’s actually fire code that says you can’t block ingress or egress - for anyone. The reason is that if an emergency occurred you’d block the access for emergency vehicles to get to the site, and for people at the site to exit to safety. Their role in society doesn’t matter, and it’s OSHA that maintains all industries in both the private and public sector - even military bases - for these operational safety regulations.
This isn’t a question of “can you protest at a base” but “can you block egress” and you can’t.
This is exactly the kind of case that jury nullification was designed for.
Was the trial by jury, or is it a magistrate court?
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Man, somebody needs to update this article with some of the facts as a tl;dr for the folks that don’t want to dredge through all the comments, but I’ll do it any way:
1 - Protesters break the law (blocking the base entrance) on multiple occasions when protesting, resulting in an Order of Protection being levied against them.
2 - One of said protesters goes back to the base, crosses the road (and apparently, the property line) and in turn violates the Order of Protection (she says that this was unintentional, who knows if it’s true or not?). Gets arrested
3 - The protester is found guilty of violating the Order of Protection (intentionally or not, it doesn’t matter, she did in fact violate it).
4 - Due to her previous behaviour, where she refused to pay fines levied against her, the judge sentenced her to the maximum possible sentence.
It seems like any number of things could have prevented ms Flores from going to jail, while still quite actively expressing her first amendment right to protest. Hell, she could have quite happily protested at the base for many years, had she not blocked the base entrance in the first place.
Also, I agree with the poster (somewhere way above) in that I dislike the “grandmother of three” description, which has nothing to do with the story at hand other than to try to drum up sympathy for her.
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You didn’t read my post clearly. I was telling Glitch not to exaggerate in his rhetorical questions – which were silly questions.
As I said elsewhere, I do think he’s right that the event was a little more complex than Cory’s post made it out to be.
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The trial was by jury.
From the defendant’s statement at sentencing:[quote]Third, my jury trial represented a perversion of justice because the jury was forbidden to hear three key facts: all the protesters I photographed that day as their press liaison were acquitted I myself was previously acquitted for trespassing at the base because even the police could not specify the base boundaries. An acting Supreme Court judge ruled that the Order of Protection is invalid because its language is excessively vague and it shows no evidence of any threat[/quote]
Shaddack was the first to post the link to the article quoted above, and I have re posted it in this topic already, but with a thread of this size, it’s worth posting yet again. Full article here.
There was another of the articles linked in this thread where it was reported that the jury came back after some deliberation, asking what the word “near” “keep away” meant in the context of the language of the OOP. Apparently the judge rebuffed the jury’s question and reminded them they were there only to decide facts.
That last sentence is key to your suggestion that this case begged for jury nullification. The judge in this case appears to have implicitly forbidden it.
I will go back through the links and see if I can find the article where the interaction between the judge and jury was described and post it here as an edit. I can’t promise how quickly the edit will happen.
EDIT: Here is the promised quotation, with a re-link to the article from which it was taken. Also, I mis-remembered what it was the jury wanted the judge to define, so I have corrected it above, but in a way that makes it clear it is an edit.[quote]The guilty verdict was brought in the jury five minutes after they had asked the judge for a legal definition of "keep away,” and he had replied that they "are the sole triers of fact” — not giving them any explanation of something they obviously were not clear on. No one was really and if you asked at your arraignment for clarification on what specifically the order meant on certain points you were derided by the judge.[/quote]
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I never figured out any specific reference to these lyrics, only the general world-war-eyness.
I whole heartedly agree about the use of sympathetic descriptives. Ms Flores is frequently referred to as both a Christian and a grandmother. Both those descriptives are meant to gain sympathy, but descriptives used this way are often deceptive. We have no idea what kind of person she is just because she claims the titles “Christian” and “grandmother”. Before anyone claims “straw man” at me, I’m not claiming Ms Flores is like these examples - I’m saying these examples exist. So, while a term may give you a mental picture of a person, it may not be the right one.
I just wrote in this parallel thread, how the Christian Science Monitor wrote (in the very first line of an on-line article) an untrue descriptive about a victim. They were also seeking sympathy, and that weakened their story in my eyes - a real shame because I agree that attack was awful. Bloating a story to gain sympathy may work, but it’s an underhanded tactic.
Here’s what the first line of this article says:
Mary Anne Grady Flores, a grandmother from New York State, was sentenced to a year in prison for nonviolently recording a likewise nonviolent protest over the training of drone pilots at Hancock Air Base near Syracuse.
More truthfully, it should say this:
Mary Anne Grady Flores was sentenced to a year in prison for breaking an Order of Protection while recording a non-violent protest over the training of drone pilots at Hancock Air Base near Syracuse.
Note: If I was feeling snarky, I would’ve said, “non-violent (but still illegal by fire code) protest.” after all, I included the fact that it was non-violent.
Here’s an article that has a photo of how the protestors stand. They fully block the road leading to the gates with themselves and signage. This article notes that the 2013 acquittal was the first such acquittal since people had begun protesting in this fashion in 2009. Ms Flores, in her closing argument, was referring to the one time five protestors (a small group) were let go, and that group had no OoP against them. Legally they could be at the base, just not blocking the gates. Ms Flores was ultimately tried on different charges and is blurring the issue.
It was a jury trial,with a six member jury. They found her guilty.
Guilty as charged, Your Honor. I really don’t understand what Horribly Wrong Thing she did to get longer sentence than many real criminals.
A legal protest is often a rather ineffective thing to do. It is easy to make laws and bylaws and regulations that push virtually anything resembling noticeable action into the area of illegality. Privatize the area where the protesters traditionally converge, to someone who is ideologically aligned with you (or money/power-linked or so), and voila, trespassing galore; that’s only one of the favorite techniques.
Quote from the linked article:
Lenny Parker, safety officer for the Albany-Schenectady Hog Club, does not advocate the practice but says it is sometimes done to keep a group together. Parker also teaches motorcycle safety at Hudson Valley Community College.
“Technically it’s not really legal,” he said. “Sometimes it’s safer to block the road so people don’t get into the middle of a group of motorcyclists. Sometimes it’s done to be safe. It’s not done to be obnoxious.”
Police might stop a group that blocked traffic, he said, but he says officers will rarely ticket for the offense.
Apparently it is not as gravely bad thing to do. Gray area, yes; Big Bad Thing, no.
It does not matter only if you value the letter of the law over its spirit, and the law itself over the wider social context.
She assumed the more logical version of the layout of the Invisible Border. Like the prosecutor himself did. Like the jury did, too.
Not lightly? If it was so gravely important, why the wording was not more precise? The jury apparently had to ask for clarification.
Putting themselves at risk is a common tactics during protests. Serves also as a demonstration of commitment. Israel will never exorcise that bulldozed girl’s ghost.
I am suggesting a more precise wording, more restrained use, and more context-aware sentencing. Using an innocent mistake to get rid of one troublemaker is a wrong use of a tool that if used properly is actually beneficial. It is not Me Flores who is the bad actor here; it is the khakibrain commander and the judge. I hope she appeals and wins, and gets the OoP itself declared illegal.
a) The base has multiple gates. The Officer Khakibrain was complaining that they - oh, the horror - had to open another gate. Oh the crime-worthy level of inconvenience!
b) This kind of protest is nothing like welding themselves to the gate and holding it shut by not-quickly-undoable force (then you would be right). At the protests I saw, and they were large filled-main-square kinds, the crowds readily made way for ambulances when needed. I assume this one little crowd can readily vacate the road in seconds if an emergency vehicle approaches or if the base itself, which I assume has a considerable space between the gate and the structures within, goes up in flames.
So the letter of The Holy Fire Code is violated but the spirit stays untouched - the emergency service can get in, the people can get out.
The fire (or building? not sure) codes in some areas even prohibit you from installing low-voltage wiring in your own home, without a permit. So even the in-principle good thing can be abused as a permit-fee mill, or for other purposes.
Don’t just look at the letter of things; the underlying meaning is more important, and that’s why there are the juries. That’s why they have jury nullification powers. The question is why they are coerced into not using that (and not even told they have that option) even when the case just screams for that, why the judges so often instruct (often in an intimidating way) to only consider a narrow subset of the facts, and why admitting knowledge of jury nullification existence is a quick way to get out of the jury duty.
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Look I won’t argue all day with you, because it’s clear that we won’t agree. She has broken the law on multiple occasions, and because she’s doing it in the name of something you approve of, you don’t care at all. You support her actions. The problem for your argument is: she could have protested without breaking any laws at all. So she is a “real criminal” with unpaid fines, a history of criminal trespass, and more. You’re going to stretch the limits to try to find a way to make this somehow in favor of Ms Flores. It really isn’t.
You even pull quoted someone from my source saying “Technically it’s not really legal” as though them saying it somehow made this situation more legal. It doesn’t. Neither one of these is a “grey area”. The riders who get a police escort do so by requesting one in advance. I wrote in my post directly to you, “You don’t really ever have the right, unless you paid to close a street, to be in a street or driveway to protest.” That’s exactly the same concept. Neither party is behaving legally - either a sit-in in a street or riders with a blocker need to get legal clearance to do so. You can’t protest in a fashion that may cause physical harm to others. I also wrote elsewhere that Ms Flores had a year to contest and clear that OoP before this event happened. She’s just riding the publicity, and the judge is upset that she’s using the courts this way.
Clearly you haven’t looked at the OoP that I did post a link to up above. Here it is again, so you won’t have to hunt. For the original OoP she was charged with both trespass and disorderly conduct. The OoP only has one address specifically noted on it, and that one is the base (6001 E. Molloy Rd. Syracuse, NY feel free to Google it). There was no “invisible border” - there’s only one road that leads in to the base. The base has a main gate, and it’s the drive up to that gate which protestors have been blocking. (you can see a photo I already supplied of that here).
BTW, if you want more images of what it’s like trying to get into Hancock, I suggest you Google the phrase “gates into Hancock Base”. The results might surprise you . . . or not.
Fire codes require that emergency vehicles know which entrance they are expected to use at major gated facilities. You can’t block emergency vehicle access, or egress from people who may need to leave a location. You may not like the military, but that’s the law, and that same law protects you.
The jury wasn’t confused. Six people found her guilty. It’s her press (specifically Ms Flores) claiming that they were “oh so confused”. Have you ever even served on a jury? I have. Don’t assume they were coerced. Her own claims about what they didn’t hear are preposterous. The other arrests are unrelated to her charges (they were acquitted for a different reason unrelated to the OoP against her), so there was no reason for that information to be entered into the trial record.
I support the Geohotz’s actions in breaking Sony’s console bootloader. It is against the law, I consider it a better alternative to being law-abiding. Many other such examples that The Law is quite often not worth the respect it gets from law-fetishists.
And I support the dronebuster grandma.
We had a case here, not so long ago, of a bus driver who was defacing the political ads on his bus. He got busted, paid the damage but refused to serve the public works (the judge was the wife of one of the affected politicos). He was ordered to go to jail; he refused, “hiding” instead (actually, he was living in his town in plain view, waiting until someone rats him out, which did not happen to his considerable surprise), until he gave himself up to a pair of cops in front of cameras at some protest in the capital (and was sorry for the cops that he is making them into the bad guys). Now he is sort of a national hero, and at every subsequent elections the posters are being decorated with antennae on heads, to complement the fake smiles. At that time I carry a felt-tip pen for that purpose; the artificial fake smiles are IRRITATING me to the core.
A disrespect to a widely despised authority can make you a national hero.
It is. Not strictly legally, perhaps; though I hope the appeal court finds enough holes in the OoP to overturn it. But morally she has the upper hand over the drone operators. Her actions inconvenienced a few and irked some officer; their actions killed.
If it is technically illegal but mostly or totally not enforced, it is a grey area. There are quite some laws in the books that people who violate them, and even the cops, do not know they exist. Another group is the laws that exist but the violations are considered a better alternative; the motorbike convoys are an example, see the talkbacks below, few ones are negative; in this specific case it is safer to have a blocker holding up the traffic than to break the convoy. The cops know it.
The judge has nobody but himself to blame. He could’ve defused it with minimal interest of the media. He decided otherwise and now has all the upset he can eat and then some more. I don’t cry for him.
The base extends over part of the road in a then-nonobvious way. (Signs were installed since.) This is the invisible border I mentioned, the one line that was not evident, and the one that’s in dispute.
Yes, I saw the photo.
I specifically mentioned that the protesting group was fully capable and presumably willing to make space for an eventual emergency vehicle, should that appear. The time to free the road, according to the layout of personnel and transparents on the road, can be reasonably expected to be counted in seconds. That for me does not count as blocking. If I stay in the doorway, and step aside when a fireman comes, do I block access to the firemen?
The jury was confused, according to here (posted earlier by @davide405). The article is written by her supporter, so you are free to discount it. The jury wanted to ask for a legal definition of a statement, and was brushed off.
Could not, no such concept in my country.
Few people have the courage to stand up to the Authority, as shown in e.g. the famous Milgram experiment. The usual reaction, when receiving instruction from the judge, is to obey. It requires both the knowledge that they don’t have to, and the courage to, to not obey.
The usual trick of the prosecution, to consider “irrelevant” anything that could portrait the defendant in more positive light than desired or to provide a wider context that would be similarly undesirable. Nothing new under the sun.
Edit: From the actual OoP you linked:
Refrain from assault. stalking. harassment, aggravated harassment, menacing. reckless endangerment, strangulation, criminal obstruction of breathing or circulation, disorderly conduct. criminal mischief, sexual abuse, sexual misconduct, forcible touching. intimidation, threats or any criminal offense or interference with the victim or victims of . or designated witnesses to, the alleged offense and such members of the family or household of such victim(s) or witness(es) as shall be specifically named Earl A. Evans;
Sorry that I am laughing now but I imagined a little old lady attempting to strangle a trained military officer!
Apparently the judge considered it so important he did not even bother using another form than what he already had on hand for cases of direct interpersonal violence. I assume that the comical effect was unintentional.
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You ever crossed a grandmother, or know of anyone who dared? They’re bad-ass is why.
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You’re really hung up on the fire code violation.
Do you actually believe that “breaking the fire code,” even several times, is actually worth a year in jail?
Do you actually believe that this woman standing near a gate (one of many) actually put many lives in danger?
Jesus, the number of times I’ve smoked a cigarette just outside a fire exit – I should be in Guantanamo by now.
No. Seriously. She’s not being locked up for a year just because “you can’t block an egress.” That’s a ridiculous interpretation of the facts.
Sorry, the Supreme Court already decided that buffer zones around abortion clinics violate the First Amendment. So it’s ok for protestors to crowd around Planned Parenthood doors now, but protesting near a base gets you a year in prison.
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Actually, the Milgram experiment isn’t quite as clear in its results as most people believe. The Wiki entry only mentions the issues with the results in passing, but this Discover Magazine article has a much more in-depth explanation - Milgram had 24 different variations of his experiment, and in over half of those, more than 60% of the subjects refused to obey. Not to mention the other issues with methodology.
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Look, I realize I may seem to you like the lowly dissenting opinion here, but I’m not. The jury agreed to find her guilty after hearing the facts relating to her case, and that’s what really matters. Ms Flores (and her publicity team) are just trying to skew the information.
You may not like having to admit the fact that she broke the law, but she did, and that’s what got her into trouble. The five other protestors arrested that day were acquitted because there were only five in attendance that day, so you could get around them in an emergency (that’s why I’m harping on fire codes!!!). That’s the only time since protests began in 2009 that any arrests were acquitted. Ms Flores was tried for a different reason, she broke the OoP, and that’s why the information about the other acquittal (unrelated legally to her OoP) wasn’t allowed at her trial.
I never said she was, “locked up for a year just because “you can’t block an egress.”” I said, very specifically, that she was locked up for a year because she broke an existing Order of Protection, and had already failed on multiple occasions to pay fines — you can go back and check.
Have you even bothered to look at the way that the protestors block those gates, or are you just making assumptions? I already recommended to a different person that they image Google “gates into Hancock base”. Doing so may clear up this whole thing for you. This isn’t like you having “a cigarette just outside a fire exit” — it’s people lying in the street blocking traffic, and holding up signs as actual barricades saying “STOP” as the entire road is blocked. Go take a look.
You’re not schooling me on anything.
SCOTUS didn’t allow buffer zones, and said in their summation (which I read in full at the time, did you?) that partially they wouldn’t allow them because existing laws already protected egresses (much like this situation, huh - go fig’). Blocking them was already an arrest-able offense. If you read everything else I wrote about SCOTUS’s buffer zone decision, you’ll know that I believe fully that it was wrong, and gave preferential treatment to the protestors over the people seeking protection at a private medical facilities. I never believe the law should give preferential treatment — no matter whether I agree or disagree with the parties concerned. To allow Ms Flores to simply not pay fines and ignore an OoP is to give preferential treatment. Also, as I’ve already written, if she’s opposed to a law, that’s the ONLY law she should be breaking, and she should be willing to accept legal penalties. Breaking other laws may have the unintentional effect of weakening well-written laws used to protect people, and that’s a bad thing.
BTW, if she finally gets her fines paid, they’ll probably lower the sentence, or call it “time served” and stick her on probation. Again, as I already wrote, the judge was clearly not happy with her repeatedly using the court for publicity’s sake.
Now, there really isn’t anything else I can say here, so I think I’m probably done. If you respond, I will read it, but I’m getting tired of repeating myself.
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