“Comfort Women” aren’t unique to Japan and Korea. In the US military they’re called service women.

As a South Korean court decides that Japan owes more compensation to the Korean women it abducted during WWII to serve as “Comfort Women” for the Japanese troops, Americans should own up to the reality that all militaries rely on involuntary prostitution and gang rape to motivate their soldiers.

From antiquity through the Napoleonic Wars, through America’s Civil War to its imperial conquests westward and abroad, and until World War One immobilized warfare, “comfort women” were called “camp followers.” US servicemen in Vietnam established a sex industry in Southeast Asia that is fertilized still today by veterans of all nationalities. But while America’s Defense Department outsources more and more of its functions to contractor profiteers, it has moved the sexual services in-house. This shifts the customary impact on victim populations unto another consumable pool of sexual prey called FELLOW SOLDIERS.

In brief the scheme is simple: Recruit young women, let male soldiers to rape them, replenish as needed. Mission Accomplished as they say. Among your female grunts, purge would-be careerists to ensure you are trafficking in only the age of vulnerability suited to your comfort-seekers. That perverse finess is of course the giveaway.

In the US military, 100% of women are sexually harassed or raped. Officials say the figure is 70%, or they discount attacks as cases of harassment and not rape. This allows service women who chose not to report their rapes to save face, and it ameleorates the stigma which otherwise would fall on every woman in uniform. Like the single blank bullet issued to firing squads to ease the conscience of every member allowing them to believe their gun did not chamber a live and fatal bullet. The confidential medical records say the frequency of sexual victimhood is actually 90%, but that suggestes an improbable paucity of unreported cases. In the civilian world, it’s believed that half of all rapes go unreported. Assuming a correlation, how can you have twice as many as 90%?

Besides addressing the rape culture endemic to professioonal soldiering, a remedy suggests itself in at least pretending to care about the well being of female soldiers. For a start, America’s military branches could easily relax the basic training requirements for women. The current standards, which pander to a feminist insistance on a physical equality of the genders, quickly destroy all female recruits. The same backpack weight loads of boot camp, which eventually debilitate men’s backs and knees by the time they’re 40, cripple women before they’re 25. An obscenely high percentage of women have to be med-boarded out of active duty with destroyed backs, ankles and wrists. And the female re-enlistment rate is abysmal. You’d think the army, navy, air force and marines would want to retain trained soldiers. Unless women are more valuable to them young, untrained, and uninitiated.

Comfort Women and Camp followers suffered attrition from the natural consequences of communicable disease and abuse, allowing for a regular turnover of fresh stock. Pretending your soldiers don’t consume comfort women means having to be duplicitous about where you are dumping your bodies.

Of course it was the 7th cavalry at Nogun Ri

Even the rightest wing-est extremist in Texas don’t hold a candle to Some Colorado Wingnuts, the ones who call Natives “prairie niggers” or “wagon burners”, especially when any negative reviews of the Seventh Cavalry massacres. Like Wounded knee, a vengeance quest for Custer and a bunch of his homicidal lunatic troopers got their own asses sent to Hell. And before that, at the Little Ouachita, murdering men, women and children at a mostly Cheyenne winter encampment. Must not criticize heroic asswipes like Custer. Oh, that song they adopted, Garryowen, that’s about a really rowdy  custom (performed by the lads of Garryowen, a town in Ireland) of getting drunk and beating up on cops. Anyhoo, I got this from Wiki because it’s easy. Sue me. It’s about another massacre and why the people of Korea aren’t as enthusiastic about the U.S. Big Brother as the South Korean Government. Hint: it’s because the corrupt U.S. Government pays the S. Korean Puppet Government to pretend to like us.

The No Gun Ri massacre (Hangul??? ??? ?? ??; Hanja?????????; RRNogeun-ri minganin haksal sageon) occurred on July 26–29, 1950, early in the Korean War, when an undetermined number of South Korean refugees were killed in a U.S. air attack and by small- and heavy-weapons fire of the 7th U.S. Cavalry at a railroad bridge near the village of Nogeun-ri (Korean: ???), 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Seoul. In 2005, a South Korean government inquest certified the names of 163 dead or missing and 55 wounded, and added that many other victims’ names were not reported. The South Korean government-funded No Gun Ri Peace Foundation estimated in 2011 that 250–300 were killed, mostly women and children.

The incident was little-known outside Korea until publication of an Associated Press (AP) story in 1999 in which 7th Cavalry veterans corroborated survivors’ accounts. The AP also uncovered declassified U.S. Army orders to fire on approaching civilians because of reports of North Korean infiltration of refugee groups. Some details were disputed, but the massacre account was found to be essentially correct. In 2001, the U.S. Army conducted an investigation and, after previously rejecting survivors’ claims, acknowledged the killings, but described the three-day event as “an unfortunate tragedy inherent to war and not a deliberate killing”. The army rejected survivors’ demands for an apology and compensation. United States President Bill Clinton issued a statement of regret, adding the next day that “things happened which were wrong”.

South Korean investigators disagreed with the U.S. report, saying that they believed that 7th Cavalry troops were ordered to fire on the refugees. The survivors’ group called the U.S. report a “whitewash”. The AP later discovered additional archival documents showing that U.S. commanders ordered troops to “shoot” and “fire on” civilians at the war front during this period; these declassified documents had been found but not disclosed by the Pentagon investigators. American historian Sahr Conway-Lanz reported that among the undisclosed documents was a letter from the U.S. ambassador in South Korea stating that the U.S. military had adopted a theater-wide policy of firing on approaching refugee groups. Despite demands, the U.S. investigation was not reopened.

Prompted by the exposure of No Gun Ri, survivors of similar alleged incidents from 1950–51 filed reports with the Seoul government. In 2008, an investigative commission said more than 200 cases of alleged large-scale killings by the U.S. military had been registered, mostly air attacks

If you’re a vet from that arena, and was above the rank of captain at the time, I won’t give two thirds of a sex act about your damn feelings.

Occupy v. Martinez (Plaza Protest Ban) 2016 US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals Decision AFFIRMING Prelim Injunction


Yesterday I published the federal judge’s order to grant the 2015 preliminary injunction against the Lindsey Flanigan Courthouse. Since that time the city motioned to dismiss, there were show cause hearings, and depositions, and an appeal to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. On April 8, 2016 the appeals court AFFIRMED the preliminary injunction. As a result this legal action is on the road to becoming a permanent injunction, to be decided at trial this April. The prospects look promising, based on how the appelate judges schooled our First Amendment adversaries. I’m reprinting their full decision below.

In particular you might enjoy Judge McHugh’s citing of US Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts, writing in 1939 for the majority, in a decision to uphold public first amendment rights in Hague v. [AFL-]CIO. Robert affirmed that streets were traditional free speech areas:

“Wherever the title of streets and parks may rest, they have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions. Such use of the streets and public places has, from ancient times, been a part of the privileges, immunities, rights, and liberties of citizens. The privilege of a citizen of the United States to use the streets and parks for communication of views on national questions may be regulated in the interest of all; it is not absolute, but relative, and must be exercised in subordination to the general comfort and convenience, and in consonance with peace and good order; but it must not, in the guise of regulation, be abridged or denied.”

Here’s the full 2016 opinion rejecting Denver’s appeal of our federal injunction:

Document: 01019599889 Date Filed: 04/08/2016

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT

_________________________________

ERIC VERLO; JANET MATZEN; and FULLY INFORMED JURY ASSOCIATION,

Plaintiffs – Appellees,

v.

THE HONORABLE MICHAEL MARTINEZ, in his official capacity as Chief Judge of the Second Judicial District,

Defendant – Appellant,

v.

THE CITY AND COUNTY OF DENVER, COLORADO, a municipality; ROBERT C. WHITE, in his official capacity as Denver Chief of Police,
Defendants – Appellees.

_______________

FILED ?United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit

April 8, 2016

Elisabeth A. Shumaker Clerk of Court

No. 15-1319

_________________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Colorado ?(D.C. No. 1:15-CV-01775-WJM-MJW)
_________________________________

Stephanie Lindquist Scoville, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General for the State of Colorado, Denver, Colorado (Cynthia H. Coffman, Attorney General; Frederick R. Yarger, Solicitor General; Matthew D. Grove, Assistant Solicitor General; Ralph L. Carr, Colorado Judicial Center, Denver, Colorado, with her on the briefs) for Defendant – Appellant.

David A. Lane, Killmer, Lane & Newman, LLP, Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiffs – Appellees.

Wendy J. Shea, Assistant City Attorney; Geoffrey C. Klingsporn, Assistant City Attorney; Evan P. Lee, Assistant City Attorney; Cristina Peña Helm, Assistant City Attorney, Denver City Attorney’s Office, Denver, Colorado, filed a brief on behalf of Defendants – Appellees.
_________________________________

Before BRISCOE, McKAY, and McHUGH, Circuit Judges.
_________________________________

McHUGH, Circuit Judge.
_________________________________

This is an interlocutory appeal challenging the district court’s grant of a preliminary injunction, enjoining in part the enforcement of an administrative order (Order) issued by Defendant-Appellant Judge Michael Martinez, acting in his official capacity as Chief Judge of the Second Judicial District of Colorado (Judicial District). The Order prohibits all expressive activities within an area immediately surrounding the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse in Denver (Courthouse). Plaintiffs-Appellees Eric Verlo, Janet Matzen, and the Fully Informed Jury Association (collectively, Plaintiffs) sought the preliminary injunction to stop enforcement of the Order against their expressive activities. Following an evidentiary hearing, the district court enjoined enforcement of a portion of the Order as against Plaintiffs. The Judicial District now appeals.

Based on the arguments made and evidence presented at the preliminary injunction hearing, we hold the district court did not abuse its discretion in granting Plaintiffs’ motion in part. Although we affirm the district court’s order granting a limited preliminary injunction, we express no opinion as to whether a permanent injunction should issue. Instead, we provide guidance to the district court and the parties regarding the factual inquiry and the applicable legal standard relevant to that question on remand.

I. BACKGROUND

The genesis of this case is an incident involving nonparties. On July 27, 2015, two men were distributing pamphlets on the plaza outside the Courthouse (Plaza). The pamphlets contained information about jury nullification, a practice in which a jury refuses to convict a defendant despite legal evidence of guilt because the jury members believe the law at issue is immoral. 1 Both men were arrested and charged with jury tampering in violation of Colorado law. See Colo. Rev. Stat. § 18-8-609(1) (“A person commits jury-tampering if, with intent to influence a jury’s vote, opinion, decision, or other action in a case, he attempts directly or indirectly to communicate with a juror other than as a part of the proceedings in the trial of the case.”).

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1 Jury nullification has been defined as “[a] jury’s knowing and deliberate rejection of the evidence or refusal to apply the law either because the jury wants to send a message about some social issue that is larger than the case itself or because the result dictated by law is contrary to the jury’s sense of justice, morality, or fairness.” Jury Nullification, Black’s Law Dictionary (10th ed. 2014).
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Plaintiffs, like the men who were arrested, wish to distribute literature relating to and advocating for jury nullification to individuals approaching the Courthouse who might be prospective jurors. Fearing they too would be subject to arrest, Plaintiffs brought suit against the City and County of Denver and Robert C. White, Denver’s police chief, in his official capacity (collectively, Denver) to establish their First Amendment right to engage in this activity. On the same day they filed suit, Plaintiffs also moved for a preliminary injunction, seeking to restrain Defendants from taking action to prevent Plaintiffs from distributing jury nullification literature on the Plaza. Two days later, Plaintiffs amended their complaint to also challenge the Order issued by the Judicial District.

That Order, entitled Chief Judge Order Regarding Expressive Activities at the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse, states in relevant part:

The Court has the responsibility and authority to ensure the safe and orderly use of the facilities of the Second Judicial District; to minimize activities which unreasonably disrupt, interrupt, or interfere with the orderly and peaceful conduct of court business in a neutral forum free of actual or perceived partiality, bias, prejudice, or favoritism; to provide for the fair and orderly conduct of hearings and trials; to promote the free flow of pedestrian and vehicular traffic on sidewalks and streets; and to maintain proper judicial decorum. Those having business with the courts must be able to enter and exit the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse freely, in a safe and orderly fashion and unhindered by threats, confrontation, interference, or harassment. Accordingly, the Court hereby prohibits certain expressive activities on the grounds of the Courthouse, without regard to the content of any particular message, idea, or form of speech.

Prohibited Activities: The activities listed below shall be prohibited in the following areas: anywhere inside the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse, including courtrooms, corridors, hallways, and lobbies; the areas, lawns, walkways, or roadways between the Courthouse and public sidewalks and roads; and any areas, walkways, or roadways that connect public sidewalks and roads to Courthouse entrances or exits. This includes, but is not limited to, the Courthouse entrance plaza areas on the east and west sides of the Courthouse as depicted in the highlighted areas of the attached map.

1. Demonstrating; picketing; protesting; marching; parading; holding vigils or religious services; proselytizing or preaching; distributing literature or other materials, or engaging in similar conduct that involves the communication or expression of views or grievances; soliciting sales or donations; or engaging in any commercial activity; unless specifically authorized in writing by administration; ?

2. Obstructing the clear passage, entry, or exit of law enforcement and emergency vehicles and personnel, Courthouse personnel, and other persons having business with the courts through Courthouse parking areas, entrances, and roadways to and from Courthouse and Courthouse grounds;

3. Erecting structures or other facilities, whether for a single proceeding or intended to remain in place until the conclusion of a matter; or placing tents, chairs, tables, or similar items on Courthouse grounds; except as specifically authorized in writing by administration; and ?

4. Using sound amplification equipment in a manner that harasses or interferes with persons entering or leaving Courthouse grounds or persons waiting in line to enter the Courthouse. ?

The Order was accompanied by an image depicting an aerial view of the Courthouse and its grounds, with the areas in which the Order prohibited expressive activity highlighted in yellow (Restricted Areas).

The Courthouse is bordered on its north side by Colfax Avenue and on its west side by Fox Street. Both Colfax Avenue and Fox Street have public sidewalks running along the perimeter of the Courthouse. Immediately to the east of the Courthouse lies the Plaza. The Plaza is bisected by Elati Street, which is closed to traffic other than police vehicles. Elati Street runs through a large circular area (Main Plaza) between the Courthouse and the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center (Detention Center), which houses pretrial detainees. The Main Plaza contains planters, benches, public artwork, sidewalks, and gravel areas and is suitable for public gatherings.

Of relevance to this appeal are the Restricted Areas, which include an arc-shaped walkway and planter area immediately to the east of the Courthouse. The arced walkway runs from the corner of Elati Street and Colfax Avenue in a curved path across the front of the Courthouse and ends where it intersects with an open area in front of the Courthouse containing planters and benches (the Patio), which also forms part of the Restricted Areas. The Patio provides access to the main entrance on the east side of the Courthouse. Thus, the Restricted Areas encompass only the portions of the Plaza closest to the Courthouse.

The Judicial District opposed Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction and, in doing so, defended the Order. In contrast, Denver entered into a joint stipulation (the Stipulation) with Plaintiffs. The Stipulation asserted that the entire Plaza between the Courthouse and the Detention Center—specifically including the Restricted Areas—was “a public forum and any content-based regulations must be narrowly drawn to effectuate a compelling state interest and reasonable time, place and manner regulations.” It further acknowledged that Plaintiffs were entitled to distribute jury nullification literature on the Plaza and pledged that Denver would not “arrest or otherwise charge Plaintiffs for handing out literature regarding jury nullification so long as Plaintiffs do not violate Colorado law or Denver’s Revised Municipal Code when they are handing out their literature.” The Stipulation specifically referenced the Judicial District’s Order, indicating Denver did not “intend to enforce [the Order] as written and will only impose content and viewpoint neutral reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on the use of the Plaza, and/or other exterior areas surrounding the Plaza if Denver determines that a compelling need exists to do so.”

At the preliminary injunction hearing, the parties called only two witnesses. Plaintiffs called Commander Antonio Lopez of the Denver Police Department. Commander Lopez described the Plaza as a public “open space” much like the city’s various parks. He testified that in the five years since the Courthouse opened he has witnessed “more First Amendment activity take place in [the Plaza] than [he] can recall.” Specifically, Commander Lopez described a variety of protest activities “at one point . . . averaging about two or three a week” in the Plaza. He further testified that the Denver Police Department had never taken steps to stop protest activity in the Plaza, other than intervening if protesters became violent or otherwise broke the law. Relevant to this appeal, Commander Lopez testified that in his experience, the entire Plaza—including the Restricted Areas—has traditionally been used for First Amendment protest activities. On cross-examination, Commander Lopez acknowledged that the “majority” of the protests in the Plaza occurred closer to the Detention Center, but that he had also seen protests directed at the Courthouse.

The Judicial District called Steven Steadman, administrator of judicial security for Colorado. Mr. Steadman testified that the Order was motivated by concern about anticipated protests of a verdict in a death penalty case being tried at the Courthouse.?Mr. Steadman explained that he met with Chief Judge Martinez to discuss security concerns relating to that verdict and recommended the Judicial District adopt a policy similar to one recently implemented in Arapahoe County during another high-profile capital trial.

Mr. Steadman also testified about the design of the Plaza, including the Restricted Areas. He indicated that the planters, gravel areas, and sidewalks were intentionally designed to “signal to the average user how to find their way, and where you should go and what the main travel ways are.” Mr. Steadman explained that the Patio and arced walkway’s “sole purpose is to allow people, the public, to enter and exit the [Courthouse] without being interfered with.” But Mr. Steadman also stated that, prior to imposition of the Order, protestors—including pamphleteers—were allowed to protest immediately in front of the doors to the Courthouse, provided they did not interfere with ingress or egress from the Courthouse. He explained that the “general response” of protestors was to cease their activities when requested by Courthouse security not to interfere with public access to the Courthouse. Mr. Steadman further testified that no person had ever been arrested for blocking ingress or egress from the Courthouse since it opened in 2010. Important to this appeal, Mr. Steadman acknowledged that Plaintiffs’ activities of passing out jury nullification literature did not present “any security risk” beyond what had previously been tolerated without incident throughout the time the Courthouse had been open.

The district court also accepted a proffer of Plaintiffs’ testimony, indicating that their intent was to approach people entering the Courthouse to discuss quietly the concept of jury nullification and to distribute their literature. Plaintiffs asserted that proximity to the front door of the Courthouse was key to their message because otherwise their intended audience—“people who are going to serve or are in fact serving on juries”—will “very frequently just bypass them” in the designated free speech zone by “walking on one of the sidewalks that is part of the [Restricted Areas].” By contrast, positioning themselves near the front door would allow Plaintiffs “to pass out literature to anyone who wants it” and “if people want to stop and talk about [it], they can then explain to them what the concept of jury nullification is.” Thus, according to Plaintiffs, the Order effectively prevented them from reaching their target audience. Finally, the district court accepted the parties’ jointly stipulated exhibits, which consisted of a series of images of the Plaza and Restricted Areas, as well as a copy of the Order.

Following the evidentiary hearing, the district court granted Plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction. In doing so, the district court relied on Denver’s Stipulation that the Plaza was a public forum and the Judicial District’s position that resolving the forum status was not necessary because the Order “would satisfy even the strictest test.” The district court concluded Plaintiffs had demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits because, treating the Restricted Areas as public fora, the Order’s complete ban on expressive activity was not narrowly tailored to accomplish a significant government interest.

Accordingly, the district court entered a carefully circumscribed preliminary injunction in favor of Plaintiffs. Specifically, the district court enjoined enforcement of Paragraph 1 of the Order against Plaintiffs “to the extent he or she is otherwise lawfully seeking to distribute and/or orally advocate the message contained in [Plaintiffs’ pamphlets]” in the Restricted Areas. But the district court expressly left the remainder of the Order in place.

Following entry of the preliminary injunction, the Judicial District moved to stay the injunction pending appeal pursuant to Rule 62(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In its motion to stay, the Judicial District introduced evidence that— subsequent to entry of the preliminary injunction—protesters had “descended on the Courthouse Plaza” and engaged in a pattern of disruptive and inappropriate behavior, including erecting canopies, harassing citizens seeking to enter the Courthouse, damaging the Courthouse landscaping, yelling and taunting court personnel, and posting signs in the planters and on the flagpoles in the Plaza. The Judicial District argued that a stay of the injunction was appropriate because protesters had been “emboldened” by the injunction to violate even the portions of the Order not subject to the injunction, thereby irreparably harming the Judicial District. The district court declined to stay the injunction, finding the Judicial District had not demonstrated a likelihood of success on appeal because the harm identified was not caused by the injunction. The district court reasoned the Judicial District and Denver were free to enforce the Order against the parties engaging in the complained-of disruptive behavior because such behavior was unlawful and not protected by the narrow injunction issued by the court with respect to Plaintiffs’ activities only.

The Judicial District now appeals. Exercising jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1), we affirm.

II. DISCUSSION

On appeal, the Judicial District raises two arguments. First, it asserts the district court erred when it concluded the Plaintiffs had demonstrated a likelihood of success in establishing the Restricted Areas are public fora. Second, the Judicial District argues the district court incorrectly applied strict scrutiny when evaluating the Order. As a result, the Judicial District asks this court to reverse the district court’s entry of the preliminary injunction and remand for further proceedings.

We review the district court’s grant of a preliminary injunction for abuse of discretion. Planned Parenthood of Kan. & Mid-Mo. v. Moser, 747 F.3d 814, 822 (10th Cir. 2014). “A district court abuses its discretion when it commits an error of law or makes clearly erroneous factual findings.” Id.

A. Scope of Review

Before addressing the merits of the parties’ arguments, we pause to clarify the scope of our review. The district court granted a narrow preliminary injunction drafted to address Plaintiffs’ First Amendment concerns related to their specific expressive activities. Although Plaintiffs asked the district court to prohibit enforcement of the entire Order, the court enjoined only the first paragraph, which imposes a complete ban on First Amendment activities—picketing, pamphleteering, protesting—within the Restricted Areas. The district court left in place the rest of the Order, including the prohibitions against obstructing Courthouse entrances, erecting structures, and using sound amplification equipment in the Restricted Areas.

The district court further limited the scope of the preliminary injunction by enjoining the first paragraph of the Order only as to Plaintiffs’ specific pamphleteering activities. In fact, the court enjoined enforcement of the Order only as to Plaintiffs’ distribution and discussion of two specifically identified pamphlets. The Judicial District remains free to enforce the first paragraph of the Order—even against Plaintiffs—for all other First Amendment activities within the Restricted Areas.

Finally, the district court limited the geographic scope of the injunction. Although the Order prohibits First Amendment activity both inside and outside the Courthouse, the district court enjoined enforcement of Paragraph 1 as to Plaintiffs only outside the Courthouse, leaving the entirety of the Order intact within the Courthouse. And the district court did not enjoin enforcement of any part of the Order within those portions of the Restricted Areas dedicated to Courthouse landscaping and security features. Thus, the Order continues to prohibit all expressive activity in the planter boxes or other landscaping and in the gravel security areas. Accordingly, the features of the Restricted Area to which the preliminary injunction applies are limited to (1) the arced walkway running south from Colfax Avenue between the gravel security area (to the west of the walkway) and a raised planter (to the east of the walkway) and ending at the Patio area at the main entrance on the east side of the Courthouse; 2 and (2) the Patio area at the main entrance. 3

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2 As discussed, the Order’s prohibition on expressive activities in the planter and gravel security areas were not enjoined by the district court.

3 The evidence presented about the geographic layout and physical features of the Restricted Area consisted primarily of approximately fifteen photographs. Because the record contains little testimony about the photographs, we rely on our own review of them to describe the Restricted Areas. In particular, it is unclear whether and to what extent the Restricted Areas include the sidewalk running along Fox Street on the west side of the Courthouse. The exhibit appears to highlight some areas of the sidewalk, but counsel for the Judicial District conceded at oral argument that it would be “constitutionally questionable” to prevent speech on a public sidewalk, and then indicated “[t]hat is precisely why the order here does not extend that far.” Therefore, we do not treat the Fox Street sidewalk as part of the Restricted Areas for purposes of our analysis.
——————

Our task in this appeal is to determine whether the district court abused its discretion when, based on the record before it at the preliminary injunction hearing, it issued this narrow, targeted injunction. But the Judicial District asks us to consider events occurring after the preliminary injunction hearing to determine whether the district court abused its discretion in issuing the preliminary injunction. Specifically, the Judicial District points to evidence introduced during the Rule 62(c) hearing on the motion to stay the injunction pending appeal, which indicated that following the injunction, protestors had engaged in a series of inappropriate and disruptive behaviors. Some of these behaviors included harassing court personnel seeking to enter the Courthouse, erecting canopies and signs, and trampling Courthouse landscaping. According to the Judicial District, these post-injunction events demonstrate the “concrete concerns” motivating the creation of the Restricted Areas and therefore should have been considered by the district court.

Although we share the Judicial District’s concern about the disruptions created by some protestors following issuance of the injunction, these post-injunction events are not relevant to our resolution of this interlocutory appeal for two reasons. First, this evidence relates to events occurring after the preliminary injunction issued, and therefore none of it was presented to the district court at the hearing. We will not hold that the district court abused its discretion based on evidence not before it when it ruled. See Adler v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 144 F.3d 664, 671 (10th Cir. 1998) (noting the general principle, in the context of de novo review of a summary judgment disposition, that we conduct our review “from the perspective of the district court at the time it made its ruling, ordinarily limiting our review to the materials adequately brought to the attention of the district court by the parties”); Theriot v. Par. of Jefferson, 185 F.3d 477, 491 n.26 (5th Cir. 1999) (“An appellate court may not consider . . . facts which were not before the district court at the time of the challenged ruling.”). Cf. Ambus v. Granite Bd. of Educ., 975 F.2d 1555, 1569 (10th Cir. 1992) (“[W]e will not reverse the grant of summary judgment . . . based on evidence not before the district court.”). Accordingly, our review is limited to the evidence before the district court at the time of the preliminary injunction hearing, and we will not consider post-injunction events.

Second, even if we were to consider the post-decision evidence, it would not alter our analysis. The evidence the Judicial District relies on to demonstrate the negative effects of the preliminary injunction, in fact, does not implicate the injunction at all. As discussed, the preliminary injunction enjoins enforcement of Paragraph 1 of the Order specifically against Plaintiffs’ pamphleteering activities in certain parts of the Restricted Areas. The district court expressly allowed the Judicial District to continue enforcing the entire Order as to all other parties and all other First Amendment activities in the Restricted Areas. Importantly, the preliminary injunction does not affect the Judicial District’s ability to enforce the Order against any protestors, including the Plaintiffs, who engage in disruptive behaviors. For example, the injunction does not prohibit the Judicial District from taking action against protestors who obstruct Courthouse entrances, damage the Courthouse landscaping, or erect structures. All of this behavior remained prohibited by the Order after issuance of the injunction. In short, nothing in the preliminary injunction before us on appeal interferes with the Judicial District’s or Denver’s ability to enforce the Order against anyone, including Plaintiffs, engaging in such behavior.

The evidence of post-injunction bad behavior of some protestors may be relevant on remand to a motion to modify the injunction4 or to the district court’s ultimate decision on whether to issue a permanent injunction. But for the purposes of this appeal, we limit our review to the evidence before the district court at the time it issued the preliminary injunction.

—————
4 As the district court noted, the Judicial District did not move to modify the preliminary injunction based on changed circumstances. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(5) (allowing a party to obtain relief from a judgment or order when “applying [the judgment or order] prospectively is no longer equitable”); Horne v. Flores, 557 U.S. 433, 447 (2009) (noting that under Rule 60(b)(5) “[t]he party seeking relief bears the burden of establishing that changed circumstances warrant relief”).
—————

B. Abuse of Discretion

We now turn our attention to the question of whether the district court abused its discretion when it issued the preliminary injunction.

To obtain a preliminary injunction the moving party must demonstrate: (1) a likelihood of success on the merits; (2) a likelihood that the moving party will suffer irreparable harm if the injunction is not granted; (3) the balance of equities is in the moving party’s favor; and (4) the preliminary injunction is in the public interest.

Republican Party of N.M. v. King, 741 F.3d 1089, 1092 (10th Cir. 2013). In the First Amendment context, “the likelihood of success on the merits will often be the determinative factor” because of the seminal importance of the interests at stake. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. v. Sebelius, 723 F.3d 1114, 1145 (10th Cir. 2013) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Heideman v. S. Salt Lake City, 348 F.3d 1182, 1190 (10th Cir. 2003) (“[T]he loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.”).

1. The district court did not abuse its discretion in finding the second, third, and fourth factors weighed in Plaintiffs’ favor.

Here, the district court found the second (irreparable harm), third (balance of equities), and fourth (public interest) factors weighed in Plaintiffs’ favor in light of the important First Amendment interests at stake. As an initial matter, the Judicial District has not challenged the district court’s determination as to these factors beyond a single footnote in its opening brief stating it had challenged them before the district court. A party’s offhand reference to an issue in a footnote, without citation to legal authority or reasoned argument, is insufficient to present the issue for our consideration. See San Juan Citizens All. v. Stiles, 654 F.3d 1038, 1055–56 (10th Cir. 2011). Accordingly, the Judicial District has waived any challenge to the district court’s findings related to the elements of irreparable harm, the balance of equities, and the public interest. But even if the Judicial District had properly challenged these factors on appeal, we would nevertheless affirm the district court’s conclusion that they weigh in Plaintiffs’ favor.

The Supreme Court has instructed that “[t]he loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.” Elrod v. Burns, 427 U.S. 347, 373 (1976); see also Awad v. Ziriax, 670 F.3d 1111, 1131 (10th Cir. 2012) (“[W]hen an alleged constitutional right is involved, most courts hold that no further showing of irreparable injury is necessary.”). There is no dispute that Plaintiffs’ pamphleteering constitutes First Amendment activity. See McCullen v. Coakley, 134 S. Ct. 2518, 2536 (2014) (recognizing that one-on-one communication and leafletting are First Amendment-protected activities). And the Judicial District does not dispute that the Order would bar Plaintiffs from engaging in their pamphleteering in the Restricted Areas. Accordingly, the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that the factor of irreparable harm weighs in Plaintiffs’ favor.

The third factor—balance of equities—also tips in Plaintiffs’ favor. Before the district court, Plaintiffs proffered testimony that the Order would substantially impair their ability to convey their intended message to their target audience because it would prevent Plaintiffs from approaching potential jurors and engaging in a meaningful discussion of jury nullification. The district court also heard testimony from Mr. Steadman that Plaintiffs’ distribution of jury nullification literature and one-on-one discussions with potential jurors did not present a security risk. And the Judicial District presented no evidence that Plaintiffs’ activities otherwise interfered with Courthouse functions. On this record, the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding the balance of equities weighed in favor of Plaintiffs. See Awad, 670 F.3d at 1132 (“Delayed implementation of a [governmental] measure that does not appear to address any immediate problem will generally not cause material harm, even if the measure were eventually found to be constitutional and enforceable.”).

As to whether the preliminary injunction is in the public interest, we agree with the district court that “it is always in the public interest to prevent the violation of a party’s constitutional rights.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted); Pac. Frontier v. Pleasant Grove City, 414 F.3d 1221, 1237 (10th Cir. 2005) (“Vindicating First Amendment freedoms is clearly in the public interest.”). The district court did not abuse its discretion in finding the public interest was served by issuing the preliminary injunction to prevent the violation of Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights.

Thus, we agree the second, third, and fourth factors weigh in Plaintiffs’ favor. The only remaining question, then, is whether the district court abused its discretion in finding Plaintiffs demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits. 5 Specifically, we must determine whether the Order violated Plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to distribute jury nullification pamphlets and engage in one-on-one conversations with individuals entering and leaving the Courthouse.

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5 The Tenth Circuit has modified the preliminary injunction test when the moving party demonstrates that the second, third, and fourth factors “tip strongly” in its favor. See Oklahoma ex rel. Okla. Tax Comm’n v. Int’l Registration Plan, Inc., 455 F.3d 1107, 1113 (10th Cir. 2006). “In such situations, the moving party may meet the requirement for showing success on the merits by showing that questions going to the merits are so serious, substantial, difficult, and doubtful as to make the issue ripe for litigation and deserving of more deliberate investigation.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). But because we conclude the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding Plaintiffs demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits, we need not decide whether this more lenient test applies.
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2. On this record, the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding Plaintiffs demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits.

To demonstrate a violation of their First Amendment rights, Plaintiffs must first establish that their activities are protected by the First Amendment. See Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Def. & Educ. Fund, Inc., 473 U.S. 788, 797 (1985). If so, a court must identify whether the challenged restrictions impact a public or nonpublic forum, because that determination dictates the extent to which the government can restrict First Amendment activities within the forum. See id. Finally, courts must determine whether the proffered justifications for prohibiting speech in the forum satisfy the requisite standard of review. Id. We address each element in turn.

a. Plaintiffs’ activities are protected by the First Amendment

The Supreme Court recently reaffirmed that pamphleteering and one-on-one communications are First-Amendment-protected activities. See McCullen, 134 S. Ct. at 2536. The Court “observed that one-on-one communication is the most effective, fundamental, and perhaps economical avenue of political discourse” and that “no form of speech is entitled to greater constitutional protection” than leafletting. Id. (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). The Court went on to state, “[w]hen the government makes it more difficult to engage in these modes of communication, it imposes an especially significant First Amendment burden.” Id. Thus, Plaintiffs’ activities are protected by the First Amendment.

b. The district court did not abuse its discretion by assuming for purposes of analysis that the Restricted Areas are public fora

To properly place the district court’s decision in context, we begin with a brief discussion of the significance of forum status to the protection afforded under the First Amendment to public speech on government property. We then review the argument presented by the Judicial District to the district court regarding the forum status of the Restricted Areas here. Because the Judicial District either made a strategic decision to forgo any argument that the Restricted Areas are nonpublic fora, or inadequately presented that argument to the district court, we conclude the argument is waived. As a result, the district court did not abuse its discretion by scrutinizing the Order under public forum analysis for purposes of the preliminary injunction motion.

Turning now to the constitutional restrictions on speech, our analysis is guided by Plaintiffs’ wish to engage in First Amendment-protected activity on government property. “Nothing in the Constitution requires the Government freely to grant access to all who wish to exercise their right to free speech on every type of Government property without regard to the nature of the property or to the disruption that might be caused by the speaker’s activities.” Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 799–800. But in some instances, the public may have acquired by tradition or prior permission the right to use government property for expressive purposes. See id. at 802. To determine when and to what extent the Government may properly limit expressive activity on its property, the Supreme Court has adopted a range of constitutional protections that varies depending on the nature of the government property, or forum. Id. at 800.

The Court has identified three types of speech fora: the traditional public forum, the designated public forum, and the nonpublic forum. Id. at 802. Traditional public fora are places that by long tradition have been open to public assembly and debate. See id.; Perry Educ. Ass’n v. Perry Local Educators’ Ass’n, 460 U.S. 37, 45 (1983) (“At one end of the spectrum are streets and parks which ‘have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions.’” (quoting Hague v. Comm. for Indus. Org., 307 U.S. 496, 515 (1939))). In these traditional public fora, the government’s right to “limit expressive activity [is] sharply circumscribed.” Id. A designated public forum is public property, not constituting a traditional public forum, which the government has intentionally opened to the public for expressive activity. Id. The government is not required to retain the open character of the property indefinitely, but “as long as it does so, it is bound by the same standards as apply in a traditional public forum.” Id. at 46. If the property is not a traditional public forum and it has not been designated as a public forum, it is a nonpublic forum. “Access to a nonpublic forum . . . can be restricted as long as the restrictions are ‘reasonable and are not an effort to suppress expression merely because public officials oppose the speaker’s view.’” 6 Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 800 (brackets omitted) (quoting Perry Educ., 460 U.S. at 46).

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6 Not relevant to this appeal, the Supreme Court has also recognized that the government can create a “limited public forum” by allowing “selective access to some speakers or some types of speech in a nonpublic forum,” while not opening “the property sufficiently to become a designated public forum.” Summum v. Callaghan, 130 F.3d 906, 916 (10th Cir. 1997) (citing Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of the Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819, 829–30 (1995)).
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Because the nature of the forum dictates the standard of scrutiny with which restrictions on speech are reviewed, courts typically begin the analysis of a challenge to restrictions on speech involving government property by identifying the nature of the forum involved. See, e.g., Doe v. City of Albuquerque, 667 F.3d 1111, 1128 (10th Cir. 2012). But the procedural posture of this appeal restricts the scope of our inquiry. That is, we need not determine whether the Restricted Areas are, in fact, public or nonpublic fora to resolve this interlocutory appeal. Rather, our task is to determine whether the district court abused its discretion when it found, based on the evidence and arguments presented, that Plaintiffs had demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits. See Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. Co. v. Lennen, 640 F.2d 255, 261 (10th Cir. 1981) (“It is only necessary that plaintiffs establish a reasonable probability of success, and not an ‘overwhelming’ likelihood of success, in order for a preliminary injunction to issue.”). Because the Judicial District waived any argument that the Restricted Areas are nonpublic fora, we conclude the district court did not abuse its discretion by evaluating the Plaintiffs’ likelihood of success under the scrutiny applicable to public fora.

To explain our rationale for this conclusion, we track the evolution of the Judicial District’s arguments in the district court regarding the forum status of the Restricted Areas. Plaintiffs argued in their motion for preliminary injunction that the entire Plaza, including the Restricted Areas, constitutes a traditional public forum. Denver also stipulated with Plaintiffs that the Plaza is a public forum.

In response to the motion for preliminary injunction, the Judicial District claimed Plaintiffs were unlikely to prevail on the merits of their First Amendment claim because “[i]rrespective of Denver’s view of the courthouse plaza, it is not a traditional public forum. And even if it were, the [Order] comes nowhere near banning all expressive activity in that area. To the contrary, it is a reasonable time, place, and manner restriction.” But the Judicial District did not then provide any support for its assertion that the Plaza is not a public forum. Rather, it first claimed that Plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the Order and then continued its argument under the heading, “This Court need not decide whether the plaza is a traditional public forum for the purposes of this proceeding.” Under that heading, the Judicial District asserted that the Stipulation between the Plaintiffs and Denver did not bind the Judicial District or the district court and that therefore “[t]he status of the plaza is an open question.” But, again, rather than present argument on the correct forum status of the Plaza or ask the district court to reach a contrary conclusion, the Judicial District stated the district court need not identify the precise forum status of the Restricted Areas “because [the Order] would satisfy even the strictest test.” That is, the Judicial District claimed that “[e]ven if Plaintiffs were correct that the entire plaza is a traditional public forum,” and thus subject to a higher standard of review, the Order was constitutional as a reasonable time, place, and manner restriction. The Judicial District maintained this tactical approach through oral argument on the motion for a preliminary injunction.

After the close of evidence at the hearing on Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, the district court attempted to clarify the Judicial District’s position:

THE COURT: In your briefing the Attorney General took the position that it doesn’t matter whether the area in question is a public forum or a non-public forum area, because the Attorney General believes that you can establish the grounds necessary under the standards to apply in either case.

JUDICIAL DIST.: To be clear, our position is that this is not a public forum. However, that is a factually intensive question that I don’t think the Court has been presented with sufficient evidence to decide today.

THE COURT: Well, I have a stipulation from the owner of the property that it is a public forum area.

JUDICIAL DIST.: I understand that. I don’t think that binds either [the Judicial District] or this Court.

THE COURT: Well, that’s something I need to decide, right?

JUDICIAL DIST.: Not necessarily.

THE COURT: Okay. But here’s what I am getting at. Your position is, whether it’s public or non-public, you believe that the . . . Plaza Order . . . is sufficiently narrowly tailored to meet the concerns of ingress and egress to the courthouse and threat to the public safety. Is that your position?

JUDICIAL DIST.: Yes. Our position is that the order satisfies time, place, and manner requirements. . . .

The discussion then proceeded under the assumption that the Order impacted a public forum and therefore had to be narrowly tailored. Recall that the government has broad discretion to restrict expressive activity in a nonpublic forum, irrespective of whether the restrictions are narrowly tailored. Perry Educ., 460 U.S. at 46. But, as will be discussed in more detail below, even content-neutral restrictions on speech in a public forum—whether a traditional public forum or a designated public forum—must be narrowly tailored to advance a significant government interest. See id. at 45–46.

Consistent with its acquiescence to the district court’s application of a public forum analysis at the preliminary injunction stage, the Judicial District limited its oral argument on the motion for preliminary injunction to the proper definition of “narrowly- tailored.” Tellingly, the Judicial District provided no argument relevant to whether the Restricted Area was, in fact, a public forum, or that the restrictions did not have to be narrowly tailored at all because they impacted only nonpublic fora. Instead, the Judicial District conceded that the evidence was insufficient to allow the district court to determine the forum status of the Restricted Areas. But it claimed the district court could proceed to the merits under a public forum analysis nevertheless, because the result would be the same whether the Restricted Areas were public or nonpublic fora. That is, the Judicial District argued the district court could assume for purposes of analysis that the Restricted Areas are public fora. And the district court did as suggested in its Order Granting Motion for Preliminary Injunction.

In the Preliminary Injunction Order’s discussion of the likelihood that Plaintiffs will succeed on the merits, the district court discussed forum in a section titled, “Is the Courthouse Plaza a Public Forum?” In this section, the district court considered the significance of the nature of the forum, the disagreement between Denver and the Judicial District on that issue, and the Stipulation between Denver and Plaintiffs that the Restricted Areas are public fora. Relying in part on the Stipulation, the district court concluded Plaintiffs are “likely to prevail in their claim that the Courthouse Plaza is at least a designated public forum, if not a traditional public forum.” But the district court also notes “the Second Judicial District has not specifically argued for a finding that the Courthouse Plaza is a nonpublic forum. Rather, it says that ‘resolving [the type of forum at issue] is not necessary for the purposes of this proceeding because the [Plaza Order] would satisfy even the strictest test.’”

Our review of the record is consistent with the district court’s assessment of the Judicial District’s argument. During the briefing and argument to the district court in opposition to Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction, the Judicial District never provided legal argument supporting its conclusory statement that the Restricted Areas are nonpublic fora. As noted, it instead indicated the forum status of the Plaza was an open question the district court need not decide, and further conceded it was a question the district court could not decide based on the evidence presented. In sum, the Judicial District made the strategic decision to accept Plaintiffs’ characterization of the Restricted Areas as a public forum for purposes of analysis and to present only an argument that the Order is constitutional under the scrutiny applicable to restrictions of speech in public fora. And the Judicial District maintained that position throughout the district court proceedings.

The Judicial District filed a motion in the district court to stay the injunction pending appeal, in which it stated “courthouse plazas are not traditional public fora,” and cited, without further analysis, Hodge v. Talkin, 799 F.3d 1145 (D.C. Cir. 2015), a new decision at the time holding the plaza of the Supreme Court building is not a public forum. But again, the Judicial District did not seek a ruling that the Restricted Areas are nonpublic fora or provide reasoned analysis to support such a claim. Consistent with its earlier strategy, the Judicial District argued that “even if the [Courthouse Plaza] were a traditional public forum,” the district court applied the wrong level of scrutiny. Significantly, the Judicial District never claimed it could bar or reasonably restrict speech in the Restricted Areas because they were nonpublic fora; it argued the district court had erred because “[s]trict scrutiny applies only to content-based restrictions on speech in a public forum.”

For the first time on appeal, the Judicial District provides substantive argument for the claim that the Restricted Areas are nonpublic fora and, therefore, the district court should have considered only whether the content-neutral restrictions contained in the Order were reasonable. When a party pursues a new legal theory for the first time on appeal, we usually refuse to consider it. See Richison v. Ernest Grp., Inc., 634 F.3d 1123, 1127–28 (10th Cir. 2011); Lone Star Steel Co. v. United Mine Workers of Am., 851 F.2d 1239, 1243 (10th Cir. 1988) (“Ordinarily, a party may not lose in the district court on one theory of the case, and then prevail on appeal on a different theory.”).

As noted, the Judicial District was aware of the “open question” with respect to the forum status of the Restricted Areas but made the strategic decision to forgo presenting meaningful argument on this point. In its response brief to Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction filed with the district court, the Judicial District cited three cases in support of its statement that the forum question remains open. But it provided no argument incorporating those decisions into a cogent legal analysis of the Restricted Areas as nonpublic fora. See United States v. Wooten, 377 F.3d 1134, 1145 (10th Cir. 2004) (“The court will not consider such issues adverted to in a perfunctory manner, unaccompanied by some effort at developed argumentation.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). And although forum status is a fact-intensive inquiry, the Judicial District failed to explain how the particular facts here color that analysis. Cf. Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(8)(A) (providing that appellant’s opening brief must contain an argument section that includes “appellant’s contentions and the reasons for them, with citations to the authorities and parts of the record on which the appellant relies”).

Thus, the Judicial District has waived this issue, at least for purposes of our review of the preliminary injunction order. Richison, 634 F.3d at 1127 (explaining that if a party intentionally chooses not to pursue an argument before the district court, “we usually deem it waived and refuse to consider it”). 7 And the forum status issue is not properly before us even if we generously conclude the Judicial District presented alternative arguments to the district court that (1) the Restricted Areas are not public fora; or (2) even if the Restricted Areas are public fora, the Order can survive the applicable level of scrutiny. Although the Judicial District presented cogent legal argument on the second issue, it failed to present reasoned argument on the first to the district court. See Ark Initiative v. U.S. Forest Serv., 660 F.3d 1256, 1263 (10th Cir. 2011) (holding that the “scant discussion” of an issue in the district court “appear[ed] as an afterthought, and [did] not meet the standard for preserving an issue for review”).

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7 Even if this argument had been merely forfeited, it would nevertheless be an inappropriate basis for reversal because the Judicial District has not argued plain error. See Richison v. Ernest Grp., Inc., 634 F.3d 1123, 1131 (10th Cir. 2011) (“And the failure to do so —the failure to argue for plain error and its application on appeal— surely marks the end of the road for an argument for reversal not first presented to the district court.”). Nor are we inclined to exercise our discretion to consider the forum status issue despite the failure to raise it to the district court because we agree with the Judicial District that the preliminary injunction record is inadequate for that purpose. Cf. Cox v. Glanz, 800 F.3d 1231, 1244–45 (10th Cir. 2015) (exercising discretion to consider forfeited argument on “clearly established” prong of qualified immunity).
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Our conclusion that the Judicial District failed to adequately present this issue to the district court is further supported by the district court’s view that “the Second Judicial District ha[d] not specifically argued for a finding that the Courthouse Plaza is a nonpublic forum.” Id. (“Not surprisingly, the district court never addressed” the issue.). Accordingly, the argument that the Restricted Areas are nonpublic fora was waived either by the Judicial District’s strategic decision not to present it, or by the Judicial District’s failure to adequately brief the issue. As such, the district court’s application of a public forum analysis is not a legitimate ground on which to reverse the preliminary injunction order.

We now address the only other challenge the Judicial District makes to the preliminary injunction: that the district court abused its discretion by applying the wrong test, even if the Restricted Areas are public fora.

c. The district court did not apply the wrong standard to the content-neutral restrictions imposed by the Order

Having determined the district court did not abuse its discretion by treating the Restricted Areas as public fora for purposes of analysis, we next consider whether the district court abused its discretion when it found Plaintiffs had demonstrated a likelihood of success on the question of whether the Order violated their constitutional rights under the relevant First Amendment standards. 8 In a public forum, the government cannot ban all expressive activity. Perry Educ., 460 U.S. at 45. But even in a public forum, the government can restrict speech through “content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions that: (a) serve a significant government interest; (b) are narrowly tailored to advance that interest; and (c) leave open ample alternative channels of communication.” Doe, 667 F.3d at 1130–31. Content-based restrictions, however, “must satisfy strict scrutiny, that is, the restriction must be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest.” Summum, 555 U.S. at 469.

The Judicial District argues the district court abused its discretion by applying an incorrect legal standard. Specifically, the Judicial District contends the district court applied the stringent strict scrutiny analysis reserved for content-based restrictions. And because the Order imposes only content-neutral restrictions, the Judicial District claims this was an abuse of discretion. Although we agree the restrictions are content-neutral, we are not convinced the district court applied the more stringent standard applicable to content-based restrictions.

The district court explained that under the relevant standard, “[t]he state may . . . enforce regulations of the time, place, and manner of expression which [1] are content- neutral, [2] are narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest, and [3] leave open ample alternative channels of communication.” On its face, then, the district court appears to have invoked the correct legal standard. Cf. Doe, 667 F.3d at 1130–31 (same). Nevertheless, the Judicial District argues that in considering whether the restrictions are “narrowly tailored,” the district court inappropriately applied the more demanding standard applicable to content-based regulations.

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8 “Government restrictions on speech in a designated public forum are subject to the same strict scrutiny as restrictions in a traditional public forum.” Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, 555 U.S. 460, 470 (2009). Thus, our analysis does not turn on whether the Restricted Areas are considered traditional or designated public fora.
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The term “narrowly tailored” appears in the tests for both content-based and content-neutral regulations on speech. See Doe, 667 F.3d at 1130–31 (indicating a content-neutral regulation must be “narrowly tailored” to advance a significant government interest); Pleasant Grove, 555 U.S. at 469 (stating that content-based restrictions “must be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest”) (emphasis added)). And, as the Judicial District correctly notes, there are subtle differences in the way courts apply the concept of narrow tailoring in the two contexts. For the purposes of a content-neutral regulation, “the requirement of narrow tailoring is satisfied so long as the regulation promotes a substantial government interest that would be achieved less effectively absent the regulation, and does not burden substantially more speech than is necessary to further the government’s legitimate interests.” Wells v. City & Cty. of Denver, 257 F.3d 1132, 1148 (10th Cir. 2001) (ellipsis and internal quotation marks omitted). In contrast, a content-based restriction is narrowly tailored only if it is the least restrictive means of achieving the government’s compelling objective. See Ashcroft v. ACLU, 542 U.S. 656, 666 (2004); United States v. Playboy Entm’t Grp., Inc., 529 U.S. 803, 813 (2000).

According to the Judicial District, the district court considered alternatives to the Order that might have been employed to achieve the Judicial District’s objectives, and such consideration proves the district court applied the “least restrictive means” standard. In the Judicial District’s view, any inquiry into alternative means of achieving the government objective is inappropriate where, like here, the restrictions are content-neutral, rather than content-based, and thus not subject to the least restrictive alternative form of narrow tailoring. We disagree.

The Supreme Court has not discouraged courts from considering alternative approaches to achieving the government’s goals when determining whether a content- neutral regulation is narrowly tailored to advance a significant government interest. Although the Court has held that a content-neutral regulation “need not be the least restrictive or least intrusive means of serving the government’s interests,” it has also explained that “the government still may not regulate expression in such a manner that a substantial portion of the burden on speech does not serve to advance its goals.” McCullen, 134 S. Ct. at 2535 (internal quotation marks omitted). And when considering content-neutral regulations, the Court itself has examined possible alternative approaches to achieving the government’s objective to determine whether the government’s chosen approach burdens substantially more speech than necessary. Id. at 2537–39. That is, the government may not “forgo[] options that could serve its interests just as well,” if those options would avoid “substantially burdening the kind of speech in which [Plaintiffs’] wish to engage.” Id. at 2537; id. at 2539 (“The point is not that [the government] must enact all or even any of the proposed [alternative approaches]. The point is instead that the [government] has available to it a variety of approaches that appear capable of serving its interests, without excluding individuals from areas historically open for speech and debate.”). Thus, “[t]o meet the requirement of narrow tailoring [in the context of content-neutral regulations], the government must demonstrate that alternative measures that burden substantially less speech would fail to achieve the government’s interests, not simply that the chosen route is easier.” Id. at 2540.

As a result, we cannot conclude the district court applied the wrong legal standard merely because it considered whether the Judicial District had options other than the complete ban on speech contained in Paragraph 1 of the Order that would equally serve its interests. We now turn our attention to whether, under the standard applicable to content-neutral regulations in a public forum, the district court abused its discretion when it found Plaintiffs had demonstrated a likelihood of success on the question of whether the Order survives constitutional scrutiny.

d. The district court did not abuse its discretion by concluding that Plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits

As discussed, for purposes of the preliminary injunction analysis, the Judicial District acquiesced in the district court’s acceptance of Plaintiffs’ characterization, and Denver’s Stipulation, that the Restricted Areas are public fora. Under that assumption, we can easily conclude the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding Plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claim that a complete ban of their expressive activities violates the First Amendment. Our resolution of this issue is informed by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in McCullen, which is highly analogous.

In McCullen, the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of a state law creating thirty-five-foot buffer zones around the entrances of facilities where abortions are performed. Id. at 2525. The McCullen plaintiffs wished to approach and talk to women outside such facilities —to engage in “sidewalk counseling”— in an attempt to dissuade the women from obtaining abortions. Id. at 2527. The buffer zones forced the McCullen plaintiffs away from their preferred positions outside the clinics’ entrances, thereby hampering their sidewalk counseling efforts. Id. at 2527–28. The McCullen plaintiffs brought suit, arguing the buffer zones restricted their First Amendment rights and seeking to enjoin enforcement of the statute creating the buffer zones. Id. at 2528. After the First Circuit upheld the statute as a reasonable content-neutral time, place, and manner restriction, the Supreme Court granted certiorari. Id.

The Court began its analysis by recognizing that the buffer-zone statute operated to restrict speech in traditional public fora: streets and sidewalks. Id. at 2529. It then held the buffer-zone statute was a content-neutral restriction because violations of the act depended not on what the plaintiffs said, but on where they said it. Id. at 2531 (“Indeed, petitioners can violate the Act merely by standing in a buffer zone, without displaying a sign or uttering a word.”). The Court then proceeded to apply the test for content-neutral restrictions in a public forum, assessing whether the buffer-zone statute was “narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest.” Id. at 2534. Because the plaintiffs had not challenged the significance of the government’s asserted interests, the Court’s analysis largely focused on the question of whether the statute was narrowly tailored to serve that interest.

The Court noted the buffer zones placed serious burdens on the plaintiffs’ speech activities. Id. at 2535. Specifically, by preventing the plaintiffs from engaging in quiet, one-on-one conversations about abortion and distributing literature, the buffer zones “operate[d] to deprive petitioners of their two primary methods of communicating with patients.” Id. at 2536. Although the First Amendment does not guarantee a right to any particular form of speech, the Supreme Court explained that some forms of speech -one-on-one conversation and leafletting on public sidewalks— “have historically been more closely associated with the transmission of ideas than others.” Id. The Court held that “[w]hen the government makes it more difficult to engage in [one-on-one communication and leafletting], it imposes an especially significant First Amendment burden.” Id.

The Court also rejected the idea that the buffer zones were constitutional because they left ample alternative channels for communication. Id. at 2536–37. In McCullen, the size of the buffer zone made it difficult to distinguish persons headed to the clinic from passersby “in time to initiate a conversation before they enter[ed] the buffer zone.” Id. at 2535. As a result, the plaintiffs were often forced to raise their voices from outside the buffer zone once they identified the clinic patients, thereby forcing a mode of communication contrary to their compassionate message and preventing them from distributing pamphlets. Id. at 2535-36. Where the plaintiffs wished to engage in quiet conversations with women seeking abortions and not in noisy protest speech, the Court held it was “no answer to say that petitioners can still be ‘seen and heard’ by women within the buffer zones.” Id. at 2537. Instead, the Supreme Court concluded the thirty-five foot buffer zones had “effectively stifled petitioners’ message” by prohibiting the plaintiffs’ chosen means of communication. Id.

Finally, the Court held the buffer zones burdened substantially more speech than necessary to achieve the state’s asserted interests in public safety, preventing harassment of women and clinic staff seeking entrance to clinics, and preventing deliberate obstruction of clinic entrances. Id. Although the Court acknowledged the importance of these interests, it determined the state’s chosen method of achieving them —categorically excluding most individuals from the buffer zones— was not narrowly tailored. Id. at 2537–41. That is, the Court held the government had not demonstrated “that alternative measures that burden substantially less speech would fail to achieve the government’s interests.” Id. at 2540. In so doing, the Court expressly rejected the argument that the government could choose a particular means of achieving its interests merely because that method was easier to administer. Id.

Here, the Order imposes substantially similar restrictions on Plaintiffs’ First Amendment activities as the buffer-zone statute did in McCullen. Specifically, the Order imposes a categorical ban on First Amendment activity within the Restricted Areas. This ban effectively destroys Plaintiffs’ ability to engage in one-on-one communication and leafletting within the Restricted Areas. And the record is silent on whether Plaintiff could adequately identify and thereby engage in their preferred method of communication before the public entered the Restricted Areas. Where the district court’s preliminary injunction analysis was based on a public forum analysis and the record does not contain facts to distinguish McCullen, we cannot conclude that the district court abused its discretion in finding that the Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment claim.

Moreover, the Judicial District’s asserted interests in banning First Amendment activity in the Restricted Areas are largely identical to the government interests asserted in McCullen: unhindered ingress and egress and public safety. See id. We agree these interests are legitimate. But on this record at least, the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding the means chosen to achieve those interests —a total ban on expressive activity— is not narrowly tailored, as even content-neutral regulations in a public forum must be. 9

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9 This is not to say that the Judicial District cannot impose content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions that are narrowly-tailored to advance the significant interests it identifies. Indeed, several of the provisions contained in the Order were not enjoined by the district court. As one example, paragraph 4 of the Order prohibits the use of sound amplification equipment. This type of content-neutral restriction has long been upheld. See Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781, 796–97 (1989).
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In summary, the district court did not abuse its discretion by analyzing the issues at the preliminary injunction stage as if the Restricted Areas were public fora, or by considering alternative means of achieving the governmental interests in determining whether the Order is narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest. Similarly, the district court did not abuse its discretion by finding Plaintiffs were likely to prevail on their claim that the complete prohibition of Plaintiffs’ plans to distribute pamphlets to people in a public forum is unconstitutional. See United States v. Apel, __ U.S. __, 134 S. Ct. 1144, 1154–55 (2014) (Ginsburg, J., concurring) (“When the Government permits the public onto part of its property, in either a traditional or designated public forum, its ‘ability to permissibly restrict expressive conduct is very limited.’” (quoting United States v. Grace, 461 U.S. 171, 177 (1983)).

Nevertheless, because the question of the forum status of the Restricted Areas will remain central to the district court’s permanent injunction analysis on remand, we now address principles relevant to the resolution of this issue. See Cook v. Rockwell Int’l Corp., 618 F.3d 1127, 1142 n.15 (10th Cir. 2010) (“[I]t is proper to . . . decide questions of law raised in this appeal that are certain to arise again . . . in order to guide the district court on remand.”). In doing so, we express no opinion as to the merits of that question.

C. Issues on Remand

To determine whether a permanent injunction should be granted, the district court must reach a final decision on the First Amendment issues in this case. Because the relevant First Amendment test varies according to the nature of the forum involved and because the Judicial District will presumably contest Plaintiffs’ characterization of the Restricted Areas as public fora, the district court is required to first determine the forum status of the Restricted Areas. In resolving this question, the parties must present evidence, and the district court must enter factual findings supporting its conclusion, that each of the Restricted Areas constitutes a traditional public forum, a designated public forum, or a nonpublic forum. See, e.g., Huminski v. Corsones, 396 F.3d 53, 90–92 (2d Cir. 2004) (separately considering the forum status of state courthouses, court lands/grounds, and parking lots); Sammartano v. First Judicial Dist. Ct., 303 F.3d 959, 966–68 (9th Cir. 2002) (concluding plaintiffs were likely to succeed on First Amendment challenge to rule restricting expressive clothing in municipal complex, including courtrooms, because the rule “does not differentiate between courtrooms and other public areas”), abrogated on other grounds by Winter v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7 (2008); United States v. Gilbert, 920 F.2d 878, 884 (11th Cir. 1991) (Gilbert I) (holding portions of courthouse grounds were designated public fora, while other parts of the grounds were nonpublic fora). We summarize the relevant precedent on these issues now in an attempt to aid the district court and the parties in this task on remand. In addition, we provide some limited guidance to the district court and the parties on the tension between the Judicial District and Denver over the appropriate use of the Restricted Areas.

1. Traditional Public Fora

The Supreme Court has long recognized “that public places historically associated with the free exercise of expressive activities, such as streets, sidewalks, and parks, are considered, without more, to be public forums.” United States v. Grace, 461 U.S. 171, 177 (1983) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Perry Educ. Ass’n v. Perry Local Educators’ Ass’n, 460 U.S. 37, 45 (1983) (identifying as “quintessential” public fora those spaces that “time out of mind[] have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions”). Here, the Restricted Areas include the arced walkway that runs from the corner of Elati Street and Colfax Avenue in a curved path across the front of the Courthouse to the Patio in front of the main entrance to the Courthouse. The inclusion of this area raises at least a question concerning its status as traditional a public forum.

The Supreme Court has also cautioned, however, that not all streets and sidewalks are traditional public fora. See United States v. Kokinda, 497 U.S. 720, 727 (1990) (discussing a postal sidewalk “constructed solely to provide for the passage of individuals engaged in postal business” from the parking area to the post office door); Greer v. Spock, 424 U.S. 828, 835–37 (1976) (speech restrictions on a military reservation that contained streets and sidewalks). Instead, the particular characteristics of a sidewalk are highly relevant to the inquiry. See Grace, 461 U.S. at 179–80. “The mere physical characteristics of the property cannot dictate” the outcome of the forum analysis. Kokinda, 497 U.S. at 727. Rather, “the location and purpose of a publicly owned sidewalk is critical to determining whether such a sidewalk constitutes a public forum.” Id. at 728–29.

The Supreme Court’s discussion in Grace is likely to be of particular relevance on remand. In Grace, the Court considered whether a federal statute prohibiting expressive activities on the Supreme Court’s grounds could be constitutionally applied to the adjacent public sidewalks. 461 U.S. at 172–73. The Court found the public sidewalks along the perimeter of the grounds were physically indistinguishable from other public sidewalks in Washington, D.C. Id. at 179. “There is no separation, no fence, and no indication whatever to persons stepping from the street to the curb and sidewalks that serve as the perimeter of the Court grounds that they have entered some special type of enclave.” Id. at 180. See also Int’l Soc’y for Krishna Consciousness, Inc. v. Lee, 505 U.S. 672, 680 (1992) (“[W]e have recognized that the location of property also has a bearing [on whether it is a traditional public forum] because separation from acknowledged public areas may serve to indicate that the separated property is a special enclave, subject to greater restriction.”). In the absence of some physical distinction between typical public sidewalks and the sidewalks making up the perimeter of the Court grounds, the Court in Grace held the perimeter sidewalks were traditional public fora, subject only to those restrictions normally allowed in such spaces. 461 U.S. at 180. Thus, on remand here, the district court must determine whether the evidence supports a finding that the arced walkway is physically distinguishable from other public sidewalks.

But the physical similarity to public sidewalks is not alone determinative of these sidewalks’ forum status. In Kokinda, the Supreme Court held that a sidewalk owned by and in front of a United States Post Office was not a traditional public forum, despite the fact that it was physically identical to a public sidewalk across the parking lot from the post office entrance. 497 U.S. at 727. The Court reasoned the post office sidewalk did not share the characteristics of a sidewalk open to the public at large. Although the public sidewalk formed a public passageway that served as a general thoroughfare, in contrast, “the postal sidewalk was constructed solely to provide for the passage of individuals engaged in postal business.” Id. As a result, the Court held the postal sidewalk was not a traditional public forum. Id. at 729–30. Accordingly, the evidence and findings of fact on remand should be focused on the physical characteristics and the intended and actual use of any sidewalks included in the Restricted Areas.

Importantly, the mere fact a sidewalk abuts a courthouse or its grounds is not determinative of the forum status of the sidewalk. 10 The Grace Court expressly rejected the idea that a traditional public forum could be transformed into a nonpublic forum merely because of its physical proximity to government property. 461 U.S. at 180. The Court stated

[t]raditional public forum property occupies a special position in terms of First Amendment protection and will not lose its historically recognized character for the reason that it abuts government property that has been dedicated to a use other than as a forum for public expression. Nor may the government transform the character of the property by the expedient of including it within the statutory definition of what might be considered a non-public forum parcel of property.

Id.; see also Rodney A. Smolla, 1 Smolla & Nimmer on Freedom of Speech § 8:32 (“With the development of modern public forum doctrine, courts increasingly have come to recognize that they are not immune from the rules set down for other public property.”). In Grace, the Supreme Court concluded, “[w]e are convinced . . . that the [statute], which totally bans the specified communicative activity on the public sidewalks around the Court grounds, cannot be justified as a reasonable place restriction primarily because it has an insufficient nexus with any of the public interests [asserted].” 461 U.S. at 181. Similarly, the fact that the arced walkway abuts the Courthouse here is not determinative alone of its forum status.

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10 The cases relied on by the Judicial District do not support the blanket proposition that all courthouse grounds are automatically nonpublic fora merely because they physically abut a courthouse. Rather, these cases first conclude the grounds are not a traditional public forum and then carefully consider the physical characteristics of the government property, as well as the prior use of that property for expressive activities, to determine its forum status. See Huminski v. Corsones, 396 F.3d 53, 90–92 (2d Cir. 2004) (holding courthouses were nonpublic fora where buildings housing the courts had not been traditionally open to the public for expressive activities and such activities inside the courthouse would likely be incompatible with the purposes the courthouse serves); Sammartano v. First Judicial Dist. Ct., 303 F.3d 959, 966 (9th Cir. 2002) (holding civil complex, including courts and public offices had not “by long tradition or by government fiat” been open to public expression and agreeing with parties that it was a nonpublic forum), abrogated on other grounds by Winter v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7 (2008). See also United States v. Gilbert (Gilbert I), 920 F.2d 878, 884–85 (11th Cir. 1991) (considering prior expressive activities on different areas of court grounds and holding some portions had been designated as public fora, while other parts of the grounds were nonpublic fora).
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The district court will also be required to decide the forum status of the Patio before it can apply the proper standard to restrictions on expressive activity in that Restricted Area. The D.C. Circuit recently applied the Court’s forum analysis in Grace to the question of whether the plaza in front of the Supreme Court was a traditional public forum. See Hodge v. Talkin, 799 F.3d 1145, 1158 (D.C. Cir. 2015), petition for cert. filed, 84 U.S.L.W. 3388 (U.S. Jan. 4, 2016) (No. 15-863). The court’s analysis focused on the plaza’s physical characteristics, emphasizing the architectural integration of the plaza with the Supreme Court building itself, as well as the physical separation between the plaza and the perimeter sidewalks. Id. at 1158–59. In particular, the D.C. Circuit relied on evidence that the Supreme Court plaza is elevated from the public sidewalk by a set of marble steps that contrast with the public sidewalk, but match the steps leading to the entrance of the Supreme Court building. It also relied on evidence that the plaza is surrounded by a low wall that matches the wall surrounding the Supreme Court building. Id. at 1158. According to the court, a visitor would be on notice that the pathway to the Supreme Court begins on the plaza. Id. Because the physical characteristics of the plaza indicated an intentional separation from the surrounding sidewalks and because the plaza had not traditionally been a space open for expressive activities, the D.C. Circuit held the Supreme Court plaza was a nonpublic forum. Id. at 1159–60.

Here, the parties should present evidence and the district court should make findings about the physical characteristics of the arced walkway and Patio, with attention to the ways in which each is distinguished from public sidewalks and the public areas of the Plaza. Specifically, the district court should consider whether it would be apparent to a visitor that by entering the Patio he is entering an enclave connected with the Courthouse and whether the use of the arced walkway is limited to courthouse ingress and egress.

?2. Designated Public Fora

If the district court finds that one or more of the Restricted Areas is not a traditional public forum, it must next consider whether the Restricted Area has been nevertheless designated as public fora. The Supreme Court has explained that “a government entity may create ‘a designated public forum’ if government property that has not traditionally been regarded as a public forum is intentionally opened up for that purpose.” Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, 555 U.S. 460, 469 (2009) (holding that placement of certain privately donated permanent monuments in public park while rejecting others constituted government, not public, speech). To create a designated public forum, “the government must make an affirmative choice to open up its property for use as a public forum.” United States v. Am. Library Ass’n, Inc., 539 U.S. 194, 206 (2003) (holding that library’s provision of internet access did not open a designated public forum, but was offered as a technological extension of its book collection). The Court has further cautioned that “[t]he government does not create a public forum by inaction or by permitting limited discourse, but only by intentionally opening a nontraditional forum for public discourse.” Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Def. & Educ. Fund, 473 U.S. 788, 802 (1985). See also Walker v. Tex. Div., Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc., ___ U.S. ___, 135 S. Ct. 2239, 2249–50 (2015) (holding that Texas did not intentionally open its license plates to public discourse). Thus, the government’s intent is the focus of this inquiry. See Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 802; see also Gen. Media Commc’ns, Inc. v. Cohen, 131 F.3d 273, 279 (2d Cir. 1997) (“Governmental intent is said to be the ‘touchstone’ of forum analysis.”), as corrected and reported at 1997 U.S. App. LEXIS 40571, *15 (March 25, 1998).

The Supreme Court has further instructed that it “will not find that a public forum has been created in the face of clear evidence of a contrary intent, nor will [it] infer that the government intended to create a public forum when the nature of the property is inconsistent with expressive activity.” Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 803. If the “principal function of the property would be disrupted by expressive activity,” the Supreme Court is “particularly reluctant” to conclude the government designated it as a public forum. Id. at 804. Consequently, prohibitions on speech within a courthouse have been routinely upheld. 11 See, e.g., Hodge, 799 F.3d at 1158 (upholding statute banning expressive activities within Supreme Court building); Mezibov v. Allen, 411 F.3d 712, 718 (6th Cir. 2005) (“The courtroom is a nonpublic forum.”); Huminski, 396 F.3d at 91 (collecting cases and holding that the interior of a courthouse is not a public forum); Sefick v. Gardner, 164 F.3d 370, 372 (7th Cir. 1998) (“The lobby of the courthouse is not a traditional public forum or a designated public forum, not a place open to the public for the presentation of views. No one can hold a political rally in the lobby of a federal courthouse.”); Berner v. Delahanty, 129 F.3d 20, 26 (1st Cir. 1997) (holding that courtroom is a nonpublic forum).

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11 The preliminary injunction here does not enjoin the Order’s restrictions on speech within the Courthouse.
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Under facts similar to those here, the Seventh Circuit held the plaintiffs had no First Amendment right to distribute jury nullification pamphlets in the lobby of the county courthouse. Braun v. Baldwin, 346 F.3d 761, 764 (7th Cir. 2003) (“[Plaintiffs] have no greater right than a criminal defendant’s lawyer to tell jurors in the courthouse to disobey the judge’s instructions.” (emphasis added)). See also United States v. Ogle, 613 F.2d 233 (10th Cir. 1979) (upholding conviction for jury tampering where the defendant, who did not raise a First Amendment defense, attempted to have jury nullification literature delivered to a juror in a pending case).

Although there is little doubt the interior of a courthouse is a nonpublic forum, the forum status of a courthouse’s exterior is dependent upon the unique facts involved. Compare Grace, 461 U.S. at 182 (acknowledging “necessity to protect persons and property or to maintain proper order and decorum within the Supreme Court grounds,” but striking as unconstitutional a ban on expressive activities on abutting sidewalks), with Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 559, 562–64, 572–74 (1965) (upholding statute prohibiting demonstration outside a courthouse intended to affect the outcome of pending criminal charges, but reversing defendant’s conviction pursuant to the statute under the circumstances). In determining whether the government “intended to designate a place not traditionally open to assembly and debate as a public forum,” the Supreme Court “has looked to the policy and practice of the government and to the nature of the property and its compatibility with expressive activity.” Walker, 135 S. Ct. at 2250 (internal quotation marks omitted).

Applying these principles, the Eleventh Circuit reached contrary conclusions regarding different portions of the grounds of a federal building housing a federal district court and federal agencies. Gilbert I, 902 F.2d at 884. In Gilbert I, the plaintiff challenged an injunction prohibiting him from using the federal building as his home and from engaging in certain expressive activities in and around the building. The ground level of the federal building included an interior lobby and, outside the lobby doors, a covered portico leading to an uncovered plaza. Id. at 880–81. Because demonstrations had occurred frequently on the uncovered plaza, the Eleventh Circuit held the uncovered plaza had been designated as a public forum. In contrast, it determined the covered portico area was not a public forum. In reaching that conclusion, the court relied in part on the district court’s finding that the Government Services Agency (GSA) had an unwritten policy of excluding demonstrators from the covered portico. Although there was evidence demonstrators had occasionally used the portico during protest activities, the Eleventh Circuit relied on the district court’s finding that these were “isolated instances of undiscovered violations” of the GSA policy and not the intentional “opening of a nontraditional forum for public discourse.” 12 Id. at 884–85.

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12 After the Eleventh Circuit issued this decision, an unrelated security issue caused the GSA to place a row of planters across the uncovered plaza and to issue a statement limiting the public forum to the area between the planters and the public street. Mr. Gilbert again sued and the circuit court upheld the district court’s ruling that the GSA had effectively withdrawn the area between the planters and the building previously designated as a public forum. See United States v. Gilbert (Gilbert III), 130 F.3d 1458, 1461 (11th Cir. 1997) (“The government is not required to retain indefinitely the open character of a facility.”). Between Gilbert I and Gilbert III, the Eleventh Circuit upheld Mr. Gilbert’s conviction for obstructing the entrance to the federal building. United States v. Gilbert (Gilbert II), 47 F.3d 1116, 1117 (11th Cir. 1995).
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As the decision in Gilbert I demonstrates, the issue of whether an area associated with a courthouse has been designated as a public or nonpublic forum is highly dependent on the evidence of the government’s intent to open the area to public speech. That intent can be established by the government’s policy statements, 13 affirmative actions by the government to designate the area as a public forum, 14 stipulation, 15 the compatibility of expressive activity with the principal function of the property, 16 and whether and the frequency with which public speech has been permitted in the forum. 17 To avoid post hoc justification for a desire to suppress a particular message, courts have considered the government’s statement of policy in light of the government’s actual practice. Air Line Pilots Ass’n, Int’l v. Dep’t of Aviation of City of Chi., 45 F.3d 1144, 1153–54 (7th Cir. 1995) (“[A] court must examine the actual policy —as gleaned from the consistent practice with regard to various speakers— to determine whether a state intended to create a designated public forum.”); Hays Cty. Guardian v. Supple, 969 F.2d 111, 117–18 (5th Cir. 1992) (“[T]he government’s policy is indicated by its consistent practice, not each exceptional regulation that departs from the consistent practice.”). Accordingly, forum status is an inherently factual inquiry about the government’s intent and the surrounding circumstances that requires the district court to make detailed factual findings. See Stewart v. D. C. Armory Bd., 863 F.2d 1013, 1018 (D.C. Cir. 1988) (holding that “identifying the government’s intent . . . raises inherently factual issues that cannot be resolved on a Rule 12(b)(6) motion”); Air Line Pilots, 45 F.3d at 1154 (same). And the ultimate question is whether the facts indicate the government intended to open a nontraditional forum to expressive activity. See Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 802 (“The government does not create a public forum by inaction or by permitting limited discourse, but only by intentionally opening a nontraditional forum for public discourse.”).

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13 Church on the Rock v. City of Albuquerque, 84 F.3d 1273, 1276-77 (10th Cir. 1996) (relying on senior citizen center policies to determine forum status of senior centers); Paulsen v. County of Nassau, 925 F.2d 65, 69 (2d Cir. 1991) (relying on county charter and local law as indicia of county’s intent to dedicate coliseum to a broad array of public and expressive purposes); Gilbert I, 920 F.2d at 884 (relying on unwritten GSA policy banning demonstrations from the covered portico).

14 Church on the Rock, 84 F.3d at 1278 (holding that senior centers were designated as public fora because the city had “permitted lectures and classes on a broad range of subjects by both members and non-members”); Huminski, 396 F.3d at 91 (holding courthouse parking lot is not a public forum because there was no evidence the government did anything to designate it as such).

15 Grider v. Abramson, 180 F.3d 739, 748 n.11 (6th Cir. 1999) (relying on stipulation of the parties that courthouse steps are a public forum).

16 Paulsen, 925 F.3d at 70 (holding that coliseum grounds are a public forum, in part, because the property can accommodate a wide variety of expressive activity without threatening the government function of the facility); Greer v. Spock, 424 U.S. 828, 835– 37 (1976) (holding military reservation is not a public forum); Adderley v. Florida, 385 U.S. 39, 47 (1966) (same as to jailhouse).

17 Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263, 267-68 (1981) (holding university’s policy of accommodating student meetings created a forum generally open for student use); Paulsen, 925 F.3d at 70 (“The grounds of the Coliseum have been used for parades, political rallies and speeches, religious weddings and circuses. . . . Routinely, banners have been displayed by patrons . . . . Significantly, . . . many groups, including war veterans, the Christian Joy Fellowship and the Salvation Army, were regularly permitted to solicit contributions or distribute literature.”); Gilbert I, 920 F.2d at 884 (holding that unenclosed plaza of a federal building that houses courtrooms has been opened by the government as a public forum because “[d]emonstrations occur there on a frequent basis,” but holding covered portico was not opened as a public forum because occasional demonstrations there were undetected violations of GSA policy).
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3. Disagreement Over Opening the Restricted Areas as Public Fora

Here, the issue of the government’s intent is complicated by the disagreement between Denver and the Judicial District about the forum status of the Restricted Areas.

According to Denver, it intended to and did open all areas of the Plaza, including those within the Restricted Areas, to the public for expressive activity. In fact, Denver (one of the Defendants) entered into a Stipulation to this effect with Plaintiffs. Cf. Grider v. Abramson, 180 F.3d 739, 748 n.11 (6th Cir. 1999) (noting that parties had stipulated that courthouse steps are a public forum). In contrast, the Judicial District argues Denver’s Stipulation that the entire Plaza is a public forum cannot control the status of the Restricted Areas because Colorado law vests the judicial branch with inherent authority to regulate state courthouses. As such, the Judicial District asserts that its intent —not Denver’s— should control the forum status of the Restricted Areas.

This argument between Defendants raises difficult and novel questions about the intersection between a government property owner’s power to designate its property as a public forum and the rights of the occupant of the government property —in this case another governmental entity— to use that property without interference. The parties have not directed us to any authority addressing the question of whose intent controls when two governmental entities disagree about the status of the same forum, and our own research has not revealed any decision precisely on point. But a review of the evolution of the Supreme Court’s doctrine on speech forums reveals some fundamental principles that may guide resolution of this difficult question.

The Supreme Court has not always recognized a First Amendment right of the public to use publicly owned property for expressive purposes. Indeed, the Court’s early jurisprudence recognized the absolute right of the government to exclude the public from using its property. See Davis v. Massachusetts, 167 U.S. 43, 46–47 (1897); see also Geoffrey R. Stone, Fora Americana: Speech in Public Places, 1974 Sup. Ct. Rev. 233, 236–37 (discussing the Supreme Court’s early forum jurisprudence). In Davis, the Court considered a First Amendment challenge to a Boston city ordinance forbidding “any public address” on public property “except in accordance with a permit from the mayor.” 167 U.S. at 44. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts had affirmed a preacher’s conviction for violating the ordinance by preaching on Boston Common without first obtaining a permit from the mayor, stating “[f]or the Legislature absolutely or conditionally to forbid public speaking in a highway or public park is no more an infringement of the rights of a member of the public than for the owner of a private house to forbid it in his house.” Id. at 47 (quoting Commonwealth v. Davis, 39 N.E. 113, 113 (Mass. 1895) (Holmes, J.)). The Supreme Court unanimously affirmed, concluding that “[t]he right to absolutely exclude all right to use necessarily includes the authority to determine under what circumstances such use may be availed of, as the greater power contains the lesser.” Id. at 48. Under the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence at the time, the government —as the owner of public property— retained an absolute right to exclude the public from that property, just as any private property owner would have the right to exclude others. See Stone, supra, at 237 (“[T]he state possessed the power absolutely to prohibit the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech on public property simply by asserting the prerogatives traditionally associated with the private ownership of land. The complex and difficult problem of the public forum had been ‘solved’ by resort to common law concepts of private property.”).

Later, the Supreme Court revisited the question of the public’s use of government property for expressive purposes and again relied on traditional notions of private property ownership. See Hague v. Comm. for Indus. Org., 307 U.S. 496 (1939). In Hague, the Court considered the constitutionality of city ordinances prohibiting all public meetings and leafletting in streets and other public places without a permit. Id. at 501–03. Departing from its analysis in Davis, Justice Roberts, writing for a plurality of the Court, stated:

Wherever the title of streets and parks may rest, they have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions. Such use of the streets and public places has, from ancient times, been a part of the privileges, immunities, rights, and liberties of citizens. The privilege of a citizen of the United States to use the streets and parks for communication of views on national questions may be regulated in the interest of all; it is not absolute, but relative, and must be exercised in subordination to the general comfort and convenience, and in consonance with peace and good order; but it must not, in the guise of regulation, be abridged or denied.

Id. at 515–16. Justice Roberts’s position accepted the underlying premise of Davis —that the owner of government property enjoyed the same prerogatives as any private property owner— but then extended that premise to predicate a “public forum right upon established common law notions of adverse possession and public trust.” Stone, supra, at 238. See also Harry Kalven, Jr., The Concept of the Public Forum: Cox v. Louisiana, 1965 Sup. Ct. Rev. 1, 13 (describing Justice Roberts’s analysis in Hague as establishing “a kind of First-Amendment easement” in which the public, through long use and tradition, has acquired a right to use certain types of public property for First Amendment purposes).

Although Justice Roberts spoke only for a plurality of the Hague Court, his formulation has since been accepted by the Supreme Court as the prevailing rationale underlying the concept of traditional public fora. See, e.g., Perry Educ., 460 U.S. at 45 (defining traditional public fora by adopting Justice Roberts’s “time out of mind” description). Even in the context of a traditional public forum in which the government property owner’s power to exclude and curtail use is sharply circumscribed, the underlying rationale is premised on traditional notions of private property ownership. Indeed, the government’s power to control speech in a traditional public forum is circumscribed precisely because the public has, through the extent and nature of its use of these types of government property, acquired, in effect, a “speech easement” that the government property owner must now honor.

The Supreme Court has continued to rely on traditional notions of property ownership to describe the government’s ability to control the use of its property. For example, the Supreme Court has recognized that the government, “no less than a private owner of property, has power to preserve the property under its control for the use to which it is lawfully dedicated.” Greer, 424 U.S. at 836 (emphasis added). This includes the ability to designate portions of government property for expressive purposes. See Perry Educ., 460 U.S. at 45. But the underlying rationale of a designated public forum is that the governmental entity with control over the property can decide whether and to what extent to open nontraditional fora to public speech. See Christian Legal Soc’y Chapter of the Univ. of Cal., Hastings Coll. of Law v. Martinez, 561 U.S. 661, 679 (2010) (“[I]n a progression of cases, this Court has employed forum analysis to determine when a governmental entity, in regulating property in its charge, may place limitations on speech.”) (emphasis added)).

In this case, the record before the district court at the preliminary injunction hearing indicated that Denver is the owner of the Courthouse and its surrounding grounds. It was also undisputed that there is no lease agreement between Denver and the Judicial District that could have transferred some of Denver’s property interests to the Judicial District. And the Judicial District is not the only occupant of the building; the county also has courtrooms in the building. As a result, Denver’s intent will be particularly relevant to a determination of whether the Restricted Areas were designated as a public forum.

Nevertheless, the Judicial District argues Denver may not unilaterally designate the Restricted Areas as public fora because, under Colorado law, the state judicial branch is endowed with inherent authority as an independent and co-equal branch of government to regulate state courthouses. The first problem with this argument is that it ignores the limits of that inherent authority. Although Colorado permits its courts to do all that is “reasonably required to enable a court to perform efficiently its judicial functions, to protect its dignity, independence, and integrity, and to make its lawful actions effective,” the Colorado Supreme Court has recognized that this inherent authority is not without its limitations. Bd. of Cty. Comm’rs of Weld Cty. v. Nineteenth Judicial Dist., 895 P.2d 545, 547–48 (Colo. 1995) (quoting Pena v. District Ct., 681 P.2d 953, 956 (Colo.1984)). Specifically, the “court’s inherent authority terminates when its ability to carry out its constitutional duty to administer justice is no longer threatened.” Id. at 549.

On the existing record, the Judicial District has not demonstrated that Plaintiffs’ First Amendment activities interfered with the ability of the Judicial District to carry out its essential functions. Mr. Steadman testified that Plaintiffs’ pamphleteering presented no security risk to the Courthouse. And the Judicial District presented no evidence indicating that the narrow preliminary injunction issued by the district court would interfere with its judicial functions. On the record before us, therefore, the Judicial District has not demonstrated that the preliminary injunction issued by the district court implicates the court’s inherent authority.

But it is also true that Denver’s statement of its intent is only one factor to be considered by the district court in determining whether a permanent injunction should issue. Recall that the government’s statement of policy should be weighed against the evidence of its actual practice to avoid post hoc justifications. See Air Line Pilots, 45 F.3d at 1153; Hays Cty. Guardian, 969 F.2d at 117–18. Denver’s concession in the Stipulation and its expressions of past intent could be motivated by fiscal or other considerations that are inconsistent with its actual practice.

For example, although the evidence indicated that some expressive activity has occurred in the Restricted Areas, those occasions may have been “isolated incidents of undiscovered violations,” rather than evidence of affirmative acts to open the Restricted Areas as public fora. Gilbert I, 920 F.2d at 885. And a contrary intent might be gleaned from the design of the Restricted Areas and the extent to which public and private areas are clearly separated. See Grace, 461 U.S. at 179–80. Also of importance in assessing whether the Restricted Areas have been designated as public fora is the extent to which doing so is incompatible with the primary use of the Courthouse. See Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 803. That is, it would be strong evidence that Denver did not intend to designate all of the Restricted Areas as public fora if to do so would destroy the primary function of the Courthouse. Or in different terms, the district court must assess whether it is credible that a governmental owner would construct a courthouse and install state and county judicial operations within it, only to designate public fora so intrusively that the essential function of the courthouse is thwarted. Thus, although the Stipulation provides some evidence on the question of whether the Restricted Areas have been designated as public fora, it is not alone determinative of that question.

III. CONCLUSION

Based on the record before it, the district court did not abuse its discretion in granting Plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction. We therefore AFFIRM the order entering a limited preliminary injunction in favor of Plaintiffs, and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this decision.

Enbridge Dakota Access Pipeline and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stopped by who else but Standing Rock Sioux


Native American activists have been converging in North Dakota to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline which is encroaching without permission on tribal lands. They’ve delayed construction though the industry already secured an injunction against them. Their main complaint is that it threatens their water. Fittingly the first step authorities took against the growing protest was to take their water. Purportedly because some campers were allegedly endangering corporate surveillance planes with laser pointers.

Erdogan fakes coup in Turkey, purges army and supreme court, shuts down US air base to force extradition of rival


The military coup in Istanbul was not what the Turkish President’s tightly reined media, nor the West’s fascist controlled media, say it was. It was not a coup, it was a Reichtag Fire. Now Recep Erdogan is rounding up the “plotters”, most of them supreme court judges, who were the last checks and balances on his authoritarian ambitions. We’re supposed to believe jurists plotted with foot soldiers? Imagine you get a ransom note from kidnappers, but the person they say they’ve kidnapped is on Facetime with CNN assuring you he’s free! Imagine you’re the kidnapper and you see that! But you’re only a soldier, doing your compulsory military service, following orders to prevent rioters from storming a bridge, and you’re not watching television as your president calls citizens to take to the streets and attack the disloyal “rebels.” Meanwhile the officers ordered to give you the orders hop a helicopter to Greece because they know they are going to be the scapegoats. And get this: jet pilots who precision bomb Kurds and ISIS for lunch, can only lob lunchbox bombs upon the parliament and sundry official buildings. Now US pundits, speaking as former CIA officers, resting their laurels on having been advisors to countless military coups, are claiming the coup was “bungled”. Yeah? Do you think Turkish soldiers don’t know their capitol is in Ankara, not Istanbul? Former CIA director James Woolsey is among the pundits. Woolsey, we learn, has been in Turkey for the last six months. What is HE doing in Turkey? Now Erdogan has closed US use of Incirlik Air Base and he’s asking President Obama to extradite Fethullah Gülen, the Turkish expat whose is seen as Erdogan’s main political rival.

Modern Nat Turner insures Dallas cops cannot assail Black lives with impunity

Chris DornerWas ANYBODY going to stop the unfettered lynching of people of color in America? Did President Obama ever deliver anything more than a eulogy? Few police officers are being convicted or even indicted. Videotaped killings of black men by lawmen have become so common, those disseminating the videos are being accused of harboring fetishes. People expressing offense online are being shamed for being clicktivists, though clearly the only fuels firing public outrage are the videos. Meanwhile Black Lives Matter spokespeople have become so jaded they ridicule the efficacy of street protests. And now everyone is condemning the lone direct action taker.

The killing of any human being is terrible, but the retaliatory killings of police in Dallas could have been prevented. Not by expecting minority communities to stomach further and unending extrajudicial assassinations, but by having police curb their racism and use of lethal force. Or of course by disbanding militarized police departments. Public officials can’t even broach that conversation. Do we expect the police state to dismantle itself?

Self-styled black revolutionary Micah Xavier Johnson, a typical PTSD-hardened Afghan vet, put “suicide by cop” to the service of his embattled community and avenged the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. He didn’t shoot their actual killers, but he didn’t hit innocents either. Johnson targeted America’s systemic enforcers of inequity, hitting twelve police officers, five of whom have now died.

Let’s note those cops weren’t “protecting the first amendment rights” of a spontaneous protest of the Sterling and Castile murders, but were harassing and detering demonstrations. The officers could have chosen not to, and hopefully, their comrades in other cities, molesting other legal assemblies, may now choose to stand down, because now authoritarian bullying has come in the line of fire.

There is poetic justice for those who would decry “Blue Lives Matter”. If they’re going to pretend it, let them feel the oppressive threat of violence which black lives bear. For one evening, in a small corner of Dallas, Texas, police brutality faced a comeuppance.

For now Johnson’s act is being condemned as an atrocity, as a massacre even, though obviously his victims 1) met every standard of belligerent adversary, 2) were armed, and 3) outnumbered him. Let’s concede that Johnson is a credit to his military training. He confirms how our soldiers could so murderously rapage through our war zones against lesser equipped combatants. Johnson’s motive echoes that which provoked US atrocities overseas, seeking revenge against civilians, exacting collective punishment for deadly IEDs.

If we acknowledge the violence with which African Americans are oppressed, and the mendacity of its apologists and enablers, can we condemn violent resistance? International law accords oppressed peoples the human right to resist.

Slave rebellion leader Nat Turner is recognized today as a hero, but was exhaustively vilified in his day because he killed slave owners, indescriminate of old or young. Whites retaliated and killed many more blacks. More violence follwed from abolitionsists and Jayhawkers, all of it lamentable. But slavery didn’t end because we willed it.

Because this era’s history is written with erasers, our victors’ primary tool, Micah Johnson will probably never be praised for heroism.

Johnson will join fellow effaced cop-killer Christopher Dorner. A previous African American reservist vet who was immolated alive, killed instead of being apprehended, lest an investigation benefit from his testimony about why he could no longer bear LAPD corruption in 2013.

From Dorner’s “manifesto”, before Michael Brown, Ferguson and Baltimore:

“Those Caucasian officers who join South Bureau divisions (77th,SW,SE, an Harbor) with the sole intent to victimize minorities who are uneducated, and unaware of criminal law, civil law, and civil rights. You prefer the South bureau because a use of force/deadly force is likely and the individual you use UOF on will likely not report it. You are a high value target.

“Those Black officers in supervisory ranks and pay grades who stay in south bureau (even though you live in the valley or OC) for the sole intent of getting retribution toward subordinate caucasian officers for the pain and hostile work environment their elders inflicted on you as probationers (P-1?s) and novice P-2’s. You are a high value target.

You perpetuated the cycle of racism in the department as well. You breed a new generation of bigoted caucasian officer when you belittle them and treat them unfairly.

Mikah Johnson’s last words we only know through the spin of Dallas police, the same people who decided not to wait him out, nor to smoke him or gas him out from hiding in a public parking garage, but instead to send a robot with a bomb and M.O.V.E. his ass like every other black nationalist revolutionary.

No, you murdurous assholes, Johnson didn’t “want to kill all white people.” He wanted to kill white cops. Just like Dorner, he wasn’t a threat to the public, he was a threat to the police state. You cops ensured Mikah Johnson didn’t live to dictate “confessions” and you even obliterated his body like Osama bin Laden. Drawn and quartered essentially, to preclude memorializers being able to center on an idol to build a resistance.

You and I may grapple with what to think of Johnson’s personal rampage, but the state knew immediately his was the selfless heroism they fear most. As with bin Laden, they knew his apprehension must be terminal.

Lest I be misunderstood, I do not promote armed insurrection, sedition or murder. I cannot. But I will not condemn Micah Johnson.

I need not agrandize him either. Taken without his revolutionary ideology, Johnson was an ordinary mentally wounded veteran like many others. Homicidal vets with PTSD are at the core of our epidemic of police brutality. Our law enforcement teams are full of OIF and OEF soldiers who got their start shooting up cars at checkpoints and acting out racist genocide to their heart’s content.

It’s not a new problem, the US has always had active warzones feeding veterans into homelessness for those who couldn’t cope and filling government jobs for those who thrived. Beside policemanship, a very common job for discharged soldiers has always been the post office. Rembember the rampaging gunman problem we used to call “going postal?”

America’s racism problem may be transcended by a succession of church services, but class struggle is not a hearts and minds operation. Fascist rule and its army of the rich are not going to be wished away by militant nonviolence. That’s as likely as counting on the tooth fairy.

Worrying that acts like Johnson’s will provoke increased authoritarian repression is an expression of privilege provided by someone aclimated to a tolerable status quo, clearly a white perspective for whom black lives matter not enough.

Until all of us share the plight of the average Syrian refugee, trapped in our capitalist frontier war zones, none of us are shouldering an equitable burden of the police state.

That’s why it is more than black lives that matter. The middle class greivances of Occupy Wall Street are only a class removed from Black America’s suffering. We’re still talking about privileged Americans who support a grander racism that drives our global exploitation of all peoples.

I don’t have any faith that an arc of history bends toward justice in this corporate dark age. For my own sense of what’s right, it’s important to recognize Micah Johnson and Christopher Dorner for who they were, flawed, maybe very minor, aspiring Nat Turners, who wanted to strike against today’s slave masters and their brutal blue foremen.

Ray Lyall Denver homeless man loses home in legal battle over tiny houses


DENVER, COLORADO- Ray Lyall was among nine homeless rights advocates arrested last October trying to defend a row of Tiny House model homes they built on public land administrated by the Denver Housing Authority. All were accused of trespass and today was Ray’s day in court before a jury of not quite his peers. Though the jury perceived Ray’s act to be political and were shown the paradox facing the city’s homeless, they found in favor of DHA and its SWAT eviction team. Denver’s lack of sympathy for the homeless is shared by Denver residents serving jury duty. All of whom were conscripted through addresses, many of them gentrified.

Like his co-defendant DJ Razee, the first of Ray’s colleagues to take a stand in court, Ray was found guilty of trespass.

Instead of jail time Ray was sentenced to twelve months probation, forty hours of community service, and a protection order to stay clear of DHA stooge Ryan Tobin. Ray also has to write a letter of apology stating that he understands trespass is not an acceptable protest act. Most significant however is an area restriction. Ray can’t return to the area bordered by Arapahoe and Lawrence, 25th and 26th, the block where Denver Homeless Out Loud erected “Resurrection Village”.

If the tiny houses were demolished the night of the police raid, and the vacant lot has been locked ever since, what does Ray’s area restriction matter?

The where to which Ray cannot return is under the tree he and DHOL’s real-life homeless members have called home before and since, a tree along the sidewalk of the DHA property, outside the fence but now inside Ray’s area restriction, where Ray & co. never bothered anyone, though maybe they troubled Ryan Tobin’s view, which is what prompted the heartless crackdown in the first place.

Ryan Tobin is not just DHA’s manager, he owns a $650,000 gentrified home across the street from the restricted lot. While urban “housing authority” entities purport to supply all income residences, they profit by redistributing properties to developers and relocating low income communities to the lesser desirable areas.

Denver inaugurated Spring 2016 with homeless sweeps to clear the gentrified neighborhood of its street dwellers. Where police can’t harass for “encumbrances” to move homeless along, they prosecute with “trespass”.

Each of the DHOL defendants who’ve reached trial or have taken plea deals have been given the area restriction. Restricted from a fenced lot surounded by no trespass signs. The legal overkill recalls the army of police officers deployed to assault DHOL and their tiny homes.

Ray isn’t going to jail but now he really has nowhere to go. Ray was houseless, a distinction that’s not just a technicality. Now Ray is homeless.

Maybe we can ask the Pope to call for the release of American mercenaries captured in a Baghdad brothel

WE SAY they were civilian contractors kidnapped from a Baghdad neighborhood apartment. WE ARE investigating whether the abduction was coordinated by Iran. When those missing are Western agents or corporate media propagandists or covert special ops (or wayward US sailors armed with AK-47s), we say they are abducted and scour diplomatic channels for traces of the underword. When the victims are adversarial persons of interest to Western military intelligence or the White House, they are rendered extraordinarily or summarily incinerated from the sky end of story.

Can you imagine foreign diplomats approaching US officials about their passport holders gone missing? How simply ludicrous that the US is indignant that our mercenaries are being picked off at the scene of their crimes. Iraq is a war zone. What, the occupied peoples must endure our drones but can’t arrest our criminals? Even when we’re raping Iraqi women? American exceptionalists bomb hospitals but hold brothels to be no fly zones.

US media won’t report who the contractors were or what they were doing. Security service company SALLYPORT is denying the three men work for them, or their parent company MICHAEL BAKER INTERNATIONAL, or doing work for GENERAL DYNAMICS CORP under contract with the US Army. The Dirty Three might have been in the sex trafficking service of providing “comfort women” for the US soldiers being redeployed to Iraq. “Sallyport” sounds pretty damned ugly to me. Good riddance.

350.ORG disowns Paris sans-culottes, opts for boot-counting passivist shtick, figures to storm the Bastille shoeless.


HOLY CRAP, Bill McKibben sells out the activists again, agreeing not only to cancel planned protests at the Paris Climate Conference, but distancing 350.ORG and its collaborator NGOs from real demonstrators upset at the protest ban. After leading hundreds of thousands in New York City on the World’s Largest Climate March TO NOWHERE, Bill McKibben flushes the Paris demonstrations and the climate they hoped to save with them. Nothing says silence like a streetful of shoes. Antiwar activists resorted to staging shoe die-ins at every surge of the Iraq War. The result? Crickets. We used army boots to represent mounting American war casualties. As pacifism lost popular traction, the disparing passivists cobbled larger and larger “demonstrations”. Activists came to call them exercises in BOOT-COUNTING. It’s a well-trod path, and as you might expect of shoes without wearers, they march nowhere.

WORSE BUT AS USUAL, the permit-carrying protest groups at the Paris summit immediately disowned demonstrators who threw bottles or in any manner protested the government’s edict to ban public protest in the wake of the November terrorist attacks. Activists who habitually support 350.ORG leadership were thrown under the bus as “not part of our movement”. Specifically they had violated a supposed pact which self-respecting nonprofits had signed to reject anything but impotent rule-following. While the media will continue to hand Bill McKibben a microphone, it’s time for street activists to raise their pitchforks against false grassroots leadership. There wouldn’t have been an Earth First if environmental nonprofits had put resistance before staged activism. The climate message doesn’t require their nuanced strategists. The struggle certainly doesn’t benefit from participants who think they can conscript shoes to take the streets for them.

AS TO A NONVIOLENCE PACT. Organizers of the Paris protests apparently swore an oath not to let protests escalate to resistance to police repression. It’s the same malarky nonviolence advocates demand of their adherants. AS IF Gandhi and MLK won their laurels without resorting to active resistance. Demonstrations against US national conventions have been hamstrung by simlar nonviolence pacts.

HOW ABOUT activists get a jump on the upcoming election year and propose an alternate oath for wannabe protesters, an elaboration on the St Paul Principles so to speak. At the DNC and RNC we swear to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to shut it down. Whoever can’t commit to WHATEVER IT TAKES can’t call themselves comrades. They have no business filling streets only to capitulate. They are the words of Malcolm X: “whatever it takes”. Whatever does not exclude nonviolent methods but it excludes expulsions, or you’re disowned.

Protect and Serve …Who?


When the police show up at your door dressed like this, I assumed the ‘Protect” means for them not you. They have done a great job of selling America the “Protect and Serve” but do you really need it? In February 1955, the Los Angeles Police Department, through the pages of the internally produced BEAT magazine, conducted a contest for a motto for the police academy. The winning entry was the motto, “To Protect and to Serve” submitted by Officer Joseph S. Dorobek. In my seventy six years of life, I can count on one finger the times I’ve had to call the “Serve and Protect” guys. And that was only at the insistence of my Insurance agent who had refused to pay the claim until the police were notified.

It did not escape my attention, as I explained to my Insurance agent “Why call the police now? the burglars are already gone, along with my stuff. I’m sure most people fail to notice that the police only show up after a crime; Not before, so where then does the “Protect” come into the equation. It should also be noted; to this day, that the police have never caught the burglar or returned any of my stuff.

When I was ten years old, I and some of my friends went to the East-town theater, I saw my first Frankenstein move. That night when my mother told me to go upstairs and go to bed, I refused as I was sure Frankenstein was waiting up there under my bed to get me. I was so scared, I almost shit my pants. In my feverish state of mind, I even thought my mother was conspiring with Frankie so that he could get me. It took me a few years of growing up to figure out, Hollywood was about making movies and money, if they had to scare the shit out of a ten year boy, so be it.

The “Protest and Serve” police join a long list of groups and people who use the fear factors to promote their own agenda for their own benefit. And of course the police can protect you from most of them.

You might recall some of them; The black man is coming to rob you and take your white women, the brown man is coming to take your jobs, the government is coming to take your guns, the IRS is coming to get your money, the devil is coming to get you for sinning, but then of course you can purchase absolution from guess who?

And who among us could ever forget; “Reefer Madness” the propaganda film that was sure to send you out into the streets beginning a career of robbing and raping and those were only two of the milder things that could happen after just one puff. I’m sure the big pharmaceutical companies had much to do with this as they also had their fears of losing their addicted customers.

And of course the police were always there to protect you from all this mayhem and madness, all except the devil and IRS, these areas are covered by your local church and lawyers.

And then we come to the granddaddy of all fears; The “Terrorist” you might remember him? They were that group of rag tag guys we saw on Fox News, swinging on monkey bars somewhere over in Afghanistan. The “Terrorist” were primarily the responsibility of the US army and Geo Bush. But then we discovered some of those “Terrorist” hiding in something called a cell, here in America.

So now we would need to call in the local police departments to protect us. The Army was so appreciative of the police help, they gave much of their equipment to help protect us from this new threat. The police were always there to protect us no matter where that threat might come from.

As we saw on January 26th 2015, when this elite “Protect and Serve” police force, discover a 17 year old unarmed girl sitting in a car, in an alley on the east side of Denver, putting four bullets in her, resulting in her tragic death and suffering of all those who loved her.

It is heartbreaking to look into the eyes of this young woman, Jessica Hernandez and see her as a threat and to think she was murdered by the Denver Police Department with no repercussions to any of her killers. You might think I’m being too hard on the Denver Police Department. Well!

We have all seen those funeral processions as they wind their way to the graveyard escorted by the “Protect and Serve” police. Not quite sure why a deceased person needs protection or what the hurry is to get them in the ground but my question is; Did those same “Protect and Serve” police that murdered this young girl, also escort her hearse to the graveyard? This is just too difficult and emotional to think about.

Film critics toe corporate line to re-kill messenger Gary Webb, after Hollywood

Gary Webb
AT BEST “KILL THE MESSENGER” portrays suspiciously deceased journalist Gary Webb as a heroic sleuth who refused to compromise his principles. At best, the film re-reports the enormous crime which Webb exposed in his series DARK ALLIANCE, that the CIA’s support of the Nicaraguan CONTRAs in the 1980s involved facilitating the smuggling of drugs into the US, in such large quantities as to precipitate the crack cocaine epidemic, delivered to our major inner cities by the CIA. UNFORTUNATELY the film muddies the crack connection, as Webb’s detractors did back then. Two deliberate plot omissions suggest this is probably not a coincidence.

Conveniently the screenplay ends before the years when Gary Webb was able to elaborate on those links. By then he’d lost his audience. Unfortunately the film that might have given his life’s work a main stage reprise chose not to go that far. Does it matter anymore? These days the CIA and its covert cohorts are understood to have authored a litany of unimaginable evils. So it’s not too early to demonize the CIA. Evidently someone thinks the American public is not ready to be shown the racist stratagems of corportate class war.

Exposing the genesis of the crack attack on African American ghettos is clearly a missed opportunity for a film in 2014. Given Ferguson. Given the rising awareness of our government’s coordinated and premeditated containment and criminalization of dark-skinned populations. Let’s remember that while the US was fighting Nicaraguan rebels, it was also at war with the Black Liberation Army. Funding and arming drug warlords was the same strategy Brazil used to administrate the favelas, via proxy gangs. One might say that LA’s Bloods and Crips played domestic Contras set loose to destabilize community building efforts by militant Black Power.

UNPARDONABLE however are the film’s departures from the truth, which paint a curious fiction as if to indemnify the national press from its complicity with the intelligence community. Two lies will stand out to anyone who was there. (Did the filmmakers think their audience would be only millennials?)

First, the San Jose Mercury News was hardly a “local news outlet” unfamiliar with handling national stories and unknown to the average reader. The Mercury News was an award winning paper which competed with metropolitan mastheads. I can’t imagine its employees aren’t indignant by the film’s yokel characterization. The Los Angeles Times’ vindictive campaign to defame Gary Webb was hardly driven by professional embarassment over a missed scoop.

Second, the Contra-CIA drug smuggling link was suspected well before Gary Webb brought it to the mainstream. I remember during the Iran-Contra Hearings a decade earlier, the alternative media often lamented that the official investigation had been narrowed to exclude mention of the cocaine connection.

These amendments might be excused for simplifying the plot except that they minimize the breadth of the corporate identity of Webb’s censors. How very 90s of this narrative to pretend that Capitalist media outlets compete for news scoops like highschoolers at a science olympics. Newspapers and networks have always only ever peddled the themes their owners dictate. Media consolidation has only meant the manufacturing of public consent has become more uniform, perfectly illustrated by the collusion of the tag-team that hit Gary Webb.

AND AFTER HOLLYWOOD FAILED GARY WEBB, the film critics were waiting with daggers.

David Denby begins his New Yorker review by associating KTM with other crusading journalist thrillers, “some depicting real events, some not”, then pointing to director Michael Cuesta’s “paranoid” TV work, finally contriving that the film botches “many contraditory assertions.” Um, sorry, neither. But I do worry that giving all thumbs down will succeed in scaring away viewers. Denby finishes by making it all about actor Jeremy Renner, un-ironically aping the campaign waged on Gary Webb, overtly described in the film, shifting the focus from the story to all about the messenger.

The Washington Post dispatched one-time Webb adversary Jeff Leen to reprise the hatchet job begun when Gary Webb broke the story. Labeling Webb as “no journalism hero”, Leen’s rebuttal hangs on the technicality that no CIA “employees” were implicated, ignoring what everyone knows post-Blackwater, post-Wikileaks, that the US has long outsourced its crimes, from torture to food service. Dimwit.

Video evidence supports uncompelling theory that ISIS is an army of one

ISIS beheading videoWestern warmongers have caught on to viral videos for scaring up public support for military airstrikes against Iraq and Syria. So far three videos have emerged appearing to show a Western captive being beheaded by a faceless executioner presumed to represent “the Islamic State”. Though viewers are purported to be screaming for Islamic blood, the evidence at hand doesn’t implicate more than one person, himself faceless and of indeterminate identity, nationality and religious preference. It could be Mr. Califate himself, if the video is genuine –as usual we have only the CIA’s word on that– or it could be a mercenary under anyone’s employ. Apparently experts are convinced this is provocation enough to launch a war. I say, let the US and its military allies show the intellectual honesty to release videos of detainees they’ve tortured or of families they’ve executed with drones. If videotaped atrocities are going to govern international policy, let the global viewership determine whose side of the war they want to be on.

The Putin knock-knock joke is easier to find than his Kremlin speech on Crimea

Putin Obama Knock Knock Joke - Crimea RiverThis graphic circulating on the interwebs is a lot easier to find than Vladimir Putin’s March 18 address to the Kremlin about the referendum in Crimea after the Western coup in Ukraine. Bypassing dubious translations excerpted on Capitalist media sites, here is a transcript of his speech direct from the Kremlin. Putin is no hero, but he threatens US-EU banking hegemony, gives asylum to Edward Snowden, and executes zero people with drones.

QUOTING PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN:
Federation Council members, State Duma deputies, good afternoon. Representatives of the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol are here among us, citizens of Russia, residents of Crimea and Sevastopol!

Dear friends, we have gathered here today in connection with an issue that is of vital, historic significance to all of us. A referendum was held in Crimea on March 16 in full compliance with democratic procedures and international norms.

More than 82 percent of the electorate took part in the vote. Over 96 percent of them spoke out in favour of reuniting with Russia. These numbers speak for themselves.

To understand the reason behind such a choice it is enough to know the history of Crimea and what Russia and Crimea have always meant for each other.

Everything in Crimea speaks of our shared history and pride. This is the location of ancient Khersones, where Prince Vladimir was baptised. His spiritual feat of adopting Orthodoxy predetermined the overall basis of the culture, civilisation and human values that unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The graves of Russian soldiers whose bravery brought Crimea into the Russian empire are also in Crimea. This is also Sevastopol – a legendary city with an outstanding history, a fortress that serves as the birthplace of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Crimea is Balaklava and Kerch, Malakhov Kurgan and Sapun Ridge. Each one of these places is dear to our hearts, symbolising Russian military glory and outstanding valour.

Crimea is a unique blend of different peoples’ cultures and traditions. This makes it similar to Russia as a whole, where not a single ethnic group has been lost over the centuries. Russians and Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars and people of other ethnic groups have lived side by side in Crimea, retaining their own identity, traditions, languages and faith.

Incidentally, the total population of the Crimean Peninsula today is 2.2 million people, of whom almost 1.5 million are Russians, 350,000 are Ukrainians who predominantly consider Russian their native language, and about 290,000-300,000 are Crimean Tatars, who, as the referendum has shown, also lean towards Russia.

True, there was a time when Crimean Tatars were treated unfairly, just as a number of other peoples in the USSR. There is only one thing I can say here: millions of people of various ethnicities suffered during those repressions, and primarily Russians.

Crimean Tatars returned to their homeland. I believe we should make all the necessary political and legislative decisions to finalise the rehabilitation of Crimean Tatars, restore them in their rights and clear their good name.

We have great respect for people of all the ethnic groups living in Crimea. This is their common home, their motherland, and it would be right – I know the local population supports this – for Crimea to have three equal national languages: Russian, Ukrainian and Tatar.

Colleagues,

In people’s hearts and minds, Crimea has always been an inseparable part of Russia. This firm conviction is based on truth and justice and was passed from generation to generation, over time, under any circumstances, despite all the dramatic changes our country went through during the entire 20th century.

After the revolution, the Bolsheviks, for a number of reasons – may God judge them – added large sections of the historical South of Russia to the Republic of Ukraine. This was done with no consideration for the ethnic make-up of the population, and today these areas form the southeast of Ukraine. Then, in 1954, a decision was made to transfer Crimean Region to Ukraine, along with Sevastopol, despite the fact that it was a federal city. This was the personal initiative of the Communist Party head Nikita Khrushchev. What stood behind this decision of his – a desire to win the support of the Ukrainian political establishment or to atone for the mass repressions of the 1930’s in Ukraine – is for historians to figure out.

What matters now is that this decision was made in clear violation of the constitutional norms that were in place even then. The decision was made behind the scenes. Naturally, in a totalitarian state nobody bothered to ask the citizens of Crimea and Sevastopol. They were faced with the fact. People, of course, wondered why all of a sudden Crimea became part of Ukraine. But on the whole – and we must state this clearly, we all know it – this decision was treated as a formality of sorts because the territory was transferred within the boundaries of a single state. Back then, it was impossible to imagine that Ukraine and Russia may split up and become two separate states. However, this has happened.

Unfortunately, what seemed impossible became a reality. The USSR fell apart. Things developed so swiftly that few people realised how truly dramatic those events and their consequences would be. Many people both in Russia and in Ukraine, as well as in other republics hoped that the Commonwealth of Independent States that was created at the time would become the new common form of statehood. They were told that there would be a single currency, a single economic space, joint armed forces; however, all this remained empty promises, while the big country was gone. It was only when Crimea ended up as part of a different country that Russia realised that it was not simply robbed, it was plundered.

At the same time, we have to admit that by launching the sovereignty parade Russia itself aided in the collapse of the Soviet Union. And as this collapse was legalised, everyone forgot about Crimea and Sevastopol ­– the main base of the Black Sea Fleet. Millions of people went to bed in one country and awoke in different ones, overnight becoming ethnic minorities in former Union republics, while the Russian nation became one of the biggest, if not the biggest ethnic group in the world to be divided by borders.

Now, many years later, I heard residents of Crimea say that back in 1991 they were handed over like a sack of potatoes. This is hard to disagree with. And what about the Russian state? What about Russia? It humbly accepted the situation. This country was going through such hard times then that realistically it was incapable of protecting its interests. However, the people could not reconcile themselves to this outrageous historical injustice. All these years, citizens and many public figures came back to this issue, saying that Crimea is historically Russian land and Sevastopol is a Russian city. Yes, we all knew this in our hearts and minds, but we had to proceed from the existing reality and build our good-neighbourly relations with independent Ukraine on a new basis. Meanwhile, our relations with Ukraine, with the fraternal Ukrainian people have always been and will remain of foremost importance for us.

Today we can speak about it openly, and I would like to share with you some details of the negotiations that took place in the early 2000s. The then President of Ukraine Mr Kuchma asked me to expedite the process of delimiting the Russian-Ukrainian border. At that time, the process was practically at a standstill. Russia seemed to have recognised Crimea as part of Ukraine, but there were no negotiations on delimiting the borders. Despite the complexity of the situation, I immediately issued instructions to Russian government agencies to speed up their work to document the borders, so that everyone had a clear understanding that by agreeing to delimit the border we admitted de facto and de jure that Crimea was Ukrainian territory, thereby closing the issue.

We accommodated Ukraine not only regarding Crimea, but also on such a complicated matter as the maritime boundary in the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait. What we proceeded from back then was that good relations with Ukraine matter most for us and they should not fall hostage to deadlock territorial disputes. However, we expected Ukraine to remain our good neighbour, we hoped that Russian citizens and Russian speakers in Ukraine, especially its southeast and Crimea, would live in a friendly, democratic and civilised state that would protect their rights in line with the norms of international law.

However, this is not how the situation developed. Time and time again attempts were made to deprive Russians of their historical memory, even of their language and to subject them to forced assimilation. Moreover, Russians, just as other citizens of Ukraine are suffering from the constant political and state crisis that has been rocking the country for over 20 years.

I understand why Ukrainian people wanted change. They have had enough of the authorities in power during the years of Ukraine’s independence. Presidents, prime ministers and parliamentarians changed, but their attitude to the country and its people remained the same. They milked the country, fought among themselves for power, assets and cash flows and did not care much about the ordinary people. They did not wonder why it was that millions of Ukrainian citizens saw no prospects at home and went to other countries to work as day labourers. I would like to stress this: it was not some Silicon Valley they fled to, but to become day labourers. Last year alone almost 3 million people found such jobs in Russia. According to some sources, in 2013 their earnings in Russia totalled over $20 billion, which is about 12% of Ukraine’s GDP.

I would like to reiterate that I understand those who came out on Maidan with peaceful slogans against corruption, inefficient state management and poverty. The right to peaceful protest, democratic procedures and elections exist for the sole purpose of replacing the authorities that do not satisfy the people. However, those who stood behind the latest events in Ukraine had a different agenda: they were preparing yet another government takeover; they wanted to seize power and would stop short of nothing. They resorted to terror, murder and riots. Nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes and anti-Semites executed this coup. They continue to set the tone in Ukraine to this day.

The new so-called authorities began by introducing a draft law to revise the language policy, which was a direct infringement on the rights of ethnic minorities. However, they were immediately ‘disciplined’ by the foreign sponsors of these so-called politicians. One has to admit that the mentors of these current authorities are smart and know well what such attempts to build a purely Ukrainian state may lead to. The draft law was set aside, but clearly reserved for the future. Hardly any mention is made of this attempt now, probably on the presumption that people have a short memory. Nevertheless, we can all clearly see the intentions of these ideological heirs of Bandera, Hitler’s accomplice during World War II.

It is also obvious that there is no legitimate executive authority in Ukraine now, nobody to talk to. Many government agencies have been taken over by the impostors, but they do not have any control in the country, while they themselves – and I would like to stress this – are often controlled by radicals. In some cases, you need a special permit from the militants on Maidan to meet with certain ministers of the current government. This is not a joke – this is reality.

Those who opposed the coup were immediately threatened with repression. Naturally, the first in line here was Crimea, the Russian-speaking Crimea. In view of this, the residents of Crimea and Sevastopol turned to Russia for help in defending their rights and lives, in preventing the events that were unfolding and are still underway in Kiev, Donetsk, Kharkov and other Ukrainian cities.

Naturally, we could not leave this plea unheeded; we could not abandon Crimea and its residents in distress. This would have been betrayal on our part.

First, we had to help create conditions so that the residents of Crimea for the first time in history were able to peacefully express their free will regarding their own future. However, what do we hear from our colleagues in Western Europe and North America? They say we are violating norms of international law. Firstly, it’s a good thing that they at least remember that there exists such a thing as international law – better late than never.

Secondly, and most importantly – what exactly are we violating? True, the President of the Russian Federation received permission from the Upper House of Parliament to use the Armed Forces in Ukraine. However, strictly speaking, nobody has acted on this permission yet. Russia’s Armed Forces never entered Crimea; they were there already in line with an international agreement. True, we did enhance our forces there; however – this is something I would like everyone to hear and know – we did not exceed the personnel limit of our Armed Forces in Crimea, which is set at 25,000, because there was no need to do so.

Next. As it declared independence and decided to hold a referendum, the Supreme Council of Crimea referred to the United Nations Charter, which speaks of the right of nations to self-determination. Incidentally, I would like to remind you that when Ukraine seceded from the USSR it did exactly the same thing, almost word for word. Ukraine used this right, yet the residents of Crimea are denied it. Why is that?

Moreover, the Crimean authorities referred to the well-known Kosovo precedent – a precedent our western colleagues created with their own hands in a very similar situation, when they agreed that the unilateral separation of Kosovo from Serbia, exactly what Crimea is doing now, was legitimate and did not require any permission from the country’s central authorities. Pursuant to Article 2, Chapter 1 of the United Nations Charter, the UN International Court agreed with this approach and made the following comment in its ruling of July 22, 2010, and I quote: “No general prohibition may be inferred from the practice of the Security Council with regard to declarations of independence,” and “General international law contains no prohibition on declarations of independence.” Crystal clear, as they say.

I do not like to resort to quotes, but in this case, I cannot help it. Here is a quote from another official document: the Written Statement of the United States America of April 17, 2009, submitted to the same UN International Court in connection with the hearings on Kosovo. Again, I quote: “Declarations of independence may, and often do, violate domestic legislation. However, this does not make them violations of international law.” End of quote. They wrote this, disseminated it all over the world, had everyone agree and now they are outraged. Over what? The actions of Crimean people completely fit in with these instructions, as it were. For some reason, things that Kosovo Albanians (and we have full respect for them) were permitted to do, Russians, Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in Crimea are not allowed. Again, one wonders why.

We keep hearing from the United States and Western Europe that Kosovo is some special case. What makes it so special in the eyes of our colleagues? It turns out that it is the fact that the conflict in Kosovo resulted in so many human casualties. Is this a legal argument? The ruling of the International Court says nothing about this. This is not even double standards; this is amazing, primitive, blunt cynicism. One should not try so crudely to make everything suit their interests, calling the same thing white today and black tomorrow. According to this logic, we have to make sure every conflict leads to human losses.

I will state clearly – if the Crimean local self-defence units had not taken the situation under control, there could have been casualties as well. Fortunately this did not happen. There was not a single armed confrontation in Crimea and no casualties. Why do you think this was so? The answer is simple: because it is very difficult, practically impossible to fight against the will of the people. Here I would like to thank the Ukrainian military – and this is 22,000 fully armed servicemen. I would like to thank those Ukrainian service members who refrained from bloodshed and did not smear their uniforms in blood.

Other thoughts come to mind in this connection. They keep talking of some Russian intervention in Crimea, some sort of aggression. This is strange to hear. I cannot recall a single case in history of an intervention without a single shot being fired and with no human casualties.

Colleagues,

Like a mirror, the situation in Ukraine reflects what is going on and what has been happening in the world over the past several decades. After the dissolution of bipolarity on the planet, we no longer have stability. Key international institutions are not getting any stronger; on the contrary, in many cases, they are sadly degrading. Our western partners, led by the United States of America, prefer not to be guided by international law in their practical policies, but by the rule of the gun. They have come to believe in their exclusivity and exceptionalism, that they can decide the destinies of the world, that only they can ever be right. They act as they please: here and there, they use force against sovereign states, building coalitions based on the principle “If you are not with us, you are against us.” To make this aggression look legitimate, they force the necessary resolutions from international organisations, and if for some reason this does not work, they simply ignore the UN Security Council and the UN overall.

This happened in Yugoslavia; we remember 1999 very well. It was hard to believe, even seeing it with my own eyes, that at the end of the 20th century, one of Europe’s capitals, Belgrade, was under missile attack for several weeks, and then came the real intervention. Was there a UN Security Council resolution on this matter, allowing for these actions? Nothing of the sort. And then, they hit Afghanistan, Iraq, and frankly violated the UN Security Council resolution on Libya, when instead of imposing the so-called no-fly zone over it they started bombing it too.

There was a whole series of controlled “colour” revolutions. Clearly, the people in those nations, where these events took place, were sick of tyranny and poverty, of their lack of prospects; but these feelings were taken advantage of cynically. Standards were imposed on these nations that did not in any way correspond to their way of life, traditions, or these peoples’ cultures. As a result, instead of democracy and freedom, there was chaos, outbreaks in violence and a series of upheavals. The Arab Spring turned into the Arab Winter.

A similar situation unfolded in Ukraine. In 2004, to push the necessary candidate through at the presidential elections, they thought up some sort of third round that was not stipulated by the law. It was absurd and a mockery of the constitution. And now, they have thrown in an organised and well-equipped army of militants.

We understand what is happening; we understand that these actions were aimed against Ukraine and Russia and against Eurasian integration. And all this while Russia strived to engage in dialogue with our colleagues in the West. We are constantly proposing cooperation on all key issues; we want to strengthen our level of trust and for our relations to be equal, open and fair. But we saw no reciprocal steps.

On the contrary, they have lied to us many times, made decisions behind our backs, placed us before an accomplished fact. This happened with NATO’s expansion to the East, as well as the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders. They kept telling us the same thing: “Well, this does not concern you.” That’s easy to say.

It happened with the deployment of a missile defence system. In spite of all our apprehensions, the project is working and moving forward. It happened with the endless foot-dragging in the talks on visa issues, promises of fair competition and free access to global markets.

Today, we are being threatened with sanctions, but we already experience many limitations, ones that are quite significant for us, our economy and our nation. For example, still during the times of the Cold War, the US and subsequently other nations restricted a large list of technologies and equipment from being sold to the USSR, creating the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls list. Today, they have formally been eliminated, but only formally; and in reality, many limitations are still in effect.

In short, we have every reason to assume that the infamous policy of containment, led in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, continues today. They are constantly trying to sweep us into a corner because we have an independent position, because we maintain it and because we call things like they are and do not engage in hypocrisy. But there is a limit to everything. And with Ukraine, our western partners have crossed the line, playing the bear and acting irresponsibly and unprofessionally.

After all, they were fully aware that there are millions of Russians living in Ukraine and in Crimea. They must have really lacked political instinct and common sense not to foresee all the consequences of their actions. Russia found itself in a position it could not retreat from. If you compress the spring all the way to its limit, it will snap back hard. You must always remember this.

Today, it is imperative to end this hysteria, to refute the rhetoric of the cold war and to accept the obvious fact: Russia is an independent, active participant in international affairs; like other countries, it has its own national interests that need to be taken into account and respected.

At the same time, we are grateful to all those who understood our actions in Crimea; we are grateful to the people of China, whose leaders have always considered the situation in Ukraine and Crimea taking into account the full historical and political context, and greatly appreciate India’s reserve and objectivity.

Today, I would like to address the people of the United States of America, the people who, since the foundation of their nation and adoption of the Declaration of Independence, have been proud to hold freedom above all else. Isn’t the desire of Crimea’s residents to freely choose their fate such a value? Please understand us.

I believe that the Europeans, first and foremost, the Germans, will also understand me. Let me remind you that in the course of political consultations on the unification of East and West Germany, at the expert, though very high level, some nations that were then and are now Germany’s allies did not support the idea of unification. Our nation, however, unequivocally supported the sincere, unstoppable desire of the Germans for national unity. I am confident that you have not forgotten this, and I expect that the citizens of Germany will also support the aspiration of the Russians, of historical Russia, to restore unity.

I also want to address the people of Ukraine. I sincerely want you to understand us: we do not want to harm you in any way, or to hurt your national feelings. We have always respected the territorial integrity of the Ukrainian state, incidentally, unlike those who sacrificed Ukraine’s unity for their political ambitions. They flaunt slogans about Ukraine’s greatness, but they are the ones who did everything to divide the nation. Today’s civil standoff is entirely on their conscience. I want you to hear me, my dear friends. Do not believe those who want you to fear Russia, shouting that other regions will follow Crimea. We do not want to divide Ukraine; we do not need that. As for Crimea, it was and remains a Russian, Ukrainian, and Crimean-Tatar land.

I repeat, just as it has been for centuries, it will be a home to all the peoples living there. What it will never be and do is follow in Bandera’s footsteps!

Crimea is our common historical legacy and a very important factor in regional stability. And this strategic territory should be part of a strong and stable sovereignty, which today can only be Russian. Otherwise, dear friends (I am addressing both Ukraine and Russia), you and we – the Russians and the Ukrainians – could lose Crimea completely, and that could happen in the near historical perspective. Please think about it.

Let me note too that we have already heard declarations from Kiev about Ukraine soon joining NATO. What would this have meant for Crimea and Sevastopol in the future? It would have meant that NATO’s navy would be right there in this city of Russia’s military glory, and this would create not an illusory but a perfectly real threat to the whole of southern Russia. These are things that could have become reality were it not for the choice the Crimean people made, and I want to say thank you to them for this.

But let me say too that we are not opposed to cooperation with NATO, for this is certainly not the case. For all the internal processes within the organisation, NATO remains a military alliance, and we are against having a military alliance making itself at home right in our backyard or in our historic territory. I simply cannot imagine that we would travel to Sevastopol to visit NATO sailors. Of course, most of them are wonderful guys, but it would be better to have them come and visit us, be our guests, rather than the other way round.

Let me say quite frankly that it pains our hearts to see what is happening in Ukraine at the moment, see the people’s suffering and their uncertainty about how to get through today and what awaits them tomorrow. Our concerns are understandable because we are not simply close neighbours but, as I have said many times already, we are one people. Kiev is the mother of Russian cities. Ancient Rus is our common source and we cannot live without each other.

Let me say one other thing too. Millions of Russians and Russian-speaking people live in Ukraine and will continue to do so. Russia will always defend their interests using political, diplomatic and legal means. But it should be above all in Ukraine’s own interest to ensure that these people’s rights and interests are fully protected. This is the guarantee of Ukraine’s state stability and territorial integrity.

We want to be friends with Ukraine and we want Ukraine to be a strong, sovereign and self-sufficient country. Ukraine is one of our biggest partners after all. We have many joint projects and I believe in their success no matter what the current difficulties. Most importantly, we want peace and harmony to reign in Ukraine, and we are ready to work together with other countries to do everything possible to facilitate and support this. But as I said, only Ukraine’s own people can put their own house in order.

Residents of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, the whole of Russia admired your courage, dignity and bravery. It was you who decided Crimea’s future. We were closer than ever over these days, supporting each other. These were sincere feelings of solidarity. It is at historic turning points such as these that a nation demonstrates its maturity and strength of spirit. The Russian people showed this maturity and strength through their united support for their compatriots.

Russia’s foreign policy position on this matter drew its firmness from the will of millions of our people, our national unity and the support of our country’s main political and public forces. I want to thank everyone for this patriotic spirit, everyone without exception. Now, we need to continue and maintain this kind of consolidation so as to resolve the tasks our country faces on its road ahead.

Obviously, we will encounter external opposition, but this is a decision that we need to make for ourselves. Are we ready to consistently defend our national interests, or will we forever give in, retreat to who knows where? Some Western politicians are already threatening us with not just sanctions but also the prospect of increasingly serious problems on the domestic front. I would like to know what it is they have in mind exactly: action by a fifth column, this disparate bunch of ‘national traitors’, or are they hoping to put us in a worsening social and economic situation so as to provoke public discontent? We consider such statements irresponsible and clearly aggressive in tone, and we will respond to them accordingly. At the same time, we will never seek confrontation with our partners, whether in the East or the West, but on the contrary, will do everything we can to build civilised and good-neighbourly relations as one is supposed to in the modern world.

Colleagues,

I understand the people of Crimea, who put the question in the clearest possible terms in the referendum: should Crimea be with Ukraine or with Russia? We can be sure in saying that the authorities in Crimea and Sevastopol, the legislative authorities, when they formulated the question, set aside group and political interests and made the people’s fundamental interests alone the cornerstone of their work. The particular historic, population, political and economic circumstances of Crimea would have made any other proposed option – however tempting it could be at the first glance – only temporary and fragile and would have inevitably led to further worsening of the situation there, which would have had disastrous effects on people’s lives. The people of Crimea thus decided to put the question in firm and uncompromising form, with no grey areas. The referendum was fair and transparent, and the people of Crimea clearly and convincingly expressed their will and stated that they want to be with Russia.

Russia will also have to make a difficult decision now, taking into account the various domestic and external considerations. What do people here in Russia think? Here, like in any democratic country, people have different points of view, but I want to make the point that the absolute majority of our people clearly do support what is happening.

The most recent public opinion surveys conducted here in Russia show that 95 percent of people think that Russia should protect the interests of Russians and members of other ethnic groups living in Crimea – 95 percent of our citizens. More than 83 percent think that Russia should do this even if it will complicate our relations with some other countries. A total of 86 percent of our people see Crimea as still being Russian territory and part of our country’s lands. And one particularly important figure, which corresponds exactly with the result in Crimea’s referendum: almost 92 percent of our people support Crimea’s reunification with Russia.

Thus we see that the overwhelming majority of people in Crimea and the absolute majority of the Russian Federation’s people support the reunification of the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol with Russia.

Now this is a matter for Russia’s own political decision, and any decision here can be based only on the people’s will, because the people is the ultimate source of all authority.

Members of the Federation Council, deputies of the State Duma, citizens of Russia, residents of Crimea and Sevastopol, today, in accordance with the people’s will, I submit to the Federal Assembly a request to consider a Constitutional Law on the creation of two new constituent entities within the Russian Federation: the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, and to ratify the treaty on admitting to the Russian Federation Crimea and Sevastopol, which is already ready for signing. I stand assured of your support.

Bear Creek Massacre, January 29, 1863


The year 2014 will mark the 150th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre, on November 29, two days after Thanksgiving. But on this day, January 29 of the year before, a Shoshone village suffered an identical fate. The Bear Creek Massacre was also once called the Battle of Bear Creek, but the only grounds which western military history buffs have to argue that such engagements were “battles” not massacres, is that was how the US cavalry waged its fights against the hostiles, its only victories were raids upon unsuspecting villages.

Here is the official contemporary report of Colonel Connor’s attack. First the cover letter which sets the scene. From the Official Records of the War of Rebellion (what the Civil War was called then), series 1, volume 50, part 1:

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE PACIFIC,
San Francisco, February 20, 1863.
Adjt. General L. THOMAS, U. S. Army,
Washington, D. C.:
SIR: I have the honor to inclose herewith the report of Colonel P. E. Connor, Third Infantry California Volunteers of the battle fought on the 29th of January, on Bear River, Utah, Ter., between U. S. troops and hostile Indians. Our victory was complete; 224 of the enemy left dead on the field. Colonel Connor’s loss was heavy. Out of 200 men engaged 14 were killed on the field and 4 officers and 49 men wounded; 1 officer and 5 of the men wounded have since died. Colonel Connor’s report of the suffering of his troops on the march and the gallant and heroic conduct of both officers and men in that terrible combat will commend the Column from California and its brave commander to the favorable notice of the General-in-Chief and War Department.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
G. WRIGHT,
Brigadier-General, U. S. Army, Commanding.

I’ll parse those totals for you. Cowboy casualties: 20 dead, 47 wounded. Indians: 224 dead, 0 wounded.

Here are the more relevant passages of Connor’s report. Notice he puts plenty of emphasis on the fight he encountered, even suggesting that the Shoshones initiated the attack. Connor sheds much less light on the aftermath. (I’ve bolded some parts of import:)

Report of Colonel P. Edward Connor, Third California Infantry, commanding District of Utah. (Excerpt)

As daylight was approaching I was apprehensive that the Indians would discover the strength of my force and make their escape. I therefore made a rapid march with the cavalry and reached the bank of the river shortly after daylight in full view of the Indian encampment and about one mile distant. I immediately ordered Major McGarry to advance with the cavalry and surround before attacking them, while I remained a few minutes in the rear to give orders to the infantry and artillery.

On my arrival on the field I found that Major Mcgarry had dismounted the cavalry and was engaged with the Indians who had sallied out of their hiding places on foot and horseback, and with fiendish malignity waved the scalps of white women and challenged the troops to battle, at the same time attacking them. Finding it impossible to surround them in consequence of the nature of the ground, he accepted their challenge.

The “scalps of white women” was a common motif used in justifying ensuing slaughters. Colonel Chivington cited the presence of same at the Sand Creek camp, although none were ever produced.

The position of the Indians was one of strong natural defenses, and almost inaccessible to the troops, being in a deep, dry ravine from six to twelve feet deep and from thirty to forty feet wide, banks and running across level table-land, along which they had constructed steps from which they could deliver their fire without being themselves exposed. Under the embankments they had constructed artificial covers of willows thickly woven together, from being which they could fire without being observed.

After being engaged about twenty minutes I found it was impossible to dislodge them without great sacrifice of life. I accordingly ordered Major McGarry with twenty men to turn their left flank, which was in the ravine where it entered the mountains. Shortly afterward Captain Hoyt reached the ford three-quarters of a mile distant, but found it impossible to cross footmen. Some of them tried it, however, rushing into the river, but, finding it deep and rapid, retired. I immediately ordered a detachment of cavalry with led horses to cross the infantry, which was done accordingly and upon their arrival upon the field I ordered them to the support of Major McGarry’s flanking party, who shortly afterward succeeded in turning the enemy’s flank.

Up to this time, in consequence of being exposed on a level and open plain while the Indians were under cover, they had every advantage of us, fighting with the ferocity of demons. My men fell fast and thick around me, but after flanking them we had the advantage and made good use of it. I ordered the flanking party to advance down the ravine on either side, which gave us the advantage of an enfilading fire and caused some of the Indians to give way and run toward the north of the ravine.

At this point I had a company stationed, who shot them as they ran out. I also ordered a detachment of cavalry across the ravine to cut off the retreat of any fugitives who might escape the company at the mouth of the ravine. But few tried to escape, however, but continued fighting with unyielding obstinacy, frequently engaging hand to hand with the troops until killed in their hiding places.

The most of those who did escape from the ravine were afterward shot in attempting to swim the river, or killed while desperately fighting under cover of the dense willow thicket which lined the river-banks.

Most were shot, but Connor skimps on the detail. The wounded Shoshones and those feigning injury were prodded with bayonettes then shot, violated sometimes before, sometimes after. Few escaped this fate. Like any population of civilians, the village was at least seventyfive percent women and children.

I have also to report to the general commanding that previous to my departure Chief Justice Kinney, of Great Salt Lake City, made a requisition for troops for the purpose of arresting the Indian chiefs Bear Hunter, San Pitch, and Sagwich. I informed the marshal that my arrangements for our expedition against the Indians were made, and that it was not my intention to take any prisoners, but that he could accompany me. Marshal Gibbs accordingly accompanied me and rendered efficient aid in caring for the wounded.

Of the good conduct and bravery of both officers and men California has reason to be proud. We found 224 bodies on the field, among which were those of the chiefs Bear Hunter, Sagwich, and Leight. How many more were killed than stated I am unable to say, as the condition of the wounded rendered their immediate removal a necessity. I was unable to examine the field. I captured 175 horses, some arms, destroyed over seventy lodges, a large quantity of wheat and other provisions, which had been furnished them by the Mormons; left a small quantity of wheat for the sustenance of 16 and children, whom I left on the field.

WWII air veterans of Doolittle Raiders celebrate 71 years of bombing civilians

Doolittle nose-art
I read 30 Seconds Over Tokyo when I was still a war-playing kid, before I would understand the mischievous consequences of the Doolittle Raiders B-25 bombers deploying without their bombsights. This was to prevent US war-making advantages falling into enemy hands but it also precluded dropping bombs with accuracy. I’m pretty certain the account for young readers also didn’t explain why over a quarter of the squadron’s bombs were of the incidiary cluster variety. Readers today know what those are for. Doolittle claimed to be targeting military sites in Japan’s capitol, but “invariably” hit civilian areas including four schools and a hospital. Of the American fliers captured, three were tried and executed by the despicable “Japs”, who considered the straffing of civilians to be war crimes. After the war, the US judged the Japanese officers responsible, as if their verdict was a greater injustice against our aviators’ “honest errors”. Today we rationalize our systemic overshoot policy as “collateral damage”.

Every year since WWII, Doolittle’s commandos are feted for their milestone bombing mission. This Veterans Day is to be the last due to their advanced ages. But it is fitting, because isn’t it time Americans faced what we’re celebrating? There’s no denying it took suicidal daring, but the Doolittle Raid inaugurated what became a staple of US warfare, the wholesale terrorizing of civilians from on high, with impunity and indifference. To be fair, the American public has always been kept in the dark. American aircraft have fire-bombed civilians at every diplomatic opportunity since 1942, and a Private Manning sits in the brig for trying to give us a chance to object.

We now know that the Doolittle Raid didn’t turn the tide, nor shake Japanese resolve. It was a retalliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor, intended to boost US morale as if to say, America wasn’t defeated. Kinda like why and how we struck back at Afghanistan after 9/11, just as indiscriminately.

The “Mark Twain” ersatz bombsight
substitute bombsightThe Norden bombsight was a closely guarded US secret weapon. An airstrike without it would today be like lobotomizing so-called smart bombs, and deciding to opt for imprecision bombing. The official army record recounts that a subsitute sighting mechanism was improvised for the raid, dubbed the “Mark Twain” and judged to be effective enough. Now a bad joke. Indochina and Wikileaks-wisened, we know the mendacity of that assessment. The vehemently anti-imperialist, anti-racist Twain would not have been honored.

Twain satirized Western so-called Enlightenment thus: “good to fire villages with, upon occasion”.

Post-postwar hagiographies of the raid have suggested the improvised bombsight was better suited to low-altitude missions than the Norden model. That conclusion is easily dismissed because the device was used only for the Doolittle run and never after. The sight’s designer, mission aviator C. Ross Greening, offered a explanation for why he named the device after Mark Twain in his pothumously published memoir Not As Briefed. He didn’t.

The bombsight is named the “Mark Twain” in reference to the “lead line” depth finder used on the Mississippi River paddle wheelers in bygone days.

Because its design was so simple, we’re left to suppose. Greening’s bombsight was named for the same “mark” which Samuel Langhorne Clemens adopted as his celebrated pen name. I find it disingeneous to pretend to repurpose an archaic expression whose meaning was already eclipsed by the household name of America’s most outspoken anti-imperialist. Who would believe you named your dog “Napoleon” after a French pastry?

We are given another glimpse into Greening’s sense of humor by how he named his plane, the “Hari-Kari-er” ready to deal death by bomb-induced suicide. Greening’s B-25 is the one pictured above, with the angelic tart holding a bomb aloft. Greening’s plane was another that carried only incendiary ordnance.

Much was made of the sight’s two-piece aluminum construction, reportedly costing 20 cents at the time compared to the $10,000 Norden. This provided the jingoist homefront the smug satisfaction perhaps, combining a frugality born of the Depression with the American tradition of racism, that only pennies were expensed and or risked on Japanese lives.

War Crimes
Targeting civilians, taking insufficient care to avoid civilian casualties, using disproportunate force, acts of wanton retaliation, and the use of collective punishment are all prohibited by international convention. They are war crimes for which the US prosecutes adversaries but with which our own military refuses to abide. Americans make much of terrorism, yet remain blind to state terrorism. Doolittle’s historic raid, judged by the objective against which it is celebrated as a success, was an act of deliberate terrorism.

Forcing the Japanese to deploy more of their military assets to protect the mainland sounds like a legitimate strategy, except not by targeting civilians to illustrate the vulnerability, nor by terrorizing the population, one of Doolittle’s stated aims. He called it a “fear complex”.

It was hoped that the damage done would be both material and psychological. Material damage was to be the destruction of specific targets with ensuing confusion and retardation of production. The psychological results, it was hoped, would be the recalling of combat equipment from other theaters for home defense, the development of a fear complex in Japan, improved relationships with our Allies, and a favorable reaction in the American people.

There is no defending Japan’s imperialist expansion in the Pacific, and certainly not its own inhumanity. The Japanese treated fellow Asians with the same racist disregard with which we dispatched Filipinos. While Americans point in horror at how the Japanese retalliated against the Chinese population for the Doolittle Raid, we ignore that Doolittle purposely obscured from where our bombers were launched, leaving China’s coast as the only probably suspect.

To be fair, most of Doolittle’s team was kept in the dark about the mission until they were already deployed. I hardly want to detract from the courage they showed to undertake a project that seemed virtually suicidal. But how long should all of us remain in the dark about the true character of the Doolittle Raid?

Out of deference for the earlier generation of WWII veterans, those in leadership, certain intelligence secrets were kept until thirty years after the war. Unveiled, they paint a very different picture of what transpired. The fact that the US knew the German and Japanese codes from early on revealed an imbalance not previously admitted, as an example.

About the Doolittle Raid, much is already openly documented, if not widely known. The impetus for the raid was public knowledge, the evidence of its intent in full view.

BY DESIGN
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, American newspapers were already touting offers of cash rewards for whoever would be the first to strike back at Japan. President Roosevelt expressed a deliberate interest in hitting the Japanese mainland, in particular Tokyo, to retaliate for the Japanese strike against Pearl Harbor, never mind it had been a solely military target.

Plans were made to exploit the Japanese homeland’s vulnerability to fire, as ninety percent of urban structures were made of paper and wood. Writes historian William Bruce Jenson:

In his “confidential” meeting with reporters back in November, Marshall had declared that the US would have no cavil about burning Japan’s paper cities.

For the Doolittle Raid, a bombing strategy was developed to overwhelm the fire department of his target, the Shiba ward.

A former naval attache in Tokyo told Doolittle: “I know that Tokyp fire department very well. Seven big scattered fires would be too much for it to cope with.”

As lead plane, Doolittle’s role was to literally blaze the way. Fellow pilot Richard Joyce told Nebraska History Magazine in 1995:

The lead airplane, which was going to have Doolittle on board as the airplane commander, was going to be loaded with nothing but incendiaries -2.2­ pound thermite incendiaries- in clus­ters. They drop these big clusters and then the straps break and they spray, so they set a whole bunch of fires. He was to be the pathfinder and set a whole bunch of fires in Tokyo for pathfinding purposes.

Doolittle’s report outlined his objective more formally:

one plane was to take off ahead of the others, arrive over Tokyo at dusk and fire the most inflammable part of the city with incendiary bombs. This minimized the overall hazard and assured that the target would be lighted up for following airplanes.

Greening paints the most vivid picture, of burning the Japanese paper houses to light the way:

Doolittle planned to leave a couple of hours early, and in the dark set fire to Tokyo’s Shiba ward … the mission’s basic tactic had been that Doolittle would proceed alone and bomb a flammable section of Tokyo, creating a beacon in the night to help guide following planes to their targets.

Doolittle’s copilot Lt Richard Cole, told this to interviews in 1957:

Since we had a load of incendiaries, our target was the populated areas of the west and northwest parts of Tokyo.

After the bombers had left on their raid, and before news got back about whether or not they accomplished it, the Navy crew on the carrier USS Hornet already sang this song, which went in part:

Little did Hiro think that night
The skies above Tokyo would be alight
With the fires that Jimmy started in Tokyo’s dives
To guide to their targets the B-25s.
When all of a sudden from out of the skies
Came a basket of eggs for the little slant eyes

Incendiaries

Most of the bombers were loaded with three demolition bombs and an incendiary cluster bomb. Some of the planes carried only incendiaries. According to Doolittle’s official report of the raid, here were some of their stated objectives:

Plane no. 40-2270, piloted by Lt. Robert Gray:
thickly populated small factories district. … Fourth scattered incendiary over the correct area

Plane No. 40-2250, Lt. Richard Joyce:
Incendiary cluster dropped over thickly populated and dense industrial residential sector immediately inshore from primary target. (Shiba Ward)

“The third dem. bomb and the incendiary were dropped in the heavy industrial and residential section in the Shiba Ward 1/4 of a mile in shore from the bay and my tat.”

Aircraft 40-2303, Lt Harold Watson:
the congested industrial districts near the railroad station south of the Imperial Palace

AC 40-2283, David Jones:
the congested area Southeast of the Imperial Palace

Even though the planned night raid became a daytime mission, Doolittle did not alter his original role, intended to light the way for the following planes. His target remained the Shiba District of Tokyo. His own plane: “changed course to the southwest and incendiary-bombed highly inflammable section.”

Doolittle’s report included a description of the incendiary bombs:

The Chemical Warfare Service provided special 500 incendiary clusters each containing 128 incendiary bombs. These clusters were developed at the Edgewood Arsenal and test dropped by the Air Corps test group at Aberdeen. Several tests were carried on to assure their proper functioning and to determine the dropping angle and dispersion. Experimental work on and production of these clusters was carried on most efficiently.

As has become an aerial bombardment tradition, crews were let to inscribe messages on the bombs about to be dropped. Accounts made the most of these chestnuts: “You’ll get a BANG out of this.” And “I don’t want to set the world on fire –only Tokyo.”

These details, which reveal the intentions of the raid, were not made known to the public immediately. The Doolittle Raid was planned and executed in secret, with US government and military spokesmen denying knowledge of the operation even in its aftermath. The first word to reach the American public came from the New York Times, citing Japanese sources:

Enemy bombers appeared over Tokyo for the first time in the current war, inflicting damage on schools and hospitals. Invading planes failed to cause and damage on military establishments, although casualties in the schools and hospitals were as yet unknown. This inhuman attack on these cultural establishments and on residential districts is causing widespread indignation among the populace.

This report was dismissed as propaganda. When Japan declared its intention to charge the airman it had taken captive with war crimes, the US protestations redoubled. The accusations were belittled even as our own reports conceded to the possibilities.

Lieutenant Dawson’s Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo was the first published account of the raid. Printed less than a year after the event, wartime-sensitive details such as the phony guns made of broomstick handles poking out the back were left out. Targets were also not specified, but a candor remained, probably intended to be threatening. Lawson described the 500-pound incendiaries as “something like the old Russian Molotov Breadbasket”, and related US naval attache Jurika’s advice:

“If you can start seven good fires in Tokyo, they’ll never put them out,” Jurika promised us. … “I wouldn’t worry too much about setting fires in flimsy-looking sections of Tokyo,” he said. “The Japanese have done an amazing job of spreading out some of their industries, instead of concentrating them in large buildings. There’s probably a small machine shop under half of these fragile-looking roofs.”

“Flimsy” became Lawson’s keyword for the residential areas. Here Lawson described dropping his third and fourth bombs, when he saw their corresponding red light indicators:

The third red light flickered, and, since we were now over a flimsy area in the southern part of the city, the fourth light blinked. That was the incendiary, which I knew would separate as soon as it hit the wind and that dozens of small fire bombs would molt from it.

I was satisfied about the steel-smelter and hoped the other bombs had done as well. There was no way of telling, but I was positive that Tokyo could have been damaged that day with a rock.

Our actual bombing operation, from the time the first one went until the dive, consumed not more than thirty seconds.

Thus: Chance of hitting civilian homes: 50/50.
Charges of Excessive Force could be expected, because
blame the victim for being weaker than: a rock.
Care taken to avoid innocent casualties: 30 seconds.

In a later afterword, Lawson blamed Tokyo for having insufficient bomb shelters.

After the war, US occupation forces recovered Japanese records which documented the losses attributed to the Doolittle Raid: fifty dead, 252 wounded, ninety buildings. Besides military or strategic targets, that number included nine electric power buildings, a garment factory, a food storage warehouse, a gas company, two misc factories, six wards of Nagoya 2nd Temporary Army Hospital, six elementary or secondary schools, and “innumerable nonmilitary residences”.

Strafing
Japan accused the fliers of indescriminate strafing civilians. The US countered that defending fighters were responsible for stray bullets when their gunfire missed the bombers. That’s very likely, except the raiders were candid about their strafing too. Lawson:

I nosed down a railroad track on the outskirts of the city and passed a locomotive close enough to see the surprised face of the engineer. As I went by I could have kicked myself for not giving the locomotive’s boiler a burst of our forward 30-calibre guns, then I remembered that we might have better use for the ammunition.

A big yacht loomed up ahead of us and, figuring it must be armed, I told Thatcher to give it a burst. We went over it, lifted our nose to put the tail down and Thatcher sprayed its deck with our 50-calibre stingers.

Greening’s account of firing on a sailor, raises the moral ambiguity of air warfare with which few airmen grapple. By virtue that technology allows it, combatants become slave to a predetermined outcome:

When we attacked the next patrol boat, a Japanese sailor threw his hands up as if to surrender. I guess he expected us to stop and take him prisoner. We shot him and left this boat smoking too.

The Medals
Friendship Medals exchanged between Japan and the US found themselves requisitioned for Doolittle’s Raid:

Several years prior to the war, medals of friendship and good relationship were awarded to several people of the United States by the Japanese government.  In substance these medals were symbolic of the friendship and cooperation between the nations and were to represent the duration of this attitude.  It was decided by the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Frank Knox, that the time was appropriate to have these medals returned.  They had been awarded to Mr. Daniel J. Quigley, Mr. John D. Laurey, Mr. H. Vormstein and Lt. Stephen Jurkis.

After arrangements had been made and the medals secured, a ceremony was held on the deck of the Hornet during which the medals were wired to a 500 lb. bomb to be carried by Lt. Ted Lawson and returned to the Japanese government in an appropriate fashion.

Lawson’s plane no 40-2261 dropped that bomb on an “industrial section of Tokyo” omitting to mention that Japan’s industry was still a post-feudal cottage industry.

“The medals were subsequently delivered in small pieces to their donors in Tokyo by Lt. Ted Lawson at about noon, Saturday, April 18, 1942.”

–Mitscher, M.A. Letter Report to Commander Pacific Fleet.

“Through the courtesy of the War Department your Japanese medal and similar medals, turned in for shipment, were returned to His Royal Highness, The Emperor of Japan on April 18, 1942.”

–Knox, F. Letter Report to Mr. H. Vormstein

Rogue vigilante Chris Dorner burned at the stake by angry hooded white men

Tuning in to developments with fugitive cop-killer Chris Dorner in Big Bear on Tuesday, I half expected a televised denouement like Fahrenheit 451, where impatient viewers were given a contrived final scene, fitting the short arc of the average attention span for corporate media fodder. As I recall, that renegade fireman watched his pursuers stage his capture/demise, because authorities favored truncating a felon-on-the-lam narrative lest it generate a deviant hopeful following; it didn’t matter if the criminal really escaped. Could Ray Bradbury have envisioned the expectations which reality TV has created to satiate real blood lust?

No doubt Bradbury foresaw the ferocity with which a vengeful police state would immolate their one-man insurgent, with a compliant media averting their cameras so American viewers didn’t witness another Waco.

Americans should be attuned to these out of sight infernos, all our wars for example. Except that we know Dorner was set aflame with an paramilitary incendiary device dubbed “the burner”, this is what our extrajudicial executions look like via drones. Only last week news junkies were treated to the legal argument which the USG made to justify killing untried suspects, even US citizens. A if international law differentiated among infidels. One man’s infidel may be another’s exemplar, but he’s every government’s infidel.

So Chris Dorner had snapped. His manifesto, rambling only as much as those were his parting words, Dorner a Falling Down avenger who knew there would be no Hollywood ending. But Dorner had bought into the Rambo Army-of-One mythology. No disrespect intended toward Dorner’s feat, but elite military training proved more of a dud than a fighting machine, did it? What a laugh that American forces deign to train Afghan recruits. Any one mujahideen is likely the equivalent of a high-capacity magazine clip of US special forces in their underwear. But it’s likely authorities will never reveal Dorner’s actual superhuman achievement. He knew what he was up against, and now so do we. The crooked police machine has proven to be worse than Dorner’s complaints. Perhaps that was meant to be the audience takeaway. We didn’t get to see Chris Dorner burn at the stake, but we sure as hell felt the heat.

Senate hopeful, Missouri fool Todd Akin takes wide stance on legitimate rape

Representative Todd Akin revealed his “legitimate rape” standard was no misunderstanding — now he’s courting America’s vast army of Christian idiots who already share his belief in rape-modulated immaculate contraception, a convenient pretext for a complete abortion ban. Meanwhile his Larry Craig Wide Stance against abandoning his campaign bid in disgrace allows the GOP to earn points distancing themselves from Akin’s crass misogyny, even though their party platform is steeped in it. When I hear American conservatives seem to compete with each other over who can bring the ugliest inanity to the party, I can’t help be reminded of internet trolls –which constructive discourse requires we not feed. Except we are powerless to prevent the damn corporate media from feeding their GOP squeezebox monkey trolls and stoking the firestorm of ignorant, beyond the pale, political twists and u-turns.

Now pundits are mouthing suggested mea culpa for the recalcitrant unpenitent: What Akin should have said. I’ll have a go: I’m sorry, I’m a moron, a morally bankrupt, crap-regurgitating degenerate. Yes I’m a reflection of my constituents, but people, you can’t give no-ideologues like me the responsibilities of government. I know that much.

Julian Assange and Bradley Manning put lie to Western pretense of freedom and rule of law


The UK wouldn’t extradite Pinochet, but they’re threatening to storm the Ecuadorian embassy in London to see that Wikileaks impresario Julian Assange is extradited to Sweden where a prosecutor wants to decide whether to charge him for sexual violations, more likely so that the Australian can then be rendered to the US to be imprisoned like Bradley Manning and face the death penalty for espionage. The US denies this intention, though it voted against Ecuador’s allies to hold a meeting about the continuing US-UK assault on journalism and whistleblowers. Can the Western empire let Assange and Manning escape severe reprimand? The two are only the mastermind and the alleged-source who’ve ignited the global uprising behind the anti- austerity movements, Arab Spring, and Occupy. President Obama cannot leave either off the hook without encouraging a deluge of more insider defections. Bradley Manning is already under torture in military custody, but Assange continues to evade US clutches. Should he escape to asylum in Ecuador where Obama’s exterminator drones can deal “American Justice”? The US has yet to condemn a white man to targeted assassination, but in the Global South, in darker-skinned populations, who will know? I favor Ecuador expanding its embassy to more than the first floor office, to offer Wikileaks an entire center of operations for as long as Julian Assange is confined under virtual house arrest. In Assange’s speech from the embassy balcony he repeated three times: “Bradley Manning must be released.” Journalists must be free to expose the crimes of the rich. Citing prison sentences for a Bahrain dissident and Russia’s Pussy Riot, Assange concluded: “There is unity in the oppression. There must be absolute unity and determination in the response.”

Here’s the full text of Assange’s statement:

“I am here today because I cannot be there with you today. But thank you for coming. Thank you for your resolve and your generosity of spirit.

“On Wednesday night, after a threat was sent to this embassy and the police descended on this building, you came out in the middle of the night to watch over it and you brought the world’s eyes with you.

“Inside this embassy, after dark, I could hear teams of police swarming up into the building through its internal fire escape. But I knew there would be witnesses. And that is because of you.

“If the UK did not throw away the Vienna conventions the other night, it is because the world was watching. And the world was watching because you were watching.

“So, the next time somebody tells you that it is pointless to defend those rights that we hold dear, remind them of your vigil in the dark before the Embassy of Ecuador.

“Remind them how, in the morning, the sun came up on a different world and a courageous Latin America nation took a stand for justice.

And so, to those brave people. I thank President Correa for the courage he has shown in considering and in granting me political asylum.

“And I also thank the government, and in particular Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino, who upheld the Ecuadorian constitution and its notion of universal rights in their consideration of my asylum. And to the Ecuadorian people for supporting and defending this constitution.

“And I also have a debt of gratitude to the staff of this embassy, whose families live in London and who have shown me the hospitality and kindness despite the threats we all received.

“This Friday, there will be an emergency meeting of the foreign ministers of Latin America in Washington DC to address this very situation.

“And so, I am grateful to those people and governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, and to all other Latin American countries who have come out to defend the right to asylum.

“And to the people of the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden and Australia who have supported me in strength, even when their governments have not. And to those wiser heads in government who are still fighting for justice. Your day will come.

“To the staff, supporters and sources of Wikileaks, whose courage and commitment and loyalty has seen no equal.

“To my family and to my children who have been denied their father. Forgive me, we will be reunited soon.

“As Wikileaks stands under threat, so does the freedom of expression and the health of all our societies. We must use this moment to articulate the choice that is before the government of the United States of America.

“Will it return to and reaffirm the values, the revolutionary values it was founded on, or will it lurch off the precipice dragging us all into a dangerous and oppressive world, in which journalists fall silent under the fear of prosecution and citizens must whisper in the dark?

“I say it must turn back. I ask President Obama to do the right thing. The United States must renounce its witch-hunts against Wikileaks. The United States must dissolve its FBI investigation.

“The United States must vow that it will not seek to prosecute our staff or our supporters. The United States must pledge before the world that it will not pursue journalists for shining a light on the secret crimes of the powerful.

“There must be no more foolish talk about prosecuting any media organisation; be it Wikileaks, or be it the New York Times.

“The US administration’s war on whistleblowers must end.

“Thomas Drake, William Binney and John Kirakou and the other heroic whistleblowers must – they must – be pardoned or compensated for the hardships they have endured as servants of the public record.

“And to the Army Private who remains in a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, who was found by the United Nations to have endured months of torturous detention in Quantico, Virginia and who has yet – after two years in prison – to see a trial: he must be released.

“Bradley Manning must be released.

“And if Bradley Manning did as he is accused, he is a hero and an example to us all and one of the world’s foremost political prisoners.

“Bradley Manning must be released.

“On Wednesday, Bradley Manning spent his 815th day of detention without trial. The legal maximum is 120 days.

“On Thursday, my friend Nabeel Rajab, President of the Bahrain Human Rights Centre, was sentenced to three years in prison for a tweet. On Friday, a Russian band were sentenced to two years in jail for a political performance.

“There is unity in the oppression. There must be absolute unity and determination in the response.

“Thank you.”

One man’s war hero is another’s snitch. Iraqi informant Jasim Mohammed Ramadon is also an American rapist.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.– Haha. Iraqi “war hero” Jasim Mohammed “Steve-O” Ramadon was granted asylum in the US after snitching on his countrymen, his tribe, and own father, as a youth informer for the US Army. An American soldier brought Ramadon back to Ft. Carson and praised him as a war hero in his memoir. Now Ramadan has been getting himself into trouble for drunk driving and beating women. Recently, he and four other Iraqi expats were arrested for the violent sexual assault of a neighbor, probably the everyday rape M.O. of American soldiers in occupied lands. I’m laughing because while Ramadon betrayed his dad, beat his girlfriend, and now faces charges of rape, local teabag Red White & Blue guy Jim Cross stepped forward as character witness for Ramadon, saying “his heart is in the right place.” Does being a conservative jingoist mean you have to hit every sour note?
 
I was reminded of Cross today because our City Hall fracking protest was interrupted by the stereotypical blimp-neck sticking his smartphone in our faces with lame gotcha questions, beginning with the usual insincere “So what’s this about?” Today’s idiot was no brighter than Cross, and thought he’d caught us up because we protested oil drilling yet drove there burning fossil fuels. These guys are almost worth having cameras turned on them, so dopey are their leading questions and smug oversimplifications. This one seemed too dumb to actually be of interest, but it turns out we could have unmasked a local media bully. I learned only later that our camera-wielding heckler was the Gazette’s editorialist Wayne Laugesen. So now I’ve confirmed my suspicion that Mr. Laugesen’s relentlessly backward editorials must be cribbed verbatim from right-wing PR mills. For all their nauseating inanity, the editorials are too consistent with the corporate talking points to emit from the moron we saw today. Of course, one man’s idiot is a ditto-head’s intellectual. Laugesen trailed us as we walked to lunch, but filmed it like we were running away from his lard ass.

Colo. Springs content to see Obama, skip chance to put a message TO him


COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.– It’s so dispiriting to witness the perpetual truancy of the local social justice community. They can attend prayer meeting circle jerks apparently, but when President Obomber comes to town, on the anniversary of the targeted assassination of the City of Nagasaki via atom bomb no less, August 9, those finks are nowhere. We saw teabags, potheads and Paultards with more spirit. You might be satisfied to hear that none of the other sign-bearers divined the motorcade route, but with patience we were able to see and be seen by the president twice, as he left Cutler Hall for the Olympic Training Center and on his return to Peterson AFB via Uintah to I-25. We would have welcomed antiwar colleagues, but what are you going to do? I guess advocating for military intervention in Darfur, Libya and Syria occupies a pacifist dupe full time, not to mention cheerleading for the Army’s “sustainability” PR. And you can’t speak up for immigrants, prisoners, women, gays, the environment, the poor and oppressed, if you’re sucking on Obama supporters’ toes for the duration of the election season. Some of the democrats exiting the campaign stop thanked us for our message. One asked: “Are you with the Justice and Peace?” Sadly, no, we said. They don’t turn up in public anymore. You might ask them about that, I recommended. I write this after the next day’s anti-activist trial, also a no-show by the excuse-making louts.

Heads kept down in Colorado Springs as professional gunman, Army Ranger ‘Little Monster’, threatens rampage

COLO. SPRINGS– The CSGT morning headline described Aurora shooter: GUNMAN WAS LIKE ASSASSIN GOING TO WAR, but the next news cycle warned of a pro, this time an Army Ranger, cruising the city, who’d flown from Fort Lewis, Washington with the intention of killing his ex-fiance, her new boyfriend, then himself. The 5-foot-5 Sgt. Joshua Johnston Daner, a special forces soldier nicknamed “Little Monster”, has three guns, “violent tendencies” and possibly an injured hand from punching a wall. If you think having to look out for one Army Ranger is bad, imagine a city in a US war zone, Iraq or Afghanistan where Daner served for example, bracing for teams of “Little Monsters”, a death squad of Rangers, or brigades of regulars behaving with less discipline than special ops, with the authority to hit you as they would a wall.

With no clue to the whereabouts of said ex, Colorado Springs residents are bracing for a city wide free fire zone, though a drive-by at a strip-bar seems the most likely scenario. If you’re not chatting up a stripper looking to scam a soldier for their life insurance, you’re probably not in the line of fire.

So far the Gazette has this:

Daner has served eight four- or five-month tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Mark Edwards, an Army Human Resources spokesman. He most recently returned in February 2011 from a five-month tour in Afghanistan, Edwards said.

Daner entered the Army in 2003, completed ranger training in July 2006 and has been stationed at Fort Lewis since around that time, Edwards said. Daner has received numerous military commendations, including the Afghanistan Campaign Medal with one campaign star, as well as the Iraq Campaign Medal with one campaign star, Edwards said.

Army Rangers are a group of highly-trained troops who specialize in airborne operations, along with raiding facilities and enemy compounds, according to the Army. The 2nd Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment is stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

No reports yet of a Daner rap-sheet, though obviously investigators should look to his deployment record for priors.

Colorado police brutality retrospective: the 1934 Relief Strike Battle, UP story “Girl Radical Leads Mob in Denver Riot”


If one image captures the “Relief Strike Riot” of October 30, 1934, it’s of Patrolman CV Satt who continues to fire his service revolver after he’s felled by a bottle thrown by a striking picketer. Although Colorado newspapers were anti-union, their accounts vary enough to reveal the escalation of violence for which the DPD was responsible and for which they and the newspapers I’ll bet have never apologized. This article will be the first of a series to unearth the newspaper accounts which documented the events of Oct. 29 through Nov. 3, 1934, mostly because the police tactics and media defamation are remarkably similar today.

(Caption on above photograph: “This remarkable photograph was taken when the rioting between Denver police and “relief strike” picketers was at its height at W. Jewell ave. and the Platte River yesterday. Patrolman C. V. Satt is shown rising after he had been struck over the head with bricks and a shovel. He has his service pistol in his hand, ready to fire at his assailants, but Sergt. Henry Durkop is restraining him.”)

INTRODUCTION: THE BATTLE
As with many “riots”, the confrontation of Oct. 30, 1934 was instigated by the abrupt arrest and detention of a union organizer. What follows is an entertaining eyewitness account which attempts to defame the picketers and laud the police officers for their restraint, although the other reports and photographic record suggested otherwise.


Colorado Springs Evening Telegraph, October 31, 1934, page 1, column 8: GIRL RADICAL LEADS MOB IN DENVER RIOT — FERA Project Pickets Spurred Into Battle by Woman Believed Imported Agitator By DAVIS CAMPBELL, United Press Staff Correspondent

DENVER, Colo, Oct 30 (UP)– A dark haired, attractive girl led demonstrators into hand to hand battle with police here today, as the picketers, under alleged communist leadership, sought to force a strike of Denver FERA workers.

The girl, who was believed by police to have been an imported communist sympathizer, was the spearhead of the rush of demonstrators who attempted to rescue their arrested leader, Gene Corish, 35, of Denver, from the hands of police.

I followed the demonstrators from the time they gathered with the intention of picketing the FERA projects. Police believed they planned to descend on a project at Alameda avenue and Cherry creek. Instead they headed for another at Evans street and the Platte river.

FERA Workers Fight Reds.

There they rushed into a group of FERA workers and sought to take away their tools. The relief workers fought back. But, by the force of superior numbers the demonstrators were winning the spirited battle when police rushed up.

Several picks and shovels had been thrown into the stream.

The police leaped into the midst of the hand to hand fighting. They seized Corish, who appeared to be the leader of the rioters, and dragged him to a patrol wagon.

Instantly the girl leader of the rioters set up a cry of “Don’t let the (here she used an unprintable epithet) have him” and she started toward the patrol wagon swinging a shovel someone had wrenched from a worker.

Others joined the rush. Bricks and clods flew thru the air toward the little band of a dozen husky policemen, outnumbered about 50 to 1 by the rioters.

The patrolmen formed a cordon around the patrol wagon, and retreated slowly toward it, fighting every step of the way, but using only their clubs and fists. They very apparently were seeking to avoid serious injury to anyone.

Officer Felled by Bottle.

Suddenly a beer bottle flew thru the air and struck one of the patrolmen (I learned later he was Carl V. Satt), squarely on the head. Satt dropped like a log.

A rioter stood over him with a shovel in his hands, apparently ready to swing another blow at the unconscious man.

Driven to desperation by this development, police drew their pistols and fired what sounded to me like more than 30 shots.

A rioter dropped, wounded thru the hip. He was Henry Brown, later found to be superficially wounded.

I think Patrolman Marshall Stanton shot him. Stanton told me later he believed this was the case.

I was certain, as I watched from some distance away, that I saw two other rioters drop, but, if others were wounded, they were carried along by their fellows and were not taken to hospitals.

Rapidly the ranks of the demonstrators broke, giving ground before the police fire. Several paused long enough to hurl bricks and rocks such as those which had already injured Sergt. James Pitt and Sergt. Henry Duerkop.

The police made 10 arrests in all.

Thru all the violence, FERA workers sided with police. They appeared determined not to give up their jobs.

INTRO 2: PHOTOGRAPHS
From the Rocky Mountain News, October 31, 1934, page 4


Caption reads: “A group of the “strikers” parading near the Cherry Creek relief project. Only 21 bona fide relief workers in Denver left their jobs yesterday to strike.”


Caption reads: “This view was taken just before police and so-called relief striker started their bloody battle at the Platte River near W. Jewell ave. yesterday. The arrow points to Patrolman C. V. Satt, who was struck in the head by a missile and critically injured. Other patrolmen are shown on duty around the patrol wagon, as one of the picket leaders is being placed inside.”


Caption reads: “During the heat of the battle. This view shows the action in the encounter between police and strike picketers on the Platte River yesterday. Two of the picketers, knocked down by policemen, are shown lying on the ground.”


Caption reads: “After the smoke of battle. This shows the battleground where strikers and police met yesterday just after all the action had ceased. Two strikers are shown down on the ground and beyond them is Patrolman C. V. Satt, who was perhaps fatally injured when struck by missiles of the strikers. He is prone on the ground but has pulled out his revolver.”


Caption reads: “R. W. Rankin, a relief supervisor, shown waiting for the ambulance after he had been struck over the head by a patrolman following a private fight at the strike demonstration held yesterday at Civic Center. He suffered a severe scalp wound.”


Caption reads: Henry W. Brown, who was shot in the hip during the encounter between the demonstrators and police on the Platte River yesterday. He is shown here as he lay on a cot in county jail after his wound had been treated in Colorado General Hospital.”

INTRO 3: NEWS HEADLINES

CS Gazette, (AP) Oct 29, 1934:
Relief Strikers March on Capitol – Governor Refuses to Talk to Crowd When One ‘Red’ Won’t Keep Still

Rocky Mountain News, Oct 30
‘Relief Strikers’ March On Capitol, make Demands – Threaten Violence at Projects Today If Officials Do Not Grant All They Seek
Will Rogers – Says Bread Line Is Encouraged by Deficit of New York Stock Exchange
Young Folk Lambast Older Generation For Getting World Into Present Mess – No Punches Pulled as Boys and Girls Have Their Say

CS Evening Telegraph, Oct 30,
RELIEF RIOTERS BATTLE DENVER POLICE
Agitators Shot and Four Officers Injured as Mob Tries to Foment Strike – Blazing Guns Disperse Communist Led Crowd, Radio Car and Gas Station Burned, Score of Attackers Hurt, FERA Workers Refuse to Walk Out
Girl Radical Leads Mob in Denver Riot – FERA Project Pickets Spurred Into Battle by Woman Believed Imported Agitator

RMN, Oct 31
POLICE ARMY WITH MACHINE GUNS WILL GUARD FERA WORKERS TODAY
Force of 300 Officers Will Use Bullets and Tear Gas If Necessary to Protect Relief Workers From Molestation – Agitators Threaten Violence After Yesterday’s Bloody Clash
Witness Says Police Fired When Driven Back to Car – Gives Graphic Account of Rush by Screaming Men and Women Who Volleyed Rocks at Officers

CS Gazette, Oct 31,
RESUMPTION OF VIOLENCE IN DENVER STRIKE FEARED
City Tense After Bloody Riot on South Platte – Barricade Erected at Table Mountain, to Be Visited Today by Agitators

CS Evening Telegraph, Oct 31,
DENVER QUIET BUT TENSE AFTER RIOTING
Mob Gathers But Fails to Carry Out Threat to March on projects – Police Precautions Against Further Outbreaks Nip New Demonstrations; Report Agitators on Way to Foment Trouble in El Paso County – Mob Gathers in Englewood but Fails to Carry Out Threat to March Against FERA Projects
Don’t Expect Any Agitator Trouble on C. S. Relief Jobs p1, c7
Mountain at Golden Resembles Fortified Castle as Workers Prepare to Resist Strike Mob p1, c7

New York Times, Oct 31
‘Hunger Marchers’ Routed at Albany; Rioting in Denver – Many Injured in Denver – Relief Strikers Attempt to halt Federal Project–One Shot Fighting Police, p1, c1

RMN, Nov 1
Relief Strike Riots Subside as Police Act – Agitators Fail to Start Anything at Various FERA Projects
Pretty Girl From Illinois Finds Denver Police Nice p4, c1

CSET, Nov 1
Roundup Ends Denver Relief Strike Threat – With Agitators Arrested, Leaderless Mob’s Spirit Broken; Plot to Spread Disorder in State Fails
U.C.L.A. Branded Communist Hotbed

RMN, Nov 2
File Charges Today Naming 15 as Rioters – Two of Group Face Fine of $1,000 and Year in Jail If Acts Are Proved, p14
College Students Battle Radicalism – Form Vigilante Committee at Coast School

Stop Joseph Kony? Who’s going to stop US military from raping all of Africa?

Wanna know who’s all over Kony, KONY 2012 that is? Denver’s Global Equality collective is on top of that shit like you wouldn’t believe. You may have thought the viral video debunked and that was that, a screening of KONY 2012 was attempted in Uganda and caused a riotous backlash. But offline and getting no mention in the MSM is our military’s propaganda campaign in the public schools. From elementary to high school, American children are being rallied to push for US military intervention in Africa. Fortunately anti-imperialist Global Equality owns that cause and has been sending operatives into as many Denver area schools as they can. They’ve got multitudes of handouts, posters, and stickers to subvert the pro-intervention line. Unadulterated, the official message has American children pumping their fists to support hunting down warlord Kony. It’s not just boosterism, they’re recruiting! Our Hitler Youth are vowing to join up to defeat Joseph Kony, for the crime of abducting children to fight in his army, aptly named “invisible children” because our would-be conscripts forget that’s who they’ll be killing. If you want to save the children in the Denver schools, contact Global Equality about getting their anti-press-kit, otherwise their resources are available online.

Near success of delegates for Ron Paul exposes electoral college as rigged

I want to give Ron Paul supporters their due. By their determination to advance their Republican candidate by hook or by crook, Team Ron Paul’s self-deputized delegates have exposed the US electoral college nomination process to be fixed. Isn’t it interesting how far Republican state party chairmen have been willing to go to stop even the slightest encroachment on candidate Mitt Romney’s presumptive convention backing? May the best man win is the ethos they preach, but it seems the furthest from what they will allow. Of course this learning moment will be lost on Ron Paul’s army of halfwits, just clever enough to outmaneuver the average rival Republicans, but dumb enough in the first place to fall for their “Dr. Paul”. Don’t you just love it, their reverence for a PhD, from mostly stunted males claiming post-grad (of associate degrees) studies in “The Austrian School” of economics? They’re gun nuts and bombastic proponents of folk-wisdom libertarian nationalism, no surprises there, and so we can’t even congratulate them on debunking the apple-pie objectivity of America’s electoral level playing field, because it will go to their head and their craniums are pit bull small.

Who else indoctrinates children and trains them for warfare? SONY 2012

No sooner had the KONY 2012 video gone famously viral, with lots of help from the corporate war-loving media, it was debunked for being US Africa interventionism propaganda. But Springs area schools had already booked the tour, and that’s a difficult about face in these military parts. Yesterday Palmer High School hosted Ft Carson spokesmen who rallied the students to help raise money for US Army operations in Uganda, regardless whether USG or public support wanes. Tomorrow the KONY 2012 circus moves to Colorado College, where the pitch looks to be more skeptical, but the speaker lineup is decidedly pro western imperial expansion. Have you heard that both Joseph Kony and his Ugandan Army foes are behind the rapes and child soldiers? Now the official US Army call to arms proclaims it intends to take out Kony AND the Ugandan government. They’re also telling the kids Uganda doesn’t have any resources the US wants, so trust us, we have no ulterior motive.