Colo. US District Court judge enjoins DIA to limit restriction of free speech (grants our preliminary injunction!)

Plaintiffs Nazli McDonnell and Eric Verlo
DENVER, COLORADO- If your civil liberties have ever been violated by a cop, over your objections, only to have the officer say “See you in court”, this victory is for YOU! On January 29 we were threatened with arrest for protesting the “Muslim Ban” at Denver International Airport. We argued that our conduct was protected speech and that they were violating our rights. They dismissed our complaints with, in essense: “That’s for a court to decide.” And today IT HAS! On Feb 15 we summoned the cops to federal court and this morning, Feb 22, US District Court Judge William Martinez granted our preliminary injunction, severely triming DIA’s protest permit process. In a nutshell: no restrictions on signs, size of assemblies or their location within the main terminal (so long as the airport’s function is not impeded). Permits are still required but with 24 hours advance notice, not seven days. Below is Judge Martinez’ 46-page court order in full:

Document 29 Filed 02/22/17 USDC Colorado

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO

Judge William J. Martínez

Civil Action No. 17-cv-0332-WJM-MJW

NAZLI MCDONNELL, and
ERIC VERLO,

Plaintiffs,

v.

CITY AND COUNTY OF DENVER,?
DENVER POLICE COMMANDER ANTONIO LOPEZ,
in his individual and official capacity, and?
DENVER POLICE SERGEANT VIRGINIA QUIÑONES,
in her individual and official capacity,

Defendants.

________________________________________________________

ORDER GRANTING PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION IN PART
________________________________________________________

Plaintiffs Nazli McDonnell (“McDonnell”) and Eric Verlo (“Verlo”) (together, “Plaintiffs”) sue the City and County of Denver (“Denver”), Denver Police Commander Antonio Lopez (“Lopez”) and Denver Police Sergeant Virginia Quiñones (“Quiñones”) (collectively, “Defendants”) for allegedly violating Plaintiffs’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights when they prevented Plaintiffs from protesting without a permit in the Jeppesen Terminal at Denver International Airport (“Airport” or “Denver Airport”). (ECF No. 1.) Currently before the Court is Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction, which seeks to enjoin Denver from enforcing some of its policies regarding demonstrations and protests at the Airport. (ECF No. 2.) This motion has been fully briefed (see ECF Nos. 2, 20, 21, 23) and the Court held an evidentiary hearing on February 15, 2017 (“Preliminary Injunction Hearing”).

For the reasons explained below, Plaintiffs’ Motion is granted to the following limited extent:

• Defendants must issue an expressive activity permit on twenty-four hours’ notice in circumstances where an applicant, in good faith, seeks a permit for the purpose of communicating topical ideas reasonably relevant to the purposes and mission of the Airport, the immediate importance of which could not have been foreseen seven days or more in advance of the commencement of the activity for which the permit is sought, or when circumstances beyond the control of the permit applicant prevented timely filing of the application; ?

• Defendants must make all reasonable efforts to accommodate the applicant’s preferred demonstration location, whether inside or outside of the Jeppesen Terminal, so long as the location is a place where the unticketed public is normally allowed to be; ?

• Defendants may not enforce Denver Airport Regulation 50.09’s prohibition against “picketing” (as that term is defined in Denver Airport Regulation 50.02-8) within the Jeppesen Terminal; and ?

• Defendants may not restrict the size of a permit applicant’s proposed signage beyond that which may be reasonably required to prevent the impeding of the normal flow of travelers and visitors in and out of Jeppesen Terminal; and specifically, Defendants may not enforce Denver Airport Regulation 50.08-12’s requirement that signs or placards be no larger than one foot by one foot. ??

Any relief Plaintiffs seek beyond the foregoing is denied at this phase of the case. In particular, the Court will not require the Airport to accommodate truly spontaneous demonstrations (although the Airport remains free to do so); the Court will not require the Airport to allow demonstrators to unilaterally determine the location within the Jeppesen Terminal that they wish to demonstrate; and the Court will not strike down the Airport’s usual seven-day notice-and-permit requirement as unconstitutional in all circumstances.

I. FINDINGS OF FACT

Based on the parties’ filings, and on the documentary and testimonial evidence received at the evidentiary hearing, the Court makes the following findings of fact for purposes of resolving Plaintiffs’ Motion.?

A. Regulation 50

Pursuant to Denver Municipal Code § 5-16(a), Denver’s manager of aviation may “adopt rules and regulations for the management, operation and control of [the] Denver Municipal Airport System, and for the use and occupancy, management, control, operation, care, repair and maintenance of all structures and facilities thereon, and all land on which [the] Denver Municipal Airport System is located and operated.” Under that authority, the manager of aviation has adopted “Rules and Regulations for the Management, Operation, Control, and Use of the Denver Municipal Airport System.” See https://www.flydenver.com/about/administration/rules_regulations (last accessed Feb. 16, 2017). Part 50 of those rules and regulations governs picketing, protesting, soliciting, and similar activities at the Airport. See https://www.flydenver.com/sites/default/files/rules/50_leafleting.pdf (last accessed Feb. 16, 2017). The Court will refer to Part 50 collectively as “Regulation 50.”

The following subdivisions of Regulation 50 are relevant to the parties’ current dispute:

Regulation 50.03: “No person or organization shall leaflet, conduct surveys, display signs, gather signatures, solicit funds, or engage in other speech related activity at Denver International Airport for religious, charitable, or political purposes, or in connection with a labor dispute, except pursuant to, and in compliance with, a permit for such activity issued by the CEO [of the Airport] or his or her designee. . . .” ?

Regulation 50.04-1: “Any person or organization desiring to leaflet, display signs, gather signatures, solicit funds, or engage in other speech related activity at Denver International Airport for religious, charitable, or political purposes, or in connection with a labor dispute, shall complete a permit application and submit it during regular business hours, at least seven (7) days prior to the commencement of the activity for which the permit is sought and no earlier than thirty (30) days prior to commencement of the activity. The permit application shall be submitted using the form provided by the Airport. The applicant shall provide the name and address of the person in charge of the activity, the names of the persons engaged in the activity, the nature of the activity, each location at which the activity is proposed to be conducted, the purpose of the activity, the hours during which the activity is proposed to be conducted, and the beginning and end dates of such activity. A labor organization shall also identify the employer who is the target of the proposed activity.”

Regulation 50.04-3: “Upon presentation of a complete permit application ?and all required documentation, the CEO shall issue a permit to the applicant, if there is space available in the Terminal, applying only the limitations and regulations set forth in this Rule and Regulation . . . . Permits shall be issued on a first come-first served basis. No permits shall be issued by the CEO for a period of time in excess of thirty-one (31) days.” ?

Regulation 50.04-5: “In issuing permits or allocating space, the CEO shall not exercise any discretion or judgment regarding the purpose or content of the proposed activity, except as provided in these Rules and Regulations. The issuance of a permit is a strictly ministerial function and does not constitute an endorsement by the City and County of Denver of any organization, cause, religion, political issue, or other matter.” ?

Regulation 50.04-6: “The CEO may move expressive activity from one location to another and/or disperse such activity around the airport upon reasonable notice to each affected person when in the judgment of the CEO such action is necessary for the efficient and effective operation of the transportation function of the airport.” ?

Regulation 50.08-12: “Individuals and organizations engaged in leafleting, solicitation, picketing, or other speech related activity shall not: * * * [w]ear or carry a sign or placard larger than one foot by one foot in size . . . .” (underscoring in original).

Regulation 50.09: “Picketing not related to a labor dispute is prohibited in ?all interior areas of the Terminal and concourses, in the Restricted Area, and on all vehicular roadways, and shall not be conducted by more than two (2) persons at any one location upon the Airport.” ?

Regulation 50.02-8: “Picketing shall mean one or more persons marching or stationing themselves in an area in order to communicate their position on a political, charitable, or religious issue, or a labor dispute, by displaying one or more signs, posters or similar devices” (underscoring in original).

The Airport receives about forty-five permit requests a year. No witness at the Preliminary Injunction Hearing (including Airport administrators who directly or indirectly supervise the permit process) could remember an instance in which a permit had been denied.

?Although there is no formal written, prescribed procedure for requesting expedited treatment of permit requests, the Airport not infrequently processes such requests and issues permits in less than seven days. Last November, less than seven days before Election Day, the Airport received a request from “the International Machinists” 1 to stage a demonstration ahead of the election. The Airport was able to process that request in two days and thereby permit the demonstration before Election Day.
?
——————————
1 Presumably, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. ?
———————

B. The Executive Order

On Friday, January 27, 2017, President Trump signed Executive Order 13769 (“Executive Order”). See 82 Fed. Reg. 8977. The Executive Order, among other things, established a 90-day ban on individuals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, a 120-day suspension of all refugee admissions, and an indefinite suspension of refugee admissions from Syria. Id. §§ 3(c), 5(a), 5(c). “The impact of the Executive Order was immediate and widespread. It was reported that thousands of visas were immediately canceled, hundreds of travelers with such visas were prevented from boarding airplanes bound for the United States or denied entry on arrival, and some travelers were detained.” Washington v. Trump, ___ F.3d. ___, ___, 2017 WL 526497, at *2 (9th Cir. Feb. 9, 2017). As is well known, demonstrators and attorneys quickly began to assemble at certain American airports, both to protest the Executive Order and potentially to offer assistance to travelers being detained upon arrival.?

C. The January 28 Protest at the Denver Airport

Shortly after 1:00 p.m. on the following day—Saturday, January 28, 2017— Airport public information officer Heath Montgomery e-mailed Defendant Lopez, the police commander responsible for Denver’s police district encompassing the Airport. Lopez was off-duty at the time. Montgomery informed Lopez that he had received media inquiries about a protest being planned for the Airport later that day, and that no Regulation 50 permit had been issued for such a protest.

Not knowing any details about the nature or potential size of the protest, and fearing the possibility of “black bloc” and so-called “anarchist activities,” Lopez coordinated with other Denver Police officials to redeploy Denver Police’s gang unit from their normal assignments to the Airport. Denver Police also took uniformed officers out of each of the various other police districts and redeployed them to the Airport. Lopez called for these reinforcements immediately in light of the Airport’s significant distance from any other police station or normal patrol area. Lopez knew that if an unsafe situation developed, he could not rely on additional officers being able to get to the Airport quickly.

Through his efforts, Lopez was eventually able to assemble a force of about fifty officers over “the footprint of the entire airport,” meaning inclusive of all officers already assigned to the Airport who remained on their normal patrol duties. Lopez himself also came out to the Airport.

In the meantime, Montgomery had somehow learned of an organization known as the Colorado Muslim Connection that was organizing protesters through Facebook. Montgomery reached out to this organization through the Airport’s own Facebook account and informed them of Regulation 50’s permit requirement. (Ex. 32.) One of the Colorado Muslim Connection’s principals, Nadeen Ibrahim, then e-mailed Montgomery “to address the permit.” (Ex. 30.) Ibrahim told Montgomery:

The group of people we have will have a peaceful assembly carrying signs saying welcome here along with a choir and lots of flowers. Our goal is to stand in solidarity with our community members that have been detained at the airports since the signing of the executive order, though they do have active, legal visas/green cards. Additionally, we would like to show our physical welcoming presence for any newly arriving Middle Eastern sisters and brothers with visas. We do not intend to block any access to [the Airport].

(Id.) Montgomery apparently did not construe this e-mail as a permit request, or at least not a properly prepared one, and stated that “Denver Police will not allow a protest at the airport tonight. We are willing to work with you like any other group but there is a formal process for that.” (Id.)

Nonetheless, protesters began to assemble in the late afternoon and early evening in the Airport’s Jeppesen Terminal, specifically in the multi-storied central area known as the “Great Hall.” The Great Hall is a very large, rectangular area that runs north and south. The lower level of the Great Hall (level 5) has an enormous amount of floor space, and is ringed with offices and some retail shops, but the floor space itself is largely taken up by security screening facilities for departing passengers. The only relatively unobstructed area on level 5 is the middle third, which is currently designed primarily as a location for “meeters-and-greeters,” i.e., individuals waiting for passengers arriving from domestic flights who come up from the underground train connecting the Jeppesen Terminal with the various concourses. There is a much smaller meeters-and-greeters waiting area at the north end of level 5, where international arrivals exit from customs screening.

The upper level of the Great Hall (level 6) has much less floor space than level 5 given that it is mostly open to level 5 below. It is ringed with retail shops and restaurants. At its north end is a pedestrian bridge to and from the “A” concourse and its separate security screening area.

Given this design, every arriving and departing passenger at the Airport (i.e., all passengers except those only connecting through Denver), and nearly every other person having business at the airport (including employees, delivery persons, meeters-and-greeters, etc.), must pass through some portion of the Great Hall. In 2016, the Airport served 58.3 million passengers, making it the sixth busiest airport in the United States and the eighteenth busiest in the world. Approximately 36,000 people also work at the airport.

The protesters who arrived on the evening of January 28 largely congregated in the middle third of the Great Hall (the domestic-arrivals meeter-and-greeter area). The protesters engaged in singing, chanting, praying, and holding up signs. At least one of them had a megaphone.

The size of the protest at its height is unclear. The witnesses at the evidentiary hearing gave varying estimates ranging from as low as 150 to as high as 1,000. Most estimates, however, centered in the range of about 200. Lopez, who believed that the protest eventually comprised about 300 individuals, did not believe that his fifty officers throughout the Airport were enough to ensure safety and security for that size of protest, even if he could pull all of his officers away from their normal duties.

Most of the details of the January 28 protest are not relevant for present purposes. Suffice it to say that Lopez eventually approached those who appeared to be the protest organizers and warned them multiple times that they could be arrested if they continued to protest without a permit. Airport administration later agreed to allow the protest to continue on “the plaza,” an area just outside the Jeppesen Terminal to its south, between the Terminal itself and the Westin Hotel. Protesters then moved to that location, and the protest dispersed later in the evening. No one was arrested and no illegal activity stemming from the protest (e.g., property damage) was reported, nor was there any report of disruption to travel operations or any impeding of the normal flow of travelers and visitors in and out of Jeppesen Terminal.

D. The January 29 Protest at the Denver Airport

Plaintiffs disagree strongly with the Executive Order and likewise wished to protest it, but, due to their schedules, were unable to participate in the January 28 protest. They decided instead to go to the Airport on the following day, Sunday, January 29. They came that afternoon and stationed themselves at a physical barrier just outside the international arrival doors at the north end of the Great Hall, level 5. They each held up a sign of roughly poster board size expressing a message of opposition to the Executive Order and solidarity with those affected by it. (See Exs. 2, 4, M.)

Plaintiffs were soon approached by Defendant Quiñones, who warned them that they could be arrested for demonstrating without a permit. Plaintiffs felt threatened, as well as disheartened that they could not freely exercise their First Amendment rights then and there. Plaintiffs felt it was important to be demonstrating both at that particular time, given the broad news coverage of the effects of the Executive Order, and at that particular place (the international arrivals area), given a desire to express solidarity with those arriving directly from international destinations—whom Plaintiffs apparently assumed would be most likely to be affected by the Executive Order in some way.

Plaintiffs left the Airport later that day without being arrested, and without incident. They have never returned to continue their protest, nor have they applied for a permit to do so.

E. Permits Since Issued

The airport has since issued permits to demonstrators opposed to the Executive Order. At least one of these permits includes permission for four people to demonstrate in the international arrivals area, where Plaintiffs demonstrated on January 29.

II. REQUESTED INJUNCTION

Plaintiffs have never proposed specific injunction language. In their Motion, they asked for “an injunction prohibiting their arrest for standing in peaceful protest within Jeppesen Terminal and invalidating Regulation 50 as violative of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.” (ECF No. 2 at 4.) At the Preliminary Injunction Hearing, Plaintiffs’ counsel asked the Court to enjoin Defendants (1) “from arresting people for engaging in behavior that the plaintiffs or people similarly situated were engaging in,” (2) from enforcing Regulation 50.09 (which forbids non- labor demonstrators from holding up signs within the Jeppesen Terminal), and (3) from administering Regulation 50 without an “exigent circumstances exception.” Counsel also argued that requiring a permit application seven days ahead of time is unconstitutionally long in any circumstance, exigent or not.

III. LEGAL STANDARD

A. The Various Standards

In a sense, there are at least three preliminary injunction standards. The first, typically-quoted standard requires: (1) a likelihood of success on the merits, (2) a threat of irreparable harm, which (3) outweighs any harm to the non-moving party, and (4) that the injunction would not adversely affect the public interest. See, e.g., Awad v. Ziriax, 670 F.3d 1111, 1125 (10th Cir. 2012).

If, however, the injunction will (1) alter the status quo, (2) mandate action by the defendant, or (3) afford the movant all the relief that it could recover at the conclusion of a full trial on the merits, a second standard comes into play, one in which the movant must meet a heightened burden. See O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal v. Ashcroft, 389 F.3d 973, 975 (10th Cir. 2004) (en banc). Specifically, the proposed injunction “must be more closely scrutinized to assure that the exigencies of the case support the granting of a remedy that is extraordinary even in the normal course” and “a party seeking such an injunction must make a strong showing both with regard to the likelihood of success on the merits and with regard to the balance of harms.” Id.

On the other hand, the Tenth Circuit also approves of a

modified . . . preliminary injunction test when the moving party demonstrates that the [irreparable harm], [balance of harms], and [public interest] factors tip strongly in its favor. In such situations, the moving party may meet the requirement for showing [likelihood of] 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.

Verlo v. Martinez, 820 F.3d 1113, 1128 n.5 (10th Cir. 2016). This standard, in other words, permits a weaker showing on likelihood of success when the party’s showing on the other factors is strong. It is not clear how this standard would apply if the second standard also applies.

In any event, “a preliminary injunction is an extraordinary remedy,” and therefore “the right to relief must be clear and unequivocal.” Greater Yellowstone Coal. v. Flowers, 321 F.3d 1250, 1256 (10th Cir. 2003).

B. Does Any Modified Standard Apply?

The status quo for preliminary injunction purposes is “the last peaceable uncontested status existing between the parties before the dispute developed.” Schrier v. Univ. of Colo., 427 F.3d 1253, 1260 (10th Cir. 2005) (internal quotation marks omitted). By asking that portions of Regulation 50 be invalidated, Plaintiffs are seeking to change the status quo. Therefore they must make a stronger-than-usual showing on likelihood of success and the balance of harms.

IV. ANALYSIS

A. Irreparable Harm as it Relates to Standing

Under the circumstances, the Court finds it appropriate to begin by discussing the irreparable harm element of the preliminary injunction test as it relates Plaintiffs’ standing to seek an injunction.

Testimony at the Preliminary Injunction Hearing revealed that certain groups wishing to protest the Executive Order have since applied for and obtained permits. Thus, Plaintiffs could get a permit to demonstrate at the airport on seven days’ advance notice—although Regulation 50.09 would still prohibit them from demonstrating by wearing or holding up signs. In addition, as discussed in more detail below (Part IV.B.3.c), Plaintiffs could potentially get a permit to hold a protest parade on public streets in the City and County of Denver with as little as 24 hours’ notice. And as far as the Court is aware, the two Plaintiffs may be able to stand on any public street corner and hold up signs without any prior notice or permit requirement. Thus, Plaintiffs’ alleged irreparable harm must be one or both of the following: (1) the prospect of not being able to demonstrate specifically at the airport on less than seven days’ notice, or (2) the inability to picket in opposition to the government action they oppose—that is, the inability to hold up “signs, posters or similar devices” while engaging in expressive activity at the airport. The Court finds that the second of these options is a fairly traditional allegation of First Amendment injury—even if they do apply for and obtain a permit, by the express terms of Regulation 50.09 Plaintiffs will not be allowed to carry or hold up signs, posters, or the like. The first option, however, requires more extensive discussion and analysis.

The rapidly developing situation that prompted Plaintiffs to go to the Airport on January 29 has since somewhat subsided. The Executive Order remains a newsworthy topic, but a nationwide injunction now prevents its enforcement, see Washington, ___ F.3d at ___, 2017 WL 526497, at *9, and—to the Court’s knowledge—none of the most urgent effects that led to airport-based protests, such as individuals being detained upon arrival, have since repeated themselves. Nonetheless, the circumstances that prompted this lawsuit reveal a number of unassailable truths about “freedom of speech . . . [and] the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” U.S. Const. amend. I.

One indisputable truth is that the location of expressive activity can have singular First Amendment significance, or as the Tenth Circuit has pithily put it: “Location, location, location. It is cherished by property owners and political demonstrators alike.” Pahls v. Thomas, 718 F.3d 1210, 1216 (10th Cir. 2013). The ability to convey a message to a particular person is crucial, and that ability often turns entirely on location.

Thus, location has specifically been at issue in a number of First Amendment decisions. See, e.g., McCullen v. Coakley, 134 S. Ct. 2518, 2535 (2014) (abortion protesters’ ability to approach abortion clinic patrons within a certain distance); Pahls, 718 F.3d at 1216–17 (protesters’ ability to be in a location where the President could see them as his motorcade drove past); Citizens for Peace in Space v. City of Colo. Springs, 477 F.3d 1212, 1218–19 (10th Cir. 2007) (peace activists’ ability to be near a hotel and conference center where a NATO conference was taking place); Tucker v. City of Fairfield, 398 F.3d 457, 460 (6th Cir. 2005) (labor protesters’ ability to demonstrate outside a car dealership); Friends of Animals, Inc. v. City of Bridgeport, 833 F. Supp. 2d 205, 207–08 (D. Conn. 2011) (animal rights protesters’ ability to protest near a circus), aff’d sub nom. Zalaski v. City of Bridgeport Police Dep’t, 475 F. App’x 805 (2d Cir. 2012).

Another paramount truth is that the timing of expressive activity can also have irreplaceable First Amendment value and significance: “simple delay may permanently vitiate the expressive content of a demonstration.” NAACP, W. Region v. City of Richmond, 743 F.2d 1346, 1356 (9th Cir. 1984); see also American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm. v. City of Dearborn, 418 F.3d 600, 605 (6th Cir. 2005) (“Any notice period is a substantial inhibition on speech.”); Church of Am. Knights of Ku Klux Klan v. City of Gary, 334 F.3d 676, 682 (7th Cir. 2003) (“given that . . . political demonstrations are often engendered by topical events, a very long period of advance notice with no exception for spontaneous demonstrations unreasonably limits free speech”); Douglas v. Brownell, 88 F.3d 1511, 1524 (8th Cir. 1996) (“The five-day notice requirement restricts a substantial amount of speech that does not interfere with the city’s asserted goals of protecting pedestrian and vehicle traffic, and minimizing inconvenience to the public.”).

This case provides an excellent example of this phenomena given that —whether intentionally or not— the President’s announcement of his Supreme Court nomination on January 31 (four days after signing the Executive Order) permitted the President to shift the media’s attention to a different topic of national significance. Thus, the inability of demonstrators to legally “strike while the iron’s hot” mattered greatly in this instance. Cf. City of Gary, 334 F.3d at 682 (in the context of a 45-day application period for a parade, noting that “[a] group that had wanted to hold a rally to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq and had applied for a permit from the City of Gary on the first day of the war would have found that the war had ended before the demonstration was authorized”).

These principles are not absolute, however, nor self-applying. The Court must analyze them in the specific context of the Airport. But for present purposes, the Court notes that the Plaintiffs’ alleged harm of being unable to protest at a specific location on short notice states a cognizable First Amendment claim. In addition, by its very nature, this is the sort of claim that is “capable of repetition, yet evading review.” S. Pac. Terminal Co. v. Interstate Commerce Comm’n, 219 U.S. 498, 515 (1911). Here, “the challenged action”—enforcement of the seven-day permit requirement during an event of rapidly developing significance —“was in its duration too short to be fully litigated prior to its cessation or expiration.” Weinstein v. Bradford, 423 U.S. 147, 149 (1975). Further, “there [is] a reasonable expectation that the same complaining party would be subjected to the same action again.” Id. More specifically, the Court credits Plaintiffs’ testimony that they intend to return to the Airport for future protests, and, given continuing comments by the Trump Administration that new immigration and travel- related executive orders are forthcoming, the Court agrees with Plaintiffs that it is reasonably likely a similar situation will recur —i.e., government action rapidly creating consequences relevant specifically to the Airport.

Thus, although the prospect of being unable to demonstrate at the Airport on short notice is not, literally speaking, an “irreparable harm” (because the need for such demonstration may never arise again), it is nonetheless a sufficient harm for purposes of standing and seeking a preliminary injunction.

The Court now turns to the heart of this case—whether Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims. Following that, the Court will reprise the irreparable harm analysis in the specific context of the likelihood-of-success findings.

B. Likelihood of Success on the Merits

Evaluating likelihood of success requires evaluating the substantive merit of Plaintiffs’ claim that Regulation 50, or any portion of it, violates their First Amendment rights. To answer this question, the Supreme Court prescribes the following analysis:

1. Is the expression at issue protected by the First Amendment? ?

2. If so, is the location at issue a traditional public forum, a designated public ?forum, or a nonpublic forum? ?

3. If the location is a traditional or designated public forum, is the ?government’s speech restriction narrowly tailored to meet a compelling ?state interest? ?

4. If the location is a nonpublic forum, is the government’s speech restriction ? ?reasonable in light of the purpose served by the forum, and viewpoint neutral?

See Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Def. & Educ. Fund, Inc., 473 U.S. 788, 797–806 (1985).

The Court will address these inquiries in turn.

1. Does the First Amendment Protect Plaintiffs’ Expressive Conduct?

The Court “must first decide whether [the speech at issue] is speech protected by the First Amendment, for, if it is not, we need go no further.” Id. at 797. There appears to be no contest that the sorts of activities Plaintiffs attempted to engage in at the Airport (including holding up signs) are expressive endeavors protected by the First Amendment. Accordingly, the Court deems it conceded for preliminary injunction purposes that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on this element of the Cornelius analysis.

2. Is the Jeppesen Terminal a Public Forum (Traditional or Designated)?

The Court must next decide whether the Jeppesen Terminal is a public forum:

. . . the extent to which the Government can control access [to government property for expressive purposes] depends on the nature of the relevant forum. Because a principal purpose of traditional public fora is the free exchange of ideas, speakers can be excluded from a public forum only when the exclusion is necessary to serve a compelling state interest and the exclusion is narrowly drawn to achieve that interest. Similarly, when the Government has intentionally designated a place or means of communication as a public forum[,] speakers cannot be excluded without a compelling governmental interest. Access to a nonpublic forum, however, 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.

Id. at 800 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted; alterations incorporated).

a. Is the Jeppesen Terminal a Traditional Public Forum??

Plaintiffs claim that “[t]he Supreme Court has not definitively decided whether airport terminals . . . are public forums.” (ECF No. 2 at 7.) This is either an intentional misstatement or a difficult-to-understand misreading of the most relevant case (which Plaintiffs repeatedly cite), International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Inc. v. Lee, 505 U.S. 672, 679 (1992) (“Lee”).

The plaintiffs in Lee were disseminating religious literature and soliciting funds at the airports controlled by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark). Id. at 674–75. By regulation, however, the Port Authority prohibited “continuous or repetitive” person-to-person solicitation and distribution of literature. Id. at 675–76. The Second Circuit held that the airports were not public fora and that the regulation was reasonable as to solicitation but not as to distribution. Id. at 677. The dispute then went to the Supreme Court, which granted certiorari specifically “to resolve whether airport terminals are public fora,” among other questions. Id.

The Court answered the public forum question in the negative. Relying on the historical use of airport terminals generally, the Court found that “the tradition of airport activity does not demonstrate that airports have historically been made available for speech activity.” Id. at 680. “Nor can we say,” the Court continued, “that these particular terminals, or airport terminals generally, have been intentionally opened by their operators to such activity; the frequent and continuing litigation evidencing the operators’ objections belies any such claim.” Id. at 680–81. Then, invoking the reasonableness test that applies to government regulation of nonpublic fora, the Court affirmed the Second Circuit’s holding that the solicitation ban was reasonable. Id. at 683–85.

Five justices (Rehnquist, White, O’Connor, Scalia, and Thomas) joined all of the major rulings regarding the solicitation ban, including the nonpublic forum status of airport terminals and the reasonableness of the ban. The outcome regarding the distribution ban, however, commanded no majority opinion. Justice O’Connor, applying the reasonableness standard for nonpublic fora, agreed with the Second Circuit that the distribution ban was not reasonable. Id. at 690–93 (opn. of O’Connor, J.). Justice Kennedy, joined in relevant part by Justices Blackmun, Stevens, and Souter, agreed that the Second Circuit’s judgment regarding the distribution ban should be affirmed, but on different grounds, namely, under a strict scrutiny test (because these justices believed that the airport terminals should be deemed a public forum). Id. at 708–10 (opn. of Kennedy, J.). The result was that the Second Circuit’s invalidation of the distribution ban was affirmed without any opinion commanding a majority view.

Regardless of the outcome with respect to the distribution ban, it is beyond debate that five Supreme Court justices in Lee agreed that airport terminals are not public fora. Id. at 680–81. The Tenth Circuit has acknowledged this holding. Mocek v. City of Albuquerque, 813 F.3d 912, 930 (10th Cir. 2015) (“As an initial matter, an airport is a nonpublic forum, where restrictions on expressive activity need only ‘satisfy a requirement of reasonableness.’” (quoting Lee, 505 U.S. at 683)). Notably, Plaintiffs have cited no case in which any court anywhere has deemed an airport to be a public forum.

b. Is the Jeppesen Terminal a Designated Public Forum??

Even though the Jeppesen Terminal is not a traditional public forum, Denver could still designate it as a public forum if Denver “intentionally [opens the Jeppesen Terminal] for public discourse.” Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 802. Denver denies that it has done so, and Plaintiffs’ arguments to the contrary lack merit.

i. Terminal Visitors’ Incidental Expressive Activities

Plaintiffs argue that visitors to the Jeppesen Terminal “engage in First Amendment activity; they wear buttons, shirts, and hats that convey distinct messages to other visitors. They engage in one-on-one conversations.” (ECF No. 21 at 3.) Thus, Plaintiffs say, Denver has designated a public forum within the Jeppesen Terminal.

The Tenth Circuit has already foreclosed this argument. Addressing the public forum status of the Denver Performing Arts Complex, the Court stated the following: “Even if Denver allowed patrons to wear political buttons or shirts with slogans, this would not be sufficient to establish a designated public forum. The First Amendment does not require the government to impose a ‘zone of silence’ on its property to maintain its character as a nonpublic forum.” Hawkins v. City & Cnty. of Denver, 170 F.3d 1281, 1288 (10th Cir. 1999).

Indeed, even if it wanted to, Denver almost certainly could not impose such a “zone of silence,” as illustrated by Board of Airport Commissioners of City of Los Angeles v. Jews for Jesus, Inc., 482 U.S. 569 (1987). There, the Los Angeles airport authority adopted a resolution announcing that “the Central Terminal Area at Los Angeles International Airport [LAX] is not open for First Amendment activities.” Id. at 570–71 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Supreme Court found that this provision did not “merely reach the activity of [the religious proselytizers who challenged it],” but also prohibited

even talking and reading, or the wearing of campaign buttons or symbolic clothing. Under such a sweeping ban, virtually every individual who enters LAX may be found to violate the resolution by engaging in some “First Amendment activit[y].” We think it obvious that such a ban cannot be justified even if LAX were a nonpublic forum because no conceivable governmental interest would justify such an absolute prohibition of speech.

Id. at 574–75. Thus, the evidence at the Preliminary Injunction Hearing established beyond any possible dispute that Denver has shown no intent to designate the Airport as a public forum by allowing speech at that location which it may not disallow in the first instance.

ii. The Effect of Regulation 50 Itself?

Plaintiffs further argue, “Regulation 50 states that free speech activity is proper in the Jeppesen Terminal (pursuant to a restriction). Denver has [thus] designated the Jeppesen Terminal a public forum for leafleting, conducting surveys, displaying signs, gathering signatures, soliciting funds, and other speech related activity for religious, charitable, or political purposes.” (ECF No. 21 at 3–4.) Although clever, this argument cannot be correct. 2

First, the Airport knows from the Supreme Court’s Jews for Jesus decision, just discussed, that it cannot prohibit all behavior that can be characterized as First Amendment-protected expressive activity.

Second, the Airport also knows from the Lee decision that it likely cannot completely ban some forms of intentional First Amendment communication (such as leafleting) given that the Jeppesen T erminal, like the Port Authority terminals at issue in Lee, is a large multipurpose facility that can reasonably accommodate some amount of intentional First Amendment activity. So, again, the Airport’s choice to regulate what it could not prohibit in the first place is not evidence of intent to designate a public forum. See Stanton v. Fort Wayne-Allen Cnty. Airport Auth., 834 F. Supp. 2d 865, 872 (N.D. Ind. 2011) (“[t]he designation of certain free speech zones, along with the permit requirement and limitation of expression to certain times, manners, and places as set forth in the permit, are marks of the Airport Authority’s attempt to restrict public discourse, and are inconsistent with an intent to designate a public forum” (emphasis in original)).

Third, Plaintiffs’ position, if accepted, would likely turn out to chill expressive speech in the long run. If a government will be deemed to have designated a public forum every time it accommodates citizens’ natural desire to engage in expressive activity in a nonpublic forum, governments will likely cut back on such accommodations as far as they are constitutionally allowed. Cf. Perry Educ. Ass’n v. Perry Local Educators’ Ass’n, 460 U.S. 37, 46 (1983) (government may un-designate a designated public forum).

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2 Plaintiffs have unsurprisingly cited no decision from any court adopting their reasoning.
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iii. “Welcome Home” Messages?

Plaintiffs finally argue that “[s]ome individuals (who, importantly, are not airlines passengers) hold signs welcoming home loved ones or those returning from overseas deployment.” (ECF No. 21 at 3.) The Court will address signs welcoming home veterans and active-duty military members in Part IV.B.3.f, below, and for the reasons stated there finds that this practice, to the extent it exists, does not show intent to designate a public forum. As for welcoming home loved ones, the Court sees no greater religious, charitable, political, or labor-related significance in a typical welcome home sign than standing in the meeter-and-greeter area with a pleasant smile.

In any event, to the extent a welcome home sign has greater significance, “[t]he government does not create a public forum by inaction.” Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 802. Thus, simple failure to enforce Regulation 50 against such signholders is not itself sufficient to infer that the Airport intended to designate a public forum. And finally, even if the Court were to find such an intent, the Court would still be required to consider whether the Airport only intended to designate a public forum specifically for, e.g., those wishing to convey welcome home messages: “A public forum may be created for a limited purpose such as use by certain groups, or for the discussion of certain subjects.” Perry, 460 U.S. at 45 n.7 (1983) (citations omitted). Plaintiffs have nowhere addressed this.

For all these reasons, Plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that the Jeppesen Terminal is a designated public forum. 3

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3 Plaintiffs also attack Regulation 50 as a “prior restraint.” (ECF No. 2 at 6–7.) “The term prior restraint is used ‘to describe administrative and judicial orders forbidding certain communications when issued in advance of the time that such communications are to occur.’” Alexander v. United States, 509 U.S. 544, 550 (1993) (quoting M. Nimmer, Nimmer on Freedom of Speech § 4.03, p. 4-14 (1984)) (emphasis in original). Whether or not that definition could fit Regulation 50, it adds nothing to this case because the Supreme Court’s forum analysis provides the governing principles.
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3. Given that the Jeppesen Terminal Is Not a Public Forum, Is Regulation 50 Reasonable in Light of the Purposes Served by the Airport, and Is It Viewpoint-Neutral?

a. Reasonableness of the Need for a Permit Submitted in Advance, Generally

Reasonableness is a fact-intensive inquiry into the “particular nature of the public expression” at issue and “the extent to which it interferes with the designated purposes” of the nonpublic forum. Hawkins, 170 F.3d at 1290. Justice O’Connor’s concurring opinion in Lee is significant here, both because of its reasoning and because it has reached the somewhat paradoxical status of a “controlling concurrence.” See id. at 1289 (“In actuality, [Justice O’Connor’s reasonableness analysis in Lee] constitutes only Justice O’Connor’s view, who provided the swing vote in the highly-fractured Lee decision, but as the narrowest majority holding, we are bound by it.”).

In Lee, Justice O’Connor noted the Port Authority’s airports were not single-purpose facilities (unlike many other locations where the Supreme Court had previously examined speech restrictions). 505 U.S. at 688. Rather, the airports were “huge complex[es] open to travelers and nontravelers alike,” id. at 688, and had essentially become “shopping mall[s] as well as . . . airport[s],” id. at 689. The question, then, was whether Port Authority’s restrictions were “reasonably related to maintaining the multipurpose environment that the Port Authority has deliberately created.” Id.

Justice O’Connor’s description of the Port Authority Airports aptly describes the Jeppesen Terminal, to an extent. The Great Hall is lined with restaurants and retail establishments, and in that sense is reminiscent of a shopping mall. On the other hand, most of the floor space on level 6 is simply the floor space needed to get from location to location (the equivalent of wide hallways), and most of the floor space on level 5 is dedicated to security screening. The only large area that is usually free of significant obstructions is the central meeter-and-greeter area—and even that area has at times been taken up by art installations or other features. 4

Moreover, despite certain characteristics of the Airport that may resemble a shopping mall, the Airport’s undisputed primary purpose is to facilitate safe and efficient air travel. The need for safety hopefully needs no discussion —for decades, airports and airplanes have been the specific target of terrorists. As for efficiency, the significance of the Great Hall within the Jeppesen Terminal is particularly evident given that it is the node through which every arriving and departing passenger must pass. As noted, the Airport served 58.3 million passengers last year. Even assuming that just 20 million (about a third) were arrivals and departures (the remainder being those who connect through without reaching the Jeppesen Terminal), this still comes to more than 55,000 passengers moving through the Great Hall per day, or about 2,300 per hour. If the Airport could somehow maintain precisely that average over all days and hours of its operation —which of course never happens— it would still be the equivalent of perpetually filling and emptying a large concert hall every hour.

In this light, the Airport’s general purposes for requiring demonstrators to apply for a permit in advance are difficult to question. As stated by the various Airport administrators who testified at the Preliminary Injunction Hearing (Ken Greene, chief operations officer; Patrick Heck, chief commercial officer; and Dave Dalton, assistant director for terminal operations), it is important for the Airport to have advance notice regarding the presence of individuals coming for reasons other than normal airport- related activities, and particularly those who come to the airport intending to attract the attention of passengers and others. The Airport needs an opportunity to determine the appropriate location for a group of the requested size in light of the day(s) and time(s) requested. The permitting requirement also gives the Airport the opportunity to point out Regulation 50’s code of conduct (Regulation 50.08), so that demonstrators know what activities are and are not permissible.

In addition, the Airport fairly desires an opportunity to understand the nature of the expressive activity, which can inform whether additional security is needed. As Lopez’s testimony illustrates, it is not a simple matter to bring additional police officers to the Airport on a moment’s notice. Lopez further pointed out the advantage of understanding the subject matter of the dispute so that he can anticipate whether counter-protesters might arrive and potentially create at least a difficult, if not dangerous, situation.

Importantly, Denver does not need to prove that any particular past event has raised serious congestion or safety concerns: “Although Denver admits that plaintiffs did not cause any congestion problems or major disruption on the particular occasion that they demonstrated . . . , that is not dispositive. ‘[T]he Government need not wait until havoc is wreaked to restrict access to a nonpublic forum.’” Hawkins, 170 F.3d at 1290 (quoting Cornelius, 473 U.S. at 810). Thus, the Airport may reasonably require a permit applied for in advance. The Court does not understand Plaintiffs to be arguing to the contrary, i.e., that the Airport is never justified in requiring an advance permit under any circumstances.

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4 Plaintiffs’ Exhibit 15, for example, is a photograph of the meeter-and-greeter area in 2008, and shows that a fountain occupied a significant portion of floor space at the time.
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?b. Reasonableness of the Seven-Day Requirement, Specifically

Plaintiffs do attack Regulation 50.03’s requirement that permit applications be submitted seven days in advance of the desired activity, apparently arguing that this is unconstitutionally unreasonable in all circumstances. Given both Plaintiffs’ testimony at the Preliminary Injunction Hearing, it is not clear that they would be satisfied by a shorter advance-notice period, nor that it would redress their claimed injury —the inability to protest essentially at a moment’s notice on a topical event. But, to the extent Plaintiffs are challenging the seven-day requirement through the overbreadth doctrine (see Part IV.B.4, below), the Court finds that they have not met their higher burden (or even the normal preliminary injunction burden) to show that they are likely to succeed on proving the seven-day requirement unreasonable in all circumstances.

The Airport’s witnesses were not aware of any other airport with a seven-day requirement. The Indiana airport at issue in the Stanton case —which Defendants have relied upon heavily— had a two-day notice requirement, and also a provision by which the airport could accept an application on even shorter notice. 834 F. Supp. 2d at 870. On the other hand, that Airport handled about 40,000 departing and arriving passengers per month, id. at 868, whereas the Denver Airport handles far more than that per day.

The Court’s own research has revealed that airports ahead of the Denver Airport in 2016 passenger statistics have varied requirements:

• O’Hare International Airport (Chicago) — six business days, see Chicago Department of Aviation Amended Rules and Regulations Governing First Amendment Activities at the City of Chicago Airports § 3(A) (Sept. 18, 2015), available at http://www.flychicago.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/ OHare/AboutUs/cdaamendedRulesandRegs.pdf (last accessed Feb. 16, 2017);

• Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport — three business days, see Code of Rules and Regulations of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport Board, ch. 3, § 4, art. VI(A) (2006), available at https://www.dfwairport.com/cs/groups/public/documents/webasset/p1_008800.pdf (last accessed Feb. 16, 2017); ?

• John F. Kennedy International Airport (New York City) — twenty-four hours, see Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Airport Rules and Regulations § XV(B)(2)(a) (Aug. 4, 2009), available at http://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf/Rules_Regs_Revision_8_04_09.pdf (last accessed Feb. 16, 2017). ??

Obviously there is no clear trend. Depending on how these airports define “business day,” some of these time periods may actually be longer than the Denver Airport’s seven-day requirement. ?

In any event, Plaintiffs have never explained how the Airport, in its particular circumstances, cannot reasonably request seven days’ advance notice as a general rule. Indeed, Plaintiffs could not cite to this Court any case holding that any advance notice requirement applicable to a nonpublic forum was unconstitutional in all circumstances. Accordingly, Plaintiffs have not made a strong showing of likelihood of success on this particular theory of relief.

c. Reasonableness of the Regulation 50.03’s Lack of a Formal Process for Handling Permit Application More Quickly in Exigent Circumstances

Plaintiffs would prefer that they be allowed to demonstrate at the Airport without any advance notice in “exigent circumstances.” Given the serious and substantial purposes served by an advance notice requirement, the Court cannot say that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on this score. Plaintiffs have given the Court no reason to hold that the Airport has a constitutional duty, even in exigent circumstances, to accommodate demonstrators as they show up, without any advance warning whatsoever.

Nonetheless, the Airport’s complete lack of any formal mechanism for at least expediting the permit application process in unusual circumstances raises a substantial and serious question for this Court. As noted in Part IV.A, above, timing and location are cardinal First Amendment considerations, and a number of cases regarding public fora (streets and parks) have held or strongly suggested that an advance notice requirement is unconstitutional if it does not account for the possibility of spontaneous or short-notice demonstrations regarding suddenly relevant issues.

Indeed, as the undersigned pointed out to Defendants’ counsel at the Preliminary Injunction Hearing, Denver itself is willing to accept an application for a street parade on twenty-four hours’ notice (as opposed to its standard requirement of thirty days) “if the proposed parade is for the purpose of spontaneous communication of topical ideas that could not have been foreseen in advance of [the] required application period or when circumstances beyond the control of the applicant prevented timely filing of the application.” Denver Mun. Code § 54-361(d). But again, this governs a public forum (city streets), where time, place, and manner restrictions such as this must satisfy a narrow tailoring analysis and leave open ample alternative channels for communication. See Perry, 460 U.S. at 45. As the above discussion makes clear, under controlling authority the Airport need not satisfy the same legal standards.

The parties have not cited, nor has the Court located, any case specifically discussing the need for a nonpublic forum to accommodate short-notice demonstrations. But the Court likewise has not found any case expressly precluding that consideration when evaluating reasonableness in the context of a nonpublic forum. It is perhaps unsurprising that the specific question has never come up in a nonpublic forum until now. The Court believes it to be an accurate observation that this country has never before experienced a situation in which (a) the motivation to protest developed so rapidly and (b) the most obviously relevant protest locations was a place the Supreme Court had already declared to be a nonpublic forum—the airport terminal.

When evaluating the reasonableness of a First Amendment restriction in a nonpublic forum, the Court concludes that it may appropriately consider the ability to shorten an advance notice requirement in a place like the Airport, given how unique airports are within the category of nonpublic fora. As Justice O’Connor noted in Lee, most of the Supreme Court’s major nonpublic forum cases aside from airport cases have involved

discrete, single-purpose facilities. See, e.g., [United States v.] Kokinda, [497 U.S. 720 (1990)] (dedicated sidewalk between parking lot and post office); Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense & Ed. Fund, Inc., 473 U.S. 788 (1985) (literature for charity drive); City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789 (1984) (utility poles); Perry, supra (interschool mail system); Postal Service v. Council of Greenburgh Civic Assns., [453 U.S. 114 (1981)] (household mail boxes); Adderley v. Florida, 385 U.S. 39 (1966) (curtilage of jailhouse).

505 U.S. at 688 (parallel citations omitted). As Justice O’Connor observed, however, many airports have become large, multipurpose facilities, see id. at 688–89, and that describes the Denver Airport well. To be sure, the reason for expanding beyond the bare minimum of infrastructure needed to handle travelers and airplanes is to promote air travel—to make the airport a more convenient and welcoming location specifically (although not exclusively) for travelers—but the reasonableness of First Amendment restrictions must nonetheless be judged according to the “multipurpose environment that [airport authorities] ha[ve] deliberately created.” Id. at 689.

Moreover, modern airports are almost always owned and operated by a political body, as well as secured by government employees. Thus, short-notice demonstrations reasonably relevant to an airport are also reasonably likely to be demonstrations about political or otherwise governmental topics, “an area in which the importance of First Amendment protections is at its zenith.” Meyer v. Grant, 486 U.S. 414, 425 (1988) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Given all this, and in light of the First Amendment interests in location and timing that this very case has made salient, the Court finds it unreasonable for the Airport to have no formal process by which demonstrators can obtain an expedited permit when -to borrow from the Denver parade ordinance— they seek to communicate topical ideas reasonably relevant to the Airport, the immediate importance of which could not have been foreseen in advance of the usual seven-day period, or when circumstances beyond the control of the applicant prevented timely filing of the application. The Court further finds in the particular circumstances of the Airport that reasonableness requires a process by which an applicant who faces such circumstances can request a permit on twenty-four hours’ notice. If this is all the notice Denver needs to prepare for a street parade, the Court can see no reason why more notice is needed (in exigent circumstances) for a substantially more confined environment like the Airport. 5

Accordingly, the Court finds that Plaintiffs are strongly likely to succeed in their challenge to Regulation 50.03 to this limited extent.

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5 At the Preliminary Injunction Hearing, Defendants’ counsel argued that preparing for a street parade is actually easier than preparing for demonstrations at the airport. The Court cannot fathom how this could possibly be the case, at least when comparing a typical street parade request to the typical Airport demonstration request. Indeed, the normal street parade request window is thirty days, suggesting just the opposite. Denver Mun. Code § 54-361(d). The challenges may be different, but the Court cannot accept—on this record, at least—that Airport demonstrations on average require more preparation time than do public parades or marches.
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d. Reasonableness of the Airport’s Power to Control the Location of Permitted Expressive Activity

At the Preliminary Injunction Hearing, it became clear that Plaintiffs not only wish for a more expansive right to protest in the Jeppesen T erminal, but they also argue for the right to select precisely where in the Terminal they should be allowed to stand. The Court recognizes that, from Plaintiffs’ perspective, their message is diluted if they cannot demonstrate in the international arrivals area, and this is a legitimate concern for all the reasons discussed previously about the power of location when conveying a message. The Court must also account, however, for Airport administrators’ superior knowledge about airport operations, foot traffic patterns, concerns particular to the specific day of the protest, and so forth.

?Regulation 50.04-1 requires permit applicants to specify “each location at which the [expressive] activity is proposed to be conducted,” but nowhere in Regulation 50 is there any limitation on the Airport’s discretion whether to approve the location request. Rather, the only provision addressing this topic is Regulation 50.04-6, which applies to a demonstration already underway: “The CEO may move expressive activity from one location to another and/or disperse such activity around the airport upon reasonable notice to each affected person when in the judgment of the CEO such action is necessary for the efficient and effective operation of the transportation function of the airport.”

There is no evidence that Airport administrators are using their discretion when approving a demonstration’s location to suppress or dilute a particular message, but there is also no logical reason to leave Airport administrators’ discretion essentially unfettered at the permitting stage while restricting it once the demonstration is underway. The Court finds Plaintiffs are likely to succeed at least in proving that Regulation 50.04-1 is unreasonable to the extent the Airport’s discretion is not restrained to the same degree as in Regulation 50.04-6. Defendants will therefore be enjoined to follow the same restraints in both settings.

e. Reasonableness of Regulation 50.09’s Prohibition of Signage Within the Jeppesen Terminal, and Regulation 50.08-12’s Limitation of All Signs to One Square Foot

Regulation 50.09 establishes that “picketing” (defined to include “displaying one or more signs, posters or similar devices,” Regulation 50.02-8) is totally prohibited in the Jeppesen Terminal unless as part of a labor protest. And, under Regulation 50.08-12, any permissible sign may be no larger than “one foot by one foot in size.”

?Any argument that the picketing ban is reasonable in the context of the Airport is foreclosed by Justice O’Connor’s analysis of the leafleting band at issue in Lee. See 505 U.S. at 690–93. Leafleting usually involves an individual moving around, at least within a small area, and actively offering literature to passersby. Signholding is usually less obtrusive, given that the signholder often stays within an even smaller area and conveys his or her message passively to those who walk by and notice the sign. The Court simply cannot discern what legitimate or reasonable Airport purpose is served by a complete ban on “picketing” or signholding among permitted demonstrators in the Jeppesen Terminal.

The Court also finds the one-foot-by-one-foot signage restriction unreasonable. The Airport has a legitimate interest in regulating the size of signs, as well as other aspects of their display (such as whether they will be held in the air, as in traditional picketing), but a one-foot-by-one-foot restriction is barely distinguishable, both legally and as a factual matter, from a complete ban. The point of a sign is to make a message readable from a distance. Few messages of substance are readable from any kind of distance if they must be condensed into one foot square. Reasonableness instead requires the Airport to consider the size of the signs that a permit applicant wishes to display as compared to the needs and limitations of the location where the applicant will demonstrate. Any restriction by the Airport which limits the size of a permit applicant’s signage beyond that which may be reasonably required to prevent the restriction or impeding of the normal flow of travelers and visitors in and out of Jeppesen Terminal will be preliminarily enjoined.

f. Viewpoint Neutrality

?A nonpublic forum is not required to be content-neutral, but it is required to be viewpoint-neutral with respect to the First Amendment activity it permits. Hawkins, 170 F.3d at 1288. Regulation 50, on its face, is viewpoint neutral, and Plaintiffs do not argue otherwise. Rather, they say that “Regulation 50 is being enforced as a clearly view-point-based restriction.” (ECF No. 2 at 14 (emphasis added).) This appears to be an as-applied challenge:

Individuals walk through Denver International Airport with political messages and slogans on their shirts and luggage and discuss politics on a daily basis. Counsel for Plaintiffs has worn political shirts while traveling through Denver International Airport and discussed modern politics with fellow passengers on many occasions. However, no other individual, to Plaintiffs or Plaintiffs’ counsel’s knowledge, has been threatened with arrest for engaging in this political speech. Nor has any individual been arrested for displaying pro-President Trump messages, for example a red hat that reads “Make America Great Again.” Only Plaintiffs’ expressive activity against the President’s Executive Order, and others advocating similarly, has been threatened with arrest.

(Id.) Denver responds:

The permit requirement furthers the nonpublic forum purpose by mitigating disruption at the airport by individuals who choose to be at the airport for non-travel related activities. In Stanton, the [Northern District of Indiana] rejected this exact argument challenging a nearly identical permitting rule of the Fort Wayne-Allen County Airport on an as applied basis by distinguishing between incidental expressive activities by members of the traveling public versus those arriving at the airport solely for purposes of engaging in expressive speech. Any messages a traveler or individual picking up a family member conveys by wearing T-shirts or hats are “incidental to the use of the Airport’s facilities” by persons whose “primary purpose for being present at the Airport is a purpose other than expressing free speech rights,” which is different in kind than individuals arriving at an airport whose primary purpose is expressive speech. Id. at 880–882.

(ECF No. 20 at 11 (emphasis added).)?

This argument obviously relies on a particular interpretation of Regulation 50 (given that the Regulation itself makes no explicit distinction between those who arrive at the airport for travel-related purposes and those who do not). Nonetheless, this is how Airport administrators interpret Regulation 50, as they made clear at the Preliminary Injunction Hearing. They also made clear that they have never sought to enforce Regulation 50 against someone wearing a political shirt, for example, while on airport-related business. Plaintiffs’ own arguments support the sincerity of the Airport administrators’ testimony. By Plaintiffs’ own admission, they are unaware of anyone going about his or her typical airport-related business who has been arrested or even threatened with arrest for wearing a political shirt, discussing politics, etc.

At the Preliminary Injunction Hearing, Plaintiffs attempted to present an as- applied viewpoint discrimination case by showing that the Airport regularly allows individuals to hold rallies, display signs, and so forth, for returning servicemembers and veterans, yet without requiring those individuals to obtain a permit under Regulation 50. The Court agrees that pro-military and pro-veteran messages are political statements, at least to the extent being conveyed by someone not at the Airport to welcome home a relative or loved one (and perhaps even by those persons as well). Thus, it would seem that pro-military messages would fall under Regulation 50. However, Plaintiffs have failed at this stage to show that the Airport’s alleged treatment of pro-military and pro-veteran messages amounts to viewpoint discrimination.

At the outset, Plaintiffs fail to note the subjective element of their claim: “viewpoint discrimination in contravention of the First Amendment requires a plaintiff to show that the defendant acted with a viewpoint-discriminatory purpose.” Pahls, 718 F.3d at 1230. In that light, it is tenuous to suggest that allowing (allegedly) unpermitted pro-military or pro-veteran expression at various times in the past but not allowing these recent unpermitted protests against the Executive Order is evidence of viewpoint discrimination. The question of whether our nation should honor servicemembers and the question of how our nation should treat foreign nationals affected by the Executive Order are not really in the same universe of discourse. To bridge the gap, it takes a number of assumptions about where pro-military attitudes tend to fall in the American political spectrum, and what people with those attitudes might also think about the Executive Order. This would be a fairly tall order of proof even outside the preliminary injunction context.

Moreover, Plaintiffs’ evidence of unpermitted pro-military expression is fairly weak. Plaintiffs’ main example is the activities of the Rocky Mountain Honor Flight, an organization that assists World War II veterans to travel to Washington, D.C., and visit the World War II Memorial, and then welcomes them home with a large and boisterous rally held in the meeter-and-greeter portion of the Great Hall. A former servicemember who helped to organize one of these rallies testified that she inquired of a more-senior organizer whether the Airport required any special procedures, and the answer she received was “no.” However, Airport administrators presented unrebutted testimony that Rocky Mountain Honor Flight rallies are planned far in advance and sponsored by the Airport itself, in connection with TSA and certain airlines. The Airport does not need a Regulation 50 permit for its own expressive activities, and a government entity’s expression about a topic is not a matter of First Amendment concern. See Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, 555 U.S. 460, 467 (2009) (“The Free Speech Clause restricts government regulation of private speech; it does not regulate government speech.”).

Apart from the Rocky Mountain Honor Flight, Plaintiffs’ evidence comprises photos they gleaned from a Getty Images database showing individuals over the last decade or so being greeted at the Airport by persons holding signs. Some of these signs appear to be simple “welcome home” signs directed at specific returning family members. In the obviously servicemember-related photos, American flags are common. The Court finds that these photos, presented out of context, are not sufficient evidence to make a strong showing of likelihood of success regarding viewpoint discrimination, particularly the subjective intent requirement. Thus, the Court finds no reason for an injunction based on alleged viewpoint-discriminatory conduct. 6

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6 Even if Plaintiffs’ evidence were enough, the Court would find at this stage of this litigation that the only injunctive relief appropriate in light of the balance-of-harms and public interest considerations, below, would be an injunction to enforce Regulation 50 evenhandedly. Such an outcome would not advance Plaintiffs’ interests here.
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4. Is Regulation 50 Overbroad or Vague?

Plaintiffs bring both overbreadth and vagueness challenges to Regulation 50, which, in this case, are really two sides of the same coin. If a speech regulation’s sweep is unclear and may potentially apply to protected conduct, a court may invalidate the regulation as vague; whereas if the regulation actually applies to unprotected as well as protected speech, an individual who violates the regulation through unprotected speech may nonetheless challenge the entire statute as overbroad. See Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108–09, 114–15 (1972); 1 Smolla & Nimmer on Freedom of Speech ch. 6 (Oct. 2016 update). Here, Plaintiffs argue either that Regulation 50 is overbroad because it forbids (without a permit) protected conduct such as wearing a political hat while walking to one’s flight (ECF No. 2 at 16–18); or it is vague because it is unclear to what it applies precisely, given that Plaintiffs have seen Regulation 50 enforced against themselves but not against those who wear political hats or buttons, who are welcoming home military veterans, etc., all of whom are “seemingly in violation” of the Regulation (id. at 18–20).

The first task, then, is to determine what Regulation 50 actually encompasses. Again, the Regulation states that “no person or organization shall leaflet, conduct surveys, display signs, gather signatures, solicit funds, or engage in other speech related activity at Denver International Airport for religious, charitable, or political purposes, or in connection with a labor dispute, except pursuant to, and in compliance with, a permit for such activity issued by the CEO or his or her designee.”

The portion about leafleting, conducting surveys, displaying signs, gathering signatures, or soliciting funds is not vague. It does not fail to “give the person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited.” Grayned, 408 U.S. at 108. Nor is it overbroad given that it is not a complete prohibition of leafleting (as in Lee), but simply a prohibition without a permit.

The arguably difficult portion of Regulation 50 is the “or engage in other speech related activity at Denver International Airport for religious, charitable, or political purposes” clause. It is grammatically possible to interpret this passage as extending to any religious, charitable, or political “speech related activity” by anyone at the Airport, including travelers wearing political buttons or sharing their religious beliefs with others.

Denver argues that no person of ordinary intelligence would have such a worry: “a person of ordinary intelligence cannot reasonably claim that they are unable to discern the difference between a traveler walking through the airport with a ‘make America great again’ baseball cap or travelers discussing politics as they walk to their intended destination and a gathering of people who have no purpose for being at the airport other than to march or station themselves in order to communicate their position on a political issue.” (ECF No. 20 at 14.) This argument is slightly inapposite. The question is not whether someone can distinguish between a passenger’s pro-Trump hat and a gathering of anti-Trump protesters. The question is whether Regulation 50 contains such a distinction, and particularly a distinction between the incidental activities of those who come to the airport for airport-related purposes and the intentional activities of those who come to the airport to demonstrate.

However, to the extent Denver means to say that Regulation 50 would not be interpreted by a person of ordinary intelligence to encompass, e.g., a traveler choosing to wear a “Make America Great Again” hat, the Court agrees. Regulation 50 is not, as Plaintiffs suggest, just one paragraph from Regulation 50.03. Regulation 50 comprises sixteen major subdivisions, many of which are themselves subdivided. A person of ordinary intelligence who reads Regulation 50 —all of it— cannot avoid the overwhelming impression that its purpose is to regulate the expressive conduct of those who come to the Airport specifically to engage in expressive conduct. Thus, Regulation 50 is not vague.

As for overbreadth, “[t]he first step in [the] analysis is to construe the challenged statute; it is impossible to determine whether a statute reaches too far without first knowing what the statute covers.” United States v. Williams, 553 U.S. 285, 293 (2008). For the reasons already stated, the Court finds that the only reasonable construction is one that does not extend to an airline passenger wearing a political T-shirt, or anything of that character. Cf. Jews for Jesus, 482 U.S. at 575. This is, moreover, the Airport’s own interpretation, the sincerity of which is borne out by Plaintiffs’ own experience. Thus, Regulation 50 is not overbroad. 7

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7 Even if Regulation 50 were vague or overbroad, the Court would nonetheless find that an injunction against enforcing Regulation 50 as a whole would be against the public interest. The more appropriate remedy would be an injunction to follow precisely the interpretation that the Airport currently follows, but that would be of no benefit to Plaintiffs.
————

?C. Irreparable Harm

Having found that Plaintiffs are strongly likely to succeed in invalidating a narrow subset of Regulation 50, the Court returns to irreparable harm. Given that Plaintiffs First Amendment rights are at stake in those portions of Regulation 50 that the Court finds to be unreasonable, irreparable harm almost inevitably follows: “the loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.” Heideman v. S. Salt Lake City, 348 F.3d 1182, 1190 (10th Cir. 2003) (internal quotation marks omitted).

?D. Balance of Harms

The injury to a plaintiff deprived of his or her legitimate First Amendment rights almost always outweighs potential harm to the government if the injunction is granted. See Awad v. Ziriax, 670 F.3d 1111, 1131 (10th Cir. 2012); ACLU v. Johnson, 194 F.3d 1149, 1163 (10th Cir. 1999). Thus, the Court finds that the harm to Plaintiffs from the Airport’s continued enforcement of the unreasonable portions of Regulation 50 would be greater than the harm to the Airport in refraining from such enforcement, particularly given that the unreasonable portions are quite limited and most of Regulation 50 will remain unchanged.

?E. Public Interest

Finally, as with irreparable injury and balancing of interests, it is almost always in the public interest to prevent a First Amendment violation. See Awad, 670 F.3d at 1132; Johnson, 194 F.3d at 1163. Moreover, the Court is not striking down Regulation 50 or even altering it in any significant respect. Thus, the public’s interest in safe and efficient Airport operations remains unaffected.?

F. Bond

A party awarded a preliminary injunction normally must “give[] security in an amount that the court considers proper to pay the costs and damages sustained by any party found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(c). The Tenth Circuit has held, however, that “a trial court may, in the exercise of discretion, determine a bond is unnecessary to secure a preliminary injunction if there is an absence of proof showing a likelihood of harm.” Coquina Oil Corp. v. Transwestern Pipeline Co., 825 F.2d 1461, 1462 (10th Cir. 1987) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also 11A Charles Alan Wright et al., Federal Practice & Procedure § 2954 n.29 (3d ed., Apr. 2016 update) (citing public rights cases where the bond was excused or significantly reduced). Denver has not argued that Plaintiffs should be required to post a bond, and the Court finds that waiver of the bond is appropriate in any event.

V. CONCLUSION

For the reasons set forth above, the Court ORDERS as follows:

1. Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction (ECF No. 2) is GRANTED to the ?limited extent stated in this order and otherwise DENIED; ?

2. The City and County of Denver (including its respective officers, agents, ?servants, employees, attorneys, and other persons who are in active concert or participation with any of them, and further including without limitation Defendants Lopez and Quiñones) (collectively, “Defendants”) are PRELIMINARILY ENJOINED as follows:

a. Defendants must timely process a permit application under Denver Airport Regulation 50.04-1 that is received less than 7 days but at least 24 hours prior to the commencement of the activity for which the permit is sought, provided that the applicant, in good faith, seeks a permit for the purpose of communicating topical ideas reasonably relevant to the purposes and mission of the Airport, the immediate importance of which could not have been foreseen 7 days or more in advance of the commencement of the activity for which the permit is sought, or when circumstances beyond the control of the applicant prevented timely filing of the application; however, circumstances beyond Defendants’ control may excuse strict compliance with this requirement to the extent those circumstances demonstrably interfere with the expedited permitting process; ?

b. So long as a permit applicant seeks to demonstrate in a location where the unticketed public is normally allowed to be, Defendants must make all reasonable efforts to accommodate the applicant’s preferred location, whether inside or outside of the Jeppesen Terminal;

c. Defendants may not enforce Denver Airport Regulation 50.09’s prohibition against “picketing” (as that term is defined in Regulation 50.02-8) within the Jeppesen Terminal; and

d. Defendants may not restrict the size of a permit applicant’s proposed signage beyond that which may be reasonably required to prevent the impeding of the normal flow of travelers and visitors in and out of Jeppesen Terminal; and specifically, Defendants may not enforce Denver Airport Regulation 50.08-12’s requirement that signs or placards be no larger than one foot by one foot.

3. This Preliminary Injunction is effective immediately upon issuance of this Order, and will remain in force for the duration of this action unless otherwise modified by Order of this Court.

Dated this 22nd day of February, 2017, at 8:05 a.m. Mountain Standard Time. BY THE COURT:

__________________________
William J. Martínez?
United States District Judge

Two arrested at Colorado Springs bank, asking Wells Fargo to divest from DAPL

Water Protectors Jerima King and Karyna
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO- Water Protectors Jerima King (on left) and Karyna Lemus were arrested inside a downtown bank on Friday while trying to convey a message to Wells Fargo Bank to divest its interest in Energy Transfer’s controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. Protesters were denied entry into the Wells Fargo main location but marched to a nearby branch and entered its lobby before police were called. Several dozen Springs activists participated in coordination with protests at Wells Fargo banks across the country.

Protest outside Wells Fargo Bank
The bank doors were locked against the Water Protectors, who’d been asked to act in support of the Standing Rock encampment which is actively trying to block the construction.

Police threatening sitters with arrest
CSPD officers emerge to warn protesters that those who remain seated will be arrested. Before the protest had even begun, a CSPD paddy wagon was parked on the sidewalk next to the bank, to intimidate the activists. Earlier police officers circulated to tell everyone that they’d be allowed to enter, and be arrested if they wish. The police said they’d seen Facebook references to the desire to be arrested. They wanted to know specifics of what to expect to ensure that no one would have to be hurt getting arrested.

When the group tried to enter, the same officers blocked our way. They said “you can’t come in.” When I disagreed and pushed past them, they physically ejected me out the door. Then commanded me to rebove my foot from holding the door ajar.

So much for the pre-arrangements touted by those protesters who’d taken their council. Since there was no gameplan to discuss, meaning there was no way to tell the police what to expect, the police were effectively disseminating the warning that being arrested unpredictably would mean getting hurt. And there was never an intention to allow the demonstrators to enter the bank atrium, no matter how peaceful.

Jerima King and Karyna told they faced arrestThe new CSPD warning was conveyed to Karyna and Jerima. But everyone remained, whether seated or standing.

After a brief rally at the front door. The water protectors discussed visiting a Wells Fargo branch four blocks to the south. Over the bullhorn we feigned disbanding, thanking everyone for joining in, then going to our cars. Except we appeared to have left our cars, all of them, in the same direction. CSPD did not take note and we were able to reach the branch location and enter its lobby.


There was not room enough for everyone in the tiny lobby. Note the bullhorn.


Officers arrest the two water protectors who stayed behind after the bank employees locked the doors.


Water Protector Jerima King is led out in handcuffs.


El Paso County Green Party upstart Karyna Lemus is taken in handcuffs.


Arrestees were taken to CSPD HQ in a police van.

March on DC with your own protest message, not one dictated by NGOs. Yes, you’ll need a banner and poles.

Denver Womens March 2012Organizers of the post-inaugural WOMEN’S MARCH in Washington DC this weekend are telling participants not to bring poles for signs or flags, or even knapsacks. Ha ha ha. As you travel across the country to march, remember who’s making the real sacrifice. The march coordinators are paid. You are spending the time and expense because you have something to express. Bring it. The only reason organizers want you unequipped is so your [rogue] message won’t stray from theirs. Does that sound democratic? They also have a different goal than you. Their mission is to pull off a smooth event. Yours is to make history.

As a veteran of countless protest marches, national, regional and international, I encourage newcomers to stick to their nonconformist inclinations. Independent critical thinking is what led you to take action in the first place.

To begin, THIS IS YOUR MARCH.
Washington DC belongs to you. Inauguration Day and its aftermath belong to you. Just because someone squats a Facebook event on a day conducive to public gathering doesn’t give them dibs to call the shots. A stand-alone call to arms, such as MLK’s Million Man March or CodePink’s A Billion Rising, is another matter. Spontaneous uprisings against historic events are no one organization’s to control or temper. Especially if they begin with capitulations to the state.

Here’s the usual pattern. After a FB event goes viral, nonprofit activist groups jump in to offer their expertise, resources and manpower. The nonprofits thus dominate the details and the event originators have little ground to object. Thrilled to see “their” event succeed, these new-to-the-spotlight activists don’t know that street protest is anathema to nonprofits whose existential foundation is not to disrupt politics as usual. Falling into the trap of coordinating ineffective demonstrations is often blamed on newbie error, but in Washington DC, newbies making the newbie mistakes are employees of nonprofits seeded to pretend the event had a grassroots origin. What the NGOs are really doing is setting a prescribed burn, or backfire.

Backfire: a fire set intentionally to arrest the progress of an approaching fire by creating a burned area in its path, thus depriving the fire of fuel.

Bastards! Fortunately backfire has a further meaning, probably not unrelated to the sketchy forestry strategem.

Backfire: rebound adversely on the originator; have the opposite effect to what was intended.

Just as DC lobbyists monopolize your representatives, professional activists have staked out the capitol and squatted on what is the public’s only access to speak to power. Accept their invitation to come to DC. Thank them for their legal support, their logistics and water bottles, but you’ll handle your messaging thank you.

NOTES FOR NEXT TIME
(If you’d prefer not to dwell on criticism, please skip to the section on RULES. For me, these counterproductive “mistakes” set us back every time we give them a pass.)

1. Telling participants they can’t bring stuff like food or chairs! The event’s duration is being throttled to what can be endured between meals, without a pause for rest. Do you go to meetings without chairs? In the cold outdoors one can’t even sit on the ground.

2. Hiring private security contractors, “some identifiable, some undercover”. WTF? DC’s cops, National Guard, Secret Service, and “Shadow Teams” aren’t enough?

3. Coordinating with police. What? What?! To whom Black Lives Can’t Even Matter? Sorry no.

4. Stifling expression with limits on how to carry signs. Without sticks. “Flags but without poles.” Restricting marchers to signs reinforced with only cardboard tubing. Viewed from a perspective to show the numbers, the march will bear no legible message at all.

5. Telling marchers they must handcarry small bags. You’d think they don’t want marchers’ hands free to carry signs at all.

6. Stooping to a permit, as an excuse to self-police and make participants feel honor bound to unecessary concessions (the permit terms). You don’t need a permit for First Amendment activities. NGOs use permits to effectively reserve public areas and restrict their concurrent use by others. It’s a means to control public space.

7. Scheduling the march on the day after the main event, in time to disrupt nothing. Diluting the inherent outcry, expending from everyone’s discretionary resources to converge on DC. As a result we’ll have two mobilizations. Both massive, hopefully, intead of one which could have TIPPED THE SCALE.

RULES ARE
Meant to be broken. Permit holders can enforce rules within the confines of their event area, with the assistance of authorities if needed, but not outside it. Organizer “rules” can’t be enforced on Metro, or on public streets, or along march route. DC police may pretend they have that authority but they don’t. Cops lie. Know your rights.

To hold a sign where it’s visible in a march, and big enough to where it can be seen among multitudes, you need poles.

BRING POLES.
There is no safety reason whatsoever, in Washington DC, for forbidding the use of sign poles. We’ve seen pole restrictions attempted at national conventions, in close-in urban areas with vulnerable storefront windows, but Washington’s boulevards and setbacked facades evolved with political marches. Demonstrations, parades and motorcades are everyday for DC. Your sign poles pose zero threat and you don’t have to relinquish them. Not Post-911, nor in the Age of Trump. If an NGO-deputized cop won’t allow your entry to their rally, their privatized-park, have someone wait with the contraband outside its bounds. Banners are best seen on the edges of rallies anyway. When attendance numbers reach overload, you’re golden. Move with the numbers. Otherwise wait and join in as the march departs from the rally.

What’s best for poles? Lengths of bamboo from garden nurseries. Bamboo is stiff, light, and utterly non-threatening. Eight footers will hold a banner above marchers’ heads while still allowing you to rest the poles on the ground when the march lags. Six foot lengths give you adequate leverage to keep the banner taut but are more work. Either are cheap and expendable. Bring extra. Bamboo are thin enough to hold reserve pieces bundled. You can grasp a bundle of three as readily as a single pole. Those extra poles can be allocated as you see other marchers in need.

Let’s rule out pipe, lumber and dowels for being too heavy. Broom handles are expensive. Wooden stakes are uncomfortable and too short, and apparently, too “pointy”.

Various widths of PVC are rigid enough to about eight feet. Steel electrical conduit can give you ten feet. Both are cheaply available at neighborhood hardware stores. The baggage holds of charter buses can’t accommodate pieces over eight feet.

Alternatives to fixed lengths poles would be telescoping poles such as hiking sticks or monopods. Usually these do not extend beyond five feet. Longer telescoping tool handles used for painting for example extend but won’t contract to shorter than five feet or so.

Sectional poles such as geodesic tent poles can be folded to different length permutations. Depending on the weight of your banner material, multiple tent poles may be required to provide sufficient stiffness.

The benefit of collapsible poles is that you can conceal them until you are ready. Provided you have a BAG.

BRING A BAG
There are plenty of ordinary reasons to need a bag. Lunch. Extra layers of clothing. Hat, sunglasses, bandana. Extra gloves, hand warmers, snacks, literature to share, stuff handed you at the rally.

As a banner holder you’ll need supplies like duct tape, markers and string to fix signs, and those aforementioned extra tent poles. Maybe a backup banner or gag props for an alternative photo op.

We bring bags to work, school and play. Who expects that a day traversing DC doesn’t call for a bag?

Don’t be fooled into believing that for safety reasons all bags must be clear plastic. DC surveillance can spot the excess heft of dangerous materials such as explosives or weapons, without having to see them. What they’re really looking for are items like ropes, carabiners, harnesses, goggles, which activists can use for nonviolent fun, to mix things up and entertain, provide media moments and get attention.

Besides which, clear bags will make for unsightly messy photos. Neither does your bag need to be restricted in size. Bring a backpack or knapsack. Leave your hands free to carry that sign!

The best reason for you to shoulder an ordinary opaque knapsack is to give cover for others to bring bags with necessities you overlooked. Cameras, accessories, extra socks, bullhorns, batteries, umbrellas etc.

There’s nothing so heartbreaking as a mass of people who’ve come from across the country to participate in a march that goes nowhere. An uneventful demonstration garners no press, wins no recruits, and only burns out those who thought they came to DC to effect change.

I watched half a million hispanic Americans assemble on the National Mall for Immigrant Rights. Many of those half million took a great risk marching in DC. It’s possible many as a result were deported. They could only follow the rules of course, received no media coverage, and accomplished fuck-all.

BRING CHAIRS
Come to DC with a demand, but bring more than the leverage of numbers. Carry with you the potential that you might LINGER. That’s the pressure the media can’t ignore.

Chairs, umbrellas, canopies, tents, enhance your stamina and protect you from the elements. The longer your protest runs, the more time there will be for latecomers to join in. That’s the momentum the state is worried about. Project that.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” – Frederick Douglass

Douglass also said: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” Your march organizers have promised their DC colleagues a toothless beast. It’s not what they tell their donors, nor how they phrased their invitation to you. You brought your physical body to DC to support the cause. Is it theirs to squander?

BREAKING: Denver judge rules DPD “Shadow Officers” will be compelled to testify in Guy Fawkes protest case


DENVER, COLORADO- Judge Theresa Spahn ruled this morning that Commander Fountain of DPD Intelligence, and “Shadow Team” Lieutenants Mitchell and Jimenez, will be compelled to testify in the case of Selayna Bechtold, a 19-yr-old arrested at last November’s Guy Fawkes Day march. Selayna was accused of obstructing the roadway and was among nine jailed that night, out of one hundred who marched. Curiously, a document accidentally released into one of the defendant’s discovery evidence revealed that 27 of those 100 were “shadow officers”. That march was 27% cop. From a leaked DPD crowd management manual we know that undercover shadow teams assist the arrest teams by pointing out “persons of interest”. What Cmdr Fountain and his men can testify to is how the undercovers pretend to be protesters. Do they take the streets? Do they pretend to assault policemen? Do they ingratiate themselves with real protesters by encouraging or leading in acts of unlawfulness? The city lawyers lost their bid to quash the subpoena motion of the intelligence and shadow personnel, but they will probably keep resisting defense efforts to shine the light on Denver’s heavy handed suppression of public protest. Even funnier: have them watch surveillance footage of the march and ask them to identify those seen misbehaving. Which are protesters and which are cops? If neither side know, there’s a 27% chance they are cops!

UPDATE: This afternoon, after the jury was seated and after opening arguments were made, the city lawyers told the judge they finally had the chance to review the defense evidence, which included a video of Selayna being jumped from behind, dragged across the street, tugged this way and that until eventually piled upon by riot officers. Based on that video, the city no longer wished to proceed. That video had been posted to Facebook within minutes of Selayna’s arrest November 5th of last year. It’s remained online for nine months. Count me among activists who thought the authorities scrutinized social media more closely. Was this the reason or did higherups spend lunchtime discussing what shadow officers were going to reveal? The testimony of shadow officers will have to wait until the next pending tials, five remain and all the defense lawyers have now motioned to subpoena these gentlemen. Selayna’s courtroom by the way was filled with Denver city attorneys preparing for those upcoming cases…

December 19 the Billion People March


http://www.billionpeoplemarch.org/

Denver
https://www.facebook.com/events/1630747410519445/

New York FB
http://unify.org/peacemap/web/events/2765?affiliate=1000019

LA Macarthur Park
http://unify.org/peacemap/web/events/2775

Minneapois
http://unify.org/peacemap/web/events/2767

Vancouver FB
http://unify.org/peacemap/web/events/2768

Buenos Ayres
http://unify.org/peacemap/web/events/2773

Oslo FB
http://unify.org/peacemap/web/events/2781

Istanbul, Taksim Square FB
http://unify.org/peacemap/web/events/2771

Delayed Habeas Corpus for Eric Brandt, then two Westminster kangaroo courts, despite $3,500 bond being paid.


WESTMINSTER, COLORADO- It was quite a day for Eric “Fuck Cops” Brandt, in custody at the Denver County Jail since Monday August 10, as usual for exercising his First Amendment rights. Even by Wednesday the jail wouldn’t allow Eric visitors or bail. Next they delayed his court appearance almost two hours. Then the judge wouldn’t grant a PR bond, choosing to require the homeless veteran to raise $3,500 for bail. Then the clerk insisted the entire docket be completed before the bond paperwork would be available. Eventually Eric’s bond was covered by a benefactor, but before Eric could be processed for release, the City of Westminster transferred him to their municipal court for a full afternoon of hearings.

In Westminster, Associate Judge Paul Basso refused Eric’s motion for a jury trial then immediately declared court to be in recess and walked out as Eric’s attorney David lane tried to voice his objections. Funny story: though Basso had declined the motion, he misspoke and declared that Eric was to have a jury trial, so Basso had to reenter the courtroom to reiterate for the record: there was to be no jury trial. This time Lane offered to put Brandt’s former public defender on the stand, he was there waiting, to attest that Brandt had never declined his right to a jury. Judge Basso refused and again walked out.

Next up, Presiding Judge John Stipech declined motions to dismiss, to recuse, or to appoint a special prosecutor for Brandt’s cases. Stipech declined to hear witnesses present and ready to testify that Westminster staffers were overheard plotting to incarcerate Brandt no matter what. No hearing, set all the trial dates up like bowling pins.

Next on the agenda, Judge Stipech ordered Eric to remove documents he’d posted to “his Facebook”: confidential police internal affairs reports sloppily surrendered during discovery and now published in Westword. Eric was supposed to comply whether in custody or homeless, or be found in contempt.

Brandt was put back en route to Denver while attorneys were asked to set the upcoming court dates. Suddenly Eric’s transport was ordered to return so that the Westminster prosecutor could motion to revoke Eric’s multiple bonds on account of his new felony charges in Denver. Fortunately the bond revocation hearing was set for Sept 2 to allow David Lane time to subpoena witnesses. This date will also follow the Aug 31 hearing in Denver where Lane has subpoenaed the Denver DA to account for the unconstitutional train wreck.

Now back at Denver Jail, Eric is being kept overnight with the excuse that the pretrial services office was closed and doesn’t reopen until 8AM. Eric Brandt has been incarcerated since Monday afternoon, his bond met, his tattoo assuring he can’t be confused for anyone else. He’s front and center today on the Denver Post and Westword, but the city’s top law enforcers can still pretend to delay his release on technicalities. They spent eighteen hours “running his fingerprints” when everyone in downtown Denver can recognize Eric Brandt a block away, three, when he’s got his sign.

An Open letter to the Denver Police Department

I can see you, as you sit there reading this; yeah, you with the donut jelly and crumbs all over the keypad and mouse. Searching Facebook and all social media sites looking for information. Doing a little undercover spying and investigative work so that you can run back to inform your buddies on what’s going down. There is a term for that; you are a “SNITCH”. In case you don’t know, a snitch is someone who hides in the shadows gathering information so that they might betray another.
 
We know what information you want. What are the protesters’ plans? How many of them are there? Where will they be? What are their names? We are happy to give that information to you. Unlike you, we are not a secretive in our goals. But before we give you that info we’re going to give you a little mix of commentary and history wrapped up in the truth. You seem to get very upset when the protesters call you pigs or holler “Fuck The Police”.

Personally, I think calling you pigs is a bit of and upgrade. When every human is born there is a residue left over, it’s called, afterbirth; it serve no useful purpose, it is waste left over from making of a human being. And this is how I see you, you are the “Afterbirth” that serves no useful purpose, you are the waste product. You want and demand respect from the citizens, yet you fail to understand that respect is something that is given, not taken. Respect is given for acts of valor, courage and bravery.

Do you believe it was an act of bravery when you murdered a 17 year old girl, Jessica Hernandez, in the alley, or when you murdered Marvin Booker in the county jail? Was it courage when you pepper-sprayed a 12 year old child in Civic Center Park on April 29th? Did one of you even think to go to that child and give medical assistance or maybe an apology? Or were you too busy looking for the next victim to assault? I can only assume you are brain-dead if you think these act will gain you respect.

The advent of the cell phone camera and internet has shown who and what you really are, that afterbirth, I mentioned above.

Back in the 60s we did not have cell phones to record your criminal conduct, but if you take the time to Google “Art Winstanley” you will discover you are not the first criminal cops. Art was one of Denver’s Serve & Protect cops who was also a burglar while on duty. When Art got caught, he “Snitched” on over fifty other cops who were in the burglary ring. He began his snitching after he was served a piece of cherry pie. How’s that for serve and protect?

And somewhere in your ranks is another Art who will come forward and expose your criminal deeds against the citizen. We don’t know who or when, but you can be sure, he or she is there to snitch on the rest of you.

Now about that information you looking for; I won’t give you any names, because unlike you, I’m not a SNITCH.

How many is there of us? We are many and our numbers are growing, your days and deeds are numbered.

Where is our next action? It will be everywhere on the streets, calling you out for your criminal deeds. The days of hiding your crimes are over and we will expose you.

TEDx comes to Dumbville, or, Colorado Springs reads Horton Hears a How

COLO. SPRINGS- TED-TalksTM likes to say it offers “a spa for your brain” and when I saw that an X-variant was coming to Colorado Springs (“TEDx”s are unaffiliated affiliates. Yeah, uh-oh.) I wondered if a spa might only be as good as its mineral water. Or its mud, or masseurs, whatever. Yes, I foresaw the inevitability of Dumbass Springs confirming its nature, but the lure of a train wreck was strong. I confess my expectations were lower still because incessent shared posts on Facebook have inoculated me with an aversion to the TED motivational formula, no matter the click-bait hyperbole they are AHA-moments For Dummies.

Typically a TED theme holds water for about as long as it takes to incubate a viral meme, but I wondered if in unedited presentation form, do they permit the scrutiny of live input from the audience? They are popular after all. A complementary pass offered the chance to see, and our local franchise had sold out. Could I gag the reflex of skepticism about TED’s curated plethora of inspirational vehicles? To my mind they never fail to carry water (Let’s cross the metaphors) for the neoliberal false-Left, its outside-of-the-box thinkers never truly asserting a POV remote from Capital’s doomed ship whose last exertions mimick being radically progressive enough to impersonate credibility, cross fingers spark hope. TED’s appearance of being crowd-sourced has already been eroded by its gatekeeping against populist lay disciplines. Its novelty was its social media distribution model, otherwise TED is merely another consent-manufacturing think tank of unchanged spots for the pedestrian academic. Will a local TEDx event outsource its attractions or will it local-source from luminary wattage? I ask because our backwater tradition is to elevate dimbulbs. When we mob Ticketmaster it’s for star talent of our ilk. Upcoming exhibit A: Dennis Miller. Ok TED, a full report to follow.

Sorry, Edward Snowden is not leaking “allegations” open to USG refutation

Corporate media doesn’t want to do its job investigating or reporting on security state mechanisms and excesses, and it’s not going to let Edward Snowden do it either. Isn’t it curious that they’re able to allege Snowden’s leaks are “allegations” instead of …LEAKS? Of course they’ve only got their corrupt selves for peer review. The US press leaves the foreign papers to break Snowden’s documents after which it can accurately say the conclusions are “reported”, giving US officials a premise to dismiss the “accusations”. Except they’re not accusations, or allegations or conclusions, they’re unveiled fact. The US security agencies aren’t reportedly violating the privacy of citizens, they ARE! And no, “everyone is[n’t] spying on everyone” the security states are spying on their peoples. Neither you, nor I are spying on anyone, except maybe via Facebook. Our oligarchs and their world security apparatus are keeping close tabs on us via wildly illegal surveillance, to the bemusement of media talking heads.
 
NMT has for some time been writing about how the NSA is recording all phone calls and internet transmissions, not merely “meta” data. Of course our reports were suppositions, so THANK YOU EDWARD SNOWDEN for the confirmation. Any credible response to Snowden’s revelations, whether from the White House or Angela Merkel, must begin with expressing gratitude for the moral superiority of a brave whisteblower.

Is Facebook censoring NMT headlines like they already do our images?

Who can say what is the cause? But this began in November when suddenly images on the Not My Tribe website would no longer appear alongside the NMT articles being crowd-aggregated by Facebook users. Now a link to our Snooze article failed to resolve into a post headline, instead remaining a raw http link, further reducing NMT’s visibility on the social network. If eventually we are completely blocked you won’t know it. Facebook is the new AOL. Already if a tree falls outside the shopping mall, America doesn’t hear it.

Snooze owner Jon Schlegel wants Denver Police to treat Occupy protesters like they’re homeless

Snooze Jon Schlegel
(As best we could determine, Facebook was refusing to aggregate this article so long as “Snooze” and “Jon Schlegel” were mentioned in the headline. The article you are looking for is above at this link. Target of Occupy Denver boycott expects DPD to roll protesters like they’re homeless sleepers. Facebook still won’t allow the photo.)

Broomfield Police play rough game of Cowboys & Indians with Idle No More Native Americans, literally

Photo by Jolynne Locust WoodcockBROOMFIELD, COLO.- Fellow Occupy members and I joined in a “round dance” flash mob at a local mall on Wednesday night, as part of the growing IDLE NO MORE actions whose First Nations grievances include the despoiling of indigenous treaty lands by tar sands extraction and the XL pipeline, and sovereignty issues about which Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence is now on a 22 day hunger strike. Two previous round dances in Colorado had proceeded uneventfully but no sooner had we begun in the Flatirons Crossing Shopping Center, located between Denver and Boulder, that mall security and police began routing the round dancers out the door. It was a rather comical scene, peaceful dancers, many of them children, being blocked and herded straight out into the cold, no warning or explanation being given. Of course the round dance stopped in its tracks, people instead dancing in place, gently waving their signs, as security told them they had to leave or face arrest. Apparently, because we didn’t hear it. Drummers were let to finish the first song, after which they packed up to leave. Once the drumming stopped however, we were surprised to hear security and police officers relaying their instructions, that “anyone who looked Native American” should be made to leave.

Of course we questioned what we were hearing, and were then threatened with immediate arrest and ushered out the door. At the same time, police officers were running in a continuous line into the mall to conduct sweeps as many flash mob participants were still arriving from all directions. Many got lost on the way, or miscalculated the traffic they’d encounter, so arrived late. In essence however, people without signs, not singing or dancing or drumming or holding their ground, were summarily being ordered to leave the mall immediately, based upon the clue that they looked Native American.

If my “Cowboys and Indians” analogy seems kinda flip. Imagine squads of Broomfield and Westminster police, roaming throughout the FlatIrons Mall checking people’s faces to see if they qualify to be expelled. The mall wasn’t cleared of all shoppers, just those who looked indigenous. A fairly scarey game, considering that many of the Idle No More participants were children.

I can tell you part of the thrill for me, of the round dance flash mobs, as a European immigrant, is feeling the surroundings begin to fill with indigenous faces. That is turned around in the hostile atmosphere created by the police, as western law enforcement resumes its traditional role of hunting down those it pretends don’t belong.

I had invited a friend to bring her young family, part Native American, to join the dance. Thankfully they couldn’t make it. What if they’d had, and come late, and were walking through the mall full of shoppers, and were encountered by squads of police who sought them out of the crowd and inexplicably ordered them to leave the premises? What’s any American child to think of that?

I have a young nephew who just that day I’d seen playing in his policeman’s costume, with a new policeman’s badge he got for Christmas. What would he have thought of that?

Plus, how’s that for irony? Natives considered trespassers. Even the mother of a girl being detained, was not allowed past to inquire what was happening, because she didn’t fit the profile of Americans who have rights, or a profile the police thought should be afforded a status of dignity or respect.

Meanwhile, three female participants, one of them 17-year-old Idle No More organizer Cheyenne McCallister, were being detained inside.

When Occupy Colorado Springs activist Patrick Jay tried to document the actions of the police from outside the mall window, he was pounced upon by Bloomfield Police for not having removed himself sufficiently from the area and thus was held to be trespassing. When I tried to take pictures of his arrest, I was arrested.

Held in separate police cruisers we could hear over the police radio that fifteen Westminster Police Officers were on their way armed with “shields and gas”. An officer on the scene told the dispatcher to turn them back because they were no longer need. As we’d seen, the mall and even the parking area filled with police vehicles had been completely cleared. But then a report came that a Native American group was reconstituting itself in “Parking lot E” and so the officers in riot gear were summoned. We learned later that they did arrive to menace the crowd, which decided to reconvene across the street at a McDonalds instead.

And now consider the further travesty, when a local news crew arrived to cover the story, they told only the mall’s side, because the IDLE NO MORE folks were prevented from reaching the news crew because it would mean trespassing! They could only watch, then watch on television as the story completely misrepresented the facts.

Patrick and I were eventually booked and held for several hours, like the others, then released to a warm welcome from Idle No More organizers who’d waited the whole evening. Our court date is February 20, the two women and one minor have court the next day, February 21.

Photo by Jolynne Locust Woodcock
(First and last photo credit: Jolynne Locust Woodcock)
See more at Facebook/OccupyColoradoSprings

Facebook advertisers can repost “likes” in your name so you don’t have to

Users of Facebook are accustomed to seeing friends listed in right-column ads, mentioned liking such-and-such a brand, or two or three. It’s understood that those friends at some point visited the brand’s page and clicked “like”, permitting that company, Amazon for example, to pay Facebook to advertise the “like” as frequently as it wishes. It’s also understood that when one “likes” a page, a post is simultaneously shared to herald the act and appears on the user’s wall unless that feature is turned off. What you may not know is that your initial timeline post can be reposted, in the center-thread, at the advertiser’s whim, perhaps limited to when you’re online, perhaps triggered when you log on, but not logged on your wall and thus unseen by you. Does it also boost the number of people pretended to be “talking about” that brand? Are 372,523 talking about Starbucks? That could include “you”, repeating yourself ad-maybe-nauseum.

Or maybe, for a premium, your original “like” is not shared simultaneously, but doled out as each of your friends comes online to guarantee one hundred percent reach. Who knows. As personalized as we know the ads can be, no doubt the algorithm is not calculated for clarity.

Do you remember which pages you’ve liked or not? Perhaps you clicked like to be able to comment on the page, or to monitor a monopolistic miscreant, or perhaps it was before Wells Fargo, Bank of America, or British Petroleum became persons and not-so-grata. Maybe now you’d rather not be said to like Chevron, Monsanto, or killer Coke. You can review your “likes” under INFO, then INTERESTS. Or you can check the list below. On each page, see if beside the LIKE button, you have the option to unlike, for example, Facebook.

Here’s a quick list of corporate brands which have fallen from fashion among those with fashion sense. You can click on each to check whether you are counted among their unpaid repeated endorsers.

Nike
Gap
Fox News
CNN
AT&T
Caterpillar
Disney
Walmart
Target
K-mart
Toys-r-us
Lowes
Ikea
Home Depot

And the fat merchants:
McDonalds
Burger King
Hardees
Carl’s Jr
Wendy’s
Taco Bell
KFC
Pizza Hut
Sonic
Chick-fil-A
Jimmy Johns
Subway
Outback
Dairy Queen
Dunkin Donuts
Krispy Kreme

Birds of a feather laugh at doggy sex jokes together

I saw this thread under a video posted to Facebook making light of a joke made on NMT by Ed Billings, at Tony’s expense.
Joel Aigner, Mike Jay, Jim Cross, Michael Clifton, Ed Billings, Nancy Wolffe
LOVE IT. There are the names in one webshot, IN LEAGUE, laughing as one of them offers to contract for a dog-napping. Freedom of Speech doesn’t protect making threats and menacing, you dopes. Further along Clifton suggests that the dog sex jokes are surrogates for the politically incorrect laughs they’d rather be having, at thinking about Tony and me being GAY.
 
Do you suppose any of these comedians think we could give a fig about what they’re saying? They’re irrelevant do-nothings. And while my advice to anyone is assert yourself and get involved, I’m thinking a worthy cause would be ill served by these intellects.

Do you Facebook? You’re a Yahoo

What is Facebook worth? To whom does it belong? Reigning property right schemes aren’t reciprocal to Facebook’s actual content providers. Maybe an outrageous IPO will prompt a user’s bill of rights and a new intellectual rights paradigm, monetizing the net to flow outward instead of inward to the cyber 1%. Facebook is the whole world in a filing cabinet, but they’re your files, and you’re the volunteer file clerk. Facebook is Yahoo outsourced basically, because Google is too complicated for thought-overwhelmed people. Yahoo mapped the known internet, Google rationalized the database, but the social networking outfits calculated that interests could be predicted along personal ties. We’re sheep after all, and we only want to follow where the flock is going. While Twitter’s cues comes at you like Space Invaders, Facebook provided the blinders and rear view mirrors to coax the reluctant along, and resurrected the virtual community of the World Wide Web’s first internment camp, AOL. This time when everyone is comfortably corralled, it will be interesting to see what becomes of the web’s open range.

Step on up folks, He-Who-Shoots-From-Cover Indian name hits nerve with identity-obscuring internet trolls

A little bird tells me there’s been a discussion on Facebook, an overnight marathon of name-calling about ME. Alias-extrovert Agent Doubt offered a beer or coffee to whoever could come up with the best quip to counter my Indian-name for Chairforce pilots and other US soldiers who wield disproportionate force: He Who Shoots From Cover. I guess this sobriquet hit too close to home for identity-concealing internet snipers too. In any case, it looks like Doubt’s outsourcing his creativity again, and sneaking the makings of a date on an unsuspecting winner.

Tea party klan patriot thug Jim Kross circulates fliers to incite mob violence


OccupyAfghanistan vets Jeremy and Brittany Westmoreland attracted Patriot Shop teabag Jim Kross to their vow to destroy our local occupy. I’d like to say as little as possible about this lamentable development, except to document today’s escalation.


Occupy Colorado Springs held forth on the sidewalk in front of Memorial Hospital this Saturday, making a plea for UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE. Across the street once again were our threat-making stalkers, fortunately not reprising their Westboro Baptist tauntings, but sitting in their truck as OCS’s original heckler Jim Kross finished his cigar.


We weren’t many, but of course the recent news stories didn’t help recruit participants, claiming that OCS is so against the troops, that it kicked out members because they were soldiers. And not more accurately, because they initiated a witch hunt against occupiers who weren’t showing solidarity with the US military’s occupy movement, OccupyIraq, OccupyAfghanistan, OccupyLibya, veni, vidi, vici.


We were in the unusual position of trying not to elicit honks of support from the passing traffic, in view of standing outside a hospital, but drivers signaled their enthusiasm in friendly ways. We discussed repeating this healthcare action soon, it was such an easy sell.


Eventually Patriot Kross came over to film us as he made his best taunts. The Westmorelands watched from the truck and after Kross was through, they drove back and forth flipping us off.

At first Kross denied any knowledge of the dozen fliers we’d found taped and pinned around the hospital’s perimeter.


The fliers were “wanted” posters which offered a bounty for the eviction or firing of certain occupiers. The fliers bore Kross’s email address and website. He conceded they were his, or belonged “to one of [his] identities,” whatever, and then he named the reward, said the amount may have grown since he looked online, and then solicited the occupiers present.


We had already removed the fliers he’d circulated around the hospital, from trees, street signs, walls and doors.


We had found some fliers downtown on our way to the action. This one was taped to the office building door.


Jim Kross’s animosity for Occupy goes back to the original GAs, when he used to videotape from the circle’s center and exploit the opportunity it gave him to counter everyone’s statements. He hadn’t been harassing OCS actions until last week when OCS held its NO WAR ON IRAN event. Kross made a gleeful reappearance with Raven Martinez counter-protesting what she considered an anti-troop message.

Speaking of Raven, I received this Facebook message on Friday, from her daughter’s account which Raven uses when she finds her account blocked…


Are those the words of an 11-year-old? “WATCH UR BACK”?

Neither Raven nor the Westmorelands seem to understand the line they cross with their threats. On Tuesday Raven defended her comment on NMT asking me what I’d do if my home went up in flames. She said I needed to take it in the context of her talking about soldiers, police and first responders, ignoring the context Soldier Westmoreland had created with his vow to burn NMT down.


Patriot Kross says he’s a veteran of the police force. You’d think he’d understand that distributing wanted posters charging his own personal complaints is a call for vigilante justice. To begin with, posting fliers is against city code, and these incite violence.


Kross came across our noon bannering at Acacia on Friday, mocking Patti for standing on her lonesome, Occupy reduced to just herself. He didn’t like the color of her flags.


I caught this priceless photo as Kross stepped quickly back when he saw that reinforcements were coming.


The bright side of this story is that when I went to take a picture of Jim Kross’s store, the Patriot Shop, it was gone, in retreat, to within another store, on Academy. Bye Jimbo.

Colorado Springs Occupy saved from the haters, Occudrama: the Final Act

He bragged at GA about how he’d personally mobilized tonight’s contingent to descend upon Occupy Colorado Springs to depose its leadership, but did Agent Dumb really think someone who’d sworn to destroy OCS, another who’d stolen the first Facebook group, another who’d tried to sabotage OCS actions, another who’s snitched to both the press and FBI, and another who’d betrayed each and every occupier, would be entrusted to decide the fate of OCS? Agent’s sidekick Wolf, who’d swiped the FB group, kept hissing “make everyone admin, make everyone admin.” But when Agent Dumb pushed forward with a proposal it was this: “Dissolve every element of Occupy, its website, Facebook group, and all its infrastructure.” Seriously?
 
He felt disenfranchised by the probationary terms to which he was being held, but basically Agent Dumbass’s renewed interest in Occupy was only because he wanted to kill it. The hater tag-team could not have, of course, because OCS actions go on, headless. At least now the insurgent chatter should lessen, now we can recruit real occupiers, free of those who wanted to wrestle control so they could call the shots from online, never having to attend a thing, and making sure to prevent OCS from scheduling meaningful actions. Been there, done that. Occupy Colorado Springs LIVES!

Was it heavy handed to rain probation slips on their anti-occupy parade? It came as quite a shock that mob rule wasn’t the rule with Occupy. I think the most important message sent is that you can’t overwhelm a meeting with greater numbers and declare yourself in charge. That’s war, not democracy. Occupy Colorado Springs is much greater than the members who attend its meetings. There’s nothing undemocratic about telling would-be usurpers to bugger off. Occupy Pueblo fell to a similar attack. They let some newbies in and lights out.
The most important message

Tea Party soldiers attempt military coup of OCS, want Occupy to be more like occupations of Iraq & Afghanistan

ONLY IN COLORADO SPRINGS! (SPOILER: OCCUDRAMA ALERT)–
Not satisfied with heckling the OCS antiwar rally on Saturday, some “berserkers” from Fort Carson’s 4/4 2/12 regiment thought they’d march on the Occupy events committee meeting Monday and vote to make OCS more like their occupation stints in Iraq and Afghanistan, more pro-killer and all. Or vote OCS out of existence. Cute, as they pretend to uphold everybody’s freedom, etc. Apparently the soldiers were following the directions of Right Wing Youtube slackupier Agent Snuffleupagus Doubt, who promised to reopen his faux-occupy website for their coup, as if maintaining the fake OCS Facebook group wasn’t anti-occupy enough. True to idiotic form, Doubt’s plan was to overwhelm the democratic nature of OCS, forgetting to caution his winged monkeys about embarrassing mechanisms which protect OWS groups from malicious disruptions, many of his troops face disciplinary probation, for starters. But for Agent Duh it’s enough to videotape a flash-blob declaring itself king of OCS, and it’s done. Emboldened by this virtual occupy, next Mastermind Duh will probably scheme to send Republican operatives to crash the Democratic Caucuses, vote them all Republican, and steal their delegates for Ron Paul! What a plan!

BTW Commander Dumbass, how can someone who hasn’t attended Occupy meetings in months, someone who has publicly declared himself on repeated occasions to have left Occupy, and someone who has often acted in league with public attackers of Occupy, PRETEND to tell people what are its bylaws? Critics of democracy movements accuse proponents of advocating mob rule, and so you’ve confused democracy for your own caricature? I suppose you think if the minister of First Prez wanted to convert Occupy, he could march enough of his flock down to Acacia and vote OCS into his denomination. That logic may wash with Ft Carson boys, and your Youtube viewership, but it’s not going to cut it with real people. Are you kidding me with your inanity?

Four Occupy tormentors unmasked


Occupy Colo. Springs held a NO WAR ON IRAN demo today, counter- protested by some soldiers who think any antiwar criticism of their mission fails to Support The Troops. (Horrifyingly curious don’t you think, that US soldiers would already consider war with Iran as their mission?!) Joining them it turned out, were four of OCS’s sneakiest saboteurs. I got them with one camera click! From right to ultra-right: Raven Martinez aka Briaunna Webbing aka Occupy Csprings, Michael Clifton aka Agent of Doubt, Ian Carman aka “Father” Ian, and Ryan Butler aka Ry King aka Lone Wolf.

My policy until now was not to dignify any of these Facebook twits with attention, but their rumor campaign against OCS has become so virulent and untrue, and their misdeeds are now tipping the balance. Today the entire intersection had to bear personal megaphone taunts, but I’ll say that the final straw was yesterday when I learned of misinformation they attempted to spread to the local news. Occupy CS’s hand was forced in issuing a public statement about accused-arsonist Kyle Lawrence, because someone asserted Kyle had joined a violent group that had sprung up in OCS. Uh, let’s get to the bottom of that one, shall we?

WARNING: OCCUDRAMA AHEAD. All of it boring, but these creeps need to crawl back under their mouse pads. Ignoring them hasn’t worked, and even though they crave attention, I’ll give that a try.

Exhibit A
Ryan Butler, Ryan King, Lucky Dog, Lone Wolf
At far right is RYAN BUTLER aka Lucky Dog, aka Lone Wolf. When he disrupted OCS GAs he went by “Ry King”.

The secretive Ryan Butler is half of the Clifton/Butler nerd team that hijacked the “Occupy Colorado Springs” Facebook Open Group. It’s got about 400 members, doesn’t represent Occupy at all, and is maintained as a launchpad for Tea Party occu-haters under the pretext of “free speech” as decided by its unlisted admins Ryan & Michael. The open group was originally created by authentic occupier Amber Hagen, who in her idealism let all participant have admin privileges. When Amber discovered that haters among the admins kept wrecking the page, she began to delete them. Michael Clifton once recounted at a meeting how he and Ryan scrambled over Skype to keep Amber from shutting them out. They hurriedly deleted Amber’s admin access, thus exiling her from her own group. This was the act that inspired Raven Martinez to do the same with the OCS Facebook community page, in all fairness I should say, to prevent others from doing it to her.

Ryan’s claim to fame in OCS came from a failed coup to share the spokesmanship monopoly held by occupothead Jason Warf, but I digress.

Ryan had to step away from OCS after legal trouble from a drunken poker game gone awry, which he tried to blame on authentic occupy vet RTG. Ryan has a criminal record of domestic violence and wears a gun in his home in violation of having lost his permit to carry. That much is not disputed. But Ryan refutes RTG’s version of the event: that Ryan pistol-whipped his ex-girlfriend, which enraged RTG and the two fought, trashing the house. Both face assault charges and Ryan’s ex has filed her usual plea to the court to dismiss any notion that Ryan abused her. Instead we are to believe Ryan tried to defend himself with a vice-grips laying about (leaves a strike pattern similar to a gun maybe), accidentally striking his ex.

I’ll add that my perspective doesn’t come from hearing RTG’s testimony, but rather from eavesdropping on private IMs sent by Ryan as he deliberated what to say by way of damage control. Anyway.

Entirely relevant here however is Ryan Butler’s favorite bragging right, his secret Fight Club-inspired “PLAN-B” CLUB (First rule of Plan-B, you don’t talk about Plan B, snore). Apparently “Plan B” is for Amendment Two fans who want an alternate plan “when the revolution fails.” Was this the pro-violence group to which Michael Clifton alluded in TV interviews? It had nothing to do with Occupy, didn’t come from Occupy, and if its membership is limited to Ryan’s friends, I’m guessing that pares it down to two: he and Clifton. Thus Clifton’s statement about his disassociation from proponents of violence was also facetious, because the above photo was taken upon their arrival at the counter-protest, they came together.

But how absolutely scurrilous to attempt to tarnish OCS with the suggestion that occupy was the breeding ground of their pro-gun Amendment Two fantasy life?!

Exhibit B
Michael Clifton, Agent of Doubt
Occupying more than the center of this photo is Michael Clifton, self-appointed videographer of the local occupy, known on Youtube and DIY newsites as “Agent of Doubt”.

Michael Clifton was a very early supporter of OCS, donating water and food as he documented its progress on Youtube, each segment introduced in his best impersonation of Alfred Hitchcock, minus the wit, or substance. Let’s say Clifton’s motives started out good, what would lead him last week to step forward and break the story about arsonist Kyle having a history with OCS, packaging his videos for best consumption by the local media?

Of course the answer is simple, and we’ve seen it before. Apparently 15-minutes of personal soundbite, TV attention converted to Youtube views, trumps any consideration for possible negative blowback for the movement. Clifton actually keeps distancing himself from OCS every time he alleges to speak authoritatively as an insider. It’s laughable if it wasn’t damnable, because this time the oaf said he quit when OCS members began to plan illegal strategies. Whaaat? –leaving listeners to infer that arson was among the strategies. What kind of tomfoolery insinuation is that?

Not surprisingly, once more Clifton is defending himself against accusations of being an informer or provocateur. I make no such charge. He’s an idiot. What can you do, Colorado Springs is full of them. Am I being too harsh? Read on.

In an earlier episode in front of City Council, Clifton famously declared himself an outsider to OCS so that he could take all the credit for a –he-thought– brilliant bit of investigative deduction regarding CSPD’s billing of man hours charged for policing OCS. Our friend had videotaped an OCS march you see, and noticed there weren’t any police officers in sight, ergo, the billings must have been fraudulent, yes, ignoring the possibility the cops were plain-clothed, or observing from a perimeter, or on call, etc. So like a flat-earther who draws conclusions based on only what he can see, our intrepid Sherlock declares the CSPD guilty of fraud, and… marches straight into the local office of the FBI to make the charge! The FBI, he reports, were only too happy to accept all his video footage into evidence!

This might point to Clifton’s real reason to declare he was not part of Occupy, because a GA consensus would have vetoed his FBI idea. OCS had recently endorsed a no-snitch policy, not on anyone, not even the city, and let’s face it, not least of all I’m guessing, TO the FBI.

Thus, however unwittingly, let’s call it witlessly, Clifton is an FBI informant in the very technical sense, isn’t he?

To put a fine point on it: everyone who’s participated in OCS activities recorded by Agent of Doubt Clifton, is now on record at the FBI, in not just the lossy Youtube segments available online, but the original hi-def digital sequences, in their entirety.

And while Agent Dork has been a stalwart companion to Occupy, if only for the videos which he converts into ad-views whose revenue he “contributes” to the Occupy movement by funding his own efforts to “promote” it, so far the sum of his efforts has been to give law enforcement and the local media evidence to build a case against Occupy. Thanks a ton Agent Dork. From here onward, your camera aught to record everyone giving you the finger!

Exhibit C
Department of Homeland Security Officer Ian Carman
I was tempted because of his sign to give Father Ian Carman a pass. Who’s to say a Department of Homeland Security employee shouldn’t consider himself part of the 99%? But after successive absences from GAs, then hiding among the haters, it might be time to take a close look at this very disruptive occupier.

Divisive behavior can be very subtle, so I’ll cut to the quick on Father Ian. He revealed to us that he worked for DHS because he wanted to explain that he had access to confidential files on certain occupiers, one of whom, supposedly a veteran, still had a very high security clearance, indicating he was likely still active duty, or perhaps in the intelligence service. Father Ian was asserting this about our high profile occupy star JWS, effectively trying to snitchjacket JWS. Come down on that whichever way you like.

Exhibit D

Raven Martinez writes on Facebook under the identity of her daughter, or the occunonymous Facebook user “Occupy Csprings”. Once a formidable OCS volunteer, Raven suddenly became my own personal raving critic. It’s been suggested that her fury bears the air of a woman scorned — I’ll delve into that further down, if I feel like it.

As reported above, the Tea Party mutiny of Amber’s Facebook OCS open group is what inspired Raven to hijack the OCS Facebook COMMUNITY PAGE. Raven might have done it with the best intentions, but did it utterly undemocratically and to everyone’s chagrin and condemnation. Here’s what happened.

Embattled by internal struggle against the very identity of mothership Occupy Wall Street, the OCS GA had adopted the moderating policy implemented by the New York OWS to thwart vanguards and saboteurs, but the Springs admins at that time were refusing to implement them. Admins were continuing to post political endorsements, conspiracy theories and statements critical of fellow occupiers. Further protocols were adopted by OCS to require admins to use their initials to identify who was responsible. Again this was ignored, and now many of the admins were refusing to attend the GAs.

One day Raven noticed important posts being deleted and snide comments being made about OCS protest actions, all being done by an admin who would not reveal his/her identity, and worst of all, in the name of Occupy Colorado Springs. An admin herself, Raven made the clever move of temporarily deleting all the other admin users on the chance that this one might be stupid enough to reveal himself by complaining about his suddenly lost access. The idiot took the bait, and turned out to be none other than OCS-permit-holder and self-important-leader Hossein Momsforpot. For shit. Well this left Raven with a dilemma. Who was going to believe that Hoss was anti-OWS? More critically, who among the admins she had deleted, could she reinstate without the risk that Hoss would convince them to reinstate his admin status with which he could then delete Raven? This was the lesson Raven had gleaned from the hijack perpetrated by Wolf & Agent Duh.

I neglected to mention that the earlier hijack was accomplished anonymously, with Ryan pretending that sole admin status was held by “his dog”. So with her hijack, Raven added her own innovation, Raven loudly proclaimed that she’d been shut out too! She planned to claim that her eventual “reinstatement” was the result of an omniscient AnonymousTM hacker who’d intervened for the betterment of the movement.

Raven’s problem was that I had just the day before publicly refused an admin appointment, and when she cavalierly let suspicions fall on occupier PJ, he promptly deleted himself. Funny story, no?

Well, although a number of very earnest admins felt slighted, oddly enough things worked out for the better after Raven’s purge because all the internal occuhating stopped, and a number of the admins who felt pushed out ultimately outed themselves as Ron Paul enthusiasts, conspiracy nuts, or single-issue MMJ addicts. In reality, no one was ejected from OCS, but having lost their control over the Facebook page, they chose to make kissoff statements and move on.

So Raven was able to coax PJ and me to share the admin responsibilities with her, and it’s a good thing too, because when Raven eventually turned against the broader OWS mission, she’ll say it was because of my personal agenda, Raven went and DELETED the Facebook page. She thought she’d done it, but Facebook has safeguards fortunately, PJ and I were alerted and able to save the 3,300 member page from oblivion.

And the rest is history in the making. Three of us administrate the community page now, we trust each other and our dedication to the values and goals of the original Wall Street occupiers, and the Facebook likes continue to rise.

Is that enough about Raven? Yes it is. She’s doing her best to vilify and destroy our efforts, but that’s as much as I want to say about her.

What the hell. Each of these four unsavory characters knows that I could say far more than I’ve divulged here. I’m already embarrassed enough to talk about them as I did, good grief. The personal attacks on me are based on nothing that I hadn’t written about on NMT, yet they persist via email and phone calls to everyone they can reach. Well, here’s my shot across the bow.

Tea Partying with the Freak Brothers

Whew! These Occupy posts are far more difficult to pry from myself than their predecessors; the hands-on mechanics of putting the earlier stuff into practice in the present world, amongst the isolated pools of individuated consciousness we humans represent, each with his or her own vision of the whole, has been at the very least disorienting. I’ve lately revived an old motto i swiped from the good people at Oat Willie’s down in Austin, Texas: Onward Through the Fog! How odd is it that i’ve recently connected with some folks that hark back to that place in ways that are deeply surreal. Oat Willie’s and Fat Freddie will seem to be completely out of place in this bit, in which i mean to address the notion of cooperation amongst disparate factions, but not permanently i hope. By the end of this post, i hope to connect Occupy, The Tea Party, disparate passions, and yes, Hippies. It will be necessary to engage in some relatively surreal thinking.

Last night on a new Facebook page, “UNITE: OCCUPY,” (cap lock and all), i got into a conversation about this stuff started by a guy that asked whether anyone thought a joint event between Occupiers and Tea Partiers might be possible. Sure, i said, our Colorado Springs group had lots of Tea Partiers among its earliest enthusiasts, and although many have pulled away, there still exists a close association with many that veer sharply toward the Te Party camp, especially among Ron Paul supporters. The common ground Occupy shares with the Tea Party, at least t a grass root level, is substantial. There can be no doubt of the equally substantial differences. I suspect that it would take some pretty serious ideological barnstorming to bring the two camps together, but nothing prevents the groups from at least tentative discussion to find commonalities.

Tonight our Occupy group staged a talk by Tea Party stalwart, Constitutionalist Mike Holler. Mike seemed for all appearances to be an earnest and well-versed supporter of Constitutional “fundamentalism,” if you will. He peppered his talk with lots of my favorite quotes from my favorite founding fathers. He got a little testy about the revisionist history his kids bring home from college early on–perhaps indicative of one point of separation between Occupiers and Tea Partiers. Some of those are important. Occupy is international, where the Tea Party can display degrees of jingoism. I, personally, respect the earnest efforts of our Enlightenment founders, but recognize that they were flawed, and aver that their document was dated by racist, sexist, and elitist provisions and thinking that they might be excused from by noting their temporal milieu. We don’t have the same luxury. Occupy is legitimately grass root, supported by sweat and blood more than funded, where TP is, or at least became very quickly corporately funded “astroturf,” disingenuously proffering libertarian ideals as a smoke screen for corporate license to plunder. Occupiers are in my experience far more diverse than Tea Partiers. Socialist and Anarchist Occupiers are common, as are assorted races, genders, orientations, and religious persuasions, where Tea Partiers seem to my limited observation to be relatively homogeneously white Christian capitalist patriots. Mike interjected that both groups had been misrepresented by the media, and that seems likely to be so given that mainstream media seems content to misrepresent ’bout anything they report in this country, but Fox news and the rabid right like the Tea Party so much i have to wonder if he’s fallen victim to a personal soft spot.

Mike spoke eloquently enough in his effort to simplify the Constitution, focusing on issues of freedom, and state’s rights. He said very little with which i could find disagreement. He pointed out two major points of confluence between Occupy and the Tea Party–personal liberty, and a rally-cry, “No more Bailouts!” I suspect he fastidiously avoided some points he knew or at least feared might be contentious, like for example the ludicrous assertions i’ve heard often that environmental warnings from the scientific community stem from some kind of Satanic control scheme from the–well just whom is never too clear. The Vatican or something. Commies, i guess. That just maybe the best way for Tea Partiers and Occupiers to interact, though, for now, concentrating on the common aversion to what amounts to Fascism. Interacting from that perspective could exclude much conversation. It could put the Tea Party in the same position as the Occupy movement, after their Fascist sponsors withdraw in horror. Whatever. We Occupiers got on just fine with Tea Party Mike–“Mr. Constitution.”

Mike largely expressed notions we Occupiers could embrace. I suppose he could have done a bit of research and tailored his speech toward that end, but i think we just agree; he seemed a grassroot kind of guy, to me. He briefly alluded to schisms within the Tea Party, and there’s no sensible reason to avoid acknowledging the same within Occupy. Last night’s event was attended by Occupy people that have had such extreme altercations in their attempts to wrestle a semblance of ideological unity from a stubbornly liquid platform that it could easily enough have disintegrated into bedlam. I attended with my dear friend Thomas, with whom i often disagree. In fact, he and i often disagree so strongly that sometimes i feel like smacking him in back of the head. I expect he feels the same way about me at times. Maybe much of the time. Take note, war-mongers of the world: Thomas is a great guy, and even though we disagree with one another, sometimes strongly, neither of us has smacked the other in back of the head. Get it?

So here we were last night, disparate Occupiers engaging a Tea Party mouthpiece in a room full of people that have all experienced the vagaries of human interaction under a fairly pressurized circumstance over the past few months. No butterflies fluttered around the room, but no one worked up a bickering session, either. We worked together. All of us. One could recall the old adage that “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” but that would be devolution. I prefer to imagine that those with arguments present recognized the futility of scrapping amongst friends, if only below the radar of their Egos. Whether my nobler hopes for those pained souls in the room last night are valid or not, the assertions i made in these non-pages well before Occupy began remain true. The system we wrestle against is collapsing around our heads. And the solution is spiritual, to a far greater extent than it is temporal.

Fat Freddy is a comic book character that lives in Denver. Seriously. I met him a little while ago. (This only seems out of place, i promise.) Mr. Constitution Mike Holler expressed the opinion last night that our American republic, our constitutional federation of states, is in its final throes; that we are in a position where, ” it’s too late to save the country, but too early to start shooting.” Mike seemed tentative in expressing his hope that God might pull some kind of supernatural rabbit from his celestial hat to resolve our monumental national woes. I expect he feared perturbing the often non-Christian sensibilities of the Occupiers. He needn’t have worried quite so much–we may be largely skeptical of literal interpretations, but we’re pretty tolerant of that sort of thing. When i met Fat Freddy–an icon of counter-cultural activism important to me since childhood, an old-school Hippie with connection to the most famous and infamous of that crowd–he singled me out and pulled me aside to explain in some detail his expectation for a spiritual upheaval in coming days. Freddy’s taken up with the Urantia Book, a tome i’ve heard Christians disparage as devilish. I couldn’t see anything devilish about what he showed me. He earnestly explained his expectation for resolution. Soon.

We had come to Denver to talk about foreclosures and bank jiggery-pokery with another guy, and pulled up at Freddy’s house without knowing it. It just happened that way. These old Hippies like Tea Party fave, Ron Paul. (Follow along, now, i know it’s weird, and yeah, i know a lot of Occupiers don’t like Paul; i’m not sure about him myself). Also in attendance at that meeting was a woman i had been conversing with on line for quite a while in the context of Occupy. It took me nearly through the whole meeting to recognize her, because i knew her to live down in the Four Corners neighborhood of Colorado. She lives at Freddy’s now. This juxtaposition is so weird that now i’m expecting the Mad Hatter, or Lewis Carroll himself to pop up at some meeting quoting from Jabberwocky. Mike Holler holds out for resolution to the country’s woes in a traditional Christian context. My own suspicion, shared with J.B.S. Haldane, is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. But somewhere in the mix i am convinced that some divine Thing many of us think of as God is deeply interested in the little proceedings here on our little blue marble and that our interactions are subsequently and necessarily thus influenced.

We live right here. We have no choice but to manage things on a coarse, physical level; but we also live, i think, on an overlapping and less tangible plane, where we have more influence than we might ordinarily imagine. At the same time, things seem to occur herethere without our conscious direction. We’ll need to keep plugging away at things like grasping the Constitution, and taking on massive, quixotic quests like fighting banks and a world full of renegade, intransigent governments and power brokers, not to mention our own internal battles, as finely defined as within our own Souls. We’ll need to recognize the Truth in one another, even when it’s obscured by a bunch of worldly disagreement and fog. And so far as i can tell, were learning. Whatever that means.

Reprinted from hipgnosis.

All in

When i first set out to write this blog i had no intention of writing about geopolitics, or anything any bigger than my own little world, or to develop any sort of readership at all, let alone to kick up international interest. Who knew? Since the time i started, Adbuster’s Occupy movement has overtaken the whole world and i’ve become a part of it, along with apparently millions of fellow humans dissatisfied with aspects of the concentric and overlapping political systems that govern and control the minutiae of our daily lives. Occupy has struck a chord that resonates well beyond what seems to have been its original intent as well.

Adbuster asserts in its campaign web-page opener that, “we vow to end the monied corruption of our democracy,” speaking, one assumes of U.S. democracy, even though Adbusters is a Canadian publication founded by Kalle Lasn, an Estonian. Adbusters itself claims to be a, “global network of culture jammers and creatives,” and that their Occupy is, “[i]nspired by the Egyptian Tahrir Square uprising and the Spanish acampadas.” One should note that Adbusters is a non-profit organization with aspirations and effect well beyond the confines of the magazine at its core.

Many of my dear intrepid friends struggle mightily with the unavoidable nature of the movement in which we all participate. Occupy Colorado Springs, (OCS), has garnered a fair amount of attention both because of its early acquisition of a city permit to camp on the sidewalk, and for its fragmentary infighting. Strong personalities have clashed fairly spectacularly for what scale we’re dealing with here, and precisely the same arguments are on display at Occupy web-pages all over the U.S., as well as abroad. Here, many patriotic, nationally oriented players have concentrated on addressing the U.S. Constitution and the influence of corporate interests in Washington, D.C. politics. Others have been caught up in causes of personal concern as the “focus” of the overall movement has grown more and more diffuse. The bickering and difficulty in reaching consensus has been frustrating but, i suggest, not unhealthy or out of place.

Adbusters, following ques from the Middle East and Spain, deliberately set off a “leaderless” movement, and has fastidiously avoided taking hold of any sort of control of what has developed since, refusing even media interviews for fear of exercising undue influence. Occupy remains a leaderless movement. Various groups and individuals have issued lists of demands; the one linked there, “is representative of those participating on this [particular ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Facebook] page.” We Occupiers have much common ground, which has served well to bring us all together, and will continue to serve as we gather to discuss and bicker over issues and particulars. There is plenty to differentiate amongst us as well, on individual and other categorical bases, but we have recognized, more or less, an essential humanity that has us willing to stand in freezing temperatures if we live in the northern hemisphere, and subject ourselves to the slow, often painful process of learning to live together.

Some among us, as we have seen right here in Colorado Springs, are very uncomfortable indeed with the amorphous nature of the Movement. We have seen splintering, censorship wars, general Assemblies that devolve into shouting matches, and the development of personal animosities. These phenomena are repeated on a grander scale throughout the Movement while observers gloat over the imminent dissolution of Occupy unity. Neither we Occupiers nor the Movement’s detractors ought to be misled by these birth pains. Our situation as humans, or for that matter any other creature inhabitant of the Earth has been rendered fully untenable by humans competing for dominance. The upheaval we engage from our Colorado Springs street corner, or from squares in Manchester, Belgrade, Cairo, and etc. is the natural response of rats in a corner. Were it not for the fact that we humans indeed possess reasoning capacity beyond a rat’s we really would be screwed. Fortune, or Divine providence, or evolution, or whatever mechanism or mechanisms turn(s) out to be true has granted us the tools that, utilized with empathy at every turn may–just may–allow us to work our way out of the massive pickle in which we’ve put ourselves. Nothing about this will be easy, quick, or for most, especially comfortable.

The Movement is leaderless. This is an existential fact. No matter how strenuously individuals attempt to grab hold of reigns, or to turn them over to others, there is no authority behind the Movement other than the profound spiritual authority of its essential Idea. The financial disparities that we have focused on here in the U.S. are real, and the supra-national bodies that control our government with full directive power are the same bodies that separate people from power in every nation on Earth. Each issue that has arisen into the Movement’s overall consciousness, from derivative markets, to marijuana law, to camping on public property is part and parcel of the whole thing, which itself amounts to such a gigantic, lumpen juggernaut that we have a hard time gathering our thoughts around the whole thing at once. We must.

Many U.S. citizens, including some prominent in and around OCS, have expressed insistent nationalism. Muslims and Christians around the world have pushed religions agendas. Nationalism is by no means confined to the U.S.A. Our corporate, non-personal enemy and its personal, human operators are Global already, and use these divisions to our detriment! At a Colorado College faculty panel yesterday, much ado was made of income disparities and market finagling by Wall Street financiers. We can isolate our minds all we want, but we can not eliminate the fact that Wall Street, Fleet Street, Singapore, Hong Kong, the House of Saud, whatever, whatever, are already one indivisible entity, operating in opposition to any concern for overall humanity or household priorities for any of us as inhabitants of the planet, including the natural requirements of the controllers. The Idea of competition and profit has acquired an independent life of its own and has prevented even those at the top of the unwieldy pyramid from living lives connected to the most valuable prizes of all, which we humans have recognized throughout our history and recorded in odes, songs, and literature to be transcendent of politics and possessions. The statistics cited by those college economists, and the many Occupiers that mention them in speeches and lists of demands are quite real, and Americans might note that Kurdish, Nepali, and Palestinian Occupiers, for example, skew the stats we’ve been flailing our arms about here even further, and that “First World” exploitation is a very large part of this discussion, indeed.

There can be little doubt that the “Wall Street” entities in control of our various governments have planned for and directed events toward a “New World Order” for decades, if not centuries. Lots of justifiably paranoid conspiracy watchers all over the planet have done their best to alert their fellows to this alarming and unacceptable development for as long as it has been in the mix. The Vatican, a power with negative credibility in its adherence to its own doctrine, has offered itself up as a potential controller of a global banking scheme. Currently entrenched power-brokers will absolutely without question attempt to co-opt and control the current Movement. We humans are not interested in more of the same bullshit, plus the added benefit of still more bullshit! We occupiers are fully Sovereign, each in his or her own right. We are leaderless by design, which is the natural development of the abject failure of our leaders, and in fact of the failure of the very foundation of our interaction amongst ourselves that has developed without much direction for at least the 10,000 year span during which we have written about it. Those who resist this fact will find little more than inversely correlated discomfort in their resistance. One can deny the nature of a rhinoceros till one’s dying day, but the beast remains a rhinoceros, and the denier’s last day may well come on the day he encounters a rhinoceros.

Sovereign consensus building is not democracy. It’s something we humans have never attempted on the scale we Occupiers are attempting now. Broad-scale cooperation as a foundation is against an established competitive approach that we have fallen into by default for a long, long time. Voting one another into submission will not work, simply because we have let the cat out of the bag. We noble individuals are learning a brand-new thing, like it or not, because a rhinoceros has smashed the freakin’ house down. I, for one will not abandon the Liberty of my own Sovereignty, no matter who votes what, nor will i abandon the respect i hold for each other Sovereign in the entire mix. I recognize the differences between whatever groups or persons are in the whole wide world. Categorical observations are real, so far as they go; but i won;t be bound by them. I won’t be forced to fight against the 1% simply because i am a member of the 99%. Rather i will be fighting with every fiber of my being for the 100% of us who will ALL be trampled by the rhinoceros, in pretty danged short order, unless we ALL relinquish our insistence on control, avarice, and irresponsibility of all stripes.

Each of us has a part to play, a purpose to serve. Never abandon what you know. Work hard at open discussion. Don’t be embarrassed by frustrating moments or attempt to hide your own humanity. Withdraw for a moment if you need to to prevent overboiling passions. We’re all in this together. Be patient Brothers and Sisters; this is gonna hurt some….

OWS List of Demands:
www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=157161391040462
Adbusters:
www.adbusters.org/campaigns/occupywallstreet
NPR:
www.npr.org/2011/10/20/141526467/exploring-occupy-wall-streets-adbuster-origins
Middle Eastern origins:
www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/apr/09/libya-egypt-syria-yemen-live-updates
Acampadas:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13466977

Legal artistry

(In response to questions received on another forum: “I’m curious as to why, exactly, you feel that you are entitled to stay in a public park at all?”, “What makes you feel that you are entitled to enjoy the ‘right’ of pursuing your happiness — that is, living in Acacia park — without having to contribute monetarily to the upkeep of that public facility.. Furthermore, why is it that you believe that, in the interest of effecting a change in a law which you disagree with, the best course of action is to choose to voluntarily break said law, rather than getting involved in the legal process and effecting a change in the typical fashion? After all, all that really accomplishes is an additional waste of taxpayer-funded services, in this case law enforcement.”)

I’ll reiterate again before i take this on that these are profoundly excellent questions that i think every Occupier, observer, and citizen of any country ought to contemplate deeply before entering the fray–maybe even before leaving the house this morning.

First I should clarify what may amount to a few misconceptions wrought largely by the media of late. As has been reported I am living with dear friends who find my comfort to be a valuable thing and have extended their hospitality freely absent any solicitation on my end. J. Adrian Stanley of the CS Independent has referred to me as a “technically homeless…couch[-]surf[er],” which is true, though only by certain technical legal definitions, which are generally designed to either skirt or address issues involving benefits of some sort. I am “technically” employed as the sole proprietor of the Paint Squad, a remodeling company that has been defunct for practical purposes since the media began trumpeting a new Great Depression, and the guy i had been working with abandoned the project. For the record, i collect no unemployment, disability, food stamps, or any other money or benefits of any kind from the government. Plainly stated, i have no monetary income. This is not meant to offer ethical assessment of my situation nor to elicit sympathy or whatever, but is merely offered to add perspective to my positions, and to rectify factual errors that have made it into the mix. Bear in mind i was camping at Acacia Park not out of necessity, but to effect the specific outcome that you may observe to have been effected. Note that although hundreds of campers are now down along Fountain Creek in violation of the same ordinance, they are not at Acacia Park kicking the bee’s nest with me–they have different and rather more imminent needs than i.

I believe i adequately responded to Mark’s first question by directing him to the appropriate pages here at hipgnosis. The second is a continuation of the first, with the addenda about “contributing monetarily.” A response must necessarily involve the natures of money, property and its use, and our interaction amongst ourselves as human beings. The third involves political processes and movements, civil disobedience, and my own spiritual foundation. I hope those statements enlightens the reader on the length of this post, and Mark in particular on the reason for the time taken for its development.

Some questions in answer to a question: Who owns public land? What does it mean to “own” it? Whence the resources to maintain the land, and what does that mean? We Americans have never adequately addressed these matters, and our ethical foundation for holding this conversation will remain forever spongy until we do. All land ownership in the United States harks back to the arbitrary decrees of that series of monarchies our predecessors here acknowledged to be so corrupt that a bloody war was necessary to shed the influence thereof. Land was simply declared by powerful people to be “owned” by favored sycophants, regardless of the opinions of the contemporary inhabitants. The Founders adopted the same attitudes governing property as had been utilized by their enemies. Every piece of property in the country now, public or private, is viewed through the lens of this fact. Its “ownership” is determined by arbitrary acts of murder and fiat. It’s understandable that this is the case–effecting such jarring and massive shifts in foundational thinking is never blithely easy, though it does appear simple once accomplished.

Having had an ear to the ground for some time on matters such as we are discussing , i am alert to numerous suggestion that “we” give land back to the “Indians.” This idea is as flawed as the other, and the thinking of indigenous peoples advocating it has been corrupted by our Western philosophical bias. The only genuine option uncorrupted by avarice and murder is to revert to a state of ignorance of ownership where the land is concerned. The elaboration of this notion constitutes a genuine system of political economy and i will carry it no further here, (but will link below). This is put in the mix to allow the reader to investigate further, and to establish that the following points are argued from an academic point of view rendered at least partially moot by the actual philosophical basis for the actions in question.

Be alert, Mark, that i have not been a societal parasite. I have worked and paid taxes since the age of 12, in spite of strenuous effort to limit the absurd, onerous, and unethical share the Government has taken through any nefarious means available. Maintenance at Acacia Park is paid out of city sales tax, unless i’m mistaken, which i certainly paid when i bought the sleeping bag i slept in there, the bicycle i rode to the park, the tobacco i smoked while there. Additionally, though i have not camped there in a week or so, one might readily visit the Park and ascertain that it is in a far cleaner state than before Occupiers carved out a space there, the rest rooms were locked coincident to their arrival, and the only maintenance in evidence is a guy that comes around in the morning to collect the bags of trash the Occupiers have gathered from around the whole park, and the sprinklers which still douse the tree lawns where people are camping even though watering season is so obviously over that infrastructure damage is imminent. Regardless, and without additional verbosity, the land in question is public, and we Occupiers clean up after ourselves requiring less maintenance, not more, of the City. Opposition to the notion that smaller contributions in tax payments ought to equal diminished rights to enjoy publicly held assets, with which we are endowed at birth is quite close to the heart of the Occupiers’ battles, whether individual Occupiers have become aware of the idea yet or not. We all pay for it, both monetarily and in karmic debt, or by whatever system of spiritual balance you may care to invoke. Any Rockefeller is welcome to pop a tent next to mine.

Your final point, that is, why civil disobedience rather than ordinary action is yet another that might be expanded at length. In the interest of getting this up i’ll restrain myself from that in hopes that you will recognize that i am not attempting to be glib or brusque with you here, Mark, but merely brief. Additional commentary on all these points is both available and forthcoming. Simply enough–civil disobedience, and in fact in my mind and those of many, many others, full-blown political and ideological restructuring is necessary because no approach within the confines of less strenuous discourse has worked thus far, and people all over the planet have had quite enough bullshit. If you imagine to yourself that this business of mine, or the business of Occupy in general is about camping in Acacia Park, or the stupid camping ordinance enacted but not enforced by the City of Colorado Springs then you have badly missed some very important news. I suggest you follow the links below. Visit the Occupiers, both here and in many other cities around the whole wide World right now.

This’ll do. Ask more questions! Read these links:

I’m not angry, but, hmmm… http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1

Henry George developed a system addressing this stuff. I can’t say his system is complete, and in fact, i am personally convinced our problem as humans must be addressed spiritually. That’s a topic for another moment, and it does not detract from George’s thesis: http://www.henrygeorge.org/

This strikes me as so obvious that it could be seen as a jab, and almost feels that way, but it’s still the place to go for primary discourse on civil disobedience: http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil.html

This is obviously unnecessary, but i’ll point out once more that the reader will find an abundance of words of my own that bounce around all these topics and more. It’s all the same conversation: http://www.hipgnosis21.blogspot.com

PPCC Philo Club page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/168063276537761/

Some other discussion and reporting establishing basis: http://wwwwendolbloggercom.blogspot.com/

There’s no end. Keep looking.

Report from the Right Front

I will be the first to point out, right now here in this forum, that I have a Texas-sized ego. I think I’m a reasonably smart guy, and not unlike any writer, that I have some things to say that are so danged important that I’m gonna say them. I’ll also point out that some others in the conversation, possibly including you, gentle reader, have the same handicap. The entire discussion ought to be undertaken with a salt shaker within easy reach ’cause everything anyone has to say ought to be taken with a liberal helping.
 
This post is an attempt to unravel a bit of a Gordian knot that has tied itself around the politics of “Occupy” movements around the world, and particularly here in Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S.A. without hacking at it with f-bombs directed at the many possessors of equally large egos as mine, while openly acknowledging strong disagreements between some of us. Believe me, this is a difficult bit of unraveling and though I mean to avoid ad hominem attacks, I’ll not promise to eschew strong language. It’s also a bit of a news update, straight from the horse’s ass, so to speak. Sorry if it runs long or gets complicated; it’s a big hairy knot.

I am the guy that picked up the first no-camping ordinance violation in the city of Colorado Springs. I did this while participating in protests falling under the ill-defined aegis of a group called “Occupy Colorado Springs,” in solidarity with another ill-defined group called “Occupy Wall Street,” and other Occupiers all over the world. In case it’s unclear: there’s no such thing as Occupy Colorado Springs, (OCS). What happened is a few guys, boldly named at the top of the eponymous Facebook page like John Hancock at the bottom of that one famous page, finally got bent enough out of shape to do something about it so they set up a page, and a small camp down at Bijou and Tejon–Acacia Park. They were behind the Wall Street guys and liking what they were about, I came behind them.

There is no club membership, no charter, no bylaws, no nothing to define the Colorado Springs group that might in any way be construed to suggest the thing we are doing at Acacia Park is anything other than a gathering of a bunch of fully leaderless sovereign individuals that happen to share a common distaste at the state of human affairs extant in the world today. Anyone who has known me for any length of time, or has read any of the pages preceding this post will know that this is nothing new for me. I was and remain ecstatic at the development of public expression, both here and globally. I am a free actor in the business of protesting in general, and that involving the city’s no-camping ordinance in particular. I act as a sovereign, as a member of OCS whatever that means, as a citizen of the U.S.A., as a citizen of the World–a member of the human race, possessor of certain unalienable rights, whether those derive from God or not.

I decided to deliberately violate the city ordinance because I believe it exemplifies an aspect of the overall erosion of human rights here and across the globe that has precipitated such widespread uproar. I believe it directly attacks individuals’ right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that it is both superfluous and fully unnecessary. It’s just a mean-spirited dig at the weakest among us, a tactic akin to schoolyard bullying, which I maintain is motivated by the same spirit that allows the holders of power at the Federal Reserve and other powerful international and national bodies to gleefully grind the majority of the world’s citizenry to dust for no more than sport. I meant all along from well before the advent of any Occupations to have this conversation at a level previously unattainable to me, and now we will–that is, I and whomever cares to jump in during the proceedings. I control only my own actions and expressions.

There are some protesters at Acacia Park that have strenuously objected to my camping as I did. They are pleased to maintain the fine relationship with CSPD and with the Mayor’s office that has developed, and happy to have avoided the head-bashing, tear-gassing removals that have troubled some other Occupy outposts. Fearing a narrowing of focus from the general Occupy platforms, they asked me, and truly in some instances pleaded with me to abandon my course. Some attempted to tell me. They are happy to compromise, capitulate, appease, to utilize terms previously utilized by those members opposed to my individual action. I am not. I promise, I love every one of the crazy fools involved with the action at our little street corner whether we agree on this matter or not. I’ll mention this one more time: I am just one dude. Anyone that agrees with me here is also behaving of his or her own accord.

Our Mayor Bach is an asshole. I promised to avoid ad hominem here, and I’ll point out that this is not an attack but an observation, and only my opinion. Publicly, falsely and slanderously maligning the very civilized protesters of OCS for urinating on sidewalks while simultaneously locking park rest rooms which had previously been available to all manner of dope-shooting freaks, and possibly authorizing the operation of park sprinkler systems to douse protesters in below freezing temperatures are asshole moves. In my opinion. Mayor Bach is in error, but he’s only acting as seems best to him in each moment, now also capitulating, and allowing protesters a right to their freedom of speech.

We already have a freedom to speak in our country. My violation of the camping ordinance addresses a deeper, more fundamental set of freedoms mentioned so briefly in Mr. Jefferson’s Declaration, and to be found in all the keening of literature throughout all of history–blowin’ in the wind, one might say. This is not a narrowing of focus, but rather a telescopic lens by which I hope we can examine questions of such grand scale and difficulty that centuries after a bunch of homeless guys floated across the Atlantic to Plymouth, we still haven’t grasped them. failing to address the camping ordinance presenting itself so conveniently will flippantly sidestep the most essential key to all of this whole set of global protesting. We’ve all seen protesters on the street corner a million times. We’ve always compromised. It’s never worked.

Anecdotally speaking, it appears the major objection raised by detractors of the Occupy movement is that there has been no firm expression of goals, manifestos, or demands. It seems to me that this is the natural outcome of the complexity of the problems at hand. Although there are certainly individuals involved in skulduggery at, say, the FED, my view is that we face the necessity to alter a fundamental flaw in our very basis for human interaction. I’ll leave you to read my thoughts on that elsewhere in this blog, if you desire, both previous to this post and to come. Right now the Occupy movement is just an acknowledgement of discomfort with the extraordinarily stubborn status quo across all political and national lines, and a frame work within which discussion may take place. Planning and legal definitions will have to wait for some 7 billion Occupiers to chime in. The difficulty of hashing out the minor disagreements among players here in Colorado Springs may be an indication of how much work is involved with the big picture. Be patient. Unless you like the status quo. Most of us don’t.

For anyone out of the loop, including friends across the U.S. and abroad, here’s a bit of fact: I was arrested 18 October, around 2am MST for deliberately violating a city no-camping ordinance. The arrest was executed by my friends, the extra-fine members of the “HOTT” team of the CSPD, as we had previously discussed, (those guys are just as much in jeopardy from “Wall Street” as any of us; they are our brothers). I was simply driven, sans violence of any kind, or even cuffs or hard feelings, to the Gold Hills police station. We did a little paperwork and the fellas drove me to a friend’s place where I claimed a bit of much-needed rest. The HOTT team and I were completely cooperative with one another, and remain so. They did their jobs, I did mine. I had to wrestle with the question until some family matters came up, but I will not be camping under that no-camping sign again until at least my court date, 8 Nov at 1:30p MST. I can not, nor will I attempt to speak to the actions of any other sovereign actors who may follow my example, other than to toss out my opinion should it seem germane to me.

I hope we can all have this conversation in a civilized manner. I hope the whole world shows up at the courthouse that day. I hope all my friends known and unknown that can’t make it will pray, or chant, or beam love on fairy wings–whatever their fancy. I’m gonna need it. I think we all need it, that day and every other.

Reprinted from Hipgnosis