PurpleSerf.com
6/1/11
Adam Kokesh of RT America and host of the show Adam Vs. The Man visited our nation's capital with some friends this last weekend in order challenge The Man to a dance off - The Man, evidently, wasn't havin' it.
Recently the DC Federal Court of Appeals ruled against dancing within the Jefferson Memorial. In 2008 members of a flash-mob silently celebrating Thomas Jefferson's birthday were arrested and their subsequent lawsuit protesting the arrest and asserting their 1st Amendment right (Jefferson's baby) to dance on taxpayer land was shot down.
The US Court of Appeals decision specifically delineates the dome area housing Jefferson's statue (where the dancing took place) as a "non-public" forum and one which the US Park Service has a significant interest in maintaining as "tranquil" in order to perpetuate an environment of "reverence."
This is somewhat ironic considering the man who we are to peacefully revere, mouths shut, claimed that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." I am sure this phrase was meant to teach posterity how to kowtow and grovel before bureaucrats.
The driving argument it seems is that government has a right to use tax payer dollars in order to erect, portray, and communicate a specific "viewpoint." In other words, as long as there room left in America to bitch about something, federal land is not necessarily a public forum, in other words a one way street of government speech, and therefore not a place for you and I to express ourselves freely either in protest or jubilance - as is evidenced here.
Adam Kokesh and other activists engaging in civil disobedience.
May 28, 2011.
UPDATE: 6/7/11
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