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March 05, 2003
...likely to provoke disturbances...
STEPHEN DOWNS AND his son, Roger Downs, each had a pro-peace shirt made Monday night. One shirt simply said "Let Inspections Work" on one side and "No War With Iraq" on the other. The other shirt said "Give Peace A Chance" on the front and "Peace On Earth" on the back. The men paid about $23 for each of the shirts and then wore them in the mall.
"We were just shopping. We were wearing these T-shirts. We weren't handing out leaflets, we weren't saying anything," Roger Downs recalled.
They may not have been saying anything, but they were creating enough of a disturbance to one employee, who called security.
Security asked Downs and his son to remove their shirts. Roger Downs complied, but when Stephen Downs wouldn't, he was told to leave the mall. When he refused, he was arrested.
[...] New York Civil Liberties Union President Stephen Gottlieb says he can't believe the peaceful T-shirts could lead to Downs' arrest.
[...] Guilderland police say they arrested Downs because he refused to leave private property. That, they say, is trespassing.
Representatives for Crossgates did not return calls for comment Tuesday.
Signs posted at entrances to the mall say that "wearing of apparel... likely to provoke disturbances... is prohibited" at the mall.
"Likely to provoke disturbances". When you get right down to it, that's pretty vague, really. What criteria are used to determine how "likely to provoke disturbances" any given shirt (or other article of clothing) is? Obviously, no actual disturbance has to occur for something to be considered out of bounds. I know when I was still able to go to malls, I saw some pretty outlandish and offensive things on shirts that no one seemed to think needed to be removed or were "likely to provoke disturbances".
It can be argued that once they asked the guy to leave, he should have - but what I find most disturbing about this incident is that the security guard felt that an anti-war t-shirt was provocative enough to tell the guy to take it off or leave in the first place. I'd love to have someone go to that mall and keep track of what other kinds of shirts are seen there that aren't considered too provocative.
What's really sad, though, is that the main reason for considering a shirt "likely to provoke disturbances" would be if you're afraid that someone will see the shirt and have a significant reaction to it. The guy who wants to promote peace is being shushed to prevent a guy who wants a war from acting out when confronted with a message contradictory to his own desires. It's not the guy in the peace shirt whose the threat here, it's the one who wants war and thinks he needs to verbally (or otherwise) assault those who disagree. The message the whole incident sends, however, is that those who want peace should just be quiet.
Posted by thorswitch at March 5, 2003 01:49 AM
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