THUG WATCH: Soliciting Nothing

From Eschaton, a personal report of a major violation of the freedom of speech:

We explained that we were promoting NOTHING. They told us that we were soliciting "something" and would have to leave the mall premises. We asked the head of the mall's security to clarify exactly what we were soliciting, to which he replied, "You are soliciting a reaction from people." (One year, during a different Buy Nothing Action, we were accused of no less than "soliciting ideas.")

The standard conversation about soliciting ensued and the state police were once again called in to help deal with the situation. This year, a small army of mall security and state police told us that we were not allowed to even carry the shopping bags that said "FREE SAMPLES NOTHING" on them or we would be arrested. Only the t-shirts and Santa hats were permissible. While we felt that the order was completely ridiculous, we also had not come to the mall that day to be arrested, so we agreed to take the bags out of the mall.

Cut forward

Just as we were walking through the parking lot in front of one of entrances to JCPenny's (but still far from our car), a police van swerved around in front of us and another in back of us. We were surrounded by policemen who told us we were under arrest for failing to obey their orders to leave the mall. We tried to explain that that was what we were trying to do, but they were already putting metal handcuffs on us and warning us not to resist arrest.

Click here for the rest.

This post goes on to say something to the effect that laws vary from state to state as far as free speech in malls goes, even though I seem to remember hearing something about a Supreme Court case a few years back that made free speech in shopping malls the law of the land: apparently, I was wrong about this.

This is pretty lame. Admittedly, I'm a free speech zealot, but given that malls essentially serve the same purpose as a public square (from back in more civilized, pre-freeway days), it strikes me as screwy that people can't protest consumersim at the scene of the crime. But, hey, I'm no lawyer.

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