Bob La Trémouille reports:
1. Introduction.
2. Marilyn Wellons on Censorship and The Law.
Flier Ordinance Cannot be Enforced.
3. Your editor on Cambridge, MA's contempt for The Law.
Flier Ordinance Cannot be Enforced; Response - Cambridge has contempt for inconvenient laws.
1. Introduction.
The following exchange appeared on the Cambridgeport listserve on May 5, 2008.
2. Marilyn Wellons on Censorship and The Law
Flier Ordinance Cannot be Enforced.
If the city's already hired a compliance officer and fined Riverside Neighborhood Association, it may be silly but someone's serious about it. Why, and why now, I do not know, but this move does follow hard upon others to limit public speech, especially in City Council.
How we're to find lost dogs or cats, advertise yard sales or neighborhood meetings without being able to put signs on utility poles I also don't know. Postings like these are a public means of communication unlike the telephone, e-mail, snail mail, or door-to-door leafleting.
Marilyn Wellons
PS Something about this reminds me of the poem attributed to Pastor Martin Niemoeller: see http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ First_they_ came...
3. Your editor on Cambridge, MA's contempt for The Law.
Flier Ordinance Cannot be Enforced; Response - Cambridge has contempt for inconvenient laws.
Standard game with the City of Cambridge is: "If you want us to obey the law, sue us."
That is the reason they get away with so many truly reprehensible things, all the time putting out "Holier than thou" lies.
One excellent example is Kathy Podgers' case at the MCAD, two findings of probable cause so far in an obvious case.
Another excellent example the flat out refusal of the Election Commission to obey the Jack E. Robinson case. Most sane people do not spend thousands of dollars fighting these bastards.
They wind up in court only when they force somebody into a corner, as those dirty bastards did with Kathy Podgers. With Kathy, however, it says wonders that a roomful of rogue cops have not been punished for siccing a pit pull on her guide dog in the lobby of the Cambridge Police Station.
