Posted on 07/18/2013 7:08:41 PM PDT by Maelstorm
Two cases in Eugene Municipal Court this week revolved around protest, poop and constitutional free speech rights. Judge Karen Stenard heard testimony in a motion-to-dismiss hearing July 15 about two protests in the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza that involved the arrests of 21 people in one protest and activist Alley Valkyrie in another. Both were related to the group SLEEPS, which set up tents in the plaza to call attention to the plight of the homeless. The cases were heard on the same day as they subpoenaed the same witnesses.
Attorney Lauren Regan in her motion to dismiss the trespassing charges writes that closing the plaza and forcing the protesters to leave violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment as well as Article I of the Oregon Constitution.
Lane County Administrator Liane Richardson ordered the free speech plaza to be closed and controversially called for “disinfection” of the plaza. At the hearing, Valkyrie says, Richardson testified that she smelled human feces in planter boxes in the plaza within 24 hours of the closure order and had several coversations about it with the sheriff’s sergeant in charge of the clean up. But Valkyrie says the sheriff’s sergeant testified that he didn’t actually find any feces and that he smelled the feces after the barricades went up, which Valkyrie says would be two days later.
Valkyrie, who calls the feces testimony “poop fiction,” says that either way, there were no feces to be smelled. Protesters used nearby city bathrooms and had peacekeepers and a clean-up crew. “This is protocol at every protest,” she says. “You leave the place better than you found it.”
She also says she takes issue with the way that county prosecutor Daniel Barcovic “tried to invoke George Zimmerman” in his questions about if the peacekeepers were trained or carried weapons.
The poop issue is key because a public health hazard could be seen as a reasonable legal basis for closing the plaza. Valkyrie and the SLEEPS protesters maintain that free speech has no curfew. The case resumes July 18 but a ruling is not expected until later.
liberals have minds?
Good Point.
:-)
Poop is “speech”?
How about lead?
A new pre-school book in my wife’s school: “Everybody Poops.”
Garbage in.....
And some of you got mad at me for writing about snot.
Valkyrie...”You leave the place better than you found it.”
Right...sure. Commies and leftists trash everything and leave it for others to pick up. Look at Occupy XYZ, Seattle WTO, you name it. What fevered dreams she has.
Yeah compost on the brain.
“’Alley Valkyrie.’ Now there’s a made-up handle if I ever heard one.”
Signed,
Rod Manly
lol!
Yeah. What gets me is these liberals aren’t inviting this homeless folks into their homes. Oh no they are fighting for them to sleep outside in shabby tents and cardboard boxes. They aren’t trying to get them into safe homeless shelters they instead are using these poor people as pawns to raise their profiles as activists.
Community organizers, FRiend: The copraphiliac ministers of the left’s religion of dung.
Poop happens. Speech happens. Ergo...
Bingo. I had to LOL at her ridiculous declaration. Better, my butt.
Inside every liberal is a dung slinging monkey.
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