Defying government shutdown, national park visitors play ‘catch me if you can’

Christian Science Monitor ^ | 10-8-13 | Patrick Jonsson

[RKBA Democrat]

With the US government shutdown well into its second week, growing numbers of Americans are gleefully engaging in what they call “civil disobedience” by tossing aside cones or jumping over government shutdown-inspired barricades around national monuments, malls, and park entrances.

SNIP

Yet the barricaded federal lands issue has particularly focused on whether it’s really necessary to close off public lands that aren’t regularly patrolled, that are leased to private entities, or are simply open-air monuments without pay gates. For some areas, millions of dollars in tourism revenue is at stake.

“We’ve gone from ‘this land is your land, this land is my land,’ to the government saying this land is its land,” writes University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds in an e-mail. “President Obama said that government is just a word for the things we do together. Apparently that includes kicking WWII veterans off their memorial.”

SNIP

One area where the government seems to have the clear right to put up barricades or “closed” signs is where there are pay gates to enter an area. But for parks and monuments where people can simply wander onto federal lands, blocking access touches on a “a huge [legal] gray area,” says Dale Goble, a land policy expert who specializes in the sagebrush rebellions of the West.

One issue that remains unclear is the legal foundation for those closure protocols, including what authority rangers have to either remove “trespassers” or even ticket and arrest them. If the rangers don’t have that power, then many of the barricaded areas are, by default, still open to the public.

[MrB]

Make sure it’s on video.
People need to see the fascism in order for something to be done about it.

[mbennett203]

“Don’t stop until you reach the back of their teeth!”