The problem here isn’t free speech cages in and of themselves. The right to speech is derived from property rights. Since these lands are owned by the public government, according to rights theory, they should have the ability to dictate what is done on their plot of land. However, as a result of the whole “the public owns it” farce we come to a situation where there is a tragedy of the commons. Their founding documents claim that the public has the right to peacefully assemble and freedom of speech. Therefore one would derived the right to use common land as a platform for those. Let’s accept that as I think historically that can be shown true. What these protesters need to do then is disobey. Stop listening to the thugs who are attempting to disrespect their rights. During the 2004 Republican National Convention the NYPD had setup similar free speech zones. The Manhattan Libertarian party told the city to go pound sand and went off to Central Park and protested there. They received international attention for doing so and no one to my knowledge was harassed. I, however, who at the time was not an MLP member nor protesting, was nearly caught up in one of the NYPD’s protester nets where dozens were taken to Pier 57. Had I not found a low part in the orange netting and hopped over I may have ended up at the pier for just walking down the street. No damage should come of the cages or cameras nor should anyone get violent obviously. They should just not listen, en masse.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 6:42 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.