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Governor Rick Scott (R) has declared a state of emergency in the county where the University of Florida lay, due to a planned speech by Richard Spencer. According to NPR:
When Hurricane Irma was bearing down on Florida last month, Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency. On Monday, he did the same thing in Alachua County, ahead of a speech by white nationalist Richard Spencer at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
"We live in a country where everyone has the right to voice their opinion, however, we have zero tolerance for violence and public safety is always our number one priority," Scott said in a statement. "This executive order is an additional step to ensure that the University of Florida and the entire community is prepared so everyone can stay safe."
"I find that the threat of a potential emergency is imminent," Scott declared in his executive order, noting that Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell had requested the state's assistance. The order will make it easier for various agencies to coordinate a security plan for Thursday's speech at the university.
[...] No campus group invited Spencer to speak, and the university is not hosting or sponsoring the event. Spencer's group, the National Policy Institute, is paying the university $10,564 for facility rental and security.
And it looks like it could get expensive:
The speech and accompanying protests are also a major expense: The university as well as state and local agencies expect to spend more than $500,000 to provide additional security.
And the University of Florida can't demand that Spencer pay the full cost of protecting him, because of a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement.
In that decision, the university explains, "the Court clarified that the government cannot assess a security fee on the speaker based upon the costs of controlling the reaction of potential hostile onlookers or protestors," under legal doctrine known as the "heckler's veto."
Well, that is the cost of free speech in a free country.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by arcz on Wednesday October 18 2017, @10:03PM (27 children)
Or maybe, just maybe. The government could buy security cameras, collect evidence, and arrest, indict, and charge the hecklers with a crime, whereafter they are convicted and locked up instead of allowed to cause more disruption.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 18 2017, @10:11PM
What?? Follow the rule of law? But then how can governors and presidents declare martial law for no good reason? What happens when at the next million man march? We just let em invade a city with no heads busted????
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday October 18 2017, @10:50PM (25 children)
Except for one teensy weensy little problem: heckling isn't a crime. I know there are lots of people who would like to make it into a crime for all kinds of reasons, but it is a constitutionally protected right to heckle somebody in public to your hearts' content.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Funny) by rylyeh on Wednesday October 18 2017, @11:11PM (3 children)
I used to play in rock bands. I would have gladly jailed the next idiot who shouted out: "Play some Skynyrd!!!"
SO, I'm guilty of 1A oppression - clearly.
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday October 18 2017, @11:29PM (2 children)
Filter error: I've seen it played live.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by rylyeh on Wednesday October 18 2017, @11:45PM (1 child)
Yes. FYI this was Seattle in 1992!
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday October 19 2017, @12:39AM
I don't remember when but I do remember that the woman I was seeing at the time didn't wan't to go, so I went by myself and had a really bad time.
For a great many reasons I should have stopped seeing her as soon as she started treating me really badly. But I persisted for five years - five years I cannot get back.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 18 2017, @11:24PM (3 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 18 2017, @11:25PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday October 19 2017, @12:44AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @03:39PM
Just cause there is a law that may outlaw it ignoring the constitution, enforcement of that law would fail if it was used in an unconstitutional way.
Screaming and making noise in the middle of a night out side someones house? Breach of peace.
Screaming and making noise at a public gathering, particularly one with a political streak? Constitutionally protected speech.
You should look up a book called "We Must Not be Afraid to be Free"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Thursday October 19 2017, @12:49AM (11 children)
In Clown World it apparently is so, in a sane one it isn't, In a Sane World you eject the hecklers and get on with the program people went to the bother of obtaining tickets to attend. Because the authorities are usually on the side of the hecklers though, this never happens when the speaker is on the Right. Not even the Alt-Right mind you, plenty of ordinary cucked National Review type Republicans get shouted down now. Yet it never happens to the Left, when someone on the Right gets the idea to return the favor they discover the police do know how to do their job, it is a matter of the orders being different depending on the event.
And we aren't even discussing hecklers buttmunch, you don't even contemplate declaring a State of Emergency because someone might be about to be heckled. Antifa riots, burns, maims and destroys. As does Black Lives Matter and the rest of the militant Left, while their pet politicians declare a safe space for the rioters to "express themselves." Meanwhile the businesses looted and burned discover their insurance does not cover acts of insurection, civil disorder, war or terrorism so they are shit outta luck.
The solution is obvious. If you don't like what somebody says you disagree. That can involve attending and asking a question intended to make them look like a fool, it can involve standing outside with protest signs, the media is certain to give you at least equal coverage if you are on their side. It might even involve a speech of your own, a lecture, an article.
What it can't include is the "shut it down!" attitude and behavior we see now. Anyone who is a student caught disrupting a speaker should be expelled, no appeal, no refund and no application for readmission for at least two years while they are encouraged to undertake a study of what a life of the mind involves and the expected behavior for a scholar. Anyone identified participating in an act of violence / riot should be arrested, jailed and generally have their life screwed over as an example to others that free speech and civil order will both be maintained. Anyone caught looting during a riot, insurrection or natural disaster (other than life critical supplies) should simply be shot on sight.
Do those obvious things, which used to be standard procedure, and civilization would suddenly be restored to much of the stability which has recently been lost.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday October 19 2017, @03:08AM (3 children)
Get off the fuckin' cross, J-Mo, we need the wood.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 19 2017, @01:20PM (2 children)
Has J-Mo got wood? And Azuma wants it?
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 19 2017, @03:47PM
Azuma's down with the beaver not the wood.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday October 19 2017, @04:33PM
Uzzard's right, I'm the local strict vagitarian :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday October 19 2017, @09:27AM
jmorris need an editor. I offer my services, gratis.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 19 2017, @12:50PM (1 child)
I agree with you. Everyone needs to smurf up their courage and speak, instead of trying to prevent others from speaking.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 19 2017, @09:07PM
Really, this deserves a +2 for the gratuitous but proper use of the word "smurf" but I can only give it +1 without cheating.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by arcz on Thursday October 19 2017, @07:13PM
So you really think that stripping away the constitutional right to due process is a good way to protect the constitutional right to free speech? You're a special kind of idiot.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday October 20 2017, @03:01PM (2 children)
In a private venue, absolutely. But in a government building (like a public university), the hecklers have a constitutional right to speak their minds. There are limits of course, the first amendment requires you to speak "peacefully", and if you don't you'll get a charge like disturbing the peace...but that generally only applies to speech intended to "incite violence" and does not cover actions that "merely annoy".
http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/disturbing-the-peace.html [findlaw.com]
If this guy wants to give some grand speech free from interruption or opposition, he can go hire a private venue for that. But if he's going to have his speech partially supported by our tax dollars, then we've got every right to be part of that conversation too. If you're gonna use my own money to insult me, the least you have to do is gimme a chance to tell you to go fuck yourself too.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday October 20 2017, @05:48PM (1 child)
You aren't even trying to debate in good faith. Sad.
So you are wanting people to believe that you are serious when you claim that if a building is public there can be no scheduled events, no public speakers because anyone, absolutely anyone, is free to simply stand and speak there? You assert that I can walk into my local city council during a meeting and begin speaking and there is nothing they can do, that when they have the large armored gruff policeman drag my ass out they are violating my rights and should sue? Really. And if I want to go to a university, walk into an occupied lecture hall and begin holding forth they simply have to accept that I am exercising my right to speak instead of calling campus security?
Or are you are so utterly convinced of the rightness of your cause and the utter wickedness of the speaker in this case that you simply can't imagine anyone being against "shut it down!" Or more bluntly: Fascism is good when YOU do it. SJWs Always Project. Always.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday October 20 2017, @07:02PM
There are different laws against interrupting a public meeting...but this isn't a public meeting, it's a lecture.
Yes. When I was at Penn State that happened several times; nobody ever got arrested or expelled for it. If it's a frequent, persistent campaign you could maybe get them arrested for harassment, but single incidents are perfectly acceptable.
Oh sure, and I suppose the priests that weren't students or in any way affiliated with the university that would still come around every week shoving giant posters of aborted fetuses in everyones' faces were leftist SJWs, huh? Because tons of people complained but nobody could ever get them booted off campus either because that too is protected speech. Not that I disagree with that decision either, of course they have that right, no matter how much I would have preferred to not have to look at that every goddamn week...
(Score: 3, Informative) by arcz on Thursday October 19 2017, @07:11PM (4 children)
Heckling is not the same as protesting.
Heckling involves violence and is illegal. It's considered ordinary assault, battery, and disorderly conduct.
Heckling is not protected by the first amendment. You have no right to assault people because you disagree with them.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday October 20 2017, @02:12PM (3 children)
What exactly do you think heckling is? Heckling is basically just shouting something. How is speech assault? How is speech not protected by the right to free speech?
https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=define%3A+heckle&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-001 [yahoo.com]
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by arcz on Monday October 30 2017, @09:54PM (2 children)
We have the legal sense of heckling vs the common meaning of the word. Sometimes these definitions are different.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday October 30 2017, @10:33PM (1 child)
This does not appear to be one of those times:
https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/heckling [thefreedictionary.com]
http://legaldictionary.lawin.org/heckler/ [lawin.org]
(Score: 2) by arcz on Wednesday November 01 2017, @04:20PM
Oh I'm sorry I referred to the word in the way that the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken of the word instead of some random "dictionary" run by who knows who. Because a dictionary is more authoritative than the Courts.