100,000 Protestors... Angry mobs of students...

[Alex]

Why? (and I ask purely from the criminal justice point of view; obviously it is different from the school administrators point of view.)

If an act is, or should be, protected (from criminal presecution) speech on the sidewalk in front of the school I see no reason it shouldn't be in front of the flag pole as well.

Though in an ideal world the kid would have taken the Mexican flag down and then burned another Mexican flag that he owned. Though I think the administrators are being dicks if they referred this for criminal prosecution I don't think it warrants anything more than vandalism charges.

So, just to reiterate my original point, I would be just as supportive of this guys defense fund regardless of whose flag was burned (or similarly important symbols such as if he burned a cross, even on school property).

[innerSpaceman]

I'm only in support of the no fires policy on school property trumping the free speech rights of students. Let them shout 'Down with Mexico' all during math class for all I care. But I can seriously understand a no-setting-fires rule applying to ALL circumstances.

The same might go for hospitals, post-offices, bus depots. Protest fires cannot just happen anywhere simply because they are protests. Fire poses a danger, and its use must be restricted under certain circumstances ... at school being one of them, imo.


On the other hand, I am fervently against the practice of locking down the schools so that kids cannot participate in protests. This has happened all over Los Angeles this past week, and I believe it is a violation of students' civil rights.


All in all, school administrators seem to be behaving like schmucks all over the southwest.

[€uroMeinke]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Fire poses a danger, and its use must be restricted under certain circumstances ... at school being one of them, imo.

How about candlelight vigils?

[tracilicious]

Yes, I suppose that's true. But if you can do something with consequences attached, then you aren't really free to do that thing.

[€uroMeinke]

Originally Posted by tracilicious

Yes, I suppose that's true. But if you can do something with consequences attached, then you aren't really free to do that thing.

But everything has consequences, and exercising freedoms should have some responsibilities attached for what some of those consequences might be - fire getting out of control and gutting the school building for example.

[tracilicious]

Originally Posted by €uroMeinke

But everything has consequences, and exercising freedoms should have some responsibilities attached for what some of those consequences might be - fire getting out of control and gutting the school building for example.

You can hold a protest and burn whatever flags you want without consequences if you aren't on school property, so I would consider that a freedom. I would not consider breaking and entering a freedom, because you'll be thrown in jail. I think it's more semantics than anything else.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by tracilicious

I think that makes the free speech issue here moot because free speech doesn't exist on school property.

Yes it does, for the most part. The Supreme Court has ruled that public school administrators must show a substantial disruption to school operations prior to making content-based restrictions. They are given broader leeway in creating general policies but they can very rarely prohibit specific speech.

Originally Posted by tracilicious

Students can't distribute written materials without school approval,

The SC has addressed this specific issue in Papish and ruled exactly that students could distribute written materials without approval so long as the method distribution did not disrupt school operations (for example they could stand in the hallway between classes handing it out but they couldn't barge into classrooms during session to do so).

But again this is a difference I don't necessarily have a problem with (that is the school having administrative punishments for certain speech) vs. the criminal justice system punishing certain speech.

[innerSpaceman]

Well, then I would suggest the matter of whose property the flag was is very salient, as Alex previously suggested. Because if the property burned did not belong to the kid lighting the fire, whether in protest or not, it was a case of arson. Lighting fire to someone else's property in protest is not free speech. It matters not if the property has some symbolic meaning that burning conveys.


I think criminal prosecution of this particular matter is absurd. But I can see where it clearly falls into criminal jurisdiction.



edited to add:

Also, it need not be your own ignited property to protect you from criminal intent. I suppose the KKK brings its own crosses. Where does the Supreme Court stand on that?

Is speech protected when it's hate speech? When it's initimidating speech?

Is flag burning merely a political statement? Or can it be hate speech and/or threatening?

[Alex]

In my opinion intimidating speech and hate speech should be protected but I apparently lost that argument a long time ago.

As soon as you create special criminal categories for those two things then it is all just a fight to define which hate is worse than other hate and it is in the best interested of the targeted group to at least pretend to be intimidated.

[innerSpaceman]

Is bribery ok then? Jury tampering? Yelling "fire" in a crowded nightclub?

How absolutist is your free-speech desire?