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protest
naomi wolf
.org/about/) has a fourfold strategy: buy, invest, boycott, demand change. According to the leaders of Co-op America: Any concerned group can call a boycott and any consumer is a potential boycotter. If you buy things, you have the power not to buy. If your friends and neighbors are among the target customers for a specific product or industry, you are in a very powerful position indeed. Investments you have bought can also be used to drive change. A majority of Americans own stock, and you can use the stock you owneven if it is only a small amountto drive a shareholder resolution. A shareholder resolution happens when shareholders get together to demand a course correction by a corporation by putting it out for a shareholder vote. Shareholder resolutions have helped bring about such immense changes as divestment in apartheid-era South Africa; because of such actions, companies such as Nike have had to face their exploitive use of sweatshops and been forced by ordinary people to ensure that conditions in Nikes factories are not abusive. According to boycott movement leader Todd Putnam, Boycotts used to take between five and ten years to get results, but now they take about two. Thats because theyre better organized and get more media attention: corporations recognize the damage potential much earlier.
additional resources
How to Drive a Boycott
Co-op America: http://www.coopamerica .org/about online NewsHour website that lists all discussions and protests nationwide that emerged from a boycott: http://www.pbs.org/
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newshour/bb/law/jan-june06/immigration2_ 05-01.html National Black Boycott Information Bureau (NBBIB): http://www.nbbib.org/ Boycotts.org: http://www.boycotts.org once you have run your successful boycott and beaten Goliath, you will want to register your success at http:// www.boycotts.org to inspire others. Your democracy commando group must take to the streets. Go to the Los Angeles chapter of the National Lawyers Guilds website to consult the section entitled Your Right to Demonstrate and Protest (http://nlg-la.org/). Marjorie Cohn, who runs the National Lawyers Guild, offers the following guidelines for how you can protest. These apply to California, but your own communitys guidelines are also available from the National Lawyers Guild.
Can your right to speak out be restricted because what you want to say could be considered controversial?
No. The First Amendment prohibits restrictions based on the content of speech. But your local police and govern247
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ment officials are allowed to place certain non-discriminatory and narrowly drawn restrictions on when, where, and how you can exercise your First Amendment rights.
Is there a specific location in town where you are entitled to use your First Amendment rights to speak and protest?
Generally, all types of expression are constitutionally protected in traditional public forums such as public sidewalks and parks. In other words, you are free to say anything you want in public spaces. Usually, you do not need a permit to picket or protest on the sidewalk, in a park, or in front of a government building so long as you allow pedestrians to pass on the sidewalk and you obey all traffic rules. You can march in public streets subject to reasonable permit conditions, which means that you need a permit if you want the street closed to vehicular traffic for your parade or protest. That is, like the proKorean refugee and pro-Tibet groups, you will need to get a permit from the mayors office, and they cant unreasonably deny it to you. You can also use your right to free speech in public locations such as the plazas in front of government buildings which the government has opened up to similar speech activities.
Is there anything else you need to know to keep your rally on track?
Generally free speech activity, meaning your rally, cant take place on someones private property if the owner of that property does not consent to it. The National Lawyers Guild notes that some kinds of events require permits: if your march or parade is not
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going to stay on the sidewalk, or if you plan to block traffic or streets, or if your city requires sound permits for a rally that will need a sound amplifying device such as a bullhorn or sound system. Many permit ordinances let officials constrain the route of a march or the level of amplification your sound equipment makes. You may need to file for those permits some weeks or months in advance of your rally. However, the good news is that the First Amendment prohibits such advance-notice requirements from being used to prevent spontaneous rallies or demonstrations that are rapid responses to unforeseeable and recent events, such as a police shooting or bombing another country.
Can you pass out leaflets and other written material on public sidewalks?
Yes. You can approach pedestrians on public sidewalks and give them leaflets, newspapers, or petitions. You are also free to ask them for money donations, but some cities limit face-to-face solicitations for money on the spot. Check your local ordinances. You can set up tables to help you do this as long as you dont block peoples way or block building entrances.
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sUCK as long as you dont tell your listeners to attack the school board members.
Is heckling protected?
In general, heckling is protected, unless hecklers are attempting to physically disrupt an event, or unless they are drowning out the other speakers.
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out certain protections against fire. Again, this is going to be a local law, so check with your local Guild lawyers. The rules for protesting on federal property may be significantly different from your local city and state laws, so be sure to check.
staging a protest
Choose a significant venue. Think about a location that will be most effective. It should be symbolic, the way Boston Harbor was symbolic of the fight against taxed imports. Look interesting. Almost every protest I have attended as an adult in the U.S. was uncoverable visually because there was nothing interesting happening for cameras to capture. People were dressed in boring ways, holding boring signs, and saying boring things. The great protests had color, a mass of uniformity, or a mass of spectacle, and used theater, music, and humor. You want to have color so that you will be on the front page of your newspaper or so that footage of your protest will make good TV news clips. If you are protesting for the Constitution, for instance, have everyone dress in red, white, and blue; that will guarantee a front-page image rather than one on a black-and-white inside page. Use theater. Ron Paul supporters tend to have at least one attendee dressed as an eighteenth-century patriot, in waistcoat, wig, and breeches. Bring music. Todays protest leaders tend to talk and talk. Sing instead. The great protest marches used the singing of the marchers to uplifting effect and included protest songs, folk songs, national ballads, or spirituals. Hold hands. Civil rights marchers often held hands.
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The Estonians actually entwined their hands, creating lines of people that could not be broken. It is harder for agents provocateurs to claim that a crowd has instigated violence if they are peacefully holding hands.
additional resources
Staging a Protest
Protest against war: http://pax.protest.net/ National Lawyers Guild: http://nlg-la.org Protest.Net: http://protest.net/
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arrest
Most police officers are devout patriots and do not wish to beat or terrorize citizens or force them into narrow nonspaces for protest activity, but local regulations have compelled them to do so. As a result, if you break restrictive permit requirements, which I argue you must, they may need to arrest you. Now what? It is illegal for you to do anything that can be construed as resisting arrest. If a police officer takes you out of the crowd and says You are under arrest, go quietly. This is not the moment to fight. You may be placed in handcuffs in front of your body or cuffed with your hands behind your back. You may be put in a police car the officer will probably push you in with a hand on the top of your head; this is to protect your skullor in a paddy wagon with other protesters. Judges want the argument about whether an arrest was warranted to take place after the altercation, between lawyers, and not in the street, between police and protesters. When the police seize you, Try to stay calm. If you struggle at all, even if you lie on the street and refuse to move, it can be considered resisting arrest. When you are arrested, stay silent, but do give your name and address. The police have the right to pat you down to see if you are carrying a weapon, but they may not search you until they have formally placed you under arrest. If you think you might be arrested, you should, of course, not be carrying illegal drugs. Dont carry sharp objects of any kind, as these can be classified as weapons, and dont carry on you names or phone numbers of your friends. However, keep your lawyers number memorized.
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once you have been put in a police car or van, dont try to escape or try to persuade the police to release you. When you arrive at the police station, you must ask to call your lawyer. You cant count on someone else giving you coins or access to a free phone; have a cell phone, calling card, or pocket change on you. Ask a friend to bring as much money as possible down to the courthouse where you will be taken. If you are not told which courthouse it is, tell your friend the name of the precinct station where you are being held. Your friend should also call your lawyer or the defense committee that is overseeing your protest and arrest. The lawyer will meet you either at the precinct station or in court, depending on how serious the charge is you are facing. You will not be permitted to take notes, so try to remember the name of the officer who arrested you, the time and place where the arrest took place, and any possible witnesses that your lawyer will want to speak to. If you cant find or afford an attorney, a Legal Aid lawyer will be provided for you for free. At the arraignment you will hear the charges that will be pressed against you. You will be told your court date and what bail you will need to post. Your friend should arrive with a few hundred dollars toward your bail; if the bail is higher, there are bail bondsmen close to the courthouse who will lend you the balance for a fee if other responsible people cosign the loan. once you are bailed out you should be in contact with a private attorney for the duration of your case. You will be read your Miranda rights. This means that you must be told by the police officer arresting you that you have the right to remain silent and to consult with
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your counsel. If the police question you without having read you your Miranda rights, it means that nothing you say can be used against you at your trial. There are some exceptions to this, and it is also not true that your case will be thrown out of court if the police do not read you your Miranda rights. The following is from the audiobook Criminal Law Handbook: Know Your Rights, Survive the System:
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If you make a statement voluntarily before you are read your Miranda rights, it can be admitted into evidence at your trial. Many people who are arrested ignore the Miranda warning and talk to officers when they shouldnt; they feel psychologically vulnerable, intimidated by jail conditions, and wish to please those now seemingly in control of their lives. Be aware of all these tactics, and just dont talk without your lawyer present. When you have been released on bail, you may need to keep talking to the media. Your arrest and the issues you have raised can become a cause clbre in your community. If your concerns are meaningful to your neighbors, both support and criticism may come pouring in. Perhaps others are organizing a countermovement. They may even start saying and writing negative things about you and your group. This is all great, it is fair game, and it is how democracy is supposed to work.
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naomi wolf
What is your wish list for what a mass citizens movement could do?
Unfair laws continue to exist because the citizenry doesnt challenge them, even if the injustice is from the local town hall or police station. In the case of parade and protest permits, a mass movement needs to start with going through the proper application process and pointing out
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its defects. If a town hall continually denies permits to certain groups, but gives them to others, get together and fight. Share each story widely with friends, colleagues, and strangers. Do not be afraid to challenge those in charge of permits. Go to the local body in charge of making decisions and start a petition or a letter-writing campaign to draw attention to flawed policies. Grassroots modes of communication work especially well on the local level word of mouth, local flyering in stores and public places. Identify the injustice and give it a human facethe local families of killed soldiers are denied a permit to protest the war. Find support from other like-minded group or individuals and expose how their voices were stifled. With each victorysmall or largea peoples movement is born.
naomi wolf
Amendment activities in the street for over four decades. They have documented an orchestrated pattern by which local governments around the country engage in tactics that make it daunting or difficult to engage in political speech. Such tactics include imposing exorbitant permit fees or asking for deposits in the amount of a citys estimated cost of police protection and cleanup. or local authorities may cause undue delays in the granting of permits so that organizers cannot make plans and publicize the events. Municipalities may deny permits altogether, or pass ordinances placing unreasonable or undue restrictions on marches and public demonstrations. The requirement that liability insurance be taken out by demonstrators before a permit is granted is another way that authorities make it costly or difficult to secure permits for constitutionally protected events. often sponsoring groups cannot afford the thousands of dollars such insurance costs. When challenged in court, many of these tactics are found to be unconstitutional and an unlawful interference with free speech. Such unlawful practices are dangerous to a democracy because they may intimidate or discourage Americans from taking to the streets to voice their viewpoints. The uniformity of such strategies around the country, and the relentless application of tactics suggest a highly organized threat to civil liberties.]
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is an area about three inches below your heart, right between where your ribs start to bend away from the breastbone. You want this area to vibrate when you speak. Feel how, when you drop your voice so that it emerges from your diaphragm rather than higher in your chest or throat, you can project naturally much farther. Keep your speech simple. And speak from the heart. The biggest mistakes speakers make include couching their remarks in generalizations, using jargon, getting too complicated, and going on too long. You want your speech to be as short as possible. Giving a specific example is always better than a generalization, and a human story is always better than an abstraction. Rather than announcing Particulates in the air have a negative effect on our childrens respiratory systems, tell your audience about a single child you know ofAlex, who is seven and is in first grade, and who really wants to be well enough to play softball this spring with his friends, but who was hospitalized twice this winter for breathing problems. You can move from a human story to a general pointAsthma in our community is up twenty percent and we now know whybut for heavens sake, dont neglect the individual story. If you are a nurse, dont use medical jargon Children are compelled to raise the level of preventive treatment to manage their reactivity to particulates. Instead say, our kids have to take steroids to keep them from getting sick just from breathing the air. If you are an activist, dont use activist jargonBy being inclusive and proactive as a diverse community consisting of various interest groups in coalition, we can prevail. Say, We can win this fight together. If you are a businessperson, dont use business jargonand so on.
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Use Anglo-Saxon rather than Latinate words wherever possible. Anglo-Saxon words tend to be punchier, shorter, more colloquial, and more vivid: push, win, run, fight, hope. Latinate words are fancier, more abstract, and more intellectual: problematize, advocate, conceptualize. Government websites are death to follow because they tend to be written in Latinate language: select rather than choose; assist rather than help. Choose in advance the three things you want to say. These three things should be phrased in sound bites. A sound bite is ideally memorable, quotable, and punchy. You will give these in your speech. But as your movement gathers momentum, you may be called upon by local and national media to be a spokesperson. You can contract your three sound bites for a three-minute TV interview or expand them with details and examples for a twentyminute public-affairs radio interview, but your job is to know them and get them across each time. Message discipline means sticking to your message no matter the venue and sending it out fresh each time as if for the first time, so that you are sure, no matter what your interviewer throws at you, you have gotten it across. As is true of your op-ed, you want to open a speech with a hook, something that grabs the audiences attention. This can be a relevant joke, some startling information, an account of a recent news event, or, one of my favorites, a contrarian statement. The hook lets your listener know that he or she needs to pay attention. Then you make your first assertion; expand it by explaining it further or giving examples. Then conclude it. Let your audience hear the punctuation. Pause when there is a comma. Let your voice get stronger when there is a period. Pause longer between paragraphs. It makes
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audiences uneasy if you rush or speak in run-on sentences, because its hard to follow them. Powerful speakers have a strong internal logic in their speeches and always let the listener know where they are. Again, as in an op-ed piece, use transitions to link thoughts logically. Transitions can include such phrases as Not only that . . . or Even more seriously . . . or If that doesnt make you mad enough . . . Transitions can be as basic as I am going to tell you three things that need to change if our kids are going to breathe easier. The first thing is . . . The second thing . . . and so on. Your transitions are like the string on which you assemble the beads of your argument, or the stairs by which the listener ascends the different stories of your argument. Then you offer your listeners action stepswhat the audience must do to take action. And, finally, you give them your conclusion. Here is where you can use various rhetorical devices that always work. You can use a technique from Greek rhetoric called anapraxis, which means repeating the opening phrases as you build up the excitement: Will we let our air get dirtier and dirtier? Will we sit by as our kids get sicker and sicker? or will we do something about it? You can use call and response technique: Are you with me? Yes! Are we going to close this plant down? Yes! End with your strongest sentence. By strengthening your voice to its fullest at the very end of your speech, your audience understands that this is the climax of your remarks. It will trigger their applause. In classical rhetoric, this is called the crescendo.
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But if this technique is not natural to you and you are a more quiet personality, dont pretend to be something youre not. You can also use a more meditative conclusionasking the audience, for instance, to imagine a community in which the air is always clean and a child never misses a day of play because of asthma. You can conclude with a quieter hope or wish. This is also effective and it is called a diminuendo.
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