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From: orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Protest in Russia and the U.S.
Message-ID: <543@whuts.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Feb-86 12:02:19 EST
Article-I.D.: whuts.543
Posted: Mon Feb 17 12:02:19 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Feb-86 20:00:33 EST
References: <1691@bbncca.ARPA> <536@whuts.UUCP> <716@harvard.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
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> In article <536@whuts.UUCP> orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER) writes:
> > 
> >Finally, before we get holier-than-thou about Soviet peace activists
> >being arrested for distributing literature we should remember that
> >the New York Supreme Court just recently ruled that anti-nuclear
> >activists distributing literature in malls in New York State could
> >be arrested for trespassing.
> >          tim sevener   whuxn!orb
> 
> 	I find it simply incredible that a person with any conception
> of reality in the Soviet Union could write the above.  There is absolutely
> nothing in common between the policies governing dissent in the Soviet
> Union and the laws that prohibit trespassing in the United States.  They
> are completely alien to one another in origin, purpose, and effect. 
> 	The implicit comparison between pamphleteers in our malls and
> the residents of the Gulag is sickening, and only belittles the plight
> of Soviet prisoners of conscience.
> 
> Jim Matthews
> matthews@harvard

Jim, I am not saying that our country is currently equivalent to the
Soviet Union.  I noted that after a letter from an ACLU lawyer that
the mall in New Jersey apologized.  We *do* still have a rule of law
roughly based upon the Constitution. I would like to maintain that
system. Don't you?
 
However that should not blind us to possible threats to our
democratic rights.  Nor is it true that every transgression in the
Soviet Union leads to a Gulag.  In fact, if you had seen the Frontline
show "Russia - Love it or Leave it" you would know that while the
peace activist was arrested for distributing literature that at
the time of the TV interview she was living peacefully at home amidst
her Nuclear Freeze bumperstickers.  She was not sent to a Gulag anymore
than I would have been had I been arrested.  That does not mean
that she was not intimidated and prevented from exercising her rights.

Every day another shopping mall is built - in some newly built suburbs
there never is a town square since the shopping mall serves its
function from the beginning.  In other areas, the traditional town
square and its business district dies as the shopping mall replaces it.
In many communities, particularly in the New Jersey suburbs, the
shopping mall *IS* the locus of public activity and community events.
Shopping Malls have Boy Scout events, exhibits from local military
arsenals, and other "community" events.   They are *the only place*
where the public can go see such events and they are the locus of
community activities in exactly the same fashion as town squares.
In order to distribute political literature one does not do well in
a closet.  Nor is this any democratic "freedom" of any consequence
to be free to distribute literature in a closet.  The Soviet peace
activist had no trouble being arrested for her Nuclear Freeze 
bumpersticker in her own apartment.  She got in trouble for trying
to disseminate her views in public; rights guaranteed by the Helsink
Accords and the Univeral Bill of Rights.
If present trends continue then in many places there will be no
public town squares, only shopping malls.  What will become of
*our* political rights guaranteed under our own Constitution if
there is no place to distribute literature to the public?  If one
is simply not allowed to distribute literature where the public
actually congregates?  We will wind up with repression of democratic
rights similar to the Soviet Union, in which distributing literature
is to court arrest.  It does not matter to me if such repression
in our own country is based upon the rights of *private* property
while in the Soviet Union it is based upon the rights of *public*
property.  The end result is the same loss of democratic rights.
Nor does it matter to me if in our own country the punishment is
less severe - arrest and possible loss of a job versus eventually
being sent to a Gulag in the Soviet Union.  The denial of
civil liberties is wrong. Period.
 
    tim sevener   whuxn!orb