Don’t Dance at the Jefferson Memorial: A Quick PSA

in Current Affairs, Law | May 29th, 2011 36 Comments

Any­one know what law these dancers were vio­lat­ing, since the arrest­ing offi­cer appar­ent­ly does­n’t know (or won’t say)?

Update: This article/post gives you the back­sto­ry. It explains that the dancers were “there protest­ing a … court deci­sion [hand­ed down] ear­li­er this month that upheld a ban on danc­ing with­in the memo­r­i­al.” The mem­bers of the “civ­il danceobe­di­ence” were charged with demon­strat­ing with­out a per­mit, and then released a short time after. That’s the answer to the ques­tion, in short…

via Boing­Bo­ing


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Comments (36)
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  • privatedancer says:
    May 29, 2011 at 10:43 pm

    Danc­ing needs a per­mit:
    http://lawyersusaonline.com/wp-files/pdfs‑3/oberwetter-v-hilliard.pdf

    Reply
  • Laamanen Steven says:
    May 30, 2011 at 12:41 am

    these sil­ly fucks have no respect for where they are.…

    Reply
    • PS says:
      May 30, 2011 at 3:10 am

      No, I think they under­stand what free­dom and respect mean. They were danc­ing to hon­or the man who said “Timid men pre­fer the calm of despo­tism to the tem­pes­tu­ous sea of lib­er­ty.” I think Jef­fer­son might be talk­ing about you.

      Reply
    • Ganeshaa23 says:
      May 30, 2011 at 1:33 pm

      No, I think you have no respect for where these Amer­i­can Cit­i­zens were. I tru­ly won­der at the utter dis­re­spect these police­men and the Judge have for the Con­sti­tu­tion. There is absolute­ly no rea­son this should have hap­pened!

      Reply
    • GC says:
      June 5, 2011 at 5:19 pm

      I agree with you Laa­ma­nen, these cops have abso­lut­ly NO respect for where they are…  Thanks!

      Reply
  • MD says:
    May 30, 2011 at 7:33 am

    They were not giv­en a warn­ing. That being said this video is a sad state of affairs. Respect to the peo­ple who start­ed danc­ing after the cou­ple were arrest­ed.

    Reply
  • Ammo63rambo says:
    May 30, 2011 at 7:47 am

    the only prob­lem i saw here were the fas­cist police exer­cis­ing tyran­nan­i­cal pow­er over “free” amer­i­cans who wer­ent real­ly doing any­thing wrong. they wer­ent demon­strat­ing and i dont see why they should­nt be able to dance in the memo­r­i­al.  the police may have been doing their job in some way but it seems they looked real­ly stu­pid. these peo­ple were just tourists hav­ing a lit­tle fun. if a “no danc­ing ” law exists then they should be required to post signs stat­ing that instead of just walk­ing up to peo­ple and spoil­ing their fun. ive been pay­ing tax­es all my life for police to pro­tect me against seri­ous crim­i­nals. not to arrest peo­ple for danc­ing. and hav­ing spent the first six years of my adult life serv­ing my coun­try proud­ly in the mil­i­tary i hate to see CRAP like this in my coun­try!! and ive been to the jef­fer­son memo­r­i­al. and jef­fer­sons house, mon­ti­cel­lo. and jef­fer­son would be turn­ing in his grave if he saw this video.  one of my uncles died in ww2 and he helped crush the nazis. we cer­tain­ly dont want that type of behav­ior here in amer­i­ca with our police. its no won­der ter­ror­ists, ille­gals and drug deal­ers are flood­ing our nation. the cops are wast­ing time arrest­ing peo­ple for danc­ing. how pathet­ic!!

    Reply
  • Hanoch says:
    May 30, 2011 at 2:46 pm

    These peo­ple were delib­er­ate­ly dis­obey­ing the law and inten­tion­al­ly pro­vok­ing police offi­cers who are charged with enforc­ing the law.  Like chil­dren, they had absolute­ly no point to make aside from attempt­ing to demon­strate that they should be able to express any­thing they want, where and when they want to do it.  That is sim­ply not the law in this coun­try.  The D.C. Cir­cuit ruled that the Jef­fer­son Memo­r­i­al is legal­ly cat­e­go­rized as a “non­pub­lic forum” which means that “the gov­ern­ment may reserve [it] for pur­pos­es that pre­clude expres­sive activ­i­ty”.   The Court explained that “[i]n cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing the Jef­fer­son Memo­r­i­al in par­tic­u­lar, the gov­ern­ment has ded­i­cat­ed a space with a solemn com­mem­o­ra­tive pur­pose that is incom­pat­i­ble with the full range of free expres­sion that is per­mit­ted in pub­lic forums.”  

    Obvi­ous­ly, if every­one decid­ed to dis­obey laws with which they dis­agreed, there would be chaos and every­one would be worse off for it.  If these peo­ple felt that the reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing con­duct at gov­ern­ment memo­ri­als are incor­rect, then they should act like grown-ups and make their views known through prop­er means.

    Reply
  • Mike says:
    May 30, 2011 at 3:37 pm

    Any­one who’s ever spent much time in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., knows that protests go on there every day.  But there are rules.  And in some spaces (like the inte­ri­or of the Jef­fer­son Memo­r­i­al) there are rules of deco­rum.  If you were stand­ing in front of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion at the Nation­al Archives, for exam­ple, you might glance up at the First Amend­ment, and then over at the crowd of tourists, and con­clude that this would be the per­fect place to hand out pam­phlets for Jiffy Lube, offer­ing $5 off the next oil change. When secu­ri­ty arrived you could point to the First Amend­ment and shout self-right­eous­ly about Thomas Paine and the Rights of Man. But you’d still be a jerk.

    Reply
  • Ks222 says:
    May 30, 2011 at 4:54 pm

    Clear­ly and unfor­tu­nate­ly not sur­pris­ing dis­play of a grotesque abuse of pow­er. This is not behav­ior indica­tive of either ser­vice or pro­tec­tion. I’m sure that the peo­ple danc­ing would have made Jef­fer­son proud for stand­ing up for their right to free expres­sion. If any­thing Jef­fer­son would have been ashamed of the unnec­es­sary force used here. These peo­ple danc­ing were not offen­sive when tak­en in con­text nor were they caus­ing any harm to oth­ers. It is sad to see the eager­ness of the offi­cers towards vio­lence. It is com­plete­ly with­in one’s rights to resist unlaw­ful arrest / unlaw­ful force. Pow­er to the dancers! This should not end here, we should make Jef­fer­son proud by demon­strat­ing with dance DAILY.

    Reply
  • Ks222 says:
    May 30, 2011 at 4:54 pm

    Clear­ly and unfor­tu­nate­ly not sur­pris­ing dis­play of a grotesque abuse of pow­er. This is not behav­ior indica­tive of either ser­vice or pro­tec­tion. I’m sure that the peo­ple danc­ing would have made Jef­fer­son proud for stand­ing up for their right to free expres­sion. If any­thing Jef­fer­son would have been ashamed of the unnec­es­sary force used here. These peo­ple danc­ing were not offen­sive when tak­en in con­text nor were they caus­ing any harm to oth­ers. It is sad to see the eager­ness of the offi­cers towards vio­lence. It is com­plete­ly with­in one’s rights to resist unlaw­ful arrest / unlaw­ful force. Pow­er to the dancers! This should not end here, we should make Jef­fer­son proud by demon­strat­ing with dance DAILY.

    Reply
  • Ks222 says:
    May 30, 2011 at 4:54 pm

    Clear­ly and unfor­tu­nate­ly not sur­pris­ing dis­play of a grotesque abuse of pow­er. This is not behav­ior indica­tive of either ser­vice or pro­tec­tion. I’m sure that the peo­ple danc­ing would have made Jef­fer­son proud for stand­ing up for their right to free expres­sion. If any­thing Jef­fer­son would have been ashamed of the unnec­es­sary force used here. These peo­ple danc­ing were not offen­sive when tak­en in con­text nor were they caus­ing any harm to oth­ers. It is sad to see the eager­ness of the offi­cers towards vio­lence. It is com­plete­ly with­in one’s rights to resist unlaw­ful arrest / unlaw­ful force. Pow­er to the dancers! This should not end here, we should make Jef­fer­son proud by demon­strat­ing with dance DAILY.

    Reply
  • Anonymous says:
    May 30, 2011 at 7:34 pm

    The com­plic­i­ty of the cit­i­zens in these com­ments indi­cate that Amer­i­ca has fall­en. You have a con­sti­tu­tion it clear­ly enables the free­dom of expres­sion. This isn’t adver­tis­ing this is express­ing an opin­ion at a pub­lic memo­r­i­al for a fig­ure impor­tant in terms of fram­ing the idea of free­dom of speech.

    Instead the posters here defend the use of exces­sive vio­lence, in one case body slams and chok­ing, against peo­ple who were gyrat­ing.

    Reply
    • Hanoch says:
      May 31, 2011 at 3:19 pm

      If any­thing is an indi­ca­tor of Amer­i­ca’s demise, it the per­va­sive  mis­un­der­stand­ing and dis­re­gard of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion, and the con­don­ing of law­less con­duct of the type evi­denced here.  The Con­sti­tu­tion man­i­fest­ly does not per­mit unbound­ed free­dom of expres­sion.  You can­not walk into some­one else’s house or a retail estab­lish­ment and spout off at will.  Nor could you do so in a pub­lic library.  Supreme Court prece­dent has always rec­og­nized that the rights enu­mer­at­ed in the Bill of Rights — includ­ing free­dom of speech — are con­strained by the need to account for com­pet­ing inter­ests.  The D.C. Cir­cuit ruled that the deco­rum restric­tions at the Jef­fer­son Memo­r­i­al are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sound.  It is a fun­da­men­tal under­pin­ning of this coun­try that when the courts rule on an issue, the cit­i­zen­ry must con­duct itself accord­ing­ly, whether one agrees or dis­agrees with the rul­ing.  The alter­na­tive is chaos.

      Reply
  • TAM17 says:
    June 2, 2011 at 8:20 pm

    Why were they stop­ping them from danc­ing any­way? Before the court case put the “law” in place…what rea­son did they have to stop them from danc­ing? Were they bored because they were only Park Police and want­ed to get some action that day? Or was it because they can’t dance so no one else should? Still does­n’t make sense to me why they felt it nec­es­sary to stop peo­ple from dancing…blows my mind.

    Reply
  • Steve says:
    August 14, 2012 at 12:41 pm

    I think because of the open are­na and dance hall like set­ting peo­ple just danced — but when asked to stop and they did not stop I think the police just felt like their egos were deflat­ed. So in my hum­ble opin­ion they just went on a ram­page caus­ing more trou­ble and vio­lence ensur­ing job secu­ri­ty.

    Reply
  • Steve says:
    August 14, 2012 at 12:49 pm

    In the CFR law it does not include CASUAL park users or users not want­i­ng to pros­per or start a gath­er­ing.

    I believe it is aginst the law in some Mid East coun­tries that pro­hib­it pub­lic affec­tion.

    Reply
  • asdf says:
    December 8, 2012 at 7:40 pm

    The place has spe­cial rules, like many oth­er places. For exam­ple, at the Tomb of the Unknown Sol­dier, you’re not allowed to talk dur­ing the chang­ing of guards. There IS such thing as abuse of free­doms. These peo­ple were look­ing for trou­ble, and yes, the DID get warned first, but con­tin­ued to not fol­low the rules. In 1st grade, I was­n’t allowed to ran­dom­ly start danc­ing in the mid­dle of class. Was this a vio­la­tion of my free­doms? Yeah, if you want to stretch it that far. But if you’re rea­son­able you’ll just lis­ten to the rules. And the offi­cer did state what rule they were break­ing, MULTIPLE times. Just because it’s far-fetched does­n’t mean it does­n’t apply to you.

    Reply

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