On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 09:09:25AM -0800, Seth wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Dec 2014 00:11:40 -0800, Robert Jakob <rsjakob@???> wrote:
> >I was very surprised with what a small percentage of people said yes they
> >should be allowed to protest. How did the Mall of America get
> >$250 million
> >in taxpayer money?
> >
> >Freedom of assembly is in the constitution. You don't get to
> >protect those
> >rights only when it's convenient for you.
>
> It's a weird situation. The argument or principle advanced that if a
> legal person accepts taxpayer $$ (is there a threshhold?) from the
> government they therefore automatically forfeit certain property
> rights and must allow political protest on what is ostensibly their
> property is not one I'm comfortable with.
>
> At the same time I have no great love for malls, mall culture, or
> welfare of any kind, especially corporate.

Some more background:
http://www.startribune.com/business/208425631.html

And now it gets weirder.
http://www.startribune.com/local/west/286734251.html

It's not the *mall* filing civil suits. The Bloomington city attorney
is wasting taxpayer money going after organizers. It was not *the protestors*
that caused shut downs and loss of business, it was the police, on the
request of the mall owners.

There is also this amusing commentary:
http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2014/12/after-mall-protest-a-threat-of-overplayed-hands/

which I think basically says if mall management had taken a nonviolent approach
and allowed the protestors to stand around and sing, it would have been another
protest that nobody cared about. But now we have an overplayed hand by one of
the singular examples of conspicuous overconsumption, and it's almost like
someone who hated working at the mall *wanted* this to become a political
firestorm, and indeed it did, because it's now a huge urban/suburb political
battle between Minneapolis and Bloomington (where the mall is), and people like
me are throwing "why do I have to pay taxes for this crap if it's private"
rocks.

I don't have a good answer for you on the property rights issue. The mall is
taking public tax money for infrastructure for what I think most people consider
a public space. The place exists to be open to anyone that wants to spend money
and buy something there. Now if a group of people that don't want to buy anything
show up, is that really the Bloomington city attorney's problem, or just bad
marketing and PR on the part of the mall?

One store has had better sales because their employees joined in, so why is
tax money being used to cover the bad marketing decisions of the owners?
http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2014/12/22/lush-employees-mall-of-america-protesters-sales-up.html?page=all